We were in Seattle for a brief visit last weekend. I decided to climb to the top of a parking garage, hoping to get a view of Pike’s Market and the waterfront. Well, the building wasn’t quite high enough! So I took this shot of 1st Avenue. One of the cool effects of the tilt shift lens is the ability to make everything look like miniature toys. This effect is amplified if you get much higher than your subjects. For this shot I used both the tilt and shift features of the lens. The “shift” feature was used to straighten the vertical lines of the skyscrapers, making it appear that I’m higher than I really am. Then I angled the “tilt” feature to align down the street, so that the two men walking, the PARK sign, and the buildings all the way down at the end of the street are all in focus.
Hi. Steve here. I have a ton of new photos and posts to publish from my latest adventures. But first things first. I gotta change the name of this website! This is a blog of personal photos and adventures, and as a result it is a steadily morphing entity. As I evolve as a human and as a photographer, the look and feel of the site needs to change with me.
“The Dark Side” was a name that I impulsively came up with a couple years ago one late night when I was changing both of my blogs to my new ProPhoto WordPress blog template (great template, there is a discount coupon at the bottom of the page!). My professional websites took over an all-white theme, and I thought it would be fun to have my personal site reflect the opposite of that. So I just started calling the two, the Light Side, and the Dark Side. It was never really a well thought out plan, I will admit. One was white, one was black. One was professional work, one was personal work. It was really supposed to be temporary, but, I’m pretty busy with all the tons of things to do with this photo biz, so I just never got around to changing it, mostly because I never really thought of anything else to call it.
What is the purpose of this site anyway? Do I really need it? Does it really matter?
To me, it does. I love photography. I’m passionate about it, and addicted to it. I love taking photos when I’m on my adventures. Sometimes the photos are just travel snaps. But once in a while I get a really cool shot, the kind that I’d like to hang on the wall of my house. So I feel the need to put them out there and share them with the world, rather than have them live a cold and lonely life on a computer hard drive. I want them to see the light of day. I’d like to set up a cart where they could be purchased . . . but that’s a whole nutha project.
I need a new title that is more representative to the photography work that I publish here. In all reality, there isn’t much that is Dark about my photography. I’m more interested in beauty than sadness. I do have a quirky sense of humor, no doubt. I love what I do and I do have some pretty cool adventures where I have a lot of fun. The Dark Side had some people thinking that they were going to see horror movie stuff or something! So I need a title that is smart and clever, and possibly hints that this is a photo blog featuring photos from my travel, biking and snowboarding, and other random photos I take in my free time. There is also occasionally some technical and educational info for photographers, although I don’t seem to manage to find the time to publish a quarter of the articles that I think of in my mind. How do I sum all of that up in a title? How do I sum up 39 years of me in a couple words?
Until I come up with a cool new title . . . I’m just going to have a clean white sheet of paper. The Great Title-less Blog! I just couldn’t stand the old look any more and had to change it immediately! I made a Facebook comment about changing the name; in a dream world someone will come up with a clever name for me! I’m not counting on that though. My best ideas usually come from an unexpected moment of clarity, and will just pop into my head when the time is right. As for now, I’m going to throw out the idea that I’m ready for the new name to come to me.
As for the photo . . . It’s just a funny self portrait that I took on my recent trip to Washington State. My chin is all distorted and enormous due to the distortion of my Nikon 14-24mm lens. I love to take beautiful pictures. But I also like taking funny and somewhat distorted pictures as well!
If you actually read all of this, thanks. I hope you keep coming back for years to come, as this blog will still be around, although the format may completely different. Evolution is like that. Cheers, Steve Z.
I have lots of difficultly buying a product that just works. It seems like when I purchase something, there is only a 50% chance that I will be able to have it work, function, or look like it is supposed to on the first try. There doesn’t seem to be quality of products any more. We live in a disposable society, where products are actually designed to fail so that you will be forced to buy a new one in a few years. Additionally, many are just scurrying about with their tails between their legs hiding from The Recession. Consumers are searching for a cheaper and cheaper deal all the time without thinking about where the costs are being cut.
Photography is a luxury expense. As a result, many photo pros running top notch businesses are feeling the crunch of the economic downturn. No one really understands why it costs so much to run a photography business these days. I don’t blame them one bit. I really didn’t have a very good idea when I started doing this either! There are so many hidden costs that it never ceases to amaze me. And as long as I continue, more and more costs keep surfacing. My latest is it’s going to cost $1000 just to adjust and calibrate my cameras and half of my lenses. How much would the already expensive equipment have to cost for the quality to be perfect, so that I didn’t have to make these adjustments and repairs? Sure, I could just deal with my cameras the way they are, but I’m committed to having perfectly calibrated cameras so that my images are perfectly sharp.
The real lesson here, is that quality is just plain expensive. Just take this photo of this screw for example. It’s hard to tell from the photo, but there are no true threads, just metal rings! When did it become difficult to buy something with screws that actually had functioning threads? There were screws like this in two sofa tables that I bought to display my albums in the studio. I really don’t have the funds to buy them from Design Within Reach, so I bought some cheap bolt together ones from Target online. The first ones showed up with brush marks and hand prints under the clear coat on the wood. Then the second set showed up with non-functioning screws. Luckily I had screws from the first set, so I could put the tables together. So while I got a cheaper deal, I still had to waste a bunch of time assembling, disassembling, calling, reshipping, etc.
What is the cost of the cheap tables? The margins are so tight that they are trying to remove fractions of pennies out of the cost of the tables, and the screws. Should I always just buy designer tables so that they will (hopefully) work the first time? Should I support local merchants in the way that I hope to have my business supported? My accounting spreadsheet doesn’t really support buying top of the line studio furnishings in a business where I’m always being undercut by photographers who are willing to sell out their digital files for nothing.
Despite the sliding trend of photo studio profitability, I am working towards reaching the higher end of the market where quality is respected. I am seeking the clients that will recognize the top quality of the product that I offer. While some people in the world will continue to be content to display their Wal-Mart prints with bad skin tones proudly on their Target sofa tables with hand prints and screwed up screws, I pledge to offer services that represent, support, and exude Quality. The perfectionist in me will only be satisfied offering a premium product at a premium price.
A while back a friend from the Digital Wedding Forum sent me a couple flash brackets that can be used to make a 2 flash setup. The brackets are Sonia Flash Brackets for Metz Flashes. But as it turns out they work great to attach your flashes to any lightstand adapter with a 1/4-20 thread. You then attach either a Stroboframe or Canon/Nikon plastic flash shoe to the slot of the bracket. Easy peazy. The catch is that I’ve only seen the brackets for sale in groups of 10, so you need to get some friends together to split the lot. Or you can give them out as cheap Christmas gifts as they only cost 7 bucks each. You can buy them HERE.
I have a small collection of cheap flashes that I have accumulated from Ebay and Craigslist for Strobist style off camera flash shooting. Even with two flashes sometimes I run out of power when I try to overpower the sun. So I realized the other day that I could rig up to four flashes at once on this Metz bracket. So I headed out with Corey the Intern to take a test shot. It works great, and the sound of four flashes recycling after a full power dump is oh so sexy!
The trickiest part is how to get all four of your flashes to trigger. My life was made easy because my old SB-26 Speedlights have an optical slave. So I just triggered one with a Pocket Wizard, and the other 3 went off from the light reflected off of the subject.
OK this post has almost nothing to do with my usual photography topics. But many portrait photographers use portable speakers and projectors for presenting images to their clients. And Logitech has been very bad at making these speakers compatible with the latest software releases. After an hour of searching and hacking, I’ve come up with a solution, and thought that I would post it so as to be helpful to others. This post will also work for getting other Logitech products such as keyboards working with Snow Leopard, until Logitech can bother to get around to supporting their devices on the latest OS releases.
Step 1: Download the Logitech Control Center: http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/494/3129&cl=us,en I needed to do this step order to get the Macbook Pro to ‘see’ the speakers. This step is possibly also helpful in getting the speakers to work on older OS-X versions such as 10.5.x Leopard.
Step 2: Snow Leopard won’t install the software, since it isn’t signed to support 10.6.x. So rather than directly opening the Logitech Control Center Installer, you first need to locate the downloaded file in the Finder, then right click, and select ‘Show Package Contents’. Navigate to Contents>Resources and double-click Logitech Control Center.mpkg. This will install the software.
Step 3: Go to System Preferences>Hardware>Sound>Output. Hopefully you see the Logitech USB Speaker listed as a possible output device.
So, as you probably can see, I like taking nature photos when I’m wandering around in the local woods around Boulder. It can be challenging to come up with creative ways to take new photos every time, when the surroundings appear to be the same. In the foothills of Boulder, we really don’t have too many big scenery shots other than the standard Foothills landscape. Our local pine woods are generally quite scrubby looking, with lots of visual chaos. I find that the tilt shift can really help in providing alternate perspective, as any ‘Perspective Control’ lens should! As you can tell I’ve really been getting into those lenses lately; they are the ones I go to when I want to just mess around. Too much fun!
As anyone who knows me knows, I really like the tilt shift. The limitless versatility allowed by changing the angle of the focal plane keeps the latent scientist in me entertained for hours. I’ve been using the 45mm version since way back in my Canon days of last year. When I switched to Nikon, I purchased the superior Nikon 45mm PC-E lens. The Nikon version allows for the added feature of being a 1:2 macro lens, which comes in handy for the ring shots and close up shots of eyeballs. The 45 is a standard lens, which means it can be used for landscapes and portraits, it’s right in the middle of the focal range. But it still is a little bit wide angle for a close up portrait, and sometimes I like my ring shots a little tighter, so I’ve been thinking about the 85mm version. But, at $1600, the new PC-E version is quite expensive. Well, I found a used older version of the lens, the 85mm PC on the DWF classifieds. The major difference is that the camera body can’t control the aperture, you have to adjust it manually. But, I figured I’d give the lens a try, and if I really use it a lot I might pony up the cash for the new version someday. Optically, I think they are mostly the same, minus some new lens coatings.
Well the lens came today, and I’m pretty excited about a new lens that I’ve never owned before. I took a couple sample shots here in the office, to compare the 85 to the 45. The differences probably aren’t huge to the untrained eye, but to me they are pretty significant! To me it’s easy to see how the 45 still has a wide angle effect to it, as seen in this first shot of the loose change on the window sill. In the 45 shot, it looks like the dime and the nickel are at different angles, while they appear more parallel in the 2nd shot. Interestingly, the lens causes the camera to perceive that the coins are at different angles, as you can see that the amount of reflected light off the silver coins is much different in the 45mm image than the 85mm image. Also notice how I shot the stacks of coins at an angle, but aligned the focal plane along the tops of the coins, leaving the change below blurred out. This is what I jokingly call using the tilt shift “The Right Way”, when you are intentionally aligning things with the focal plane. Both of these lenses are excellently sharp, even hand held wide open at f/2.8.
left- 45mm .:. right- 85mm
Secondly I took a couple silly pictures of Richie in the foyer. Once again, the 45 has more of a wide angle to it. In this particular composition, I like the 45mm better. But I’m pretty sure that if I was doing a close in headshot, that I’d like the more flattering flatness of the 85mm. In both these shots I’m using the lens ” The Wrong Way”, where I use the angled focal plane to blur out everything but the eyes.
left- 45mm .:. right- 85mm
Now I acknowledge wasn’t a particularly scientific “test” by any means. I didn’t even do a very good job of keeping the subjects face at the same angle so that you can compare the shots. This was just an excuse to play with my new toy and to make funny faces for the blog!
I hired a new employee. His name is Steve. Steves are cool. I was explaining to him how RadioPoppers PXs work, and that I can shoot off-camera flash way over the camera’s synch speed using High Speed Sync. To show my point, I took this shot of him at 1/8000 of a second. Because I wanted to be sure that his backlit leg hairs were as sharp as possible. I took this shot with 2 Nikon SB-800s at full power, with a Nikon D700, Nikon 24-70 f/2.8, 1/8000, f/4, 640 ISO. How cool is that for a first day of work? Steves are cool.
My buddy Neil Van Niekerk is coming to Denver on August 18th to do a workshop on state-of-the-art flash photography techniques. This is an amazing opportunity and space is limited: head over to Planet Neil for more information about the workshop, dates, and how to sign up.
I did a great shoot this past April in New Jersey with Neil. It was set in the Paterson Historical Museum, and the modeling was done by Priscilla.
The world of digital photography is an interesting blend of art, classical and contemporary photography techniques, and straight up computer nerdiness. In today’s digital age it is imperative to stay on top of all of the latest software updates to keep one’s photography at the top of the game. For better or worse, I have the ability to sit in front of the computer for hours and hours, surfing the web for information. Many times all I wind up doing is procrastinating pressing tasks. But once in a while, I achieve a major breakthrough. Last night was one of those nights, as I discovered Adobe’s DNG profiles and DNG profile editor. I’ve been using Adobe Lightroom to process my RAW files (NEF files for Nikon, CR2 files for Canon) for about a year now. I love the workflow and the RAW editing power that the program offers. I’ve read complaints from photographers who won’t use it, citing that they don’t like the skin tones that are produced by the Adobe RAW processor. They say that Nikon’s Capture NX2 provides much better color. But then I ask if that program is practically usable for volume wedding photography, and the answer is “no”. So at this point I stuck my head in the sand and went on my usual workflow. I didn’t realize how different the results could be.
Meanwhile, I’ve been struggling with the skin tones that come out of many of my photos. People appear very orange, very pink, and very saturated as a whole. I’ve created my own Lightroom preset, called ‘Skin Shift’, which I use to adjust the skin tones on particularly bad examples, usually those people who are very red, and lit under tungsten bulbs. But using the HSL color controls never really got me to where I wanted to be. I knew that the Camera Calibration controls were available, but since I was never able to get the settings to a place I liked, I wasn’t sure how I could possibly come up with a profile that was better that what I was already using. So I continued using the Adobe Standard profile. It is Adobe’s attempt to make an average profile that works for every single camera out there that shoots in a RAW format. You can imagine how well THAT works! ;>)
Then I found out about the Adobe DNG Profiles page. Here there are specific profiles created for every camera out there. Additionally, there are various modes for each camera, that are like the Picture Styles that you use in the camera if you are shooting JPG. For the D700 there are: Camera Neutral, Camera Portrait, Camera Standard, Camera Vivid, Camera Landscape, Camera D2X Mode 1, Camera D2X Mode 2, and Camera D2X Mode 3. The last 3 Modes are similar to profiles that became available with the Nikon D2x camera body. Additionally, there is a DNG profile editor where you can make your own profiles. I haven’t gotten to that point yet. In this article I’m just going to show you the differences between the Standard Nikon d700 profiles. One can also utilize these profiles using Photoshop CS3/Bridge CS2. I am blown away at the differences in the photos. With these DNG profiles and/or the DNG editor, the adjustments to the color are much for fine tuned than is possible with the manual controls. All my problems with Disney Cartoon skin appear to magically have been solved! So here are some pictures to tell the tale. I picked this recent portrait because it was taken in natural daylight under overcast conditions without any flash. White balance is set to Daylight. Disclaimer: You may or may not be able to see the differences here depending on 1- your color trained eye (or lack of), 2- your color calibrated monitor (or lack of).
On a calibrated monitor viewed under proper lighting, the difference is huge! In the first photo the general tone of the man’s face is magenta, but that isn’t really the way he looks in real life. His skin tone is much closer to the second image, a normal orange-brown hue. I’m now going to include some close up, side-by side images of some of the profiles to give you an idea of the differences. But basically, ANY of them are better than using the Adobe Standard! Keep in mind, the only setting changed between these images is the Camera Calibration Profile.
As you can see, the differences between the D700 specific Camera Profiles are more subtle, but the difference between the Adobe Standard is huge! In a large printed image, the differences would be easily discernible even by the untrained eye. Camera neutral is a good place to start. The profile itself is a bit flat, but contrast and saturation can easily be added. One of the other settings can also be a good starting point to have an image with more punch, straight out of the editor without any tweaking.
Even with as much improvement these standard camera profiles are, there is still room for improvement. I’ve seen some examples on the DWF where some advanced users show examples of odd discoloration and blotchy-ness in shaded or complex areas of photos using Camera Neutral. So there are still further steps to take to achieve true color mastery. The next step is to be to create a custom profile, using the DNG profile editor, based upon calibrated images taken from my actual cameras. Added to my personal recipe will be a little bit of my personal style and taste, that will make my color profiles truly unique, and unlike any other photographer. I will create one profile that is a ‘do it all’ type file, where I can process an entire wedding with all of its varying light conditions and backgrounds, and come up with natural looking, true color images that have a little extra pop of saturation and contrast. After that, I plan to create some additional ‘artistic’ profiles, that I can use for particular conditions that I shoot often. These additional steps are icing on the cake for me. Currently I am super happy to have found an immediate and easy solution to a nagging skin tone problem. All I had to do was download a simple executable file, install, and change one setting in Lightroom. Epic Win!
Last year I decided to switch from Canon to Nikon. Switching and upgrading the level of my cameras and lenses was quite expensive, so I made a few decisions to try and cut costs. One of those decisions was to try and shoot a prime lens instead of a zoom in the telephoto range. So instead of replacing my Canon 70-200 f/2.8 IS with a Nikon 70-200 f/2.8 VR or a Nikon 80-200 f/2.8, I bought a Nikon 135mm f/2.0. I was hoping that I would be happier on a wedding day by having a lighter lens which can also shoot more wide open and achieve a creamy blur at f/2. That was the intent, but in practice that isn’t quite how things have turned out, so I bought a Sigma 70-200 f/2.8 lens to try out. I compared this new lens to my Nikon 135, to try and find out if I was really gaining any performance by shooting a prime. Read about it after the page break…
On my trip back East, there were two distinct parts. The first was family time in PA. The second half was NJ and NY. My grandmother lives a train ride away from the city, so I stayed there and took a trip to NY. I went to Manhattan for a day. I didn’t want to bring all of my gear, so I decided to pick one lens, and shoot the whole day with only it. That’s a tough decision for a gear head like myself!
So I decided to bring the most difficult lens I have, the 45mm tilt shift (Perspective Control PC-E in Nikon speak). The difficulty provides an interesting challenge that I enjoy a lot! This lens allows you to change the focal plane so that it is not perpendicular to the camera sensor. So what this means is that you can make areas of the photo in focus (or not), that are not necessarily the same distance from you.
This lens is experiencing a fad-like popularity right now. It’s somewhat easy to take a subject, like a person, and blur everything around them. It’s only somewhat easy because you still have to manual focus the lens! But you can get the effect and still be ignorant of how to use the lens to it’s full capability. In this series of images I angled the focal plane to create visual ties between parts of the images. So as you look at the images, pay attention to what parts of the photos are in focus, and what parts are not. Trippy huh? :>)
And if you aren’t interested in the technical mumbo jumbo . . . just enjoy the scenery from the most infamous parts of NJ! Haha!
I’ve been trying to decide if I need to buy a Nikon macro lens or if I can make due without it. I took the first photo with the macro feature on my Canon G9. The photo below is with the 100mm macro on the 5D. Definitely sharper, and a more telephoto perspective. I like the blurred areas much better in the photo below. But then again, surprisingly similar. Hmmmmm.
It’s just a funny self portrait that I took on my recent trip to Washington State. My chin is all distorted and enormous due to the distortion of my Nikon 14-24mm lens. I love to take beautiful pictures. But I also like taking funny and somewhat distorted pictures as well!
