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What is the flash sync speed?

The way the camera actually operates when doing an exposure is by pulling two curtains across the sensor. This is how an exposure is done in modern SLRs cameras. When the shutter opens the first curtain is pulled across, followed by the second curtain at the speed of the “Shutter”. At “sync” speed, the second curtain follows the first curtain exactly when the entire sensor is open. If your shutter is faster than your cameras sync speed, let’s say 1/500^th. The second curtain has started to close when the flash goes off. This usually results in some portion of the image being darker than it should be.

A quick example, let’s assume that the camera’s sync speed is 1/250^th. If you set your shutter speed to 1/60^th, the first curtain fully opens, 1/60^th of a second later the second curtain follows so that the entire sensor is fully exposed for 1/60^th of a second. Now let’s assume that you set your shutter speed to 1/8000^th. The first curtain opens, as soon as it does the second curtain starts to close as well since it to be able to keep the exposure on the sensor to 1/8000^th of a second. That means only a small sliver of the sensor is exposed at any point in time. If there was a “fast” bright source (like a flash) that was introduced only several small slivers portions of the sensor would record that light.

To summarize, the sync speed of any SLR is the fastest speed at which the entire sensor is exposed before the second curtain starts to close.

Most consumer DSLRs have a sync speed of 1/200^th, most professional cameras have a sync speed of 1/250^th or higher. Some of the really good exceptions are the original Canon 1D bodies which had a 1/500^th sync speed which is unheard of now days.

Camera

Let’s start with the source, since as always GIGO applies (Garbage in, garbage out)

The camera’s color management is fairly easy to control. You have two questions, “Color Space” and “White Balance Kelvin”. Color balance refers to the range of colors that will be available, and how they will be defined.  Adobe RGB has more colors (wider gamut) than sRGB. However, Adobe RGB is usually used for commercial printing and if you’re not going to a lab, you will need to do more post processing to bring out the colors of your image. In camera they will look washed out and subdue.

The second question White Balance is the color of light. There are various pre-defined settings such as Auto, Sun, Shade, Cloudy, etc… but the best setting is Custom White Balance.

To combat white balance, the best option is to use a 18% gray shot and set your custom white balance several times during a shoot (unless the light does not change, i.e. Studio, short session).

One caveat, shooting in RAW would defer the entire argument above. With RAW all data is kept at 16-bit data points as the sensor captures it, so no matter what you have set for your color space or white balance, they can be changed without loss of data in Camera Raw Converter.

Recommendations: Use sRGB in Camera, use a 18% gray target and set your custom white balance and always shoot in RAW.

Work environment

In your work environment your monitor and video card are the most essential parts as this is how you see your image.  You are going to make decisions on color, contrast, vibrancy.  Sadly most environments are not a true representation of what your image looks like.  The “profile” of your monitor maybe (or I should say “is”) giving you a distorted color variation of what the photo actually looks like.

A “Color Profile” is simply a lookup table that tells reads in the color values of the most saturated colors available.  This means that it knows what the highest blue, red and green are where as if something is green, the question is always “how green?”  The profile defines the maximum and the rest fall below that as needed.

The best option is to use an external caliber to not only calibrate your monitor but build a specific profile for your monitor and your environment.

The following are important points to remember

1. It is by far the cheapest tool in photography.
2. It is by far the most important tool in color management.
3. Get a unit that not only does calibration but generates a specific color profile for your monitor
4. The unit should also remain attached to your computer and continuing adjust the monitor based on the light in the room.  The colors on your monitor will not look the same when being viewed while a warm glow of a sunrise is lighting the room, vs. a cloudy day, vs. Halogen bulbs at night.  The unit should determine the color of the light in the room and do slight adjustments to the monitor.

Recommendations: I, personally use the Spyder3 Pro from DataColor to calibrate, profile and keep an eye on the room ambient light.  It works for me, but your mileage as always will vary.  Please do a full due diligence before any purchase to make sure it’s the right tool.

Outputs

The output of a photograph can be:

• Printed
• Projected

1. Viewed on another monitor

However, we’ll discuss only printers for now.  Projectors and other monitors although important would take a lot longer.

With printers, and I’ll only discuss higher end printers, as with low end printers the color is going to shift no matter what you do.   Higher end printers, and even commercial printers, will always have a Printer Profile that you can use.

Just like with a monitor, a printer profile defines the most the most saturated R, G, B (or CMYK) color the printer can provide.  The rest of the colors are below those numbers as they need to be.

The profile for your commercial printers can usually be downloaded from them directly.   With most professional printers, they either provide updated profiles (every month or so), or they calibrated their printers back to a specific profile themselves so that they’re consistent even though the profile may have changed.

There are various tutorials on the web on how to do soft proofing and print matching and I will not go into that here.  If you have any questions please follow up in email or comments.

Well once again this little gem has come up, so I thought I would write do a short blog on it.

Should you have a UV(0) filter on your lens?

The two sites are:

1. Any extra piece of glass is going to reduce/manipulate/change the quality of the image.
2. The protection offers by the filter out ways any image quality images.

Here are my thoughts on the subject:

Both statements are true.  You just paid $500-$1200 for a nice lens on your SLR to get the absolutely best image you can.  Why introduce something that is going to take away from your image quality?  But also, you just paid $500-$1200 for a nice lens, do you really want to scratch the front element when a small piece of debris get blown into it?  Or while you’re cleaning it, you scratch it?

So what’s the answer?  The answer is to use a filter, but use the best filter possible to reduce the amount of disruption to an absolute minimum.  Multi-coated filters, good name brand filters are the best option.

I personally use Sunpack filters as they are actually made by the same manufacturers as other “name brand” filters but cost half.    When I get a new lens, after testing it and within the first 12 hours I have a sunpack UV(0) filter on there and it doesn’t come off until spring cleaning.   I do my very best not to have to remove the filter.   I have heard of “What about sunflares?”  USE your hood, that’s what it is for. Also, you can use a GND filter on top of the UV filter.  Most non-ultra-wide filtes (< 14mm) will not notice the extra lens.  You should check this on your lens before trying it though.   My Canon EF 24-105mm L f/4 is my main walk around lens and it has had UV(0), and 2 GND (-3 stop) filters on it without it doing any vignetting — so it depends on the lens.

Final word…. I rather break and chuck s $60 filter than have to send in my lens to Canon for a $400 repair anyday of the week.

Well as all know one of the most useful tools when editing is to see how much you’ve changed.  Sometimes you find it you’ve gone over the deep end on something and need to back off because whatever was, would work better.

In Lightroom, while under the “Developer” modeule (D) 2 has the (\) can be used to switch back and forth to the before and after image of your shot.  With or without any edits.

What is going on is that the image is shown as it stands, compared to the “Import” usually the initial view.   What if you had 12 changes, but only wanted to see the last 6 changes to a customer as before and after and not all of the other corrections?

The trick is to move the “before” stamp to a new spot on the history.   Select the step you want to be “before” and on the History item, right click and select “Copy History Step Settings to Before”.   Remember, that whatever history item you have selected is the “After”.  So select the next point of comparison and use the backslash key.

There are no magic bullets on getting a knife’s edge sharp picture.

Here are some steps that you need to get you 50% there, the rest you’ll have to do…

1. Use a tripod, monopod, or anything else.
   Before you even ask — YES, you need one.  The best one that you’ll actually carry with you.
   • Be it, a $450 carbon-fiber Manfrotto, or a $12 Walmart special.  Having it and using it better than having it and not using it.
   • This includes a ziplock full of rice that you can slap down and use as a bed to place your camera on, to using the side of a building to push your camera against.
   • A proper stance is the last part of this.  Left hand underneath against your chest, cradling the camera on your palm, your fingers spread out being parted by the lens.
2. Use a fast shutter speed.
   The general rule of thumb is that if you at 100mm focal length, you can hand hold up to 1/100th of a second or faster. I would not tell anyone to hand hold anything below 1/80th — as your blood pressure, heart beat, and simple act of breathing can introduce movement in the image.   This goes double for longer focal length.
3. Use good glass.
   You have to do your research before buying your glass.  Almost all main lens manufacturers have your “regular” or “consumer” lenses, and also a “professional” series.  The main difference is the construction and optics that are used in the lens.  Canon has the “L” series, Sigma has the “EX” series,  Tamron well they don’t but they claim all of their lenses are professional.
4. Use the proper depth of field — good focus
   A whole lot of images are in fact very sharp — you just don’t like where the sharpness is.  This is because of poor focus, because the subject moved, you moved or you just mis-focus.  This plus, a small depth of field puts all or some of your subject out of focus, and not very sharp.  Using manual focus is obviously idle, if possible.  Using a larger depth of field (smaller aperture) would also help.  If you camera has a “auto-keep-focus” such as the Canon AI Servo that will lock and keep focus will also help if the subject is moving.
5. Use a short focal length
   Now this one is my personal note, I think most people try to zoom too much.  Most your feet and get closer to your subject and fill the frame.   Use the shortest focal length you have (without going into the wide range [< 50mm]).
6. Proper post-processing
   Unlike film, almost all digital images need some post processing.  Specially USM (UnSharpen mark) — opposite to it’s name it’s actually a tool that sharpens your images.  It is not a tool to sharpen a blurry image, but if you have done everything else this last step will give you that extra pop of sharpness.

As always, there are dozen different answers to every question, but I am hoping that these small points help someone get a sharper image.

Well I must have slipped or something because I totally over exposed this poor Dahlia.

As you can see I was holding the flash way too close on the bottom and totally overexposed the bottom of the flower.  Well there is a an easy way to save  this image.

If you don’t already know I’m a very big proponent of Lightroom.  It has made my life so much easier.  I can find sports images in seconds with the nice keyword searches, and I hardly ever go into Photoshop anymore.  If I do, I’m there for 30minutes to a day because what I need to do is usually a huge task.  The rest of the work is all done in LR.

This image can be saved in a matter of seconds.

First we need to identify the tool that we would like to use.  As the overexposure happened from a side, this means we need to reduce the exposure of the bottom without changing the exposure on top.  So the gradient (moving from one color to another) negative exposure is what we need.

First, lets switch to the Developer Module by either clicking “Develop” on the top row, or by hitting “D”.   The gradient tool is a right below the Histogram on the right side of the developer module, and it looks like a box with 3 dotted lines going through it.   The 4th option from the left, and 2nd option from the right.   You can see it below circled.

Now choose “Exposure” from the drop down list in front of Effect.  Next move the slider all the way left so that it reads -4.00.  That’s right we’re going to way underexpose the image so that we can see where the gradient will start and end.  Afterward we will pull the exposure back up and we’ll end up where we want.

Now click on where the image is “most” over exposed, and while holding the left mouse down drag the mouse towards where the exposure is correct.  You should be able to see the exposure change as you’re doing this, if your computer is a little slow, just hold the mouse steady without letting go of the button and LR will catch up. When you’re happy with the size of the gradient let go of the mouse, but don’t click anywhere on the picture, if you do you’ll start a new gradient.  If this should happen, click “Cancel” on the bottom right hand corner of the tool window.  You can grab the old gradient to change it’s value by clicking the little white dot (handler) that is on the image.

As you can see we have underexposed the flower on the bottom now, but we can also see exactly where the gradient starts.  If you know exactly how much exposure you need than you can set it from the start, but me, I can’t tell from the image how badly I’ve done something so I usually just go over and reduce as needed.

Now let’s increase the exposure until the bottom and the top matches.

As you can see we now have a properly exposure flower, ready to be matted and framed for the gallery or show.

Also, please notice that the history on the left shows us all of the steps that we completed.  At this point I usually take a “snapshot” of the history point so that I can break this off and/or continue to play with the image to see if anything else can be changed to make it better.  In this case I might run it through Noise Ninja once at a low setting.

Final export:

This is one of those topics that keeps coming up. Almost all digital files are “compressed” formats. Which means they have “zip-like” functionality built-into them. With Zip, or Windows Compress, if you zip a document, or a file — when you unzip it, you get the same exact file back (hopefully). Well this is not true for most digital media formats, such for Audio, Video, or Pictures. These lossy formats actually throw away information to make the file smaller. You can never get that original data back. Now let’s admit — most people cannot tell the difference in listening to a MP3 (lossy audio format) of “Smoke on the Water” or the originally recorded digital CD. That’s because most of the information that was thrown away by the conversion was outside of our listening area. Yes some of it was outside of hearing range as well, but most of it is actually inside of what we can hear but don’t usually listen to, specially where there is something more interesting going on.

So what does this all have to do with images and photographs? Well most of the formats that we use are also lossy formats. JPEG is a HUGE lossy format, GIF is even worse. Jpeg actually has 100 levels of lossy. from 1 to 100. 100 being the least lossy, and 1 you won’t recognize your image from the source. The trick with jpeg is to lower the quality enough so that you can’t tell that it was shrunk down — usually between 60-75 (6-7 as some programs refer to the scale).

Formats such as Raw files (CR2[Canon Raw], NRF[Nikon Raw], DNG[Adobe DigitalNegative]) are lossless formats, which means they’re much larger. TIFF and PNG are also two types of lossless formats. Right now everything I shoot is Canon Raw, which is then converted to a DNG for store and archival. I think it’s always better to have 100% of the data in our raw file and in Lightroom it’s breeze to create any size, spec JPEG I need as an output.

I’ve been a sports shooter for as long as I can remember, I just like shooting sports.  With that comes certain restrictions.  You can’t always crop your pictures the way everyone else thinks you shoot.  First as a commissioned piece, you have to allow for editorial space.  Second, the publisher (whatever the format it might be) will tell you exactly what size the image should be.   For example, all of the images that I deliver to the Rough Riders for their website has to be 1155×855 pixels, and yes it has to be horizontal images.  That’s because the primary media for the site is their website.  They do also want verticals and standard ratios as well since they do use them for print, but that’s the size of their template for their site.

This is specially true if you move from a cropped sensor to a full frame.  You end up with a lot more room than you’re used to.  After you get used to it, you start cropping less and less, but you still do it.  Also in sports, everything is cropped, because you can’t move.  You have to take the frame that the player develop for you.  If you want that instant you have to click, and crop it later.

All that said, what’s the best crop?  A crop should be to spec, and it should emphasis your subject as much as possible.  Now some people go for the deepest crop they possible can.  I don’t subscribe to this theory.   I think dead space, used properly, can add to your image.  It all depends on what you’re trying to show, and point to.

Since I just got my 1000th person telling me how they lost something because they didn’t have a proper backup, I thought I would point this fact out again.   There really is no excuse.

“Mozy is a simple and safe way to back up all the important stuff on your computer. A copy of your data is stored in a secure, remote location for safekeeping, so that in the event of disaster your data is still retrievable.”  according to Mozy.com.   You can get a free account which allows you to backup 2GB of data for free.  This can be your bookmarks and misc files.  Obviously you’re not going to backup a great deal of images with 2GB.

Here is athe good news.  They have an unlimited, single machine, option.  Which means you can backup a single machine (all local storage) with a single price — $4.95 per month if you sign a two year agreement.  That’ ~$104.00 for two years of unlimited backups and restores.   You can even restore files remotely.  I’ve been on the road and realized that I needed a file from my workstation.  I’ve initiated a restore to my laptop from the road and gotten last night’s backup.  Oh, did I forget to mention that the backups are in the background and seemless.  They run when you don’t use your machine.  No need to schedule a specific time.  As you getup and go get coffee Mozy figures out what needs to be backed up and backs it up.   They even keep multiple copies of files on their server, in case you need a version of the file from 4 days ago.

I, highly, highly suggest Mozy to everyone.   You can use my referral code, this gives me 128MB added to one of my free accounts for everyone who signs up and actually uses Mozy.  Or you can just sign up without it. Just start using it.

DISCLAIMER: Mozy is now owned by EMC.  I have no direct affiliation with EMC or Mozy.   However I do hold 401K portfolio(s) which at times may hold EMC stock, but they would not be direct holdings and not under my control.

I’ve been doing a lot of research into Infrared photography and there doesn’t seem to be a single place that contains all of it, so here is what I found:

With DSLRs there are three types of IR Techniques.

1. Photoshop
2. Converted Bodies
3. Filters

Photoshop: Techniques do exist to “imitate” IR photography.  This is a trick and cannot reproduce the amazing images that you can get from IR itself.

Converted Bodies: The main reason that IR photography is not readily available to us is that all DSLR cameras have a IR Filter that blocks most of the IR light from the sensor.   Method #3 is to physically remove this filter from in front of the sensor.  This conversion is destructive, and that body is not longer able to take normal pictures again, it can only take IR images.    Yes, this means you have to carry yet another body with you everywhere you go, but this is the best possible image you can get.   A typical conversion (there are two or three different kinds) is around $250.   The positives are endless, Auto Focus Works, Exposure Controls work (somewhat, you still need to adjust exposure compensation), you can see the image in your Preview Window as it is, you can use it with any lens you like (even fish eye or long zooms that don’t accept filters or use drop ins).

Filters: They are expensive, but can be used and unused as you like.   The draw backs to filters are:

1. They’re expensive (did I say that already?)
   • Hoya R72 IR Filter, 52mm – 77mm ($90 – $210 respectively)
   • B+W 093 IR Filter, 52mm – 77mm ($114 – $203 respectively)
   • Tiffen 87 IR Filter, 52mm – 77mm ($106 – $153 respectively)
2. With Filters, you have to use very long exposures (as most of the light is blocked by the IR filter of the camera.
3. Only certain scenes can be captured (because of the duration required)
4. AF is disabled (you can’t see anything once you put the filter on) — You have to compose your shot, put on the filter and hope nothing moves, than take the shot.
5. Exposure Control is disabled.
6. You have to use a tripod – since you get only a small % of the light you need very long exposures (10″-30″, 30″+ second exposure are typical).

In the next few posts, I’ll delve more into each of these items in more detail.