Digital Photography

Picture courtesy of http://www.geocities.com/COKINFILTERSYSTEM/graduated_filters.htm

This week one of my loyal customers asked me a brilliant question about Neutral Density filters. It was so good I just had to answer it via this article. You’ll most likely appreciate this digital photography tip as much as he will.

“A question, I want to get a graduated filter, however, all the one’s I see are graduated grey, are they still ND and will not affect the colour? Very best regards, Pete.”

What Pete’s digital photography question is all about is the common confusion of photography equipment looking like something different to what we first expect.

When choosing a filter for our digital photography its best to first look at them as tools. Firstly in order to maintain clarity about ND filters, firstly think about what you need then work your way from there. Pete’s a fantastic photographer and is ready to move to the next level with his digital photography equipment choices, which is where I come in.

The answer to Petes digital photography question is yes, they are still ND, but like all filters, the colour will be affected. I’ll explain.

ND filters are predominately used to darken a bright sky so that both the sky and subject can be properly exposed. Graduated ND filters have varying degrees of “graduated grey.” The Graduated ND filter comes in a few different types, but can really be broken down into two main categories. They are; hard edge and soft edge.

As the name suggested a Hard Edge is mainly applied when there is a sudden difference in the luminance of the digital photo, such as an overexposed sky over a landscape. The soft edge filter is mainly applied to a digital photo that has less distinct over and under exposed areas such as the same landscape but perhaps taken at approaching dusk when the light is not do hard. A soft filter just gently tones down harder areas of light. It’s less dramatic and can often be used very well in black and white photography to give the digital photo a “boost” of the dramatic.

You can have a variety of ND filters that go from a weak graduated grey to quite a strong graduated grey. The “intensity” of graduated grey is described by numbers. So for example a weak graduated grey ND filter is known as “ND2X”. And the strongest is “ND8X”.

All filters affect digital photography colour whether subtly or dramatically. You can have an ND filter that’s quite soft but still darkens an area of the digital photography image. Even though it’s subtle, anything you put onto that lense will be affected. But it depends what we mean by “affected.”

If we mean the colours disappear and change completely…well a lot depends on that such as the intensity of grey, the colour at the time of day, the seasons etc. If you are using a Full graduation from top to bottom then your colours will most definitely change. They will become darker. However if you are using a less intense ND filter, then you’ll notice the change in colour is not as apparent. You‘ll notice that the lighter ND filters will have more of a polarizing affect, the darker areas being at the top and not so much shading at the bottom.

Graduated ND filters are brilliant in times of excessive brightness coming from the top of the sky for example. You can use an ND filter to darken an overly bright sky and keep the main subject’s luminance the same. It has a terrific influence over evening up unbalanced light. It can effectively tone down over exposed areas in your digital photography.

Happy Shooting,

Amy Renfrey

This week I’ve been asked a barrel of questions! I’m very lucky to have such a loyal group of subscribers. One the questions I was asked was from John about digital camera cleaning and what sort of digital camera cleaning equipment did he need (a different John to last week).

Well don’t do what I did before I knew anything about photography. It’s embarrassing, but I’ll tell you anyway. I was standing at a beautiful beach one balmy, Aussie summers dusk and there was a rush of wind. It blew sand all over me and onto the digital camera. Knowing ‘zip’ about digital camera care and maintenance at the time I cleaned the lense with the corner of my t-shirt and went on my merry way.

When I arrived home that night I took out my digital camera to download the images to the computer and out fell small particles of sand onto the floor. I thought “what the..?” I was surprised to see so many grains. I took off the lense cap and there were sand granules embedded into the edge of the lense. And that particular digital camera lense has never retained the same sharpness and clarity since my various trips to the beach. After a while the sand granules on the lense caused the annoying lack of quality that I previously had. I’ve done a lot of dumb things in my time with digital photography from not knowing any better, and that was a doozy.

Thankfully I learnt and am now teaching digital photography. Camera care and cleaning is a regular thing you should give your digital camera. And the best way to clean a lenes? Carefully! This is why you should never take the edge of your t-shirt and clean it because unbeknownst to you, you could be leaving tiny trails of grit and dirt on the lense causing scratching.

Remember all digital camera lenses are made of glass. The clarity and sharpness you get in your digital photos relies heavily on the surface of that glass to be squeaky clean. Nothing must get onto the lense if you can help it. Its pretty hard to keep a lense 100% clean because of dust particles floating around in the air, but you can get as close to100% as possible with some handy digital photography camera cleaning equipment.

There are a couple of ways you can clean your digital cameras lens, and that’s with a bit of spit…..just kidding. Seriously, you must use a proper lense cleaning cloth. You can use cleaning fluid too. This can cause some streaking across the lense if you use too much. One drop on your lens cleaning cloth in a gentle circular motion with a will get most marks off a lens.

In popular digital camera stores you can buy a pretty good lens cleaning fluid. It shouldn’t be more than $20-$25 depending on where you go. The digital camera lense cleaning fluid is an alcohol-based fluid that, just between you and me, I wouldn’t take my digital camera out without it. The digital camera lens cleaning fluid is ideal because it’s not solely for dust but accidental finger prints and other unplanned smudges.

Don’t forget about your other digital camera filters too. You can have a polariser on the front of your lens which will most likely need a clean if you’re using your digital camera a lot, or if you are using it outside for a day. You’ll be amazed at how dirty the lens can get. If you’re not sure, grab a lense cleaning kit from your nearest digital camera store.

Picture by www.precison-camera.com

Personally I have several lens cleaning cloths, lens cleaning fluid, a brush with an air capsule to blow of dust then brush, cotton buds to get into the crevasse and a small leather pouch I keep it all in. The leather pouch is actually a small ladies purse. I bought it for the size and the durability and protection it gave my cleaning equipment.

No more wiping the lense with a t-shirt! (Heaven forbid!)

Happy shooting,

Amy Renfrey

Many times I’ve been asked what the best digital camera to get is. The response is, as you’ve probably heard quite a few times, “it depends on what you want to do.” And what you want to do creates a need. That’s all very well but how do you know exactly what you need?

Once you work out what types of digital photos you want to improve then choosing a camera will seem difficult and confusing. In the end you will have a hard time and probably end up not choosing a digital camera at all and this is not good because your digital photos will remain the same. You can certainly have a great experience in digital photography, but if you have the right camera you’ll find that this experience is vastly improved.

 For starters, think about the digital photographs you have taken in the past and think about your frustration with them. Are they to dark? Is the lag time too long? Is it out of focus when you try to get long distance digital photos? Or alternatively are have you tried to get digital photos that seem out of focus up close, or you can’t get close enough in to your subjects?

 For example I have a subscriber who just loves to take digital photographs of flowers. She’s a lady in her 60’s and is an avid Gardner and asked me to help her to capture the brilliant colour and detail of her carefully grown flowers. I suggested that with the camera she had been using to date, her flowers would have two problems:

 Colour saturation (which creates lack of detail) and the camera would not provide her with the ability to get focused shots up close, even when the “flower” setting was on, on her digital camera. She confirmed this was indeed the problem she was having. As a help, I gave her some pointers to what may help her digital photography experience by looking at the problems in the current digital camera, then finding an active solution.

 The problem was that a lot of point and shoot digital cameras may be fantastic and feel like a bargain at $200 they just don’t have the digital sensor capabilities to capture to fine detail when there is a bulk amount of colour in the scene. Let’s take for example a digital photograph of a yellow rose. The digital camera would not be able to distinguish the detail in the petals up close because it gets lost in “all the yellow”. Because the digital camera’s sensor built for the bottom end range it’s not able to capture this fine detail.

 My subscriber was also having trouble with her detail in focus up close. Even though she was selecting the “flower” setting, it still was not as clear up close as it could be. And due to the colour saturation in her digital photos she was having difficulty getting the clear digital images that she imagined getting in her mind. I suggested that she may want to look at a digital camera with a capability to add macro lenses. I explained that the sensor would be able to pick up more detail in the colour of the flowers if she had better lenes for the macro photography that she wanted to do. A good macro lens would give her the detail up close, and she could get in even closer than before without loosing focus or detail.

 In the end my lady subscriber ended up choosing a Sony digital camera with interchangeable lenses and with a better sensor. She was extremely impressed with the new digital image quality her photographs were getting. She was able to photograph the petals up very close and even capture the tiny veins in the petals of the flowers.

 I recommend you do the same. Think about the frustrations you’ve had in the past as then find a camera to suit. Try to look first at the digital cameras that have the features and facilities you are after, and then look at the whole range. Not the other way around. Looking at every single digital camera first may confuse you; its better to narrow your search down to the features first.

Happy shooting!

Amy Renfrey

Many times I’ve been asked what the best digital camera to get is. The response is, as you’ve probably heard quite a few times, “it depends on what you want to do.” And what you want to do creates a need. That’s all very well but how do you know exactly what you need?

 Once you work out what types of digital photos you want to improve then choosing a camera will seem difficult and confusing. In the end you will have a hard time and probably end up not choosing a digital camera at all and this is not good because your digital photos will remain the same. You can certainly have a great experience in digital photography, but if you have the right camera you’ll find that this experience is vastly improved.

 For starters, think about the digital photographs you have taken in the past and think about your frustration with them. Are they to dark? Is the lag time too long? Is it out of focus when you try to get long distance digital photos? Or alternatively are have you tried to get digital photos that seem out of focus up close, or you can’t get close enough in to your subjects?

 For example I have a subscriber who just loves to take digital photographs of flowers. She’s a lady in her 60’s and is an avid Gardner and asked me to help her to capture the brilliant colour and detail of her carefully grown flowers. I suggested that with the camera she had been using to date, her flowers would have two problems:

 Colour saturation (which creates lack of detail) and the camera would not provide her with the ability to get focused shots up close, even when the “flower” setting was on, on her digital camera. She confirmed this was indeed the problem she was having. As a help, I gave her some pointers to what may help her digital photography experience by looking at the problems in the current digital camera, then finding an active solution.

 The problem was that a lot of point and shoot digital cameras may be fantastic and feel like a bargain at $200 they just don’t have the digital sensor capabilities to capture to fine detail when there is a bulk amount of colour in the scene. Let’s take for example a digital photograph of a yellow rose. The digital camera would not be able to distinguish the detail in the petals up close because it gets lost in “all the yellow”. Because the digital camera’s sensor built for the bottom end range it’s not able to capture this fine detail.

 My subscriber was also having trouble with her detail in focus up close. Even though she was selecting the “flower” setting, it still was not as clear up close as it could be. And due to the colour saturation in her digital photos she was having difficulty getting the clear digital images that she imagined getting in her mind. I suggested that she may want to look at a digital camera with a capability to add macro lenses. I explained that the sensor would be able to pick up more detail in the colour of the flowers if she had better lenes for the macro photography that she wanted to do. A good macro lens would give her the detail up close, and she could get in even closer than before without loosing focus or detail.

 In the end my lady subscriber ended up choosing a Sony digital camera with interchangeable lenses and with a better sensor. She was extremely impressed with the new digital image quality her photographs were getting. She was able to photograph the petals up very close and even capture the tiny veins in the petals of the flowers.

 I recommend you do the same. Think about the frustrations you’ve had in the past as then find a camera to suit. Try to look first at the digital cameras that have the features and facilities you are after, and then look at the whole range. Not the other way around. Looking at every single digital camera first may confuse you; its better to narrow your search down to the features first.

Happy shooting!

Amy Renfrey