Today we have a simple photo of an oatmeal cookie stack. We'll discuss how it was planned and lit using minimal equipment and a lot of soft light.
This photo has been selling well for me, but it's also a very simple shot with minimal fuss for me as the cookies are store-bought and the lighting setup was very simple as well.
An advantage of using store-bought food items, particularly dry goods, is that you can have several "hero" subjects to choose from. You can just open several packs of the same item and pick the best one for the shot. There's a lot less cooking, food prepping, and styling involved, which is good for most beginners and photographers who can't cook. Continue Reading
Canon officially announced the EOS 60D to fully replace the existing EOS 50D and put a stop-gap product between the Rebel T2i/550D and the much acclaimed EOS 7D.
You can check out the Special Site for the EOS 60D from the Canon Japan site.
Canon also announced a series of pro-grade "L" lenses including the EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM, EF 8-15mm f/4 L USM (first ever fisheye lens with zoom function), the EF 300mm f/2.8 L IS II USM, the EF 400mm f/2.8L IS II USM, EF 500mm, and 600mm f/4L IS USM. Third incarnation of Canon's teleconverters, the EF Extender 1.4x III and EF Extender 2x III were also announced.
Are you one of those folks who really takes care of their cameras? Shielding them from every scrape, bump, water drops, dashboard heat, etc. But how delicate are these cameras in real life anyway?
DigitalRev made an interesting and amusing 'test' between a Canon EOS Rebel 550D (looks like a 400D, though) and an older Nikon D70 to some 'daily accidents' that cameras might face, as well as some improbable ones for our entertainment.
Now I don't normally use other site's contents as a blog post, this is worth sharing on a larger scale, not to mention I don't have the budget and resources to torture test my cameras right now LOL. Anyway, enjoy the video and thanks to the guys at DigitalRev for making this vid.
In this article, I'm going to share with you some buying tips and guide you on how to select your first external flash gun for your photography lighting needs.
I'm going to provide some tips and advice when you're shopping for that first camera flash for your DSLR. Here are some of the common key terms you'll encounter when reading a flashgun's specification sheet. The items listed are the specs you should put more consideration to when comparing products:
Why Should I Get an External Flash and Which Flash Should I Buy?
Just to recap. An external flash gun is a very powerful piece of equipment that opens up a lot of photographic opportunities and improves your resulting photos particularly when available ambient light is unfavorable. By having the option of adding your own light, you can control exposure, contrast, motion, lighting pattern, and ISO noise control as well. Continue Reading
Red Ognita is a Filipino fine-art photographer based in China. His trademark black and white fine art images have been exhibited in various websites and art galleries.
As Red shares some insights of his work and thought process to create his artwork, you can admire his gallery in his website www.ognita.com.
This week, we're treated with some New York eye candy through fine arts photographer, James Maher.
James is an American fine arts photographer based in New York, James credits his inspiration for photography to his love for the city and its endless supply of personalities to capture and streets to explore. He enjoys the balance that photography provides between the creative and technical sides, as well as the constant problem solving and learning that it involves.
I hope this interview will give aspiring travel and fine arts photographers out there some tips, insights, and inspiration to pursue this niche market in your own big city. If you're as big of a New York fan as I am (I just love NY, though I have more attachment to Boston), I'm sure you'll enjoy James gallery as much as I did.
Most straight-out-of-the-cam (aka SOOC) images from DSLRs exhibit some haze and lack of overall "punch" to the image, this is primarily due to filters.
First, the camera's anti-aliasing filter (AA filter) mounted in front of the sensor softens images to reduce imaging artifacts inherent on most CCD/CMOS camera sensors. Second would be the fact that most folks use UV filters that may reduce sharpness if the filter isn't optically transparent.
Some additional factors such as most travelers shoot landmark and building images when the temperature is high. The haze caused by atmospheric smog, heat, and other contaminants reduce the contrast and apparent sharpness of the captured image even more.
I'm going to share a quickie workflow in Adobe Photoshop that is easy to do and easy to run as a batch action with minimal worries about sharpening halos and eyeballing every single image.
The image below was shot in HK Disneyland, as the shadows reveal, taken around high-noon. Quite a bit of haze and the inevitable softness from the camera's sensor filter.
Here's the detailed area we want to use for comparison. The subject (railway station) has enough textures and details captured, we'd like to get more details out through improving contrast and sharpening the details as well. Continue Reading
We're going to use this image for web-posting only, specifically, for this site. My pages can only accommodate images up to 450-pixels wide, so I'll resample my image down to 72dpi and change the width of the image to 450px.
Now that I have an appropriately-sized image, I can merge all the changes we've made by flattening all the layers. Remember that I've already saved a full-resolution version of this image with the NR and base sharpening applied, so I don't need to have all those layers slowing down my system for these final steps. Continue Reading
