Choosing a Large Format Camera

If you don't know what a view camera does or why you might need one, please read my camera tutorial before trying to wade through this document, which assumes that you already know why you need the perspective control and image quality of a view camera.

Size

I'm going to risk crucifixion by saying that you shouldn't consider a 8x10 view camera unless you are planning to make contact prints. Note that contact printing is how Ansel Adams and Edward Weston made some of their most famous and valuable prints. Without the distortions of the enlarger lens or contrast reduction of enlarger flare (stray light from one portion of the image scattering into another portion), a contact print is a beautiful thing to behold. Nonetheless, if you're too lazy to do it then an 8x10 should be scratched from your shopping list. The cameras are simply too huge. The film is too expensive. You can't get Fuji Quickload film in 8x10 size. The only way to scan 8x10 is with a ruinously expensive drum scanner (i.e., no Kodak PhotoCD). You can't get simple Polaroid film in 8x10 size.

At the other end of the spectrum are medium-format view cameras, such as the Horseman VH 6x9 cm camera. These have the advantages of compactness and roll-film loading ease. However, they are about as cumbersome and slow to operate as a 4x5 camera. You could put a roll film back on a 4x5 camera if you wanted to avoid loading film holders. At the end of the day a medium-format view camera won't give you a beautiful 4x5 sheet of film for your light table. And the resulting negative won't be cheap to scan like a 35mm neg would be. So scratch anything smaller than 4x5 from the list.

Where does that leave us? With 4x5 view camera. If you need a bunch of images scanned, you can get a Kodak PhotoCD made from 4x5 film. You have the widest selection of emulsions in 4x5 size. The latest and best view camera lens designs are intended to cover 4x5.

Staying at Home, Staying with the Car, or Packing into the Bush?

The next big decision that you have to make is whether you are going to

• take pictures at home in a studio
• take pictures on the road but close to the car
• take pictures in the wilderness

If you're going to take pictures at home in the studio, then what you want is a 12 lb. monorail camera with beautifully precise and geared movements. If you're going to travel but stay reasonably close to the car, then you probably want a camera that won't break your arm if you have to carry it 200 yards: a 6 lb. monorail. If you're going to take the camera into the wilderness and trek for 5 hours before setting up for the perfect photo, what you need is a camera that folds up compactly and is also fairly lightweight.

Let's treat each of these situations in turn.

The camera for the studio

My favorite studio camera is the Sinar X. Let's look first at why Sinar and then at why this specific model of Sinar. Suppose that Joe Clueless person looks through a catalog of photographic equipment. After doing extensive research through product literature and by testing some sample cameras and lenses, Joe tells you that Canon, Contax, Leica, Minolta, Nikon, Pentax, and Sigma camera systems are all basically just fine. The usability and final image quality on film are tough to distinguish.

Yet a working photographer knows that only Canon and Nikon make complete professional systems with the full range of lenses, attachments, and accessories that they'd be likely to need. Moreover, those are the only two systems for which they'd have a prayer of renting lenses, attachments, and accessories for a special job.

The view camera world is more or less the same. Leaving through catalogs and, if you're lucky enough to live near a good shop, playing with various view cameras, you would be likely to conclude that they are all the same. This is particularly the case since a view camera is really only a light-tight box. You can use any lens or film back on any view camera. So what difference does the box make?

At least in the United States, the only comprehensive view camera system available is Sinar. It is also the only system for which you can find rental gear. Since it isn't really any more expensive than other brands, there is no reason to ever consider another brand for studio work.

Now that we've settled on Sinar, let's look at what we've got. Every Sinar seems to have little calculator wheels that tell you (1) what aperture you need to get enough depth of field, and (2) at what angle you need to tilt the lens and/or film plane to bring a tabletop into focus via the Scheimpflug Rule. Every Sinar has lots of parts that interchange with other Sinar models. If you start with a cheap lightweight Sinar for use while traveling, you will be able to use all of your extension rails, bellows, etc. on the top-of-the-line studio cameras.

Let's get back now to my recommendation of the specific Sinar X model. Like the $6000 Sinar P2 it has geared and calibrated movements (and sadly, like the Sinar P2, it is a heavy camera). What is good about the Sinar X is that you can buy it for about $3000 at the end of every calendar year when Sinar has a sale. You can get it for pretty close to this price the rest of the year if you're affiliated with a university. Otherwise, budget a little over $4000. What you give up compared to the P2 is the ability to convert to 8x10 without having to buy a whole new rear standard and also the ability to stick a meter probe in the film plane.

The camera for the road

If you're going to stick close to the car but want a more easily luggable camera than the X, I recommend the Sinar F1 or F2. These are about half the weight of the X and start at under $2000, which is a much better deal than the X except at the end of the year.

The camera for the wilderness

I tried to do this with my Linhof Master Technika but it is simply too heavy and, in virtue of its being a view camera, requires too many accessories to take any pictures. The Horseman field cameras have always attracted me because of their impossibly light weight. Wooden field cameras drive me insane because the movements aren't precise and it is tough to even get the standards parallel. Actually, when I think about it, all field cameras inevitably drive me insane because they don't have the movement flexibility to which I became accustomed with my first view camera (a Sinar F2).

Check the comments at the end of this article to see if any other photo.net community members have found nirvana in this area.

Which lenses

Real view camera photographers will tell you that you should buy all your lenses from one company because they will be matched for color and contrast. Unless you're doing catalog photography, I think this is bad advice. First, in a world of digital imaging and color negative film, I don't see why color consistency should be so important. Second, one of the joys of view camera ownership is that you can choose any lens from any manufacturer.

Here are some of my favorite lens ideas:

• the Schneider Super Angulon XL series; these are innovative wide angles introduced with great fanfare in the late-1990s. They are revolutionary in that they cover the full 4x5 frame while going as wide as 47mm (equivalent to a 15mm lens on a Nikon). Personally, I would get a 72mm XL. Don't forget to budget $500 extra for a center filter that corrects for the inevitable wide-angle light falloff in the corners.
• Nikkor AM 210 ED macro lens. This is an apochromatic lens at 1:1 and covers 8x10 easily. It is frighteningly sharp.
• Nikkor T 360mm lens. This is part of the Nikon telephoto series introduced in the 1980s. They have ED glass and, because of their telephoto design, let you take portraits without racking the bellows out to an absurd and usntable degree. Even more interestingly, you can get an extra rear element for the lens and convert it to 500 or 720 mm. Caveat 1: these are big long lenses. If you want a 300 for field use, consider an older 300/9 non-telephoto design. Caveat 2: because the telephoto design puts the nodal point way out in front of the lens, and therefore in front of the lens board, tilts and swings will not work as expected.
• Rodenstock 250mm Imagon. This is a very strange soft-focus lens that covers 4x5. Use it for portraits and landscapes.
• oh yes... a normal lens. The 210 macro will work reasonably well at longer distance so you might as well get a 150. Schneider's APO Symmar and Rodenstock's APO Sironar S are indistinguishable. If you want to get extreme with movements, the Schneider Super Symmar HM 150 is unique.
• finally, for those times when the Super Angulon XL is simply too wide, you need a Schneider Super Symmar XL 120.

A potentially good strategy for saving some money is finding a set of Fuji lenses. These are very similar in quality to Nikon, Rodenstock, and Schneider but were always a bit cheaper and then Fuji withdrew from the American market.

A few other items

If you want to attach your fancy new lenses to your fancy new camera, you need lens boards, one for each lens. Generally it is best to buy the lenses already mounted on boards by a professional camera shop. Otherwise, you will have to invest in a spanner wrench and some brain effort.

To focus a wide angle lens at infinity requires mushing the front and rear standards very close together (about 72mm for a 72mm lens, for example). If you can do it at all, you'll find that the bellows becomes very stiff and it is hard to use the view camera perspective controls. One solution is a recessed lens board that holds the lens back behind the front standard. I don't like recessed boards because they make it hard to adjust aperture and shutter speed. A better solution is the wide-angle or "bag" bellows. These are, well, bags. On a Sinar, you can switch from regular to bag bellows in about 30 seconds. The bellows that are you aren't using becomes a lens hood. It is a very slick system.

To focus a long lens on a close-up object requires a lot of bellows extension. You'll probably need a 6-inch extension rail for your Sinar.

Personally, I find that my photography is improved when I put film behind the rear standard. This isn't so easy with 4x5. The traditional way is to buy a stack of film holders (Rite-Way are the best), a box of film, and a brush or can of compressed air to get the dust off the holders before putting the film in. After you've done this a few times, you'll probably decide that you'd get better results if you did it in total darkness, either by building a special room in your house or by purchasing a PhotoFlex Changing Room or similar tent-like changing bag (Jobo and Calumet sell them also). You put in the film, zip it up, and stick your arms in through elastic sleeves.

After you've loaded film this way for a few years, you decide to buy into the Kodak Readyload system. Kodak packages the film for you in their factory. Each pair of sheets comes in a light-tight dust-free cardboard sleeve. You stick the sleeve into a special Kodak holder and can take pictures almost as easily as with a roll-film camera. The film stays in its sleeve until the lab removes it for development. The system is perfect except for the 20-30% of exposures that are ruined due to light leaks and other system failures.

After you've gotten tired of Kodak's incompetently-designed system, you switch to Fuji Quickload, a system that appears on the surface to be similar to Kodak's. There must be some big difference because I've been using the Fuji system for almost ten years and have never had a single failure. Nor have I ever talked with anyone who has had a problem with Fuji. Nort have I ever talked with anyone who has gotten Kodak Readyload to work reliably. Kodak periodically comes out with a new film holder for Readyload and issues a press release saying "we've fixed Readyload so that it works".

But of course it doesn't.

So the right thing to do is either be a real photographer and take the time to load film holders or use Fuji Quickload and bitch and complain about the limited variety of emulsions available. As of December 1998 you could only get Velvia (ISO 50 slides; delicious but lurid), Astia (ISO 100 slides; delicious), Provia (ISO 100 slides; "the worst slide film ever made" according to one of my friends and I couldn't disagree), and Fujichrome 64T (tungsten slides).

Before putting that film in the rear standard, you might want to check that your camera is pointed at something interesting. For that you'll want a dark cloth that you can drape around the ground glass and your head.

In order to see if your subject is in focus, you need a magnifying loupe. My favorite is the "Toyo 3.6X Groundglass Focusing Magnifier" (about $40), though expensive German loupes lifted from the light table work reasonably well also.

As you're stopping down the lens to the correct aperture and adjusting the Copal shutter, you may wonder whether these settings are correct for the light and your subject's tone. A handheld meter is useful at this point. Real view camera nerds generally use a dedicated spot meter but I prefer the Sekonic L-508 (spot, incident, reflected, weatherproof).

Once your exposure is set, if your subject isn't at infinity you might want to make sure that a bellows extension exposure correction isn't required. For this you need a QuickDisc (free) or Quick Stick (not free).

If you're still not able to nail exposure, or if you're using studio strobes, you'll definitely want a Polaroid 545 back and some Polaroid 4x5 film (about $3 per exposure).

At this point you need a humungoid case to hold everything. The most convenient are those that let your camera hang from its rails. Lightware and Tenba make soft-sided versions of this age-old design. My Lightware case is a persistent source of difficulty and the doesn't seem to be great with support, so I'd personally get a Tenba View 45 case or maybe one of the Sinar-brand cases.

More

• reviews of specific cameras in photo.net
• Large Format threads in the Q&A forum
• Quang-Tuan Luong's comprehensive large-format page
• View Camera Technique; book review
• once you get your camera: the QuickDisc exposure tool
• vendor smut, but comes with interesting MTF diagrams (warning: these are calculated, not measured): http://www.schneideroptics.com/

Inspiration

I'm going to try to keep tossing in photos here that show the advantages of large format photography.

http://www.photo.net/photo/large-format/choosing

Choosing a Digital Camera

We live in strange times. Remember the 1970s when magazines and newspapers had digital compositing systems but word processors weren't widely available? Content originated on typewriters and had to be imported (rekeyed) into digital form. That's where we are in the late 1990s. Most imaging professionals have a computer and software capable of processing digital images. But content originates on film and has to be scanned. So only a tiny percentage of images that people make are amenable to computer processing.

The world of photography will change when most content originates in computer-readable form. That means the world will change when the average person converts from a film-based camera to a digital camera.

Thus before we get into thinking about which digital camera is best, we have to consider whether a film or digital camera is better for a particular application.

How much worse than a film camera is a digital camera?

How much quality do you lose by using a digital camera? Maybe none. In fact, a digital camera is better quality than a film camera in many important respects! The easiest to understand specification is resolution. A 35mm film-based camera will crush any digital camera in the number of good pixels. But maybe you care about color balance under mixed lighting. A digital camera is actually better than a film camera. Maybe you care about scale, the ability of the camera to capture detail in the brightest highlights and darkest shadows of a scene. A cleverly designed digital camera may be much better in this respect than a film-based camera.

The key word in the above sentence is clever. Most digital cameras come from Japanese companies with a lot of engineering experience making imaging pipelines that run from a CCD to an analog video tape (i.e., what is inside a camcorder). They've adapted these pipelines to the new DV camcorders. So why not adapt them to the digital still camera? It is mostly the same thing except you write one frame at a time to some sort of computer memory. The flaw in this argument is that the CCD sensors are capable of much more dynamic range than one can record in an NTSC video signal. There has thus been very little pressure to make the pipeline milk the ultimate in shadow and highlight detail from the sensor. However, if one were to store digital still images with 16 bits per pixel, it would be worth trying to squeeze all the dynamic resolution from the sensor. Cameras like the Nikon D1 and Canon D30 are just the beginnings of the trend away from 8-bit cameras.

Over the next few years, expect to see some interesting digital cameras from non-traditional companies with strong backgrounds in instrumentation (e.g., Hewlett Packard).

Yeah, yeah, but what about resolution?

You need at least 200 pixels-per-inch for photographic quality. So for a 4x6 proof print to stick on the fridge, an 800x1200 image will be fine. For an 11x14 you'll want 2200x2800 (6 megapixels).

Note that the megapixels from a digital camera aren't as good as the megapixels coming from a slide scanner. Slide scanners essentially have three CCDs underneath each pixel, one for red, one for green, one for blue. The array of CCDs in a digital camera is covered by a mosaic of red, green, and blue filters. Thus a digital camera might produce a megapixel of luminance (black and white) information, but only a third as much resolution in the area of color.

The process of mapping those megapixels, each a different color, into a traditional computer RGB format is known as "demosaicing". The quality of the algorithm used to demosaic will affect the final image quality. This is yet another reason not to judge cameras by specifications alone.

To show that you can't judge an image by the numbers, compare the following:

• 1600x1200 image from Canon S100, unaltered, maximum quality
• 2048x1536 image from Canon G1, unaltered, maximum quality
• 1536x1024 PhotoCD scan from a 35mm ISO 100 slide film original
• 1024x1024 ProPhotoCD scan from a 6x6cm original slide (section of a 1536x1024 scan)
• 1300x1024 ProPhotoCD scan from a 4x5 inch original slide (section of a 1536x1024 scan)

The bottom line for us here at photo.net is that we're not satisfied with the quality of the pixels as they come out of any digital camera. For Web (screen) presentation we reduce the image by 2X and are much happier with the resulting quality.

$4,000 or $500 and not much in between

Conventional marketing wisdom has it that there are only two types of camera consumers: (1) the average person who just wants to push the button, and (2) the professional photographer who needs control and will pay virtually any price. Thus, if you want to control exposure, change lenses, use the lenses from your existing Canon or Nikon 35mm SLR, expect to pay $2500-4,000. Part of the reason that these cameras cost so much is that a 35mm camera lens paints an image 24 x 36mm in size. Digital camera sensors are essentially computer chips. The larger the computer chip, the more likely it is not to work. This is because a single flaw in the silicon wafer may ruin a chip. The larger a chip, the more likely it is to enclose a random flaw in the wafer. Very expensive chips such as Intel Pentiums are usually no larger than 20mm square and these have the benefit of huge manufacturing volumes and enormous capital investment. Making a flawless 24 x 36mm chip in small quantities is going to result in enormous costs.

What should engineers do? Swing to the opposite end of the spectrum. Make a physically very small sensor. A small sensor can be covered by the image coming out the back of a small lens. This makes it tough to build a true wide-angle lens but easy and cheap to build a mid-tele zoom. Most consumers will be grateful that they've not been burdened with excessive weight, size, and cost.

How will it change your photography?

In "Choosing a Medium Format Camera", I allude to the steps in getting an image up onto the wall:

• picking a subject
• picking a place to stand and a lens (perspective)
• deciding whether to compose vertically or horizontally
• deciding whether an image is good enough to frame
• choosing a frame molding shape
• choosing a frame material
• choosing a mat size
• choosing a mat color

and explain my preference for the 6x6 cm square format because it lets me defer the vertical/horizontal decision until I'm comfortably ensconced at home in front of the light table.

Digital cameras not only force you to make all the choices that you have to make with a 35mm camera, but you also have to edit in real-time. You can't run off to Italy for two months, come back with 60 rolls of film, let them sit in your files for another two months, then start to pick the gems.

Essentially film comes with its own built-in write-once storage medium for the bits that it records. Digital cameras have limited storage space. If you're traveling, you'll have to spend every night figuring out which pictures are worth preserving on a laptop computer's hard drive. The really great ones you'll have to make sure that you e-mail back home or risk losing them if the laptop is damaged or stolen.

Consider the picture at right, the chess master in Harvard Square, taken with an old manual Nikon. Had I been forced to edit this in real-time, I'd probably have tossed it. Yet upon close inspection, the upper-right corner of the frame reveals a contorted photographer! A perfect image for photo.net! I didn't really notice it until many months after I took the picture.

Guide for Shoppers

Here are some reasonable choices:

• The Canon S100 (Digital ELPH) is a remarkably small camera that works about as well as any other $600 camera. For $200 you can get a Canon-brand underwater housing for the machine. I've tested the camera and the housing and both work very well, though the image quality is very poor in low light unless you use the built-in flash. Also see the Sony Cybershot DSC-S70.
• The Canon G1 and Nikon 995 are the best mid-priced cameras if you want to use off-camera flash. They can control the full range of Canon and Nikon (respectively) strobe equipment.
• The Olympus E-10, which started at $2000 in the fall of 2000, is a very nicely engineered single-lens reflex (SLR) digital camera with a purpose-designed lens built in. One nice thing about non-interchangeable lenses is that it keeps dust off the sensor.
• If you're got a big line of Nikon F-mount lenses, the Nikon D1 and Fuji S1 are nice digital SLRs. If you're bought into the Canon EOS line, the D30 is the best choice.

Displaying Digital Images

Once you get those images on your hard disk, you'll probably want to either

• upload them into the photo.net photodb system
• print them out using a color printer and hang them on a wall or
• read Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing and build a collaborative Web site based around your photos

More

reviews of specific cameras in photo.net (doomed to be pathetically out of date)

• Digital Imaging threads in the Q&A forum

http://www.photo.net/photo/digital/choosing

Choosing Digital Camera Filters

Filters are those glass or gelatin disks or squares that are affixed to the front of your camera's lens, changing the light that passes through the lens in some way. Filters were really popular before the advent of digital photography because some of the effects you could get with them weren't possible (or easy) to achieve in the darkroom.

Glass and gelatin filters are less used today among casual photographers because you can achieve many of the effects they provide within Photoshop or other photo editing software. Yet, not all filtration effects are possible in the digital darkroom. Here's a description of the most essential filter add-ons:

• Infrared: Many digital SLR (single lens reflex) cameras are capable of taking photographs by using only infrared illumination, which produces a spectacular effect outdoors. You can get dark skies, vivid clouds, and ghostly white trees in your landscape shots and strange, pale complexions with your photographs of humans. However, you must buy an infrared filter that blocks visible light, and be prepared to shoot at slow shutter speeds (because very little light is left for the exposure). Also, you can't preview your shot because an SLR viewfinder turns black when an infrared filter is mounted.

• Polarizers: Polarizing filters, like the one shown in Figure 1, can reduce the glare bouncing off shiny surfaces in your photos. Simply attach the filter and rotate it until the glare disappears. These filters can also help deepen the contrast of the sky from certain angles.

Figure 1: Polarizing filters can reduce glare in many situations.

Be certain to buy a circular polarizer rather than a linear polarizer for your dSLR. (All polarizers are round; circular refers to the way in which the filter handles light.) Circular polarizers won't interfere with the autoexposure mechanism of your camera as linear polarizers can.

• Neutral density: The third kind of filter that every digital SLR photographer should own is a neutral density (ND) filter, so called because it blocks light but is neutral in color. ND filters come with various assigned filter factors, such as 2X (reduces the light by 1 f-stop), 4X (reduces light 2 f-stops) and 8X (cuts down 3 f-stops). As with most filters, they can be stacked to combine the effects of more than one, as long as the additional filters don't become visible in the image, thereby cutting off corners. Neutral density filters also come in a split variety - the top half (or bottom half or one side, if you rotate it) has neutral density, and the other half is clear.

You can do a lot of amazing things with a neutral density filter, including rendering objects invisible! All ND filters decrease the amount of light reaching the sensor, so you need to use a longer exposure than you would without the filter (or let your camera adjust the exposure for you automatically).

• Special Effects: Lots of different filters produce special effects, including star-like points on highlights, prisms, special colors, and so forth.

http://tech.yahoo.com/gd/choosing-digital-camera-filters/153014;_ylt=AmxaKzsbBJsX933hb4WqmdYvLZA5

Checking for Advanced Flash Features in Your Digital Camera

Most cameras have a built-in flash that operates in several modes. In addition to automatic mode, in which the camera gauges the available light and fires the flash if needed, you typically get the following options: fill flash, no flash, red-eye reduction, and night-time flash (also called slow-sync flash). Higher-end cameras may allow you to add an external flash unit as well.

Fill flash (or force flash)

This mode triggers the flash regardless of the light in the scene. Fill-flash mode is especially helpful for outdoor shots, such as the one in Figure 1. The image on the left was captured using auto-flash mode. Because the picture was taken on a sunny day, the camera didn't see the need for a flash. Switching to fill-flash mode and forcing the flash to fire threw some additional light on the subject's face, bringing her eyes into visible range.

Figure 1: Adding flash light brings the eyes out from the shadows created by the hat.

No flash

Choose this setting when you don't want to use the flash. For example, you may want to use this mode when you're shooting highly reflective objects, such as glass or metal, because the flash can cause blown highlights (areas that are completely white, with no tonal detail). You may also want to turn off the flash simply because the quality of the existing light is part of what makes the scene compelling, such as a burning candle.

When you turn off the flash, the camera may reduce the shutter speed to compensate for the dim lighting. That means that you need to hold the camera steady for a longer period of time to avoid blurry images. Use a tripod or otherwise brace the camera for best results.

Flash with red-eye reduction

Anyone who's taken people pictures with a point-and-shoot camera - digital or film - is familiar with the so-called red-eye problem. The flash reflects in the subject's eyes, and the result is a red glint in the eye. Red-eye reduction mode aims to thwart this phenomenon by firing a low-power flash before the "real" flash goes off or by lighting a little lamp for a second or two prior to capturing the image. The idea is that the prelight causes the iris of the eye to shut down a little, thereby lessening the chances of a reflection when the final flash goes off.

Unfortunately, red-eye reduction on digital cameras doesn't work much better than it does on film cameras. Often, you still wind up with fire in the eyes - hey, the manufacturer only promised to reduce red eye, not eliminate it, right? Worse, your subjects sometimes think the preflash or light is the real flash and start walking away just when the picture is actually being captured. So if you shoot with red-eye mode turned on, be sure to explain to your subjects what's going to happen.

Slow-sync flash

Slow-sync flash, which sometimes also goes by the name nighttime flash, increases the exposure time beyond what the camera normally sets for flash pictures.

With a normal flash, your main subject is illuminated, but background elements beyond the reach of the flash are dark, as in the top example in Figure 2. The longer exposure time provided by slow-sync flash allows more ambient light to enter the camera, resulting in a lighter background (the bottom example in Figure 2).

Figure 2: Slow-sync flash produces a brighter background than normal flash mode.

Whether a brighter background is desirable depends upon the subject and your artistic mood. However, remember that the slower shutter speed required for slow-sync flash can easily result in a blurred image; both camera and subject must remain absolutely still during the entire exposure to avoid that problem. In addition, colors in slow-sync pictures may appear slightly warmer because of white-balance issues.

External flash

Higher-end digital models may enable you to use a separate flash unit with your digital camera. In this mode, the camera's on-board flash is disabled, and you must set the correct exposure to work with your flash. This option is great for professionals and advanced photo hobbyists who have the expertise and equipment to use it; check your camera manual to find out what type of external flash works with your camera and how to connect the flash.

If your camera doesn't offer an accessory off-camera flash connection, you can get the benefits of an external flash by using so-called "slave" flash units. These small, self-contained, battery-operated flash units have built-in photo eyes that trigger the supplemental flash when the camera's flash goes off. If you're trying to photograph an event in a room that's dimly lit, you can put several slave units in different places. All the units fire when you take a picture anywhere in the room.

http://tech.yahoo.com/gd/checking-for-advanced-flash-features-in-your-digital-camera/153013;_ylt=AtisfhZGbRI_njpk1nKOM1gvLZA5

Capturing a Great Digital Picture with Framing and Lighting

Good composition when capturing a digital photo is a little like good art. Even when people aren't consciously aware of all the components that go into great compositions, they still know what they like. That's because the very essence of composition is to arrange subject matter in a way that is both pleasing and which communicates the message the photographer is trying to get across. Framing and lighting are two elements of composing an image that can dramatically improve the quality of your images.

Framing images

Most kinds of photography benefit from building a visual frame around your subject, but architectural photos benefit more than most. If possible, frame your main subject by using doorways, windows, arches, the space between buildings, or the enveloping branches of trees as a pseudo border. Usually, these frames are in the foreground, which creates a feeling of depth, but if you're creative, you can find ways to use background objects to frame a composition.

When you're ready to shoot, keep some of these framing tips in mind:

• Use curves, lines, and shapes to guide the viewer's eye, as shown in Figure 1. In this case, the lines draw the eye to the center rock formation. Fences, gracefully curving seashores, meandering roads, railroad tracks, and receding tree lines all can lead the viewer through your carefully crafted composition.

Figure 1: Lines and shapes can guide your viewer through your photograph.

• Try to balance your compositions. Place interesting subject matter on both sides of the frame. If you pose a person on one side of the frame, include a building or some foliage on the other side to create a balanced look.

• Avoid splitting your photo in half with the horizon. Place the horizon one-third down from the top if you want to emphasize the foreground, or one-third up from the bottom if the background and sky are your most favored subjects.

• You don't have to compose landscapes in landscape mode. Try shooting some verticals. If you incorporate strong vertical lines, such as trees off to one side of the shot, your landscape photo can be naturally converted to a vertical orientation.

Using lighting techniques

You can make lots of improvements to a challenging subject simply by using good lighting techniques. Your uncle's bald head, a teenager's less-than-perfect complexion, a harshly lit beach scene, a drop of falling water - you can portray all these attractively with effective lighting techniques. In your uncle's case, throwing the top of his head in shadow and avoiding shiny lights can minimize glare. The teenager might benefit from diffuse lighting that softens the texture of his or her face. You can fix up that glaring direct sunlight on the beach by using a reflector to bounce light into the shadows. And you can freeze a drop of water in midair with a halo of light added by an electronic flash.

To use light effectively and take your photography to the next level, here are some tricks you'll want to master:

• Managing the quality of light: Light can be highly directional or soft and diffuse. It can cast sharp shadows and dot your subjects with specular highlights. Light comes in different colors, too. Figure 2 shows the kind of effect you can get with diffuse light.

Figure 2: Use diffuse light to soften an image.

• Using multiple lights: Photographers create some of the best pictures by using two, three, four, or more lights. One source can be used to illuminate the main part of your subject, and others can outline its edges, fill in the shadows, or call attention to a particular area. Some lighting arrangements are used often enough that they have their own names: broad lighting, rim lighting, Paramount lighting, and so forth.

If you can master applying multiple lights to model and shape the appearance of your subjects, you'll have a powerful tool at your disposal.

• Making best use of a light source's duration: Generally, electronic flash units are the main noncontinuous light source photographers put to work. Using the duration of the flash creatively requires practice and experience. Some techniques are simple. For example, you can use your flash's brief duration (particularly when shooting up close) to freeze even the fastest action. More complex is the use of repeating flashes to trace movement, or balancing flash output with ambient light to create combination exposures.

• Subtracting light: Sometimes, you don't want to add light to a scene as much as you want to remove it, to create a particular lighting effect or look. Barndoors are little flaps that look like a horse's blinders, and fit over an electronic flash or other light source to block the light or feather it onto a subject. Opaque sheets can block light coming from a particular direction, functioning as a sort of reverse reflector. Gadgets that stage lighting directors call cookies or gobos can change the size and shape of a beam of light. With lighting effects, sometimes less is more.

http://tech.yahoo.com/gd/capturing-a-great-digital-picture-with-framing-and-lighting/153012;_ylt=Ag12KAPzTExiZRw0zcuCsiMvLZA5

Blurring the Backgrounds of Digital Photos to Enhance Motion

When photographing rapidly moving vehicles, the practice of using a high shutter speed goes right out the window. Sure, you freeze the action, but you also freeze everything else, including the rapidly rotating wheels and tires. The image you end up with looks like you took a picture of a parked vehicle. The solution is to use a slow shutter speed and pan with the subject.

1. Switch to shutter priority mode.
2. Choose a slow shutter speed of 1/60 second.
3. Pre-focus the camera on a subject that is equidistant to the point at which you will take the picture.
4. When the vehicle comes into view, center it in your view finder and begin panning the camera with the vehicle as outlined previously.

5. Press the shutter button fully when the vehicle reaches the desired position. Remember to continue panning after your press the shutter button. An image taken using this technique is shown next.

   

   http://tech.yahoo.com/gd/blurring-the-backgrounds-of-digital-photos-to-enhance-motion/191736;_ylt=ApI4ThS9z9hlQNdvGIvK984vLZA5
   

Avoiding Red-Eye in Digital Photography

Red-eye occurs when light from the built-in flash of a camera bounces off the subject's retinas and reflects back to the camera lens. Along the way, the light takes on the tint of the blood vessels in the eye, which causes the eyes to appear to be glowing red in the picture. In animal pictures, eyes often have a white, yellow, or green glint.

Red-eye can result from any camera with a built-in flash, not just a digital camera. Why just a built-in flash? Because a built-in flash is positioned very close to the camera lens. When people look into the lens, they're also looking directly at the flash, which means that their retinas pick up and reflect almost all of the light from the flash. When you use an external flash head, you can position the flash farther from the lens and also angle the flash so that it's not aimed directly at the eyes.

Most digital cameras don't have connections for attaching an external flash head, unfortunately. Using a slave flash - a flash unit that is designed to work in tandem with a built-in flash - isn't always a solution, either, because your camera's built-in flash needs to fire to trigger the slave flash. If you stand at a distance from your subject, the built-in flash may be far enough away to prevent red-eye, but if you want to get a close-up, you're right back in red-eye zone. So what's the casual photographer to do?

A couple of tactics help reduce - but may not entirely eliminate - red-eye:

• Indoors, turn on as many lights as possible. In response to the additional light, your subject's eyes will constrict a little, so less flash light will be reflected back to the lens. (This is why you can usually use flash in the daytime without creating red-eye.) Most cameras also adjust flash output based on the ambient room lighting, so the brighter the setting, the weaker the flash needs to be.

• If you're shooting indoors during daylight, position your subjects next to a window. The daylight coming through the window will have the same effect as turning on additional room lights.

• Switch the flash to red-eye reduction mode. In red-eye reduction mode, the camera fires a brief, preflash light in advance of the main flash. The idea is the same as turning on lots of room lights - the eyes constrict in response to the preflash so that when the main flash fires, less light is reflected from the retinas. Keep in mind, though, that it's called red-eye reduction and not red-eye prevention mode for a reason: That little preflash can do only so much, so you may still wind up with some red-eye areas.

Be sure to warn your subjects to expect two bursts of light. Otherwise, they'll think that the preflash is the real flash and assume that they can quit smiling and get back to whatever they were doing before you pestered them for a picture. Some cameras actually emit three lights for each shot. The third beam, which the camera sends out when you depress the shutter button halfway, helps the camera's autofocusing mechanism pinpoint the subject-to-camera distance.

• Consider posing your subjects so that they're not looking directly into the camera lens. A profile shot can be every bit as captivating as a regular, face-forward image, as illustrated by Figure 1. You also can ask your subjects to look off to one side or slightly up or down. Because the flash light won't be heading straight for the eyes, red-eye reflections will be minimized.

Despite your best efforts though, some pictures will still be marred by the red-eye effect. The good news is that you can fix the problem easily in your photo editor.

Figure 1: Consider shooting subjects in profile to avoid red-eye in flash pictures.

http://tech.yahoo.com/gd/avoiding-red-eye-in-digital-photography/153011;_ylt=Agqhu7K9Y3jGyw1kf2dF1lYvLZA5