How to Photograph Corporate Portraits
I have been getting many requests lately to write an article on corporate portrait photography, after my last corporate event photography tips article that I wrote a few weeks ago. Photographing employees for corporate websites and magazine articles is very different from corporate event photography - it is similar to photographing a portrait in a professional studio. Obviously, the atmosphere is different, lighting is different and the gear you use is also very different. You must be equipped with portable lighting equipment that you can assemble and disassemble in minutes. In this article, I will go through the different types of corporate portrait photography and what you can do to get the best possible results with the least amount of money spent on gear and lighting equipment.
Corporate Portrait
Photography FAQ #2
Big thanks to our readers for continuously sending questions to us and participating in the comments section of our blog. We truly value your feedback and we do our best to respond to your queries as soon as we can. Here is the compiled list of FAQs from the last two weeks:
- What is the best lens for child photography?
Our readers with families love our family photographs (thank you!) and occasionally ask me what lenses work best for photographing children, especially indoors. Most of the family pictures that we have are taken with the Nikon 50mm f/1.4 lens and we use it more than any other lens both indoors and outdoors. Photographing kids is a challenging task (even with fast lenses) because children often move way too fast. Having a fast aperture lens helps to focus a little better in dim environments and also does a great job in isolating children from the background. Another lens that we have been raving a lot about lately, is the Nikon 35mm f/1.8. While it is not as superb as the 50mm f/1.4, it is still a pretty darn good lens on a DX body and super sharp at only $200 brand new. One more thing - if you are planning to photograph your children indoors a lot, I highly recommend purchasing an external flash unit like the Nikon SB-600 or SB-900. You can get great results by simply bouncing the flash off the walls and ceilings of your house and freeze motion. - Should I buy Nikon D3000 or Nikon D5000?
Despite the fact that there is a $200 difference between the two cameras, I always suggest our readers to get the Nikon D5000 over D3000. Why? Because the sensor on the Nikon D5000 is superior and much more capable compared to the sensor on the Nikon D3000. The most important thing in a camera is the sensor and the sensor on the Nikon D5000 is identical to the sensor on the Nikon D90 semi-professional camera. So, the image quality on the Nikon D5000 matches the image quality of the Nikon D90 - the difference is only in features and body design. - What is the difference between the older Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR and the newer Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR II?
Optically, both lenses are identical. Because the older Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR had a problem with lens creep (pointing the lens down would start extending the barrel and zooming in), Nikon introduced a lock switch that locks the barrel in place on the newer Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR II. In addition, the newer lens has "VR II" vibration reduction technology, which is supposed to be one stop better than the older one. - Can I use Nikon SB-600 as a commander?
Unfortunately, you cannot. You will need a Nikon SB-800 (no longer manufactured) or Nikon SB-900 to be able to command other flashes. Nikon SB-600 works perfectly as a slave though. By the way, if you own a Nikon D70/D70s/D80/D90/D300/D300s/D700 camera, you can use the built-in flash as a commander! Just go to your flash menu settings and set your camera flash as a commander and set your SB-600 as a slave and give it a shot - it works like a charm! - How big is the difference between a 200mm and 300mm lens?
Check out the focal length comparison article I wrote a long time ago that shows the difference between 200mm and 300mm. You can also see the difference between wide-angle and telephoto lenses there. - Is the new Nikon 70-200mm VR II good for sports photography?
Absolutely, as long as you are shooting from a close distance. If your subjects are more than 10 feet away, I recommend getting a longer lens instead. Keep in mind that due to a change in optics, the new Nikon 70-200mm at 200mm is more like a 135mm lens at close-focus distance. The problem goes away as you increase the distance between yourself and the subject, but it is still quite noticeable compared to the original 70-200mm lens. - How does the Nikon 70-300mm VR compare to the Nikon 70-200mm VR?
Well, the biggest difference, first of all, is the price - the Nikon 70-200mm is around $2K more expensive than the 70-300mm. Second, the 70-200mm lens is a professional-grade lens for sports and news photographers, while the 70-300mm is a consumer lens. Third, 70-200mm is a constant f/2.8 aperture lens, while the 70-300mm lens is a variable aperture lens (at 70mm it is f/4.5, while at 300mm it is f/5.6). Fourth, if you do a comparison between 70 and 200mm, the 70-200mm lens will obviously beat the 70-300mm in both sharpness and contrast. Fifth, due to a completely different optical and lens design, there is a huge difference in weight and size between the lenses. Lastly, the 70-300mm gives far more reach than the 70-200mm VR II at the long end. Overall, it is unfair to compare these two lenses - it is like comparing a Ferrari with a Toyota.
Please let me know if you have any questions. Have a good day!
Landscape Photography Post-Processing Tutorial in Lightroom
In this tutorial, I will show you how to transform boring landscape pictures to vibrant and beautiful images in Lightroom in quick and easy steps. I will show you the real benefits of using the RAW image format and just some of the possibilities it gives you to non-destructively enhance your photographs without ever leaving Lightroom. I personally use this technique for post-processing my landscape photography all the time and I hope you find it useful.
Read on if you want to be able to take an image like this (original, as came out of the camera):
and transform it to an image like this:
Continue reading 'Landscape Photography Post-Processing Tutorial in Lightroom'
Must-Have DSLR Accessories
Every photographer has a toolbox of camera accessories that are heavily used for photography. While some photographers have a large array of accessories for every type of situation and need, others only buy what they feel is necessity for their photography work. In this article, I will provide some detailed information about what accessories should be in every photographer's bag - I call it a "must-have" list.
1) A good camera bag
As soon as you buy a camera, you buy a camera bag, because you want to protect your investment and easily transport it between locations. But choosing the right camera bag is not always easy - there are so many different bags out there, that it gets frustratingly difficult to make the right decision. Often times, people end up buying a small camera bag, only to replace it in a couple of months with a different one, realizing that they need more room for their camera and lenses. This happens all the time and it also happened to me! I got my first Nikon D80 DSLR, thinking that I wouldn't spend a penny more on an already expensive camera. I bought a compact camera bag that fits the camera and a couple of lenses and thought that I was good to go. Eventually, I ended up buying another lens and extra accessories and my bag was too small to accommodate everything. So I had to go and buy another camera bag with more room. Instead of wasting your money like this, you should buy a good camera bag from the get-go. I personally prefer a backpack, but some people like the convenience of using sling-bags and shoulder bags. It is a personal preference and you should definitely try before you buy...a local camera store is a great place to start. My personal favorites are LowePro and Kata bags, specifically LowePro Pro Runner 300 AW and LowePro Kata 3 in 1 Sling Backpack.
Kata 3 in 1 Sling Backpack
How to Calibrate Your Monitor
Color calibration should definitely be an essential part of every photographer's workflow. Without proper color calibration, it is impossible to tell whether the colors that are displayed by your monitor are truly accurate and whether what you see on your monitor will match the print. There are many ways to calibrate devices and the process can be fairly simple or very complex, depending on how accurate you want to reproduce the colors and whether you are also printing your work in-house. Simple calibration is just calibrating your LCD or CRT monitor through free software and affordable calibration hardware, while "very complex" means an end-to-end professional-grade calibration and color profiling, which requires a very concise color calibration of both the display and the printer. Obviously, professional calibration is a time-consuming and expensive process, so I will only focus on a simple calibration of your monitor that you use today for your photography needs.
1) Why is calibration important?
One of the big misunderstandings about calibration, is that people think that calibration is only needed for printing. Wrong! Calibration is needed for everything - from viewing other people's work online to processing your own images in Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom. If your monitor is not calibrated, you are most likely not seeing everything in the image. For example, a smooth and beautiful sunset might appear as pale and gradient streaks of light or a black and white picture might appear too dark or too light.
What is White Balance?
Thoroughly understanding White Balance and how it works is very important in digital photography. An incorrectly-set White Balance could ruin a picture, adding all kinds of unwanted color casts and causing skin tones to look very unnatural. In this article, I will explain what White Balance is and how you can adjust it on your camera or post-production to get accurate colors.
1) What is White Balance?
Simply put, White Balance in digital photography means adjusting colors so that the image looks more natural. We go through the process of adjusting colors to primarily get rid of color casts, in order to match the picture with what we saw when we took it. Why do we have to do this? Because most light sources (the sun, light bulbs, flashlights, etc) do not emit purely white color and have a certain "color temperature". The human brain processes the information that comes from our eyes and automatically adjusts the color temperature, so we normally see the colors correctly. If you took a white sheet of paper and looked at it outside, it would most likely look as white as if you were to look at it indoors. What most people do not realize, however, is that there is a huge difference in color temperature between bright sunlight and indoors tungsten light.
Best Monitor for Photography
One of the frequently asked questions from our readers and friends is "What is the best monitor for Photography?". Since there is no simple answer to this question, I decided to write a quick article on choosing the best monitor for professional photography needs.
Currently, there are three main types of monitors that are being offered by manufacturers:
- CRT - the oldest type of monitor that has been almost completely phased out and replaced by newer LCD/LED technologies.
- LCD - currently the most popular and the most widespread monitor type.
- LED - future technology that will replace LCD.
I won't talk much about the above, since you can find a lot of useful information on the Internet that explains the differences. Basically, CRT monitors are almost dead and we are currently in between LCD and LED technologies. LED is a new technology and although it will eventually replace the current LCD technology, it is still in its early stages of development and there are not many good products out there for professional photography needs.
Photography FAQ #1
Starting from today, I decided to start posting some of the FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) by our blog readers. We get a lot of questions and feedback through comments and email, so I decided to post some of the shorter ones here. Let's get started with the first part of Photography FAQ.
- I am having a hard time picking between Nikon D90 and Nikon D300/D300s. What do you recommend?
Unless you are planning to photograph fast-action sports, action and wildlife, I would recommend Nikon D90 over Nikon D300/D300s, especially if it is going to be your first DSLR. Nikon D90 is a great camera that works great for occasional portraits, landscapes and other types of photography where the speed of the camera is not important. As can be seen in our Nikon D300 vs D90 high ISO comparison, Nikon D90 deals with noise in high ISOs a little better than Nikon D300. This is due to a slightly better sensor and a more aggressive noise-reduction algorithm on the Nikon D90. Therefore, if you were to compare the image quality of both cameras, Nikon D90 would have a very slight edge over Nikon D300. In addition, accessories for Nikon D90 are a lot cheaper than for Nikon D300/D300s (for example battery grip and remote camera trigger). So, unless you have special needs, you should buy the Nikon D90. - Do you recommend using filters on lenses for protection? Do filters degrade image quality?
Absolutely! I use clear filters on every single lens that I have for not only protection, but also for easiness of cleaning. Many lenses have round front elements that stick out and are somewhat painful to clean. In contrast, filters do not have this problem and are very easy to clean. If a filter gets scratched or damaged, you throw it away and get a new one, knowing that the front element of your lens is always protected. Now as far as filters degrading image quality, it all really depends on the quality of the filter. In general, filters do have a slightly negative impact on image quality - after-all, it is another glass element in front of your lens! However, if you get a good high-quality filter, it will have almost no negative impact on image quality. At least not something you will notice with a naked eye. I personally use clear/protection filters by a company called B+W and I use their B+W 77mm MRC Clear Filter on lenses with a 77mm filter thread. I buy the same kind of protection filter for all other filter threads as well. Always make sure to get an MRC (Multi-Coated) version of the filter. There are many other filter manufacturers such as Tiffen and Hoya out there, but I prefer to use B+W, because their glass is of higher quality. - Is there a considerable difference between FX (full frame) and DX (cropped-sensor)?
Yes, there is. Full frame sensors have a much larger sensor than cropped sensors and therefore have larger pixels that are more sensitive to light. When it comes to both image quality and low-light capabilities, FX has a huge advantage over DX. There is a 2-stop difference between low-light capabilities of FX versus DX. For example, shooting at ISO 3200 on Nikon D700 is comparable to ISO 800 on Nikon D300s. I'm currently writing a separate article on differences between these formats in much more detail and I'm hoping to publish it early next week. - What Nikon portrait lens do you recommend?
In my opinion, the best lenses for portrait photography are Nikon 50mm f/1.4G, Nikon 85mm f/1.4D and Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G VR II (not cheap). I personally love the Nikon 50mm f/1.4G and use it more than any other lens. - I see that most of your articles are about Nikon. Are you planning to cover Canon gear in the future as well?
We try to write most of our "howto" articles for both Nikon and Canon digital cameras. However, since we primarily use Nikon cameras and lenses, we feel that it would be wrong to write about gear we do not have much experience with. I personally shot with Canon Digital Rebel and 40D/50D/5D DSLR cameras in the past, but we do not own any Canon equipment at the moment. We are hoping to start playing with Canon equipment more in the future though, read why below. - Are you planning to write more reviews on cameras and lenses?
Going forward, one of the largest photography stores in the world (you can probably guess which one) will be sending us new equipment for reviewing and testing. We are honored and privileged to be able to do this and our review section will be growing in numbers fairly quickly. The only problem I have is time - testing, reviewing and writing about products takes weeks of hard work. But we are committed to our website and our readers, so we will work hard on making it all happen!
If you buy from any of the above links, we get some diaper money for our Ozzy :)
That's it for now, more to come later!
How to Submit Photos to Foodgawker and Tastespotting
If you have stumbled upon this entry, you are most likely having trouble getting your photos accepted by either FoodGawker or TasteSpotting. Believe me when I say I've been there and done that to get my photos through :)
You submit a picture of your favorite dish and wait for an e-mail from the site admins. Here comes the long awaited e-mail, in which it states that your image was rejected, because it was either dull, unsharp, had lighting issues or whatever other reason the admins came up with! At times, it gets very frustrating to find out that your precious creations were chosen not to be displayed on famous food sites. I too got very frustrated the first couple of times, until I figured out how to do it right. For those who are in the same boat as me, the following tips should help you to get your pictures approved by both FoodGawker and TasteSpotting.
Continue reading 'How to Submit Photos to Foodgawker and Tastespotting'
Understanding Metering and Metering Modes
Every modern DSLR has something called "Metering Mode", also known as "Camera Metering", "Exposure Metering" or simply "Metering". Knowing how metering works and what each of the metering modes does is important in photography, because it helps photographers control their exposure with minimum effort and take better pictures in unusual lighting situations. In this "understanding metering modes" article, I will explain what metering is, how it works and how you can use it for your digital photography.
When I got my first DSLR (Nikon D80), one of my frustrations was that some images would come out too bright or too dark. I had no idea how to fix it, until one day, when I learned about camera metering modes.
1) What is Metering?
Metering is how your camera determines what the correct shutter speed and aperture should be, depending on the amount of light that goes into the camera and the sensitivity of the sensor. Back in the old days of photography, cameras were not equipped with a light "meter", which is a sensor that measures the amount and intensity of light. Photographers had to use hand-held light meters to determine the optimal exposure. Obviously, because the work was shot on film, they could not preview or see the results immediately, which is why they religiously relied on those light meters.
Today, every DSLR has an integrated light meter that automatically measures the reflected light and determines the optimal exposure. The most common metering modes in digital cameras today are:
- Matrix Metering (Nikon), also known as Evaluative Metering (Canon)
- Center-weighted Metering
- Spot Metering (Nikon), also known as Partial Metering (Canon)
You can see the camera meter in action when you shoot in Manual Mode - look inside the viewfinder and you will see bars going left or right, with a zero in the middle, as illustrated below.
Metering shown in Nikon Viewfinder
Continue reading 'Understanding Metering and Metering Modes'
