Photography Bay

Digital Camera News, Reviews and Tips

Computed Photos

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To continue my previous ramblings on technological innovations and photography, Science News Online has an interesting article on computed photos and how this technological trend will affect photography in the future.

HDR is part of this trend obviously.  Love it or hate it, HDR and future innovations are now a part of the photographic world. There’s a world of innovation waiting out there.  There’s already plenty here that is too much for one photographer to master it all.  Embrace what you love and enjoy the creations of others.

Computational photography, however, transforms the act of capturing the image. Some researchers use curved mirrors to distort their camera’s field of view. Others replace the camera lens with an array of thousands of microlenses or with a virtual lens that exists only in software. Some use what they call smart flashes to illuminate a scene with complex patterns of light, or set up domes containing hundreds of flashes to light a subject from many angles. The list goes on: three-dimensional apertures, multiple exposures, cameras stacked in arrays, and more.

In the hands of professional photographers and filmmakers, the creative potential of these technologies is tremendous. “I expect it to lead to new art forms,” says Marc Levoy, a professor of computer science at Stanford University.  Read the rest of the article. . . .

 

Weekend Reading/Viewing Material

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Wondering when you will ever get those thousands of film shots in digital format? Thinking about which scanner is the best to buy for your needs, but you don’t even know what to start looking at? Popular Photography has the run down on all the film scanner 411 and tells you what to look for in a scanner. They even go as far as recommending a model or two. Check it out.

Nothing to read, but something to watch. Take a look at how you can get rid of people cluttering up your photos of that beautiful fountain with Photoshop CS3.

Save some money and hack that disposable camera for repeated uses.

This photographer nailed it.

Camera Tossing

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Camera Tossing (3 of 3)

Originally uploaded by hawridger.




I’ve been reading the Camera Toss Blog for some time now and admiring all the great abstracts that camera tossing produces. Until last night, I hadn’t tried it myself.

I was more than pleased with my first effort (above) at camera tossing. What’s more, it’s addictive like crack! Seriously, I blew through half an hour just getting warmed up.

It’s easier than it might look. Be warned though, you should take a browse through the beginner’s guide and Mini How-to over at the Camera Toss Blog (take note on the disclaimers stating that you can break your camera) before jumping full throttle into camera tossing.

The Future of Digital Cameras

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We fuss about sensor size – oh, I like the 1.6 crop factor because it gives me a longer focal length; or, oh, I want a full frame camera because I get a wider angle. We (including yours truly) nit-pick the features of digital cameras apart before they’re even release. We fantasize about the next cameras that Canon or Nikon are going to release (especially yours truly – *cough Canon 40D, *cough Nikon D3). If this rings a bell then you truly need to take a look at some technology that could revolutionize the way we think about image capture; something that could far surpass the capabilities and quality of film (I understand some of you believe we have already arrived and film lovers should just let go).

Ease on over and check out the Light-Field camera if you’ve never heard of it. It’s like HDR on steroids and being chased by flaming ninjas that are all in-focus. Oh yeah, and I want one.

How to Use Your On-Camera Flash

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my brand new camera…..flash

Originally uploaded by rougerouge.


I was stumbling around the web today and came upon PlanetNeil. Neil van Neikerk is a pro photographer in NJ. You should really check out his blog and photos. He’s got a creative vision that really shows in his work.


You’re wondering about the whole on-camera flash bit, right? This is where the stumbling comes in. I landed on his FAQ for flash techniques, specifically, the use of on-camera flash. Solid stuff. His FAQ is very well written with nice example photos of what he’s talking about. If your photos just look plain wrong when your shooting with your on-camera flash, head on over now to learn how to do it right. That said, if you think you know how to bounce your flash and you’re still reading this post then you need to read it too – go now.

Thanks for the great article Neil and thanks to rougerogue on flickr for opening blogs on the cool shot above.

Photo (Lesson) of the Day

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2007-03-19-10-32-411

Originally uploaded by joshuatargownik.


We get two in one today – a cool shot and a lesson on how it’s done. It looks like Joshua is a Strobist reader too (see the links in my sidebar under “Photography Resources”).

This was a recent topic for a Strobist assignment and this shot pretty much nailed it. If you want a more in depth lesson, first, take a look at the original Strobist post and then, see the explanation post.

This post was made possible by Strobist and Joshua‘s generous sharing via flickr.

What does “Crop Factor” mean?

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. . . and why does it matter?  Crop factor is a term used loosely in the DSLR world when referring to lens focal length.  There’s often a lot of confusion and misunderstanding surrounding the term for folks that are new shoppers or users of DSLR cameras.

It’s not so scary folks.  If you want a no nonsense explanation of what it means and why it may be important to you, head on over to Rich Legg’s recent post on the topic.  He explains it for the average Joe and even gives us some photos to illustrate what crop factor does.  What are you waiting for?  Go.  Now.

Photo Mosaics

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Cades Cove Mosaic

I learned something new today. I stumbled upon a mosaic maker. It was pretty simple to do. I upload my image file and the mosaic generator pulls images from flickr to create a mosaic of my original image. I imagine that there are some real copyright problems with this use of the photos from flickr even though the mosaic generator puts a copyright notice on the Image Mosaic Generator site.

IMAGES USED IN THE MAKING OF IMAGE MOSAICS ARE COLLECTED FROM FLICKR AND COPYRIGHT OF THEIR RESPECTIVE OWNERS.


That said, you may want to go about creating your mosaic from your own photos. There are several ways to do it. There’s online tools that you can use your own flickr photos with (or any other online photos). Also, take a look at the popular software, Mosaic Creator, at aolej.com or ArcSoft Photo Montage. Want to learn more about photo mosaics? Start with the wealth of info on Wikipedia.

UPDATED 3/15/07:  See also, Rich Legg’s colored pencil mosaic post.

RAW vs. JPEG

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I’m going to address a debate that there is no clear answer to . . . actually, there is an answer: “It depends.”

Ask a handful of photographers which file format you should shoot with and you’ll get some strong opinions on both sides of the debate. Each side has some good points. The problem with the debate is that some folks with strong opinions believe there is only one way – JPEG or RAW. I tend to think that this depends on each photographer’s particular circumstances. [Read more…]