Podcast #88 – Talking with Jason Anderson about building your lighting kit

Kerry and Jason talk about building your first lighting kit on a budget. Everyone needs a lighting kit but many people are intimidated by the upfront costs. In this show, Kerry and Jason walk through …

Read the full story »
News

Current news and information about photography and related things.

Product Reviews

Get the scoop on the latest product and see what we think of them and if they are the right products for you.

Tutorials

Tons of tutorials on things like Lightroom, Photoshop, and more.

Podcasts

Subscribe and listen to our weekly podcasts

Shooting and Lighting Tips

Improve your shooting and lighting techniques and take your images to the next level

Home » Archive by Category

Articles in Shooting and Lighting Tips

DSLR Remote Pro – Revisiting an old friend DSLR Remote Pro – Revisiting an old friend

If you have been a fan of Camera Dojo for a while you will have seen mentions of Breeze Systems’ DSLR Remote Pro. DSLR Remote Pro at its basics is a tool for doing tethered shooting, so what right? The Canon EOS Utility can do that, so why would we want to spend close to $100 for software that comes free with your camera? Let’s take a fresh look at what all DSLR Remote Pro can do for you.

How to properly clean your lenses How to properly clean your lenses

In the forums Benjamin Trevor asked for an article on how to properly clean your lens so thanks for the suggestion and here we go. First off, the best thing to do is keep your lenses clean in the first place, always keep your front and rear caps on when not in use.

Video: What’s in Kerry’s Bag Video: What’s in Kerry’s Bag

I get asked all the day what gear I have in my camera bag so today I put together a video of going through my camera bag and seeing everything that is in it. If …

Video: Walking through a typical product shoot Video: Walking through a typical product shoot

In this video Kerry walks through the process of doing a typical product shoot. This tutorial uses the Westcott Spiderlite TD-5 constant lights. Constant lights are great for product shots because you can easily get your lighting setup and see exactly in the viewfinder what you will get when you press the shutter.

Video: Using Live View Mode for Macro Shots Video: Using Live View Mode for Macro Shots

One of my favorite shots at a wedding is the ring shot or close-up shots of specific details. For these shots I love to use a Lensbaby Composer. With many DSLR’s it can be pretty tricky because of the warping action of the Lensbaby lens along with the small viewfinder and when using the super wide angle lens it just compounds the issue on macro shots. In the past, the best I could do was to get the focus as close as possible and then take a series of shots making slight changes to the focus each time.

Video: Hows does aperture affect your shot

Adam Mason asked us how aperture can affect your shot. To answer the question Kerry explains what aperture is and then demonstrates how it can be used to alter the look of the image you are trying to create. By learning how to use your aperture to control light and depth of field you can dramatically change the look of your photographs.

Video: How to use a Light Meter

With the recent articles we have done on portrait lighting and the use of light meters we have had a bunch of requests to do an actual demonstration of how to use a meter in an actual real-world environment.

In this video Kerry demonstrates using a simple light meter in a product shoot.

Classic Portrait Lighting Styles Part I Classic Portrait Lighting Styles Part I

As we continue our series on portrait lighting we now need to look at the different types of classic portrait lighting and see the effect it has on someone so we can decided when to use each type. By choosing the proper lighting for a particular person, we can help them to look their best by making them appear to be thinner or wider or to accent or minimize certain facial features.

Lighting ratios for portraits Lighting ratios for portraits

One of the dyeing arts is that of portraits using classic styles of lighting ratios. Many new photographers are completely unfamiliar with how to do portrait lighting and so they don’t even try leaving the current trend of wedding photography to be that of photo-journalism instead of being a mix of styles including traditional portraits. In this article we are going to try to teach you the typical lighting ratios that are used in portraiture.

Using a Light Meter for Proper Exposure Using a Light Meter for Proper Exposure

I have heard the phrase “I don’t need no stinking light meter” more times than I can count, your LCD display and histogram are all you need for a perfect exposure right? Would you be surprised if I told you that your camera was lying to you? We first need to know why our LCD and histogram is wrong before we can believe that using a light meter will be of benefit.