Use

The plague of many photographs and photographic hardware devices is of not being able to produce nicely sharp pictures, nearly crunchy images (Nota bene: I do understand that this is not the ultimate goal of a photographer and that many a picture is technically mediocre or fuzzy or foggy and still is a great photograph).

A few tips and tricks I grouped for you in order to reach the maximum possible sharpness on your photos (and my photos):

• Light: Darkness is not favorable; It brings fuzziness when the subject moves and a difficult automated focus.
• Speed: A fast shutter speed is good to freeze the subject in place.
• tripod: In order to be stable, there is no better solution than screwing the camera to a good old sturdy tripod.
• ISO: Choose a sensitivity high enough for the shutter to stop all movement, but not too high (to avoid blowing the digital noise up).
• Autofocus: An AF finely tuned (for those who have micro-setting of the AF), using the AF in the right mode (according to the subject -moving or not- there are different AF modes on your SLR).
• Autofocus Zones: The choice of the AF zone(s) is also critical (it is all too often to focus on the background rather than the model). It is quite important to focus on the eye of the subject rather than on the nose.
• Subject: If everything else is already optimized (especially in low light), make sure that the subject itself does not move.
• Sensor: Of course, use a camera whose sensor is as high resolution as possible; But do not let figures fool you: The more resolution, the more digital noise. do not use a 10MP+ P&S, or a 18MP+ D-SLR with an ASP-C sensor, for example).
• Lens: It’s always better to use a lens with a pro sharpness (and a pro price, too) but each glass has its optimal conditions for use (hardly the full aperture, often not the most closed diaphragm).
• Filter: shun unnecessary filters (like the Skylights or the UVA/UVB) or low quality filters (who add their own optical defects to those from the lens).
• Software: Do not push to the limit of the noise reduction software settings (while NR crunches noise, it also removes details and image crunchiness).
• Format: Avoid JPEG or use JPEG at a low compression rate (the compression artifacts start by eroding the fine quality of your image). Stay in RAW (or in TIFF)

Camera tossing is all about sending a photo camera up in the air while in long exposure settings to record the whirling moves of the camera into a somewhat different picture. This is an obviously dangerous photo technique (How many times can you strike such a move without letting the camera fall on the floor?) but this is also a way to get out-of-the-ordinary photos.

Wired has an article about this technique. And Flickr allows to search for images resulting from this perillous exercise.

• Examples of camera tossing on Flickr
• Snap a Camera Toss picture

In some African countries, life can be quite hard because of the difficult economic conditions. For some African people, it can be even worse. That’s the case of the albino people (whose skin lacks most of its pigments and who are often suffering from acute sun sensitivity and eye sicknesses). In several countries of central Africa, their limbs and organs are even considered as possible cures for illnesses and their life is threatened by these beliefs.

Johan Bävman has recorded an enthralling documentary of the life of some of these people in Tanzania. Go to his web site, and check his “Reportage” titled “Albino”.

Copyright (C) Johan Bävman

These two girls come from Tanzania. One of them is blind and the other one (Selina, the albino girl) has severe eye troubles.

Once again, let’s check my bag of fine Photoshop-related articles found on the web. For sure, most of them did not need to receive a full article here, but you will admit with me that they are worth reading.

• Paste Images on Tilted Surfaces in Photoshop
• Understanding the basics of Sharpening in Photoshop
• Create Seamless Textures with Photoshop CS4
• Agrandissez votre studio dans Photoshop
• Détourage #1 : utilisation des couches dans un cas simple

It’s been quite some time that I wanted to mention the existence of a powerful HDR tool that is available for Mac: HDRtist is free and seems quite able. Unfortunately, it comes from the family of HDR tools which prefer to produce unrealistic images, but it can be tweaked.

The new version of HDRtist, v1.2, is available for free download.

HyperDrive Album

For the last few years, I have been strongly recommending the Sanho disk-based photo viewers and portable memory, to empty your Flash cards into a big portable disk drive. Visibly, they have a very powerful technology which leads to features like:

• Extremely fast copying from card to hard disk drive
• Superb autonomy
• Compatibility with many card formats

Now, Sanho is launching a new product (or product series), the HyperDrive Album, and it boasts pretty nice and precise cons:

• 2GB per minute downloading, with full data verification
• 640GB configuration for $599.00 (or 160GB for $349.00 and any other intermediates)
• 4.8-inch display (800 x 480 resolution)
• 200GB of transfers between battery charges
• Compatibility with the new SDXC card format (and all other common ones)

Go and buy it at HyperShop.com.

Hyperdrive Album

Corel just announced an update to its graphics design suite CorelDRAW® Graphics Suite X5.

The new features of this too-often-forgotten competition to Photoshop:

• A new engine of color management
• A Built-in Content Organizer: Corel® CONNECT
• Compatibility with 100+ graphics file formats

The price? 716,40€/£399/$489 for a full version and 357,60€/£179/$189 for an upgrade.

It can also be evaluated via the free download trial.

Despite all the positive aspects of cheap photo cameras, many a photographer will outgrow its camera possibilities. For good reasons, some day, you will need/want a more powerful photographic power horse, will you not?

Cheap cameras are cheaply built. Though the least expensive cameras are quite sturdy, it’s true that they are not as strong as the expert cameras. If you accidentally drop your beloved camera, it may make a hell of a difference.

Furthermore, there are places where you don’t want to see plastic in your camera. For example, the metal mount ring to hold the lens will sustain a lot more lens exchanges than the plastic ring only adequate to permanently hold in place a standard zoom lens you would never replace. And if you intend to attach a big tele-lens, the lens mount will be stressed by the unusual weight (even more if you do not quickly acquire the habit of holding the camera by the lens rather than by the camera body).

Additionally, more expensive photo cameras have some useful features like larger LCD screens and who doesn’t want the added comfort when viewing pictures or setting options?

If you’re not asking for comfort, the high resolution sensors come only at a high price (The cost of the sensor still is a significant part of the full camera). Don’t expect today’s best digital photo sensors on anything less than the best (and highest priced) cameras. The same is true for camera speed: You have to pay a lot for higher shooting speed (useful for sports and wildlife photo) and a lot of processing power (used in the most complex noise reduction algorithms).

And don’t stop there: Some critical features only come with the more expensive price tag. Most entry-level cameras do not have an DOF test push-button; The best quality viewfinders are only present in the high-end segment of the market.

These are important features, but your money will also buy many more gadgets (or useful features not often used, if you prefer). If you shoot a lot in the studio, in concerts, in sunset wildlife photo, you will appreciate the added flash controls, the low light capacity, the better manual or semi-automatic control over exposure or focus. They make the expensive photo camera objectively better and worth the added money.

So, you may reach a point when you will require more. At this moment the expert cameras and the pro gear is right for you. Start budgeting, then start enjoying the new benefits.

The question is often asked, even more in the context of YLovePhoto and its information about expert photo cameras: “Do I need an expensive camera?” and the answer is most often that the expensive new features are mostly useless.

For example, ISO sensitivity is over-rated. Today’s performance levels are so high that, out of specialty photography, all Digital SLR photo cameras are more than able to satisfy 99% of our photography needs. They reach ISO levels often compatible with low-light situations with either a reasonable resolution or a small flash.

You may also be tempted by the high resolution sensors of expert cameras, but let’s be fair: Bigger pictures are not useful if you don’t print in large paper sizes (When did you print a poster last?). Worse, they eat memory card space, computer memory and disk storage at a tremendous pace.

If this was not enough, most people tend to forget that big sensors are inordinately sensitive to lens quality: You waste your money on a 20 MP Full-Frame sensor if you buy ordinary lenses. Be prepared for 1000€ primes and 2000€ zoom lenses. As a matter of fact, it is true for photographic hardware that your money is best spent on good-to-excellent lenses that you will keep for years while your photo camera will feel obsolete before three years. While it is often true that the more expensive expert photo camera is an objectively better photo device, you must ask yourself “Do I need it?”

If that was not enough, most of the expert photo cameras tend to expect expert users (They often lack the simpler task-oriented modes of entry-level cameras). So, you will have to invest significant more time before you master it (before you forget about the camera and start concentrating on shooting better pictures rather than on wish knob to turn).

Furthermore, I tend to consider that cheaper cameras are used more because we are not afraid of risking them more than cameras which cost nearly as much as a second-hand car (don’t even think of adding insurance for traveling with expensive gear) and because we keep them with ourselves more often than the heavier equipment (are you ready to keep 1 kg of hardware at the end of your arm for more than a short time?)

All that being said, the best advice is often “Buy a newer camera, but not a bigger one”. You’ll get most of technology improvements without the hurdles. It still is the photographer who frames and shoots, not the camera. Have a reliable camera you feel at ease with, shoot a lot, work on improving your eye and your technique, you’ll buy a bigger camera when you actually out-perform your current one.

[Followed with another post]

I stopped by the web site of Ransom Riggs because of a picture series coming from the Mojave Desert Airplane Graveyard (probably throwback from the engineer in me, who is sensitive both to the esthetism of time degradation and to the complexity of technology even when it is slightly outdated) where I extracted the following one:

Copyright (C) Ransom Riggs

But you should also visit the rest of his portfolio and of his web site because this is the man of many crafts. I heartily recommend you start with his photo essays.

If you are looking for the User Manual of an SLR camera, any SLR camera, things can be difficult. Just remember that you can look at the manufacturer web site but it could be tough since some of them do not show everything for download, or not all in the same download web site. You should try and look in our User Manuals news category where we frequently publish links to download the PDF files containing English and French User manuals and Operations Manuals for SLR cameras.

GIMP is an excellent image edition software which could (should?) attract all those who do not want to pay the full price of Photoshop, while they work with Apple, Windows or Linux. the differences are real, but the most obvious one is certainly the interface (and Adobe clearly did a nice work on it). So, why not try to prep up your GIMP to make it look like a near-clone of Photoshop?

photo credit: See-ming Lee ��明 SML

Blair Mathis decided to reduce the distance between them by the installation of several plugins on GIMP. And the result is astonishingly interesting. All the more because the process is fully documented step-by-step, which makes it little more than a longer software installation.

1. PSPI
2. Layers
3. Separate+ from Yellowmagic
4. Liquid Rescale from Wikidot (for an image rescale without deformation as in CS4)
5. Additional brushes from Blendfu
6. GIMP Animation Package
7. Enable GEGL

But if this is not enough, there are also a few hacked versions of GIMP that have been already prepared for the Photoshop lovers. The most renowned are:

• GimpShop whose interface is specially good
• GimPhoto is slightly less convincing but is based on a more recent (and more powerful) GIMP version

Once again, here is how you can (nearly) download Photoshop for free, while being well on the right side of law.

Who said that panoramas can only come from landscape photography? Who said that a panoramic format should be limited to a continuous picture?

Rémi Garcia is seeing things differently and his gallery of panorama photos is definitely worth visiting because it is eye-opening to the possibilities available to the photographer merely wishing to fill such a frame with an image that it not exactly the same as so many others.

Equus Burchelli, Copyright (C) Rémi Garcia

In composition, it is often considered that putting objects of interest on the key attention points helps build more powerful images. Daniel Cohen-Or and Lior Wolf at Tel-Aviv University, Israel, with colleagues at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, created a software program that automatically re-organizes photos to make them more powerful, more pleasing.

Is this to announce one of the following:

1. The picture police?
2. A new powerful feature in Photoshop CS5 and other picture edit tools?

Aviary, one of the best online graphics edition software, just changed its pricing model. Instead of the subscriptions previously used, they went for a new price structure: 100% free. Supported by new financial partners, they offer their tools for free. Impressive free tool suite.

The announcement on the Aviary blog.

Underwater photography is a technique specifically difficult to master. As in all other photography genres, there are some parameters to take into account in order to create a nice picture (even if a good technician is not enough to produce great photos).

Dive Photo Guide

More than in any other photography types, you have to adapt to a very harsh environment: Limited light or no light, density of the medium, incompatibility between water, pressure and mechanical or electrical hardware, optical characteristics of water.

This is why it is often necessary to acquire a number of core competencies before becoming able to produce nice images. I admire all the more those divers who invest a large part of their hobby time (or their professional time) into underwater photography.

For those willing to try or develop this technique, I would recommend heartily a web site which I found in Photography Blog: Dive Photo Guide. Hardware informations, techniques, tips and tricks, tutorials, ideas; All you may need for underwater photography for photo-divers.

Initially, I wanted to show a wave photo from Brian Bielmann. He is spending a lot of time in the water shooting big waves, surfers, underwater wonders, etc. I still recommend you visit his web site for these, but I stopped at a very small wave:

Copyright (C) Brian Bielmann