ChateauLooey

This is one of the most interesting shoots I've done in my life. The client runs a business selling cardboard homes (ChateauLooey) that cover up the litter box. "Hide unsightly litter boxes with a charming lightweight, durable litter box cover made of heavy grade corrugated box material."

The client wants to revamp their current web site, with new designs and new pictures. The 6 cardboard homes look really great in person... beach home, cottage home, brick home, etc. However, the web site doesn't do justice. The assignment is to make each home standout, with style. The client also would like to use their cat Wooster as the model. I quoted 3 hours on-site+ editing, and it was pretty much a spot on estimate! In short, it was 30 minutes product-shot setup (backdrop, stand, umbrella, lighting), 1.5 hour shoot behind the backdrop, and the remaining hour in a real home environment. Wooster had a tendency to run out, but it was easy to place him inside the cardboard box, and he would sniff around, walk out, walk around, etc. during which I had precious seconds to take pictures before he ran elsewhere.

Here's the video I created for the client which will be placed on their website:

It was a pretty pleasant shoot. No animals were injured. Including the photographer.

P.S. The new design with new pictures and a video should be out in a month or two. Special thanks to Christine and Redseed Media for giving me the opportunity.

"Help my HD is filling up fast"

A good 'ol friend of mine took a picture of his condo to put online, and I spent about 2 minutes doing basic editing to make it look more "homey" by warming it up, sharpening foliage, and adding more definition to the mid-tones while recovering a little bit of details in the highlights:

Later on he asked:

BTW, how do you save/backup your pictures? Currently, I just copy them into two HDs.

But with my new camera, the space is filling up quick. Also, what about sharing? Do you upload your orignial pictures? 7M each?

If you just got a brand new spanking XXX megapixel camera and if you're filling up your HD fast-- you're most likely machine gunning your camera. In another word, you're taking too many pictures. Let's say you take 100 full size resolution pictures per session. For a typical [2009-spec'ed] 15 megapixel camera, that is 20MB in raw and ~2 to 8MB in JPG (depending on your setting), or up to 2GB/session. If you have a 100GB HD, you'll fill up your [2009-spec'ed] HD in a short period of time.

Are all of those pictures "usable" pictures? When I say usable, I mean are they good enough that someday, you'd be willing to spend $20/frame to print them as posters? Most likely, the answer is no. In all likelihood, you're not going to use every single one of those 100 pictures to print and to publish on the web. In all likelihood, more than 90% of those pictures will end up on the hard-drive, sitting there forever, never to be seen again.

In the old film days, people thought very carefully about their shots-- composition, lighting, color, timing. Each frame needed to be developed and printed, and each frame had a substantial cost to the photographer. Not surprisingly, for a typical photographer in the old days, each roll of film had many good looking shots (compared to today's DSLR shooters) because each frame had a cost, so a lot of thought was put into each frame before the actual shot.

Today however, people think digital is free, so they machine gun shot their digital cameras. They take one picture. Then take another. Then another. To make matters worse, camera makers today advertise that their cameras have really high frames per second, and many macho guys love it (they tend to also the ones that love BIG ZOOMs). They like to show off with their super fast click-click-click-click-click camera. It's as if they're screaming "I am a super cool sports photographer and I can make lots of photos! Listen to the super cool click-click-click-click-click sound my super camera makes!" Yeah, whatever. Maybe these guys like big zooms and fast frames-per-second cameras because they compensate for their small penis or something. I don't know. Anyways, after the session is over, people upload hundreds and thousands of bad looking family photos on Picasaweb, and share it with people who don't actually have time to look through every single one of the thousands of boring looking photos. They do so, because it's so easy to machine gun cameras, and it's so easy to upload to Picasaweb.

Unfortunately, there is a cost of taking too many pictures. That cost is time. One needs to spend initial time managing (picking/filtering and editing) pictures. If the photographer ever needs to find pictures to use in the future (wedding slide show, baby shower, etc), then he/she will have to spend a lot of time sorting through thousands of pictures. If each picture takes 1 second for the brain to parse, then 1000 pictures will cost 16 minutes, not counting software lag. If the average layman machine guns 10000-20000 pictures per year, then the future cost of time would be HOURS and even days. Lastly, there is also the time a photographer incurs on others when he/she shares bad pictures to others. I can't tell you how many times people upload 3000 [really really bad] pictures from their vacation and ask me to critique. They're incurring HOURS on me, and to their friends.

1) My first useful advice to storage woes is-- think more, shoot less.

2) Pretend that you're using a film camera. Pretend each frame costs $0.50. You need to nail your focus and exposure correctly. You have one shot. You think carefully, and make that one shot. Alternatively, if you're a macho machine gun kind of guy, you can pretend that you're a US Army Sniper. "One shot, one kill" is their slogan. You have one chance. So slow down, breath, think carefully, and make that one shot. By doing so, you will A) ensure that all your shots are well thought out, and therefore, will be spot on and B) you'll gain intimate knowledge of your camera settings, and gain knowledge of lighting in general.

3) DELETE BAD PICTURES while you're shooting. Ask yourself "Is this picture good enough that I'm willing to spend $20 to print on a poster?" If the question is no, delete it. Also ask yourself "Does this picture have good sharpness? Does it have good colors? Does it look like something that I can put up in my kid's wedding slide show? Does it look like something I can put in a yearbook?" If the answer is no, delete it. Delete delete delete.

4) DELETE DUPLICATE-LOOKING PICTURES. People often take a shot, then take another. "Smile! Click. Wait let me take another one just to be safe. Click. Wait one more." When you have a bunch of similar looking shots, there will always be one shot that looks better than the rest. If you're going to print or share the best one, you're most likely never going to use the ones that aren't as good. Therefore, delete the rest. Why keep anything that is anything but the best?

5) Share less pictures. People in the 20th century have ADD and get bored after looking through 50 pictures. In the old days 35mm film had 24 or 36 exposures-- people didn't get bored after looking through a roll of film because they had enough attention span for up to 50 pictures. But people today get really bored with today's pictures, because people shoot too many! So instead of mass uploading 3000 pictures (yes I know it's super easy to do in Picasaweb), pick out your top 20-30 and upload those.

6) If taking JPG, downsize the resolution. If your destination print is the internet, then 1600x1200 is way more than sufficient. So why waste 4700x3100 pixels on a typical 15 megapixel sensor? Taking 4700x3100 is over SEVEN TIMES the size you need for your normal 1600x1200 size. You may be thinking that you need to make big prints (300dpi). First of all, megapixels is just one equation on making good prints-- 100 lousy megapixels will look worse than 10 good megapixels (other factors affected by lens quality, lighting, etc). In general, 8MP is more than enough for 8x10 print, so no need to use 15MP if you don't need to. Downsize it.

7) Backup backup backup. Storage is cheap, but get the right type. People are now just finding out that burned DVDs only last 10-20 years. Even hard drive quality isn't what they used to be-- many break down in a matter of 3-5 years.

I personally use a consumer grade RAID-1 network drive (two mirrored 1TB hard drive) as a primary drive, and a 500GB+200GB external drive for backup. I know one of these disks will fail in a few years, so it's imperative to use RAID-1 and/or backup. Here are some datapoints: this year I had a 750GB Seagate fail after 10 months, a 1TB Seagate fail after 3 weeks. In the past I've also had a catastrophic failure of the famous IBM 60GB Hitachi Deskstar (aka Deathstar), and a EIDE Maxtor drive failure. Devices fail.

For a given price, hard drive capacity doubles every 12-18 months. For example, last year, the cost of 1TB was $200. Today, it's less than $100. As long as the rule of doubling is true (and it has been for ages), then you can buy whatever storage you need today, and buy double the capacity when you need more. For example, if you filled up your 1TB this year, just get a new 2TB this year ($200) and copy everything over to the new 2TB. Next year when your 2TB is filled, buy a new 4TB next year ($200) and copy everything over to the new 4TB drive. When your 4TB is filled, buy a new 8TB ($200) and copy everything over to the new 8TB drive. What do you do with all the old drives? Safe-format (secure format 4-8 times) and eBay. There's no point keeping a bunch of old drives that'll become paper weight in less than 5 years. High-tech means "obsolete very soon." Keep your data, throw away technology.

In short, hard drive may be dirt cheap today, but the cost of management is not. The best way to use your digital camera is to pretend that it's a film camera... every frame has a cost to it, so think more, shoot less. By doing so, you'll end up with a lot of good pictures, and save a lot of management time, while gaining more knowledge and appreciation for photography.

Thank you Patrick

I went to Northern Cal for vacation on the week of June 29. I got a chance to meet up with my coworker/colleague/friend Patrick Hung, a former pro photographer. Patrick said he had a bunch of photography stuff that he no longer have a need for. I didn't know exactly what to expect and boy oh boy, all the goodies exceeded my expectations! First of all, a real backdrop plus 2 9' professional-grade backdrop stands... JackRabbit rapid flash charger (I'll need to get an adaptor for the SB-800/900 since the adaptor is for a flash in the film days), a *real* studio flash unit with light bulb+flash (WOW), a camera flash bracket, a bulb release extension that fits on my FE2 (this is a electro-mechanical film camera). I offered $ and dinner but Patrick was such a generous guy; he wouldn't take anything but thanks. THANK YOU PATRICK.

Here's the first trial using the low-key backdrop. Manual exposure at 1/200 sec, f/4, 200 ISO. 1 SB-600 under umbrella at 1/16 power, 1 SB-600 pointing upwards at 1/4 power, 1 SB-800 rimlight snooted towards the hair (on the left side) at 1/32 power:

Here's when the model stops behaving:

Here's the setup (this shows 2 umbrellas but the top 2 pictures only used 1):

By the way here is something I learned about velour-type backdrops. The Photek instruction sheet that came with the backdrop says something to the effect: "Don't fold or it'll crease. Just stuff it in the bag. If it creases, just hang weight and wait." I thought, wouldn't it be better if you fold it carefully and roll it up? After a few days of experimentation, it IS better to just stuff it in a random manner. The random crease pattern under flash actually gives out a natural marble-like texture. On the other hand, when you fold it, there is a very noticeable crease that the eye can spot easily. So, there ya go-- it's is [sometimes] better to be lazy-- just stuff it in and everything will just turn out fine!

The true cost of Leica D-Lux 4 vs Panasonic LX3

What's in a name? Can you repackage the same camera under a different name and charge twice as much? Apparently, that's what Leica has done.


I've been doing research on the Leica D-Lux 4 and Panasonic LX3. Internally, they're almost the same cameras and almost every casual shooter online agrees that the image quality differences between them are negligible. One produces a slightly cooler/warmer image. Yes there are other very subtle differences in tone, but it's not very significant. What is significantly different is the price tag. Today, you can get new models as follows (results from Bing/live cashback):

New D-Lux 4: $680
New LX3: $410

The argument I keep hearing from D-Lux users is that "it's a red dot!", "it has a slightly better warranty", and "it has a better resale value." I think what they are really saying "I need a Leica to fit in with my Country Club buddies putting at the greens." Leica, Mercedes, golf. They go hand in hand. I haven't heard a person who said he/she got the D-Lux because of the extra software. Anyways, of all the arguments I've heard, the "better resale value" seems to hold, somewhat. After doing a search on completed bids on eBay, here is what I find:

Used D-Lux 3: $450 (ball park)
Used LX2 $200 (ball park)

Assuming a new D-Lux 4 will drop to the price of today's used D-Lux 3 in a few years, and assuming a new LX3 will drop to the price of today's used LX2 in a few years, then we're looking at the following depreciation (yes this is a gross assumption but since no one can see the future, let's just assume the past prices correlates to future prices to some extent):
D-Lux: 680-450 = $230 depreciation (33% loss)
LX: 410-200 = $210 depreciation (51% loss)

So assuming you are willing to sell your old Leica D-Lux or Panasonic LX, will will depreciate to about the same value; even though the Leica costs a lot more than the Panasonic, its higher resale value holds. Leica owners can probably feel good that they're only paying $20 extra for the extra warranty, and the red dot that is useful for getting attention (which could be very good or very bad, depending on your perspective). So in the end, the cost difference, based on the assumptions above, is only $20 plus/minus a bunch of flaws in the assumptions above.

What is your take on the D-Lux 4 vs. LX3?

Pentax K1000

Pentax K1000 is one of the most loved and most common SLRs of all time. Its production run started from 1976 up to 1997, or 21 years of unchanged design! With electronics, motors, plastics, and computerized automation innovations in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, most camera production runs were only between 2-5 years... the time of high-tech obsolescence. Almost no other camera has had a production run as long as the K1000! Primitive as it may be, the K1000 has been a workhorse for people all over the world. It is cheap, mass produced, and the early versions have superb built quality. The early K1000 production was in Japan, then shifted to Hong Kong in the late 70s, to China in later years. Subsequent designs allowed the cameras to be cheaper, but had more plastics and were more prone to problems. Many photographers talk about their love for the K1000 the same way they talked about the Canon AE-1... cheap, reliable, superb. Given how popular and common the K1000 is, it's not a collector's item like the Nikon F or Leica rangefinders.

The pictures of the K1000 + 55mm f/2 shown here has been my workhorse since I was a kid. It was given to my mom, and almost all of the nice pictures from my childhood was taken with this camera. When I was old enough to hold it, it became my camera. It later became the only camera I used in my photography classes, the only camera I used as a school photographer for newspapers, then yearbook, and the only camera I won awards with. It was an amazing workhorse. Later on in my life I did get other lenses (two Sigma zoom K-mount) and while I loved not having to move around constantly using zoom lenses (I became lazier with zoom lenses), most of the picture with those lenses turned out really crappy. I didn't know it at the time, but now I do: in terms of image quality, consumer zoom lenses paled in performance relative to the amazing (but inconvenient) prime lens such as the 55mm f/2. This is one of the reasons why most of my lenses today are heavily biased in prime lenses. IMHO zoom lenses are for people who are lazy photographers who take same looking images over and over again from their chair.

The K1000 is an all manual camera with a built-in lightmeter. Focus, speed, aperture are all manual. It's one of the most popular cameras in film and photography classes because it's cheap, plentiful, and most importantly, it is completely manual operated. Manual cameras force people to think about photography, there is no way to cheat on it, it's a great learning tool, and it's one of the most recommended cameras in beginning film classes.


This camera dates between 1976-1978-- subsequent models were no longer made in Japan to reduce cost. Also subsequent models do not have the Asahi Pentax symbol on the penta-prism.

It's been 21 years since the camera had service, so I thought I would give CLA a try. First I wanted to clean the penta-prism because it was full of junk. But reaching the penta-prism requires disassembly of the top plate since the focusing screen on the K1000 isn't interchangeable. First, disassembly of the ISO/speed dial (which was actually surprisingly complex for a simple camera):


Then disassemply of the count dial:


Keep in mind I was so confident that I didn't need a service manual that I went ahead with disassembly, and here's the result-- I didn't know this was a LEFT HAND screw and stripped it the wrong way. There goes the screw!




Finally, I got to the penta-prism!


I managed to lose two screws, stripped a screw, and screwed up other things too. Moral of the story: no matter how simple the camera is, USE A SERVICE MANUAL!!! Anyways I replaced the mirror damper which looked amazingly good for an ancient camera. Here's a picture of resealing the film seal: