Review Digital Camera World 10-05-2013

Digital Camera World

Many wonderful memories are captured in black and white. With digital photographs, the art is now in creating black and white images. This course will teach you how to use Photoshop techniques to create beautiful images. From our sponsors

7 common landscape photography clichés (and how to make your shots stand out) Oct 4th 2013, 23:01, by jmeyer Just like anything else there are trends and fashions in photography which means that almost as soon as a style starts to become popular it becomes a cliché.  In their latest guest blog post, the photo management and Canon Project1709 experts at Photoventure take a look at some of the current landscape photography clichés and suggest some alternatives to help your images stand out from the crowd. 1. Blurred water movement It can be very effective and produce some beautiful images, but long exposure shots of water are a bit of a cliché these days. It's a technique that has become increasingly popular with digital photography because you can assess whether you've got the right result on location instead of having to wait until the film is processed. Using a fast shutter speed freezes water movement, often giving a more natural looking result, but you need to time your shot carefully and experiment with the exposure time to produce a pleasing composition. 2. Rock in the foreground, castle in the background It's a composition that has been used and reused for cover images, but it's become rather formulaic. When you see somewhere like Banburgh Castle for the first time it's reassuring to follow a tried and tested composition, but once you've got it in the bag, look for something different, perhaps experimenting with shallow depth of field or different foreground interest. READ MORE How to use a tilt-shift lens (video tutorial) Breaking bad habits: how to add variety to your landscape portfolio 14 photo editing tips and tricks every landscape photographer must know How to photograph anything: best camera settings for landscape photography 10 common landscape photography mistakes every photographer makes Back-button AF: how to master this professional time-saver Oct 4th 2013, 11:18, by jmeyer Avoid switching between AF modes and ensure sharp images with this clever back button focus technique. In this tutorial we’ll explain why professional photographers often rely on back button AF to guarantee best results. If you watch sports photographers, they've often got a thumb hovering over the back of the camera, as well as a finger over the shutter release button. This is back-button focusing, a technique that keeps autofocus locked on a moving subject; locks focus on a stationary subject and recomposes; or keeps focus on a subject if something else enters the frame. With back-button focusing, you simply press the rear button to lock focus on your subject, take your thumb off and you'll always keep your original focus point. If your subject is moving around a lot, you need to keep the back button pressed down all the time to keep focus-tracking (in continuous or AF Servo focus mode), then press the shutter button when you're ready. How to set up back button AF on your DSLR 01 Find your AF screen Every camera model handles back-button focusing slightly differently, but on a higher-end SLR such as the Nikon D600 or Canon 7D, you usually need to assign either the AF ON button (or the AE Lock button) as your main focusing button. We are using a Nikon D800, and we're going to start by going to Custom Settings Menu>Autofocus.   02 Assign a new button On the screen that follows, you need to select AF-ON only from the AF activation screen. Doing this decouples autofocus from your camera's main shutter release button, but you can obviously still use this button when you want to take the actual shot. If you try and half-press it to focus, nothing at all should happen.   03 Set continuous AF Before you start shooting, set AF mode to Continuous (Nikon) or AF Servo (Canon). This allows you to keep focusing on moving subjects by keeping the AF ON button pressed. To lock-focus a stationary subject, press the AF On button to achieve focus, then release it, allowing you to recompose for a better composition.   04 Important caveats Now that you're set up, go and practise! You'll need to change back to conventional AF activation via the shutter release button if you use a shutter release cable. Also on our Nikon D800, we need to ensure AF-C priority selection is set to Release, again done via Custom Settings Menu>Autofocus. READ MORE How to choose the best AF mode How to focus on off-centre subjects Creative focus: camera tips for static to spontaneous subjects Focus modes: how, when and why you need to change your AF settings How to focus your camera for any subject or scene: free photography cheat sheet

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