Digital Photography Tips and Techniques

What are your favorite lens apertures? After running the stats on 20K+ photos on one of my hard drives, I plotted the data in this chart.

My most popular aperture is f/8. It looks like I am the “set the lens at f/8 and shoot away” type. The fact is that I shoot lots of landscapes and f/8 works well most of the time. I go to extremes of f/2.8 when I want to have very shallow depth of field (DOF). For most family activity and informal portrait shots, I use f/5.6 to ensure sufficient DOF and avoid busy background associated with smaller apertures. Read More…

I have been having some fun with Nikon Capture NX lately. It is not Photoshop, but it has some really nice features that can make the same photo enhancements effortlessly with out purchasing the much more expensive alternative. Today, I will present a tutorial on how to remove distracting background using the selection brush in Capture NX.

The selection brush tool allows you to selectively apply effects and enhancements. You can do the same in Photoshop using layers and layer masks, but the selection brush tool in Capture NX is more intuitive and doesn’t require users to master the concept of layers and layer masks.

The selection brush tool is highlighted with a red circle in the screen capture shown above. Next to the brush icon, you can see a small “+” button and a small “-” button. These are the two modes the selection brush can work in. In the plus “+” mode, the brush will allow you to paint in the effect you have previously applied to the entire image. In the minus “-” mode, the brush will allow you to remove the previously applied effect from where you paint over with the brush. Confused a little bit? Don’t worry. It is actually much easier than it sounds. Read More…