I was just moving from one train carriage to the other and grabbed an empty seat without paying much attention to the persons opposite me, when my eyes caught a glimpse of the unusual. An old brown leather bag, held by old leathery hands, an old brown leather jacket and an old brown leather vest, with an old brown tie. I looked up slowly. In front of me sat an old man and his old wife. Their hair was white, a bit longish, quite artistic. A chiseled face, deep wrinkles and weathered skin. An green amnesty international badge on his tie. They where dozing off into slumber-land between stops, gently talking to each other on the odd occasion, checking the time on their watch – being totally at peace and calm in this early afternoon commuter train. What a wonderful couple.

Where was my camera? I was wrestling with the idea of introducing myself to them, and asking if I could come over to their house this Saturday and just follow their day with a camera. Or just even take their portraits. I had to capture them. So unique! They would have been well in their 90’s. What would their day look like? It occured to me – as I slowly pulled out my iPhone – that they had no electronic gadget on them. Their world seemed to be thoroughly analogue.

So with the best camera available, I took that shot. Just the hands, just the jacket and bag.

I followed them with my eyes, as they got up to get off the train. She smiles at me. He took her hand, and together they walked down the platform towards the exit. I wonder what these photos could have been. Did I miss an opportunity? I got one photograph which speaks to me of that beauty of old.

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Shooting Tethered with Nikon

For many photographers shooting tethered is one of the things, not so sure about. For Nikon shooters this is especially relevant, as Nikon has not yet managed to provide a free capture software that allows shooting tethered but instead demands the purchase of
Nikon Capture which sets you back a between US $180 – US $150 straight away. Canon cameras on the other hands ship with capture software straight away called Canon EOS Viewer.

Anyhow, there are options and they are getting increasingly more which is great. If you are just want to shoot and not worry about editing the best solution is to download the german-engineered "Sofortbild" (Instant-picture) app. It is a beautiful small application that allows to plug in your camera to the computer and simply captures each shot that is triggered. Sofortbild supports a large range of cameras, including Nikon’s D3 and D300s and LiveView!

Working with Sofortbild:

Sofortbild controls your camera remotely from your Mac via USB or through wired or wireless LAN using a wireless transmitter. It automatically transfer all captured images instantly to you hard disk and optionally import them into your prefered image library application. Sofortbild allows you to trigger image capture via release button on camera body including high speed shooting or remotely from your Mac via toolbar button, menu item, keyboard shortcut or even the Apple Remote. Sofortbild automatically recognizes your camera and shows camera model, lens name, focal length, focus mode, exposure value and battery status in a status bar. All major camera settings like shutter speed, aperture, white balance, iso, image format and size and matrix mode are shown and can be changed from inside Sofortbild.

The other very cool feature is that you can tell Sofortbild to shoot a series of images, and allows you to set the shooting interval from with the app, even if – and that’s the beauty – your camera doesn’t support that feature natively.

It is really easy to make it work. All that’s needed is a camera, USB cable, MAC computer with Sofortbild installed. Depending on your shoot setup,you’d want to set the camera up on a tripot or similar. A long USB cable is of adavantage as it give you a bit more space handling things.

Make sure your camera is set up in such a way that when connecting to a computer it is NOT recognised as a USB mass drive but as a camera. To achieve that simply (on Nikon) go into the "spanner" menu, select USB, then select PTP (not Mass Storage). The camera is now set up to be controlled remotely via USB and shoot directlyt to computer.

Launch Sofortbild which will recognise your camera and give you all the camera specific details instantly. In Sofortbild you still have a few options as to where to store the captured files and once that#s assigned you’re ready to roll. Depending on the camera model it can take asecond or 2 until they are shown on screen, but it does work flawlessly.

Now what if you want to shoot directly to Lightroom 2?

Lightroom 2 doesnt natively support tethered shooting but there is a work-around. And it’s easy too!
In Lightroom, go into the Import settings under Lightroom’s File menu, under Auto Import, and choose “Enable Auto Import” (to turn it on) and then choose Auto Import Settings. A dialog appears at the top where it says “Watched Folder” click on the Choose button. – An now select the folder Lightroom should watch – namely the folder you just setup in Sofortbild to shoot tethered to! Choose it and any photo that goes into that watched folder will get automatically imported into Lightroom. The rest of the dialog is pretty much like Lightroom’s normal import dialog, where you choose where the files are saved, what they’re named, and you add keywords.

That’s it—when you shoot now, the images go seamlessly through Sofortbild and into the watched folder that Lightroom imports from. Select that folder in Lightroom, switch to the Grid view, double-click on the first photo so it zooms up to Loupe view size, and start shooting.

Lightroom 3 is coming soon, what will change?

As mentioned, Lightroom 2 doesn’t support tethered shooting natively. However, with the release of Adobe Lightroom 3, there will be the ability to connect to your camera and shoot tethered directly.
John Williamson, Photographer & Westcott Technical Rep describes how the process in Lightroom 3 will work:

Launch Lightroom 3 and once loaded, go to ‘File – Tethered Captured’. This will bring up a dialog box where you can tell Lightroom 3 how and where to save the images.

1. Session: This is where you will name your photo session for LR.
2. Naming: This is where you will alter the name of the images as they are being saved. Within the Template drop-down you have a few options such as Custom.. Simply type the name in the Custom Text Field and the number for your images to start at.
3. Location: Since images are not actually stored within LR, you will need to choose your own destination folder. This will launch a dialog box where you can choose a folder already on your computer or create a new one. Once complete, click ‘choose’.
4. Metadata: There are many options here and you can create presets that include information such as copyright info, ect. There is also a place to input specific keywords for categorizing and searching within your Image Library.

Once complete click “Done” and you will be brought back the Library Window with a new dialog box for your tethered camera. This will show your Apereture, Shutter Speed, ISO, and WB. You can also fire the camera by clicking on the button that shows up on the screen.Other options:

1. Camera Choice: Which camera to shoot with (if you have more than one camera tethered). Once you have complete the setup, you have the option to hide the Camera Control by a) Clicking on ‘File – Tethered Capture – Hide Tethered Capture Window’. OR b) Using the Keyboard Shortcut: Cmd+T (MAC) or Ctrl+T (Windows)

Here’s a link to Lightroom 3 and a list of which cameras are supported: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom3/releasenotes.pdf

Some other tethered shooting links: http://www.apertureexpert.com/tips/2010/4/21/who-shoots-tethered.html

Shooting tethered in Aperture: http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/2006/12/05/tethered-shooting-in-aperture.html

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High dynamic range imaging (HDRI or just HDR) is a set of techniques that allow a greater dynamic range of luminances between the lightest and darkest areas of an image than standard digital imaging techniques or photographic methods. This wider dynamic range allows HDR images to more accurately represent the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes, ranging from direct sunlight to faint starlight.

Tone mapping techniques, which reduce overall contrast to facilitate display of HDR images on devices with lower dynamic range, can be applied to produce images with preserved or exaggerated local contrast for artistic effect. (Source)

Different photographers do it differently and prefer different HDR looks. Most would say that a tripod is absolutely necessary to match the bracketed images up. I personally shoot a lot of HDRs just handheld. If one considers Joe McNally’s tips on how to actually hold a camera still, doing HDRs handheld is not a big miracle. However, I also use the inbuilt bracketing system, this way I just need to keep the shutter pressed, and wait till a series of 5 or 7shots is taken. There are photogs out there that would only shoot HDR manually setting the shutter speed manually – but that certainly means you need to use a tripod!

So here is how I go about it:

Step One: Set your camera to Aperture Priority Mode (A on Nikon, AP on Canon)

Step Two: Set your camera to bracketing (BKT) and select your settings. I normally choose 5 frame with 1stop exposure increments. THis will result in 2 shot underexpsed, 1 correct exposure, 2 over exposed.

Step Three: Frame you subject, Hold tight, and push the shutter.

If you’ve done it right, your should now have a set of 5 frames to photomerge. I always! shoot RAW to get the most captured data out of images. To actually create an HDR image, software like Photoshop or Photomatix is required.

Step Four: Import the images into Photomatix (for example) and select "Generate HDR Image" . Select the 5 frames you took. Click "Generate HDR". Photomatix will then do it’s bit and present you with an image that looks nothing like and HDR. – But there is another option to select, called "tonemapping". When selecting "Tonemapping" You get a stak of other options such as Strength, Color Saturation, Luminosity, Light Smoothing etc. I normally only select the Light Smoothing option. THis allows you to really alter the look of your HDR, to either look like a very soft HDR with all the high dynamic range features – but without the HDR look, up to a very harsh HDR look, which may work or may not – based on your subject and preferences.

Step Five: Make your adjustments and hit "process"

Step Six: Save the HDR that was generated as a tonemapped tiff file

Step Seven, import it into Lightroom, Aperture or Photoshop to make the final adjuste and processingg to create the look you want. You could try and do that in Photomatix, but I prefer above mentioned programs as they give you a much better result and are easier to adjust and use.

So there you go. HDR done. Check out more examples on Flickr.

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