Having spent many years on Photography forums, I’ve delivered my fair share of critique to budding photographers and received an equal amount myself. I’ve personally always taken extensive time out when critiquing an image to make my critique meaningful to the photographer and doing my utmost best to not break their spirit but instead to boost them to try even harder. Giving critique on images is not an easy job by any means and formulating your words so as not to cause offence is a skill that only a few possess. Quite simply, if you do not have the time to deliver a meaningful critique then rather say nothing at all.
I’ve seen so many photographers with oodles of potential sign up on a photography forum and have their spirits broken by people who do not know how to say things nicely or in some cases say things to deliberately break someone’s spirit. There are so many great photographers out there on forums who are more than eager to give of their time and help someone grow and improve, but there are also (quite sadly) some not so nice people who cannot stand the slightest hint of competition and will dig into their toolboxes of nasty comments to try and break someone’s progress.
You need some thick skin to be a photographer and to display your work online but not everybody possesses this. You need to be able to take a meaningful comment and use it to improve yourself and you need to know when someone is simply trying to get under your skin and simply delete their comment or just ignore it.
Now when I say meaningful critique, I mean a lot more than what I call the 3-H-Salute (Three H Salute). The three H salute is simply Halo – Hotspot – Horizon. This is a common tool in the arsenal of forumites who live, eat and breathe forum life, mostly on their employer’s time. Seldom do these type of critiquers ever deliver meaningful comment other than pointing out the blatantly obvious stuff like a) your horizon is slightly off level b) you have a hot spot in the sky or c) you have a halo in your image caused by oversharpening the image or something else that caused a halo effect. Make no mistake, these 3 elements of a photograph are essential to and often unseen by beginners as it is easy to miss these problems in an image when you’re just starting out. But these are not the be-all and end-all of a great image. In fact most great images have some type of flaw in them and most people would never notice that your horizon is slightly off level when there is enough wow factor in the image to keep your eyes peeled elsewhere. Some of the greatest photographers in history could post their work online today and have their work ripped to shreds by intermediate photographers.
Horizon:
Having a level horizon in an image is an important factor especially with seascapes where your horizon is actually a straight line. When it comes to landscapes in the interior of a country however, horizons are often not level by any means and only those who do a lot of photography away from the seaside will know this. Most camera’s today have levelling devices built in or photographers with older digital camera’s can purchase a hot-shoe
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bubble level which will help them level the camera. That said, when it comes to shooting around mountain ranges you may have your camera perfectly level but the image horizon looks off-level due to the way the land is shaped.
Posting such images online will always attract a comment about your horizon and you trying to explain it to the person commenting on it is often just futile because the next image you post will have the same person saying the exact same thing. So, for those starting out, learn to level your camera and trust it regardless of what others are saying. Some forumites go to extreme, often insane levels to prove your horizon is off-level, they’ll take your image into photoshop and draw a level horizontal line and then come back with comments that your horizon is 0.2 degrees off level, do yourself a favour and ignore ignoramuses like this.
Not all horizon's are level. This image shot from a perfectly levelled camera, this is the way the scene appears to the natural eye. Also notice the hot spot which is also perfectly natural. This image would attract numerous horizon and hot spot comments on a forum. Click image for a larger view.
Hot spots occur naturally even to the human eye. There are times when the sun is naturally illuminating clouds so much that they lose all detail. Put your camera down and look at such scenes with your naked eye and you will see for yourself.
Hotspot’s:
A hot spot, normally in the sky section of an image, happens mostly with sunset and sunrise images when you are trying to expose your foreground more and as a result you overexpose the brighter sky section. This causes areas of the sky to lose all detail and have a very noticeable white or “hot” spot. Using filters to control exposure of the sky can eliminate hot spots but there really is far too much fuss about hot spots on forums. Many images from the world’s leading photographers will contain hot spots, I know because I’ve seen it repeatedly. I’ve even seen images that would be ripped apart of a photography forum, take first place in an international photographic competition. Clearly judges who are trained and experienced enough in judging photography can see an image for what it is and do not spend that much time looking for tiny technical flaws in an image. If an image comes in front of a judge and his immediate reaction is “WOW,I wish it were mine”, your image will progress further in the competition without the judges sitting there trying to discredit you on something like a hot spot. Hot spots in all reality are natural occurences that exist to the human eye. Those preaching HDR photography techniques, seem to have convinced themselves that hot spots are foopah and do not exist in real life but seldom do I ever see HDR fanatics ever spending time WITHOUT a camera truly surveying scenes with their eyes, noting down all the tiniest details. If they did, they would notice that even to human eye hot spots DO exist. As I say, those with enough experience like judges of photography competitions, seem to know this and will not kick your image out due to it having a hot spot. So by all means be aware of hot spots, try to expose as best as you can but don’t beat yourself up when you post an image on a forum and you get 15 parrot comments about a hot-spot.
Halo’s:
Extreme Over-Sharpening can cause very visible halo effects on your image. Some halo effects however are natural occurences. This image has been deliberately over-sharpened to illustrate the effect.
Halo’s are a tricky issue. Some halo’s in an image occur naturally due to the way light is bouncing around your scene, other’s are however introduced while processing the image often when sharpening the image. Learn to identify what a halo is, whether it occurred naturally or whether you created it in your post processing. When you receive comments about halo’s in your image, go back to your original frame and look carefully at that section of the image and decipher if you are the one that created the halo or whether it exists in your original frame. If you introduced it, go back to step 1 of your processing and figure out at what stage you introduced a halo. If the halo exists naturally, which it quite often does, due to the way light was bouncing around, simply ignore the comments or if you feel up to it try explaining it to the commenter’s but don’t think they won’t be back saying the same thing about other images from the same shoot where this same anomaly exists.
Forumites will often comment on this as a halo, it's NOT. It's a natural effect caused by contrasting light conditions. This is an unedited image, straight from camera.
While the above 3 elements are important aspects to pay attention to, they are NOT the be-all and end-all of photography. There are much more important factors of an image that go completely ignored because forumites get fixated on the 3-H’s. Critiques on aspects like composition, colour accuracy, tonal range, shadow detail and a host of other things are often in short supply on forums. Mostly it’s because those who like to comment all day long have a fixation with clocking up their post count to make themselves appear as major contributors to the forum, this often results in them trying to comment too much on a daily basis and they literally do not even LOOK at an image but instead just look for the 3 H factors mentioned above.
By all means if you are a budding photographer, eager to improve your game, make no mistake that a forum is a place where you will learn the quickest and the knowledge you will gain from other photographers is invaluable. So don’t think I am knocking photography forums. I am trying to help you not get fixated, upset or have your spirit broken by people who only seem to concentrate on the 3-H’s and never actually look at your image for what it is.
You will learn quickly enough who are the troublemakers on a forum and who are the ones who never have anything good to say. If you find yourself being constantly harassed by someone, report it to the moderators of that forum or just ignore the person or block them from commenting if the forum you are on permits that functionality. Search out the members of the forum who do take time to deliver meaningful critique and send them a private message asking them to comment on your work, you’ll be surprised how many of them will be more than eager to assist you in growing as a photographer and always remember your good manners by saying thank you to those who take the time to help you and give credit where credit is due.
Whether you’ve grown your image collection into thousands of images or only have yourself a few hundred prized photographs and memories, just how securely backed up are those images of yours. Do you even have them backed up at all?
Everybody at some point in their life will experience the awful feeling of data loss. This normally happens on a day when you least expect it, when out of the blue your perfectly functioning computer system crashes and dies. You take the system to a technical person who then tells you the bad news, all your data is gone. What do you do other than nearly have a nervous breakdown?
First off there are data recovery labs that in many cases can get your data back, some of them are so good they can even take a hard drive that has been smashed into pieces and get data back bit by bit. This however is an extremely costly scenario, for the most part the charges are by the hour and it can literally run into hundreds of hours and there is no guarantee’s offered whatsoever.
“Oh why didn’t I backup my images” starts to play over and over in your head even haunting you in your dreams.
The answer is to avoid this scenario altogether, it’s not pleasant and I speak from experience. Once you’ve lost data once you spend the rest of your life making sure everything is securely backed up and sadly many people only learn this the hard way.
So what are your options for backing up your images?
Many people with a smaller image collection can get away using CD-roms for their backups. They are one of the most affordable forms of media around and this allows you to make multiple copies to store in different locations. But how safe are CD-roms? Many people mistakenly assume that a CD-rom will last for ever. This is a picture painted into people’s minds in the early days when CD-roms first came onto the market, they were marketed as indestructable. Well quite simply they are not. Simply dropping a CD-rom from a desk can damage the disc badly if it contacts the ground wrong. A CD-rom is nothing more than a plastic disc with a microscopically thin layer of foil material which is the recording surface. If you took a sharp knife and ran it quickly over the recording surface you’d see silver flakes (and data) come flying off. In modern times CD-roms are in mass production and the materials used to manufacture them are cheaper resulting in lower quality products. You can buy CD-rom discs for less than a Rand a disc and you can buyCD-rom discs for a few Rand a disc and there is indeed quite a difference. Cheap no name brand discs will become your worst enemy, they seem fine and seem no different than their more expensive counterparts but there will come a time when you take data written onto a cheap disc, put it into your Cd-rom drive and discover your drive cannot read the disc. You try in a friend’s drive to find the same problem and you eventually discover that disc no longer works ….. what happened …. your data is GONE? “This can’t be happening” you say to yourself. Well uh yes it can. There is major differences in the price of CD-roms due to the quality of the foil recording surface. Cheap CD-roms may only last 1-5 years, more expensive ones may last 5-10 years and then you can get what we call medical grade CD-roms which have a “claimed” lifespan of 100 years. The price between them is remarkably different, the cheap discs can cost R1.00 a disc, the more expensive “name” brands could cost you about R2.50 per disc and medical grade discs could cost you abour R20-R25 each. So depending on just how important that data is, the choice is yours. If you choose to use cheap CD-roms then every year you will need to re-record them and discard the old ones. Trust me this ends up being a tedious process and once your image collection starts requiring several discs at a time it’s time to look at another solution.
The next best solution which works very well is to use external hard drives to back up your image data. Having been personally involved in the high-tech industry for nearly 20 years I have been through just about every brand of hard drive and above all Seagate drives seem to have the longest lifespan and the least chance of failing. I have Seagate external hard drives that are nearly 5 years old and still functioning perfectly so I have standardised on Seagate as a trusted name. Seagate produces a variety of external hard drive solutions called FreeAgent ranging from 250GB drives upwards to 2TB. They also have a range called FreeAgent “Go” which are small enough to fit in your pocket. Using an external hard drive for your backups is quick and easy. You get yourself a program like Super Flexible File Synchroniser and set it up to mirror your images and other data and you can run it daily or once a week. Simply having one external backup is not enough. If you buy yourself one 500Gb external drive you actually need to purchase two and every time you do backups you do it onto both hard drives. One hard drive you can store in your safe (hopefully fire proof) and the other you should store off site at a friend or family member’s house, and preferably in their safe too. Having everything in triplicate stored in 3 different locations guarantees you that should trouble strike you have one totally safe backup. The cost of external hard drives have come down dramatically and they are by far the most cost effective form of storage around but you really need to refrain from saving yourself a few bucks considering cheaper external drives, stick with Seagate (no I do NOT work for them) do your backups in duplicate and store one off site and you’ll be good to go for many years.
When your image collection grows beyond the confines of a 2TB external hard drive it may be time to start looking for a more serious back solution. For this photographers are turning to the Drobo system because of it’s great offerings. Drobo has essentially taken very expensive RAID technologies which were out of the reach of the average Joe for many years and brought out a fully redundant raid product with a more affordable price tag. A basic Drobo which can house 4 hard drives could cost you around R12-14000 or thereabouts. Then you could move onto a Drobo Pro system which is a lot more expensive but can house 8 drives, it all depends on how much cash you wish to part ways with and just how serious you are about your data. Again, having one Drobo storing all your data, even though it has full redundancy, is no guarantee your data is safe. I know of several people whose Drobo’s have crashed on them so essentially like above with external hard drives, if you buy one Drobo, you actually buy two and one gets locked away very safely, preferably off site.
When it comes to data backups you need to have a plan, something you’ve invested some thought into and you need to stick to it religiously. It’s no good storing a backup off site and never updating it. If you formulate a backup plan you will thank yourself one day when things do go wrong, you will rest assured knowing your data and images are securely backed up. I’ll revisit this topic again one day. For now, get backing up.
We’ve been spending some time revamping the look and feel of the site and we hope you enjoy the new look. We’ve made the site loading much faster and are still tweaking some elements to further improve your experience. We’re changing the scope of the site slightly from this point on and we will be bringing some new and insightful articles delving into many different aspects of photography whether it be a technique, an observation or simply some great images.
We’ll no longer be feeding articles from other sources into this site but if, like many of our subscribers, you’ve come to rely on this site as your one stop source of information on what’s going on in the photo world, do not fret. you can continue getting all that info at http://www.photography-blog.co.za
Behind the scenes there’s lots going on and we hope you enjoy what’s in store for you in the coming weeks and months. We welcome guest contributions so if you have something you’d like to share simply email it to us on submit@africanphotographyblog.com
High Dynamic Range or HDR in it’s shortened form has opened up many new avenues for photography. HDR is a process of blending multiple exposures together to better reproduce the dynamic range of the scene and for the most part it’s a very useful tool indeed. I myself have done many experiments into HDR using bracketing of frames to produce multiple exposures which I can later blend BUT all that blending does take up a lot of time in post processing.
Just doing one image blend with 7 exposures with some fine tuning and manual blending included you can easily spend 1-2 hours to get the image perfect. In some cases it might be worth it to take a very special moment you captured on film and to spend that time working the image to perfection. While this can and does produce some very special effects within images I still find HDR, no matter how well executed, to lack something truly special, an ambience that only a single shot exposure carries.
One exposure requires finding the perfect moment to capture the image.
While some may argue that we’re now in the digital world and we must all move to new and wonderful ways of processing images I say yes and no to that argument. I will use HDR when I find it necessary and with many shoots I will bracket exposures regardless but my primary goal is always to get it right with one exposure. I find simply bracketing exposures on every shoot with the intention of later blending and “fixing” it in photoshop makes one a rather lazy photographer because you tend to find a recipe, set up, compose, bracket and go home to fix. Guilty as charged.
While this approach may be perfectly okay for some I enjoy photography because it challenges my mind. I myself got into a trap for a short while of merely relying on bracketed exposures for nearly all shoots. There were many days when I was too lazy to get out filters and do it properly so it was much easier to just bracket my exposures and do the hard work later in Photoshop.
In the end I was just finding HDR was totally lacking something very special, HDR just looked too perfect and NOT at all how the eye saw it. HDR fanatics (myself included) continually fool themselves into believing that the end product they produce through HDR and image blending is a faithful representation of what they saw, but of the many many photographers I know only a few ever take real notice of what the scene really looks like. The others have their eyes stuck permanently behind the viewfinder relying solely on the camera to capture all the necessary bits of information. I make a point of studying very carefully the scene’s I record and do my best to etch them in my mind, right down to the tiniest details and by doing so I manage to find some very special elements of an image that HDR tends to over-produce and in most cases actually ruin. Shadow areas of an image, for example, are crucial to the depth and feel of an image yet HDR fanatics tend to, what I call rape the shadow areas, lightening them up much more than they appeared to the human eye and it’s so easy to fall into this trap with HDR. Again .. guilty as charged
In the last year I have slowly forced myself back to basics, getting exposures perfect with a single exposure, without filters and without bracketing. It’s not always easy depending on light conditions but actually a lot of the time it is and it all comes down to timing, planning and using all available and natural elements to control the flow of light into the camera.
I’ve enjoyed my journey with HDR and I do know I will still use HDR methods for certain work but with landscape, nature and some other forms of photography I’m finding the step back to basics to be producing very special images like none other and it’s made my photography all that more interesting and challenging again. The mental challenge has always been my driving force and it’s good to have that old friend back at my side.
Africa is by far one of the most diverse landscapes in the world and much of it is still undiscovered by the lens. Many photographers would trade a limb to have access to the African landscape yet a great majority of South African photographers seem intent on travelling around the world to photograph landscapes that have been well covered by other photographers, all the while a treasure chest of images lies right under their noses.
"Mercury Down II" The sun sets and the mercury indicator starts to drop after a very hot day in Namibia - Copyright Mitchell Krog / Living Canvas Photography. All Rights Reserved.
For the budding and professional landscape photographer there is virtually endless landscape photographic opportunities in Africa and Southern Africa. South African photographer Mitchell Krog is no stranger to the African landscape and spends many months a year exploring, discovering and capturing breathtaking images of the beautiful African landscapes. Mitchell chooses to completely avoid re-capturing images which have been captured a million times or more, “I just don’t see the point in photographing things that have are captured 100 times a day when there is just so much that has NOT even been photographed yet” he says.
"Drakensberg Sunrise" - The sun rises over the beautiful and majestic mountainous region of the Drakensberg of South Africa. Copyright Mitchell Krog / Living Canvas Photography. All Rights Reserved.
The greatest parts of the undiscovered African landscape are only accessible via foot and often many kilometers of walking can be involved simply to capture one image. As Mitchell Krog says, “This is the game unfortunately and quite simply if you’re not willing to go the extra “mile”, excuse the pun, you will not return home with any new or unique images that have not been captured already. The Drakensberg region of South Africa, of which the greatest area lies within the province of Kwazulu Natal, is a good example. Photographers seeking to cover this area really need to go many extra miles to get to unique locations and in the Drakensberg there literally is endless locations on offer. The Drakensberg is so diverse and the landscape is ever changing, the light is so dramatic that you could sit and photograph the same scene every day for 365 days and not one image would be the same, it is for this very reason that I can say the landscape opportunities of the Drakensberg are endless.”
"Table Mountain at Dusk" - One of the most photographed mountains in the world, Table Mountain. Copyright Mitchell Krog / Living Canvas Photography. All Rights Reserved.
Similarly the Western Cape region of South Africa is also very mountainous and has some very dramatic landscapes. The Cape weather is rather unpredictable but this coupled with dramatic light seems to make for a good recipe for excellent landscape photography opportunities. The Cape is one of the most photographically covered regions of South Africa but this does ot mean that there is not still many landscape photography opportunities in store for the visiting photographer. No doubt South Africa will see many international photographers visiting our shores as the World Cup Soccer draws closer and it will be interesting to see how fresh eyes portray our beautiful landscapes.
Copyright – Living Canvas Photography / African Photography Blog – Duplication in part or whole is expressly forbidden. All images and photographs are copyright to Mitchell Krog & Living Canvas photography and may not be used without prior permissions. All images are available in limited and regular edition print series on archival quality papers and canvas through the web site www.livingcanvas.co.za – You may syndicate articles from this blog using our RSS feeds but all syndicated articles must link back to the original content on this site. Please see the Copyright page for more information.
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Lightning Storms are one of the most incredible forces of nature. The sheer force of a lightning strike is enough to power a city for months on end but man has not yet learned to harness and store this incredible energy source provided free of charge by nature. As Summer approaches in South Africa, the first rains and electrical storms for the season are already brewing and we’ll soon see what kind of storm activity nature has in store for use this season. Acclaimed South African Lightning and Storm Photographer Mitchell Krog shares some of his images, views and experiences with lightning photography.
Danger Written In The Sky. Multiple Lightning Strikes Light Up The Summer Night Sky. If Only Man Could Learn To Harness This Energy. From Mitchell Krog's Lightning Photography Collections. (Copyright Mitchell Krog - All Rights Reserved)
For many years SA photographer Mitchell Krog has watched and studied electrical storms and to this day still stands in utter amazement at this incredible force of nature. In recent years he acquired the equipment and skills to finally capture them on film and he has produced an endless array of breathtaking images. For Mitchell it is not about simply capturing a lightning strike on film but more importantly capturing the entire scene and telling a story through his images. “With any form of photography if you can captivate a viewers attention, draw them into an image, tell them a story and have them study it for more than just a few seconds you have imprinted an ever lasting memory” says Mitchell. Lightning photography can be a very lonely passtime, only those with enough dedication, patience and endurance to be out at strange hours of the night will stand a chance of capturing unique, sometimes once in a lifetime images.
The Big Detour. A passenger aircraft destined for Lanseria airport bypasses a massive storm cell. Missing dinner and spending many lonesome hours outside comes with the job of photographing lightning storms. From Mitchell Krog's Lightning Photography Portfolio. (Copyright Mitchell Krog - All Rights Reserved)
As with any form of photography, timing is of the essence. If you are unprepared, unwilling or unable to drop whatever you are doing at a moments notice you will miss opportunities. “I cannot tell you how many evenings I have rushed out of the house just minutes before dinner was ready only to return home several hours later, but nature waits for no man and if you are quick to seize the opportunity you will reap the rewards” says Mitchell. Mitchell’s Fire and Ice series, capturing a grassland fire which was started by lightning strikes was one such occasion. He explains – “I was cooking dinner when I heard thunder approaching, I took a quick look outside and saw the sky glowing red from a grass fire, I dropped everything, rushed outside and managed to capture a few frames of this scene before the storm extinguished the fire it had started. This entire window of opportunity lasted a mere 20-30 minutes and was at it’s best stage for around 5-10 minutes.”
Fire and Ice. An early Spring lightning storm starts a grass fire and is captured here with strikes falling around and into the fire. Minutes later the storm extinguishes the fire it started and the moment is gone. From Mitchell Krog's Fire and Ice Lightning Photography Series. (Copyright Mitchell Krog - All Rights Reserved)
Safety is an important part of watching and photographing lightning storms. Finding a safe location with a good view is of the essence, you need to be able to see the storm approaching and be able to determine if you are in any way in the path of danger. “If your view is in any way blocked a storm can sneak up right behind you so a 360 degree view is preferrable, you also need somewhere safe to escape to. I’ve often been watching a storm in one direction when right behind me another one is brewing, so I always keep a watch all around me. Standing outside with a metal tripod and an electrically charged camera when strikes are falling too close is asking for trouble” says Mitchell. Mitchell insists that climbing on the roof of your house or any metal structure is a big no-no and could quickly cost you your life and he always promotes safe lightning photography. “There is just no image worth losing your life over” he adds.
Killer Storm. On the 23rd of November 2007 this mammoth supercell emitting lightning strikes up and out of it's core was captured by Mitchell Krog. The strikes emanating from the centre of this storm cell were kilometres in length and streaked across the night sky. This same evening several massive storm cells circulated through Gauteng and claimed lives in their path. (Copyright Mitchell Krog - All Rights Reserved)
More articles and images in this series on Lightning Photography will follow in the coming months.
Posted on 23rd July 2010 by News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com) in Syndicated Press
Just posted! Our lens review starring the world's first optically-stabilized ultra-wide zoom: the Nikon AF-S Nikkor 16-35mm 1:4G ED VR. Conceived as a relatively inexpensive alternative to the highly-regarded AF-S 14-24mm 1:2.8G, this lens features Nikon's latest 'VR II' stabilization unit in a high quality magnesium alloy body. We've put it through our usual battery of tests to see how it performs.
Posted on 23rd July 2010 by News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com) in Syndicated Press
Just posted: our review of Adobe Lightroom 3. It's been more than three years since Adobe introduced the first version of Lightroom - its raw processing and workflow tool aimed specifically at photographers. In June 2010 the company released the third version which represented the biggest update the software has yet seen, including the incorporation of an entirely new raw processing engine. We've been using the latest version extensively and have prepared a eight-page review assessing its usefulness as a tool for photographers. We've also looked at its relationship with the rest of the Photoshop family and, most importantly, how its output compares to that of its rivals.
Posted on 22nd July 2010 by News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com) in Syndicated Press
Canon has posted a firmware update for its EOS 7D digital SLR. Firmware v1.2.2 fixes AF point selection and display bugs occuring under specific shooting conditions, and also addresses an error in movie mode. It also corrects misspellings in the Spanish and Thai language menus. The firmware is available for immediate download from Canon's website.
Posted on 21st July 2010 by News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com) in Syndicated Press
Samsung has launched the PL200 budget compact camera. The 14.1MP camera features a 3.0 inch LCD and comes with 7x image-stabilized zoom lens (31-217mm equiv.) and records 720p HD videos using H.264 compression. The camera will be available from September at a retail price of $179.99.
Posted on 21st July 2010 by News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com) in Syndicated Press
Samsung has launched 14.2MP versions of its dual LCD compact cameras in the shape of the ST600 and ST100. Both feature larger 3.5" rear LCDs and slightly bigger 1.8" front LCDs compared their DualView predecessors (known as 2View in Europe). The ST600 comes with a 5x image stabilized zoom starting at a useful 27mm equivalent, while the ST100 comes with a 35-175mm equiv. lens. The ST100 is a departure for the DualView series, being a card-style camera built around a periscope lens. Both cameras are designed around touch-screen interfaces. The ST600 and ST100 will be available from September at a retail price of $329.99 and $349.99 respectively.
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Posted on 21st July 2010 by News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com) in Syndicated Press
Just posted: full sized images from the Panasonic DMC-LX5. We had the chance to shoot with the newly-announced LX5 and have prepared a 24 shot gallery of images. We intentionally shot at a variety of apertures, ISOs, focal lengths and aspect ratios to give a flavor of what the camera can do. The images were taken with a pre-production camera, so may not be representative of final, production image quality.
Whether you’ve grown your image collection into thousands of images or only have yourself a few hundred prized photographs and memories, just how securely backed up are those images of yours. Do you even have them backed up at all?
They are one of the most affordable forms of media around and this allows you to make multiple copies to store in different locations. But how safe are CD-roms? Many people mistakenly assume that a CD-rom will last for ever. This is a picture painted into people’s minds in the early days when CD-roms first came onto the market, they were marketed as indestructable. Well quite simply they are not. Simply dropping a CD-rom from a desk can damage the disc badly if it contacts the ground wrong. A CD-rom is nothing more than a plastic disc with a microscopically thin layer of foil material which is the recording surface. If you took a sharp knife and ran it quickly over the recording surface you’d see silver flakes (and data) come flying off. In modern times CD-roms are in mass production and the materials used to manufacture them are cheaper resulting in lower quality products. You can buy CD-rom discs for less than a Rand a disc and you can buyCD-rom discs for a few Rand a disc and there is indeed quite a difference. Cheap no name brand discs will become your worst enemy, they seem fine and seem no different than their more expensive counterparts but there will come a time when you take data written onto a cheap disc, put it into your Cd-rom drive and discover your drive cannot read the disc. You try in a friend’s drive to find the same problem and you eventually discover that disc no longer works ….. what happened …. your data is GONE? “This can’t be happening” you say to yourself. Well uh yes it can. There is major differences in the price of CD-roms due to the quality of the foil recording surface. Cheap CD-roms may only last 1-5 years, more expensive ones may last 5-10 years and then you can get what we call medical grade CD-roms which have a “claimed” lifespan of 100 years. The price between them is remarkably different, the cheap discs can cost R1.00 a disc, the more expensive “name” brands could cost you about R2.50 per disc and medical grade discs could cost you abour R20-R25 each. So depending on just how important that data is, the choice is yours. If you choose to use cheap CD-roms then every year you will need to re-record them and discard the old ones. Trust me this ends up being a tedious process and once your image collection starts requiring several discs at a time it’s time to look at another solution.
The next best solution which works very well is to use external hard drives to back up your image data. Having been personally involved in the high-tech industry for nearly 20 years I have been through just about every brand of hard drive and above all Seagate drives seem to have the longest lifespan and the least chance of failing. I have Seagate external hard drives that are nearly 5 years old and still functioning perfectly so I have standardised on Seagate as a trusted name. Seagate produces a variety of external hard drive solutions called FreeAgent ranging from 250GB drives upwards to 2TB. They also have a range called FreeAgent “Go” which are small enough to fit in your pocket. Using an external hard drive for your backups is quick and easy. You get yourself a program like Super Flexible File Synchroniser and set it up to mirror your images and other data and you can run it daily or once a week. Simply having one external backup is not enough. If you buy yourself one 500Gb external drive you actually need to purchase two and every time you do backups you do it onto both hard drives. One hard drive you can store in your safe (hopefully fire proof) and the other you should store off site at a friend or family member’s house, and preferably in their safe too. Having everything in triplicate stored in 3 different locations guarantees you that should trouble strike you have one totally safe backup. The cost of external hard drives have come down dramatically and they are by far the most cost effective form of storage around but you really need to refrain from saving yourself a few bucks considering cheaper external drives, stick with Seagate (no I do NOT work for them) do your backups in duplicate and store one off site and you’ll be good to go for many years.
When your image collection grows beyond the confines of a 2TB external hard drive it may be time to start looking for a more serious back solution. For this photographers are turning to the Drobo system because of it’s great offerings. Drobo has essentially taken very expensive RAID technologies which were out of the reach of the average Joe for many years and brought out a fully redundant raid product with a more affordable price tag. A basic Drobo which can house 4 hard drives could cost you around R12-14000 or thereabouts. Then you could move onto a Drobo Pro system which is a lot more expensive but can house 8 drives, it all depends on how much cash you wish to part ways with and just how serious you are about your data. Again, having one Drobo storing all your data, even though it has full redundancy, is no guarantee your data is safe. I know of several people whose Drobo’s have crashed on them so essentially like above with external hard drives, if you buy one Drobo, you actually buy two and one gets locked away very safely, preferably off site.
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Giving and Getting Meaningful Critique on Photography Forums
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Posted on 10th August 2010 by admin in Photography Forums
comments, contrasts, critique, forumites, forums, halo, horizon, hotspot, light, natural, photographers, Photography
Having spent many years on Photography forums, I’ve delivered my fair share of critique to budding photographers and received an equal amount myself. I’ve personally always taken extensive time out when critiquing an image to make my critique meaningful to the photographer and doing my utmost best to not break their spirit but instead to boost them to try even harder. Giving critique on images is not an easy job by any means and formulating your words so as not to cause offence is a skill that only a few possess. Quite simply, if you do not have the time to deliver a meaningful critique then rather say nothing at all.
I’ve seen so many photographers with oodles of potential sign up on a photography forum and have their spirits broken by people who do not know how to say things nicely or in some cases say things to deliberately break someone’s spirit. There are so many great photographers out there on forums who are more than eager to give of their time and help someone grow and improve, but there are also (quite sadly) some not so nice people who cannot stand the slightest hint of competition and will dig into their toolboxes of nasty comments to try and break someone’s progress.
You need some thick skin to be a photographer and to display your work online but not everybody possesses this. You need to be able to take a meaningful comment and use it to improve yourself and you need to know when someone is simply trying to get under your skin and simply delete their comment or just ignore it.
Now when I say meaningful critique, I mean a lot more than what I call the 3-H-Salute (Three H Salute). The three H salute is simply Halo – Hotspot – Horizon. This is a common tool in the arsenal of forumites who live, eat and breathe forum life, mostly on their employer’s time. Seldom do these type of critiquers ever deliver meaningful comment other than pointing out the blatantly obvious stuff like a) your horizon is slightly off level b) you have a hot spot in the sky or c) you have a halo in your image caused by oversharpening the image or something else that caused a halo effect. Make no mistake, these 3 elements of a photograph are essential to and often unseen by beginners as it is easy to miss these problems in an image when you’re just starting out. But these are not the be-all and end-all of a great image. In fact most great images have some type of flaw in them and most people would never notice that your horizon is slightly off level when there is enough wow factor in the image to keep your eyes peeled elsewhere. Some of the greatest photographers in history could post their work online today and have their work ripped to shreds by intermediate photographers.
Horizon:
Having a level horizon in an image is an important factor especially with seascapes where your horizon is actually a straight line. When it comes to landscapes in the interior of a country however, horizons are often not level by any means and only those who do a lot of photography away from the seaside will know this. Most camera’s today have levelling devices built in or photographers with older digital camera’s can purchase a hot-shoe
Get your 3-Axis Bubble Level from B&H Photo Video
bubble level which will help them level the camera. That said, when it comes to shooting around mountain ranges you may have your camera perfectly level but the image horizon looks off-level due to the way the land is shaped.
Posting such images online will always attract a comment about your horizon and you trying to explain it to the person commenting on it is often just futile because the next image you post will have the same person saying the exact same thing. So, for those starting out, learn to level your camera and trust it regardless of what others are saying. Some forumites go to extreme, often insane levels to prove your horizon is off-level, they’ll take your image into photoshop and draw a level horizontal line and then come back with comments that your horizon is 0.2 degrees off level, do yourself a favour and ignore ignoramuses like this.
Not all horizon's are level. This image shot from a perfectly levelled camera, this is the way the scene appears to the natural eye. Also notice the hot spot which is also perfectly natural. This image would attract numerous horizon and hot spot comments on a forum. Click image for a larger view.
Hot spots occur naturally even to the human eye. There are times when the sun is naturally illuminating clouds so much that they lose all detail. Put your camera down and look at such scenes with your naked eye and you will see for yourself.
Hotspot’s:
A hot spot, normally in the sky section of an image, happens mostly with sunset and sunrise images when you are trying to expose your foreground more and as a result you overexpose the brighter sky section. This causes areas of the sky to lose all detail and have a very noticeable white or “hot” spot. Using filters to control exposure of the sky can eliminate hot spots but there really is far too much fuss about hot spots on forums. Many images from the world’s leading photographers will contain hot spots, I know because I’ve seen it repeatedly. I’ve even seen images that would be ripped apart of a photography forum, take first place in an international photographic competition. Clearly judges who are trained and experienced enough in judging photography can see an image for what it is and do not spend that much time looking for tiny technical flaws in an image. If an image comes in front of a judge and his immediate reaction is “WOW,I wish it were mine”, your image will progress further in the competition without the judges sitting there trying to discredit you on something like a hot spot. Hot spots in all reality are natural occurences that exist to the human eye. Those preaching HDR photography techniques, seem to have convinced themselves that hot spots are foopah and do not exist in real life but seldom do I ever see HDR fanatics ever spending time WITHOUT a camera truly surveying scenes with their eyes, noting down all the tiniest details. If they did, they would notice that even to human eye hot spots DO exist. As I say, those with enough experience like judges of photography competitions, seem to know this and will not kick your image out due to it having a hot spot. So by all means be aware of hot spots, try to expose as best as you can but don’t beat yourself up when you post an image on a forum and you get 15 parrot comments about a hot-spot.
Halo’s:
Extreme Over-Sharpening can cause very visible halo effects on your image. Some halo effects however are natural occurences. This image has been deliberately over-sharpened to illustrate the effect.
Halo’s are a tricky issue. Some halo’s in an image occur naturally due to the way light is bouncing around your scene, other’s are however introduced while processing the image often when sharpening the image. Learn to identify what a halo is, whether it occurred naturally or whether you created it in your post processing. When you receive comments about halo’s in your image, go back to your original frame and look carefully at that section of the image and decipher if you are the one that created the halo or whether it exists in your original frame. If you introduced it, go back to step 1 of your processing and figure out at what stage you introduced a halo. If the halo exists naturally, which it quite often does, due to the way light was bouncing around, simply ignore the comments or if you feel up to it try explaining it to the commenter’s but don’t think they won’t be back saying the same thing about other images from the same shoot where this same anomaly exists.
Forumites will often comment on this as a halo, it's NOT. It's a natural effect caused by contrasting light conditions. This is an unedited image, straight from camera.
While the above 3 elements are important aspects to pay attention to, they are NOT the be-all and end-all of photography. There are much more important factors of an image that go completely ignored because forumites get fixated on the 3-H’s. Critiques on aspects like composition, colour accuracy, tonal range, shadow detail and a host of other things are often in short supply on forums. Mostly it’s because those who like to comment all day long have a fixation with clocking up their post count to make themselves appear as major contributors to the forum, this often results in them trying to comment too much on a daily basis and they literally do not even LOOK at an image but instead just look for the 3 H factors mentioned above.
By all means if you are a budding photographer, eager to improve your game, make no mistake that a forum is a place where you will learn the quickest and the knowledge you will gain from other photographers is invaluable. So don’t think I am knocking photography forums. I am trying to help you not get fixated, upset or have your spirit broken by people who only seem to concentrate on the 3-H’s and never actually look at your image for what it is.
You will learn quickly enough who are the troublemakers on a forum and who are the ones who never have anything good to say. If you find yourself being constantly harassed by someone, report it to the moderators of that forum or just ignore the person or block them from commenting if the forum you are on permits that functionality. Search out the members of the forum who do take time to deliver meaningful critique and send them a private message asking them to comment on your work, you’ll be surprised how many of them will be more than eager to assist you in growing as a photographer and always remember your good manners by saying thank you to those who take the time to help you and give credit where credit is due.