Tutorials

Photography / Tutorials — 1 Comment
14
Sep 09

Three Monopods Under Five Bucks

In this post I’m going to show you how to make 3 very simple monopods for under 5 bucks!
Now keep in mind a tripod would give much better results than a monopod anyday. But if your in a fix or just want to pack light you can get some sharp photos using really low shutter speeds with these tools.

The first of which is the string monopod. I got this idea from Jon Adams and he got it from Chuvak1 on YouTube to view click (here). Its simple to make, just get a string that wont stretch cut it to be roughly your height, a washer, and a 1/4″ in diameter bolt (the exact bolt I got was a carriage bolt 1/4″ in diameter and 1″ long).

Then tie one end of the string to the washer, I just did a simple granny knot for that. Then take the other end of the string and attach it to the bolt, I used a lashing so it would look nice.

What the knots look like.

Look how compact!

What it looks like in action

Without String Monopod at 1/8th of a second

With String Monopod at 1/8th of a second

While I was at home depot I saw these other 1/4″ bolts and I got thinking “hey these would make some great mini monopods!” and guess what they do! Just pick out a size you would like the ones I saw ranged from 1″ long to 6″ long. (I decided on getting the 3″ and the 6″ as your see below)

The 3″ and 6″ carriage bolts

I did the lashings on these as well, so they would look nice. But lucky me it did more than just make them look nice. It also made them thicker so when I put on the two 1/8″ nuts (I think) on they fit pretty tight, I even had to screw them on.

Then I found some 5/8″ rubber caps that are normally for chairs that fit over the bottom of the bolts and nuts perfectly. Now they wont scratch my car if I decided to use it on the hood or something.

Here is the 3″ bolt in action

Here is the 6″ bolt in action

Without the mini monopod at 1/3rd of a second

With the mini monopod at 1/3rd of a second

I hope you liked this post. Hope it helps you in your photography.

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Photography / Tutorials — No Comments
29
Aug 09

Why Shoot Fast Glass?

First of all what is “Fast Glass”? Well when we photographers are talking about glass were really talking about a lens for a camera we just like to use code haha. Then the fast comes in when the lens can let in a lot of light for example an ƒ/1.4 or a ƒ/2.8 would be a fast lens.

So why do we want fast glass or a fast lens? Because of Depth of Field. The faster the glass the shallower the depth of field becomes. Also a fast lens will allow you to shoot in very low light which is very nice. The only thing that isn’t nice about fast glass is the price tag.

The images below show the advantages of having a fast lens and being able to shoot at those low f-stop numbers.

K
ƒ/14 not so great for portraits to much detail in the background but would be nice for landscapes. ƒ/1.4 really selective focus great for portraits like this one. What one would you rather use?

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Photography / Tutorials / iPhone — 1 Comment
10
Aug 09

iPhone GeoTag for Photographers

If you have an iPhone you know you love it. Now your just about to love it even more!

While in Barnes and Noble with my girlfriend Kari I picked up the iPhone book by Scott Kelby and I was flipping through it when I came across the GPS section and how every time you take a picture with apples camera app. It geo tags your images! Thats right it bakes the longitude and latitude right into the images metadata.

Why is this so cool? Because now when you go out scouting places to shoot photos and snap a picture with your phone the location of where you were standing when you took the picture will never be forgotten. So ten years down the road you can easily find out where you took that photo and go shoot some photos at that location.

Now how do you see and use this metadata? With lightroom its a snap! Just go to your library mode select one of your iPhone photos. Then on the right hand side will be all your meta data telling you what camera was used, shutter speed, all that stuff. But if you look at the EXIF section of it all your see GPS and some numbers. Guess what if you click on it. It will launch your web browser going right to Google Maps and pin pointing where you were when you took the shot, well I would say within 100 ft. I added some images to the end of this post to show you exactly how it all works.

Here is the image I captured

Screen shot 2009-10-22 at 1.42.36 AM

Here is where I click to launch Google Maps in my web browser

Screen shot 2009-10-22 at 1.43.13 AM

Here is my Google Maps result.

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Computers / Lightroom / Tutorials — No Comments
8
Aug 09

Lightroom Plug-Ins

If you a lightroom lover your about to love it even more! Thanks to Jeffery Friedl we have some amazing lightroom export plug-ins. If your like everyone else in the world you have a Facebook page and there is a export plug-in for that, all you have to do is click “HERE” and it will take you to his lightroom goodies page.

Now this is where it gets even better there not just a facebook plug-in there is a blogger, flickr, photobucket, and a few others. Just select the ones you want and download them.

Screen shot 2009-10-22 at 1.55.39 AM

Screen shot of Jeffrey’s blog, as you can see in the upper left corner there is a list of all the plug-ins. Just click to download.

Then your going to want to go to your lightroom catalog, while in the library mode your want to click the export button or hit (Command+Shift+E). This will bring up the export dialog then go to the bottom left where it says plug-in manager and hit the “add” button to add a plug-in. Go to your download folder and import your plug-in. Once it is added there should be a green dot to the side of the plug-in name, which means “I’m ready to rock!”

Screen shot 2009-10-22 at 1.54.37 AM

This is what you should see in your plug in manager

Hit done, now your back to the regular export menu. So go up to the top of the menu and by default it will say files on disk or something to that affect. Click on it and select your plug-in from the drop down menu. Now your a boat load of options for that plug-in. All I did was verify my account by putting in my user name and password for facebook and I also set up which folder it would export my images to. (for the facebook plug-in it will swap you to facebook and you will have to allow the plug-in to export to facebook. Sounds complex but your see what I mean) Once you set all that fun stuff up your going to want to go to the left of your menu and hit “add” and name it something useful like Facebook.

Screen shot 2009-10-22 at 2.02.22 AM

Now all you have to do is hit that magic button called export and it should automatically swap to your browser into a new facebook tab and all you have to do is select the images you want to add and confirm and its just that easy!

Screen shot 2009-10-22 at 2.03.39 AM

Just to note all the plug-ins are basically the same set up.

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Computers / Lightroom / Tutorials — 3 Comments
28
Jul 09

Auto Mask in Lightroom

I was just using the auto mask feature in Adobe Lightroom on one of my recent New York shots. I was using it to select the sky behind the statue of liberty, and this photo looked like the perfect photo to use the auto mask feature with the local adjustment brush.

Auto Mask

I put on a red over lay so you can see exactly where my brush painted. As you can see it did a fantastic job of just selecting the sky and not the statue. Saving me hours of time selecting it myself. All I had to do was turn on auto mask and paint away and it avoided cutting into the statue. Then all I had to do was tweak with the setting making the sky darker. I was trying to get more detail out of the sky you can kind of see that I did in the bottom right corner. But most of the sky didn’t have any detail at all so I just lowered the brightness of the sky to make the statue stand out a little more.

GageThompson-4

Before and after auto mask and darkening of sky

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