A friend of mine is going on an extended backpacking trip, and space is already tight, so he approached me to see if I had any ideas on how he should go about running his SLR for an extended period of time without being able to charge or re-charge.  A couple ideas came to mind:

1.  First, just buy a battery for each day – not the cheapest route, but the easiest way to ensure power is had all along.

2.  Second, what about renting these accessories?  If he has two of his own, then renting 5 would run half the cost…

3.  Another option was to get a battery grip.  Here he could use his own for as long as possible, then switch to disposable AA batteries…

4.  Last but not least, solar power…I’ve considered these and even saw them in REI – they were a tad expensive and I am not even sure how one would go about connecting these to an AC charger.  You’d need the solar panel, then a male USB/AC converter, then the charger.  And the other factor would be how much of a charge you could get off that…in addition to weather concerns.  What if it’s not all that sunny?

Given the options, my final recommendation was to go with option 3.  It’d be a sound investment, would actually make the gear easier to hold on to, and often more stable than going w/out.  He agreed and will likely buy based on my recommendation.  It’s always a good feeling to be helpful to others, but before he does, I asked him to hold off for a day or two if possible, because I wanted to throw the question out to the readership…what ideas does the audience have for my friend?

Some of the rental outfits I’ve pointed him to include:

• Borrow Lenses
• Rent Glass
• Lens Proto Go
• Lens Rentals

I’ve not had the benefit of experience with any of these vendors as we have a local camera rental shop that gives pretty good rates, so I always rent local from them.  Anyone have any experience with the national rental outfits?  Would really be helpful to get some external input here as he is leaving soon on his trip and could use some direction.  Sound off with your ideas!

So, if you are looking at a scene from camera view 1, and you want the sharpness of your image (your viewers attention) to focus on something at point B, it’s easy to do this.  Simply drop your aperture wide open and the depth of field will throw points A and C out of focus naturally.  Pretty easy, no photo editing, no trickery or anything involved – the mechanics of apertures and depth of field handle this for you.

Well, take a moment to consider things from the viewpoint of Camera Two.

You still want the focus to be at point B, but because both A and C are also positioned relative to the camera at the same place (they are not in front of or behind the point of focus, they are merely off to the sides of the point of focus), dropping your aperture wide open will not throw A and B out of focus – they still there, just as sharp as point B.  Well, up until now, you’ve always had to take images taken under situation 2 and bring them into image editing software to blur, dodge, burn, and otherwise minimize the attention that points A and C got from the viewer eye.

Well, what the Lensbaby does, through it’s unique combination of lens elements that include an actual curved optic and a curved field of focus, giving you a round spot of focus, so that it allows you to set point B as a single point of focus, so that A and C will fall off in sharpness, bringing the viewer back to your desired point of what to look at.  (The eye will almost always naturally look for sharpness and light in images…)

So now, dodging, burning, blurring and other darkroom and software techniques are no longer needed!  The Lensbaby allows you to create these visions in camera, not afterward in post processing.  What does this mean for you?  More time shooting, and less time photo editing!  Who doesn’t want that?

The coolest part of the new partnership with Lensbaby is that they’re also offering anyone reading the blog or listening to the show an opportunity to get a 0.6x wide-angle/macro conversion lens for the Composer lens totally free! Imagine taking your creative visions to a whole new level with the Composer lens from Lensbaby – and then add the macro capabilities, and literally, the sky is the limit!  Your creativity knows no boundaries with lens-work like this!  So, if you are looking at adding the Composer lens to your gear bag (and you can purchase it from any retailer), then look no further, because from here you can get a free 0.6x wide-angle/macro-conversion lens from Lensbaby as a way of saying thanks.

Expanded creativity + Free gear = lots of fun

Sounds like a perfect equation for me!  So, stop on over to the partner website they made just for Canon Blogger listeners and readers to get your free lens today.  This is a limited time offer, and I am not sure when it will end, but the Composer and the companion 0.6x wide-angle/macro conversion lens (which you can get for free) would have been very useful this last weekend on the Eldorado shoot.  Remember the rock fissure?  Imagine if I had a chance to fade the DOF out away from the rock completely?  What about the rear window reflection?  Imagine if I could have faded the front window part out of focus completely?  Both of these shots might have ended up in my portfolio!  As they are, I’ve got two snaps that while interesting, will likely never get added to the print portfolio…

Does this help clarify how the Lensbaby works and what it does?  I know it’s a very simplified version, and the folks at Lensbaby have a lot more resources to help explain it than I do so be sure to visit their partner landing page here to learn more about it!  If you’d like to see some samples of the lens at work, (my lens hasn’t arrived yet) make sure to stop over to the gallery page here too!  Got some pics you’d like to share?   Link them here in the comments section (or even share then with the good folks at Lensbaby – they like to hear feedback from the field so share your thoughts and shots with them too!)  Finally, to learn all the details about this promotional offer, stop over to the page the folks at Personal Life Media have set up here.

If you do have pics and thoughts to share here, feel free as always to drop me an email, and you could be on the show!    For those interested in buying the composer, make sure to visit this link here to get the free macro conversion lens!  Questions, comments, feedback and ideas are welcome at my email address (as always) is jason <at> canonblogger <dot> com!

Check them out today – then get back out and keep on shooting!  Hope all your shots are good ones and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!

First a little background – the reason why we are losing part of the picture is because we are changing the aspect ratio.  What is aspect ratio?  Simply enough, it’s the relative size of the long side of the picture to the short side.  Aspect ratios are often referred to by their lowest common factor.  So, a 4×6 print uses a 3:2 aspect ratio.  (Aspect ratios usually are stated with the larger of the numbers coming first…)  An 8×10 has an aspect ratio of 5:4.  Want to print a 16×20?  Guess what – it’s got an aspect ratio of 5:4 too!  Here are some of the most common aspect ratios that you see in photography:

4:3 – Point and Shoot Cameras
3:2 – 35mm Film cameras and most APS-C sensor cameras (SLR’s)
1.81:1 – APS-H Mode (High Def)
3:1 – APS-P (Panoramic)

So, with an SLR camera, since your sensor approximates an aspect ratio of 3:2, getting an 8×10 print means you need to keep your subject matter in from the edges because when you crop to the new ratio, at least one of those edges (and a little of the other) will be lost from the crop.  So, having now explained  “why”, let’s now look at the “how” (as in how to fix it!) in the delayed tutorial for the week:

Web Version (Flash):  Re-framing your pictures