Browsing all posts in "focus".

Sharpening De-Mystified

We all want absolutely tack-sharp photos. We all know that sharpness begins with the shot itself – there is no saving a blurry photo in post-production. We are somewhat familiar with sharpening techniques in Lightroom or Photoshop, but what is the best way to apply sharpening for landscapes? Portraits? Cars? Street scenes? When is the [...]

Three Simple Tips to INSTANTLY Improve Your Photography

Would you like to see instant improvement in your photography? Here are three simple things that you can do RIGHT NOW that will make a big difference! One – Turn on your viewfinder composition grid. If you’re having a hard time keeping your horizons straight, if you tend to misalign your subjects, or if you’d [...]

Your November Photo Challenge Contributions

The November 2010 Photo Challenge technique is “soft focus”, photographing the subject of your choice. The challenge runs all month long, so you have until the end of the month to share your shots! All of your efforts are very much appreciated and valued. Thank you so much for your participation. Here are some of [...]

The Beauty of Soft Focus

We talk a lot about how to achieve tack-sharp, perfectly focused photographs. We extol on the virtues of the Unsharp Mask in Photoshop, and enumerate the countless ways to steady our cameras in order to achieve perfectly crisp images. There is great beauty to behold, though, in a softly focused photograph – keeping in mind [...]

Dioptric Adjustment

If you’re having focus issues that you can’t quite explain or pinpoint the cause, you might need to adjust your camera’s diopter. Everyone’s vision is different, so your camera provides the ability to adjust the focus of the viewfinder to your individual needs. Your SLR camera has a small dial, typically near the eyecup, that [...]

The Finer Points of Focus

Most of the time, unless we’re trying to achieve some sort of differing photographic effect, photographers are shooting for tack-sharp pictures. Here are some tips for taking sharp and well-focussed pictures. 1. Stability is key. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. If you want to take a picture that is perfectly focused [...]

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 [...]

Freelensing

While perusing the Internet for new photography techniques, I came across something referred to as “freelensing”. This technique is achieved by detaching the lens from the camera but holding it in place, then shifting the lens around to focus the shot. Shafts of light are “leaked” into the image, a high degree of bokeh is [...]

Bokeh

The term bokeh refers to the out-of-focus areas of an image, when using a shallow depth-of-field to focus on something in the foreground of an image. To achieve it, simply focus on something in the foreground while using the lowest numbered f-stop possible on your camera/lens combination. Using the “macro” setting (typically a flower icon) [...]