Drop-dead Gorgeous photo books

I just got my first 10" x 8" hardcover photobook back from Blurb.com. All I can say is 'WOW'. With about 4 hours of work and a $69 investment I was able to turn a library of my favorite photos into a beautiful 330 page 'coffee-table' quality photo book. Really stunning. I've used other 'photo book' services in the past, but Blurb was the most cost-effective (by a long shot) and delivers exceptional quality. I believe that a lot of the photo print services, such as ShutterFly, are using photo books to to improve margins. With 4x6 prints now selling for about 10 cents each, the profits on small prints is very thin. Since all Blurb is selling is 'photo books', they need to offer superior quality at a great price. Blurb pricing is particularly cost-effective for large books - whereas a lot of their competition really 'stick it to you' for multi-hundred page books, Blurb pricing/page gets better as the number of pages increase. The ability to cost-effectively create large books also makes it easier to justify doing 1 full-bleed photo per page. Blurb offers their books in both hardcover and softcover versions with the softcover version costing about $10 less per book. I ordered a softcover version also, and it's fine, but the hardcover is especially handsome. They offer books in a couple sizes including 7" x 7", 10" x 8", 8" x 10", 13" x 11". You can also make your book available for friends and family to purchase via the Blurb web-site, you can also make your book available for purchase to the public with a 'mark-up' (of your choice) for yourself. I think this is a great tool for creating a portfolio of your photography, a summary of your photography for each year, a photo summary of a wedding/event, etc. Check it out:

www.blurb.com

My fix for garish-color, high-ISO indoor shots

I love the high-ISO capability of my Canon DSLR, combined with my 50 f1.4 or 24 f2.8 lenses I can take some great indoor shots of the kids without flash (I don't like the 'snap-shot' look I get when I turn on the flash.) The problem is that for ISO 1600/3200 indoor photography I'm unhappy with the 'garish-color'. My 'easy fix' for this is to shoot in 'Sepia-tone'. To shoot in Sepia tone, set picture-style to 'monochrome' with the toning effect set to Sepia. The photos come out great and the digital noise that looks horrible in color, looks like ISO 400 black and white film-grain when shooting as a Sepia-tone. I also turn sharpening down to 0, so the camera is not sharpening all the noise. I personally use this technique for almost 100% of my indoor people photography. Here's an example:

Camera: Canon 5D, lens: Canon 24 f.28, Mode: Av, Aperture: f2.8, shutter-speed: 1/80th, ISO 1600, picture style: faithful, white balance: auto (AWB). Everything is Orange, Yuck.

Same photo but with my best attempt at a custom white balance. The correct white balance gets rid of the bad Orange cast from incorrect white balance. Much better, but still too cold and too flat.

Ahhh, there we go. I really like Sepia-tone style for these high-ISO indoor shots.

This obviously is not such a good technique if you really have your heart set on color :)

Recommended photography skills books

There are 2 books I recommend folks read to understand the basics of photography and using their Canon DSLR. The first book is Dennis Curtin's 'short course on photography using Canon DSLRs', the second book is your camera manual. Dennis' short courses on photography explain the basics of photography, inluding exposure, shutter-speed, aperture, depth-of-field, etc. but do so with examples specific to the model of camera you have. This is my #1 recommended accessory for your Canon DSLR. Buy and read this book before you invest in more camera gear - learn how to use the amazing capabilities of the Canon DSLR you own. This blog assumes the reader has a basic understanding of photography and is designed to 'start' where these 2 books end. My blog is about taking your basic knowledge of photography and your camera and applying these principals to making great photos. I recommend reading Dennis' 'short course on photography' first, then doing a lot of practicing, and then reading your camera manual. Dennis has different versions of this book for each model of Canon DSLR. Here are links to the various 'flavors' of Dennis' book on Amazon.com:

A Short Course in Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT/350D Photography (Book & eBook)

A Short Course in Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi/400D Photography book/ebook

A Short Course in Canon EOS 20D Photography (Book & CD-ROM)

A Short Course in Canon EOS 30D Photography

A Short Course in Canon EOS 40D Photography book/ebook

A Short Course in Canon EOS 5D Photography book/ebook

Ok - but all your photos are with 5D!

Ok - so I imagine there a some readers out there thinking -- these are some 'cool photos', but Clint is shooting with a 5D -- I've got a Rebel XT, Rebel XTi, 20D, 30D, 40D, etc. First of all, I do love my 5D, it's the best camera I have ever owned, but with that being said I could make 98% of the photos in my portfolio with a Rebel XTi. I might use a different lens on a crop-sensor body than on a full-frame body, becauses of differences in effective focal lengths, but I could get the same shot. The only exception to this would be the shallower depth of field possible with the larger full-frame sensor of the 5D, and even then the difference would not be massive, you can still get a nice 'blurry background' with a crop-sensor body. Keep in mind that there are also benefits of a crop-sensor body over a full-frame body, including an effective 1.6X telephoto factor, smaller/ligher body, lower purchase price and a built-in flash.

Creating cool light trails

Canon 5D, 50mm f1.4 lens, manual exposure of 2.5 second @ f1.6, ISO 400, external flash

Here is another one of my favorite shots of Sawyer. We were sitting on the beach with a great bonfire going and the kids were putting sticks into the fire and then swinging them through the air. I had my camera handy so I figured I'd see if I could make a neat photo out of the action (bearing in mind, it was pitch black out.)

So, I mounted my 50mm f1.4 lens (the lens in my bag the best light gathering capability -- because of it's wide f1.4 aperture). I set the aperture to F1.6 (this lens is 'soft' @ 1.4 - it isn't even very sharp at f1.6, but I was choosing 'gather more light' over 'be razor sharp.) I set the ISO to 400. I used the focus assist feature of my external flash so the camera could focus in the darkness (I originally had the flash set to 'not fire', as the picture I was trying to capture was just the light trail.) I played around with the shutter-speed, eventually deciding that I liked 2.5 seconds (using manual exposure [f1.6, 2.5 seconds.]) This was very much a 'trial and error' process. This combination gave me a great light trail, but I couldn't see Sawyer in the picture at all - just the light trail. So, I thought "I'll use the flash to light Sawyer". I left the manual exposure settings @ f1.6, 2.5 second but turned on the flash and this gave me the exact same 'light trail', but Sawyer was now lit - this made me feel like a photography genius. The default flash settings over-exposed Sawyer, so I tweaked the flash exposure compensation, ending-up with a -1/3 flash exposure compensation. I did also tilt the external flash up about 30 degrees, so the flash didn't 'light-up' so much of the beach. The shot was done hand-held (the flash is what 'freezes' the Sawyer in the photo.) It took about 30 frames before I found the combination of settings that produced this type of photo. I then had to take about 30 more frames to get some 'good' light trails. So it's very much a trail and error process, looking at each image you capture and adjusting 1 setting at a time until you get the image you want. Knowing what to tweak to change the aimge you capture does require an understanding of shutter-speed, aperture, ISO and basic lighting.

Technical details:

• Lens: Canon 50mm f1.4. I needed a lens that could gather as much light as possible, given it was pitch dark out.
• Manual Exposure: I used manual exposure for this photo because I wanted 100% control over both the aperture and the shutter-speed.
• Aperture: f1.6. Given it was pitch-dark out, I wanted an aperture that let in lots of light. The 50 f1.4 produces soft images from f1.4 to f2.0 - I choose f1.6 becuase 'light gathering' was more important that absolute image sharpness.
• Shutter-speed: 2.5 seconds. Leaving the shutter open for this long is what creates the long light trail.
• ISO: 400. Higher ISO speed increases the sensitivity of the sensor to light - in essense allowing the sensor to gather more light. But, higher ISO's also have more noise. ISO 400 gave me the balance of gather lots of light - without introducing any noise. In addition, I didn't want to gather 'too much light' as I wanted to keep a black background (at ISO 1600 I saw too much background which cluttered the image.)
• Flash: I did use my external EX-420 flash for both 'flash assist' (this throws a pattern of red grid-lines on the subject to assist the camera's auto-focus system) and to light the subject. The flash is what illuminates Sawyer in the picture - without the flash all you would see is the light trail. I tilted the flash 'up' 30 degrees, which caused the flash to light the subject, but not the ground.
• Flash Expsoure Compensation: -1/3. Without any flash compensation, the flash power was too high and Sawyer was over-exposed.

Here are a couple other photos from the evening:

Canon 5D, 50mm f1.4 lens, manual exposure of 2.5 second @ f1.8, ISO 400, external flash

Canon 5D, 50mm f1.4 lens, manual exposure of 2.5 second @ f1.8, ISO 400, external flash