Overlooked Photography and Photoshop Learning Resource

 There are plenty of online resources for learning about Photography and Photoshop some are free others like Lynda or Kelby will cost you some money. I'm a member of Kelby Training and although it's expensive i've found it to be worth every penny. I've managed to take advantage of some of the member discounts with Kelby's partner companies, which has reduce the cost of my membership by more than half. The first couple of videos of each course are free to review so you check out the content before paying for a membership.
 
  One of the free resources that you may have overlooked is your local library. Here in Toronto the public library has an arrangement with "Safari Books Online" to provide online access  to approximately 4100 of the 9000 books in their electronic catalog. These books are mostly technical reference books dealing with software and IT subjects, but there is a decent collection of photography related items also. Although these titles are only available online, it makes perfect sense for the library to provide this type of access. How often does Adobe release a new version of Photoshop? If they were to buy a dozen copies of each newly released book to circulate amongst their branches it would cost them thousands of dollars, and they would be out of date in less than 2 years. This way they can provide the latest version with unlimited copies and all at a fraction of the cost. 

  Some examples of the resources available here in our library are Digital field guides for most camera models including the newer models (ex: Canon 7D, Nikon 300s). Newly released photography books like "Mastering Canon EOS Flash Photography", which was just released 15-Mar-2010 (13 days ago as of this posting). There are 144 books and 66 videos on Photography and another 68 books and 92 videos on Photoshop related products (Elements, CS4, Lightroom, Camera Raw etc..)

  So CS5 will be released soon, and you will be looking for a book to help you along with the new features. Before you buy get a library card if you don't already have one (they're usually free) login and take a look at what your local library has to offer first.

AC5 Soft Shield Distance Test

In late 2009 Pocket Wizard starting shipping free* AC5 soft RF shields to address the the problems between their FlexTT5 triggers and Canon Speedlights. The AC5 is essentially a sock made of RF shielding material which surrounds the flash and is cinched off to an RF shoe filter provided as part of the kit.

The RF noise from some Canon flashes were interfering with the radio frequencies used for communications between the MiniTT1 (master) and the FlexTT5 (slave) triggers. The RF interference impacts the distance you can remotely trigger your flash units. To see how much of a difference this solution would make, I performed a quick test to measure the effective distance of the units with and without the AC5 solution. Prior to testing I installed the latest firmware version 5.0 available from PW. I place a FlexTT5 and 580ex II on a light stand at the end of a standard narrow apartment / condo style building hallway and backed off until I lost reliable communications between the camera and the flash.  Here are the results I obtained:

	FlexTT5	FlexTT5 + AC5
Distance in Feet	40	100+

 The hundred foot limit might be related to a metal door frame I encounter in the hallway (the door is used as a fire break). It seemed that once I crossed the threshold of the frame I lost reliable communications.

 Pocket wizard has started including the AC5 soft RF shield with all FlexTT5 units sold and is about to start selling an AC7 model which is a hard plastic version. From early product images of the AC7 it appears to allow easier access to the flash controls (bonus for manual flash users) and has two lightstand/bracket mounting points. No information is provided at this time if the AC7 will provide any increased usable distance over the AC5 model.

* offered until 30-Jan-2010

Saving & Restoring Wacom Tablet Preferences

 If you own a Wacom Intuos 4 tablet you have no doubt spent a considerable amount of time customizing it for each of your applications, time you only want to spend once. The latest Wacom driver allows you to save / restore a copy of your current tablet settings in case it becomes corrupt due to machine failure etc.. This process also allows you to share your setup with other users or transfer your preferences amongst multiple machines you may access.

Note that this process will save or replace all Expresskey, Touch Ring and Radial Menu settings for all applications. Make sure you have made a backup of the current machine settings before replacing them with a file you have created or obtained from another source.

Saving your current tablet settings:

• Go to Start> All Programs: and choose 'Wacom Tablet'
• Launch the 'Tablet Preference File Utility'
• Within my preferences, you will be given the option to 'Back-up…' for a future 'restore'. Click the 'BackUp' button.
• Using the "Save As" dialog, specify a name and location for the backup file.

 Restoring / Replacing current settings:

• Use the same procedure from above by selecting the  'Tablet Preference File Utility' only this time click the 'Restore' button.
• Select the appropriate file from the open file dialog box to replace the current tablet setup.
• That file's setting are now loaded for access from your tablet.

Wacom Intuos 4 Graphics Tablet

A few months ago I purchased a Intuos 4 graphics tablet for photo editing. After using a mouse for years I struggled with the new pen interface for a while. This seems to be the standard experience of all new users, and most say you must force yourself to use the pen and soon you'll never use a mouse again for graphic applications. Well I persevered and within a few weeks I found the pen felt very natural especially when using a brush to create a layer mask or applying localized adjustments.

 The Intuos 4 tablet is available in four different sizes, based on the active interface area ranging from 6"x4" (small) up to 19"x12" (extra large). All models come with a two button pen and traditional mouse which use electro magnetic resonance battery free technology. The tablets themselves contain a series of programmable buttons called Expresskeys for often used keyboard commands, and a four function iPod like Touch Ring which provides users with a variable type interface. The touch ring can be used to control brush size, opacity, image magnification or anything that has a variable adjustment setting.  The feature I like best  is the Popup menu system which provides an unlimited number of programmable drill down menus which overlays the screen of any application. All of the buttons, touch ring features and popup menus can be set so their functions change depending on the current active application also.

 The three larger models all have the exact same features, only the physical size and active area is different. The smaller model does lack one important feature which for me influenced my purchase decision. There are only six Expresskeys compared to eight on the larger models, however more importantly the smallest model lacks illuminated button displays. If you program the Expresskeys to change with each active application, remembering what they do could become confusing. There is a default key which displays the key functions on screen for the smaller model, but for convenience I went with the medium sized unit.

 As I said before my favorite feature is the pop up menu system which provides an unlimited number of shortcuts to application menu features replacing the need to use the keyboard almost entirely with Photoshop. I've programed the top pen button to access the menus and they are currently set up to access my most commonly used Photoshop and Lighroom functions.

Here are the menus I use for Photoshop so far (underlying key commands appear in Red):
 
Main Menu:

Layer: 

Adjust: I remapped some of the key shortcut commands in Photoshop to open an adjustment layer.

Save:

Clone/Heal:

Zoom:

Small Bird Photography

Small birds are always a challenge to photograph, they rarely spend more than a few moments in one place and often seek shelter in thick brush. Some birds can be lured out into the open with feeders, but even then it's hard to get clean natural looking images. If you're like myself and live in a large city, you may not have access to a yard where you can set up a permanent feeder. A simple and effective solution is to use a portable feeder station / stage which can be easily transported and setup in any local park.

The set up consist of a few common photography items you may already own, or could use anyway:

• Light Stand: Any light stand can be used, if you do not already own a stand I'd suggest using the Manfrotto 5001b. Cheaper stands can be found, but none fold up smaller than this model. The 5001B folds down to 19", weighs only a couple of pounds, extends to 7' which is plenty. 
• Clamps: Which are used to mount perching branches or other props you wish to include in your stage. I found that a 'Superclamp' in combination with a few background clamps work well. Cheap 'A' clamps found in any hardware store can also be used here.
• Small container used to hold the attractor: seed , orange slice, grape jelly etc.. Size is important, you want the container small enough to allow only one bird to feed at a time. This forces other birds to wait on your near by perching branch, right where you want them. You can use any small plastic jar lid with a hole drilled in it to accept the light stand's threaded stud. I use a 1/4" wing nut to secure it to the stand.
• Perching branch: Any branch can be used, however look for one with moss, lichens or interesting bark. Ideally you want one main branch with only a few sprigs. If you must remove some sprigs, try to remove them so the broken stub will not show in your image. Also do not break boughs from living plants, there are plenty available on the forest floor, and these often have more interesting details anyways.

 When using this setup place it in an area where your subjects are already active. Start out by placing the light stand near natural cover until the birds become use to it, then slowly walk the stand out into a clear area that offers cleaner backgrounds for your images. Birds like Nuthatches, Chickadees and Gold Finches will soon be swarming all over your feeder and will provide many great opportunities for natural looking images.

 The main advantage with using this portable staging method is control, you can control:

• Where the subject is likely to perch.
• The background, which can be changed simply by moving the stand left/right, or raising/lowering the stand height.
• The light on your subject. You can easily move the stand so that your subject is always front lit adjusting the location as the sun tracks across the sky.
  
• The elements in the image. Interesting looking branches can be used and quickly swapped out to give variety to you images.
• Pests, squirrels will be attracted to seed placed in an accessible area. The light stand restricts their access.

 Before you use this method, ensure the park bylaws do not restrict feeding wildlife. And remember please do not remove any branches from living plants. Take great images, and leave only footprints.

Rosco Strobist Kit

The Rosco filter sample kits have become very popular with users of Speedlite (Canon) / Speedlight (Nikon) flash units. So much so that Rosco was going to stop their free sample program completely due to the overwhelming demand. Strobist blogger Dave Hobby approached Rosco and together they created a "Strobist" kit which contains commonly used color correction and tinting filters. For a small fee (approx $10 USD) you receive 20 1.5" x 3.25" different colored filters. Multiple pieces of the more commonly used correction filters CTB, CTO, Plusgreen for fluorescent correction are supplied along with numerous tinting filters for special effects, a total of 55 in all. No longer a free solution, but better than having to purchase separate larger more expensive individual sheets and building your own kit.
Here in Toronto you can still obtain the free filter kit at The Source Shop (as of Nov'09) and you can purchase the Strobist kit at the DV Shop for $16 CAN.

McNally high above New York

I've been following Joe McNally's tutorial videos on the Kelby training site and reading his two books on photography. Always amazed by his work and thought i'd share this clip of one of his more daring location shoots: