Shooting hoops with the kids

My oldest son loves to play basketball.  Warm afternoons will often find him out on the driveway with the neighbors and a ball.  He just finished his sixth season of YMCA youth basketball with a second place tournament finish.  These games always pit the photographer against the father, as it's very difficult to follow the game while looking through the viewfinder.  Hence, I only shoot a few games each year for posterity, and simply enjoy the others along with the rest of the parents.  I therefore don't get a whole lot of practice photographing these games.  I did, however, shoot their final tournament weekend (three games).  I got stopped by several parents asking how to make their own shots better, so I wanted to share what I've learned.  It's no coincidence that March Madness is in full swing as I write this.

DIY SBIII Soft Box

I've wanted a LumiQuest SBIII soft box for a while now.  The SBIII is a great size for close-in work.  It's about as large as you can get and still use it with the speedlight flash mounted on your camera's hot shoe.  It's big enough to soften the light for tight portraits or product shots.  It collapses down small enough to fit into large camera bags or laptop bags.  It also only costs about $40 online.  Alas, it costs considerably more at our only local camera shop.  When I found myself needing a softbox just like that on short notice, I decided to make my own for a few pennies.  Here's how I did it.

Why format your camera's memory card?

One topic that I've seen come up periodically is how to clear out all the photos from your camera's memory card.  Some say that it's better to simply erase the photos, while others say it's better to completely reformat the card.  I'm a firm believer that unnecessarily reformatting a flash card is a bad idea.  Here's why...

Installing a split image focusing screen

If you play much with manual focus lenses -- or even if you like to manually focus your AF lenses (for macro photography, for instance), you'll realize that the factory focusing screen in new DSLR's really wasn't designed to make this easy.  They're small, dim, and have no focusing aids.  By contrast, older, mechanical cameras have glorious picture window viewfinders, usually with a split image focusing circle surrounded by a microprism ring to help you know when your subject is in focus.  I've installed aftermarket focusing screens in all three of my Canon DSLR bodies, and I've illustrated below how to do so in an 50D.

Old glass: Nikkor non-AI, AI, and AI-S lens differences

As regular readers know, I've come to enjoy using quite a variety of older, manual-focus lenses on my Canon EOS bodies.  This may seem like blasphemy, but among my favorites are some of Nikon's Nikkor lenses.  Of course, Nikon's own DSLR bodies are also able to use older Nikkor lenses... with some caveats.  Before I go into too much detail on specific Nikkor lenses for my "Old Glass" series, I wanted to lay the groundwork on the differences between these Nikon lens mounts and how those differences affect modern DSLR users.

Image resolution for digital photography

Creating the sharpest images possible is a holy grail for many photographers.  It's easy to get the idea that image sharpness comes only -- and always -- from bigger, more expensive gear.  This isn't necessarily true, but even if it were, you may not need better equipment at all depending on your application and processing workflow.  Read on for info on how good is good enough when it comes to image resolution.

Experiences with Canon Factory Service

Having just received another damaged lens back from Canon Factory Service in fine shape, I wanted to give a thumbs up to the folks who work there.  This is the fifth time I've had to deal with them, and the experience has always been as pleasant as you could hope for, given the circumstances of having a broken camera.