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Nikon has been cranking out new digital SLR camera upgrades like crazy these last two years, with the low, high, and pro end of the lineup getting update after update, but the mid-level SLR in particular has gone more than 18 months without an upgrade. While the Nikon D80 has a rich feature-set and maintained a high resale value throughout its tenure, it's due for an upgrade.

The Nikon D90 arrives fashionably, just as its predecessor did in late 2006. It comes sauntering in with most of the current hot features that the D80 lacked, plus a new twist that will bowl them all over with its relevance and utility.

With a 12.3-megapixel sensor, the Nikon D90 rises to the resolution of the more professional D300. It also shares the same sensitivity as the D300, ranging from ISO 200 to 3,200, plus L1 (100) and H1 (6,400).

Though Face Detection is helpful in Live view mode, its utility goes further, as it's now an integral part of Nikon's Scene Recognition System (SRS). Thanks to the Nikon D90's 420-pixel matrix metering sensor, the SRS can combine color metering with autofocus sensor data and tune white balance and exposure with a particular bias toward getting faces exposed properly. In theory, this should also include making sure the Nikon D90 focuses on an eye rather than a nose or forehead. If true in practice, this is quite an advance. Face detection even comes into play in i-TTL Flash control.

The Nikon D90's 11-point phase-detect AF system is arrayed in a diamond pattern and now includes 3D focus tracking as found on the D3 and D300.

Another essential upgrade on the Nikon D90 is the move to a high resolution 3-inch LCD screen. The 920,000-pixel display has a 170-degree viewing angle and appears to be as nice as the new screens found on the D3 and D300. It makes checking focus and using Live view mode that much more pleasant.

Source

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]]> http://weareartists.wordpress.com/?p=3 Sat, 11 Oct 2008 12:55:10 +0000 Verseau http://weareartists.it.wordpress.com/2008/10/11/new-page-of-a-new-book/

Noirmoutier, France, summer 08

A new blog for new artists, waiting for art to be ours, and us to be art. This picture is the last I posted on "Days off", a blog I used to work on. It is now the beggining of a new book, a new time.

This Blog is meant to be a place for artists to express themselves, photographers, painters, drawers, composers, writers and so on will (I hope) join me to share their works and above all their love of art.

I hope that you'll enjoy your visite, do not hesitate to contact us, we are expecting communication.

The results, when they put together my shots with the formal ones were a wonderful blend of photos that told a fuller story than if they’d gone for one or the other.

Below are a number of tips to help photographers improve their ‘candid’ photography. Please note that these tips are not about taking sneaky, voyeuristic or true paparazzi shots (ie photographing people without their permission) but rather about how to add a more candid feel to the shots you take of people that you know.

1. Take your Camera Everywhere

Probably the best way to take spontaneous photographs is to always be ready to do so. I have a DSLR which I take out when I’m on a shoot but between shoots like to cary with a quality point and shoot camera that I can whip out at a moments notice to capture the many opportunities for a good photo that life presents us with. Taking your camera with you everywhere also helps people to be more at ease with you taking their photo. I find that my friends and family just expect me to have my camera out so when I do fire it up it’s not a signal to them to pose but it’s a normal part of our interaction - this means that they are relaxed and the photos are natural.

2. Use a Long Zoom

Obviously the further you are away from your subject the less likely they will be to know that you’re photographing them and the more natural and relaxed they’ll act. Using a telephoto lens or long zoom enables you to shoot from outside their personal space but keep the feeling of intimacy in the shot you’re taking.

3. Kill the Flash

Perhaps the most obvious way that you can signal to another person that you’re photographing them is to use a flash. There’s nothing like a blinding flash of light in the eyes to kill a moment. If possible (and it’s not always) attempt to photograph without the flash if you’re aiming for candid shots. When in lower light situations increase your ISO setting, use a faster lens, open up your aperture or if your camera has a ‘natural light mode’ turn it on. Hopefully one or a combination of these approaches will help you blend into the background a little more.

4. Shoot lots

I’ve written about this before on this site but when you shoot multiple images quickly of a person you can sometimes get some surprising and spontaneous shots that you’d have never gotten if you shot just one. Switch your camera to continuous shooting mode and shoot in bursts of images and in doing so you’ll increase your chances of that perfect shot.

5. Position Yourself strategically

While Candid Photography is about capturing the spontaneity of a moment and getting that perfect shot at the right split second of time I find that if you think ahead and anticipate what is about to unfold in front of you that you can greatly increase the chances of getting some great shots. So at a wedding get to the church early (or even go to the rehearsal) and think about what will happen during the ceremony and where will be best for you to stand to capture each moment. Which way will people be facing? What will they be doing? What will the light be like? Thinking through these issues will save you having to run around repositioning yourself when you should be shooting images - it’ll also mean you take a whole heap less shots of the back of people’s heads!

6. Photograph People Doing things

Images of people doing things tend to be much more interesting than people sitting passively doing nothing. For one your subject will be focussed upon something which adds energy to a photo (and takes their focus off you) but it also puts them in context and adds an element of story to your image. Timing is everything in Candid shots so wait until they are distracted from you and fully focussed upon what they are doing or who they are with and you’ll inject a feeling into your shots of them being unaware and that the viewer of your image is looking on unseen.

7. Photograph People with People

Something very interesting happens when you photograph more than one person in an image at a time - it introduces relationship into the shot. Even if the two (or more) people are not really interacting in the shot it can add depth and a sense of story into the viewing of the image. Of course ideally in candid shots you’d like some interaction between your subjects as that will add emotion into the shot also as we the viewer observe how the people are acting.

8. Shoot from the Hip

If your subject is aware that you’re there and that you have your camera out they might tense up or act a little unnaturally as they see you raising your camera to the eye. The beauty of digital cameras is that it doesn’t cost you anything to take lots of shots and it can be well worth shooting without raising your camera. To do this most effectively you might want to set your lens to a wider angle setting to make up for any aiming problems you might have.

9. Mix up your Perspective

The other beauty of shooting from the hip is that it gives you a slightly different perspective to take the shot from (ie shooting from 3 feet height instead of 6). This adds to the candid nature of the shots. In fact sometimes it’s the slightly crooked, slightly out of focus or poorly composed shots taken from this type of angle that ends up looking the best because they come across as quite random. Of course you can add all these new perspectives to your shots without shooting from the hip. Crouch down, get up high, frame your shots on an angle, zoom in close and then quickly zoom out to a wide angle, break the rules of composition etc and you will add a new perspective to your shots that can mean they look fresh and surprising.

10. Frame Images with Foreground Elements

A trick that I often use in candid shots is to purposely include something in the foreground of the shot to make it look as though I’m hiding behind it. You might do this with by shooting over someone’s shoulder, by including a little of a tree branch or the frame of a doorway.

11. Take Posed Shots into Candid Territory

One of my favorite times to shoot candid shots is when other people are taking formal ones. This is because everyone in the shot is focused on the one element (the other photographer) - but it’s not you. If the main photographer has posed the happy couple of the day or their bridal partly look for a different angle to them to take a shot of the same subject. Often if you take a few steps to the side and shoot from almost a profile position you can get great shots. Also zooming in to take shots of just one or two of the people in a larger group at these times can work well. Also try zooming right out to take a shot of the photographer and their subject all in one. If you’re the only photographer and you’re taking formal shots a great technique is to take your posed shot and then continue to shoot after everyone thinks you’ve finished. It’s often the shots just after the posed one that are the best as people relax and look at each other.

Source: Digital Photography School

Play it here.

Previous time wasters:

1. Meltdown

2. Falling Sand

3. Desktop Tower Defense

4. Flickr

5. N+

6. Pandemic 2

7. Slap fighting anime women

8. Ikariam

9. fkconflict

First I tell them composition is great but how your picture is composed will make other people appreciate your print. Right now we should not worry about that but we should be concerned if the image being printed is suitable for printing. Plain and simply said, this means the image file needs to be large enough for the size you plan to have printed.

For most digital cameras out today, this is not a problem as much as it had a few years ago. As we all know, people measure the power behind a digital camera in megapixels. This is the total number of pixels the camera is able to generate when capturing an image.

These pixels are merely the mosaic light pattern of colors that make of the picture shown on your computer screen. This has a direct bearing on the quality of the print. You see, when ever a digital photo is printed either on your inkjet printer at home or at a pro-lab like ours, the computer has to translate those pixels into a hard copy print. The more color data it has, or the more pixels it measures in width and height, the better the print quality.

Now there are some other issues of course such as camera shake and exposure settings that can wreck havoc on an image and result in what appears to be a poor quality print but the reality is the printer simply prints what is given to it so the print quality may be great but the shot itself might not live up to the potential of the printer.

What this all means is the larger the image file the better print you will get. A 12 megapixel camera shot should therefore yield a better quality printed imagery then a 6 migapixel camera shot when printed at the same size.

Under our hints and tips section at FinerWorks.com we have a chart that provides an general idea as to what a camera is capable of when using megapixels as the guide.

]]> http://yesbuts.wordpress.com/?p=2518 Fri, 10 Oct 2008 19:15:54 +0000 yesbuts http://yesbuts.it.wordpress.com/2008/10/10/apples-pears/

]]> http://yesbuts.wordpress.com/?p=2514 Fri, 10 Oct 2008 17:12:18 +0000 yesbuts http://yesbuts.it.wordpress.com/2008/10/10/wait-till-i-get-my-claws-on-you/

]]> http://yesbuts.wordpress.com/?p=2511 Fri, 10 Oct 2008 15:20:34 +0000 yesbuts http://yesbuts.it.wordpress.com/2008/10/10/just-cheese/

I can see he has just held the camera up to the side of the tank and pressed the shutter. As a consequence the darker temperature of the light is quite cool,  this results in an image with predominately blue tones. There is a slight blur because it took the camera a longer time for shutter to release because of the lower light.

What John didn't realise is that relying on light from behind your main subject dulls the clarity of the creatures he wants us to see. The darker something is, the more blue it seems and the less "up front" it will seem. The warmer colours are more energising and can offer an opportunity to create a better focal point by bringing things into the foreground a lot more.

As you can see John has not given the crabs more light and has relied on the light from the top of the tank to provide light on the crabs. it doesn't work because the details gets lost, the temperature changes (becomes more blue) and the foreground is underexposed.

I thought I'd edit this to show him how he can improve. I can't do much with it, but you can see that increasing the warmer colours and "turning the light up" in the Histogram in Photoshop has given a little bit of improvement. The only thing about working with a photo like this is that you can overexpose the background which my editing has done. But in this situation it doesn't really matter. At least you get a better view point of what John wants us to see, which is his sea creatures. And they are lovely crabs and deserve to be shown off. :)

You can see how the warmer colours adds a lift to his sea creatures when there is an absence of a more white light.

So when you are in the situation when you do not have adequate lighting you can always edit your photograph to make it lighter and warmer which will have the main subject more defined. Because I have reduced the blue and increase the magenta the crab on the right is clearer. You get a better image of him and he's now the main subject, where as before you looked at both of them and weren't sure which one was the main subject.

Next time, John can hold a lamp light onto the crabs to give a warmer light- not to close, perhaps a meter or so away, depending on how strong the light is. You don't need strong light on the crabs to shoot them well, you just need a soft light coming from the front because they are small and you are photographing a small area. If you do this, you'll see a dramatic difference.

When you have small subjects, stick to soft light. Bright light will just give you a washed out effect by overexposure.

John Reese maintains the copyright on these images.

By Amy Renfrey

PS. No, I'm not changing my spelling, there are other countries on Earth than America.

]]> http://justjamesblog.wordpress.com/?p=372 Fri, 10 Oct 2008 12:16:36 +0000 justjamesblog http://justjamesblog.it.wordpress.com/2008/10/10/view-from-our-living-room-window/

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