Digital Photography Tips and Techniques

CNet UK has a fascinating article about the history of digital camera. It is amazing to compare what we are shooting today with the very first digital camera (imagine a 4kg/8.8lb toaster sized machine!). I picked up the story on Slashdot.

The Eye-Fi is a secure digital (SD) format memory card with Wi-Fi (802.11g, 54mbps) that can wirelessly send photos from a digital camera to a computer or photo sharing service of your choice. It has generated quite some buzz on gadget blogs (Engadget, Gizmodo, CrunchGear) but some mixed reviews (Post-Bulletin, PC World, DPReview) since its launch.

Overall, it works as advertised but comes with some limitations. For example,

• It only transmits JPEG photos, raw shooters are out of luck (The company says other formats and raw support are coming).
• It has limited range (< 45ft, and practically <20ft).
• It only works on trusted, encrypted, pre-configured wireless network but not open access points.
• It is only in SD format (some have reported it works with a SD-to-CF adapter).
• It is slow to start and slow to upload especially when uploading to online photo sharing sites.
• It uploads everything, no way of selecting images for upload.

Despite the limitations, it does come with a reasonable price of $100. If you find it fun or useful for you (with the limitations), you may want to give it a try.

If you have sold anything online in an e-Store or on eBay, you probably noticed how the product photo greatly affect the potential customers interests and your bottom line (profit). I came across this great two-piece article on Auction Inspector Blog.

• Professional Product Photos in a Flash: Part 1: Equipment.
• Professional Product Photos in a Flash: Part 2: How to Set Up Your Photo and Get a Good Shot.

High pass sharpening is one of the popular sharpening techniques along with unsharp mask (USM) and lab color sharpening used by Adobe Photoshop users.

Capture NX is Nikon’s NEF raw workflow software and it has many innovative processing technologies. The best thing about it is that it offers most of what raw shooting photographers need without breaking the bank. Here is a tutorial on how to do the high pass sharpening using Nikon Capture NX. Read More…