Friday, March 28, 2008

35mm Camera

35mm Camera

Though I use my digital camera for most of the pictures that I take, I still keep my 35mm camera around for some things. Digital seems to be taking over, but there is still something to be said for using film in some cases. My daughter likes to take pictures just like I do, but I don’t trust her with my expensive camera. When she wants to take some photos I had her my 35mm camera and she can snap away to her hearts content.

The 35mm camera that I have was not an overly expensive one, but it was a great camera for a very long time. It still takes great pictures even though I’ve had it for over ten years. Someone I used to know worked in a photo shop, and someone had brought in his or her 35mm to be fixed. The person decided they didn’t want it any longer and bought something else. They told my friend to just throw away the 35mm camera, but instead he gave it to me. It was fully automated and a great little camera. All it needed was a new belt somewhere and it has worked great ever since.

This 35mm camera has been on a lot of adventures with me, and has even survived being dropped to the floor. Luckily one of my friends had her toe in the way when it dropped, sparing my poor 35mm camera for sustaining any damage. There have been other times when it was dropped, shook up, and jarred around, but the thing just keeps on working. Perhaps there is a little Energizer bunny inside. It still winds, snaps, and opens and closes perfectly.

If you have a 35mm and are going to get a digital, make sure you hang on to the film camera. You never know when you may need it, and you may want to have a back up camera incase your digital battery goes dead at a very bad time. I have had to use my 35mm camera in a few moments when I really wanted to take a picture but my digital decided it was time to shut off. It is always great for kids who want to take pictures but haven’t learned how to handle an expensive digital. Film is still a good deal, and sometimes you might prefer the look of film verses a digital print anyway.

Family Photos

Family Photos

The used to be that if you wanted to share family photos you had to make extra prints to give out. Today, you can share your photos the old-fashioned way, or you can share digital prints in many different ways. If you have a computer and a digital camera, you can share your family photos with anyone else you know that also has a computer. You can even share your photos via your cell phone if it works with photos. Though not all phones can do this, many of the newer models coming out handle the only photos or video as well.

The problem I have with sharing family photos is that some of my family is not online. Though my mother used to have a computer, she no longer does. The computer they had died a long time ago, and they have yet to replace it. I can however, share my family photos with my dad, my sisters, my brothers, and the rest of my family via the Internet. This makes sharing photos so much easier, it also saves me a lot of money. Though my digital camera was expensive, in the end I save money by not having to make so many prints.

When sharing family photos online, there are a few things you should remember. When you post pictures of your children the Internet, you cannot control who sees them. If you e-mail them to your family they are likely to remain private. However, if you put them in a public website anyone with access to a computer may view your family photos. Though not everyone is concerned with privacy, many people are. Consider the subject matter and content of your family photos before you post them where anyone can see them.

There is an even better way to share family photos with those who may not have access to a computer. You don’t have to make prints, but you may have to spend a little money. Just recently, I saw a new product in the store that I thought was pretty amazing. It was one of those things that made me think I wish I had thought of it first. What I found was a digital photo album that not only stores family photos, but can store videos as well. All you have to do is put the photos into the frame, and you can give it to anyone you wish.

Friday, March 14, 2008

Advanced Digital Photos Programming And Editing

Many people have trouble knowing how or whether or not in the first place to edit their digital photos. Most photographs just don't turn out the way you imagined; they might be too dark, or too red, or too big. Depending on what you need in a digital photo-editing program, you may want to get a more simple or a slightly more advanced software. For example, if all you're planning on doing is correcting a few minor details in a picture, you want to go as simple as possible. If you're planning on adding things to pictures or taking them out, or changing the color of objects, you will want a more advanced program.

There are many pictures that you've probably taken that would've looked great... except for the red-eye. Just about every graphics program has a red-eye removal, so that no matter what level your program is you'll be able to remove the red-eye. However, in order to prevent it in the first place, it helps to know what causes it. Red-eye is caused by the flash reflecting to the back of the eyes all the way to the retina, and the red comes from the blood vessels in the eye. Therefore, if you flash a light in the eyes of your subject, this will cause the pupil to contract, and then there won't be any red-eye.

Cropping is a good tool to use when you have a picture that has too much going on, or perhaps too little. In the former, you would want to cut the image down to just the subject of your picture, essentially eliminating all the distracting surrounding objects. In the latter, you would do the same thing, in order for your subject not to look too solitary. Once you begin cropping, you'll find there are many different creative ways to crop your pictures; every picture is different, and you'll find different ways to improve your pictures with cropping.

Experimenting with colors can be a great way to create a whole new picture from something plain. There are so many ways to edit colors, and playing around with them can help you discover different techniques. You can make a photograph look aged with sepia, or you can change a color photograph to black and white. Just about all photo-editing programs have color-balance options. All you have to do is experiment with them to find results you like.

When you upload your pictures from your digital camera to your computer, most of them will probably be a little blurry. Probably it won't be enough to make you want to change it, but if it's not, there's always the UnSharp Mask that you can use to sharpen the image. Most cameras don't apply any kind of sharpening filter to pictures they take, and so they won't always look as crisp as you might want. Most likely if you have a basic editing program you will be able to sharpen your pictures successfully, and you can sharpen them as much or as little as you want.

When you email pictures to friends, you will notice it usually takes a very long time to attach the files. This is because the size of the picture is probably too large to process well. In order to reduce the size of the file, you must reduce the size of the picture. Your editing program will most likely have an option that allows you to change the dimensions of the images, which will change the size. Usually you would use this option to make images smaller, not larger, as the quality would be greatly reduced.

Saving your pictures in the appropriate format is very important to ensure the best quality. If you are planning to continue to work with a certain picture, save it as a TIFF image, as it will retain all the detail of the picture. However, if you want a compressed image and you are done working with it, you can save it as a JPEG. Although a JPEG is a lossy file format, it does not lose enough data to be noticeably visible, and it is a good compressing format. This means it will make the size of the file smaller. As long as you don't keep opening, editing, and saving a JPEG image, you won't get too much degradation of the photo.

Professional Equipments To Make Digital Photos

Selling digital photos online does not require you to be a professional or have professional equipment. All you basically need is a good quality digital camera and internet access. Having the two of these will let you make a lot of money if you work hard enough. Your primary customers will be thousands of people that want pictures they can use over and over again and for specific projects. These can be graphic artists, web designers, companies, and editorial magazines.

Submitting to the websites

The first thing you will want to do is submit your stock photos to stock photo websites. These websites are free for you to submit the photos to but cost money for the customers to buy photos. You will be supplying the photos to the customers and thus earning money for every photo a customer downloads that is yours.

Many of these micro stock photo websites will give you the choice to set the price of your photo to whatever you want. Do not set it high and start off with the default price when you first start. When your photos are getting downloaded multiple times a day then you can start raising the price. The high demand will give you that power.

It is not hard to get started in the micro stock photo industry. Many new photographers start off in the business and try to earn money through stock photos. It's the ones that continue to work at it and develop their own style that live through and are successful.

When you take photos be sure to not have any trademarks or brands in your photos. If you happen to forget to remove clothing items with a brand try to get rid of it in an editing program. Do not upload your photo with trademarks because they won't be accepted.

There are many subjects that you can photograph for stock photos. You can take pictures of dogs, birds, cats, flowers, people, basically anything! Here's a major tip that will help you out. Do not try to cover everything. Stick with one category and specialize in it for a while. Build a stock photo collection of these photos. For example, take pictures of flowers only. Specialize and build a collection of many different flowers. Be sure to have plenty of coverage for each flower and different angles, lighting, and distances from the flower. Doing this will make you get better at taking flower pictures and also make you fill in many gaps that can be in flower stock photos.

Selling digital photos online is very easy and can be very rewarding. When you start out you probably won't make much money but as you continue adding more and more pictures that are getting better each time you can start making a serious amount of money.