Browsing all posts in flash.

Stepping Up Your Gear

So, you have a camera that you’re happy and comfortable with. You have a small handful of lenses which accommodate nearly every photographic circumstance that you find yourself in. You’ve set yourself up with a few extra pieces of essential gear – a remote shutter release, a tripod, maybe some lens hoods or a couple [...]

Tips for Focusing in the Dark

Taking a long exposure picture in dark conditions can be a challenge, because the camera’s auto-focus capabilities find it difficult to “see” a point of focus. Manual focus can be hard, too, because you can’t see what you’re trying to focus on through the viewfinder! In keeping with this month’s “long exposure” challenge, here are [...]

Review: Photo Recipes Live

I recently purchased Photo Recipes Live: Behind the Scenes: Your Guide to Today’s Most Popular Lighting Techniques, the DVD/workbook combo by Scott Kelby. This product goes into detail about how the photographs were achieved in “Photo Recipes That Help You Get “The Shot”” – the final chapter of each of Kelby’s three Digital Photography Volumes. [...]

Great Beginner Light Sources

Some day soon I hope to set up a home-based studio. That “soon” is dictated by the whims of our 21-year-old daughter, who moved back in with us in July and has no firm plans for moving out as of yet. Since she occupies what used to be the only “free” room in the house, [...]

How It Was Done (Part One)

Following up on yesterday’s post, here are the techniques used for the first two photographs that I featured: Photo #1: The photographer used excellent camera and lighting technique in order to capture this image of a drop hitting a pool of water. According to the description accompanying spettacolopuro’s photo, the photographer used a Canon 40D [...]

Freeze Time with High Speed Photography

Someone recently forwarded me an e-mail which had some fantastic pictures. One of those pictures was of a balloon popping. The photo had been timed such as to capture the burst just at the right moment. I then realised that it is impossible to manually time a shot with such accuracy. I was also reminded [...]

Crummy Weather Photography

February and March are crummy weather months in much of the country.  Certainly in NY – it’s one crummy, cold, dreary, nasty, cold, snowy, cold, muddy mess of a day after another.  So I did a shoot yesterday to demonstrate the different ways to adjust your settings and equipment to get better shots on crummy [...]

Flash Diffusers

Flash is a tricky thing – in low natural light situations you need it and yet it often changes the exposure of your picture negatively.  That’s where a diffuser can come in handy.  I’ve been checking out these diffusers for my regular on-camera flash as I already have this one for my external flash.  They both are under $20.00 and [...]

Photography in the News: Groundhogs

Today is Groundhogs Day.  Not exactly a holiday – it doesn’t get me out of work and unfortunately it’s not going to make the gray of winter move along faster.  In a few minutes some well dressed man with a top hat will reach his hand into the hole of a Groundhog pull him out [...]

Photo Ohhhhhh Christmas Tree

It’s Holiday time and a shot that is on a lot of peoples minds is the Christmas Tree shot.  Last night we went out to dinner and a lovely women offered to take my picture with Lexi (my daughter) staring at the Christmas Tree.  It was very generous of her to offer to do so [...]