photography

Camera and Lens Rentals in St. Louis, MO

For the past few years, when shooting large events in indoor spaces (such as the 2010 Priesthood Ordination Mass), I've rented camera bodies and lenses from BorrowLenses.com, a great online rental store, with pretty much any lens or camera body you'd ever want to use (especially if you're like me and could never justify the cost of purchase!). I highly recommend BorrowLenses (though I have also used and liked LensRentals.com and RentGlass.com).

This year, however, I decided to look into whether it might be more advantageous to use a local camera shop. I found that both Schiller's and Creve Coeur Camera offer camera and lens rentals, but both have more limited selections. However, the lens and camera body I need are usually available at Schiller's, I don't have to pay shipping (pick-up only, but the store is nearby), and I can pay a one-day rental rate for a weekend (most of the events I use the cameras for are on Saturdays).

Ethics in Media Use: Catholics are NOT Excused from Licensing, Copyright

As a Catholic who's worked in many different media fields (newspapers, photography, video production, and web development), I've seen a very wide array of copyright violations, improper media usage, and misuse of licensed assets. This seems to happen more in the non-profit world, where there is little or no budget for acquiring stock images, etc.

I'm extremely generous with my licensing for photos and other media I produce; typically, if someone asks to use a photo of mine, I'll send them a full-resolution JPEG and a license that allows them to use it for any non-profit cause.

However, what really gets under my skin is when I find my photos (especially) used in YouTube videos, for articles, and on posters, when I have never even been asked for permission, and when the photos clearly have 'All rights reserved' or some form of Creative Commons license.

Priest at Prayer
The lifted photo.

Willis Tower, Chicago IL

Willis Tower Perspective

I took this photo from the ground at Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower) in Chicago, IL over the weekend. I also took a bunch of HD videos from the SkyDeck that I'll be putting together into a few minutes of video. Truly a majestic building, and I wonder if we'll ever see something taller in the U.S. Seems our architectural prowess is taking a back seat to the rest of the world lately.

As an aside, if the iPhone 4 takes pictures of this quality, I can't wait to get an iPhone 4S and ditch my Nikon D7000 for many of my trips. While using a 50mm f/1.4 inside in a dim room and still getting nice shots is awesome, having a camera that's always with me and gets 'pretty good' shots is also awesome. I hope to get a 4S soon!

The Magic Keyhole in Rome

During part of a driving tour of ancient Rome this year, our (my wife's and my) tour guide drove us to a small courtyard on one of the hills near the Colosseum. As he parked the car, I noticed two rather serious looking militia with automatic weapons standing in the courtyard—and I hoped they weren't there for me! They had their fingers over the triggers the whole time I was there, though they seemed friendly enough as we passed by on our way to a mysterious door.

The tour guide told us that there was a delightful treat waiting for us; he told us to look into a small keyhole, not a half inch in diameter, and see what we could see. It was obvious many people had touched the door around the keyhole, so it had to be a somewhat popular thing to do.

My own suspicions made me hesitate from putting my eye to the hole—whenever I'm told to do something touristy, like rub the belly of a bronze Billiken statue, I remember what college kids did to such statues—but when my eye came into focus, I saw a brilliant and beautiful sight. A sight that cannot be adequately captured by a camera:

Rome from St. Peter's Dome (Cupola)

Rome from Copula of St. Peters Basilica

This is a panorama shot from the top of St. Peters Basilica in Rome (the Cupola is the Dome).

The image is 9611x2937, and if you view the original, you can see details down to some of the furthest buildings—such as the two small domes of St. Maria Maggiore, the dome of the Pantheon, the 'Wedding Cake' (Monument to Vittorio Emmanuele II), and more! If you zoom in, you can also see the cars driving to and from St. Peter's Square.

I shot this image series on a stormy day in March with my Nikon D7000. I stitched the images together with Adobe Photoshop CS5.

Converting between Exposure Value and LUX

For a recent project, I had to make some rough LUX measurements (LUX is a more international standard for light measurement than candlepower, which is traditionally used in the U.S.) of an environment to help determine what kind of video cameras to use. Problem was, all I had was a spot meter—an incident light meter for film/digital photography, that would give me a reading of, say "1/15 second exposure at f/5.6 and ISO 100."

After looking around online a while, I found a simple method to get a rough estimate of the LUX measurement from these photography measurements.

First, though, it's important to know the distinction between 'incident' light (a measurement of light hitting a certain surface or area) and 'reflected' light (the light you can measure from bouncing off the surface). It's better, for determining EV (Exposure Value) or LUX values, to measure the incident light... and you can only do this accurately with a spot/light meter. (You can estimate the reflected light by taking a picture with your camera, and glancing at the exposure at given settings. If the exposure is decent, look at the meter settings you used—ISO, aperture, and shutter speed).

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