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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...

Here is a list of my current settings for hybrid work with the Canon EOS M50. The Canon EOS M50. I have a video on Youtube detailing the entire list. Learn a few tips and tricks with the M50. Tab 4: Menu display: Standard Mode guide: Disable Feature guide: Disable I understand the point of these features, but they get in the way. The feature guide is something you might want to use for a few minutes to see any little details Canon mentions about each menu item, but I’d turn it off after a while. Now I’ll go from left to right in the menus: Tab 1: Page 1: Image quality: RAW. Depends on your needs. I don’t often want a JPEG. Image review: Off I find having image review on not super useful on a mirrorless camera and can actually get disorientating when using the EVF when the review shows up. Lens aberration correction: I turn all of these off. It looks like the digital lens optimizer might apply to the RAW, but most should be capable in Canon’s editing software afterward if you decide to...

In this video I go over using a PS4 DualShock controller when reviewing and culling photos. It’s an ergonomic and quick way to go over large numbers of photos in your initial review process.  Using a game controller in Adobe Bridge! In my case I use Adobe Bridge CS5, which has limited support for keyboard shortcuts. The related video about using a controller to cull photos in Adobe Bridge. Get a Sony DualShock 4 Wireless PS4 Controller through my links: B&H Photo Video , Amazon , Best Buy , and eBay . As an affiliate of these shops, I earn from qualifying purchases!  You can use whatever controller you want as long as you have the ability to mimic keyboard inputs. The DS4Windows program I use has full macro support, which is great.  Configuring DS4 Windows to work with Bridge. The PS4 controller drivers: ds4windows ( github source ) Adobe Bridge shortcut list Here is how I have mine set up: – D-pad = The arrow keys on the keyboard so you can navigate through the...

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...

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...

I talk about camera flash communication methods (TTL vs E-TTL i-TTL p-TTL) as well as thyristor sensor based auto mode.  Flash talk Here is the Youtube video: Diagram for TTL and pre-flash based TTL methods: TTL and more advanced methods. Standard TTL: This was the original method of flash power control. It happens as the film/sensor is being exposed to light. There is a dedicated sensor near the film that monitors the reflected light off of the film/sensor and eventually tells the flash to “quench” (stop) outputting light. The nice thing about TTL is that it works with any lens and was generally pretty reliable. p-TTL, E-TTL, i-TTL, and similar systems that use pre-flash: This is the newer method that all of the camera manufacturers use now. The flash sends out a pre-flash burst of light (or multiple bursts) and records the results with the standard light meter built into the camera. So this all happens even before the mirror has been flipped up and of course before the sensor Thy...

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...

Have you been interested in trying out action photography? I have too! Just recently two friends and I tried out some basic action photography on a whim as were were taking photos at a local park. I thought that writing about what we did and adding a bit extra on how to do animated sequences (GIF files) in Adobe Photoshop would be a fun supplement to the main article. We switched cameras, so a friend took that image above with my camera (cropped). Camera setting suggestions: Set the camera to continuous shooting mode (high-speed). I was using a K-7 camera that has around 5 FPS maximum, which is alright. The faster your camera can take frames, the better your sequences will be. Set your camera to continuous auto-focus (AF-C) to start. Chances are that using AF-C mode it will slow your camera down, so you might want to experiment with manual focus. When in AF-C mode, try using just a single point like the center one. That way you can be sure to focus on your subject and not somet...

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...

I wanted to go over the techniques I used at this convention partly for a personal log and also for anyone who might find the discussion of techniques interesting. This really is just a selection of techniques, but a good overview nonetheless. Primary Equipment: Pentax K-5 camera body Pentax FA 31mm f1.8 lens Sigma 530 DG Super flash + Stofen diffuser (used in certain situations) Pentax DA 50-200mm WR lens (fashion show and masquerade) K-7 + DA 55mm f1.4 SDM (only used them once for a private shoot) Kata 3N1-22 backpack Camera modes: The K-5 camera body has 5 selectable setting modes allowing the photographer to select and save settings in those 5 slots. I used three slots primarily, which I will go over below. I’ll also include any other factors in how that mode was used. USER Mode 1 (flash photography): – ISO fixed (usually 80, but a range for creative and testing reasons) – Av mode (usually large aperture) – Exposure compensation like -2 inside, only slight reduction like -2/3rds ou...