Indoor Flash Photography Tips

Over the years, you’ve probably seen plenty of indoor flash pictures that have a pitch black background and a washed-out, overexposed foreground. Many factors conspire to produce these stark, unflattering shots, but one of the major contributors is, once again, your camera thinking on its own. You’re letting it decide when to turn on the flash and which shutter speed to use.

First of all, you don’t always need the flash. Indoor photography offers many opportunities for stunning existing-light portraits and moody interior shots. And when you do have to turn on the flash, you can make certain adjustments to preserve the ambiance of the room so that your background doesn’t fall into a black hole.

Flash shots may have a pitch-black background for a couple of reasons. The first problem is that the light from a typical digital camera’s flash reaches only about 2 to 3 metres. Anything beyond this range, and you’ve got yourself an inadvertent ambient-light photo.

If your camera has a manual mode that allows you to dictate both the aperture (f stop) and shutter speed, you can easily overcome these problems.

Once in manual mode, try this combination as a starting point for flash photography indoors:

* Set your film speed to 100

* Set the aperture (f-stop) to f-5.6.

* Set the shutter speed to 1/15th of a second.

* Use the forced-flash mode. (Don’t use the red-eye reduction feature)

When you use these settings, hold the camera as steady as possible or better yet, use a tripod. At these slow shutter speeds, your shots are more vulnerable to camera shake, and therefore to blurriness. Your flash will help freeze everything in its range, but the background, not illuminated by the flash, may blur if the camera isn’t steady.

If your camera doesn’t have a manual mode, all is not lost. Almost every consumer model has a night time or stow-synchro mode (look for a “stars over a mountain” icon). The intention of this mode is to let you shoot portraits at twilight. But you can also use Nighttime mode indoors to open up the background. Granted, you don’t have as much control with this setting as you do with manual mode, but you may be pleasantly surprised with the results.

Browse our Australian photo library and have a look at our wide and interesting selection of Australian stock photos. We pride ourselves in quality iamges at affordable prices.

Lean about Photography and its Development

Photography is the result of combining several technical discoveries . Long before the first photographs were made, Chinese philosopher Mo Ti described a pinhole camera in the 5th century, Albertus Magnus discovered silver nitrate and Georges Fabricius discovered silver chloride. Daniel Barbaro described a diaphragm in 1568. Wilhelm Homberg described how light darkened some chemicals (photochemical effect) in 1694. The fiction book Giphantie, published in 1760, by French author Tiphaigne de la Roche, described what can be interpreted as photography.

Photography as a usable process goes back to the 1820s with the development of chemical photography. The first fixed photograph was an image produced in 1825 by the French inventor Nicéphore Niépce. However, because his images took so long to expose, he sought to find a new process. Working with Louis Daguerre, they experimented with silver compounds based on a Johann Heinrich Schultz discovery in 1724 that a silver and chalk mixture darkens when exposed to light. Niépce died in 1833, but Daguerre continued the work, eventually culminating with the development of the daguerreotype in 1837. Daguerre took the original photo of a person in 1839 when, while taking a daguerreotype of a Paris street, a pedestrian stopped for a shoe shine, long enough to be captured by the long exposure (several minutes). Eventually, France agreed to pay Daguerre a pension for his formula, in exchange for his promise to announce his discovery to the world as the gift of France, which he did in 1839.

Meanwhile, Hercules Florence had already developed a very similar process in 1832, naming it Photographie and William Fox Talbot had earlier discovered another means to fix a silver process image but had kept it secret. After reading about Daguerre’s invention, Talbot refined his process so that portraits were made readily available to the masses. By 1840, Talbot had invented the calotype process, which produces negative images. John Herschel made many contributions to the new methods. He invented the cyanotype process, now familiar as the “blueprint”. He was the first to use the terms “photography”, “negative” and “positive”. He discovered sodium thiosulphate solution to be a solvent of silver halides in 1819, and informed Talbot and Daguerre of his discovery in 1839 that it could be used to “fix” pictures and make them permanent. He made the first glass negative in late 1839.

In March 1851, Frederick Scott Archer published his findings in “The Chemist” on the wet plate collodion process. This became the most widely used process between 1852 and the late 1880s when the dry plate was introduced. There are three subsets to the Collodion process; the Ambrotype (positive image on glass), the Ferrotype or Tintype (positive image on metal) and the negative which was printed on Albumen or Salt paper.

Many developments in photographic glass plates and printing were made in through the nineteenth century. In 1884, George Eastman developed the technology of film to replace photographic plates, leading to the technology used by film cameras today.

In 1908 Gabriel Lippmann won the Nobel Laureate in Physics for his method of reproducing colours photographically based on the phenomenon of interference, also known as the Lippmann plate.

Processes

Monochrome Images

When photography all began the pictures were only black and white, but with the development of colour film professional photographer still preferred monochrome due to the cheaper cost and the look of the finished image.

It is important to note that some desaturated pictures are not always pure blacks and whites, but also contain other hues depending on the process. The Cyanotype process produces an image of blue and white for example. The albumen process which was used more than 150 years ago had brown tones.

Many photographers continue to produce some desaturated images. Some full colour digital images are processed using a variety of techniques to create black and whites, and some cameras have even been produced to exclusively shoot monochrome.

Colour

Colour photography was explored at the beginning in the mid 1800s. Early findings in colour could not fix the photograph and prevent the colour from fading. The first permanent colour photo was taken in 1861 by the physicist James Clerk Maxwell.

Early colour photographs were taken by Prokudin-Gorskii (1915). One of the early methods of taking colour photos was to use three cameras. Each camera would have a colour filter in front of the lens. This method provides the photographer with the three basic channels required to recreate a colour still in a darkroom or processing plant . Russian photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii developed another technique, with three colour plates taken in quick succession.

A practical application of the technique was held back by the very limited colour response of early film, however, in the early 1900s, following the work of photo-chemists such as H. W. Vogel, emulsions with adequate sensitivity to green and red light at last became available.

The first colour plate, Autochrome, developed by the French Lumière brothers, reached the market in 1907. It was based on a ‘screen-plate’ filter made of dyed dots of potato starch, and was the only colour film on the market until German Agfa introduced the similar Agfacolor in 1932. In 1935, American Kodak introduced the first modern (‘integrated tri-pack’) colour film which was developed by Polish constructor Jan Szczepanik. It was Kodachrome, based on three coloured emulsions. This was followed in 1936 by Agfa’s Agfacolor Neue. Unlike the Kodachrome tri-pack process, the colour couplers in Agfacolor Neue were integral with the emulsion layers, which greatly simplified the film developing. Most new colour films, except Kodachrome, are based on the Agfacolor Neue technology. Instant colour film was introduced by Polaroid in 1963.

Colour photography may form images as a positive transparency, intended for use in a slide projector or as colour negatives intended for use in creating positive colour images on specially coated paper. The latter is now the most common form of film (non-digital) colour photography owing to the introduction of automated photo printing equipment.

Full spectrum photography ultraviolet and infrared

Ultraviolet and infrared films have been available for decades and employed in a variety of photographic avenues since the 1960s. New technological developments in digital photography have opened a new direction in full spectrum photography, where careful filtering choices across the ultraviolet, visible and infrared lead to new artistic visions.

Modified digital cameras can display some ultraviolet light and all of the visible and much of the near infrared spectrum. As most digital imaging sensors are sensitive from about 350 nm to 1000 nm. An off-the-shelf digital camera contains an infrared hot mirror filter that blocks most of the infrared and a bit of the ultraviolet that would otherwise be detected by the sensor, narrowing the accepted range from about 400 nm to 700 nm. Replacing a hot mirror or infrared blocking filter with an infrared pass or a wide spectrally transmitting filter allows the camera to detect the wider spectrum light at greater sensitivity. Missing the hot-mirror, the red, green and blue (or cyan, yellow and magenta) coloured micro-filters placed over the sensor elements pass varying amounts of ultraviolet (blue window) and infrared (primarily red, and somewhat lesser the green and blue micro-filters).

Uses of full spectrum photography are for fine art photography, geology, forensics and law enforcement and even some claimed use in ghost hunting.

Digital Photography

The Nikon D1 was the first DSLR to truly compete with and begin to replace, film cameras in the professional photojournalism and sports photography fields and was the start of something very new.

Traditional photography burdened the commercial photographer working at remote locations without easy access to processing facilities and competition from television pressured photographers to deliver images to newspapers with greater speed.

News photographers at remote locations often carried miniature photo labs and a means of transmitting images through telephone lines. In 1981, Sony unveiled the first public camera to use a charge-coupled device for imaging, eliminating the need for film: the Sony Mavica. While the Mavica saved images to disk, the images were displayed on television and the camera was not fully digital. In 1990, Kodak unveiled the DCS 100, the first commercially available digital camera. Although its high cost precluded uses other than photojournalism and professional photography, commercial digital photography was born.

Digital imaging uses an electronic image sensor to record the image as a set of electronic data rather than as chemical changes on film. The primary difference between digital and chemical photography is that chemical photography resists manipulation because it involves film and photographic paper, while digital imaging is a highly flexible medium. This difference allows for a degree of image post-processing that is comparatively difficult in film-based photography and permits different communicative potentials and applications.

Digital point-and-shoot cameras have become widespread family products, outselling film cameras and including new features such as video and audio recording. Kodak announced back in January 2004 that it would no longer sell reloadable 35 mm cameras in western Europe, Canada and the United States after the end of that year. Kodak was at that time a minor player in the reloadable film cameras market. In January 2006, Nikon followed suit and announced that they will stop the production of all but two models of their film cameras: the low-end Nikon FM10, and the high-end Nikon F6. On May 25, 2006, Canon announced they will stop developing new film SLR cameras. Though most new camera designs are now digital, a new 6x6cm/6x7cm medium format film camera was introduced in 2008 in a co-operation between Fuji and Voigtländer.

According to research made by Kodak in 2007, 75 percent of professional photographers say they will continue to use film, even though some embrace digital.

A survey held in the U.S. showed that over two thirds of the professional photographer group that compared film images to digital images liked the film results better for some circumstances which included:

• film’s superiority in capturing more information on medium and large format films (48 percent);
• creating a traditional photographic look (48 percent);
• capturing shadow and highlighting details (45 percent);the wide exposure latitude of film (42 percent); and
• archival storage. (38 percent)

Digital pictures has raised many ethical concerns because of the ease of manipulating digital photographs in post processing. Many snappers have declared they will not crop their pictures, or are forbidden from combining elements of multiple photos to make “illustrations,” passing them as real photographs. Today’s technology has made picture editing relatively simple for even the novice photographer. However, recent changes of in camera processing allows digital fingerprinting of RAW photos to verify against tampering of digital photos for forensics use.

Camera phones, combined with popular photo sharing web sites, have lead the way to a new kind of social photography. But that is a whole new article.

Author: Peter Davey MA DipM

Best Digital Camera

It seems that every month manufacturers are coming up with another new digital camera in their range to entice potential customers If it is your first camera then you probably won’t have a clue what to look for if you are searching for the best digital camera you can buy but there is help.

Eventually saving enough money to buy that eye-popping, 10 megapixel, 10x optical zoom with up to a sixteen gigabyte expandable memory using super hi-speed SD memory card and of course, very compact; which we hope be the envy of almost everyone we know.

Can you imagine your surprise when you find that the camera you have researched so diligently and have set your heart on has been usurped from its position of best model with a newer more expensive version.

We sigh because the manufacturer of this amazing gadget claims that this is the best digital camera yet out in the market. We should have known but because we must have the best digital camera then we will just have to swallow the extra cost.

Don’t worry though if you are not sure what to do; just follow the guide below and you shouldn’t go to far wrong. Much is made about the number of pixels and the truth is the more you have the better.

You normally find that the higher the number of pixels, referred to as megapixels, the camera has, the deeper the colors and clarity of the image will be which helps the final printed version. This increase in megapixels means that poster size pictures can be easily printed. Good quality models are now using large LCD screens around the 2. The best digital cameras are able to touch up and edit the images this is an excellent feature to have as standard.

So go for the biggest display you can but bear in mind that you would be advised to carry spare batteries as large screens drain the power faster.

Almost every digital camera has a digital zoom but it is the optical zoom that you need to try for if your budget will extend to it. Optical zooms are usually fitted on the more expensive cameras with a combination digital zoom.

Images on these cameras are stored on small storage cards that can have a huge memory capacity but be sure to buy the right type. A number of cards have been used over the years but the main ones are: the Secure Digital, Compact Flash, Sony’s Memory Stick and the newer XD cards.

As the large megapixel cameras use a large amount of memory then purchase the largest capacity card your camera can use within your budget. Now the cost for these larger capacity cards has dropped it is a good time to buy camera memory.

Remember, the camera must suit the type of person you are as much as your wallet as there is no point having the best digital camera if you do not use it. Ultimately, the camera you choose should be one that you will take with you everywhere and use all the time.

Photo Portraits: How to Really Get Rid of the Dreaded Red Eye

For years now, film and digital camera manufacturers have been forcing red-eye reduction settings on their customers. Its a series of bright, strobing flashes that’s not only annoying to the people you’re photographing, but doesn’t even work very well.

What causes red eye? In a dimly lit setting, the subject’s pupil expands, revealing more of the retina. The back of the retina has blood vessels over it, hence the red colour that is caused when the flash bounces of the back of the eye.

On cameras where the flash is close to the camera lens (as it almost always is), the light from the flash shines through the dilated pupil, bounces off the retina, and reflects as a red circle directly back into the lens. (the same thing happens to animals, too, except that the colour is sometimes green or orange instead of red.)

The fix is to move the flash head away from the camera lens or use bounce flash. That way, the reflection from the retina doesn’t bounce directly back at the camera. But on a camera that fits in your pocket, its not practical to achieve much separation of flash and lens.

Since camera makers couldn’t move the flash away, they went to Plan B: firing the flash just before the shutter snaps, in theory contracting the subjects’ pupils, thereby revealing less retina.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work very well, and you may wind up with red eye anyway. The other problem is that some people see the pre-flash as the picture being taken and then move while the shutter is open. Not a good result.

Basically you have three ways out of red eye. You can turn up the lights to help contract the subjects pupils. You could also use a camera that accepts an external, detachable flash. And if none of that works, remember that you can edit out red eye on your computer, using for example, the red eye reduction tools offered in most photo editing programs.

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Nikon D90 the 12.3 Megapixel Super Camera

This proud member of the Nikon family was introduced as a solution for those who were searching for a digicam that could offer high-resolution videos and top-notch optics but within a limited budget. Many people might not know this, but the Nikon D90 12.3 Megapixel DSLR was the first among the DSLRs that combined video capturing with a very capable High Definition (HD) movie camera. What has really upheld its reputation in the market is the ability to shoot movies at a rate of 24 frames per second and its brilliant optical image stabilisation. However, its movie-recording abilities aren’t its only claim-to-fame. The D90 is a major advancement over its predecessors and offers some amazing features.

It has a 12.3 Megapixel resolution that helps in executing sharper images with enhanced details. Furthermore, it has the CMOS technology rather than Nikon’s traditional CCD. This means a huge reduction in noise levels of the shutter and it gives the camera an increased ability to recognise colours. For its size, the D90 does weigh more than what is anticipated but the body has been compacted very well and feels more substantial and sturdier than most models in this price range. Nikon has worked religiously towards improving the durability of the shutter and has added a feature — Dust Prevention System, which is usually found among its much pricier models. The 3-inch LCD quality is recommendable and it is now enclosed by a polymer instead of glass that is used in most of D90’s contemporaries. The body is very easy to grip and the navigation is convenient, courtesy of the new control layout. The buttons have been smartly positioned along a two-toned dial interface. In Live View mode, the 12.3 Megapixel Nikon D90 has two grids with different information displays, making it easier to switch between applications.

The Auto Focus is very perceptive and has three modes to it — single-point, auto and dynamic. It uses a combination of 11 focal points and moving objects can be shot with ease, using the dynamic AF mode. The razor-sharp images are a result of using the newly launched EXPEED processing. It can capture more than 4.5 images per second without compromising on picture quality. Images can be edited within the camera itself with tools such as the Fisheye and red-eye reduction. My verdict – Nikon’s D90 perfects blending the 12.3 Megapixel-boosted image quality with the cinematic Movie mode to deliver a true ‘one-of-its-kind’ digital camera at an affordable price.

To buy your new or used Nikon D90 12.3 megapixel digital SLR click the link for our best prices on new and used models.

The Canon G10 Powershot reviewed

Canon’s Powershot G10 offers a staggering 14.7 million pixels on its hi-def CCD sensor. Pixel count isn’t the only indicator of quality, but in general more pixels is better and certainly gives you more cropping choice after the event.

Unlike, say the Canon A590IS model, which is geared to amateurs, the Powershot G10 is very much a prosumer model. The list of features alone make that clear.

With a 28 m.m. wide-angle lens and also offers a 5x zoom. Optical Image Stabilisation keeps the image sharp even at the long end of the zoom – pretty essential for anyone who can’t hand-hold a camera as steadily as before. The benefit of the image stabliser is that more of your shots should come out sharp.

The monitor screen is a 3.0-inch Pure Color LCD II screen. That makes it much easier to line up your shots – there’ll be no squinting to see what’s on the screen. If you’ve never used a large LCD screen digital camera before then you’ll be astonished at just how much easier it makes life. The Canon Powershot offers a really beautiful display.

The famed Canon Digic 4 processor has been added. Fancy names and acronyms aside, the DIGIC 4 offers faster operation and enhanced image quality – something we all appreciate.

The Powershot G10 is truly a stunning example of engineering and design. For most people it will be a more practical and a better alternative to an SLR. Although it’s not the smallest digital ‘compact’ on the market, it’s probably one of the best specified and ergonomically designed cameras available today.

Golfing in Aspen Colorado

Aspen Colorado offers visitors and tourist a lot of exciting places to visit. The landscape around Aspen is dotted with carved valleys and beautiful crystal clear streams. Nature photographers will find these pristine areas very appealing so make sure to bring your digital camera with you. You may also want to photograph the high mountain meadows filled with delicate wildflowers. Garden buffs will have a lot to brag about when they get back home. If you want to be close to this magnificient scenery you might not want to stay in the heart of Aspen. It would probably be best if you stayed in Aspen hotels which are located around the countryside where it would be a lot easier for you to explore the outdoors without dealing with the traffic in the city. Most Aspen Hotels located away from the busy commercial areas have a more relaxing atmosphere that is good for the soul. No need to strictly plan your activities around traffic since you can do some exploring at a moments notice.

Aspen is also a good place for golfers to visit. If you want to play a round of golf in Aspen, you can choose among many fine private golf courses in Aspen. Each of these golf courses have unique services, facilities and amenities to offer discriminating golfers. There are also hotels close to the fairways of many of the golf courses. You can easily find these hotels in Aspen by researching and booking your hotel reservations online well in advance to ensure you get the accommodations you want.

Digital Camera Buying Guide

Looking to purchase your first or next point and shoot digital camera? The top makers of digital cameras are engineering and creating products with better picture quality and are loaded with features that users find more convenient than ever.

Face detection is an innovative technology on a few digital cameras. The Cyber-Shot DSC-W300 is a digital camera manufactured by Sony under the Cyber-shot line which includes this handy feature. Digital cameras with this feature are able to recognize faces in a scene then automatically adjusts the focus, exposure, white balance and flash to uncover faces hidden in shadows, turn skin tones to a more natural look, reduce or eliminate red-eye and remove harsh facial glare which means the photos you take will show every expression on every face in every shot you take.

Another feature many newer digital cameras include is image stabilization. Many more moments can be captured due to this now essential feature. Image stabilization compensates for the average user’s shaky hands the can blur and ruin those memorable moments. Image stabilization uses a built-in gyro sensor to detect camera movement and delivers signals that stabilize the lens. Image stabilization is available in the Sony Cybershot DSC-W300.

You can’t always tell the subject of your picture to move themselves into a better position so you can get a good shot based on the lighting conditions. With Intelligent Scene Recognition available in the DSC-W300 you select the mode such as Backlight, Backlight & Portrait, Twilight, Twilight & Portrait, Twilight with Tripod and Portrait, and the camera will adjust itself to produce the best possible picture under the lighting restrictions.

More picture taking opportunities are available when a digital camera has sufficient optical zoom. Digital cameras these days offer 3x to 10x zoom and even more. The Sony Camera DSC-W300 comes with a 5x optical zoom lens that captures outdoor subjects or scenes from far away with high quality detail.