On to the sticky subject of lens cleaning.

After reading an article on lunar photography, I was taking some photographs of the moon. My instinct was to use a tripod, remote shutter release with a long exposure and a high ISO but that’s totally the wrong way around. The article reminded me that the moon was reflecting light from the sun and if you set things up correct then you can grab a good shot holding your camera in your hand.

So with camera in hand, wide aperture, fast shutter and a low ISO I grabbed this shot...

That glow around the moon was so annoying and I couldn’t work out where it was from.It was on all the shots but with a little bit of work in photoshop elements I could clean it up a little. The shot could still be better though. I had cleaned my lens with a microfiber cloth so what was going on. The only thing it could be is a dirty lens so I decided to do a little research on lens cleaning. It must be the way I am cleaning the glass, which is the problem.

It was a little bit frustrating as the information that I was reading on one page was contradicting what I was reading on another. One page was saying to use rubbing alcohol (70% Isopropyl alcohol) when another site says not to use it. Admittedly, the page saying not to use Isopropyl alcohol was promoting a lens cleaning product called Lenspen (www.lenspen.com), more about that later. After looking at a bottle of lens cleaning solution that came in a kit that I got from Jessops (www.jessops.com),I found it contains Isopropyl Alcohol so decided that that was the way to go.

So on to the best way of cleaning a lens.

First of all the kit you will need is as follows.

· Size 12 flat (brights) brush. http://tinyurl.com/35bbynb
· Two microfiber cloths. http://tinyurl.com/2vj3unl
· A rocket blower. http://tinyurl.com/2vz5ulm
· Isopropyl Alcohol 70%
· Powder free surgical quality gloves.
· Bright working light.

The bright working lamp helps you spot bits of dust and grime that will not normally show up. The gloves will be needed as the Isopropyl Alcohol is not good to get on your hands and you may have a reaction to it leaving you with sore hands. Powder free gloves because you do not want to cover your lens in powder as your trying to clean it.

The first job on the list is the lens cap. What would the point be of spending the next 30 minutes cleaning a lens only to put a lens cap back on that is contaminated in dust? So, get your rocket blower and blow all the loose dust out of the lens cap. Lightly tap it on the table to get the more stubborn dust particles out. Next, with your brush, clean out any dust that remains in the cap.

Next, its time to move onto the lens itself. Again, like the cap, blow off any loose dirt and dust with the rocket blower being careful not to touch the lens with the tip of the blower. Then with the brush, carefully brush off the remaining dust. If you don’t get the dust and grime off before you attack it with the cloth, you risk scratching the lens with any hard particles on the glass. Next, take one of your microfiber cloths and wet it with the Isopropyl Alcohol, do not soak it in the liquid, but make it nice and damp. Do not put the fluid directly on the lens. With a circular motion, from the centre outwards thoroughly clean the lens. Do not press hard on the glass. Light pressure is all that is required. Then, with the other clean microfiber cloth, again, from the centre working outwards clean up the alcohol. If you use Isopropyl Alcohol 70% this will give you plenty of working time to clean the lens. There is no reason why you can’t use pure Isopropyl Alcohol, all it will mean is that it will evaporate quicker giving you less working time. If you decide to water down the alcohol then you have to uses pure ionised distilled water, otherwise you risk introducing contaminates into the solution that can damage the glass. Best advice is to ether buy Isopropyl Alcohol 70% or work quicker.

It is exactly the same process for the rear glass but you need to take a lot more care as it is a lot more prone to damage than the front glass. As the rear lens is inside the camera body it is very unlikely to get dirty anyway so you may not need to bother cleaning this lens as often. With long focal length lenses it is possible that the rear lens will be deep inside the lens body and may be difficult to clean. If in any doubt I would recommend getting your lens cleaned professionally.

After I finished cleaning my lens, out I went with my camera and took another moon shot. The results are below.  

Camera Nikon D40
Exposure 0.002 sec (1/500)
Aperture f/5.6
Focal Length 200 mm
ISO Speed 400

Taken on September 25, 2010 at 9.34pm BST

Regarding the lenspen cleaning system. These pens are a exelent product but I find are best for quick cleaning while out in the field. They do an exelent job, the brush is of very high quality and good for brushing off dust.

Jessops are selling a kit containing a pack of four difrent pens for about £12. I would advise anyone who takes photography serious to get a set.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 9

Since May this year I have been using Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 (PSE 8) which was given free with the Open University T189 Course. As a long-term fan of Adobe Photoshop Creative Suite (PSCS), to go over to PSE appeared to be a little of a backward step. A little like getting out of a Rolls Royce and trading it in for a Vauxhall. As PSE was supplied for the course and all the tutorials were based around PSE, I could have carried on with PSCS but I decided to keep to the course syllabus. It didn't take me long to discover that it really did have an advantage in some respects over PSCS. Imagine driving a McLaren F1 around central London for a week then swapping over and driving a Fiat 500 city car for a week.

PSCS Still has its place, but for the basic things you need for a photographer PSE is just fine. If you did your job right pre-shutter then there will be very little editing required anyway. Maybe just a little colour balance a little bit of dodge & burn, a little lighting adjustment.

This week, Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 has arrived and after I looked at its new features, I decided to give it a test run. The main feature that appealed to me was that I could automatically upload pictures to flickr. The program that flickr supply to upload pictures is at its best poor. It does what it says on the can, it uploads pictures to flickr but it’s slow.

The GUI has had a little tweak and I find it slightly better. In other reviews I have read people that have gone from PSE7 don’t like the GUI. To be fair, I hate the gui of PSE7 so maybe it’s one of those things you hate or love, nothing in-between.

On the list of new features are

·         Instantly de-clutter and repair photos

·         Match the style of a favourite photo automatically

·         Create stunning pop art, reflections, portrait effects, LOMO camera style photography effects.

·         Create richly layered photos using layer masks

·         Quickly share photos and videos on Facebook

·         Print calendars, cards, and photo books with your home printer

And some of the current items have been enhanced.

·         Create fuller panoramas

·         Edit raw image files for the highest quality results

·         Share photos via fun Online Albums

·         Use flexible layouts to create scrapbook pages, CD/DVD labels.

Some of the features and enhancements that have been added or improved, while handy to have, run against the grain as a professional photographer particularly a semi-pro who is still learning the trade.  Are you going to take credit for work that is done in an auto or a program mode on your camera then run it through ‘auto fix everything’ on the computer? Use the features by all means, but you at least have to understand what the feature is doing for you and are able to do it manually. I always find the auto fix features never get it quite right anyway and it is still the same on PSE9. A computer can count pixels, compare and measure all it likes. It cannot understand the subject of your photograph, what you want from it or trying to portray in your photograph.

Adobe has now incorporated the ‘content aware’ spot healing brush from CS5, which is good news. The content aware brush was one of the few reasons I had for starting up PSCS for a photography work. In addition, ‘Camera RAW’ has been improved. PSE9 comes with Camera RAW 6.1, but you can download and install 6.2 if you like. It has no added functions just more compatibility.

As mentioned before, the ability to upload direct to flickr is a welcomed feature. It has all the features that the flickr-supplied program has, but it actually uploads a lot faster. The speed is obviously limited by your upload speed your ISP decides to offer, but those of you on a fast connection will notice the difference.

In all Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 is a good application for photographers. Photoshop CS is a little overkill for a photographers needs. Is it worth upgrading? I would say for a photographer, if you had version 7 or under, definitely yes. If you have version 8 unless you can get it under a student or education licence for £40 then maybe it is not worth the £75 you would have to stump up for it. If you are looking for a cut-price image-editing suite then with the addition of layer masks you could do no worse.

For me, yes, I will be upgrading from 8 to 9 just because of the ‘content aware’ brush and the upload to flickr. I hate the pop art type tools and I would never use them. Not unless I was producing images for a magazine or a website but then I would be using Photoshop CS5

Feedback from T189.

I got a letter from the Open University today with feedback about my photographs I submitted for my end of course assessment (ECA) for T189. Most of the feedback I agree with but some I do not.

 Below are the 10 pictures I submitted along with the feedback I received.

 Overall feedback for the whole panel 'Some excellent images in a widely varied panel. Not one could be described as "week", so you have achieved a high overall standard. No serious technical problems at all to report. A couple of comments:' (I have placed these comments under the picture it refers to.)

01 - Deep in Thought 

This photo was taken a while back at Chester Zoo. It is one of my favourite photographs I have ever done. One of its appealing features is the way the eyes are in shadow from his deep brow, keeping an enigmatic air around him. It makes me wonder what is on his mind.

The feedback I got was 'Is a great study of the subject but without light on the eye, it has no “life" to it.'

This I do not agree with as the hidden eyes give the feeling of 'his thoughts are his own and not for sharing.'

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02 - Chance on Red

The feedback I got was 'Whilst technically well handled, don’t do quite enough for me to regard them as outstanding.'

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03 - Lucky Hand

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04 - Depth of Beer

This picture was taken as a demonstration of control of depth of field (DOF). A very wide aperture was used to create a narrow DOF so that the can of beer in the foreground is in sharp focus and as  the line of cans move further away they in turn become a little more out of focus.

The feedback I got was 'Whilst technically well handled, don’t do quite enough for me to regard them as outstanding.'

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05 - “Champions”

A celebration of Blackpool Football Club as they make it to the Premier League.

The feedback for this picture was, 'Is an excellent and saleable journalistic photo'

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06 - Thornton Force. 

A waterfall on the river Twiss along the Ingleton Waterfall Trail

The feedback I received for this picture was 'Slightly un-sharp'

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07 - The Three Graces on the Mersey

A traditional shot of the Liverpool waterfront.

The Three Buildings known as the three graces are left to right, The Royal Liver Assurance building “The Liver Building”. Opened in 1911, the building is the purpose-built home of the Royal Liver Assurance group, which had been set up in the city in 1850 to provide locals with assistance related to losing a wage-earning relative. One of the first buildings in the world to be built using reinforced concrete, the Royal Liver Building stands at 90 m tall and was, until the construction of St John's Beacon in 1965, the tallest building in the city.

Cunard Building, The building was, from its construction until the 1960s, the headquarters of Cunard Line, and the building retains the name of its original tenants. It was also home to Cunard's passenger facilities for trans-Atlantic journeys that departed from Liverpool. Today, the building is owned by the Merseyside Pension Fund and is home to numerous public and private sector organisations.

The Port of Liverpool Building. The building was designed by Sir Arnold Thornley and F.B. Hobbs and was developed in collaboration with Briggs and Wolstenholme. It was constructed between 1904 and 1907, with a reinforced concrete frame that is clad in Portland Stone. The building acted as the headquarters of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board (MDHB) for 87 years, from 1907 to 1994, when the company relocated to new premises at Seaforth Dock. In 2001, it was sold to Liverpool-based property developer Downing and between 2006 and 2009 underwent a major £10m restoration that restored many original features of the building, while creating high value residential and office space.

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08 - Bridge Over Troubled Water.

A bridge across the River Twiss in north Yorkshire on the Ingleton Waterfall Trail

The feedback I received for this picture was 'Slightly un-sharp'

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09 - Deep mid winter

It does not snow often in Blackpool, but when it does, it hits hard! 

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10 - Balanced Wheels.

A motorbike stunt show on St Chads Headland in Blackpool Last year. (2009)

The feedback I received for this picture was, ' Shows the subject nicely and is well timed, but I would have used a wider aperture, f4 or f5.6 to ensure the background was more blurred and therefore less distracting.'

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Searching.

I have been looking around the intewebby for stories from people who have gained an LRPS and the one thing that I have noticed is that an LRPS really is a realistic prospect for anyone who puts there mind to it. 

I have looked at quite a few panels from successful applications and to be honest, and I do not mean this in any sort of elitist attitude, but I have many photographs that have been much better as far as composition or subject goes. It is just the technical qualities of my pictures I need to improve to get a good panel together.  Since I finished the Open University T189 course, my technical abilities have improved tenfold so I am looking forward to producing some new photographs. 

I still have not decided on a subject for my panel but I am thinking about pictures from events. I find that one of my strengths in photography is "photo journalistic". One of my favourite pictures I have taken recently was from "the Tour of Britain" cycle race. I grabbed the shot below as André Greipel crosses the line to win the first stage of the Tour of Britain.

Shopping List.

I have a bit of a shopping list of kit I need to get to complete my camera kit. 

My Basic kit already comprises of the following.

• Nikon D40 camera body 
• AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED II
• AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 55-200mm f/4-5.6G ED II
• Circular polarizing filter
• UV filter
• Graduated ND filter
• ND 4 filter
• ND 6 filter
• A set of x1 x2 x4 x10 screw on close up lenses.
• 300w Studio flash
• Soft Box
• Gold reflective umbrella
• gold/silver/white fill in reflector
• 3m wide background stands with assorted colour backgrounds.
• Gossden Light meter.

To add to this kit I need to get-

• Nikon SB-900 AF Speedlight (I will settle for the SB600) http://tinyurl.com/2cmtjmk
• Spyder3 pro monitor calibrator http://tinyurl.com/6x7775
• Spydercube RAW image calibration http://tinyurl.com/cqyeyc

I also plan to get some paper from www.fotospeed.com. They offer a free printer calibration service so that combined with the spyder calibration system, when I print out an image, it will be exactly as I see it on screen.

Ultimately, though, the pictures I create for my RPSL, I will send out for professional printing. There is no way that after spending all the money I have on photography kit that I will trust a 6 year old Epson printer with a cheap CISS attached to it to produce my pictures for scrutiny from the Royal Photographic Society.

Welcome to my blog.

Welcome to my blog.

So, It’s time for me to start my own blog. Why? Well why not. The world and his wife all have a blog so I have decided to start one myself.

As an enthusiastic semi-pro photographer who intends within the next 3 years to become a fully professional photographer, I have decided to blog my journey. The day I will be fully professional will be the day I receive my Licentiateship from the Royal Photographical society http://www.rps.org/licentiateship hence the title of the blog, “The road to Licentiateship”.

I started my journey a few months back when I did an Open University course, T189, Creating and sharing better images. http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/course/t189.htm Its a 10 week course that I did not think I would get much out of, but I was surprised how much my photography improved from this course. My only disappointment with the course was the ‘Open Gallery’, everyone from the course posting the pictures they took from the weekly assignments for everyone else to critique.  The problem was that inexperienced photographers critiquing pictures were too afraid to post anything negative. If a picture is poor, say its poor, but at validate it with what should be done to improve it.  By week 7 very little critiquing was done.  I found I was getting better comments from Flickr. The course finished in July and this week I finally got my results. I passed with an overall grade of 90%, which is a ‘Distinction’ I was very pleased.

So now, it is time to turn my attention to my Licentiateship. 

To gain a Licentiateship, I have to produce a panel of ten photographs to be submitted to a board of assessors who will pass judgement on my work to say it meets the standard requirements. The panel of photographs should have an overall theme but not of the same subject.  The position in the panel of each photograph should complement each other.

So, part one. Time to decide on my subject for my panel. Any ideas?