Posts Tagged ‘photography’
Question Asked: How Can I Upload A Lot of Photos to Flickr At Once?
Luckily, Flickr makes it pretty easy.
Via their website, you can only upload a few images at a time. However, they recognize that people need to upload a lot of images at once, and developed the Flickr Uploader. (Link here.)
It’s a pretty easy to use tool. You drag a folder of images into it, and it calculates the size to upload. You can tag photos, name photos, add descriptions, and even add them to a set right from the application.
Then you just click the “Upload” button, and off they go.
My only complaint about it, is that it’s relatively slow, compared to the website upload. Other than that, it’s a pretty great app, and one any Flickr user should absolutely use.
Question Asked: What Are The Best Online Photo Storing Services?
There are a lot these days, a real lot.
It depends on your needs for the most part, but generally I’d recommend Flickr Pro. It provides unlimited storage, unlimited photos, statistics, and a bunch of other features, and it’s only $24.95 a year.
Other services that get highly recommended include Shutterfly (which allows you to buy copies of your prints), and Ritz Camera. (However, Ritz has already closed half their retail stores, and that may be an insight that their business is in trouble.)
Question Asked: Do Wide Angle Lenses Make A Difference?
I saved this question until today, because I literally just got my first wide angle lens two days ago, and wanted to play with it first. (The wife and I are heading down to D.C. this weekend, and I wanted a wide angle lens to take in all the monuments with.)
I performed a test with it. I put my Canon Digital Rebel XTi on a tripod, in my living room, and took one picture with each of my four lenses, zoomed all the way out. Below are the two that matter in regard to this question. The first is with the 18-55mm lens that came with my camera. The second is with a 10-20mm Sigma wide angle lens. It’s an amazing difference.
18-55mm lens
10-20mm Wide Angle
Just so you know, both images were taken at the exact same spot, without moving the tripod.
The wide angle lens catches much more of the room than the 10-20mm. The wide angle lens was at 10mm, the regular lens was at 18mm. I guess those extra 8mm make a pretty big difference.
Hopefully the photographs above will help you understand what the physical difference is between wide angle and standard. Had I been able to find these types of images online before my purchase, it would have made my decision much easier.
Question Asked: How Do I Make a Digital Picture Black and White?
Nowadays, many digital cameras have the option to take the photograph in black and white, right from the get-go. The problem in doing so, is that you jeopardize the quality of the photograph, to get the black and white effect.
The other option is to take the photo in color, and do “post-processing” on it. That means that you’ll edit your original photograph after it’s taken, in an editing program. For the instructions below, I’m using Photoshop CS4.
- Open the photo in Photoshop
- Add a “Channel Mixer” adjustment layer.
- Select “Monochrome” and adjust the percentages of your RGB values. (R:70% G: 20% and B: 5% is a good place to start)
- Duplicate your “Monochrome” layer, by dragging it to the “Create New Layer” icon.
- Select one of the duplicated layers, and change the Screen Mode to “Color Burn”, and then reduce the opacity to between 5% and 15%.
- Select the other duplicated layer, and change the screen mode to “Soft Light” and then reduce opacity to between 5% and 30%.
- You then should have a black and white looking photo.
It won’t be as perfect as if you took a photo on a film camera, with black and white film, but it’ll get the job done.
Question Asked: What Is Macro Photography?
“Macro” in photography translates roughly to “close up.”
A macro lens is capable of getting much closer, and zooming in to much greater detail than a standard lens. Macro lenses can zoom in on insects, flowers, etc and get detail that you couldn’t get with a standard lens.
The downside, is that these macro lense are quite a bit more expensive than standard lense. For example a 60mm Macro lens is roughly $450, and a 100mm Macro lense is close to $875.
A standard 60mm lense would cost you less than $100, generally.
Here’s a few examples of Macro photos I’ve taken with my Canon Rebel XTi and 60mm Macro lense. They’re of a Wiimote, and Rock Band guitar.
Wiimote - Macro
Wiimote - Macro
Rock Band Controller - Macro
As you can see, these images are uber up close, closer than I could get with a standard lense. While these appear that I was literally right on top of the items I was photographing, I was actually about 18 inches away from them. That’s the power of a Macro lense. It feels like you’re taking a picture through a pair of binoculars, and it brings the item you’re photographing up much closer than it really is.