Right now, I'm in between projects so I decided to take a day out of a week and go to the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge to take some pictures. Good God! What a disasterous trip that was. My big problem was ignoring the weather forecast because today is a similar day except there's virtually no wind. Since my destination was really a shoot to take shots of birds, I needed to bring my 'big gun' -- I brought along my 650-1200 mm Phoenix lens. I wanted to get right up close to the birds, and there were a lot of them. A few different kinds of ducks, some beautiful swans, etc.

Well.... The wind just would not quit. This was in addition to the fact that my tripod isnt really designed for this type of a lens. I use the Benbo Trekker II tripod, which is not really designed to support this type of lens -- it CAN do it because it's rated for 17 pounds, but the overall design of the tripod makes it difficult to control this size lens. To make a long story short, the wind caught inside the built-in hood and did something to the mount. The lens froze onto the head screw and I couldnt get it off. I decided to leave it the way it was until I got back to my car -- still couldnt move the thing. Finally I got home and had to use a vice-grip to get the lens off of the tripod head. The problem was that the lens mount was still frozen (not like ice frozen, but stripped frozen) onto the head. I essentially ripped the lens mount around the head screw right off.

The problem here was that I did not really think about the conditions and my equipment. When you go out to shoot, it's obviously very important to make sure that your equipment is the proper equipment for the type of shoot and for the conditions that you'll be shooting in. The cost to replace the tripod head - $135. The cost to replace the lens - $329. Total cost of my mistake $465 plus shipping.

With today's digital cameras, there's now 2 reasons for you to take photos. One is to email or upload so that someone else can electronically see your images. The other reason is to print them and look at them that way, if you want to print 4x6s to pop into your briefcase and show friends or if you want to do an 8 1/2 x 11, frame it and hang it on the wall, you want it to look great.

If you're printing your own photos at home, you're probably using an ink-jet photo printer. One of the biggest threats to your print out from an ink-jet printer is humidity. Even if you don't live in a humid climate, there's still humidity at different times that can cause something called 'ink migration'. This can lead to a very washed out appearance. After printing your photos out, you should let the print dry for 24 hours before you do anything with it and that includes putting it in a frame.

When you are storing your photos, you should also keep the ink from directly touching the outside air. Putting the photo in a frame or inside an album page will add years to the life of your print.

When zooming in on subjects, photographers [both pro and amateur alike] are prone to getting some blur in their picture. The reason for the blur is something called 'camera shake'. There's several things that cause this, mostly this is due to 2 things - first your hand shaking, this is an obvious problem when taking shots that are 'hand held'. The other cause is the motor of your camera. If you use a point-and-shoot camera sometimes the lens motor starts to move around when you're shooting or sometimes the flaps that create the opening in your lens can cause the camera to shake.

Whatever the cause, you want to minimize it. If you can completely eliminate the shake in your shots you have a much better chance of getting a clear shot. There are a few steps that you can take to reduce at least your causes for the camera shake. First, when you can, use a tripod or a beanbag for support. A nice sturdy support system goes a long way to making a clear shot.

If you must hand hold your camera, here's a simple rule of thumb for you to follow to minimize shake. When you are zooming (or not) in on your subject, make sure that your shutter speed is at least equal to the focal length of your zoomed in lens. For example, if you are at 200mm of your 70-300mm lens then your slowest shutter speed should be 1/200th of a second. The NY Institute of Photography goes a step further and indicates that you should double the focal length -- your ideal shutter speed will be 1/400th of a second. Unless you are outside on a fairly bright day you can just about forget about hand-holding your camera at 200mm or more.

Please note -- the camera shake problem is amplified with digital cameras. This is due to 2 factors; 1- pretty much everything is motorized so there's a lot more stuff moving around in your camera, 2- the size of the sensor has a lens multiplier associated with it which makes everything more pronounced. [for example, if you have a 300mm lens on a digital camera with a 1.5x lens magnification ratio then your effectively using a 450mm lens. For more on this, click here.]

Waterfalls are almost always an interesting subject for you to photograph. When i was first taking pictures, I would always stick the camera up to my face and click away thinking that i was getting a great photo because it looked great in real life. When I got the pictures back from the developer I was always disappointed -- the print never looked like the photographs that I had seen on calendars and in books. Well there's a few tricks that I didnt know about to help make the photographs be more expressive and come to life a little bit. Below are two images of the same spot, I actually did this to illustrate a point to my wife while we were contemplating the universe.

In this first shot, I wanted to illustrate what a typical waterfall shot looks like. When setting my camera, I wanted to play around with the shutter speed and let the cameras light meter take care of the aperture -- so I set my camera on the 'TV' setting. The 'TV' setting allows you to set the desired shutter speed while the camera sets the aperture (the size of the opening in the lense). In this shot, I wanted to essentially stop the water, which requires a fast shutter speed, I selected 1/250th of a second. [The camera set the f/stop to f/20.] As you can see the water in this shot is essentially stopped which makes for an okay picture, but really didnt capture the beauty of the setting and makes for a forgettable picture.

This next shot is a much more interesting photograph. I changed the camera shutter setting to 1/10 of a second, which is pretty exaggerated -- I actually recommend a little slower setting of 1/25 or 1/30th of a second. With this slower shutter speed the camera changed the f-stop to f/20, which descreases the total amount of light coming into the camera. The two camera settings each let in the same amount of light as you can see from the consistent color in the background rocks. The aspect of this photo that makes it interesting is the 'Angel Hair' effect given to the water. The big difference is in the way that the water looks. With the slower shutter speed the white lines that you see on the top of the rocks as well as the seemingly solid white of the water really illustrates that the water is in motion. With the fast shutter speed you're actually able to see the drops of water, which is a little less interesting from a photographic perspective.

Here's how you do this:

• Set your camera to 'Shutter Priority' ('TV').
  
• Set the shutter speed to between 1/10 to 1/30th of a second. This will actually depend on the amount of sunlight that's available.
  
• Try a neutral density filter (or filters) to darken the setting without changing colors -- please note it was unnecessary to use the filters on the day these shots were taken.
  
• For waterfalls, go out on an overcast day AFTER a rainstorm when the water is higher than on hot sunny days.
  
• For waterfalls, go in the springtime when the snowmelt makes for a lot of water coming down the hill or mountain.

To see the full article click here

I participate over on Yahoo! Answers answering questions in several areas. One of the areas that I participate in is in the Camera/Photography section of the site. There is 1 question that pops up over and over again and that is, "what's the best digital camera for $200-300?". I see this question almost every day on the board somewhere -- maybe searching for an answer would help speed up the results of these posters. Anyway.....

A while back, I put together an article reviewing some items that potential customers should understand when thinking about purchasing a camera. This first article is available by clicking here. This is really just an introduction to what you need to understand.

To summarize some highlights:

• Don't focus on Digital Zoom. Only think about Optical Zoom.
  
• Get as many pixels as you can for the price, you can crop an image and get great results. If you have a small image to start with a crop it, it could look bad when you go to print it.

These are just basic heads up things that you should consider. As for the actual cameras that you should focus on, I always recommend that you stick with one of the true camera companies; Canon, Nikon and Kodak. There are too many oddities with the Sony cameras, there are a lot of strange things with Fuji cameras that prevent me from recommending those brands. The other 3 manufacturers are good solid companies that you really should focus on. The one thing that I don't really like about Hewlett-Packard (besides them being in too many businesses) is that they force images to be stored inside the camera first, and the storage card second. I don't really like that.

The camera series' that you should look at are Canon Powershots, Nikon Coolpix and any of the lower end Kodaks are all great cameras that you should start out with. I personally have a Nikon Coolpix and I have a Canon DSLR camera so I know from personal experience that they make great digital cameras. I havent personally tried the Kodaks but all the reviewers give them very good reviews, so I won't argue with that.

As I've been preparing my lessons on controlling exposure, I've been consulting a lot of resources to get guidance in just how to explain this. This subject is the heart of creative photography. It's the thing that sets aside a 'photograph' from a 'picture'. It's similar to the difference between a guitar player and a guitarist. One of the resources that I consulted was a book that I just purchased of the same name as this post 'Understanding Exposure'. This is now one of my key photography resources and an invaluable tool for what I just LOVE doing. You can see my review by clicking here.

Now, lets get to the heart of exposure. There are 3 camera settings that you will use to control the exposure of a given shot. These 3 are; Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO (or film speed). These 3 work essentially the same whether you are working with digital or film photography, with the exception of ISO. ISO is different when dealing with film because the film stays in the camera and is a setting of the FILM, not the camera. I will focus the discussion in these next few postings just discussing the element, not the film vs. digital debate. Understanding the combination of settings is critical when trying to come up with the correct exposure for a photograph. All 3 of these elements work together to create the exposure and resulting photograph.

If you're like me, you rarely if ever change the ISO setting whether you're a film photographer or a digital photograper. I typically have my digital camera set at ISO100 unless I'm taking shots indoors where I'm not allowed to use the flash (like my daughters school auditorium), when I set the camera to ISO800 or ISO1000. I like 100 because of the crispness of the image. Working with 1000 in the film realm typically creates a pretty grainy image.

I have lessons on each of these; for aperture, click here and for shutter speed, click here. Have a look at these and then look for my next posting where I describe how the 2 elements can be combined to create essentially the same image, although creatively the images will be very different.

Taking good pictures takes a bit of practice [some luck doesnt hurt]. There's a certain skill in taking good pictures. The most important thing about taking better pictures is to practice things that will allow you to take better pictures. The items below are a few important tips (some obvious, some not) to get you from being someone that takes pictures that bore people to tears to someone that takes enjoyable photographs.

Read the instructions:

This one's my favorite. When showing people how to use features of cameras that they've purchased, a typical response that I get is 'oh, I didn't know you could do that!'. In my head, I'm thinking, well why not, it was on page 24 of your instruction manual -- that's where I found it. Reading through your instruction manual [with the camera in your hand] will do wonders to understanding what you can and can't do when you're taking pictures.

Taking good pictures takes a bit of practice [some luck doesnt hurt]. There's a certain skill in taking good pictures. The most important thing about taking better pictures is to practice things that will allow you to take better pictures. The items below are a few important tips (some obvious, some not) to get you from being someone that takes pictures that bore people to tears to someone that takes enjoyable photographs.

Construct Better Lighting:
Understand the lighting of your picture. Many many pictures are taken of a person (or persons) outside on a bright sunny day. Your automatic camera is designed to compensate for either shadows or bright spots -- but not both in the same picture. The automatic exposure in your camera is designed for 18% gray -- this means that an average picture is considered to be 18% covered (when converted to grayscale). You can see evidence of this by taking a picture of snow -- you'll note that it almost always looks gray when the camera determines all of the settings. The easiest way to adjust your exposure is to make sure that you are focusing on the bright highlighted areas in the picture (use the focus lock). When you focus on the highlights, you will usually wash out the color in the sky, but at least the persons face won't be blacked out with a shadow.