Author Archives: Melvin

Third-Party Upstart NP-95 Battery Review from eBay for Fuji X100

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Introduction

The NP-95 battery for the Fuji X100 is good for about 200-300 photos depending on whether you use the LCD or chimp your photos frequently by previewing the LCD. Those who utilize all the power-saving options and stay away from the LCD might be able to push 500 photos under ideal conditions. Therefore, a spare battery for the Fuji X100 is a must-have, but paying almost 10% of the price of the camera ($90) for an FujiFilm OEM NP-95 battery is not reasonable for me.

Other User Reviews

I have read reviews that branded third-party batteries from Maximal Power, Wasabi, and SterlingTEK can be trusted and are reliable. The problem with unbranded third-party batteries is that they are not manufactured to the same specifications or with the same intent for quality as the OEM batteries. The following problems are well-documented about third-party NP-95 batteries:

  • Unbranded. Do you really want to buy batteries from a nameless brand where there is no liability if something goes wrong?
  • Power rating (mAh) is incorrect, usually too high.
  • Batteries are wrapped in a flexible plastic sticker, rather than a hard plastic shell.
  • Batteries overheat during use and expand inside the camera. This could make it get stuck inside the camera and cannot be removed when expanded.
  • Batteries overheat, leak or explode during charge due to lack overcharge prevention circuitry.
  • Batteries are smaller than OEM specifications so they can bounce around inside the camera or won’t charge due to poor contact with the OEM charger.

UpStart Batteries

Unfortunately for Canadians, the Maximal Power batteries have been sold out by Amazon for months; the Wasabi and SterlingTEK batteries are not available in Canada at all. In searching for an alternative, I found a Canadian distributor on eBay and Amazon selling UpStart Batteries (yes, they also ship international, including the US). The seller and UpStart Battery’s website both claim that these batteries are manufactured in the same factory where the OEM batteries are made. In addition, the company also offers a lifetime warranty for peace of mind.

So I took a chance and ordered two NP-95 batteries from the seller’s (bifficus) eBay auction for an inexpensive price of $9 a piece. The shipment arrived within 4 days of paying for them.

First Impressions

The clamshell plastic packaging means that UpStart Batteries uses a more expensive packaging process instead of simply wrapping them in a Ziploc bag or a cardboard box. The clamshell helps protect the battery really nicely and comes with good quality marketing materials. Though the packaging is not as important as the performance of the battery itself, the fact that effort was put into packaging and marketing is a good sign for the product.

When compared side-by-side with the OEM Fuji NP-95 battery, you can see that it is the same size and dimension as the original NP-95. In fact, the plastic shell is 99% identical. The most important thing is that it fits inside the camera identically as the OEM battery and it also sits in the OEM charger perfectly. Therefore, the battery was designed and manufactured to OEM specifications from my visual perspective.

UpStart NP-95 Battery Specifications (Model No: fuj-NP-95)

  • Lithium-Ion (Li-on) battery
  • 3.7 Volts
  • 1800 mAh
  • Digital overcharge prevention circuitry
  • Lifetime warranty

Conclusions

Obviously the battery works in the camera without any issues, or I wouldn’t be posting this positive review. I take comfort in seeing that the website and the packaging are signs of a good quality product. For $9 a battery, there is certainly no harm in giving this brand a chance. By the way, the NP-95 battery is identical in specifications and dimensions to the DB-90 batteries used for Ricoh’s GXR camera.

Christopher posted some great information on batteries, chargers, and X100 power management in the Fuji X-Series forum. Please check out this link if you are looking for third-party chargers: http://www.fujixseries.com/discussion/80/batteries-chargers-power-management-finepix-x100-user-guide/p1

Other Recommended Batteries

Maximal Power NP-95 or DB-90

Wasabi Power NP-95 or DB-90

SterlingTEK NP-95 or DB-90

Portrait Posing and Lighting with Bambi Cantrell

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This past weekend, Bambi Cantrell joined CreativeLIVE to host a Posing Masterclass to teach us aspiring photographers how the professionals are able to capture great photos through the art of posing. The key to Bambi’s success is the fact that she understands that photography is more than having strong technical skills behind the camera. If you caught Bambi’s workshop, you would have learned that her ability to lead and direct her subjects can change a good picture into a great picture.

In today’s post, I will summarize some of my takeaways from that workshop. While I was unable to watch the 3-day workshop in its entirety, the few moments I was able to catch were extremely valuable.

Posing Tips

  1. For an older woman that shows her age around her chin and neckline, you can try hiding her age by asking the subject to stretch her neck and rest it intimately on the shoulders of the bride/family member.
  2. In portrait photography, it is always more pleasing to give highlights and shadows on the same face because they both give dimension and depth to portrait photographs.
  3. If your subject has a large or round face, taking the photograph from the shadow side will give the face a narrowing effect.
  4. If your subject has a long or narrow face, taking the photograph from the highlight side will give the face a rounder effect.
  5. When posing women, try to rotate the subject so that she is being photographed from the side. Also, extend the legs closest to the camera in front of her and give it a little bend to add shape to the subject.
  6. When photographing a subject walking, ask the subject to walk by placing one leg in front of the other, rather than side-by-side like most normal walks. If shooting the subject straight from the front, this style of walking will give the subject a narrower shape. This is why models cross their legs in front of them as they walk down the runway. It makes the models taller, skinnier, and shapely.
  7. Never let the subject’s hands rest down the side. Always give a bend at the elbows to create an opening, also known as a “light trap”. The pocket of light trapped in that area gives the subject dimension, depth, shape, and context.

Lighting Tips

  1. In addition to the key light (which is either natural like the sun or artificial like strobes), Bambi uses a 60″ reflector to add in fill-light. Instead of reflecting the primary light source directly back at the subject, Bambi also prefers to skim the light by barely kissing the reflected light against the subject. This allows the fill-light to be less flat.
  2. When using artificial light, do not give more than one primary light source to the subject. The idea of a primary light source is to reproduce the look provided by the sun (one primary light source). The secondary light source should be at least 50% or less powerful than the primary light source. The overall result is a smoother look on the subject’s face.
  3. In weddings where many things are bright white, introducing shadows to the subject brings out the details. In the example of a white wedding cake, you want the light source to come in from the side instead of head-on from the camera.
  4. When photographing dark objects such as dark cars or darker skinned subjects, it is the highlights that give details to dark objects. So for dark objects, you want a stronger highlight shown on the subject to add dimension.
  5. When composing a shot, remember that the eyes always focus towards anything brighter in the frame. This means if there are many bright objects in your photograph, each of those bright objects will be competing for attention. For example, two women in white dresses on the dance floor in a sea of women with black outfits.

This is all I remember from the workshop. If you have never participated in a CreativeLIVE workshop before, what this company does is bring in renowned photographers from all around the world to teach a workshop. The workshops are free if you watch it live on air. If you miss the first airing, you can also catch it later in the same day. If you completely miss the workshop, the entire workshop can be purchased for $149. I encourage everybody to catch at least one of the LIVE workshops to see what the fuss is all about.

Books Options

The following books on Amazon contain many of the same posing techniques taught in Bambi Cantrell’s workshop on CreativeLIVE. The first book is instructional to the art of posing, while the next two books give you 500 example poses for both women and men. Notice by the cover photos how the subjects are turned to the camera and also notice the highlights and shadows on the face giving it dimension.

Tutorial: 2-Minute Photoshop Tools for Better Portraits

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While I have been using Adobe Photoshop for over 15 years doing mostly non-portrait editing work, I have become lazy in portrait photography due to Adobe Photoshop Lightroom allowing me to achieve 95% of what I need for amazing photos. My typical portrait workflow ends in Lightroom once the exposure and color tones are to my liking. I have not bothered to go in and cleanup facial features using Photoshop for many years now.

Just recently, I discovered creativeLIVE classrooms through the local Edmonton photography Meetup group. Today, I watched 30 minutes of glamor photography live with Sue Bryce and was blown away by the simplicity of her workflow in Photoshop itself. In her classroom, she predominantly used three tools in Photoshop for 90% of her workflow, which allowed her to edit most photos in just under 2 minutes. I quickly tried that technique myself on a photo taken yesterday.

The main tools used in her workshop were as follows (with her settings shown) and their use is explained further later in this post:

  1. Clone Stamp Tool: 100% Opacity, 10 to 20% Flow
  2. Dodge / Burn Tool: 50% Exposure
  3. Brush Tool: 100% Opacity, 1% Flow
  4. Eraser Tool: 100% Opacity, 10% Flow

Clone Stamp Tool

Cloning was used to take away wrinkles and other unsightly blemishes from the skin. It is pretty straight forward to use the tool by following the flow of light on the face. However, care must be taken so that the shape and features of the face are not drastically altered when using this tool. In a more extreme case, this tool could also be used to soften many of wrinkles or freckles on the model. The goal here is not to hide or eliminate these distinguishing features, but rather, to soften them so as to take attention away from them.

Dodge / Burn Tool

Mostly used to bring some pop into the eyes and makeup, this tool was used to make the whites of the eyes whiter and the color in the cornea brighter and more captivating. If the model is wearing eye-liner, then the burn tool could be used to darken those eye lines as well.

Brush Tool

With a lime or light green swatch, the brush tool was used by Sue to neutralize the reds in the eyes and any other areas where reds are undesirable. There are many other more complex ways to achieve this in Photoshop, but Sue used her background in photo touch-ups and color mixing to do this.

Warp Tool

The warp tool was used to adjust body shape and feature lines. While many fashion and portrait photographers have used Photoshop’s Liquify tool, Sue showed a technique where the area to be transformed is selected, copied to a new layer, and warped to tweak the shape. Sue used this feature many times to make the contour of the arms more pleasing, especially when the model’s pose made the arm look larger than it actually was. Once warped, Sue looked for any unsightly edges and feathered it in with the layer below by using the eraser tool.

Before & After

The before and after photo (above) showing the results of using just some of the techniques in the Creative Live classroom. This editing took literally 30 seconds from start to finish, but look at how much more pleasing the results are. Below are larger photos of the work I did so that you can pixel-peep.

In the photo below, you will see that:

  1. The ridges and blemishes are removed from the face.
  2. The eyes are clearer. Redness has been removed.
  3. The light coverage is balanced on both sides of the face.

Conclusions

  1. You don’t have to spend hours editing photos to make it more pleasing.
  2. creativeLIVE.com … check it out.

Winter Mall-Walking

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In Edmonton, when the weather is too cold outside to do outdoor activities, sometimes the best resource we have is one of the largest malls in the world. This “used” to be the largest mall in the world, but no more. We usually spend the weekend circling the mall on both levels to get some exercise in.

Sometimes, we wish that this scene was from a tropical location in warm weather, instead of inside a concrete mall. Sure would be nice to go fishing right now in the warm sun. Fortunately, we are only a few more weeks away from summer.

Tutorial: How to photograph t-shirts.

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After my successful Bathroom Products Photography attempt, I was thinking of the next series of photos I could take using items found around the house. I needed a subject that would be colorful and bring lots of contrast to the photo. I decided that photographing my colorful t-shirts would give me exactly what I needed. So I went ahead and started planning how to do this to achieve a seamless white background. Coincidentally, a local business contacted me at the same time about wanting this type of commercial product photography. So I took the job to deliver 52 photos of t-shirts (front/back, male/female, six colors, four designs). Yeah, that is A LOT of shirts. Total time for the job including setup and post-production was 6 hours.

The picture above shows my setup with two light sources that was required to achieve the effect I was going for. The shoot-through umbrella was used to produce a soft light on the t-shirt, while the reflective umbrella was used to give the t-shirt harsh shadows along the outside edge. I felt that the harsh shadows would give the t-shirts a little bit of depth and help separate it from the seamless white background, which was especially important when dealing with the white t-shirts.

The backdrop was two layers of bed sheet covers purchased from Zellers at 140 and 180 thread count, respectively. The sheet covers were stretched over our old wooden dining table and then held in place with thumbtacks. I ensured that there were no wrinkles on the sheets that would introduce ugly shadows into my final photo. On hindsight, I could have used a nylon shower curtain instead which would have been easier to manage.

Strobist information:

I think this shoot was a success. In addition to the seamless white backgrounds, the client also requested magazine-style layout of 4 popular t-shirts on a 15% gray background. Except for the magazine style layouts being created in Photoshop, the rest of the images were all processed in Lightroom.

All photos Copyright by Nautinyce Clothing Inc. who commissioned this project.

Bathroom Photography. No More Excuses.

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I hear hobby / amateur / wannabe-pro photographers make excuses all the time that they need to go out and shoot more to improve their skills. You do not have to leave your warm (or cool house depending on where you live) to take great photos.

Today, I was walking around the house looking at places I have not taken a photo yet. That was when the bathroom idea came to mind. The above commercial, magazine-type shot was taken right inside my bathroom by pulling some of my used products to participate in this shoot.

So the next time you are looking for ideas, go visit your bathroom first. You might be surprised with what you find in there. If you don’t see anything you like in there, bring some items from your kitchen into the bathroom. The backdrop is perfect for this kind of work.

Strobist Info:

For your reference, here is what the original photo looked like straight out of camera before I cleaned up the not-so-white areas and added marketing text. I posted this shot to show you that I did not have to do a lot of editing to the photo. Although, I will remember to remove other distractions from the background in the future like the shaving cream bottle to the left of the frame. Ooops!

Forget Your Subject. Photograph Backgrounds.

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What the heck? Yes, you heard me. Forget your subject, it is not the silver bullet that makes your photos amazing. A good subject paired with a great background is what really establishes the scene and mood of your photos. Heck, the background could even be considered the key part of your story, the plot if you will.

When I am out on a photography meetup, I notice most of my meetup friends looking for a great subject to photograph. I don’t blame them and there’s nothing wrong with that approach. But when you are outside with a group of 20 photographers, you can bet that many will shoot the same interesting subject. If one photographer points at something, 5 others will point at it at some point.

However, when I am out shooting, I look for the background first. Why? Because the background fills 100% of your frame and has a greater presence in your photo. Once you found the background that is truly stunning, you can easily find something in the foreground to add a subject.

There are many times when I am out on a mission to take a great photo, I find that there is nothing interesting to photograph. That is because I am looking for a subject, not a background. And what if there is nothing in the foreground to incorporate into your photo? Well, just improvise. Use your hands or a twig on the ground. I make it a habit of bringing with me 3-inch tall action figures which I can incorporate into the scene. They are cheap, inexpensive and can be found anywhere. Sometimes, they even add a comical relief to your photos (as shown above).

So the next time you are out shooting, look for a background and add a subject later. You can even make a subject into the background by playing with a shallow depth of field (DOF) as shown above.

Question: Where is your camera?

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Is it beside you, easily accessible? Is the battery charged? Is your memory card empty?

I am a photographer that loves to be ready as you never know when the moment will strike where you need your camera. It doesn’t matter what camera you pick up, as long as the moment is special, capturing it with any type of camera is better than none at all. In a related post, I talked about reaching for the nearest camera, which is the best tool you could have at the moment.

A special moment hits in split seconds. When you recognize something worth capturing, it takes only split seconds for that moment to erode. When you reach for the closest camera, turn it on and take the shot. Don’t worry about settings or exposure or even focus. It takes merely 2 seconds for the camera to boot up and fire the first shot. After that, you can look at your settings and adjust it for the situation as needed. Too many times, people worry about their settings and by the time they are done fiddling with their camera, the moment is lost. You never know when a photographic opportunity awaits you.

My favorite go-to camera is the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5 10.1 MP Digital Camera with 3.8x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom and 3.0-Inch LCD – In WHITE of course!. Most of my photos are taken with it because it takes no time to boot up and the photos taken by its “Intelligent Auto (iA)” mode is spot on, sharp, dynamically bright, and amazing overall.