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 …

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Shooting and Lighting Tips

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Camera Raw 5.4 RC Release – New Camera Support

Adobe has released a Release Candidate version of the upcomign Camera Raw 5.4. The main feature of the new version is support for a number of new cameras including:

Adobe RGB vs sRGB vs ProPhoto RGB Adobe RGB vs sRGB vs ProPhoto RGB

Mac versus PC, RAW versus JPEG, Coke versus Pepsi, all solid battles in their own right but Adobe RGB versus sRGB is still one that confuses more people than anything else. One of the problems is that there is big name experts on both sides of this argument arguring why their side is right and the other is totally off-base. What we will try to do is to show how both affect images so that you can choose the right one for your situation.

Cleaning your own DSLR’s Sensor – the right way Cleaning your own DSLR’s Sensor – the right way

I have seen grown men shiver and quake in the shoes at the thought of cleaning the sensor on their DSLR by themselves. The sheer anxiety of sticking something into your expensive camera body has left many people with the only option for dust removal being a stop at a camera shop or repair center for a cleaning. In this article we will look at how to clean your camera’s sensor the safe and easy way and dispel some myths around the black art of sensor cleaning.

Repairing the hot shoe on a Canon DSLR Repairing the hot shoe on a Canon DSLR

During a wedding shoot one day I noticed that my flash was only firing occasionally. After the initial panic, I quickly figured out that if I held the flash with a little counter-clockwise tension, then the flash worked fine. At the first break, I tried my backup camera and it was doing the same thing. When I got home, I checked it against my daughter’s 20D and it worked fine, and it also seemed that the hot shoe on my cameras was loose compared to hers.Another symptom of this is that the flash will switch from E-TTL mode into TTL mode and the exposure will usually be very overexposed.

Vote for Camera Dojo Vote for Camera Dojo

We know you love The Dojo and here is your chance to show it. Camera Dojo is up for a fresh blog award. The downside is its a little weird to vote for. First off you have to go to the right page (linked here) and then click on the thumbnail for Camera Dojo as shown in the next image. From there you are only a click away from casting your vote. We really appreciate your support and maybe even win an award. Thanks for voting!

Understanding Exposure with the Exposure Triangle Understanding Exposure with the Exposure Triangle

Based on comments and emails I have received there are still some people that are confused about how the three elements of exposure play together to determine how dark or bright an image is. Today I want you to think of the three elements of exposure as the three points of a triangle each having an equal effect on the final exposure of the image.

Reader Question – Books about posing Reader Question – Books about posing

Heather wrote in with the following question and we thought it deserved more than just a quick email response.

“Hey Guys,

I got a question for ya. Sorry the answer to this might already be on your site somewhere but I’d just thought I would msg you instead. I was wondering if you had any suggestions for photography books either having to do w/ business or the technical side of things.

RAW vs. JPEG – Deciding which is best for you RAW vs. JPEG – Deciding which is best for you

Yes, RAW vs. JPEG, the seemingly endless debate, almost as bad as Mac vs. PC or Film vs. Digital and people have been asking me to write up an article on this based on my opinion and experience and I have really put this article off for a long time as I wanted to be as unbiased in how I write this given that this is a very biased topic.

Lightroom 2.2 Camera Profiles Lightroom 2.2 Camera Profiles

With the release of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.2, camera profiles are now built in by default. What are camera profiles? Well, let’s look start at the beginning and explain what happens to your images within Lightroom so we have a basis of reference when we get back to figuring out how to use these profiles.

Comparison of HDR Techniques Comparison of HDR Techniques

HDR Photography is a method of combining multiple exposures into a single image in order to achieve a greater dynamic range in an image. If that sounded a bit complex, let’s break that down a bit more. If I take a photo, the sensor only can capture a given range from light to dark, in a normally exposed image, you may lose some detail in the darkest areas and you may lose some detail in the brightest areas. But if we can take an normal exposure, an underexposed image (to get the detail in the highlights) and an overexposed image (to get the details in the shadows) and combine them into a single image, then we can get a new image that can be the best of all three.