Daily Photo Tips Archive

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These photography tips are a record of new entries to the Daily Photo Tips RSS feed since November 2007. There are currently 1567 tips in the database! Contact Me to comment or add tips.

Daily Photo Tip

If you develop a particular artistic interest, explore it. Many great photos can be created by revisiting subjects, photography techniques, moods, or styles that interest you. (First published Oct 5, 2009)

09.Feb.17Young babies, especially newborns, often sleep peacefully if the room is quite warm, even hot. Many baby photographers do early sleeping portraits in a hot studio to increase the likelihood of a peaceful, easy photo shoot!

08.Feb.17The back distance on mirrorless system cameras is much smaller than on mirror-box, or reflex cameras. Though this is what reduces the size of the camera, such a system requires rethinking and redesign of many common lens types.

07.Feb.17Because of the wide exposure latitude of some RAW files, it is possible to create single image HDR files. Instead of using photos that were bracketed in the field, the image is comprised of one RAW file post-processed in several ways to optimise highlights, shadows and mid-tones.

06.Feb.17Focus 'peaking' in modern cameras is a real alternative to the often slow and clumsy manual focus routines found in earlier electronic viewfinder cameras. Instead of focusing using a zoomed image, which was difficult to do hand-held, the photographer can focus similarly to the optical viewfinder environment!

05.Feb.17Plenoptic, or light field, cameras tend to have limited resolution compared to their 'fixed field' siblings. Since an entire array of microlenses is required to measure the 4-dimensional light field, manufacture is limited by the size of the lenses as well as the size of the sensor.

04.Feb.17When taking portraits of a baby or young child, make sure the parents are involved to help manage the little one's moods. Usually, a child will react more positively to someone familiar, and this will be obvious in the resulting photographs.

03.Feb.17Repeated details or texture close to the resolving power of the viewing medium will often appear as noise, even if little noise is present in the photograph. The effect is most noticeable on digital media with poor reduction algorithms.

02.Feb.17A 'plenoptic' camera, or 'light field' camera, is a camera that measures the entire field of incoming light (instead of one focused aspect) using an array of microlenses. An image made using a plenoptic camera can be focused and refocused after the image has been captured.

01.Feb.17When using a camera system that corrects lens defects using software, it is important to make sure the camera system is performing the appropriate corrections. If a new lens is introduced, you might see disappointing results until you upgrade your camera's firmware.

31.Jan.17If you are making a photograph of a long, planar surface at an oblique angle, you cannot help but get at least a small strip in focus, even when using a large aperture. If the subject is textured through the depth of the photo, try moving the focus plane backward and forward to create different looks.

30.Jan.17Small sensors are indeed capable of producing large, detailed prints! However, their capabilities are more limited to lower ISO settings than larger sensors. Smaller sensors tend to produce more noise when the ISO value is raised, spoiling fine details in prints.

29.Jan.17Focus 'peaking' is feature found on electronic viewfinder cameras which highlights areas of the image where high-contrast edges appear during manual focusing. After adjusting focus, the 'peaking' highlights disappear to allow the photographer to properly compose the photograph.

28.Jan.17The reduced back distance on mirrorless system cameras can increase the angle of incidence with the sensor. This can lead to increased light falloff. Wide angle lenses, in particular, can struggle to control vignetting.

27.Jan.17Some modern camera systems, especially mirrorless systems, control known lens defects using software. When taken in uncorrected RAW form, photographs from some lenses can display very large amounts of distortion and vignetting.

26.Jan.17Sometimes, poor corner sharpness in a photo can be explained by focus problems rather than lens defects. Often the edges and corners are a different distance from the sensor plane than the image centre, and focus is not checked in these areas before exposure.