I recently got a new 4GB CF card, and I have a couple CF card readers. I was inspired to see how much of a difference in speed I really get on my main machine, a 15” MacBook Pro, using various combinations of cards and readers. Like my Canon 17-40L vs 18-55 Lens Comparison, this is not a scientific shootout, by any means. It’s a quick real-world test of the equipment I’ve got on hand. Your results will most certainly vary…

The Players:

• CF Card Readers
  • Lexar Pro Series Compactflash Readers Firewire 400
  • Lexar USB 2.0 6-in-1 Card Reader
• CF Cards
  • SanDisk 4GB Extreme III
  • SanDisk 2GB Ultra II
  • Viking 512MB

The Script:

I created a test file of exactly 200M [created with openssl rand (10241024200)]. For each pair of reader and card, I wrote the file using ‘time cp 200M.dat /Volumes/CFCard/200M.dat’ and recorded the real time spent. I then read the same file back off the card to a clean location on my local hard drive. All tests were performed on my 15” MacBook Pro, and in addition, I tested the highest-performance configuration with a Quad-core Mac Pro as well.

The Numbers:

The Conclusions:

A few conclusions I’ve drawn from this test:

• Higher-end CF Cards yield dramatically better write performance. This is critical not so much when writing to them from a computer (a rare case), but is very important when shooting burst mode, especially with RAW files. You never want slow card writes to be blocking you when the perfect shot frames itself in your viewfinder! The Extreme III was the clear winner for write performance.
• Reading on a MacBook Pro is limited by the local hard drive speed, not by the bus speed, card speed, or card reader speed. This was the biggest surprise to me. It turns out that on my laptop setup, all the read speeds were in the same range. However, you’ll see on the Mac Pro (with a much faster bus and local drives), read performance was significantly higher.

So I would say, if you are a serious shooter, with high-volumes of data, your best bet is to get a fast computer with fast drives. Next, you’ll want a great FW card reader (there are FW800 versions of the Lexar Pro series available, which I didn’t have on-hand for this test). Either way, be sure you have a high-write-performance card, as this effects not only post-shooting workflow, but also allows you to be more agile when shooting in the field. Never let your equipment get in the way of your art…

My recent shooting at the IFL MMA Event reminded me that there are a lot of things one has to get right when shooting indoor action sports, so I thought I’d write a rare article for this blog outlining some tips for those embarking on this exciting type of photography.

These tips are good for shooting sports like MMA or Boxing, basketball, gymnastics, or theater events like bhangra dancing

Whenever you’re shooting fast-moving targets, shutter-speed is of the essence. If your main subject is blurry, the photo is typically viewed as a reject no matter how well composed, exposed, or processed. When shooting outdoor sports like auto racing or baseball, controlling shutter speed is generally pretty easy, as there’s plenty of light to work with. In some cases, like those outlined in my panning primer, you actually fight to get less light through the lens. But indoors, it’s nearly always a battle for more light, faster shutter speeds, and rapid-fire action shooting.

So on with the tips. Most of these are directly aimed at allowing you to achieve shutter speeds in the neighborhood of 1/500s – 1/2000s, a great range for stopping motion to capture those critical action moments.

1. Fast Lenses Only – Anything worse than a f/2.8 maximum aperture need not apply for most indoor action shooting. Experiment a little in your own house or apartment. Go into a well-lit room during the day, turn on all the lights. Now see what it takes to shoot in those ideal conditions at 1/500s, or even better 1/2000s, and you’ll see how little light there really is indoors. It’s even worse in a spottily lit arena, theater, or stadium.

2. Aperture-Priority – Shoot in aperture-priority mode, and lock that aperture at it’s maximum size. You can also shoot manual to get this effect, but I find unless you are quite comfortable shooting fully-manual in a fast-paced atmosphere, you’re better off letting the camera take some of the exposure work, so you can worry about pressing that trigger at the crucial moments.

3. High ISO – Just save yourself the headache and max out your ISO right from the start, you’ll want it. 1600 is great, go 3200 if you’ve got it. Today’s modern SLRs do a spectacular job of managing noise at high ISO settings, and taking advantage of it for indoor action is a big step towards getting those shutter speeds under control.

4. No Flash – Don’t even think about using a flash for serious indoor sports shooting. A few reasons to avoid flash include a) Your flash is very unlikely to have the range to properly light the action in front of you, unless you are photographing cockroach races or some such micro-sport, b) Unless you have an extremely fancy camera, your flash-sync speed will necessarily limit your shutter speed to something too slow to adequately capture the action (my camera has a respectable but insufficient 1/200s flash sync speed, and many DSLRs are limited to 1/125s or even 1/60s), and c) It might be disallowed in the venue, as it’s likely to distract the athletes or performers

5. Expose Dark – There is an important rule in digital photography that you should always “expose right”, and I definitely recommend you follow it….usually. In the case of eeking out the most light you can and effectively stopping the action, you may consider setting your camera to expose “left”, putting the exposure compensation down at -1/3, -1.0, or even lower, thus lowering the shutter-speed that your camera selects

6. Maximize Burst Mode – A great technique for action photography is to use your camera’s burst mode. When the action heats up, just hold down your shutter button and let the camera capture as fast as it’ll allow. A few sub-tips to help maximize your success in this mode:

   • Shoot JPG – It pains me to not shoot RAW. But again unless you have a very high-end camera, you’ll be limited in your ability to shoot rapid-fire burst shots in RAW, as the file sizes are large and will quickly fill-up your in-camera buffer.
   • Big, Fast Storage Media – Another way you can be nice to your in-camera buffer is to provide a fast hungry media card to move photos quickly to permanent storage while bursting. And don’t forget, burst mode eats through memory like nothing else, so don’t get stuck with too small a card. For many of you shooting with Compact Flash cards, I use and recommend something like the SanDisk 4GB Extreme III, or if your camera supports the newest UDMA standard (most, including mine, don’t at the time of this writing), check out the impressive Lexar 8GB Professional UDMA
   • Disable In-Camera Noise Reduction – Some cameras have custom-functions for reducing noise directly within the camera’s image processing chipset. These typically reduce dramatically the burst-mode capacity, so it’s good to check your manual on that before you go out shooting rapid-fire.

7. Servo-Mode Autofocusing – Be aware that shooting rapidly in low-light is a real challenge for your autofocus system. (That’s another reason to obey tip #1 and stick with fast lenses, they are better at AF) If your camera as an “AI Servo Autofocus” mode (like Canon’s), or equivalent, it’s probably worth using in an environment like this.

Finally, a note about workflow: You’ll shoot a lot more photos when doing this type of work than any other events or art photography, even model-shoots. As always, you’re doing well if ~10% of your shots meet your personal standards for “usable” captures. And if the setup allows for a laptop or dedicated unit to offload your storage media as you go, take advantage of it. Practice your workflow ahead of time, so you don’t miss any of the action, but also have the peace-of-mind of knowing that you can take as many shots as you want (bits are cheap!), and that you are protected against any tragedy that might befall your media cards during the event or in transport. No one ever regretted having backups of their shots!

Enjoy! If you use any of these tips, leave a comment and point us at examples of your exciting indoor action photography!

A new version of this site launched today. The major site changes include:

• A new look and feel, less clutter, more focused on the photos
• New 800px wide images, for better appreciation
• Information about the site, photography resources, and clear copyright information
• A whole new backend, powered by WordPress that should allow more flexibility in the future

I hope that this redesign gives more emphasis to the photos and less on the “blog”. I apologize to those of you with small monitors, it does require a 1024×768 minimum to really get the impact of the photos, and ideally even larger.

If you have feedback, or find things broken or not to your taste in the new design, please let me know! Otherwise, I hope you enjoy, and it’s time to get back to taking photos regularly for me.

(Yes, I know some of you myspace.com folks have been using my large images as site backgrounds. If you are going to use images without permission (I’m happy to give it if you ask), at least copy them to your own server, in case I move them around on my end like I did with this redesign. If you get permission from me, you’ll get a high-resolution copy of an image, with instructions for posting it as your background. Thanks!)

Here’s a brief tutorial on the technique of “panning”. It’s a very exciting way to capture action for planes, trains, and automobiles.

Download the 3-page PDF file (~800KB) here.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, in no small part because my Digital Rebel was in the shop getting the back-plane autofocus components replaced. It’s now back safe and sound, and seems to be fixed.

Not having a camera got me itching, and when combined with the fact that I’ve really wanted something more portable to stick in my pocket at all times, was enough motivation to go get a pocket camera.

I picked up a silver model of the Olympus Stylus Verve μ-mini. And boy is it mini.

Just to give a sense of how much more portable this is than my SLR camera bag, here’s a shot of the Verve next to my Canon 70-200/2.8L IS lens.

The camera is definitely targeted at consumers, and even has on-board effects. Here’s a shot, unaltered out of the camera, with a few copies made (in camera) with the on-board effects. Yoy can click on any of them to enlarge to the full camera original.

Raw Image

Sepia Tone

Fish Eye Effect

Black & White

Soft Focus

Overall, it’s a cute little camera so far. Fits my needs to be able to toss it around in my pocket so I have a camera at the ready all the time. The one weird thing to get used to is not having a viewfinder. The only way to frame your picture is with the LCD screen. I hope that this will actually help me be a better photographer by forcing me to think about the world through a 2-dimensional lens. We’ll see…

So for Christmas, Santa left me a couple of nice continuous lights to replace the 1000W halogen Craftsman work lamps I’d been using. So in honor of the new lights, here’s a quick comparison which shows off pretty clearly the benefits of soft light.

Here’s the setup. There is an overhead light (A), a right hand halogen (B), left hand halogen (C), and camera position (D).

The first shot was taken with just the 60W overhead bulb. Although the shadows are hidden mostly by the bottles from this angle, they are fairly harsh.

This next shot was lit with a 500EX flash to the right of the camera. This clearly shows why flashes are not such a good idea for closeup portraits!

Now we turn a 600W halogen light, with no softening umbrella used, from position A. This has the harshest shadows of all. The small lightsource so close to the subject creates very dark shadows and very bright hot-spots (highlights) on the bottles.

Through the miracle of diffusing, we take the same lighting from the previous photo, but bounce the light off the inside of a reflective umbrella. Even with this basic setup, we see that the shadows are softened significantly.

Finally, taking two such umbrella lights, placing them as shown in the setup photo, we have this shot.

This is a simple example, and shows what softening the light and removing shadows is all about. These are far from professional results. Some backlighting would be helpful to remove the shadows entirely, and there’s nothing particularly sexy about these results. They aren’t going to convince any ad-readers to buy Grey Goose. But hopefully this experiment has been educational and clear.

Thanks Santa. Now it’s time to get into making some art with these new lighting possibilities!

I recently upgraded from the Canon Digital Rebel 300D kit lens, the EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6, to the Canon EF 17-40mm f/4.0 “L-glass” lens. As one would expect, and hope, the much more expensive L-series lens has proved much more capable optically and mechanically. But I thought before I got rid of the EF-S 18-55mm, I’d post an entry with a quick comparison.

Note:This comparison was made with the Mark I version of the 18-55mm lens. Canon released a Mark II along with the release of the Digital Rebel XT 8MP body, which supposedly changes some of the optical characteristics. So take this comparison with a grain of salt, as they say.

First off, this is not intended to be a full review of either of these lenses. there are plenty of reviews out there on the web, and anyone seriously considering buying either of these lenses should certainly review those. This entry is just a quick side-by-side of the two lenses, to satisfy my own curiosity.

The 18-55 is an extremely light, “consumer” zoom, all plastic. The weight makes it really convenient. But the other mechanics of it are definitely lower-grade. The front element moves when zooming and the focusing ring is external, turns filters when focusing, and is difficult to manipulate manually. The 17-40 is a pro lens from Canon’s high-end series, and although much heavier, also feels rock-solid. It’s all metal, has internal focusing, and a real USM motor mechanism. It also is somewhat larger, and has a much bigger front lens element, 77mm as compared to the smaller 58mm (much cheaper filters!) of the 18-55.

The 18-55 lens is usable only on the Canon Digital Rebel 300D, as it uses the new EF-S mount. The “S” stands for short-back, and indicates that the lens back protrudes farther into the camera body than allowed by cameras other than the 300D. There are resources on the web with instructions for modifying this lens physically to mount on all EF-mount bodies, which could make it a great inexpensive ultra-wide-angle lens on film bodies. The 17-40 works on all Canon EF-mount cameras.

It’s worth mentioning again the “digital crop-factor” of most Canon digital cameras (the exception being the full-frame $8000 Canon 1Ds). These digital cameras operate with a sensor frame smaller than that of a 35mm film frame, and thus effectively crop out the edges of the frame, with a factor of 1.6. So the 18-55mm lens has an equivalent view of 28-88mm, and the 17-40mm has an effective view of 27-64mm. This means that although these lenses are extremely wide-angle lenses optically, they are more standard wide-zooms on digital cameras. As a side note, I haven’t heard anything about the optically quality at the edges of the 18-55 on a full-frame body (as it doesn’t naturally fit those), but I expect that it is not stellar, since the edges of the frame were never intended to be captured on the sensor.

The only real question I’ll address here is the difference in zoom-range for these lenses, and the sharpness of the lens wide/short, and open/closed. Hopefully, I can give some test-images that will let you decide for yourself whether the more expensive 17-40 lens is worth the money, or meets your photographic needs.

Here’s a full-frame shot to see the different field of view between the 17mm and 18mm ranges on these two lenses. There isn’t much difference when we are this wide already. Remember, this is a 35mm equivalent of 27mm and 28mm, respectively. Note: All the photos were processed using auto-levels, auto-contrast, auto-color, and Unsharp Mask of 100%, radius of 1.0

EF 17-40/4.0 Full Scene as taken with the widest, 17mm, field of view.

EF-S 18-55/3.5-5.6 Full Scene as taken with the widest, 18mm, field of view.

We’ll start by taking a look at 3 shots at the widest angle on each of these zooms. They are taken first with the largest aperture, then at the forgiving f/8.0, and lastly, fully stopped down.

EF 17-40mm @ 17mm f/4.0

EF-S 18-55mm @ 18mm f/3.5

Wide open, the 18-55 seems pretty dismal. To be fair, it is at 3.5, while the 17-40 is at 4.0. Nevertheless, there isn’t anywhere on the mulch that’s crisp. The lens quite obviously suffers wide-open.

EF 17-40mm @ 17mm f/8.0

EF-S 18-55mm @ 18mm f/8.0

At f/8.0, the story is different. The EF-S performs quite well. In fact, it seems to perform a little better in this particular test. I’d be surprised if this result is typical, but it shows that the EF-S is definitely in the same ballpark, in the center of the frame, for moderate apertures.

EF 17-40mm @ 17mm f/22

EF-S 18-55mm @ 18mm f/22

When we close down these two lenses at wide-aperture, we see that again the 17-40 has an edge. The 18-55 is much softer, although not nearly as bad as at f/3.5. Be aware that these exposures were well over one second, due to the late evening light on the scene.

Next, let’s look at the lenses at full-zoom. Here, the field of view difference is much more apparent. The difference between an effective 64mm and 88mm is significant, and may make the 18-55 lens a much more practical choice as a “walking-around” lens. I find often that I’m craving a little more than 64mm equivalent when I’m stuck with the 17-40 lens.

EF 17-40/4.0 Full Scene as taken at a 40mm field of view.

EF-S 18-55/3.5-5.6 Full Scene as taken with a 55mm field of view.

EF 17-40mm @ 40mm f/4.0

EF-S 18-55mm @ 55mm f/5.6

EF 17-40mm @ 40mm f/8.0

EF-S 18-55mm @ 55mm f/8.0

EF 17-40mm @ 40mm f/22

EF-S 18-55mm @ 55mm f/36

I think these pictures speak for themselves. Although the zoom of 55mm is useful on the EF-S lens, the optical quality at this focal length leaves something to be desired. All the photos are quite soft, at all apertures. Even at f/8.0, the 17-40 lens easily outperforms the 18-55.

Conclusion: The upgrade to the 17-40mm “L” glass is definitely worth it if you are looking for the most crisp photos you can get, and the most flexibility. Although there are faster wide-angle lenses out there, a fixed aperture of f/4.0 gives enough flexibility both indoors and outside. If the EF-S lens could perform as well wide-open at the 17-40, it would be a very capable lens. But unfortunately, it doesn’t perform even close, except at middle apertures, and even that may not be true. All that having been said, is the 18-55mm lens worth the $100 in the Digital Rebel kit? Absolutely. For the money, I can definitely recommend this lens. I personally started with it, and upgraded to the 17-40mm when I was ready for more serious shooting in this range, and I wanted something that would give me the same quality as the other L-lenses I own.

Welcome to FountainPhoto.com. The idea here is to post interesting photos, photography commentary, etc. Well, really, it’s just to have a spot to post links to photos, other than my global family photo gallery.