A Giant Softbox - for Free!

Also in this issue

Shooting the Northern Lights with Video

Three Ebooks released (and one in the pipeline)

Contest Winners

We're moving (again!)

A Giant Softbox for Free

And much more...

Shooting the Northern Lights with Video

My wife and I were watching a cool movie one night entitled “Under an Arctic Sky”, where a bunch of 20-somethings went to Iceland in wintertime to surf. (Pretty amazing cinemaphotography. You can see the trailer for it here). Toward the end of the movie (and the trailer) there’s footage showing them surfing at night, in darkness, with the Northern Lights painting a picturesque backdrop. “That had to have been shot with an A7S!” I exclaimed, thoroughly annoying my wife who hates it when I talk about technical BTS stuff during a movie.  “That’s the only camera sensitive enough to shoot useable footage in such low light!!”  Sure enough, as the movie progressed you can see them handling the Sony gear, and at the end, you can see that Sony was actually a sponsor.  Ever since the original A7S came out, cutting-edge filmmakers have been using it to shooting things previously unshootable.  The example that really sticks in my mind is this nighttime drone shot (again, the Aurora Borealis) using the original Sony A7S and a 20mm f/1.4 lens.  There's another one called "Moonwalk", also sponsored by Sony.  Just amazing. 

I bring this up as a prelude to my announcement that the long-awaited, most-thorough-book on the Sony A7S III is now out!  (It would have been out sooner had Adobe not moved all of the legacy arrows and shapes out of the shape tool in Photoshop and not told anybody.)  All of the new menus, all of the new video modes, even the new HEIF files are all explained, in 703 pages of insane technical (yet completely understandable) detail.  Get your copy now, available in .pdf, .epub, .azw3, and printed versions!! 

Other e-book announcements: 

Wireless Flash vs. the Adjustment Brush

My first shooting gig in Boston was a cool venture called Backyartists, a company started by two experienced early childhood educators. Backyartists mostly caters to local families with pre-school aged children, but they also ship out seasonal and holiday boxes of open-ended process art and sensory activities for kids ages 3-9.  Today I was taking marketing shots of their Friendship & Love box, for Valentine’s Day.

My goal was to create images they couldn't easily make with their smartphones.  I used an f/2.8 lens shooting wide open so the background would be beautifully de-focused, and had their backs to the sun so that their hair (or hats in this case) were illuminated, giving them a certain glow.  Wireless flash (with my usual paper diffuser) was used to illuminate the faces, completing the look.  If I do a good job, you won't even notice that I used a flash, although you might subconsciously pick up that there was something special about the pictures.  (Click on any image to view larger and sharper.)

Two good reasons to turn off the Focus Assist light...

Also in this issue:

• Why we moved
• Two new books out!  (And two more in the queue!)

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Reader Bill Gordon writes: "One comment on the auto illumination feature. You and every other author I’ve ever read says there is no reason to turn it off. But there is one place where you need to shut it off. A museum. Generally there is no flash allowed in a museum and this feature will get you yelled at every time. My mother lost a day of shooting once because she couldn’t figure out how to shut it off in the field. Just sayin….."

So now using the Focus Assist Lamp is the equivalent of using a tripod - it gets you in trouble for no good reason.  

There's another reason to turn that feature off, and I was reminded of it when trying to take the above self-portrait (as part of my Quarantine Beard series).  But this shot was going to be different -- this time instead of using studio lighting, the light from my face would come solely from the flame in the faux pipe.  Sony A7C, ISO 6400, 1/10th of a second, f/2.8 using the Tamron 28-75 f/2.8 lens, and framed and taken using Sony’s smartphone app.  

The Camera with the lowest noise? Check out this shocking discovery...

Also in this issue:

* Monster Adapter Update

* Geeking with Gary - Un-Throttling Unlimited Hotspot Data

[Editor's Note: I'm on the road this week - we're selling our lovely home in Southern California and moving to Boston.  We're traveling in a motor home, exiting the vehicle only to refuel because so many are not taking the pandemic seriously.  We have to get there before our furniture does so no time for sightseeing or doing vacation-y things.  So this blog post will be necessarily short.]

The Camera with the Lowest Noise?

I'm actually writing e-books on both the Sony A7S III and the Sony A7C cameras at the same time.  And of course, as I always do when I write books about cameras, I wonder about things.  "I wonder if a high ISO shot taken with the 24 megapixel A7C has noticeably more noise compared to the 12 megapixel low-noise king, the Sony A7S III?"

So I took a couple of informal test shots at ISO 10,000, and zoomed into the shadow areas where the noise is most likely to show up.  The noise looked the same to me.  (Click on any image to view larger).  (You can also download the original RAW files from here.)

What's worth keeping?

We're moving to Boston.  Long story.

As with any move, we're going through and weeding out material possessions we don't need anymore.  And that goes for the archives as well.  When I was younger I felt that old images, like fine wine, might become more valuable over time, and therefore it was imprudent to throw old pictures away, even when they didn't "make the cut".  You never know about the future.  That's a foundational principle of stock photography.

I benefitted from this philosophy a few times.  

The Three Tricks

Me, doing my best Orson Welles impersonation

Also in this issue:

• Articles That Didn't Make it to Cameracraft Magazine
• Sony's new Webcam software - comparison
• Being a Virtual Speaker at your Photo Club
• Giving Back with the Virtual Reading Project
• In the Pipeline

Articles That Never Made It to Cameracraft

I pitch a lot of ideas for articles for Cameracraft magazine; most get accepted but some do not for various reasons.  The subjects still fascinate me, though.  Here are a couple that didn't make it (and I wish I had permission to show you some of their examples.  But you can click on the links below to see some remarkable works):

• Photographer Esther Honig did a fascinating experiment - she took a picture of a model and sent it to photo retouchers in 27 different countries and asked them to "enhance" the image according to their cultural preferences.  Beauty is a subjective thing but it amazes me how entire cultures can buy into a certain ideal.
• Seth Casteel takes pictures of dogs underwater and cats in mid-air.  I have no idea how he got the cat shots - they are super sharp (no autofocus works that fast), extraordinarily well-lit, and the cat is often looking directly at the camera.  I was hoping to do an article about him to learn how he did it; alas my emails and instagram messages were never answered.
• Haruhiko Kawaguchi is a Japanese photographer who approaches people on the street and convinces them to come to his studio, get naked, get into a vacuum-sealed bag, and have their pictures taken.  To me the images are the least interesting part; what's amazing is how he convinces total strangers to do this.  (Warning: Probably Not Safe For Work.) (On the other hand, you're probably working from home right now. :-) )

Cameracraft is a substantial read with superb images and repro. It’s not an obscure art fest either. Every two months it’s a shot of inspiration, with solid technical content, and it’s written by experts, not interns.  Subscribe today and experience the last "proper" photo magazine standing!

The Three Tricks

There are three projects I've been getting a lot of questions on regarding how they were done.

Topaz AI - As good as they claim?

Also in this Issue:

• Monster Adapter Update
• A Virtual Zoom Lecture for your Photo Club
• In the Pipeline

Topaz AI - As Good as They Claim?

[Editor's note: This is an expanded version of an article which appeared in a recent edition of Cameracraft magazine.]

AI has been the buzzword in the technology industry for the last 30 years.  But when Topaz used it as a branding for their latest collection of image enhancement tools, the phrase they should have used is “deep learning”; a technique in which a learning algorithm is trained with thousands of before & after images to allow the computer to slowly learn what a good cleanup looks like.  Most people who have spent years learning how to do these things by hand in Lightroom and Photoshop may not think these new tools are anything special; for they can’t possibly improve upon a skilled retoucher.  I thought I would spend a few days testing that theory.

A New Hope for A-Mount Lenses...

Also in this issue:

• A new way to stabilize video
• A new Camera Problem-Solving Guide by Mark Galer and Gary Friedman
• Wireless Flash on a camera that doesn't support it
• ZV-1 Discoveries
• In the Pipeline

A Free Sony Camera Problem-Solving Guide 

Let's start with something free.  Australian Sony Digital Imaging Ambassador Mark Galer and I have teamed up to create this free Sony Camera Problem-solving Guide, a compilation of all the email queries we get from users trying to find out why their camera is not behaving as expected.  You can download this free resource (did I mention it was free?) from Mark's website.

Ten of the Smartest People I Know

• He testified before Congress about the dangers Near-Earth Asteroids pose to humanity.
• He was Executive Vice President and director of research for the Space Studies Institute in Princeton, NJ.
• He was Vice President of Publications of the Aerospace and Electronics Systems Society of IEEE.
• He was the chairman of the Planetary Defense Committee of AIAA
• He served as a consultant to the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board and the NATO Industrial Advisory Board.
• He was co-founder and 3rd president of the National Council of Systems Engineering.
• He taught graduate-level engineering courses at USC for over 20 years.
• He rubbed elbows with high-profile physicists like Freeman Dyson and Neil DeGras Tyson
• He wrote a Chapter in the seminal work “The High Frontier” by Gerry O’Neil
• He was an elected fellow of the IEEE, INCOSE and IAE engineering societies.

And all that was AFTER he retired from Northrop corp. as a Senior Vice President!

[Editor's note: My dad died on May 31, 2020.  I'm setting up this blog post as a tribute and a shrine to one of the smartest and humblest people I've ever met.  Even most of his co-workers were unaware of his level of accomplishment.  This post has nothing at all to do with photography, but read on and get to know a most remarkable person.  -GF]

The Photo that Got Me In Trouble...

Also In This Issue:

• The Increasing Value of Crappy Shots
• Video of Hearts for Hue
• Schedule time with me - I'll undercut Sony's price
• In the Pipeline

[Special note: I had lofty goals for this blog post.  I was going to share my tests of Sony's new video stabilization phone app for the newer cameras.  My plans got cut short by a life event.  Read to the end for more info. -GF]


The Shot That Got Me in Trouble With My Physicist Friends

The shot at the top of this page is a shot I took in Hawaii back in the 1990's (with film).  The hammock was swinging, and I took my Minolta Maxxum 9xi (hated that camera), set it to a "slow" shutter speed (I think it was about 1/8th or 1/4 of a second).  When you use a slow shutter speed, anything that moves relative to the camera looks blurry.  So placing the camera on my chest and with the self-timer invoked, I got this clever little shot.

"You clearly Photoshopped that!", said one of my know-it-all physicist friends.  Of course I hadn't; and I had a negative to prove it.  Didn't matter.  "Look at the roof!  It's nice and sharp whereas you clearly only blurred the vegetation!"

Hmmm... And I have to tell you that had me scratching my head for awhile.  

Turning Your Camera into a High-Quality Webcam

[Updated 9/10/24]

So I've been spending my pandemic downtime learning the ins and outs of livestreaming and how to conduct webinars.  The learning curve wasn't that bad (Photoshop is worse, but that's not nearly as bad as Unix internals, and both of those combined pale in comparison to Torah, which literally takes a lifetime to decipher.  But I digress...)

I think nothing kills online credibility like bad light, bad framing and bad sound, all of which characterize about 99.99% of all Zoom participants.  If you want to be taken seriously as an online educator in photography, you need to employ the techniques of the Hollywood cinematographers and the more successful Twitch streamers.

Let's start with that awful webcam that's built into your laptop.  It just won't do.  Let me share with you a test I did (this was also a high-level test involving live streaming to both Facebook and Youtube - more about that later.)