I've been reading a lot more about composition since writing my last column, since it's such a complex topic that's not very easy to verbalize. This has me going through old photo libraries, looking at ones that catch my eye, and wondering why a particular photo stands out. For example, one photo I really liked from last year is from New York Maker Faire, of the competitors in the Power Racing Series. Staring at a favorite photo you've taken to scrutinize its composition can be a maddening exercise, but those illuminating moments when you discover something new make the effort very worthwhile. And one of the things I'm becoming more aware of is the use of the ground in photography.

In reading up on composition, I came across several articles about the work of legendary French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson. Cartier-Bresson is well known as the father of photojournalism and street photography, and New York-based photographer Adam Marelli has written some excellent analyses of Cartier-Bresson's compositional techniques. Among those tricks he mastered was the Figure-to-Ground relationship, a concept practiced in painting. Not surprising, since Cartier-Bresson began his career as an oil painter before adopting photography.

Let's first define our terms. In thinking about the relationship between Figure and Ground, the Figure represents the subject of a photograph. This can be a person, an animal, or even a smartphone. It's the most important object in the photograph--everything else serves to accentuate it or call attention to it. And that "everything else" is what's referred to as the Ground. The Ground is defined as everything that's not the Figure (or Figures), and the compositional relationship between those elements is the magic sauce that makes a photo stand out. The Ground of a photograph, as you can surmise, is actually short for background--but not necessarily in the spatial sense, since technically your subject could be in the focus in the background of a scene.

But while the real world exists in three dimensions, a photographic image is flat. And in a two-dimensional plane, there is no "background" and "foreground" in the spatial sense. So when I look through a viewfinder to compose an image, my mind has to "flatten" the scene in front of me, much like the flattening layers of a Photoshop file into one single image. In photography and painting, the physical ground becomes the background.

I've created a simple diorama to illustrate this concept:

Here's a little behind-the-scenes detail for you. For this week's videos with Chris Hadfield (you've seen them by now, right?), Chris actually played cameraman himself for all the footage shot on the ISS. This was likely the case for his now-famous Space Oddity music video, which makes the feat that much more impressive. The video clips the Canadian Space Agency relayed to us were 720p video shot from on a Nikon DSLR, and while we were reviewing the footage, we noticed speckles of static white pixels throughout the video. It looked like dead pixels on our monitors, but they were actually damaged pixels on the ISS cameras!

The prosumer-grade cameras used on the International Space Station aren't heavily modified for use in space (they are certified through a rigorous testing process), so they actually aren't shielded from the cosmic radiation that exists both outside and inside the station. So when video is being recorded and the DSLR's mirror is flipped up, high-energy particles slam into the digital sensor and damage it permanently. According to astronaut Rex Walheim of STS-135, cameras that are taken on space walks may suffer severe radiation damage on sensor pixels. NASA evaluates the damage and decides whether or not to retire that camera for use.

Cosmic radiation (primarily gamma rays) are a well-known phenomenon for NASA and its astronauts. Some astronauts, including Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, have even reported seeing streaks of light that were determined to be cosmic rays zipping past their eyes. The most prolific astronaut photographer, Don Pettit, described the rays' effects on ISS equipment on his blog:

"Free from the protection offered by the atmosphere, cosmic rays bombard us within Space Station, penetrating the hull almost as if it was not there. They zap everything inside, causing such mischief as locking up our laptop computers and knocking pixels out of whack in our cameras. The computers recover with a reboot; the cameras suffer permanent damage. After about a year, the images they produce look like they are covered with electronic snow. Cosmic rays contribute most of the radiation dose received by Space Station crews. We have defined lifetime limits, after which you fly a desk for the rest of your career. No one has reached that dose level yet."

So rewatch our videos with Chris Hadfield and see if you can catch those speckles of damaged pixels--it's just another consideration that astronauts have to be mindful about when living on orbit!

Big day for Yahoo. Not only did Marissa Mayer announce the acquisition of Tumblr this morning, but Flickr has gone through its biggest revamp since the internet petitioned Mayer to save the photo service. The new Flickr site launched today, along with a new Android app with the same photo-centric interface (and full-resolution uploading capabilities) as its well-received iOS counterpart. Visit Flickr starting today and you'll see a redesigned front-page photostream of activity from friends, user landing pages that are reminiscent of Facebook and Instagram's profiles (with even bigger photos), and large text letting you know that you now have 1TB of free storage. Yup, that's terabyte with a T. But as Will is quick to point out, this ad-driven service may be a downgrade for existing Pro Flickr users who have been paying $25 a year for unlimited storage and no ads. So let's break down the features of the new free Flickr account and how it compares to the old free and Pro accounts.

Here's how the previous free Flickr account compares to the new free account. This applies to the vast majority of Flickr users (myself included), and is undeniably an improvement:

And here's how the new free Flickr account compares to the old Pro account:

So you’ve bought an SLR or Mirrorless camera. You’ve got your first few lenses. And you’ve started taking some really interesting photographs. Congrats, that’s awesome! Now we just need to get you sorted out with the stuff you should have to keep all your gear in good condition, so that you can keep on shooting without trouble.

Photography isn’t a sterile business. Unless you’re shooting in a studio at all times, dust, mist, mud, rain, sea spray, and all manner of other outdoors filth can easily get on your camera. And lets not forget how easily oil from our fingers can smudge a lens. So with this gear guide, you should be set up to clean any problematic dirt that gets on (or in) your camera.

Photo credit: Flickr user tiagoafpereira via Creative Commons.

For cleaning the front element of your lens, and a rare scrubdown of your sensor, we recommend the $9 Giotto’s Rocket Air Blaster, a $6 Lenspen, a $10 set of PEC-PADS, a $12 vial of Eclipse Cleaner, and if you need to get into your sensor, a $35 set of Sensor Swabs. Between these different cleaning products, you should be able to keep your images spotless.

Best Practices

You know how it goes. An ounce of prevention and all that. The first thing you can do to prevent your lenses from getting dirty and scratched, and your sensor from getting dusty, is to take some basic steps to keeping everything from getting gross in the first place.

For your lenses, keep the lenscap and rear cap on them when not in use. It’s also worth putting a basic UV filter on the front of your lenses, so that if the worst should happen and it gets damaged, it’s a filter that bears it, and not the lens. The downside of this is that it’s adding an extra element to the lens, and so gives an opportunity for image quality to drop, specifically in terms of getting more lens flare and color fringing. A good general purpose brand for this is Hoya, who offer filters that range from $15 up to more than $100, depending on how much lens quality you’re trying to preserve.

Photo credit: Flickr user so_wrong_its_kelly via Creative Commons.

Also, don’t do that thing where you breath on the lens, and then wipe it with your shirt. That’s a really bad idea. Nikon used to specifically recommend against breathing on your lens as they claimed your breath might hurt the lens coating (though the support page no longer says that). What’s probably much more of an issue is what’s on the edge of your shirt that you’re rubbing into the glass. That’s a very easy way to scrape the hell out of your lens.

Be as quick as possible when swapping out lenses, so that the internals of your camera are exposed to dust and air as little as possible. If your camera has a built-in sensor cleaning tool, see if you can’t set it up to run every time you turn the thing on or off, that way it’ll shake loose any gunk that gets on quickly.

See? Easy.

Today's topic is a subjective one. And that's actually true for many aspects of photography. Aside from the technical know-how that you can learn about operating a camera, accessories, and software, there really aren't many "rules" to taking a photo. The appeal of a photo is entirely up to eye of the beholder, and certain techniques better fit specific needs of the target viewer (eg. composing a commercial photograph vs. one for photojournalism). There are, however, guidelines that have proven to be effective in getting a point across to the viewer. That's where the "rules" of lighting and composition come in, which photographers actually adopted from classical paintings.

So keeping that in mind, I wanted to talk about the framing and composition of a photo, and how I specifically go about doing it when putting a camera between my eye and a subject. Everyone has different methods and thought processes that works for them--these are the things that work for me.

When I talk about framing, I mean the positioning of the camera and adjustment of the focal length to decide what part of a scene in captured in a photograph. In the history of photography, it wasn't until fairly recently that we had the opportunity to see exactly what the camera will capture when pressing a shutter button. Digital sensors in cameras, coupled with electronic viewfinders, let us see almost exactly what the sensor sees and what image will be saved. Even on DSLRs, which have digital sensors, the optical viewfinder doesn't always give a perfect representation of what's being framed. That's why DSLR viewfinders have a percentage rating spec to indicate how much of the sensored is covered by the optical mirror. On my 6D, for example, coverage is rated at 97%, which means that what I see in the optical viewfinder omits a bit of the image around the border. DPreview's review of the 6D gives a good approximation of how much image is left out.

Photo credit: Flickr user b-love via Creative Commons.

Framing is important to me because I use it as my primary crop of a scene. Some people--as discussed in our forums--make the choice of not worrying about framing when taking a photo, because you can always crop and rotate afterwards in software. And given that 16+ MP of detail is more than you'd ever need for web publishing, software cropping is a very valid approach to photography, which lets you worry about other settings like exposure and focus while on location. For me, I insist on framing as best as I can in-camera, and don't like to crop after the fact if it can be avoided. It is a matter of preference, but one way I think about it is that the original framing of a photo is actually just another crop--but a crop of real life using the camera and viewfinder instead of Photoshop.

Let's take a look at a few sample photos I've taken recently and how they exemplify my framing methodology.

Now this is really interesting. Adobe--whose MAX conference is going on this weekend--revealed on an online photography show that it is working on an iOS version of its RAW image processing software Lightroom. Apppearing on Scott Kelby's The Grid, Adobe Group Product Manager Tom Hogarty demoed an early internet app that could read and process RAW files from a Canon 5D Mark III, "developing" it using tools from Lightroom's Basic Development panel (eg. Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Vibrance, etc). While other RAW photo readers on iOS exist, like Apple's own iPhoto, Lightroom compatibility would allow photographers to sync edit paramaters between mobile and desktop, where copies of the RAW files would live. Performance is also a big concern for Adobe, said Hogarty.

On a related note, one of the problems I'm running into with my iPad photo workflow and RAW is the inability to choose what files to import using the camera connection tool. Since I'm shooting all my photos in RAW now, the iPad only allows me to import both RAW and JPEG while the SD card is connected, even if I only want to import the JPEG for viewing and light editing. And once a photo is imported, there's no way just to delete the RAW or JPEG version on the iPad. My current solution is to plug that SD card into my desktop and move all the RAW files to a separate temporary folder, then sync just the JPEGs to my iPad before moving the RAW files back again for Lightroom import on the desktop.

Adobe MAX being this weekend, and we're expecting to see many more new products and features announced from Adobe at the show. Can't wait to see more of Photoshop's upcoming deblurring tool!

Today our smartphones, DSLRs and other cameras use digital image stabilization to cut down on the jitter and blurriness caused by motions big and small. We can walk, while carrying a camera, and produce video that's relatively steady, something that wasn't possible with early digital cameras. In the film world, that's been possible for decades thanks to the Steadicam, which was invented by cinematographer Garrett Brown in 1976. The Steadicam changed what was possible in filmmaking, and Brown will soon be inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame thanks to his creation.

Photo credit: Garrett Brown

The Steadicam isn't Brown's only important invention--his website reveals he's also behind the Skycam used at football games, Divecam, and other frequently used camera systems. Steadicam first showed up in the iconic training montage in Rocky when Sylvester Stallone runs up the steps outside the Philadelphia Art Museum. Brown started working on the Steadicam after being annoyed that walking with a camera was so much shakier than our own vision, which has a sort of built-in image stabilization.

NPR recently conducted a great interview with Brown to talk about the invention of the Steadicam and some of his other history in the movie business. Here's a great quote about the splash Steadicam made when it arrived on the scene in the 1970s:

"I could show up with a demo reel of 30 impossible shots, obviously impossible to anybody that knew anything, and not give them a clue of how it was done," Brown says. "So showing up with a reel just knocked down the doors. It just floored everybody."

Listen to the 17-minute interview on NPR.

When shooting digital photographs, you can usually feel the difference between a cheap Class 4 SD card, with its minimum 4 MB/s write speeds, and a faster Class 10 or UHS (Ultra High Speed) card. SD speed classes can be really confusing--Class 10 cards are technically the fastest, with required 10 MB/s minimum read and write speeds, but there's a world of difference between a basic Class 10 card and a Class 10 UHS card, which can operate at quadruple the standard SD clock speed. Slap one of those cards, like the SanDisk Extreme Pro, into a camera, and you'll feel the difference--photos write to the card in a snap and reviewing a shot won't leave you staring at a blinking LED for three seconds.

The speed of the card makes a difference, but a fast card isn't guaranteed to reach its potential in every device you use it in. Devices like digital cameras talk to SD cards with host controllers, and those host controllers can vary in speed and compatibility. For example, older host controllers only support the SD and SDHC formats, not the more recent SDXC. Using a really fast SD card with a slow host controller is a bit like plugging a USB 3.0 flash drive into a USB 1.0 port. You're not going to come close to maxing out what the card is capable of.

Unfortunately, age isn't the only factor that accounts for SD controller performance. Last year, while researching SD cards for The Wirecutter, I talked to Nikon, SanDisk, and some photographers, including the experts at Imaging Resource. I also looked at Rob Galbraith's extensive database of SD and CompactFlash performance numbers. Next time you buy an SD card--or anything that uses one--keep in mind that hardware like the memory controller and CPU, even in a brand new camera, may dramatically undercut what the card should be able to deliver.

Let me take a deep breath, because this is not an simple topic to broach. Since I've started shooting with my Canon 6D, and based on the recommendations of many of you, I've been saving all my photos to both JPEG and RAW formats. My mirrorless camera also could save RAW images, but I never really used it for numerous reasons. Primarily because I was already accustomed to my workflow for quickly posting photos to accompany stories on the site, partly for file storage and management considerations, but also because I knew that adopting a RAW workflow would require both new software and knowledge of new image processing techniques. I simply wasn't ready to tread those deep waters.

But took the dive I did, and just like the jump from an APS-C-sized sensor camera to a full frame one, it's difficult to see myself going back. Processing photos is a lot of fun, and even therapeutic. So here's what I've learned from dabbling in RAW photo processing for two months, which just skims the surface of what you can do with a RAW file that you can't do with a JPEG.

A RAW file, unlike a JPEG, is not an image file in the traditional sense. It's not a single standardized file-type that you can open with any image editor or web browser--each camera company and even individual camera models store RAW data differently. Instead of the file denoting the color values of individual pixels, a camera's outputted RAW file encompasses all the light data captured by a camera sensor run through that camera's image processor. Data from different parts of the color spectrum aren't combined and flattened with luminosity settings--that's to be done on your computer. And so special RAW photo software is needed to process that data into a visual image, and lets you tweak that data to manipulate the final image.

But just as different cameras store RAW data slightly differently, RAW photo editing software have different algorithms in their engines to interpret that data. Adobe's Lightroom and Apple's Aperture will read RAW files in their own way before giving you an image to work with. That's not hugely consequential since all RAW editing software will let you tweak in myriad ways to eventually get your desired result, but it's important to remember that not all RAW converters are created equal. Some are favored for speed, some for compatibility with software suites, and some for unique features like direct camera tethering.

In my case, I chose to start with Adobe Lightroom 4, which is one of the more popular RAW converters. I chose it because it's cross platform (I image edit mostly on my Windows desktop), and because Adobe dropped the price of Lightroom significantly last year with the version 4 release. Even without an educational discount, you can find it for around $160, and I've seen it drop to below $100 during holiday sales. If you favor another RAW editor, please share why you like it in the comments!

Lightroom 4 isn't just a RAW photo editor, it's also a very good file manager. The first thing that happens when you plug in a camera or memory card is the import process, which transfers photos (both RAW and JPEG) to the directory of your choosing. As a file manager, Lightroom has many sorting and tagging options. I have it automatically file photos away according to date taken, and then create groups based on events for processing. In tests conducted by DPreview, Lightroom 4 wasn't as fast as some other RAW editors to import photos, but that's because the software also creates high-resolution thumbnails for each image in the library, which are also customizable. Imports can take several minutes for a few dozen photos, but the ability to instantly preview thousands of photos in high-resolution makes it worth it.

This is also a good place to point out that an SSD is extremely useful for RAW processing. I originally had my photos stored on a 1TB hard disk drive, but the software chugged when calling up 25MB file after file to edit. Now I keep my Lightroom library on a 256GB SSD.

Adopting an interchangeable camera system, whether mirrorless or DSLR, means that you have an intent to use more than one lens with that camera. Bundled kit lenses are typically good general purpose lenses, but the whole point of going interchangeable is to be able to swap out lenses for different situations and types of photos. Otherwise, you're better off with a good fixed lens compact, like the RX100 or Fuji X100. And while choosing lenses isn't as complicated as deciding on a DSLR body, there are many more lens options than camera body options. Even if you've settled between a Canon, Nikon, or Sony camera--and hence, a lens mount ecosystem--there are many categories and brands of lenses, each with different specs and specialties.

Most people starting off with a DSLR--myself included--are in no rush to fill out their lens collection. It's best to start off with one or two lenses, maybe kit lens included, and build experience from there. And in choosing those starter lenses, online guides I've read tend to use focal length as the starting point for recommendations. As a refresher, the focal length denotes the field of view covered by a lens, which is determined by a combination of the optics and camera sensor. As we've written before, 35-50mm is a good starting point for a prime lens (fixed focal length), with focal length 70mm or longer being considered telephoto and 28 or shorter considered wide-angle.

But focal length is just the tip of the iceberg for lens specs, and while it's the most defining characteristic of a lens, it's also probably the least nuanced trait. Today, I want to go over the other specs you'll find etched on the side of a lens, and the important ones that aren't.

Let's use the kit lens on the Sony camera above as an example. There are three sets of specs listed on the front of the lens--these alone will give you a good sense of what the lens is capable of. Ostensibly, the most important string of text is at the top, so let's parse its components.

Vincent Laforet has a pretty good track record being an early adopter in emerging digital video technologies; in 2008, he famously hyped up Canon's 5D Mark II as a piece of technology that would be an inflection point for digital video production. And guess what, it did. So when the photographer calls something a game changer, it's worth taking seriously. This year--not coincidentally just before the annual NAB show in Las Vegas--Laforet is putting his reputation behind Freefly Systems MoVI, a gyrostabilization platform for handheld DSLR video. And judging from both the video below of the stabilization system in action and Laforet's aerial footage shot using a Canon 1DC mounted on a MoVI, the $15,000 system will be coveted by amateur and professional videographers when it's released. Keep in mind that existing gyrostabilised systems are not cheap--the ones used in videos like this one cost north of $50,000. Of course, the MoVI meant to be handheld and not helicopter-mounted, and I'm more interested in the $7,500 model that will hold five pounds instead of ten.

Buzz about the MoVI has me thinking about a Chris Kenneally's recent documentary about the emergence and growth of digital video technologies as a replacement for film. Side by Side, which was produced and hosted by Keanu Reeves, does a great job summing up the arguments for both sides in interviews with each formats' biggest proponents (eg. Chris Nolan for film, Steven Soderbergh for digital). Cinematographers who champion digital video praise the unique handling afforded by lightweight cameras--think of the handheld shots you see in Danny Boyle movies like 28 Days Later and Slumdog Millionaire. MoVI seems like it'll move cinematography more in that direction: shots that are increasingly mobile, agile, and bold.

I've taken a lot of cosplay photos. It's become sort of my thing at comic book conventions, the first one of which I attended in 2003 (as it was the first year WonderCon was held in San Francisco). For me, going to a convention used to be about waiting in long lines for artist autographs and sketches, even longer lines for panels to get a sneak peek at the next year's movies, and picking up collectibles and goodies that were exclusive to those events. These days, it's mostly me wandering the floor taking thousands of photos of booths, toys, memorabilia, and yes, the people who dress up as their favorite fictional characters. Part of this is practical--I've put up a gallery every year since 2008 for the places I've worked for--but it's increasingly become an educational exercise. Taking photos of cosplayers at comic book conventions is my idea of photography school, and I probably learn and practice more photography during the few days at a convention than I do the rest of the year.

So let's go though my cosplay photos over the years and talk about exactly what I've learned, what skills the convention environment is conducive to teaching, and which cosplay photos have been my favorite.