Photo Month: Week One

This is it! The challenge starts now!

The theme for Week One of the Photo Month Photo Challenge is......

Seven

Why? Because according to Wikipedia septem in Latin means seven, and September was the seventh month in the Roman calendar.

So what are you going to shoot? Your 7 year old nephew? Your size 7 shoes? The 7 wonders of the world? It is entirely up to you! Be creative!

Photo Month: Themes

This is your last chance to let me know your ideas for themes to be part of this challenge.

Remember there are 4 weeks, so we'll need 4 themes.

Every week, probably on Friday, I will announce next week's theme. No cheating and shooting prematurely! You'll need to check here every week - while you're uploading the previous weeks entry - to see what to shoot next.

Each weekly theme is going to be deliberately vague. It is up to you to interpret the theme as you see fit. (If we all think your picture doesn't seem to match the theme, we may ask you to explain your interpretation. But that's part of the fun!)

Since it's September, I'm expecting the themes to somehow be related to the month. Here are some ideas for themes:

- School
- Virgin
- Balance
- Twin Towers
- Sound
- Shaka Zulu
- Seven
- Equinox
- Sapphire
- Body Part
- Salad
- Motor
- Water
- Shakespere
- Sharp
- Scallywag
- Shrug

Are your batteries charged? Are your memory cards emptied and formatted? Cleaned your lens? Filled up your creative juices? Good! Then watch this space in the next day or two for the first theme!

Photo Month : WHEN

The Photo Month photo-per-week challenge is coming up soon so if you haven't done so yet, get your camera out, dust it off, charge the batteries, empty the memory cards, and watch this space in the next few days for info about the themes!

The weeks will run:

• 1st - 7th Sept
• 8th - 14th
• 15th - 21st
• 22nd - 28th

Four weeks and four themes. (And maybe even a bonus theme!)

The themes will be announced here on the weekend before the next week - so you can't cheat and take all your photos at once. This is meant to be a challenge after all.

We expect you to take photos at your leisure during the week, and make sure they are uploaded and tagged in the Flickr group before the weekend. That way we can see all the theme's photos and comment on them.

If you haven't sent me suggestions for themes yet, now is the time to do so. (Add a comment to this post so everyone can share.)

Photo Month : HOW

How it works:

• New theme(s) every week for a month.


• Submit photos within the week.


• Any number of photos can be submitted, but they must be significantly different. Don’t upload two pics of the same flower.


• Look at other peoples photos and comment / vote for your favourite.

Technical:

• Sign up for a Flickr account if you don’t already have one : http://www.flickr.com/
  (Flickr is part of Yahoo! so you can use your yahoo mail account to sign in.)


• Go to the group DerekBez Photo Month and join the group.


• Upload your photo
  
  • Give it a title
  
  
  • Tag your photo with dbpm_[theme], where [theme] is obviously the current theme name. eg: dbpm_red
    (You can add other tags too if you want)
  
  
  • Click “Send to Group” to add it to the DerekBez Photo Month group.

To see photo submissions for the week:

• Go to the group DerekBez Photo Month.


• Search within the Group for the current theme (ie: search for “dbpm_[theme]”).


• Everyone’s submissions should appear – if the photos have been tagged correctly.

How close? Macro Lens Test

Ever wondered how to get the best close-up shot? Or more to the point, make something small look big.

I have 4 lenses in my collection*, and I wanted to know which lens would make something small look biggest. So I set up a little comparison test.

To do this I put the smallest, most colourful things I had to hand – namely some little jars of chutney – onto a nice white towel and lay on the floor to take my first shot with the lens I had on the camera at the time.

The test isn’t looking at image quality, nor is there any artistic merit. The aperture was set to the widest each lens would go. ISO was fixed at 400. Shutter speeds ranged from 1/13th to 1/125th.

What we are looking for in this test is (a) how big is the subject in the picture, and (b) how far away from the subject was the front of the lens? (ie: the closest focusing distance)

The contenders:
Canon 28-135mm f3.5-5.6 IS USM (link)
Canon 70-300mm f4-5.6 IS USM (link)
Sigma 18-50mm f2.8 EX DC (not the Macro version apparently) (link)
Canon 50mm f1.8 (link)

The results:
Canon 28-135mm
Pretty big.
Front of lens about 19cm away from target.

Canon 70-300mm
Winner big!
Front of the lens about 1500cm away from the target!

Sigma 18-50mm
Not so big.
Front of lens about only 10cm away from target, which is odd because the markings on the lens and the spec sheet suggests that the closest focusing distance should be 28cm or 20cm.

Canon 50mm
Small.
Front of lens about 45cm away from target.

So what have we learnt?
The 70-300mm give the largest image, but from 1.5m away. This is good for flitsy insects.
The 23-135mm is very close second, but quite close to the subject. This is good for static subjects.
The 18-50mm can get you really close to the subject, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to fill the frame. It does give an interesting ‘perspective’ distortion to the image though.
The 50mm, while so good at many other things, is rubbish at this.

No particular surprises – this was sort of expected. It is good to know the actual boundaries of each lens though. Next time I’m out in the field wanting to shoot something ‘macro’, I’ll know which lens to pick.

When I get my extension tubes I’ll have to do this entire test again! Watch this space.

* I’ve got a couple more lenses, but I don’t carry them around.

Photo Month : WHAT

Let us hold our own little photo “contest”. It will take the form of a Photo-a-Day challenge. Ie: every day you get a new theme and are required to submit a photo, taken on the day, on the topic of the theme.

Ok, scratch that.

Photo-a-Day is not practical unless we all suddenly become free agents* with nothing better to do.

So let us hold our own little Photo-a-Week challenge. To participate, you will be given a new theme every week. During that week you take original photos on that theme and submit your best so we can all see and comment. The Photo Month will be for September - 4 weeks & 4 themes.

I’m making the rule that you can submit as many photos as you like, provided that they (a) are all within the theme, and (b) are significantly different from each other.

For example, if the week’s theme is “Red”, you might submit a rose and a Ferrari. That would be fine. But two photos of roses would be disqualified, and you will have to report to the headmasters office.

This is not a contest, as in, the winner will not receive an all expenses trip to a paradise island. This is more of a personal challenge and a bit of fun. The challenge is for us to be creative in our interpretation of the theme, and for us to grow our technical photography skills. Explore your artistic side in creating an interesting composition. Explore your camera’s settings**.

Speaking of cameras, this is not about expensive SLR set-ups. Any camera will do. Use your phone if you have to.

The fun will be as we share our entries and comment on each other’s photos.

Come back here next week, where I will describe HOW we will share our photos.


* free agents, aka jobless.
** Exploring your camera: I’ll write some tips in a future post. Suggest things to me you’d like to know about.

Using the 400D Battery Grip

It’s been several weeks in use now, so I feel it’s time to comment and share my experiences with the battery grip I have plugged onto my Canon 400D.

First a reminder: This isn’t the official Canon BG-E3. This is a made-in-China replica, which has some added functionality.

So why would anyone want a battery grip attached to their camera? To ease taking pictures in portrait (aka vertical) mode, and to increase battery life.

Without the grip attached, to take a portrait orientated photo, you need to swing the camera around 90 degrees anticlockwise – which means that your right hand is on your forehead - kinda like making the L-Looser sign – and your elbow is waving about exposing your underarm BO.

The additional grip fixes that. Now you can hold the camera normally, with your elbows tucked in at your side. (Which is how you want to pose for greater camera stability.) The grip has its own shutter release button more-or-less in the exact place you’d expect to find it. It’s not exactly positioned as on the actual 400D body, but it is close enough.

Using the camera in portrait mode becomes second nature now. It just feels natural to flip the camera 90 degrees and carry on shooting. That said, the bit you wrap your fingers around on the grip is considerably fatter than on the 400D camera body. It’s not uncomfortable, but it is bigger and my little fingers only just wrap.

(As an aside, I recently got to handle a Canon 40D. It’s a big camera, and the part you wrap your fingers around feels like it would be a problem for me – too big.)

The battery grip also has other control buttons, just like on the main camera body. Using them there on the grip isn’t much different. Except when selecting a different focus point. Then you have to reach over and use the cursor keys and Set button next to the screen. This requires shifting the weight of the camera to your left hand and stretching your right. I don’t do that too often, so no real problem.

The battery grip definitely does add significant weight to the camera. I haven’t put it on a scale yet, but you’ll notice the difference. That means I have changed the way I carry the camera with the neck strap. The battery grip has a place for strap attachment underneath, to the right of the tripod screw. I’ve got my neck strap connected there, and on the normal place on the left of the camera body. The camera now sits diagonally. This may seem awkward, but in practice it is more comfortable to carry. Instead of just putting the strap around the back of my neck, I now put it over my right shoulder and under my left arm. Considerably less pressure on my neck now. Once again, this may seem awkward, but when carrying the camera with a heavy lens on a long walk, this setup is comfortable and flexible.

I’ve been doing a bit of close-up of flowers at some really strange angles lately. The grip adds so much flexibility, and feels so natural to use, I found myself with my hand on the grip rather than on the camera body most of the time.

Being a Battery Grip, you’d expect to hear about batteries. Open the side door on the grip and there is a tray that slides out. The tray takes two normal NB-2LH batteries. This is where I should get all scientific and tell you how many extra shots you get before you need to change the batteries. Sorry. I haven’t counted. In the 6 weeks I’ve had the grip attached to my camera I’ve changed batteries once. That seems reasonable to me, considering I do use the camera just about every day, and it includes bird-watching expeditions and the Motor Show. One moan though. The battery indicator on the camera seems to drop off very rapidly – it went from full to zero, in like 20 shots or so.

The grip I have also has some “professional” features – functions to do time-lapse type photography. I haven’t used these features in anger yet. That might be another post.

Conclusion:
Usability: great – it works exactly as you expect it to.
Weight: there are workarounds to keeping it comfortable. And bear in mind a 40D or other “full-size” camera will weightier.
Quality and general feel: adequate – solid, but buttons do feel a bit plasticy.
Still recommended? Yes, definitely.