Tip: Lens cap = incident meter
Thu Aug 9th - 10:10pm
Cameras base their auto-exposure on reflective metering, which is unreliable. Light meters are much more reliable as they use incident metering. Here's a quick-n-easy way to use your camera as a makeshift incident meter.
First of all you will need to know how to use your camera's manual mode, and how to select different metering modes. Flick the camera into manual and select whatever aperture you want to use. Now find something black such as your wallet, an item of clothing or your camera's lens cap.
If you've got a spot meter on your camera then this next step is easy. Simply switch to spot metering, hold your black object in front of whatever you want to photograph, and set your shutter speed to under-expose by 2 stops. Get rid of the black object and take your picture.
If your camera doesn't have spot metering then it might have partial metering which is effectively a less precise spot meter. Use that, just make sure your black object covers at least the middle 10% of the frame. Then it's the same procedure: Under-expose by 2 stops and take your picture.
If you only have full-frame metering then you'll need to make sure you use a black object large enough to cover the whole frame, but keep it far enough away from the camera that you won't cast a shadow on to it.
When you use this technique you're actually using the zone system, and you're showing your camera what zone 3 should look like. Zone 3 is defined as being where dark objects with texture belong. When you spot meter your black object, your camera has no idea if it's black, white or grey, so by default it goes in to zone 5. When you under-expose by 2 stops you place it in zone 3. Then when you take your picture you'll have a correct exposure. If the blacks are in the right zone then everything else must be too.
This technique has much the same strengths and weaknesses as an incident light meter. It won't be fooled by the brightness (or darkness) of the object you want to photograph. But it doesn't work very well for large scenes such as landscapes.
For example, in these two pictures, the lighting across the whole scene is consistent so the overall exposure appears correct:
But in this scene, although the rocks in the foreground are correctly exposed, the metering hasn't taken the background into account so the image appears to be over-exposed. There may be times when this would be exactly the effect you want, but more often than not it won't be.
Music workshop pic in North Star
Thu Aug 9th - 5:54pm
It's been a good week in the newspapers for the Sellers family with Reuben in the P&J on Monday and then Lorelei and Evangeline in the North Star today.
Canon 1D Mk3 auto-focus problems
Thu Aug 9th - 5:22pm
Rob Galbraith has a detailed report on the Canon 1D Mk3 auto-focus problems. Latest news was added today on the last page of the article.
Makes you wonder what Canon is playing at nowadays. First we had the Mk2 producing soft images, an issue that was patched to some extent but only fully resolved with the Mk2-N. Now the Mk3 doesn't focus properly and people are already talking about waiting for the hypothetical Mk3-N before upgrading.
Law does not provide “a press-free zone for children”
Tue Aug 7th - 5:54pm
Did you know that someone can take a photo of your child, without your permission and against your wishes, and sell it to newspapers? No, neither did I. But a judge has struck a double-whammy by making both the press and the law look bad in today's ruling against JK Rowling. From the BBC news report:
Harry Potter author JK Rowling has lost a High Court action seeking to ban the publication of a picture of her son.
The photo showed Rowling pushing David, who was 20 months old at the time, in a buggy on a street in Edinburgh.
The author complained that David's right to privacy had been infringed and sought to prevent future publication.
The judge said the law did not provide celebrities with "a press-free zone for their children in respect of absolutely everything they choose to do".
Roughly 75% of the photos I do for newspapers involve children, and I always need to get releases from parents, which is usually done in advance by the school or event organiser. No release, no picture. So why should it make a difference that the child's parent is a celebrity?
All this child protection stuff used to seem over-protective to me. But thanks to these paparazzi bozos I now agree with it absolutely.
There are thousands, maybe millions of photogs around the world who firmly believe that a parent's right to protect their child outweighs the photog's right to make a living selling pictures. It's obvious that that's how it should be. But it seems that if the parent has a job that sometimes puts them in the public eye, and the photog has had a common courtesy bypass, then the law is quite happy to look the other way and to hell with what's in the kid's best interests.
Conclusion of a masterpiece
Tue Aug 7th - 2:08am
Yeah that's right, I said masterpiece! 
Modesty aside, I really do think this is my finest photograph to date. I've posted it before (here) but that version was, with hindsight, badly processed. This is the full-on 20+ hour processing job ready for printing at A2. Seeing it small on a computer screen can't do it justice. I printed it at 13" x 19" yesterday and it was jaw-droppingly beautiful. I can only imagine how good the A2 print will be.
The goal throughout the processing was subtlety, quite the opposite of how I originally envisioned the picture, and this final version is silky smooth and understated. When I first processed it I wanted to emphasise the dramatic lighting. But I realised that the best way to present this picture is to keep everything subdued and allow its strongest aspect, the composition, to shine through. On screen it doesn't hit you over the head in the same way that the original version did, but on paper it's… dare I say awesome?
And for good measure, here's the final version of the other portrait from the same session. I have to say that I think this picture looks quite poor on screen, and even the A5 test prints looked cheap. But it was processed to look good when viewed as a large print and at 13" x 19" it looks amazing. You don't even want to know how long this one took to process. Heck I don't even want to think about it. Way too long.
Music workshop pic in Press & Journal
Mon Aug 6th - 11:57am
Got my first 'proper' pic in the P&J today. Hurrah! I've had one in before but that was done for a community project so the co-ordinator paid for the pic and then the paper got it for free. This was the first time I've sent a pic on spec and had it used.
It was from a music workshop that I photographed for the organiser. I didn't think I'd got any good newsy-type pics but then this one jumped out of the screen at me. As soon as I saw it I thought it was great P&J material.
As I've mentioned before it's always a good idea to send more than one photo, so I picked out this next one and sent it too. And this is the one they used! I do prefer the one of the girl, and even the boy's mother thought the paper would use that one, but it's worth repeating that if your goal is to get your photos published then you should provide more than one option whenever possible.
Beach mats as cheap diffusers
Sun Aug 5th - 11:07pm
Thanks to bossnas for this tip about some alternative light diffusers available from Habitat in the UK. For £8 (or £3.60 in the sale!) you can get a pack of two beach mats which can double as diffusers, about 6' x 4' each, and they appear to be quite sturdy. Example photos in this Flickr thread.
Golf prize-giving with backdrop
Sun Aug 5th - 6:01pm
I've photographed several golf tournaments at Tain Golf Club and I usually hang around afterwards to do pictures of the prize-giving ceremony on my own time, just for completeness. Those pics are generally quite poor due to cluttered backgrounds with lots of light fittings, windows and pictures on the walls.
Yesterday I was there specifically to photograph the prize-giving for the sponsor, Balblair Distillery. So we decided to get the job done right and set-up a backdrop. And I wanted to shoot f/8 @ ISO 100 so I set-up a studio strobe with a 100cm softbox. This set-up was still not ideal as I didn't have a lot of room to work in, so I had to shoot around 70mm and I couldn't use either a fill light or a hair-light. But it was the best of limited options.
As always it's good to plan for all eventualities and I would have put money on the club committee wanting a group shot with the sponsor. So I used a full 3m wide backdrop and lit the full stretch. And sure enough…
Here's a shot from a previous prize-giving at this location. This shows pretty much the whole area available for doing the photos. As you can see it's not a case of having to find a clean background, it's a case of there simply not being any clean backgrounds available. And that's not even taking into account the number of people standing around.
Yesterday's shoot went perfectly with one exception: I'm too polite! The photos were done at one end of the bar and we'd cleared away a few tables so I could set-up the strobe to frame right. I needed to keep the lighting angle fairly sharp in case anyone was wearing glasses. Just as I was getting the strobe set-up a couple came over and asked if they could move a table into the place that I had reserved for the strobe. Well of course I didn't just say yes, I actually went and got the table and chairs for them! What an idiot I am sometimes.
So anyway I then had to put the strobe to frame left, quite close to me, producing some nasty reflections in people's glasses. Took a couple of hours to remove the reflections in Photoshop.
In all seriousness, though, I think this was the right way to handle the situation. When you're working for someone you are effectively representing them, so you need to conduct yourself as if you were any other employee. So if someone asks you to do something then the answer is yes and you need to work around any problems you create for yourself. It's, uh… par for the course.
Classic portraiture
Sat Aug 4th - 6:00pm
Thanks to lightnewb for this link to an online book about classic portraiture by photographer and instructor Joe Zeltsman. You'll notice immediately that the example photos are from sometime around the 70s or 80s but the posing and lighting is no less valid today.
Bobby Nelson is new SPP staffer
Sat Aug 4th - 2:23pm
I've been waiting all week for this news to become public, and now at last I can publicly congratulate Tain photographer Bobby Nelson on his new position as staff photographer with Scottish Provincial Press in Inverness.
SPP owns the North Star, Ross-shire Journal, Highland News, Inverness Courier, and several other papers. For as long as I've been following the newspaper business in this area they've only used freelancers. This has always struck me as strange because it's more expensive to use freelancers, and with staffers you have the major benefit of a consistent style throughout the paper. So it totally makes sense for them to take someone on full-time and I'm sure everyone around here will agree that Bobby is the best man for the job.
When I originally heard about this I thought it was great news, even though I had assumed it would mean less freelance work for me. (I'm too objective, I know!) But I've since learned that there will actually be more work around this area as Bobby will be covering Inverness. So it has worked out really well for everyone.
Anyway, bottom line: Congratulations to Bobby. He richly deserves the job and it couldn't have gone to a nicer guy. It's a huge boost for SPP too.
