Category Archives: Photography

Articles I Like: How to Take Good Photos of the Moon

The Writing Life of a Tadpole Posted on by  

I’m frequently on the look out for tips and tricks for astrophotography, although my ambitions are a bit basic to start with — smartphone use at the telescope eyepiece for now, maybe graduating to DSLR and webcam stuff later. And some of the easiest of the early photos are for moon shots. So of course I clicked when I saw an article on HowToGeeek.com entitled How to Take Good Photos of the Moon (by Harry Guinness, September 13th, 2017).

He breaks the challenge down pretty succinctly: the brightness and the distance. On the technical side, he recommends a tripod (duh), plus a 200mm lens for full-frame and 130mm on a crop-sensor. The tip, and why I thought the article was useful, came with a rule I’ve never heard of — Looney 11.

Astrophotographers have a rule for taking photos of the moon (it’s more of a guideline really) called Looney 11. The idea is that if you set your aperture to f/11, the correct shutter speed will be the reciprocal of the ISO. In other words, if your aperture is set to f/11 and your ISO is set to 100, your shutter speed will be 1/100; if your ISO is 400, the shutter speed is 1/400.

While he doesn’t think it’s a hard and fast rule, it seems like a good starting point — f/11, ISO 100, shutter speed of 1/100. Apparently if I then open my aperture by a stop, I can adjust the shutter speed by a stop too. He also suggests checking out a website called iAstrophotography which I hadn’t seen before. Not quite the technical detail I was looking for, but a good starting point.

Worth sharing anyway…

 

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#50by50 #05 – Re-start my astronomy hobby

The Writing Life of a Tadpole Posted on by  

When I set my goals for the year (Goals for 2017 – Nudging the needle), I had some astronomy goals in mind. Specifically, under my blue goals, I wanted:

Astronomy: Fixed battery supplies + 1 viewing…I want to attend the RASC annual meeting, do at least 1 viewing at Star Party+Luskville+cottage, but I’ll start with 1 viewing. And work on reading the new RASC guidebook for the year.

and under my yellow goals I had:

Astrophotography: One decent shot…Sure, I would like to do more. Level 2 would likely be a complete set of moon phases (1/4, 1/2, 3/4, full). Level 3 and beyond could be constellations, planets, figuring out the laptop thingy, filters, etc. But I’ll start with the moon. And somewhere in there I have to sort my existing astro photos.

Since my new 50by50 goals kind of overtake the regular 2017 ones, I wanted to keep something in my new goals related to astronomy and I wanted to be realistic. So, in the end, I chose:

#4. Re-start my astronomy hobby

  1. Attend RASC annual meeting and/or monthly meetings;
  2. Attend a viewing Star Party at Carp;
  3. Solve my battery supply for the telescope;
  4. One decent moon shot; and,
  5. Upload my previous astronomy photos to my photo gallery;

I didn’t expect to meet all five of those in one week!

Friday, Saturday and Sunday of this last weekend was the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada’s Annual General Meeting, and because it was Canada Day, the Ottawa Chapter (of which I am a member) had offered to host the meeting. About 150-200 attendees across the three days, I think. Including…dun dun dun…me!

Yes, I registered, and yes, I went. I confess readily that I suck at attending RASC meetings. The local chapter meets the first Friday of the month, and there is a mix of technical and non-technical presentations. But the meeting is way across town, you have to pay for parking, the items I usually care about are only part of the meeting, and the reason I joined RASC is not really what they do. I originally hoped for more “informal training”, as I generally don’t know what I’m doing. I had hoped, I guess, that there would be more offerings on set themes, kind of like groups going out one night at the start of the year where everyone gets to figure out how to work the scope better; then perhaps a night aimed at studying the moon; another aimed at planets, or constellations, or clusters. Not really how it works. And I thought the star parties would lead to more obvious bonding, but honestly, you’re in the dark and you can’t even really see the other person you’re talking to most of the time! Don’t get me wrong, some people find it great; I’m an analytical introvert, and mingling is not one of my big skills. All things being equal, I feel I might as well stay home and watch the YouTube feed. 🙂

But I join every year, I pay my dues, and this year, I decided I would go to the annual meeting. I know! Surprised me too!

I won’t cover everything, but I picked up my registration on day 1, including my extra swag, a nice t-shirt for the conference. I was already wearing my “You have a place in space” shirt from the US Planetary Society; if nothing else, I have the group swag. I checked ou the displays, spoke to a couple of people, and said hi to Tristan working the Focus Scientific desk (more on that later). And then I decided to attend a sesson on “50 years of Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) at the Algonquin Radio Observatory”. I know, right, how could I pass up such a stimulating topic? Dr. Brendan Quine was presenting, and I had heard good things about him, but seriously, why would I care about the topic? Cuz it was a title that did not do the presentation justice. He was fun, engaging, and talked about not only the basics of VLBI and it’s foundational work to create GPS, but also the transfer of the ARO from the government to the private sector and what his company (Thoth) was doing these days. Including workable ideas for space elevators. Not a dry technical presentation at all, although some in the room could have likely handled that detail too, and highly entertaining. Plus I found out that the ARO rents rooms out to guests who want to come and hang out i.e. a place where I could do a weekend’s worth of observing in Algonquin Park where the observing + sleeping is the same location, not a hotel somewhere nearby. With reasonable rates. Colour me intrigued, and I might book something for this fall (when the bugs are gone!).

I even attended the BBQ the first night. I normally eschew the social aspects by nature, but if I want to meet people, I kind of have to do it, right? So I did. And ended up sitting at the same table as our local rock star, Gary Boyle. Okay, so there is nothing remotely “rock star” like about Gary, but he is regularly interviewed by CBC, his name is recognizable to anyone in the Canadian astronomy community plus lots of people internationally, and not for nothing, he just had an asteroid named after him. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/astroid-named-after-gary-boyle-1.4075015 Plus I actually managed to talk to someone I had never met before, Heather from Calgary, who helps out with the Executive and is on several sub-committee/task teams. Practically being a social butterfly by my normal standards. And checking off part (a) above…meeting attended!

I left the BBQ and headed to pick up my son Jacob and wife Andrea, then a friend Mike, and we headed out to the star party in Carp. The weather wasn’t looking awesome but it was still a “go”. We arrived just around 8:30 as the sun was still setting, and Ingrid (wife of Attila, owners of the giant scopes) showed us sun spots on her small 4″ scope. We had a lovely sunset, and then we got to see the Moon, and then Jupiter along with four moons eventually as the night got a bit darker. This was the only the second star party I have been at without my own scope, and the first Ottawa one for Mike, Andrea and Jacob. We all walked up and down the row looking through all the different types, seeing the different setups and viewing options. Later, someone had Saturn in their scopes, so we had to look at them all again for that. Easy to see the rings, all good. Then the fireflies arrived. The field next to the viewing area was dancing. And all of that was in about 1 hour, 15 minutes. By which time the clouds were threatening and the bug stuff we were using was NOT working well enough to stay. Great evening, and tick off part (b) of my goal…star party attended!

On Canada Day, I quite enjoyed the presentation on the solar system and current geological controversies from a retired NRCan scientist, highly enjoyable, and again, a topic I normally wouldn’t have chosen to attend if it was part of the monthly series. I even chatted with some more people at lunch — Eriq La Salle, and his friend Taras, plus Mike M of course — and got some really good advice from Taras on viewing areas and my battery problem. I avoided the opportunity to go visit the Hill that night for Canada Day, and hung out at home with my family. Sunday was okay too, nothing big sticks out, although I skipped the actual AGM in the morning and the banquet at night (which apparently was quite good).

I mentioned above that I talked to Tristan, as well as Taras, and most of that conversation was about two things. First, I have a battery problem. I have two PowerTanks to power my telescope, but they are both standard batteries, which means if you over charge them or leave them on charge or let them go too low on charge, they die. Never to work again.

I killed a large PowerTank, I killed a small PowerTank. And the pain of figuring out what to do with them has been a bit paralysing. I sought other people’s opinions and options online, and found out I could try putting the PowerTanks on trickle or DC charge to see if it would help revive them, but reliability would always be an issue even if I get them to work. Or take them apart and replace the core batteries in them. Which has a bunch of labour involved, not very clear instructions, potentially a need for soldering (!), and no guarantees of success, plus the cost of the batteries, maybe $175+ to attempt to fix both? Or I could say screw it and buy one of the almost idiot-proof lithium ion phosphate ones that don’t die if you mess up the charging schedule. But they cost almost $200 and well, I already have these other ones, they just need fixing. Grrr…

I compared options, talked to some people, bit the bullet, and bought a new one at Focus Scientific. https://focusscientific.com/product_info.php/products_id/1104

Problem solved. I don’t know what I’m going to do with the old ones, maybe offer them to anyone who wants to try to repair them or for parts. In the meantime, I had power for my scope. You know, that scope I haven’t really used in over a year. Tick box (c) above…power issue solved!

The fourth item on my list was to have one decent shot of the moon. I have a range of options to do this, none of which I’ve figured out how to do reliably or consistently:

  1. Smartphone by itself, not very exciting;
  2. Point and shoot by itself, ditto;
  3. DSLR by itself, with a tripod, at least now I’m in the ballpark;
  4. Scope + smartphone over eyepiece — hard to get the phone centred above the eyepiece;
  5. Scope + point and shoot over eyepiece — similar to smartphone problem, but I have this little adapter thing, just never got it to work very well;
  6. Scope + NEXIMAGE 5 + laptop + software — I’ve done this before, even got some shots, but stability was definitely an issue, plus replicating the outcome from shot to shot.
  7. Scope + DSLR with adapter — sure, this is supposed to be easy, but I’ve struggled on anything other than the moon;
  8. Scope + DSLR with adapter + laptop + software — supposed to take a lot of the guesswork out of the previous option but I haven’t figured that one out yet;

Now, I have been treating these like a series of more and more complicated options and / or more reliable and sophisticated photos. Bear in mind that I am using a SCT-style scope on a basic alt-az base…this is NOT designed for sophisticated astrophotography, and honestly I don’t want it to do that…I just want some quick snaps of what I’m seeing, preferably all less than a second or two of elapsed time. I won’t get the beautiful colour shots of other people, but I’m okay with that. More souvenirs of what I saw, records of my viewing, than art.

And I can pretty much eliminate (a) and (b) above. I haven’t tried (c) yet for the DSLR just on a tripod, not consistently, although I do have a photo or two of the Milky Way and constellations. D-H are all increasingly complicated, as I said, and I wasn’t really into it.

Until I went to the conference and saw what Tristan was selling. A Meade smartphone adapter, one with a very simple setup, with good reviews online. For $30. Hell yeah.

It is a simple adapter that attaches itself to your smartphone and puts a little ring adapter over your camera so that you can “mount” it over an eyepiece i.e. the ring holds the top of the 1.25″ eyepiece (without the rubber cup around the EP) and thus allows you to almost centre it perfectly before you even put the EP into the scope. You can see the layout of it here at the FS store: https://focusscientific.com/product_info.php/products_id/1354

And I managed to get a few decent shots…they are not DSLR quality, nor will I be publishing them in an astro magazine, but as a fun addition to my hobby, I was pretty happy:

Then I tried to get a “little” fancy, and do some zooms.

I have moon maps, so I can go through some time and label some of the features. But for now, I’m happy with just getting the shots. Part (d) complete…a good shot of the moon.

Which has left me with one simple piece outstanding — to organize my astronomy photos over the last 4 years and upload them to my site. I had them semi-organized at one point when I had a Piwigo sub-site, but never got around to fixing the mess of how they are stored now that I’m with SmugMug. I hadn’t even uploaded them. So that’s fixed too: https://polywogg.ca/pandafamily/index.php?/category/17 is the opening gallery. I have shots of the sun (1), moon (54), Venus (2), Mars (6), Jupiter (5), Saturn (19), Milky Way (8), Constellations (6) and my gear setup (1). Not all photos in those batches are created equal, but it’s the best I have so far. And with that, I’ve completed part (e)…upload astronomy photos to the gallery.

Which means one of the items that I didn’t think I would come close to completing before the fall is done. I’ve re-started my astronomy hobby. Feels good.


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Learning photography – Equipment

The Writing Life of a Tadpole Posted on by  

As I mentioned earlier, I started watching videos on Fundamentals of Photography from The Great Courses company. Chapter 2 of the course deals with camera equipment and related accessories. While the host is a National Geographic photographer, and has been for much of his career, he basically suggests getting equipment that fits in a backpack. No more, no less.

For the bag, he recommends soft shoulder straps so that you can lug it around for the day, and room for:

  • camera body;
  • a lens or two;
  • memory cards;
  • batteries;
  • battery charger;
  • lens cloth;
  • external flash + batteries for it; and,
  • a sync cord for flash.

I confess I don’t really like my camera bag setup. I had one that came with the combo I bought, and it is a hard bulky near cube-like format. It would hold everything above, but it only has a shoulder strap, and it’s kind of blocky. The interior design isn’t the best either, and I often felt like I was trying too hard to shift things around. I had another camera bag that I had bought for astronomy stuff, and I’ve repurposed it back to its original purpose, but it’s not great either. It is very hard to get things in and out of without taking it off, setting it on its side, etc. At some point, I need something better, just not sure what that it is yet as I haven’t quite figured out where/when I will use my camera the most yet. It’s a different setup if I’m doing astrophotography vs. hanging out at the cottage vs. going on a hike. Or, as the host puts it succinctly, “What do you want to do?”.

He prefers a photography vest, as do some astronomers. Lots of little pockets to hold everything, distribute weight equally, and freeing your hands for adjustments, etc. It is also harder to steal your equipment if you’re basically wearing it.

The Chapter doesn’t spend much time on the actual camera equipment, mostly as he wants to hold that back until he gets into the various features and what he uses them for…his only real advice is that his favorite lens is a 24-70 mm lens, mostly as it is comfortable, not too heavy, allows him to mostly support the entire camera and lens in his left hand, freeing his right hand to snap and adjust easily.

He does, however, heavily recommend three things:

  1. A decent view screen, although he has a cute story that professional photographers call it a “chimping” screen (i.e. so people can look at it, and sound like a chimp, saying ooh, ooh, ahh, ahh);
  2. A solid tripod for longer exposures and to reduce any shake; and,
  3. A cable release to also eliminate shake.

The Canon T5i has a good screen, I like it. Sure, some of the new ones that come with Android built-in along with WiFi are great, but this is a little more traditional and meets my needs. Only challenge I have is in bright light with my transition sunglasses on, it’s hard to see the screen.

I picked up a used tripod from a camera store on Bank Street, and it is pretty rock solid. Not the best options for heads, etc., and quick change setups, but I haven’t used it much either to get used to it. I also have a lighter one that I had for my previous cameras, including the video camera, which would work with short lenses (i.e. not too heavy), and a monopod for hiking, although I’m not convinced it works as well as some people seem to claim. Could just be a lack of practice too.

I have two cable releases — one that works remotely, that I could never get to work, and one that is wired. I’ve toyed with the idea of adding the bluetooth attachment that would also connect to my phone or tablet, but outside of astronomy, I don’t know when I would use it that much.

What I found really interesting this week though is that he blew past the intro to equipment and covered the basics of aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. Those three pieces work together on your photos, and I confess that while I have read multiple explanations of them over the years, I have never really “gotten it”. I could regurgitate what the shutter speed was, mostly aperture although sometimes a little off in technical details, and on ISO, I often described it more as the speed of the “film” from our old pre-DSLR days. And how the three worked together, I really had no idea. I was constantly confused. I would get pieces, I could duplicate other shots, but the real relationship between the three and how the three worked together? I really didn’t get it.

For the first time, watching this host, a light came on. The example he used, which isn’t the biggest part for me, was the idea of a faucet filling a sink with water. The aperture is the size of your faucet — small faucet, small amount of water; large faucet, large amount of water. The shutter speed is how long you have the faucet running — longer duration, more water; shorter duration, less water. And the ISO, although the metaphor is a bit weaker here, is how strong the water is pushing through the pipe.

Translating that to the camera, the biggest piece for me is that he ignored ISO. He focused almost entirely on aperture and shutter speed. So, with light coming in, a big aperture lets in a lot of light, while a small aperture lets in less light. Pretty straightforward. It’s the same concept for astronomy, and I think that was the hook for me. Large light buckets bring in lots of light, small light buckets bring in smaller amounts of light. If I think of it as Aperture, instead of focal length, it becomes much clearer to me. Maybe part of what was confusing to me previously is that astro stuff works heavily with focal length, and you even have some basic math to figure out magnifications, etc.

So, I learned that if you decrease the number, you’re increasing the amount of light and increasing the amount of light. Because it is a ratio, the number works in reverse with the focal length. The focal length is on the bottom of the ratio, so as that number goes higher, and the focal length gets higher, the aperture gets smaller. So f/1.0 is the biggest aperture with the most light coming in; f/8-11 is a moderate setting; and f/22 is a small amount of light. It’s also why you frequently see wide-angle lens having the f/2.8 settings — because they are designed to give you wide shots with lots of light. Also making them good in low light too, because they are pulling as much light as possible at those settings. Most of my lens stop in the f/4.0 range and that’s pushing them to their limits.

For shutter speed, I’ve never really had any trouble understanding that…it always made sense to me in terms of longer exposure. But I didn’t think of it like I do astronomy i.e. I only thought of it as related to night photography. Longer shots to get the stars, to gather lots of light. I didn’t think of it as gathering more light for the day time too. Hence the trade-off with the aperture — if you go to a small, small, small aperture, you need to adjust to longer exposure times. If you have a large aperture, you need faster shutter speeds or you’ll get nothing but white — you’re controlling how much water/light is coming out of the faucet into the sink.

The trade-off has never been clear to me on that. Particularly when you start with shutter speed — if I’m going with a faster shutter speed, for example to capture somebody doing sports, I also need to adjust my aperture in order to open up the “light hole” (aperture) to make sure I’m still getting lots of light in. Hence why small f # lenses, like 2.8, are called fast lenses — because they allow for the fastest shutter speeds.

I couldn’t see those two as the trade-offs as I always threw the ISO in there just enough to confuse me. I remembered that ISO 100 was considered “normal” speed film, and that ISO800 was considered “fast” film. So I figured if you were jacking your shutter speed to be super fast, you must have upgraded your ISO at the same time. Almost like they *always* went hand-in-hand, and hence could be considered almost the same.

I knew that ISO stood for the International Standards Organization, so the acronym never helped. However, once he started talking about it as the light sensitivity of the camera, kind of the reverse of how much water is being pumped into the sink, more like how hard or how much is hitting the bottom of the sink, it clicked for me. I understand sensitivity of sensors, and how important it is for ability to register photons, just like the old plates (not that I ever used them, but I understand the physics of it). Particularly in terms of astronomy, so it suddenly became clear why jacking my ISO during the day was like flooding the camera with super sensitive light. Just like taking a photo of a bright moon with high ISO, and seeing it just completely wash out the details.

I know I’m supposed to see them as a triangle — aperture, shutter speed, and ISO — but it works better for me to see aperture and shutter speed as trade offs, and ISO more as just the sensitivity to the amount of light controlled by the other two.

After that, it was more simple note-taking:

  • shutter speed normally in the 1/60 or 1/125 range;
  • f/16 has everything in it tack sharp, f/2.8 is mainly the centre;
  • low light needs more sensitivity;
  • “aperture priority” is great for setting aperture, and the camera does the rest on “auto”; and,
  • “shutter speed priority” is great for setting fast or slow and letting the camera handle the rest on “auto”.

He concluded the intro by noting that he frequently sets up beginners in AP mode, shooting as close to 2.8 as they can get, and letting them rock out on composition after that. The assignment was basically to just to play with settings, which I’ve already done, so wasn’t part of my main focus afterwards.

I’m just ecstatic that I finally understood aperture and shutter speed trade offs, with ISO in behind. I finally “get it”. That alone is worth the price of the course (maybe not full price, but certainly with the discount that is always available).


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Learning photography – Introduction

The Writing Life of a Tadpole Posted on by  

I bought a DSLR camera some time ago, a Canon T5i Digital Rebel. It came with a stock lens, plus I bundled it with a 55mm to 250mm zoom lens, and it works pretty well for me. I’ve taken some amazing shots of our cousins waterskiing, some nice group photos, a few sunsets, and even some astrophotography. But I have a big challenge. And it isn’t the equipment.

I don’t really know what I’m doing. Sure, I’ve read the manual, but I don’t know much about the difference between aperture, f-stops, shutter speeds, and ISO settings, let alone white balance, metering modes, bounce flashes or any of that stuff. I kind of naively thought if I looked at settings of photos I like (often the magazines include the specs for the shot), I could learn to recreate some of them. Not impossible, but not very illuminating either. I have wanted to take a course, but timing and expense and area of emphasis were hard to coordinate. In the meantime, I’ve been playing with my camera and reading magazines.

Fast forward to a photography course with The Great Courses company. Note that TGC has an approach to these learning courses that basically relies on identifying excellent teachers from around the world, getting them to teach a specific course they’re passionate about, and then selling the audio or video series. Think of it is as more organized TED talks, or alternatively, downloadable MOOCs without the other students, interactions online, or the paper certificate at the end. They have a couple of photography courses, and I lucked into Joel Sartore’s “Fundamentals of Photography”. Broken into 24 video lectures of about 30-35 minutes each, the course basically talks about various subject matters in photography from a non-technical perspective. Which is about where my level of expertise is at the present.

Chapter 1 is a general introduction to the course, with an overview of the “approach”. Mostly Sartore talks about teaching would-be photographers to “see well”, combining subject, light, background and space to create iconic or interesting photos, something different from everybody else.

While the lecture is more of a general intro, there were some tips I liked:

  • Sartore noted that lots of people subscribe to the classic myth that the best photos outside require you to have the sun at your back. Except he said that this means that whoever your subject is (person, dog, etc.), they are looking directly into the sun. Which means they are likely squinting, a form of torture for your subject, and it is even less important with modern cameras which can work with a lot softer light.
  • For him, Sartore noted that the true basis for a great picture was great light + great composition + something interesting to see.
  • Last but not least, he advised that you should stop to “pet the whale”, an anecdote about a specific whale watching excursion where the whales will let you pet them but many photographers are so focused on the photo, they forget to enjoy the experience. Combined with the need to think about what you are photographing, he advises putting the camera down to enjoy the experience as well as seeing it clearly, considering what you want to include or exclude, and only then consider picking up the camera.

There was one sour note in the opening lecture, and I confess it almost turned me completely off the series. Sartore was talking about how some photos require a bit of staging, although those aren’t the words he used, and he showed a photo of his wife and son, with his wife holding his son up while he was wearing a bright shirt/short set, less than 2 years old, in front of a sweeping Arizona vista. He was noting that the shot was “unique” because it showed his son in full on crying mode — beautiful image, but not your typical pose. The image itself was a bit iconic, perhaps, but Sartore noted that his son had been crying most of the time, and wasn’t very happy. And he wanted a photo, so he asked his wife to hold his son up for about 20 seconds, essentially to make him uncomfortable and give him real time to get into the cry. Did it hurt his son? Of course not. Would I do it with my son? No, cuz I don’t want to be an a**hole to him.

It really turned me off the host, and I basically took it as my “warning shot”. I stuck with the series though and it hasn’t repeated. Maybe he was being funny, maybe he was adlibbing, maybe he was careless with his words, but it didn’t sound very nice to the kid. However, I’m in it for the photography tips, not parenting tips, and I’ve stuck with it.

I liked his “homework” assignment at the end, where he suggested you find an interesting room in your house, i.e. your favorite room, and think of what you could photograph. He chose his living room, with two assistants playing with dogs. What I found interesting was to see the composition, and how much of a difference it made when he decluttered the background to remove a mirror and some pictures. It isn’t much, very subtle, but it drastically altered the composition. Quite well done.

In short, I loved it. On to Chapter 2.


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Photobook fun

The Writing Life of a Tadpole Posted on by  

So I’ve been spending a lot of time uploading old photos to my website, and now that I have a healthy base to work with, I’m working on some photobooks. Nothing too “fancy”, mostly just “year in review” type books.

I’ve used Shutterfly before, and while it puts out a decent book, I have two reservations with it. First, because they aren’t produced in Canada, you end up spending a heavy chunk of cash on shipping. Not exorbitant, just enough to notice. Price goes higher the faster you want it, as it would be anywhere.

Second, and a little more vague, the photo places often ship them overseas for production to Asia, and there is little regulation for either labour or the production methods used in a lot of the hot spots. We recently had a canvas print shipped from Malaysia (by Photobook Canada, not Shutterfly) and it came in smelling like musty canvas — turned out it was a lacquer they used on the finishing. There’s no way it would be allowed to be shipped in that condition in Canada, would never pass the sniff test, literally. The print stunk bad enough I had to put in the garage for a few days to air out. It’s relatively fine now, but not the most reassuring of experiences. And Shutterfly uses the same printing options/places.

On the plus side, they are reliable, they have regular sales, their coupons are stackable (i.e. 30% off for a sale, $10 off on books, free shipping etc. — most sites would make you choose one, Shutterfly usually lets you apply all of them to your order at once). I recently did a full year in review book with them, haven’t received it yet, but it has a LOT of extra pages (80+, when standard is 40) and price is about $75 in the end, including shipping, etc. Not great, not horrendous. None of the extra bells and whistles. And their software has a couple of painful omissions (an ability to duplicate or move pages, for instance). A solid 8 / 10 for sure on quality, software and price.

Mixbooks is the big blogger darling in the U.S. at present, with lots of people saying it is 10/10 for quality and software, maybe 8/10 for price. They are competitive with the other companies, but coupons are not stackable and their sales are not as frequent or as deep. I found the software good, but unwieldy at times. In the end, I bailed before completing an order.

Photobook Canada is one that everyone likes to say is better because it is supposedly Canadian, but the stats on their production in Canada are extremely limited. Most of their cheap stuff they farm overseas, maybe they used to do their stuff and prints here in Canada but looks like it is all off-shore now. The smelly canvas came from Malaysia, two calendars came from Malaysia. A small astronomy book I did awhile ago came from Asia somewhere. I’ve just ordered a small book as a gift, and I suspect it will also come from Malaysia. Software is not as good as Mixbooks or Shutterfly, but functional, and their cheap options are good for price at least, if not enduring quality.  Their other fantastic feature, in my view, is that their software is 100% downloadable. You can build the entire book on your own computer and just connect when you’re done. It takes a while for everything to upload at that point, but it’s better and faster than working in the cloud the whole time. I used them for the calendars (and make a rookie error with them) and the canvas print (that was initially smelly and is okay now), but I should also give them credit for the fact that my vouchers had expired (I didn’t realize they did that when I bought them last January), and they extended them with no trouble at all. Nice.

I checked out a bunch of other sites this week too.

Shoppers Drug Mart has a good basic option, software seems a little limited, and prices are okay but competitive. Their big “savings” offering is that it is free shipping to their local stores (I discovered their options earlier this week when sending some simple prints to a remote store). However, the software crashed completely in basic options working with both Firefox and Microsoft Edge. I’m not willing to invest any time in buggy software.

Uniprix seemed okay, nothing flashy. Basic software, prices were okay, seemed more geared to the pamphlet-style softcovers than some of the other bigger companies. I don’t know that I gave them a truly adequate test though.

Loblaws was a surprise for a couple of reasons. First, I didn’t know they had a photobook option — it strikes me if they were kicking butt, everyone would know about them. Second, their software is the SAME as Shoppers Drug Mart. Whoever is their backend supplier has given them the same front-end interface, with only minor differences. Seemed good, not as big and powerful as Shutterfly, Mixbooks or Photobook Canada, but decent enough. I even found some default templates I liked. But here’s the weird part…I chose a special template with some contemporary features i.e. not everything was blocky, squared designs. About half the default pages had a bit of a scrap-book feel to them, a common design feature. Except when I then went to the layouts feature to see what the options were for additional pages, none of those scrap-book layouts were available to select. All the rest were blocky, perfectly squared line ups. No obvious option to copy the existing templates either, unless I wanted to copy a page element at a time. But then it got even weirder…I chose a default template, added it to a page, and the photo sizes were completely wrong. I had the book set for 9×12″ size, and it put photos down as if they were going in a 6×6″ book. In other words, just part of the page…and no option to drag them as a group to make them bigger. You could manually adjust each and every photo individually. Nuh-uh, no way. That would be incredibly time consuming if I add some 50-60 additional pages, all of which required custom layouts. However, I have discovered that you CAN duplicate the original pages, just a bit of extra manual work to do it, kind of counter-intuitive.

Lots of people have used Costco and while I admire their commitment, the software was the worst one of all. Slow, few options, etc. If you had, say, 75 photos, and you wanted it to pre-populate them into a book template, it might be okay. But 10 minutes in and I’d already found 3 things I couldn’t do in the format. Not an option. Most importantly they had a lower limit on number of pages allowed. I was two-thirds of the way through a photobook when I came to a screeching halt — I couldn’t add anything else, and couldn’t copy the project to another project (I would have just split it into two books).

Henry’s has a site that has the same back-end as Loblaws and Shoppers Drug Mart (same themes, etc.) but a completely different interface. Looks okay, but it won’t actually let me load any photos from the album into the layout to try it. It didn’t want to sync with other sites either. Kind of hard to do a photo book if you can’t get photos into the layout! Fail.

I think I’m going to give the Loblaw’s one another go. We’ll see if it works out. Might try UniPrix after that, based on a friend’s recommendation. In the end, I’m likely to end up back with Shutterfly, but it won’t be for a lack of trying to find a Canadian supplier.


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