Photography Hacks and Best Practices.
1. Keep an organized photography bag. Keeping a organized bag will speed you up when you're out photographing. Having a specific spot for everything in your bag does a few things. First it keeps you from loosing stuff. If you have a specific place for everything you can quickly know when something is missing. Because you will have an empty space where there is not suppose to be. I lost a camera strap for over a year because I just shoved it in my bag where it wasn't suppose to be and when I went looking for it I couldn't find it because it was a black strap in a black pocket and I didn't see it. This was at a wedding I was shooting and I took the strap off because it was
2. Keep micro fiber clothes everywhere. You've heard this hack before. If your like me you have these little micro fiber clothes laying around everywhere. You get them at the eye doctor in almost every electronic you buy they just accumulate. So in every slot of my camera bag I put one or two at the bottom under a lens or under a battery. That way when I'm out in the field and I need one there is one very handy. I always have one in my pocket also. So if I'm shooting away from my bag I can pull one out. It also comes in handy if you're out shooting with a friend and they need a cloth you can quickly pull one out of your pocket for them to use. This has happened to me more than once.
4. Medicine. If your older like I am sometimes you need the help of say a Tylenol or a Tums to get you through the day. Instead of taking a bottle of each I use an old film canister and put a few of each in and use it as a pill bottle. This works great and is the perfect size to keep the weight and clutter down in my camera bag. I then can wrap Gaffers tape on the outside the bottle to use like in the item above. 5. Emergency Rain Poncho. I always have an emergency rain poncho with me. Here is the reason. I went to a state park to shoot a waterfall its
6. Take an umbrella. Along with the tip above about rain ponchos. If it looks like you'll be shooting in the rain. Maybe doing street photography take a small umbrella with you. Not so much to keep you dry or your camera dry but to keep water spots off of the front of your lens. Theses little umbrellas are handy and deploy with a touch of a button. 7. Check Camera Settings before you arrive. Make sure your camera is ready to go for that first shot. If your going on a camera shoot before you leave or travel make sure your camera is set up to shoot the second you arrive. Make sure the ISO is set to where you want it. Maybe you were shooting Night photography and you have the shutter set at 30 seconds and you don't check it. When you arrive at the first spot the next day and you frame up your shot and click! Nothing happens for 30 seconds and you may miss the shot. So give your settings a once over before you leave so this does not happen to you.
9. Have lots of SD cards. Another of my nightly checks before a trip is to make sure I have an freshly formatted SD card in my camera for the nest day. When I arrive at my hotel after a shoot I pull out my SD card and insert a fresh one and format. Boom! Camera is ready for the next day! The one I took out I backup and store in a camera wallet. I shoot one SD card or more per day and a fresh one
10. Comfortable Shoes! Wearing comfortable shoes is one of the best things you can do for your photography shoot. Trying to hike or walk a city street or just being on your feet for an extended time. If you don't have comfortable shoes your feet hurt and you can concentrate on the matter at hand , shooting! Wear comfortable clothes as well. Tight fitting binding clothes will also make you uncomfortable leading to missed shots. Well there are ten hacks or best practices. I could probably come up with more with a little thinking. I'm sure there are some stuff that you do that could help us. Share a hack or best practice that you do. So until next week please stay safe and get outside and shoot! Advantages of shooting a Full Frame Sensor Camera.
1- Low Light capability. The surface area of the sensor of a full frame is larger than a crop sensor and catches more light.
2- Shallower Depth of Field. The depth of field is how much of your frame is in
3.- More resolution. Mega-Pixels wars! These full frame sensors can be from 12mp to 60 plus MP. This comes into play when cropping in. So in post production maybe you took a shot of a scene but only liked one corner of the image with a large MP sensor you can crop in and not hurt the quality of the shot. This can make this great landscape or wildlife shooters. For example if you had a 42mp sensor camera and you cropped in 1.5 times you now have a 19mp image. Which is still great for printing. 4. - Dynamic Range. With a larger sensor you have a greater dynamic range. What does this mean? I’ll give
5. - Larger Camera and lenses. For those that have large hands this can be a plus and I hate to say it but if
There you have it 5 advantages to shooting full frame sensor camera’s. They are great camera’s and I shoot both crop and full frame and I love them both. And if you took photo’s from both camera’s and mixed them up and showed them to someone they wouldn’t be able to tell the difference of which camera took them. Believe me I have done it. Well that’s enough of that until next week. Keep shooting no matter what camera you have and get outside! Advantages of Shooting Crop Sensor Cameras!
- They are smaller. The bodies tend to be smaller and more lightweight than their full frame counterpart.
- The lenses are smaller. This is a big advantage from the full frame counterpart. Much more than the bodies the lenses are much smaller and lighter but still give you great quality. This with the smaller bodies make them great for travel photography. You can get very good lenses in the crop sensor size. And sometimes they can fit in your pocket! Street photographers like the smaller lenses because it makes them more inconspicuous when in a crowd.
- Smaller File Size. The files that these camera's produce are much smaller than the larger sensor camera's.
- This makes the camera quicker! More frame rates! Crop sensor camera's are used for sports photography quite often because they are quicker when a photographer has continuous shutter on the cameras can be very fast and buffering is not as much as a problem as with full frame cameras. So great for Sport and Wildlife photography. - The smaller files are great on your computer also! The smaller files take up less room and are easier for your computer to process! What does this mean? It means you don't have to update your computer as much and you can use that money for more experiences. The smaller files make them easier to process and to store!
To sum up there are many advantages to using a crop sensor camera. They are lightweight, smaller, cheaper, smaller file size and larger depth of field. When I was first considering a crop sensor camera I only shot full frame. I was worried about quality. I got an inexpensive crop sensor camera and used the kit lens that it came with and started comparing similar shots used with each and I couldn't tell the difference. I liked the crop sensor so much I sold all of my full frame stuff and shot only crop sensor for many years . I've just recently got another full frame camera to play with. The quality is great in these little camera's and are a great investment for anyone wanting to get into photography. Next week we'll talk on the advantages to Full sensor sized camera's. So until next week get outside and keep shooting. Timing is Everything! For National and State Parks.
1. Time of year. Planning the time of
3. Using your time wisely. As I said earlier your at a special place one you don't regularly visit. After your
As you can tell I love visiting State and National Parks and seeing different things. So just don't sit in the house on the weekend get out and explore and shoot!
What do I Shoot? Stills!
1. The iPhone. Like most of you I carry a smart phone everywhere I go. I use this for taking quick snapshots maybe a selfie or two. I also use it for reference shots. For example my wife sends me to the store to get something she just ran out of. I can take a photo of the item and look for it at the store. Or if I'm at the store I can take a photo of something and send it to her to make sure I'm getting the right thing or not . Usually not! LOL. Smart phones have become a very large part of ours lives in that way. 2. A One Inch Sensor. I have a point and shoot camera that really goes with me when I'm at work everyday. If I get a chance to take a walk or
3. An APSC (Crop Sensor). This camera is my main Landscape and Wildlife camera. It is a fantastic camera even though it is a couple of generations old. It shoots great stills. It has in body stabilization. I have three great lenses that can go from approx. 15mm to 550mm in full frame terms. It is lightweight and I can hike into places with great ease and I have the camera to get the shot. I take this camera when Landscape or Wildlife is the object of the trip.
4. Full Frame. My full frame camera I use for everything else not mentioned here. Street/urban photography. Portraits. Studio work. Right now I only Shoot primes with this camera. I love primes! They make me think and stir up my artistic juices. I have a 24mm, 35mm, 55mm and a 85mm that I use. I normally have one lens on the camera and carry one more. I never have all of them together. This makes me work harder and think more. It slows me down and gets my feet moving. I the way this camera feels in my hand more like a traditional camera. My APSC is more of a rangefinder style and this one is more of a DSLR camera feel to it. The camera I am currently using is a Sony Alpha A7II at 24MP . It also has in body image stabilization. I am currently working on upgrading this camera body to a newer version and will trade to upgrade to a Sony Alpha A7III. I'll let you know how that goes. I'm sure I'll have a blog on it soon.
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