The lesson of the past 10 days is….

The blog has been strangely quiet over the past 10 days or so. Thank you to everyone who got in contact to make sure I’m OK. You’ll be pleased to hear I’m fine and no I’ve not been off on some exotic holiday or struck down with a terrible illness.

No, the lack of posting has been caused by the utter chaos caused by the sudden and unexpected failure of my PC’s main hard drive.

Now I know what you’re thinking. A professional photographer like Gavin would have everything backed up just in case. Well you’re right, I have every wedding, studio shoot, training article and video I’ve every made safely backed up, but there’s a lot more on my PC then just photos.

Emails, correspondence, passwords, stationary, work in progress, internet favourites and mp3’s are just some of the day to day items that I never thought of backing up. Replacing them is taking forever!

So what is the lesson of the past 10 days?

B A C K U P !

Normal blogging will resume later this week.

Gavin.

360 panoramas in Photoshop?

In the last post I talked about how amazingly quick and simple it is to make a panoramic inside of Photoshop. Photomerge has become increasing clever at seamlessly joining overlapping images together, but it does have it's limitations.

First off, if you're using Photoshop CS3 you're limited to a panoramic that covers a field of view that's roughly 180 degrees. That's pretty wide, but Photoshop CS4 can manage an eye spinning 360 degrees.

There's other differences too. For example Photoshop CS4 can join a multi row panorama and even a vertical pano. Photoshop CS3 can't do either of those, although a quick cheat for vertical panos is to rotate the images and trick Photoshop into thinking it's a horizontal image. Just remember to rote the final image back to vertical.

The other major difference between Photomerge in CS3 and CS4 is how wide a lens you can use. I found CS3 was OK with lenses going down to 24mm (on a APS-C camera) but struggled with anything wider. In Photoshop CS4 we have a Geometric Distortion Correction option which allows the use of super wide optics and even fish eye lenses.

So in theory Photoshop CS4 is capable of stitching a full (spherical) 360 degree panoramic. But does it work?

Actually, no. Well ok it does work, but when it comes to full panoramics shot with a 10mm wide angle lens, it's far from perfect.

Have a look at this panoramic I shot today. It's a full 360 pano, so that's everything I could see in front, behind, above and below. 17 images were needed to complete the image.

Click to enlarge

Look closely. Can you see the joins? I'm pretty sure you won't find any. Mind you I didn't use Photoshop, I used Autodesk Stitcher, a purpose built panoramic stitching program.

The location is stunningly peaceful Worth Abbey in Sussex, England and I was lucky enough to be allowed in to take a number of interactive panoramics. Why are they interactive? Well download my virtual reality tour (4mb) to see. Just drag your mouse over the Quicktime "movie" to see exactly what I saw. including the top of my tripod!

Here's the link: http://www.gavtrain.com/free/worth-abbey-VRtour.mov

By the way, vrtual tour images is just one of the services offered as part of my Photography Services. See http://www.gavinphoto.co.uk/

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Preaching to the converted

Wow, doesn’t time rocket past when you’re busy and last week was one of those times. I get to many enjoyable things as a photographer and sometimes I have to remind myself that I’m actually at work. One of the things I enjoy is giving talks to camera clubs and photographic societies all over the UK.

My diary for camera club talks is booking well into 2011, which is great. Usually I try to keep the talks down to a few each month, but last week I presented three lectures in seven days.

Until now, all my talks have been based around Photoshop tutorials. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy teaching Photoshop and they’ve always been hugely popular. But to keep things fresh and exciting for the audience (and for me) I’ve been looking for ways to spice things up a little.

So recently I’ve introduced some live photography to each lecture. The plan is to have some sort of “shoot it, Photoshop it” talk ready for 2011, but because live photography is something of a rarity in UK camera clubs I thought I’d better test drive the theory first.

But what do you photograph at night in front of an audience made up of other photographers? After a bit of head scratching I figured out that the simplest and most interesting thing I could photograph was the audience.

What you see in the picture above is a panoramic image of the members of Horley Camera Club. It's made up of four images stiched together.

How to take a pano
If you’ve never taken a pano before, the technique couldn't be simpler. The first thing to check is your software. If you’re using Photoshop CS4 or CS3 then you’re in luck as it features the newest version of Photomerge. Similarly, users of Elements 6, 7 & 8 are equally blessed with the panoramic stitching power of Photomerge, although it has a few less features.

The next thing to do is take a series of images. For these shots I used my Canon 24-105L lens at its 24mm setting. I cranked up the ISO to 1600 to avoid the use of flash and overlap each image by roughly 30% to ensure a good stitch.

How to stitch a pano
Open all the Images in Photoshop and click File – Automate – Photomerge (Elements users click File – New – Photomerge Panorama)

Use the Auto setting and click the Add Open Files button. Click OK and wait for a few minutes as Photomerge does it’s thing.

It’s that simple.

One quick tip. If you’re pano gets the bow tie effect, meaning it’s stretched out at the corners, restitch it with Geometric Distortion Correction turned on (not available in Elements).

Here’s a the pano’s from the other two clubs.

Gravesend

West Malling

One final tip. If you’re coming to one of my talks, dress smart, sit up and smile!

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Freezing motion in the studio

On the whole studio lights are the best choice when it comes to studio work, but there is one occasion when a speedlite is a much better choice then a studio head. If you want to freeze a moving subject you need a speedlite and a little strobist know how.

First thing that springs to mind when I talk about freezing action is shutter speed. To be honest you’d normally be absolutely spot on, but there’s one very important thing you really need to know about shutter speed and flash.

Every heard the term “sync speed”? It’s the fastest shutter speed your camera can handle where the shutter is open long enough to expose the whole sensor to the flash of light. It’s most likely to be 1/125th 1/200th or even 1/250th second at the most. Go faster then that and you’ll get a horrible black strip over the image. To put it another way, in the studio setting a faster shutter speed isn’t the answer.

So how do you freeze action? Simple, make the burst of light last for less time.

A burst of light from a typical studio flash head will last for around 1/500th second. It’s called the flash duration and you can think of it as the effective shutter speed. 1/500th sec is pretty fast, but that’s a walk in the park for a speedlite which can reach easily speeds of 1/8000th second or faster.

As you’ll see in the video below a speedlite is easily fast enough to freeze my daughter bouncing on a mini trampoline.

As is often the case there was a lot more I could have shown you in the video, so here’s some extra content for my blog readers…

So you’re probably thinking there must be a down side, and you’d be right. First the speedlite isn’t as powerful as a studio flash head, so I increased the iso to 400 to compensate a little. The second problem is the speedlite takes a while to get up to full power which meant several missed shots.

In the studio I use multiple lights to achieve the look I want, but as I only have a couple of speedlites I had to be a bit more careful about where they were placed. The main light was put in a Lastolite ezybox at 45 degrees to the model. To fill in the shadows I placed a large white reflector on the opposite side.

The Pocket Wizard radio flasg triggers are amazing devices allowing you to maintain full E-TTL even off camera. The practical up shot of that is you can forget about setting the flash strength and concentrate on the other stuff, like focus, posing and aperture.

You’ll probably have noticed that I used a second speedlite to light the white background. Although I could have also set that to E-TTL control, experience has taught me that the white background fools the system. So I set the second speedlite to manual and dialled in 1/8th power. I also deployed the flash diffuser to give a big spread of light.

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Me, me, me.

Don't be fooled by the title, this it's one of those "I'm better then you" blog posts. Instead it's an answer to a question from a message I received from a blog reader (yes, I do read EVERY email and message you send).

The question went something like this... I want to take a self portrait like one I've seen somewhere on the internet.

Ok so far, surfing the web is a great way to get ideas and inspiration. The image I was directed to was an excellent image which featured a guy on a skateboard, but unusually it looked like the guy has skating with half a dozen identical twins.

As I can't skate, here's my interpretation of the image.

You can see abigger version on my Flickr page http://www.flickr.com/photos/photogavin/4272359952/

So how's it done, your asking? Well here's your answer, complete with live action video showing all the studio work and that's followed by the complete Photoshop technique.

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Busy week on the net

The new years barely a week old but already things are getting busy. As well as creating a couple of new videos for my blog, I've been working on content for a few other websites.

Lighting tutorial
Over on the smick website I've just completed a video tutorial on studio lighting effects which you can view here. Although the tutorial ,covers video lighting the set up is essentially the same one I use in the studio for portrait photography.

Translated tutorials
At the end of last year I was contacted by Dennis Vermaut who has spent hours and hours translating many of my tutorials in to dutch. I'm really amazed at his dedication. Thank you Dennis. Here's a full list of tutorials and links.
http://www.eleanorcomputing.be/index.php?p=blog&blog=91 ==> Waterdrops
http://www.eleanorcomputing.be/index.php?p=blog&blog=94 ==> Smoke
http://www.eleanorcomputing.be/index.php?p=blog&blog=95 ==> Waterbottle
http://www.eleanorcomputing.be/index.php?p=blog&blog=96 ==> Mirror 3D box
http://www.eleanorcomputing.be/index.php?p=blog&blog=97 ==> HDR
http://www.eleanorcomputing.be/index.php?p=blog&blog=98 ==> Rain
http://www.eleanorcomputing.be/index.php?p=blog&blog=99 ==> James Bond
http://www.eleanorcomputing.be/index.php?p=blog&blog=100 ==> Zip open an apple
http://www.eleanorcomputing.be/index.php?p=blog&blog=101 ==> Fog
http://www.eleanorcomputing.be/index.php?p=blog&blog=102 ==> Image by text
http://www.eleanorcomputing.be/index.php?p=blog&blog=103 ==> Extract filter


Tip Squirrel - Guest Blog
Last but not least today my guest blog post for the tip squirell website goes live. The subject was mine to select and I opted for sharpening in camera RAW. The post has plenty of written content as well as a exclusive video tutorial. To view the post and the video click here

Well that's about it for now. If you're in the UK I hope you're making the most of the snow which still looks fantastic (if a little cold).

How to take amazing photos in the snow

Anyone who lives in the UK will be all too aware that this winter is unusually cold. Snow isn't a rare round these parts but this year has started with an unusually large downfall which has made everywhere look like a winter wonderland.

Of course, no self respecting photographer can resist the temptation of taking snow photos so to help you get decent photos here's a short tutorial on snow photography.

As always I'm not simply making videos for the sake of it, I'm also out taking photos for myself. You can view the photos seen in the video on my flickr page

Here's one of favourite form the day. It's a panoramic made from 6 images. I think this would make an amazing canvas print. 6 images joined together makes for a pretty big image, in fact it can be printed 130cm wide without interpellation.

Click the photo to enlarge

Of course I'm well aware the whole world isn't in the grip of winter and according to Gym, one of my readers in Australia, he's never actually seen real snow!

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