Digital Photography Tricks - Make The Most Of Your Digital SLR! Paul Summers #MePhotographyYou

Digital Photography Tricks - Make The Most Of Your Digital SLR! Paul Summers #MePhotographyYou

Few would argue that more people than ever can take pictures of real quality, as digital photography and the equipment available opens up opportunities for the keen amateur. Modern digital SLR cameras are boasting more and more megapixels and features, which can almost make photography seem too easy. However, there is functionality and easy to grasp techniques that many budding photographers never take advantage of. This article aims to address a few of the digital photography tricks and tools available.

Camera shake is the surest way to ruin a photograph, and can still occur even with your camera secured to a tripod. For example, you still have to press the shutter, and this causes some movement. This will ultimately affect the sharpness of your final image. There are two basic ways to avoid this. The first is to use a remote control shutter release button, or the less expensive cable release alternative - both will do the job well. Otherwise, you can set your camera's self timer option. All that is required is that you set up the shot and settings, then stand back while the camera carries out the shutter press for you.

No matter how near perfect your taken image is, many photographers will carry out at least some post shoot manipulation in the digital darkroom. To give you the opportunity of making the most of this facility, it is always a good idea to shoot your original image in RAW rather than JPEG format. JPEG images contain 256 brightness levels in each of the three colour channels (red, green and blue). However, RAW files contain up to 16,384 levels, which means you can have much more influence when amending your image, for instance making significant changes to highlights or shadows.

One of the digital photography tricks worth using is your SLR's Live View mode. Here you can set up your photo on the LCD monitor, rather than the viewfinder. One advantage to using this is the number of viewpoints you can use, for example, holding the camera above a crowd of people, and still being able to get an idea of what the final image will look like. Many people believe that it is easier to see the final composition by using Live View as opposed to the viewfinder.
Once upon a time, ISO was determined by the film you used. That is to say that you would be forced to stay with, for example, ISO 200 for all 36 shots if that was the film in the camera.

However, with digital photography, you can adjust ISO for every picture you take, if necessary. Generally, an ISO setting of 640 or above can start to show some noise in your image. You need to consider the trade off between upping the ISO to allow shots in dark conditions, and accepting some noise, or missing the image altogether. In most cases, the auto ISO setting would work sufficiently.

These are just a few of the digital photography tricks that you can use, to help unravel the mysteries of your SLR.

Source: Paul Summers

Beauty Photography Mistakes You Need to Avoid #MePhotographyYou

There is more to the shots than what a camera sees, it is actually how beautiful the model and scenario is to the photographer, and how beautifully they can capture what they see. Make people think that taking nice portrait shots makes them a professional photographer. What they do not realize is they make some mistakes, which can be avoided.

Here are some in detail:

Trying to be a One Man Show

Beauty shots are not a one man's show, and this is what amateur photographers do not realize. A photographer is not a photographer without a team. Many amateurs do not see the importance of their crew when they start their profession. Without models you have no one to shoot, and in order to get them, you need your friend, the agent to contact them.

How about setting the entire shoot? Not many people are artistic and experts at what they do. What about changing the scenes for different shots? The hair and makeup of the models? Being successful is a team effort and there is definitely no "I" in team.

Using the wrong lens

When someone does a beauty shoot, their entire purpose is to make the model stand out and look absolutely stunning, regardless of the backdrop used. Amateur photographers try to capture the surroundings as well and that too by using the wrong lenses. The idle lens used of a beauty shot is 70mm-100mm. For example, a professional knows that using any focus less than 70mm, will distort the facial length and the features will not be as prominent as needed.

Using Direct & Diffused Lights Incorrectly

Playing with lights is not easy; a professional knows that but not an amateur. Professionals play with direct and diffused lights. The difference between the two is the direct light creates a dark and hard edged shadow effect whereas diffused lights are used to get some light on to the model or subject. Newbies typically are unaware which lights they need to use at which time. This can change the entire look of the picture.

Not keeping the Proper Eye Level

Professional beauty photographers know that if they take a shot below the level of their model's eye level, the neck of the model will look a tad bit shorter. This is why when a model is sitting, a pro is on their knee or crouching down to make sure that the length of the neck is perfect. Amateur photographers make this common mistake often; they will just take the picture from the front without putting much thought into it.

Relying on Photoshop too much

Amateurs think Photoshop is a magical tool; it is, but it does not always help. A professional does not need to waste time on Photoshop since they make sure to take the perfect shots. A professional refers back to the monitor, finds the mistake, if any, and corrects it on the spot without wasting a single moment.

Source: Steve Jen@MazenAbusrour.com

Learn Photography - Photography As A Career Option! #MePhotographyYou

Source: Indin Photography at Go Articles

Learn Photography - Photography As A Career Option! #MePhotographyYou

What to do after high school? What are the best career options for me? Will it be the best suitable career option for me? What am I going to take as my profession?

Are you fed up of finding answers to these never ending questions? Then, your search stops here!

Nowadays photography is more of a serious profession than just being a hobby or passion. Unlike 1960's, photography has now curved out as one of the most hunted professions across the globe.

Photography is an effective medium of self-expression. It is that form of art which demands a sense of creativity as well as technical expertise. A person who has an increased appetite for photography or who discovers photography as his hobby then he can take it as his career option and can fruitfully venture into professional photography, make it very profitable at the same time.

In today's world where media, communication and advertising industries are booming, photography has now become a serious profession with great marketable value. So, this area now offers great scope for those who have great interest and unique traits required to be a thorough professional.

Training in photography hones your intrinsic skills and helps you to outgrow in the field of photography with various specializations like photojournalism, commercial advertising photography, fashion photography, wildlife photography, outdoor photography, etc.

1.Photojournalism - Photojournalism is all about taking pictures of the newsworthy events. If you have a nose for news and you have that ability to discover and record various dramatic actions with your talent, then photojournalism is a good option for you! The job requires quickness, alertness and may often be carried on in terrifying situations.

2.Commercial Photography: This includes photographing for different commercial segments such as for individual products, machinery, home d©cor, etc. These pictures have commercial value added to them and are used for the purpose of advertising and selling.

3.Fashion photography: This is most profitable form of photography. Fashion photographers have an eye for detail and should have sufficient knowledge of fashion. These photographers cater to a variety of clients, export houses, fashion designers & brands, portfolios, fashion based magazines and newsletters, etc.

4.Wildlife Photography: What's most important for a wildlife photographer is keen observation, an eye for detail, a lot of patience to get the required shot and love for nature, wildlife and adventure.

5.Travel photography - For those who love to travel and capture those exquisite locations, local people, food, emotions and all those memories in the camera, travel photography is THE perfect steal for them.

The Amazing krpano Panorama Viewer #MePhotographyYou

krpano Panorama Viewer

The krpano Viewer is a small and very flexible high-performance viewer for all kind of panoramic images and interactive virtual tours. The viewer is available as Flash and HTML5 application. The viewer is designed for the usage inside the Browser on Desktop (Windows, Mac, Linux) and on Mobiles/Tablets (iPhone, iPad, Android, ...).

In addition to the krpano Viewer there are the krpano Tools - this are small tools and droplets which are helping to automatically prepare the panoramic images for viewing and making them ready-to-use. Making a pano or a tour is possible just by drag-and-drop.

Convince yourself by viewing the examples and / or by downloading the krpano Viewer and krpano Tools for free and try using them with your own panoramic images.


Features

Flash and HTML5

The krpano Panorama Viewer is available as Flash and HTML5 viewer. Both viewers have and use the same interfaces for controlling the panos and the layout.

High-performance and high-quality rendering

The rendering-performance and the image-quality were and are one of the two most important features in the krpano development. Additionally there are also strong development demands to keep the viewer itself as small and efficient as possible.

Highly-customizable

Almost everything is customizable in the krpano viewer. There are settings for everything and adding custom settings or behaviors is possible too. krpano has a flexible and dynamic xml scripting system which allows realizing own ideas and features
.
To build user interfaces just include and arrange your images on the viewer screen.

And for even more and deeper customizing or extending the viewer itself it is possible to include external Flash or Javascript (HTML5) plugins. See here for the all available krpano Plugins.

Wide-range of supported panoramic formats and image file-formats

Supported panoramic formats by the krpano Flash Panorama Viewer:
Cube and Cubestrip Images
Spherical Panos (360x180)
Cylindrical Panos
Partial Spherical, Partial Cylindrical Panos
Flat Images
Cubical QTVR files (.mov)
Zoomify Images
Object Movies (=Multi-Frame-Flat-Images)
Panoramic Videos (Spherical, Cylindrical, Partials)
Supported input and output image file-formats for the krpano Tools:
JPEG (*.jpg, *.jpeg)
TIFF / BigTIFF (*.tif, *.tiff, *.btf, *.tf8, *.bigtiff)
Photoshop Document and Photoshop Big Document (*.psd, *.psb)
Kolor Raw (*.kro)

Multi-Resolution

Loading very large images, e.g. at Gigapixel size, at once is not possible today - the loading would take ages and the memory need that would be need to display the image would be much to much for a web application. To solve this problem krpano supports a tiled Multi-Resolution loading - the large images will be resampled to several resolution levels and each level will be split up into many small tiles. And these small tiles will be loaded piece by piece and only when needed. This makes is possible to view also very large images quick and fast and with a few memory need.

Multi-Resolution images can be generated automatically by using the krpano Tools.

This panorama has a resolution of 24576x12288 pixel (about 302 megapixels). To display such a large panoramic image your computer would need about 1.2 gigabytes of available memory only for the panoramic image itself.
How was this calculated? 1 pixel needs 4 bytes - is thus 24576 * 12288 * 4 = 1,207,959,552 bytes! In addition, approximately 17 MB will be required to be downloaded. (this is the filesize of the panorama image compressed as JPEG image).

That would obviously be too much for an average computer to handle. The solution is to split the high resolution Panorama image into many small parts. These parts only load into the player as necessary (as the user zooms in).
(In this example, the image is split into smaller pieces of 1024x1024 pixels in size)

So, it is now possible to view the whole panorama without loading everything at once. However, there is still a problem - depending on the angle of view - when there are very many parts visible at once, again many split images need to be loaded, and again a lot of memory is needed for this.

This problem is solved by using multiple image resolutions of the panorama. Depending on the zoom level and angle of view, only the parts that best matching resolution are loaded. This means large amounts of data are never loaded simultaniously, and therefore less memory is needed.
If the view changes, parts that have already been loaded but are no longer needed, will remain available. Only when the memory limit (memory.maxmem) is reached, the not required image parts will be released from memory. If these parts are needed again later, they must be re-loaded.


3D Projections

The krpano Flash viewer supports several ways for projecting the pano image on the screen:
The normal or also called Rectilinear Projection.

Fisheye Projection.

Stereographic Fisheye Projection (when looking down also called 'Little Planet View').
Pannini Projection (Cylindrical Fisheye / Stereographic).

Architectural Projection.

Every of these projection modes can be adjusted by several parameters in fine steps. Mixing and / or fading between the different projection modes is also possible.

For example - a pano can start in with a 'Little Planet View' (a Stereographic Fisheye Projection) and then transit smoothly to the normal projection.


Virtual Tours / Hotspots / Scripting

By linking several panos together, e.g. by Hotspots, Maps, Thumbnails, Select Boxes or any other custom actions, it is possible to build full featured virtual tours.

The krpano Tools include MAKE VTOUR droplets for an easy and automatic generation of virtual tours. Just drop all pano images on it and done.

Simple and complex usage at the same time

Use the included MAKE PANO / MAKE VTOUR droplets from the krpano Tools for an easy and fully automatic generation of ready-to-use panos or virtual tours. And for more individual and complex customizing use krpano xml format and / or the Flash or Javascript interfaces.

Try it Now!

Download krpano for free and try it with your own panoramic images - for a quick and free try - please krpano Download and Tutorials

What You Can Do With Your Photos #MePhotographyYou

Andew Bourke. Article City. Visit : Personal Canvas Prints UK.




What you can do with your photos

It is that time of year again when you are all off on holiday or have been on a great holiday and we all like to take lots of pictures but a lot of us don’t do anything with the pictures we take we look at them when we get back and show them off but more often than not they are left on the phone or camera and forgotten about.

Memories we make on holidays are great and a good way to keep them is to have your photos and pictures printed on to canvas it’s a great way to display your precious memories. Canvas photo printing has been around for a long time but is still very popular and with the amount of people out there that are supplying them now it’s easy to find the rite canvas prints for u and as there is so much canvas printers out there you can get a great very competitive price.

Canvas prints are a excellent way to keep an display our memories but also make brilliant gift it can be very hard to find people a gift that is thoughtful personal and unique that is why this could be a great idea for you what could be better than giving someone a memory for any occasion they are great for birthdays, Christmas etc.

No one wants to give a friend or family member a gift someone else has given them already and as the canvas print you have made will be unique to you and your specifications so there is no chance of you turning up at the party with the same present as anyone else with your own unique canvas print this will never happen to you again.

Any picture that is special to you is a great idea to have put on to canvas weddings your children or holidays but it doesn’t have to be a photo if you are in to art and designing your own artwork it could be a great way to quickly and cheaply reproduce your work even your children love to create pictures why not have them made in to something you can keep and treasure long after they have grown up and moved out.

A lot of businesses that specialize in canvas printing are based on the internet and this is where you can find the best deal and search lots of businesses without leaving the house they can also offer canvas artwork printing to which is also a great idea.

There are a lot of effects an touch ups that can be used when making your custom made canvas print don’t hesitate to ask the person supplying you if there is anything you want touched up added or repaired on your picture i am sure they will be happy to meet any of your requirements .

When having a picture printed on canvas you can have it done straight from your camera off a disc memory card or even from a old picture that can be scanned straight on to a computer.