As I mentioned in my last post, my 135mm lens took a tumble this weekend at Andrea and Jason’s engagement shoot.  It was a pretty major tumble–it popped out of my lens bag as I was bending over taking portraits and bounced down a flight of cement steps.  Nothing quite like seeing your favorite lens rolling into the street!

It was a hard fall, but the lens itself is fine (I put it through many tests and it’s resting comfortably now).  I had a lens filter and lens hood on it that took the damage like a champ.  Nic had to cut the filter to get it off (he was ready to call in the jaws of life).  Instead of being out hundreds of dollars to repair the lens, I’m out a mere $65 to replace the filter.

And that is exactly what UV filters are for.

Filter pros: Saves you money when your lens tries to commit suicide by jumping out of your bag.  Ensures that any scratches are limited to an easily replaced filter instead of your actual lens.

Filter cons: Any time you add a filter onto your lens you run the risk of decreasing the quality of your pictures.  However, investing in high quality UV filters is a great work-around to this problem (though it will run you $50-$100).

Bottom line: All of this being said, I used our pricey lenses for three years personally without UV filters and for eight months professionally without filters and never once had a scratch.  As long as you’re careful, I think you’re fine.  I always had the lens cap ready to pop back onto the camera the minute my finger was off the shutter.  But with weddings I felt that our lenses were more at risk.  Close quarters with guests, less time to deal with constant lens cap use, and more chaos.  It is nice to have the peace of mind of the filter, but if you will only use your lenses in nice controlled situations (or your lenses are of the $200 variety), it’s an easy purchase to skip.

(PS–not really sure how the pic up top plays into all this, it’s just one Nic snapped as we were packing up on Sunday and it makes me laugh.  It’s the sort of dorkiness that people who drop lenses exhibit.)

When you’re first starting out, prime lenses seem like a terrible idea. Why have a lens that just covers one focal length when you can get a zoom lens that covers many?

Convenience is the name of the game with zoom lenses.

You can’t beat the convenience of a lens that goes from wide angle to telephoto without having to make a lens change. But I am a lover of prime lenses. And here’s why:

Prime lenses only do one thing, so they do that one thing very well.

My 50mm lens only has to look at the world at a 50mm focal length, so it can do that job incredibly well. It doesn’t have to worry about 35mm or 24mm or 70mm–it only has to worry about doing the best little job that it can at 50mm.

My 24-70mm lens has a lot more to worry about. It’s got to cover 24mm, 70mm, and everything in between.

Many non-L series prime lenses are sharper than L-series zoom lenses. And when you get an L-series prime lens? Oh my, baby. The image is so sharp it could cut through streak.

Prime lenses only do one thing, so they can be cheaper.

To get excellent sharpness from a zoom lens, and a reasonably fast aperture, you have to pick up an L series zoom for over $1000k. But you can pick up a great prime lens that is very sharp and very fast (even faster than that L-series zoom lens) for $300.

Prime lenses are faster

Dollar-for-dollar, you’ll get a much wider aperture in prime lenses than zoom lenses. Wide apertures not only allow you to blur away backgrounds into prettiness, but they allow you to shoot in much darker situations (like indoor nighttime family snapshots).

Prime lenses are lighter/smaller.

This isn’t that big of a deal, but for going-to-the-park-with-Will lens, I like something that doesn’t make me look like I might also be peeking into people’s bedroom windows.

Prime lenses make me a better photographer.

I can’t really put it into words (so excuse me while I blubber like an idiot for a paragraph or two), but shooting with prime lenses requires more thought. Instead of standing where you’re standing and then zooming in and out until your composition is the way you want it to be, first you must decide on your focal length. Do you want a wide angle look? A normal look? Or a telephoto melting-of-the-background-and-compressing-the-image effect? Once you know that, you fix that focal length in and use your feet to compose the shot how you want it.

I like the way I move and think and compose shots when I shoot with prime lenses. They fit my style well. In fact, I shot 99% of my recent engagement portrait session with Julie and Marc using the 50mm and 135mm. That’s how much I love primes!

And now for the exact opposite

I use primes as my first choice, but here’s a review where the photographer’s first choice are zoom lenses. This is another case where what someone loves might not be your favorite. Give both a try and see what feels best to you!

Sorry Nikon photographers…this is a Canon post.

My Lenses

Canon 70-200 f/2.8 L IS

It is hard for me to pick a favorite lens, because I love them all, but if I had to pick just one favorite, it would probably be this one.

Pros: I love the beautiful bokeh it creates for portraits, and being a long (telephoto) fast (the maximum aperture is f/2.8) lens with 3 stops of image stabilization (I can take pictures in places that are three times darker), it is my best friend at indoor wedding ceremonies. I recommend it wholeheartedly to wedding photographers–I wouldn’t want to be without it. I also use it a lot for portraits–long lenses are more flattering, they condense a scene making it possible to bring a mountain or city skyline closer to your subject, and long lenses can also isolate a subject from a cluttered background better than a normal or telephoto lens.

Cons: It’s expensive. I think it would be hard to justify this lens if you couldn’t make money from it. People also complain about the weight…but I don’t think that’s a good reason not to carry the best equipment for the job. And needing to carry heavy equipment is a great reason to stay in shape.

Canon 135mm f/2.0 L

Since purchasing this lens last month, it has been a disproportionate amount of time on my camera. It definitely comes a close second to the 70-200 as my favorite lens. It’s the lens I keep on my camera for taking family pictures.

Pros: This is a long fast lens, so it has all the benefits of the 70-200 (with the exception of image stabilization). It’s faster than the 70-200 (f/2.0 instead of f/2.8) so the bokeh from it is even more amazing. It’s relatively lightweight. And this is one super sharp lens. The pictures I get from it are incredibly sharp and it focuses very quickly. A fellow photographer and friend of mine calls this her “magic lens.” At $900, it’s also a fantastic deal for such beautiful quality.

Cons: This is a fantastic focal length for my style and on my full frame 5d camera, but on a 1.6 FOVCF body (rebel, 20/30/40d, etc) I can see it being too long (or too “zoomed in”) for many people’s liking.

Canon 24-70 f/2.8 L

This was our first lens, and it is a fantastic multi-purpose lens. Many pros list it as their favorite lens, or the one lens they would keep if they could only have one.

Pros: It is fast, sharp, focuses quickly, and has a great range–a perfect “every day” focal length range.

Cons: I like the 24-70 more on a 1.6 FOVCF body than I do on the 5d–it’s a little too short for my style on a full frame body (but is great in tight quarters or for groups). This is another on-the-big/heavy-side lens.

Canon 17-40 f/4 L

This is our wide angle lens, and it does a great job of that. Perfect for wide angle wedding scenes.

Pros: It is a great wide angle lens. It is a fantastic deal–$650 and fairly small and lightweight. When I need a wide angle shot, I know I’m going to get a great one.

Cons: I’m not a huge fan of wide angles (though I know they are popular right now in portraits)–I prefer the flattering telephoto lenses. So this lens doesn’t get used much.

Canon 50mm f/1.4

This gets my vote for the one I recommend most to new photographers. If you are on a tight budget and can only get one lens, this is the one to get.

Pros: It is very fast, fantastically inexpensive ($250), and has beautiful bokeh (unlike it’s cheaper illegitimate sister, the 50mm f/1.8). This one also spends a lot of time on my camera at home. It’s wide aperture and multi-purpose “normal” focal length makes it a great bet for family photos. It is tiny and very lightweight. (And it’s the least expensive lens in my bag, so if something gets dropped or damaged from being out, at least it’s not an expensive loss!) You are also able to get very close to your subject with it–it has a minimum focusing distance of 1.5 feet, which means I can very nicely fill the frame with my little two year old subject.

Cons: Can’t think of any. Unless not having a pretty red “L series” stripe can counts as a con.

Lenses I have kicked to the curb

Canon 70-200 f/4 L

Pros: This baby is a fantastic value. One of the least expensive L lenses. It is sharp, relatively lightweight, and a great lens for traveling. We broke this one out for vacations and it was fantastic.

Cons: As a telephoto f/4 with no image stabilization, this was not a good indoor lens. The 70-200 f/2.8 IS kicked its butt, and then when we got the 135mm, we sold this one.

Canon 85mm f/1.8

Another prime lens (so far I’ve discussed the 50mm f/1.4 and the 135 f/2.0). Prime lenses are my faves and I plan on discussing the difference between primes and zooms later this week. But in short, prime lenses are usually a totally fantastic value because they only have to do one thing, and they can do that one focal length extremely well.

Pros: A lot of people like this lens.

Cons: I was not one of those people. To be fair, it IS a nice lens with great image quality and fast focusing at a great value (around $350). I think on a 1.6 FOVCF I would like this lens, but it was useless to me on the 5d. Every time I framed the shot how I wanted it, it would turn out I was too close and I’d have to take a step back. It has an almost 3 feet minimum focusing distance (compared to the 50mm’s 1.5 feet). I bought the 135mm to combat this problem (it also has a 3 feet min focusing distance, but being a much longer lens means that I can frame the shot just how I want it from that distance).

Whenever you are about to print a photo or share it online, one of your last steps should be to sharpen it. Whenever you resize your photo–either making it larger OR smaller–you’ll need to sharpen it.

Here’s the picture we’ll be working with:

I have always used the “unsharp mask” feature (FILTER>SHARPEN>UNSHARP MASK):

Next you get a little pop-up window that asks you to pick your settings. This is the setting I usually use, but I think every photographer finds one that they like best:

Yesterday a fellow photographer taught me a new technique that I like a lot.  It gives you a little more power to fine tune the effect.

Start by making a duplicate layer of your photo (LAYER>DUPLICATE LAYER):

Then you head over to the filter drop-down again, but this time you’ll select OTHER>HIGH PASS:

It will give you another pop-up prompt. Pick something around 30px:

Now it’s time to make the scary gray disappear. In your layers menu, change it from “normal” to “soft light” and then adjust the opacity of the layer to whatever seems right.

And there you have it–two different ways to sharpen your photos!

One of the pictures I took while second shooting weddings for Laura Dombrowski Photography was picked by The Knot to illustrate cute orange decorations! (Laura is a fantastic Denver wedding photographer well worth checking out if you are a Colorado bride!)

That photo (which you may recognize from our wedding site contact page) is a great example of how getting closer can provide an entirely different photo. It began with this idea I had of a picture of the flower girls (they were already standing in a group waiting for the reception to start, so I simply had them bring their flowers together):

I wasn’t crazy about everything going on in the background, but then I realized that I had another great photo right there. Without moving anything except ME, I stepped in quickly and took this second shot:

Just another example of how many ways there are to take different photographs of one subject. If I hadn’t thought to take one step closer, we wouldn’t have been able to do a happy dance over my photo being published in The Best of 2008 Weddings magazine by The Knot!

If you’re new to the blog, on Tuesdays I cover photography tips–providing info for a totally basic point-and-shoot user as well as one for those starting to dive in a little deeper.

Photographers are always asked for advice about gear. Which is great because photographers love to talk about gear! For the next couple of weeks we’ll talk about the things in your camera bag.

Photography is an expensive hobby. If you’re not broke, you’re just not trying hard enough. The two biggies, of course, are your camera and your lenses.

I am really really really really really excited about next week when we’re going to talk about my favorite thing in the world: lenses.

But first we have to cover cameras.

The Basics

I know nothing about the point-and-shoot market in 2008. For specific camera recommendations, I point you to DP Review. In our pre-dSLR days, this is the website we cruised for camera info.

Instead of giving specific recommendations, I offer this advice:

- Don’t buy more camera than you need. It is tempting to buy a fancier camera and think it will make your pictures better. This isn’t always true. Make sure you’re not buying bells and whistles that you don’t intend to use. If you plan on keeping your camera on auto, you probably don’t need a dSLR (but you might still want one–we’ll return to this in a minute). Many of the nicer point-and-shoots come with the ability to use it on manual mode as well as aperture priority and shutter priority (and therefore learn practice and learn more about photography) and they come with better lenses on the front of them than the kit lenses included with entry-level dSLRs.

- Megapixels don’t mean much these days. The difference between a 2 megapixel image and a 4 megapixel image was huge. The difference between a 8 meg and 10 meg camera? Not so much. As Nic says from time to time “it’s the quality of the megapixels that matters” (but I have no earthly idea what that means–maybe he can guest author an entry about it some time).

- Shutter-lag DOES matter. Shutter-lag is that annoying pause between the time you hit the shutter button and the time your picture actually takes. Like how when you take a picture on your cell phone you can hit the “capture” button and then by the time the image actual records, your kid is out of the frame. Shutter-lag doesn’t matter much with landscapes or grown-ups, but if you’re photographing kids, it is HUGE. The best reason to purchase a dSLR if you never plan on taking it off auto is for the ability to take the picture when you mean to take the picture–not when your camera gets around to it.

- What is this SLR term that is thrown about? SLR stands for single lens reflex (which explains nothing, right?) and it simply means that what you see through the viewfinder is coming through the lens (not through a little viewfinder hole). dSLRs are just digital SLRs. With most SLRs, your lens isn’t fixed to the front of the camera–you can use different lenses for different situations (there are fixed lens SLRs–it’s just not what most people mean when they talk about SLRs).

Step It Up

Ready for your SLR? You have a big decision to make: Nikon or Canon?

(There are of course other SLR brands, but let’s be serious: it’s a choice between Nikon and Canon.)

When you buy your first SLR, you’re not just buying a camera–you’re investing in a system. You can’t use a Nikon lens on a Canon body (and vice versa)…so if you buy a (Canon) Rebel now, and in two years want to buy a (Nikon) D3, all of your lenses will need to be sold and you’ll need to buy all new Nikon lenses.

Digital camera bodies are essentially disposable–every couple of years there will be new developments that will make the old camera bodies seem ridiculously slow or noisy or out-of-date. But lenses last forever. Good glass 10 years ago is good glass today. (Which is why lenses retain their value so incredibly well while a 20d on Ebay can be snapped up for less than half of what it cost two years ago.)

When you buy your camera, it is a big investment. But the lenses you buy to put on that camera are your real investment. They can be with you for years and through many different camera bodies, so you want to choose your brand carefully. It just doesn’t make sense to lose money by switching back and forth.

How do you choose?

The good news is that you can’t make a bad decision–Nikon and Canon are both fantastic brands, and there are amazing professionals that fight to the death on which one is better on either side of the debate. The biggest factors that influenced choice Nic and I made were (a) how Nikon and Canon sensors deal with color and (b) the way Nikon and Canon implement technology. The biggest push toward Canon for me was looking at the images of the photographers I admired. They all shot with Canon. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it (I learned later what it was), but I loved the Canon pictures.

What I learned later from the photographic community is that Nikon images tend to be more vibrant straight out of camera and the skin tones more red. Canon tends to deal with skin tones more naturally. (I think this is why you see so many portrait and wedding photographers using Canon while landscape photographers seem to prefer Nikon.) Someone wrote that when post-processing Canon images, you’re coaxing out the color. With Nikon, you’re reigning it in.

We also read that Canon tends to implement their latest technology at the middle of their product line, while Nikon introduces it at the high end. Canon’s approach appealed to us, because we were hobbiests when we bought our first dSLR.

If I was making the same decision today I would also place an emphasis on the range of lenses that Canon offers. They simply have more lenses to choose from.

But the bottom line when you’re picking your first dSLR is to not just compare camera to camera (eg–comparing the Rebel to the D60), but system to system. You’ll have that camera for a couple of years, but that brand will be yours for much longer.

Once you’ve decided on your brand, the decision becomes much easier. The camera you choose can be determined by your budget.

More on your budget and how to allocate it next week when we get to talk about lenses! (I’m excited. Are you excited? Some girls like diamonds. I like fast glass.)

This month we’re examining two snapshot portraits, and why one works, and the other doesn’t. Photography Tip #1 is here, Photography Tip #2 is here.

This is our bad photo:

And here is our good photo:

Simple Tip: It’s called “portrait” orientation for a good reason

When you want to print a sheet of paper the hotdog way, you select “portrait.” When you want to print it the hamburger way, you select “landscape.” It’s right there in the name, yet the vast majority of snapshots of people are horizontal prints (probably because it’s easier to hold the camera that way).

A very easy way to improve most of your compositions is to turn the camera, remembering that “portrait orientation is for people, landscape is for landscapes.”

People are tall and skinny, and so they fill the frame better when the photo is vertical. In the bad photo, Nic doesn’t fill the picture. He is the subject, but he’s swimming around with a bunch of clutter. In the good photo, Nic fills the frame.

Stepping it Up: All rules were meant to be broken

Finding ways to break this rule can lead to very interesting compositions. Most of the time landscape orientation portraits are showing a beautiful landscape, like this engagement portrait:

Close-ups can be very interesting, though, too, because it usually leads to cropping the face in an unexpected way:

If you’re going to use a horizontal orientation, though, it’s important to remember to watch your composition. You most likely will be creating some white space, so you’ll want to make sure that space really is white (and not full of a lamp or china cabinet as in The Bad Photo) and that you utilize the rule of thirds to keep things interesting. (More of the rule of thirds next week for our “simple photography tip.”)

Cindy and John!

Cindy is currently deployed in the Middle East, so when I have spoken with her in the past, she’s said how much it would mean to her to have this part of her wedding taken care of and off her worries! I’m sure she and John would like to thank everyone that voted for them!

We are so excited to photography their wedding and can’t wait to share those pictures with everyone (the Academy Chapel is really a dream location for wedding photographers, so we hope we’ll do it justice)!

Nic and I would like to thank all of our finalists for participating. We have loved sharing their stories with you and thank everyone who came to visit our website to vote for their friends/family/favorites! It has been a wonderful experience and we look forward to doing a similar wedding photography give-away contest for 2009!

In case you missed it the first time around, here is their winning entry:

Cindy and John – 23 August 2008

We quickly connected with Cindy and John’s story. Our relationship also began in college with our Air Force training (ours in ROTC rather than the Academy) and we had lots of long-distance times in our own relationship. And if that wasn’t enough to pull at our heart strings, Cindy and John are tanker pilots…and I have had an unusual love affair with tankers ever since my Aircraft Maintenance tech school (other maintainers thought I had it sweet working at Langley with F-15s and F-22s…and all I could dream of were KC-10s)!

My name is Cindy, and I would like to share my love story with you. My fiance, John, and I are both first lieutenants in the U.S. Air Force. We are both KC-135 Stratotanker pilots, and as such conduct air refueling for other jets. That probably makes us the highest paid gas station attendants in the world!

How We Met (or “The Usual He-said, She-said”)

John and I met a few years before we even considered dating each other, as freshmen (actually we were called “fourth class cadets”) at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. Though I had worked hard to land a congressional nomination and appointment to the Academy, my first real exposure to the military and life away from my small hometown was a bit daunting. But I’d been running on sports teams basically my whole life, so joining the Academy’s cross country and track teams was my release. I found that running was the same no matter where you were. It was at one of the first few practices that I met John.

John was born and raised in central Florida, near Orlando. He was the tall, dark haired, stunningly handsome, and confidant guy you’d expect to meet in a beach town. I figured there would be no chance he could ever be interested in me. Years later he told me that I had caught his eye during those first few practices as well–me in my short running shorts and spaghetti-strap sports bra–but of course I had no idea at the time.

Time passed, and we became teammates, mere acquaintances–because I could never work up enough courage to really talk with him outside of practice. The next summer, my boyfriend-at-the-time failed to pick me up at the airport upon my return from summer leave at home in California. While I was on the phone with him, furious and stranded, John walked up to me in the airport and offered me a ride. I was embarrassed, but took him up on the offer. He was very pleasant and friendly, but I was sure he was laughing on the inside at me and my awkwardness. He tells me now that he had enjoyed talking with me so much, he decided then that he was going to date me someday.

Over the next two and half years I ran into him at various times. Every time we’d meet he would stop and ask me about things–classes, running, my family, my boyfriend–and he genuinely seemed to care. I’d always walk away thinking he was so sweet and sincere. Of course in my head I was swooning over the fact that he actually remembered my name! He says he was always scheming on how to take me out on a date. He wanted me to know that he cared, and to make sure that I didn’t forget about him. At long last, he asked me out, and we just clicked—chatting through our first date for more than seven hours!

Fast-Forward (or “Insert Complications Here”)

Two years later, the military put a stumbling block into our otherwise ordinary development as a couple. We were both in pilot training, and it was time for each of us to make some career decisions about first, what type of airplane to fly and second, where we each wanted to live for our first assignments (about four years). I came upon decision-making time first and though we were very much in love, we decided I should ask for assignments based on my personal preferences and we’d figure things out with us down the road. My first choice: Fly KC-135s in Mildenhall, England. And sure enough, I was granted orders to England as a KC-135 pilot! I was so excited.

Seven months later—more secure in our relationship and ready to commit—it was time for John to request his first assignment. His request: KC-135s to Mildenhall England, in hopes of following me. The tanker was not actually his favorite, but it might make it more likely for us to be stationed together. As we waited to hear the results of his assignment, I packed up my belongings, shipped them to England, and bought a plane ticket in preparation for my departure. Much to our dismay, John was given orders to fly KC-135’s, but in McConnell, Kansas. Instead of Great Britain, he would be living in the Great Plains. Now he was stuck flying a plane that would not have been his first choice, and we wouldn’t even be living on the same side of the Atlantic.

He had sacrificed a lot for the chance of being with me, and so I decided it was time I do the same. I requested my orders be changed to Kansas in order to be with him. John of course did not want me to give up England–he knew how excited I was for the assignment–but life with him in Kansas would bring me more joy than life alone in England.

I moved to Kansas in October, with the two small suitcases I had planned on flying with me across the ocean. With all the rest of my belongings already being shipped to England, I had no furniture and was even borrowing shower towels for months, but I knew I had made the right choice. Things started to fall into place in December. My belongings finally arrived back from their voyage to England (my couch is now more traveled than I am) and I settled into my new place. Then on Christmas Eve in my hometown, John asked me to marry him!

Our Wedding (or “Happily Ever After … Mostly”)
We will be sharing our vows in front of friends and family back where it all began—in Colorado at the Air Force Academy, in the beautiful Cadet Chapel on August 23, 2008. (If you haven’t seen it before, the Chapel is simply gorgeous–every photographers dream;) ) I couldn’t be happier with the way things have turned out, but there are still many obstacles in our future.

Long term, even though we are stationed together now, every re-assignment brings with it the risk of being separated. The needs of the Air Force will always trump the desires of the wedded members. We are thankful for our good fortune so far, and will never take it for granted! Wedding-wise, planning is kind of difficult. With my family living in California, his family in Florida, me in Kansas and him in Oklahoma (he won’t be moving to Kansas until a few months from now), all arrangements must be made via email and phone exchanges. As if that were not difficult enough, I will be deploying to the desert in a few weeks in order to do my part in the War on Terrorism. I’ve heard of brides planning weddings from Iraq, but that’s never how I imagined my wedding planning would go. I just keep thinking about heading down the aisle in my elaborate white dress (I’m thinking elbow-length gloves would go well with his crisp, navy-colored mess dress uniform, right?), with the colored light streaming in through the Chapel’s modern windows spanning the height of the majestic spires—and John ahead of me. With him by my side, I’ll always be home.

OK, so it’s a bit cheesy–but what’s a bride without her cheesy love story? This one’s mine!

To read the Real Photography Pay it Forward interview, click here.

I’ve also got something coming in the next couple of weeks that I’m really excited about…a solution for people who can’t find enough time to scrapbook all the pictures they generate in a year!

Stay tuned for the newsletter later today and a sneak peek at a big secret…if you know anyone who is planning a wedding in Colorado for 2008, you won’t want to miss it!