Photography Blog

Michael C. Podlesny asked:




Digital Photography is all the rage when it comes to taking pictures. Unlike convential cameras, the 35mm variety, you are able to view pictures immediately after you take them, decide whether or not you want to keep them and so much more. Also unlike 35mm cameras, digital cameras give you the ability to store your photos on a memory card, giving you the potential of taking literally hundreds of photos without running out of film.

The biggest advantage of digital is its flexibility. You will no longer need to carry separate cameras to shoot in black and white or color. Most digital cameras come with a knob or digital menu that allow you to choose how you want the picture to be taken. Additionally, digital is the only format that allows duplication with no loss of quality.

Digital photographs can be easily shared through email, jump drives and through the internet with onlin photo galleries where you can send share links to friends that allows them to view the photos or a slide show. I personally use Kodak Gallery.

In this article I want to give you digital photography enthusiasts some tips on making your experience as an amateur (who knows maybe some pros also) digital photographer even better.

If you are into digital photography, acquaint yourself with a product called Adobe Photoshop. You may have already heard of it, but for those who haven`t this is a powerful piece of software that allows you to edit your photos to your wildest imagination. To give you an example, you can make pictures more clear, and add words. These are just a few of the basic items you get with Photoshop. With the release of Photoshop Lightroom you now have a professional photo management system for your digital photographs. According to Rob Schoeben of Apple Computers Inc., “the Photoshop Lightroom is about pulling the beauty out of image. The new program helps users to browse and manage images.”

With any type of camera you will need a good lense. Without going into specific brands here are a couple of tips. Zoom lenses used in most digital cameras are insufficient for nature photography. Prime lenses offer the highest optical quality to digital photographers and Super zoom cameras are perfect to capture a sporting event.

As with all hobbies and other subjects you can find a variety of tutorials and books on digital photographty. Some include, “The Perfect Picture,” by Bryan E. Peterson which offers beginners a strong foundation from exposure to composition on DVD format, “SureShot System” is another DVD course from Big Picture Enterprises. The short course “Fundamentals of Digital Photography: Getting the Most Out of Your Digital SLR” includes audio CDs.

The power of technology has lent itself to make digital photography a wonderful and enjoyable hobby for all. With these tips and further educating yourself on the matter, you can snap (or is it record?) your favorite photo and make it look like a pro took it, in no time.

By: Bruce A. Tucker

Adam Singleton asked:




With the rise of digital photography in the last decade, many photographic purists have lamented the declining use of good old fashioned printed photographs. In fact, digital photography is, by and large, much preferable to the now outdated camera film reel and offers a wide range of benefits that not only include better quality pictures, higher resolution and more options for storage, but also – to the evident delight of many – the option to print!

Historically, the earliest cameras were first developed in the tenth century by a Persian mathematician, but photographic processing and chemical photography didn’t actually come to light until the nineteenth century, when a French inventor came up with the first permanent photograph in 1826. This first photographic print took a whole eight hours to expose and, while traditional photography made long strides in order to reduce the time it took to process photos, it wasn’t until the birth of digital photography that photographers were truly freed of the need to be within close access to processing facilities.

Commercial digital photography is often said to have begun with the unveiling of the Kodak DCS 100 in 1990, but the high cost of digital cameras meant that its uses didn’t stray much away from professional photographers and photo journalists. It was only in the late 1990s and early 2000s that digital photography began to find its way into the home. The take-up of digital cameras became so widespread that in 2004, Kodak announced it would no longer be producing re-loadable film cameras, with both Nikon and Canon following suit in 2006.

It’s clear that digital cameras offer both the professional and amateur photographer a range of benefits. With a traditional re-loadable camera, printed photos that turned out blurry or were unwanted would simply have to be thrown away, with the processing fee already paid for. However, with digital cameras, it’s easy to delete photos that you don’t want – making more room for photos that you do.

Additionally, digital photo printing has become much more widely available today. In the early days of home digital cameras, printing out digital photos was largely confined to in-home printers, with only the best quality colour ink cartridges being able to cope with such high resolution images. But now, it’s possible to find affordable digital photo printing from online photo processing services and on the high street.

Moreover, digital photos give you the option of having your photos printed on personalised items, like a mug or family Christmas cards. Many people even choose to get digital photos of special occasions, like a landmark birthday or a wedding, printed in book form, so there’s less likelihood of special photos being lost or becoming faded. And while the traditional medium of printed photographs can hold nostalgic value, it’s becoming increasingly clear to many that digital photography is the only way to go!

Robert Meeks asked:




Photographing Lightning

by Robert Meeks

Lightning can be both a beautiful and yet frightening part of nature. Many of us find awe in watching the momentary bolts of lightning and have seen photographs which seem to have captured more bolts of lightning than are possible in a split second.

When dealing with lightning, as with any unpredictable subject, the ability to capture that one fleeting moment is something we do not have the luxury of doing. Yet, what we can capture is quite impressive when we use the proper techniques. With lightning, the key is to let it do its show for us, and not to attempt to capture a momentary bolt.

As lightning is a split second event, and often lightning bolts come in groups, we can use the lightning for our source of light. We do this by using a slow speed film (a low ISO on digital cameras), a small aperture, and a long exposure time at a point when the lightning’s activity has increased. This exposure can be from 1 second to many seconds depending on the amount of lightning activity, and if we are taking the shot during the day or night. Even if we are taking the exposure during the day, often lighting conditions are very reduced during a storm; by as much as 7 stops or more from sunny conditions.

The idea is for us to pick our spot from which we are going to shoot during the storm; such as a cityscape, farm, church, or any other area we feel would make a good background (or subject) for the lightning. We can select areas from which we would like to shoot during a non-storm period and go to those locations when a storm is brewing.

If we are to set up the camera in an outside location, we need a sturdy tripod with some additional weight to hold it down during potentially high winds, and some waterproof cover for the camera. The use of a cable release is a must, for the sake of safety, and the best type to use is an air-bulb release as it does not use metal in the tube; not giving a source of continuity back to us in case the camera is struck by lightning. We need to set the camera to the bulb (B) setting for shutter speed, and probably an f/16 with the lens set to infinity, or a pre-determined hyperfocal distance. We then need to get to our safe place from where we are to trip the shutter.

An alternative to setting up the camera in an outdoor location is to use a windowpod we can attach to our car windows and attach the camera to it. The window should be rolled up as much as possible and the camera still needs to have a cover for protection. For those of us lucky enough to have a good view from our home, we can position the camera at a window, either opening the window or pushing the lens up against the window glass, making certain that any interior lights for the room we are using are turned off.

Taking pictures is a matter of holding the shutter open for a few seconds so we can capture one or more bolts of lightning. For the best results, we need to do this several times as we cannot pre-measure the exposure value of the lightning. We should plan to kill of a full roll of film (here, digital cameras have an advantage) doing this for different exposure times and various lightning effects. The end result will be several successful exposures with some really neat lightning effects.

A lesson on taking pictures of lightning cannot be closed without mentioning the potential danger in doing such. Lightning is electricity with an equivalency of thousands of volts of potential delivering enough joules to make the electric company salivate. Capital punishment by electrocution uses less power than what a lightning bolt can potentially deliver.

Safety during a lightning storm involves keeping yourself in a protected place such as a shelter where you are not exposed to an opening or a vehicle which is well protected from lightning due to it not being grounded, as lightning is attracted to portions of the earth which have an imbalance in their electrical state. Being separated from the ground breaks the continuity and prevents you from becoming an attractor for the lightning.

If you find yourself outside during a lightning storm and you feel the hair on the back of your neck and limbs stand up, quickly get away from the area as this is a precursor of a lightning strike. Wearing protective clothing such as a rubber raincoat and boots with rubber galoshes over them can add protection, but it is not a cure. Staying away from trees during a lightning storm is advised, not due to making you a better target (as it does not), but if the tree is hit and the ground is moist enough, you can still be struck due to continuity of the electrical charge or the splitting of the bolt; not to mention having a tree fall on you.

The effects on someone from being struck by lightning can range from the loss of fingernails and toenails, loss of hearing, severe burns, loss of sight, loss of all body hair, organ and tissue damage, organ failure, brain damage, fusion of skin, to outright death which is not uncommon from lightning strikes.

I hope my warnings about the dangers of lightning have not fallen on deaf ears. Taking photos of lightning can be quite a rewarding experience. Being alive to share those photos can be an even more rewarding experience. You do not want to end up being the butt of the old photographer joke where their last picture was a beauty.

Bob

This article is copyrighted 2005 by Robert Meeks. All rights reserved. Webmasters are allowed to use this article on their site so long as the content and copyright information stays intact and a link is provided, on the same page as the article, to Zhorkow’s CargoShip.

Amelie Mag asked:

More and more people are interested in getting the best offers for digital photo printing. Nevertheless, the phenomenon is a commonsensical one: we all strive to obtain the best at the most affordable terms. When websites offer digital print coupons, customers are easily convinced. No matter how cheap digital printing can be, once we hear about free photo prints, we are extremely interested. Whether it’s $1 or $10 coupons, everyone will go for it. There’s no doubt that digital print coupons help us save a lot of money.

A photo holds the value of a thousand words. This is particularly obvious when we try to access memories of past times, whether those times concern our own life or the life of others. Without a doubt, one could spend incalculable hours searching through letters, books and magazines in his or her past in an endeavor to revisit a past event. The right photograph can generate a grasp of things past that is both evident and instantaneous.

Fortunately, these days, with the help of photo prints, you are able to recoup such valuable data as promptly as possible. The situation is even more fortunate when you use digital print coupons and are able to have your photo prints free of charge. With free photo prints, you have flexibility – a feature secured by digital printing – and affordability – secured by the possibility of obtaining digital print coupons.

Digitalized photos indeed benefit from high quality and versatility, but people often want to have their pictures – even those taken with a digital camera and then stored on a PC – on paper. This is possible with digital printing. Most likely digital cameras will not replace photo film completely. However, the adaptability of digital cameras, as well as their unique characteristics renders them in one of the frequent (and outstanding, one might add) preferences of the recreational photographer.

On the other hand, even professional photographers make use of digital photography. With the many highly upgraded photo-shoot technologies nowadays, one can manipulate photos in extraordinary manners with the aid of digital cameras.

Many people might assume that the history of digital photography goes back only ten or fifteen years. But actually digital photography had been present years prior to the accessibility of the general public to the first digital cameras.

A record of digital photography most likely started in the 1980s. At that time, digital shooting substituted customary film in astronomy. The reason was one related to the quality of the pictures taken by digital cameras: they were able to capture light at a superior level when compared with film plates.

However, beyond the history of digital photography, the reality is that people use digital photos to secure their memories for a long time. Nothing can do it better than digital photos – at least not for now. The best thing about it is that you can have digital photos printed and, thus, kept closer to you, instead of just having them stored on the hard drive of your PC. Even more, digital technology makes it possible for such prints to come out at high levels of quality.

You want to secure your memories in this manner. Moreover, you probably want to have these prints in the most reasonably priced conditions. With the opportunity to get free photo prints, you have the best terms of affordability you could obtain. Finally, keep in mind that with the help of another highly upgraded technology – i.e. the Internet – you have the possibility to be the beneficiary of an incredible number of free photo prints. You just have to do your online research with our assistance.

Juan C Ruiz asked:




What is probably the most popular American past time today? If you think taking pictures then you’re right. Millions of people today are buying and using digital cameras take shots of almost any occasion be it birthdays, graduations, anniversaries, Christmas, New Year’s eve, parties and countless vacation trips. And when they get home they will have to save those images into their computers or have them printed. But to many, printing those pictures are not enough so they look for a good hosting site where they can place all of their photos.

What is image hosting? It is all about digital images that are uploaded to a website or hosting service. Those images are then saved in the servers of that hosting service for as long as the client wants. Now there are a few things that are standards with these services.

1. Image file format

The most popular image format today for the common digital cameras to save pictures on are the jpeg files. This format is perfect for taking every day photos with the right blend of the colors, saturation and hues can be saved in relatively small file sizes without greatly affecting the quality of the images. Of course there are other file formats like bmp, png and tiff. There are also proprietary formats that are only used by the digital camera manufacturers who invented that format and therefore not as popular as the other formats.

2. Disk space

What is image hosting without the alloted disk space?  There are free image hosting sites that offer a certain amount of disk space for you to upload your photos. Often this is already enough for most people. However there are those who are called power users who will require bigger spaces because either they have more photos to store or their images have bigger file sizes. Most image hosting sites offer paid subscriptions which come with larger disk spaces, perfect for all the photos of all of your trips and other special moments.

3. Digital image manipulation

While you probably already have a software that you can use to fix some minor things about your photos, most image hosting sites also do offer such a free service although usually in a much limited set of functions. The common features are present like cropping tools, frames, patterns, you can also change the hues, and other neat features. Usually these free image manipulation or correction services are enough for most people. Either way you can simply buy a more expensive photo software so you can do more with your photographs.

An image hosting site is a great service to all those people who love to take pictures. While the memory cards available for the digital cameras might be limited, you can just transfer your photos to these image hosting sites and store your pictures there for as long as you want. No need to worry about losing the original files or misplacing the prints. It’s the perfect online tool for those who love the art of photography.

Bruce Rama asked:

While it is very easy to spend lots of money on all the equipment that is available to the beginner in digital photography.  You only need to get a few basic items to start learning how to take great photos.  There are some essentials you need to have, like obviously a camera and a camera bag. Also items like batteries, memory, tripod, lenses and filters should also be on your shopping list. Below is a list of equipment you should consider when you want to get more out of shooting digitally.

A Camera. With the advances in digital technology, cameras have become feature packed.  Cameras that range from simple point and shoot models to top professional level workhorses worth thousands.  Features to look for in a camera are resolution, lens quality, image transfer mechanism, and wether you want goodie like movie modes or panoramic capture.  The features and abilities of your basic digital camera has exploded over the recent years.  So much so that with a little practice and the right equipment absolute beginners can take amazing photos.

An essential link in digital photography that is often underestimated by the beginner is your PC.  Crunching data to process the photos you take with your digital camera takes a bit more processing power than just normal Word or Excel work.  It is more RAM memory that is generally more useful than a faster processor.  If you want to really get into image editing then you will have to spend a bit of time optimising your PC/laptop setup.

Digital cameras really chew through the batteries when you want to take a lot of photos.  The best thing to do is buy several sets of rechargeable batteries, since they will pay for themselves in the long run.  If you can, and I highly recommend it, buy an AC adapter from the camera vendor you bought your camera from.  Use the AC adapter when you are doing tasks like transfering images to your laptop.  Also when you are displaying your images on a TV if your camera has that ability.

When you are not using that camera it should be put snuggly away in a camera bag.  Go for a camera bag that lets you arrange your equipment in a way that will protect them from damage.  Water Proof!  Most people take digital photos when on holidays in foreign locations and that can often make them targets for local thieves.  So consider looking for a bag that doesn’t look like it is holding camera gear.

If you want to get stunning close-ups or spectacular long-range landscape images, then a tripod is a must.  Again approach the vendor that you bought the digital camera from for the right type of tripod for your camera.  Most digital cameras today are light and small so the tripod does not have to be big or flashy, it just needs to hold that camera of yours steady.

Filters for your camera can reduce the effects of Glare.  Consider purchasing lenses for extreme close-ups or wide-angle shots, that are beyond the range of the lens that came with your camera.  Lenses and filters can lead your digital photography into all sorts of new directions.

A lot of beautiful moments can be captured and saved with the right type of digital camera equipment.  A beginner does not have to shell out lots of money to enjoy taking digital photos. Some basic pieces and your imagination can lead to some breathtaking photos. As the technology becomes ever more accessible more and more people are taking up digital photography as a hobby.



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