Quick Tip #2 – What to after you’ve accidentally erased your memory card

Posted on August 28, 2011 by mizomi

This is just a follow up to the previous quick tip. In the unlikely event that you do accidentally erase a memory card in the middle of a photoshoot, (yes, I have done it), here’s what to do:

Immediately after you’ve erased the card (and I mean, IMMEDIATELY), turn off the camera and remove the erased card. Screaming “oh sh!t oh sh!t oh sh!t”/pounding your head against a wall/slapping yourself is optional.

Quarantine the card – keep it separate from your other cards until you get back to your computer. This is very important – Do not record anything else to that card until after you have recovered your images from it.

Use file recovery software – there are a number of programs out there that can recover erased images. We use the Sandisk Extreme brand of CompactFlash and SDXC cards, which come with a free file recovery program called Rescue Pro.

This software has ~~saved my ass~~ safely recovered lost images on several occasions. You simply start up the program, insert the card into a card reader and tell the program where to save the recovered images (such as a folder on your hard drive. Do not try to recover the images by re-saving them to your memory card). Then let it go and do it’s thing. It will take a while, but you’d be surprised at what it can recover.

Formatting erases the catalog on the card that tells the computer where the images are on the card. The images are still on the card until they are overwritten by another image. As long as you do not record anything onto an accidentally formatted card, you stand a good chance of recovering what you lost.

Quick Tip – Formatting your cards in camera

Posted on August 20, 2011 by mizomi

Before every photoshoot, one of the items on our checklist is to format the CF cards in-camera. We always check first to make sure that the previous shoot on the CF cards is backed up in at least 3 different places (hard drive, CD, online – you can never be too careful) before we format the cards.

One little tip about formatting the cards in-camera before a shoot. Immediately after you format the card, it’s a good idea to change the menu item to something other than “Format”. I’m not sure how it is on Nikons, but on Canon cameras, whenever you press the “Menu” button, it always goes to the last thing you selected in the menu.

If you left it on “Format” and hit the “Set” button while in the menu, you are just a couple of clicks away from erasing everything on your card. When you are running and gunning, like at a wedding, it’s all too easy to forget. The LAST thing you want to do is to accidentally format a card in the middle of a shoot.

After formatting a card in the camera, I’ll usually move the menu selection to the top of the Tools page,

then tab over to the next screen and select something harmless like “Highlight Alert” (in case I want to turn off the blinking highlight warning when showing the image on the back of the camera to a client.). This greatly reduces the possibility of dumb old me accidentally formatting the card.

It takes less than a few seconds to do this, and once you get into the habit of doing it, you’ll save yourself a lot of potential aggravation.

Wraparound light

Posted on January 10, 2011 by mizomi

Canon 5D mkII 85mm f1.2L II lens iso640 1/100@f2.8

The wraparound light is a technique I picked up from photographer Carlos Baez’s See the Light DVD.

While I was in Japan this past December, I shot two photosessions at the White Studio in Edogawabashi. One of the nice features of this place is a wall of frosted windows in one section of the studio. In both sessions I did some sets where I had the models stand in front of these windows and shot without flash or reflectors.

Since the model is backlit, it can trick the in-camera meter, so a handheld meter works better in this situation (or using the camera’s spot-metering). By metering for the face and letting the backlighting overexpose, the light comes in through the window and wraps around the subject. It makes for a very soft romantic high key image.

Canon 5D mkII 85mm f1.2L II lens iso800 1/80@f2.8

This shot of Kayo actually took several tries, mostly because we wanted to position the shirt to show as much curvature as we could without being too revealing. It’s actually a lot harder to do than you might think. 😉

For Miyu’s session, I tried this same lighting technique near another window in the studio. This was later in the day, and the light level from outside wasn’t as strong as before. For this shot of Miyu on the bed, I had to bump the iso up to around 1600. Thankfully the 5D mkII handles higher isos extremely well, and there wasn’t much noise to deal with at all.

Canon 5D mkII 85mm f1.2L II lens iso1600 1/30@f2.8

I also had to drastically change my camera angle for this image to get the window positioned correctly behind Miyu. The bottom edge of the window was slightly higher than the edge of the bed, so I had to shoot this while lying on the floor, between two recycling bins underneath some metal shelving against the opposite wall (it was a very small studio).

In the original shot, there was a part of the window frame that stuck out of Miyu’s head which bothered me. By blowing out the background with this lighting technique however, the window frame nearly disappears making it much less distracting and eliminating the need to Photoshop it out in post.