October 30, 2008

CPPOTW = The Digital Grey Kard

It seems someone is always selling a gadget to get your white balance right. It can indeed be useful to have a grey reading to get your white balance spot on out of the gate. This CPPOTW is the Digital Grey Card.

WB targets work quite simply. Their an 18% gray. You shoot a frame with the gray card in the scene, then later in post production you click it with the WB eye dropper using, Lightroom, Aperture, Camera Raw or whatever you use. The system reads, what you say is 18% gray and balances the rest of the scene accordingly.

I‘ve tried a few targets, and aside from being overpriced many of them are cumbersome, which means I tend not to use them. This set however is like having three business cards on a lanyard. Throw it in your bag, or better yet around your neck and wherever you are you can toss the card in for a WB target shot. It also includes white and black level target.

Nothing big, strange, or expensive. At around seventeen bucks, it may seem like a lot for three plastic cards, but these targets are cheaper than most and do just what they need to. Something every photographer should have in their kit. I’ve linked to Amazon. I’m sure you can find it all over, but the price is right.

Gavin Seim

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October 26, 2008

For my last recreational shoot I went down by Leavenworth for the afternoon and drove up Highway 2. The fall colors were amazing. This old pipeline bridge is now a footpath, and spans the Wenatchee river looked really cool. I got some other neat shots of the river itself so stay tune.  I also found a little chipmunk friend who was busy making a dinner of some strange bugs. He started to get used to me after a few minutes, and his dining experience more important than avoiding my camera.

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October 24, 2008

It’s a little hard to believe that in 2006, me, a twenty year old kid who was shooting weddings and whatever else he could get hired for, jumped in feet first and had the nerve to start a show telling people how to be better pro’s.

Now some would contend that I’m still just a punk kid who doesn’t know much about anything. Perhaps they’d be right, but I do know there’s a lot we can learn as photographers, no matter what our age or experience.

Today we’re starting The Best of Pro Photo Show. Content posted on the site quickly gets pushed down and sometimes fades into internet oblivion. Then I’ll get a question a year or two later and think. “Someone talked about that on a show”

We’re going to add the best articles and podcasts to this page, which will then be continually updated. This isn’t some automated popularity algorithm. It’s our hand picked content, so that newcomers and long time fans can find the goodies easily. I’m especially embarrassed by some of the early podcast’s. I still have a lot to learn as a broadcast as well, but I cringe at some of the first shows. Still some of them contain good stuff and for that reason I’ll keep them around all the way back to #1 which can still be found in the archive.

I have not seen many sites using a best of list. Sure I may be crazy, but I think it’ll be useful now, and as PPS continues to grow. So, without further adieu..

The Best Of Pro Photo Show

~Gavin Seim~

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October 23, 2008

“Don’t allow them to charge you 5.00 folks. Let’s at least attempt to keep them honest”

I know this is a photography site, but most photographers have cellular phones, so this is relivent for us too. Oddly I’m not seeing much reporting on this. I guess I’m just a cranky geek.

If you call AT&T Wireless to pay your bill with a real person they’ll charge you a five dollar fee to give them money. I’m not kidding here. They’ll tell you that if you go online, or use the automated system there will be no fee, but if you pay them it will cost you five US dollars. I’m not really interested in them forcing their system on me. I didn’t agree to pay a fee, I agreed to pay my bill.

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October 20, 2008

By Gavin Seim: Today I want to share a tip that some of you may already be using, but many others have not delved into. It’s called Auto Sync.

Within Lightroom’s Develop Module (D) you can select multiple images in the filmstrip and you’ll see the sync button appear on the bottom of the right panel. You can select the images you wish to sync, and click Sync. It will ask what settings you want to apply, then apply those settings to the selected images. OK so most of us know this already, and while it can be a big time saver there’s still more.

Auto Sync is slightly more hidden, but very useful. With your images selected, hold CNTRL (Win) CMD (Mac) and the Sync button now turns into the Auto Sync button. Click on the Auto Sync button to activate it. It now stays active until you click again to turn it off.

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