Site Moved To BailwardPhotography.com

This site has been sadly ignored for far too long, and in hopes to consolidate a few of the various blogs I have I'm moving it over to http://bailwardphotography.com where it will be loved and let run in the yard whenever it wants :)

Seriously though, please hit the link and check out the site, and understand that things will be in flux for the next while as pages and images are moved around, themes are tweaked, etc.

http://bailwardphotography.com (rss)

Pentax Global Shoot Day

The 7th annual Pentax World Global Shoot Day is coming up next weekend, where Pentaxians are encouraged to all shoot locally. Any Pentaxians from the Vancouver or Fraser Valley area feel like getting together?

K-7 Review @ DPReview

DPReview gives the K-7 a thorough, 33 page review and ends with.... well, I'll let you see the conclusions yourself. :)

Fantastic Landscape Image

Sometimes you run across an image you have to give kudos to, and this is one of them. Lets see what's right about this lovely shot:

• Made with a Pentax (of course this has nothing to do with it....)
• Rule of thirds obeyed, boat is on the left third, horizon on the top third
• Foreground elements (boat + vegetation in the water)
• Triangles, lots of 'em, starting with the angled boat, extending to the mountains in the background, followed by vegetation on the bottom right and clouds in the background
• Center of focus on the sun, with everything pointing towards it
• Well lit and the perfect time of day, the golden hour rules!

Kudos to Aleš Nanut for his fantastic image.

New Pentax K DSLR - The K-x

I'm realizing now that naming this blog after a particular camera body wasn't the smartest thing, especially now that the K-x has been released. OK1000 has some great details on it. Looks like it is basically a low end K-7 (with a $700-900 price point with lenses) and comes in funky colors. It has the picture mode stuff that the pros scoff at, has 12mp, ISO 100-12800, 720p video, HDR bracketing and a few other things from the K-7. This is to the K-7 what the *ist-DS was to the *ist-D, the lower end, affordable consumer model (not that there's anything wrong with that).

What Resolution Is Needed?

I was having an IM conversation with a friend of mine today talking about the resolution of digital cameras and what's needed for printing images out, in his case for large wall hung landscape prints.

My attempts to figure it out with him were basically along these lines.... The megapixels you need are not what you think they are. The current range of about 10-14mp is pretty damn good, and here's why.

First of all, heck out the print sizes for different digital camera resolutions. It has a nice explanation of sizes, printing needs, and most importantly, DPI. The accepted sizes that magazines print at is 300dpi, for close up viewing (about a foot or so I figure). For billboards, you only need about 40dpi according to the page.

I also found this megapixel calculator. It's pretty good, and given a pixel height and width it'll tell you things like filesizes and printed size given 300/150/72 dpi printing.

For example, put in the settings for the 6 megapixel Pentax *ist-D, with a maximum resolution of 3008x2008. You can see that you can get a high resolution (300dpi) print of 10x6" and a "photo" resolution print of 20x13" (which is pretty huge). If you're using screen resolution of 72dpi (still higher than the billboard setting) you can get up to 41x28". That's a 3 foot print from a "mere" 6 megapixels.

Bump it up to the 14 megapixel K20D and you can check out the 4672x3104 image size stats. This bumps you up to a 15x10" magazine resolution print (ie: larger than your standard magazine size), 30x20" photo print size and 64x43" for screen resolution.

Even if you take into account the photo resolution of 100dpi (which is probably more than is needed for viewing from a foot or more away in a home setting), you can get a 20 inch print out of a 6 megapixel camera, or 28 inches from 12 megapixel camera. And an image printed out at 20 inches by 13" is huge :)

Update: OK, so looking at this post from BoingBoing about the big $$ and big megapixel Phase One digital back, maybe I take back a bit about what I said regarding extreme cropping. The calculator shows that 60.0 megapixels (I chose the square cropping hxw) gives you a 25" square image at 300dpi. Kinda big :)

BBC Series - The Genius of Photography - Is Genius

While I'm only about halfway through the 6 hour miniseries from the BBC The Genius of Photography, I have to say it's absolutely fantastic. Talking about photography and it's evolution from the very first images, though the renaissance of the new artists using it, to war and back again, it's done very, very well. Most of what hit me was how sometimes the simplest images have huge impact. Sure there are the "created" images, but some of the most powerful images that everyone has seen and knows (such as the iconic images from various wars) were just grabbed running and gunning with an all manual Leica, or shot as the photographer was thrown to the ground. No bitching about lens sharpness, or lack of bracketing, or having to go into the menus to get feature XYZ.... makes you think.

Lightroom 2.4 and Camera Raw 5.4 Available

Lightroom Journal has the goods on the Lightroom 2.4 changes and improvements. Mostly minor bug fixes and new camera support (including K-7, whooho!).

I Finally Start To Understand Flash and Pentax Wireless Flash Options

OK, it took a while, but I'm finally starting to really think I "get" flash, flash options, and the Pentax solutions that are out there. I pointed to this article on ok1000 last year, but thought that after the last 4 hours of hunching over a laptop with PDFs of flash and camera manuals open, a very ghetto "studio" (I started typing in "stupid" just then... ironic) setup with knickknacks as a subject I should write down a few things.

The setup I was using. Click through for notes.


Michael covered things really well in the OK1000 article, but sometimes you just have to do them yourself, by hand, with and without the manual to really get them in your head. Here's what I learned. Oh, first, equipment. The Pentax K20D of course, and the AF360FGZ flash unit, a laptop with USB cord for tethered shooting (more on that in a later post), and a big cup of tea (earl grey, hot) to keep me sane.

• The "SB" mode is really only useful if you want to keep the flash on the camera but not use it for anything other than a focusing aid. Seems useful to me only in situations where you're testing things and don't want to be yanking it on and off the camera a lot, or turning it on and off and on again.
• There are two wireless "slave" modes, 1 and 2. In mode 1 the flash works with Pentax equipment, in mode 2 it works as a triggered slave with non-Pentax gear. So if you're taking your 360 over to a friends house, and he has a Nikon setup and wants to use your flash, remotely triggering it with the flash output from his camera, you need slave mode 2.
• With wireless flash you will always need to fire the remotes with the built in pop-up flash (or another flash on the camera). There's a custom option (29) to set whether or not the output from the pop-up flash is used only for control of the remote flashes (set custom option 29 to off) or if you want it to be used for flash compensation, so both the pop-up and the remote flash contribute to the image (ie: a bit of fill in flash from the pop-up flash) (set custom option 29 to on).
  
• Some settings are done on the camera (slow sync speed mode) and some are done on the flash unit (first/second curtain). Some are confusing as well because the flash has a mode switch setting for first/second curtain, but under the flash options on the K20D there's also a second curtain mode. I believe the latter doesn't work with an external flash, only the on camera flash.
  
• Some functions are only available in some exposure modes. For example, high speed sync mode isn't available in the Av exposure mode, only Tv.
  
• Some functions will only show up in certain circumstances. For example, if you set your flash to the HS (High speed Sync) mode, the little "HS" in the LCD will only show up after you set your aperture past the sync speed of 1/180th.
  
• In some exposure modes with the Flash attached, one of the wheels suddenly starts controlling the ISO. If you're like me and always forget which the front wheel does and which the rear one does, keep an eye out for this!
• You can get very interesting using +/- EV for both the camera and the flash. IE: To raise the overall image light, set +EV on the camera, but then you can dial down the flash so it doesn't over power your subject. Or something like that. This is more a "when do I use what where" type of thing that I'm still working on.
  

So those are the cliff notes for my setup, and a bunch of my learning process (read: failing, cursing, trying again, failing, cursing, reading the manual, doing it, failing, reading the right section of the manual, and finally succeeding).

So why would you use various flash modes and what affects what in them. First the easy ones.

Slow Sync Mode
Used when the backdrop is darker. Allows you to "drag the shutter" to let more light in so the background lights up as well as the "flashed" main subject. This is where you want to adjust first or second curtain settings.

Useful for images of moving objects with a sense of speed or motion to them. IE: a dancer frozen at the peak of a jump, but with blurred leading lines. Also good to play with for dimly lit areas. David Hobby of Strobist fame uses the term "burn in", which evokes a great image of the rest of the background slowly embedding itself onto the sensor, like using a spray paint can without moving it and waiting for what you're pointing it at to become solidly filled in.

High Speed Sync
The opposite of slow sync really. Used if you want faster shutter speeds than the 1/180th or 1/250th that your camera allows. Useful for things like freezing fast action without any leading blur. Also for adjusting how much of a shot is lit. If you want to photograph a person or baby or something and not have the background lit up, only the foreground, then this is where you play.

On the back of the 360 flash it shows a guide line of what distance your flash is being effective at, it'll shrink drastically if you start pusing the shutter speed to 1/1000 or higher.

First / Second Curtain
Classic example is a moving car. First curtain flash will freeze the car but have the blur "trail" moving forward, because the flash fires as soon as the shutter opens. Second curtain fires at the end, so your moving car would be a blur line moving to a frozen image.

Adjusting Your Aperture
This controls the ambient light. A larger f-stop number (ie: f/13) will let less ambient light in, so your background is going to be darker. A smaller f-stop number (ie: f-4.0) lets more background light in, so the background is lighter.

Adjusting Your Shutter Speed
This controls the main subject. Faster or slower shutter will give you different effects in terms of the high/slow speed sync as above.

Getting a Reading
I'm now treading way into "mostly guessing" territory. Lets say you want to light a subject in a not well lit room. My guess would be take a flash-less meter reading, and see what the exposure should be. Lets say 1/4 @ f/5.6. So that's the ambient exposure. Now you're adding a flash on, so you're exposure will be something like 1/180th @ f/5.6. This is where you pick click off this site and read this exercise on Strobist 102, where David makes way more sense than me.

In fact, now I have myself setup with a nicely reproducable system, I'm about ready to start going through the Strobist classes and not be fumbling around wondering why my flash isn't firing!

Thanks for reading this far folks!

Lightroom Plugins

A few plugins for lightroom crossed my RSS reader today. Lightroom News has a bunch of them, everything from tweeting pics to shutterfly to backing up your config.

K7 HDR Mode

Some results from tests of the K7's HDR mode are up on the Adorama blog. Their conclusions....

The Pentax K-7 is a game changer. The era of in-camera HDR begins today.

Well, I won't lie and say that while I'm happy with my K20D, I'm itching to get my hands on a K7, just to see....

Flowers!

Took these in a friend's back yard. I went out on a bit of a limb this time and used only my M50/1.7, non-autofocus only manual lens. Course, I still had my other lenses with me, but I wanted to do it by hand. Also in the past I've had some pretty horrible "green button" manual exposure setting with the K20D (I'm told the overexposure problem actually started on the K10D). Course, checking the histogram and LCD helped. I like the bokeh, but I do think I should have bumped it up a couple more stops to get more depth of field.

This last one is a sepia version of the red flower above, just some of me playing around with lightroom to get a different look.





Thanks for reading!

Golden Ears Walk

Probably my favorite pic from a walk Friday out to Golden Ears park. This is a panorama stitched together with PTGui, which really did an incredible job, considering of the 4 images the person and dog (our friend Jesse and her dog Cheech) were in motion. Obviously a bunch of photoshopping involved, mostly in the conversion to black and white, playing with saturation and clarity settings. I just remembered I had a "Ansel Adams B&W" action from one of my Photoshop books that I should throw against this one and see what happens.

May Strobist "Newbie" Meetup

A couple of weeks ago a bunch of folks from the Vancouver Strobist group on Flickr got together to teach the newbies how to do strobist stuff, the art off off-camera lighting. The idea was to get a few experience folks as mentors, give them a small group of us green newbies, and teach what they could. The models model in exchange for pictures for the portfolios, which the photographers give them in exchange for models to create pictures for their portfolios. TFP is what it's called, Time For Pictures, Trade For Portfolio, etc.

Anyway, as one of the newbies, I had a great time and I just yesterday finally got around to processing a bunch of images, and after getting approval from the models, am ready to post a few here.

The first model we worked with was Jessti, with Glen (or Glenn?) as the mentor. His method was very exacting and precise, using a light meter, etc, and getting great results. I'll update with a pic from the session when the model gets back to me with approval to post them though.

This is actually the second model we worked with, Maggie. To light her we set up a flash on tree in the background, a bare flash as key light hanging from a tree to her right, and shoot through umbrella to camera right (manned by a V.A.L.). This second setup was even a bit nicer as it was with Steve who lives not far from me and who does some awesome and funky shoots. The setup wasn't as extreme as some of his other portfolio, but it was a different way of doing things that was cool to see.




This one is from the end of the shoot, when everyone retired to the grass there was one group still going, and I jumped in and got a few shots of Cindy. Lighting her there are flashes behind on left and right and homemade straw grid spot to camera right.

End result was a great day, meeting lots of new people, and learning a lot from the group. Well, that and a sunburnt head :) The only disadvantage with these types of strobist meetups is that there are so many people who want to learn this stuff that the setups are more done by committee in a way, and there's not a lot of one-on-one work with just you and the gear and playing around. Could also be that I was just too scared to start messing with things with 3 other guys waiting to take pictures and a model who is sitting there all made up and waiting :)

Hardware wise there were a couple of things that were a bit off for me. The K20D has a max sync speed of 180th (vs the 250th that the newer Nikons have) which meant that when things were set up and people figured out the right settings, I had to adjust things to compensate. Also even when I did my exposure settings seemed way different than everyone elses, not even just moving an f-stop or two to compensate for the 180 vs 250, but some completely different stuff. Though time alone with equipment might show that it was more me than the Pentax gear that had the problem.

The last thing was this again cemented my desire for a 70-200/2.8 equivelant portrait lens like the big boys have. The DA* 50-135/2.8 would be perfect for those long shots with shallow depth of field. The 16-45 I use most of the time gives the wrong perspective if it's used in anything but the most zoomed position (67mm equiv) and the 70-300 I have is a) slow and b) too zoomy a lot of the time (150mm equiv at the most un-zoomiest).

Intensifying the Ocean

Found this fantastic tutorial on Intensifying the Ocean, via Brent Pearson's excellent site. I only wish I was closer to Australia so I could take one of his seascape photography courses :) Of similar note is an eBook on Night Photography and Light Painting that I'm considering picking up.

Home Studio Conversion in Stop Motion

DIY Photography shows me once again why excuses like:

• "I can't do studio photography, I don't have a studio"
• "I don't have space to do a real studio"
• "It would take a huge amount of time and money to create a place to do studio photography"

just don't fly. Ignoring of course the fact that James has lots of nice studio lights of course :)

The video is by James Burger and is funny, cute, neat, and inspiring, all in 108 seconds of stop motion.

"The New K" Hits Tomorrow

Yup, tomorrow is the big day.... 1001 Noisy Cameras has a countdown blog, and I've seen lots of goodies posted here and there (mostly links from the dpreview Pentax forum), which indicate HD Video, a new sensor, new processing engine, and slightly smaller size than the K20D. I guess we'll see what happens tomorrow for Pentaxians. The places to watch would be the US Pentax site and the Japan Pentax site, though the countdown blog is live, so that's where I'll be watching.

DHS Photography "License"

This is pretty funny, cool, and awesome, all at the same time. Matthew Williams has created two photographer license templates for presentation to the Department of Homeland Security and/or the San Francisco Municipal police (I think that's what Muni is for anyway). They are gorgeously designed and official looking (though I'm quite certain not actually accepted or recognized by any sort of official organization :) Still, fun looking to create your own and something to whip out next time you're being hassled by the man for taking pictures of docks, street signs, or (closer to home here in Vancouver) security cameras.

Capturing Rain

Had a heck of a downpour here tonight... Ran out with my DA 16-45/4 and captured a few shots. The new firmware did well with the shake reduction, but sadly my skills at capturing the impression of rain and the power of the wind and water coming down were lacking. The only couple of shots that were half decent (and not from an artistic point of view) are below.

Time to look up other images of rain and weather and see how other, better photographers do it :)

Info (?) On the Newest Pentax FROM Pentax

Well, it's not much, and I'm not going to recap 1001 Noisy Cameras' multiple (and great) K7 news updates, but a reader in the forums noted that the Pentax Japan site was now a shadowed DSLR image. A translated page doesn't show much more, other than meeting places to watch the presentation on 5/21/2009.

I know there aren't many people watching this blog, but if the uber-camera all us Pentaxians are wanting (full frame, 10fps, no noise at ISO 6400, costs $20, etc), are you going to upgrade from your K20D/K200D/K2000D/K10D/etc? What'll be the killer feature that will get you to break out your checkbooks in this economy and get a new DSLR?

Update: Maybe it's just a time zone thing, but the US Pentax site has the "New K" date as 5/20/2009.