Last Sunday we had a lovely photo shoot in the studio with Theres as a model and Annie doing the makeup and then three photographers. Here are some of the pictures from this session. Annie is a makeup artist from the Stockholm Makeup Artist school and Theres had modeled only once before and that was on the Saturday but everything got great and we had a lovely time!
The slide show of the full set is here >>>
You never know, the accident is closer than you might think. A few days ago my workdisk started having funny noises and thrashing about. I quickly checked that backups was running as they should and just for the heck of it made sure I got a full backup of the whole thing before it went dead.
Then I went out and bought myself a new USB attached disk, 1 TB of capacity is a lot but I am sure me and my camera will fill it soon enough. So I started transferring data and then the old disk just died. Flat out died. Lucky to have a backup on my other disk I started transferring the backup onto the new disk. A few percent in it started sounding bad and then the disk failed.
Not knowing what to do I quickly dismantled my backup disk, another external disk although attached by firewire instead of USB. The disk was so hot I could not touch it so I quickly realized the problem was overheating, it wasn’t really designed for extensive data transfers like this. So I let the disk cool down a bit and rest, then I disassembled it completely so it could run in free air, I used the cabinet fan to cool the hotest circuit, I put ice clamps around the back side of it and the sides and right now it is running fine, I have extracted all my photos up to 2005 so far.
This just goes to show that you can’t be too careful. Keeping your disks cool are important but keeping more than one recent backup is even more important. I have also considered getting a disk to swap with a friend to put backups on to it and I will push and see if she is interested. Then we can back up and meet up bi-weekly or monthly or so and exchange the disk. I am scared of what would happen to my collection of photographs if there was a mishap, burnout, smal fire, accident, electic overload, lightning strike… well there are many things that may potentially damage more than one disk at a time.
We are talking several hundreds of GB here people. CD’s are not an option, a full backup would mean close to 600 CD’s to burn. Just the sheer time of it is incomprehensible, but let’s say a full data CD takes 8 minutes to burn top speed. That’s 80 hours. Two full working weeks.
DVD’s are not much better either, they have a magnitude up on the CD’s or so but it is definitely not an option either, a full backup there would be 150 DVD’s or so, they take longer to burn than CD’s so I bet the time necessary to do that is about the same.
That’s why I use hard disks to store everything and I then schedule backups from one to the other. The whole idea is that a single point of failure should never mean a loss of data. My worries after tonight is that if there is a second point of failure I might be toast. I don’t like that.
Yeah, I got much stuff on my Flickr account, but not the negatives, the RAW files, the working copies, the drafts the ORIGINALS and more important my own notes and stuff. I need a solution for this soon. The broadband ISP has a solution with online storage but only 10 GB. I need at least 60 times that in order to feel safe.
It’s not an easy solution, disks do go bad, the only thing you can do to make sure your data stays around is to copy it and copy it again and keep it current. Digital data screams to be copied of course but it scares me sometimes how easily I could lose everything I have done.
And don’t talk to me about RAID systems. I have trouble shooted and fixed enough electronic systems to know that when stuff runs together it needs only to be an overvoltage problem in a single power supply and your whole raid stem is fried.
My backup copying is now at May 2005. Perhaps I will make it this time as well. I swear, I will buy a new backup disk on salary day.
I use tar as my backup software almost exclusively and here is the trick:
Every week or two weeks or when you think it is necessary you make a full backup
Every time there has been changes or just daily to backup the changed files since the last full backup
Using tar this is pretty simple, in the first case
tar c -f backup.tar /home/ichi
# I normally never compress my archives. There are two reasons for this and
# the most important is that there is a better chance to save the contents
# if the file is damaged if it is not compressed. The second reason is because
# of the large amount of data compressing / decompressing takes a lot of time
# the full backup is already several hours of work.
tar c -x -N 2008-10-21 -f backup-partial-`date -I`.tar /home/ichi
# The -N flag backs files that were touched after this date (and on this date).
# so in this example the last full backup was at 2008-10-21. All files touched on
# this date and later will then be backed up.
# The `date -I` is a nifty trick inserting todays date in the file name
I met Björn when we met up for an excursion into the Solna Badlands. He seemed to have an affinity for shooting abandoned industrial areas and general industrial environments. Here in Sweden it is increasingly difficult to find abandoned places like this but Björn has recently put up a series of pictures from an abandoned Sugar Mill in the southern part of Sweden. We also had company of another Flickr photographer, Len Lysén.
All pictures in this slide show are Copyright Björn Sahlberg, I have just linked to his Flickr set displaying them as a slide show. Enjoy the tour.
As everyone knows the trick is to keep the camera steady and this is easier said then done. When the exposure times goes up to 1/30s and more most people run into problem. There is a simple formula you can use to calculate the slowest exposure for a given focal length and it goes like this:
t = 1/f
t is your exposure time (shutter speed) and f is the focal length you are currently shooting with.
Some people also say there should be a 1.5 factor here because of the crop factor of the APS-C sensor in most digital cameras. That’s not my experience and I believe the explanation is that the smaller the sensor, the less the camera shake is noticeable. Anyway, I have never had a problem shooting handheld with this formula.
This means that for a 200 mm lens you need 1/200s in order to shoot sharply handheld. This is a good aim but sometimes you can not get that because the light is not goot enough and you don’t want to bump that ISO setting because it produces far more noise in your pictures.
On a 50mm it says you should be able to take sharp pictures handheld down to about 1/50s which is a pretty low shutter speed. This is definitely possible but for the best result you can practice the McNally Grip, also known simply as ”Da Grip”. This requires you to be a left-eye shooter and is easier for right-handed people.
It’s not always practical to carry or even use a tripod. If you are doing street photography with a tripod in certain places you know the police may take an active interest in what about you are up to. Basically this is the same technique as when firing a rifle, you keep it well tucked in, steady and squeeze the trigger as you slowly exhale. Same thing here, just a camera trigger.
Using this technique most people can shoot about 1-2 EV lower than they would otherwise. This means that if you can just about do 1/50s with a 50 mm you may be able to get tack sharp pictures down to 1/25s or even 1/10s which is really really good!
This is handheld only in lamp light in the metro line of stockholm city (focus is deliberately on the Ubunty cola poster to the right hand side):
The reason I took this is because Ubuntu is also a Linux distribution.
I happen to be both so I love this.
Or you can watch his video here directly if you like.
People sometimes ask in forums and other places what is the optimum settings for certain types of photography. Although there is no absolutely clear answer—it depends what you are trying to capture of course and your own style there are some things that are useful to remember.
Here are my arguments for each of these settings.
Continuous shooting this is great because if something happens unexpectedly you just point and keep shooting frame after frame and you might get that special picture even if you was not ready to compose and wait for the moment. Things happens fast in the street so be prepared. A useful lens to have mounted is a superzoom, 18-200 mm or similar, they give you great range and can handle almost any urban situation. The drawback is of course that superzooms are a compromise and may lack sharpness for example.
Tracking autofocus this means the camera keeps focussing all the time even if you keep shooting frame after frame. This is good for tracking moving objects but you have to be aware where the focus points are in your frame. On Nikon cameras this is AF-C (Autofocus continuous). Single time focusing is called AF-S.
Aperture priority or the ”A” mode on the camera. This allows you to select the aperture for best depth of field and focus and the camera will automatically pick the apropriate shutter time for a good exposure. This means you don’t have to worry about the exposure and you still maintain a high level of control. Most lenses are sharpest when they are stopped down 2-3 steps. For most this means that f/5.6 – f/11 is probably the best choice in broad daylight. As your light diminish, keep shooting but open the aperture to f/3.5 or f/2.8 or even further if your lens supports it! Most superzooms can not open byond 3.5 at their broad end and 5.6 at their far end.
ISO200 this is a good setting because it minimises the noise from the sensor. If the light conditions are low, raise it but do it with caution since it can produce severely grainy images. Some cameras are much better than others though, you may want to experiment with this. But if your light conditions do not require it—keep your ISO low.
Center focus is preferred because thats where you aim. Use the AF-L (autofocus lock) button to lock if you wish to recompose. The reason center focus is so nice is that if something happens quickly you tract it the focus system has a better chance of concentrating on the object you are tracking. On Nikon cameras the 21 point focus system is great. On the older models as the D70 that has a very limited number of focus points use the single center dot.
Matrix metering means the camera is ready for most light conditions. Activate the ”highlight” function on your display to see if the metering has overexposed the picture, then use the exposure compensation setting +/- to change, recompose and take another shot. Using spot metering it may be very difficult to get the right exposure when there are multiple light sources as it generally is in the city. Centre weighted can sometimes be useful but most of the time matric metering is the best.
White balance does not matter too much if you are shooting RAW which you should be anyway… you can always correct this afterwards in your post processing because RAW files keep the sensor data as it was while JPEG will apply the white balance to the final picture. If you are shooting JPEG then set your WB accordinly, if you are shooting RAW you may do so but auto is usually fine as well.
RAW format is great because it allows you to adjust exposure and white balance with the maximum dynamics in the picture. In RAW you can easily correct 1 EV underexposure but if you attempt to do this on a JPEG the picture usually does not fare well.
JPEG format is not listed above but still very useful in certain situations… There is one time I will flip to JPEG when shooting street phot and that is when I will be taking long series of pictures of some event such as marathon runners or similar. The reason is that when I shoot RAW my camera buffer overloads after a few pictures and the camera can not fire as rapidly as in the beginning because it has to wait for the memory card to ”swallow” all the data. Since JPEG images are pre-compressed before they are written to the memory card they are smaller and thus allows me to shoot very long series of pictures before the camera memory buffer is full and it starts to ”stutter”. Don’t forget to set it back to RAW when you are done!
Are you looking for some nice business cards or would like to make some cool postcards with your own design and pictures? This site moo.com can grab your Flickr images and then make business cards, mini cards, post cards and other stuff straight off with your own design.
You can even have each card be a complete individual with a different unique picture on each of your business cards.
I just placed and order for a stack, I will tell you more when it arrives in the mail in a few days…
[Update 2008-10-15]
I got my cards a long time ago but have neglected to update this page, sorry for that. Here it is anyway! Iam thrilled with the service from moo.com, they are excellent. My package was sent using New Zealand mail and therefore the Swedish customs charged me import toll fees, even though the package was actually sent from the UK. Moo.com gave me the money back for that and then some immediately and had a talk with their courier to make sure this would not happen again.
The quality is excellent and I really love the look and feel of these!
Och ett smakprov på några bilder här nedan:
This photograph was shot on the way home from a fabulous course in nature photography last weekend. The course rendered many nice photographs and some of them you can see here on my flickr page.