Hello readers. I’m a bit scattered this time and thought that I would share some general tips that I have learned over the years.

Never Shoot While Wearing Sunglasses

When it’s bright outside we wear sunglasses. If you remember old Canadian music and your name is Corey Hart, you also wear your sunglasses at night. If you are Billy Gibbons, you wear them all the time. We should not wear sunglasses while making photos because we are seeing the light filtered through the sunglasses that is not an accurate representation of the scene. We make an image, chimp the LCD and say cool, then we get back to editing and wonder what the hell went wrong. Then we post questions about the camera, the lens, the software when the real problem was perched on your nose. Solve the problem, no sunglasses.

Reflective or Glow in the Dark Tape on the Tripod legs

If you do any kind of low light photography, there is a tripod likely involved. Most tripod leg sets are matte finished and dark. Put some reflective or reflective glow tape around the legs where the leg adjusters are. You will be less likely to trip over things and it will be easier to adjust the tripod in the dark without a flashlight. It’s cheap and effective.

Spare Camera Batteries

If you carry a spare battery for your camera, keep it in an inner pocket close to your body. Batteries do not like being cold and they really don’t like being wet. Protect your investment in expensive batteries this way and your cold and damp shooting will be one step more effective.

Clean Your Feet

More for tripods. We put our tripods in all manner of places. We get dirt, muck, sand, water and all manner of crap on the feet and the lower parts of the legs. Very often a tripod foot may offer a screw mount between a rubber foot that can be screwed up to reveal a ground spike. After your shoot and you have finished wiping down your cameras and lenses, take the tripod to the sink and wash its feet in fresh water. Then dry the legs and feet, don’t leave them wet. Next time you need to manipulate the feet or lower legs they will not be all gummed up.

Bag It

If you are shooting in the rain, or in high humidity, or when it’s cold, keep a couple of clear thick plastic bags with you. A heavy clear plastic bag is good protection because water resistant does not mean waterproof and unless your kit is in a dive housing, it’s not waterproof. If there is enough humidity to make you damp, there’s enough to make your camera damp. Putting it in a clear bag, with a hole cut for the front of the lens gaffer taped in place is a good idea. When going from warm to cold or cold to warm, seal your camera and lens in a clear plastic bag and let it come to the external temperature. Any condensation that forms, happens on the outside of the bag, not on the outside of the camera. You can spend money on camera store kit with drawstring closures, but the price for one is the same as the price for a box of clear garbage bags that can also be used to keep you free from wet and muddy if you have to get down in challenging conditions. Let the spec mongers rant about weather protection. You can spend your time shooting.

Ground Spikes are there for a reason

If your tripod’s feet can reveal ground spikes use them when you are outside. Rubber feet are made for indoor work. Rubber slides on damp grass or fall leaves and is not a good choice for outdoors in general. If your tripod has ground spike options, use them.

Eyecups

We all have a dominant eye. The eyecups that come with cameras are designed for all and serve none particularly well. You know which eye is dominant and a good extended eyecup like the ones from Hoodman will rotate for whichever eye that you use. They block out extraneous light from the viewfinder and also provide a bumper between your eyeball and the camera. If you wear prescription glasses, there are aftermarket eyecups built specifically for eyeglass wearers. But remember, no sunglasses

Lens Hoods

Use them. Always. Nothing more to discuss on this topic. There is really no good reason not to use a lens hood. Except for when you use my polarizer tip that comes later

Tripod on a Slope

If you are using a tripod on a slope, always put two legs on the downslope side and only one leg, on the upslope side. Set the leg lengths so the head mounting plate is properly level. Failing to do this can result in your tripod going ass over teakettle down the hill and taking your camera with it.

Learn to Shoot with Both Eyes Open

Not only does this improve your balance, it also improves your situational awareness so you are less likely to trip or fall or get hit by the silent electric car being driven by the idiot. This is particularly helpful if you are tracking moving subjects because your brain is built to do this.

Check Your Grip

It’s easy to get sloppy in your grip. The left hand goes under the lens and as much as possible, the left forearm stays vertical. All the grip strength is in the left hand. The right hand needs to be on the camera but not in a crush grip otherwise you give away all your fine motor skills which are important for tasks like squeezing the shutter

Long Lens with Tripod Mount Handheld

Take a couple of seconds to rotate the tripod mount out of the way if you are shooting your long lens handheld. You want as much of your hand on the lens as possible, not holding onto a small piece of metal. That device is called a tripod mount for a reason, it’s not a hand mount.

Shoot Video in Manual Mode

Video is a different critter. The shutter speed defines the frame rate. The aperture defines the depth of field so for the most part, you make a decision and leave them alone for a clip or sequence of clips. The best way to prevent inadvertent changes is to put the camera in manual mode. The ISO setting controls the gain or brightness so its the only control that you should be varying as part of your video shoot

Always Record Audio in Camera When Shooting Video

In camera audio sounds like crap but is a perfect quick tool to use to synchronize your externally recorded audio to the video. The in camera audio is called a scratch track. Once you have synced your good audio to the video, just mute the camera audio track.

Get an L Plate

Flipping the camera from horizontal to vertical on a tripod is a pain. Some heads make it difficult and all of them throw the camera to on site and out of the line of greatest support when in vertical mode. An L Plate mounts to your camera and as any decent tripod head these days uses an Arca Swiss style dovetail mount, the L Plate which is machined with said dovetail makes it very fast to mount the camera to the head in either horizontal or vertical orientation while keeping the weight of the camera positioned correctly on the tripod

Use Your Smartphone

You see a scene that you want to make photographs of. Before you get all wrapped up in setting up kit and settings, grab a snapshot with your smartphone. This automatically gives you the GPS location of where you were, produces a decent overall JPEG and then use the built in voice recorder to make a note for yourself on why you are making the photograph in the first place. What caught your eye, how were you feeling, all the non-techy stuff that drives the emotion of the image. Odds are excellent that you won’t remember precisely your feelings when you go to process days or weeks later. This requires discipline but you are committed to your art, right?

Save Money by Not Buying Super Fast Lenses

No one other than your ego and other photographers who are more into gear than photography care in the least about how fast your lens is. If you buy an f/1.2 lens and never shoot at f/1.2 you spent money pointlessly. You can spend $2500 for an 85mm f/1.2 or around $500 for an 85mm f/2.0 So for the $2000 more, how many more images are you going to make with the lens wide open? Really?

Bokeh is Marketing Bafflegab

Bokeh specifically means the appearance of out of focus highlights. Thus a photograph with portions that are selectively out of focus but with no highlights has no bokeh. Bokeh is also defined by the number of blades in the aperture and how closely that out of focus highlight is circular. If the out of focus highlight looks circular, the image can be said to have nice bokeh. If the out of focus highlight looks like a hexagon or an octagon, then the image has meh bokeh. To get more blades, you spend more on the lens. Maybe. Check the specs for a lens. 9 blades or more will give pleasing bokeh. A 50mm f/1.8 can deliver very pleasing bokeh if you do your job. If you don’t do your part, all the money in the world will not make pleasing bokeh.

Choose Straps and Bags that make camera access fast

Photography is often about timing. If you have to struggle to get your camera to your eye from wherever it is right now, you are on the bad side of the timing curve. Keep it simple. The more complicated the carry system, the greater the odds that you will miss a shot. Holsters, clips, chest rigs and backpacks are ok for transport and mostly a hindrance when it comes time to shoot. Get a good strap that works for you, that is very fast and consider a hand strap on your camera so you can keep your camera where it should be for making images. In your hand.

Use a Polarizing Filter

You cannot fake out a polarizing filter in post processing. If you go outside and you can see the sun, put the polarizer on and LEAVE it on. As a polarizer only has a ninety degree operational range, even if you forget that it is there, or have to snap shoot, your odds of filtering out polarized light improve dramatically. The only downside is that the presence of the filter is going to impact your use of the lens hood. A polarizer adds no value on overcast days, but it also doesn’t hurt. Also you can still have reflective subjects even when there is no direct sun, such as on water, or on wet foliage. Or snow. You get the picture. Pun intended.

And There are More….

But not today. If you find these tips or any one of them useful, please say so in the comments section. Please consider subscribing so you get notification of new content. Thanks for reading and until next time, peace.