I am sure some of you use this technique in Photoshop for fixing the keystone (falling over backward) effect you get when photographing a tall building with a wide-angle lens from close up: Select All > Edit > Transform > Perspective - and then pull out from either of the top anchor points.
It's a cool technique, and I use it when I want the building to look as though an earthquake had not struck the site.
A series of mini-tutorials on advanced camera techniques is running on The Digital Story. I've listed (with links) the first batch here. More to follow on a regular basis. These are fun!
I've written about using noise for aesthetic purposes. I've also explored the possibility that noise generated by boosting a camera's sensitivity (ISO) will become a historical artifact and thing of the past. I've also explained my strategies for effective noise post processing. It's time to take a look at a technical challenge that decreased noise generation at higher ISOs solves....
Sometimes the best way to photograph something natural is indoors, using a studio setup. This kind of studio doesn't have to be anything fancy, although you do have to pay attention to light and exposure. Often, the setup for indoor still life photography of natural objects such as flowers, shells, and insects is pretty ad-hoc and jury rigged. Case in...
Proving once again that a digital camera is a computer with a lens on front, yesterday I upgraded the firmware (or BIOS) of my Nikon D300. This was a simple process. I downloaded the file containing the up-to-date firmware to my Mac (of course, you can use a Windows PC as well). I de-compressed the file, and copied it to...
I've been shooting in low light at ISO 6400, partly on the grounds that my Nikon D300 is remarkably low noise, and partly on the grounds that noise can be used as part of the aeshetic of an image. My photos of the jellyfish in the aquarium tanks at Monterey are examples of this kind of high ISO work. However,...
In a previous story, I showed imposition proofs for my Light & Exposure for Digital Photographers laid out on our living room floor. I noted that the book is due out in the next few months, published by O'Reilly, and is being printed in Italy. As I explained, imposition proofs are used to determine the layout of the book into...
In my review of the Nikon D300, I promised to look into its Active D-Lighting feature. Besides pure intellectual curiousity, and the deep desire to be helpful to my readers, I needed to know how to manage this camera setting. As I noted in an earlier post, Active D-Lighting is written up as a kind of in-camera extension of dynamic...
