Keyboard cleaning?! Does it have anything to do with digital photography?
Yes!
If you take digital photos you cannot avoid working on a computer. Without one of the most important input devices, the keyboard, the computer is mostly useless. So there is indeed a connection between digital photography and keyboard, with a stretch.
You eat, drink, or maybe drool over your keyboard and eventually the keyboard will become dirty. If you have been trying the typical dusting, wiping methods, you know it doesn’t get you too far. So what’s the best way to clean the keyboard?
Take it apart and wash it!
If you are scared by the imagined scene of the keys popping out all over the place, your fear is completely unfounded. If you do what I am going to show to your keyboard, you will most likely void the warranty on the keyboard if it still hasn’t expired. If that’s not a problem for you, read on. Read More…
Posted in
Miscellaneous on December 20th, 2009.
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If you want to sell your unwanted stuff on eBay, Craig’s List, or elsewhere, some good looking product photos will certainly enhance the chance of quick selling or getting the money you ask for. Taking good product photos, especially those with seamless white background is not difficult at all. And you don’t need to purchase any specialized professional gear such as a shooting table or tent. One umbrella or softbox is all your need for the lighting part of the process. Read More…
Posted in
Tips and techniques on December 16th, 2009.
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Nowadays, camera manufacturers want you to believe their cameras are very sophisticated precision digital instrument that can take great photos effortlessly. There is some truth in the marketing literatures, but they don’t typically tell you at the same time that their cameras can also produce garbages if the users fail to use them properly. I admit, this is really not necessary for them to do so in the marketing materials and most camera manuals do come with such warnings. The matter of the fact is that many people have some unrealistic expectations from their cameras that cost them hundreds if not thousands of dollars. Read More…
Let’s face it. The value of a digital camera drops like a rock over time. I spent $1300 on a Nikon D70 in 2004. It is now worth about $300, without factoring in the inflation. How to make the photography hobby worth the big price tag besides the pure enjoyment? Read this interesting post on the personal finance blog I will teach you to be rich. In addition to what were said there, I found selling photos is another obvious way of paying for the cost of photography hobby. I made enough on a micro stock photo site (with just a few hundred photos) to cover the cost of the D70, a D200, and half a dozen decent lenses in the past a few years.
Posted in
Inspiration,
Miscellaneous on March 17th, 2008.
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Cop went extra mile to find the owner of a digital camera filled with safari photos. The owner was obviously very happy to find the lost photos and memory. As a digital photographer, we cannot always count on someone to return your lost camera and invaluable photos. Here is something you can do to safe-guard your captures:
- Always download and backup photos immediately after shooting if possible.
- Keep the backup copies of the photos separate from the camera and the other copy.
- Label or mark your camera, flash media, and accessories with your name and phone number.
- If your camera supports it, setup your camera to automatically tag your photos with your name and contact information in the EXIF metadata section of each photo.
Here are some great resources for Capture NX from Nikon.
- Capture NX Tips and tricks from Nikon Europe. You can download the PDF tips and tutorials in PDF foramat. Please note there is a zip archive of everything at the bottom in case you want to download them all (why not).
- Tech tips, case study, tech guide, and movies from official Capture NX site.
Is Capture NX any good for JPEG shooters? Although it is mainly a RAW converter for Nikon NEF files, it is also a very useful tool for for JPEG shooters.
For the most part, you get the same powerful editing capabilities as for NEF raw files. Plus, you can save all your edits at the end in NEF format non-destructively! You can go back to your original JPEG photo embedded in the NEF file without image quality degradation. You can also create different versions of the same JPEG photo and save them all in a single NEF file. Of course, you can export JPEG file again.
In Capture NX, you can create multiple versions of a photo and save all the different versions in the same NEF file. For example, you may want to have different crop sizes, colors vs. black and white, different sharpening levels of the same photo. Instead of creating multiple copies of the RAW files, Capture NX can use the same set of RAW data with all the version information embedded so you don’t get several large files to manage. Read More…
Posted in
Photo editing,
Tutorials on December 23rd, 2007.
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