Review Digital Camera World 08-14-2013

Digital Camera World

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Best tripod alternatives: 5 budget options for the photographer travelling light Aug 13th 2013, 23:01, by jmeyer If you want sharp images at slower shutter speeds you’ll need to support your camera. But a tripod isn’t always a practical option. We round up 5 of the best tripod alternatives for photographers on the go. Shooting handheld gives you plenty of freedom, but there are occasions when you need to support your camera in order to capture sharp shots. Tripods prevent camera shake when you're shooting long exposures – whether it's in low light, or for creative effects such as blurring water – but there are times when it's just not practical to use one: perhaps you're on holiday and travelling light, or are taking a short afternoon stroll and don't want the hassle of lugging a tripod. Cue the tripod alternatives. While still providing solid support for your camera and lens, they're lighter and more compact than conventional tripods, making them easier to transport and set up. They come in all shapes and sizes, from simple bean bags to cleverly designed multi-position mounts, to suit different shooting situations. So whether you need something to help support your camera and a heavy lens while waiting for action to unfold, or simply something to stabilise your camera for pin sharp shots in low light while out and about, there's something for everyone. We sourced five tripod alternatives, all of which cost under £90, weigh less than 1.2kg and will support a maximum weight of at least 1.5kg. Thinks to consider in a tripod alternative Practical uses When choosing a support, think about what types of photography you'll be using it for, as some supports may be restrictive. For example, if you tend to shoot in a portrait format a monopod will be of no use unless you have a ball-head attachment, and if you're on location with a beanbag that needs filling you need to make sure you can get hold of materials to fill it. If you choose a product like the Fat Gecko or GorillaPod, you'll need an appropriate surface or object to fit it to: you may not be able to find a car window if you're shooting wildlife in the middle of nowhere! Using Live View Once your camera is mounted to a support you don't always have easy access to the viewfinder, and this is where Live View comes in handy for composing shots. Another advantage of Live View is for focusing: you can zoom in on key areas, and adjust the focus precisely using the focus ring. PAGE 1 – Thinks to consider in a tripod alternative PAGE 2 – Best tripod alternative: Manfrotto MP3-D01 PAGE 3 – Best tripod alternative: Velbon Ultra Stick L50 Monopod PAGE 4 – Best tripod alternative: Joby GorillaPod SLR-Zoom and Ballhead PAGE 5 – Best tripod alternative: C14F-ST Standard Double Bean Bag (filled) PAGE 6 – Best tripod alternative: Fat Gecko Triple Mount READ MORE Best tripod under £150: 6 top models tested and rated 10 reasons why your photos aren’t sharp (and how to fix them) Hands-free photography: 4 ways to take pictures without touching your camera Camera Shake: the ultimate cheat sheet for using tripods, monopods and shooting handheld How to edit landscapes: get extra detail from shadows, midtones and highlights Aug 13th 2013, 10:37, by jmeyer In our latest Raw Tuesday tutorial we’ll show you how to make adjustments to your landscapes in Adobe Camera Raw to get a well-exposed shot with more detail in the shadows, mid tones and highlights. By shooting your landscapes in raw format, you can give yourself a safety net that enables you to take a more relaxed attitude to setting your shutter, aperture and even white balance settings while on location. Thanks to the extra information about colour, exposure and tone that's packed into every raw format file, you can adjust your landscape with ease without jeopardising image quality. Raw files are much more forgiving than compressed JPEGs when it comes to clawing back detail lost in the shadows – or rescuing textures in apparently blown-out highlights. If you push a JPEG too far, you'll end up adding unwanted artefacts, such as noise or halos, to the shot. In a compressed JPEG, there's less information to work with, so existing artefacts such colour fringes caused by chromatic aberration are much more difficult to remove. Raw files give you more editing options, which is why it makes sense to shoot in this superior format. You can always downgrade a raw file to a JPEG, but you can't go in the other direction and upgrade a compressed JPEG source photo to a high-quality raw format file. In this tutorial, we'll take a fairly well-exposed landscape and tweak its attributes to give it a wider contrast range, more vivid colours, and restore detail hidden in the midtones and highlights. Follow these simple steps to make a good shot look even better. How to edit landscapes in Adobe Camera Raw 01 Open your RAW file Open your landscape in the Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) editor. By default, Photoshop tries to produce a wider tonal range of shadows and highlights by setting the Contrast to +50 and Brightness to +25. This can cause the cloud highlights to lose a bit of detail, so set Brightness, Contrast and Blacks to 0.   02 Boost exposure You can now see the raw file as it was originally shot. The histogram has plenty of information at the left (shadows) and the middle (midtones). There aren't as many pixels towards the far right (highlights). Our landscape is slightly underexposed. To brighten up the image, drag the Exposure slider to +0.80.   03 Clobber clipping Click on the Highlight Clipping Warning triangle at the top-right of the histogram. The brightest highlights show up as red patches. These blown-out areas will print as pure white. To restore this highlight detail, drag the Recovery slider to 16. The red clipping warning patches will vanish and you'll see more detail.   04 Fill in the midtones Now the shot looks brighter and the contrast is less flat. The bridge is a prominent feature and consists mainly of midtones. Reveal the texture in its midtones a little more by dragging Fill Light up to 12. The midtones in the distant tree line are a little washed out, so gently darken them by dragging Clarity to 27.   05 Increase the blacks For an even more striking contrast between shadows and highlights, increase Blacks to 4. This darkens the blackest shadows. Create a wider range of tones by sliding Contrast up to +13. The histogram looks more balanced, with plenty of tonal information in the shadows, midtones and highlights.   06 Vivid colour To give your landscape a final polish, you can boost its desaturated colours and ensure that your final print has plenty of punch. The Vibrance slider enables you to enhance typical landscape colours, such as blues and greens. Whack it up to +63 to produce colours that are much more vivid. Final Tip Sharpening increases the contrast around the edge of pixels, which helps to give the shot more impact. Click on the Detail tab. Use the Zoom tool to view the shot at 100%. The finer branches in our shot look a little soft, so drag Amount to 49. To keep the delicate branches looking sharp, move Radius down to 1.0, or you risk them looking woolly. Protect the smallest details by dragging the Detail slider to 23. READ MORE 14 photo editing tricks and tips every landscape photographer must know 10 common landscape photography mistakes every photographer makes 10 quick landscape photography tips 13 ways famous landscape photographers make money from photography

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