Tag Archives: tutorial

How to Buy a New Camera

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Hi Folks:

The first 35mm film camera I ever used was my dad’s Argus A5; it had four shutter speeds, five f/stops and ‘guess the distance’ focusing. No lightmeter, of course. It taught me a lot about photography. Back then I couldn’t always afford film, but I’d take that camera out in the woods and make compositions through the viewfinder, measure the light with the little handheld lightmeter and calculate exposures. My first SLR camera was an Asahi Pentax Spotmatic F; a definite step up in photographic terms, and a great little camera, even though I eventually jumped ship and went with Minolta instead.

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My Lightroom Workflow

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Hi Folks:

There are a number of different tutorials and videos available regarding Lightroom workflow; I’ve learned from several of them and have incorporated them into my own way of doing things.  You can find some of these tutorials through our ‘Lightroom Links‘ post.  Many people seem to ‘focus’ (pun intended) on Lightroom’s ability to render RAW files into usable digital images, but of course it does much more than that.  At its heart, Lightroom is a database, a way of cataloguing and organizing one’s digital library.  Used well, Lightroom makes it easy to discover, sort and group one’s images in a meaningful way.  You can read more on that in our ‘Should I Get Lightroom or Photoshop or…?‘ post.

Before I begin discussing my workflow, I wanted to mention a few personal preferences: Continue Reading →

Photo of the Month – Garry Oak Sunset

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Hi Folks:

February has been a strange month weatherwise here in Victoria.  We had the first snowdrops, crocuses and cherry blossoms (not unusual), but we currently have several inches of snow and (comparatively) low temperatures.  I’ve had to bring in the hummingbird feeder at night to keep it from freezing solid.

This month I’ve been playing with a new piece of software: Nik software’s ‘HDR Efex Pro‘.  As you may have read from some of my other Photography posts, I’m not generally a big fan of what some call the ‘HDR-look’.  Having said that, I do understand the value of using HDR imaging for scenes that have an extended dynamic range.  Some photographers seem to think that using film to make images is somehow more ‘pure’ than using digital technology, or that computers allow us to render photographs in ‘unnatural’ ways.  I disagree.  Photographs have been manipulated both in camera and in the darkroom in many ways since their earliest days, including montages.  I have no doubt that if Ansel Adams was alive today he’d be quite happy to apply his ‘zone’ system to Photoshop/ Lightroom or other software. Continue Reading →

Help! I Deleted My Lightroom Images!!

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Hi Folks:

I received the following question this morning and provided some information that helped, but I thought I’d take the time to write a longer response as well. First, the problem:

Hi there Mike, Thanks for offering to help me! I just did a real stupid thing! Processed images in Lightroom (2.7). By accident I deleted the images in the orig. folder – AND emptied the bin (do not ask) but I am still seeing the images in my Lightroom Library tray! However it does not let me export them obviously – as it cannot find the original files. So I was wondering if I can retrieve the images from Lightroom? I hope you can help me!

Now then…  If this happens to you, all is not (necessarily) lost but there are a few things to understand about Lightroom and about your computer’s hard drive.  I’ll begin by saying that I work in Windows and my knowledge of Macs is somewhat limited, but they work in essentially the same way. Continue Reading →

A Quick Tip: Lightroom Colour Picker

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Hi Folks:

The following isn’t my idea, but something I picked up from watching a video by Matt Kloskowski over at Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Killer Tips.  The only difference is that he was working in Photoshop, and I thought it must be transferable to Lightroom; so it is.

The colour picker tool in Lightroom’s Develop module is used mostly with Split-toning, although it’s also available with the Gradient tool and the Brush tool.  As can be seen in the image below, one can either use the sliders to set the hue and saturation levels for the Highlights and Shadows, or, by clicking on the colour box, one can bring out the colour picker tool. Continue Reading →

Photographing Moving Water – Revisited

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Hi Folks:

Last month I did a blog post on a technique I’ve been playing with for ‘Photographing Moving Water‘. I’m not going to reiterate that technique here so if you’d like to read that other post first, I’ll wait…

…welcome back!

Now, I’ve used this idea on several photos and it generally works pretty well, but I’d only used it on wave action down at the shore of the ocean. I’d been wondering how well it would work on a stream, waterfall or other moving water, so I went out yesterday to make some more images. This is my second ‘winter’ here on the island and I’m still not quite used to the idea of using ‘January’ and ‘spring’ in the same sentence, but the skunk cabbage leaves were already starting to unfurl when I was out… Anyway, I digress. Continue Reading →

Making Rounded Corners in Lightroom

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Hi Folks:

This has been covered on other photography sites, but since it popped up on Twitter again yesterday I thought I’d do a short post on it.  The question is, “Can I add rounded corners to an image in Lightroom?  The answer is yes, and it’s pretty easy to do, using the Post-Crop Vignetting Tool in the Develop module.  That tool is in the right panel near the bottom and is mostly used to add a vignette for creative effect or to remove the vignetting sometimes caused by wide-angle lenses.  To create an image with rounded corners, use the following settings:

Amount: +/-100 – depending on whether you want a white border or a black border.
Midpoint: Start at around 25 and adjust from there.
Roundness: -100
Feather: 0

Rounded Corners

That’s it!  You can play with the numbers a bit, but once you’ve set them you can also create a Develop preset using the ‘Uncheck All’ then selecting only the ‘Post-Crop Vignetting’ checkbox.  Here, you can even use this one: Rounded Corners preset.

Now go out and make some photographs!

Mike.

P.S. You can find more of our posts on photography and Lightroom tutorials here, and you can find links to over 200 other sites that have Lightroom tips, tutorials and videos here.

Why Use HDR?

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Hi Folks:

I was at an informal gathering of photographers recently where we were sharing and discussing our work.  I displayed a sunset image that I had made (this one)

Seeing the Light

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Cell Phone Cameras

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Hi Folks:

One of the gifts Mrs. Claus gave me for Christmas was a Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant GT-i9000M Android-enabled cell phone. The name is actually longer than the phone itself; I’m not sure who comes up with this stuff! The GPS feature combined with Google Maps makes navigating the sleigh a lot simpler, but that’s another story. The phone also has a 5MP digital camera, and that’s the topic for today’s blog post. BTW, I checked the Apple Canada site and the iPhone 4 also has a 5MP camera, so I’m assuming they’re in the same ball park as far as comparisons go.

The reasons for this post are two-fold. For one, up until now I’ve never really had the chance to experience making photographs with a cell phone camera. For the second, there have been a couple of posts on Mike Johnston’s ‘The Online Photographer‘ blog recently that say that the sales of ‘point and shoot’ cameras have been steadily falling. His suggestion is that point and shoot cameras are single-use devices while cell phones with cameras are multifunctional… so more people are simply using their cell phone cameras rather than purchasing a separate camera as well. Continue Reading →

Photo of the Month – Winter Storm

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Hi Folks:

Today is the last day of December, and that means it’s time for the ‘Photo of the Month’ post. Being December 31, it’s also the last day of 2010. There’s an old story about spring coming in like a lamb or a lion, and if that also applies to winter, this one could be interesting!

I was walking back from the grocery store on December 20, and when I got to Dallas Road the wind was just howling and the waves were crashing into the beach. Despite this, the sun was still shining. I later discovered this is known as a ‘King Tide‘ event, a biannual event caused by the alignment of the sun and moon that creates extremely high tides. All I knew at the time was, “I’ve got to shoot this!” Continue Reading →