Monitor Calibration Revisited
Some recent hardware and software upgrades to my computer system has meant that I’ve had a buy new monitor calibration tools. I made mention of this on Facebook and it inspired a small discussion. It became apparent to me that there is still a lot of ignorance and misunderstanding about monitor calibration. Some people have [...]
Useful Software
It goes without saying that software plays a big part in photography today and there are a number of different packages you can use to assist you in creating final images that work the way you want them to. Adobe Photoshop is probably the most widely known amongst the general public but there are a [...]
Exposure Fusion
High dynamic range or HDR photography has been very popular the past few years, with photographers such as Trey Ratcliff and David Nightingale leading the way. I use it from time to time but often find a simple exposure fusion of two differently exposed images works wonders and produces better results than the full HDR [...]
Adding Custom Pages To Photoshelter
Last month, Photoshelter undertook an upgrade to their system and the services they offered photographers. They simplified the URL structures to put more attention on the photographer’s name, made integration with WordPress and Graph Paper Press themes easier, lowered transaction fees for photographer’s using the built in e-commerce features, enabled automatic submission of sitemaps and [...]
More New Flash Triggers From Phottix
I must have done something right with the recent review of the new Phottix Atlas flash trigger because a courier arrived the other day bearing more Phottix goodies. This time it was the soon-to-be-released Phottix Strato 4-in-1 Wireless Trigger, a new trigger that’s sure to be a hit with wedding and event photographers. The Strato [...]
Buying Gear
It seems that I’m always giving advice to people who are buying cameras. In many cases, it’s someone who’s making the transition from point and shoot digicam to DSLR. I’m quite happy to help people when they are getting prepared to buy their new camera. When I think about it though, my advice is always [...]
Phottix Atlas Flash Trigger
I recently had the opportunity to do some pre-release testing of the newly released Phottix Atlas Wireless Flash Triggers. Steve Peer, CEO of Phottix, is someone I’d known online for a couple of years, and he approached me about doing some testing for them. My first thought after agreeing was that the testing should be [...]
Which Lens
Prime, zoom, normal, telephoto, wideangle, tilt-shift. These are all commonly heard terms that describe different lenses. Which one is best is determined by a combination of factors including the subject, your vision and creativity, the light, your budget. Remember also that many of the greatest and most famous photographs of all time were taken by [...]
Telephoto Lenses
I know that I’m not alone when I say that one of the very first extra lenses I wanted was a telephoto. Unlike today, when I was first starting out, I wanted to go long. These days, my longest lens is a 70-200mm and most of my time is spent shooting at wide angles or [...]
Useful Things
Photography is often an expensive hobby, what with new bodies released every couple of years, endless lenses to buy, tripods, lighting gear, computers, bags and more. It seems that there’s always something extra to buy. Not everything needs to cost the earth though. Here are ten useful things that are cheap and readily available.
An Introduction To Workflow
Having a smooth, well-organized workflow is essential for almost any photographer, regardless of whether you are an amateur or a pro. For today’s phototip, I’m going to take an introductory look at the various stages of workflow. Future posts will go into more depth in regard to some of what’s mentioned here. Before we continue, [...]
Shooting Tethered
If you find yourself regularly shooting in a studio or indoors, it pays to shoot tethered. Even outdoors, using something like the Gitzo G065 monitor platform allows to set up your computer on location and continue to shoot tethered. The biggest advantage of shooting tethered is that you can see the images straight away on [...]
Monitor Calibration
A week or so ago, I tweeted that I was about to (re)calibrate my monitor. It’s something I’ve been doing regularly for a few years now in order to ensure that the photographs I’m working on are color correct. One of the replies I got was from someone saying that they didn’t know it was [...]
Reflectors
When you want to eliminate shadows from a scene, particularly those caused by hard sunlight, or when you want to direct just a little more light onto a subject, reach for a reflector. Reflectors come in all shapes and sizes to fit all sorts of budgets, from large ones that require a stand to mount [...]
Getting Gritty in Lightroom
Down and dirty, gritty urban type imagery is pretty popular these days. A lot of examples of this can be seen in the various HDR Flickr groups, as they are often created from multiple photographs that have been run through Photomatix or some other HDR processing software. You don’t actually need multiple exposures though, nor [...]
Contact Sheets
A contact sheet is useful for a photographer to be able to deliver a selection of images to a client for review before a final decision is made on which image to go with. Having the ability to put together a collection of photos from a shoot and quickly email them to a client for [...]
Polarizing Filters
In the days before digital, photographers would routinely carry and use a wide variety of lens filters for different purposes and different effects. These days however, the need for this has been greatly reduced, as many of the adjustments that a filter would give can now be easily applied during the processing state, and photographers [...]
Tools of the Trade
From time to time I get people asking me what I use to make the images I do. So here is all the gear I’m currently using. Camera Bodies Canon EOS 5D Mark II Canon EOS 40D Lenses Canon EF 17-40mm f4L Canon EF 70-200mm f4L Canon EF 50mm f1.8 Tokina 100mm f2.8 macro Camera [...]
Adobe Lightroom and Camera RAW Updates, Media Player and TV Launch
The teams at Adobe have been busy over the past few days. First up, we have the Lightroom update to 1.4.1 and Camera RAW update to 4.4.1. They are both available in the downloads section of Adobe’s site. For a complete list of what’s been changed, updated and fixed, visit Tom Hogarty’s blog. Tom is [...]
Lightroom 2.0 beta – looking at what’s new
With the release of the public beta for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.0, many photographers are eagerly diving in to check out the new features. So lets take a look and some of whats new. All screenshots below are from the Windows version because here in Taiwan, a Windows machine is half the price of a [...]
Lightroom 2.0 beta – looking at what’s new
With the release of the public beta for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.0, many photographers are eagerly diving in to check out the new features. So lets take a look and some of whats new. All screenshots below are from the Windows version because here in Taiwan, a Windows machine is half the price of a [...]
Spyder3 released by Datacolor
One of the often overlooked aspects of digital imaging is the need to properly color calibrate monitors and printers to ensure that you are seeing accurate colors. Datacolor have just released the Spyder 3 calibration tools. I’ve been using the Spyder 2 Pro for a couple of years now and it has been a good [...]
The Cult Of Leica
What was Henri Cartier-Bresson talking about when he said it felt like a big warm kiss, like a shot from a revolver, and like the psychoanalyst’s couch. Ω Leica. The closest a camera comes to a religion. Mike Johnston of the Online Photographer put it like this. Ω And if you really get used to [...]
Nikon D300 Announced
Rounding out the major announcements from the big two manufacturers is Nikon’s D300 which features a 12 megapixel CMOS sensor, 14-bit A/D conversion, EXPEED image processor, sensitivity up to ISO 6400 (with boost), the new CAM3500DX AF sensor (51 point), HDMI video output, UDMA CF support and a 3.0″ 922,000 pixel LCD monitor with Live [...]
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