The devices come in lots of different types: full-covering caps, dome-shaped caps, home-made versions made out of coffee filters or Pringles caps, or any number of other surfaces.

In theory, it’s a great idea, but it has a flaw: A white balancing cap like this measures all light that hits it. Can you spot what the problem might be?

Imagine your lighting set-up is like this, for example

You are in the sun, but your subjects are in the shade. Your white-balancing cap will measure the light that’s hitting your camera (direct sunlight – or around 5,500 Kelvin or so). However, your subject will be in the shade (around 7,000 Kelvin or thereabouts).

The outcome is utterly predictable: Your white balance is going to be miles off.

So, what’s the solution? It’s simple:

Don’t white-balance where you are taking photos from… White-balance what you are taking photos of.

This article was originally posted at Why white-balance lens caps don’t make sense , on Photocritic.

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You can future-proof your subscription by heading to your Settings. It’s right there under Personal Information. And all the details about retaining ‘Pro’ status are here in this FAQ.

(Headsup to Engadget)

This article was originally posted at Flickr confirms: ‘Pro’ memberships can be retained , on Photocritic.

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‘Make Flickr awesome again.’ That was the Internet’s message to Marissa Mayer when she was appointed CEO of Yahoo! last year. Last night’s announcement of a new-look Flickr with a new business model was her, and her team’s, response to that claxon. But are the changes all that awesome?

To summarise, ‘New Flickr’ has done away with the divide between ‘Free’ and ‘Pro’ accounts. Before, ‘Free’ membership meant limited image display that was supported by ads. ‘Pro’ accounts cost about $25 a year, enjoyed unlimited storage, provided statistical analysis, and were ad-free. Now, everyone has one terabyte of storage for free and photos are undoubtedly the heart-and-soul of the newly designed site.

The new-look moasic-style photostream

If you want to enjoy Flickr ad-free and have access to statistics, you need to pay $50 a year. For $500 a year, you can buy a Doublr account and double your storage space.

Understandably, the split between the ‘Wow’ and the ‘Grr’ reactions seems to fall along the divide between ordinary members and ‘Pro’ members. For ordinary members—those who didn’t pay about $25 a year for unlimited uploads, statistical analysis, and no ads—it’s a win. One terabyte of storage for free, full-resolution display, and some of the organisational tools that were previously the preserve of ‘Pro’ members: what’s to complain about?

There are two primary complaints that Flickr needs to solve, and quickly. The first is the treatment of its old ‘Pro’ members. I paid for Pro membership because I wanted the unlimited storage, I appreciated the statistical analysis, and I liked the ad-free experience. ‘Pro’ exists no longer, and instead there is a great deal of confusion as to which old ‘Pro’ members will be grandfathered in to the new deal on their old terms. It seems as if some might, and some won’t. Apart from not being able to determine easily if our previous contracts will be honoured, why the differentiation at all? Flickr’s ‘Pro’ membership was a relatively small percentage of its overall membership; giving all these loyal users the benefit of the doubt seems only fair.

The old ‘Pro’ members were the old Flickr stalwarts, who stuck by the site when it felt as if Yahoo! had put it out to seed, but continued to pay them their money and keep the community alive with images and conversation. What could have been a positive transition, with clear communication and recognition for their loyalty, feels more like a shafting. It is, however, an easy fix.

The new-look sets lay-out

Second, can Flickr please fix its metadata-stripping antics? Display an image online and you run the risk of it being purloined and used without permission; that’s a fact of life. However, there are measures that many of us take to protect our images. Some of us use watermarks, some of us only upload small versions of our images, I’ve disabled the downloading function on Flickr, and most of us append metadata to our pictures. Metadata are a bit like a dogtag, identifying who took an image, where, and when. Unfortunately, Flickr strips images of their metadata, (or takes the collar off of the dog, if you like) so if someone does manage to download one of your pictures, its owner can’t be identified. Now that pictures are being displayed bigger and brighter and bolder on Flickr, this is more important than ever. Ensuring that metadata aren’t separated from images really would be awesome.

In terms of the look and the feel of the new Flickr: I love it. If the images can’t do the talking, then why bother? And the new moasic layouts and easy enlargement options make it all about the images. When Yahoo! addresses the issues that people are finding troubling, Mayer might’ve answered the Internet’s request.

This article was originally posted at The Flickr Spectaculr: what’s right, and what’s wrong , on Photocritic.

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In the case of the Triggertrap Company Hackathon, I decided to build a site celebrating one of my favourite hobbies: Timelapse photography.

A screen shot of a website? What’s next, an interpretative dance recital of a haiku poem? Actually, come to think of it, that’s not such a bad idea.

Primelapse.com is the name, and it is a collection of a load of rather fabulous timelapses from around the world, organised by location, technique, and theme.

If HDR photography is your poison, we’ve got you covered. Looking for timelapses from California? Done. How about a load of timelapses taken from space? Yeah, sure, why the hell not.

It’s a brand new site, so there’s a load of things I still want to add to the site, but for now, we’ve got the first hundred or so timelapses live on there, so why not pop over and have a look?!

This article was originally posted at Brand new site celebrating Timelapse Photography! , on Photocritic.

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For most of us, time-lapse photography is something that is beautiful to look at and tricky to get right; for a team of researchers at a lab in Manchester, their time-lapse photography doesn’t need to be beautiful to look at, but it does need to be right. They’ve been using it to monitor the development of embryos in the IVF process, consequently increasing the chances of a successful live birth.

The most common cause of IVF failure is aneuploidy, or chromosomal abnormality. In fact, it’s estimated that about 70% of fertilised eggs, whether achieved naturally or via IVF, don’t reach birth and in many cases the loss or gain of single chromosome is key.

By imaging an embryo every ten to 20 minutes and observing it at key stages of its development, the team at the CARE fertility clinic is able to identify if it is at low, medium, or high risk of chromosomal abnormality. In all, each embryo is photographed about 5,000 times before it is implanted, or not. The lower the risk of chromosomal abnormality, the higher the chance of a successful implantation, pregnancy, and birth.

At the moment, it is only a very small sample of embryos that have been subjected to CARE’s cameras (88, in fact), but the results are encouraging. There was a 61% success rate of babies born to the low-risk group. The medium risk group had a 19% success rate, whilst the high-risk group didn’t have any births.

It’s early days, but for couples struggling to conceive, time-lapses might be the way forward.

(Via BBC radio news and the website)

This article was originally posted at Using time-lapse to help make babies , on Photocritic.

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Where does the line exist between public and private? At which point does photography become voyeurism, or even exploitation? When you live in the Zinc Building, a glass-fronted set of apartments in New York’s TriBeCa district, this question has just been thrown into sharp relief by a new exhibition at the Julie Saul gallery in Chelsea.

Arne Svenson, a photographer living on the second floor of a building opposite the Zinc Building, used a telephoto lens to capture images of the residents of the Zinc Building from his flat. These have now been curated and exhibited at the Julie Saul gallery under the title ‘The Neighbors‘. None of the subjects can be identified from their images, and Svenson maintains that by living in a glass-fronted building, they are putting themselves on a stage:

For my subjects there is no question of privacy; they are performing behind a transparent scrim on a stage of their own creation with the curtain raised high. The Neighbors don’t know they are being photographed; I carefully shoot from the shadows of my home into theirs.

For the residents of the Zinc Building, however, there is a distinct feeling that their privacy has been violated and consequently they are contemplating legal action. The feeling seems to be that there is a difference between an odd stolen glance and a concerted campaign to document their lives from the shadows. Even if they cannot be identified, it feels creepy.

Bearing in mind I’m in no way a legal expert and certainly not one in New York law, I think that there are two critical factors here; first, that Svenson took these photos from his own flat; second, that the images were captured using a long lens. Would someone standing on the street, without optical assistance, have been able to discern these scenes? If this weren’t the case then the residents’ expectations of privacy were reasonable and their sense of intrusion justified. Legality aside, from an ethical standpoint Svenson’s location adds a distinct element of voyeurism and exploitation to his actions: he observed them purposefully and secretly from the security of his own flat.

Even if Svenson’s actions are deemed legal, it is ethically dubious situations such as these, which provoke a sense of violation in the public, that leave photographers facing a barrage of abuse and do nothing to support or promote our rights to shoot in public. To say that we should never push the boundaries and paint ourselves into a photography-less corner would be foolish and detrimental to the medium. Rather, we need to be respectful of our subjects; just because we can do something doesn’t mean that we should.

Meanwhile, I might just start drawing my bedroom curtains when I change. Nobody can see me from the street and the only possible view into the room comes from the first floor windows of two houses several hundred metres away. But you never know.

(Headsup to The Online Photographer)

This article was originally posted at People in glass houses , on Photocritic.

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To celebrate the launch of my newest book, Surreal Photography: Creating the Impossible, it seemed entirely appropriate that the theme for May’s competition should be surreal.

Whether you construct a meticulous composite of gods and monsters battling it out in an as-yet undiscovered universe, or create a scene at five degrees to the world we know using papier mache, we don’t mind. It can be Photoshopped to Kingdom Come or created entirely in-camera, what we’re looking for is a strong image.

The Ilex Press, publishers of the book in the UK, are very kindly supplying a copy of the book as a prize. You have until Friday 31 May to submit your entry to our Flickr pool and link the image in May’s thread. Please remember: it is one entry per person and the image must be posted to the thread.

I think that just about covers the details, but I have produced The Rules for your reference. Good luck!

The Rules

• If you decide to enter, you agree to The Rules.
• You can’t be related to either me, Haje, or Gareth to enter.
• One entry per person – so choose your best!
• Entries need to be submitted to the right place, which is the relevant monthly thread within the Small Aperture Flickr group.
• There’s a closing date for entries, so make sure you’ve submitted before then.
• You have to own the copyright to your entry and be at liberty to submit it to a competition. Using other people’s photos is most uncool.
• It probably goes without saying, but entries do need to be photographs. It’d be a bit of strange photo competition otherwise.
• Don’t do anything icky – you know, be obscene or defame someone or sell your granny to get the photo.
• We (that being me, Haje, and Gareth) get to choose the winner and we’ll do our best to do so within a week of the competition closing.
• You get to keep all the rights to your images. We just want to be able to show off the winners (and maybe some honourable mentions) here on Photocritic.
• Entry is at your own risk. I can’t see us eating you or anything, but we can’t be responsible for anything that happens to you because you submit a photo to our competition.
• We are allowed to change The Rules, or even suspend or end the competition, if we want or need to. Obviously we’ll try not to, but just so that you know.

If you’ve any questions, please just ask!

This competition was launched when Photocritic and Small Aperture were still hosted by Pixiq. Unfortunately, it was lost in the transition. This is a re-posted article containing the same details, although the exact content will be slightly different.

This article was originally posted at May’s other-worldly photo competition , on Photocritic.

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IdeasTap is a charity focused on helping creative people who are just starting out in their careers to find their feet, to get the support and encouragement that they need, and to develop their passion into a workable career path. It covers a diverse range of creative disciplines and works with some of the biggest names in those fields to bring insight and opportunities to its members. In the case of photographers, it is working with Magnum Photos for the 2013 Photographic Award. It doesn’t get much bigger than that!

The IdeasTap 2013 Photographic Award offers three winners £5,000 in prize money, £1,500 in project funding, mentoring from Magnum photographers, and the chance to work at Magnum’s offices in London or New York. One winner will be selected from each of the age categories: 16 to 22, 23 to 30, and 31+; in addition, there will be prizes for 18 shortlisted photographers (six from each age group).

The short-listed candidates will benefit from a mentoring session with a Magnum Photographer, Blurb book vouchers, and £150 to have their pictures printed. Come the autumn, their photos will be exhibited, too.

At the exhibition, nine finalists—three from each group—will be selected. The nine finalists will each receive £1,500 to shoot the project of their dreams, create a multimedia Magnum in Motion project, and will receive a second mentoring session. Then of course, the three overall winners will be chosen.

The brief for each category is the same: submit a series of ten photos that fit with one of five themes: conflict, climate, memory, human relationships, or journey. The deadline is 31 May, so if you’re interested, you need to get a wriggle on!

All of the details, including how to join IdeasTap (it’s free), is available on the IdeasTap website.

This article was originally posted at Get your entries in for the 2013 IdeasTap Photographic Award , on Photocritic.

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Everything needs a bit of refreshing every now and again: cameras get upgraded, batteries need replacing, humans need sleep at the end of the day, and even Think Tank Photo bags deserve a bit of a redesign from time to time. It’s just been the turn of Think Tank Photo’s monster camera mover, the Logistics Manager to have a swift make-over, making it the Logistics Manager 30.

The Logistics Manager 30 is Think Tank Photo’s behemoth camera bag with seemingly infinite combinations of internal organisation. Its 3,500 cubic inches of storage is capable of holding multiple camera bodies, multiple super-telephoto lenses, flashes, medium-sized softboxes, small lighting stands, as well as having pockets and organisers, room for a laptop, and an external tripod holder. Thank heavens it is on wheels or moving it would be a struggle.

If you want its internal dimensions, you’re looking at 13.75” W x 27.5” H x 8.25” – 10” D (35 x 70 x 21-25 cm). That’s a lot of space, people!

It’s made of water-resistent ballistic nylon, and has replaceable in-line skate wheels and antique nickel plated metal hardware. There’s also a security cable and lock in the front pocket.

The whole idea is that it should allow you to relocate huge amounts of kit with relative ease and security. For around $500.

All the details, and the opportunity to buy one, are on the Think Tank Photo website.

This article was originally posted at Think Tank Photo’s super-huge Logistics Manager 30 , on Photocritic.

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There’s also 50% off the digital versions of our books in Ilex’s webstore for a few more days, but you’ll need a special code to claim it. And that’s revealed during the interview. Mwahahaha!

Big thanks to Adam at Ilex for setting up the session and acting as technical director, being the Voice of God, and editing the recording. If you couldn’t guess, we really enjoyed ourselves.

And the name I so embarrassingly forgot: Adrian Sommeling. Profuse apologies.

This article was originally posted at On not taking photos and black eyes: Team Photocritic in conversation , on Photocritic.

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