Intro to Light Meters
May 23, 2008
A light meter is a tool that photographers use to measure the amount of light in a given scenario. There are both digital and analog meters available and they all help the photographer determine the correct exposure for particular lighting situation.
Most meters are capable of giving two kinds of readings; reflective and incident. With reflective metering, the meter reads the amount of ambient light that is coming into the scene and reflecting off the subjects to be photographed. This is very similar to the built-in metering of many cameras. Read more
Shooting in Shutter Priority Mode
May 19, 2008
Shutter speed is a good starting place to get your feet wet and begin using the manual features of your camera. Your camera’s shutter is a mechanism that allows light to pass for a certain amount of time. You can think of it in terms of a window shutter that you open to let light into a room. The longer the shutter is left open, the more time that your camera’s sensor is exposed to light. The sensor being exposed to light is what creates the photograph, or exposure.
Shutter speeds are typically displayed on your camera as whole numbers–125, 250, 500, etc. These numbers are abbreviations for fractions of a second. For example, 125 would be 1/125 of a second. Read more
Be a Responsible Geek
May 17, 2008
There’s no doubt that geeks love their gadgets. But like my uncle always said, “With great power come great responsibility,” and one of those responsibilities is to be courteous and considerate. Something that happened to me today made this more than clear to me and anyone else nearby.
Shooting in Aperture Priority Mode
May 14, 2008
Aperture Priority mode (Av or A) is a semi-automatic mode where you determine the size of the aperture and your camera handles the rest.
Just to give you an idea of what aperture is, it’s the opening in your camera’s lens that determines how much light passes through to the sensor (film). Think of the pupil and iris of your eye. In bright settings, the iris contracts and the size of your pupil shrinks to help cut down the amount of light that passes through. The aperture of your lens acts in much the same way. What we’re about to learn is how to control the size of aperture and use it creatively in our photography. Read more
Get Your Pictures Ready for the Internet
May 9, 2008
This article is a continuation of How to Import Your Pictures to you Computer. Now that you have your pictures downloaded to your computer, it’s time to get them ready for the web.
As you may or may not know, the pictures you download from your camera are generally far too big for practical use on the web. The first step will be to get them to a good usable size, in regards to both the picture’s dimensions and file size.
How to Import Digital Pictures to Your Computer
May 5, 2008
So, you spent all your hard-earned money on your cool digital camera and you went out and took a day’s worth of pictures. Now you want to email the photos to your family but you have no idea how to get them onto your computer easily, much less get them in an email-friendly format.
Being able to “develop” your own pictures on your computer is, to some, both a blessing and a curse. Sure, it saves you from having to drop-off the pictures at your local neighborhood Walgreens, but downloading them to your computer and cropping, adjusting brightness, and resizing are intimidating to most people.
Digital Camera Buying Guide
March 13, 2008
This is a question I get asked occasionally; “Which digital camera should I get?” I sincerely wish I had fast and easy answer. Alas, there are too many options available and too many details to consider for me to give fast and easy instruction on this matter. So let’s start at the basics and see what we can come up with.
