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How to photograph a newborn?

admin — Wed, 18 May 2011 19:07:06 +0000

Help needed... How to shot Newborn or babies in general?

Well... our family is +1 and even I trying to shot almost everything... i found not very easy to photograph my little princess Sarah. She sleep almost whole day, not following my commands... when I want to make her naked she start to piss... Here are some links I found so far regarding this topi:

Posing guides – How to poses for female model

admin — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 21:05:02 +0000

Posing rules for model or photographer?

Everyone who shoot especially unexperience models probably find difficulties how to explain and get good poses. Sometimes it is even worse like lack of ideas of the photographer. It is also common situation when someone wanted to start doing portraits or scenic photos. I have tried to find some good resources on the net and this post is just about my results: model posing guides to download and print etc.

Posing tips and tricks for photographers

They are several good sites with posing tips for photographers of any level. Usually it is set of rules which is good to follow or at least perfect tips how to be aware of common mistakes. Unfortunately most of the good sites nowdays are paid or just a promo to book with this topic. Here is one free link with poses tricks I found very useful, free and with examples. Second part can be found here. Some other tips can be also find at photographycourse.net even not that detailed. Last article is more less for models to read. There are much more very similar, sometimes is just a copy of previous articles. I personaly like the freedigitalphotographytutorials.com one even I do not agree with everything written there. Last thing is small text from closed site nowdays however worth to read.

Posing tips and tricks for photographers

What I find very useful is to print/show pose figures or even whole photos to the model. It accelerate communication and you can get better result much faster. Especially with newbie models when you simply give them an option even to choice poses they like for beginning and then you can work on the others. Here are some poses guides which you can print easily, it is more than 400 poses all together for female and male models and for pairs. This resources I have found on the net, some of them such as "legendary" photocrack.com (site closed nowdays... yes again) I downloaded from internet archive.

Belive or not however there are not many free sites with such material. Most of them are simply promo to book or what ever paid site where you have no idea what are you going to get for your money. So enjoy and if you find more, please send me a link (post to discussion). Lets start here, more links bellow.

Click on links bellow to download...


1,378 poses for use on the iPhone or iPod Touch	Poses Tips PDF	New Pose	Model Pose Exe

Update: Posing Techniques Videos

Just few days after I made this post I got some infos about video tutorials of posing techniques and photographing model portfolios on youtube. Here are some interesting ones:

How to fix front focus on Nikon D90 or D80… or back focus.

admin — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 22:01:07 +0000

Front focus and Back focus manual adjustment

Front or back focusing can be a serious problem. You buy new Nikon camera and suddenly does not focus properly with old lenses. Very frustrating. And even more when you take all to the Nikon service and after one month they will send it back with result "everything is in limit". So lets talk about D90 back/front focus adjustment. How to adjust autofocus of your camera in 30 minutes.

Nikon DSLR Autofocus and View Finder system

This article is based on several forum posts and especially original article of Sergei Khizhiy about back focus problem on Nikon D70 and later leongoodman.com. Links to the original articles are at the end. Important thing is that this method is not just for really strong back/front focus problem however also for fine tunning the camera. Even if you get the answer that everything is in limit or your camera works fine with expensive ethalon prime lens (which you obviously dont own). This can help you to get better focus with your current lens (if it has some focusing problem). Important note: AT YOUR OWN RISK. THE FOLLOWING PROCEDURE HAS NOT BEEN APPROVED BY NIKON

On the left you can see basic design how the autofocus system of the D90 works. There are two mirrors. One for autofocus (AF) and one for manual focusing - viewfinder focus (VF). The general idea is that screw 1 and 2 are easy possible to adjust by hex key screw driver (also called Inbus or Imbus). And because they are even not hidden or covered, obviously they are here for adjusting purposes of the service.

When you frame a picture, the light from the lens travels along path A (green). A fraction of the light beam goes through the semitransparent rectangular window in the main mirror and is reflected to the auto focus detectors (path C, magenta). When you take a shot, both VF and AF mirrors lock at the upper position, and the light hits the CCD directly by path B (yellow). Distances A, B, and C must be equal to some base distance D defined by Nikon engineers for their SLRs long time ago.

Because its is impossible to fine tune or even change the positions of the CCD/CMOS sensor or AF sensor, we have to find another way. There is also no way how to change this by software (so far from what i know), so this is the only way i find on the net. All you can is to change distances A and C by changing just a little bit the working angles of the corresponding mirrors. Basically, the mirrors should be positioned precisely at 45 degrees from the main optical axis of the camera and lens. These angles are maintained by the positions of the eccentrical stoppers, fine tuned by hex key screw 1 and 2. you can easily find them on the right side of the mirror chamber. This general design seems to be the same for Nikon D70 D80 D90. I do not know if its also for D7000. 1. Print a good test pattern like the one used for testing at www.dpreview.com (ISO 12233). Stick it to a flat vertical surface in front of the camera and light it brightly to help manual focusing. 2. Remove the lens, pull up the mirror, lock it in the upper position with an adhesive tape for convenience, mark the initial positions of the stoppers for a roll back, take a 2 mm hexagonal L-shaped wrench and rotate the AF stopper against its axis to a chosen direction by a few degrees. Then unlock the mirror and put the lens back. 3. Mount the camera on a tripod and align it carefully against the test pattern. 4. Set the Aperture Priority mode on the camera and use the fastest aperture available. 5. Let the auto focus do its job and shoot. Then shoot two more pictures of the pattern with a manual correction of the focus by half a notch to either direction of the focusing ring (focus bracketing). The kit lens of the D70 allows you to do so simply by turning the focus ring while pressing the shutter release button half way. Check the user manual on that. 6. Download the images to a computer and see which of the images is better: autofocused or manually corrected. This will give you a clue if you need to rotate the AF stopper some more or if you rotated it to the wrong direction and need to reverse it. Repeat steps 2...6 until you get a perfectly autofocused picture. 7. Now that you have done with the auto focus, proceed to the calibration of the manual focus. It is done by turning the VF stopper to a certain direction by a few degrees. Keep adjusting the VF stopper position until you get the two following things at the same time: first, you must see the test pattern through the viewfinder perfectly in focus, and, second, you must see the confirmation sign of the auto focus (a green dot lit) in the bottom left corner of the viewfinder. 8. Check the result by downloading images to a computer. Use focus bracketing to see that you get the best resolution with auto and manual focusing and without focus correction.

Here is the original Sergeys procedure:

1. Print a good test pattern like the one used for testing at www.dpreview.com (ISO 12233), for more see links at the end of this article. Stick it to a flat vertical surface in front of the camera and light it brightly to help manual focusing.
2. Remove the lens, pull up the mirror, lock it in the upper position with an adhesive tape for convenience, mark the initial positions of the stoppers for a roll back, take a 2 mm hexagonal L-shaped wrench and rotate the AF stopper against its axis to a chosen direction by a few degrees. Then unlock the mirror and put the lens back.
3. Mount the camera on a tripod and align it carefully against the test pattern.
4. Set the Aperture Priority mode on the camera and use the fastest aperture available.
5. Let the auto focus do its job and shoot. Then shoot two more pictures of the pattern with a manual correction of the focus by half a notch to either direction of the focusing ring (focus bracketing). The kit lens of the D70 alows you to do so simply by turning the focus ring while pressing the shutter release button half way. Check the user manual on that.
6. Download the images to a computer and see which of the images is better: autofocused or manually corrected. This will give you a clue if you need to rotate the AF stopper some more or if you rotated it to the wrong direction and need to reverse it. Repeat steps 2...6 until you get a perfectly autofocused picture.
7. Now that you have done with the auto focus, proceed to the calibration of the manual focus. It is done by turning the VF stopper to a certain direction by a few degrees. Keep adjusting the VF stopper position until you get the two following things at the same time: first, you must see the test pattern through the viewfinder perfectly in focus, and, second, you must see the confirmation sign of the auto focus (a green dot lit) in the bottom left corner of the viewfinder.
8. Check the result by downloading images to a computer. Use focus bracketing to see that you get the best resolution with auto and manual focusing and without focus correction.

Some links to useful articles I get most of the information: Here are front/back focus test charts. There are several ways how to do it. Some people like the lines, another tiny texts. My suggestion is that you need both.

Line based front focus test chart: http://focustestchart.com/focus10.pdf
Tiny text back focus test chart: http://www.leongoodman.com/d70/focus.pdf
http://leongoodman.com/sergei/backfocus.htm
http://www.leongoodman.com/d70focus.html

Note: I post this article because I have difficulties to find relevant info about front focus Nikon D90.

Note: I post this article because I have dificulties to find relevant info about front focus Nikon D90.

How to made softbox for 10 USD

admin — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 10:53:27 +0000

Home made softbox

Every photographer have been thinking about buying softbox lights at least once. However especially for amateurs there is a question of need and if its good idea to spend few hunders bucks for softbox or should I buy new lens instead.

Since I have been thinking in the same way I decided to do softbox by myself and found out that very basic think can be done for 20 USD maximum. How? Lets make a list what we need:

What we need

For homemade softbox studiolight we need following:

Big Nutella package :)
2x "Universal underlay", no idea how its call corectly in english. Anyway It is simply silver underlay that protect you when you sleep in nature (protecting human budy from humidity and temperature when you lay down in the forest).
1x light diffuser, simply something what makes light softer. You can use what ever. If you have Collapsible Reflector Disc with semi-transparent white fabric, you win. Easyest way is to buy 1 meter of curtain without any texture/pattern. Such a small piece you can get even free in special shops with curtains.
4x wooden Lath (thiniest one), for framing front rectangle of softbox
Sticky tape, stickers, binder and pencil.
Flash light

Make a template from paper of final form. You will need for several reasons: first you wanna to make same sides of the softbox, second its better to make a paper model first because its quite dificult to make it right at first try. Do not forget that you need few cm (1 inch) on the borders. I have used A3 paper for template. When you have temlate simply copy it to underlay and make sides of softbox which you can put together by binder. Sticky tape you can youse for finishing. The rest is clear i think, just use tripod as softbox stand and you win.

Results

Its is definitevly not the pro version of softbox which you can use outside however for playing and fun its not that bad. Here are the results:

How to shoot landscape pictures

admin — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 14:20:52 +0000

Landscape photos are easy!

Landscaapes... most of peoplelove it. There are nice colorful with lot of details. Why in hell none of my picture looks the same? Probably I do not have Eur 5000+ camera equipment. No no. The truth is much simplier. Hot to shoot landscape? Hot to make landscape pictures? Lets have a look hot to do it step-by-step. Simple manual how to make landscape that all of your friends say just wow. UPDATED: 10/2010

Any camera can produce wonderful landscape

I am really sorry but you do not need to buy new camera. Here are list of thing we need to make nice landscape pictures. Basically we have two parts of our work. One is field work - you need to shoot landscape somewhere. You probably can not use any of your older pictures because their are simply bad for this purposes. Two is a bit of photoshop magic or better call that digital black chamber work. Do not worry. It takes 5 minutes no more!

You will need this:

Any camera (with some manual control is better)
Tripod
Circular polarizer filter (higly recomended)
Good weather condition (no landscape is nice without clouds, sundown, sunrise... sun and noon-time is not a case here at all!)
Some software, here we are going to use HDRsoft Photomatix
Mars bar :)))

Lets go shooting

Go to the woods and find some nice scenery. Put your camera on tripod. Now we are going to shoot more pictures that has to be exactly same except exposition. These pictures we are going to compose to get one which much higher dynamic range. If your camera support bracketing feature use it (set 3 pictures witch step 1 EV). Bracketing means that camera by itself make more images at once with different exposition. No bracketing? Do not cry about. You simply shoot one picture on auto mode then set exposition compensation down (-1 EV) and shoot another one. 2 pictures can be enough however always make 3 (+1 EV). No one never know which one you need. Try to focus on closer subject if you know how (rock on the picture for example).

Important thing is that all pictureas has to be exactly same so do not move with camera. If your camera support bracketing try to use selftimer to avoid any handshaking. Better pictures you have larger landscape you can produce (better details). Result should look like this (yes this kind of pictures we usually get):

Note for the lucky ones who having manual controls: To get best results set lowest ISO (means best quality), high Aperture - f8 on compact cameras (usually maximum) and f16 on DSLR (no more because average lens giving best result around this) and focus on 1.5 m for wide picture (this distance is close to hyper focal lenght which means everything above 1.5 m be sharp).

Honey, I'am home!

So lets start our computer work. Run Photomatix and get this

Our case is probably second option so lets continue. Open pictures you made in nature. Be sure they are the same (if not the result will be pretty blurred. Sometimes you have to use just pictures because of handshaking or wind blowing - it has moved camera or plants on the picture). When you open them it should look like this:

Menu HDRI -> Generate HDR. As result you get very strange looking picture. Do not worry about it.

Menu HDRI -> Tone Mapping. And now we are getting to interesting part which you will like the best:

Now we have to tune our picture. (1) is control of dynamic of the picture. Usually is better to not using max so -5 is best here. (2) is histogram control. Good picture need shades as well as shine parts. Try to make histogram wide by black and white point controls. Last control is whole saturation of the picture. Its all upon you: wanna colorfull picture or rainy-like dark scenery? My setting here are following:

And thats it. Easy, dont you think? The final result in this case is here:

Conclusion

There is nothing to conlcude... I whish you luck!

Well... what do you think about?

Flash lighting samples

admin — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 14:38:05 +0000

Photo flash light with umbrella

Intro

One day, almost every photographer decide or at least start to think about his own studio. The easiest way is to make some kind of amateur studio (atelier) at home. The problem is to find some relevant info or how tos. There just a few articals about this important topic for beginers or people without good infos or friends whit such know how. I have written this artical in czech years ago however its is still relevant even today.

Lighting is the key of a lot of types of pictures. We are not going to talk about expensive soft boxes and pro lighting. The only thing we use is the Nikon DSLR with one wireless TTL comanded flash (Nikon SB-800). The brand here is absolutely not important here, you can get the same with Canon, Pentax, Sony, Panasonic or Sigma. We also use 5-in-1 light reflector / diffuser and some cheap umbrellas (rain umbrellas :)).

What we need here?

Not much and not very expensive staff...

Nikon D70 - old DSLR as camera and flash commander. aperiture 5,6, time 1/160, iso 200, white ballance - auto, flash in commander mode.
Nikon SB-800 - our main light source. Setings: remote TTL with difusion dome and adapter (14mm).
Holder - we need to hold external flash outside camera, the same whit diffusor and umbrella.
Silver umbrella - original photo umbrella, cost 30,- USD
Silver semitransparent umbrella "Tesco" - low cost, low quality Tesco umbrella for 2,- USD (or free). The main advantage of this umbrella is the fact that it is half transparent. You can use it as a diffusor or reflect umbrella. The color is about bluesilvergrey something.
Reflector 5-IN-1 - we use it as diffusor to make "softbox" efect.

No a jak to dopadlo?

Nebudeme to protahovat, jdeme se podívat na výsledky:

Here is the scene set up and again, camera settings f5.6, 1/160 a ISO 200.

Picture number one: original scene, no special light is used. Just original lighting in the room. We used 1/2 S for shutter. Important area of all picture is around the loudspeaker and on the nose and neck.

Here we have first lighting, direct flash light. What we see is the sharp shadows and very good light on whole picture.

Here we see usage of the silver umbrella (photo type). Very hard and direct light. We can say even agressive. Shadows are a bit softer. We see double shadows around loudspeaker due reflections of the walls and umbrella.

Tesco umbrella as reflector is softer than previous. Light is also with better coverage on the picture thanks to the light which comes through the umbrella. Shadows are not agressive. We also see that there is no big problem with white balance which we could expected.

Tesco umbrella as diffuser. Shadows are very soft and the light is very close to softbox type of lighting.

Here we used 5-in-1 diffuser used as open softbox. The light is soft and shadows very decent.

Result

There is no something like an result, which light is the winner. Every pohotographer is hunting good light for the rest of his light. Without good lighting there is not good picture. The best lighting is the natural light and maybe you have asked yourself why I have choiced such a strange scene for my test. The answer is to compare with some of my older shots when natural sun light comming through window were used:

Pictures from Israel

admin — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 22:14:06 +0000

Lets go to Israel!

Israel, small country with high media coverage. Country some people dream about. Some ones hate it. The others fighting for and the rest is afraid of. Me and two friends of mine decided to make a short trip to israel and try to visit all places we have heard about from news and bible. So this is photo report of our israel trip because my camera made me a company of course! So pictures from Israel!

Landing Tel-Aviv straight to Hebron

Its 18.1.2007 arround 5:00 am. We are getting to friends of mine flat. Just quickly throw away our luggage and then directly to Central Bus station.

For everyone who is first time in Israel. Just visit of central bus station is pretty shocking. First of all they the security check is the same like on airport (you get use to very fast because they check you in the same way even at the entrance of every restaurant or club). Secondly young soldiers are everywhere. The israel is the only country which has military duty for man and woman as well. Boys has to serve 3 years, girls just 2. So you see them all around and to be honest they do not lookl frustrated at all. :)

Our destination is Hebron located on west bank (under palestinian authority control) and the way will not be easy because there are no any lines there. It is pretty dangerous place and most of isrealis have never been there during their whole life. We are getting in armoured bus (bullet proof windows etc.) direction the nearest settlement: Qiryat Arba. Btw. We are the only non-uniformed passengers.

There are no real bus stops in settlements so sometimes its pretty confusing to get off at the righ place. Anyway we decided to get out because friend of mine though it is the place. So no we are in the middle of nowhere trying to find a place to hitchhike to Hebron. After one hour we find out we are completly wrong. Qiryat Arba is next settlement around 4 kilometers away and tt is danger to go there by foot so we have to hitchhike to Qiryat Arba first and then to Hebron.

After two hours we are in Hebron. Hebron is one of the most ancient cities in the Middle East. And one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world as well. Population around 150000 palestinians and 500 jews (which are guarded by 5000 israel soldiers). Its is holy city because allmost all patriarchs are buried here (sara, isaac, rebekah, rachel), second holiest city for jews called the city "the City of the Patriarchs". We are staying right in front of the Cave of the Patriarchs. Synague, thomb and mosque at once. Today some muslim festival take place there so there are a lot of policemans and atmosphere is pretty hot.

Very soon we are getting to know some settlers. They are really interested in what we are doing there because not very much visitors comming here in general. Look at picture bellow even ambulance has to be armoured here!

These guys are very nice to use and they offer to give us a tour guide. So we are walking around idf checkpoints. On every second corner there is a story who died here and when. Wanna bit of frustration?

We did not want to go too far from last checkpoint because it was quite obvious that there are some problems all around (shooting can be heard clearly).

When we get back to the cave it was around 6pm. and no car have been parking there anymore. So question was how to get back to Qiryat Arba. After 30 minutes some one give as a lift to the nearest bus station and on the we found out why everybody told us that comming back on foot to Quiryat Arba is almost suicide. A lot of strange people were rubberneck on the streets and so on. 10:00pm we are safe home in Tel Aviv Jaffo which is very nice by night:

Jerusalem, capital of all

10:00 am we are on the way to Jerusalem. No armoured bus anymore. Around noon time we get to the ancient city and we were walking around famous sights and our favoured places and restaurants. Lunch we spent in Praha restaurant eating fake hungarian goulash with dumplings (we got ordinary goulash with potatos something instead however good taste after days of eating just falafel :) ). Here are some pictures next day at night in Church of the Holy Sepulchre and Kotel (western wall of second temple).

Now we are on the way to Afula to get to kibbutz Ein Harod to visit my realtives. Kibutzs are collective community villages (cities). Its kind of ideology way of living: everybody share everything and no one owns anything. People working for kibbutz and gets everything they need (like house, food, goods). Most of kibbutzs are willage type of setlements around some factory or farm which giving people jobs. They provide corporate dinning hall, swiming pool or car renting (free for members). Around 8% of all israelis living in Kibbutz. Getting less now days because for young people this way of living is not cool anymore. We were quite surprised by visiting nice club near by Ein Harod. On our way back we drive golf car (pretty drunk) which was very funny. :)

Golan Heights

Next day we were going to Golan Heights. Israel captured land during Six Day War in 1967 and Yom Kippur War in 1973. Nice piece of nature full of mines and other war artefacts.

Last picture is from Syrian border with anti-tank barrier. On our way back we went to Kineret lake and Nazareh. Then by bus back to Tel-Aviv.

Gaza, Ber-sheba, Massada, Dead See and back

Gaza strip is very small area with around 1.4 mil residents, mostly Palestinians. Probably most dangerous place in middle east. To be honest I do not know why we wanted to go there. Maybe just kind of adrenalin. Anyway we were able to get just to the border line. No way to get in. Gaza is surrounded by defence wall (security fence), 6 m high concrete wall. It takes exatly 1.5 minutes israeli army HMMWV (idf) to capture you when are waling near by this wall. They were quite angry to us however at the end they were happy to see just stupid tourist and not something else.

Our next steps goes to the judea desert to visit massada and dead sea. Massada is really unique fortrest in the world. It was build on the top of flat mountain and it had everything you need to survive: rainy watter tank, fields. No wonder Romans spent few years at mountin foot and even after that they won just because all of defenders self-murdered.

And this is the end of our journey... just map of travel.

Well... ???