Check out what the pros use.
Every time we go to an event our eyes are on the photogs to see what they use to get the money.
The right stuff. The real deal. the gear. The goods. We ask questions too.
And we have found a couple of items that are pretty easy to find and can make you life easier, save embarrassment, make you taller, pack flat, and correct your color.
Ready?

OK, first up is a step stool. No big deal? Oh yes it is.
Available in 2 sizes, 12 or 16in. heights, these plastic beauties will give you a extra reach for your shots, and they fold flat for travel in rolling camera bag. We keep a 12″ in the outer pocket of a ThinkTank Photo roller.

Holds up to 300 lbs, for when you are carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders.

Now here is a good trick: the bottoms feet have a nice rubber grip and if you are in some place where keeping your laptop on your lap, just isn’t cutting it, flip over this bad boy and place your laptop right on the legs. Cools it, gives you room, and the rubber feet keep it in place.
$16-$24 clams for these

Next up we have a perfect tool for travel. If you’ve ever packed all of your chargers, extra batts, Wacom tablet, or just general gear into a suitcase , only to find when you get to the airline luggage counter that you are overweight, rut-roh,.
You look silly trying to re-pack and split stuff between more bags, AND you get to pay dough. Just hope you don’t sit next to one of those people in line. they will not be happy. And either will you if you pay the extra charges.
Check the chart:

We use a Balanzza Digital Compact Airline Luggage Scale,
to weigh the bags at home, and suss out the distribution while we can comfortably shift it from bag to bag.
Good up to 100lbs. and does lbs and kilos. Sweet deal for only about $20.
check this vid:

OK, it DOES explain it. Just in a 70’s kinda way.

Another thing we ALWAYS have in the case and shift to a shirt pocket is a X-Rite M50111 Mini ColorChecker Chart

Set it somewhere in the scene you are shooting, even if just for a frame, and you will have the best fix for your color in post.
And remember: Never use the auto white balance! make a choice! easier to correct that than deal with the crazy AWB choice.
You know those color dropper icons in Lightroom and iPhoto?
If you have a color chart in your scene you now have a standard to adjust to. Set the dropper to the right square and you’ll be very happy.
And this one is about $60. But the time you’ll save in post is worth it.

And there you go. A coupla tips for goods that you may want to add to your kit.

One of our frequent contributors, Debbie Zeitman, has a global proposition for you:
read on:

© Debbie Zeitman

We often come to Photoinduced to learn of great gadgets and read insightful reviews, to have our eyes nudged to others’ work for awe and inspiration and to learn behind-the-scene tricks.

But how about a little kick to get us out the door, to shoot side by side with other photographers and take the online community to the streets?

July 18th is Scott Kelby’s 2nd Annual Worldwide Photo Walk. Photographers across the globe are eagerly signing up to participate and space is disappearing quickly. Photoinduced’s Damon Webster is possibly leading a walk in Los Angeles, but even if you live in a distant city, you can join the party.

Hop over to the Worldwide Photo Walk site and navigate to the city of your choice and secure a spot. If your city doesn’t offer a walk or if its walk is already full, you can sign up to lead one, but that deadline of June 18th is quickly approaching, so act now.

After the walk, your group can set up a localized Worldwide Photo Walk ’09 Flickr group to share images and reflections of a day on the streets. If you still need further inspiration to be launched into action, check out work from last year’s walk . Quite impressive.

Walks cover a two-hour period, and details can be found here.

Come armed with extra memory cards and batteries. Consider grabbing that film camera that may be collecting a bit of dust. And gather all the great and appropriate gear you’ve learned about here on Photoinduced.

Most of all, mix it up, challenge your default shooting setting, and have fun with fellow photographers. And please announce your participation and city in comments so that we can meet one another and see how far the Photoinduced reach is.

Thanks Debbie for that cool turn-on.!
We’ll keep everyone posted.

Another installment from one of our favorite writers/photographers, Daniel Milnor

“Polaroids” fake of course.

So a few weeks ago I wrote a long post about tilt-shift lenses and how I thought they were basically a gimmick that made just about any image look good. I never posted the post, but I’m still thinking about it. My wife and I were on a short trip and she was using this lens. We were sitting in the car joking that anything you pointed that lens at suddenly become a prize winning picture, just due to the blurred area, short depth, etc. We sat in the car and made 35 different pictures that were a-m-a-z-i-n-g to use a terribly overused word.

But, what I realized was when we stripped away the gimmick, we were left with a bunch of nondescript pictures. The tilt-shift WAS the photograph. If shot in the same position, from the same angle, all things equal, without this lens, you wouldn’t look twice at the picture, let alone print it, include it in a book, etc.

It made me realize something. In my humble opinion, shooting a STRAIGHT, 35mm image, and getting a picture that is truly fantastic, is perhaps the hardest game in photo town. I look around at much of the images I see today, much of those pictures that seem to get the most press, and in many cases the images are HEAVILY manipulated. This manipulation can come in many forms, tilt-shift just being one of those methods. Software is probably the biggest offender. Much of what I see is so over processed I find it difficult to find the original image, and when I do, typically I’m left with just a routine picture. Layer masks, vignettes, hyper-color, selective sharpening, tilts, shifts, throws, heaves, blurs, zooms, spins, thrusts, all lend themselves to hiding the original image, or making up for an original image that was never there. And this doesn’t just apply to ad work, or fashion, or celebrity, the areas you would think most logical for manipulation, but also news, documentary, etc. I’ve seen plenty of pictures in these genres that are dodged and burned, tweaked, at such fine detail that you end up with images containing light that is doing things that light just doesn’t do. Light typically doesn’t come from multiple angles at the same time, on four different planes at the same time. I see faces of refugees peering from under tents, with faces beaming, from unknown light sources. I see landscape pictures where it is impossible to even tell where the light is coming from because every blade of grass has been “touched.”

I got to thinking….why is this so rampant these days? Why do we so rarely see straight images? I think I know why.
Continue Reading »

We told you what the goal was here: find a good enough point and shoot camera, to carry in a suit jacket.
So bulky, or sticky-outy (technical term meaning “protruding from the main camera body” ) lenses need not apply.
Whether you are out with your buddies, or at an more elegant affair. Or maybe just a cool party.
The desire came out of need as it was time to upgrade anyway.

Not going high end like a Canon G10 or a Nikon P6000 (video here). Both great cameras, but bigger than we needed.
So we went with 2 on this journey:
Canon SD780is and the Nikon S620.
Each one had its pluses and minuses.
Canon: small and sleek, 12.1 megapixels, 5 scene choices, face self timer (timer only shoots pic when it recognizes another face-yours- added to the scene) 33-100 mm lens, 3x optical zoom, HD movie. ISO to 3200
Nikon: pocketsize, 12.2 megapixels, 18 scene choices including voice memo, smile and blink detector, tracking focus for moving subjects, 28-112mm lens, 4x optical zoom, SD movie, ISO to 6400.
OK, those are the main stats.
But we wanted to take it to real world situations that you may have.
So the cameras were set on Auto exposure, Auto White Balance, Auto ISO. Total simple, PHD camera. Push here dummy, which is the main way you’ll be shooting these when you whip it out to get that shot.

Our friends were ready. the cameras were held side by side and the shutters tripped as simultaneously as possible.

Here is what we got:
Continue Reading »

Ahhh, the sweet smell of commencement!
Caps and gowns, mortar boards and diplomas. Politicians, celebrities, and business men address the graduates with pithy, sometimes inspirational, sometimes trite, and usually a coda to a turning point in your life.
Or someone you know.
And what about the memories of your years? Is it all encapsulated in a yearbook? Did you really get to know those people around you ?
Dawoud Bey has created a book of photographs, Class Picture, that may help you think again about your high school years. No matter when they ended.
With an insight you’ll never see in your yearbook, he would spend a few weeks at each school, and usually have 45 minutes with each student per sitting.
They would write out an autobiography, which is included in this book, to give you an additional insight into the teenagers whose life you only see from their outward presentations. Yep, the old “don’t judge a book by it’s cover” is defined right here in this volume.
So as you move on in your life, look at these photographs and maybe, just maybe, your memory will be shifted and enhanced, courtesy of the subjects in this book.

Details on getting a copy of this book for free, will be included in the NEWSLETTER this week, so you might as well sign up now.
It’s doesn’t cost you anything and we will never sell your email address. ever.