Archive for category Focus
The benefits of keeping your camera with you
Posted by Mark Duehmig in Everything, Focus on May 18th, 2009
I’ve mentioned before that a camera doesn’t do any good sitting in the camera bag, sitting at home. I try to carry my camera all the time, and when that isn’t possible, I’ve got a small Sony point-and-shoot that I’ll stick in my pocket.
Last week I was able to pull over to the side of the road, on a bridge, and get a few shots of a schooner sailing by.
The schooner Woodwind sails by under the Severn River bridge last week.
The bow of the schooner Woodwind cleanly cuts the water of the Severn River.
But I wouldn’t have anything but regrets if I’d seen the boat and I just had to watch it go by.
Mark
www.MarkDuehmig.com
A Classic Cartoonist
Posted by Mark Duehmig in Everything, Focus on May 14th, 2009
I’m not afraid to tell people about something good I’ve found if I think they’ll benefit from it. It doesn’t matter what it is. Even an artist.
A few months ago I got the chance to help cartoonist Jim Hunt pull some video off a DVD and quickly learned he is a good guy. The video was of a Boston Red Sox game where some of his drawings of players were shown on TV. (Don’t ask me, some people just like the Red Sox. He’s still a good guy.) And later he had some video of himself sitting in the stands, a few feet behind home plate, holding the radar guy that measures the ball speed for the TV stats. Obviously a friend of the team.
Through all this I got to see his cartoons. He isn’t just the guy who did the menus at my favorite restaurant here in Annapolis, he does all sorts of creative stuff. I strongly recommend you check out his website and see for yourself. You will probably even recognize his hand from editorial cartoons, town maps, book illustrations, logos… you get the point.
http://www.acartoonist.com/
This isn’t an advertisement. It is a recommendation. I haven’t stooped to advertisements yet.
You won’t be disappointed.
Mark
www.MarkDuehmig.com
Traveling with memory cards
Posted by Mark Duehmig in Everything, Focus on May 14th, 2009
As with film, everyone asked about going through airport security with digital cameras and whether the x-ray machine will hurt the data stored on the cards. And we were all told our stuff was safe.
BUT putting memory cards in your checked luggage is very risky. According to Nikon reps teaching a class a few weeks ago, the scanners used on checked luggage are stronger than the ones used with carry-on luggage. They can damage the cards and destroy or corrupt digital content.
So always carry your memory cards with you and…
Keep shooting,
Mark
www.MarkDuehmig.com
Which camera is best for you?
Posted by Mark Duehmig in Everything, Focus on May 8th, 2009
I’ll say right up front that I can’t tell you the answer to this question, but, I can give you some directions to look.
Point and Shoot vs. a Digital-SLR
Let’s do a big separation here. Do you just want good pictures of the family? Something to grab those irresistible looks on your daughter’s face? Don’t know or care about f-stops? My friend, YOU are a candidate for any of the many excellent point and shoot cameras out there. And the good thing here is that they all take EXCELLENT photos. The only things to consider are features. But that is another post.
Or, did you have a film SLR and loved taking photos a few years ago but never made the leap to digital? You loved your Tri-X black and white film and remember the good old days when you took that dark room class in college. (Oh, the nasty chemicals we used to just pour down the drain!) You have an interest in taking photography to the next level? Being more creative? Then maybe a D-SLR is for you.
(One other note, these two cameras are not mutually exclusive. I have a LOT of camera gear. But I just bought a little point and shoot from Canon and I love it. Why? A few weeks ago my 10-month-old daughter was in a pink dress and the cat walked into the room. She lit up with a wonderful smile and all my camera gear was packed safely away in camera bags elsewhere. So I pulled out my iPhone and took a picture that is now my wife’s favorite. It is a grainy, 1 megapixel image that I can’t look at without wishing I had taken it with a camera instead of a phone. So now I always have a camera with me.)
Leaning toward a D-SLR
Ok, so you want to make the jump to a digital single lens reflex camera (D-SLR.) Here is the good part: the entry-level D-SLR cameras from either Nikon or Canon are excellent choices. You get a lot of camera for your money. At the time of this writing, for the Nikon, it is the D40. For Canon, it is the Rebel. You can spend more money, but I’m not sure why unless you really want some of those extra features. The 80/20 rule works here: you are getting 80% of the features with these cameras. You’ll really have to spend a lot more to get that remaining 20%.
Not convinced the low-end cameras are the way to go? Here is another idea; buy the lower end camera bodies and spend that extra cash you have on good lenses. Camera bodies will come and go, but good glass will stay with you year after year. But brace yourself; good lenses can cost three times as much as your camera.
Can I use the lenses from my film camera with my digital SLR? Answer: Maybe. With Nikon, yes. (As with both Nikon and Canon, because of the small size of the sensor, you multiply the lens focal length by 1.5. So if you put a 50mm lens on a DX camera, [Nikon D40 through the D300 or the Canon Rebels or 50D] the result will be the same as if you put on a 75mm lens. If you buy an FX body [Nikon D3 or D700 or Canon 1D or 5D] the lens will act normally. A really old lens may lack some of the metering functions, but will still work.)
Canon lenses, probably won’t work. They have been much more anxious to incorporate the latest technology, even if that means making a lens for a specific camera line.
Last comment on old lenses; before you pull that old manual focus, 7 lb zoom out of the shoebox in the closet, keep in mind that new lenses are vastly superior in performance to the old lenses. Design, coatings, etc, combine to give you a great lens. Even the “kit” lens that comes with the camera.
Finally…
One final thought about choosing a camera; you may be excited about taking creative photos with a D-SLR, but a camera that gets left at home is worthless. If you get a D-SLR, buy a small bag that is easy to grab on your way out the door. Get in the habit of taking it with you or you might as well have bought a shirt-pocket sized point and shoot.
Keep shooting,
Mark
www.MarkDuehmig.com
So you’re a professional photographer…..
Posted by Mark Duehmig in Everything, Focus on May 8th, 2009
I wonder if, in certain professions, the same questions appear over and over. The way a sore elbow is asked about when someone says “Actually I’m a doctor…”.
For me, the question is, “So what camera do you use?”
There are a lot of reasons people ask me this, but I think the biggest is that a lot of people are constantly shopping for a camera, but never buy one because the choices out there are overwhelming. SLR or point and shoot? Canon or Nikon? Which lenses do I get? How much memory? What is a megapixel?
I’m guessing some people think if they ask a professional photographer what camera they use, that might be a magic bullet. If she uses a X900, I’ll get an X900, or maybe an X900 JR.
When I answer the question I loose half my audience right off the bat; because if I say Nikon and the person asking is a Canon user, then never mind. And visa-versa. It seems a person’s preference in one of these two major manufacturers is stronger than politics or Mac vs. PC, and maybe a little more ingrained than religion. (There are other manufacturers out there of course, just as there are always cults out on the fringe. But we don’t want these people taking our picture and we certainly don’t want to ask them about cameras. )
We almost expect to hear a knock on our door, and two well dressed young men saying “Good morning, we’d like to talk to you about Pentax….” Slam the door!
I’ll get it out in the open right now. I use Nikon D700s. I’m guessing some people are saying “Hmm. Too expensive for my tastes.” And others are saying “Hmm, wonder why he doesn’t use the D3? Or the new D3x?”
Here is my answer to both. (Canon users and the rest of you, be patient. Much of this applies no matter what brand you use.) First, the D700 is a “full frame” camera, meaning it has a much larger imaging sensor than “DX” cameras do. By full fame, I mean the sensor is the same size as a piece of 35mm film. There is nothing magical about this size. It is, in fact, an arbitrary size in the digital world, but it is now a standard for larger sensor sizes. So to me, the $3000 price tag for each camera body is worth it.
Why not the D3, Nikon’s top of the line? If I shot sports, or something else that required the D3’s incredibly fast frame rate, I would. But I don’t and I am too hard on cameras to spend an extra $2000 on features I don’t use. I was in Cameroon waiting for a plane full of medical supplies to arrive when my camera rolled off a small ledge and broke the whole lens mount off the frame of the camera. (That my 70-200 lens wasn’t broken was a true miracle.) Fortunately I was with a group of doctors, including an optometrist, who had a nice tool kit and some superglue for fixing glasses. The camera made it through that trip, but if I’m going to trash camera bodies, I need a good reason for that to be a $5000 loss instead of a $3000 loss.
In the near future, there may be a technology gap between the very highest cameras and the D700s that warrant the extra price tag. But right now there isn’t.
For you Canon users, let me say I almost put my whole Nikon collection up on EBay not long ago to make the jump. The release and incredible performance of the D700 stopped me at the last minute.
I, like many of you, stuck with Nikon in the jump to digital because I shot with Nikon film cameras. But truthfully, until Nikon released the D3 and the D700, Canon had it all over Nikon in the digital world. The playing field is now about even. For most things, I’d prefer Nikon. If I was suddenly thrust into the world of fashion photography, I’d probably jump to Canon.
When shopping, make sure you compare FX cameras to FX cameras and DX cameras to DX cameras. There is quiet a price jump between the two.
Next time: which camera is best for you?
Keep shooting,
Mark
www.MarkDuehmig.com
Cleaning your lens and image sensor
Posted by Mark Duehmig in Everything, Focus on May 1st, 2009
It’s a cool, rainy day here in Annapolis, America’s Sailing Capital. (Most people will accept Annapolis as the Sailing Capital, unless you live in Newport or San Diego.) And a cool rainy day might seem an odd time to talk about dust on your images, but it can happen any time.
I got an email from a friend yesterday that said he had a spot on his images he couldn’t get rid of and he asked my advice.
First, I told him, put away that can of compressed air. Save that for dust on your keyboard or to blow dandelion seeds out of your camera bag, but it has no business being used on cameras. Compressed air has a propellant in it that can leave a residue on lenses and really screw up your images sensor.
Looking for the dirt, I recommended he check the lens first, both outside and on the inside where the glass meets the camera. He had already done this but it was a good chance to talk about what to clean the glass with.
I have a small, squeezable thingy with a brush on the end. Nothing fancy, but you can get some sophisticated squeezable things that will do the same thing. This is my first assault on dirt since it gently brushes away solids that have landed there. I’d rather brush them off than smear them onto the lens.
Next is a lens cloth. This is the key for smudges and fingerprints. If a real lens cloth isn’t handy you can use clean cotton. Never use a paper product like a paper towel, nose tissue or even toilet paper. The tiny wood fibers will scratch your glass.
This will take care of most dirt issues on a camera, but if not, the dirt may be (queue dramatic music) on your sensor!
This isn’t the end of the world. Many cameras now have vibrating sensors that literally shake the dust off. My Nikon D-700s do this automatically. Some cameras might require a menu option be chosen to do this cleaning shake.
If your camera can’t shake its dirt off, or if it can’t shake it all off, then you need to clean the sensor. You’ll need to get one of the products specifically designed to clean sensors. Don’t even think of reaching for a Q-tip and whatever cleaner you had in mind. Put it down!
I was shooting in the northern Sahara Desert (yes, lots of sand) when I got my first sensor dirt. A colleague had a sensor cleaner called a Sensor Swab by Photographic Solutions Inc. (photosol.com) It saved my butt.
Upon returning to the States I bought one of their kits, which consisted of several disposable swabs and a bottle of cleaning fluid. However, my very next trip through airport security found that bottle confiscated. A tad too big I guess. This was painful as the kit wasn’t cheap.
Apparently I wasn’t the only one to contribute my gear to the TSA garbage can. The folks at Photographic Solutions have come out with individual, pre-moistened swabs. I bought a handful. This is a better solution IMHO because now I divide them up among my various camera bags.
There are other makers of sensor cleaners out there but I don’t have experience with them. I won’t go into detailed instructions on the actual technique of cleaning the chip itself; I’ll leave that up to the directions on the package. But you’ll probably need to go into the camera menu and lock up the mirror to get access to the sensor.
That should do it. If it doesn’t, I think you’re in for a repair job. But the above steps should get 99% of the stuff off you photos.
All for now. I think I’ll put on my Musto foul weather gear jacket and take some pictures in the rain….
Mark
www.MarkDuehmig.com
New photos in Spinsheet Magazine
Posted by Mark Duehmig in Everything, Focus on April 30th, 2009
Just a note that a few photos of the schooner Marilyn appeared in Spinsheet Magazine. www.Spinsheet.com. This is an outstanding sailing magazine that is available all over the Chesapeake and the Mid-Atlantic.
If you can’t pick up a free copy at one of a thousand places on the Bay, you can see it on-line. Pages 58-59 I think.
I am very fond of this magazine at its high quality coverage of sailing on the Chesapeake Bay. If I have the opportunity to throw them some photos, I’m happy to do it.
Mark
www.MarkDuehmig.com
My humble beginnings…
Posted by Mark Duehmig in Everything, Focus on April 29th, 2009
I might as well talk about some of my photographic history to get started. Maybe that will help, or hurt, my street cred.
Back in my college days I spent some time in Alaska working on fishing trawlers. The first year I went up north was the year the Exxon Valdez found some rocks and spilled her guts. The oil had creeped down to Kodiak, where I was staying, and brought fishing to a halt.
So not having a job, I lived in the woods a few miles outside of the town of Kodiak until I finally found a job on a trawler. At the time it was traveling up and down the coast of Alaska buying fish and taking them back to canneries in Kodiak. I had with me a cheap little point-and-shoot camera. I took some pictures and sent the undeveloped film back home since I couldn’t affirt to have it developed there. (I was broke.)
When I got back home that fall, my Mom, who was trained as a artist, had developed my film and even had a few prints enlarged. They were pretty good, she said. (One of the photos is in my portfolio now. If I can figure out how to insert it here, I will.)
A foggy morning in Kodiak
Well, being told you have some talent gives you a bit of enthusiasm. I started to have visions of National Geographic covers. Someday.
And I scraped enough money together to buy a Minolta X-700. I carried that everywhere. And eventually wore it out. That is when I made the jump to Nikon.
A job or two out of college I started doing field service work for an engineering company. They were still growing and the winters weren’t too busy for me. So my boss wanted me to start shooting video (I was already shooting still photos, of course) when I traveled to construction sites and during the slow winters, edit them into sales videos.
Well the technical end of video is very similar to still photography so I quickly took to it. I started in Hi-8 and bought a two gigabyte hard drive. (In 1993 or 94, that cost a bundle.) This is when I also switched to Macintosh. And for many years video production has gone hand in hand with still photography. (See my alter ego at http://www.EncompassFilmWorks.com). But, still photography has always been my passion. My creative outlet. Recently I have taken efforts to return to my roots and dedicating more energy to one-frame-at-a-time photography. This blog is part of that.
There is a link to my portfolio in the upper right of this blog. It is www.MarkDuehmig.com. (If you didnt come to this blog through my website.) Please have a look and and let me know what you think. I’d love your feedback. Many of my friends are photogs so don’t be afraid to get critical and I’ll learn from it.
Thanks and more later.
Mark
www.MarkDuehmig.com
Getting the word out.
Posted by Mark Duehmig in Everything, Focus on April 27th, 2009
Welcome. If you’re reading this, you’re one of my first visitors. This blog is just being set up and I appreciate you stopping by.
I’ll be posting comments on photographs, locations, shoots, equipment, adventures, things that work and things that don’t.
In the mean time, check out my portfolio at www.MarkDuehmig.com.
Check back often!
Mark
www.MarkDuehmig.com