Current photography software offers great options for the restoration of of the shadow and highlight detail in photographic images.
These adjustments can give a great improvement to an image by allowing you to show much more detail in the shadow areas and the highlight areas of the image.
In general for aerial images, there are several main factors to be aware of. When taking images through the windows of aircraft the window material appears to be very dense and of poor optical quality, the images will loose quite a lot of contrast, however this can be overcome with digital images to some extent by post processing in Photoshop and giving the contrast a boost.
With domestic animals or animals in the zoo, the photographer generally has the confidence of the animal and a lens in the range of 50-200 mm may be sufficient.
When animals are in cages a very large aperture should be tried to give a very low depth of field, as this may help to give a blurred background to reduce any interference such as cages or other intrusive objects.
Digital photography is unlimited. With film we were limited by the chemical processes which were used. Now we use many different software packages to process our digital files and we are virtually unlimited in what we can do in Photoshop and other software packages.
With digital we now have many variables, shutter speed, aperture, ISO, white balance, sharpness, contrast, saturation and custom curves for some of the more sophisticated cameras.
Film appears to be very limited compared to digital, once a certain ISO speed film and color temperature film is in the camera, we can only modify certain of the film characteristics by using filters, whereas with digital these limits do not apply. Film has the capability to capture superb highly saturated images.
However, film has been with us for many years and it produces excellent results with extremely high resolution compared to digital cameras. One can only guess how much longer film will be available.
Black and white photography may be regarded as abstract photography as the image is not a true representarion of the original scene. A good black and white image will be expected to contain the full range of tones from complete black to complete white.
There are two methods of getting a black and white image. Firstly through the process of capturing the image in camera from a black and white film, this method has proven itself over many years of development. Secondly an image can be captured digitally and then processed to discard all the color information.
The Dynamic range of a camera can be defined as the ratio between the maximum and minimum light intensities from the sensor. The maximum ligjht intensity representing white and the minimum light intensity representing black. The dynamic range can be measured in f-stops to describe the overall light range available, summing up it is the… Continue reading Dynamic Range
Image sensors are the heart of the digital camera, if comparing to a film camera the image sensor is the equivalent to the film.
When purchasing a camera the sales person will most likely try to sell a camera based on the number of Megapixels in the cameras sensor, but this is only part of the story. A more important issue is how large is the sensor and how large are the pixels on the sensor.
Most modern cameras and light meters measure the photons of light reflected from the subject in terms of Exposure Value (EV). The greater the number of photons received, the greater the electricity that is produced by the light meter. International standards specify how much light received equals a certain EV number.
Long ExposuresLong exposure photography is generally refered to when the photographer uses shutter speeds greater than can be hand held and still get sharp images. There are several options to turn to when this occurs.
Image Stabilization or Vibration Reduction which is built into some lenses, will assist in allowing the use of longer exposure times, in some circumstances this can be by the equivalent of three to four stops. This means that a shutter speed which would normally 1/100 of a second hand held could be extended to possibly 1/10 or 1/5 of a second, using one of these lenses. Image stabilization lenses compensate for the movement of the camera and lens by moving an element inside the lens to stabilize for any movement of the image at the sensor plane. Image stabilization or vibration reduction can be very usefull in longer lenses from 100mm and upwards.
The reason we need to adjust the colors reorded by the camera is because the scene we are photographing may be lit by different light sources and the variation in light sources may cause a color cast in the final image, the color cast which a light source may exhibit is determined by the color temperature of the light ce. The unit of measurement for color temperature is Kelvin (K).
With any camera the digital sensor or film needs to receive the correct amount of light for the final image to be correctly balanced in respect to the intensity of the light and the colors and tone of the image. If the sensor receives too much light the image will be washed out and light toned, if the image receives insufficient light the image will be too dark and may appear muddy. If the images receives the correct amount of light the images will be well balanced in respect to colours and tone.
ISO speed is a number that indicates the sensitivity of the film or the imaging sensor to to the light. ISO sensitivity is measured by a set of standards established by the International Standards Organization (ISO). In general, films with a higher sensitivity (larger ISO number) have coarser grain and do not register detail as well as films with lower sensitivity (lower ISO number). With digital sensors, in general the larger ISO number will cause more noise in the sensor and will degrade the resulting picture to some extent, however there are some software application packages which can filter out the noise from the digital file.
Accurate focusing is one of the two main steps in obtaining an excellent image, the other main step is setting the camera to the correct exposure. If the scene captured by the camera contains close objects near the camera and far objects at a distance from the camera it may be difficult to get all of the image in focus due to depth of field limitations. The depth of field is a zone of focus in front of the subject and behind the subject which is acceptably sharp. This zone is controlled by the aperture setting of the lens.
Would you like to capture a full frame image of a dangerous creature or a shy animal or bird. It is quite easy if you use a remote camera release. Today there are many types of remote releases available for cameras, there are cable releases, infra red or radio controlled releases. There are also many types on remote triggering devices to automatically trigger your camera as an animal or bird approaches.
Many people believe that bad weather is the time to stay at home and wish for better weather. No, bad weather is the time to get out and take pictures.
Many bad weather conditions can actually enhance your images.
When it is very cloudy, the flat lighting is excellent for photographing people or animals. The flat lighting is very flattering to the subject as the contrast is low.
Foggy and misty conditions can add a moody feeling to your images. Moody foggy lighting can be excellent for landscapes.
Here we outline the main aspects to consider in selecting and purchasing a Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) camera, to help you make an informed decision on your camera purchase. The range of cameras available in any particular country may vary at any time but we endevour to give you some guidance an what to look for. DSLR cameras have larger image sensors than the compact range of cameras and will offer a far greater image quality. In addition, the range of DSLR cameras will offer a far better high ISO performance (to perform better in low light conditions) than the compact cameras.
In some digital images the noise can become quite objectionable where images are taken in relatively low light levels and high shutter speeds are required, particularly when using telephoto lenses. Generally digital cameras allow for ISO settings between ISO100 and ISO3200 even in some cases up to ISO 6400 and higher. When used at high… Continue reading Noise Reduction in Images
With the use of digital cameras we are now taking many more images than we were many years ago. What happens when you want to track down one of the many thousands of images you have taken. Will you be able to retreive the image you need.
Capturing color is all about making color predominate in the image. Colors in an image can be closely related to give the image harmony, or the colors may contrast to make the image stand out.
It is common for a splash of red in an image to make the whole image stand out. Some colors will give a warm feeling (orange and yellow), others will give a cool and calming feeling (green, blue and violet) and other may give us a hot feeling (red).
