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A lot of people over the last several months have asked me about what type of camera I use and what I do to edit my pictures.  Since I’ve written people many times individually, I thought it would be useful to put this information in one place for future reference in case any of you are interested.

Photographic Philosophy & Technique

First a couple of basic things about photography technique.  I try my hardest to almost never use the flash on the camera because that often creates pictures that are very two dimensional and lack the depth and emotion that you can capture by using natural light to your advantage.  If you’ve taken a look at many of the compact camera pictures that people take, they often have the same blown-out look because the flash is on and thus it make a lot of images lose the emotion and visual depth that is needed for good photographs.  I say this because this belief in not using the flash and trying to take advantage of natural light as much as possible significantly impacted what type of camera I decided to purchase.

A second observation that I’ve come to with regard to photographic technique is to capture people and events with as little posing as possible.  This might run a little counterintuitive when you want to get good pictures but I think the important thing is the event and not the picture.  The photographs I take should capture a sense of the reality that was present in the scene but not seek to alter it.  I rarely ask people to pose for my pictures and I would much rather capture people doing what they normally do rather than making them artificially pose for me.  For me this is the best part of photography - to be able to capture the world around me without changing it for my purposes.  This does make it more difficult to take good pictures because people don’t always stand in front of a clutter free background or stand in the best lighting.  I think there are two ways I try to address this.  First, its being willing to move around as the photographer to get the best angle for a picture.  There are hundreds of different angles to take the same picture but it might require you to get on your knees or to get up on a chair or lie down - just find a position that makes your subject look their best.  Second, be willing to take a ton of pictures and throw away 90% of them.  I think that is what I love about shooting digitally because I typically take 200-300 pictures when I’m trying to document an event and out of that I might get 20-40 pictures that really work well.  Thankfully because I’m shooting in a digital environment, those extra pictures don’t cost any extra.

Camera

After many years of reading about digital cameras and seeing the pictures of others I finally decided to buy a digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) camera that would be affordable but at the same allow me to get some great images.  I finally chose the Pentax K10D (if you click on the link it will take you to the review of the camera from DPReview.com).  First of all it is a camera that has been on the market for about two years which was perfect for me because I wanted something that was cheaper than the top of the line models on the market and it had all the features I needed.  So why did I choose the Pentax K10D when most people choose a Canon or Nikon?  I think it comes down to choosing a camera that would best align with my photographic philosophy.

I looked for a camera that would allow me to acheive my goals in taking a picture - namely being able to capture high quality pictures without having to rely on flash, a rugged camera that I could take anywhere and to be able to get equipment for an affordable price.  After looking at multiple digital cameras, I really liked the Pentax K10D because it is one of the DSLRs that offers in camera optical stabilization.  Why is this important? Because if I want to be able to take a picture when there is not much light available I either have to decrease the shutter speed or increase the ISO (sort of like gain on a monitor).  Having a camera that is image stabilized means that you can take pictures at slower shutter speeds and not get a blurry image because the image stabilizer will compensate for slight movements in your hands. Most of the Canon’s and Nikons have their image stabilization built into special versions of their lenses but then the lenses weigh more, cost more, and if you want image stabilization on each lens you have to pay the premium for each lens.  The great thing about the Pentax K10D is that because the image stabilization is built into the body of the camera (the camera actually shifts the sensor to compensate for movements of your hand) any lens that you put on the camera becomes image stabilized.  That means that every lens that has been made by Pentax since the late 1970s can become image stabilized…pretty amazing value.

Because Pentax has made some great lenses over the years, another big advantage with regard to cost for me was that I could buy old manual focus lenses or auto-focus lenses made for prior generation Pentax cameras and still use it on the K10D.  Pentax has done a great job over the years in making their cameras backward compatible and so you can still use the lenses that were made for the K-mount cameras orginally produced in 1975.  One of my favorites lenses I use on the camera is a 50mm SMC Pentax-M f/1.7 lens that I picked up from a pawn shop off an old pentax camera for $40.

The other important reason for choosing this camera was how rugged this thing is.  All of parts on the Pentax K10D are weather sealed and so I can take the camera out in the rain or in dust and not worry about it not working.  This was especially important to us because we love to travel and especially considering what we would like to do in the mission field, we wanted a camera that wouldn’t break down on us on the field because it got some water or dust in it.  The nearest competitors from Canon and Nikon that have weather sealing costs well over $1200.

Lenses

One of the great things about DSLRs is the creative latitude offered by a wide range of lenses available to help you get the right picture.  I have three lenses that I use primarily.  The lens that I use most often for everday photography is the 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 Pentax lens.  I love the wide-angle on this lens to give picture more depth and its a small lens that can be take almost anywhere.  The main disadvantage is that it is not a fast lens (meaning it doesn’t let in as much light because it is an f/3.5-5.6 lens) and so it doesn’t take very good pictures at night or when there is not much light.

The second lens I use is the 50mm SMC Pentax-M f/1.7 which is a wonderful lens that allows you to take great pictures at night because it is fast and produces shallow depth of field (so that only your subject is in focus).  The big disadvantage of this lens is that it is manual focus and so it is hard to get it focused perfectly and it is a fixed focal length which means you can’t zoom in or out.  The final lens I use mainly for outdoor photgraphy when I need to take pictures of objects or people far away is the Pentax DA 55-300mm f/4-5.8 ED lens.  It has a great zoom range but it is also very big and not very fast and so it only works well when there is lots of light and when you have the space to carry around a big lens.

Post-Processing

So what do I do with all those hundreds of pictures I take at a time?  I wanted a good piece of software that would allow me to quickly edit hundreds of photos and give me enough tools to apply some creativity to my pictures.  This is where Adobe’s Photoshop Lightroom comes in.  I’m sure many of your have heard of Photoshop but maybe not necessarily Lightroom.  It is software that can help you process a large number of images very quickly by allowing you to label, sort, and categorize them.  I like it more that Photoshop because I can apply a variety of effects very quickly unlike Photoshop which requires more time.  After I choose the pictures that I think have good potential, I can go to the Develop module in lightroom and apply a myriad of effects to them.  There are effects that can be applied to a picture called Presets that I just scroll through and find the right one to make the picture look just like I wanted it.  There are hundreds of presets available on the web for free and you just have to try them out to figure out which ones you like.

After the pictures are editied I then export them using Lightroom’s web module which automaticaly creates Flash slideshows which I can then link to from our blog.

I hope that is helpful to people out there with regard to at least some of what I do with pictures and how I take them.  If there are other areas that you would like me to elaborate on just let me know and I can add more information.