The Mode Dial and how it affects the pictures you shoot Most cameras on sale today have a dial that can be turned to select a particular shooting mode (the exceptions to this rule are top-flight professional models and quirky retro-styled models such as the Fuji X-series). Generally the mode dial can be divided in two between fully automatic modes and semi-automatic/manual modes. Which mode you choose has a bearing on how much control you have over the image-making process….

Photographing great sunset in summer is a much easier task than shooting the sunrise. Okay, sunset times are late in the evening but sunrise times are very, very early (factor in travelling and setting up time and it’s often not worth going to bed). The drawback of shooting at sunrise only gets worse the further north you go, particularly close to the time of the summer solstice (or, if you’re in the southern hemisphere, around the time of the winter…

How to Shoot Black and White Portraits. I’ve a friend who believes that shooting in black and white is the only way to create a photographic image. You get the feeling he’s just waiting for everyone to get bored with this new-fangled colour photography and go back to a purer way of working. I think he may have a long wait. I can’t say I entirely agree with him either, though I am sympathetic. Black and white has a directness…

You see a lot written about which tripod to buy, but very rarely do you see which tripod head to buy? If you want to get ahead in photography, get a head: a tripod head that is. In a previous blog post I wrote about tripods but only told half the story. Many tripods are sold legs only (you can buy tripods with built-in heads of course, but typically these are three-way heads of which more below). This means that…

There’s a slightly geeky joke that tickles me. There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who don’t. Binary notation gives you two choices: 0 or 1. People can be surprisingly binary at times. Take organisation for instance. Some people are efficient, prepared and ready for all eventualities. Some just aren’t. Guess which type a photographer has to be? Even just turning up at the right time for an event, whether it’s a…

Which tripod should I buy? There is probably no more agonising decision in photography than buying a tripod. You only have to search an online photography equipment store to see what a bewildering range there is to choose from. Certain types of photography – such as shooting in low-light – benefit from the use of a tripod. The basic function of a tripod is to keep a camera steady. However it’s remarkable how many fail to do so. The size…

Did you know; deep in your camera’s menu settings you can change your cameras Picture Styles? Did you know you camera can emulate film styles like Fuji Velvia or Kodachrome? Now, I don’t want to sound like an old codger but I do sometimes get misty-eyed for the days when I used to shoot film. After all, there was the fun of trying to load the stuff into the camera. Winding the lever on after each frame with a satisfying…

Life is full of choices. Tea or coffee? Cat or dog? Work or play? RAW versus Jpeg? Quite often there is no right answer. The choice you make could be arbitrary and depend entirely on your mood that day. This is an image shot for a client. Although I originally used Raw, the images were later converted to Jpeg for use by the client. Photography throws a lot of choices at you too. If you’re like me you probably agonise…

Understanding the difference between a full frame camera and its smaller ‘sensored’ siblings What is the crop factor and why is it important? And why do some cameras have smaller sensors in them the their more expensive full frame cousins?  I’m an avid reader of science books. Admittedly whenever an equation is thrown into a sentence I feel a bit lightheaded. However, it’s a small price to pay for a better understanding of the natural world. One of my favourite…

Whenever you press the shutter button of your camera you record a moment in time. The faster the shutter speed you use the thinner the slice of time captured. This means that we now record events that are far too fast to be seen with the human eye. A shutter speed of 1/640 was needed to record this helicopter sharply. Notice how the rotor blades are blurred though, they were moving faster than the helicopter was moving forwards. The fastest…