Posts Tagged ‘camera’
Calling all iPhoneistas!
Image via CrunchBase
If you’re an iPhone aficionado, this post is for you – here are four nifty, spanking new add-ons for your camera.
GoldenPic is an app that allows you to anticipate the kind of light you can expect at a particular place at a particular time. It’s main claim to fame is that it provides four mini-charts, Sunrise, Sunset, Moon, and Weather, showing timings for Blue Hour Begins, Sunrise, and Golden Hour Ends for the first, reversing that order for the second mini-chart.
That – of course – is not all. Weather, locations, moon, timezone detection and similar support round out this app. According to ePhotozine, it’s simple and useful when an outdoor photographer wants to be in the right place at the right time but is a bit steep.
Much cheaper is the VSCO Cam. It is a ‘value-added’ picture-taking app – it has an editor with ten features, ten filters, sharing capabilities via different social media outlets, and more. Not bad for a buck!
Novices will like the way they can warm up or cool down a picture with a couple of clicks or add novel effects, like grain and the main attraction will surely be the instant sharing on offer: Twitter – or wherever.
Now if you’re worried that someone will steal your work off some social media website (cheesiness alert!) Have no fear, Marksta is here! A few hours back BJP published an article about photographer John D. McHugh teaming up with a software developer to create this app that lets you put a watermark – more like a signature – in your choice of type and style on your photos, quickly and easily.
“It’s not just about protecting the commercial value of their photographs, it’s also about protecting their moral rights. What I hope is that when you use the app, you feel it’s just easy,” he says. That should put a lid on stealing, or at least on unattributed re-use of the fruits of your skills.
Whether you go for GoldenPic or VSCO Cam, your iPhone may look a bit more stylish with Trygger Camera Clip. The clip has an integrated polarizing filter (once seen as an essential for outdoor photographers), a sharp idea. But is the $40 price tag justified? Here’s what Trygger have to say about their product and campaign and they also provide a few sample images. See if this iPhone clip is worth the price – then again, it is a polarizer lens.
A Mixed Bag of Three Cameras: Leica, Fuji, and Polaroid
Logo for Leica Camera (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
We know that top-of-the-line cameras can be really expensive but $2.18 million? The price of a mansion? And this is not even one of those diamond-encrusted iPhones, it’s a plain old Leica.
This Leica M3D is not a prototype or a limited edition; it is a production camera although it is “one of four that was specially customized by Leitz for American photojournalist David Douglas Duncan.” Another Leica, this one the legendary M3, also fetched $1.17 million. This near-mint piece is “the very first production M3 ever made.”
We all knew Leicas were high-end cameras; however, they’re obviously collectors’ items and museum pieces too.
The new Fuji X-E1 is a display piece for your neighbourhood camera store. Like other recent Fujis, this APS-C mirrorless has that retro look with a few manual controls which makes it stand out from the crowd of NEXes and such. There’s also a material technical difference: instead of the standard Bayer Array, it uses a new, very different, ‘X-Trans CMOS’ Array which is meant to offer improvements in “remov[ing] colour moire and false colour.”
As with the X100, the X-E1 also has digital filters that mimic the palettes of Fuji’s well-known films – Provia, Velvia, Astia – plus other filters. Another feature worth mentioning is auto-stitched panoramic photographs. All you need do is pan.
Now here’s one camera that doesn’t have a retro look, it has a custom look, thanks to woodworker-photographer Siebe Warmoeskerken and his skills. He “combine[d] his two passions.” He took a Polaroid SX-70 Alpha and designed a wenge-wood veneer around it.
Regardless of whether you go for a Leica, Fuji or a wood-worked Polaroid, you could always brush up on your photography skills. To that end Digital Photography School has compiled a list of the top fifteen photography books that visitors to their site clicked through to actually buy.
Have a look at this list and each of the books on it. You’ll probably find that the subject-area of one or another book addresses one of your weaker areas or covers an area you wanted to learn more about. Fundamentals of digital photography, composition, natural light, RAW, even HDR – several major subject-areas are represented on the list.
However, it’s probably the number one book whose title will resonate with many novice readers: “Beyond Snapshots: How to Take That Fancy DSLR Camera Off ‘Auto’ and Photograph Your Life like a Pro.” If only it were that easy! Perhaps the book makes it a little less complicated?
Eye Versus Camera. And the Winner is . . .
In a direct face-off, which is superior: the Camera or the Human Eye? That is actually the question Cambridge in Colour seeks to answer – even the title reveals that this is a adversarial contest: Cameras Vs. The Human Eye – note the ‘versus’!
Given that a photographer has at least a tangential interest in sensitivity to, and perception of, light, and issues of optics, this article is quite a fascinating read.
The similarities abound but so do the differences. For instance, while a camera and lens will capture a sharp image over the full frame, even with an intermediate aperture (for a given lens) for a scene where the depth of field is not too deep, our eye does not ‘see’ a sharp image over the full field of vision. Notch up one for the camera and also put a tick in the ‘Differences’ column.
But wait— the article states that we see a fairly sharp image in our central angle of view, and that is 40 to 60 degrees, which is “incidentally . . . close to a 50 mm ‘normal’ focal length lens on a full frame camera (43 mm to be precise).” Thus, what had seemed to be a ‘Win’ for the camera turns out to be a ‘Tie’ and a ‘Difference’ is in truth a ‘Similarity’.
On other factors, such as Resolution and Detail, a comparison is scarcely possible because of how far apart the eye and the camera are. Actually, as the article points out, it is more meaningful to compare the eye to a video camera than a still camera.
After all, a still camera ‘sees’ a picture for an instant – only so long as the shutter curtain is open. The eye and a video camera ‘see’ a picture continuously. Indeed, they even have something in common: an iris/pupil or aperture that adjusts dynamically according to the amount of light in the scene being viewed or filmed.
Amidst all the comparisons there is one game-changer, as this article points out: “What we really see is our mind’s reconstruction . . .” While one can compare the eye to the camera, the eye doesn’t work in a vacuum: you’ve surely read about another organ-technology comparison between the brain and the computer, right? Well, the human mind and its neuronal circuitry does an immeasurable amount of ‘post-processing’ and ‘Photoshopping’ every nanosecond to convert the ‘raw’ images captured by the eye into what we end up ‘seeing’. The game-changer is the human brain.
When a photographer reads and studies the educational ‘Eye Versus Camera’ face-off, there’s only going to be one ‘winner’ . . . the photographer!
Hiya Shutterbug! Here’s a new blog for you
Hiya Shutterbug!
Brilliant Prints is delighted to bring you a cool new blog that won’t try to keep ‘educating’ you with a never-ending stream of photography how-tos . . . most of which you already know! We’ll mix it up by telling you about photography exhibitions and auctions, plus gadgets and gizmos, all seasoned with the practical lesson and spiced with the offbeat item, say about the love-hate relationships our chi-chi ‘celebrities’ have with the lens (go ahead Angelina Jolie, strike another whacko ‘binbag’ pose and make our day . . . puh-leez!)
If you snap the shutter for a living then do we have more good news for you! You’ll find a more professionally-oriented blog on our BPro site. However, if you’re a casual shutterbug then (in real casual way) mosey along to the Pro Blog; you just might find some useful tip or trick or it may even inspire you to take the plunge and go pro!
In any event, this blog’s purpose is to keep you informed and excited about photography, and sometimes even amused and entertained. As we said on the Pro Blog, “You don’t have to trawl the Web – because we do it for you!”
Today has to be ‘gadget and gizmo’ day, courtesy of Sony. In our pro blog yesterday we mentioned that Pentax had made a ‘news splash’. If that was right, then today Sony has made a news SPLASH! They’ve announced an assortment of gear – semi-pro cameras, snapshot cameras, zoom lenses, fixed-focal-length lenses . . . . The SLT-A99 is surely the ‘Headline Act’ in glitzy Sony’s lineup – it’s certainly a lightning rod and is attracting a slew of comments. Also take a peep at the new DSC-RX1 which too is getting a lot of attention.
In closing, we at Brilliant Prints don’t plan to do this in a vacuum so feel free to wade in. Tell us if there’s anything in particular you’d like us to discuss or dig up!
Cheerio,
Kersie
How to Prevent Camera Shake
Camera shake has always been an issue for photographers, whether novice or professional. This happens when you are shooting either at low apertures or low shutter speeds using a non-stabilized camera. The resulting image is blurry and discouraging.
This is not the kind of blur on photos that contain moving objects. In contrast to camera shake, motion blur is intentional and produces a fluid effect.
To help us get crisp and sharp images every time we press that shutter, there are 2 options to take: use Image Stabilization or get a tripod.
What is Image Stabilization?
DSLR manufacturers sell camera bodies and lenses that support a feature called Image Stabilization (IS) for Canon lenses or Vibration Reduction (VR) for Nikon.
These allow photographers to handhold their camera in poorly lit conditions, using longer exposures without having worry about camera shake. This is usually achieved by turning on a setting in the camera menu or flipping a switch on the lenses.
Cameras and lenses packed with IS will cost you more. But, if you often shoot under low light conditions (for example, if night photography is your expertise) investing in IS-capable tools is well worth paying the extra dollars for.
If you shoot at extremely slow shutter speeds, however, the IS in your lenses will not suffice; your hands will surely move or shake after 2 to 3 seconds. Here’s where a tripod comes in handy.
What is a tripod for?
A tripod is a three-legged stand that is used to elevate and stabilize your camera. Like Image Stabilization, it will help you prevent camera movement when taking a photo, especially when making slow-speed exposures.
For example, if you want to photograph the traffic on a busy avenue and you want to create that flowing lava effect as a result, you need to use a slow shutter speed that’s between 3 to 4 seconds. At this setting, you cannot trust your hand to give you the result you desire. You need to mount your camera on a tripod, and you can play around with the long exposure as much as you want.
You can also use your tripod to precisely frame a scene, or when you want to take more than one image of the exact scene at different exposures (which you can later process with HDR).
If you have been ranting about your blurred images since the day you started exploring your hobby and if you are serious about your photography, do yourself a favor. Get yourself IS-capable lenses and a tripod.
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