Daily Photo Tips Archive
Page 21
These photography tips are a record of new entries to the Daily Photo Tips RSS feed since November 2007. There are currently 1567 tips in the database! Contact Me to comment or add tips.
Daily Photo Tip
Fish-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. (First published Sep 15, 2011)
09.May.11More advanced face recognition software can pick faces out in a frame and even recognize specific people. By accessing a preset database, the camera can automatically focus on the photographer's friends and family.
08.May.11Some scenes lose depth when viewed in two dimensions. Try resorting to false depth cues, like converging lines, to reintroduce perspective to the scene.
07.May.11A 'radius' in photography software is usually the number of pixels surrounding a target pixel that will affect the action. The resulting value for a particular pixel are calculated based on the values of pixels within this given radius.
06.May.11A pinhole lens will show sensor dust more than a regular lens will. This is because the very small aperture creates a huge depth of field, one that can extend from infinity all the way to the sensor plane!
05.May.11Pinhole lenses often vignette quite strongly, usually because of the ratio of width to thickness of the pinhole. The vignetting can go as far as blacking out the corners of the frame, but is one of the desirable 'home-made' characters of the lens type.
04.May.11Even with a tiny, perfectly shaped pinhole, pinhole photography will never be as sharp as optical glass photography. Since pinhole optics work through diffraction, every photograph will be softened due to the very tiny aperture.
03.May.11It is possible to 'nest' actions to avoid repeating repetitive processes. Actions can be created that simply run a list of auxiliary actions and include very few unique commands.
02.May.11Winners of a photography competition can sometimes be the photographs that work best with one another. Since the results are usually displayed in a group, how the finalists display together can be as important as the quality of any single work.
01.May.11The 'sunstar', caused by extreme highlight diffraction from aperture blades, can vary in size and quality depending on the format used. Smaller format camera systems tend to produce the star at larger apertures than larger format systems.
30.Apr.11A shape with square corners will usually look more imposing than a shape with rounded corners. Besides looking 'proud', sharp edges can make a shape look more dangerous, causing it to carry more weight and attract more attention.
29.Apr.11Ignoring the 'progressive scan' option when saving JPEG images will cause the resulting photograph to load from the top down, at full resolution. This is the option that is most often used when saving images for web viewing.
28.Apr.11When using an unsharp mask, smaller radius values work well for reduced photographs and web images. Since details will be very fine in these cases, the radius to 'catch' the details must be very fine as well.
27.Apr.11Restructuring your file system (as one does when configuring a new computer) can wreak havoc on actions what open or save files! If your actions do this, write down the exact path to the action folders so you can reconstruct them later.
26.Apr.11Large radius sharpening is more prone to edge haloing than small radius sharpening. Because sharpening enhances edges at a larger level, oversharpening can cause large, visible artifacts that were never part of the original image.
25.Apr.11The 'alpha' channel in some image formats is the transparency channel. Some image formats (like GIF) only support 100 percent or zero percent transparency. Others (like PNG) support graduated transparency.