Converting your Flash into a strobe & it’s advantages

Converting your Flash into a strobe & it’s advantages

Got a speedlite? Add a softbox and you are on your way to making some awesome portraits – without making a huge investment in lighting gear.

As most any professional photographer will agree, the lighting used can definitely make or break the success of the finished product. To much illumination can wash the subject out completely, yet too little and there is nothing to see but dark spots and shadows. Many people find that the perfect way to eliminate this problem is to use a well- placed speedlite softbox.

This product is considered by many serious photographers as one of those items that one must have in order to complete their camera kit. Studio lighting is not always available and natural sources are not always reliable but this item is an acceptable substitute for both and it is easily transported virtually anywhere. This makes it perfect for shooting weddings and properties as well as portraits and product shots.

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Godox LP-750 Portable Power Source Review

At the start we must say that we are very impressed with the Leadpower LP-750, as far as being a great universal portable power source.

That being said we believe it does solve a lot of problems, that Photographers have when working on location. The obvious advantage is that it can power and number of different devices, from laptops through to wind machines. The correct term for the LP-750 system is a Portable Power Inverter, it has a continuous output 750W and peaks at 1400W . The rechargeable battery is a 9000mA NI-MH which is rated for around 500 recharges. The battery is removable so it is easy to replace, which also means that you can get more batteries if you need more capacity. It simply a matter of replacing them, as you run the batteries down. The batteries can also be charged independently, the kit comes complete with AC charger and a DC charger making it possible to charge the batteries from a car connection.

Its portable and compact weighing in at just under 6 kg and unit itself measures 25cm x 17cm x 25cm. A handy waterproof carry case comes complete with the kit. The fact that you have 3 outlets available also make it possible to run or charge multiple devices at the same time. The unit is safe and reliable and is protected against overload, short circuit, high voltage input or power surge, overheating and inverse external connection. The robust engineered casing protects both the user and the components from harm.

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Extension Tubes – An alternate for Macro Lens

MACRO EXTENSION TUBES

Macro extension tubes adds high magnification capabilities to virtually any camera lens. This can give a whole new range of subject matter to your existing camera equipment. However, it’s often unclear exactly how much magnification you’ll gain.

EXTENSION TUBES OVERVIEW

An extension tube is simply a hollow cylinder that fits in between your camera and lens, causing the lens to move further from the sensor. This additional distance allows your lens to focus more closely, which in turn provides more magnification capability. Unlike most lens accessories, extension tubes don’t add any extra optics, and are therefore relatively inexpensive, simple devices.

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Resizing Images and optimizing to get best results

In many cases we cant use the same image size as we get it. If its a old photo of yours and what you have saved it before is a small photo and you want to get it a bit bigger if you need to print. Or you have a photo which you need to upload to your website and this file is too big to upload. The main problem what we face here is loss of quality of  Image. Lets Discuss a few things to take care when enlarging as well as reducing the image resolutions.

Methods to Reduce the size of the image.

How to Format Photos for Facebook

Facebook makes it simple to add pictures to your profile, but you will get better results when you optimize and format photos to fit the site’s settings. If you don’t have photo editing software installed, download a free image editor like IrfanView to prepare your photos for viewing on Facebook.

Click the Image menu tab in IrfanView. Select Resize/Resample from the drop down list. This brings up a box that displays the current photos size in pixels and its resolution. Review the photo’s current dimensions in the boxes below the Set New Size radio button. Type 600 in the width box and 400 in the height box; these are recommended sizes for Facebook photos. Change the DPI (resolution) to 72, if the number in this box is higher. Place a checkmark next to the Preserve Aspect Ratio box if it is empty. Click OK to finish and review your changes. The optimum file size for Facebook photos is 65 to 85 MB. Open your photos folder. Switch to Detail View in Windows Explorer to display the size of your edited photo file. If your file is larger, you may need to crop it and then resave it.

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Nikon D5200 DSLR Announced

Nikon has announced the D5200 – an upper entry-level DSLR that improves on the D5100 by offering a 24MP CMOS sensor, 1080i60 movie capability, a side-articulated 921K dot 3.0″ tilt/swivel LCD and new processing filters. Interestingly, the D5200 is equipped with a significantly upgraded AF system, based around the same Multi-Cam 4800DX AF sensor that is used in the D7000, and the same 2016-pixel RGB metering sensor. The D5200 is also compatible with Nikon’s optional WU-1a WiFi module.

Turning to the internal upgrades, the D5200 debuts an all-new 24.1-megapixel CMOS sensor, which is Nikon-designed, but most probably manufactured by Sony, as per usual. The new sensor has an ISO range between 100 and 6400, extensible to ISO 25600 using the company’s Hi2 mode. It’s combined with the company’s Expeed 3 processor, achieving a 5fps burst mode and up to 60fps when shooting 1080i video. There are stereo microphones embedded above the pentaprism, just behind the flash, and there’s an external microphone input as well, taking care of the basics for audio recording.

Continue reading the article here : Nikon D5200 DSLR Announced

Create Wonderful Sliced Fruit Images

The following sliced fruits shots tutorial is by photographer and artist William van der Steen.

The tutorial will take you step by step toward creating an image similar to that wonderful sliced up banana.

here we go

Selecting Raw Material

The first thing is to select an object to work with. Any fruit or vegetable can work here, as long as it can be cut in a relatively clean way. Hard fruits and vegetables are the easiest to use. After I decided what kind of fruit or vegetable I’m going to use, I’m going to think about how this object is sliced the best way, some fruit is very soft and that doesn’t give you complete freedom on how to slice it.

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Tips for Basic Lightning Photography !

Photographing lighting can be exciting as well as dangerous. But the output always makes the viewers stare at those. Normally lighting is something we dont see still for a long time, It dissappears in a fraction of second. So its always amazing to gaze at those lightning photographs.

Lets discuss a few tips that will help you start :

Location

 

Avoid locations where there is chance of lightning hitting directly. You can know this by observing the patterns for some time. Dont choose high locations like top of a building etc where the lighting is more obvious to strike.

 

 

Compose

Capturing only the lightning in your photo might be not as interesting as a photo where there are a few more elements included like towers, buildings , trees etc. Ultimately your composition will depend on where the lightning is appearing, but always consider what other elements you can bring into the shot.

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Story of wedding photos that survived an earthquake

HAPPY TIMES: Martin Burley and his wife Fen Jeremias on their wedding day. This was one of many photos recovered after they found their camera, 18 months after it got lost.

DON SCOTT/ Fairfax NZ

Eighteen months after a Christchurch couple’s camera with their wedding photos was washed away in silt, they stumbled across it poking out of their driveway.

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Tips on Using Different Shutter Speeds

Shutter speed is one of the most basic but very important controls on a camera. If you master to control your shutter speed, you can get amazing images. Shutter speed controls the amount of time that your film, or digital sensor, is exposed to light. In effect, the shutter determines what image is captured on your film.

The Working

Shutter speeds are designated by seconds and fractions of seconds, such as 1/250 second, 1/125 second, 1/2 second, and 1 second. As you increase the shutter speed it doubles on each step, thus 1 second, 1/2 second, 1/4 second, 1/8 second, 1/15 second (rounded slightly), 1/30 second, etc. But now a day you’ll see many more steps in the total range of shutter speeds, such as 1/13 second, 1/25 second, 1/640 second, and so forth. In most dSLR cameras, you can set the incremental jumps of shutter speeds to change by 1/3 or 1/2 stop or even 1 stop. This lets you customize your choices of shutter speed settings.

At slower shutter speeds, the shutter fully opens like a door or window and completely uncovers the opening in front of the sensor. But at faster shutter speeds, such as 1/500 second, the shutter resorts to trickery, because its mechanical

Components cannot operate fast enough to fully open and close in such a short time. Instead of fully uncovering the sensor (as it does at slower shutter speeds), the shutter mechanism forms a narrow slit; as the shutter speed increases, and the slit becomes narrower. The slit then travels across the sensor area, painting it with light—almost like using a roller when you paint a wall

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A few of the Best Portrait Lenses

You can shoot a portrait with just about any lens. A fisheye will do the job though your subject may appear to have an unusually shaped head and a particularly large nose. You could also use a super-telephoto, but you’ll have to stand so far away from your subject you might need a megaphone to relay instructions.

Professional portrait photographers generally use prime (non-zoom) lenses equivalent to 85mm, 100-105mm and 135mm lengths. Used with a full-frame camera like the Canon EOS 5D, Nikon D700, or Sony A900, these are the “ideal” choices for, in turn, an upper body, head and shoulders and full-face shot.

Lets go through a few of the best portrait lenses.

Canon 85mm f/1.2 USM L II

The widest aperture out of all the portrait lenses here, Canon’s revised version II of the 85mm f/1.2 USM is best appreciated for the difference made to focusing action and speed.

Continue reading the article : A few of the Best Portrait Lenses.