$1 Image Stabilizer for Any Camera

“Cobbler” has a video where he builds a $1 string-based monopod, using a 1/4″ bolt, string, and a weight, whereby you pull up on the string to stabilize the camera.

Just finished reading: Photos That Inspire

Rating: Borrow It

So far I’ve been pretty pleased with the PhotoWorkshop books I have read - they’re the ones with the orange stripe along the cover and along the spine, and are easy to spot in the bookstore. They have interesting, useful content, and also have sets of exercises for you to do after each chapter.

Photos That Inspire has been a disappointment in comparison to the other PW books. Perhaps that’s why it was the only PW book left on the shelf at the local Border’s. The book itself is a photo per page, sometimes straddling two pages, with a paragraph or two of light intro, and a paragraph or two of photographer’s statement. The editor’s intros are generally vague, but occasionally offering a nugget of useful information. The photographer’s statements are mostly of the “I was doing something, then happened upon this shot” variety, with the occasional over-the-top I Am An Artist self-indulgence. There are also no exercises, even though the word from the publisher and the PhotoWorkshop blurb on the back cover mentions them.

The quality of the photos are hit and miss. Many aren’t better than what you’ll find by randomly trawling through Flikr. This is not surprising since these are taken from the user community of photoworkshop.com. There are a few really nice ones (I loved “Beggar”, the cat), but most are just “eh”. Many have technical problems that are waved away with “I intentionally made this blurry to give it an impressionistic feel!” explanations. Even the front-cover photograph is highly processed and out of focus.

The editing is also careless. The inclusion of technical details are fine (camera, lens, f/stop, shutter speed, iso, film type), but much of the same kind of data is inconsistently presented, such as “Camera 20D digital SLR”, “Canon EOS 20D digital SLR”, and “Canon 20D digital SLR”. These are all within 10 pages of each other. Some is also incorrect, such as calling a Canon SD-800 IS a “digital SLR” (which it isn’t - it’s a very nice point and shoot). Saying “that’s how the users input the data” isn’t an excuse - that’s what editing is for.

In the action and sports chapter, the term “panning” is used easily a half dozen times in the editor intros, and then the next to last photo in the chapter has “you need to follow the subject with your camera in one smooth movement during the exposure. This technique is known as panning.” Better editing would have had this statement before all of the other uses. One orchid picture utilizes “an aperture of 1/60 because he was using flash” (ok, it’s a think-o). Also, the “grasshopper” is actually a praying mantis.

One final oddity is that well over 70% of the photos are on Canon equipment. Most of the Nikon photos are film SLRs, and there’s a smattering of exotic brands all sharing the other 30%. The proportions definitely don’t jive with things like Flickr’s camera finder.

I had not visited photoworkshop.com before writing this, and on the site I noticed they have an “alliance” with Canon, which kind of makes me suspect of the criteria used to choose the photos. Actually, this seems like a good plan - get money from customers so they can be considered for publication (Showcase level), and also get money from Canon from their alliance, and so feature their products in the books. There’s probably nothing nefarious going on (and it’s just capitalism if it were) - I bet the community there has a higher proportion of Canon hardware users than others given the Alliance. Knowing that, though, I know what filter to read PW materials through.

With all that negativity aside, it was a diverting couple of hours flipping through the book. If a library or a friend has it, it’s worth borrowing for an evening or two, or flip through it at a bookstore. But I wouldn’t buy it again.

Book Rating Scale

I love books. I really love books. I love throwing tons of data at my brain and seeing what sticks. Generally books fall in one of three categories:

• Buy It : it’s great, something I either got a lot of useful information out of quickly, it was a lot of fun to read, or I think I can go back later and get more out of it
• Borrow It : It’s pretty good. Not something I want to sacrifice shelf space for. If you can get it from a friend or a library, try that first.
• Burn It : Awful. Best put to use supplying heat.

Lens Porn

The making of lenses:

Discovery Channel

Canon Promotional Material.

Link Roundup

• Mike Davidson’s A Rookie GUide to Digital SLR Cameras.
• Digita lPhotograph School’s How to Shoot Light Trails.
• Ken Rockwell has his D3 Review all consolidated and edited.

Generic Plates for a Really Right Stuff Ballhead

The Really Right Stuff ballheads and camera clamps are wonderful pieces of equipment. Unfortunately the don’t make a generic flat base, only form-fitted plates. While waiting for a plate for the D3, I called them up looking for a temporary solution, and they redirected me to Wimberly, at tripodhead.com, specifically the P-5 Camera Body Plate. Works like a charm.

Hyperfocal Distance Guide

DOFMaster has a discussion about using the hyperfocal distance for a lense for getting the maximal depth of field.

Depth of Field extends in front of and behind the plane of focus, which is a waste if you’re focusing at infinity since the extra DoF after infinity isn’t adding anything. By focusing closer, but still keeping the far-end of your DoF at infinity (which is the hyperfocal distance), you can get more of your foreground in focus.