Take a Tablet and Call me in the morning

Now, if you're like me, you've heard of tablets and how handy they are to use with photoshop. If you're also like me, you've been doing just fine with a mouse and involved in too many other things to learn a new technology unless it's critical.

When I was at Imaging USA in Florida earlier this year, Jed Toufler (www.v-gallery.net) showed me what he likes about tablets. He had a small Wacom Intous 4x6 tablet (www.wacom.com/intuos) with his laptop for use on the road. He was actually showing some interesting stuff in Photoshop, but I got distracted by how fast he was with the tablet.

Jed's enthusiasm is a bit infectious and I soon found myself in front of one of the vendor booths, buying a 6x8 tablet for myself. Of course, once I got back home, I found myself with several problems. I didn't have a long enough USB cable to reach from my system to the monitor on the other side of the room and other projects soon consumed my time.

Well, along comes my office move and I found myself at the electronics store looking for a few things and remembered the USB problem. With the addition of a USB extender, I could now play with my not-so-new toy.

Jed was pretty honest and said it would take a little bit to get used to the tablet, but would love it. He was absolutely right. I'm not an expert yet with the tablet by any means, but I found myself proficient with it within 10 to 20 minutes - and I love it.

Using a tablet has some pleasant surprises. It's a lot more sensitive than a mouse (or at least my mouse) and you have the added dimension of pen pressure, which affects the brushes particularly. Photoshop brushes now act like real brushes with a tablet, rather than crop circles, as with the mouse.

It doesn't seem to care if you use your left or right hand and even a 6x8 is a comfortable size for desktop work. I haven't even really explored the programmable keys on the tablet, but I can see how they would be useful.

There are larger sizes, from 6x11, to 12x19 and one smaller size, the 4x6, which I'm told works well for laptops. I have no problems with the 6x8, but may play with one of the larger units in the future.

Wacom does another line of tablets called the Cintiq, which actually display the picture on the tablet itself. It's an interesting ideas, but I don't really like. I found mu hand blocked what I was trying to do and was a bit of a hassle. Since artists have been using pens for some time, I presume this may simply be a case of me needing to get used to the tablet screen, but who knows.

I recommend trying a tablet the next time you're working heavily in Photoshop. I found it particularly useful while retouching portraits.

How white are your whites?

How white are your whites?

One the biggest challenges of photography is understanding just good the Mark I eyeball is at dealing with light. The human eye is capable to dealing with light at a level well beyond any camera in existence, particularly with dynamic range and colour temperature, or white balance.

Colour temperature makes a fire look orange and a florescent light green, but the human eye can render it all in the correct colour while the camera cannot. Hence the strange and interesting colours when shooting under artificial light, or even just a cloudy day.

Most cameras, even simple point and shoots, have an option to set colour temperature (cloudy, sunny, indoors, night, etc) or more exact setting on professional cameras. If you shoot raw, like I do, you can set the colour temperature after the fact or even change it at will. Unfortunately, the all have the same problem, even with photoshop. Unless you have a white object in the picture, how can you define "white" (or grey or black) - you need a reference. Usually, this results in best guesstimates and less than perfect results.

One solution is to set a custom white balance using a special filter or card. The filters work well, but setting the custom white balance is rather time consuming and needs to be done again whenever the light changes. This works well in a studio, but usually fails in the field, particularly with changing light.

One solution is to have a standard target, in either colour or black&white, for reference. You've probably seen the square filled with little patches of colour from vendors like Getag-MacBeth. They work great, but don't travel well, as they about the size of a sheet of paper and somewhat fragile. Once more, a great studio solution that doesn't work well in the field.

My favorite tool for setting white balance in the field is the WhiBal kit. It's made from very durable plastic, and coloured to include a black, grey, and white area. It's also been tested with a spectrophotometer to make sure each patch is accurate in colour. You simply take a picture of the card in your hand under the lighting conditions and you have a solid reference for white, grey, and black.

The previous version used three different cards that you fanned out to have a sample of each. Each card was a little bigger than a business card, so you could carry it around, but the fanning out was a bit of a pain while event shooting. This has now been reduced to a single card, with a carrying case and neck strap. This makes it easy to carry and access, even during a fast moving shoots, such as events.



The current version, which is the 6th version, is now a single grey card with a black and white sticker. The pocket kit is 2"x3.5", has its own carrying case and neck strap and is very easy to simply keep in the camera bag. The studio kit is 3.5"x6" and the reference kit is 8.5"x11". It's handy to pull out on a shoot whenever the light seems to have change and take a reference shot. The black card lets you use it as a stand for hands free shooting

I recently used mine for a natural light night shoot of a few boats under a bridge. The light was provided by sodium street lights, florescent, and moonlight with snow behind me to reflect everything together. My Whibal reference made my post production very simple.

This is so useful and so important, I'm considering getting a second one for the camera bag as a backup.

You can find this and other useful tools at www.rawworkflow.com

Direct link: http://www.rawworkflow.com/products/whibal/index.html

More Interesting Non-Photo Photo Gear

Well, just after I posted my past entry I needed to order another pair of boots, as I've worn the last ones out. This will be my third pair, and this one carried me from the Scottish highlands to the jungles of the Yucatan peninsula and just about everything in between.

I love these boots, as they are waterproof yet breathable, lightweight but long lasting, and capable to maintaining traction on just about any surface including wet ones. When you're shooting outdoors your footwear is almost as important as your camera, as the last thing you need is a nasty fall and broken equipment.

My boots of choice are from Oakley and called the SI Assault boot. They are the civilian version of Oakley Military boot and available in boot, tall shoe, and shoe sizes. I prefer the boot, as it keeps you dry while stomping through puddles. I have no idea what the difference is between this version and the military version, but I would be interested in hearing if anyone knows more.

You can often find these boots at the local Oakley store, but I prefer ordering online. They are about $250, which is not cheap, but they are well worth it, and you can find them at www.oakley.com. The boots look like:



I wear mine until they wear out, which is about as strong a recommendation I can give something.

Finally - Gloves for shooters

If you're like me and you shot outdoors, at some point the weather will turn cold. I'm pretty good in cold weather, but eventually I need to wear gloves.

When you're trying to shoot, this creates problems, primarily that you need to remove the gloves to do almost anything. Reaching into a pocket, changing a setting, reaching into the photo bag all require the removal of a glove or two. Once this happens, your hands start getting cold and you probably lose at least one of the gloves. I can;t tell you how many gloves I've left like little mementos of my visit.

Lowepro has some wonderful photographer's gloves that both protect against the cold and allow you to work with your gloves on. These mesh fabric gloves are thin, but warm, and have something called "control dots on the palm and finger side. These dots let you work even the tiniest buttons without removing the gloves.

More info at: http://products.lowepro.com/product/Photo-Gloves,1990,44.htm

I've used these now in temperatures as bad a -17C and they were fine. Even though they're mesh, they seem fine in strong winds. I haven't used them wet, but I think they might even be fine then.

These take up very little space in a bag, cost about $30, and can mean the difference between a good shoot and a bad time. I'm even thinking of getting spare pairs.