I just started experimenting with video on my 5DmkII and it’s been frustrating. The camera repeatedly locks up during recording. It says the buffer is full, flashes a “Busy” message on the status LCD, and won’t power down. The only solution is to remove the battery and lose the video that was recording. Not ideal.

It took me a while but I finally came across this blog post that describes the problem and solution.

Tip: Canon 5D MarkII - Video Locks Up/Freezing (Solution)

I meet new photographers all the time at various photography meetings, gatherings, and shoots. We often look over each other’s portfolios and they will often ask how long I’ve been shooting and are shocked with I say 18 months thinking it must have been years. They then ask how I got as good as I did in such a short time. I don’t think I’m all that good, but I’m better than average and I have improved a great deal in a short time.  I still have a long way to go and am constantly trying to improve. But since it keeps getting asked I thought I would share what I have done to get to were I am today. I’ll leave that up to you to decide where I am. 

- Listen to photography podcasts. I like Tips From The Top Floor (TFTTF) but there are dozens of good ones out there. TFTTF is a short podcast and it gives a single tip every show. I also listen to  This Week in Photography. They have some tips but it’s more about news in the photo industry.

- The best thing I ever did was join DPChallenge.com, they hold weekly competitions where they put out a theme and you have a week to go shoot that theme. What was so great about it is they give good, critical feedback. They will tell you exactly what you did wrong and are more than willing to tell you how to fix it. I learned more in the first 8 weeks there than I had the previous 6 months.

- Critique other people’s photos. It’s OK that you don’t know anything about critiquing just write down what you feel about it, or what catches your eye. You will very quickly learn what works and what doesn’t in a photo and can then apply these to your photos. Photography-on-the-Net and DPChallenge are both excellent places to critique others work, because people are asking for good harsh critique.

- Take a workshop at a local camera store. Most stores have a class that will get you up to speed on the basics for a very low cost. My goal is to go to at least one photo workshop a year.

- Shoot with others. Go to Meetup.com and find photography groups in your area, or join the local camera club. Every time I shoot with someone else I learn something new.

So doing the above and applying myself to photography helped me to improve significantly over 18 months. As I said above I still have a long way to go and I’m looking forward to the journey.

This is my latest DIY project. These stands hold a sheet of foam core board vertically. I use foam core a lot in my photography, to act as a reflector, a background, or a gobi. In the past I have used a variety of methods for holding the foam core boards in place such as taping them to light stands or leaning them up against bricks or boxes. But this did not often work well as the boards tended to move and fall over.

So to the solve the problem I devised these stands. I made two sizes. The large is made of wood and is designed to hold large 4′x8′ sheets of foam core. The smaller ones are cut out of acrylic and can easily hold a 3′x4′ sheet of foam core. The slot is cut so it is exactly the size of the foam core thickness. This provides a tight fit, and I can actually pickup the foam core from the top and the stands stay in place.

So this is a simple, yet effective solution to my problem. If you would like to make your own stands I have plans available for the acrylic version here. Plans for the larger wood version will be coming soon (or you can probably figure out yourself).

For those of you who would like the stands but don’t have the tools to make your own, I am also selling them on my web site FoamCoreStands.com

Here is a photo of the small acrylic version

I participate in a weekly photo challenge on the site DPChallenge. Besides taking the photo, one of the challenges I often face is getting photo to be the right file size for submission (either 150K or 200K depending upon the compeition). Photoshop has a quality slider when using Save for Web, and a readout of the file size on the status bar that updates as I move the slider, but I’ve found it to not be entirely accurate. It can be a few K off, so even though it says my file will be 149K it might come out at 152K instead. I often have to save the file several times to get the file size correct.

Today I came across this great tip on Planet Photoshop blog.  It turns out that the option called Optimize to File Size which solves this problem for me.

I’m a happy man

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Alvin-1434

Originally uploaded by Moose408

Finally catching up on a backlog of photos that need processing. Got several up from the August Model Mixer. There were 3 models there and I improved somewhat on the lighting from the previous shoot. Still need to practice.

More Model Mixer photos at
http://www.craigcolvin.com/photos/model_mixer

Packing for Photoshop World in Las Vegas. Looking forward to 4 days of nothing but Photoshop (alright perhaps a little gambling as well). Hopefully I’ll learn a few tips that will help me get through the backlog of photos I’ve taken over the past month. I still have photos to process from the Tips From The Top Floor workshop, Hawaii, Camping in Northern CA, and another model shoot a few days ago.Â

Warnings from the Gutter

After some great Pakistani food on Saturday night a group of the Tips From The Top Floor Workshop participants went to the Apple Store to record “Warnings from the Gutter” which was then inserted into the Tips From The Top Floor feed. You can listen to the podcast here

Kingsley

I have spent the last 4 days at the Tips From The Top Floor (TFTTF)Workshop in San Francisco. The workshop is put on by Chris Marquardt who produces the Tips From The Top Floor Podcast about all things photography.

It was a great workshop, with 4 days of shooting photos, hanging out with great people and improving my skills.

Photos from all the workshop participants (not just mine) can be found on flickr using the keyword tfttf2008sf

I bought a new lens the Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS. I went back and forth on whether to get this lens or go for the 24-70mm f/2.8L. The 24-70mm is the flagship lens and I knew I couldn’t go wrong with it, but also wanted something a little wider. The Canon rebate pushed me in the direction of the 17-55mm and I must say I’ve been very happy with the results. I took it on an photo outing yesterday and was very thankful for the 17mm focal length. I’ll post some photos with the lens later today.

I was invited to a Model Mixer this past weekend at a local studio. There were 9 models and 4 photographers and I ended up spending 7 hours and shooting over 1200 photos. It was a lot of fun and I learned a lot. The models were great, some were very experienced, others it was their first modeling experience. 

See the photos from the shoot here.