A Simple Guide To Shutter Speed Basics

By Luke Walker

I wanted to write this post to help you understand all that you need to know on shutter speed basics. So let's start with the most basic thing of all, what is shutter speed?

Shutter speed is just the speed at which your camera takes an image. Inside your camera, there is a shutter. Every time you take a shot, the shutter opens and then closes. Upon opening, light shines onto the sensor, the sensor captures the image, then the shutter closes. Faster shutter speeds will basically freeze the movement. Longer shutter speeds come in handy when there is a limited amount of light. If the shutter opens and closes rapidly, a very small amount of light will be able to enter the camera. Your pictures could turn out under exposed depending on how much light you are working with. You won't have this problem on a bright and sunny day for example if your shutter speed is something like 1/1000 of a second or 2/1000 of a second. This issue more commonly occurs indoors.

Imagine you are taking a shot of a sunset. If you select a very quick shutter speed, your image will be dark. In this kind of circumstance you would slow down the shutter speed. It might be a few seconds long. This depends on the lighting and also on the aperture value you have picked. By doing this, you will no longer have the problem of your photos being under exposed and too dark, but this leads to another problem; you will need to use a tripod to keep the camera still. If you hand shakes even a tiny amount while you are taking the photo, or the subject moves, your picture will be blurry. Alternatively you can place the camera somewhere where it will be completely still.

When you have an abundance of light, is it still possible to produce any nice effects by slowing the shutter speed down?

Of course this is possible! An example is when you take a picture of moving water, such as a river or a waterfall. This will create a silky, dreamy effect on the photo of the water. You would have to change your aperture to compensate for the abundance of light hitting the sensor. Some effects require us to change the aperture so much that the shutter speed can be as slow as several minutes! This may be an aperture number of about F18 or F22. This means that the aperture size will shrink so that there is less light coming in. It could still be over exposed and you might need to use a filter to block out some of the sunlight.

This technique can also be used if you are standing on a bridge in the city to take shots of roads with vehicles on, to make the vehicles disappear so that all you can see is that nice streak of their headlights and rear lights.

Understanding Shutter Speed Basics

To adjust the shutter speed on your camera, there will be a dial you can rotate. When you increase the shutter speed, you will notice the F number decreasing. This is because as you increase the shutter speed, less light enters the camera, so the camera picks up a smaller F number, so the aperture opens up to allow more light to come inside the lens. Experiment with taking some photos at various shutter speeds. If you set the shutter speed as one or two seconds, you will clearly hear the shutter before closing one or two seconds later.

With longer shutter speeds, it works best if you put your camera on a timer, so that your pressing of the button to take the photo won't make the camera shake in any way, even when you are using a tripod. Another tip is to slowly roll your finger off the button when you take the image with the timer, so the camera isn't subjected to any small sudden movements.

If you want a clear picture of any moving object, such as water or children (who tend to move around suddenly), you would be wise to use a quick shutter speed. 1/500 of a second is a good example of a decent shutter speed, but you sometimes don't need to use such a high speed.

For night time long exposure, we will examine this in another post.

I hope you found this article on shutter speed basics to be informative and that it helped you to gain a deeper understanding of the fundamentals of the topic.

About the Author:

Now that you've gained a good level of understanding about the basics of shutter speed you may want to have a look at some other great articles to help you along your way as a budding photographer

Beach Photography Tips That Will Get You Incredible Pictures

By Luke Walker

If you're interested in some excellent beach photography tips, one of the most beautiful things you can take pictures of at the beach is a sunrise. The sun makes an orange warmth, which makes the colours in your pictures really pop, so the morning is usually the best time of day for photographers to walk on the beach and capture some interesting shots. Especially if you are on the East coast of a country, the sun will rise above the ocean, creating breathtaking seascapes.

However, shooting sunrises can be pretty difficult because you have extremely bright light which needs to be balanced out. You can balance it out with ND filters, which work in a similar way to tinted glass and help you to control the light and balance certain areas of the shot. If you really want to shoot incredible sunrise images, you must commit yourself every day to getting up early for at least a month or two. If you get up and go shooting every morning for this long, you will get a few mornings of really crisp top quality light.

Capturing pictures of sunsets is fairly similar to shooting sunrises. You'll be best off using an ND grad filter to let you control the light. Another thing to consider is using a good F stop, say around F11 or F22 depending on what lens you have. Different lenses have their sweet spots but it's important to get a lot in focus.

Shooting surf is another thing you may want to do at the beach. For this it is definitely very good to get various angles. A regular surf image will have a front-on angle and a surfer in the middle of the frame. This can make for an uninspiring shot and has been done time after time. To get a more unique picture, get down low on the sand, or up on top of a cliff or a building to get a different angle. Of course, shooting in the water is the best place for shooting surf because you are right there among the waves and the splash. If a surfer is in the tube, you are in that same tube with him or her. It is less common for a photographer to be so close to the subject.

You should always try to make your picture tell a story. One way you can achieve this is to have an unexpected background in the shot, so for example instead of just shooting out towards the horizon, try to get a cliff in the background, or a boat. It will make your images a lot more unique and will also add scale to them.

For taking photos in the ocean, you will have to choose the best possible conditions. Avoid beaches that have strong rip currents. Before entering the water, stand still on the beach for about 10 to 15 minutes and have a look at how strong and exactly where the rips are. See if you will find it difficult to paddle against the current.

The clarity of the water is also very important, especially if you're going to be doing a lot of underwater pictures. If you have a clear day and the tide is incoming, and there hasn't been a big swell or any rain for a long time, the water is going to be crystal clear.

If you can see highly talented surfers in the water, it is definitely worth getting in the water because you'll be able to get much closer to them than intermediate level surfers, making your photos more exciting. A lot of great surfers understand how to work well with photographers and can time their shots well.

The shape of the waves is another factor to be aware of. Barrels look wonderful to shoot inside, but if the waves are not really peeling and are just dribbling it doesn't look as exciting.

Tips for looking after your equipment at the beach

If it's really misty and you're getting a lot of sea breeze from the ocean, don't set foot on the beach or your equipment will get sandy and dusty.

The last thing you want is spray on your lens. If you do, don't wipe it with a lens cloth. First you should let it dry, and after that you will need to use a rocket air to spray off the lens so that all of the dust particles fall off. Once that's done, you can clean the lens. If you try to clean the sand off too early, you may scratch the coating on the lens.

A polarizing filter can be very useful if you're taking photos on the beach, because it will give you some very nice rich, saturated skyscapes and seascapes.

If you're going to be taking shots in humid conditions from a relatively dry, air conditioned room, you will get condensation on the lens and it will be necessary to wait until the lens has warmed up to the outdoor temperature. One way to overcome this is to leave your camera outside before you go out to take photos.

So enjoy it and head down to the beach as soon as you possibly can!

About the Author:

Before you travel to the coast this summer, you may need to learn extra great ideas aside from beach photography tips. Our main website has a huge amount of very useful articles that will help you to improve your camera skills quickly. travel on over to Digital Camera Review Guru today and start learning from our entertaining resources.

Aspects of white balance in photo retouching

By Jeffrey Hudson

White balance correction means to adjust the illumination in a image to white. In order to do this one must have some neutrals in the image like a gray card or a white sheet of paper. Software can adjust white balance, but not all software solutions are equally good.

White balance is the first thing you want to work on when you begin to retouch your photo. White balance refers to the color of the light and implies that the best light color is white. Some photos, like sunset or candlelight, do not have white light, but in general an impression of white light is desirable. Some use Photoshop's auto levels to set white balance, but that is not a good solution, since auto levels just sets the darkest pixels to black and the brightest to white without considering the mid tones. But what if the brightest pixel in your photo is not white? Or what if you do not have pure black in the photo? (Most pictures have black areas, but the palest pixels are rarely pure white).

When correcting white balance, the mid tones are the most important and to help set the mid tones correctly one adds a grey card to the photo when taking the picture. A grey card is a sheet of cardboard or plastic colored an exact mid tone neutral gray. Ideally one has three cards: a black, a gray and a white. Photoshop's levels adjustment panel has three eye droppers for picking color: one for white, one for gray and one for black. By clicking the gray color picker on the gray card, one can adjust the mid tones to neutral gray. One can only include a gray card in the picture if one intends later to crop the image.

If one does not want a gray card in the image, or if one doesn't have a gray card at hand, one can later use specialized software that scans the image and calculates the color of the light and sets it to white. There are problems with such applications: what if there are no neutral areas in the picture to calculate the color of the light from? Some applications do not need a neutral in the photo, but most do to get a good result.

When working with RAW images, you will have found that the RAW converters generally come with a control for color temperature, which means a slider to adjust the photo cool or warm. But what if the color of the light is greenish as when you have taken a picture in neon light? The cool-warm slider is good for regular incandescent light, but not for fluorescent.

Color adjustment sliders are rarely good for correcting white balance, because the color correction will not only neutralize the gray card, but will also color the picture in an undesirable way: often the blacks become toned or the whites or both. In short one needs some neutrals in an image to set white balance. A white wall or a sheet of white paper will do well; preferably add a gray card for the mid tones.

About the Author:

For reference, I based this article on these two: this article about White balance and this one White balance

Tips You Can Use When Expanding Your Professional Photography Business

By Joe Smith

Investing some time into creating a booming photography service business continues to be an effective approach to attain more revenue while doing work that you want to do all the time. There're numerous vital things to think about before you begin. If you plan a nicely laid out growth technique and business plan, you'll be the proprietor of a profitable thriving business quickly. Remember these suggestions and ideas to build up your own growing business.

We all love raffles. Why not promote your items in populated raffles because folks stick there till the end, until they win their due prizes. You will soon understand the benefits of raffle as it serves as a great medium of advertising. Your message to your existing and potential clients goes around really well.

Go to trade shows. These trade shows are good for striking partnerships with other photography service businesses, getting new leads and prospects, generating new dealers and consignees, igniting word of mouth advertising, and basically getting your name out there in the enterprise world.

Utilize the Email Wizard on Constant Contact to create an awesome newsletter and incorporate your logo and branding messages with ease. Providing continual and regular e-newsletters are a proven technique to expand your photography service business. With over 400 templates, your bound to find one that fits your business.

One thing to keep in mind as you go through the day to day of photography service business is operating cost. If you can think of ways to lower operating cost without sacrificing quality, it would be for the best. Try to think of new ways to save money.

Never settle for less when it comes to running your photography service business. While it may be extremely tempting to take a shortcut every now and then, don't do it! Shortcuts often lead to a less-than-perfect product.

When you review your professional photography studio strategic schedule, set action items for the next review. The purposes will not attain themselves. Action items aid hold people accountable for the plan being done. It also shows problems in the plan or changes needed.

Working hard and being loyal to your profession is essential if you want to gain the topmost position and most importantly if you want to succeed. Hard work is the factor that is responsible for a successful photography service business.

Set specific targets and goals in your photography service business to deliver the desired achievement. Work hard to meet these targets in a timely manner. If you fail to meet targets, evaluate the reasons for your failure and work to resolve any issues. Rooting out problems and working towards continued goals is essential to maximizing increase potential.

About the Author:

Visit any large search engine and enter candid wedding photography into search field. You might discover a few useful ideas about professional photographer you can utilize soon.

Methods To Develop A Business By Selling Canvas Photos Online

By Sally Mop

You do not need experience to sell your canvas photos online. In order to get started, you simply need some expert advice to verify that you know everything you need to know in order to make your business profitable. By utilizing the information in this guide, you will learn the tips you need to know to ensure the success of your online business.

Add a blog to your site that discusses canvas photos and offers suggestions to customers. Keeping the blog up-to-date will keep them coming back. Remember customers will see it so make sure your grammar and spelling are correct.

Think of including give-ways with the name of your online business. For example, a flashlight or pen with your URL could attract potential consumers. Include your homepage URL, so it's easy for customers to remember.

Making sure that your emails and newsletters contain valuable information, coupons or discounts is a great way to make customers actually look forward to your communications. Also, do not flood them with emails, spread them out so that they have something to look forward to.

An online contest or promotion can help attract attention in social media channels and garner interest of potential customers to your site. Simple contests with smaller prizes can be effective. If you give away a high value item you can stir up the most attention.

Determine the best methods of advertising you online business by conducting research. Let your employees help. They may contribute valuable ideas and are an important part of your business. It will also give them a sense of pride in working for you and your business and will make them more likely to recommend it to their friends and family members.

Rewards programs and points help to build more loyal customers. Give customers one point for each dollar they spend towards their next purchase, and have a system in place for redeeming points. This will not only provide incentives for repeat business, but keep you one step ahead of your competition.

Help your website show up more prominently in online searches. Since a website can't sell if it can't be found, consider trying some free tools offered by Google. Remember, if you want to optimize your site for search engines you will need both time and expertise to use them properly.

Try to have a complete grip on your business. Make up your mind regarding which canvas photo product line you have a proper control over. Setting an online business is not a piece of cake. Start evaluating various options and assess different situations so that you can find out where you actually fit in.

About the Author:

Be sure to go to Bing and type in canvas photos when you are curious about discovering more about quality canvas photos next time you are online.