The Elusive White Background

Photos shot on a white background are easy for buyers to use. White provides a consistent color (or non-color, if you will). So, as a result many of us spend time perfecting setups that will allow for people or objects to be isolated on these pure white backgrounds -- "floating in space." Built in camera meters are, unfortunately, not designed to help you achieve that look. Nobody, however well intentioned, can give you a "secret formula" for creating this white background look, but here are some guidelines:

• Your camera will try to make a scene average out to 18% gray. That means a scene that is 40% white will wind up looking gray because the in-camera meter is working at cross purposes to your intent.
• To be white (and that means 255, 255, 255 in RGB), the background must be 1.5 to 2 stops brighter than the main subject.
• Lights tend to produce "hot" spots that could be 2 stops brighter at the center, but falling off at the edges.

These effects look, to read many of the blog posts on the net, easy to achieve by taping a couple of little strobes in strategic positions. This turns out not to be the case for reliable results. Besides the +2 exposure for the background, there are a couple of other questions:

• How do you get a background that bright?
• And how do you make sure that light doesn't pollute your subject?

How to Get a Really Bright Background

There is only one way to do this, with a few variants: Shine a really bright light at it. The variants are that you can shine a light off a white background, shine several lights off that background to reduce falloff at the edges of the frame, or shine bright lights through a translucent background. So that's at least one light in addition to your keylight.

How Not to Get Light Pollution on the Subject

The short answer to this is distance. The further from the background the more distinct the separation between the subject an the background and the less background light will spill around the edges of the subject. The longer answer is that whatever light you have pointing at the background needs to be modified so all of its output is toward the background and none up off the ceiling, or back at the subject. Barn doors, black cards, cereal boxes, anything that doesn't let light shine through is fine.

The Other Option: Photoshop

The words I hate to hear in conjunction with a planned photograph is "and we can Photoshop this later." If you know about the problem beforehand, it's always easier to solve the problem with cropping and lighting. Ok, say that doesn't work. No way do you get your 255, 255, 255 background that you so dearly desire. The temptation is to grab the eraser tool and start hacking. And everything is fine until you get near the object you wanted isolated, at which point, everything begins to look quite artificial.

Here are things to forget about right now:

• Photoshop Extract filter. There's a reason this is no longer in the core product. It is nearly useless, and the amount of time it takes making it work is longer than the amount of time it takes to isolate an image manually.
• Third-party masking tools. These uniformly stink, each in a new and different way. Their demos are staggeringly effective. Funny how the same technique never ever works on a real world image.

The absolute best tool in Photoshop for isolating an object is the pen tool. Depending on who you are and your background, this is either great news, or disastrous. If you are great with vector art and Bezier curve drawing, then drawing a clipping path around an object should be a snap. Won't work for complex things like hair, but straightforward objects are really easy to isolate. If you are less than proficient with the pen tool, then you may find this a grueling task. The only advice I can offer is, "practice." Nobody was born knowing how to do this. Oh, and remember that part about getting it right in camera being easier!

Packing My Photo Gear Bag

I have some heavy gear -- more than my back likes me to carry, but what to take? Having taken everything but the kitchen sink for years and felt a bit sheepish when a lot of the gear didn’t get used, I’ve taken to thinking through the “absolutely must-have” gear before going on a location shoot. Here’s why.

I move around a lot. And my bag moves around a lot. And that means I carry my bag around a lot. Which gets old, and in a hurry. So, I’ve taken to examining likely shooting scenarios and taking the camera bod(ies), lens(es), and light(s) that are most likely to be useful. In making these selections, I know there will be times when I will think, “if only I had my …”, but I also know I will make more images if I have a lighter load.

So, here’s a thought exercise I often run through:

• What’s the best camera for the job. Most of my gear is pretty interchangeable, but one stands out for action photography and that’s the 1D Mark II. It’s super fast and never misses a shot. Another consideration is how long do I expect to be carrying it. The weight difference between a 1Ds Mark III Canon body is about 49oz. Compare that to the 5D Mark II at 30oz. The 5D is only 60% the weight of the 1Ds. Over the course of a day walking around, especially if it’s hot, and you have something you’ll remember. The other consideration is do I need gazillions of pixels. One great reason to bring a high-resolution camera is that the images can be used in many more applications than images made on a camera with a smaller sensor. If I think I’m really onto something and not on a scouting shoot, I’ll typically bring as much camera as I think I can lift.


• What range of focal-lengths do I expect? If this is a subject I know well, I might only bring one or two lenses. If not, I will normally bring a set of zoom lenses that cover the expected range. Some great lenses from Canon are:
  
  
  
  • 16-35mm wide-angle zoom
  • 24-105L zoom
  • 70-200L zoom
  
  
• How much battery power do I need. I know about how many shots I get on a charge, and have prepared fresh batteries, but no need to carry more than necessary. They are just dead weight. If I don’t know, then I carry one more than the maximum I think I might possibly need. Two are often enough. Especially now that Canon has gotten their power systems to the point where you get quite a number of RAW images on a single charge. I take into account the amount of burst shooting I might do (more battery intensive), how much AI Servo focusing I expect, and any other things that might negatively affect battery life.


• How many lights will I need? If I am doing available light photography such as scenics or night, then I might leave all the flashes behind. If I’m doing people, do I need one or more lights, and how about remote triggers/stands? One thing with the lights: A small diffuser will go a long way toward making subjects look more natural, and they weigh practically nothing. I like the ones from Lumiquest, but any diffuser will help.


• Does this shoot require a tripod or am I better off hand-holding. A tripod is a mixed blessing. It will get in the way when I’m in tight quarters, and it’s more weight to pack. But, there are some shots that simply don’t happen without one. If I know I need a tripod, I also need a remote release.

One thing I think about less often with digital are filters. They are simply not the issue that they were with transparency film, where the point of capture was pretty much the photographer’s last chance to influence color. The two that are normally in my bag are polarizers (not too often used), and a UV or Skylight on every lens. If I’m looking for some particular effect I’d prefer to do at the point of capture, such as a star or soft filter, I might bring these. But not so much anymore.

Comments are, as always, welcome. What’s in your bag?

Packing Tips

“There are two kinds of travelers in the world: those who packed light and those who wish they had.”

I love that quote. One of my favorite tips not mentioned in the article is; cross pack items in two suitcases. When traveling with your spouse, partner or friend, pack some of your clothing in each piece of luggage. If one of them gets lost, you’ll both still have something to wear.

To read more great suggestions on packing, go to: Packing Tips on travelsense.org.

For additional packing information, there are more suggested sites at the end of the article and on our affiliate clothing websites. Both TravelSmith and Magellan’s offer trav-savvy packing tips. Plus you’ll find all the best in light-weight and wrinkle-free clothing for your cruise, backpacking adventure, or photo safari.

DNG? DxO Optics Pro Ain't Buying It

DxO Pro Optics doesn’t understand Adobe DNG files. Can you blame them? Here’s more information about DNG files and how to make them more compatible with third-party (read: not Adobe) tools.

I’ll admit it, I’ve drunk the Kool-Aid and am now starting to convert my RAW files into DNG (Digital Negative) files as I import them. It makes the Lightroom/Photoshop integration much more straightforward because it preserves all the RAW adjustments you do in Lightroom as metadata right in the DNG without need for an extra sidecar XMP file.

And all is well with this Universal Standard until you stray from the Adobe fold. It turns out DNG is universally-Adobe. Many other vendors also recognize the DNG file as well. For example, Microsoft Expression Media, Extensis Portfolio, CameraBits PhotoMechanic to name a few. But try to import one of these puppies into anotherRAW image converter like DxO Optics and you are the proverbial toast. They just won’t gobble up a DNG like it was a RAW file.

So, let’s back up a couple of paces. Why not just keep things in RAW and let all the converters live in peace? Almost all of my reasoning behind this is related to the metadata. DNG wraps the original Camera Raw file into a more neutral format together with IPTC and EXIF metadata. And you ask, yeah, so? Well the IPTC data, and in particular the keywords, title, and caption information, have typically been stored in a separate file and I didn’t want to store two files for each image. Further, the processing flow from Lightroom to Photoshop is so keen win DNGs. You do whatever you’re comfortable doing in Lightroom then use Command+S to save the metadata. Then drag and drop the image from Lightroom onto Photoshop. That way, you wind up smack in the middle of Adobe Camera RAW with all the adjustments you made in Lightroom already in place.

Ok, so we’ve established that I’ve not only drunk the Kool-Aid but have also decided on a workflow that does not really include DxO Optics. But there are certain use-cases for a tool like DxO. One of these is where you have a really warped image and you need a straight one. Say, for example, you shoot an image in a tight space like a kitchen. You can use a wide-angle lens, and you get the predictable exaggeration of the lines that wide angle gives you as well as the converging lines. How do you get straight walls and such? Well, you could go out and get a view camera but that seems too much like hard work, so have a look at DxO. It has the most insane perspective correction module on this planet and possibly in this solar system.

If you get into a pickle where you have a DNG, make sure you are embedding the original RAW file in your DNG. That way, you can extract it later if you need the facilities offered by the camera manufacturer’s converter or a tool like DxO. For Lightroom users, see this handy explanation of how to accomplish this.

Canon 5D Mark II

The Canon 5D Mark II is a very capable camera, combining the compact footprint and light weight of the 40D with the full-frame 21 megapixel sensor of the 1Ds Mark III.

I didn’t race right out to have a look at the very first 5D Mark II off the production line. However, the 1Ds is a somewhat bulky camera for certain field work and I decided to give the new 5D a look. Here are some initial impressions:

Sound too good to be true? Is it a 1Ds Mark III for less money that won’t put a permanent dent in your shoulder. Qualified “no.” I shot the two side-by-side and here is what I found:

• The 5D is amazingly quiet. So quiet, if fact, that it doesn’t seem you’ve made your exposure. Spooky… but cool in a way.
• Canon implemented a feature called “Live View” on the 40D and later 1-Series DSLRs. This sounds kind of dumb initially. After all, who uses an LCD plate on aDSLR? It turns out to be incredibly useful for no-shake, deliberately composed studio shots. The 5D also has this feature, but it is tangled up in the video features of the camera, so it is easier to make mistakes and clunkier to use than the same feature on the 1Ds. Clunky because if you’re a dyed-in-the-wool Canon user, you will come to expect the SET button (you know, the one in the middle of that big wheel you turn with your thumb) to control important functions. The SET button turns Live View on and off on the 40D and 1Ds MarkIII, but there is a separate button on the 5D that is overloaded to both control Live View and control the HD video capability. I’m sure that, over time, I would get used to this, but my first encounter with this particular control was not a positive one.
• As one might expect, the resolution from the 5D is amazing. The RAW images come out to about 22MB, so buy more hard disks. A subjective opinion: The images from the 5D are way better than the 40D just because of the density. The images from the 1Ds Mark III seem “creamier,” if that’s a good way to characterize image quality.
• Flash. Prosumer cameras from Canon – and I categorize the 5D at the top of that basket – have always had built in flashes. They weren’t great, but in an absolute emergency, the could provide some fill. The 1-series never has had built-in flashes, on the assumption that carrying heavy gear makes you a good photographer (I made that part up). Anyhow, if you decide on a 5D, set aside a few dollars for one of the 580EX speedlights.
• Feel. I’ve been shooting with the 1D and 1Ds bodies for the last several years and every time I pick up a camera without a vertical-release grip, I feel like someone cut a hand off. It’s just plain weird. If you have gotten used to a vertical release grip, then you might want to consider the add-on accessory for the 5D.
• Weather hardening. This is a major point Canon makes in their sales. The 1-series bodies have more weather-resistant seals at all their coupling points – lens mount, electronics attachment points, etc. But if you use your camera with some care and don’t drop it in water, then saving a few thousand dollars can go a long way toward making you feel better.
• Sensor cleaning and mapping. The new Canon cameras have these features. They are better than nothing, but you will still need to clean your sensor. Period. I don’t care what the sales pitch is, sensors attract junk and not all that junk can be shaken off. Caveat photographer when you use your sensor cleaning gizmo-du-jour. Sensor filters can be scratched and damaged easily. Now, to mapping, this seems like a non-feature to me. You have to use the Canon software to take advantage of it. Basically, the idea is that the software identifies and remembers repeated “bad spots” caused by hot pixels or persistent dust. It then edits these spots out using some kind of nearest-neighbor algorithm. This works pretty well on the large sensors because there is just so much data, but I have to come back to the fact that you have to use the Canon software. Using Adobe Camera RAW is so infinitely superior that it renders any advantage from this sensor mapping irrelevant when compared to all the ACR utility you would have to give up if you used the Canon software.
• Lens performance. Here is the bad news: The old lenses that were performing quite nicely, thank you very much, won’t anymore. Two reasons: 1) The sensor has far greater resolution; and 2) Full-frame sensors bring out chromatic aberration near the edges of images, especially an minimum or maximum apertures. This is not a new problem, nor is it a problem unique to the 5D. It just is. The CA adjustment in Adobe Camera RAW will clean up all but the worst offenders. I am able to get acceptable performance out of my 15mm fisheye and 17-35mm wide zoom. The chromatic aberration is there at f/2.8 and sometimes at f/22, but f/5.6 through f/11 are just fine.

So, bottom line: If you are wanting a full-frame (35mm aspect ratio) sensor 21 megapixel camera with (drum roll) HD video capabilities, then the 5D is a great choice at a good price (street price about $2,700). If you are very demanding of your camera and of your images, then you will want to get the 1-series body – either the 1D Mark IIIfor crop sensor or 1Ds Mark III for full-frame.

Feel free to comment, agree, disagree, or point out the “killer” feature you love about this camera.