On Getting Specs


Hello Little One! Some of you may know this baby's parents. Big Hint: the parents play floor hockey in San Diego.

May is proceeding more hunkidorily than expected. Photoshoots scheduled at a manageable rate, time to work on my editing and ponder additions to my equipment collection.

What more could I want? I am considering a portable backdrop stand with telescoping legs and cross bar, from which I can hang all manner of fabrics, instead of hunting around people's homes for clip-friendly ledges near the ceiling. There's that and well, a new camera body, the 5D. When I study other photographer's photos and I see a picture that I think is fantastic, I check the specs on the picture and it's often taken on a Canon 5D.

How to check the specs? Oh this is very useful. Just pull the pic off the net and put it on your desktop. Borrowing. You're Borrowing the photo. Then (Macs) hit "Command I" for information. A window will appear with info such as camera body, focal length, FNumber, Exposure Time. If you open the image in Preview (Mac users) and hit "Command I" again, and go to the Exif tab (What is Exif? I don't know) and you'll find info on exactly what lens was used, white balance, metering mode, whether flash was used or not etc. It's one way to teach oneself about how to take a good photo - see what others have done to achieve the look you like. Some pro photogs will disassociate or lock this info on their posted pic and so the info sections might be blank, or some sites prevent pics from being pulled, like my website. Of course, there's no info on photoshopping technique, and for me - PS is a huge part of the process.
OK, now delete the photo.