Photography

Post on when to use high speed sync:

The High Speed Sync feature allows you to work with Speedlites way past your camera’s normal sync speed (1/160 – 1/250 depending on camera). By shooting at very fast shutter speeds you can dramatically reduce ambient light and shoot what look like night time shots at high noon.

If 1/250th is fast enough to freeze most action, why would we need to shoot faster than that or why would we need to use flash outdoors in the daylight? To begin with, if we are shooting people against a bright blue sky and we try to expose the scene for our subject, the blue in the sky will get completely washed out and turn white. On the other hand, if you crank the shutter speed fast enough to get the sky to stay nice and blue, the subject will be underexposed. The best way to solve this is to expose for the sky and then use flash to light the subject. While this sounds simple the problem is really bright conditions is that you may need a shutter speed significantly faster than your sync speed, sometimes well over 1/1000th of a second.

I have been using SmugMug for hosting my photos for a while now. There are a few benefits that make it worth the small annual subscription and don’t seem to be available from any of the free offerings:

1. Your friends and family can download photos in full resolution
2. Absolutely zero ads. Not having ads posted alongside your photos makes them look a LOT better.
3. Unlimited storage and quick/easy bulk uploads
4. A personalized URL
5. Backups in 3 states.
6. No need to login to view the photos (strangers really aren’t interested in your photos!)
7. More professional look and feel. This is a website that is used by many pros.

I’ve used SmugMug for three years now and have been extremely happy with all aspects of the service. If you’d like to save $5 on a subscription, enter the following coupon in the ‘Referred by’ field:  LQvt6m1M08vGw

I have been using Riya’s new face recognition software. The face recognition works remarkably well and will only improve with a larger dataset and more powerful processors. Unfortunately, there is still no way to export the tag information generated by the software. Without this feature it is hard to contemplate investing too much time into the software or recommending it to anyone other than the earliest adopters with an insatiable fascination with technology. Companies come and go, which is why I think it’s important to maintain ownership of any structure I add to my data.