All Charged Up

“All Charged Up”

By: Marc Henderson – MBP staff photographer.

All our modern cameras need batteries…duh, Marc. heh.

Yes’em, I’m here to talk a bit about batteries today. Some of it you might have already have known and some you might not have known.

First of all, treat your batteries with a little respect and kindness and you’ll will probably not miss those snapshots that you’ve wanted to get and more importantly, the ones you weren’t expecting!

Here’s some tips: I recommend nickel-metal hydride rechargeable batteries above the rest. They’re cheap, easy to acquire and with a little care, will last quite a long time. They will pay for themselves many times over alkalines.

If you use your flash often, especially a hot shoe mounted flash, alkalines will get hot and become a bit inefficient as well not being very “Green”.

In the photo below, I have a couple of nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) AA batteries. If you notice on the label, there are numbers followed by mAh. That stands for milliamps per hour. That’s how much current can flow from the battery under demand.

Think about it like this, your kitchen faucet will allow less water to flow when it’s not all the way open and more when it is. A 2000 mAh battery will allow more current flow than a 1800 mAh. What does that mean? Well, if you are using your flash often, the flash has to build up a bit of power from your batteries. A lower mAh number can make you wait a little longer, especially when you need more light produced by the flash! How many times have you or someone else have been taking pictures and the flash didn’t go off? Yep..you might just have lost a bit of the moment and the shot itself!

Also, if you camera uses AA batteries for the camera operation and the built in flash, that can hold things up even more so. The next time you’re battery shopping, try to buy higher mAh rated batteries. AA rechargeables range from 1300 – 2900 mAh.

Another tip is recharging. Try to run your batteries down before you put them in your charger. I recommend not using a rapid charger because the rapid chargers substantially degrade and shorten the batteries’ useable life. The regular “overnight” chargers usually hold more batteries and some even can accommodate AAA and other sizes .

Buy a couple of sets of rechargeables batteries. When one set runs down, you’ll have the second set ready to go. That goes for the specific batteries that a lot of cameras and equipment use besides just AAs.

Getting back to alkalines for a minute. I think it’s a good idea to get a new pack of AA batteries and put them in you camera bag or glove compartment in your car…just in case, to use in a pinch.

An additional note here. The battery in the photo that reads “15 minute rechargeable”, I slow charge those as well. I suspect that’s a bit of marketing there. heh. From my experience, those “15 minute” NiMH batteries seem to degrade and wear out as fast over their lifetime just like regular NiMH batteries often do when constantly recharged with a quick charger.

I geeked out today, huh? heh.

’til next time.

Have fun.

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Cell Phone Camera Tricks

I am going to start this post very irritated. There is a cell phone company that has a commercial that makes erasing unwanted subjects and objects from an image look like magic. In case you have not seen it, a family member is sitting in an audience and watching a graduation ceremony. Someone jumps in front of the graduate and the person taking the picture says no problem, I will just erase it and like magic the person who jumped in front of the graduate is gone. Well first of all that is absurd. If you take one image and someone jumps in front of the subject, that photo is one dimensional so there would not be a graduate behind the person jumping in front. What the cell phone company does not show you is that you have to take several images of the same pose in order for this to work. Firstly, what would be the point if you had other images of that exact pose. If there was only one image of the graduate receiving the diploma and someone jumped in front of that image, there is no way to have an image of the graduate receiving the diploma.

I pay professional graphic artists to remove people from family portraits all summer season. This commercial makes their job seem easy and makes it look like anyone can do this. This is simply not true. It take professionals hours to to this correctly and commercials like this trick the public into thinking it is automatic.

I just want the public to know that these functions are not what they seem. When you see your proofs and there are lots of unwanted objects in your image, Our professional graphic artists are not just clicking a button to remove them. They work very hard and use their professional skills turn your raw image into your perfect family portrait

Now my rant for the day is done.

Here is a video that shows exactly how this works:

http://www.talkandroid.com/guides/samsung-galaxy-s-4-guides/how-to-take-a-drama-shot-and-erase-unwanted-objects-with-the-samsung-galaxy-s-4-camera/

What Photography Means to Us…

The staff at Myrtle Beach Photography looks at thousands and thousands of images just like this almost every day. When you look at this image, you see a beautiful family. When this family looks at this image, they remember what the beach smelled like, what it felt like to walk on the sand with their their children, the giggles when they went to the amusement park, the taste of the seafood dinner where they all sat around a table together. That is what photography is. It is not a disk of images or hair out of place or the money that it cost. It is a special time that families spend together that can never be replaced. It is a feeling inside of you that you want to feel 50 years from now. Our job is so important because we are in the business of precious memories and feelings that we must capture so that those feeling can live on forever.

Should a professional photography studio sell raw unedited images…..

The big question is (drum roll please) Should a photography studio sell raw unedited images? I read many articles, and this one explained it best…..

http://digital-photography-school.com/should-we-ever-sell-raw-unedited-images