Photo ABCs

Out of the Chute

Greetings from Leon, Guanajuato, Mexico.

Para más fotos de la corrida, por favor mire aquí.

For more bullfight photos, please look here.

  

Phainopepla

Photographed over Thanksgiving weekend at Saguaro National Park, just west of Tucson, Arizona.
 

Maria Kirilenko

I'm reposting this because of a technical glitch...

It's tennis time again, the Australian Open is in full swing!

Maria Kirilenko upset fellow Russian Maria Sharapova in the first round. Here she is in last year's Indian Wells BNP Open:

 

More tennis photos here.

CF Card Tests

 

Okay, now for a real exciting post, CF (Compact Flash) card test results!

I'm taking a trip soon, and wanted some extra CF capacity, as newer cards are out with higher speeds and capacities and lower prices.

I wanted to know if there was a significant difference in performance in the cards I already owned. 

I now own SanDisk Extreme III 8 gb cards , and Lexar 300x 8gb cards , and one Kingston 133x card 4 gb card.

As the Kingston 133x cards are very inexpensive now, I wanted to know if it made sense to buy more.

I devised a very simple test, which reflected to some degree real world conditions. All tests were with my Nikon D300 camera with a battery pack, with newly charged batteries. (If you have a different camera your results may vary!)

I formatted each card before each test. I then shot the same nearby target (something across the room) until the buffer filled. (ten shots in raw at 8 frames/second, in each test). I then used a stopwatch to record how long it took for the buffer to clear (for the green light to go out), so high-speed shooting could resume. I repeated the test three times and averaged the results.

Here are the results:

Kingston 133x 4gb card: 21 seconds.

SanDisk Extreme III 8 gb card: 7.7 seconds.

Lexar 300x 8gb card: 7.7 seconds.

I then formatted the cards, and simply held the shutter down for thirty seconds, to see how many shots I could shoot. (raw) The results:

Kingston 133x 4 gb card: 32 frames.

SanDisk Extreme III 8gb card: 56 frames.

Lexar 300x 8gb card: 56 frames.

Interestingly, I tried the same test using jpeg-high, and got these results:

Kingston: 55 frames

SanDisk Extreme III: 56 frames

Lexar 300x: 56 frames

The buffer, though, took 28 seconds to clear with the Kingston, and approximately 7 seconds to clear with the Lexar and SanDisk.

I then tested download speeds onto my computer using a Lexar FireWire 800 card reader, timing how fast 56 raw images (733 mb) were downloaded. 

Kingston 133x 4 gb: 38 seconds  (19.3 mb/sec)

SanDisk Extreme III 8 gb: 33.3 seconds  (22 mb/sec)

Lexar 300x 8 gb: 28.5 seconds (26 mb/sec)

These are the only cards I currently use, so these are the only cards I tested.

What do the results mean?

If you shoot sports, and frequently fill your buffer, then you want a fast card. The Extreme III and the Lexar 300x were essentially identical in in-camera performance, in my D300. The Kingston 133x was much, much slower.

If you do not shoot sports, the camera performance of any of these cards is more than adequate and would make no difference whatsoever.

Downloading speeds were not as different as I suspected they might be. The 300x was only 35% faster than the 133x, and only 18% faster than the Extreme III. These results assume a firewire 800 connection. When downloading 8 or 16 gb of data, though, that will mean minutes of extra time waiting with the slower cards.

These tests do not in any way test card reliability!

What do I recommend? If your livelihood depends on getting the shot in sports, then get the fastest card you can afford. 

I plan to try the new Lexar 233X , since Ken Rockwell reports that their performance is nearly indistinguishable from the 300x cards, but the cost is much less. Since my livelihood does not depend on these cards, I will wait for the price to come down before buying SanDisk Extreme IV or Lexar 600x cards.

If you shoot landscapes and never fill your buffer, get the best price for whatever card you think is reliable enough for you. (you rarely hear of a Lexar or SanDisk card failing). But buy from a reputable dealer, counterfeit cards exist, and it would be a shame to lose valuable pictures because you bought a counterfeit card from someone on ebay!

I just discovered that Adorama (see link at left) is offering the Sandisk cards with an increasing rebate; the more cards you buy (up to three), the bigger the rebate. So, the Extreme III and IV cards become a much better buy.

For more cf card testing, see Rob Galbraith's site.

 

Fun With Motion Blur!

Any photo which includes the motion blur filter is unlikely to be classified as fine art... but, it can be fun!

To me, background makes or breaks a photo. I do everything I possibly can to have clean or contextual backgrounds. Photographers pay many hundreds or thousands of dollars extra for lenses that are "faster," which have wider maximum apertures, allowing faster shutter speeds, and shallower depth of field, which give cleaner backgrounds.

When you've done everything you can and you still have a photo with a cluttered and distracting background, but you really like the subject, it's motion blur to the rescue!

Simply open a new layer in Photoshop, add a motion blur, and use a black paintbrush on the mask, to mask out the area you wish to remain sharp. You don't need to be perfectly exact, unless you want to. If the effect is a bit much, you can lower the layer opacity until it looks more natural.

That's all there is to it!

If all this is Greek to you, it's time to pick up a copy of one of Scott Kelby's introductory Photoshop books, or take a workshop! 

 

without motion blur:

For more photos of San Diego State basketball (and cheerleaders...) look here.

Published!

In the mail yesterday came Bird Watcher's Digest, with one of my pictures published (a small image on page 93), and a nice check!

I now receive the "image want list" for three bird magazines, and the first set of images I submitted was for the November/December Bird Watcher's Digest. They chose one image of a roadrunner. It's not what I consider a great shot (or even close to it!), but it suited their editorial need. 

This teaches me that despite how wonderful we think our images are, editors will choose what works best for their publication and the ideas they are trying to convey, and not necessarily choose what we consider our most artistic images.

Take A Workshop!

Looking at images in galleries, or online, it's often apparent that many photographers have little knowledge of how to use Photoshop to improve their images. It is often the case that their images will look worse after their attempts at Photoshop!

Why not learn from the best! I have found that setting aside a week to take a workshop can work wonders. There are superb classes offered at a number of locations. Why not study in the most beautiful location in the world, Yosemite Park, with the Ansel Adams gallery guest instructors?

Rich Seiling was one of my first Photoshop instructors, and impressed me with his straightforward, common-sense approach to his images. He is teaching a black and white Photoshop workshop in June. Black and white is not easy to do well in Photoshop, Rich will show you how to do it superbly.

Examples of Rich's straightforward instruction can be found on You Tube, here.

 

Another Design Assignment

This week I had the privilege of designing a postcard for my friend, artist Heidi Rufeh, of Rancho Santa Fe. She has two works hanging in an upcoming show at the Ordover Gallery in Solana Beach, and wanted a new card for collectors to take.

She had in mind a card with four images, with a short biography on the back.

Rather than use a plain design with the images, I made a few changes. I used her name graphically, so it would stand out. I arranged the four works in a more interesting pattern, on a background using colors from her images, muted so they would not compete.

For the rear of the card, rather than use the biography word for word, I simply took the descriptive words from her biography which would apply to her art. I arranged them in a manner similar to the way many blogs use descriptives. I thought it would convey what she wanted quickly and graphically. If the viewer needed more information, her website is listed prominently.

She was pleased with my ideas and so was I!

Please come see her works at the Ordover Gallery and other upcoming shows.

  

Say's Phoebe

At the Cibola National Wildlife Refuge, Arizona.
More birds here. 

Ballet

This White-faced Ibis was drying its wings. Shot last week in the Imperial Valley, California. More birds can be seen here.

This, and other bird photos, can be licensed at V.I.R.E.O. (Visual Resources for Ornithology).

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