Archive : Photography: The Basics
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Tips For Starting Freelance Newspaper Photography
by: Peter Phun
So you’ve honed your skills to the point where you are confident you can get a good picture in any situation.
Have you thought about freelancing for a newspaper? Photojournalism is one of the most challenging, exciting types of photography.
As a result, it is also the most competitive fields to break in to. So what do you need to start?
Reliable Transportation
This should be obvious, [...]
Top 12 Image Editing Skills Every Photographer Should know
by: John Huegel
Before you start editing, make sure that you have a good image work flow. This means saving originals in a separate place to prevent you from damaging or destroying the original image. And get familiar with your program’s UNDO capability – usually the Ctrl-Z key is a shortcut to undo the most recent image change. Don’t forget SaveAs, which allows you to save a copy of the [...]
Creative Photography – Rules are made to be Broken
by: Andrew Goodall
Creative photography is a mix of many ingredients; art and technology, skill and patience, cold mechanical know-how and individual flair.
As a beginner, wouldn’t it be nice if the whole thing could be explained with a simple set of rules that were easy to understand. Surely someone could just tell you what aperture to use in a given situation, or how to structure a composition [...]
Beginner Digital Photography: Choosing your equipment
by: Peter Phun
As you are entering the world of digital photography, it is important to pause for a little consideration ahead of time make sure you can accomplish your goals. Start thinking from the point where you go out into the field; all the way to where you start printing or sharing your work.
Ask yourself these questions:
Will your present computer run Adobe’s Photoshop?
I’m going to assume [...]
Review of the Canon EOS 7D
by Guest Contributor
A guest Review of the Canon EOS 7D by Patrick Dean from NeutralDay.com.
The 18 megapixel Canon EOS 7D is a significant leap forward for the prosumer line of EOS DSLR cameras.
It offers increased resolution, high ISO capabilities, a new AF system, improved handling and functionality, and rapid-fire continuous shooting.
Intended for enthusiasts and semi-professional photographers, [...]
How to Hold a Digital Camera
by:Darren Rowse
One of the common problems that many new digital (and film) photographers have is ‘camera shake’ where images seem blurry – usually because the camera was not held still enough while the shutter was depressed. This is especially common in shots taken in low light situations where the shutter is open for longer periods of time. Even the smallest movement of the camera can cause [...]
15 Digital Photography Tips for Christmas
by: Darren Rowse
It’s just a few days until Christmas so I thought a quick tutorial on the topic of Christmas Photography might be appropriate. Hopefully this will give you some good Christmas photo ideas.
Here are 16 Christmas Photography tips and ideas to try that come to mind for digital camera owners wanting to capture the big day:
1. Prepare – Making a List, checking it twice….
Making sure [...]
Top 10 Popular DSLRS
by Darren Rowse
What’s Hot in DSLRs?
Note: The following DSLRs are the most popular in terms of purchases over the last month. We’re listing them in the order of popularity in terms of sales and in the configuration (ie with or without lenses bundled) that they’re selling in best.
1. Canon EOS Rebel T1i
This camera has topped our best selling list for the last few months. It’s a 15.1 [...]
Lenses and Focal Length Photography Tutorial
By Fredrik Silverglimth
In Photography, your lens is often your most important purchase. This photography tutorial outlines some important qualities of different lenses, and how each performs in identical situations.
Choosing a lens is often more difficult then choosing a camera when it comes to purchasing. One thing to remember is that a lens will last several times longer than digital cameras. [...]
Choosing a Camera Bag
By Fredrik Silverglimth
Camera bags can be one of the most difficult pieces of equipment to choose. No camera bag is made to fit every occasion so I will here talk about some different types of bags and cover a few points to consider.
Choosing your next lens or camera is often quite easy, you often know what you want, but when it comes to choosing a new camera bag at least I can be confused and have [...]
Filed in: Camera Accessories, Photography: The Basics
The Power of RAW Photography
By Fredrik Silverglimth
What is RAW?
RAW is an image format that is used in many D-SLR cameras. There is no standard file extension, every camera developer (and some software tools) have their own extension — but the backbone is the same.
The RAW format captures what the camera sees and stores it together with the metadata information in the file. In fact, every camera shoots in “RAW”, but if [...]
Filed in: Photography: The Basics
Exposure and Camera Modes
By Fredrik Silverglimth
Exposure
There are 3 parts of exposure that you should understand. The following examples ought to illustrate how these 3 components of exposure interact with one another.
Example 1
You take a photograph with the following settings: ƒ/8, 1/250s and ISO 100
But let’s say you want to freeze the object more, which requires a faster shutter speed, you can either change the [...]
Proven Ways to Reduce Shake in Photography
Learn how to get those steady shots, both with the help of tripods, monopods, and additionally with your bear hands. These tips are guaranteed to improve your stability while taking photographs!
To get good photographs you usually have to hold the camera steady. Sometimes a blurry photograph or one in motion can be desired, but most of the time it’s unwanted. The most common equipment to help counter [...]
No More Bad Photos
By Fredrik Silverglimth
Blurry Images Caused by Poor Focus
Photos that aren’t sharp are almost always caused by focus problems — either you, or the auto focus didn’t do their job correctly. If you are using auto focus and still get blurred photos it might be because the camera used another focusing point rather than the one thought you intended to use. Another reason might be the setting of [...]
Filed in: Photography Tips, Photography: The Basics
Introduction to Aperture in Digital Photography
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been writing a series of posts on elements that digital photographers need to learn about in order to get out of Auto mode and learn how to manually set the exposure of their shots. I’ve largely focussed upon three elements of the ‘exposure triangle‘ – ISO, Shutter Speed and Aperture. I’ve previously written about the first two and today would like [...]
Filed in: Camera Settings, Photography: The Basics
Digital Camera Modes – Automatic Modes
Automatic Mode
I suspect no one will need any introduction to this mode (as it seems most digital camera owners use it). Auto mode tells your camera to use it’s best judgement to select shutter speed, aperture, ISO, white balance, focus and flash to take the best shot that it can. With some cameras auto mode lets you override flash or change it to red eye reduction. This mode will give you nice results [...]
Filed in: Camera Settings, Photography: The Basics
Digital Camera Modes – Semi Automatic Modes and Fully Manual Mode
Semi Automatic Modes
Aperture Priority Mode (A or AV)
This mode is really a semi-automatic (or semi-manual) mode where you choose the aperture and where your camera chooses the other settings (shutter speed, white balance, ISO etc) so as to ensure you have a well balanced exposure. Aperture priority mode is useful when you’re looking to control the depth of field in a shot (usually a stationary object [...]
Filed in: Camera Settings, Photography: The Basics
Introduction to Shutter Speed in Digital Photography
What is Shutter Speed?
In film photography it was the length of time that the film was exposed to the scene you’re photographing and similarly in digital photography shutter speed is the length of time that your image sensor ’sees’ the scene you’re attempting to capture.
Let me attempt to break down the topic into some bite sized pieces that should help digital camera owners trying to get their [...]
Filed in: Photography Tips, Photography: The Basics
ISO Settings in Digital Photography
What is ISO?
In traditional (film) photography ISO (or ASA) was the indication of how sensitive a film was to light. It was measured in numbers (you’ve probably seen them on films – 100, 200, 400, 800 etc). The lower the number the lower the sensitivity of the film and the finer the grain in the shots you’re taking.
In Digital Photography ISO measures the sensitivity of the image sensor. The [...]
Filed in: Camera Settings, Photography: The Basics
Photographic Composition
Composition is what seperates generic point-and-shoot photography from actual planned and thought out photography. Without knowing how to properly compose a picture, you may have a $3,000 camera, but will still be taking bland pictures. A camera is a tool, and no matter how simple or complex a tool is, the effectiveness of this tool relies on the operator. For an example, let’s use one of the [...]
Filed in: Photography Tips, Photography: The Basics
Point and Shoot vs Digital SLR
Point and shoot and digital SLR cameras are worlds apart in more ways than one. The first question you have to ask yourself is what kind of photography are you going to be doing? Do you want something where you can just press a button and forget about it, or do you want to jump into your shots head first with complete control over every aspect? There are upsides and downsides of both dSLRs and point [...]
Filed in: Photography Tips, Photography: The Basics
Megapixels Explained
What is a Megapixel?
A megapixel simply means 1 million pixels. But what is a pixel? A pixel is a single point (or dot) in a graphic image. All graphic images are made up of thousands of tiny dots. Your computer screen, your digital images, both are made up of thousands (or millions) of little dots. If your camera is 8 megapixels, it means that any pictures it takes (on its highest quality setting) [...]
Filed in: Megapixels, Photography: The Basics
Lens Filters Explained
Lens filters can add many enhancing qualities to your photographs. When purchasing a filter, remember that you usually get what you pay for. Hoya and Tiffen are always good filter choices, but are a little pricey. Sometimes, lower quality filters will work fine, but other times, you may have problems such as low performance, low image quality, haze or blur, etc. With a Hoya or Tiffen you are pretty [...]
Filed in: Lens Filters, Photography: The Basics
How to Choose a Lens
Your lens is quite possibly the most important part of your camera. SLR and dSLR (digital SLR) cameras (and even some non SLR/dSLR) allow you to change out the lenses, to suit all of your photography needs. A good lens will produce sharp crystal-clear pictures with beautiful detail. A low quality lens can hinder you to the point where you’d be better off shooting with a disposable camera. Basically, [...]
Filed in: Choosing Lens, Photography: The Basics
Camera Settings Explained
There are several different ‘modes’ on your camera that determine the level of automation which your camera will provide. These modes are generally adjusted by a dial located on top of your camera, and may range from fully manual, meaning you have control over every single aspect of the shot, to fully automatic, meaning the camera will control everything for you based on the current conditions.
There [...]
Filed in: Camera Settings, Photography: The Basics
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