Daily Photo Tips Archive

21.Sep.11When making baby photos that will be converted to black and white, consider the color of background objects. If you rely heavily on the red channel (as is common with black and white portrait conversions) any red background objects will be rendered quite brightly.

20.Sep.11Chroma noise displays as larger blotches of colour not originally present in a particular part of the photograph. Chroma noise is very distracting, but can often be completely eliminated by photography software.

19.Sep.11Super-wide prime lenses are lenses wider than about 20mm (35mm equivalent). These lenses are neither slow nor fast, but are easy to hand-hold at slow shutter speeds. They are sometimes soft in the corners at wide apertures and are used to greatly exaggerate the perspective of a scene.

18.Sep.11Normal or telephoto zoom lenses may include a macro setting, usually at the longer end of the zoom range. It may not be a 'true' macro (which produces a life-size, 1:1 image of its subject) but will probably come in handy anyway.

17.Sep.11Not all baby photos have to be close-ups! Placing a baby in context can show it interacting with the world around it and can hint at its personality more than a traditional portrait.

16.Sep.11Though most camera systems include many common types of lenses, the quality of a lens between brands will vary. Photographers have been known to switch camera brands simply because the destination brand makes an excellent model lens in a favourite focal length.

15.Sep.11Fish-eye prime lenses are generally wider than about 16mm (35mm equivalent), and have no correction for the distorting effects of wide-angle optics. They are usually moderately expensive and weighty, and are used for special-effects and unusual perspective work.

14.Sep.11Beanbags may be more effective than tripods for dampening vibrations in very long telephoto lenses. While even the most solid tripods allow the camera and lens to communicate vibrations through the metal structure, a beanbag absorbs vibrations and can produce a sharper final image.

13.Sep.11A full-featured camera system will include many common types of lenses. A photographer using a different brand of camera than usual should expect to find lenses similar to their 'home' system.

12.Sep.11Baby photos, especially when made out of the studio, can often work better converted to black and white. Some babies' skin can be quite blotchy in colour photos, and babies are often surrounded by colourful objects that could be quite distracting in colour.

11.Sep.11When converting a photograph to black and white, some colour channels may affect the photograph in small, unobvious areas. Before deciding which colours to use in your conversion, check the whole photograph and make note of all colours that will affect the final result.

10.Sep.11Pinhole lenses will usually produce a better image than a viewfinder or display screen preview might suggest. Since so little light is allowed through a pinhole aperture, a long exposure time is required to get a proper, low-noise image.

09.Sep.11Luminescence noise displays as small lighter and darker dots in an area that originally had no such darkness fluctuations. Luminescence noise is less distracting but much more difficult to remove than chroma noise.

08.Sep.11Turning on image stabilization when using a long telephoto lens on a tripod can still help to dampen vibrations. Because telephoto lenses are so sensitive to motion blur, image stabilization still helps rid the photograph of movement transferring through the metal framework.

07.Sep.11A long telephoto lens is better than a shorter lens for finding compositions from a single stance. Because the field of view is narrower, a long lens can divide a single scene into many hundreds of possible photographs.