NaturePhotoAdvisor.com News

New eBook, Mastering Chiaroscuro, Now Available

Nov. 20, 2007. Chiaroscuro refers to the use of light and dark elements in paintings and other pictorial representations. Chiaroscuro techniques were pioneered in the late middle ages by highly innovative oil painters like Jan van Eyck. The increase in realism and emotional depth was so huge and profound it sparked a new appreciation of art, and the birth of the renaissance itself.

Interestingly, chiaroscuro techniques were originally developed by carefully observing the behavior of natural light. In nature, chiaroscuro happens all the time. It is a big component of magic light, and is responsible for many of those "holy moly" moments we encounter in nature.

Landscape photography pioneers like Watkins, Weston, and Adams have shown us it is possible to deliberately incorporate chiaroscuro techniques into photographs to greatly increase the perception of physical and emotional depth.

To show how to use chiaroscuro to create your own holy-moly photographs, I've created a 39-page PDF book—chock full of examples—called Mastering Chiaroscuro. It is available in the Member Download area of NaturePhotoAdvisor.com

Two New Articles on Monitor Calibration

Nov. 13, 2007. I recently completed an intense, six-week, emergency project moving all my computer operations off a new but ailing laptop onto three new desktop computer systems. Along the way, I gained a lot of new insight supporting my recommendation to go with a CRT monitor and the Pantone Huey monitor calibrator from x-rite.

Of all the topics covered in my classes, CRT monitors and monitor calibration receive the most push-back from students. To ease the way around all the technophobia, procrastination, technical difficulties, and general cantankerousness surrounding this most important topic, I've written two new articles:

New LCD Monitor, Video Card, and Monitor Calibrator Reviewed
Pantone Huey Calibration Tips and Hints

These articles can save you hours, maybe even days of futzing and fiddling.

Members can find them in the newly established section: DDR Equipment Recommendations.

Digiscoping Examples

This gallery shows a small sampling of hundreds of unique digiscope photographs taken over the course of a few months. With the right components and techniques, digiscoping can be extraordinarily productive on a professional level. All the examples in this gallery show their original, in-camera composition with no enlarging and cropping. Several digiscopes were used with focal lengths ranging from 900mm to 2,400mm. Due to varying sensor sizes, this resulted in fields of view equivalent to 2,250mm to 3,800mm lenses on 35mm cameras.

Hot Birding Gallery 001

Click Hot Birding Gallery 001 for more bird photography examples.

Digiscoping Examples Gallery 002

Click Digiscoping Examples Gallery 002 for more digiscoping examples.

Pro Digiscoping Techniques

Pro Digiscoping Techniques pioneers the use of digital SLR cameras for high-performance, high-productivity, high-system-resolution digiscoping.

One of my most interesting projects of late has been researching and writing a new book called Pro Digiscoping Techniques. One great surprise to come of this effort was discovering digiscoping to be highly productive on a professional level. The above gallery represents just a small sampling of hundreds of unique and highly publishable photos created over a few short months.

Of course it took years of effort to develop just the right combination of components and techniques to bust this productivity wide open. My workshop is littered with the bleaching bones of spotting scopes, eyepieces, lenses, and all manner of digital cameras that failed to make the professional grade. Turns out, the most popular digiscoping recipes on the Internet are among the worst performers in the field.

My productivity turning point came when a Nikon lens purchased 35-year ago inspired the use of digital SLRs for digiscoping. Certain dSLR digiscoping recipes are fully capable of surpassing and surplanting conventional $6,000-$9,000 monster telephoto lenses. A top-performing digiscope used in conjunction with a handheld (Sigma 50-) 500mm lens far outproduces my monster 800mm lens (which is now in virtual mothballs). Had I known from the start the extraordinary capabilities of good digiscopes and the major shortcomings of conventional monster telephoto lenses, I would have passed on the 800mm lens, and saved a huge sum of money.

Although equipment is critical to pro digiscoping, techniques for working with hyper-focal-length lenses are just as important. Far and away, working with hyper-long lenses is the most challenging form of photography I've ever undertaken. The level of skill, technique, and expertise involved is intense. But even though digiscoping is supremely challenging, it is also supremely rewarding, and this makes it a ton of fun.

Pro Digiscoping Techniques covers all the top-performing equipment and techniques needed to digiscope on a highly productive, highly professional level. It is slated for release on NaturePhotoAdvisor.com in August, 2007.

Digital Image Quality

Readers of my books, Digital Nature Photography and Mark Hatasaka's Digital Landscape Photography, know how I emphasize photographic fundamentals to the umpteenth degree. So it may come as a bit of a shock that I'm working on a book called Digital Image Quality. In this book, I delve deeply into some heavy technical matters.

The reason I'm doing this is, to this very day, a lot of erroneous technical assumptions about digital image quality are commonly and cavalierly bandied about in magazines, on the Internet, in advertisements, in camera stores, and between colleagues. As a result, a herd mentality has grown up around these erroneous technical assumptions, and they've become accepted as "common wisdom." As a result, much money, time, and angst are tragically wasted. The only way to correct the massive inertia of this "common wisdom" is to provide a full, in-depth examination of digital image quality.

Fortunately, all of this has a worthwhile outcome. Digital Image Quality provides numerous specific, eminently practical, big-money saving recommendations for purchasing digital cameras and lenses. Here's a small sampling.

Current 35mm full-frame sensors provide magnification/system-resolution geometries about on par with 10-12 megapixel APS-C sensors and 645 medium format film. When magnification is held strictly equal (e.g. while digiscoping and shooting lifesize, 1:1 macros), the lower pixel density of current 35mm full-frame sensors captures significantly less detail. Because bigger sensors are exponentially more costly to manufacture, 35mm full-frame digital cameras cost more not because of vastly better image quality, but because of inefficient design. Bottom line, save your money, big time.
Digiscopes are commonly believed to be poor man's monster telephoto lenses. Careful analysis of magnification/system-resolution geometries and f-numbers, however, shows monster telephoto lenses are dumb man's digiscopes.
Target testing shows RAW processing is effective at extracting professional-level detail from consumer-resolution lenses. This means combining low-cost superzooms with low-cost, 10-12 megapixel, APS-C cameras and RAW-processing is an effective way to achieve professional-level image quality, while simultaneously reducing costs, reducing bulk and weight, and increasing all-important focal-length capabilities.

Again, this is just a small sampling of scores of practical, money saving recommendations found in Digital Image Quality. The book is slated for release in webbook form on NaturePhotoAdvisor.com in September, 2007.

Here are a couple of excerpts from Digital Image Quality.

Testing Lens and Camera Resolution

Case Study: Nikon 18-200mm Lens Review