Ideas and tips for holiday shopping for cameras and photo accessories

As we rapidly approach the holiday season and the time for gift giving, I have been doing quite a bit of research on new cameras and accessories.
In this posting I would like to cover some information on a few of the newer cameras that are available. I will also go over some of the terminology that we should know in order to be well informed shoppers. I will also talk briefly about and make a few recommendations on photographic accessories.

First I would like to answer a question that I was asked recently. The question was “How come the maximum f-stop for zoom lenses is given as two numbers and what does this mean?”

Put simply you may see something such as (18-200 mm f3.5-6.3) This is not telling us the range of f stops available.What it is telling us is that at the 18mm zoom value the maximum aperture size is f3.5 however when zoomed to the maximum telephoto length of 200mm the maximum aperture size is f6.3. So what does that mean to me and my picture taking? When zoomed out to 200mm this lens will pass less light than when at the 18mm end. Therefore you will need to use a slower shutter speed at higher zoom values to get a correct exposure in the same amount of light. Not a real good thing if we are doing sports photography or trying to stop movement of something like for instance a running Afghan hound. A non zoom lens of one fixed focal length will have only one maximum aperture value given such as 600mm f2. In the case of the fixed focal length lens if the spec says f2-16 that is the range of available f stops for that lens.

Before we discuss the different types of digital cameras that are available these days lets make sure that we understand some of the other terminology used in their specifications as well as some basic facts of digital camera life.

film graininess and digital camera noise. These two terms can be related quite easily. Films come in several ISO speeds such as 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600 etc. The higher the ISO number the faster the film and the less light you need to take pictures. However as the ISO number goes up and the film gets faster we will also see more graininess and lack of smoothness in the slides or prints.
Now the world of digital cameras. These days with a menu entry on the camera we can select an effective ISO value. They are usually given in the same numbers as with real films. As we select higher numbers we get essentially the same effect as with film. In digital cameras we get higher effective ISO values by increasing the electronic amplification of the signals from the sensor. This increases the noise in the signals and in affect the higher noise gives the viewed or printed image the appearance of being grainy instead of smooth. The good news is that over the years films got faster and graininess decreased. The same is being seen with digital cameras with the development of better sensors and better image processing. On an early digital camera that I had the ISO could be set for 50, 100, 200 or 400 but the highest ISO setting that gave me acceptable noisiness was 100. Now with cameras like the Canon 50D I can set the ISO at 1600 and still get photos with acceptable noise quality. You will not find camera manufacturers or camera store sales people real eager to discuss noisiness with you. However quite a few of the camera and photography magazines rate the noisiness of the cameras that they test. Also there are some excellent reports and ratings of various digital cameras in the December 2009 issue of “ConsumerReports and they do give the highest effective ISO value that they believe still gives best quality for each rated camera. Bear in mind also that as they say in their reports, overall image quality also depends on the resolution and compression settings that you select on the camera set up and how large you will make the final photo. The noisiness is an important issue if you are doing low light or action photography where you really need to use a high effective ISO speed.

Operating modes and scene modes:
Digital cameras almost all let you select exposure operation modes such as fully automatic, aperture priority, shutter priority, manual, and program AE.

Auto - You compose the photo that you want to take in the viewfinder, press the release button and the camera does everything on it’s own to usually give you an acceptable photo.

program AE (program auto exposure) the camera will automatically set the f-stop and shutter speed for a correct exposure. you can set and control other functions that you have no control over in the auto mode, such as flash, metering mode, ISO speed, manually focus etc.

Tv (shutter priority) lets you select and set the shutter speed for the camera to use, it selects the aperture to get a correct exposure and does the rest.

Av- (aperture priority) lets you select and set the aperture for the camera to use it selects the shutter speed to get a correct exposure and does the rest.

M - (manual) lets you set both the aperture and shutter speed.

Most digital cameras also have a variety of so called mode and scene modes that you can select and the camera will set itself to give usually acceptable photos of scenes

The mode selections usually include:
Portrait - (blurs the background and makes the subject stand out).

Landscape - (automatically sets up camera to use maximum depth of field so as much of the landscape will be in focus as possible).

Night Scene - (used to capture human or animal subjects against a backdrop of the evening sky or a night scene. The flash exposes the subject and the camera sets a slow shutter speed so that the background and the subject are both beautifully exposed).

SCN or Special Scene Mode (lets you select a preprogrammed (by the manufacturer) to best automatically photograph scenes such as Foliage, Snow, Beach, Fireworks, Indoor shots, Night snapshots, etc. and generally give you very good results. The selections available vary from camera to camera).
 
Now for a look at the types of digital cameras that are current available and how we might use each type.

The so called “point and shoot” cameras are usually broken down into three groups, sub compact, compact, and super zoom.

The sub compacts are ideal if you want a camera that will easily fit in your pocket of handbag. Some of them have maximal optical zoom up to 5x. (I always advise to stay well away from digital zoom, It is not real zoom and will give you lots of fuzzy un-detailed photos) They weight anywhere from about 3 to 7 ounces. Megapixels range from 8 to 12. They range in price from under $100 to a high of about $400. Most of them will give you quite satisfactory casual photos. All the major camera manufacturers make a few different models of the sub compacts. Consumer Reports rates and compares 57 of them in their December issue.

The compacts are ideal for those that desire a camera with basic to advanced features for a relatively low price. Size is generally between the sub compact and the super zoom models. Again megapixels range from 7 to 12. Maximum optical zoom ranges from 3x to 6x. weight ranges from about 5 to 8 ounces. Prices range from under $100 to about $500. Again all of the major camera manufacturers make a few different models of the compacts. Most of them will give you satisfactory photos. Consumer Reports rates and compares 14 models in their December issue.


The super zoom cameras are for people that need the maximum versatility of covering the whole range from wide angle to long telephoto and do not want the size and weight of an SLR and the necessity of carrying around 1 or more extra lenses. The size is the largest of the point and shoot cameras. They generally have more features. The megapixels currently range from 8 to about 12. Optical zoom ranges from 10x to 24x. weight ranges from 7 ounces for the lightest one to 35 ounces for the heaviest one. Prices range from $260 to $570. All the major camera manufacturers make a few different models of the super zoom cameras. Consumer Reports rates 21 different models in their December issue. Some of the newest models offer high definition video recording as well as still photography.

At the top of the heap are the digital SLR cameras. These cameras are essentially best for the advanced amateur or the professional. They are generally broken down into two levels, basic (for those who want relative ease of use) and advanced (for those who want or need the most advanced features and performance). Most of the models are sold with one lens included. Some manufacturers and some dealers bundle a second lens with the camera at a discounted price. Size is the largest of the digital cameras. The advanced models generally have more features than the point and shoot cameras. The megapixels currently range from 10 to 25 or more. Both fixed focal length and zoom lenses are available both from the manufacturers and from some third party lenses makers. Weight ranges from 16 ounces for the lightest to 32 ounces for the heaviest. Should you decide to mount a long telephoto lens on the camera it may add as much as 23 more ounces to the total weight for you to carry around. Prices of the ones that I have looked at recently ranged anywhere from about $450 to about $1,700. Again all the major camera manufacturers make a few different models. Image quality is generally better than the point and shoot cameras simply because the SLRs use physically larger and more sensitive sensors. This means less electronic amplification is needed and some have selectable ISO speeds up to as high as 3200 with acceptably low image noise (graininess). The December issue of Consumer Reports compares and rates 19 of these cameras in the basic class and 7 in the advanced class.

While I have pointed out that you can look at comparisons and ratings of quite a few cameras in the December Consumers Report, there are numerous other publications and web sites that also have well written and detailed camera tests, ratings and comparisons. Any of the camera magazines, or just do a google search for “Digital camera reviews and ratings.

Above all do not select a camera without actually getting it into your hands and playing around with it a bit at a store. It is important for you to feel comfortable with it.

When you have decided on a camera, what else may you want or need to go with it?

I definitely would get a good camera case made for that particular camera to protect it while carrying it about.

A well made camera bag to hold the camera and various other accessories is also a good idea.

Planning to take a lot of low light or telephoto photos? Then definitely a good solid tripod would be in order. About all digital cameras these days have some form or other of “image stabilization” and it does help quite a bit to get sharp photos. However when taken to the extremes it is not really a substitute for a tripod.

Memory card or cards. The higher the capacity and the faster the better. Most cameras come with a memory card included but generally not a real high capacity one. You would hate running out of shots part way through a photo session.

The obvious stuff to go into your camera case, such as lens tissue and lens cleaner solution.

A good photo editing program such as Photoshop.

A photo quality printer. Check out HP, Epson and Canon
I hope this short posting will be helpful for you. I will do some more postings in the next week or so.

Meantime should you have any questions or should you care to suggest any topics that I can delve into for you please do not be shy. You can comment here or e-mail me at phillipmerlin@aol.com or leave a message on the AHI facebook page or if you are a face book friend on my face book profile.

While I said Afghans these techniques apply to just about any other pet that you might like to take good photos of. I greatly enjoy photographing my Afghan Hounds as well as other domestic and wild animals.

I usually try to get down to their eye level. That involves kneeling, sitting down or laying down on the floor or ground. I believe that they look better when photographed from their level instead of looking down at them and it also tends to put them more at ease. Put yourself at their eye level.



You also need to pay attention to the background. Eliminate distractions in the background that would distract attention from the subject. You can usually do this by changing the camera angle or moving the dog to a slightly different location. Sometimes you can shoot from an angle that will make the sky or a wall the background. Inside you can use a bed sheet, a blanket or a piece of fabric hung on a wall as a background. Backgrounds can also be smoothed out by using a larger lens aperture to reduce the depth of field and throw the background out of focus. If your camera has a setting called aperture priority use that setting and experiment with different aperture settings
(F stops) to find the one that will give you enough depth of field to have the subject in focus and the background fuzzy. This technique can often be achieved simply by using the portrait mode of your digital camera. That mode picks a large aperture and automatically adjusts the shutter speed to match. You can usually relax and just take good shots as they present themselves.

Do not use a wide angle lens or the wide angle on a zoom lens. That will put you physically too close to the subject and introduce unflattering distortion of the features. I normally do portraits of both animals and people with about a 100mm lens 35mm equivalent. That lets you get closeups without being right in the subjects face. I like a zoom lens because without changing position I can change the focal length to capture closeups of interesting parts such as the eyes, nose, head or entire body. Just be sure to keep out of the wide angle part of the zoom range.

A bit about lighting is in order. For outside photos avoid mid day with the sun directly overhead causing strong shadows. I prefer doing outside photos during the couple of hours after sunrise and before sunset. The light is from a better angle and also more flattering at those times. Overcast days are great for outside portrait photography. We call this open shade and the light is very soft and flattering. Do not be afraid to turn on the flash for fill light. It will not overpower the natural light and will help even out the lighting. When doing inside photos with a flash it is best if you have a flash that can be angled so it bounces off of the ceiling. Again softer more even and more flattering lighting.

      
                Without fill flash                                                               With fill flash

What shutter speed to use depends on the type of photo you are taking. For a photo of your dog moving if you want to freeze the action you must use a fast shutter speed (1/500 sec or faster). For an action shot you may want to have a bit of blur to give the feeling of movement. You can achieve this effect by panning the camera following the dogs movement and using a much slower shutter speed (try about 1/60 sec to start).

       

For hand held still portraits a speed of 1/125 sec should work well. With slower speeds you will probably need to use a tripod to eliminate blur caused by camera shake. If your camera has anti shake I would suggest keeping it turned on in any case.
For portrait type photos, fill up the camera frame but still leave a bit of space between the subject and the borders so they do not look tightly boxed in. The best way to get a really good dog or animal photo is to treat your subject like a person in terms of lighting and composition.
Eyes are where we usually make a connection with other living creatures. The eyes convey emotions and intelligence. Assure that the eyes are in focus to maximize impact.
The best way to make really good animal photos is to use the same techniques that you use when photographing a person as regards the lighting and composition. Pay close attention to body position, head position, the positions of highlights and shadows and the general composition of the photo just as you do with a human subject.

  

Take lots of photos during a photo session. I promise you that the pros also do that. Even they get some bad ones to throw away but you will also generally get some very good keepers. Since digital has to a large extent replaced film cameras this is no longer a waste of expensive film.
I have seen some very good photos of your Afghan Hounds in some of your face book albums and on your some of your web sites. I will enjoy seeing more photos of these wonderful hounds. Happy photographing !!

Photo Composition Some tips for better looking photos
To make the best looking photos we need to learn a bit about composition. For this purpose I would like to define composition as:

1) the contents of the photo

2) how things are arranged in the photo to draw the viewers attention to the subject or subjects of primary interest
    What is best included in the photo and what should sometimes be left out

3) The best orientation to use for the photo to give it the most pleasing appearance

4) Taking care to be sure that undesired clutter and other effects like cutting off of arms, legs, tops of heads etc are not produced

Considering photo content:
Keep the background uncluttered. Do not include pieces of people or objects that will distract attention from your main subject. Pay attention to the background. How often have we seen a photo where a tree or pole in the background seems to be growing out of your subject. For the best composition I believe that anything that distracts from your main subject should be eliminated.

    

Considering arrangement:
We have something in photography called the rule of thirds. This means that we divide the photo horizontally and vertically into thirds.  Then we place our subject at one of the four intersecting points. In any case attempt to place your main subject off centre. You do not have to be a slave to the rule of thirds. I just try to remember that always placing your main subject in the center of the photo can be boring.



I also sometimes like to use lines and curves to frame the subject or to lead the viewers attention into the photo and to the main subject of the photo. For landscapes a tree branch, a road or path, a river, a sidewalk and many other objects if properly placed can do this quite effectively.




As for photo orientations, There are essentially two:
One is vertical which is often referred to in a printer set up dialog box as portrait. An example would be a photo that is 8 inches wide x 10 inches high. This is generally the orientation to use for subjects that are higher than they are wide. It is also almost exclusively the orientation used for portrait photography, thus the name.The other is horizontal which is often referred to in a printer setup dialog box as Landscape. An example would be a photo that is 10 inches wide x 8 inches high. This is generally the format to use for subjects that are wider than they are high. It is the usual format of choice for photos of landscapes, thus it’s name.



In regards to item 5 on my list:
The main thing I advise is to pay close attention to what you are seeing through the view finder when lining up the shot. Look at the edges of the image to be sure there are not some undesirable objects poking into the photo. Always try to get the entire subject into the photo.
There are quite a few things with photos that can be corrected after the photo has been taken with a photo editing program such as PhotoShop or Paint Shop Pro. However the basics of good photo composition are generally not one of them. Sometimes but far from always a photo’s composition can be improved by cropping the image for example.

My bottom line would be that it is much better to work at having pleasing photo composition showing in your view finder before you snap the picture than to attempt to make up for a poor job of it later.

Making old photos beautiful again
Introducing you to the art and techniques of restoring old photos and slides
Part 1

I am sure that we all have collections of treasured old photos and slides laying around somewhere. Some of them may be faded, discolored, torn, wrinkled or otherwise damaged. Today let’s talk about how to restore the these damager ones to like new or even better than new condition. With a little help from your scanner and using a photo editing programs, you can return your photos to their former beauty.

We talked a bit in a previous posting about scanning photos and slides. That process is the first step toward restoration. Now what do we do next?

There are some different options available to us for doing our repairs / restorations.

Some of the newer home desktop scanners have features built into their software to do minor repairs as you scan the original damaged print or slide. For more advanced corrections, retouching and
editing, there are several advanced programs available such as these three:

Adobe Photoshop Elements .
photo-editing program | Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 


Paint Shop Pro
Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 - Photo Editing

Aperture is a program for Macintosh OSx developed by Apple Computer and designed to assist professional photographers in post-production work.
Apple - Aperture

There are others available both as commercial programs and free ware or shareware programs. However these three are the most widely used to the best of my knowledge. I personally use PhotoShop Elements, however the other two are very good as well.

There are quite a few online tutorials available that help to learn how to use these programs. Here are links to some of them.

Photoshop Elements User Resources - tutorials tips downloads info

Paint Shop Pro User Resources - tips tutorials free downloads tubes support training

Apple - Aperture - Tutorials



 

Preparing your original photo or slide for scanning;
Carefully remove any visible dirt and dust from your photo. This will save you some work later. You can use a lint-free
wipe or cleaning materials specifically designed for photo surfaces. The original is the better scan you will get and the easier it will be to do the restoration magic with your photo retouching program.

Do not be real concerned if your old photo is still in an album. You can usually scan it while it os still attached to the album page. Just be sure that if there is a plastic overlay sheet over the photo that you peel back the sheet before scanning.
Should you be scanning slides or negatives be sure to clean them first with film cleaner. Since they will be greatly enlarged to be printed or sent in emails it is even more important to have them as clean and dust free as possible when you scan them.

Scan the originals following the instructions for your particular scanner and save the file in either TIFF or JPEG format on your computer. You should scan the original at a high resolution to pick up as many of the details as possible. Generally you will pick up more detail from slides or negatives simply because they are capable of having more detail as first generation images than prints which are second generation images.

Newer model scanners may have some settings or automated functions built into their scanning software that will correct some of the problems with the original as it is scanned. Consult your manual on how to use these functions. You'll need to use the software that came with your scanner in order to access these advanced
features. Personally I prefer to do all the repairs, and any corrections on the computer with PhotoShop. That way I have more control over how the finished product will look.

Taking the next step;
Photo restoration and repair using PhotoShop

To do more complex repairs and restorations, you will need to use a photo editing/retouching program such as Adobe Photoshop Elements. Since as stated I use PhotoShop I will talk about that program and some of it’s features that are useful for our purposes. It is important and quite necessary to learn how to use some of PhotoShop’s features such as;

1) the clone stamp
2) filters
3) levels
4) the red eye removal tool
5) the spot healing brush tool
6) the cropping tool
7) the eraser tool
8) the color replacement tool
9) some other functions that you can ease into using to restore torn, creased,   faded and stained photos to their former beauty

With Photoshop Elements you can quite easily restore photos by;
Cropping and resizing your photos
Improving the lighting, color and clarity of your photos
Removing unwanted spots,tears, scratches and creases.

This old color slide was scanned into the computer and fixed in photoshop with a minimum of work in about 10 minutes by only using the clone stamp tool to remove spots and stains and using 2 other functions to adjust the brightness, contrast and sharpness.




 


 

Below are tools used and the control panels for for setting up the tools that were used. Once you play around with PhotoShop as with anything else using it gets easier the more you do it.



           






you can download a fully-functioning free-trial version PhotoShop Elements for either the PC or the MAC at the Adobe Systems website. After the 30-day trial, if you are comfortable it you can purchase it. Be sure to read the information on the Adobe site about computer requirements before down loading the trial version make sure your computer meets the minimum requirements in order for the program to run on your computer.
We have now "scratched the surface" of photo restoration. There will be more to come to the blog about this subject soon.

A scanner is a great device for converting photos, negatives and slides to digital image files for storage or for sharing on the internet or via e-mail. It is also the starting point for letting us do digital photo restoration of our treasured old photos and color slides that may have suffered from the ravages of time.

So in this posting I will talk about scanners.

I want to help you to learn what scanners are, how to select one, and how to use it to scan and correct or restore our old treasured photos and memories.

First, and with an absolute minimum of boring technical details, let’s look at what a scanner is and some key points to help you select the right one for your purposes.

A scanner is a photo optical and electronic device to convert continuous tone photos, slides, documents and even other things into digital image files that can be stored on a computer and digitally enhanced, corrected or repaired if necessary.

There are essentially two types of scanners.
The flat bed scanner for reflectively scanning original photos, pictures, documents and within reason even things that are three dimensional. Essentially anything that is flat or can be flattened out to fit on the scanner’s surface. Most of these scanners will accept sizes up to at least letter size or A-4 size or what we call legal size documents. Some will accept even larger sizes. Using a transparency adapter some of these flat bed scanners will also scan slides or negatives.
The slide and negative transmission scanner is dedicated to scanning slides or film negatives. Usually in the 35 mm size. This type of scanner is particularly useful for converting old slides or negatives into digital files for storage or printing or easily sharing with relatives and friends via the internet or email. I am presently in the process of scanning a very large number of old color slides to preserve them. Some have deteriorated over time and I am restoring them as I go.

Factors to look at when selecting a scanner.

Let’s talk resolution first since it is a term associated with digital
imaging. Scanner resolution is expressed in dpi, or dots per inch.
As the resolution increases so does the amount of detail you'll be able to capture from the original that you are scanning. Resolution is very important when you intend to enlarge the original. For example to enlarge a 35 mm slide or negative to make a print.

So how much resolution do you need in a scanner? Generally speaking resolution is to the number of pixels per inch (sometimes referred to as dpi or dots per inch) used to represent the scanned images. Most of todays scanners have a dpi of at least 2400 dpi and most of them have 4800 dpi.
2400 dpi is a high enough resolution to allow you to enlarge a small photo such as a 2 1/2 x 3 1/2 inch photo (generally called wallet size) into an 8 x10 inch photo and still have excellent print quality.

If you intend to scan 35 mm slides or negatives and make enlarged prints from them you will want to scan them at the highest resolution available. You should scan slides and negatives that you intend to make prints from at higher than 2400 dpi if possible. The higher the scanned resolution, the larger print you can make and still maintain lots of detail. For my present slide scanning project I have used a Prime film model PF7250U slide and film scanner. It has a resolution of 7200 x 3600 and I have had prints made as large as 20 x 24 inches from scanned slides and they look great.

looking at a scanner’s resolution, you'll normally see two numbers
such as 4800 x 9600 dpi listed. The first, and smaller number indicates the optical resolution (the number of tiny sensors that are placed side by side in one inch on the sensor array). This number tells the scanner's maximum dpi. In this case it would be 4800 pixels to each inch of the scanned original. The other larger number tells us how many steps the array will take in one inch of travel as it scans. The larger the dpi, the more detail you can retain in your scans.

Next consider whether you will scan only photos and documents or slides and negatives as well. Scanners that will scan both types of originals are usually somewhat more expensive or require optional adapters. For scanning slides and negatives a scanner that was designed for and does only that will usually do a better job of it.

Scanning speed is not real important unless you will be scanning large numbers of originals.

Consider what software is included with the scanner purchase. All will include a scanner driver program for your computer. Most of these driver programs have some limited correction features built in that will allow you to do some basic corrections and modifications to the original at the time you scan it rather than later on your computer. Quite a few of the scanners will have other software bundled with them such as PhotoShop Elements or software to create albums, slide shows etc.

As far as price goes, there are some basic scanners available that will do a reasonably good job that cost under $100.

Consider what you really want to do with the scanner. If you only want to scan photos for use on web sites, the internet or emailing you do not need real high resolution.

There are quite a few scanners on the market today that will do a creditable job for you. These include models made by Canon, HP, Epson and others. For my flat bed scanner I have a Canon but that is just my personal preference. The other brands are fine as well.

Once you get your scanner and it is connected to your computer lets talk about a few things that you need to do to scan stuff and have it look good.

Intend to print the scanned image the same size on your printer or send the scanned file to a lab to be printed the same size? Then scan at a resolution of 300 dpi

Intend to print the scanned image as an enlargement? Then scan it at a higher resolution. You can adjust for the best resolution to match the size that you want to print later in your photo editing program. As just a quick rule of thumb if you want to print the image twice the size of the original than you should double the scan resolution. As an example if the original is 4 x 6 inches and you want to print it at 8 x 10 inches scan it at 600 dpi instead of 300 dpi.

Intend to just display it on a web site or to email it to people? Then scan it at 100 dpi. This is enough to display on a monitor and will give a smaller file size to send that will  down load faster at the receiving end.

Are you scanning a color slide or a 35 mm negative? Then you will want to enlarge it in any case so scan it at the highest resolution that is available but in any case at least at no less than 2400 dpi.

Can’t I just scan everything at the highest available resolution? Sure you can, and it will you more versatility as to how you can use the scanned image file. However remember that the higher resolution that you scan at the larger the file will be. Have lots of memory and a big ole hard drive then go ahead.

Let’s talk a little about file sizes and file formats.

There are many different image file formats that have been developed. The two most used formats are TIFF and JPEG. How are they different and when do I use one or the other.

TIFF stands for (Tagged Image File Format) - the file will have an extension of .tif - Tiff is the highest quality format - the file is not compressed and therefore maintains more of the image detail - because there is no compression the file is considerably larger than a JPEG file so it takes up more disk space to store it - the actual file size depends on the scan resolution and the size of the original being scanned - since the file is not compressed when you save it you can break a work session up into several segments and save the intermediate work after each session without any image degradation building up - the file size will be too large to even think about using it on the internet or emailing it to someone - it is the best format for editing, correcting and processing images while maintaining original image quality and detail

JPEG stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group (the organization that developed this file format) - The file will have an extension of .JPG - the JPG format was developed exclusively for photos - the TIFF format file will be compressed from two to ten times less than the original file size - because of this it is called a lossy format (when the file is compressed some information is thrown away so some amount of detail is lost) this is cumulative, every time you re save a file it will be compressed more so the quality will be degraded more - if you do a lot of editing and correction and a lot of re saves you will eventually notice some degradation of image quality - because of the compression and smaller file sizes this format is better suited for use on the internet in web sites and emailing - most digital cameras create JPEG files - you can choose the amount of compression that takes place by selecting one of several levels of quality

Please remember that while you can always reduce an image file once you have done so you can not increase it again This means you can use a TIFF file to create a lower resolution JPEG file but you can’t use a JPEG file  to create a higher resolution TIFF.
Once you've compressed and decreased resolution and quality, merely saving back to the TIFF format won't restore it.

What do I do about file format usage? I generally will save the original scanned image  file in TIFF format. This allows the maximum of versatility. As I work on the image correcting it and editing it in an program like PhotoShop I will save it after each intermediate step as a TIFF file. This way no image degradation will be introduced by compression. When I am through working on the image I will usually save the final image as a TIFF and also as a JPEG file. Now I have the best of both worlds. If it is a critical job I will save the TIFF file on a DVD. This also will save hard disk space.

There are several other file formats such as BMP - GIF -  PDF - and PNG they all have  their uses and I will discuss them in a later posting on file formats for digital photography.

A few more scanning tips:
for scanning color photos I always scan with millions of colors selected
for scanning black and white photos I almost always scan in the gray scale mode. Ho
For scanning text only documents I use the black and white mode
Keep the glass scanner document bed nice and clean. Use a good non abrasive glass cleaner on it along with a lint free cloth. You might be surprised as to how many dust spots will be eliminated from the scan by keeping the glass clean. This will also save you some time retouching the scan in your photo editing/correction program.
Clean the original that you will be scanning. On slides and negatives this is especially important since when you enlarge them a tiny speck of dust will become a large spot. You can use film cleaner solution on slides and negatives. Anti static brushes and lint less cloth wipes work very well here also as is a can of compressed air.
Read through any manual that came with your scanner and pick up the fine points and advice on how to use it most effectively.

There are many uses for scanners other than merely converting photos or slides or negatives to digital files in order to archive them or restore them. However for our purposes I want to stick to these uses.

As a point of possible interest, the first color scanner that I worked on and used in the 1970s and 80s was a Doctor Hell Company DC-300 drum scanner. It was for the very high end graphic arts industry and did a wonder job. It was also enormous in size and it cost about $300,000. Scanners have come a long ways since then. Now a color scanner can be purchased for under $100 and it sits on a desktop quite comfortably.

Action shots
or photographing subjects that are not standing still for you

Action photos are without a doubt quite a  challenge for any photographer and requires some practice in order to become good at taking them.

I would like to offer a few tips to help you get these very interesting photos of such things as our beautiful Afghan Hounds running & playing or moving in the show ring. The tips also apply to other moving object, such as kids, friends, sports events, auto races and air shows to name a few.

A comment and kind of a tip. I very rarely use the camera’s fully automatic mode to try to capture action . The camera does not know that my main intent is to freeze the motion. It will do it’s auto focus, select an appropriate shutter and f-stop pairing to give a correct exposure. As they say, been there and done that. Ended up with some properly exposed photos of dog butts and tails because by the time the camera did it’s calculations and actually snapped the photo the dog had ran almost through the frame. A large part of the problem is the thing that we call shutter lag. With some digital cameras it can take them almost 1 second to from the time that you press the shutter release button until it actually takes the photo. At the speeds that our wonderful Affies can travel, that is almost forever.

I have looked at lots of albums on face book that were put there by lots of my Afghan Hound people face book friends. Some of them have some very excellent action photos in their albums. Those are the friends that do not need any advice from me on how to do it.

Now for a few tips for those of you that either have not tried your luck at action shots yet and want too or have tried but have not gotten the shots that you really wanted to get. I hope they will help you.

1) Instead of fully auto mode, select shutter speed priority. Then pick a fast shutter speed (I suggest 1/250 sec as a minimum) and to freeze the action faster is better regarding shutter speed. The camera will still select the correct aperture setting to use for a proper exposure. However be advised that the higher the shutter speed that you select, the larger the aperture that the camera will select to maintain a correct exposure. If the lighting is fairly dim the selected aperture may be so large that you do not have much depth of field so it is important to focus on the subject.

2) Select manual focus for a couple of reasons. One reason is that you can focus in advance on a point that you know the subject will be crossing through and when the subject does then snap the photo. We used to call this zone focusing and it is quite useful. Another reason is that if you have selected the speed and done the focusing in advance the camera’s shutter lag will be reduced. (your fast moving hound or kid or sports star will not have quite as much time to run through and out of the photo).

3) You can also reduce the shutter lag in the auto focus mode by aiming the camera at something that is the same distance from the camera that the subject will be and depressing the shutter release button half way and holding it there. This will lock the focus as long as you keep the button half way pressed. When you are ready to actually take the photo just press the release the rest of the way to snap the photo. This method however may give you a tired finger.

4) If you want to show that the subject is really moving try panning. That is, start to follow the subjects motion with the camera and while doing so press the shutter release button.  If you do this and use a somewhat slower shutter speed the chances are good that the subject will be reasonably sharp and the background will be blurred and this effect gives a good indication of motion.

5)Some digital cameras have a burst mode. Try using this mode to capture multiple shots in quick succession. Chances are at least one of them will catch the action well.

6) Action shots can be taken from a variety of angles from the action passing from left to right or right to left in front of the camera or coming directly toward the camera or going directly away from it or at any angle in between. There is not really any right or wrong angle to use. It depends on what looks good to you and what you want to have the photo convey to a viewer.

The best way to get good at action photography is practice and more practice. With digital cameras there is no film cost and any photos that you do not care for can be deleted. The only thing that you use up is some of your time.

What are f stops and shutter speeds and how are they related to each other?

When we want to take over from the fully automatic camera mode it is very important to know about some of the basic stuff and their inter relations that are going on in the world of photography.

Here is a short explanation of f stops and what they mean.
Aperture size in represented by numbers called f stops. These numbers have a range as follows; f1, f1.4, f2, f2.8,f3.5 f4, f5.6, f8, f11, f16, f22, f32, f45, and f64. Consider that f1 corresponds to the largest aperture and f-64 to the smallest aperture. For any given lens each number is the ratio of an actual aperture size to the focal length of the lens. I have yet to see any lens that will encompass the entire range of numbers. Usually the range of f stops for any given lens will be from some where in the middle of the range. The f stop numbers are in effect a standard and each number indicates a certain amount of light that will pass through the lens. This is regardless of the type and focal length of the lens. For example, if you have a 55 mm lens and a 300 mm lens and both have their f stop set at f11 they will both pass the same amount of light. The f stop numbers are set up so that if you go up to the next higher f stop number the lens will pass half as much light and if you go down to the next lower f stop number the lens will pass twice as much light.

Now lets have a look at shutter speeds. They are measured in fractions of a second. They are also standardized values in a set sequence and have a set relationship to each other. The range of shutter speeds is in time increments and they indicate the amount of time that the shutter will be open when you take a photo. An example of a range of standard shutter speeds is as follows;
1/15 of a second, 1/30, 1/60, 1/125, 1/250, 1/500, 1/1000, 1/2000, 1/4000 of a second
Each time we go up a setting for example from 1/125 to 1/250 the time that the shutter will be open will be halved and as we go down one setting for example from 1/60 to 1/30 the time the shutter is open will be doubled.

Do you see the inverse relationship of f stop to shutter speed? It is very simple. In order to maintain the correct exposure, If we go down 1 f stop we must go up 1 shutter speed and if we go up one f stop we must go down 1 shutter speed, If we go down 2 f stops we must go up 2 shutter speeds and if we go up 2 f stops we must go down 2 shutter speeds to maintain the same exposure and so forth.

For example the following exposure pairs will all give the same exposure. 1/30 sec at f-22, 1/60 sec at f-16, 1/125 sec at f-11, 1/250 sec at f-8 etc.

Why would we want it to work manually with these settings instead of just leaving the camera in fully automatic mode to do it all on it's own?  Working with setting the f-stop manually or the shutter speed manually allows us to have some creative control over how the final photo will look. We can have control over whether the photo of something, Like maybe a running Afghan Hound, is blurry or sharp by selectively picking an exposure pair that will give the correct exposure to our photo and that has a slow or fast shutter speed. We can control the depth of field, how much of the photo is in focus from the foreground to the back ground by selecting a pair that has a large or small f stop. We usually have an idea of what we want the finished photos to look like. The camera really does not.

There have been entire books and lengthy articles written about the  theory of Depth of Field. However for our purposes I just want to offer a very brief explanation of what it is as relates to film and photography along with a tip or two and 1 link to an also very brief interactive tutorial about depth of field that I think was pretty well done.

The depth of field (DOF) is the portion of a scene from the foreground to the background that appears sharp in the image. Although a lens can precisely focus at only one distance, the decrease in sharpness is gradual on either side of the focused distance. Therefore in the area that falls within the DOF any unsharpness is imperceptible under normal viewing conditions.

The distance from the camera lens to the point that you focus on and that has the sharpest focus is said to be the hyper focal distance. As a general rule of thumb we say that the depth of field, the range of acceptable focus will extend 1/3 of this distance in front of the hyper focal point toward the camera and 2/3 behind the hyper focal point going away from the camera. In other words, if you focus on a subject that is 30 feet in front of the camera’s lens, the depth of field would extend from 10 feet in front of the subject to 20 feet behind the subject.

There are three main factors that will effect depth of field

The aperture size. The fact is that a larger the aperture will give less depth of field and a smaller  aperture will give more depth of field. Therefore I usually will be using a relatively large aperture when doing portraits of people or dogs in order to soften the background focus and a relatively small aperture when photographing landscapes and scenery in order to keep everything in focus from the foreground to the background.
The distance from the camera to the subject being photographed. The closer the camera is to the subject, using any given lens, the less the depth of field and the farther the camera is from the subject the more depth of field.
Lens focal length. Fact is that a wide angle lens will have the most depth of field and a telephoto lens will have the least. As a matter of fact with a zoom lens the depth of field will decrease for any given aperture setting the more that you zoom to the telephoto range of the lens.

A little tip regarding selecting aperture size and focusing the camera when photographing landscapes. Select a small aperture size to maximize the DOF. If it is a dim day you will probably have to use a fairly slow shutter speed at the small aperture setting. This could cause camera movement and blurring when you actually take the photo. For this reason I usually use a tripod when I do this type of photography.
Now take note that if you just set the focus to infinity you will in effect be setting the point of sharpest focus at the horizon and losing  about 1/3 of your depth of field. Better to focus on something about 2/3 of the distance between you and the horizon. This way you will retain more depth of field and things in the photo that are closer to you will be in sharper focus.

Here is a link to a very short interactive tutorial on depth of field. I think it is quite well done.




http://smad.jmu.edu/dof/index.html

Today I had a couple of people asking me about Red-Eye.
Knowing when red-eye is most likely to occur, how to prevent or minimize it and how to fix it if it does happen.

Red-eye may show up quite often when you photograph a person, animal or pet with a camera that has built in flash that is either directly above or to the side of the lens.
Red-eye is caused when the bright light from a flash goes directly into the subject's eyes from straight on. It then reflects back the red color from the blood vessels of the retina onto the pupil causing the pupil to glow red instead of looking its usual black.
 
You can minimize the effects of red-eye by recognizing when it's most likely to occur. Our pupils get larger or smaller in diameter based on the brightness of the available light. In a darkened room or outside at night—the times when you're most inclined to use flash—the pupils are wide open. That's when red-eye will be most pronounced.
Some steps that you can take to reduce red-eye:
Indoors, turn on  the room lights before you take the photo. In the brighter light the pupils will be smaller, making red-eye less likely.
Outside, compose your group in front of you, with a light source behind you shining on your subjects.
If you are using an off camera flash indoors, tilt it upwards toward the ceiling at about a 45 degree angle pointed in the direction of your subject. This is what we call bounce flash. It will minimize or eliminate the red eye effect. This will also eliminate some harsh shadows and give a more flattering lighting. Since the light from the flash is entering the eye at an angle instead of straight on the reflection from the retina will be below the pupil and you will not get the red lit pupil.
Most digital cameras have a feature built in called red-eye reduction. Make sure that it is turned on. This fires one or more lower powered pre-flashes immediately before the main photo taking flash. That in effect slams the pupil closed to a smaller diameter before the main flash goes off and the smaller the pupil the less chance of red-eye.

Some times the dreaded Red-eye occurs even though you have been as careful as possible to try to prevent it. Do not be too dismayed. It is relatively easy to fix with most photo editing/retouching programs. Here is a photo that I fixed for a friend. I did it in PhotoShop Elements using the red eye tool with just a few mouse clicks. You can do it as well with a little practice and by just following the directions in the manual for your image editing/retouching program.

            
                  Before                                         And                              After












                                                                

Today let’s talk about printing our beautiful photos

We have taken some photos and have downloaded them from our camera into our computer. We have looked at them and done some corrections with our photo editing program. Now they look really good. So let’s talk a bit about outputting them for our friends and others to see and appreciate.

There are several ways that we can output the photos.
1) We can print them ourself on an inkjet or a dye -sublimation printer.
We can put them on our web sit.
We can e-mail them to people. In this age and time a lot more photos are e-mailed than are printed.
We can make them into a slide show using most any of the photo editing software such as Photoshop Elements, Iphoto, PaintShop Pro and others.

For today we want to talk about printing the photos. There are some choices on how to get them printed. You can print them your self. You can send the files to any one of the many on line print services. You can burn the files onto a CD and take it to a store like Walmart, Kmart, a lot of pharmacies  or other similar stores and they will print them for you (most of the stores even have machines that you can use to print them yourself).

I personally prefer to do the printing myself and at home. The task is not unreasonably difficult to accomplish successfully and you retain complete control over the end product. Certainly it is a lot easier than the “good old days” when you needed a special dark room and lots of special lights and equipment, not to mention all those foul smelling and messy chemicals. (as an amateur and then a trained professional photographer, believe me, I have been there and done that). I will take this digital and electronic age any time.

So, what do we need in the way of equipment and supplies in order to make lovely prints of our masterpieces?
A computer (I do not care what brand or type. I use Apple computers as my personal preference but any mid to high end PC will also get the job done well)
A color monitor (set up to display millions of colors please)
An image processing program such as PhotoShop or PaintShop Pro
An ink jet or dye-sub printer (color laser printers are nice devices. However last time I checked into them they did not make very good photographic prints)
Some of the special photo paper and some ink. (For the paper and ink I believe that you should use the ones made by the same company that made your printer. They are designed specifically to work well with your printer) I have tried the off brand or generic inks and papers and the results are usually not as good.

What brand of ink jet printer you may wonder. I personally use Epson, however HP and Canon also work quite well. For most casual users three color ink jets will do a very good job and the prints will look fine. For obtaining the absolute best looking printed photos possible get a printer that has at least six inks.
What about resolution of the printer? Printer resolutions get higher all the time and in general the higher the better. However most people see very little difference in print quality between a print done on a 1440 DPI printer and a 2800 dpi or higher printer.

As for the resolution that you set in your photo editing soft ware to send to the printer the more of less standard recommendation that I hear and see thrown about is 300 dpi.
I usually use 200 to 250 dpi and see very little if any difference in the print quality. This is rather understandable when you consider that the photos printed in the higher quality magazines are usually printed at 175 dpi. In any case do not try to go much below 200 dpi. If you do so you will end up with a fuzzy photo where you will see very large and obvious pixels. Not what you and your friends want to be looking at.

Type of photo paper? I usually use glossy because it produces nice deep blacks, vivid colors and a wide tonal range. Paper is also available in matt and rough finishes. I suggest that you may want to play around with different photos and different paper surfaces to see what looks best to you. It will usually depend on the subject type of the photo.

Three more quick tips:
Do a color calibration on your monitor. There is usually a program to do so built into your operating system software. The display still will not be a perfect match to what you will see on a print but it will be much closer.
When looking at the photo on your monitor, adjust the photo’s brightness to be some what on the light side. Ink jet printers tend to give prints that will be darker than what you are seeing on the monitor. especially in the black or shadow areas.
After you give the print command take a look at the printer driver’s dialog box that pops up and make sure that you select the appropriate settings for photo printing before you click on the print button.

The best guidance that you will find for making wonderful looking prints is to refer to the manuals that came with your photo editing software and your particular printer. I use PhotoShop Elements 6 for my photo editing/processing and the manual that I find most useful is “Photoshop Elements 6, the missing manual”.

As with any other skill the best way to get really good at it is practice. so make lots of prints and as I did to learn from both the good ones and the bad ones. I can not really get you making great looking prints in a short blog posting. However should anyone have any questions on any aspect of printing please feel free to ask me and I will make my best attempt to get an answer to you.

As we said in the last posting, images from digital cameras are made up of millions of extremely small pixels. Now let us consider the cases of Computer color monitors that also create the image that you see on them from a very large number of pixels, and photos printed by an inkjet printer where the image is made up of a large number of ink droplets.

These three processes may appear to be about the same but there are some essential differences between them. I will attempt to explain how the systems work without getting too overly technical and hopefully not boring you with information that you do not really want to know.

Since one of the differences is how they produce and depict color, I will start with a little bit of color theory.
There are two ways that we can produce a wide range of different colors. The first way on the color monitor and the second way on an inkjet printer or for that matter a printing press.
First let’s talk briefly about the case of the color monitor. The monitor uses a process called additive color.



We call it this because we add some amount of the additive primary colors together to create all of the other colors. There are three primary additive colors. They are Red, Green and Blue and are often referred to as RGB. The process is about the same whether we are talking about old fashion CRT (cathode ray tube) monitors of the newer technology of the LCD (liquid crystal display) monitors. Both monitor types have the ability of representing up to millions of colors (16.7 million colors to be exact). This by the way is approximately the number of colors that we humans can discern. On the monitor we create all of these colors by the way we combine tiny spots of the three primary colors.
In an area of the monitor display where none of the tiny red, green or blue pixels are turned on we see pure black. If we look at an area of the display that appears pure white we are looking at an area where all three primaries are fully on. Maybe a bit of a surprise but if we add 100% red, 100% blue and 100 % green we see white as the result. By turning on different combinations of the three primary colors each to some level between 0 % and 100 % we can create all of the millions of colors. Actually our human eyes see levels of red, green and blue individually. The three color signals are then sent to our brain and there something wonderful happens. Our brain does an integration of the three colors so that we discern a resulting color. For an incredible (if you have not had a course in color theory) example consider if we have an area where 100 % of the red and green pixels are turned on and the blue are left off we will see that area as a pure yellow. How much red and how much green are turned on and whether or not we allow some of the blue to be turned on as well will determine the shade of yellow that we will see. If we turn on blue and green in an area we will see the result as a color that we call cyan. If we turn on blue and red in an area we will see the color that we call magenta.
We can then say the following:
100% Red + 100% Green = pure Yellow, 100% Blue + 100% Green = pure Cyan and 100% Blue + 100% Red = pure Magenta. By mixing different percentages of the RGB primary colors we can create all of the other millions of colors.
This is the theory of color and how it works for both the camera and the computer monitor and also for us human beings.

Now for the theory of color as it works with printers.
A color print whether done on a desktop printer or on a printing press uses a process called subtractive color.



We call it this because we use the subtractive primaries to subtract some or all of each of the additive primaries to create other colors.
Please do not be too surprised when I tell you that the three subtractive primary colors are Cyan, Yellow and Magenta and by combining the three each in different percentages in an area of the print we can produce all of the millions of colors that we are capable of discerning with two exceptions. We can not produce pure white by a combination of these primary colors and we can can not produce a really good black. Combining 100% of all three colors produces a muddy brown looking sort of black. So in order to produce pure black we add one other color to the mix. Yes, that color is black.
We call this 4 color printing or CYMK. the K is called Key and stands for black in order not to confuse it with blue if we used the letter B to represent it. This has been a printing industry standard for many years.

Now again briefly and trying not to make it too confusing here we go with the theory.
Imagine you are looking at a sheet of pure white paper. The paper is being illuminated by white light. White light is made up of equal amounts of red, green and blue. All three of these additive primary colors are being reflected from the paper to your eyes. The red, green and blur components are sent to your brain and the physiological integration that we mentioned before takes place and as a result you see the paper as pure white.
That is easy enough. Now for the fun part we want to make some colors. Here is how we do it.
We use three colors of ink. Yep the colors are Cyan, yellow and Magenta. This is true on both your desktop color printers and the printing company’s huge 4 color printing presses. The inks are rather special in that they are transparent and they each act as color filters. We will create our millions of colors by selectively filtering out some of the primary (RGB) components of the white light.
Let us see how we will get to see the color magenta on the paper. We will put a spot of Magenta ink onto the paper. Remember that we see Magenta as a mix of red and blue and that I said that the inks act as selective color filters. The magenta ink filters and blocks the green component of the white light from getting to the paper so it will not reflect back and into your eyes. It allows the red and the blue components of the white light to pass through hit the paper and reflect into your eyes. Your eyes see the red and blue and send this information to your brain. Your brain since it works with the additive color system does it’s integration thing and (Red + Blue = magenta).
The yellow ink filters out the Blue component of the white light and the result is that we see the color Yellow since (Red + Green = Yellow).
The Cyan ink filters out the Red component of the white light and the result is that we see the color Cyan since (Blue + Green = Cyan).
From this process and by laying very tiny drops of the three print color inks down on the paper in varying percentages we, by interpretation, will see our millions of colors when we view the print from a normal viewing distance.

There you have the mystery and wonder of how color perception works. There are many other things that could be said and explained. However this is not intended to be the full two day seminar that I used to present at printing companies to staff and new employees when I was still doing consulting work. Here I just wanted to give you a basic idea of how it works in case anyone was curious.

Not to worry, you should now have a general idea of how it all works. However your camera or color scanner take care of it on the input end. Your computer, photo processing software and monitor take care of it at the center and your printer and its software driver take care of it at the output end. You do not really need to know more about color theory in order to be a better photographer.

However, should you have a deeper thirst for color theory and knowledge here is a link to a good web site to start at.

http://www.cs.brown.edu/courses/cs092/VA10/HTML/start.html

I was asked about resoulation needed for putting photos onto web sites and the internet.
In this case the camera resolution is not very important and you do not need lots of megapixels. No matter what the megapixels of your camera, the image displayed on a computer is often no better than 96 dpi. When scanning photos, you will typically find no advantage to scanning at greater than 150 dpi.
If you want to put a photo on a web site, it's a good idea to cut it down to 72 dpi or at most 96 dpi resolution and size it to the size that you want to display on the web page with your image processing program. It will take less disk space, load faster and should still look fine on the web page.
Help this helps. We can give more details and recommendations about shooting and processing photos for web pages and for e-mailing in a future posting on the blog. I think that many of us often put photos on our web sites or e-mail photos to friends. So I believe that would be a good topic for discussion.
Your humble photo correspondent, Phillip

Resolution applies to cameras, monitors and printers and is measured somewhat differently on each.

We will start today with the cameras.

Resolution is measured in pixels. So what are pixels and what do we need to know about them without getting into deep theory?

The word pixel is based on a contraction of pix (for "pictures") and el (for "element")
In digital imaging, a pixel (or picture element) is the smallest item of information in an image. Put another way each pixel contains information for the brightness and color of one tiny point of the picture. Pixels are normally arranged in a 2-dimensional grid, and are often represented using dots or squares. Each pixel is a sample of an original image, where more samples typically provide more-accurate representations of the original. The intensity of each pixel is variable; in color systems, each pixel has typically three or four components such as red, green, and blue, or cyan, magenta, yellow, and black.
These pixels are laid out in a two dimensional grid and when they are combined they make up the entire photo. Camera resolution is rated in megapixels. This rating is calculated by multiplying the image width in pixels by the image height in pixels. Let’s look at one example. Assuming the image is 3,640 pixels wide and 2,736 pixels high and we do the math (3,648 x 2,236) = 9,980,926  this would mean that the camera has a 10 megapixel resolution.
Digital cameras started out a few years ago with resolutions of about 1.3 megapixels or less and now cameras are available with resolutions of 39 megapixels or more.

The important thing to remember is that the higher the number of megapixels is the higher the camera’s resolution. The higher the resolution, the larger you can make the resulting photos while maintaining excellent photo quality. My first digital camera was an early Sony with a resolution of 2.1 megapixels and about the largest photo size for acceptably quality was about 4 x 6 inches. I do a lot of my casual photography now days with a camera that has a resolution of 10 megapixels and have no problem making acceptable photos  in sizes of 11 x 14 inches or even somewhat larger.

Bottom line is don't go too crazy about megapixels. Most of us have more than enough to do what we want to do. How many of us really want or need to regularly print images larger than 11 x 14 inches?
In my opinion unless you are or strive to be a top professional photographer doing very critical work a camera with about 10 megapixel resolution should serve you very well and there are quite a few of them out there.

The chart below is a guide developed by HP to show the largest print sizes you can make with various MP settings using their HP digital cameras. I tend to agree with them.
 


 More than enough said on this I believe.
In the next few days will move on to talking about the monitors and the printers.

I and most of the professional photographers that I know have gone to digital cameras. I believe that they have some distinct advantages over the film cameras that we had all used for many years.

There are basically three categories of digital cameras on the market. I would like to offer a brief comment on each type below. Each type has some benefits and some drawbacks depending somewhat on what one intends to use the camera for.

1) The so called Compact cameras
    This has been the highest selling or most popular category. It sells chiefly to customers that simply want snapshot photos to remember family events, vacations, holidays and special occasions. One advantage is that you can slip it into a pocket and easily carry it around. The category has been designed to be as simple to use and as small as possible. They are not loaded down with lots of features. Fully automatic shooting is the way most users utilize them. Turn it on, aim it, press the shutter release and you usually will get an acceptable photo. Most do have some limited zoom lens capability, normally about 3x zoom. These are the least expensive of the digital cameras. Some models are presently selling for less than $100.

2) The so called point and shoot or prosumer cameras
    These are the kind of middle of the road cameras. They fall between the compacts and the D-SLR models in performance and capabilities. The higher end models have most of the good features of the D-SLR type cameras except that they do not have interchangeable lenses. You can shoot in the fully automatic mode and let the camera set itself or you can select from several programmed modes or you can use shutter or aperture priority etc. This gives a lot of versatility and is very useful in matching camera performance to the type of photography being done. While they do not have interchangeable lenses the high end ones have lenses of reasonably good quality with quite long zoom capability. Typically from the 35 mm equivalency of about 28 mm wide angle to 560 mm or more telephoto. Word of caution, look at the range of optical zoom offered. Digital zoom is not at all a good thing. More about zoom soon in another posting. No need to carry around a case full of interchangeable lenses. The price of these cameras at the high end are not much less than some of the available lower end D-SLR cameras. You can get a very good point and shoot model with all of the capabilities that you will probably need for anywhere in the $300 to $800 price range.
They are quite capable and usually meet the needs of all but the most critical user or the professional.
I have had very good results with the Canon SX10 IS and the Canon SX1 IS models. This type of camera will serve the average user very well. Several other manufacturers make excellent model as well. We will be comparing some in future postings on the blog.

3) The D-SLR or SLR is a true single lens reflex to the same standards as the 35 mm SLR film cameras that have pretty much been the professional photographers and serious amateurs cameras of choice for quite a long time. They do offer the best quality,and the most features and versatility. Full control of all functions such as shutter speed, lens aperture, focus etc. There are lots of lenses available in both fixed focal length and zoom types. They are physically larger than the point and shoot cameras but very small and compact compared to the old 4x5 press and view cameras that I carried around in my early pro career. When you add on several lenses and accessories to carry around these are easily the most expensive way to go but they do offer the most versatility. If you have the money to spend and need the top end you can easily spend several thousand dollars. Of the various brands available I strictly as a personal preference like the Canon line. However Nikon and other manufacturers make excellent models as well.

The bottom line on camera types, models, abilities etc that will meet your needs depends on what you want to do with it and how critical you are along with what feels good to you.

Planned next up we will talk about the mysteries of pixels, zooms, the relationship of shutter speed to aperture settings, white balance and other neat camera stuff.

Hi blog readers,
I just came across a web site that has a free on line short course in digital photography. It looks quite good and can be looked at for free on line. You can also order the course as a printed book of in PDF format on a CD from them. If you have interest in ordering it I would go with the CD since the book is printed in black and white and the CD is in color and has quite a few interactive short videos to help understand the topics.

http://www.shortcourses.com/use/index.html

Have a look. It is not every day that we can check out something for free.

Thank you Pam for the excellent examples of what not to do with photo composition and back grounds. Namely, when taking the photo do not crop too closely on the subject, do not cut off part of the subject and pay closer attention to what is in the back ground. These things are much easier to fix when taking the photo than later using a photo editing and correction program. Indeed as Pam points out some of these type of things can not be corrected later.

Afghan Hounds Photography tips learnt by photos sent and scanned for the Afghan Pedigree Database
Try to leave extra room at the edges of the photo to ensure the head, tail & feet are not too near the edge see this example the back hock is missing and the nose if too near the edge of the photo
Perhaps Phillip could add this tip to his photograph blog
Pam

Hello everyone,
I am planning and working on writing some postings for the blog. I want to get it started in earnest by the beginning of next week.
I would be very pleased to have any suggestions on initial topics of interest to out AHI photographers. You may either leave them as a comment on this blog or e-mail them to me at philliplebeau@charter.net.

I wish everyone a very happy weekend. I will be back to you on Monday with a new post.

http://reviews.cnet.com/digital-camera-buying-guide/?tag=nl.e725

I recently came across this on line article on selecting the right digital camera for the type of photography that one wants to do.
I believe it should be quite helpful for anyone considering the purchase of a digital camera.

Hello,
I would like to tell you a bit about myself and this blog.
My name is Phillip Hunt. I am a long time Afghan Hound person, a graduate of New York Institute of Photography and a retired professional photographer. I am also a member of Afghan Hounds International. My wife and I have had, shared our lives with and loved Afghan Hounds for over 30 years. You can find me on Facebook as Merlin Hunt.

As for this newly established blog,
The idea for it came from Lesley James of Afghan Hounds International. They were considering establishing a person to be a camera/photography correspondent. Someone that could help members gain some added photographic knowledge to take lots of lovely photos of their dogs and to gain more knowledge of cameras and photography in general. I have volunteered to be that person and we have decided to try it in the form of an online blog.

We have some ideas of things for the blog to cover and deal with. I would like to outline a few of those ideas for you now.
1) We would like to present news and reviews of both existing and new cameras, accessories and photography products.
2) Present from basic to somewhat advanced instructional type presentations on best use of cameras a topic at a time at one or
    two week intervals. This could include the various functions and set ups of cameras for different photo types, Pleasing photo
    composition, selection of the best pixel resolution for viewing on computer monitors and for printing the photos. How to do
    some basic photo corrections and image improvement of photos using computer programs such as photoshop.
3) Quick tips for better picture taking.
4) I believe that a question and answer section could be quite useful as well. The idea being that the readers could send camera and
    photography questions to be answered by myself and some of my professional photography buddies.

These are just a few of our ideas. I would be most pleased to have suggestions from the blog readers on any other topics that we could incorporate into this blog. You can give these suggestions as comments on the blog. I will be looking at the blog quite often and will be very pleased to see your ideas and reply to you regarding them. Also using some of them to enhance the blog experience.

I am very excited about this effort. I hope that it will go forward well and will be a positive benefit to all of us.