Category: Technology

How many lights do you need, anyway? You might be surprised to learn that you can do an exemplary job with very few lights—often only one—provided you understand your equipment and why it works the way it does. Understand that I’m not talking about an oncamera flash; those small, specular sources that throw hard shadows…

It is very hard to believe that Thanksgiving is just a month away as millions of Americans will be traveling home for the holidays. When sitting around the table eating turkey and stuffing many thrifty shoppers will begin to discuss after Thanksgiving sales. Some of the more popular items that are on sale after Thanksgiving…

The correct position of the light meter determines the correctness of exposure. Indeed, there’s a reason why incident light meters utilize a plastic dome to see the light before it hits the meter’s sensor, and that reason is undeniably easy to understand; the shape of the dome mimics the shape of the face, and that…

Throughout this book, I’ll show you examples of many different types of light and light modifiers. Umbrellas, softboxes, reflectors, and even sheets of white board, any and all can be used to create stunning images of beautiful women. The key is how they are used, alone or together, with similar or dissimilar modifiers. You may…

Your camera provides a function that can automatically make your pictures look better: Active D-Lighting. It works this way: The camera evaluates the tones in your image and then underexposes for the highlight areas while lightening any areas that it believes are too dark or lacking in contrast (Figures 11.12 and 11.13). Active D-Lighting is…

Put simply, macro photography is close-up photography. Depending on the lens or lenses that you got with your camera, you may have the perfect tool for macro work. Some lenses are designed to shoot in a macro mode, but you don’t have to feel left out if you don’t have one of those. Check the…

So what if you are doing everything right in terms of metering and mode selection, yet your images still sometimes come out too light or too dark? There is a technique called bracketing that will help you find the best exposure value for your scene by taking a normal exposure as well as one that…

Lens flare is one of the problems you will encounter when shooting in bright sunlight. Lens flare will show itself as bright circles on the image (Figure 11.6). Often you will see multiple circles in a line leading from a very bright light source such as the sun. The flare is a result of the…

Probably one of the most advanced, and yet most basic, skills to master is shooting in Manual mode. With the power and utility of most of the automatic modes, Manual mode almost never sees the light of day. I have to admit that I don’t use it very often, but there are times when no…