Down The Home Straight - Day 12 - And It's Filters And Cards

Okay. You've borne with us for the last 12 trading days as we've sung the syren song of photographic retailing. You've steeled yourself not to buy any more camera systems. You've steeled yourself not to buy any more lenses. You've even carbon fibre'd yourself not buy a new tripod...even though your old one has only two legs...

What can we say? If you are determined to be unhappy there is only so much we can legally do to cheer you up. But we'll have one final try.

Today. Camera Electronics. Filters and memory cards.

Buy one, get another of the same value  - or less value if that is your wish - for free. That's it.

You get to choose from San Disk, Hoodman, Hoya, Kenko, and B+W products. All top quality goods. All applicable over most brands of camera and lens.

And all useful in the extreme for digital shooters. Don't look on it as indulgence - look upon it as opportunity.

Heck, the writer of this blog is going down to the shop and snag a coupla memory cards. I've got a trip coming up and I don't want the hassle of downloading stuff onto a tablet - I'm just going to fill cards and be done with it. They are THAT cheap!

A-Hoya There Matey - New Filters A'Comin'

We've just gotten a sliver of information from the people who import the Hoya brand of photographic filters that they will be bringing in a new line.

The press release says that Hoya are introducing three new tough filters under the title of " Fusion ". They'll be the three classics of digital photography - the UV filter, the clear glass protector, and the circular polarizer.

The big difference is in the number and nature of the coatings on the glass which are intended to repel dust, water, and fingerprints. It sounds rather exotic as there are to be 9 coating layers to toughen the surfaces.

They'll be in the popular sizes from 37mm to 82mm and look to be quite economical.

We have yet to see whether they will be able to cope with special contaminants - dog noses in animal studios and gummy bears in studios that do children's portraiture...

See the range here - the fusion may not be there yet, but wait for our online maintenance crew, they'll be off break soon :)

Analog Drag Racing For Digital Photographers - Buy More Batteries

Okay. If you can remember Californian Poppy and Chiko rolls - favourably - you can appreciate this.

The Cranksters are going to hold a swap meet and drag race meeting called Nostalgia Drags at the Kwinana Motorplex this coming Sunday - 19th of April.

Their swap meet section costs $ 5 and you can then get that off the price of admission to the main drag races. There will also apparently be dirt track racing as well. I'm not sure what stuff will be on offer at the swap meet but if you like to troll the Workshop Camera Club's Photographic Markets every so often, you'll probably find something of interest. I'm looking for a new big end.

The drags should be a fairly smokey affair so if you are into car action this would be a good opportunity to get a zoom on the camera, a fast card inside it, and a couple of spare batteries. ( of which we have a lot right now come in and buy rahrahrah...). Unlike European formula racing, with most drag races the cars do not come off sideways and squash the spectators. There is still the occasional explosion in the bell housing or fire under the bonnet but then you can get that in Coles car park round our house any weekend.

I plan to take the Fujifilm X-pro 1 and the 55-200 for the races, but a fixed 18mm for the parked cars. Also the Metz-0-blindness flash unit in case that will help. Walking around an event it is good to have what you need to cover the thing, but it is also good not to haul the entire studio stock of lenses while you are doing it.

PS: I am hoping for Texas BBQ buns and hot rod coffee food vans but  will settle for a bottle of water and a Chiko roll.

PPS: If your lenses do not have UV protection filters on them, do not go anywhere near a dirt track race...We sell Hoya HD filters for all sizes, so be warned.

No Need To Be Koi About It - Use A Polariser

The Japanese fish in this picture are pretty contented. They live at the Asakusa Temple in Tokyo and are cared for in the ornamental pond - there are a number of signs warning people not to feed them, so I suspect they are sometimes too well cared for. No matter - they are spectacular and friendly. Perfect subjects for a picture.

Except when the skylight blocks out the surface of the water. Then you see whatever is bouncing off that surface. It is the same with shop windows and other shiny surfaces.

Answer is, and always has been, to use a polarising filter on your lens. The older types were known as linear polarisers and did a very good job of seeing down into water surfaces. The newer types are called circular polarisers and may be a little less effective in actually penetrating the surface, but do give a more accurate light meter reading. The Circ Pol's are the ones most often supplied for modern digital cameras.

We've got 'em from Kenko, Hoya, Promaster, and B+W. They are not as cheap as UV filters - never could be - but they are a pretty essential tool for landscape and marine photographers. Useful, too for correcting colours under trees in open sunshine - you can lose the blue fill from Western Australian skies. particularly recommended for bridal work in these circumstances.

Studio? Well there are times when you need to see into things and these can help. You can also use them with sheets of polarising film and studio lights if you are going to copy glossy or textured flat art work. a little more complex than just twirling it in front of the lens when you are out at the beach, but essential to capture the true colours of some canvases.

Note for newbies: Either put a UV on the lens or a Polariser. Not together. Too many glass surfaces, and sometimes you start to unscrew the UV when you think you are turning the Circ Pol.

Seeing Clearly Through Clear Glass

Well, I seen it. The customer brought it in and told me about it and I was just about to dismiss it as nonsense...but I took a look and he was right. I seen it.

He was concerned that the lens on his Nikon camera was playing up - that or the focusing screen. He said that when he took pictures of a bright light source on a dark field that he got "ghost" images all around the image. I was initally going to dismiss it as either a figment of his imagination or lens flare but I took his camera over to the bright LED lights on the new Nikon cabinet and looked.

You could see flare alright - no way you can expect not to. But there on either side of the main image were two separate faint images of the light. They moved around when you waved the lens past the light. Ghosts, but perfectly formed ones... ooeeooeeooeeooee...

A different lens showed none of this effect - you could get flare but no perfect little ghosts.

The culprit turned out to be an old uncoated Focal UV filter on the first lens. Clean enough, but every time you screwed it on the ghosts came back.

We screwed on a multi-coated UV filter from Kenko - not an expensive one, either. Ghosts exorcised!

Moral of this is listen to the customer, and throw out your old cheapjohn film filters and get some modern ones. There may be a lot of your image that is being obscured by ghosting right now that you do not even realise.

Adjusting The Sun

Landscape photographers have a good deal in common with wedding photographers; they have to hike great distances hauling heavy equipment, their subjects that have impossible dynamic range, and they are never quite at peace with the weather.

The first problem can be addressed by simply employing native bearers or wives. They carry the tripod, gadget bag, 14 different lenses, and water bottles on their heads and you simply stride through the dripping jungle or the local council gardens with them in a long line behind you. A solar topee is not absolutely necessary but it makes a nice touch. It is wise to determine if the natives or the wives are friendly before you put the topee on...

The impossible dynamic range is a stiffer problem. Brides WILL insist on wearing white, or some variation of it. Grooms WILL wear black. You have to make the dress and the tux look good so sometimes you have to adjust the dynamic range of your camera to try to accommodate this. Just when you get enough detail in the two extremes you note that everything else has gone dull gray... Grit your teeth and post process it.

Adjusting the weather or the angle of the sun is not easy - even Joshua needed help doing that - but you can use the sun that is overhead to help you out. Remember that you don't just have one light source up there -you have two. The vast bowl of Western Australian blue sky is an immense fill light, but unfortunately biased in its colour temperature. You might have to retreat under a tree and get a polariser to remove the blue from the scene. You might have to overpower the sun with a close-range burst of light from a Canon or Nikon speed light.

You might have to get an assistant to shade your subject with a diffusion panel - here the wedding worker has the advantage as it is easier to shade a bride than Bluff Knoll. Remember that there are any number of HDR programs available as plug-ins for your computer and if you are prepared to explain to the bride why her complexion has come out
looking like that, you can get great effects in the bridal dress. Those of you who are booked for a lot of  brides and grooms on pebble beaches under a storm-wracked sky in Yorkshire may care to remember this. You'll be the darling of the English photo magazines...

The Dawn Of Beauty

Landscape photographers are romantics. They must be - they go a thousand kilometres to camp overnight in freezing bush so that they can get up at 3:30AM and hike through bush to a beachfront. Then they haul 500 Kg of equipments over wet rocks and stand there shivering while they are waiting for he sun to rise. They have $ 8200 sitting on a tripod in front of them on the slippery rocks and are waiting only an incautious moment to tip it into the sea.

Then they drive a thousand kilometres back home and spend week of nights in a dark room trying the HDR the result. This seems clear evidence of either romance or madness.

One of the symptoms of this madn... I mean one of the useful and perfectly normal items that every landscape photographer needs is the circular polariser filter. See the opening image for a typical polariser in operation.

The polariser makes blue skies bluer, green seas greener, and white bride's dresses whiter. Foliage loses the blue cast that Western Australian skies put into it and the colours seem much richer. They can also be used to see through water surfaces and glass shop windows to reveal the goods within. It makes everything look like it is straight from the pages of ARIZONA HIGHWAYS.

Good? Yes. Bad? Yes. WHAT?

Well, consider - if you want to see bluer skies and greener seas and fluffier clouds, all very well - you can produce this effect and good luck to you. It is charming but fraudulent. If you wish to represent what your eye actually sees in a scene, consider that your eye is seeing the light scatter anyway - remove it and you are interpreting rather than representing.

Morals aside, if you want to get the full effect of the polariser remember that it works most effectively at 90º from the sun. If you try to put one onto a lens that has too wide an angle of view it will work in one portion of the scene differently from another portion. You may be better in these cases to seek your colour enhancement by computer means further down the track.

Please note that the polariser filter and polarising sheets may be a real boon in art copy and scientific work - letting us see what the light scatter spoils. We are seeking science, not art. And generally don't have to stand on wet rocks to get it.