FallisPhoto has quite good tips for any DSLR users on how to clean lenses.

He explained that we must use blower and lens brush first to remove as much grit as possible then we need some commonly used solvents in camera restoration and lens cleaning which are:

1. denatured alcohol, used to remove tar (from cigarettes, or pine pollen) and detriorated light seal material (sometimes found stuck to rear lens elements). Do NOT use rubbing alcohol; it will work, but it is not a benign solvent and it can attack some balsam cements used to glue lens elements together.
2. naphtha (Ronsonol lighter fluid), used to remove grease and oils (naphtha is REALLY good for fingerprints).
3. distilled water, used to remove everything else.
These are all benign and won’t harm your camera if you just keep them out of the electronics.
4. a 50/50 mix of hydrogen peroxide and ammonia, used to remove lens fungus.

Read more »

Photografix.org has a very useful tutorial on histograms which you often find on your digital camera or imaging software such as photoshop. The histogram is the small graph you can view on your LCD, it is used to view whether your photo is over/under expose/contrasted.

You can download the tutorial here (JPG), or visit the website here

Haje Jan Kamps, a DeviantArt member, wrote a good tutorial on “framing in portraiture”

“I spend a lot of time commenting on stuff on DA. One of my pet peeves is bad framing in portraiture. Not bad because it is different from the way I would have done it, but bad because some people don’t even think about framing or cropping. Lighting, the model, and other technical stuff is easy enough: Any monkey and his dog manages to set up a scene and point a camera at it. The trick is to somehow lure some context out of a photograph. This can be done in many different ways, but framing and/or cropping is the easist way to do it, in my opinion.”

Read more »

Will Ford, a DeviantArt member, has a really good tutorial on how to shoot smoke with your Digital Camera. I haven’t got the time to try it myself, but the tutorial looks good and it’s so easy to understand.

Here are 3 simple steps needed to prepare your shots:

Read more »

Fotolia has a list of 10 Nikon D70 Secrets which was re-published from Popular Photography’s Magazine, October 2005 issue. Here’s the first five:

Nikon d70 Secrets

1. Centerweighted Tip: Custom setting 11 in the menu lets you select 6, 8, 10, or 12mm for center weighted metering.
2. Hollow Battery: Hey, the hollow tube sitting in the D70 is not a fake battery. It’s a battery holder that accepts three CR2 lithium cells, and then fits into the camera’s standard battery compartment.

Read more »

Exposure Calculator

This nice piece of program will calculate the appropriate camera settings to yield a correct exposure based on the given light conditions and film speed

Screenshot:

Try Exposure Calculator now

Read more »

Have you ever photographed a wild animal? If so, you realize how hard it is to capture images of wildlife. But there is a better way. Try some of these hotspots for wildlife photography that don’t involve too much wild!

Let’s start with zoos. Zoos are a great place to photograph animals as well as birds.

Read more »

Having an efficient work flow is essential for photographers. In the days of film, many of the tasks in the film work flow were handled by the lab. Now, more and more photographers are switching to digital and have to handle many of these tasks themselves. The purpose of this document is to provide a basic digital work flow for working with RAW images that is camera and system independent.

Most modern digital SLR cameras, and some point and shoot models, have the ability to record the RAW data from an exposure, allowing the photographer to process the images as they see fit. This can be a daunting task, especially for those who don’t have a work flow in place to handle the images from the camera. The following steps will take you through the process of setting up your own RAW digital work flow.

Work flow Step 1: Compose and Expose

Read more »

There are major obstacles to overcome to get into nude photography, not least of which is the need to practise technique. By its very nature there has to be at least one subject, and the big problem for the photographer here is image. To some the image of nude photographer is tied in with the “dirty Macintosh” brigade, with the false wig and dark glasses.

Click to view

Not everyone believes the adage that an erotic photograph, does not have to be nude, and a nude photograph is not necessarily erotic. The biggest challenge is to find a suitable model, and certainly in small town rural backwater areas, it is not the brightest propaganda move to put an advertisement in the Post Office window. It is also suspect to approach someone in the street.

Read more »

Are you having megapixel envy each time you walk by the camera section of your favorite electronics store? So do I. But, do we really need more and more pixels? The answer depends on what we intend to do with the images. First, a quick definition of megapixel:

Megapixel is a technical term for “million pixels”, where a single pixel is the smallest unit of color that a camera’s sensor is able to capture. The more pixels in the sensor, the sharper the image a camera can reproduce. Note that some camera specifications abbreviate megapixel as “MP”.

Read more »