Browsing all posts in Digital Photography.

Create A Custom Preset In Lightroom 4

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 comes with a bunch of great presets, and I find myself using a combination of four of them fairly often. I decided to create a custom preset that incorporates all four presets, so I can apply the effects with a single click. For a lot of my landscape photos, I like [...]

Clarity vs. Sharpening in Lightroom

One of the last steps that we perform in post-processing is sharpening our photos. I find myself to be a greater fan of “clarity” when post-processing in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 (or Lightroom 3), and apply it with a more liberal hand than I apply sharpening. But what is the difference between clarity and sharpening? [...]

How To Update Your Firmware

Canon recently announced the latest version of Firmware for the Canon EOS 7D. Version 2.0.x provides all sorts of new improvements and features over the original firmware, most notably a higher maximum burst rate (25 vs. 15 RAW images at 8 fps), manual audio level adjustment capabilities, GPS locator compatibility, and increased ISO. In general, [...]

How do you know when you’re ready to go pro?

A lot of us aspire to become professional photographers. But after you have acquired the gear you think you will need, and have pestered your friends and family a million times into letting you practice on them, how do you know when you’re ready to go out there and start earning money with your camera? [...]

Depth of Field Differences Between Lenses

By Steve Russell Before getting into the specific subject I wanted to discuss depth of field (DOF) and why really knowing, understanding and being able to manipulate DOF can help you become a better photographer. When we start out as photographers, especially when we get our first DSLR, about the only thing we know, and [...]

Why HDR?

By Steve Russell Of course, HDR has been around for a number of years. In fact, the concept, although not in its present form, has been around since the middle of the 19th century. Until the digital photography age began in earnest in the 1990′s the only methods available to achieve an expanded dynamic range [...]

How to Shoot Black & White with Digital Cameras, Part 2

By Steve Russell In my previous article about shooting in black & white I talked mainly about shooting (saving images) in Camera RAW and then converting them to B&W. As a follow-up to that article, today I’m also going to include an image that was shot or saved in JPEG and compare it to a [...]

Six Tips to Instantly Improve Your Landscape Photography

1. For heaven’s sake, don’t center everything! The rule of thirds is your friend, and even stretching the rule of thirds to a more extreme degree can make a shot very intersting. (I call it the rule of sixths, and no that has no scientific merit whatsoever, I just thought I was being clever). Which [...]

When AWB Doesn’t Work

By Steve Russell For anyone who’s unfamiliar with white balance (WB), it’s the process of removing unrealistic color casts so that objects which appear white in person are rendered white in your photo and the colors are as accurate as possible. Most cameras today have various built-in WB settings including AWB or automatic white balance. [...]

Composition – Background

By Steve Russell. Because of one of my personal rules this article won’t have many photos for illustrations. I can find plenty to illustrate various points, but in using them I run the risk of criticizing someone else’s photos without their permission. While I have one I’m going to use, you’ll have to use your [...]