The Candid Frame Interviews Scott Kelby

Scott Kelby is a photographer, writer and educator. He is the founder of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals and the Kelby Media Group. He has authored over 50 books on photography and photo editing and created the event which is Photoshop World. His books, video, podcasts and workshops have helped nurture the work and career of thousands of photographers from all over the world. He has a abiding passion for sports photography as well as playing a mean guitar. You can discover more about Scott and his own photography work by visiting his blog and you can find out about the many things his organization has to offer by visiting the NAPP website. 

Listen to the Candid Frame's interview with Scott Kelby.

Sunfellow Fine Art

The newest member of my growing family of websites has been born: Sunfellow Fine Art. As I mention on my bio page, nature has been calling me and I’ve been spending more and more time attempting to capture “fine art images that quiet the mind, open the heart, and stir the soul”. This new website is dedicated to sharing those images with others who long for deeper connections. Come take a look. The image above — “Milky Way Over Cathedral Rock” — is the most popular image on the site so far, but more are on the way.

How did I shoot this image? Here's what I have posted on my new website about it:

Milky Way Over Cathedral Rock
Background Information

By David Sunfellow

This was one of the first night sky images I ever shot. It is a photo of Cathedral Rock, Sedona’s most famous rock formation, shot from the Back O’ Beyond side. Oak Creek is located on the other side of the rocks. The glow on the left-hand side of the image is coming from the Village of Oak Creek. If you look carefully, you’ll notice that Cathedral Rock is lit up slightly on the right-hand side. This glow was produced by a flashing light from Sedona’s small airport, located on nearby Airport Mesa. The airport light flashed across Cathedral Rock every few minutes.

Since this was one of my first night sky shoots, I did some research before hitting the trails — and then made some interesting discoveries once I was out on the rocks.

Most photographers use fast lens (2.8 or lower), with cameras set at high ISO settings (1600, 2000, 2500, 3200). The higher the ISO, however, the more noise you get in your image. 

Next, you have to figure out how long to leave your shutter open. Most modern cameras provide you with two options: set a timer on your camera to automatically open and close your shutter, or use a manual control to open and close your shutter yourself (which is what I used). The longer the camera’s shutter is open, the brighter and more detailed your image will be. But since the stars in the night sky are moving, if you leave your shutter open too long, the stars will begin to streak across the sky. And, yes, some portions of the sky are actually moving faster than others. 

Once you factor all these issues in, how in the world can you hope to shoot a brilliant, crystal clear image of the night sky?

The short answer is most of us can’t. That’s because most of today’s cameras — even high-end cameras — can’t pull in enough light, fast enough, to get crystal clear images of the sky. In order to get beautifully clear images, you need to mount your camera on a motor-driven telescope that has been carefully calibrated to follow the stars across the sky while your camera’s shutter is open long enough to pull in as much light and detail as it can — without pulling in too much (which will wash everything out).

And, of course, you also need a dark sky — something that is becoming increasingly rare as cities, and city lights, spread across the planet.

Assuming you don’t have a motor-driven telescope that is small enough to lug into exotic, dark sky locations, the best you can currently hope for is something like this:

Get a camera that can shoot RAW images at a high ISO. Attach a fast lens to it (preferably a prime lens, rather than a zoom). Mount your camera on a sturdy tripod. And, finally, limit your shutter speed to no more than 30 seconds.

That’s what I did.

In post production, I used Adobe Lightroom to adjust the colors, contrast, noise, luminosity, and other settings. Then I merged two versions of the same image in Adobe Photoshop and ran a few special filters on it to help the light and colors pop.

DxOMark Camera Sensor Rankings: Nikon D7000 Ranked 10th

DxOMark ratings of camera sensors at RAW level. The Sensor Overall Score (included below), shows the performance for a general purpose use case, the Portrait Score based on Color Depth, the Landscape Score based on Dynamic Range and the Sports Score based on Low-Light ISO.

The Sensor Overall Score is based on:

- The quality of the sensor in terms of noise.
- The ability to render high contrast.
- The formation of colored noise.
- The ability to shoot in low light.

The Sensor Overall Score DOES NOT show:

- The resolution of the camera, i.e., its ability to render fine details.
- The quality of the lens.
- The optical aberrations.

Rank - Camera - Score - Price

Notice Nikon has FIVE cameras listed in the top 10
(Canon only has one)

1 - Phase One P65 Plus - 89 - $39,900.00
2 - Nikon D3X - 88 - $9,172.00
3 - Phase One P40 Plus - 87 - $19,500.00
4 - Pentax 645D - 82 - $9,400.00
5 - Nikon D3s - 82 - $5,510.00
6 - Pentax K-5 - 82 - $1,374.00
7 - Nikon D3 - 81 - $4,300.00
8 - Nikon D700 - 80 - $2,699.00
9 - Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III - 80 - $7,100.00
10 - Nikon D7000 - 80 - $1,300.00
11 - Canon EOS 5D Mark II
12 - Sony Alpha 850
13 - Sony Alpha 900
14 - Hasselblad H3DII 50
15 - Leaf Aptus75S
16 - Phase One P45 Plus
17 - Hasselblad H3DII 39
18 - Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II
19 - Canon EOS 1D Mark IV
20 - Sony SLT Alpha 55
21 - Nikon D90
22 - Nikon D5000
23 - Pentax K-x
24 - Pentax K-r
25 - Canon EOS 1D Mark III

Source

Kelby TV

Your one-stop source to learn everything about Photoshop, Lightroom, Nikon, and photography in general, including an endless stream of easy to understand tips from pros who know what they are talking about. Go here to pick from hundreds of fast-paced, informative, user-friendly programs.

Mac OS X v10.6: About Gamma 2.2

Gamma is a numerical value that describes the relationship between the varying levels of brightness or luminance that a monitor can display or a digital camera or camcorder can capture. To better serve the needs of consumers and digital content producers, Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard uses a gamma value of 2.2 by default. In versions of Mac OS X prior to 10.6, the default system gamma value was 1.8. Using the capabilities of ColorSync, the gamma value of 2.2 is automatically applied and seamlessly transitions your display, images and videos to the new gamma value. If you are a graphic or video professional, click here for more information.

............

EXCERPT:

Some images that do not contain color profiles might appear darker in Mac OS X v10.6 than they did in earlier versions of Mac OS X. Adding the sRGB IEC61966-2.1 profile or Adobe RGB (1998) profile to these images lets them display correctly.

You can use Preview to add or replace a color profile to your images. Follow these steps to add or replace a color profile to your image. For batch processing of images, see "Using Automator..." in the below additional information section.

Note: When replacing the color profile, once saved there is no way to undo this process other than by restoring an earlier copy of the image. Make sure you have the proper color profile selected. If you are not sure, duplicate the images or make a backup copy of the images. Tip: Time Machine is a great way to keep an automatic backup of your images and other files.

1. Open your image in Preview.

2. From the Tools menu choose Assign Profile...

3. From the "ColorSync Profile:" pop-up menu select the appropriate color profile.

4. From the File menu choose Save (or Save As to save a different copy).

Ed Greenberg On Photography Copyright, Contract, And Creative Rights Issues

Scott Kelby Writes:

"If you’ve been reading this blog for the past month or so, you’ve read my posts about photographers being harassed when shooting in public, and a lot of readers have chimed in with comments about what we can and can’t shoot, what our rights as photographers are and aren’t, our interpretations of copyright law, and so on. There’s just one problem; we’re not attorneys.

"So, I contacted New York-based Intellectual Property Attorney Ed Greenberg, who’s a published author on the topic, and who has been dealing with photography copyright, contract, and creative rights issues for over 30 years, to finally get the straight no-nonsense scoop on all this..."

"The two clips, Part I and Part II... I think you’ll find it as eye-opening, surprising, revealing, and as incredibly valuable as I did. This interview can change the way you work and protect your images in a very profound way..."

Photoshop User TV interview with Ed Greenberg- Part 1:


Photoshop User TV interview with Ed Greenberg- Part 2:


Read/visit Scott Kelby's original blog on this topic.

Shutter Counts Followup

Looks like there are several software programs available that helps track shutter release counts:

Opanda (the program most often recommended)
PhotoMe
Preview Extractor (for Nikon cameras)

While I couldn't find any programs that were written for the Mac platform, all the PC versions can be used on an Intel Mac that has booted into Windows via Bootcamp or other Windows-emulating software.

And then there's brother Mel (Mel Russell, Captured Light Photography). He has offered to run a quick check on .jpg images that folks send him who would like a ballpark idea of how many times the shutters have been released on their cameras without going through the hassle of downloading, installing, and running Exif file programs (like those listed above). If you want Mel to do this for you, email him a low resolution .jpg image shot on the camera you want a shutter release count on.

Mel ran Opanda on two of my cameras, each of which is rated for 100,000 shutter releases:

My D80 = 7,401
My D200 = 28,192

Neither camera has ever been sent in for repairs, and I can't remember if I have updated the firmware on these cameras (remember Nikon says that trips to the repair shop and/or firmware updates can affect the accuracy of these counts). My D200 is about two years old. My D80 is about a year and a half old.

If you have any thoughts/resources that you would like to add to this discussion, click the "comments" link below.

Shutter Counts

I received an email from Brother Mel (Mel Russell, Captured Light Photography) that pointed me in the direction of software that reportedly can tell you how many times the shutter on a particular camera has fired. The software is called Opanda and is available for download here. Unfortunately it only works on with Win98 / Me / 2000 / XP / 2003 / Vista. Since I am Mac-based, this doesn't do me any good. So I did a little poking around trying to find a similar program that worked on a Mac. Eventually I arrived at Nikon's website and found this in the support section:

"Question: How many times has my Nikon camera released the shutter?

"Answer: There is no way to accurately tell the total number of times your camera shutter has released. While there are third party software applications designed to read a cameras shutter count, this number is not always accurate because the shutter release times may be reset by firmware updates, or reset in the Service Department if certain parts are replaced or other operations are performed."

That's unfortunate! Two of my cameras -- the D80 and D200 -- are rated for 100,000 shutter releases, while my D300 is rated for 150,000. That seems like an awful lot of shutter releases, but I noticed that the photographers in some forums were surprised at how many shutter releases they had racked up when they ran the software mentioned above. Seems like there should be a way to keep an eye on this. If you know of one, let me know...