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An introduction to photography

Submitted by Mithandir on Mon, 02/15/2010 - 12:23
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Photography is a fun hobby, but it is also a rather technical one. Of course it's the final image that counts and artistic should trumph gadgettery, but to get the best results one needs to know the gear. This guide gives an introduction to some of the more technical aspects of photography which are nonetheless essential for making ebtter pictures. Understanding this information will open up new artistic possibilities to a beginning photography.

Basic Filters

Submitted by Mithandir on Tue, 03/02/2010 - 10:04
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One of the first things a beginning photographer looks at after deciding to become more serious about taking pictures is filters. Filters change the light before it hits your sensor which allows for a great many of special and useful effects. However, if you're just getting started it can be a bit dounting to understand what each does and why you need it.

Depth of Field

Submitted by Mithandir on Wed, 11/18/2009 - 03:52
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When taking a picture, you focus on a specific distance. In theory only points that are this distance from your camera are perfectly in focus. In practice however we find that points some distance closer and some distance farther away are also sharp. They aren't exactly in focus, but they are "close enough" for us not to notice. The range in front and behind the focus distance where focus is "close enough" is called the depth of field.

Depth of field

Hidden in the EXIF

Submitted by Mithandir on Mon, 01/25/2010 - 12:11
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When you take a picture, the camera stores a lot of settings in the image file. This information, called the EXIF data can be retrieved by most of the better image viewers (and some browser plug ins) but only a few of these show all the information. This article will look at some of the more useful bits of information that you may not know you have. To do so we'll use exiftool, a freeware exif reader that shows almost all the exif tags there are.

Introducing macro

Submitted by Mithandir on Thu, 03/11/2010 - 09:19
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Where so far this guide has focussed on some of the rather technical aspects of photography, we're now moving on to a specific technique: macro. Macro photography is the rather confusingly named practice of taking pictures of really small things. Popular subjects are insects and flowers, but anything that is either really small or has a lot of small detail will do. The way this is achieved is by getting very close to the subject and the defining aspect of macro photography is therefor very short focussing distances.

Introducing RAW

Submitted by Mithandir on Thu, 02/18/2010 - 10:27
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In digital photography a RAW image file contains a direct data dump from the sensor without any processing performed on it (other than lossless compression). A JPEG image is a development of this RAW data. This is true even when you shoot in JPEG, except there the conversion is done by the camera. A RAW image is often called a digital negative, and the process of converting it to a normal image format (say jpeg) is called developing it.

Metering and Exposure Compensation

Submitted by Mithandir on Sun, 12/13/2009 - 05:40
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In any shooting mode except for manual, the camera calculates at least one of the shooting parameters for you. To do so, it measures the light coming in Through The Lens (TTL). Cameras have several ways of measuring and calculating the amount of light in a scene, which are called Metering Modes. Which modes are available depends on the camera model, but most olympus cameras have the following modes: Digital ESP, Center-weighted, Spot, Highlight spot, Shadow spot. These will be discussed later on but first we'll look at how metering works in general.

Multi-image layouts in 4:3

Submitted by Mithandir on Mon, 03/08/2010 - 00:09
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When laying out photo books or posters, it's sometimes tricky to find a good layout that works. Here's some examples, both with gaps between the images as without.

Olympus E-3

Submitted by Mithandir on Sun, 11/15/2009 - 08:00
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The Olympus E-3 was released as a successor to the ageing E-1 in 2007.

Power use of the E-3

Submitted by Mithandir on Mon, 03/01/2010 - 09:56
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About a year ago I tested the power usage of the E-510, which was interesting to me because I was planning a trip to africa at the time where every drop of battery juice counted. Hawing switched to the E-3 since, I've decided to run the same tests for the heavier camera.

While perhaps a bit esoteric for some, knowing how much power your camera actually uses in different configurations can be essential in stuations where you need to get the most out of your battery. Minimizing power usage can also speed up focussing with some lenses.

Power use of the E-510

Submitted by Mithandir on Tue, 12/01/2009 - 03:06
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While perhaps a bit esoteric for some, knowing how much power your camera actually uses in different configurations can be essential in stuations where you need to get the most out of your battery. Minimizing power usage can also speed up focussing with some lenses.

While this article is about the E-510, many of the observations can be carried over to other Olympus cameras.

Shooting Modes

Submitted by Mithandir on Sun, 11/22/2009 - 05:29
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Your camera has four primary shooting modes, which differ in what parameters you can control and which are calculated automatically (and how):

The world as a bad lens: atmospheric distortion

Submitted by Mithandir on Wed, 06/23/2010 - 13:00
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In a forum thread somewhere, somebody asked about resolution in distant focus and that tickled me into writing this article on the influence of the environment on long tele work. I have taken several pictures of distant blobs at long focal lengths, so clearly I am the undisputed expert and my words should be taken as gospel (and if you believe that, I have several renowned landmarks for immediate sale as well).

Disclaimer: I'm not a scientist. Also, some of the science in this post has been simplified.

To be continued ....

Submitted by Mithandir on Mon, 02/15/2010 - 13:57
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This guide will be continued. Subscribe to our RSS feed to find out when.
Topics that will be discussed in future pages:

  • I'm not entirely sure. Any suggestions?
  • ...

Ultra-quick panoramas

Submitted by Mithandir on Thu, 03/25/2010 - 05:58
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In digital photography a panorama is an image that was made up by combining several smaller images. Usually these images are a horizontal sequence, but they can be made vertically as well or even combining multiple rows. The process of glueing them together is called "stitching" and is done in special software. While this may seem like a lot of work, it really is not. This article shows you how to make stunning panoramas in minutes, without the need for bulky tripods or expensive tools.

Understanding Exposure Values (EV)

Submitted by Mithandir on Mon, 11/16/2009 - 09:41
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Three parameters control the exposure of an image:

Updated: Recycle time of the FL36R with different batteries

Submitted by Mithandir on Fri, 03/19/2010 - 12:07
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Update: Phase 2 concluded. During testing for phase 2 it became clear that the original tests for the eneloops was faulty, and that test has been redone, yielding radically different results.

White Balance

Submitted by Mithandir on Tue, 02/16/2010 - 03:31
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When we see an object, its apparant colour is a combination of the colour of the object and the colour of the light it is reflecting. If you shine yellow light on a white object, it will look yellow. Or rather, it looks yellow for a camera. The human brain is very good at compensating for light colour changes so that white remains, roughly, white (as long as the colour of the light is not too intense). Because of this mental trickery, you probably don't realise just how big a difference there is between different light sources.