100 amazing iPhone photos

Apple’s iPhone is a fantastic little gadget. Global positioning system meets touch-screen meets iPod / portable video player meets hyperportable computer, meets camera. For the purpose of this article, it’s only the latter that is interesting…

I was on the train the other day, and spotted the light hitting my book in a gorgeous way. Cursing that I didn’t have a proper camera with me, I decided to try and capture the moment with my iPhone. The results were actually really quite good, which piqued my interest; are there people out there taking works of arts with their iPhone?

It turns out the answer is a resounding ‘yes’ – and I wasted most of the evening and night collecting 100 fantastic examples of people taking gorgeous photos with their iPhones. Without further ado…

The Apple iPhone as a camera

The iPhone is many things. It’s the most flawed phone I’ve ever owned (which I wrote about here back when I was still editing T3.com), but it’s still heads and shoulders ahead of any other phone I’ve ever owned, too: It’s the first device that does everything I need to, the apps functionality is a stroke of genius, the built-in GPS and maps has saved my bacon so often I’ve lost count, and I’m a recovering Trism addict, too. It’s got the best screen on any phone I’ve ever used, and the whole touch-screen thing is fab.

Having said all that, the iPhone’s camera is pretty damn inferior compared to the current slew of camera phones out there. I had a couple of Sony Ericsson phones that had better battery life AND a far better camera (with – gasp – autofocus!) than Apple’s raprod.

And yet… it’s the first camera phone I’ve used where I’m taking photos all the damn time. It helps that the iPhone makes uploading photos to Flickr / Facebook or e-mailing them to friends very easy, and the fact that your photos are Geo-tagged for you is pretty nifty as well.

So yes, the iPhone is a rather fantastic machine overall, with a sub-par camera. That doesn’t stop people from making some damn fine artwork with it though…

(Top tip: the iPhone takes the photo when you release the on-screen shutter button, so you can find it, press and hold, frame, and then just release the button when you’re ready)

So – despite its shortcomings, it turns out there are some pretty awesome iPhone photgraphers out there. I’ve collected some of the best…

The best of the best

In my research, I found a few photographers in particular that are worth taking a special look at for their work with iPhone cameras: Sionfullana has more than 400 iphone photos in his stream, and his iPhone set is full of absolutely fantastic photos, including tons of great street photography around New York.

Update: I’ve done an interview with Sion Fullana about how he takes his amazing iPhone photos!

The other photographers that kept coming up time and time again are Steve Bluestein, whose abstract work is fantastic indeed. Finally, Bananajode, and carolthome both have really distinctive styles which is an inspiration in itself.

Between these four, they’ve got art with an iPhone camera covered – but there are so many others out there who dabble in iPhone photography – with fabulous results. Witness…

100 fantastic iPhone photographs

It took me a hell of a long time to collect all of these, but they’re all worth taking a look at – first off, 55 with thumbnails…

photo by bananajode

photo by pierre bédat

photo by breamarie

photo by imagohun

photo by Silence99

photo by Hieroglyphics…’

photo by pouwerkerk

photo by pressapposky

photo by clearstyle

photo by clearstyle

photo by Richard Sintchak

photo by 03ｗ

photo by kcvsf8

photo by clearstyle

photo by toalston

photo by photo_aperture

photo by kayakvarberg

photo by tsurujun

photo by raney_day

photo by presuggan

photo by bananajode

photo by bananajode

photo by Jonas

photo by imago2007

photo by stevebluestein

photo by cruzan

photo by kt

photo by ascott

photo by stevebluestein

photo by chrishalford

photo by stephenhackett

photo by zach_manchester

photo by guest_family

photo by badastronomy

photo by pixelhound

photo by ath-har

photo by bananajode

photo by libratem

photo by stevebluestein

photo by guest_family

photo by mackro

photo by stevebluestein

photo by guest_family

photo by stevebluestein

photo by stevebluestein

photo by bananajode

photo by stevebluestein

photo by andyi

photo by libratem

photo by mattloveskicks

photo by psylense

Even more!

Still haven’t had enough? I don’t blame you to be honest, there’s a lot of awesome iPhone photography going here, so you may as well keep going! The next 50 or so haven’t got thumbnail images (partially out of laziness, and partially because these users have chosen not to share the ‘small’ versions of their images with the world) – but have a click, have a look, and enjoy!

photo by AdamBaronPhoto
photo by ilyysamanthaa
photo by shoken
photo by rayguntv
photo by uncommon
photo by carolthome
photo by version-3-point-1
photo by carolthome
photo by bitrot
photo by steviezj
photo by the-challenge
photo by studioh
photo by jswright
photo by carleton_hall
photo by big-e-mr-g
photo by jswright
photo by junku
photo by petermarik
photo by maitexu
photo by dogmatic
photo by sionfullana
photo by ronlemise
photo by alexthegirl
photo by x-cao
photo by x-cao
photo by antomic
photo by davidwatts1978
photo by journalrevolution
photo by hrtwrk
photo by littlepretty
photo by romeez
photo by gabo
photo by funcrodrigo
photo by yusheng
photo by sionfullana
photo by michaelnyc
photo by big-e-mr-g
photo by jswright
photo by sionfullana
photo by Otto K
photo by sionfullana
photo by sionfullana
photo by skyblueskin
photo by marcel83
photo by Matthew Burlem
photo by carolthome
photo by sionfullana
photo by Tabangel7
photo by sionfullana

And finally, the photo which set me on this wild goose chase in the first place; the only iPhone photo I decided would be good enough to place in my main Flickr stream:

On the Train by yours truly

Join the fun

Want to get in on the fun? Check out the Taken with iPhone group – or check out the there’s currently more than 30,000 photos to be looked at, and they welcome you to add your own, too. Or you can check out ‘taken with iPhone‘ camera browser on Flickr.

… And if you find any amazing gems I’ve missed, do leave us a comment – I’ve been thoroughly amazed by peoples creativity so far, and I’d love to continue being flabberghasted! :)

Peter Yang: A Powerhouse of Portraits

A regular contributor to Rolling Stone, Wired, and ESPN Magazine, young photographer Peter Yang emerged out of the Austin journalism world and hit the ground running full-force with his masterfully lit, intimate portraits of political figures, actors, rock stars and cowboys. Peter chats with PICTURE in his cozy Brooklyn workspace about his roundabout path towards editorial success, and shares some tips on the dos and don’ts of photography.

This awesome guest article was contributed by Anna Sian, who normally writes for Picture Magazine. This article has been generously contributed to Photocritic as a sample of the writing you’ll find in Picture (a bit more about the magazine can be found at the bottom of this article)

WHERE DID YOUR PASSION FOR PHOTOGRAPHY START?

I went to the University of Texas in Austin, where I was a business major. I had to get in a suit three times a week and go to meetings and career fairs – it was all pretty depressing and I had no idea what I wanted to do. I saw a tryout for the student newspaper (which ended up being a big paper, and their photographers win a lot of Pulitzers) tried out for it, never really having taken a picture before, and I had a point and shoot camera.

I think I was just too ignorant to be intimidated by it all – I was just happy to be there. But I worked really hard and it was something I felt really passionate about, and I started seeing pictures everywhere, that I’d never noticed before. So that’s how I got started, taking the journalism route at the beginning.

AFTER SCHOOL, DID YOU ASSIST SOMEONE? HOW DID YOU LEARN?

I got a job at a newspaper coming out of school and I assisted myself a lot. I would read magazines, look at pictures, and try to figure out how they did it. There are things that took years to figure out that I think an assistant could have gotten by just asking a simple question, but the process of making so many mistakes trying to figure things out.

I went through about 900 different styles during that process, any gimmicky thing you can think of, I tried. Actually, there’s just kind of no replacing actually doing it yourself. Having not assisted, it was tough at first because I was doing it all roundabout and backwards, but I think in the end, it worked out.

HOW DID YOU GET YOUR FOOT IN THE EDITORIAL DOOR?

I come from a rich family. I just sent loads and loads of cash and they hired me. I’m actually much in debt right now. No, um…I feel really blessed that I started the way that I did. Well, while I was working at the newspaper I was based out in Texas and I was considered a regional photographer. And I started working for Texas Monthly which I had always heard was a mg that was always respected around the country – I knew a lot of people shot for them, Keith Carter, Mary Ellen Mark, Jeff Minton, and all these folks today.

Scott Dadich was there at the time, now the Creative Director at Wired. He was pretty new there and I think he liked what I was doing and so he called me for a shoot and I did another and they got bigger and bigger. It was fortunate for me to start that way, because he really encouraged me to experiment. And it was like someone was paying or me to do personal work.

Everyone has a label on their heads. Every time you see someone, you can read two words about them. People just have to know you as the Texas guy, the funny guy, the quirky guy, the dramatic lighting guy, the guy you call when no one else is available, guy or gal, whatever it is. I always encourage people who call me to really figure out how to conquer their market before they try this. But I guess if you’re already here, and you’ve already done it, you just assist.

All my first assistants, when they’re ready to go out on their own, I always put them in touch with all the editors I think they would work well with. And they usually have a relationship with them somehow already. But starting from scratch can be pretty tough.

SO HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR STYLE NOW?

I’ve been shooting for about 10 years, and I’ve been doing this kind of magazine stuff for about 5 years. When I started out, I think I was a much quirkier photographer. I never wanted to take a picture that didn’t have a point of view or a sense of humor, always looking for something a little bit off, or a little different. I think where that made some really good images, it was also a point of undue stress.

I figured out eventually that not every shot has to have a punchline. It could just be a nice intimate portrait of someone, and I think that’s what really helped me where I am now. I do try to find something interesting or funny to say but if its just a really kickass picture or a nicely lit picture of someone, that’s fine too.

DO YOU PREFER STUDIO LIGHTS TO NATURAL LIGHTS?

All of my pictures are lit in one way or another. The more I do this, the more i’m allowing the natural light to get in there somehow. and if the natural light isn’t available, I create light from natural situations.

I think a big difference between pictures now and a few years ago is that there’s always kind of a light where the sun would be overhead and behind a little. It takes a lot of gear, really long stands and big booms and all this stuff just to get a light that’s way up – it almost always simulates the sun shining dwn on someone. I feel like actually it looks a bit more natural even though its more lit than it happens to be.

HOW DO YOU USUALLY APPROACH A SHOOT?

The way I usually approach it is to do a lot of research on the subject, you know, with wikipedia and everything, you can find out all this stuff about people and you find out later that everything is not necessarily true, but at least you think them, going in. I usually try to find a location that is cool and that has different options. I try to bring props, and I have an idea of what I want but it’s not very often that I go into a shoot with exactly planned out. When a photo editor wants to say exactly what they want, I love it.

Because I can go in and get that shot and then I can do something that I think is cool too, and half the time, they love what I thought was cool.

As far as how a shoot goes, it really depends, because I do a fair amount of editorial but also a good amount of advertising too, and they’re just two completely different things in production. But at the very least there’s two or three assistants and a couple of carts worth of lights. I always try to keep it as simple as possible and stay low key.

HOW IS SHOOTING CELEBS DIFFERENT FROM SHOOTING ORDINARY PEOPLE?

It’s vastly different. It’s very much like you’re working ideas out with the publicist, there’s a set time that you have, you chat a little bit but both of you are working, they’re there to promote their new movie or their new album and you’re there to get the best picture you can. I think I get along with everyone, we click in a photographic way and once in a while, on a personal level.

SO YOU AND BARACK ARE TIGHT?

Yeah, we’re buddies. I feel like we clicked, but I kinda feel like, watching him, that he clicks with everyone. It’s usually not the bigger names—it’s someone I have a common interest with. Like when I shot Dana White, from the Ultimate Fighting Championship. I was really into martial arts and we talked about that.

WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN YOU’RE NOT TAKING PICTURES?

I like to read books and watch movies and take walks on the beach. But more recently, I’ve been making stuff out of wood.

ANY FINAL WORDS OF ADVICE?

I think it’s important to be really persistent. And constantly creating your work – I used to do a ton of it, I used to shoot every day and find a reason to shoot something, and sometimes it would just be like, a macro picture of a lego guy, but it was a picture. I find that a lot of people don’t shoot enough.

If you don’t feel the want and the motivation to be shooting all the time, you have to really ask yourself if this is what you want to do; because that kind of enthusiasm decreases over time and if you’re already not feeling it– and people will say things like “well if I can just get someone to hire me, and I don’t even have to get paid, they can just assign me something to shoot and I’ll shoot it” – well that’s not how it works. You have to prove that you can do it. It’s just way too competitive, and if you don’t have that kind of desire, you’re probably not going to make it. So keep taking personal pictures.

And everyone has pictures of their friends. It’s sort of like the young hipster portrait, with natural light or something. Some are better than others, but you see that a lot. And then there are people who take pictures of a funky or weird looking guy. Don’t do that. What you should find are images that really tell a compelling story. I would just say stay away from the homeless people or a portfolio comprised of all of your friends that are under the age of 19. Diversify.

See Peter Yang’s Website for more of his photography

About Picture Magazine

Maybe you’re stuck in the prehistoric ages and you have yet to flip through the pages of Picture Magazine. Evolve! A leader in the photographic marketplace, Picture is as much a creative inspiration to emerging photographers as it is a valuable industry resource for the professional shooter. In circulation for over 15 years, the magazine continues to shine. Honored for photographic achievement in design and editorial vision, Picture has been nominated for a “Lucie Award” for best photography magazine by the International Photographic Awards.

The magazine’s great visual detail is what Creative Director Yukina Korenaga is all about. Since March 2008, Korenaga has wedded bold graphics and provocative imagery to editorial content designed to inspire, educate and support its readers. Korenaga, a native of Osaka, Japan, studied magazine publishing and advertising communications at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City.

Korenaga creates luminous spreads which feature photomarket updates and bi-coastal studio reviews, reviews of photography in recent advertising campaigns, annual photo school reviews and roundtable forums, equipment, stock photography, news, and current trends. Her expertise covers much ground, from creative layouts to styling of photoshoots. Korenaga’s extraordinary creative vision coupled with the acuity of an accomplished team of editors makes for a smart, timely, and inspired photo source.

Picture magazine is a bi-monthly NYC-based national photo industry publication, providing news, calendar, and event information, photographer profiles and interviews, advertising and magazine reviews, digital and Internet columns, and equipment and product information. The magazine has grown tremendously over the past fifteen years to emerge as an acute, intuitive and valuable monthly photo industry resource. Picture fills the niche for a smart and insightful look into the current photography market. For further information and subscriptions, visit the Picture Magazine website.

Making an epic collage

When I moved from Liverpool to Bristol a few years ago, the first couple of weeks in my new house, I didn’t have an internet connection. I felt rather lonely, and decided to look through some images of my old friends. I grew to realise that I had an incredible amount of them.

So many, in fact, that I figured I might as well turn them into a piece of art…  

I created a 7500×5000 pixel Photoshop document, and split it into a grid of 2,730 squares of 1cm each, with a small gap in between. These squares were to become the framework upon which I was going to crop the images of all my friends.

In the end, I lost track of how many photos I used, but it must have been about 200 or so. The whole job took more than 100 hours work and resulted in a 400 MB Photoshop file

I had Photobox print me a huge poster-sized photographic print of it (and by huge, I mean a whopping 20×30 inches). The poster is now hanging on the inside of my door. Whenever I let my eyes scan across the photos, I can’t help but think there’s a lot of people out there – so many people, so many friends, so many memories.

You can’t be lonely when you have a poster of that many people close to your heart on the wall!

Check out the much-higher-resolution version on Flickr, and if you fancy having a go at making your own, you can download the Photoshop grid (76kb ZIP file which expands to a 7.8mb(!) Photoshop PSD) I used to make this. Enjoy!

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Capturing Urban Decay

Rarely do cities come more alive then when they are dying – or at least, that’s what the rather distinctive Urban Decay sub-genre of urban exploration photography is trying to prove.

Graffiti, buildings falling apart, and Mother Nature reclaiming what was once rightfully hers all have a place in my heart – so it was pretty awesome that Roy Barker decided to approach me with an idea for an article on the topic – without further ado, Roy Barker’s guide to photographing urban decay… 

Above: Fallen Arches (cc) by iboy_daniel on Flickr

Some of the most telling photos come from the stark reality of street shots of the buildings and people living in urban decay. And, as a photographer, you either need to be up early or late to catch the true essence of life on the streets.

Getting good photos of urban decay is not necessarily hard; it is more a matter of patience and understanding of the subject. So what is it that can help you become a better urban landscape photographer? Here are 10 tips for great urban photos:

1 – Get Up Early.

Early morning is one of the best times on the streets as the light is diffused and the sky is like a giant light filter that gives amazing results. Also the street cleaners are out and there are not many people around.

2 – Get it into Perspective.

When shooting urban shots the buildings should alter the way you use them to frame your photos. Make sure there is always some background behind buildings to give the viewer some perspective and appreciation of its form. Square buildings look their best when the photos are taken from a 40 to 60 degree angle.

3 – Get Permission

It may be that you need permission to take photographs in some public places. In some cases, this can mean the difference between you owning the images or not (i.e. if you have climbed over a wall or trespassed, you may find yourself in court with no rights to your own photos)

Right: Go Ahead, Open it (cc) by stephcarter on Flickr

4 – Photograph Buildings as they Grow – and as they Fall

Take photos of urban landscapes as they are built as well as the finished product, shots of construction can make for some interesting urban shots, but it doesn’t really matter if they’re putting the buildings together or taking them apart.

5 – Attack from Different Angles

Look at buildings through a different perspective. Look for shapes, patterns, textures, angles and reflections that make your work completely unique.

6 – What Lenses to Use

Take a wide angle and a zoom lens that is up to 300 mm. This will give you the flexibility you need to capture any angle. Be aware though, a zoom lens is great for capturing street scene details but can flatten your photo if you are not careful.

A wide lens gives a bigger depth of field to your photos in an urban landscape as they can capture the whole picture – and urban stuff is particularly well suited to Lensbaby photography, too…

Garbage in Madrid: Lost in Lensbabyland © Photocritic on Flickr

7 – What else to take on Location

This obviously depends on your individual style and budget but you might also want to take a tripod for night photography on the streets, UV and polarizing filters, an external flash, and a camera bag that sits over your shoulders with easy access to everything you need.

8 – Do your Research

While most people think that great urban shots come from being in the right place at the right time, this is not generally the case. It takes good research and planning to get those spectacular photos.

You will be amazed how the one spot in a street can change and be completely different depending on the time of day. How much the dynamics and contrasts change with the light and the ever-changing activities of daily life.

Lights Out (cc) by B Rosen on Flickr

9 – Plan your Photos as Themes

Urban landscapes are full of diversity but there are always common themes that run through them. For example, a series of shots about where people live – park benches, a warehouse, a modern penthouse to a period home or an old people’s home or hostel. These can be incredibly powerful when displayed side-by-side.

10 – Capture the Night Life

Urban landscapes become a completely new landscape at night. Everything changes. A city that is featureless and dull in sunlight can be an exciting, vibrant scene full of character that presents good opportunities to an urban photographer.

Right: Bright Rust (cc) by tanakawho on Flickr

The twilight zone is also a great time to shoot in the city streets as the city street lights reflect into the sky as the sun goes down.

The great thing about digital photography it easy to experiment and delete what does not work. Now get out there and try these tips for yourself – you will surprise yourself with the results.

Guest writer Roy Barker provides further information you can read on his site about the subject of photography.

And now… It’s your turn

As always, I’m curious to see your photographs – Why not share your finest urban decay photos with me and my readers? Add a comment with your link below!

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If you can dream it, you can do it

Planning out the 100% perfect photo shoot can make you a better photographer. Here’s how.

Think, for a moment, about every single photo shoot that somehow went wrong. The props you wish you had, the equipment you wish you could afford, the models you wish you could hire, the locations you wish you could scope out, light properly, and use as you please. Imagine for a second that you could hire the best make-up people, the best lighting assistants, the best stylists – everything you could possibly dream of.

Sounds insane, doesn’t it? Perhaps not – There’s a lot of limitations on your photography, but many of them will be entirely artificial. To find out what’s actually holding you back, put away your camera, and grab a pen and a ream of paper.  

I have done a lot of ad-hoc photo shoots. Glasses of water perilously balanced on top of books. Tripods that didn’t quite reach high enough perilously balanced on top of books. Needing to get higher up, I’d stand on books. I guess a lot of my photo shoots involve books. Or stacks of paper. Or dodgy tripods.

Either way, I once had an imaginary photography teacher who I wish would have come up with the following exercise: Design your perfect photo shoot. Hold nothing back.

If you can dream it, you can do it

Think about the location – where would you do your shoot? Personally, I’d head straight back to Utah – and bring a polarizer filter – some of the best skies I’ve ever seen was in northern Arizona and southern Utah. Perfect, deep blue skies with tiny clouds dotted across the heavens, combined with the rich red sandy colours of the ferrous desert, and the deep black asphalt with its bright, pearly white stripes down the middle snaking its way through the landscape. To me, that’s America – and I’ve only seen it once. It was awesome. It was amazing. And I want to shoot there again.

Arizona by me, on Flickr

So, you’ve got yourself a location and a perfect day – what’s next? Seeing as I’d want to photograph late in the evening to catch the golden hour, I’d need a bit of help – specifically, I know that lighting is my weak spot, and I’d need a bit of help getting the lighting right – someone to hold some huge reflectors to lift heavy shadows etc.

One of the things that makes me a great photography blogger is that I know my flaws as a photographer. Of which I have many. Embarrassingly many, in fact. Truth be told, my faults are pretty much universal, and I haven’t got any strengths beyond nattering on about things I’d love to be good at on this blog. (Prove me wrong by friending me on Flickr and favourite some of my photos already :-).

Nonetheless, I know that another huge weakness is that I’m rubbish at make-up. I had a brief stint of wearing black lipstick, but that’s many moons ago, and it never looked good – so the next people I’d get involved is a good make-up artist and a hair stylist. Sounds poncy, but the photo shoots I’ve done where I had professional help look universally better, and if I’m going to put together my dream photo shoot, then hell, I’m going to take all the help I can get.

Finally, I need a concept. I’m a huge fan of surrealism and such, so here’s my idea: The old Highway 66, rolling off into the distance. Sun is about to go down – golden light everywhere. There’s a young lady standing there – in her mid-20s perhaps, with unfeasibly large breasts. The light hits her from the front and the right. She’s standing there, in a pair of loose running trousers, legs quite a distance apart, one foot on each side of the centre line of the road. She’s got bare feet. A sports-bra. A general Aura of Awesome™.

Completely gratuitous shot with boobies; Tina Nude 1, by me on Flickr

A wind machine is sending her hair flying in all directions, and a spot flash from behind is turning her hair into a fantastic glow. On her right is a perfect tiger, just standing there. On her left, a toy Fisher Price tractor with gloriously garish colours. She has a look as if this is the most natural thing in the world. The photo is taken from low – very low, in fact, so she and the tiger tower out of the tarmac. She’s gorgeous. The tiger is gorgeous. The tractor just adds a very strong undercurrent of random.

The piece is called “Tiger, Tits and Tractor – Business as usual on Highway 66“. Because I like crude. I like fun. I like unexpected.

Making it realistic

Once you have your ‘perfect’ dream, you can start turning it into reality. In my day-to-day job as a digital producer for a TV station, we’d call this exercise ‘cutting scope’: You find out what the base level of functionality you think would work, and then you take it from there. In the above, I can probably find a buxom friend of mine who would model for the fun of it. We could make do without make-up – or perhaps I can get someone to do that for fun. As for hair – it’s entirely possible to go to a hair dresser and get it sorted for relatively cheaply.

As I’m stuck in rain-heavy London, I don’t think there’s much of a hope of being able to recreate the actual Highway 66 feel – and seriously, you ain’t going to get much use out of polarizer filters in this neck of the woods. But there are some bloody gorgeous back roads running through forests nearby. Outside East London, Epping forest does the trick. Down south, the New Forest is awesome. Heading north, the Nottingham Forest is gorgeous. Out east (and abroad – ooh, amazing) is Wales, with tons of cool little places. You need to recce, and you need to get a bit lucky, but it’s doable.

The point of this exercise is to see how good you can make something, and then start replacing. You probably can’t get Nathalie Portman to model for you (although I know you want that – as do I), but there are lots of models who money can buy; and there are probably a lot of beautiful people in your vicinity who can model for you for your project – simply create a list with your ideals, and think hard at where you can replace the ‘perfect’ solution for one that is merely pretty damn good – because you’d be amazed at the results.

But what if…

But what if you didn’t have to make short-cuts? What if you had an opportunity to make your full photo shoot, with all the bells, whistles, artists, models, and experts you need to realise your perfect photo shoot? Well, there is one way… The clever folk at Lenovo (Never heard of ‘em? They took over IBM’s Thinkpad range a while ago, and undid all the damage that IBM did to their own reputation. If I wasn’t such a mac addict, I’d probably buy a Lenovo laptop) and Microsoft have a photography competition going – with a twist: You don’t submit photographs, you submit ideas – and the best idea wins a semi-obscene $50,000 towards realising their photography idea.

Shaken, not Stirred by me, on Flickr

Rent a hot-air balloon or a helicopter; rent the most expensive cameras you can think of. Hire all the staff you need, fly out to any location in the world – imagine what you could do if you had $50,000 to spend on a single photo shoot. I know, it boggles the mind – but wouldn’t it be awesome? Hell, who knows, for $50,000, you may even be able to convince Nathalie Portman to model for you.

So here’s the deal: I want you to think hard, and to do the exercise above: Remove any financial barriers which might stand between you and your ideal photo shoot, and write up your perfect, ideal scenario. Then, if you are happy with it, submit it to Name your dream assignment – and, what the heck, post a comment to this post with the outline of your idea too – I’d love to hear about it.

On the even brighter side, I just might be one of the judges for this competition, so I’m looking forward to all your outlandish ideas.

Money-back guarantee

And what the hell – even if you don’t win, I’m convinced that putting together an idea like this is going to make you a better photographer. In fact, if you’re not a better photographer after writing down this idea, I promise you your money back. If you’re not happy at the end of doing this, and if you don’t feel that you have improved as a photographer as a result, I’ll send you 3 sheets of blank A4 paper and a pen or pencil (which is, in fact, the money you’ve invested into your idea)…

Go on, you know it makes sense.

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© Kamps Consulting Ltd. This article is licenced for use on Pixiq only. Please do not reproduce wholly or in part without a license. More info.

Trojan on this website

I just received an e-mail from a reader of this blog, who pointed out that his virus scanner went mental when trying to access this blog, stating that the web page was infected with an Exploit-IFrame.gen.c virus.

At first, I thought this was completely ludicrous, and that the good man was completely a) insane, b) computer illiterate and c) on a spamware-infested computer. Upon closer examination, however, it turns out that I was, indeed, the culprit.

It turns out that there is a security flaw in WordPress – the nature of which I haven’t quite been able to identify – which managed to insert a snippet of obfuscated Javascript code into the header of the blog. I had a look at the header file in my new theme template, and there was a block with the header ‘Searchbot_111’, which inserted an encoded block of JavaScript, which in turn pulled in the malicious code.

I have no idea what Exploit-IFrame.gen.c actually does, and there’s not a lot of information on the internet with specifics.

I’ve removed the offending code from my blog and I’ve locked down my file permissions – it turns out they were set to ‘world write’ (or 777 in octal, if you’re into that kind of thing), which is of course a complete beginner’s mistake – for which I hope you’ll be able to forgive me: Trust it won’t happen again.

I know most of you will be doing this already, but please remember to update your anti-virus software, ensure that you use a decent browser (use IE7 if you must, Firefox or Safari if you can, and trash IE6 if you’re still using that).

My apologies again,

- Haje

PS: I endeavour to track down how this happened in the first place and update this post with a guide as to how it can be avoided if possible and removed if necessary

Additional information about this server

This site is running the latest stable WordPress release (2.7)

I’m running a series of plug-ins to WordPress: Adsense-Deluxe v0.8 (ad serving), Akismet v2.2.3 (Spam blocking), Democracy v2.0.1 (voting/polls), Digg This v1.0.1 (social network promotion), FeedBurner FeedSmith v2.3.1 (RSS feeds), FlickrRSS v4.0 (Flickr pics in the sidebar), Google Sitemaps v2.7.1 and WP Super Cache v0.9 (caching)

In addition, I’m running a series of widgets: Democracy Widget 1.0 (voting/polls), KB Advanced RSS widget v2.1.2 (Twitter feeds) and PHP.Text widget v1.3 (To show the FlickrRSS as widgets).

The server is running a Ubuntu 8.04.1 (Hardy Heron) LTS virtual shared server hosted on a 1GB slice at Slicehost. I’m running PHP Version 5.2.4 hardened with Suhosin Patch 0.9.6.2 and MySQL 5.0.51a on an Apache 2.2.8 server.

Update

The symptom of this problem can definitely be removed by deleting any lines you don’t recognise from your header file. It’s likely to be right before the </head> tag. Look for a PHP snippet which appears to be trying to identify search engines.

It appears that the cause of this issue is an cross server scripting vulnerability in the RSS/Atom engine in WordPress, which appears to have come to light late in 2008. There is quite a bit of information about this all around the internet, but the technobrabble is a little bit beyond me. I’ll try and put together an understandable explanation for what’s going on as soon as I figure it out myself.

If I grok this correctly, It appears that the exploit is fixed in versions of WordPress beyond 2.6.5, but that the WP Super Cache plug-in continues to allow the exploit somehow.

If you’re affected by this, fix the issue, and then read Hardening WordPress and Did your WordPress Site get Hacked – both of which give a lot of starting points for research into how you can stop this happening again.

There’s also a plug-in which can help you scan your WordPress for exploits.

More updates to follow as the investigation continues

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Create your own pinhole 'lens' for your SLR camera

If you’ve been around photography for a while, you’ve probably come across the term ‘pinhole’. Basically, it’s the simplest form of bending-light-into-the-shape-you-need-it-to-be you can possibly do. A well-built pinhole camera can take gorgeous photos, with incredible depth of field, with a wonderful lo-fi look to them.

But what if you can’t be bothered getting your hands dirty with sheet film, developing or even having to build your own pinhole camera? If you fancy having a go at pinhole photography while using your trusty digital SLR, then this is everything you need to know to build your first pinhole ‘lens’.

It starts with a body cap

The first thing you’re going to need is a camera body cap.

You can either use the one that came with your camera (but you’ll be cannibalising this body cap, just like you did when you followed the instructions to create my macro extension tube out of a Pringles can) of you may want to get a second one. They are cheap as chips on eBay these days (I bought 2 of ‘em for £3), so you may as well get a spare…

Now, to prepare the camera body cap, I used some coarse sanding paper to take the logo off, then some finer sanding paper to get the coarseness down a little. There’s no good reason for doing this, other than that it’s a little easier to work with a flat surface than one with the logo of your camera embossed on the front.

If you wished, you could just drill a hole in the body cap and mount the actual pinhole to the inside of the cap instead, but seeing as how I’m planning to experiment with different pinholes in the nearby future, I like the idea of having the pinhole bit mounted on the front – easier to work with that way.

Now, you’ll have to forgive me for the blurriness of this illustration image – it’s tricky to hold a drill and a camera cap and a camera to take the photo all at the same time.

The real reason for taking this ‘action shot’, however, is that I didn’t want to look like a complete amateur, even though I was using a masonry bit in my drill. Of course, going through all the trouble to avoid showing you lot, only to then go ahead and tell you in the body copy anyway is a bit of a waste. You’ll have to forgive me.

Anyway, you end up with a body cap with a hole in it. Finish the hole by sandpapering down the rough edges both on the front and the back of the body cap, and remember to sandpaper the inside a little bit too – if for no other reason than to get a prettier finish.

Now, a very important step: you need to wash the body cap very well indeed. after all the sandpapering, it’ll be covered in black dust, and this is the kind of stuff you really don’t want to be stuck inside your camera – especially not on your imaging chip!

Creating the pinhole itself

Next up, we’re going to create the pinhole itself. There’s tons of way of doing this, but I’m a big fan on using whatever you have to hand. You need a material which is soft enough to work with efficiently, but it needs to be firm enough to be at least a little bit durable.

A coca-cola or beer can is perfect, but since I didn’t have any of those kicking about (I know, it’s mad, isn’t it? I seem to have lots of empty beer- and wine bottles, though, but they don’t make for great pinhole photography), I decided to use the side-wall of a tea light instead.

Drinks cans and tea light are made of soft aluminium, so you should be able to cut them with a pair of kitchen scissors without any problem. Beware that the edges may be very sharp, though, and you don’t want blood everywhere, so be careful.

With a very sharp implement (like a safety pin or similar), push gently into the aluminium. It helps if you have a soft-ish surface like a writing pad (that’s why all the photos are taken on lined paper. Well, that, and laziness). You want to push and turn the needle so you can only just barely see a hole.

Now, using extremely finely gritted sanding paper (I used 1200 paper), polish down the opposite side of where you poked the pin through.

The reason for the sandpapering is two-fold: for one, you don’t want the burrs on the other side of the metal, but you also want to make the metal as thin as possible, because the thinner the metal is, the finer your pinhole photos will be.

There are advanced ways of making the metal thin enough, or if you’re properly hardcore, you can get a professionally laser-cut pinhole body cap (see the ‘further reading’ section below for a link), but as long as you’re doing your best with making the hole a) as small as possible and b) as round as possible, you should be able to start making pinhole photographs soon.

When you think you’ve had a pretty good stab (haha, see what I did there) at making your first pinhole, hold it up to the light. If you can see that it isn’t perfectly round, discard your piece of metal and try again. It should look roughly like it does in the photo. Of course, the size of the pinhole is very important as well, but for now, we just want to make images appear, so this is a pretty good start.

Putting the two together

Now, you’re going to want to mount the pinhole to the centre of your body cap. Measure the centre carefully (or just take a wild guess, it’s up to you, really. I’m firmly in the guessing camp on this one), and simply tape the strip to your body cap. Also, I wish to apologise for the blurriness of this photo – you’d have thought I was capable of taking a sharp macro photo by now, but I guess that’s not the case. I blame my camera, the light, and London Transport Police because obviously, it couldn’t possibly have anything to do with me just rushing things a little bit in my excitement.

Next, use a sharpie (or whatever black permanent marker you might have handy at the time), and black out the front and back of the visual metal. I’m not sure if this is actually good for anything, but it makes me feel better thinking that I’ve at least tried to reduce the refractions on my aperture ever so slightly. That, and it makes the lens cap look more home-made, which is always a bonus.

After the previous step, you’ve actually finished everything you need to do to create a pinhole photograph! I decided to add an extra step, which is to add an additional white cover to the front of the pinhole body cap (because, obviously, if it’s a DIY project you have to add such adornments. And also, it’s a marvelous excuse for me to post a photograph of myself on my own blog), but that’s just me.

Now, it’s time to actually start taking some damed photographs, finally! Put the body cap on your camera, and set your mode dial to ‘manual’. Turn to a low-ish ISO (100 or 200 are good starting points) and a long shutter time. If you’re taking photos outdoors, start with 10 seconds and then adjust.

If you can’t see anything, you need to check if you’ve accidentally put the wrong body cap on your camera, and then select a longer shutter time.

With all the equipment finally put together in a half-way meaningful fashion, I figured it was time to start shooting some photographs…

Time to experiment!

Coca-Cola

Coffee cup

Coffee

Portrait

Autopsy of my photos

As you can see, all the photos came out a little bit on the fuzzy side.

One of the big problems you have when you’re shooting digital pinholes is that your imaging chip is absolutely tiny – the camera I was using here, a Canon 450D, has a 22.2 x 14.8 mm CMOS sensor. Compare that to a 36x24mm ‘normal’ negative, or the 60x60mm roll film (or even sheet film) that they’ve got in the analogue world, and it becomes clear that you have an awful lot less leeway.

The tiny sensor also has implications on how precise your pinhole needs to be – both in roundness (which is nigh-on impossible to get right with a safety pin) and in size (which, again, is tricky, although there is a way of measuring the size of your pinhole with a scanner)

However, the purpose of this exercise wasn’t to get perfect, super-sharp photographs, but go get a feel for how it’s actually possible to take photographs without having a lens attached to the front of your camera, for next to no money at all!

Further reading and inspiration

If this article has whet your appetite for pinhole stuff, but you just can’t get the tooling right (or if you’d rather be out there taking photos than actually mucking about with drills and bits of metal), you can buy a specially made body cap with a laser-cut pinhole.

Wikipedia, as always, has a pretty good article on pinhole photography, and in the Pinhole Camera Model article, they go into ludicrous detail of the mathematics and optics behind pinhole photography.

The Pinhole Visions website over on Pinhole.com is a huge and useful resource for learning more about pinhole photography.

For inspiration, I direct you yet again to the awesome Slowlight.net belonging to Katie. Also, hidden deeply inside her site is a list of links (see the bottom of this page) which has links to a ton of interesting pinhole photographers.

You can also try Flickr, where there are a whole load of interesting and quite active pinhole photography groups, like Pinholers, Pinhole Photography, and the oddly apt, considering this article Digital Pinholes

As usual, I’m sure I’ve left off tons of links, but that’s where you guys come in – Got ideas or recommendations? Post a comment!

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© Kamps Consulting Ltd. This article is licenced for use on Pixiq only. Please do not reproduce wholly or in part without a license. More info.

Photocritic gets a new look

Well, it’s been a good long while (November 2006, in fact) since Photocritic went Retro, and I’ve been considering to make a bit of a change to the site for the past few months.

So now, after spending a whole week-end ankle-deep in CSS, PHP and WordPress (after recently doing a bit of coding on a piece of forum software, it’s very good to be back on the WordPress codebase. I guess it’s difficult to appreciate how lovely it is unless you go through the hell that is badly coded software), I proudly present the new-look Photocritic.

It’s not completely finished yet – you’ll notice, for example, that the 4 thingies underneath the 3 thingies on the home page are still looking a bit spartan, how there are a few pages around the site that don’t really work with the new design, and how there are occasional quirks and wonkiness elsewhere, so please allow me to iron those out – if you do find any bugs or things that don’t quite look right, however, then please do leave a comment and let me know. (Unless you’re on Internet Explorer 6, in which case, please get a real browser and have another look)

Things I particularly enjoy about this design is that it is modular, and almost entirely Widgets-driven. That means that the 4 menu type things on the home page, the ‘featured articles’ on the homepage, the ‘Recent Flickr’ thingies in the right-hand menu bar on article pages (like the page you’re looking at now) etc can be added, removed, and moved about without touching any code.

The design reflects that I’m spending more time doing things which aren’t Photocritic – but are still related to the site; I’m microblogging about photography on Twitter, I’m more active on Flickr, and I’ve got a couple of other sites I’m interacting with more frequently, too – all of which is now better reflected throughout the site – a trend I’m intending to continue.

So yes, thank you for sticking with me, everybody, and I’m looking forward to run Photocritic v4 going forward!

Rock on,

- Haje

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Do you enjoy a smattering of random photography links? Well, squire, I welcome thee to join me on Twitter - Follow @Photocritic

© Kamps Consulting Ltd. This article is licenced for use on Pixiq only. Please do not reproduce wholly or in part without a license. More info.

Ambrotype photography

The ambrotype process is a photographic process that creates a positive photographic image on a sheet of glass using the wet plate collodion process. It was invented by Frederick Scott Archer in the early 1850s, then patented in 1854 by James Ambrose Cutting of Boston, in the United States.

This time, it’s your turn…

My good Katie Cooke (who I’ve featured on Photocritic before, and who might be familiar to you as the author of Slowlight – a fantastic resource on pinhole photography) wrote up a 20-step guide on the mysterious world of ambrotype photography.

Arguably, it’s not a very useful skill to learn (as opposed to, say, learning black and white, and subsequently colour developing in a darkroom), but we’re all photography geeks for a reason, dammit, so let’s start the new year by geeking out like it’s 1859!

Let’s start off with a bit of a disclaimer – The old photography processes aren’t as straight forward as clicking a button: The worst damage you can do to yourself with a digital camera is knocking yourself in the head (yeah, James, I’m looking at you) or falling off a cliff. Working with wetplates means you’re handling a lot of chemicals and suchlike – you need to understand which of the chemicals are dangerous, and which ones are less so.

I’d really recommend a workshop or tutorial for getting started: it’s a very physical process, and one that is much easier to learn by seeing and doing rather than reading. Watching a master in the art show you how it’s meant to be done will give you a massive head start. If that’s not possible, order John Coffer’s Doer’s guide (a text and 4 DVDs is available by post)

20 steps to Ambrotype victory…

Or: How not to make ambrotypes

1. Wash your glass pane

Take a piece of glass that’s cut to size to fit your plate holder, and wash it with washing up liquid and very hot water. Dry it and polish it. Breath on it, realise it’s still streaky, and polish it some more with your glasses cloth. Breath on it some more. Argh! Still streaky.

Juggle the glass to get a better look, cut your finger on the sharp edge because no, you couldn’t be bothered to knock the edges down could you. Bleed on the glass, and go back to washing it again. Wipe at it a bit more, and then declare it clean enough. Remember this would have been easier and less prone to fingermarks if you’d been wearing your stylish bright blue nitrile gloves.

2. Prepare the plate with egg. Yes, egg.

Sub the edges of the glass, by dipping a cotton bud into a mixture of egg white and distilled water that’s been sitting in the fridge for a while, and running that around the edges of the glass. This helps the collodion stick to the glass, particularly if it’s less than perfectly clean, and prevents it lifting up and peeling away your picture when you wash it later.

Do not leave the bowl of albumen mix where the cats will get at it and eat it. Egg white is Very Bad for moggies. Also, cat hair is not good for albumen.

3. Let the plate dry

Let the plate dry, and the eggy bits harden, while you set up the shot.

4. Set up your shot.

It’s easier if it doesn’t involve people at this stage, as there’s a lot of hanging around to do between now and the shutter opening. Create the scene for a bee-you-tiff-full picture, with large format camera on the tripod, all locked down and, no, you really aren’t going to bump the tripod just after you get the perfect focus, are you?

5. Look at the light and frown.

You’re inside, because you can’t leave the camera set up all alone on the front steps, your only bit of outside space, and, frankly, it’s pretty bloody dark in here, even by the big window. It’s december, get over it. Reach for your light meter, and then frown some more. That’s no damn use to you.

All you have learned about how to read light and work out the EV? Useless. You’re dealing with UV light now, not regular old school light. Collodion is not sensitive to red light, only blue. Look at your set up again, all those lovely red things in there? They will go black. The blue things? They might go white. Hard to tell, some do, some don’t. You’re probably going to get the first exposure very wrong, but that’s ok. You can do it again.

6. Add some silver

Go and get the glass plate, with dried eggy bits, from the kitchen, wiping off the half-pound of dust that’s fallen on it since, and take it the bathroom, your magic and marvellous darkroom. This, in true Blue Peter fashion, has been prepared earlier: the floor is covered in black bin bags, which are covered with newspaper, and the bath is lined with the same.

On the board across the bath is a mysterious, mostly vertical black box, containing a 9% solution of silver nitrate that has been excited (yes, really, excited. It’s already had plates dipped in it, so has some other salts in there, iodine and cadmium ones, to be precise), a stack of paper towels, and various other bottles. You’ve already filtered this, with coffee filters, and funnels, while crouching on the bathroom floor and trying not to catch the funnel full of silver with your sleeve and send it flying across the room, so, it’s ready to use.

7. Gloves!

Get the damn gloves on or you’ll have black-splotched fingers for the next week.

8. Dust your glass again.

You’re almost ready to pour the collodion. This is the sticky film which will make the silver hold to the plate, and turn a reject from a cheap frame into a photograph. Before you open it, warn your significant other that if he wants a cigarette, he’d better go outside, as you don’t want anything to explode. You’re being paranoid, but paranoid is better than explodey. Two bottles: one to pour, and one to drain. Put a funnel in the drain bottle.

9. Add the collodion to your plate

Balance the clean glass, ok, the dusty glass, as the bathroom fan seems to generate dust but damn it, you are now beyond caring about this and you’ll probably never make a plate without dust on it (and at least the bright, dragged dust spots have a charming name in this process: comets)…oh, sorry, yes, balance the clean glass on the fingertips of your non-dominant hand, as though it was a waiter’s tray.

Pour a puddle of collodion onto middle of the glass, and gently, no, gently, tilt it so the collodion runs to the corner but not over the edge, and then around to the next corner and not over the edge. Oh, well, that’s why you put the newspaper down in the bath. Aren’t you glad you were wearing gloves? And so on around to the final corner, never letting the collodion run back on itself. Head for the bottle-with the funnel, and tip the plate right up, final corner down, to run off the excess, shaking the plate side to side madly while not dropping it, face down and sticky, onto paper towels and newspapers. Knock the last drop off, and hold that plate vertically–no, don’t touch the front–while you cap the bottles and wait for the collodion to skin over slightly. Press your ungloved thumb into the corner, and check it takes a finger print. This should only take about 30 seconds from starting to pour. You were getting a move on, no?

10. Start your timer…

Open the mysterious black box of silver, put the plate on the perspex dipper, sticky-side out, and slide it smoothly into the depths, and get the lid back on pronto. Start the timer. You brought the timer into the bathroom, right? Run around the house yelling about where the hell you left the timer. Discover it clipped to your pocket. Start the four minute count, for the silver to coat the plate.

11. Set up the developing while the plate is sucking in silver.

Measure out some developer liquid and pour it into a small shot glass, and add a tiny splosh of distilled water to slow it down just a touch so you don’t get into a panic about the short amount of time you have to develop things. Mix some fixer.

Yes, the hardcore wetplaters use potassium cyanide, but, I’ll stick to regular modern fixer, thanks. Find some space on the shelf above the loo to hold the tray of fixer. Get a jug of water ready, and an empty tray. Put these on the loo. It’s the only space you have left.

12. Breathe deeply – Ahh, fixer and ether and alcohol fumes all mixed in to the tiny bathroom space.

13. Check the timer.

Four minutes is almost here. Find the dorky torch. (The LED headlamp thingy, with a red filter on, that makes everyone looks dorky, but works a treat as a darkroom light.) Close the bathroom door and put a towel along the gap. Marvel at how bright it is with the dorky torch. Realise you’ve left the light on. Open door, turn off light, turn off hall light, close door, apply towel.

When the four minutes is done, open up the silver box and lift out the plate on the dipper. It should be a creamy yellow, and the clear silver nitrate solution should be running off it rather than beading up. Remove the plate without knocking the front against the dipper, the box, your fingers or anything–it’s very fragile at the moment, and will tear if you look at it harshly. Hold it over the box and let some of the silver drip back in. Stand it up on some paper towels, to take the wet edge off the bottom, and wipe the back carefully. Any silver on the back will somehow magically get around to the front between now and developing, and create blotches and splotches (a.k.a. oysters.)

14. Load the plate up into the holder.

Try not to think about the uneven patches you can see, or the great globs of dust. Put in the dark slide, and, holding your plate vertical (you have been keeping the down edge down all this time, no?) waltz back to your camera. See now why this is trickier with portraits?

15. Make the exposure

Check your camera set up, do not kick the tripod. Make sure the shutter is closed. Go on, check again. Trust me on this. Set the timer for your best guess exposure because this is going to be way beyond shutter speed and probably into the minutes as the room is practically dark and you’re going to use artificial light to give it a boost. Plate holder into the camera, plate facing the front. Pull the slide. Cock the shutter.

Turn the light on (nasty face tanner with four UV bulbs, in my case) and hold it in the right spot, while not looking into the light at all. Reach around, without dropping the light, to get the shutter release and start the timer. Expose, all the while fretting that you are under or overcooking the exposure. Close the shutter, put the slide back in, remove the holder from the camera, and back to the bathroom with you.

16. Add developer

Dorky torch on, light off. Unload the plate and balance it on your finger tips again, waiter-style, only this time you want the long edge towards you, and tilt the plate just slightly away from you. Hover over the tray that’s on the loo seat, and take the shot glass of developer.

Take a deep breath. Pour the developer quickly but steadily onto the plate, running it along the close top edge, and letting it flow over the plate, but not off the edge, tilt it back up and shimmer-shake it gently so the liquid sits and moves around on the top. If you’ve missed any, it’s too late, if there are islands and holes and gaps in the developer, it’s too late, they are gone and you’ll never see them again.

Were you counting seconds? You should have been counting seconds. By the time you get to about seven seconds from the developer hitting the plate, you should have some image up, the highlights at least. And then the midtones come in quickly, oh hell, time to stop. Grab that jug of water and slosh it over the plate, fast, to stop the development. If your image flashed up immediately, it was over exposed. If it was sluggish and wouldn’t come up and you were there muttering and shaking your plate, it’s under exposed.

If you over develop it, all contrast will be lost, and it will be foggy and flat. But hey, you might be able to use it with an enlarger.

17. Fix it

Slide the developed plate into the tray of fixer, and slosh it gently back and forth. Wash the shot glass, wash the other tray, put the lights on. Slosh it till its clear, and this doesn’t take long, except for the stubborn bit at the edge which is looking decidedly blue, but that’s ok, keep going. You’re not using KCN, so the fixer won’t eat the image away. Lift it out and rinse it in the bathroom sink, so you don’t dribble fixer through the house as you take it into the kitchen to look at it.

18. Check it

Put the glass into a black tray, with water above and below it, and look at it in good light. If you got it right (ahahahaha) then it will show up as a perfectly exposed positive, with the clear parts black and the highlights white, and a lovely range of warm silvery greys inbetween. An ambrotype is a very thin negative, that, on black, reverses out to positive (yes, it’s magic.) They are often framed sitting against black velvet, or you can enamel the back, so that it looks like a positive without being in a black tray of water. If it’s over-exposed, then the highlights and midtones are going to be dense and solid. You might be able to print it with modern silver gelatin paper, and treat it like a thin negative. But that’s a fuss for another day.

19. Rinse it

Leave it in that tray, with something underneath to prop it up just a touch to let the water flow underneath too, and keep the water running gently for about 20 minutes. They dry it. You can let it drip dry, or dry it with a hair dryer (or, for the hardcore, an open-flame spirit lamp.) Do not fret when it goes about two stops lighter, just admire the lovely shimmery silver. This is a good time to scan it, otherwise you are going to have to wait 24 hours.

20. Varnishing

When it’s bone dry, you can varnish it. Varnish smells glorious–it’s made of alcohol and gum sanderac and lavender oil–and is a complete pain in the arse. Get the plate hot with the hair dryer, and warm the bottle of varnish in a jog of hot water. You really want gloves for this, as this varnish is the stickiest substance on the planet. Juggle the hot plate, trying not to drop it, back to the bathroom, and, almost like you did with the collodion, pour it onto the image-side of the glass.

Hold it flat a moment, and let the varnish get drawn into the silver, and the alcohol evaporate off, then tip it straight up–no shaking this time–and drain it into the drain bottle for filtering later. Look, it’s gone back to the colour and tone it was when it was wet. Hurrah!

Wait a couple of minutes, and then back to the hair dryer until the varnish is dry to the touch. Then let it cure overnight. At which point you can use meths and cotton wool to get rid of the globs of varnish that got mysteriously all over the back of the the plate.

Put the image on a piece of black cloth. Voila. One ambrotype.

Further reading:

Wikipedia’s article on Collodion photography is a bit lacking, but can at least give some historical perspective.

Joe Smigiel’s “Getting Started In Wetplate Collodion Photography” is an excellent starter read if you want to find out how to do this properly.

John Coffer’s Doer’s guide (a text and 4 DVDs)

Quinn Jacobson’s book, “The Contemporary Wet Plate Collodion Experience” is no longer available, but he has a new one coming out in February 2009, along with a video-based workshop series online.

The wet plate collodion forum board that he runs is friendly, helpful, and packed full of knowledgeable people http://collodion.com/forum

And reading John Towler’s 1864 book, “The Silver Sunbeam“, is never a waste of time, particularly for trouble-shooting.

Also, Matthew Carey Lea’s 1871 book, “A manual of photography”

And here is a far from exhaustive list of some of the people who are doing amazing work with the process: Sally Mann, Kerik Kouklis, Quinn Jacobson, Jodi Sternbach, Luther Gerlach, Jody Ake, Matthew Larkin, Scully & Osterman, Ellen Susan, and interesting stuff pops up in the flickr wetplate pool (I really like Alexey Alexeev’s work there)

Just a reminder…

Just to re-iterate: This is not meant to be a practical guide to working with wet plate collodion. Before you do any work with wet plate collodion, you should make sure you understand the chemicals and their risks, as many are toxic, carcinogenic, highly flammable, or explosive. Do not handle these chemicals without understanding their risks, how to handle them, and how to dispose of them safely. Using any of them is at your own risk, and the author does not accept any liability or responsibility for your improper use of these chemicals or processes.

A huge thank you to Katie for writing up this guide!

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JPG magazine closes its doors

Well, I’ll be damned…

I just received an e-mail from the editor over at JPG magazine, bearing a rather quite sad message: They’re shutting the doors for good. I was a subscriber (and hell, when I was working in publishing I tried to talk the publishing firm I was working for into buying the magazine, but nothing ever came of it). I’m not even bothered about whether or not I lose money as a result – the amazingly original concept of JPG was a breath of fresh air, and a lot of my friends got their first (and – for some – only) images in print on the venerable pages of JPG.

JPG – you’ll be missed. I hope that the economic tides will turn so it turns out not to be the final nail in the coffin for one of the most inspirational and creative magazines out there! 

The e-mail from Laura, the editor over at 8020 media below…

Today is a particularly sad day for all of us at JPG and 8020 Media.

We’ve spent the last few months trying to make the business behind JPG sustain itself, and we’ve reached the end of the line. We all deeply believe in everything JPG represents, but we just weren’t able to raise the money needed to keep JPG alive in these extraordinary economic times. We sought out buyers, spoke with numerous potential investors, and pitched several last-ditch creative efforts, all without success. As a result, jpgmag.com will shut down on Monday, January 5, 2009.

The one thing we’ve been the most proud of: your amazing talent. We feel honored and humbled to have been able to share jpgmag.com with such a dynamic, warm, and wonderful community of nearly 200,000 photographers. The photography on the website and in the magazine was adored by many, leaving no doubt that this community created work of the highest caliber. The kindness, generosity, and support shared among members made it a community in the truest sense of the word, and one that we have loved being a part of for these past two years.

We wish we could have found a way to leave the site running for the benefit of the amazing folks who have made JPG what it is, and we have spent sleepless nights trying to figure something out, all to no avail. Some things you may want to do before the site closes:

- Download the PDFs of back issues, outtakes, and photo challenge selections. We’ll always have the memories! www.jpgmag.com/downloads/archives.html
- Make note of your favorite photographers. You may want to flip through your favorites list and jot down names and URLs of some of the people you’d like to stay in touch with. You may even want to cut and paste your contacts page into a personal record.
- Catch up with your fellow members. Our roots are in this humble flickr forum and we recommend going back to find fellow members, discuss the situation, or participate in another great photo community. www.flickr.com/groups/jpgmag/
- Keep in touch. This has always been much more than just a job to each of us, and we’ll miss you guys! We’ll be checking the account jpgletters@gmail.com in our free time going forward. We can’t promise to reply to every email (since we’ll be busy tuning up our resumes) but we’d love to hear from you.
- Stay posted. Although the magazine is ceasing publication, we’ll be updating you on what’s happening with your subscription early next week.

We’re soggy-eyed messes, but it is what it is. At that, JPGers, we bid you goodbye, and good luck in 2009 and the future.

Laura Brunow Miner
Editor in Chief

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How To: Concert Photography

Of all the types of photography ever invented, I would claim that live concert photography is up there among the most difficult ones. You have five thousand fans behind you, and there is a band in front of you. Nobody stands still. In fact, even the notion of standing still ruins the idea of a good music photo. The bouncers hate you, because you are in their way. The crowd is jealous of you. Crowdsurfers will kick you in the head. The band thinks you’re annoying. The lighting is never bright enough, and changes so frequently that you’re screwed even in the few moments that it is.

And nonetheless, concert photography is one of my all-time favourite pasttimes. It’s hard. It’s unrewarding. But it’s deeply gratifying on a personal lever. It’s about capturing the mood. Capturing the looks. Capturing something the audience is feeling.

Of course, it’s also something I know something about – I’ve done my share of concerts…

Tristania – Live in Manchester by Photocritic.org on Flickr

So, how can you take photos at a concert successfully? First of all, remember the “standard” rules for most concerts:

• No flash photography
• First 3 songs only
• What the security guys say is Gospel

The first two rules are a blessing and a curse rolled into one. No flash photography is a nightmare at many venues, but it is often better to take photos without. You don’t get the “feel” of the gig without the stage lighting. The “first 3 songs” rule is a bugger – most bands look the most energetic towards the end of their set. On the other hand, it means that you have a very clear time limit: You’ve got 10 minutes (or so) to get the photos you need. If you screw it up, well, you’re unlucky. But there is no saving film, you obviously have to make the best of the time you have.

Using the available lighting is a challenge, but can be rewarding, especially if you manage to cotton on to the pattern of the lights. This is Emanuel in concert 2 by Photocritic.org, on Flickr. More Emmanuel photos here.

Equipment

Personally, I have done all all my concert photos with a Canon 60D, 10D or 20D. Don’t even bother trying with a compact camera – you’ll look like an idiot, and the photos will come out rubbish. (Granted, I have worked with a few photographers who have proved me wrong on this point, but why make your life more difficult than it has to be?).

My lenses of choice are a Sigma DX 70-200mm f/2.8 lens, which is great for getting in close, a Sigma 17-35mm f/2.8-4.0 lens which is great for overview shots, and a Canon 50mm f/1.4 fixed length lens. Notice a pattern? Damn right – go for brightness all the way. If you can’t afford zoom glass that is bright enough, then get a 50mm f/1.8 lens. it is normally the cheapest piece of glass you can find, and focussing is a bitch, but you need all the light you can get when doing this type of photography.

Try to capture the artists in the moment where they are most “into” their song. Photo of Eighteen Visions on Flickr. More 18 visions.

How to get in the pit

The first problem you are faced with is that unless you have credentials, the bouncers are unlikely to let you into the venue with professional (i.e anything beyond a compact) camera equipment. So you need a photo pass.

They don’t hand these out to everyone and his dog, but there are a few ways you can get them. Personally, I was shooting for an agency, so they sorted out the photo pass for me, but you can call up your local rag and ask them if they would like concert X photographing. Offer to do it for free. When they say they want the photos, call the venue, and tell them that you are photographing it for the local rag. This isn’t going to work when Metallica comes to town (the local newspaper will send their own photographers, no doubt), but for smaller bands, it usually works: The small bands are thirsting for publicity, the newspaper wants photos, you want into the pit and to get some experience. Everybody wins.

The second avenue is to become an in-house photographer for a venue. This doesn’t work with all venues, and it means you need to get friendly with the managers of the venue. Expect to photograph crappy small local bands for a while, but once they see what you can do, and they start to get faith in you, you may do better.

Finally, you can just call the venue anyway. Tell them that you are a budding photographer, and would love to take some photos. “you have ‘no’, and can’t get a ‘yes’ unless you ask”, as my mother used to say.

Photo of Tarja, of Nightwish. More Nightwish

Tips to taking good photos

So, you are in the photographer’s pit in front of the crowd. Well done. Now, you need to actually take the blasted pictures.

First of all, select an ISO value on your camera that is as low as you can get away with. ISO 200 will give you far better photos than ISO 800, but if all your photos turn out blurry because of lack of light, then you would have been better off with ISO 800 after all.

Second, observe. Concert lighting move in patterns, and you need to try and snap the photo of once the lighting is exactly right.

Always shoot in fully manual. It’ll be too dark for your auto focus, and the rapidly changing lights mean that your light meter is worthless. You need to be good, but your instincts will save you. If you can’t “feel” how a photo is going to turn out before you look at your digital display at the back of the camera, perhaps you aren’t ready for concert photography quite yet. There’s no shame in that – just keep practicing.

Take a lot of photos. Personally, I throw away 99% of my concert photos. In fact, some times, I come home without any really good photos – it isn’t always your fault. The lighting can be particularly tricky, etc. And you can’t plan for any of it – you have to roll with the punches.

Change your vantage point. You can walk all the way back and forth in front of the stage. Do it. If you are in your face enough, chances are that the lead singer will show off for the camera a little – they may even look at your cam for a fraction of a second. That is your cue. Get the photo.

Finally, get as close as you can. I guess this is mostly a personal thing, but I prefer photos where I get really close. Action portraits, if you will: photos taken of an artist at work.

Inspiration

Check out Lithium Picnic’s concert photography galleries, or talented music photographer Andrew Kendall’s photo gallery.

We’ve also done a separate article on ‘more on live concert photography‘ and ‘concert photography at smaller venues‘, both of which might be of interest to you :)

Making money off your concert photos

Originally, we had a lot of information here on how you could monetize your concert photography, but it all became a bit wieldy. I would strongly recommend you have a look at our seperate writeup on event photography, and our making money off your photos article.

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The world through a lens: Photo etiquette

As all photographers know, travel photography can be about more than safeguarding memories. Holidays are the perfect time to discover new cultures and customs, be outside of one’s comfort zone, eat new food, and, of course, really get stuck into the different lenses and ISO numbers. Coming home with that perfect picture of something or someone that fascinated you makes the enjoyment of the getaway last that much longer.

The way the local population expects you as a photographer to behave with your camera may be very different in countries other than your own. This Photo Etiquette may, however, not be easy to understand or adhere to, especially when it comes to photographing people as a subject, so we decided to have a closer look at what you might encounter…

When travelling, I find that shots of sights, animals and nature are often rewarding, but not enough. Photographing people gives a richer texture to the cultures you have visited. In hindsight, I have often regretted foregoing on a large part of the experience, simply because I did not know whether it was okay to take photos of people.

Not wishing to be photographed

Many people do not wish to be photographed, for many different reasons. Native peoples, such as some Native Americans in the US, might refuse being photographed because they believe a mirror does not reflect reality, but a persons’ soul. A picture, taken by a device that relies heavily on mirrors, may therefore capture and enslave the soul. Sometimes, this restriction only counts for infants and children, as their souls are fragile, and can more easily leave the body.

Others, such as some Caribbean cultures, believe that a representation of a person may be used in ‘sympathetic magic’ to cast voodoo spells on the person in question. Others again, especially in tourist areas, do not want to be in photos because, frankly, they are sick of them. Try to imagine how you would feel if a constant stream of tourists would come by your office and photograph you.

In some countries, such as China, taking someone’s picture without their consent is simply extremely rude. Others might feel they are not photogenic, and do not want their face to be splashed all over Flickr. And you need to be wary that some locations (places of worship, official buildings and structures, museums and military bases) may prohibit photography for security reasons.

If all that was not enough, you also need to consider the implications of a photo. If you might land someone in trouble for taking the photo (if photographing individuals at a political rally etc.) you might want to reconsider taking the photo. In other words, there should be a lot of prudence and respect on your part as the photographer.

Permission is key

Figuring out when it is okay to take a photo and when it is not will help you bring home more than just pictures of puppies, buildings and your travelling partner. The best way of finding this out is simply by asking. I have been asked for money in exchange for a photo on several occasions in India, and you will have to consider whether that money is worth the photo. If you deem it is not, just smile, shake your head and move along. Alternatively, they might ask you to buy something off them. Again, by all means do, if it is something you wanted, and if you think the price is worth the photo, if not, just keep going.

But, in general, rule number one is, get permission. It is essential that your behaviour and attitude is not one of right, but one of friendly coexistence. When you smile and nod while pointing at your camera, it is pretty clear what you want. This might sometimes mean that your photo will not be as spontaneous as you might wish, but at least you will not end up in sticky situations where the subject feels their personal space, or religion is violated. Especially on the topic of photographing children, you need to be very cautious, make sure to ask the parents or guardians for permission, no matter where in the world you are.

Rule number two is respect people’s wishes. If a person refuses your request of a photo, just move along and find other subjects. This will sometimes mean you do not get a photo at all, but do not try to sneak one in if someone has already said no. Never forget that there will be other opportunities for photos elsewhere.

If they ask you to stop; stop…

Rule number three is that if someone asks you to stop taking photos, either verbally, by turning away, by looking uncomfortable, or by running for cover, as happened to me in Vietnam, stop. No matter the reason why someone might want you to stop, it is important that you keep in mind what Darren Rowse said on his blog: people are not tourist sites. They have feelings that must be respected. And you will only end up with photos of people with their backs turned to you, and minimal amounts of goodwill. It is just not worth it.

And finally, if you wish to finish a friendly exchange with a stranger whom you just took a photo of on a high note, you may wish to show them the photo afterwards if you have a digital display. It is not only courteous, but it has sometimes caused me to have a multitude of other subjects wanting to be photographed to see themselves on the little screen, including in Indonesia and Vietnam.

This article was written by Meke Kamps for Photocritic

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We're on Twitter + new RSS feed!

Right, this is mostly a service announcement, so if you don’t use RSS or Twitter, feel free to ignore this post. Or you could, y’know, start using RSS and Twitter (Check out ‘RSS in Plain English and How to use Twitter on VJ).

SO… 2 things:

Twitter – Photocritic now has a Twitter account; you can see the updates in the side-bar (look for the Twitter-coloured box, you can’t miss it really) or follow me @photocritic. Go on, you know it makes sense. If you’re really curious, I’ve got a personal Twitter account too…

RSS / Syndication feeds – Turns out that the 30,000-odd RSS subscribers (Yes, really! Amazing stuff – thank you everybody!) are taking their toll on the server, so I’ve moved the RSS feeds across to Feedburner. I’ve done some clever redirection malarkey, so if you were already subscribing, you should just simply be redirected to the new feed, and you don’t have to do anything. If you’d rather get the feed from feedburner directly, check out feeds.feedburner.com/photocritic

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Photography Gift Guide

Are you looking for the perfect Christmas gift for that special photographer in your life? If so, you’ve come to the right place. I know from personal experience that present shopping for photography-obsessed people can be tough.

The world of photography turns quickly, so it can be a challenge for many of us to keep up. That’s why I thought I’d bring out this handy Christmas gift guide just in time for the holidays. (Well, that, and last year’s guide was one of my better visited pages, so I figured it’d be rude to not do a re-run with a bit of an update, too)

No matter what your budget, you should find something on this list that will bring a picture perfect smile to your photo-junky friend’s face.

Behold… Photocritic’s From sub-$40 to credit crisis-incurring gift guide (of DOOM)  

In the $40s and below range:

Looking for an inexpensive photography related gift? I won’t lie; sometimes it can be tough to find a good photography gift in this price range, especially with everyone switching to digital.

Unless you know for a fact that your friend still uses film on a regular basis a well-wrapped box of film canisters and photopaper won’t cut it like it did in past years. However, we’ve been able to scrounge up a few interesting possibilities.

Out of the five listed below, we feel that the Westcott 750 Photo Basics 7.5-Foot Light Stand ($29.90) is the best buy in the $20-$40 dollar range. This sturdy 7.5 foot stand receives consistently good reviews and enjoys uniform popularity. Unlike some accessories, an extra one of these is almost never a bad thing.

For other low cost options try the Photography Studio Continuous Lighting Umbrella Kit ($39.99) or the Digital Concepts Ps-101 Portable Lighting Studio ($40.67).

If none of these seem quite right, you could always resort to buying one of these two popular photography related books: Microstock Photography: How to Make Money from Your Digital Images ($16.47), or the bestseller The Digital Photography Book ($11.99). Or, you know, my book; Macro Photography Workshop :)

In the $40 to $100 range:

In this range, I’d recommend the XPRO Studio Photography White Photo Light Tent ($49.99). This cleverly designed light tent is perfect for creating professional looking photos of medium sized objects.

Since it is made out of special outer nylon shell, it diffuses light much better than other light tents in this price range. Not only this, but its comes with an easy portable carrying case and contains internal elastic tabs for suspending objects by clear wires.

Does your friend already have one of these? You could also try another one of the following options in this price range: American Recorder SIB-101CS Photo Studio-in-a-Box ($69.99) Small Stand for Background Support from Interfit COR755 ($76.99) Philips 6.5-Inch Digital Photo Frame ($89.99). Who doesn’t like these? 2 Photography Studio Continuous Lighting Kits for just under $80! This is a great deal for any photographer who needs lighting equipment for a good price.

In the $100 to $250 range:

Once you get into this price range its possible to start looking at some decent tripods and lenses. However, before you go out and buy a tripod for your photographer friend, be warned that both tripods and lenses can be very personal things for some photographers.

If you can, try to get the low down on what your friend already has versus what they might want. If he or she isn’t sure, you might consider going with the sturdy Manafrotto 725B Digi Tripod. This model gets top reviews over and over again ceaselessly repeating the same word: “sturdy”;

But what if your friend already has one? Never fear; try one of these alternative gift ideas: Lowepro SlingShot 300 All-Weather Camera Bag ($109.95) Black & White Backdrop System from Steve Kaeser ($132.00) Westcott Photo Basics 501 Backlight Kit ($99.95) SPD100 Digital Exposure Meter from Polaris ($169.99)

In the $250 to $500 range:

Alright, now we’re talkin’. In this price range, you can really find some quality lenses.

If your photography buddy already has their standard lenses set, why not spring for a high quality wide angle lens? This lens from Tamron is less expensive than many of its kind and is specifically designed to work well with the popular Canon Digital SLR cameras. This is great for any photographer who is looking to get into landscape portraits for the first time.

Or, if you’re not sure about what your friend wants, why not just get a gift voucher from Amazon? Then they can get whatever they want. Even so, you might find some of these other suggestions useful: Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM Lens for Canon Digital SLR Cameras ($449.00) Canon EF 20mm f/2.8 USM Wide Angle Lens for Canon SLR Cameras ($427.01) Canon EF 50mm f1.4 USM Standard & Medium Telephoto Lens for Canon SLR Cameras ($319.95) Induro C213 Carbon 8X C-Series Tripod Leg Set, Extends to 62.49″, Supports 17 lbs. ($279.99)

In the $500 to $1000 range:

Bestower of Christmas joy…

…you have just stepped into the digital SLR camera zone.

If your photographer friend has not yet experienced owning a digital SLR camera, this might be your opportunity to change his or her life forever.

With a 10.1 megapixel CMOS censor, a lightweight body, automatic cleaning system, and a 2.5″ LCD monitor, there are few cameras like the Canon Digital Rebel XTi (Canon EOS 1000D) ($499.95) for its price. This is a perfect gift for someone who is either just making the conversion from film to digital, or who wants to finally quite fooling around with simple point and shoot digital cameras.

You might also consider the Nikon model as an alternative: Nikon D40 6.1MP Digital SLR Camera ($549.00) Or, if your friend already has one of these, maybe one of these lenses could work: Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 G ED-IF AF-S VR DX Zoom-Nikkor Lens ($634.95) Canon EF 135mm f/2L USM Lens for Canon SLR Cameras ($921.90) Canon EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM Telephoto Lens for Canon SLR Cameras ($630.13)

In the $1000 to $2000 range:

Now that you’re ready to start pulling out the big bucks, you’ve got a very important choice to make.

Do you want to buy that oh-so-special photographer a top of the line camera (like this one: the Olympus Evolt E-3 10.1MP Digital SLR Camera with Mechanical Image Stabilization with ED 12-60mm f/2.8-4.0 Lens and FL-50R Flash ($1,999.99), or should you choose one of these groovy telephoto lenses($1,140), eh? (They’re perfect for taking photos of moving objects and capturing elements of vision that are imperceptible to the human eye.)

You’re best bet is to get the inside word about whether or not your friend is interested in switching camera models. If so, you might want to go with a new camera. But if not, I’d say consider going with the lens.

And then again, if you feel like you still need more options, you might want to take a look at these other viable choices: Canon EF 300mm f/4L IS USM Telephoto Lens for Canon SLR Cameras ($1,109.95) Canon EF 85mm f1.2L II USM Lens for Canon DSLR Cameras ($1,828.98) Canon 14mm f/2.8L II EF USM Ultra-Wide Angle Lens for Canon Digital SLR Cameras ($1,879.95) Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM Telephoto Zoom Lens for Canon SLR Cameras ($1,529.95)

If price is not a concern…

If you are really willing to go all out this Christmas (and I mean really all out), then consider buying a medium format digital camera from Hasselblad. We’re talking about the high end of the high end here. Hasselblad’s H3DII-31 ($37,995.00) offers picture quality that is absolutely unimaginable with even the highest quality 35mm cameras.

Imagine shooting at 31 Mpix with some of the most advanced lenses in the world. Let it be known that the people at Hasselblad don’t mess around when it comes to digital photography!

Want to take a look at a few other (potentially wallet-busting) jaw-droppers? Check these out: Hassleblad’s H3DII-50 ($21,995.00) Canon EF 800mm f/5.6L IS USM Super Telephoto Lens for Canon Digital SLR Cameras ($10,998.98) Canon EF 600mm f/4L IS USM Super Telephoto Lens for Canon SLR Cameras ($7,399.00) Canon EF 400mm f/2.8L IS USM Super Telephoto Lens for Canon SLR Cameras  ($6,800.00)

Happy Christmas!

Finally, when you click on the Amazon links above, it’s tied to my affiliate account. That means that you pay the same as you always would for any of the goods listed, but I get a couple of percent in return for sending the traffic from this blog to Amazon, which I can spend to save up to buy a kitten and a mountain of cat-food… Having said that, Amazon might not always be the cheapest, so do shop around to get the best deal you can.

So, all that’s left to say – have a fantastic holiday (whether you celebrate Christmas or something else – and I’m probably going to take a bit of a break for the holidays… Catch you in the new year!

RAW usage up massively, JPEG bites the dust.

There are tons of reasons for using RAW instead of JPG when you’re taking photographs. Your photos will be sharper, you will be able to unlock your camera’s full dynamic range, and you have a better flexibility over things like white balance.

It seems as if people are cottoning on in a big way, too – I ran a poll about 2 years ago about whether people were shooting in JPEG or RAW… And I re-ran the same poll earlier this month.

The changes are staggering…

2 years ago

Early 2007, 36% used Raw mostly or exclusively. 55% used JPEG mostly or exclusively:

Today

Today, a whopping 66% of you use Raw mostly or exclusively, and only 26% still prefer to shoot in JPEG:

Why’d this happen?

Hey, I think if you read the three articles linked at the top of this blog post, it’s pretty clear why I stopped taking photos in JPEG… But I’d love to hear about your reasons in the comments…

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25 cameras with the best dynamic range

Following from my post about dynamic range in cameras a few days ago, I did some further research… I give you: The 25 cameras with the best dynamic range!

Interestingly, it seems as if Nikon is generally doing quite a bit better than Canon, and that a camera launched almost 5 years ago is actually one of the ones with the very best dynamic ranges out there – And it’s not the brand you’d think, either!

Oh, and interestingly, there’s been a serious shift in the number of photographers shooting in raw – more about that in the end of this article.
 

The list…

1 – FujiFilm Finepix S5 Pro (13.5 ev)
2 – FujiFilm Finepix S3 Pro (13.5 ev)
3 – Nikon D90 (12.5 ev)
4 – Sony Alpha 900 (12.3 ev)
5 – Nikon D3 (12.2 ev)
6 – Nikon D700 (12.2 ev)
7 – Nikon D300 (12 ev)
8 – Canon EOS 1Ds mk III (12 ev)
9 – Canon EOS 1D mk III (11.7 ev)
10 – Pentax K10D (11.6 ev)
11 – Sony Alpha 350 (11.5 ev)
12 – Nikon D200 (11.5 ev)
13 – Nikon D40x (11.5 ev)
14 – Canon EOS 50D (11.4 ev)
15 – Konica Minolta DYNAX 5D (11.4 ev)
16 – Nikon D60 (11.4 ev)
17 – Canon EOS 1DS mk II (11.3 ev)
18 – Leica M8 (11.3 ev)
19 – Canon EOS 40D (11.3 ev)
20 – Sony Alpha 100 (11.2 ev)
21 – Samsung GX20 (11.2 ev)
22 – Nikon D80 (11.2 ev)
23 – Canon EOS 1D mk2 N (11.2 ev)
24 – Canon EOS 5D (11.1 ev)
25 – Canon EOS 1D mk2 (11.1 ev)

A huge thanks to DXOmark for the figures – check out their site for lots of more interesting uber-geekery about digital camera sensors and suchlike!

Update: Sorry, I had the D200 in there twice – the top one should have been the D300 instead. Fixed now – thanks for the heads-up!

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Photography History: The Digital Era

So far, we’ve covered the pre-film and the film era, so no prizes for guessing what today’s history lesson is going to be about – yup, that’s right, the digital era is upon us, and we’re taking a look at history as it’s happening all around us…

Let’s launch into the third and final installment in our 3-part series: The history of photography: The Era of Digital.

The history of digital photography is one that is as much about the technology of digital photography as it is about the photographers themselves; it is a history of advances in image quality and the violent manipulation of images; most importantly, it is a history which is still being written.

Many photographers who established themselves during the era of film (such as Annie Lebovitz) have made or are making the switch to digital photography. Others, (including Yann Arthus Bertrand, famous for his amazing aerial photography) have resisted the change and cite several reasons why the older model remains superior. However, few will question the fact that digital photography has changed the status of photography and the photograph in our 21st century society.

Rise of the Digital Camera

Although the digital camera was not available to consumers until 1990, the most important technology behind digital cameras, the CCD or charge-couple device, was invented in 1969. CCD is an image sensor which allows for the direct conversion of images into digital data without a chemical process. In the begging the technology was mostly applied to video cameras for use in television broadcasts. In 1981, Sony came out with a prototype digital camera which could take still images and store them on a floppy disk. Over the next ten years, companies like Logitech and Kodak worked on their own models.

The first digital camera which was actually available for consumer use was produced by Logitech and was called the “Dycam Model 1.” It had onboard memory which could store thirty-two images at once and shot pictures in black, white, and shades of gray only. With a resolution of only 376 x 240 it wasn’t exactly impressive by today’s standards, but it did open up an entirely new world for digital photography.

In the nearly two decades since the first digital camera was placed on the market, digital technology has developed at an astounding rate. The resolution of just over 90,000 pixels of the original logitech model has given way to resolutions of several millions, creating cameras which can rival the level of detail offered by film based models.

For more on the history of the digital camera, try the following links; Brief History of Digital Photography by Bob Brooke, History of the Digital Camera on CNET and SnapJunky.com’s History of the Digital Camera.

Changes to the Industry

With improvements in technology, digital cameras have not only become more powerful, but they have become less and less expensive as well. Cameras with resolutions of two megapixels or more can now be purchased for under $100. While this may still be more expensive than some film cameras, the money saved in film, chemicals, and other development hardware is well worth it to many photographers young and old.

As a result, many companies have been forced to scrap or greatly reduce their film camera lines and up their production of digital models. As would be expected, photographers have met this news with mixed feelings. For many, this symbolizes progress and increased accessibility for photographic equipment, a sort of populist revolution (not to mention the impact on feature film makers, many of whom are making movies with smaller budgets than ever before).

For others, the advent of digital photography means the end of an era, quite possibly an era that they loved. And for those who still believe that film photography offers a level of quality unmatched by digital cameras, feelings cannot be wholly positive. Nevertheless, the industry has followed suit with demand and continues to move toward a more and more digital oriented business model.

Changes to the Art Form

The question of quality is only one of the controversial issues surrounding the ascension of digital photography, and perhaps not even the biggest one. In fact as time goes on, those who argue that digital photography offers an image quality which is not meaningfully distinguished from that of film photography increase in numbers.

But at the same time, the art form is faced with what is perhaps an even more interesting issue. As digital photographic technology continues to increase, the potential for the manipulation of images increases as well.

Of course, artificial manipulation of images is not unique to digital photography. In fact, photographers have been reworking photographic images since at least the 1860′s (one famous example is a portrait of Abraham Lincoln in which his head has been pasted onto another politician’s body). However, the equipment required to perform this kind of manipulation was not widely available at this time. But in the last two decades, the digital camera has coupled with the personal computer to grant digital manipulation technology to the masses.

Some, photographers have used computer based programs such as photoshop as a means for creating new types of photographs based on principles of collage. Often, these remediated photographs purposefully draw attention to their “unreal” quality. However, others have used computers in order to cause photographs for magazine publication to look more appealing without making it explicitly clear that the image has been altered. As the monetary price for this technology has become less and less expensive, digital manipulation of published photographs is becoming the norm rather than the exception.

Look at this study on Photo Tampering Throughout History by H. Farid for more information on digital manipulation.

Future Greats of Digital Photography?

Digital photography is still a young art form, and ultimately, it isn’t actually any different from film photography – the techniques are the same, it’s just the technology that’s shifting.

Having said that, I think that these are some of the young photographers who are currently producing compelling photographic work, often in the digital medium…

Michael Wolf

Wolf is best known for his photographs of cities, especially those of Chicago. Many of his photos attempt to capture elements of the city which are obvious, and yet which normally escape the eye of the camera.

Michael Wolfe at the Museum of Contemporary Photography.

Deanna Dikeman

Dikeman is slightly less well known, but has a very original style of depicting clothing. It is almost never shown on the body, but instead in the wardrobe. A photography that finds itself on the other side of fashion.

Deana Dikeman at the Museum of Contemporary Photography.

Johnathan Gitelson

Gitelson is an excellent example of how collage has been absorbed by the general practices of digital photography. His art has been compared to the comic book, and his playful/serious wit confirms this.

Johnathan Gitelson at the Museum of Contemporary Photography.

Tim Long

Long follows in the tradition of early 20th century realism with his “heartbreaking” photographs of the city of Havana. His work as a whole however, shows a great sense of diversity and a large scope of vision.

Tim Long at the Museum of Contemporary Photography.

Matt Siber

Siber’s work is an excellent example of the power of digital editing to act as a critique of the image and of culture itself. His most famous photographic series “Floating Logos” acts as a study of the icons of our time, Playboy, Denny’s, etc. Floating signs at gas stations litter his photographic vision of America.

Matt Siber at the Museum of Contemporary Photography.

Additional Information on Digital Photography and its History – Digital Photography on Wikipedia, Digital Versus Film, DMOZ’s Digital Photography Links, Digital Photography FAQ from Ronald Parr, Digital Versus Film Website and finally A List of Photographer’s who’ve Chosen to Revert Back to Film (they do exist!)

Haje’s History of Photography

The History of Photography part 1 - Before Film
The History of Photography part 2 - The Firm Era
The History of Photography part 3 - The Digital Era

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Do you enjoy a smattering of random photography links? Well, squire, I welcome thee to join me on Twitter - Follow @Photocritic

© Kamps Consulting Ltd. This article is licenced for use on Pixiq only. Please do not reproduce wholly or in part without a license. More info.

Photography History: The Film Era

Right, yesterday’s post was all about how photography came about before film was invented. We had people printing on pewter and inventing the photographic negative, but we all know that the real fun began when we started losing our films down the back of sofas and ruining them when clumsily pressing the wrong button on the camera…

So without further ado, the second installment in our 3-part series: The history of photography: The Era of Film.  

In 1884, the world of photography was changed forever through the invention of film. The bulky, cumbersome photographic plates which had been the standard in photography up until this point became a thing of the past as they were replaced by the much more practical film roll technology.

George Eastman and Kodak

At age twenty-three George Eastman abandoned his career as a bank clerk and started working in a photographic lab. It was then that George imagined a new type of photographic plate which would be lighter and more portable. This would become what Eastman called the “dry plate” and what we call “film.” Once he had fully worked out this technology, Eastman invented a compact camera to compliment the film and started his own company to market this product. The company was called “Eastman Kodak” and continues to be one of the largest commercial photography companies to this day. (You know – Kodak, as in “Kodak moment.”)

Eastman’s Kodak camera was sold to consumers with 100 pictures-worth of film preloaded. For the first time, a camera had been built which was small enough to take anywhere, and which required no technical knowledge to use. Any person with $25 could buy Eastman’s camera and take pictures with the push of a button. Once the customer had taken 100 pictures, they would merely post the camera back to the Eastman Kodak Co. and within weeks they would receive back prints of their pictures and a fresh load of film. This sudden burst of accessibility completely changed the photography industry. Eastman Kodak’s slogan was “You press the button, we do the rest.”

More? Sure thing, how about George Eastman’s Grave, Kodak’s own Biography of George Eastman, The George Eastman House (A museum dedicated to Eastman) and Information on and Pictures of Antique Kodak Cameras

Film Photography Going into the 20th Century

As the world moved into the twentieth century photography was still attempting to define its role in society. As photography became more accessible, it in some ways took over the function which painting had fulfilled in the nineteenth century. Many felt, that it was a superior tool for creating realistic portraits, as well as landscape and still life studies. At the same time, advances in the technology of film resulted in increased commercialization as well as the rapid development of the world’s newest art form: cinema.

But throughout all of these changes, photography as an art never ceased to flourish, and many of the photographs which have become indelible elements of our global consciousness were created during this period. Below are just a few of the important names who helped to capture these images.

Jacob Riis

The Danish-American Riis began his career in photography at just about the time when film was becoming an industry standard. From the beginning Riis had an unflagging dedication to using his art as a means for bringing the lives of the poor of New York City into a venue of representation visible to all.

It was Riis’ great collection of photographs How the Other Half Lives (1890) which exposed the sordid reality of poverty in America to the public eye and which convinced the then president Theodore Roosevelt to shut down the inhuman state run poor houses of New York. His photographs of working class people and their lives still communicate a sense of awe and shocking immediacy today.

It’s well worth delving into Riis’ history a bit further, so check out Riis on Wikipedia, A short biography of Riis on the Harvard site, and some Photographs by Riis

Edward Curtis

By the beginning of the twentieth century, many of the cultures of the native peoples of the North American continent had begun to disappear as a result of United States expansionism. Wealthy American financier J.P. Morgan paid photographer Edward Curtis to photograph these cultures and compile his photos into a book called The North American Indian.

Although Curtis has sometimes been criticized for manipulating his photographs to represent Native Americans in a way consistent with the stereotypes of his day, it nevertheless remains that he succeeded in capturing images of many Native American leaders who would have otherwise been forgotten by history.

More on Curtis on Wikipedia, and a good essay; Edward S. Curtis in Context.

André Kertész

By the 1920′s, while many photographers continued in the tradition of the realism of Curtis and Riis (most notably: Dorothea Lange), other photographers worked to discover a more esoteric style which could answer to the new developments in Modernist painting and sculpture. Hungarian born André Kertész was just such a photographer.

Born in the final years of the nineteenth century, Kertész was completely self-educated in photography. When he moved to France in 1925, he fit in easily with the Dada movement of artists and poets. His work is conceptual, and often attempts to make visible elements of the world which are not immediately visible to the naked eye. He accomplishes this through close-ups, unusual lighting, and mirrors, among other tropes.

More on Kertész: Photographs by Kertész, André Kertész on PBS’s American Masters and More photographs by Kertész

Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams is perhaps the most well known photographer in the English Speaking world for his famous landscape and nature photographs. Images such as Monolith, Adam’s imposing portrait of the Half Dome cliff in Yosemite California have made his name internationally recognizable.

Throughout his life, which lasted well into the latter years of the twentieth century, Adams was dedicated to nature photography and to nature itself as a treasure to be protected. He saw his photographs as a way to communicate the value of natural open spaces. However, Adams always insisted that beyond any political motivation, the final purpose of any photograph should be its sheer aesthetic beauty.

More on Adams can be found at The Ansel Adams Gallery, Zpub’s Short Biography of Adams and Ansel Adams: A Documentary Film on PBS

Annie Leibovitz

Moving closer towards the digital age the role of photography again found itself destabilized. Annie Leibovitz, born in 1949 is a contemporary photographer who has repeatedly problematized the distinction between art and popular photography. She has worked in both media, but her work is powerful regardless of its “content.”

Most famously, she captured the final photograph of John Lennon of Beatles fame. What had been intended as a solo portrait of Lennon became the famous image of a nude John holding on desperately to the fully clothed Yoko. Leibovitz has continued to produce work in all subject categories which is varied in conception. From political to comic, dense to sparse, it continues to amaze.

More on Leibovitz; Leibovitz’s Portraits.

Oh, and if you’re hanging about in London, there’s a Leibovitz exhibit on at the National Portrait Gallery until mid-February. Well worth a trip.

Haje’s History of Photography

The History of Photography part 1 - Before Film
The History of Photography part 2 - The Firm Era
The History of Photography part 3 - The Digital Era

---

Do you enjoy a smattering of random photography links? Well, squire, I welcome thee to join me on Twitter - Follow @Photocritic

© Kamps Consulting Ltd. This article is licenced for use on Pixiq only. Please do not reproduce wholly or in part without a license. More info.

Photography History: Before Film

A few weeks ago, I had a long and interesting discussion about the History of Photography with a friend of mine, and I discovered that while photography is incredibly close to my heart, I didn’t really know all that much about everything that has happened in the past.

Obviously, that had to change – I give you the first in a 3-part series entitled, without a shred of originality, History of Photography. This time around, we’re having a look at what happened before they went ahead and invented film… 

The Camera Obscura

The primary grounding principle of photography was already know as early as the fifth century B.C.E. It was the Chinese philosopher Mo-Ti who remarked at this time that when a small hole is opened up on one side of a darkened room, light diffuses through this hole onto the opposite wall in the form of an upside-down projection of the outside scene, a phenomenon almost identical to what happens on the inside of a modern film camera.

In the eleventh century the Islamic scientist Ibn al-Haytham elaborated this principle further by conducting experiments which made use of a lantern placed strategically in front of a similar setup in order to create this effect artificially. He was also the first to document this phenomenon in detail by creating diagrams which give a hypothetical account of the trajectory of light as it passes through the dark room hole. Al-Haytham is to this day widely respected for this important contribution. (His face is printed on the Iraqi 10,000 Dinar note.)

During the Renaissance period in Europe many other scientists including Leonardo Da Vinci invented further improvements to this device, including modifications that allowed for the use of a small box for projection instead of a large room and a lens instead of a simple hole. This allowed for a much clearer projection of the image. Using mirrors, the image could then be projected onto a piece of paper which artists would use as a tracing image. However, it was not until 17th century that the German scientist Johannes Kepler gave the device its name: the camera obscura, Latin for “Dark Room.”

Several room size camera obscuras still exist today including a very large one in San Francisco, California which, built in the shape of a modern 35mm film camera!

For more information on camera obscuras, Bright Bytes and Wikipedia have loads of interesting info

Nicéphore Niépce

Photography developed out of the principle of the camera obscura when the French inventor Nicéphore Niépce created the first permanent photograph in 1825. Now, instead of projecting the image onto a blank screen, it was projected onto a pewter plate which was coated with a light-sensitive petroleum derivative. This chemical then reacted to the light by creating a colored imprint of the projected image. However, because of the nature of the chemical, it took eight full hours for the picture to become exposed. Niépce’s first photograph using this process is also the earliest known photograph which is still in existence. It can be seen here along with further information about its creation and preservation.

Later Niépce began experimenting with a new silver-based compound which allowed for a shorter fifteen minute exposure time. This was still arguably too long for practical photographic portraiture. However, one of Niépce’s photographs from this period did accidentally become the first photograph of a human being. He had set his equipment up at the end of a street and intended to capture the landscape of the town. Most of the traffic on the street is invisible to the camera since it is moving to fast for the fifteen minute exposure to capture. However, there just happened to be a single man stopping to have his shoe shined on the corner for a period which was just long enough for his image to be imprinted on the photograph. This picture can be seen here.

Louis Daguerre

After the death of Nicéphore Niépce, his assistant Louis Daguerre continued his work and made improvements to the photographic process. Most importantly he invented what is known as the “Daguerrotype Process.” The process further reduced total exposure time and thereby made photographic portraiture a commercial reality. At the same time that Daguerre was perfecting his process a Brazilian inventor named Hercules Florence was developing an almost identical process. It was he who gave this process the name “Photographie.”

More about Daguerre? It’s fascinating stuff – check out wwar.com and Wikipedia’s entry on the Daguerrotype

William Fox Talbot

Meanwhile in England, another inventor was also working on a similar photographic process. This man was William Fox Talbot, the first photographer to employ a “negative” in his process. This would allow him to create a single negative image during exposure which would then be used to print an unlimited number of positive copies. This became the model for most photographic processes which would follow during the next 100 years and beyond. In addition to his achievements as a photographic inventor, Talbot was himself a groundbreaking photographer, with work ranging from portraiture to images of Paris and London.

Today there is an entire museum dedicated to Talbot, his inventions, and his photographs – for more, check out The Correspondence of William Fox Talbot and ‘Talbot’ vs. ‘Fox Talbot’

John Herschel and Anna Atkins

John Herschel was a mathematician and astronomer who made several improvements on and experimented with Talbot’s model. Among these improvements, was a process called “cyanotype” which produces a blue colored print. In addition, it was Herschel who supplied Talbot with the terms “negative” and “positive.” Another photographer named Anna Atkins later used Herschel’s cyanotype process to produce a series of books on plant life illustrated with blue-tinted photographs. For this work, she is known as the first female photographer.

For more on John Herschel try the following links on seds.org and wikipedia; For more on Anna Atkins and her beautiful cyanotype prints try
Getty

Frederick Scott Archer

By the 1850′s the interest in and demand for photographs was growing at an steady rate. Unfortunately, both of the dominant photographic procedures were still terribly flawed. The Daguerrotype could produce a very fine picture, but it required a still relatively long sitting time for portrait customers. On the other hand, Talbot’s process, although it was more efficient, produced an image with weak contrast and poor definition.

As a solution to the problem, Archer invented his own process named the collodion process. In an act of photography history sainthood, Archer decided not to patent his invention, but instead, to allow its use by one and all alike, without fee. Partially as a result of this failure to protect his own interests, Archer never attained financial success. When he died in 1857 he was poor and relatively unknown.

However, Archer’s developments and those of his predecessors led to the immanent invention of film which was to revolutionize the world of photography once again…

Haje’s History of Photography

The History of Photography part 1 - Before Film
The History of Photography part 2 - The Firm Era
The History of Photography part 3 - The Digital Era

---

Do you enjoy a smattering of random photography links? Well, squire, I welcome thee to join me on Twitter - Follow @Photocritic

© Kamps Consulting Ltd. This article is licenced for use on Pixiq only. Please do not reproduce wholly or in part without a license. More info.

The quiet revolution in photography

Shutter speeds? Yaaawn. ISO speeds? Oh-god-not-again. Megapixels? Oh puh-bloody-lease, that’s so 2003. The newest frontier of digital photography is dynamic range – and it’s arguably the most exciting (r)evolution that’s happened in dSLR-world so far.

Interestingly, most manufacturers are continually improving the dynamic range of their cameras, but somehow seem to forget to tell us about it – which means that we’re witnessing – or should I say not witnessing – a quiet revolution.

It seems as if ‘dynamic range’ gets forgotten in PR world, where a bigger screen, better battery life or Live View is an easier way of getting regular consumers exited. The real technological leaps have been happening under the bonnet, though, and the result of the ongoing improvements will mean that your next camera will be significantly better than your current one – but you wouldn’t be able to tell from just reading its specification sheet.

So, why, exactly does this make a difference to us as photographers? All will be revealed… 

Is this the same as HDR?

Well, we’re still talking about ‘Dynamic Range’, and higher-dynamic-range-than-before at that, but when people are usually talking about ‘HDR’, they mean multi-shot HDR photography, which we covered thoroughly a few weeks back.

Multi-shot HDR is very exciting stuff, and it’s a taste of what is to come, but this time around, we’re talking about single-shot HDR photography and how cameras have been steadily improving over the years.

The improvements have happened so slowly, it seems, that nobody has really noticed – but grab a 5 year old dSLR and compare it to a current-day snapper, and the biggest difference in picture comes from the dynamic range.

Whatevz, can we start from the the beginning, please? What is dynamic range?

The human senses have an absolutely incredible dynamic range – think about it: when you’re inside a concert venue at a rock gig, you can hear every note and enjoy every instrument.

When you’re in a quiet room, you can hear water flowing through your radiator heater, and the extremely faint buzzing of the phone charger is loud enough to notice. More incredibly still, you can keep a conversation going with someone in the next seat while the jet you are sitting in is taking off, which is a testament to the width of dynamic range which is possible – although that particular example has more to do with psycho-acoustics than your ears themselves.

If you thought your hearing was amazing, well, your eyes are even more incredible. On a bright day, you can see perfectly, but you can also see things by moon- and starlight on a clear night. Not impressed? Try taking a photograph or do some filming by starlight without using a tripod…

Now, these examples of your eyes’ dynamic range come with a caveat – you cannot stand in a dark room and look out into a sunny landscape and see both perfectly – you’ll either be able to see the indoors, or the outside, with the other being over- or under- exposed, respectively. For photography purposes, the important thing is how much dynamic range you can see simultaneously.

Allow me to illustrate: Take a landscape photo where the clouds are nearly over-exposed. The dynamic range of the particular imaging-chip you’ve got, decides how much details you get in the darker parties of the image. The higher dynamic range, the more shadow-details you can expect.

A theoretical camera with perfect dynamic range wouldn’t need shutter speeds – you would select an aperture to get your depth of field, and you could select any shutter speed you need. The sun would have texture, and the deepest, darkest shadow parties of your image would still have detail in them, too. Of course, perfect dynamic range is impossible (for now…) but that doesn’t mean that increasing dynamic range isn’t a great thing…

Riveting, I’m sure. But is it really that different from 5 years ago?

Back when I first started taking digital photographs in the mid-1990s (I know, we still listened to The Cardigans, Tracey Bonham, Marcy Playground and Tonic…) and I did some playing about with shooting in RAW format, comparing it to just using the JPEGs straight out of the camera. Back then, I decided that RAW was a complete waste of expensive memory stick space, because it was nigh-on impossible to spot the difference. I didn’t know why that was the case back then, but I think the answer is pretty clear right now: The dynamic range of 8-bit JPEG photographs was, in fact, pretty similar to that of the imaging sensor inside the camera.

A couple of years ago, I believe when I got the then-brand-new-on-the-market Canon EOS 20D, I decided to switch to RAW. I spotted that the quality was better than with JPEG, and I stuck with it. Mostly, I did it because I could never quite get the white balance right, and with RAW, you defer the decision until you’re at your computer, which always suited me quite well.

More recently, I upgraded again, this time to a Canon EOS 450D, and the difference is quite noticeable – right from the start, I felt that the 450D was taking better photos than my old 30D, but I was struggling to figure out why. Ignoring the resolution (the 30D delivers 8.2mpx files, whereas the 450D has a slightly smaller imaging chip, but saves 12.2 mpx files to the memory card), the 30D is a better camera in all possible ways: Better top ISO, faster top shutter speed, better autofocus, quicker continuous drive, magnesium body, and so on and so forth. Nonetheless, I swear I was getting better photos with the 450D than with the 30D, on quite a consistent basis.

Then, finally, a few days ago, the penny dropped. I did some test shots on my 450D, setting it to shoot JPEGs, and then some more shooting RAW. The difference was vast – by using Photoshop’s built-in RAW editing tool, I was able to pull incredible amounts of extra information out of the RAW images from the 450D, compared to the ones from my 30D.

Now, add to that the fact that the Canon EOS 450D is Canon’s entry-level digital SLR, and that Canon’s R&D department haven’t been twiddling their thumbs in the meantime either – but as always, they save the best goodies for the people who cough up serious cash for the more hard-core semi-pro and professional lines of cameras.

I haven’t had a chance to have a go myself yet, but it’s rumoured from various fora that the Canon EOS 5D mk2′s RAW files (in addition to being full-frame and significantly higher resolution) have a 15-bit dynamic range which is completely out of this world.

What’s in it for me? How does this mumbo-jumbo make my photos better?

Much in the same way as how tastefully done multi-shot HDR photographs can look realistic and fantastic at the same time, single-shot HDR photographs can do a lot of good for you as a photographer.

Already, photographers all over are shooting in RAW instead of JPEG, because they’ve noticed that it’s a Better Thing – but only rarely do people stop to think why that might be. The reasons are above: you simply gain a lot more flexibility by having a higher dynamic range to play with, than if you limit yourself to the 8-bit limit of JPEG.

This extra flexibility isn’t just camera geekery either: It’s extra raw data in your photograph which you can genuinely use to deliver better final photographs. When I’m out taking photos in difficult lighting situations (such as dancing, concert photography or similar), I now routinely dial back the exposure by a full stop.

Yes, I know that it means that I lose some data in the top end, but because I’m shooting in RAW, I get away with it: The software will save me, and, more importantly, I can get a full stop faster shutter speed. When you’re out taking photos at a concert, the difference between 1/60th of a second and 1/100th are significant.

It isn’t just in poor light that the benefits are obvious, however – In fact, I can’t think of a single genre of photography where extra flexibility isn’t a good thing.

Look at it this way: If you go on holiday and bring two sweaters, you can always choose to wear the thick one or the thin one; when you’re shooting in RAW, you can always decide to go with the suggested automatic choices, and at worst you’ll have lost a few megabytes of storage space for a few hours (or days, or weeks, depending on how long you keep your photos on your camera), but seeing how cheap memory cards are these days, that’s hardly a huge problem – the extra flexibility is there when you need it, and it’s better to throw away data when you don’t need it, than to wish you had more when you don’t.

OK, I’m convinced, how can I join the fun?

So, how can you gain from all this extra goodness already? Easy – just set your camera to RAW. Stop reading right now, and set your camera to RAW. Yes, you. Yes, now. Then experiment. See how much your photos allow themselves to be tweaked without losing significant quality in the process.

What’s coming up in the future?

Frankly, I think digital SLR cameras can only go in one direction.

We already have higher resolutions than we know what to do with (I stick to my opinion that we never needed more than 6 megapixels, although it’s nice to be able to crop your images when needed without quality loss), and the top professional cameras are currently better, both in terms of dynamic range and resolution, than the top film-based SLR cameras ever were (and are rapidly closing in on medium format film cameras), and there are DSLR cameras that can film in full 1080p high definition video.

The way forward, is that dSLRs drop further in price, as the components that go into them get cheaper, and people get bored of the megapixel race. Canon, Nikon, if you’re listening, start selling a $200 8-megapixel sub-entry-level, and you’ll make enough money on the licensing of your lens mounts to make up for the loss in body sales; much like the way printer manufacturers (including Canon, interestingly), sell cheap printers with expensive ink refills.

The other boundary that needs to be pushed is dynamic range – I want a camera with completely ridiculous dynamic range, please, and I don’t mind if I have to sacrifice a bit of resolution or ISO speed to get there either. 20 bits worth would be nice. 24 bits if I can get it, so the dynamic range of my camera matches that of my screen.

Having such a camera means that I can become sloppy, but I can still rescue any photo unless I really balls it up. More importantly, however, it’ll allow me to do stunning HDR photos in a single click of the shutter. And, finally, it’ll be the last nail in the celluloid for those poor sods who still hang on to their film with a desperation which is inversely proportional to their dignity – and directly proportional to the grin on my face.

But seriously – start using RAW now, you might be amazed at how good your camera really is.