Digital Camera News, Reviews and Tips
Depth of field refers to the amount of photo in focus. One reason many people purchase a DSLR camera is to blur their backgrounds with ease. Creating a creamy, blurred background helps a subject “pop” or stand out from the background. The following tips will help you create this desired blur. [Read more…]
When you bought your DSLR camera, most likely it came with a kit lens. Modern kit lenses are a great pace to start. However, after a while, you may find yourself itching to try other lenses. There are so many lenses on the market that it’s often overwhelming narrowing down one or two lenses to buy. A 50mm prime lens is a natural choice for a first prime lens. 50mm f/1.8 lenses are very affordable and allow you to explore a wide variety of techniques while gaining confidence as a photographer. [Read more…]
The expectations in quality and artistry for wedding photographers have increased over the years with the influx of competition and increase in overall pricing. Not only are they expected to capture each moment and deliver great portraits, but they’re also expected to bring a high level of creativity under time constraints and less-than ideal lighting conditions. Unique, diverse compositions are a cornerstone to delivering work in-line with these high expectations.
The following article goes over common compositions in wedding photography. They should not be thought of in terms of rules, as rules are generally restricting. These compositions should instead be thought of as guides to help you expand your repertoire of shots and serve as a baseline from which you apply your own vision and creativity. [Read more…]
This topic was brought up by a reader who broke his right arm and asked how he was supposed to take photos and operate his camera with just his left hand.
Even if you are left-handed, cameras are designed to be gripped and operated primarily using the right hand. That’s why the grip and shutter release are on the right side.
If you have to go one-handed on your camera, you want the right hand to be holding it. But what do you do when you can’t use your right hand for 45 days?
Sure, you can carry around a tripod for a month and a half, but you’ll probably be without a camera quite often if it has to have a tripod attached to it every time you go out.
So, what are your other options? [Read more…]
Marksmen use a handful of fundamental principles to take aim, fire and hit their target. Many of these same principles can also be applied by other kinds of shooters – photographers.
When marksmen fail to abide by those principles, they may miss the bulls-eye. When photographers fail to follow them, they may end up with a blurry photo. [Read more…]
Last week, I showed you a couple of images that I processed with a goal of creating an extended dynamic range. One was processed in Lightroom from a single image and one was processed from three separate images in Photomatix to create an HDR image. This grew largely from an experiment with a Canon 5D Mark II RAW file to see how far I could push the dynamic range from a single file in Lightroom 2.5. Nothing scientific. Just a little fun.
If you missed it, here is the original post.
To make things a little more interesting, I posted both images with metadata stripped and asked you to decide which was a single image processed in Lightroom and which was a combination of 3 images processed in Photomatix. Take a look at the results of that poll below. [Read more…]
In sports and wildlife shooting, it’s all about getting that one particular moment that happens within a fraction of a second. Mastering the techniques to shooting sports will be able to help you progress as a photographer as those skills can be used in other forms such as photojournalism, weddings and street candids. My mentor, who has shot NY Knick games, has been kind enough to pass along some of his knowledge to me.
Here are 7 quick tips for those of you wanting to get better at shooting sports and fast action. Hint: You don’t need a camera that shoots 8fps like the Canon 7D, but it can help.
Note: Several of the photos in this article are from a recent trip to a Medieval Festival where the chance to really use the correct lenses and a better quality camera was presented to me. [Read more…]
Since the arrival of the Leica M9, bloggers have been abound with posts about Leicas, street photography, and why you need a rangefinder right now. Further, Chris Weeks has made a documentary on street photography and the human condition. If you watch it, you’ll see that it’s very pro-rangefinder. A personal critique of mine is that it almost seems like what we call in the industry to be an “advertorial.” To clarify, this is an article or piece of media that is supposed to be presented in a journalistic fashion but can seem more like subliminal marketing. To be fair, Mr. Weeks probably does legitimately love Leicas for street photography. However, as a photographer that has shot with all brands of cameras, I see no reason why a DSLR can’t do the same job. Regular readers of this blog may know that street photography is some that is held dear to me. More on this after the jump.
Author’s Note: This is not an anti-Leica post, when I worked for Magnum Photos many of their photographers used Leicas. I hold them in high regard and respect their history, but this post is about you as a photographer.
We all do portraits. It’s something that we learn how to do when we are first trained as photographers. Sometimes though, many portraits look the same after a while. Therefore they become boring to look at unless you find a way to make them fun and different than anyone else. Here are some tips to shoot that awesome portrait.
This rule is so extremely essential to creating interesting portraits. The rule of thirds is how us photographers are taught to compose our shots in order to make them effective and pleasing to the eye. If you’d like a more interesting shot, try messing with the way your viewer will look at the shot. In the above shot, she is totally off the rule of thirds. It shows her being relaxed, happy and totally serene/confident with herself. If you set up the rule of thirds composition lines on this shot you’d see that it doesn’t exactly meet the standards. On top of that, you’ve got the lines going horizontally as well as her arms and body going in the same direction. Slap on a black and white filter and you make this one really cool shot. [Read more…]
There are many different elements to street photography. As I’ve stated in previous posts, good things to focus on are the recession and the unusual/candid. There are lots more elements to street photography than that, and in this posting we will be focusing on something that I’m only now delving into: the paparazzi. [Read more…]