EZ Prints coupon code

Today and Friday only, get $15 off any purchase of $55 or more at EZ Prints

Free shipping on any order over $30.

EZ Prints does a fantastic job on printing panoramas. No cropping! Chose a height 6 to 30 inches and they will print it to whatever length that makes it. 

Use code sale15off55 at checkout. Offer ends 11:59pm EST Feb 1st.

Another Photo Job Idea for You

As photographers, whether amateur or already selling and working as a pro, we are always looking for new ways to make money from our craft.

Today's idea: Realty Photography

Check with realtor offices in your area. Don't e-mail or phone, go in person. Have a price sheet and some sample photos (maybe of your own home).

Keep the prices low enough to get a consideration. With iPhones and P&S cameras in everyone's pockets, you'll need to be able to turn in a superior product at a reasonable price. Be sure to make it worth your while, though.

An idea that can help put hiring you in their mind instead of just doing it themselves is using your lighting knowledge to your advantage for interiors. Your proper technique with the higher quality sensor of your DSLR should make an interior photograph that has much more detail than their pocket tool. Your wider lenses show more of any room without having to use multiple shots.

For exteriors, think of using your panorama mode or program. A realtor isn't just selling a house, it's the entire property. Show that. Tell them instead of simply showing a cropped view or two of the structure, you can give them the entire lot.

Balance out your processing time. If you shoot well in the first place, you won't need much computer time, just a tweak or two. I stay away from color adjustments except for corrections.

Deliver jpegs on CD or DVD. Small enough files so they can insert them into their ad copy with ease.

On your price list, price the job including delivery of a set number of images, list the extra charges for additional images.

If you want to offer image archiving, be sure to spell the terms out clearly. It's also worth more if you are able to offer that. 

Be sure to protect yourself and your clients with proper insurance, licenses, and contracts specific to your area's laws and regulations..

Another photo printing option

 

being a long time Adorama customer, I just now stumbled upon their photo processing site.

I was very pleased with their prices. If you create an account (free, no obligation), you will also get e-mailed to you all their promotions. 

I will be trying them out soon and will post my thoughts of the results.

Remember Portable TVs?

We used to be able to carry around these little things that were about the size of a Walkman, but were actually TVs. That way, if the big game or some major news event were going on and we weren't home to watch it, we could still see it. Problems were that the screens were tiny and the tuning was very touchy.

Digital TV broadcasting has made those old units obsolete, but we do still have portable TV options. And the picture is much, much better now. Easier to tune and watch also. 

Many are also usable as video monitors for our video shoots. A nice option, since so many of us now have DSLRs that capture video in very high quality.

Like this little 7" screen TV. Rechargeable, has USB input, so we aren't limited to over the air content, and has a headphone/earpiece jack so we won't bother others around us. At $104 with free shipping, it's a good deal. Look around that site for the best portable for your own wants and needs.

What happens when a dog gets into the chili

Arf! Arf! Yummy!

Nikon D5200 In Stock!

The Nikon D5200 is in stock and shipping now from Adorama!

This one of the most amazing values for a DSLR I have ever seen. 24.1mp DX sensor, articulated live view screen, built in image processing including HDR, Nikon's EXPEED 3 imaging engine (same as in the current high end D800, D600 and pro D4 cameras, also the D3200), 39 point dynamic AF system... and much more!

Two main things it doesn't have: (1) Focus motor in body (needs lenses with built in motor for full AF), and (2) beefy, heavy duty construction.

With 18-55 kit lens, it's only $896.95 with free shipping.

 

11x14s For Sale at B&B in Artesia!

We've already had success with our small photo frame cards being sold thru local retailers. We are also happy to be getting other photographic work (real estate, events, and portraits) besides sales of our art prints.

We are pleased to let everyone know that our full sized art prints are now being featured at B&B NewsStand in Downtown Artesia, NM.

Our art prints are all 11x14 photos in a 16x20 presentation mat mounting. You can use our mounting for your own framing, change them to whatever mat/mount style you prefer, or even display them as is.

Prints currently at B&B are:

Scratching Bear

Aspen Sky

Water Tower

Prices are $45.00 each + tax.

We will display for sale three at a time, rotating subjects from our  inventory. 

Other prints are available at Steve's Fine Finish online (click here). 

Please note that any prints purchased online will be unmounted, but they are available to be shipped anywhere in the USA. 

Other prints in presentation mounting available locally in Artesia, NM. E-mail us at stevesfinefinish@gmail.com to see available art prints in person.

Some good camera sale prices!

Adorama has some good buys on select Nikon cameras for the next two weeks or so.

Scroll down or click the "read more" link below.

Cloud Use

 

Ever try to e-mail an image file or maybe several image files and you get that error message that your files are too large?

With DSLR sensors growing with every new model, image file sizes are growing, too. When we had 6MB sensors, the largest file we could capture, even in RAW was right about 6MB. Usually a little less. Then, we all jumped to the 10-12MB range. Now, we have consumer model cameras with sensors of 18, 21, 24, and even 36MB. That's a lot of info! 

And if you save your photoshop work in a non-compressed version, your final image size could easily top 100MB!

Cloud storage is a great work around to sharing these large files. Free accounts, either with an iPad purchase or a site like Box.com often give you access to 5GB or more of storage, sometimes limiting each file upload/download to 250MB.

Upload to the cloud, e-mail the link, and watch your friends enjoy your work.

Thinning the Herd

Or, How to choose which picture to spend time on and then display.

New Mexico January Sunset

A few exposures of some interestingly textured clouds at sunset today. No image enhancement at all, just converted NEF to jpeg for web posting. I will adjust light values later, probably won't have to do any color work at all. Such clear, dry skies here allows the colors and textures to really show through.

Enjoy!

A Refurbished Nikon D7000!

Nikon D7000 refurbished at Adorama $749! (click here)

Refurbished products are a great way to get quality items at great prices. Many have 90 day warranties, and most will come with all the items in box just as if it were brand new. 

Rebates do not apply to refurbished items, so shop carefully. If you are looking for a camera+lens kit, a brand new bundle like this one (with 18-200 lens) with instant rebates and other savings added in is a great deal.

 

Help me out by clicking on my links to Adorama, Amazon, or Google when shopping for photo equipment. It won't add anything to your price, but it will help keep our posts coming. Thanks!

Nikon D5200 now available USA

Nikon's newest DSLR is now available for purchase in the USA.

Nikon USA D5200 page (click here) 

B&H is the first store I've found it at.

Preview here, check for full review soon.

As I expected, this new camera is at a very affordable price point. It is also dropping the prices of slightly older Nikon DSLRs. The D3100 and D5100 are being sold $100 to $200 lower than their prices just a few ago weeks back. Even the D7000 has had a price drop, from $300 to $550 off depending on the lens kit purchased (and the store, of course). Other New Items at Adorama!

Exciting news from Nikon, Canon, Sony, Samsung, Olympus, Pentax, and Fuji, all within a few weeks of each other!

Enhancing Snow Pics

Winter can be a fun time for photography. Snow looks so clean, so pure. On the other hand, slush can evoke a feeling of the dirty, grimy city. And then there's the juxtapositions available of things that don't seem to go together. 

Like this pic, a cactus in the snow:

Here is the original RAW image:

What I enhanced: the original image was made with flash to get some shine into the snow crystals, sunlight would have been nice, too, if available. I adjusted the exposure up a little bit to get a brighter looking snow. Cooling the color balance  towards the blue helps make it look whiter. If you work with colors, whether in paints, the darkroom, or on a computer, you will find that in order to get a whiter looking white, we add blue.

For this image, cooling the color balance muddled the green of the cactus, so I sampled the raw file's green and used those values to punch up the green. First, back to normal, then to make it a little bit more green. I try to avoid the unreal color look for most images. Special effects are a different story for a different post.

In between each step, I save my work as a TIFF instead of JPEG. If you keep saving as jpeg files, you will lose image file info at each step because of the compression inherent in jpeg saving. Saving as tiffs avoids the compression, but the files are huge. 50 or more MB for each step in this example. After saving the last tiff for the hard copy print, I then save a duplicate jpeg file. I save at 100% to avoid too much info loss. You can discard the in between step tiffs if you don't have a lot of memory space.

This cactus image was a fun exercise, but it isn't a good enough image to print. It's boring. In a future post, we'll talk about culling our files down to only the images worth printing.