The New York Times published an online article today discussing the tips on taking better photos when on vacation. They interviewed a pro photographer, Dan Lipow, asking him for his tips and tricks on shooting better.
I’m mostly cognizant of his tips, so on the risk self-aggrandizing, I thought it’d be interesting to answer some of the questions myself to see what I would do, and to also _FINALLY_ show some of the photos I took when I went back to Singapore and Indonesia in March, except the first one below from Spain…
Anyway, here we go!
Q: For D.S.L.R. photographers, what lenses are best for vacation shots?
A: I typically travel with zoom lenses for the convenience, although I seem to grudgingly accept the weight and bulk of my 17-55, 12-24, and 75-150 lenses. With my Nikon D300 with a 1.5X multiplier, it essentially gives me an effective field-of-view in 35mm terms of 18 to 300mm. Unless I’m in a confined space or am shooting wide open landscapes, I rarely pull out the 12-24.
Q: Do you recommend any additional equipment?
A: A light tripod absolutely. I have a light Gitzo Traveler GT1541T tripod with the Markins Q3 Traveler ballhead. I LOVE this combo for it’s stability and (lack-of) weight. Some of my best shots are taken early mornings and late evenings. The latter when the light is low and the people are out. Otherwise, I hate shooting with tripods…
Tucked in a corner, on tripod, in the rain
Q: When on vacation, do you typically shoot in manual, aperture, shutter or auto mode?
A: Generally aperture priority, unless speed is essential. Even then, I normally use the aperture to pick the speed. To be honest, I’ve never shot my cameras in manual mode, and while I’m familiar with the Sunny-16 rule, I’ve never used it.
Q: How do you take compelling photos of your friends and family on vacation, images that have an interesting composition and don’t look posed?
A: Can’t do it. Both Mrs. Blog and I seem to abhor having our photos taken, even on vadations. So while we’re trying real hard to at least document our visits, at this point, our personal photos are quite blah and are generally made up of photos taken with a P&S in my outstretched arm.
Q: It’s best to zoom in on people, right? Seems like many people take shots way too far out.
A: Shooting people is hard. See this.
Somehow these folks were oblivious to me shooting them...
Q: Any tips on taking really interesting photos of landscapes?
A: This doesn’t just apply to landscapes. Most tourists shoot from the same place where everyone else shoots. That could make great postcards shots and could impress the people back home, and if that’s what you’re looking for, great! Hey, I have tons of those! But if you’re out to shoot something that can’t already be seen on the postcards there, walk around and see if there’s something to discover.
Inside a storehouse shooting out
Q: Any advice for users of point-and-shoot cameras? Ways to better use the scene modes?
A: A P&S won’t give you the same flexibility as an SLR, but within the range of what it can do, it can rival the quality of the SLRs. I’d say that every photo in this article could’ve been shot with a decent P&S. What’s important is learning how your camera works and working with it instead of against it.
My final parting shot is one I took in a mall in Singapore. I like how the large round blackness and blueness of the fountain contrasts with the warm tones of the small tables and chairs. The lady right at the edge, to me, adds interest.
Looking for a different point of view? Try looking down
I’m no pro photographer by any means, and I’m still figuring out my way on how to maximize the image quality while on vacation, so if you’ve got a good tip for me to improve, drop me a comment. Please! If you’ve got a representative photo, send a link as well.
There are several more photos not shown here from my Asian trip. Check them out in this gallery.
Cheers!
Filed under: Photography, Travel | 1 Comment
Tags: photo shoot
One of the most interesting news I read in the past few days, apart from iPhone related ones, is the announcement of the Olympus E-P1.
Here is a tiny camera, smaller than a Canon G10, that has a interchangeable lens system, and has a decent sized imaging sensor — not quite the APS-sized cropped frame SLR sensors (~1.5X multiplier), but way bigger than the miniscule sensors in the typical P&S cameras, having a 2X multiplier.
Here is a camera manufacturer going out on a limb starting from a well-thought out format, IMHO, the Micro Four-Thirds system, building the smallest camera they can, removing elements they feel added unnecessary bulk and coming up with this camera. I don’t always agree with the decisions they made, such as not having a viewfinder without an accessory, but I respect them for accomplishing what they did.
Why would I be interested in this camera any way since I already have an excellent system in my Nikon D300? Good question. You can’t always, and don’t always want to, carry a big SLR around. The SLR brings along issues of bulk, security in questionable places, and difficulty in shooting some subjects simply because a black SLR is so imposing (see my write up on street shooting). This smaller, practically P&S camera brushes away with many of those concerns. It’s nearly pocketable, with the folding 17mm lens, it’s small and unobstrusive, and it’s not as menacing to others. It sure doesn’t seem professional looking, but that’s part of its charm.
All that means nothing if the image quality doesn’t hold up. But it sure looks good at this point. Check out the ISO 6400 sample image on dpreview’s sample gallery from the E-P1. The colors might seem a little more washed out at high ISO, but I can happily live with the noise level in a pinch. You can read the entire preview of the camera there as well.
It does HD (720P) video as well. I don’t know too much about this feature, but it opens up what can be done with the it.
So what’s not to like? As I’ve mentioned, no viewfinder. It’s just much faster to use a viewfinder for certain types of shooting, such as street, although NOT having to bring the camera up to your face can sometimes be a boon as well. It doesn’t have a built-in flash for those few occasions, but given its size, I can afford to carry the accessory flash. The 3″ screen only has 230K pixels. The SD card slot is blocked when mounted on a tripod. I’m nitpicking here. Oh, and I would’ve preferred in a nice inconspicuous black. A big unknown at this point is how responsive the camera is — can this be the shooter’s camera?
At about US$800 for body and 14-42mm lens, it’s not exactly cheap, but given what you get based on the specs, it’s not unreasonable.
Olympus has revealed that there’s more in the pipeline with cameras with electronic viewfinders coming up, and folding lenses to be announced.
I’ve been waiting for something like this since I first contemplated replacing my film SLR with a rangefinder camera, where the latter were too expensive for me and had limited zoom lenses. I’m glad to see that the idea has come around for digital cameras. Exciting times indeed.
Cheers.
Filed under: Photography, Technology | Leave a Comment
To GS or not to GS
This is so yesterday, literally, but the new iPhone 3GS (’S’ for Speed!) was finally announced yesterday at WWDC and what has been rumored, speculated, dispelled, confirmed, dispelled again, finally happened.
The geek that I am, I eagerly awaited the announcement, and kept reloading the live blogging by Engadget as I combed over the post to extract morsels of information from between the lines.
The best camera is the one you have with you. That old cliche rings true for me, and I’ve been (mostly) contentedly carrying my iPhone 3G around for 3/4 of a year now, taking pictures with its mediocre 2MP camera, wishing for better quality and macro capabilities, but still finding some creativity in the process.
I really didn’t think Apple would announce a new phone just a year after the big announcement that is the iPhone 3G, so when rumors started flying, I was intrigued.
Now that it’s out, I’m quite happy with the new specs of a 3.2MP camera with autofocus and white balance, better low light capabilities, and even macro down to 10cm! All that sounds brilliant, but upgrading early comes at a cost — an extra $200 to be precise. So the debate starts on whether it’s worth it.
At this point, I’m saying yes, and I’ve gone ahead and preordered it, but I suppose I can still change my mind before the June 19th delivery date.
The best camera is the one you have with you. Except when you can afford to pay an extra $200 above the price of $299 for the 32GB version.
Cheers!
Filed under: Technology | Leave a Comment
In monochrome
Reuters has an excellent series of monochromatic images on their site. Nearly everyone of them speaks to my love of simplicity in photos.
Many think of monochrome images as black-and-white images. True, B&W images are a subset of monochrome images, but any photo that has predominantly one hue can be considered monochromatic as seen in the collection.
Apart from B&W photos, this is as monochromatic as my photos got:
Green
Check out the Reuters collection here.
Cheers.
Filed under: Photography | Leave a Comment
Tags: photo gallery
Having a camera with me at all times has allowed me to take photos in unexpected places. Most of the time, I’m not shooting for the sake of photography, but mostly for documentation: that pretty flowering plant I might consider for my backyard, or interior design ideas in that model home.
However, every once in a find, an opportunity presents itself and even with an underwhelming 2MP camera oddly out of place in, what is now an indispensible tool for me, an iPhone, a fresh perspective can be found.
I was enjoying family time with parents, my brother, his wife, and their 3-month old baby Sonia (woohoo, I’m an uncle of 3-months!), doing the things this family does best, which is hanging out and eating good. In this particular case, given the propensity of babies to eat and poop, those not involved when baby Sonia is being cleaned of the latter propensity, including me, were sitting in the food court of a rather empty mall in Cupertino.
Here I spied the interesting patterns formed by empty table and chairs, and the black and white tile formation on the floor. After trying different framing, I ended up with what I thought wasn’t too bad a shot.
Food court
While the artistic aspect had some merit, the technical side with the dullness, color imbalance and unexposure needed work. In my iPhone, which I’ve taken to call George, I fired up Photogene to do a little bit of technical adjustment, and then CameraBag to see what I can do with it in terms of “looks”. CameraBag allowed me to try different “looks” such as the Holga look, the Lomo look, etc. Among the different options was Cinema, which gave it a tight horizontal crop pretty much down the middle. Now this was interesting! I fiddle it some more, and ended up with this one.
Food court II
The image is quite pixellated given the tight crop of an already small file, but I like it! I love how the object on the right still says “chair” and how the tile pattern leads from the top left corner to the chair.
Sometimes you find art in unexpected places.
Cheers!
Filed under: Photography | Leave a Comment
Tags: photo shoot
-
Photo Book
-
