DIYPhotography.net Photography and Studio Lighting

Six free photography eBooks (+ two halves) for your reading pleasure. Click the title and go to the download link on the as marked at the end of each section.

1. Tinker Tubes - Personal Lighting Systems by Dean Collins

This is where the entire DIYPhotography blog started. A complete tutorial on creating a studio from nothing but PVC pipes, Ripstop nylon and Nikon SBs. Creating studio photography systems like the Ghetto Studio, the Backdrop Stand and Reflector Holders, are all covered in this book.

[26 mind expanding pages, click on "Download the Tinker Tubes book"]

2. Lighting 101 by David Hobby

Or should I say by The Strobist. The complete nothing but a strobe lighting guide. This is a great book for the starting photographer covering the following topics in depth:
- On The Go Lighting Gear: Clamps, Umbrellas, Swivels, ...
- Strobe Lighting Techniques: Bounce, Bare Bulb, Hard Light, Ambient Balancing, and more
- Creative Flashware: Gels, Gobos, Ball Bungees

If you liked the book, you'll surly love the blog.

[36 pages, click the "mirror" on the UPDATE section at the bottom]

2 1/5. JPG Magazine by 8020 Publishing

Jpeg mag is one of the better photography magazines out there. This photography magazine features readers photos (selected by readers), and also great articles (written by readers). In fact JPG mag is very similar to an online forum only it is printed. How cool is that?

In fact it is so cool that you can download a PDF version of any issue right from the JPG mag site. Go to "Issues" on the top banner, select the desired issue and click Download PDF on the right hand side. (Of course, you still order the JPG magazine in print).

OK, so this is not exactly a book, which makes it the first half of the six and three halves.

[pages vary, click the download issue on the right hand side]

3. The Image-Space Tips and Tricks collection by Joe Barrett

This is a great book for any digital photographer using Lightroom (and don't we all). The Image Space is a blog dedicated to Lightroom Tips, and the books covers areas like:
- Using Lightroom full power to organize your images
- Making the best of the develop module

If you liked this book, you can follow the online Lightroom tips and tricks here.

[34 pages, click on "Download the free Lightroom tips eBook"]

Signs are great resource of photography inspiration. Why? Signs usually carry a clear message. Clear message is a good thing: you can echo, contradict or correspond with a clear message. If your message is clear too, you hit the jackpot.

In the following article I will discuss five ways one can interact with signs on pictures. At the end I will share a personal story showing the difficulties of shooting images with signs.

1. Relating Signs - The simplest way of using a sign in a photograph is to find a sign or a combination of signs that can convey a different message than originally indented. This is usually also very funny.

Pick Your Poison by Scott Ableman

There are several ways to do this: One way is to show two related signs in the same picture. This is what Scott did in his "Pick Your Poison" image. The road guys post up a "Dead End" sign to warn the drivers off a road condition. The fast food guys want the drivers to know that they will serve food on location. Combining the clear dead end message with a bunch of well known fast food chains create a new message: "fast food is a dead end".

Usually on this site I describe ways to deal with shadows in pictures. This is because shadows can distract the viewer from the main subject. Shadows also often create high contrast that gives the sensor some hard time. In past articles I've shown how to eliminate the shadows, minimize them, diffuse them and even bounce to get rid of them.

But what if? What if there was a way to turn the shadow into a friend, to make the shadow so distracting, it will become the subject itself?

In this article I've decided to face the enemy and make it a friend. Here are eight ways to get a great shadow picture:

Brian Shaler from the Brian Shaler Blog has posted a great flick with his panning technique.

Thought you new everything about panning? Think again! Brian brings us the "reverse panning" where the camera moves and the subject stays still.

Last week I have talked about an important aspect of any picture - contrast. It was only natural to follow up with an article about low key and high lighting as both are tightly related to contrast.

After covering the definitions and some samples of High Key and Low key images, it is time to show some setups that will enable you to take High Key and Low Key pictures. I'll start with Low Key images today and will follow soon with some High Key setups.

Sometimes you want to make a diagram of your photo session. (OK, sometimes you don't, but sometimes you do). I, for example, am going to use studio lighting diagrams for explaining about low key and high key studio setups. If you are like me, with two left hands in all that related to sketching, you are in a tight spot. When I draw (just like when I write), only one person in the world can understand what I wrote. Sadly, I have not met him yet.

So the solution to my situation is to use lighting diagrams "out of the box" with no handwriting involved what so ever. Ahhhhh.... sounds like heaven, right?

Great, how do you get one? Both Rui and Strobist have pointed out two great sources for creating lighting diagrams. One requires Photoshop and the other one is online. I'm going to show both.

After discussing exposure in great detail, I would like to turn to a different kind of control - Depth Of Field (A.K.A. DOF). OK. Don't jump - you are right. Depth Of Field is not a real control, but more of a result of how you used the aperture control.

In simple words Depth of field is the term you use to describe what is inside the focused area of your image and what is left outside of the focused area (and will stay home alone, and eat dry bread and drink stale water. Sorry Jewish mom syndrome...)

As I said before the control that has the most impact on depth of field is aperture. Bigger apertures tend to provide shallower depth of field. That means that if you open a wide aperture (say f/1.8) you will have a narrow location in your image which is focused. If you set your aperture to a small value, say f/22, you will have a huge focused area. The other two controls you can employ to control depth of field are Zoom focal length and camera to object distance.

After talking so much about exposure and the controls you can use to, em.. well... control it, I thought I'd bring up some info that can help bring all the control info together.

As a solid base for demonstration, I chose to display and discuss a bit about a rule know as the "Sunny Day 16" rule. I guess that this rule is known to film photographers, and is of little use nowadays when all the cameras have built in light meters. But we can explore this rule and learn something about exposure from it.

The rule is simple: on a sunny day, set your aperture to f/16 and set your shutter speed to be as close to the ISO setting as possible. (There! All the three exposure controls in one coherent sentence. Pat on the back!). This is where this rule got its name - Sunny day 16. Image by Stefan Mendelsohn.

Painting with light is a fun technique that gives great results. It is called painting with light because this is what you are actually doing while taking the shot - painting with light.

You don't need much to experiment with this kind of shot, just make sure you have the following items:

1. A camera capable of long exposures - film cameras will work OK, but if you really want to get the most out of the shooting session, use a digital camera. You will be able to see the results in "real time" and make corrections as you go.

2. A nice tripod. Since you will be doing some long exposures you want to make sure your camera sits still. If you don't have a tripod you can make one in a few minutes (see this article or this one).

3. A flash light - and by flash light I do not mean flash as in a speedlight, but the flash light or what our British will call a torch.

4. A dark location. This one is tricky. If you are going to shot at home - a dark room will be OK. If you are going to shoot outside - make sure that you are not doing this under a street light, or where a car can come by and "paint its headlight" all over your shot.

In the previous few articles, I have discussed some basic aspects of photography. The first subject to get a close look was exposure, and I have discussed two of the three components that control it: shutter speed and aperture. In this article, I will bring in the missing piece - ISO (or film sensitivity). After that I will conclude the exposure subject.

We have learned that the sensor (or film) can get the same exposure if we prolong the duration the shutter is open, but use smaller aperture (or shorten the duration that the shutter is open, while using a bigger aperture). If we want to be absolutely honest (which, at least for now, we do), we have to include the third part of the equation: film sensitivity (AKA ISO).

In short - ISO sets the impact that light will have on the sensor. High ISO will make our exposure brighter, while low ISO will make our exposure darker.

So how can we use ISO to produce better photographs?

Aperture is one of the three main controls you can use when you are taking a picture. Along with shutter speed and ISO, aperture controls how light will hit the sensor (OK, old schoolers - hit the film).

In very simple words, aperture is the "size" of the hole the light goes through when it passes the lens. So large apertures will let more light go through then small apertures. Going back to the pipe allegory analogy, we can see the following: If we use smaller aperture, then to keep our exposure unchanged we have to use longer shutter speed, or higher ISO.

Sink image by Andrew Mason.

If you got here, you must have read the first part of the complete guide to children photography. By now you should know that the key element to your success is having fun - both by you and by the kid. In this part I will talk about some more tips and techniques for children photography, but this time from a more "technical" angle. Did I say technical? Nothing to worry, I am going to keep it simple.

OK, to be honest I must start this "children photography" tutorial with two disclaimers:

Disclaimer #1: There is no "complete guide to children photography" there are only bits and pieces of information. When shooting my (or other's) kids, I try to look at the session (or occasional snapshot session) as a new, and put most of what I know behind me. Here I will try to list some of the principles that I think always stay true, not necessarily in an order that makes any sense. However - remember - those are merely general guidelines. If I had to come up with a more appropriate title for this tutorial, it would be called "How To Photograph Your kids and Leave the Jelly of the Walls", as this is the level of things that I am going to discuss.

Disclaimer #2: The author of this tutorial is also a proud Father (yes capital "F"), and as such, had to make some breaks during the writing of this tutorial to change diapers; fetch milk; kiss a scratch and hug. Also last night my daughter ran the test called "See if my father can stay up all night, and still be functional". SO.... I do not take responsibility for random thoughts; loose connection and general "make no sense" advices I here by give. Ready? Here we go:

In this article, I will show you how to make a cheap infrared (IR) filter for your digital camera out of bits and pieces such as cardboard rolls, electrical tape, and some black processed photographic film (old negatives). This is just getting a brand new Hoya R72 IR filter for free.

The idea for this project came while researching IR light. When I discovered unexposed processed film made an effective IR filter, I literally had to put my house upside down to fish out some old negatives. Sadly, I also destroyed the zoom motor on my trusty Canon A60 by making a case that was too tight. You will see I have included several warnings here to prevent you from making the same mistake! I am now the proud (and poorer) owner of a brilliant Canon A710...

Brian Edmonds writes:

I am trying to take pictures of paintings in my studio. I am having trouble with hot spots and dead spots. I have tried angling the lights but I get a little of both. I am using a canon digital camera that allows for changing settings but only has the snapshot flash. I would also like to take these digital pictures and turn them into slides. I know there are companies that do this do you have any suggestions?

When you are going on a field trip, you want your tripod to be small. Small and light. It would be best if it can fit in your pocket. When Ron Uriel saw the post about the wrap-able tripod, he had an idea. Why not use the 1/4" bolts in other ways. He told me about an idea to make a small tripod from a coke bottle.

This sounded like an interesting idea so I got to work. First I got several coke bottles (you can learn allot about a person by the bottle caps he uses. In my case, the gray-silver cap suggests I drink the diet version of the bubbly beverage). I also needed a 1/4" hex bolt, a 1/4" hex nut, and two of those round thingies called washers. For the finishing touch I used some sand paper. (If you are not into coke or diet coke you can use the beverage to perform the Mentose and Diet Coke experiment - just make sure you retrieve the bottle)

Your pictures are worth money. I have recently learned, that in the Internet age, and with the help of some stock photography agencies, getting this money is easier then ever.

In this Article Aron Brand will share some of the tips he has learned, with the hope to help you realize your commercial potential. I doubt you will be millionaires from this trying this, but it can help you recover the "lost money" you spend on your hobby, and get some new gadgets.

A guide to architectural photography (or how to photograph buildings)

Shooting
The key to good architectural photography is to point the camera straight at the subject. You don't want to shoot as an angle. That's about it-- if you shoot straight, 95% of the job is done. No special lens is required. Shooting straight requires:

The following article was contributed by Roie Galitz, from http://www.galitz.co.il.

This Tutorial will deal with sunset photography, and will cover the following subjects: