The Limits of Lightroom’s Smart Previews
I just stretched the limits of Lightroom’s Smart Previews this morning. After editing the following image I decided to see what it looked like as a smart preview. I pushed the image quite a bit, exposing the colour in the sky as the sun set behind me in Lanzarote a few days ago. The original…
Lightroom Tips and Videos
At the recent Automattic Grand Meetup in Utah I presented a Lightroom tutorial. During the course of the tutorial I went through the various Develop panels explaining what (most of) the sliders did, offering some advice sometimes on how to use them. Here’s a few tips from the night and links you’ll find useful: Use…
Use Back Button Focus to Pre Focus
Sometimes it’s useful if the shutter button doesn’t focus. Instead you press another button to focus. I’ve used it in the past when shooting street photography (focus on the ground and I know anything a metre away will be in focus), and at night on a tripod when taking long exposure shots of moving lights….
How to clean your camera sensor
One of the horrors of owning a DSLR and using multiple lenses is the dread of getting dust on the camera sensor. In small amounts it’s visible whenever you shoot using a small aperture like f/22 but if you leave it go too long you’ll see round smudges show up on your every day snaps…
Long Exposure Photography through Stacking
The usual way of taking long exposure photos is by leaving the shutter open for a long time. This requires either a dark location or ND filters of some sort on the end of your lens. There is another way and that’s called image stacking. In a nutshell, you take a series of well exposed…
Shoot … in the Style of Garry Winogrand
Tomorrow I’ll be braving the streets with Cork Streetphotography taking photos in the style of Garry Winogrand. I’d never heard of Garry but a quick Google brought me plenty of digest. First this documentary, filmed in 1982, that showed his technique and friendly nature: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RM9KcYEYXs Then I came across this excellent blog post about the…
Use Lightroom Collections to Publish Photos
Since I started posting photos online I’ve always created two images: A web sized version to go online. A full size version for my archive. This has served me well as I have from time to time changed the software I use to develop photos. Otherwise, I might have the web version and not be…
Shoot manual mode with E-TTL flash just once
If you have an external flash (and this even applies to the onboard flash but that’s a lot weaker) for your DSLR try shooting with the camera in manual mode and let the flash light the scene for you. Canon flash units use E-TTL to figure out what power to use, Nikon and other manufacturers…
Save instead of Export in GIMP 2.8
Version 2.8 of GIMP saves images as .xcf files by default when you hit CTRL-S. I remember a development version did this years ago but it was reversed before final release due to user feedback AFAIR. I can understand the reasoning behind this decision but I hate it. It really, really bugs me. I don’t…
Padded bag inserts for camera equipment
Wow, I’ve been looking for something like this for years but I never knew what keywords to use to search for it. I have a backpack for my laptop and when travelling usually carry my camera gear wrapped up in clothes or paper but this should fit (with a little squeezing) into my backpack. I…