How To Make Your Own Lens Cleaner

c1970s Kodak lens cleaning solution

I got caught on a vacation once without my trusty bottle of Kodak lens cleaner. So this is what I did…

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A Prescription for 120 Film Storage

Ever wonder why 135 film comes in those neat plastic containers, but 120 film doesn’t?

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Short and Sweet

I’ve stopped naming and re-naming files. From now on, I let Adobe Bridge do it for me.

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Keeping Your Camera Dry

You know those little packets of silica gel that come with practically everything we buy? NEVER THROW THEM OUT!

Itstead of throwing them away, keep them in a safe dry place, and you can reuse them to keep humidity from damaging your equipment!

Film Cameras Drop one inside the film compartment when storing the camera for long periods.

bold If you have a packet small enough not to foul the mirror, hot glue it to the inside of a body cap. Or, you can place it in the battery compartment.

Lenses There’s plenty of room inside the rear cap for a packet. A dab of hot glue will prevent it from moving around or touching the rear lens, or you can just make sure you store and transport them facing upward.

Bags For all-around protection, place one in every pocket.

During very dry spells, swap out the packets so they can dry up, and store them in an airtight container ready for use when the going gets damp.

They also work great for protecting negatives and prints!

Tips & Tricks: Leveling a Tripod

Many tripods these days come with built in levels. But if yours doesn’t, or the level is not accurate, here are some ways to accomplish this sometimes important task.

Flash Shoe Spirit Level There are many hot shoe-mountable spirit levels available. Simply slip one into your flash shoe (quickly becoming known also as an “accessory” shoe) and level your ’pod. But, if your camera doesn’t have a shoe, simply attach it to your tripod using a cold-shoe to 1/4-20 adapter.

Torpedo Level Even more accurate and a handy non-photographic tool to have in your kit is a torpedo level, which can be found at just about any hardware store. It can be placed against the vertical riser of your tripod to check its “plumb-ness” (the vertical equivalent of being level).

Adding Front Filter Threads to the Sigma EM-140 DG Macro Ring Flash

The adapter rings for the Sigma EM-140 DG do not have front filter threads. This means that you cannot add filters, or more importantly, close-up lenses in front of the flash. But with this trick, you can add them.

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Two-Drive Archiving Workflow

When it comes time to archive to optical disk, I do it in a batch; assembly-line style using two drives.

Over time, I organize the files in folders named with their proposed volume names. I can preview the size of each folder to confirm that its files will fit on the media I plan to burn it to. This naming convention is appended with a unique code that cannot be repeated…the date! For example, “Images 20111028” wherein the date is that of the most recent file on that disk.

Once everything is staged, I can burn when I have a free moment, working from the oldest volume to the newest. I burn on the external drive, and when it’s finished verifying, I eject it and place it into the internal drive. This ensures that it will in fact mount using the internal drive (some burns may not compatible the first time around, or even between certain drives, although I’ve never encountered the latter).

I then use this drive to catalog the disk (currently I’m using CD Finder) while I load a blank optical disk in the external drive and start burning that. When I eject the cataloged disk from the internal drive, I write the volume name in the clear section near the hole with a Sharpie. (Never write anything on the data area; over time, the chemicals in the marker can eat their way through the lacquer coating on the “label” side and damage the reflective metallic coating on the data layer, causing possible data loss.)

This helps to speed up an otherwise arduous task.

Top Ten Things to Know About Digital Photography

1. All digital images require processing. Just because the image is visible, doesn’t mean it doesn’t require processing. Whether you choose to let the camera do the processing, or do it yourself in “post”, it’s still a necessary step.
2. Digital photography favors underexposure. You can almost always extract some information from an underexposed digital image during processing, but overexposure results in pure white areas in which there is absolutely no information.
3. Always know your Image Quality setting. Unless you have very little remaining space left on your flash memory card, using the highest setting available.
4. Always know your ISO. ISO has a significant impact on image quality. If set incorrectly, it will result in noisy, low resolution images. Avoid Auto ISO.
5. Always know your White balance. Be sure to set your white balance manually when you know what the ambient light temperature is, and use Auto White Balance when you don’t. You won’t need to buy specially balanced film or conversion filters anymore, but you will need to know how to set your camera.
6. The most important control on your digital camera is the exposure compensation button. There’s no such thing as “Auto Exposure”. The sooner you begin to rely on the auto exposure system of your camera, the sooner it will let you down. Auto exposure puts you “in the ballpark”. It’s up to you to know how to use the exposure compensation button to hit the ball out of the ballpark.
7. Learn how to interpret a scene’s values. A dark scene should look dark in the photo. The camera will try to make it look like a sunny day. Know how to interpret the lighting conditions of the scene and set the exposure accordingly.
8. Don’t stand in one place when composing images. Keep your zoom lens at its widest setting, and move around the subject observing the scale and position of the subject in relationship to its surroundings. Only when you’ve found the best position and distance should you adjust the zoom to suit the composition by cropping it.
9. Don’t always center the subject in the frame. Observing the “Golden Ratio” or “Rule of Thirds” will produce engaging photos that more effectively direct the viewer’s eye to the subject.
10. A good photograph has vey little to do with the camera. Photography is all about visualization, recognizing a compelling image, capturing it, and presenting it in such a way as to substantiate that vision.

Importing Images from Flash Memory

When importing images directly from flash memory such as SD cards, it’s a good idea to set up a permanent folder for such a purpose. I’ve named my “Contact Sheet” as it behaves like one big contact sheet from which I rate, sort and tag image files. Within this folder, I have a separate subfolder for each of my cameras, digital or film.

I work with relatively small SD cards (2-4 GB), and each time I take a series of photos, I import them into this Contact Sheet folder. I mount the SD card and look in the Contact Sheet folder to see what the number of the last imported image is. I then select this image and all images after it, dragging them into this folder. This I usually do in Adobe Bridge, but it’s also possible to do it from the Finder. If I use Bridge, I have the option of selecting all the images on the card, and as I drag them into the folder Bridge will open a warning dialog to indicate if there are duplicates. I can choose to overwrite them, or I can skip them to save time. There’s also an option to resolve duplicate filenames by appending a version number, but I only use this when I’m unsure of the contents of the destination folder.

Unless the SD card is full, I leave the images on it as a backup. As I go through the Contact Sheet folder, rating, sorting and tagging, I tag the images I don’t plan on keeping as “Reject”. This way, the next time I go to import, Adobe Bridge will see the images and again present the “duplicate image” warning dialog.

When the SD card is indeed full, I select all the images and do one final import to make sure there are no images left on the card that are not in the contact sheet folder. I then replace the card in the camera and reformat it. This is a good practice, as Flash memory is somewhat quirky, and frequent reformatting helps to maintain the integrity of the data structure on the card.

Then, I use the filters in Bridge to select only the files tagged “Reject” and delete them permanently. However, since I use the Mac OS X Time Machine, they will still be on my backup volume. If I need to save space on this volume, I can permanently delete the old backups from time to time.

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By the way, if you discover that you’ve formatted a card before you’ve removed all the images from it, it’s a fairly simple matter to recover them. To find out how, see my post Restoring Lost Images.

Photographer’s Toolkit

Many essential photographer’s tools cannot be bought in your local camera supply shop. Here’s an ongoing list of handy items you can find around the house, or at your local hardware store:

• Roll of black duct tape (Gaffer’s Tape)
• Soft cloth in a zip lock bag (for general equipment cleaning)
• Glass cleaner (to clean windows you’ll be shooting out of)
• Opaque black cloth (for focusing, changing film, blocking reflections in glass)
• Rubber lid gripper (for removing stubborn filters and rings)
• Corrugated cardboard (for snoots or homemade grid spots)
• Cardboard tubes (for snoots, or to raise objects in the background for studio shooting)

How to Gain to One to Two Stop Exposure Advantage

If you’re working with a slower lens or lower ISO, you may find yourself shooting at shutter speeds that may introduce motion blur. Vibration Reduction or Image Stabilization will help with camera movement, but not subject movement.

To gain a one to two stop advantage in speed (the equivalent of using a faster shutter speed or lower ISO) try using the dynamic range enhancement feature on your camera. Nikon calls this “Active D-Lighting” and Canon calls it “iContrast”. It dynamically lightens shadow areas and fills in lost highlight detail.

Set it at maximum if possible, and use exposure compensation to select a shutter speed one to two stops faster than normal. If the shutter speed and aperture are adequate but the ISO is high enough to cause excessive noise, set the exposure compensation as above, but also lower the ISO by the same amount of stops.

The resulting image will be brighter and sharper.

Shooting Simultaneous RAW & JPEGs

If your camera has the capability of capturing both Raw files and JPEG files at the same time, you can use the JPEG versions as a guideline to post-processing through Camera Raw.

In theory, Raw files contain no processing by the camera, allowing you to perform the adjustments that the camera would make during post-processing. However, all Raw files require some processing, and this can result in a lot of work. Shoot both Raw and JPEG at the same time, and you’ll see what I mean. If you’ve made good decisions on how you’ve set the camera’s color preferences, you’ll likely prefer the JPEG over the raw file.

However, if you find that JPEG file needs major help… perhaps it’s over or under exposed, too contrasty, balanced incorrectly, etc. you can use the Raw version to fix the problem. Sure, you can make minor tweaks to the JPEG file in Camera Raw, and that’s the approach I would recommend. But if you have to make large adjustments to compensate for an over or underexposed image, Raw is the better place to make them. However, you may like the overall color balance, exposure and contrast of the JPEG version of a similar image, and you can use that as a guideline for adjusting the Raw file.

It’s easy to get lost in the Camera Raw interface; there are just so many things you can do, and sometimes you just need a “target” to point you in the right direction. Adjusting a Raw version to match its JPEG counterpart often results in an image which is not an exact match, but rather a similar image with improved detail, presence and absence of noise.

Once you arrive at a set of acceptable settings, try copying them and pasting them into the other Raw files. This may give you a good starting point more quickly. There are different ways of doing this depending on the application, but both Adobe Photoshop Camera Raw/Bridge and Apple Aperture 3 support this feature.

This also works in reverse. Many cameras apply a correction for a lens’ chromatic aberration to the JPEG file, but not the Raw file. In comparing the two, you might find qualities in the Raw file that you prefer in the JPEG file, and you can use it as a guide to reduce contrast, saturation, etc. to bring the JPEG more in line with reality.

Lastly, you can even layer the two versions in Photoshop and use blend modes and masking to get the best out of both versions. For example, if you like the color of the Raw image, but the contrast of the JPEG image, you can place the JPEG image on a layer above the Raw image, and change its blend mode to Luminosity. This will blend the luminosity (lightness and contrast) of the top layer with the color (hue and saturation) of the underlying layer.

How to Test a UV Filter for Effectiveness

Not all UV filters are created equal. In fact many offer very little UV suppression. Here’s a simple test you can perform to gauge the effectiveness of any filter in suppressing UV radiation.

1. Locate or purchase a fluorescent “Black Light” in the form of a tube or compact fluorescent bulb.
2. Turn the light on in a darkened room and allow it to warm up several minutes.
3. Locate a piece of white fabric or other item that glows or ”fluoresces” under the light.
4. Place the filter in question between the light and the fluorescent object.
5. If the item no longer glows, the filter is an effective UV suppressor.

How it Works

It’s not the purple light you can see that causes the object to glow, it’s the UV radiation you can’t see. That’s why simply looking through the filter does not reveal any differences.

However, if the filter does block UV radiation, it won’t reach the object to cause it to fluoresce.

You’ll discover that many filters, such as polarizers, neutral density and skylight filters are effective in suppressing UV. However, these all modify the light in other ways as well. The purpose of a UV filter is to achieve this suppression without modifying the light further. The suppression of any blue cast and increase in contrast and clarity is not the result of modifying the color temperature of the visible light, but of suppressing invisible radiation that interacts with visible light, just as the invisible radiation produces visible light in objects that fluoresce.

How to Make Redscale Film

Materials needed:

scissors
masking tape
2 Rolls of ISO 400 color negative film.
changing bag
lightproof container

1. Place the scissors, 1 roll of film, and lightproof container in the changing bag and zip it closed. 
2. Reach through the armholes, and carefully pull the film all the way out of the film catridge, allowing it to coil naturally. 
3. Using the cartridge opening as guide, cut the film as straight as possible about a half inch from the opening. 
4. Place the film in the lightproof container and pull your arms out. 
5. Open the changing bag, and remove the scissors and empty film cartridge. 
6. Take the second film cartridge, and trim the leader off with a straight cut across the entire width of the fim. 
7. Join the end of the film from the full cartridge with the remaining half inch of film from the empty one so that the emulsion faces in the opposite direction. 
8. Wind the film into empty container just enough so that the joint is inside. 
9. Place the joined cartridges into the changing bag along along with the scissors and masking tape, and seal it. 
10. Wind the film from the full cartridge to te empty one.
11. When all the fim has been transferred,  cut it as straight as possible about a half inch from the cartridge opening.
12. Put the newly filled cartridge aside. 
13. Remove the coiled film from the lightproof container, and join the cut end to the now empty cartridge using a strip of masking tape. Be sure the emulsions face in the opposite direction.   
14. Wind the film back into the cartrdge, leaving only the leader exposed. 
15. Remove everything from the changing bag. 
16. Trim the leader off the second roll with a straight cut across the entire width of the film.

The technique above works for making rolls in pairs. If you have reusable 35mm cartridges, you can make them faster one at a time.

1. Cut the leader off the film
2. Attach it directly to the inverted spool of the reusable cartridge
3. Reassemble the reusable cartridge and place both in the changing bag
4. Transfer the film from the full cartridge to the empty reusable one, cutting the film within a half inch of the donor cartridge. 

You now have an empty cartridge to start the next roll!

Because the light is traveling backwards through the film, it loses about one to one and a half stops of sensitivity, so rate it accordingly. For example, for ISO 400 film set your camera for 100 to 200, but process it the way you normally would.

Standardizing Filter Sizes

Buying filters to fit all the different size lenses In your collection can get very expensive. Wouldn’t it be great if you could buy just one filter that would fit all your lenses? Well, you can.

Gather all your lenses together and determine which ones will be used most often. Of those lenses, find the one with the largest filter thread diameter. Buy all the filters you need in that size, and buy inexpensive step-up rings to adapt all the other lenses to that size.

If your most used lens is 77mm, you’ll pay a premium for that size, so only make that the standard if you plan on using a lot of different filters on that lens. If it’s a long telephoto for example, you may only need a UV or skylight filter for that lens.

The exception is that you should always keep a clear, UV, or Skylight filter on each of your lenses at all times for protection, so by all means get one of those in each size.

Some bayonet hoods can still be used with slightly larger filters and rings. But you can use a single screw-on lens hood in your standardized size if you need to.

This was the thinking behind the Cokin creative filter system; Rectangular filters and holders in only four sizes with adapter rings to fit every size of lens imaginable.

How to use Modeling Flash as an AF Assist Lamp

Macro photography can present lighting challenges, which also means focusing challenges. The large heads of macro or ring flashes, or the close proximity of the subject to the front of the lens may block the AF assist lamp of your camera. If your flash is equipped with a modeling feature, you can use that to assist you in focusing. Here’s how:

1. Set your camera’s auto focus to Single Servo or Continuous mode.
2. Set your flash to use Modeling flash.
3. Compose your shot, and press the shutter button halfway to begin the focusing process.
4. Fire the modeling flash by pressing the “Test” or other button; the camera will focus.
5. If the camera doesn’t achieve focus right away, press the Test button a second time. The camera will continue to focus until focus is achieved.
6. When the focus confirmation lamp lights, press the shutter button fully to take the picture.

Single Servo mode locks the focus once it is achieved; if you move the camera in and out, you may lose focus due to the extremely narrow depth of field in macro photography. The shutter will not trip until focus is achieved.

Continuous mode will attempt to maintain focus even if you move; however, you may lose audible focus confirmation. The shutter will trip regardless of whether the focus is accurate or not.

Use whichever mode works best for you.

Removing Those Stubborn Rings

For those times when filters and step-up rings just won’t budge, you need the assistance of a “rubber husband”. That’s how my wife refers to those sheets of textured rubber used to remove stubborn jar lids.

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Restoring Lost Images

Every once in a while, the situation arises when your images seem to be gone. Or, you accidentally delete images that you meant to keep. Or, You accidentally format a memory card without offloading all the images. Here’s how to restore them.

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Reviewing images without extending the lens on the Nikon Coolpix P5100

Here’s a little trick I discovered when reviewing images on the P5100:

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How to Build a Grid Spot

I love to build stuff. It’s one of the many reasons I love photography. Every lighting situation is an opportunity to make a new gadget. So it stands to reason that after following Strobist for a while I’d find a kinship with them in the building of light modification devices for flash. And perhaps the most cool is the grid spot.

Thanks to Strobist, I was able to find a source of black Coraplast in manageable quantities. In case you didn’t know, Coraplast is basically corrugated cardboard constructed out of plastic, available in colors. You’ve most likely seen it as those silkscreen screen-printed campaign signs posted on folks’ front lawns. The hollow core forms narrow tubes through which light can pass in a narrow beam. You cut it into narrow strips perpendicular to these tubes, and laminate them into a flat panel, like this:

The greater the thickness, the narrower the overall beam, constructed of many smaller beams. One-inch is a good starting point. Grid spots, or grids as they are also known, essentially do the same thing as a snoot, but offer more control and are more compact. The challenge was to design mine in such a way that it can fit all the flashes I don’t have yet. And with the help of a friend who loaned me his Vivitar 285HV (probably the largest scenario) and Nikon SB-600 (probably the hardest to fit due to the projection on the top) I came up with the design above. The outer panel on the left is made 3/4" longer than the rest to form a tab which you can use to rubber-band it to the flash. I did’t want to attach it with something that wraps around the back of the flash, as there seemed to be too many variables to overcome, such as the size of the flash, and the angle of bounce, if it’s to be used. I’ve notched the corners so that the tab is slightly narrower than the flash head to make for a more secure fit.

The Vivitar 285HV not only has a large flash head, but its bezel is also very narrow. So, if I could make it fit this flash, it should be able to fit anyting else. And it does.

Coraplast Grid on Vivitar 285HV

Coraplast Grid on Nikon SB-600

The projection at the top of the SB-600 may at first present a mounting challenge, but in reality it creates an advantage; you could make slight adjustments to the vertical tilt if necessary by using the projection as a pivot point. Here the angle has been adjusted ever-so-slightly upward.

Detail: Using the Wide Angle Adapter projection as a pivot point. 

Of course, being a designer, the raw edges of the coraplast on the sides drove me crazy. So, I simply wrapped a 1-1/8" band of self-adhesive black craft foam around the whole thing. The extra width provide a slight rim around the front and back sides to give it a finished look and hide imperfections.

Not only does it fit these flashes, but also the D90’s on-board flash via the Janco flash diffuser bracket. You just insert the bracket into the appropriate holes. It fits perfectly.

Grid mounted directly on D90 using a Janco Flash Diffuser bracket.

For me, this was the icing on the cake. It gives me a level of control from the camera’s flash I would never have expected. A quick test shot reveals some dramatic lighting effects:

Taken at a distance of about five feet, with the grid mounted directly to the D90.

So now that I know a single design can meet the requirements of all my proposed flash purchases, I just have to duplicate it in multiple thicknesses for different beam spreads. I’m thinking a half-inch, one-inch, and two-inch version. Perhaps a four-inch version for pinpoint lighting. Perhaps experimental designs (what if every other row was blocked off, or random cells plugged?)

What’s next, a light diffuser made from Tupperware?

Hmmm...