Results for "low light"

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Camera Bag Options

By Ray Davis
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Carol Kozak left a comment  asking, “Can you recommend a “safe/secure” camera bag for an slr?  [I’m] looking for a main bag for all my gear + a “day” bag.”  Keep in mind that no bag is a completely safe/secure way of storing a camera and Photodoto recommends you treat your camera with the love and respect it so clearly deserves! That said here are a few bags that will do their best to keep your camera safe & dry:

The Green Option.
Get off to an environmentally friendly start with the Primus AW or the Primus Minimus AW from Lowe Alpine. Both are rugged, abrasion resistant, water resistant, and made from recycled materials.  The Primus is designed to hold a DSLR with an attached lens (up to 70-200mm), 1-2 extra lenses, accessories, & some outdoor gear (e.g. a light jacket). The Primus Minimus takes a DSLR with a medium zoom lens attached, plus 1-2 extra lenses, and accessories (charger, extra memory cards, flash, etc). Or if you want to throw your laptop in too try the CompuPrimus AW  which holds a DSLR with lens (up to 70-200mm),

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Video: Christmas bokeh in 60 seconds

By John Watson
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(Video content may not be visible in feed readers. Click through to view.)

You’ve all seen the photos of the beautiful out of focus highlights behind some object of interest. Now you too can participate in this irresistable photographic cliché! It’s all just a simple matter of position and focus.

To achieve the effect in this video, the only thing I changed was to move the model away from the background (closer to the camera) and refocus.

For more in-depth information about depth of field and how you can control it and use its awesome power to triumph over evil, check out these articles from the Photodoto archives:

… Continue reading Video: Christmas bokeh in 60 seconds

Thanksgiving weekend photo tips

By John Watson
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Thanksgiving is upon us once again. Like many of you, I will be spending time with my extended family, feasting, and of course taking photos. My plan of attack, photo-wise, is to skip posed shots and go light and go candid. That is, I’m bringing only one lens (the 18-105 VR kit) and a flash and I’m going to shoot lots of portraits of people doing things other than posing for photos.

I think a set of candid photographs is a much better way to capture the true spirit of a gathering than individual and group poses. But that’s me. Your mileage may vary.

Here are some tips for candid photography that you might want to try this weekend:

  • Choose a medium to wide zoom lens. That will give you the most versatility moving between the action outdoors and the action in the kitchen. Fast glass is preferable, of course, but bring what you can.
  • Use your auto-ISO setting to give you faster shutter speeds when you need it. You’re likely to be shooting indoors a lot of the time.

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Patience, a photographer’s ally

By John Watson
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I went to the beach on Sunday evening to try for some nice shots of the Huntington Beach pier at sunset. Shooting sunsets is always a hit or miss proposition. Sometimes you get beautiful, jaw-dropping colors and patterns in the sky. And sometimes it just gets dark. Around here this time of year it’s especially random because of the change in the weather. So I packed my D90 and tripod and took my chances.

Approaching the shore I could tell it was going to be a difficult day. The fog was rolling in and it was so thick I could barely see the water from Pacific Coast Highway. I almost turned around and headed home. It was disappointing. But I was already there and I know some good spots for free parking. I decided to walk down and see what I could see. I’d arrived about 45 minutes ahead of the sunset so I had some time to scope out possible compositions and exposure settings. I went through the motions.

I saw at least four groups shooting family photos that day. Two groups were doing the “white shirt and blue jeans”

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Review: The Flip Mino HD Video Camera

By John Watson
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I really like the Flip video cameras. I reviewed the original Flip Mino back in June and recommended it for anyone who wanted to shoot more than a couple of minutes of video at a time or who wanted to reserve the space on their camera’s memory card just for pictures. The Flip Mino is a handy, compact, easy to use video recorder. And the Flip Mino HD (Amazon) is virtually identical in every way except one—it records 720p HD video.

Everything I liked about the Flip Mino I like about the Flip Mino HD. The body and controls are identical. You can’t even tell them apart visually except for the “HD” logo on the back. They operate exactly the same and feel exactly the same in my hand. Everything I wrote in my earlier review about the Flip Mino applies to the HD version. So let’s get on to video quality.

The video and sound quality are quite good. Video is recorded in H.264 format at 30 frames per second. Audio is recorded in AAC format at 44.1 kHz. The average bitrate is about 9 Mbps which lets the Flip store about 60 minutes of video on its internal 4 GB memory.

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Animoto for Photography

By John Watson
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I created the above sample video in about 5 minutes using my photos and music from their commercially licensed stock library. Dead simple, nice results. Animoto is so easy because it allows you to exchange control over the video for incredible production speed. Although Animoto does most of the work, you can use the “Spotlight” feature to highlight certain photos and adjust the speed of the video. Animoto could be just the ticket for photographers looking for a secret weapon to help promote their business or as an add-on to sell to customers. It’s also a lot of fun.

Animoto says:

Created by TV & film producers, Animoto for Photography lets you turn your breathtaking photos into stunning video in minutes. Fast, award-winning production value plus a library of 175+ free, commercially licensed songs, gives photographers the most powerful video creation tool available.

Founded by MTV and VH1 alumni, Animoto for Photography automatically produces professional video from the photos and music that a photographer selects. Each video is stunning, completely unique, and takes only minutes to produce.

Animoto: Photography For Business

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Free Secrets of Digital Night Photography Webcast

By John Watson
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O’Reilly is putting on a free webcast on Digital Night Photography by Harold Davis, author of Light & Exposure for Digital Photographers, reviewed favorably by yours truly back in May. The webcast will be on Tuesday, December 2, at 11am PST. Advance registration required:

In this webcast, professional photographer Harold Davis, author of Practical Artistry: Light & Exposure for Digital Photographers and creator of the Photoblog 2.0 and Digital Night web sites shows why night photography has become increasingly popular among digital photographers. He demystifies exposure techniques at night, and explains how he post-processes night photos. Following Harold’s presentation, there will be time for a Q&A in which he’ll answer your questions about night photography.

Secrets of Digital Night Photography Webcast

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Basic Travel Photography

By Ray Davis
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I’ve just returned from a little jaunt to Portugal and I have to say there is little else that gets me as eager to get my camera out as wandering around a city I’ve never seen before. And of course, in the age of the compact digital camera pretty much everyone takes a camera with them when they travel these days. But how do you come back with photographs your friends and family won’t have to feign interest in? Here’s a few basic tips:

1) Be selective. It’s tempting when you’re surrounded by new things, impressive architecture, beautiful landscapes, and photogenic locals to go nuts and photograph everything ten times over. Especially when you’re using a digital camera and can tell yourself you’ll delete half of the photos later. While there’s nothing wrong with taking lots of photos make sure you scale it down a bit (i.e. do the deleting part) before you showcase your holiday snaps. Even Great Aunt Maude is going to struggle to feign interest in 200 photos of a church, however architecturally brilliant it is.

2) Try a little originality. If you’re photographing an iconic site see if you can come up with a more original way to photograph it.

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Review: The Art of Black and White Photography

By John Watson
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First of all, let me get something off my chest. I’m not picking on this book in particular, but generally, when will photography book authors quit talking about digital photography like it’s some crazy new thing that people need to be gently introduced to? Why does every photo book have an “introduction to digital” section that is all but useless filler? It’s 2008 people! If I wanted an introduction to digital photograhy, I’d have bought an introduction to digital photography book. Ok, rant over.

Read on to learn more about the book and find out how you can get a free copy.

Mercifully, The Art of Black and White Photography by Torsten Andreas Hoffmann keeps the intro to digital section to a mere 9 pages.

The meat of this book starts in section two. Section two devotes a full chapter to each of many different genres and concepts and attempts to show by example how to make black and white photographs.

Topics include overcoming clichés, architecture, portraits, street photography, and moods. Arguably, these are all topics that apply equally well to color photography.

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Review: Nikon D90 first impressions

By John Watson
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On semi-impulse I bought a Nikon D90 kit last Thursday from Amazon after nearly four years with my trusty D70. I sat down with the manual over the weekend and got to know it a little better. There are plenty of great in-depth reviews of the D90 out there with tech comparisons and sample photos. This is not one of those. I’m just going to give you my first impressions of the D90, especially things about it that made me smile, from the perspective of a D70 upgrader:

  • Live view! Giant LCD! 6.7x image review zoom! Awesome. The D70 screen looks like a postage stamp now.
  • It is perceptibly faster and lighter.
  • I turned on the viewfinder grid, turned off the focus beep, and switched to selected area for focus because that’s how I roll.
  • The default image processing settings are fairly neutral and true to life. In Flickr terms: boring. There’s nothing wrong with that, per se, but I’m not particularly interested in absolute truth, photographically speaking. I prefer my photos to have a little more pop so I adjusted the default to Vivid which boosts both the contrast and saturation.

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