THREE INEXPENSIVE PHOTOGRAPHY ACCESSORIES TO CONSIDER

A lens keeper is the perfect accessory for the Fujifilm X10

As photographers, we like to say it is all about the photograph and the art of making those photographs. And it is, but I also believe there is a little something in all of us, both professional and amateur, that likes new gear, gadgets, and software. We read blogs about it, discuss it over drinks or on assignment, and sometimes even long after it.

Well if you don't have thousands of dollars in your pocket, let me offer you three ways to satisfying the desire for some new gear without having to explain anything to your accountant, spouse, employer.

When was the last time you saw a lens keeper. Many of you probably don't even know what one looks like, and in fact, most professional photographers, and for that matter, most amateurs, wouldn't be caught dead using one. It is one of those accessories right up there with the Mickey Mouse camera strap that cause photographers to chuckle behind a colleague's back. However, when I purchased my Fujifilm X10, I found that I was always taking the lens cap off, putting it in my pocket, taking a photo, then digging in my pocket in order to replace the cap.

That's when I remembered this long ago forgotten gadget. And lo and behold it is still being sold. I picked mine up at Walmart for under $5.00 and it is the greatest thing. While it may not be practical for the lens cap on the 70-200mm, it is perfect for a compact camera.

A UV or skylight filter can protect you expensive lens.
I recently broke this 77mm filter yet the 24-70mm lens remained undamaged.
You can add filters to the front of your lens for all sorts of reasons, special effects, color tint, close-ups, neutral density or polarizing, but with the exception of a neutral density filter, I haven't added one of these filter since I started shooting digital in 1999.

I do, however, without exception, use a skylight, ultraviolet or clear glass filter to protect the front lens element from nicks and scratches. There has been a handful of occasions where I've smashed or broken one of these filters and yet there was no damage to the lens. This includes dropping a lens on concrete pavement. A good 77mm clear NC glass filter will run you about $89.00. Of course, you can find cheaper filters, but remember that the lens you are attaching them to probably cost around 20 times the cost of that filter. I do sometimes remove the filter when in the studio or some other safe environment. Think of this as really cheap insurance.

Manfrotto 175F1 Spring grip clamp with attached flash shoe.
Manfrotto 175F1 spring grip clamp with attached flash shoe.  AKA, the Justin Clamp.
I shoot a fair amount of environmental portraits as part of my job and most of the time I get about five minutes to visit an office, figure out a good angle, get the shot and get out. Even though five minutes is not much time, I still like to use at least two off-camera strobes, perhaps even adding a gel to one of them, combined with ambient light to get the best natural portrait possible.

Plus, with such a short window of opportunity, I don't want to mess with light stands, umbrellas, reflectors or even a softbox. In these situations, I almost always turn to the Justin Clamp from Manfrotto.  This simple accessory will quickly become one of the most useful accessories in your portrait kit.

With one strobe attached to the flash shoe of the clamp, you can clip this to just about anything, from a door frame to a flat screen TV, and if there are removable ceiling tiles, it can be attached to the grid. And even if you don't use the clamp as intended, it acts as a very stable base so you to set the flash on a desk or atop a file cabinet. I then hand hold the second flash, trigger both with an SU 800 attached to the camera and am in and out in no time.

Now put away the credit card and treat yourself to a nice dinner with all the money you just saved.

Better yet, get out and make good pictures.

GRAB A LOUPE - A NEW YEAR WITH OLD NEGATIVES

Before and after of a black and white negative photographed with a DSLR.
Original photo taken in 1993 on Kodak TRI-X film.
This didn't start out to be the first blog post of 2013, but the more I thought about it, the more I felt that this is a perfect project to start the New Year. If you are a photographer of a certain age, you can relate to the thousands of negatives and slides that fill binders and boxes under my eaves. You remember those days don't you? You'd shoot roll after roll of film, have it processed and printed and in the end, file away all those negatives and maybe some 4x6 inch prints in shoe boxes or albums that rarely were opened or looked at again.

When I purchased my first negative scanner in 1994, I would have the color film processed and sleeved, then spend hours at the computer scanning selected frames. Many of those scanned images still live on old hard drives or Zip disks and are not of the highest resolution.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, because if you really are a photographer of a certain age, you shot black and white film, processed it in the darkroom, made contact sheets and then spent many more hours printing and spotting.

So this brings us to the digital age where you can - with only a few pieces of gear you likely already own - dig out all those old negatives and slides and share them with the world, probably for the first time.

A DSLR set to copy negatives in front of a light source.
Equipment used: DSLR, macro lens, diffused light source, tripod and light stand(s), film holder, clamps and photo processing software.
Follow these few easy steps and techniques and you will think you are back in the darkroom, minus the smell of Dektol.

And staying with the darkroom theme, just think of the light source as the enlarger head, the film carrier would serve the same function and the camera replaces the easel which held the photographic paper.

For the light source I used a 36x36 inch softbox with a continuous light source inside. I then positioned the film about a foot in front and centered on the light. To hold the negatives/slides, I used old film holders from my no longer operational Minolta digital film scanner.

I attached the film holder to a clamp and bracket which were then attached to a light stand. I used an old manual 55mm Nikor Micro lens attached to a Nikon D3S and moved the camera in as close to the film holder as a could and still focus. I set the cameras ISO to 200, shutter speed to 800, f-stop at 11. I captured the images in the raw format using a custom white balance. Initially I bracketed a few stops on either side of f-11, but did not notice any significant difference.

I photographed black and white negatives, color negatives and transparencies and imported all of the images into Lightroom and processed as follows:

Tone curve on photo shows how easy it is to change a B&W negative into a positive using Lightroom.
It's as simple as inverting the tone curve. Original photo 1994 on Kodak T-MAX 400.
In order to convert the black and white and color negatives into positives, you need to flip the tone curve as shown in the photo above. In the case of B&W negatives, once the curve is flipped you will find that the results are pretty close to perfect, especially if your original exposures were correct and the negatives have good density. I did make some fine adjustments to the shadows and highlights. In the case of color images it did take a little longer to adjust since sometimes the color shifted. I found the quickest way to get close with color negatives after flipping the tone curve was set a white and black point.


Turning a color negative into a print takes a little bit more time.
Original photo 1997 on Fujicolor Press 800 color negative film.
Since slide or transparency film is already a positive, you are done with the exception of some minor color corrections. You may have to open up the shadows and reduce the contrast a bit, but again with Lightroom or Photoshop this is a breeze.

It's what you see is what you get when using a DSLR to duplicate a transparency.
Original photo shot in 1990 on a Kodachrome 200 transparency and cropped to retain the film holder.

This really was easy to do and I'm having a blast looking back and sharing images I made over 25 years ago. Probably the most time you will spend on this project is getting caught up in looking back through the years of images and the memories that are associated with them.

Keep a can of dust off handy as well, but spotting is a whole lot easier now using Photoshop or Lightroom.

Converting negatives to positives gave me the opportunity to find a photo I had not remembered taking.
A photo of my son from 1994 shot on Ilford HP5 Plus in our backyard that I had forgotten about. 
A great tutorial along with many other scanning hardware options is available at www. shuta.org.

UPDATE: I copied a negative using my Fujifilm X10 compact camera and had acceptable results.

Fuji X10 copy of Kodak high-speed infrared film negative.
Photo taken behind the Philadelphia Museum of Art on Kodak  High-Speed Infrared film.
The setup was the same. Camera was set to manual with an ISO of 200, shutter speed of 400, and a f-stop of 5.6. I used the super macro setting on this camera which enabled me to get within inches of the negative. I noticed some distortion which was not present when using a DSLR, but otherwise the results were satisfactory.

ARIZONA - FINAL DAY

I woke when the alarm went off at 3:15 a.m. with the goal of doing more star photography. A quick check of the night sky showed no visible stars. I'd say I was disappointed, but crawling back into the warm bed made up for that. Got out of bed again at 4:30 a.m. and still no stars but it was snowing. This was even better. Back to bed again.

I was dressed and ready to shoot by 6 a.m., only problem was that visibility looked like it might only be 100 feet. At first light I still couldn't see anything so I decided to just have breakfast and wait it out, since I wasn't going to leave Monument Valley when there was a chance to capture some snow photos.

A Yucca plant in Monument Valley, Ariz., during a mid December snow.
Yucca plant in Monument Valley.
Finally went out around 8 a.m. and while visibility was still limited, I was able to shoot some detail shots. For a brief moment I thought I would get a break when the bottom of Mitchell Butte was visible, but the fog quickly settled back in. After two hours I returned to the hotel, checked out and waited patiently in the lobby.

The fog clears to reveal Merrick Butte in Monument Valley, Ariz.
The fog clears to reveal Merrick Butte.
First glimpse of the Merrick Butte through the lobby window came around 11 a.m., so I grabbed my gear and quickly ran to get in position. Visibility came and went, first revealing most of Michell Butte, but want really caught my attention was when I started catching glimpses of just the top portion of the West Mitten.

The West and East Mitten become visible as the fog clears after a mid December snow in Monument Valley, Ariz.
West Mitten and East Mitten.
It was constant shooting for the next hour or so as the fog came and went and more of more of the valley came into view. As the wind picked up it wasn't long before most of the fog had cleared. I knew I had about a five hour drive ahead and figured it was about time I got on the road.

Fog clears from Monument Valley after a mid December snow.
Mid December snow in Monument Valley.
During the drive south to Payson, Ariz., patches of blue began to appear in the sky and before I knew it there were these amazing cloud formations. I kept wanting to pull over and was desperately looking for something to put in the foreground. Finally I saw some interesting rock formations by the side of the road and thought they would make a good excuse to photograph the clouds. Those photos came out fine, but as I turned to head back to the car, I noticed the clouds that had been behind me were far more interesting, so I framed up a simple composition and made the final image of this trip.

Dramatic clouds in Arizona.

Hope you enjoyed joining me on this photographic adventure as I talked about planning the trip, the gear I was bringing and the daily updates while on the road. Check back after the holidays for posts on my first time shooting the stars and what I learned photographing in Upper Antelope Canyon and more.


ARIZONA - DAY THREE

Star photography over Monument Valley, Ariz.

Started today early, waking at 2 a.m. to begin taking star photographs. As I mentioned in my previous post, I'm staying at the Monument Valley View hotel, so I only had to go as far as my balcony to begin shooting. I struggled for about an hour, mostly with focus. I would shoot a half dozen photos and then look at the photos on my laptop. A couple are usable, but far from what I'm hoping to do tonight.

Ended up laying back down and woke again 5:45 a.m. Tried a few more photos from the balcony, but again it just wasn't working out, so I gathered all my gear, bundled up and headed out in search of the hiking trail which starts about a quarter mile from the hotel.

West and East Mittens at sunrise.
West and East Mittens at sunrise.
As the sun began to rise, I found a nice vantage point to photograph the East and West Mittens. As the morning light began to fill the sky, I started feeling better about the photos I was taking. Around 8 a.m. when the sun was a bit higher, I took advantage of the golden light and photographed Mitchell Butte, including some nice sand patterns in the foreground, accentuated by the low light skimming across.

Gray Whiskers, left, and Mitchell Butte in early morning light.
Gray Whiskers, left, and Mitchell Butte in early morning light.
Ate some breakfast and then drove 22 miles to Mexican Hat, Utah, to photograph a sombrero-shaped rock outcropping that gave the town its name. Wasn't quite what I expected, but since the sun was having trouble breaking out all day and the light was very flat, it provided a distraction. I also decided to take a break and check out the Goulding's Trading Post Museum located at Goulding's Lodge.  Director John Ford and actor John Wayne were frequent visitors when filming westerns, such as 'She Wore a Yellow Ribbon' in Monument Valley.

Horses pass in front of the Totem Pole, right, and Yei Bi Chei.
Horses pass in front of the Totem Pole, right, and Yei Bi Chei.
When I finally figured I better get back to taking pictures, I drove the 17 mile loop again, only this time I stopped often and tried my best to make some photos despite the light not cooperating. Horses are left to graze throughout the valley and as I was photographing the Totem Pole I just happened to see some  approaching from the distance. I had tried to photograph horses yesterday and earlier today, but this time it worked out.

West Mitten, East Mitten and Merrick Butte in afternoon light.
West Mitten, East Mitten and Merrick Butte in afternoon light.
Finally around 3:30 p.m. the sky began to clear and the sun started to light up the valley. It was then that I started shooting like crazy, but also knew I still had to drive about six miles to get to a point where I could capture the sun hitting the West Mitten Butte. Stopped a few times and captured both the West and East Mittens as they just lit up. Ended the day at about the same location I was in when shooting the sunrise.

Old tree oversees Monument Valley.
Old tree overlooking Monument Valley.
Finally around 5 p.m., I made my way back to my room and quickly set up to shoot a time lapse with the D700 and a 24-70mm pointed at the West Mitten which still had some light on it. Set the interval timer to take a shot every five seconds and stopped it when the sun went down.



Another good day. More star photography, only tonight I'm going to head out very early in the morning to hike down into the valley and away from the hotel. Should be darker and maybe easier to focus if I'm closer.

ARIZONA - DAY TWO

Stars fill the night sky at Horseshoe Bend in Page, Arizona.

When I was planning this trip I had an idea of the types of photographs I wanted to make. As the trip neared, I started to feel some pressure, similar to when I'm about to leave on a work assignment. It's the kind of pressure you put on yourself to ensure that you make the photographs that will tell the story and please the client. Pressure to produce better images than the last assignment. And this is the pressure that drives you to get to the location early and stay late, making sure you don't miss anything.

I kept telling myself that this trip was for pleasure. It was about seeing something new and making some photographs that pleased me. Why the pressure? Also since I was traveling solo, what would motivate me to get up early and stay late.

Today I passed the first test, rising at 4:45 a.m. and returning to Horseshoe Bend by 5:30 a.m. It was dark and guided by only my headlamp it felt really good to be out there. In fact it was a little too early to see much, but I did notice that the stars were still out and what better time to see if all the reading I did about shooting the night sky would pay off. I think the first effort came out pretty good and it did give me some starting points for next time.

Returned to hotel and had breakfast, checked out and headed to downtown Page to meet my guide at Antelope Canyon Tours who would take me to Upper Antelope Canyon for two hours of shooting.

Upper Antelope Canyon outside Page, Arizona.

What an amazing place with amazing light. In fact it doesn't seem to matter which direction you aim your camera, there is a shot. I rushed a bit at first, just wanting to get something usable, but once I calmed down and realized that there would be enough time, I began to actually get some photos that I am very happy with. As with star photography, I plan a separate blog post with all the details and lessons learned.
Sand spills down into Upper Antelope Canyon outside Page, Arizona.

After some lunch and a stop at Walmart for canned air (there is lots of sand in the canyon), I made the 137 mile drive to Monument Valley. The scenery in this part of Arizona is just beautiful and the temptation is to pull over and make photos every couple of miles. I only made one quick photo stop, but wanted to reach my destination early and start processing the images from the morning. 

I'm staying at the Monument Valley View hotel where every room has a balcony that overlooks the valley. There is also a 17 mile loop road which takes you around the Navajo Tribal Park. Road is being kind and I wouldn't try this without an SUV. In winter it closes at 5 p.m. and I set out around 4 p.m. The sky was overcast and the light was flat, but I wanted to take the loop and at least check out vantage points for tomorrow, especially if we get the snow they are calling for.

The overcast sky breaks just enough during this sunset in Monument Valley, Arizona.

It took a little longer to make the loop than I anticipated and it was starting to get dark, however just as I neared the end I was rewarded by a very nice sunset. Goodnight from Monument Valley and if the sky is clear it will be a night spent shooting the stars.