The Package Shot For The Landscape Shooter

I used to be a little reticent about taking package shots - it always seems to be somewhat of a cop-out on the part of an illustrator to just show the outside of the box. Some products had a little printing on the outside but some were the classic " plain unmarked box "...It seemed unfair to make the prospective client buy it with just the promise that there was something in the cardboard.

So for years I tried my best to gently ease the shell open to get the nut out. Some of the Japanese packagers who were origami experts defeated me easily - it was either guess at the possible contents or take after it full-blown with a chain saw. This seemed to worry the management and the customers.

Imagine my relief when the packagers decided to put their own advertising on the outside of good quality printing board. Pictures, descriptions, and contents out there where you could see them. Wow.
Even if they then super-wrapped it with shrink plastic and buttoned it over with Kevlar tape and strap-iron it made no difference -you could still make a decent show of it.

So, herewith we present  the new stars of the modular filter system stage - the NiSi filters. They arrived at the studio all sealed up and By Golly they'll leave in the same condition. If you buy them you'll be the first person to see whether there really is a filter in there.

a. The little one is the NiSi Nano IR ND filter

100m x 100mm at a strength of ND 64 or 1.8 pdf you use the alternate system. Neutral density and neutral colour with a great deal of light stopping power for longer exposures.

b. Next size up is the NiSi Nano IR GND filter

150mm x 100 mm graduated to slide up and down the holders. The power on this one peaks at 8 or .9 in the other measurement. A sky modifier for the land and seascapes.

c. the big one is the Nano IR ND again in 64 or 1.8.

The big difference is that this is the one with 150mm x 150mm size to provide filtration for some of the very wide FX lenses. These would be Nikon, Canon, Tamron, and Sigma special lenses.

d. The white kit pack with the convenient description on the front is the V5 starter for the NiSi system - the 100mm filter holder assembly. Looks as though it contains the holder, several adapter rings, a round circa-pol filter, and substantial hard carrying case. You could stack one round and three square filters onto it if you could figure out what for.

The literature says that the holder is aluminium and the filters themselves glass, coated to prevent excess red in long exposures.

The film also apparently makes a series of round ND and protector filters. And of course there are are the dedicated holders for the 150mm series and all the adapter rings for various sizes.

Come down to the shop and stare at the packages, or go on-line to our Nisi online store

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 :)

The Blue Blot - Or Why You Shouldn't...

Those of us from North America who remember ARIZONA HIGHWAYS* were always amazed at the wonderful colours in the images. Deep blues in the skies, strong reds and yellows in the landscape. We all wanted that in our pictures - even if we were taking pictures in British Columbia in the murk season. What was the trick?

The trick turned out to be simple:

1. Use Fujifilm Velvia 50 film.
2. Get the printer to pour more ink into the press.
3. Move to Arizona.

I opted to move to Western Australia and the murk season stayed in Canada, so I was ahead already. Then with the advent of digital I could pour more saturation into the computer easily. And finally I discovered the circular polarising filter - this allowed me to make the skies blue and the seas green.

But when I got a very wide angle lens and tried to do the same trick with it that I was able to do on a standard focal-length lens - I ran into another of those optical facts of life. A circular polariser on a very wide angle lens only de-polarises part of the image.

The lens sees wider than the effect of the filter - it is the simple fact that the polarisation of the light in the sky is imperceptible when looking directly at or away from the sun - but is at maximum when you are looking 90º from the sun. You get a big blue blot in the middle of a blank sky.

What to do - take the filter off. Or position the blue blot where it makes a dramatic statement and cover up the other blank bits with buildings or trees. Cactus, if you are in Arizona...

Note - this is also a good hint to look at the graduated neutral density systems that Cokin and Lee make. They can make skies darker evenly, if dark skies are your thing. If you would like to have permanently dark skies move to British Columbia. They've got a murk season there that rivals anything in the world.

* Travel promo magazine.

Pictures At An Exhibition - Or How To Be Modest

As photographers we are rarely encouraged to take pictures of someones else's photographs when they are exhibited. It is considered naff in some cases and criminal in others - particularly if we then whack them on our websites and claim them as our own.

It's a little different if we go to see pictures that have been done by other means - or sculptures or artefacts and manufactured articles. Sure, there can still be a degree of  taboo, but many public galleries are okay with it - as long as you do not use flash or tripods.

This is fine - I love wandering the art galleries of Victoria and New South Wales to see famous works of art - and new, obscure things. I have learned to cope with the light conditions of the places and to get a clear result.

The illumination can be problematical, though good galleries will have directed lighting that shows the art to good advantage. But the colour temperature of it may be all over the shop. I've taken to recording the art with RAW and a small jpeg - the little one as a sighting rifle for he more detailed capture. I have also considered one of the tiny Spyder Checkr 24 colour cards for my travelling bag so that I can reference back to a neutral result later on my computer.

Flash is out - the galleries do not want to subject the works of art to the danger of fading or the cleaning staff to the danger of discovery...put your camera up to the highest ISO that will deliver a clean image for your purposes, and turn the image stabilisation on. Consider attaching a Steadepod to the bottom of the camera and stepping on the footplate whenever you need utmost stability.

Lens choice? Well, if you have a lens that has very little distortion in the first place - like the 23mm f:2 on my Fujifilm X 100 - you need not worry. If you are using a zoom, do a little investigation beforehand to find out the focal length that will have the least barrel or pincushion to it - somewhere in the middle of the range.

Stop it down one stop from wide open if the lighting permits. Nearly every lens gains something from this.

Try to stand square to a flat work of art, or at the most attractive angle to a 3-D object. If the thing is big and you are standing on the floor you are likely be tilted up and getting some keystoning - correct it later with DxO or Photoshop. If you find that you can capture the image you want from further away in the gallery wit a longer focal length the keystoning will be less evident.

Be prepared to experiment. Circular polarisers can sometimes help with the view through a glass cover - sometimes not. Painters who have decided to express the grace and beauty of life with a trowel and mortar board are likely to have left a problem, as the surfaces of their works reflect light everywhere. You are allowed to curse them quietly.

You are also allowed to quietly abominate the crowds of people who will surge in front of you just as you press the shutter button. Patience - they will drift onwards eventually and if you  wait you will get a clear shot. It is the same at a car show - the gawkers and strollers sometimes work in tag teams but eventually they tire.

Final note. When you bring someone else's vision home to look at you are free to look and free to admire but you are not free to publish it out. There are still laws for this. The artist might be dead but you can bet their lawyers are alive.

Doing The Twist - With Hoya and Chubby Checker

Okay, we don't actually have Chubby Checker but we do have Hoya.

And if you don't know who Chubby Checker, the Peppermint Lounge, or the Twist were, there are classes in retro conducted at TAFE - we suggest you enrol yourself...

Any rate, this post is as a result of seeing advertisements on the net that miss out on one of the basic fundamentals of the business - when you need to show the pack you need to show the pack. Many times the lighting on the packs has been arranged to illuminate it but obscure the surface detail - the product isn't seen effectively.

The glare of reflected light off the surface is what is doing it - and the answer to the problem is as simple as buying a good polarising filter and keeping it one the front of the lens.

We sell lots of polarisers to landscape photographers who wish to darken skies, see through water surfaces, or correct colours outside under a blue sky. They use up a stop of light but clean up the scene remarkably. What the studio shooters may not realise is that these same filters can do a good job inside under artificial illumination.

The pack shots of a portion of my lunch are a case in point. The illumination box being used is a simple Optex Studio-in-a-Box rig. We sell them for $ 249 and they are magic for small,quick advertising illustration. There are two curly fluorescent tubes sitting either side of the box that shine though adiffusers. They generate enough polarised light themselves as to obscure details on shiny surfaces. Look at the side and front views.

Then look and see what happened when I put a good Hoya HD polariser on the front of the Fujinon lens ( X-E2 and an 18-55 ). Cleaner colour and clearer detail. As it is a studio setup with a tripod the extra exposure time makes no difference.

In a studio? Try a polariser.

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.

Purity and Harmony In Your Camera Bag - A New Age Dawns

Arise, ye downtrodden. No, wait, that's a different sales pitch. May Day is over...

Peace, brothers and sisters. We are here to bring you pure harmony and a clear view of the world. We are here to protect you. We are here to help you resist atmospheric haze, oil, dust, and soil.

Yes, soil.

And all this in the thinnest possible way. We have just taken delivery of a number of Cokin round screw-in filters for various lens sizes.

We've got UV and circular polariser filters that can attach to the fussiest wide angle lenses without creating any vignetting. All the way up from 37mm to 77. They are especially coated and packed in enormous filter cases.

Ask for the Pure Harmonie model of filter.