Jan 12
2008
People occasionally ask what kind of equipment I use to take my photographs when I’m out in the field. Obviously, a camera is required, but to get the most productivity there is a lot more that goes into making a good photograph than just a camera.
Most of the time I carry a backpack with me that has the necessities. Below is a picture of the bag, what is in it, and how it is organized.
Flash – I rarely use the flash and try to avoid it if at all possible. I don’t care for the
...Read More >>Jan 03
2008
Normally, when you take a picture through your digital camera, the camera will crop a few pixels around the edges. This is because some steps involved in processing the image are dependent on reading the data for a pixels neighbor. Since the edges don’t have all of the neighboring pixels, the camera crops these out. For my camera, the Canon EOS 400D, the output size is 3888×2592. This is, however, not using the full sensor. When shooting in RAW, the edge pixels are stored in the RAW file
...Read More >>Dec 22
2007
Every camera maker has their own proprietary RAW format. They can often have different RAW formats for each of the cameras that that make. RAW converter software has to deal with all these different formats. As time goes on, it is likely that new RAW converter software will not old cameras. It would be nice to be able to keep our RAW images for years to come just as film photographers keep their negatives.
Adobe recognized this problem and developed an open standard for RAW images. They called this
...Read More >>Dec 21
2007
If you are looking to get the most out or your photography, shooting in RAW is a must. In my previous article RAW vs JPEG I explained some of the advantages of shooting in RAW. In this article, I wanted to share a little about my experiences with some of the many RAW converters that are available.
There are many different RAW converters out there and for the most part, they all do a decent job of converting the RAW data. A few months ago I started using Adobe Lightroom. I have to say that Adobe
...Read More >>Dec 19
2007
Chromatic Aberration (CA) typically shows up on a photograph as blue or purple near an edge that is high in contrast. It is caused by the lens having a refracting index that is different for varying wavelengths of light. What this means is that the speed of the light traveling through the lens does not stay constant across the whole image. Changes in speed of light through the lens causes it to shift toward blue or purple.
Here is a shot that I took a while back that has a lot of chromatic aberration.
...Read More >>Dec 17
2007
A common way to get sharper images is to stop the lens down. It is generally excepted that the range of f/8 to f/11 is the sharpest. This has been a loose rule that I have followed while taking my photographs. But how can we be sure? Where in the f/8 to f/11 is the sharpest? How much difference does it make? These are some questions that I\’ve attempted to answer by performing a simple resolution test.
The images in this test were taken using a Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II lens. The camera
...Read More >>Dec 09
2007
This is a controversial topic that comes up often on photography forums. While most will agree that RAW is the way to go, there are still those that hang on to the notion that JPEG is better. While shooting in JPEG has it’s useful purposes, I believe RAW is the best way to get the most out of your photos. My goal in this article is to explain the advantages of shooting in RAW.
When shooting a picture from a digital camera, the data coming from the sensor is 12 bits (or 14 bits on some newer
...Read More >>Dec 07
2007
If you own a Canon XTi (400d), you probably have noticed the lack of a good white balance setting for indoor pictures under artificial light. Set the camera to automatic white balance or tungsten and the picture is too yellowish. Use a gray card (or sheet of paper) to set the white balance, and the picture is unnaturally white. None of the other white balance presets are any help either.
After some experimenting, I found that using my blue jeans as a gray card to set the white balance resulted in
...Read More >>Dec 03
2007
F-stops are relative measurements of light. When I say relative, I mean, that there must be some context for a comparison. Saying f/4 for example, means nothing without mentioning what we are referring to. Most of the time we are talking about a particular lens. “I shot this picture at f/4″ implies f/4 on the lens used to take the picture.
Ok, so what is an f-stop relative too? It is relative to there being no light restriction coming through the lens. If there was no restriction, we
...Read More >>Nov 30
2007
Bokeh, from the Japanese word for “Blur”, refers to the image quality of the area of a photograph that is out of focus. Often, the best way to make a subject stand out, is to make the background blurred. To do this, we want to make the depth of field as small as possible while still keeping the main subject in focus. The depth of field is directly related to the aperture. The set of pictures below shows how changing the aperture effects the depth of field. At f/1.8, the Christmas lights
...Read More >>