PhotoNaturalist - nature photography tips and tutorials
nature photography tips and tutorials
Tripods are one of the most important tools of nature photography. Not only do they help you get sharper images, but they also have a tendency to force you to consider your composition more carefully.
And, although they may seem like really simple pieces of equipment (especially when compared to your camera), there’s actually a few things you should keep in mind when using them in order to maximize their effectiveness: [Read more…] about 4 Tips For Getting the Most Out of Your Tripod
Sometimes it can be really annoying to get your tripod in the EXACT position you need it. Just when you think you’ve got it set up how you want it, you lock in the ballhead, and realize your camera just moved down half an inch, which totally ruins your composition.
Well, luckily there are a few accessories that can help make your life easier: an L-bracket, a tripod collar, and a bubble level. [Read more…] about Three Great Tripod Accessories
In previous posts, I’ve talked about helpful accessories for your camera and tripod. But, I always seem to forget one item that almost always gets mentioned in the comments:
A garbage bag.
How could a garbage bag possibly help you with photography? Well, primarily the garbage bag is good for protecting your gear in case it starts raining.
Your camera bag may claim to be “waterproof” (note that water “proof” is different from water “resistant”), or maybe it has a built-in rain cover. But, those rain covers aren’t always big enough to cover your tripod too, so the garbage bag comes in handy when you’re carrying a tripod. [Read more…] about Something That Should Be In Every Camera Bag
With film photography, filters were pretty important (especially for black and white images). And although they play a much smaller role in digital photography, there’s still a few filters you should be familiar with. So, here’s a brief introduction to some of them: [Read more…] about Introduction to Filters for Digital Cameras
The battery grip is a great accessory for an SLR: not only does it allow you to plug in two batteries to your camera, but it also helps give you a much better grip on the camera, making it easier to handle.
But, there’s at least one situation where you should avoid using this great accessory: whenever you’re shooting handheld.
Yeah, yeah.. I know, “always use a tripod.” But, there are times when it’s just not possible to use a tripod, like when you’re trying to photograph birds in flight. In these situations, you’ll likely be changing camera positions pretty quickly. [Read more…] about When NOT to Use a Battery Grip
Last week, I wrote a post about why it’s important to keep your lenses clean, and included an example photo to help illustrate my point.
Well, it turns out I was wrong about what caused those dust specks in the photo: they were NOT caused by dust on the lens, but instead resulted from dust on the camera’s sensor.
I’d like to thank Eric Pohl and Michael Smith for kindly correcting my error (see their comments on the original post). And, please accept my sincere apology for being wrong about this!
As Eric and Mike pointed out in their comments, dust on your lens will rarely show up in the end photo because you’ll always be focusing much farther than the front element of your lens (which is where the dust is). Ron Brinkmann put together an excellent article with great examples that helps show this.
For dust on your lens to be visible as specks in your photo, you’d have to be focusing your lens to an extremely close distance (even closer than what most macro lenses can do). So, any specks of dust you see in your final image most likely were caused by dust on your camera’s sensor. [Read more…] about Why you should keep your camera’s SENSOR super clean