Distortion in Zoom Lenses

Just a quick post. I have always used prime lenses in the past fifteen years and only bought a zoom lens a year ago. One thing you need to look at before buying a zoom lens is distortion. I can not believe how much distortion there is in a £600 - £700 lens. I have found the Canon 70-200 f4 IS lens has very little distortion at 100mm - 180mm andso I use this lens for all portrait and engagement shoots. My Canon 24-105 IS lens does suffer from distortion at the 24mm-35mm end of the zoom range but is O.K at about 85mm. I use this for close portraits hand held indoors at 1600 ISO. So go out and get your zoom lens and photograph a brick wall. You will see what I mean by distortion.

Portrait Lenses 2

A good start is to use a zoom lens zoomed to 70 - 85 or 105 and approach your subject. Most people will want to run a mile as you will be very close to them if you are trying to capture a head and shoulders crop. Professional models will not be worried but the average person would rather you go back and be further away until they are comfortable. I have found most people to be happy when you are at between 135mm and 200mm on a zoom lens, they relax more and you are able to produce more natural images.

Camera Canon eos 40D
Lens 70-200 f4 set at 189mm
Shutter 1/1000
Aperture f4
ISO 800

Which portrait lens to buy? I would go for the 135mm on a full frame sensor<5D>, or the 85mm 1.8 on the cropped sensor <40D> or just buy a 70mm-200mm zoom lens.

Portrait Lenses

What lens should I buy for portraits? I about to buy a portrait lens and thought I would share with you my thoughts on the perfect portrait lens. I have used different lenses 85mm 1.8, 50mm 1.8, 75-300mm and have found that it is not the lens that matters so much its the person you are photographing.

Focal Length 105mm
Camera Canon eos 5D
Shutter 1/80th
Aperture F4
ISO 1600

Canon eos 40D Settings

The canon eos 40D is a good camera and I thought I would share with you a few tips for setting it up. I use RAW setting all the time with the PICTURE STYLE set to NEUTRAL 0.0.0.0. I have also been using the HIGHLIGHT TONE PRIORITY which works well if it is a very bright day. You can use the 40D from ISO 100 to ISO 1600 with good results (not as good as the Canon eos 5D at high ISO 3200). For 99% of the time I use one shot auto focus as I find for even the fastest moving bride and groom the camera can keep up. I do use AI SERVO MODE outdoors when they are walking towards me. The AI SERVO tracks very well and is very accurate. I only use one focus point and thats the center one. I use AUTO WHITE BALANCE on the camera and because I use RAW I can change this in ADOBE LIGHTROOM during post production.

Intermediate: Raw Vs Jpeg

I am asked this question allot and I thought I would give you my opinion. I have used Raw from day one and have never made a single jpeg file in a camera. The reason for this is simple. I like to over expose images by about 1 third of a stop then drag the highlights back with the recovery tool in adobe lightroom. I never under expose to retain highlight detail. Try photographing a subject with a wide tonal range e.g a bride and groom on a sunny day. Use jpeg for the first image and raw for the second image. Import both images into adobe lightroom. Now try to recover highlight detail with the recovery slider for the jpeg file and the raw file.

Canon 580EX Mk2 Vs Natural Light

I seem to never use flashguns anymore. I have been through times when I have used flash at weddings quite allot, but I seem to have slowly stopped using them. I think having a flash gun is a good idea, but I would advise everyone to learn photography with available light first. Flash can make you lazy. I have just photographed a wedding at Cripps Barn in the cotswolds. The day was overcast with showers and the barn had only a few windows. I could not use bounce flash and never use direct flash from a small on camera flash gun. The wedding had to be reportage - documentary and at first I thought this was going to be a problem. I looked around the room and saw three windows 2mx3m and another window 1mx3m. It was overcast and the direct sun light was being diffused before entering the room through the clear glass windows. I thought to myself "natural softboxes" and decided not to use flash at all that day. The windows gave me great light and the images had the depth I love in an image.......I will be showing you off camera flash that looks like natural light in future posts.

IMAGE INFO:

Canon eos 5D + 24-105 F4 IS Lens


SHUTTER SPEED-1/80th
APERTURE- F4
ISO-1600
LENS-90mm
PROGRAM-Manual



More images from Cripps Barn

Forums & Blogs

I have started posting comments on the photo.net website. I think photo.net is very usefull when you are thinking about buying new equipment. I have also joined the photographers.co.uk and hope to post a few comments over the next few weeks. I have just ordered a new Canon M80 portable hard drive for back up at weddings. I will let you know how it performs against our existing portable epson P3000 hard drive soon.

~rb~

Great Photographers - Sebastião Salgado

Sebastião Salgado is one of the best photographers in the world. I remember seeing an exhibition of his work about ten years ago at Aberystwyth University and will never forget it. If you have the chance to see any of his images printed and hanging on the wall please go.....they are inspirational. I have placed a link and so you can view some of the images online.


Sebastião Salgado

Free £10 Training Voucher

If you would like to attend a One to One four hour training workshop make sure you download a free £10 training voucher. We have a back to basics training course, which is for beginners and various intermediate and advanced courses. Try before you buy is also possible as you can try a canon eos 40D or Canon eos 5D. We can visit a local jessops store to try different camera equipment before you buy. To download your free voucher please click on the link below and then contact me to book your workshop.

Free Photography Training Voucher

~rb~

Exposure Compensation

Exposure compensation is a bit like the brightness control on your TV. Add exposure +1 stop to brighten the image. Subtract exposure -1 stop to darken the image. It is your choice, and you will need to have an idea of the final look you require before you play with exposure compensation. This image needed +2 stops exposure compensation to brighten the image and blow the highlights out in the background. This is a standard technique when photographing into a window to achieve a high key look.

I have put together a few cue cards to help you understand exposure compensation click on the link below to download for free.

Click here for free downloads

~rb~

Black & White Film Days

I used mono films Ilford HP5, Agfa APX 25, Kodak TMAX for five years without putting a colour film in the camera. I used two prime lenses 24mm and 50mm on a NIKON FM2 Film Body. I think this was the best training i ever gave myself. Sounds strange but by limiting your equipment you can improve your photography. I still use film cameras today for landscape. I use Large format 5x4 and two lenses 90mm and 150mm. Next time you go out with your camera take a 50mm on one body set the camera to black & white, see what you come back with.....

Click here for more images

~rb~

Image Quality - Noise

Every camera review seems to talk about noise. As cameras have improved Canon and Nikon have increased the number of pixels on the sensors. This has given them the problem with noise. I like noise as it gives the images a film like quality. I use the Canon 5D at ISO1600 / ISO3200 all the time and convert the images to greyscale in Adobe Lightroom. The images have a different look to the clean 'digital look' of ISO200 images. Some people I talk to never take their Canon 1D Mk 2 off ISO 200 as the dreaded noise will wreck their images. Noise can be good give it a go.....

I attended a wedding yesterday using ISO 1600 all day with no flash. I will post the images soon. I am off to the cotswolds today to attend a wedding and its looking pretty grey out there. The groom gets migrane from flash guns andso I can't use flash. Looks like a Canon eos 5D + 24-105 / ISO 1600 Day........

~rb~

Our photography workshops

One to One or group workshops are available for anybody interested in improving their photography. The workshops are informal and focussed on what you want to learn "not what i want to teach you". One to One tuition is getting more popular at the moment. I can offer four hour packages at £100 to get you going. Week days are best for me as the summer is now filled with weekend weddings. For more information visit our main training page Richard Barley Photography Training. If you are just starting out or semi-professional we offer bespoke training courses to help you acheive your goals.

Richard Barley Photography Training
~rb~

Sensor Dust - Finding IT ??

I am just going through my standard procedure before a wedding and I thought i would share with you my approach to 'dust specs on your sensor problem'. I keep the lenses on the cameras for a start, they never come off except for sensor cleaning every now and then. This may sound extreme but dust is best kept out of a digital SLR body. The way to check your sensor is simple.

Set the aperture to F22
Set the lens to manual focus and set it at infinity
Set the camera on aperture priority.
Find a sheet of white A4 paper.
Photograph the paper
Look at the image on the screen/histogram
Should be about mid grey

You now have an image of all the dust on your sensor. Open the image in photoshop and do image-adjustments-auto levels.
Instantly you should see all the dust better now. Don't panic dust becomes obvious at f11 - f32 so if you take photographs at f 2.8 - f8 you will not have seen most of this dust before. I will put a few images up with the next post on sensor cleaning showing the dust to worry about and the dust that will not bother you if you shoot around f5.6. Now how to get rid of it.........

Click on the image above to make it larger



~rb~

Canon Eos 40D Review 1

I have been using the canon eos 40D for the past three months and six weddings. 1st impressions are good. The cameras best point is a very good autofocus system. I have been tracking subjects in servo mode with the camera and have found it to be spot on every time. I use the 40D with a canon 70-200 IS/ F4 lens and the vertical battery grip. This combination is light weight and it feels like they were made to work together. The 40D has allot of new features that I will explore over the next few months. The Auto ISO mode is O.K but I hope a future 50D makes the range 200-3200. The screen image does not match what you see in front of you and is poor. I only look at the histogram when I am photographing weddings andso this does not effect the way I work. The canon 5D screen is great and the colours are good, I don't know why they got the 40D one wrong. The images from the 40D are very good with nice colour. I set the 5D and the 40D at Neutral and use auto white balance with both cameras. When you import the files into Adobe Lightroom they look very similiar.......

I have just found this image from a couple of weeks ago 1/60th at F4 at 200m at 800 ISO on the 40D. The skin tones from this camera are rearly nice and push the 5D at times. The noise is well controlled and at 800 ISO i never worry about it.....

more later


~rb~

Great Photographers

I am going to link you to some of my favourite photography sites and photographer blogs. This week it is Jeff Ascough who I think is one of the best wedding photographers in the U.K. He has also been voted one of the top ten photographers in the world. This link is to his blog and there is a link to his main site from there.

Jeff Ascough Blog

~rb~

In My Bag

What does a professional photographer use. I have sold most of the kit as you don't need much. This is what I use.

Canon eos 5D

Canon 24-105 IS F4 Lens

Canon eos 40D

Canon eos 70-200 IS F4 Lens

2x Canon 580 Flash Guns

and thats
it.

~rb~