Friday 20 April 2007

OK the shot is in the camera, what next?

When I bought my first digital camera I used to simply save photographs on my PC. That meant thinking of a name for each file leading to file names like Dover Castle 1, Dover Castle 2 etc.
I then spent some time inventing a way to organise the files. I chose to put them into separate folders for each subject, but this rapidly became a nightmare, because many pictures didn't fit neatly into one category.
Take for example a photo taken at a wedding. This might show friends, family, the venue, a limousine, wedding cake, champagne...
OK I could just have a folder for each wedding, but which one contains the picture of the white Rolls Royce?
Fortunately I then discovered ACDSee. This piece of software combines good photo editing and a database allowing you to add tags, or keywords, to your photos. These enable you to use several different words on each image.
Unfortunately my library of images grew too big for ACDSee to cope and their upgrade policy sucks, so I looked at other options.
Read the next post for details.

Sunday 8 April 2007

More on Stock Photography

I've now had a few digital photographs accepted by Dreamstime and it's interesting to see what's acceptable and what isn't.
Public buildings and other architecture seems to be unacceptable, together with arty photographs. Though they did accept some images that I feel fell into the latter category. For example this photograph of our little pony and one of our kitten.
So far the jury's out. I know vaguely what art directors are looking for, but have not yet matched this to the photographs I've taken.
Fotolia is another stock photography site and interestingly their requirements are slightly different. They have accepted a few images that Dreamstime rejected. So it's a bit like Decca rejecting the Beatles, if at first you're rejected, try somewhere else.
That's just about it for today, if you would like to see some of my work, you can search on either of these libraries for my user name SteveF48. I also have some images on Flickr, which I don't think are suitable for stock libraries (SteveF1948).

Saturday 31 March 2007

Food for thought

Please read Frankie's blog and click on one of her links, she needs the encouragement and I need the money.

Stock Photography

The thing that I had not fully realised was that stock photography libraries are not looking for artistic photographs.
They want photographs that are interesting to their buyers. I've now submitted around 50 photographs to Dreamstime and only had 4 accepted. Some of them were frankly not up to my usual quality, but most were rejected because Dreamstime already have more than enough images of that particular subject.
It just goes to show that to make money from Digital Photography you need to know what your customers want. Equally you can save a lot of time and effort by not photographing subjects that are not going to sell.

Thursday 29 March 2007

Making money

The simplest way to make money from your photographs is to sell them via a photographic library.
Yes and no. There are several pitfalls as I've been discovering:
  • Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. You may love an image that the library hates;
  • There's no publicity... Some libraries will not accept images that have logos, or show trademarks;
  • Model releases. If your photograph shows a recognisable person you must ask them to complete a model release. This is just a simple statement that they won't sue the shirt off your back;
  • Most libraries have a minimum size limit, typically 3 megapixels.

The beauty of photo libraries is that it doesn't cost you anything to join.

The downside of this is that millions of people know this, so you have lots of competition.

I've submitted my photos to Dreamstime and Fotalia, please click on one of these links to see what they can offer. Images submitted to both Dreamstime and Fotalia have to be approved by one of their editors, which can take over a week.

It's therefore not a quick way to make your work available for sale.

Monday 19 March 2007

Getting started with a new camera

It is usually very easy to take your first photo with a digital camera, but there are some things to beware of:
  • Does the camera have a rechargeable battery? If so you will need to charge it before you can use the camera. It is best to leave it on charge overnight the first time, even if the indicator goes out or changes colour.
  • Does the memory card need formatting? You did remember to buy a bigger card, didn't you? Most cameras do not require you to format their cards, but some do.

Switch the camera on, point it and press the shutter release. It's that simple, because the default settings for every camera that I've ever used make it so.

The automatic settings are designed to take a reasonable photograph of a static subject in daylight. We will discuss how to broaden the scope of your photography in a later blog, but for now go off and fill the card.

Thursday 8 March 2007

Memory cards

There are several different types of memory for cameras and if you buy the wrong one it won't work in your digital camera.
SD cards are compatible with MMC cards. The main difference between them is that SD cards can be protected and work faster than MMC. SDHC are the same, but have higher capacity and will not work in all cameras. Check the technical specifiation to see whether they will work with your choice.


CF cards (Compactflash) have been around for a while, but are still popular and the newer ones are as fast as any other type of card.

Sony cameras usually use their own type of card called Memory Stick. This comes in a variety of shapes and sizes, so check the specification carefully.

XD card is the newest. It was jointly deveoped by Olympus and Fuji and is the smallest card in common use. There are two types H & M, modern cameras can use either, but once again check carefully.

The last format is Smartmedia, this is just about obsolete. If you buy a camera that requires Smartmedia, for example on eBay!. It's almostly certainly old stock.

Wednesday 7 March 2007

Choosing your first camera

This post will tell you what to look for in a digital camera and what to avoid. It is based on the experience I have gained from buying and using half a dozen digital cameras over the last 7-8 years and over 30 years of photography using conventional film cameras.
The best cameras are digital SLRs. They have the biggest sensors and lots of accessories to help you take photographs in almost any situation.
I don't have one! I would like to, but I can't afford to buy one yet. The price is dropping rapidly and I hope to buy one within a year, or two, but they are still expensive and I can't justify the cost.
I assume that you are reading my post, because you want to get into digital photography, but need some help. In that case feel free to ask me questions, but do not go out and buy a digital SLR. In fact don't buy any camera just yet.
Ask yourself the following questions first:
  • What will I photograph?
  • When will I take photos?
  • How big do I want to print my pictures?
  • What can I afford?

If you are going to take photographs for the family album a simple camera with a flash may be suitable. It's worth trying to find one with an optical zoom lense, if you can. Avoid cameras made by electronics companies, unless they are associated with a traditional camera or lens company.

e.g. Sony and Carl Zeiss, Samsung and Schneider, Panasonic and Leica, HP and Pentax

Something like this:

Amazon's blurb says that it has:

  • 4 million effective pixels, usually this is quoted as 4 megapixel, or 4.0mp. More is better, but 4.0mp should produce at least an A4, or letter, sized photographic quality print;
  • 3 x optical zoom, just what the doctor ordered. Ignore anything about digital zoom, I'll cover that in a later post. Optical zoom is what you need to get closer to the action, so bigger is better;
  • Special scene settings these allow you to quickly optimise the camera for portrait, sports photo, landscape or night scenes;
  • Movie mode is not as good as a proper video camera, but it's OK if you just want something to email or view on your PC.
  • 12MB internal memory, might be useful as a last resort, but you still need a memory card!

What it doesn't say is:

  • The batteries supplied with it will not last very long, so make sure that you buy more. I recommend buying a charger and rechargeable Ni-MH batteries like these:

The camera only takes 2 batteries, so you can still use the camera while you're charging batteries.

  • There are many different types of memory for cameras, make sure that you buy the correct type and size. The types are not interchangeable and many cameras cannot use the largest available cards. This camera uses XD cards like:

It's better to buy 2-3 cards of 256, or 512, mb than to buy the largest card you can afford. That way if the card is damaged, or lost, you won't lose all of your images.

You should be able to connect the camera directly to your PC, but a card reader is handy. Especially if both sets of batteries are flat.

Although I have said that bigger is better, don't go over the top and if possible try to get your hands on a camera before you buy. If you don't have a camera shop locally, look for a review on http://www.dpreview.com/.

If you have any questions about anything in this blog please ask and I'll try to answer.

Exposure part 1

As I said yesterday a camera is just a lightproof box, simple cameras provide little control over the light entering the box.
They will work in reasonably bright light and everything from about 3-5 feet (90-150 cm) will be in focus. You have to remember that the camera is a precision instrument, it will record what it sees.
Your eyes on the other hand change focus and adjust to different light levels without you noticing. If you wait long enough and have normal eyesight you will be able to see in almost total darkness. The eye can handle an enormous range of light intensity, but even the best film, or digital, camera has a much more limited range.
We can compensate for this by adjusting the exposure in two ways. Increase the aperture, or slow the shutter speed, when it's dark; reduce the aperture, or increase the shutter speed, when it's bright.
Professional photographers have cameras that give them total control. This costs money, but there are ways to achieve very good results without buying a very expensive camera.
If you have a simple digital camera try this experiment, with it set on automatic (A, or P):
On a reasonably bright day go outside and point the camera at your house, or apartment building. Make sure that you include some sky in the picture and have the sun in front of you, but behind the building. If the building is too big, photograph something else. The actual subject doesn't matter, it just has to be reasonably big, not shiny and not too bright.
You will notice that the building is brighter than it looks, and the sky will be almost white.
Try again, but this time point the camera at the sky, so that the subject is below the central auto-focus frame.
The building will now be too dark, but the sky will be correctly exposed.

Tuesday 6 March 2007

Getting Started

The title of this blog is 'Digital Photography for Everyone', so I will assume that your only experience of photography is saying cheese when Uncle Fred pointed his camera at you.
Digital Photography is very similar to any other form of photography, you need:
  • Something to register an image; film in a traditional camera, a chip in a digital camera;
  • A way of controlling the amount of light captured; a shutter;
  • A lense to focus the image.

The simplest cameras are lightproof boxes with a simple lens and fixed shutter like this one from Samsung:



They are described as point and click, because that's all you have to do. This one is fine, if you will only be taking holiday snaps, but don't expect to get good pictures in all conditions.
As far as I know all digital cameras have automatic exposure. This means that they will adjust the shutter to allow the right amount of light to hit the sensor to ensure that you end up with an image. It may not be art, but you will see something.
This is an example of what can go wrong:
There are a number of things wrong with this photo, even though my camera has more features than the one above.
It is not the camera's fault, but the photographer's - me.
The faults include:
It's blurred, parts of it are too dark and some are too light, the composition is terrible.
Later I'll dig deeper into the basics, but for now you need to know that buying the camera is not enough. You should also buy at least one memory card, a spare battery and a case.