As promised, I have quite a bit to say about the rather hard to define Canon 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS lens that I recently got.

I say “hard to define” because the lens is quite a mixed bag - there are features that are great about it, and features that really show the “budget” portion of this rather inexpensive lens.

Let’s start with the basics of build quality and mechanics. The 55-250mm IS is an EF-S lens designed for our crop-body cameras, and it shows that Canon has let the budget drop a bit on these lenses. After all, they’re assumed to be for more amateur photogs who are not going to utterly abuse their equipment - so don’t go expecting a metal body and L-quality glass for the meager price of $279 USD.

Indeed, the 55-250mm reeks of budget in this department - even the mount where lens meets camera is made of plastic, which doesn’t give the sense of quality or security that higher grade lenses exude. However, the lens does work solidly - when it extends during zoom or focus, there’s no wiggle in the lens and it doesn’t seem to “creep.”

Autofocus on the lens is slow - even in decent light, it takes a couple seconds of seeking to find your target, and in AI Servo mode (the mode where the focus “moves” with your subject) the focus will sometimes lag and will prevent you from snapping a picture while it attempts to catch up. I would honestly say that this is the worst problem the lens suffers from, but it is not insignificant. If you’ve got the time to wait for it, it’s not a big deal - but don’t expect to be getting flying birds or catching a lot of moving-target snaps with this lens.

Another issue on the Canon 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS is the bokeh - unfortunately, the lens generates some rather harsh blur. I can’t put my finger on exactly why, but I find it to be distracting and a touch offputting, especially in hard light. It’s not always bad, as you can see by the flower shot at the beginning of this post, but it’s a little rougher in one of the shots below. Expect to retouch the blur a bit with photoshop if you want a nice and creamy blend.

Now that I’m done taking shots at it, let’s talk about what the lens does right, which is actually quite a lot. It covers a wide focal range for a tele lens, but aside from the bokeh its optical quality is superb. Chromatic aberrations are pretty much zilch, distortion is damn near nonexistent (certainly not relevant to field use) and there’s no softness across the whole image, even out to the extreme corners.

On top of that, despite the fact that it’s a bit harsh bokeh in bright light, the lens delivers nice and creamy bokeh when you can control your lighting conditions. It makes me wonder how it would fare as a studio lens, where flash could make the narrow max aperture irrelevant and lighting could be properly tweaked to suit it. I may have to send it down to my friend Eric to find out, as studio work is not my strong suit.

The IS promised by Canon assures four full stops of shutter speed, meaning that hand-shake can become essentially a non-issue. However, as mentioned in a previous post, that’s not going to help you when the subject is moving. With the narrow max aperture and the long length, you should expect to be cranking the ISO up to 200 - 400 to keep your subject sharp in anything but bright daylight. I was not able to recreate the full four stops in testing, but I did get a solid three out of it - not bad at all for a lens south of the $300 border.

Overall, I feel like the old adage rings true for this lens - you get what you pay for. Is it a great alternative for those who are shooting in the wild and drooling over the 70-200mm f/4 or f/2.8 IS? In a word, no. But that’s just it - it’s not purporting to be that lens.

What it is is a great value for people who need a lens that covers that focal range without having to be great at it. It’s a terrific buy if you normally shoot wide but just need a tele for those one-off shots. I think that in this respect, the lens represents a great value for the money - it does just what it says on the tin and it does it well.

With that in mind, I’d give it a wholehearted recommendation to the right people…landscape-oriented amateurs will delight in this as a functional and comfortable safety net to catch something that they can’t get too close to. However, people who look to shoot moving wildlife or in lower light will find that they’re better suited saving their pennies for that L-series glass. It’ll sting, but it’s money well spent.

Before I leave you to it, I figured I’d post a couple more shots of the lens in action:

So, I’m a bit late with my post this week - there’s perfectly good reason for that, I think. April 15th is my day of unending torture due to the wonders of the Infernal Revenue Service. But, it’s done and I’ve moved on.

I promised a better look at my two lens acquisitions this week, and so I’m starting with what I think is the better of the two - the Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8.

To be perfectly honest, I was nervous about spending a bit over $400 on a third-party lens, even if it was “free” money (I had earned about $600 in Amazon Gift Certificates from my bank). However, everywhere that I looked on the web turned out to be a favorable opinion of the lens.

Now I see why.

Let’s start with the build quality. The lens feels heavy for its size, and you’ll definitely find yourself supporting the camera correctly (by the lens) if you hadn’t done so while using the kit lens. It has a metal mount and a sturdy feel to it - it’s not like holding weatherproofed L-series lenses, but it will definitely stand up to the knocks and bumps that any amateur is likely to throw at it.

Also on the mechanical quality, one needs to be aware that this is not a USM lens - autofocus is a touch on the noisy side. However, this is not too obtrusive and it’s not really any louder than other non-USM lenses. In addition, the focus ring on the lens is not decoupled from the AF motor, so the ring moves in AF mode. The lens does not support Full-time Manual focusing, which is a pity, but a very minor complaint - flip the switch from AF to MF and get on with your life.

Even with these minor niggles, the lens is superb. Optical quality is spot on, with an incredibly crisp center and very nice corners as well. Surprisingly, despite the lens being made only for crop-body cameras, vignetting is pretty well non-existent. And chromatic aberrations? Nada. You will see a very tiny amount at 17mm @ f/2.8, but I feel this would be irrelevant in actual field usage.

There is one thing worth noting on the optical quality, and that’s a bit of a “bent” focal plane. I’ll try to take a picture that illustrates this clearly, but the field of focus is actually curved. This is natural for any lens, but there are tricks to work around it in the lens mechanic. On my copy, this is not too apparent, but you may notice that at low apertures (f/2.8, f/4) your subject is in focus in the center but something that’s actually behind your subject is in focus at the edges. Expect it to happen most when you’re close to your subject with a very shallow Depth of Field. This phenomenon disappears at about f/4.5 and above or when focused out far distances.

As odd as it is, it’s actually a godsend when shooting such wide apertures for portrait work and the like. Most lenses at f/2.8 can focus on the nose and eyes, for example, but the ear will then be out of focus. This curved focal plane fixes that problem, allowing the focus to “wrap around” the subject. So, just because it does something you wouldn’t expect doesn’t mean it does something bad - it’s just a little quirk to get used to.

So, is the lens worth its salt? In a couple words, “Hell yes.” At the price this lens costs, it’s an affordable trade for the kit lens. The build quality is great for the cost (far better than other Canon zooms in this price bracket) and the optical quality is superb. The extremely wide aperture makes for a very, very versatile lens that you’ll find sits on your camera a majority of the time. All of this for under $450 will leave you wondering why every lens can’t offer this much bang for the buck.

I’ve got a couple shots of the lens in action that I’m uploading right now, so you can see it in a few of its more useful moments - portraiture and landscape. To top that off, you can expect a full write-up on Friday about the Canon 55-250IS lens. Who said good things don’t come free?

Sometimes, the inevitability of a working life gets in the way. Unfortunately, this week is the final week of the dreaded “tax season” here in the good old U-S-of-A, and the outlook of a worthwhile Friday post looked “hazy” according to my magic 8-ball, and finally passed to “Get real.”

However, I do bring you hope. I have finally (thanks to the glory of credit card rewards) purchased both the Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 and the Canon 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS lenses that I talked about in my previous post.

My initial thoughts on both are fairly positive, though oddly moreso with the Tamron. I understand that the Canon 55-250mm is, for all intents and purposes, a budget lens. For that budget, there is a terrific optical quality - but the autofocus speed leaves much to be desired. Shots lagged for more than a second while the AF hunted for its target in lower light. This isn’t really the issue I make of it for most people, as you wouldn’t be shooting a very long lens whose maximum aperture is 4.0 in low-light situations often. Its outdoor daytime speed is much snappier - I just felt it should be mentioned exactly where the “budget” starts to show.

The Tamron 17-50mm, on the other hand, I could not be happier with. The lens used to be plagued with AF low-light problems, but at least on my copy it acts responsive and finds targets quickly even at wide apertures and low light. In a side benefit, I find the viewfinder to be much brighter with this lens than with the old kit lens - a side benefit of the wide max aperture. The Canon 350D-400D series is plagued with a notably dim viewfinder, so this makes a world of difference.

I hope to get out on Sunday and take some good shots with each lens for illustration, as well as to test Canon’s remarkably bold statement of four whole stops of gain from the IS.

In fact, let’s go into a little bit of what the real gain is for Image Stabilization (IS on Canon lenses, VR on Nikon). Many people seem to expect it to “fix” the blur in a bad image, and in a way that’s true, but that blur can only be from the camera end - not the target.

Normally, you must use a shutter speed of about 1/focal length to prevent ‘hand shake’, or the minute movements of your hand from shaking the camera during exposure. So, if you’re shooting at 55mm on your lens, you need about 1/55 (1/60) shutter speed to assuredly prevent blur. The longer the lens, the faster that shutter has to be.

But when you get out to 200-250mm as many telephoto lenses do, that means you need a shutter speed of 1/250th just to eliminate the shake - which is a pretty fast picture. Coupled with the fact that telephoto lenses naturally have a more narrow aperture (most are around f/5.6 at that range), you are already not letting in a lot of light. Since your shutter speed must be 250 or faster, you only have two options - crank the ISO up to 800-1600 (maybe higher), or miss the shot.

See, shutter speed and ISO, unbeknown to many amateurs, are both also measured in “stops.” This helps make the relationship and the give and take of the big three in photography - ISO, Shutter and Aperture. If you shrink your aperture by one full “stop” (f/4 to f/5.6, for example), you are subtracting one stop of light (roughly illustrated by the light meter as -1 if your image was properly exposed). To bring it back up to 0 (proper), you can either increase your ISO by one stop (go from 400 to 800), or increase your shutter speed by a stop (250 to 125). Conveniently, though aperture uses weird decimals for its stop values, shutter and ISO are just halved or doubled roughly.

So, when you go out to that 200mm and your aperture shrinks to f/5.6, you may find yourself suddenly needing to go to a shutter speed of 1/125th - the address of Hand Shake City.

IS/VR allows you to avoid this - at a small caveat. Canon’s boast of four full stops on the lens means that I can take a photo with a shutter speed of 1/30th at the full 250mm and not blur. The lens does this by voodoo magic or by decoupling the focusing element from parts of the lens construction…I’m not sure which, but my bet is on voodoo.

The trick is, it only works for shake at the camera end. This means tiny tripod bumps, hand shake, and mirror vibrations. It will not fix an image where the subject is moving.

Let’s say that together: IS/VR will not prevent blur of a moving subject.

Good. With that, I’m off to do some taxes and hopefully take some pictures this sunday. Tuesday’s post may be a bit delayed, but rest assured it will appear - even if it has to be Wednesday morning.

This last Sunday was my latest opportunity for a photo shoot, and it was a pretty great trip. Being as I live out in the middle of rural Northeast Ohio, I took the opportunity to go explore some of the neighboring towns.

The photo shoot that followed can really be summed up by one term: “Rural Decay.” You can check out all the shots in the gallery.

It really is a sad state of affairs, and I’m afraid that (as one who is affected by it greatly) it will probably be a fairly regular topic for me. A drive through the back country fields and forests shows plot after plot of dilapidated barns, overgrown fields and lowlands that are flooded from the incredibly unusual seasonal patterns as of late.

This, my friends, is the true rural America.

I still have quite a lot to uncover through a lens on this subject, but I have already posted a few of the shots that I took from this particular trip. As spring comes and the fields green up, it just gets more beautiful and I can’t wait to go take another afternoon drive.

In the meantime, what I did want to talk about is black and white shooting. I’m a bit of a novice at this, usually much preferring color for my shots. However, I think that the black and white (and mild HDR to “wash out” some of the other shots that were left in color) helps to set the mood of some of these pictures.

The biggest challenge I had with framing what should be black and white shots is the sky - a bright white sky (which all of the images were as of the start of processing) is not nearly as open and empty as I would want - instead, it just makes you feel as if you are in an old photograph - a nice effect, but not what I was looking for.

My purpose in going black and white wasn’t to age the picture, but rather to deeply enhance the contrast - to show every dying vine, flaking paint chip and cracked board. To help that contrast with a white barn, a dark sky was needed.

This is where Adobe Lightroom becomes nearly vital. The software’s “Grayscale” conversion method (under the Develop module) is fantastic. When you switch to grayscale, your image will convert as if you made a conversion in Photoshop - nothing too special. However, if you move down the sidebar of the development functions, you’ll see that there are still Hue alterations that you can do. This actually sets the “black value” for the conversion of each of the major colors, even including whites and neutrals.

If you have a mostly blue sky and want it to go dark in the image (adding contrast to the clouds), slide the blue slider all the way to the left - it will make the blue sky go very dark. You can tweak the cyan to help catch the fringes around the clouds.

Still not dark enough? Go up to the exposure section and pump up the ‘Recover’ feature, which is designed to save blown highlights. It doubles as a reflected light remover in grayscale mode, and sliding it back and forth will help you find a good balance where the sky grades evenly. Be careful though - too little or too much of this value can create a bit of wash-out or a lot of film grain.

While you’re playing with levels, try messing around with the colors for grass and brush. You’d be surprised at how much you can control the contrast of individual elements - and for once it’s more powerful (when ease of use is considered, at least) in Lightroom than it is in Photoshop.

I hope that this will help you get the look you want with your black and white conversions. Skies in black and white are one of the hardest things to get the way you want them, but that doesn’t mean you have to settle.

In fact, there’s even a great saying (which I’ll paraphrase because I suck at quoting):

“The lens is what takes the picture. The body just holds it.”

Honestly, this seems so true in so many ways. New bodies come out every 18 months or so - new lenses? maybe every couple years there might be one lens updated significantly enough to warrant a new look. Many of the best lenses have been in production since the mid 1990’s, if that new. Sure, there have been updates and alterations, but the must-haves have been around for quite some time.

When I look back to some of the pictures I took at the start of this year during my annual Vegas trip for the Consumer Electronics Show, I can see a very noticeable improvement in my own images by a lens change. Same camera, but my very trusting friend Richard loaned me his awesome Canon 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 wide-angle lens for the trip.

The differences are astonishing. The extra range, fidelity and ease of use hooked me almost instantly. I wanted that lens. But did I actually need it?

I should interject here that I’m a chronic luster. I look at things longingly, planning out every purchase and wanting every toy there is. The problem is, I also work in finance, so I know that I can’t buy it all. So, that’s why I write this - to add my insight to the “most needed lenses” discussion for serious amateurs who are willing to spend but need a real value to do so.

There are many who will argue that primes (fixed focal-length) constitute ‘necessary.” Back ten or twenty years ago, I can understand - but the quality of zooms has improved immeasurably. With focal lengths from 17mm-200mm at a solid f/2.8 covered by just two lenses, it’s almost silly to carry a bunch of primes. That being said, a couple are very useful…but they don’t count as necessary in your pack anymore.

For most of us, there are three lengths that are truly necessary - and that means only three lenses. As an amateur, almost all shots can be pulled off between 10mm-200mm. Though one monster zoom can comfortably do 17-300, you’ll be shooting at a very small aperture most of the time, making it much less ideal for low light scenarios.

Inside shots are often low light and also not where you are likely to have or need the space for a huge tele lens (unless you’re in the press). However, lengths shorter than about 15mm will start to give slight distortion in the picture, increasing around the edges. So, for indoor shots, between 17-70mm (I find 50mm to be fine) becomes the “golden length” - and it just so happens that Tamron has a terrific 17-50mm f/2.8. The AF on it isn’t perfect - but it’s only $425 compared to the nearly $1000 of the equivalent Canon.

Outside shots come in two flavors generally - either you want them up close with some creamy bokeh (that funky blur, for those of you who don’t pay attention to names), or you want something nice and wide. If you have wide-angle on the mind, you want to get as small of a length as possible - which just so happens to be Canon’s fairly well-priced 10-22mm. Nikon users are a little more out in the cold on this, but there is a nice Tokina 12-24mm available. The same lens is available for Canons and can save you an extra couple hundred, but I personally prefer having full-time manual focusing available to me.

All of this leaves us with one thing needed - a good telephoto lens. I’ll tell you what - I don’t really have a “great” suggestion here. If you find you are always shooting fairly stationary targets at long distances in bright light, you’ve got a plethora to choose from - most apertures are f/3.5-5.6 and you’ll not really need image stabilization. If you’re shooting a lot of outdoor architecture, for example, this is golden. Pick yourself up something in whatever price range fits your feature ‘wants’ and get on with your life.

Or, you could be like me - my favorite things to shoot are storms and animals/people, which means low light is a given and anything that helps me keep the shutter open longer without blurring a somewhat moving target is a godsend. If I want animals, I want to make the background melt into a colorful smear. All of these mean I need a wider aperture and image stabilizing technology. Good news is, both Nikon and Canon have absolutely awesome lenses in this category. Bad news is, they both start at about $1,000 and go rapidly up from there.

I personally have a private love affair with a Canon 70-200mm f/4L IS, which means I’ll be choking on the around $1k when I finally invest in it. Unfortunately, Nikon users are a bit screwed here - the only 70-200 (or anywhere in that length) with a fixed aperture is the Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 VR, which will leave you crying under both its heavy price and its heavy weight. Honestly, it’s like shooting with a roll full of salad plates…monopod or tripod is very highly recommended, along with a lackey to carry it for you.

In the meantime, for those of you in a similar boat to myself, I’ve just discovered a new 55-250mm Image Stabilized lens from Canon that is actually getting some great reviews. It was released in August and is at the bargain basement price of $279 new on Amazon. Seriously, how did I miss this?!

So, that’s my “amateur’s lens kit” - three fields that cover anywhere from 10-200mm. They’re not the cheapest in the bunch, but they’re money well spent.

Which one to buy first? Honestly, that’s a “Take your kit lens and find out.” Watch what lengths you shoot at for a while - use a good selection of pictures, rather than run out to buy something you don’t really need. Some people alway shoot wide, others almost always shoot long, and then there are those who shoot in between. You’ll know what you need first by what you shoot.

Look at the focal length in the EXIF data of your recent shots - are they constantly at 18mm? You likely are dying for a wide angle. Are they always at 55mm? Sounds like someone is looking for the telephoto end. Regularly somewhere in between? Then replace the kit with a new 17-50mm.

And never, EVER forget rule #1:

The makings of a perfect shot:

Camera body: 1%;

Lens: 9%;

Monkey pressing the button: 90%.

So, I think that I’ve figured out a couple great techniques for handling cloudy skies and making them pop. You can see it in tonight’s photos, a couple of which definitely took a little post-process love.

First, some background. I live in farm country out here in Ohio, on ten beautiful acres of land (thanks for the help, mom and dad!). I love the country - particularly in the spring and fall, when the thunderstorms boom or the leaves change. Obviously, we’re dealing with the former here - and last night a storm front rolled in right around sunset.

When you’re looking to capture color depth, you normally want to slightly overexpose your image (aka “shoot to the right” on a histogram). For pictures where the sky is a lot of the subject matter, this is doubly true. The gradients are usually along one color pattern - gray, blue, orange… so it’s very important to get as much of that bit depth as you can.

To do this, try using autofocus on your camera - focus up at the sky to let the exposure metering work, then adjust your shutter speed to about a full stop slower. Keep the button half pressed to maintain infinite focus if it’s a landscape shot. When you take your picture, it should look washed out, as you’d expect.

Now, to the dirty work. Bring your RAW file over in whatever manner you choose (I use Adobe Lightroom and convert to DNG format), and open the RAW up in Photomatix HDR. Tone map it as you see fit, but don’t worry so much about the sky. Focus on the subject matter in the foreground and make it look how you want it. This is mostly for the contrast - but I find Photomatix does in one step what I need about six steps to do in Photoshop. On images that can use all six of those steps (like anything with low contrast and uniform light), HDR is just a faster method to get the desired look.

Save the HDR image as a 16-bit TIFF file and open it up in Adobe Photoshop. Now, copy the background (it’s a locked layer) and apply any sharpening that you traditionally do to your new “bottom” editable layer. Once that’s done, it’s time to do the magic - copy the sharpened layer again.

To this second image layer, we’re going to apply a layer mask of “Hide all”. Take your gradient tool and paint a white gradient from the sky that should taper down nicely to the bottom of the foreground. We’ve now shown just the sky of this second layer (Anything covered by white on the layer mask is visible, black is hidden), vanishing as you hit the foreground.

At this point, you should see nothing unusual as compared to before…until you click on the picture layer that’s covered by the mask (the mask is handled separately and you’ll default to being on the mask and NOT your image). Change the blend mode to “Multiply”.

If you’ve done everything right, you should see a very highly contrasted sky where there was once just a mottled sea of very light gray. You can change the opacity of the layer to adjust how dramatic of an effect it has, or play around with other blending options.

There are, of course, other ways to achieve this effect with other skies - but this works faithfully with gray, overcast skies that are normally just “blah” to look at!

If you are totally new to this alien world, I highly, HIGHLY recommend that you skip past using the crappy tool built into Photoshop CS2/CS3 and the likes. Instead, go straight for a demo of the neat Photomatix by a company called HDRSoft. Original, I know.

The concept behind HDR is simple, but photography terms muck it up. Photogs will tell you that film and especially digital camera sensors are only sensitive to about 5 F-stops of light. An average scene encompassing both bright and dark areas will often go as high as 8 stops. That means you’re losing out on a full 3 stops of light range.

When you strip down the “stops”, it becomes a different matter. In the digital world, we represent color as bits. So an 8-bit image has 8 bits for each color, or 256 levels each for red, green and blue. If you add even one step up (to 10-bit), your options turn to 1024 levels per color per pixel. That means each pixel moves from having only 16 million possible colors to over 1 billion.

Cameras will tend to take the most careful note of colors (apply the highest bit-level) in the bright regions, where images get washed out - this way, you can recover blown highlights. HDR is the effort of taking one shot at several exposures, so that all parts of the scene are given that high-bit treatment. The dark shadows of each image are tossed, and the highlights of the next darkest picture are put in their place - thus giving a higher overall color fidelity. This means HDR is really a mosaic of different images, with the most balanced light being taken from each.

When you shoot in JPEG (no matter how high the quality), you are only ever shooting in 8-bit. Any dSLR on the market today has a minimum of 10-bit sensor, so that means you’re just “throwing out” 768 color levels. At minimum. Many better cameras have 12- and 14-bit sensors. The math there is even more frightening.

So, set your camera to RAW. Even if your screen will never show the full 10- to 14-bit color, it’ll be there when display technology improves and in the meantime, here’s some fun you can have with it:

I mentioned HDR is all about “mosaics”. When you shoot HDR, normally you take a bracketed exposure with at least three brackets per picture. But RAW data already captures more than your screen can show - and if you do too much HDR (There is such a thing), the picture starts to look quite unnatural. Even though your eyes normally “even out” the light more than a camera does, HDR is all about stripping shadows and highlights to give everything the ‘best’ lighting detail.

Rather than letting everything turn unnatural, try taking pictures that include lots of highlight and shadows and plugging just your single RAW file into Photomatix. Let it do the conversion to TIFF, rather than Lightroom or Aperture. You would be amazed how much more detail is actually in many shots - but a straight conversion loses it, and a full HDR rework takes it too far. By using just a single RAW, you’ll only alter the image by the data that’s already captured - meaning it won’t look horribly unnatural.

I stumbled on this by accident, as everywhere you read talks about HDR as a multi-exposure work-up. Sure, it can be done that way and there are reasons for doing it (it’s well worth experimenting), but I find that I like my pictures to err on the side of natural. Using a single RAW in Photomatix to apply an HDR tone-map really makes the lighting look more like what my eyes see, without over-doing it.

So, I want to talk about this.

With the difference between professional and consumer dSLRs ever narrowing (Canon 40D/5D anyone?), one would think that amateurs would learn to do more like the pros. Oddly, this is one instance where the opposite is happening - as cameras develop insane levels of cross-type auto-focus, pros are relying on AF a lot more.

Why the change? Well, as I mentioned, AF is getting a hell of a lot better for starters. Nikon’s D300, the blurring of the consumer/pro on that side of the fence, is up to 51 (I think) autofocus points. Most of them are cross-type, meaning that the sense lines horizontally and vertically.

For those who, like me, needed educated on this, let me explain. On most lower-cost bodies (Canon 300-450D, Nikon D40-D80), the AF points are arranged in some form of grid. The horizontal lines on the grid seek vertical lines in your composition, and vice versa. Cross-type points can be sensitive to either. If you’re trying to line things up on a Canon Rebel XT and wonder why it can’t really see the focal point of your horizon halfway through the frame when it’s sitting on no less than three AF points, that’s why. The line across the middle is searching for vertical lines in your picture.

Fifty-one cross-types means you can practically select an eyelash as your focal point. On a whole head. It sure is neat - except that actual AF distance is controlled by the lens, many of which aren’t quite so optimal in lower light circumstances. Maybe you’ll get it…or not, or maybe you got Uncle Fred instead of the dinner table because his face was closer to the light. In these situations, AF isn’t always optimal at all.

The problem is, modern dSLRs are caving to the consumer end. There’s a part in your camera called the “focus screen,” and it’s part of what makes the viewfinder and the light metering work. Cheaper, lower quality focusing screens and pentamirror viewfinder technologies make for dim and fairly indistinguishable viewfinders. Therefore, you almost have to use the viewfinder as more of a view-pointer, just aiming and letting AF take over. Light up whichever dot is closest to what you want to bring out, pull the shutter, and pray.

Pull the shutter and pray is exactly what the SLR was invented to avoid.

As hobbyists looking to take our photography to the next level, I’ve done a bit of research for how we can fix this:

• Pentaprism viewfinders: Pentaprisms are solid glass, and heavier than Pentamirror-based viewfinders which are hollow. However, the weight is for a reason - pentaprisms let in WAY more light, leading to a brighter, better viewfinder. You will only find these on Canon models that are 20D,30D,40D and above. For Nikon, the D80 is the first model - at a price point way cheaper than the equivalent Canon 40D ($899 instead of $1299).
• Focusing Screens: The focusing screen is the other big difference. Cheaper ones don’t let in the same amount of light, but worst of all they aren’t really designed to illustrate proper focus. Changing this out (more on this below) can make a big difference, particularly when you go to a Split-Prism model like the Kat’s Eye Custom filters.  These are what existed for the older SLRs, and a lot of photographers really miss them.  Most of those that do never knew you can get them still in your camera without a tremendous cost.

The viewfinder is not interchangeable, so you’ll get what you pay for here. However, the focusing screen is. You can purchase separate focusing screens like those from Kat’s Eye Optics for between $100-200. I’d highly recommend spending the full $200, as I probably will upon purchase of a 40D. On the 20D,30D,40D family, there is almost NO reason to not do this. Any camera repair shop that would normally work on your kit can do the switch for you, or you can do it at home if you’re feeling brave…

For those of us with lower-priced models, we’re still in luck - sort of. Same price, same product - but note that your AF points won’t work anymore. Most people don’t like having only full-time manual focus and not having the use of your AF points in the viewfinder puts you halfway there. Add that to the fact that the viewfinder is small and based on mirrors anyway, and you end up with not as much to gain. Then, figure the cost of the right focusing screen will be about half the cost of your camera. Maybe those hunting AF points aren’t so bad after all…

Whether you change viewfinders, cameras or focusing screens, one thing is for sure - shutting off your Autofocus and doing some practice on manual will improve your abilities for composition and give you a little understanding of how things should look through YOUR camera. I think (and the pros seem to agree, as that’s where I picked this tidbit up from) that though AF can be a life-saver, it shouldn’t be relied on entirely and there’s nothing like understanding your equipment and your skill.

So don’t be afraid to shut off that AF and go practice a bit! It’ll still be there when you need it…but you’ll know better how to catch and quickly correct it when it inevitably misses in lower light.

Oh, and a side note on the split-prism focusing screens - unless you go with the “Kat’s Eye Optics Plus”, the center circle will go dark while the aperture is higher than 5.6 (it’s meant for low light). It may also play a little havoc with your light metering, though there are very mixed opinions on that.

The more expensive Optics Plus version won’t start going wonky til somewhere between F11-F16, which is higher than one would usually shoot anything but landscapes at, which you should use a tripod for anyhow and will have plenty of time to line up your shots. And since modern lenses don’t actually move the aperture until the shutter is pressed, you won’t even notice it unless you press your little Depth-of-Field preview anyways.

Most of the models on the Kat’s Eye Optics page are already only “Plus,” so this problem is fairly self-correcting. But it’s a natural limit of split-prisms, and it’s worth getting used to it - photographers of the old SLR days worked with it for years, and there’s a reason for it. And they didn’t have half the lens quality we do now!

So, when I say homebrew, what do I mean? Well, let’s take a look:

• Server: The actual webserver (supplied by my friend up in Canada) is a Gentoo system running Apache2. You can run the same thing at home for absolutely no cost and setting it up isn’t all that hard. However, for those without a lot of Linux knowledge (or any at all), I’d highly recommend this simple guide written by my friend Glider and I.
• Webpage: As you can easily see, the webpage is powered with Wordpress, which is running a very heavily modified theme by Refueled.Net. If you’re in the market for a free, clean and well-constructed theme, I’d highly recommend starting there. Over time, the theme will become more my own, but it’s always good to pay homage to those who came before.
• Images: For images, there can be no substitute for good old Gallery2. I’ve personalized it with the PG X-Treme theme, and crammed it into the Wordpress portion of the site via the incredibly handy WPG2 plugin. For the record, WPG2 is fantastic - but it requires some modification under the hood. Don’t be surprised if it doesn’t do quite what you want (particularly with portrait-oriented pictures) without some serious fiddling with the CSS.

So, that’s the basics behind it. I describe it as “homebrew” because not a single part of this is based on commercial applications. Linux distributions are free and well supported. Wordpress and Gallery2 are as well. And if you wanted to follow along at home, you should be able to set up a similar server with an old system that you previously were going to throw away, which can save some bucks on webhosting. Indeed, all of this will run quite comfortably on computers that are four or five years old, and once it’s set up then it doesn’t require a keyboard, mouse or monitor.

This is, of course, as long as your Internet Service Provider (ISP) is alright with it, at least… mine at home actually scans for webservers and blocks them, which is why I run mine through my Canadian allies.

For those of you who are serious about having your own site but don’t really want to know anything about how a webserver works, just make sure that the host you sign up with allows you to install both Wordpress and Gallery2. If they don’t know what that means for your needs, then you should probably look elsewhere.

As you can see, this means that all of my display and publishing operations are free, at least on the web end of things. I do this so far on the cheap because the rest of this hobby does cost money, and I’m all about keeping costs down. So when I can do it for cheaper, I do!

By the way, anyone using this stuff should show a little love and donate so these poor chaps get something for their hard work. Rule #1 - always support those who support open source!

You’ve stumbled on the current and future home of my ramblings and wanderings through two wonderful worlds that are my hobbies - photography and technology.

Very little of my writing will actually be on the technology portion, except in its relations - honestly, I get enough of that with my job over at Bit-tech.net. If you’re a computer enthusiast and haven’t checked it out yet, I highly suggest you take a flying leap over there and see what the fuss is about.

Since my general technology rantings are taken care of, you’ll find a more photographic bent here. See, I’ve done a lot of reading of a lot of great sites - Luminous Landscape, Strobist, Cambridge in Colour…And all of these sites are great for information. What they’re not great for is understanding the process of learning photography.

There are many ways to learn, but very few of us have time for most of them. Take a class, read a book, get a mentor…we’re a bunch of novices dropped into a busy world, wanting to learn how to capture the moments of it that we hold dear and freeze them. And to do that, we have to learn.

So, here I am - and Wire-trace.com is. I’m not here to teach you, but I hope you learn something. I’m here to experiment on what I consider a glorious hobby. You won’t just read how to take good pictures here - you’ll read how I take bad ones, and how I learned, am learning, or will learn next time. And you can drop your own learnings in the comments section, I’d love to hear them.

You can expect an update twice weekly - every Tuesday and Friday. It may be a photo shoot, it may be a musing or a cool site I stumbled on. Who knows what we’ll find?