Bluebells of Hallerbos

The Halle forest, or Hallerbos, in Belgium becomes a really magical place for few weeks each year thanks to bluebells. Each spring, the bluebells bloom creating a magnificent blue forest carpet. 

During that time, which lasts only for few weeks each year, the forest is very busy. When I arrived there, I was really lucky to find a parking place. Not only families with kids come to walk in the forest but many photographers as well.

When I came there, I thought at first that it would be fairly easy to capture the magnificent atmosphere of this place. However, I quickly discovered that it was much harder than I thought. Although, the bluebells were everywhere and you could easily see them with your eyes, the camera saw completely something else and captured the pictures in a different way than I wanted them to appear.

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How to shoot HDR Without A Tripod?

When you shoot HDR (high dynamic range) photography you have to keep in mind to keep the camera steady for all the shots (under-exposed, over-exposed and with proper exposure). The best solution of course is to put a camera on a tripod but what to do when you would like to shoot HDR but you don't have a tripod with you? Is it possible to shoot HDR without a tripod and still end up with good HDR photograph? The short answer is: Yes, but you need to remember about few things to eliminate any camera movement between the shots.

I didn't use a tripod while taking the HDR picture in this article. Instead, I used what was available for me (wall of a bridge) and few settings in my Nikon. Firstly, I put my camera into the bracketing mode (duh!), set up f-stop, got the camera to set up the focus in the auto-focus mode and I turend the autofocus off. I also changed the shooting mode from single into the continuous burst mode - this is very important when you don't have a tripod because it allows you to take very quickly one shot after another, minimizing the time interval between the shots and therefore limiting any possible camera movement between the shots. Finally, I found a spot on the bridge's wall where I could position my camera against it, I held the camera firmly and I shot. It was so simple!

To summarize in step what you need to do when you want to shoot an HDR picture without a tripod:

1) Set a camera to the bracketing mode

2) Change the shooting mode to continuous burst mode

3) Set up your f-stop (I suggest as big f-stop as possible for landscapes), let the camera meter focus and lock it by switching into the manual focus mode

4) Find a place where you can put your camera on or against (table, wall, horizontal ground, etc.)

5) While holding the camera firmly, press the shutter button and let the camera do one after another (in continuous burst mode) the bracketed shots

Back from holidays, back to work

It's been a while I posted something on the blog since last time and I thought I would just give you a quick update what was and what will be going on in my photography life. Let's start with the past events then, shall we? :) I spent 2 weeks in Poland in August visiting my family and friends. Besides taking some snapshots at the countryside and while traveling a bit around, I also had a photo shoot at the Polish seaside. The pictures from this shoot are ready to be published but I think I'll put the online next week or so.

Why so late? Well, I've been quite busy recently and I'm actually going to be pretty busy with various photography assignments for at least next couple of weeks. Having said that, let me tell you what I'll be doing this weekend: I was asked by the organizers of Antwerp Diamond Triathlon 2010 (www.adt2010.be) to be an official photographer for the event. The triathlon will take place on Sunday 12 September 2010 and will start at 14:00, so come over if you're around!

How to Increase the Frame Rate in Burst & Continuous Modes

I was playing with my NIKON DSLR some time ago after buying a new ultra fast SD memory card and I discovered few things that will the frame rate in the burst mode or continuos mode. Burst mode or continuous shooting might be very useful when taking sports pictures or kids for example. So how to make your camera take pictures faster in burst mode or continuous shooting and how to increase the frame rate? You have to consider at least few things:

1) The File Type (JPG vs. RAW) - whether you shoot in JPG or RAW has a tremendous influence on the frame rate  in the burst mode or continuous shooting. Because RAW files are much bigger in size due to the additional information they contain, it takes much longer for a camera to save them and to process them. Therefore, if you want to shoot faster in the burst or the continuos mode, you should choose JPG as a file type;

2) Memory Card's Speed - I'm not a memory card guru and quite honestly, my knowledge about them is limited. However, what I can tell you is that SD memory cards vary when it comes to their saving and reading speeds. Buying a fast SD memory card will ensure that camera will be able to save faster pictures. IMPORTANT: your SD memory card's speed is not as important as your camera's buffer!

3) Camera's Buffer - the size of camera's buffer is actually more important than the speed of your memory card. Buffer is a specific amount of built-in memory in a camera that serves to store the image while it is being processed. Once the image has been processed, it is sent from the buffer to the memory card.The size of the buffer is important and the bigger the better because when using burst or continuous mode, and the buffer is filled, the camera may slow down the speed of which it takes photos, until the buffer is sufficiently empty to increase the frame rate;

4) Turn Off Noise Reduction - some cameras (NIKON for sure) has a built-in noise reduction function. This features automatically reduces noise for ISO 800 or higher and there are different levels of noise reduction. I noticed that when noise reduction is turned on, it heavily influences the frame rate in the burst or the continuous modes. Therefore, remember to turn noise reduction off in your settings in order to minimize the image processing time and to increase the frame rate;

5) Turn Off VR (Vibration Reduction) / IS (Image Stabilization) - both Nikon and Canon have their systems which help in minimizing the possibility of blurry images in situations when shutter needs to be opened for bit longer. In Nikon this is called VR (Vibration Reduction); in Canon this is IS (Image Stabilization). If you ever used these, you might noticed that the period between pressing the shutter button and the actual movement of the shutter is much longer when VR is turned on. This would also decrease the frame rate in the burst and the continuous modes. Therefore, turn VR / IS off;

6) Shoot in low ISO - I noticed that the camera works a bit slower and the frame rate is much lower when taking pictures with high ISO. Therefore, I would suggest to shoot in ISO 200 or even lower because higher than that, the frame rate will decrease;

7) Autofocus off or in continuous / continuous servo modes - a camera needs some time to set up focus in the autofocus mode. Thus, depending on the measuring method, autofocus may decrease the frame rate. The best way to increase the frame rate to the maximum when it comes to autofocus is to turn autofocus off. However, there might be situations (for example when taking pictures of a moving object with a small aperture value) when you need autofocus on. Then you can switch the autofocus mode to AutoFocus Continuous on NIKON and Continuous Servo on Canon. This way, the camera will track an object and adjust the autofocus continuously, which reduces the time for adjust autofocus from 'scratch' and increases the frame rate in the burst and continuous modes.

Goodbye Aperture 3, Welcome Lightroom 3.

It's official: I've switched over to Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3. I know that some of you followed previously my experience with testing Apple's Aperture 3 when it came out. Unfortunately, the processing speed of RAW files in Aperture 3 became simply unacceptable for me - waiting for 4 minutes for a program to process some adjustments within an image can be painful and a big time-waster as you can imagine.

I gave a try to Lightroom 3 a week ago and I edited the latest photo shoot with it. I have to admit that I'm very happy with Lightroom 3 - it's fast, intuitive and it didn't take me as long as I thought it would to learn it. Therefore, I advice to anyone having problems with Apple Aperture 3 to at least try Adobe Lightroom 3 (there is a 30-day free fully functional trial version) - you might be as positively surprised as I was.

When dark clouds take over the sky

This is once again a picture taken in Gdansk, Poland during my winter 2009 holidays but this time a little dark, scary and mysterious.

My father took me to Wisloujscie Fortress (you can read about it here ) on a beautiful but very windy day. There was a watch tower used to observe whether any enemies tried to enter land from the sea. Although the view was beautiful, I couldn't stay there for more than 5 minutes because of extremely cold wind. So I quickly snapped few pictures and went back down. The result you can see attached to this post: 'When dark clouds take over the sky'.