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Links in this post might go to my affiliates where I earn from qualifying purchases! I’ve had multiple comments on my videos recently asking me how to get photos from old cameras, or more recent cheaper cameras that don’t support connecting wirelessly to a smartphone.  There are various ways to do it, but here I’ll cover the few I tend to use. https://youtu.be/_Wy30C5pOvs Here’s a link to the combo USB memory card reader on Best Buy I showed in the video. I haven’t personally tried it but it looks versatile. Make sure it has the port and memory card types you need before considering it. Search for memory card readers: B&H Photo Video Amazon Adorama Best Buy ebay Connecting a smartphone to a normal USB memory card reader with a USB-C to USB-A adapter. Probably cheaper than buying a dedicated reader. Here are the ways I tend to use: Use a computer between the camera and phone. This is the most common and foolproof way. Besides buying a dedicated memory card reader you can usuall...

Here are some basics about shutter speed along with two tips at the end that might help you when using manual control of your camera. I show various examples of how shutter speed in the camera applies to photographs. I also talk about the reciprocal rule. Keep in mind this video was made back in 2012, so it’s definitely some of my early work… This video has been clipped in YouTube to make it more concise, so it could be a bit jumpy at times… Transcript: The shutter speed defines how long your sensor or film is exposed to light. An important thing to remember about shutter speed is that a fast shutter speed will help you freeze motion and a slow shutter speed will help you produce motion blur. It’s also important to remember that you want to generally have a fast shutter speed to avoid unwanted camera shake, unwanted motion blur. That isn’t always the case. Sometimes.. for example.. let’s say you wanted to photograph a helicopter. It’s up in the ...

Two cameras with kit lenses. I have a pair of 15-45mm kit lenses. One came from a used Canon EOS M5 that I bought on eBay . The other came with one of my M50 bodies . After checking firmware versions I found out that the older lens had 2.0.0 firmware instead of 3.0.1 of the newer one. Checking the Canon website I was able to download the newer version and decided to go through the update process. (Links are affiliated, I earn from qualifying purchases!) The video with details on the process. DISCLAIMER: ATTEMPT FIRMWARE UPDATES AT YOUR OWN RISK. FIRMWARE CHANGES ALWAYS COME WITH A CHANCE OF FAILURE THAT WILL RENDER YOUR EQUIPMENT NOT FUNCTIONAL. DON’T COME AT ME COMPLAINING THAT YOUR LENS OR CAMERA ARE BRICKS. BEST CASE THERE WILL BE HAVING TO SEND THE GEAR TO CANON FOR REPAIR. As of the making of this video and article, Canon USA’s website is down due to a ransomware hack. We will be using the Canada website, but if I remember later on I will update this page with the USA link as wel...

While waiting for my car to be worked on, I recorded a video talking about trying to stay productive doing creative work. I go over various things to avoid and ways to split up work to get it done. Let’s talk about being an effective creative! Yep The video where I go over these tips & tricks. 1. TRY TO AVOID WHAT YOU KNOW YOU ARE WEAK AGAINST (EASIER SAID THAN DONE…) It’s easy to burn through hours on things you enjoy that are more consumer focused, but are not especially helpful to being a creator. In my case I watch a lot of YouTube content. It’s definitely easy to spend too much time doing that. The same for video games. At least in my case I’ve been good about removing most of that. Figure out consumer focused time is taking a lot of your day and work on limiting it. 2. SPLIT PROJECTS INTO DAYS BASED ON TYPE OF WORK I’ve found it helpful to break up video projects into pieces. One day I might write up production notes on a few videos. Another day I might do the filming for one...

Having fun with photography doesn’t have to be expensive. In this article I show you how I use old camera equipment to do at home macro photography. Besides a camera and lens, you can use normal household “daylight” color temperature light bulbs if you don’t have gear available to light your scene. Just remember that more light is better with macro photography. Let’s get started!  Gear I'll be using for this experiment. This post contains affiliate links and I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links. In this video I use the Canon EOS 30D with a magnifying glass and multiple lenses reversed so that we can achieve close up detail photos. Back in February I started searching for an extremely low cost DSLR I could try out. I’m always up for learning about equipment I haven’t used. With how much traffic my YouTube channel currently receives, there isn’t much of a budget for video projects. My initial idea after searching was a Canon EOS 20D , but KEH had...

It’s difficult dealing with a large number of photos. Over the years I have accumulated a lot and I’ve also deleted a lot. Though I’m sure not as much as some people, right now I have around 1.25TB. Before I go into more specific details about my personal quest to get things organized and backed up to some degree, I wanted to mention the main purpose of this article. To get things organized into the most logical format possible, it was difficult finding something that would work, at least on Windows. After some experimentation and searching I wound up using Exiftool . It’s a somewhat simple command line tool that can do batch processing on images and source EXIF data in that process. Other tools I found didn’t work as I had expected, or were a hassle to use. In Windows, you download the standalone EXE from Phil’s Exiftool website , extract the EXE, rename it by removing the (-k), and copying it to the C:\Windows directory for ease of running from the ...

Though I’ve used Photoshop in some fashion since the early 2000s, I’m always learning or re-learning things about it. To improve the speed of editing, there are a few things that make a big difference. I’ve been trying to incorporate the keyboard more into the editing process because it does speed up editing a lot. I use Photoshop CS5, so if something doesn’t work for you then there might be a difference in how things are done for your version. Holding the space bar down will allow you to drag around the photo while keeping your current tool. There is an application level setting that you can change to have the scroll-wheel perform zoom and it doesn’t change your current tool selected. I always enable that whenever I need to (re)install Photoshop. The clone stamp tool is my go-to tool for editing cosplay photos. It’s easy to clone out harder to manage spots and areas with this tool compared to the others I’ve used. It takes more effort to use than the other related tools, so I try to u...

The Pentax WG-2 has a special macro configuration that allows some unique images. In addition to the lens being capable of a 1cm macro mode, the camera comes with 6 while LED lights that surround the front element of the lens. This allows these extreme close ups to have sufficient light.  Here is a picture of the camera’s lens and macro lights: The white circles surrounding the lens glass are the LED lights. This function can be turned on or off at will. Getting a photo of your own eye isn’t the easiest thing to do. Especially with large cameras that are more capable of doing that from a technical standpoint. DSLRs are heavy and macro lenses on DSLRs are not always the best at auto-focus. With the WG-2, it’s pretty simple. Get the lens as close to your eye as possible and take a picture. There is some trial and error involved, but keepers are easily possible. Results are very impressive considering the equipment being used. Here are a few examples: The best photo of the set...

I went on a big excursion recently where I used off-camera flash and full manual setting control. The nice thing about Pentax cameras is that you can have a few conveniences in manual that make setting changes faster and more accurate.  Cameras and  Cactus V5  flash transceivers. For example, changing the green button functionality from “P Line” to “Av Shift” allows you to get a quick exposure reading that changes the aperture, but not the shutter speed. This is important when you are limited to the flash sync speed of your camera, because you don’t want the green button to select a shutter speed that will be too fast for the flash to function with. “P Line” (aka. Program Line) bases your sampled exposure on a number of simple options. There is one for maximum sharpness (MTF), one for maximum background blur, one for action, one for landscape, and so on. The flash sync speed is the fastest shutter speed that still allows for your camera’s sensor to be completely visible w...

This was partly taken from my most recent book titled: “The Handbook of Photographing Arizona,” but I just made a Youtube video to supplement the information. I want to do a lot more learning and tutorial based videos in the future! Let’s take a look at the exposure triangle. Watch the video on YouTube:   The exposure triangle: All current cameras can manage exposure pretty well, so it isn’t bad to let your camera manage the details while you focus on proper composition. However, taking full control isn’t that difficult with enough knowledge. Images speak louder than words, therefore the graphic above should be very helpful in explaining the relationship of three key camera settings: ISO value, shutter speed, and aperture size. Each camera setting is also responsible for different properties you can expect to see in resulting photos. For example, a high ISO value will have more image noise, a slow shutter speed will cause more motion blur, and a large aperture value will give you t...

Already another question and answer post! Keep them coming. 🙂 Sharing information is a great way for everyone to learn. Edit: I have to say, I like the way he thinks. Why waste money on an inferior lens if you will eventually replace it? Opting to start with that 50-135mm f2.8 lens was a good idea. I’d say, If you have the cash, it is often a good idea to truly consider the high quality equipment for your given system of choice. On the other hand, the most expensive lens isn’t always the best. In my response, I go over some issues I see with the 31mm lens, but it is still one of the best lenses out there. The initial contact: I bumped into you on Youtube, have been following your channel for a while now. Great stuff! I’m in dire need for some advice, and I have a hunch I came to the right place. I recently got into photography and bought a k-5 and a DA 50-135mm. That’s my only lens (I spent my last buck on it:P, and I’m loving it) so now I am look...

I received a message recently asking for some suggestions about a new lens to supplement his 18-55mm kit lens. Check out the conversation below because it might be helpful to you as well. I like helping people out, so feel free to send me messages if you have similar questions and think I would be able to help. I might feature it on the site as well. His initial message: Hello Scott Great reviews. I purchased the Kr Pentax and the 18-55 DAL lens came with it. Can you please recommend a lens for Portraits. I think taking portraits will help me make the money I would need for a better lens. Right now I would like to spend no more then 200.00 US Thanks again My first response: Are you only interested in new lenses? If so, you options are limited at $200. Pentax has a DA 35mm f2.4 AL around $200, but that is too wide angle to be considered a true portrait lens (zoom your current lens to 35mm to get a feel for the focal length). If that focal length agrees with you, the DA 35mm would...

I just finished editing my first collaboration video titled “A Low Cost Camera Flash or Lens First?” It’s not live on Youtube for your viewing enjoyment. 🙂 Youtube video link : This was one of my larger projects video wise. We shot the video portions on Sunday and I’ve been spending a good deal of time since then putting all of the pieces together. Here is a simple work list: Extract the audio from the recorded clips and clean it up. I did a good deal of audio editing this time to remove unwanted background noise as well as equalising the voice levels. I also fixed a few words, but missed one where I said “TLL” instead of “TTL” … Post-process the sample photos in Adobe Photoshop and create all of the still frames that the video needed. Do voice over work for the result photo descriptions and clean the audio up too. Create additional graphics like the name bars that show up at the beginning of the video. Edit everything together and adding all of the text as overlays. Review the v...

In my efforts to improve the quality of my convention videos, I have spent time working through the settings of my DSLR cameras to get the best quality out of them as possible. I went over some settings in my previous article, but I thought only settings themselves were worth spending more time on. These techniques and settings apply to the K-5 and most likely the K-7 cameras. Overview on Youtube: Setting: Movie Aperture control (Fixed, Auto). Use FIXED for more control. Fixed: The camera allows you to chance the aperture at will. When the camera is recording, the aperture will be locked at whatever it was set at. The Auto setting means that the camera will control the aperture completely without user input. Using auto might be good for the sake of simplicity or when using the camera in strong lighting. Pressing the green button when in Fixed mode will allow the camera to automatically adjust the aperture. It’s a nice feature to get a good starting point on proper exposure of the...

I received another question from a Facebook friend about photography. First question: How again do you set up a batch process? I know how to automate them, but I can’t remember how to set them up. Will it work for both camera raw settings and then additional Photoshop edits? I’m going through a shoot with someone, and with similar pictures I’d love to be able to do that. Answer: The process that I use is good for camera raw modifications and whatever happens in the Photoshop action. 1. Open and tweak all of the images in a directory. In Photoshop I just select all of the files at once and camera raw opens all of them in a list to the left of the raw editing tools and preview. 2. Press the “Done” button when finished to save all of the tweaks. 3. Create a Photoshop action to do whatever you want. Keep in mind that it will happen uniformly to every image. For example, I made an action to just save a full-quality JPEG image. Other times I’ve run auto-contrast with a de-noise plugin call...

I thought I wrote an article about the Pentax AF-280T flash unit describing what settings work best with the flash. I spend a few minutes searching through the site with no luck. I was making a large number of video overviews today and did one on the AF-280T. I guess that I mentioned an article that only existed in my mind! I’ll fix that post haste…done (see below). Put the camera in Sv, Tv or P mode and the flash in red/green auto mode. Sv mode settings and overview: – Put the camera in Sv mode and modify the ISO to change depth of field. ISO 80 on the K-5 will force the camera to use the largest aperture it can when the flash is powered. I’ve used Sv with my Pentax AF-280T flash with good results. This is the simplest mode to use with the flash as all you will need to control is the ISO setting. It is also the mode I get the best results in without much effort on my part. – Matrix metering is fine. – Set the ISO yourself. – Allow the camera and flash to control aperture and sh...