Digital camera reviews and the latest releases

:: Photography Help & How-To

Balancing and Framing an Image
If you place every element of interest in a photograph on one side or another, leaving little or nothing to look at on the opposite side, the picture is unbalanced, like a seesaw with a child at one end and no one on the other. The best pictures have an inherent balance that makes them look graceful. Photos are frequently put in frames for a good reason: A border around a picture defines the picture's shape and concentrates attention on the image within the frame.
Using a Scanner to Make a Digital Photo
Scanning existing photographic prints is a popular use for digital imaging. By scanning existing digital images, you can preserve vintage photographs on CD-Rs and CD-RWs, repair and retouch your family album, and share images with friends and family without losing control of your valuable negatives or original prints. You can email or post your images on a Web site, even when they were not shot with your digital camera. In order to take advantage of these opportunities to use and share your existing photos in a digital format, you need to scan them into digital images.
Understanding Photography's Rule of Thirds
The position of your subject matter within a picture is one of the most important decisions you make. Whether you can move the subject or objects around, change your position, or wait until everything moves to the right spot, you should constantly be aware of how your subject matter is arranged. Photographers often consciously or unconsciously follow a guideline called the Rule of Thirds. It's simply a way of dividing your picture horizontally and vertically into thirds (see Figure 1). The best place to position important subject matter is often at one of the points located one-third of the way from the top or bottom and sides of the frame.
Transferring Photos from a Photo Library to Your iPod
If you store photos in an iPhoto library on a Mac, or in a photo library managed by Adobe Photoshop Album or Photoshop Elements on a Windows PC, you can transfer photos to your color-display iPod automatically, and synchronize your iPod to your library so that any changes you make to the library are copied to your iPod. You can also limit the transfer and synchronization to albums or collections rather than the entire library.
Transferring Images from Your Camera to Your PC
The first challenge you have to face is getting your digital images from your camera into your computer so that you can edit them (if necessary), store them on some archival medium (such as CD or DVD), and make prints.
Taking Great Sports Pictures
Digital cameras offer at least one advantage and one disadvantage when used for sports and action photography. The big advantage lies in the ability to shoot an almost unlimited number of pictures in your quest to capture the peak moment of action, but without burning up dozens of rolls of film.
Getting a Close-Up Look at Digital Macro Photography
One area that has really benefited from the digital SLR (single lens reflex) revolution has been close-up, or macro, photography. Although digital cameras of any sort make close-up pictures fairly easy, you always have the problem of trying to figure out whether you framed your picture properly — and whether it's in sharp focus. Tiny LCD displays are often difficult to view, especially under bright lighting conditions. With a digital SLR, though, you're always looking through the same lens used to take the picture (unless you choose to view the LCD on the back of the camera). Digital SLRs are designed for bright, easy viewing and focusing of your image.
Getting Comfortable with Digital Exposure Controls
Because light levels vary, digital cameras must vary the amount of light that reaches the sensor. One way to do that is to change the f-stop. The second way is to alter the length of time that the sensor is exposed to the light. This is done either electronically or with an actual mechanical device — a shutter — that opens and closes quickly to expose the sensor for a set period — the shutter speed.
Fixing Cracks or Tears by Cloning a Digital Photo
If you use Photoshop Elements or an earlier version of Photoshop and have no Healing Brush or Patch tool to rely on, you may find the Clone Stamp a helpful tool.
Fine-Tuning Your Digital Photos for the Web
If your company operates a Web site or you maintain a personal Web site, you can easily place pictures from your digital camera onto your Web pages.
Digitally Restoring Vintage Photos
Vintage photographs present some very common problems. Over time, the image fades because of age; developing procedures; the paper it was printed on; or exposure to the sun, extreme heat, or dampness. Dampness can cause even more harm because mold can grow, which eats away the coating on the photos, and damage the paper, as well. In many cases, multiple culprits have been and are at work, and you have multiple problems — faded image content along with scuffs, scratches, stains, mold, dust, and outright damage in the form of rips, tears, and missing corners.
Digital SLRs and Close-Up Photography
Digital SLRs (dSLRs) are the almost perfect choice for close-up photography because of the increased accuracy you can get with framing and focusing, as well as the greater control that most dSLRs provide over your picture-taking. Here are a few things to consider when using a digital SLR for macro photography. Some of these also apply to cameras with electronic viewfinders:
Determining Your Digital Photography Lighting Needs
Your digital dream camera's electronic flash capabilities (or lack of them) should be on your list of things to evaluate before you make a purchase decision. Not every photo is possible using existing light. Even if you have plenty of light, you might still want to fill in those inky shadows with an electronic flash. Your camera's built-in flash features are definitely something to consider.
Considering Your Digital Photo Storage Options
The kind of storage your digital dream camera uses will never be a factor in making your selection (unless it's a truly odious choice, and that's a matter of personal taste). The days of the digital cameras that used floppy disks and other oddball media are long gone. Today, all digital cameras use one (or more) of the following options:
Avoiding Red-Eye in Digital Photography
Red-eye occurs when light from the built-in flash of a camera bounces off the subject's retinas and reflects back to the camera lens. Along the way, the light takes on the tint of the blood vessels in the eye, which causes the eyes to appear to be glowing red in the picture. In animal pictures, eyes often have a white, yellow, or green glint.
Archiving and Backing Up Your Digital Photo Collection
You can archive digital images that you don't need to access quickly or frequently. If a photo is valuable to you on some level in the long run but you don't imagine wanting to look at or print it in the foreseeable future, just save it to disc — a CD or DVD is the best choice because Zip disks and floppy disks have a considerably shorter storage life. You have several archiving options, many of which may be on your computer right now. If they're not, you can easily acquire them.
Accounting for Aspect Ratio in Digital Photography
You may notice that your digital pictures have a different width-to-height ratio — or aspect ratio, in photography lingo — than pictures taken with a 35mm film camera. Digital cameras produce images that have an aspect ratio of 4:3, and 35mm film negative produces pictures that have an aspect ratio of 3:2.
Getting to Know Digital Photography

Going digital opens up a world of artistic and practical possibilities that you simply don't enjoy with traditional photographic prints. Here are just a few advantages of working with digital images:
Getting Smart about Digital Camera Batteries
Like any camera, a digital camera runs on battery power. The type of batteries you need depends on your camera. Some models use a custom battery supplied only by the camera manufacturer, and others use standard, AA-size batteries.
Fine-Tuning Exposure with a Digital Camera's Metering System
Your camera's exposure metering system is a tireless friend that keeps plugging away, calculating its reckoning of the correct exposure (based on parameters you set) regardless of whether you choose to pay attention or not. It's available whether you're setting exposure manually or using one of the programmed or priority modes. You can't really turn off the exposure meter completely when the camera is on — although it might go to sleep after a few seconds of inactivity. Even then, as soon as you tap the shutter release button, a sleeping meter wakes up, looks at the current view through the lens, and reports its findings.

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