Review Digital Camera World 06-28-2013

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Digital Camera World

Garden photography tips: how to take professional pictures of plants Jun 27th 2013, 23:01 In our latest Professional Photographer to the Rescue post we share our best garden photography tips for any camera, in any garden! Our quick guide shows you how to compose, expose and how to take professional pictures of plants you can be proud of.   Meet our professional photographer Clive Nichols is one of the UK's leading flower and garden photographers. He's been photographing the beauty of the botanical world for more than 20 years and is a judge for the International Garden Photographer of the Year competition. See more of his work at www.clivenichols.com. Meet our our apprentice Sam Whitton, from Scarborough, works as a graphic designer in York and loves all aspects of picture taking. But he is particularly keen to refine his garden photography. Technique Assessment Setting up your camera Sam was new to high-level garden photography and eager for some tips from a professional. Clive suggested some key criteria to get him going. "It's always best to keep everything as straightforward as possible. I try to shoot on ISO100 whenever possible for images with maximum quality and minimum noise. “What is more, I always shoot in RAW so I can tweak images at the processing stage. I use Aperture Priority (Av) mode on my SLR so I can control the depth of field. I also remove my camera strap because it always gets in the way!"   What to look for After setting up his camera gear, Sam was a bit spoilt for choice, and not sure where to begin. Clive offered some advice to get him going. "Before you start shooting, you must look for the perfect specimen. “I've often seen a flower or plant from a distance only to discover on closer inspection that it's not as good as I thought. To take a perfect flower photograph you must choose the best specimen you can – look at every bloom or plant closely before setting up and always check that the background complements the subject." PAGE 1: Meet our professional photographer and apprentice PAGE 2: Garden photography tips for during the shoot PAGE 3: Final garden photography tips from our professional photographer PAGE 4: Our professional photographer’s recommended gear PAGE 5: Shot of the Day READ MORE 10 common camera mistakes every photographer makes How to use a camera: exposure modes made simple 99 common photography problems (and how to solve them) 15 common photography questions from beginners (and how to solve them) Histogram: photography cheat sheets for achieving perfect exposure Jun 27th 2013, 13:33 Before the histogram, photography enthusiasts had to go through a lot more effort to get good exposures. But while the histogram is one of the most useful tools on your camera, it’s also one of the least understood. Understanding the histogram in photography and how it tracks your exposure is one of the key steps in learning how to become a better photographer. In this quick guide – and with a few handy cheat sheets – we’ll show you exactly how to interpret your camera’s histogram. Judging whether you have taken a decent shot and a decent exposure is simple with a DSLR. As soon as you fire the shutter, a preview of your picture flashes up on the LCD. You can instantly see if the shot is too bright, or too dark – so it seems unnecessary to have a second, more scientific, way of judging the suitability of your exposure settings… So why bother looking at the histogram? First, and foremost, displaying the camera’s histogram is not a replacement for looking at the image itself when you review a picture. This mathematical graph simply gives you some additional, but invaluable, information. Reviewing images with your camera’s histogram The qualitative nature of the preview image means that it can be hard to see if an area of the shot is slightly too dark, or slightly too bright. The quantitative graph does not lie, and tells it to you straight. Once you learn to read them, histograms clearly show the exposure – and whether you need to use exposure compensation to darken or lighten the next image you take. In the first of our three histogram photography cheat sheets below we show you a typical histogram and explain how to read and assess the graph. Simply click on the infographic to see the larger version of this histogram photography cheat sheet, or drag and drop it to your desktop. Most importantly, your histogram also tells you about the contrast of the scene. This allows you to avoid – or at least take special care with – subjects that have a greater range of brightnesses than your sensor can cope with. It also ensures that you get the best-quality results from your sensor when shooting low-contrast subjects. The standard histogram – found on all DSLRs – plots the brightness (or luminosity, to use the scientific language) of every pixel in the picture. This brightness is measured on a 256-step scale (the number of permutations available in a JPEG digital image). This graph can also be displayed as you frame up a picture on cameras that offer Live View (more on that later). PAGE 1: Reviewing images with your camera’s histogram PAGE 2: Expose to the right PAGE 3: Using the histogram as you shoot PAGE 4: Interpreting different histogram shapes READ MORE First camera crash course: simple solutions for mastering your new DSLR 10 common camera mistakes every photographer makes How to use a camera: exposure modes made simple 99 common photography problems (and how to solve them)

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