Go Shopping without spending a dime.....

A few years ago Cynthia Rowley published a book called Swell: A Girl's Guide to the Good Life.I didnt read it, not a girl, but I heard her interviewed on the Today Show one morning and something she said stuck with me - “Go shopping in your closet.”  The idea is that most women have a ton of clothes they dont wear and before you go out to buy something new, do some “shopping” with what you have.  Well, before you go to the camera store or hit Amazon, go shopping in your bag.  

What is in that thing?

I have four lenses, a flash, a tripod, remote, polarizers, warming filters, neutral density filters, macro filters, diffusers and backdrops all crammed into my bag.  I have never used all of it on a single shoot and I rarely use more than half of the lenses on a given day.  And lets not even talk about my camera.  Six regular modes (Auto everything, Program AE, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, ISO priority and Manual), Bulb, “no Flash,” and 14 scene and picture modes.  I dont even know all the scene modes let alone what they do.  And then there is the in camera processing (sepia, B&W, etc), metering modes, auto bracketing, white balance adjustments, exposure compensation, and on and on.  How much of THOSE do I use?  Way less than half.  You get the picture. Now the plan.

Shop in your bag

What is your favorite lens?  If you have more than one, you have a favorite.  You can deny it just like you do for your kids but its true.  One of the things I like about having my pictures picked up by Pixel Peeper is that it makes me see what I am shooting the most.  So here is the first assignment of shopping in your bag - put ONE lens on your camera and go shoot for a day.  If it is a zoom, force yourself to use the ENTIRE range, not the limits at each end.  Rinse and repeat for each lens in your bag.  When you are done each day, pick out your best pictures and put them in a separate folder.  At the end of the week (if you have more than 7 lenses you have no right to claim to be on a BUDGET!!!) look at all of them together.  Start taking note of what works well in what situations for what result.  I promise you will start using the lenses in your bag more.

Next step

If you carry a tripod all the time, make yourself do a “tripod only day.”  Every shot.  Then do a “handheld only day” and push the limits of your image stabilization and personal stabilization.  After three straight days of hand held only, I got to where I could shoot at 1/10th of a second and get better than 50-50 clear results.  Prior to that I maxed out at 1/30th.  Think about that, I gained 2 stops for nothing.  That is like getting the f/2.4-3.6 zoom instead of the f/4.3-5.6.  How much does THAT save?

ISO day

This one is a little more structured and can be done in a number of ways.  The idea is to learn what ISO you can live with in different situations.  On my K200D I normally have the ISO fixed at 100.  If I am doing hand held in variable conditions I will change to Auto ISO but limit it to 100-400 (very cool feature on the K200.  No idea if other brands have it).  If I am desperate for light I will go to 800 but it had better be something I cant shoot with a tripod.  1600 is to grainy for anything I really care about but if it is the only way, I will do it for documenting something (school play) or those once in a lifetime shots that would you would otherwise never get (alien encounter).  I suggest setting up near sunrise or sunset and rapidly shoot through every ISO setting with the camera on a tripod.  When you get home, decide where your sweet spot is and what you are willing to give up to get a shot.

Flashes and diffusers

This one is a little harder to do in a controlled way but the gist of it is to use your flash(s) and learn when to add light and when to go with what you have by shooting with and without.  I am still not good at this and I really struggle with adding or subtracting from the flash strength.  I use to ALWAYS use a diffuser.  Now I am starting to learn when NOT to use it.  This is my weakest area.

By the way, I suggest doing this last in your progression to this point.  The lessons of lens, tripod and ISO will all assist in determining when NOT to use a flash.

Modes

The first two weeks I had my K200D I was welded to Autopic.  Then I moved to shutter priority followed by Program AE.  Recently I have used Aperture Priority to shot an f/8 day.  But my new love is Manual mode!  Go figure!  When I was shooting a K1000 I lusted after the ME/MX/LX guys with automatic modes.  Now I have more and more better auto modes than they could ever dream of and I am shooting manual again!!  Take a week and shoot ONLY in one mode each day, just like lens day.  Again, I promise you that mode dial will start to get a workout.  After you have done that, learn to use the exposure compensation to give you “fake” manual.  Take a picture manually and than try to replicate it with an auto mode (Aperture or Shutter priority) plus the EV button.  Its faster than switching to manual and can often get the same result.  F/8 day was a real eye opener to me because it showed me what everything below that was costing me in sharpness.  I have significantly improved the quality of my pictures simply by getting away from the low end of the f-stop range.

White balance is a filter!

On the K200D, you can use the white balance to see what the different modes will look like on the last picture.  Taking a tip from The Strobist, I have used the Tungsten mode to create some beautiful effects.  Shade acts much the same as a 82 warming filter.  Didnt cost me a dime of time (Photoshop time) or money.

Get off Spray and Pray!

One of the joys of digital is that every picture is free.  Well, not quite since hard drives cost money but pretty darn close.  A lot of us have gotten in the habit of pointing and holding knowing that one of the last ten will be good.  This is a HARD habit to break.  Take a week and leave your camera on single shot for the entire week.  Make yourself think through each shot.  Frame it, straighten it (my weakness!) and then shoot.  Get in the habit of seeing the picture before you even raise the camera to your eye.  After doing this I realized that often I was just pointing and shooting because I didn't know exactly what I wanted but when I got home I could find something I liked.  Force yourself to make every shot count and you will be a better photographer for it.  If you want to get REALLY EXTREME, Shoot um Like You Bought um!  Limit yourself to 36 (or 24!) pictures a day for a week. Pretend that each one cost $5 (about the right conversion for mid 90’s processing - otherwise known as the stone age).  Subtract the cost of crap shots from your beer (or in my wife's case, yarn) budget.  Yikes!

Get a “Prime” for nothing

Most of us have zooms.  Some of us have only zooms.  Yet inside every zoom is a prime wanting to get out.  Take a day and shoot a lens with it “fixed” at one focal length.  I REALLY want a Pentax DA 35mm Macro Limited. But I also have an 18-55 zoom meaning I have a “free” 35mm prime.  Put that zoom on 35mm and shoot.  You might find out that 35mm (or what every length you choose) is not the right size.  Better to find out BEFORE you buy!  Additionally, every lens haas a sweet spot.  If your 70-300 zoom falls off a lot after 250mm, learn to shoot 250mm really well.  Like ISO, learn what it cost in terms of picture quality for that last 50mm.

Another benefit of fixing your focal length is that it gets you to move more.  Zooming in is not changing perspective.  Zooming is no different that cropping.  To get a different picture you have to move left/right/up down.  Moving closer or further is not really changing perspective either.  It is just manual zoom.  Force yourself to make a different picture instead of a more detailed/closer picture.

*** Yes I know there is a VAST difference between a zoom fixed at 35mm and a 35mm prime.  Think of it as "try before you buy" if you are looking for a prime.  More importantly, you will get an insight into what having a fixed focal length will mean.  Most post-film photographers have never known anything but zoom and while primes certainly have a place in the photographic world, if your personal shooting style doesnt agree with primes, that 50mm f/1.4 is just going to gather dust and weigh down your bag.

Learn your buttons!

Ill confess, I still dont know what the “green button” does on my Pentax.  It must be important because every Pentax DSLR has one.  And I have never checked my histogram.  I was very frustrated until I realized that half press on the shutter only locked the focus and exposure look required me to to press...the exposure lock button!  Most of the time the designers put the buttons on there for a reason.  Figure them out and you will be happier with your camera.

The Point

The point of all of this is that most of us have WAY more camera than we know we do.  We have lenses that are not used or not used to their fullest extent.  We dont know that by going with ISO 400, f/8 and 1/120 of a second we can get that shot we didnt think was possible because the automatic modes dont know that your 50-200 is super clear at 135mm and will make up for the 400 ISO.  Or when with a little bracing and breathing control (breathe, relax, aim, squeeze) we can get that low light shot without having to go to ISO 1600.  Pros can afford to have an “ISO Camera” and a collection of f/1.4 primes tended by a legion of assistants.  The rest of us normally have to squeeze every bit out of one body and a few lenses.  If you dont know the full capabilities and limitations of your equipment, you are leaving money on the table.  Do I really NEED that DA Limited 35mm?  Probably not but certainly not when my 18-55mm zoom rarely ends up on 35mm.  On the other hand, that 135mm prime is looking like a good buy.  So go shopping in your bag.  You might be surprised at how much free stuff is in there.

Lets Find A Deal!

When the 50lb brains at DARPA were laying the foundations for the internet I am pretty sure they were not thinking "this is going to revolutionize how people buy things!"  Who knew that a tool originally designed to help defeat the Soviet Union or mitigate the impact of a war with would ultimately become one of the greatest tools of the capitalist economy?  For all its various impacts on our lives, I think the greatest impact is in how things are bought and sold in this country.  The internet has flattened the arbitrage factor in almost everything we buy.  No longer can a local retailer charge above market price simply because of lack of knowledge.  With a few keystrokes, anyone can find the range of market prices for an item and make a decision about a purchase.  Beyond the direct impact on individual items, all retailers have to take the internet into consideration for every item.  Some smart person will probably put a number on it but I know the internet dramatically increases the purchasing power of my household. But.......

There is always a but.  And the but here is time.  Finding those deals can consume more time than they are worth (time is money).  As I said in the mission statement of this blog, DPOAB about people on a budget of both time and money.  One of the other great advances the internet has allowed is the ability to leverage the input of millions.  What might take one person hours to do can be spread across the masses who only spend a few minutes.  That collective effort results in a huge number of "Deal" websites.  So many that even they can become time consumers!

Over the years I have frequented tons of deal sites.  Some are better than others, some have gone away and some have gone rouge.  Two have risen to the top of my link list and are in my batch of websites I visit every day without fail - dealmac and Passwired.

Dealmac is actually the Macintosh oriented subsite of Dealnews.  Dealnews has been around since 1997 and has grown from purely user submitted content to a full time professional staff with a range of subsites.  (Full disclosure - back in the 90's I regularly submitted deals to dealmac and a number were published on the site.  I received no compensation other than seeing my name linked to the deal)

Dealmac - not just Macintosh deals.  Back in the days of SCSI, ADB and NuBus, dealmac was an important source of deals on hardware and software you could trust would work on your mac.  These days just about the only things that are not cross platform are specific software titles.  I find dealmac is more tech oriented than dealnews but I dont know if that is just my personal bias.  You still get all the Photo, storage and general deal news here, just a little more limited.

Dealram - A GREAT tool for finding solid state memory of all types.  It is especially useful in finding the right memory for your system.  You can put in your make and model and you will only see ram modules that fit your system.  

Dealcam - much less useful than dealram.  I dont think it gets updated as often.  I prefer the Photo section of dealmac.  

Dealcoupon - I always check here before finishing a purchase online.  If there is a coupon code for free shipping or X% off, you will find it here.  I can't count the number of times it has saved me money on something I was going to buy anyway.

Styenotes - the newest site, centered on clothes.  I haven't used it much but I have bought lots of clothes from the links in dealmac so I imagine it will be great.

Much of the content is repeated across the full range of sites.  I use dealmac as my starting point and then go to the subsites if I am looking for something specific.  The Photo section on both dealmac and dealnews is excellent and they regularly post coupon codes for free or shipping only deals on processing.  The last one I used got me six 8x8 photobooks for the cost of shipping only.

Passwird - Run by a UCSB senior, Passwird is generally tech focused but has a full range of deals.  The owner started the site when he was in high school and his specialty is finding bizarre combinations of codes and pricing mistakes to generate free or nearly free stuff (which he then sells on eBay!).  He is also a master of figuring out how to game the Dell website to get GREAT deals on computers.  Both my Dell laptops and one desktop were bought using instructions from Passwird.  As an example, one laptop started as a bottom of the line POS but by choosing the right upgrades and a couple of stacked coupons I got a high end gaming class notebook for $1000 (2007).  The same system purchased "normally" from Dell was over $1500 plus shipping.  Passwird is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get, but you can scroll through the days deals in less than a minute.

I can get through both Passwird and Dealmac in about three minutes.  Both have simple layouts and both have rss feeds.  If I am looking for something specific, I always start at Dealmac and work from there.  Passwird is the first deal site I check every morning (ok, Ill admit it, at night too) because many of the deals on there are very short lived.  Both are great tools for the Digital Photographer On A Budget.