Blog 10 Travel photography: Equipment and tips

Travel photography – equipment and tips

It is finally happening. After months of saving, planning and searching you have decided to travel to Asia for 4 weeks. Because photography is your biggest hobby, you want to make sure you take the best pictures possible and that you visit all the great sites a country has to offer. After you finished packing your suitcase, it is time to charge your batteries, clean your lenses and pack your camera bag. That’s when you ask yourself: what do I take with me? Or maybe even more important: What do I leave behind?

My girlfriend and me just came back from a four week trip to Asia. Our trip started in Cambodia (Siem Reap), then we travelled to Laos (Luang Prabang) and our trip ended in Vietnam, where we visited Sapa and Halong Bay. In this blog, I would like to share with you my experiences of this trip in regards to what equipment to take and how to take home the above average photographs that we all so desire. I will start with the equipment that I carried with me.

Equipment

The first thing you have to make sure is that you are carrying a comfortable and reliable camera bag. I myself have a Click Elite Pro Express. This bag has a “lock” systems for the zippers, that clamps your zipper to your bag. If anybody tries to open your bag, he will swing it left and right and you will notice. So no sneaky lens stealing! To protect your equipment during changing weather, it is also advised to have a bag with a build in rain sleeve, or to carry one separately. The following equipment I took with me on my trip:

-          Canon EOS 5D Mark II with battery grip

-          Canon EF 135mm F2.0 L USM

-          Canon EF 24-105 F4.0 L USM

-          Sigma 35mm F1.4 Art DG HSM

-          Cleaning gear (lenspen, bellows, microfiber cloth)

-          3 CF cards of 8 gb (16gb in the camera)

-          Redged TSC-424 Ultimate Travel Tripod Carbon Gold Edition

Since this camera bag was my hand luggage, it had to stay under 7 kilograms. Sadly it didn’t, so I had to put the tripod in my suitcase. Don’t forget to weigh before you check in at the airport! To save some weight, your can of course take one lens that covers a large range i.e. 18-200. This however, has a negative effect on image quality, as can be read here.

It is always wise to take a standard zoom lens with you. This lens will stay on your body for 90% of the time. The other two lenses I carried are fast. This comes in handy when you want to shoot some photographs at night and don’t want to up your ISO too much or if you want to work with shallow depth of field (DoF).

During the day I carried my Canon EF 24-105 F4 L with me. This lens allowed me to shoot landscapes (24mm) and portraits (105mm) and still maintain good image quality. The only time I brought my 135mm during the day was when I was absolutely sure that I was going to shoot portraits. I could’ve done this with my 24-105, but I prefer the 135mm for portraits. In fact, the 135mm is my favourite portrait lens! I did not take my tripod during the day because I did not need it.

Figure 1: Canon 24-105 op 100mm F8 Luang Prabang, Laos

Figure 2: Canon 24-105 op 24mm  F8  Sapa, Vietnam

In the evenings, I left my standard lens in my hotel and put the 35mm prime on my camera. The 135mm I took with me as well. Because these lenses are “fast”, it will enable the user to shoot some handheld photographs during low light without raising the ISO too much.

Figure 3: Sigma 35mm nightmarket in Siem Reap, Cambodia

Figure 4: Canon 135mm old woman op de night market. Luang Prabang, Laos

How do I bring  good photographs back home?

If you are going on a trip if this magnitude (any trip really), you want to take home the best photographs possible. What makes this hard is that your can mostly visit every site only once. Often, there is no chance to visit the same place twice, especially in the middle of the jungle, to retake a photograph. Add to this the fact that, especially during group travels, you often don’t get to choose where you will be on what time of day, so you cannot wait for the perfect light. Luckily, there are some things you can do in preparation, to make sure you have the best chance at getting those beautiful photographs.

The tip I want to give: Make sure you know your camera by heart. I lost count of how many photographers I have seen, missing great moments, like the playing children on the cart, because they were fumbling around in the menus of their cameras. You don’t want to stand there twisting dials for ten minutes. Not only does this make you miss some moments, it might make you miss the entire scene if the guide or the other group members want to move on to the next spot. So before you go on a trip, find out how to change ISO value and what value is acceptable for you (or when your camera starts to produce too much noise). Find out how to change the aperture and at what aperture your lens gives the sharpest images etc.

Figure 5: playing children in Sapa, Vietnam

The second tip: prepare. Read information about the countries you are visiting. Google is your friend. The internet is full of blogs and stories like this one, make them work to your advantage. Preparation is of course finding out what country you go to, what language do they speak, what defines their culture. More importantly though, make sure your know where you are at what time of day and what kind of pictures you want to take (to match your equipment).

For example, for landscape photography you need beautiful light. This light is available during sunrise and sunset and approximately one hour before and after these events. However, you don’t get to choose where you are at that time, given you travel in a group and have a set schedule. So you should take this into account when preparing.

When you want to do landscape photography (example again), make sure you bring a polarising filter and a graduated filter. This somewhat helps preventing colour cast and blown out skies.

 

Figure 6: landscape photograph, middle of the day

If you want to shoot portraits (one jungle tour took us to some remote villages of the Hmong people), bring your portrait lens etc.

The people in Asia sometimes expect you to pay them for a photograph, or that you buy something off of them. Don’t be fooled by giving them large amounts of money, most people settle for about 20 dollar cents. The old lady in figure 7 insisted that we buy something from her which, given the quality of her posing skills, seemed very reasonable.

  

Figure 7: An old woman in a remote village in Sapa, Vietnam. Luckily I brought my portrait lens!

Don’t be afraid of taking loads of photographs. Bring enough memory cards and fill them if you have to. Normally I prefer quality over quantity but, because you can visit most sites only once, it is better to take 100 photographs too much then 1 too few! Be sure to get some knowledge of the subjects you want to shoot, this being portrait, landscapes, streets or whatever. This helps taking good photographs faster and more efficient.

The third and final tip: don’t forget to enjoy yourself! Of course it is very tempting to practice photography every single minute of the day. Maybe you feel ambitions hot breath in your neck, or perhaps you see the shining glory of a National Geographic Magazine cover photo, but the most important thing is that you experience and enjoy the surroundings and people. Don’t be afraid to lay down your camera once in a while, hang it around your neck or just leave it at the hotel. Photography is about observing and that doesn’t always have to be done looking through a lens.

I hope you enjoyed this blog as much as I had writing it. I had an amazing trip through Asia and, in my eyes, brought back some really good and special photographs. If you have any questions, or if you want to follow my work, you can find me at Facebook, Twitter or email.  See you next blog!

I added some more photographs of my fantastic trip!

 Figure 8 Sapa, Vietnam

Figure 9 Kuang Si waterfalls, Laos

Figure 10: swimming in paradise, Laos

Figure 11: Street image, Laos

Figure 12: boy with chicken

Figure 13: child of the Hmong

Figure 14: Children in Laos

Figure 15: Child with puppy

Blog 9: Low light photography

It happens to us all. You get an assignment or are asked to photograph during an event. Arriving on the scene, you realize that the only available light you get is candle light. Furthermore, the room is crowded and small. You think: no problem, I will use my flash. The result: gone is the atmosphere, the front row is too light, the back row too dark. What now?

Lenses

The first thing you should make sure is that you always bring a “fast” lens. Fast lenses are lenses that have small aperture values (i.e. F1.4 or F1.8). The smaller the aperture value, the less light you need for a good photograph. A 50mm F1.8 will cost you around 99 euros. There is a reason why they call it the “plastic fantastic”! For the photographs in this blog, I used a Sigma 35mm F1.4 Art. Remember to use wide angle lenses instead of tele ones. The minimum shutter speed for hand shot photographs is 1/shutterspeed which means that, when a 135mm lens is used, a shutter speed of 1/135s is necessary. In contrast, when you use a 35mm lens, the minimum shutter speed only has to be 1/35s, much longer! A disadvantage ofcourse, is that you have to get close to the subject.

Figure 1: Fast lenses will save you!

ISO

Don’t hesitate to increase the ISO on you camera. Normally, I never go above ISO400 on my Full Frame camera. However, in difficult lighting situations, ISO400 is not going to cut it. Not even when using a fast lens! Most photographs in this blog were taken using ISO800 or ISO1000. Modern software is perfectly capable to reduce noise in your photographs without a significant setback in sharpness. Keep in mind that noise is more apparent in dark areas of a photograph then the lighter ones.

 

Figure 2: ISO1000, well lit parts of a photograph suffer less noise then darker parts

Focus en composition

Because you will be working with a wide open aperture, your depth of field will be narrow. Even on a 35mm lens. This means that you don’t want to try making group shots with everyone in focus. It is not going to happen! Instead, focus on the individual. Not only will this make the atmosphere seem more palpable, it will also enhance your composition because the viewer has something that stands out to look at.

Figure 3: focus on the person in the middle

Figure 4: Focus on the candle

Flash vs tripod

If you do not own a fast lens, or if you don’t want to increase your ISO value, you have to choose to use either your flash or a tripod. I strongly recommend NOT using your popup flash because you do not have control over it. It just flashes. If you own a Canon Speedlight 580 EX or equivalent, you have far greater control over the situation. Use as little flash as possible. Aim the flash towards the ceiling or, if that doesn’t give you the desired effect, behind you. This will diffuse the light and make it look softer and you will keep most of the atmosphere.

Figure 5: flash towards the ceiling. ISO200, shutter speed 1/100s

If all the above fail, you might be able to use a tripod. Using a tripod however, might be tricky since there is not always enough space. Remember you can use tables and chairs as tripods as well! In addition, using a tripod (and with it, slower shutter speeds) will result in a sharp environment but blurred people! This might be cool as an effect, but it will create a rather one sided impression of the evening!

So, to summarize:

-         -  Use fast lenses

-        -   Up your ISO value, the software will sort it out

-        -  When using a flash, make sure to aim for the ceiling or behind you

-          - Focus on the individual instead of the group (because of the wide open aperture)

Well that’s it for today. I hope you had fun reading this blog and I hope you can use these tips to your advantage!  

For more blogs, or to see my photography work, hop on over to www.photojitsu.nl or like us on Facebook www.facebook.com/photojitsu. Until next time!

Blog 8: Low Key photography

Blog 8: Low key portrait photography

Hello and welcome to my newest blogpost. Today I would like to discuss “Low Key portrait photogaphy”. I reckon everybody knows what portrait photography is, but I can imagine that not everyone knows what low key means. Low key is basically shooting with insufficient lighting, bei t in the entire photograph or a part of it. I will start off with two examples of low key portrait photography and then explain how I made these photographs and how you can too!

This is example one. In this photo (yes this is me, so it’s a selfie), insufficient lighting was used to create a low key effect on the entire body. The face and the left side of my body are clearly visible while at the same time, my legs and the right side of my body has dissapeared into the blackness. This gives the photograph a very distinct look. Some might argue that it makes people look more chique or “classy”. For me, it is a great way to cover up those extra kilo’s! Ofcourse the kilo’s reappear when you switch the lights back on.. Right, moving on.

Example two. In this example, insufficient lighting was used to create a low key effect on the face. As can be seen in this photograph, the left part of the face is highlighted while the right side is lost to the shadows. The amount of face lost can be adjusted by using a reflective screen, but I will speak about that in the next part of this blog. As in any form of portrait photography, focus on the eyes is very important. People truly speak through their eyes. By the way, this slightly older, balder and leaner version of me is my brother J.

These two photographs were made in the same way. The only difference was the placing of my studioflash and the reflective screen. The easiest way for you do practice low key photography is in a dark room with the use of a single external flash and a reflective screen. If the room is dark enough, the background will not matter. However, you might want to invest in a matte black background. I usually use the following setup:

In this setup, the flash will come from your right, lighting up the face and/or body of that person. The reflective screen will cause part of the face on the dark side to show some detail as in the following example.

The reflective screen has caused this woman her eye to light up. Odd, calling my girlfriend “this woman”. Ofcourse, the intensity of the light is controlled by adjusting the power of the flash. Professional flash equipment usually has the ability to adjust the power of the flash in several steps. You will have to experiment with different light intensities to determine what works best for you. If you want to remove the detail from you dark side of your model, simply remove the reflective screen (as with my brother).

The easiest way to learn low key is just by doing. You can use any off camera flash but I strongly suggest buying one or two professional flash units as they offer more control and are more powerful. I use the Lastolite Lumen8 F400, a 400 Watt flash unit, which is sufficient for small studio’s and not more then 2 or 3 people. Needless to say, more power means more light, suitable for example for large groups of people.

Well there you have it. My 8th blogpost! I hope you enjoyed the read and if you have any further questions, don’t hasitate to ask!

Here are some more examples:

Blog 7: Autumn photographing

7. Making Autumn photographs.

Hello and welcome back once again. In today’s blog I would like to cover the subject of colour change in your photograph. More specific, I would like to explain to you how you can make those autumn forests really look like autumn forests. But before I get to explaining the Photoshop tricks you will need, we will take a look at the situation.

I was born and raised in a town called Heiloo. Heiloo is a small town (approximately 22.000 people) in the Noord-Holland province of the Netherlands. As a kid, my parents often took me for a walk in the forest of Heiloo, conveniently called the Heilooër forest. This forest is hundreds of years old and got its name from back in the Germanic era when it was called “heiliger loo” which means Sacred Forest. I still love to go here. Not only for sentimental reasons but also because I think it is really beautiful there.

On to photography then. When I walk through the forest, I see all kinds of colours. I walk around with my camera and my tripod (not a lot of light in the forest because of all the trees you can find there J) and take photographs of lanes, hills (there is one, yay), people and benches. After a few hours I go home and sit behind my computer to look at the photo’s I have taken. My minds’ eye has given me all these memories of the past few hours, portraying golden forests with blood red leaves.

But when I open my photo it looks like this, and I am like: what? No, this can’t be right.. Green?! But it was all golden and red and magical!

Well sad truth is that what you perceive isn’t always what is actually there. A camera is really an honest object, it only captures what is there. So that is where Photoshop comes in handy.

Photoshop (or any other similar program I know nothing about) allows me to recreate what I have seen with my third eye from what was actually seen with my regular ones!

There is a (free) Photoshop manual on my website that explains in easy steps how to achieve this for any photo. You can find that here: http://photojitsu.nl/psguide.html.

In this blog I would like to concentrate on the picture on the left here, which is basically the same as any other photograph.

Ow well, moving on!

First we need to open the photograph in Photoshop and do the basic adjusting like local contrast and highlights. If you don’t know how to do this, please refer to the manual on my website.

After you have opened the photograph and did the basic adjustments, it is time to alter the colours. To do so, select “new adjustment layer” and then click on “hue/saturation”.

Here you will see all kinds of sliders. First thing you want to change is the settings next to the little hand with two arrows. By default this says “master”. Changing hue in master mode will change the entire picture. What you really want to do is set it to a select colour. Now most of us (including me) would assume that the colours in this photograph are mostly “greens”. However, according to PS, most colours are in the “yellows” range. So first change this setting from “master” to “yellows”.

 

Use the slider “hue” to change the colour of all the yellows in this photograph. I prefer to make them an intense red colour.

 After you are satisfied with the “yellows”, switch the settings to “greens”. Now adjust the greens in such a manner that they appear as the colour you want, in my case a bright yellow. After you are done, just click anywhere in the photograph to exit the layer and return to the actual photo.

When done, the photo will look a little something like this. As you can see, it is lacking a bit in the contrast department. There are two things you can do here. The first is using a simple contrast/brightness layer (found under the same menu as the hue/saturation) and up the contrast of our photograph. However, there is a second technique I want to tell your about. This technique works very well for any photo that should have a nice magical glow to it. Handily, it also adds contrast to your photos.

To create this effect, I use something called the Orton effect. The Orton effect, or simply called Orton, is a technique in which you duplicate your base layer, add a Gaussian blur and then change the setting of that copy to “overlay”. This technique is also described in my Photoshop manual.

  

In short: press CTRL+J to duplicate your base layer. Go to filteràblurà Gaussian blur and apply a blur effect with a radius of approximately 40 pixels.

Press apply and set the blending option to “Overlay”.

You will notice that the photograph is way too dark and saturated. To adjust this, simply change the opacity until you find it suitable (in this case around 60%).

Your photograph should look something like this now. The colours are bright, contrast is high and it has a nice soft glow to it.

Basically we are done now, the colours and light are how I have seen this forest with my third eye. However, I felt like there was something missing.

I always like photographs like this to have some human reference in them so I decided to add just that.

I took a silhouette from a man I shot in another photograph and I added him to this one. Can you see him? The man that always walks through this forest. I have no idea who he is or what he is doing. He’s just always there, in the distance, walking..

And there you have it. I have changed a real photograph of the Heilooër forest into a photograph of the way I see the Heilooër forest.  If you have any questions regarding this blog, or one of the others (yeah, there is more! J) please feel free to contact me at info@photojitsu.nl. Like my work? Why not have a look at www.photojitsu.nl or www.facebook.com/photojitsu .

Blog 6: Different lenses and their applications.

Different lenses, different applications.

Hello and welcome to my sixth blog entry. Today I would like to tell you something about different lenses and when to apply which type. Keep in mind that these are general applications. There is no one stopping you from using your lens in different fields.

Before we dive into the actual lens types, I want to tell you something about the science behind these lenses. Photography is writing with light (freely translated) and light is bound by natural laws. The most important part is the so called focal length. Light is reflected on an object and taken in by the lens on the camera. The image however, is always in reverse because of the glass that resides inside the lenses. The point where the light “crosses” is called the focal length. It is the length between that point and the sensor.

All lenses work according to this principle. In this example, a 24-105mm zoom lens was used. 

This picture shows a shorter focal length (24mm in this example).

 Because the focal length is closer to the sensor, the camera will capture “more” of the surroundings. This is what we call a wide angle lens. 

The zoom lens is able to shift the focal length from 24mm to, for example 105mm, capturing less of the surroundings and more of the object of interest. This is what we call zooming.

The amount of “zoom” is indicated on the lens. For this example, a 24-105mm zoom lens was used. This lens can vary between 24 and 105mm and everything in between, making it zoom approximately 4.5 times. Lenses that range from 18-200mm have 11x optical zoom. Keep in mind however, that lenses with a greater zoom range generally take less sharp photos (the reason why not everyone is running around with mega zoom lenses). 

Now that we have had a look at the basic physics of lenses, let’s move on to their application.

In general, there are four basic categories in which we can divide lenses. They are:

- Prime lenses

- Wide angle lenses

- Standard zoom lenses

- Tele/supertele lenses

All these types of lenses have their own general application. I will discuss each and every type in this blog. There are some other lenses on the market, like fisheye lenses, tilt-shift lenses and lenses with adjustable depth of field like Lensbaby. I will not discuss these lenses in this blog but might do so in the future.

Prime lenses

The first category is lenses with a fixed focal length. In normal language this means that the lens is not capable of zooming. 

In the photo on the left you can see one of these prime lenses, the Canon EF 50mm F1.4. The pros of these lenses are the unsurpassed image quality, speed and autofocus speed. Primes are usually fast, which means they have small F values (like the 1.4 on the photo). Smaller F values mean more light entering the lens and reaching the sensor. The actual application is determined by the focal length, depicted as the amount of mm on the lens. A 24 mm lens is mainly used in landscape or street photography. A 50mm lens is mostly seen as the standard lens (because our eyes operate at approximately 50mm). At 50mm your camera sees what you see, making it suitable for almost anything! The larger focal lengths, i.e. 85mm, 100mm etc are mostly used for portrait photography and macro photography. 

Needless to say, the biggest con of this lens is the inability to zoom. If you change application, you have to change the lens.

This photo was taken at night, without the use of a tripod, using the speed (F1.4) of the 50mm F1.4 prime, a 1/100s shutter speed at ISO 400. The depth of field and shutter speed would not have been possible without the speed of this lens. I love it!

Summary for prime lenses:

- Unsurpassed image quality, speed and autofocus speed

- Application is determined by focal length

- No zoom means changing lenses when switching objects

Wide angle lenses

Wide angle lenses have a short focal length. The wide angle lenses range from approximately 10 to 40mm. Because of the short focal length, the lens will capture more of the surroundings (as in the example). This makes wide angle lenses the preferred choice for landscape- and street photography.

For landscape photography, the speed of the lens is unimportant. Landscape photographers usually aim to capture the entire landscape in one sharp image. This means that a high F value is required (i.e. F22). For street photography, the speed is more important, especially when shooting indoors. Think train stations, subways, bars, restaurants, dense urban locations etc. Because of their nature, wide angle lenses tend to cause barrel distortion. Barrel distortion is where the outer corners of the image are bent, like a barrel. Be careful around butts and thighs, they will look bigger than they actually are!

This photo was taken using a 16-35mm lens at F8. Without the short focal length, I would never have been able to capture so much of the sea, since I was standing a few meters away from it! I used the F8 to make sure the beach and water were sharp.






Summary for wide angle lenses:

- Short focal length (approximately 10 to 35mm).

- Used in landscape, street and architecture photography.

- Speed is unimportant for landscape or architecture photography, but more so for street photography.

- Be careful with barrel distortion. People may look bigger than they are.

Standard zoom lenses

The next category is the so called standard zoom lenses. Standard zoom means the range between approximately 50mm and 105mm. The lenses that utilize the standard zoom range however, mostly also cover a part of the wide angle range. Therefore, these are the most versatile lenses one can own. 

For example, I own the Canon EF 24-105L F4 (see photo).

This lens allows me to capture landscapes (wide angle) and make portraits (standard zoom) and everything in between, while still maintaining great optical quality and autofocus speed. When using one of these lenses, you hardly have to take if off the body.

Standard zoom lenses like this one are best to take on a holiday when you don’t want to carry different lenses with you. Albeit not having the large zoom range of an 18-200 lens, the image quality is far superior. As for the speed, 18-200 lenses usually slow down considerably when zoomed in. For example, one of those lenses might be able to reach F3.5 on 18mm but slows down to F5.6 when zoomed above 120mm. This 24-105mm has F4 across the entire range. This is my most used lens!

This photo was taken on the NDSM wharf in Amsterdam. The 24mm allowed me to capture the entire sculpture.

This photo was taken using the same lens as the Amdock photo. Because of the 105mm, this lens is also suitable for portrait photography.








Summary for standard zoom lenses:

- Versatile lenses because of both wide angle and standard zoom ranges

- Most standard zoom lenses remain fast even when zooming

- Almost no changing of lenses because of wide application


Tele/supertele lenses

The last category is the tele/supertele lenses. These lenses are usually very long and range from approximately 120mm to 1700mm. The biggest supertele is a whopping 5200mm (it is really a prime)! 

This photo shows a supertele lens on the body of a Nikon camera.

Tele and supertele lenses are mostly used for animal photography, sports photography and voyeurism.
Because of its large focal length, images lose depth and there is no real distinction between object and background. They do allow you to take that photo of a lion in Africa, or the winning goal of your favorite soccer player while standing on the sideline. 

This photo was taken using a 70-200mm lens on F4 during a visit of a zoo in Alphen aan de Rijn. The bird was pretty far away so I had to use the full 200mm to get a crop of its head. Because of the F4, the background got nice and blurry (we call this effect Bokeh).








Summary for tele/supertele lenses:

- Mostly large, expensive and heavy lenses

- Used in animal- and sports photography

- Allows you to “snipe” shy animals and winning goal scoring soccer players

Well this concludes my blog on different lenses and their application. Like I said in the intro, this blog describes general applications. Of course you can use a supertele for landscape photography, or a wide angle lens for portraits. You might get some surprising results!

If you have any questions, suggestions, complaints or compliments, please contact me at info@photojitsu.nl.

Also, come visit me at www.photojitsu.nl, www.facebook.com/photojitsu and follow me on Twitter @photojitsu_nl.

Thanks for reading!
Maarten Kuiper
owner of Photojitsu.nl