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When travelling we tend to put our names and addresses on our suitcases and bags, but how do you do it for your camera?
You can obviously put them on your camera bag but what happens if you lose your camera or a memory card filled with precious images when your camera is not in the bag?
One suggestion that I read recently was that the first shot that you take on each memory card should be a shot of your luggage tag or business card complete with your contact details so that it has your name and contact details on it.
Similarly - I know of one photographer who has locked an image in his camera’s internal memory with his contact details. This image is never deleted as it’s locked and will be the first image anyone turning on his camera sees.
While many people would snaffle up your lost memory card (and the camera it was in if you happened to lose the whole camera) there are honest people in the world that have the technical ability and would get in touch with you.
Of course another (simpler) way might be to label your memory cards (and camera) with a sticker with your details on them. Many memory cards have a space to label them these days which could do the trick for you.
PS: of course you’ll want to put an image that people can read on your memory card/camera - unlike mine above :-)
Here’s a quick tip for those of us lucky enough to be taking a trip in an aeroplane and wanting to get the classic ‘out of the window shot’ that often is featured early in a travel photo album.
One common mistake that people make with taking this shots is to put their camera’s lens right up against the glass of the window in the hope that it will help cut down on reflections and in the hope that it will steady their shot.
While it might help a little with reflections it generally does anything but steady the shot and will often usually increase camera shake’ due to the vibrations of the plane.
A better strategy, if you’re using a DSLR with a fitted lens, is to attach a lens hood to your lens and get in as close as you can to the window without actually touching it.
Alternatively, use your free hand to cup around the lens as much as you can to shield it from reflections.
Of course for high quality aerial shots you’ll want to shoot out an open window from an appropriate altitude - but then most of us are not in that league so the window seat on an airliner is our best option.
Here are a few more tips that come to mind on photographing out a plane’s window:
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From time to time I would like to start featuring case studies by photographers talking about an image or series of images that they’ve taken. My hope is that in doing so they’ll shed some light for the rest of us on how they work, what techniques they use, what lessons they’ve learned and what they see themselves being able to improve upon.
The following brief photographic case study was submitted by Grant Dopson from GMD Photography. Thanks for Grant being willing to be our first featured case study. If you are interested in being featured in a future case study simply contact us via our submissions page with details of your idea. Here’s Grant’s tip.
Location: Vulcan Park - Birmingham, AL
Date: Thursday, August 24, 2006
Time: 7:30PM - 9:00PM
Equipment used:
This was my first time shooting with Jordan. I had met her a few weeks ago and she had already had some head shots taken a while back, but mainly just for fun. I want to start off now and say that the equipment and location are just a small part of making a great shoot. What really makes the difference is the model. Their attitude and commitment to the job is what makes good pictures. Jordan was one of these great people.
Over the last few weeks we’ve been looking at different elements of exposure and how to move out of the ‘Auto’ mode on your digital camera. We’ve looked at Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO and have discovered what each of them is and what impact changing them will have on your images.
Now that we’ve looked at the theory of how changing these elements impacts an image I’d like to move into how to use them by examining two shooting modes that many digital have on them that allow you to take a step away from the automatic settings that you might be spending a lot of time in.
The two shooting modes are Aperture Priority Mode and Shutter Priority Mode.
We’re looked at how the three elements of the exposure triangle impact one another. This is particularly the case when it comes to aperture and shutter speeds. As you increase the size of your aperture (make the hole that you shoot through bigger) you let more light into your image sensor. As a result you will need a shorter shutter speed. In the opposite way if you increase the length of time your shutter is open you decrease the necessary aperture that you’ll need to get a well exposed shot.
Aperture and Shutter Priority modes are really semi-manual (or semi-automatic) modes. They give you some control over your settings but also ensure you have a well exposed image by the camera making some of the decisions on settings. Let me explain each separately:
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The following tip on RAW vs JPEG was submitted by Richard and Rebecca from Finn Productions (You can see their Flickr account here) . It came out of a discussion in our Flickr Group titled JPG or RAW. There is actually a lot of good discussion already in this thread so once you’ve read the following head over and see what others have to say on the topic.
So, you’ve forked over at least $600 (but probably $1000) for your first DSLR camera. You have more buttons, dials, and menus than you know what to do with, even after reading through the fat booklet that came with your camera and explains its usage in ten differnent languages.
It’s all you can do to understand ISO, shutter speed, and how less is more when it comes to aperture. This beast of a camera can produce files in a Raw format, whatever that means, but it also has the nice comfortable JPEG format that we all know and love.
Like me you probably happily shoot in JPEG for quite awhile - getting used to the myriad of options available to you. One day you look at that Raw setting and ask, “should I be using Raw for the best quality? What is Raw, exactly?”
Excellent question. First, let us define these two formats.
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