Author: Tom

Being Prepared Means Having Your Batteries Ready!

by Tom

AA Battery PackI’m pretty good at keeping my batteries charged and ready to go but every now and then I slack off or I forget I took a few hundred photos thinking I still have plenty of battery life left. For the most part I’ve escaped any real trouble but more recently, I learned a very valuable lesson!

While shooting the airshow at the CNE in Toronto my camera suddenly died! The battery packs, both of them in my Vello BG-C5 Battery Grip were dead. I was able to eject and reset the camera to get a few more images out before the camera would not even turn on anymore.

Remote TriggerIt was not what I had planned for at all! What angered me even more was the fact that sitting at home I had a special adapter for the Velo unit that allowed me to use AA batteries in place of the canon lithium battery packs. Had I brought the adapter which weighs only mere ounces and consumes very little space I could have quickly grabbed some alkaline batteries and been on my way shooting again getting at least another few hundred photos before those died.

Having learnt my lesson I purchased some good quality rechargeable batteries just for the Velo AA adapter and even purchased two spare canon lithium packs. Because I also carry other things that need batteries such as my GPS unit, I also now keep four spare AA batteries and a set of AAA batteries for my remote trigger and anything else that may need them.

Spare BatteriesLastly, I keep a 4 pack of alkaline batteries that are set to expire sometime in 2020 as a last resort emergency solution.

I also make sure my batteries are not some crappy no name brand, I’ve had those before and they sometimes can’t even hold a charge in anything for more than a couple minutes.

You’ll probably notice that all of my batteries in the images are rechargeable, and that’s because I hate wasting energy and money. With my rapid charger I can pretty much fill up 4 batteries of any type in about 15 – 20 minutes, so that means between my two Canon 600EX-RT Speedlite’s each taking 4 batteries, the Velo AA Grip taking six, the 4 spare AA’s and 2 spare AAA’s totaling up to 20 batteries, it only takes about 1hr and 40 minutes assuming they are all drained and need a full 20 minutes to charge. If they were all alkaline that means I would be spending close to $50 on batteries after tax since a four pack of Energizer’s or Duracell’s would cost around $8 to $12 dollars and I would need 5 packs!

Having the two extra lithium batteries for the Velo grip is also a bonus, I keep them charged giving me 4 sets of lithium batteries to work with and assuming I can shoot 400 photos per battery set I’m good for about 800 photos plus another 250 images with the AA adapter. You might call it overkill but I call having the ability to shoot 1050 images assurance that no matter what happens, I’m prepared and you should be too.

Simulating Medium & Large Format Landscape Photography

by Tom
Humber River During Late Summer by Vaughan Weather

Do you ever see those wonderful landscape photos with the bright vibrant colours, the smooth silky water and soft moving clouds?

Well chances are you have and these photos have traditionally been the domain of medium and large format field cameras using a bellows and rear plate which holds a piece of sheet film. The advantage these cameras have is that they can shift and tilt which corrects perspective, they have super small apertures, sometimes as high as F/60 giving an incredible and crisp depth of field. The downside is that that they are big, slow to setup, a tripod is necessary and you really need to know what you’re doing because film isn’t cheap and you won’t know what you have until well after the fact.

That said, in my opinion everything about medium and large format makes it special and often the results are well worth the effort needed!

In today’s digital world, you can simulate large format images but it takes patience and even more time to setup and go through the process than it would with a 4×5 box camera.

The super high apertures associated with medium and large format field cameras have the effect of not only producing super sharp images but also serve to slow down time immensely and what I mean by that is they will require a 1 – 4 second exposure (or longer) even in full daylight. This allows water and clouds to smear into a silky looking surface which is highly desirable.

Moss Covered Stones

In order to achieve the same effect with a digital SLR you need neutral density filters and good strong ones. My favourite ND is the B+W ND110 which knocks down light by about 11 f-stops. If you shoot at F/11 with the filter you effectively now have an F/22 setting and this can turn a full daylight exposure that would be 1/500th of a second normally into a 3 or 4 second exposure. This will allow you to get the desired silky effect that has been a staple of medium format landscape images for over a century.

In order to achieve the same level of sharpness, you need to take multiple images at slightly different focal lengths; you’ll need at least 4 images using an F/22 setting and 8 images at F/11 from infinity to maybe 6 meters. You can then import these images into an application like Photoshop and have them automatically aligned and then stacked, this process is called focus stacking because only the sharpest parts of the images will be combined giving a near true infinite depth of field.

Naturally between the filter forcing the camera to require a long exposure and having to take multiple images at different focal lengths you can easily spend five or ten minutes just getting one photo that you still have to process which is longer than you would need with a medium or large format camera.
But at the end of the day, as long as you took the time to frame your scene and had patience your end result will certainly be pleasing if not simply impressive!

A Quick Collage

by Tom
Gravel Collage by Vaughan Weather

It’s easy to ignore the simpler things beneath our feet or above our heads but sometimes a simple pattern on an asphalt road or interlock pathway can make a wonderful photo if framed from above looking down.
In this case, the stone covered shore along Lake Ontario provided me with a wonderful random collage of rocks. I’ve actually taken numerous photos of the ground along this same stretch of shoreline under all sorts of lighting conditions. Generally speaking I find morning/evening and overcast daylight are the best conditions. Full sun works sometimes and can be very useful in creating high contrast images but sometimes it washes out too much detail or makes the image too harsh.

Whatever the case, next time you’re walking past anything, a wall, a fence, the ground, a roof, just take a second and stop. Think to yourself, if I took a photo of the pattern or random assortment of pieces composing the whole, would it be a cool photo?

Chances are the answer is yes, and you might just surprise yourself how you can find great photos almost anywhere!