Browsing all posts in exposure.

Studio Session -Technical Aspects

By Steve Russell Two weeks ago I posted an article on my first studio session. One post to the article and a few emails and comments from friends asked for more of the technical side of the session and I decided it was a fair request. However, before I go on, let me stress that [...]

Back to Basics: ISO Explained

The term “ISO”, when used in photography, refers to the speed rating of film. “ISO” stands for “International Organization for Standardization”, and this organization is responsible for defining standards for many, many industries and disciplines. With respect to photography, the film speed ISO rating system was created to standardize the quality of film throughout the [...]

Finding Good Subjects to Photograph – Part 2

By Steve Russell “Quit trying to find beautiful objects to photograph. Find the ordinary objects so you can transform them by photographing them.” – Morley Baer   “The best laid plans of mice and men oft go awry.” That happened to me this week. I had an article almost completed that was loosely based on [...]

Rainy Day Photography

Don’t let inclement weather deter you from breaking out your camera! Here are five tips for taking pictures in the rain. One – Protect your equipment. If you’re taking your camera out in the rain, do your best to protect it from water damage. Waterproof cases are available for many makes and models of cameras. [...]

Shortcuts and Rules of Thumb

Following are a few shortcuts and rules of thumb that help me in my day-to-day photography needs. Since I refer to them often enough myself, I thought I would pass them along to you. Using a Teleconverter Keep light loss in mind if you use a teleconverter in combination with your lens. In general, adjust [...]

Guest Entry – Is a Hand Held Light Meter Really Necessary?

This guest post is kindly provided to us by Steve Russell. You can contact Steve at steve.russell@russellpc.net. ———- Is a Hand Held Light Meter Really Necessary? By: Steve Russell Recently Tiffany Joyce posted an article about determining correct exposure by reading histograms. She opened the article by questioning the need for the use of a [...]

Photography 101 – How to Read a Histogram

I happened to be driving through the “fashionable” part of Arizona a while back (Scottsdale, for those of you familiar with the state), and saw a professional photographer arranging a wedding party in front of a fountain. The photographer was holding up an external, hand-held light meter to judge the exposure settings to be used. [...]

Photography 101 – Exposure Compensation

The exposure compensation feature on today’s digital cameras does what the name suggests – compensates the exposure of the shot according to the conditions in which the photo is being taken. Exposure compensation is used to manually adjust the exposure to something different than what the camera’s meter is suggesting. The photographer can tell the [...]

Some HDR Learnings

I’m an HDR novice, so I took the opportunity yesterday afternoon to futz around in my house and try to familiarize myself with the concept. I addressed things with an eye toward learning what works, and what doesn’t work. For the purposes of the exercise I used the HDR Photo Merge capability in Corel PaintShop [...]

SOOC Challenge

This weekend I challenge you to share your “straight out of camera”, or “SOOC” shots. Sometimes we all need a little motivation to get back down to basics. We sometimes tend to allow our post-processing skills make up for less than perfect shots. We think, “Well, the exposure isn’t quite right, but I’ll fix that [...]