PhotoNaturalist - nature photography tips and tutorials
nature photography tips and tutorials
Three Ways to Control Depth of Field
I’d highly recommend checking it out. Brian did a nice job of explaining the three things that affect depth of field (aperture, camera to subject distance, and focal length), including some sample images too.
There’s a few things I’d like to add though: [Read more…] about 3 Things That Affect Depth of Field
Today I’m happy to announce that my new eBook, Digital Wildflower Photography, is now available.
The first thing you’re probably wondering is how it’s different from the free eBook I released last spring. Well, this new one is over twice as long at 55 pages, and has a ton of new content.
While the free eBook was really just a collection of a few tips for getting better wildflower photos, this new ebook is more of a complete guide that will teach you how to take stunning wildflower photos and how to post-process them in Adobe Photoshop (CS and Elements 8). [Read more…] about New eBook, Digital Wildflower Photography, is now available!
When I started this website, I listed a few great resources on the right sidebar, but I just realized that I’ve never written about them in a post before. So, I thought I’d take a moment to list them here and explain how each one can be helpful on your journey to photograph the wonderful natural world:
This website will show you the moon phases for the current calendar month. It’s helpful when you’re trying to plan a landscape shot and need the moon to be in a specific phase (mostly likely full). I usually just use it as a sort of “quick look” planning tool, and then move on to the next site for more details. [Read more…] about 5 great resources for nature photographers
A few weeks ago, I explained how to use the histogram to get a better exposure. And although the default histogram will give you a general idea of an image’s exposure, there’s actually a special histogram that’ll tell you a lot more: the RGB histogram.
Here’s how it works:
If you understand the regular histogram, then the RGB histogram is simple: it shows you the histogram of each individual color channel (red, green, and blue).
The bad thing about the regular histogram is that it lumps all these color channels together, making it hard for you to see if you’re underexposing or overexposing a specific color channel. And, on some cameras, I’ve heard that the regular histogram only shows you the green channel. [Read more…] about How to use the “special” RGB Histogram
In last week’s post, I explained how to use the histogram to check if you exposed a photo properly. Another thing you probably want to know after taking a photo is whether or not it’s sharp.
Well, one way to see if a photo came out sharp enough, is to zoom in as much as possible on the LCD preview.
This won’t show you exactly how sharp the photo is, but it’ll give you a much better idea than just looking at the zoomed out preview (which almost always looks sharp). [Read more…] about How to check sharpness out on the trail
Sometimes autofocus can be really annoying. For some shots it’ll focus on the right part of your subject, but then the very next shot it may choose to focus on something far and away into the background.
In a previous post, I shared a few ways to avoid problems like this, but I just found a new solution that I like a lot better: back-button autofocusing.
Here’s how it works:
Normally, your camera will auto focus when you press the shutter button halfway, but with back-button autofocusing, you have to press a button on the back of the camera instead, giving you complete control of when autofocus is initiated. [Read more…] about How To Get Better Control of Autofocus