When I started this website, I listed a few great resources on the right sidebar, but I just realized that I’ve never written about them in a post before. So, I thought I’d take a moment to list them here and explain how each one can be helpful on your journey to photograph the wonderful natural world:
This website will show you the moon phases for the current calendar month. It’s helpful when you’re trying to plan a landscape shot and need the moon to be in a specific phase (mostly likely full). I usually just use it as a sort of “quick look” planning tool, and then move on to the next site for more details. [read more…]
A few weeks ago, I explained how to use the histogram to get a better exposure. And although the default histogram will give you a general idea of an image’s exposure, there’s actually a special histogram that’ll tell you a lot more: the RGB histogram.
Here’s how it works:
If you understand the regular histogram, then the RGB histogram is simple: it shows you the histogram of each individual color channel (red, green, and blue).
The bad thing about the regular histogram is that it lumps all these color channels together, making it hard for you to see if you’re underexposing or overexposing a specific color channel. And, on some cameras, I’ve heard that the regular histogram only shows you the green channel. [read more…]
In last week’s post, I explained how to use the histogram to check if you exposed a photo properly. Another thing you probably want to know after taking a photo is whether or not it’s sharp.
Well, one way to see if a photo came out sharp enough, is to zoom in as much as possible on the LCD preview.
This won’t show you exactly how sharp the photo is, but it’ll give you a much better idea than just looking at the zoomed out preview (which almost always looks sharp). [read more…]
Sometimes autofocus can be really annoying. For some shots it’ll focus on the right part of your subject, but then the very next shot it may choose to focus on something far and away into the background.
In a previous post, I shared a few ways to avoid problems like this, but I just found a new solution that I like a lot better: back-button autofocusing.
Here’s how it works:
Normally, your camera will auto focus when you press the shutter button halfway, but with back-button autofocusing, you have to press a button on the back of the camera instead, giving you complete control of when autofocus is initiated. [read more…]
Have you ever been confused by all the different modes on your camera? Maybe you understand what each one does, but you’re not sure which mode is best for what. Well, here’s a summary of the most commonly used modes for nature photography: [read more…]
