Father’s Day is coming up, and what Dad wouldn’t like some really nice gifts for his special day? Our staff has put together a list of products and accessories that would put a smile on any man. How do we know your “Best Dad in the World” would like these?… because they came right off our own wish lists.
White balance is an age old problem that is becoming all too modern with so many people moving to digital SLRs. Today’s cameras all have a pretty decent auto white balance settings, from the basic point/shot cameras to the pro SLRs. There are also several “fixed” settings on many of the simple cameras and most of the SLRs like Sunlight, Shade, Cloudy, Fluorescent, Incandescent, etc. But as many of you may know, these settings are not always perfect, and sometimes far from it.
White balance is one of the more confusing aspects of digital photography and is one of the things that really baffles people when they go from simpler point and shoots to more advanced DSLR cameras and can’t figure out why the color of their images is so bad. Today we take a look at white balance and how it affects the color of your photos.
In the recent review of the Cactus V2 wireless flash trigger we had some pretty nice product shots we used. We always take our own product shots, while manufacturer shots are usually very nice, they often can be retouched to make products look better than they really are. With the product shots for our articles, the only retouching may be to remove some stray dust. Whenever we use a different technique, we will try to post a dissection of the shoot to show you how it was done.
Learning all of the technical aspects of digital photography can be quite mind numbing for newcomers. Trying to learn about aperture, f-stops, shutter speed, depth of field, and other technical terms can be a bit overwhelming. So what do you do when you know what you want to accomplish but you just don’t know how to go about it? That’s were Scott Kelby’s new book, The Digital Photography Book comes in. This is a kind of recipe book for tons of common scenerios and how to accomplish them.
If you look at my B&H Photo wish list you will find a nice set of Pocket Wizards, but at $295 per unit, these little beauties are simply not in the budget for a while. Over at photonotes.org we saw a writeup on the Cactus PT-04 wireless flash trigger and decided we needed to give them a try and see if they were worth picking up. At $29, they fell into the “if it sucks, you throw it away” price point so we couldn’t help trying them out.
David Berman is a British news photographer and has posted a narrated slideshow showing some recent assignments with the final photos and then diagrams detailed the lighting setups he used. This is great information to learn how really dramatic photos can be taken. What is nice is that he doesn’t rely on a truckload of equipment, often its just one or two lights with umbrellas (brollys), reflectors, or gells.
Watch the flash slideshow
David Berman’s website
Via: Strobist
Photographers are human and are therefor prone to making mistakes, however, some mistakes as a photographer can cost you dearly. Fortunately for me, my mistakes have never happened on a paid gig. I have however gone out to shoot nature and landscape shots and realized I didn’t have any compact flash cards once, and didn’t have my tripod another time. Because I this, I have become a slave to checklists and I found that many pro photographers do the same thing. I have put together some of my typical checklists for you to use yourself and modify as needed.
Earlier we discussed a light setup for a basic headshot shoot. Today we go outdoors and unplugged. Natural light can be your friend or your enemy depending on how you approach it. The biggest mistake people make is thinking that the sun is a giant soft light in the sky. While the Sun is over 92 million miles away, if you hold your thumb up to the sun at high noon, it appears to only be the size of your thumbnail making it a VERY small spotlight which causes very harsh shadows. An overcast day changes this by creating a gigantic softbox, thus, the best outdoor shooting is on cloudy, overcast days. There is also the “magic hour” right at sunrise and sunset that provides excellent light and color. Read the rest of this entry »
Muslin is an excellent background material because it can be stored easily, hung on almost anything, and takes light well. However, muslins are quite expensive, often heading into the $250+ range. As always, we try to save money where we can and finding muslins on eBay from Amvona for under $30 was just too good to pass up. When something is under the $40 mark, we usualy consider it to be disposable, meaning that if it really sucks, we can toss it and not be horribly upset. So we bid on two different muslins, a blue 10×12 and a maroonish 10×20. The blue one ended up at $13 and the maroonish closed at $26. So….what was our reaction when we got them?
