There are a lot of clever ways to play with the light from your flash, but if you want a dirt cheap and effective way to diffuse the light coming from a popup or external flash, why not try putting something in front of it… like a coffee filter? Also effective is a paper towel, or even a piece of white copier paper. All of these will soften the quality of the light and make it look less harsh on your subject. They will also drastically reduce the range of the flash too, so don’t get too far away.

When shooting outdoors, you run into all sorts of elements that could potentially damage the camera. Water and sand are the two big ones. You need to protect your gear from exposure to that stuff… and a plastic bag is often not enough.

Here are four recommendations for good camera covers/shrouds that I’ve encountered in my travels, and have received good reviews from those who have used them. » MORE

The best photographers know the merits of a good tripod. Other photographers try their best to avoid them, because they don’t like the weight, or the bulk, or the they just can’t see the point.

With any camera, even the best, you’ll never be able to hand hold as steady as a tripod can. With even the fastest lenses, you’ll always encounter situations where you could use some support to shoot at slower shutter speeds. Sometimes the very point is to shoot at low shutter speeds.

The rule of thumb is that you can hand hold a camera so long as the shutter speed is (1/focal-length). So if you’re shooting with a 50mm lens, 1/50 is about as slow as you should go. At 300mm, 1/300 should be your minimum. This is because when you zoom out, you increase the magnification of the subject, but also the magnification of any camera movement. Anything slower than this speed, and you should lock the camera down somehow. If you don’t, you run the risk of blurriness due to camera shake.

That’s where a tripod and monopods come in. » MORE

If you’ve ever used a flash on your camera, be it a built-in popup flash or a single external flash on the hotshoe, you’ve almost certainly gotten pictures that look flat and drab at one time or another.

This is kind of typical for single point lighting which happens to be fired directly at the subject. With a single light, it’s best to diffuse the light somehow or redirect it by bouncing it off a ceiling, a wall, a bounce card, or something similar. You’ll still only have one source of light, but you’ve now softened it and distributed it over a larger area, which is typically more flattering for your subject.

Multi point lighting is a more advanced method of lighting your subject using several sources of light. Those sources could be studio lights or strobes, it really doesn’t matter. It’s the positioning and use of those lights which define the method, which is the de-facto industry standard for photo and video lighting. Every good photographer should understand these lighting basics. » MORE

Great stocking stuffers for your photographer. It’s that time of year again, when malls are full, roads are slick, cinammon and turkey giblet aroma fills the air, and money is spent. If you’re a photographer and you need ideas to pass along, or you’re looking for gift ideas for a photographer, it can be tough. Camera bodies and lenses aren’t cheap, and certainly aren’t stocking stuffers (incidentally, if you do regard these items as such, please feel free to email me and become a close friend).

Small and wallet-friendly gift ideas do exist, however. Here’s a few! » MORE

Taking winter pictures can be fun and rewarding, but it can also be as cold as a landlord’s heart, and it’ll require a little forethought if you plan to go out. If you’re going to be in the deep freeze for more than a few minutes, you’ll want to make sure you have the right clothing, some proper food, and that you’ve considered the limitations and special needs of your gear.

There’s nothing worse then seeing the picture you want, but being unable to take the picture simply because you haven’t thought it out or because you’re too miserable to try. So let’s revisit what you need to keep yourself working as a lean, mean, photo taking machine during those expeditions in the cold winter months. » MORE

Finding out your shutter count is one of those crazy things that photographers like to do, because most digital SLR’s will record that information internally. The problem is manufacturers don’t make it easy information to access. However, knowing your shutter count can let you know whether it’s time to get that camera serviced or not, before it breaks down.

For Nikon owners (and I understand this also works for Sigma and Fuji), there’s a handy tool out there called IExif from Opanda. While Opanda specializes in retail EXIF reading/editing software, the basic IExif application is freeware, and you can download it from here. IExif will let you open a JPG and read it’s metadata – which in and of itself is not terribly impressive (most image editing applications will let you do that), but it will show you the stuff that most other applications will not, including all the non-documented EXIF values.

Lots of this stuff is encrypted and won’t mean anything to you, unless you happen to know what 00A8 is referring to on a Nikon D200. However, it will let you see the shutter count for that image. It will only do this for JPG files unless you pay for IExifPro which can open Raw files.

Opanda also has a plugin for Firefox that will let you right click on an online photograph and view its EXIF data, assuming it still has any. You can download the free Firefox plugin here.

For Canon owners, it seems that Opanda doesn’t really decrypt the EXIF tag for shutter count, so you’ll need to look elsewhere. CanCount is an application from a German software maker which will show you the count on 1-series cameras. I also understand that Photomechanic will read some lower end Canon shutter count information, but if you know of something more concrete, let us know.

“The goggles, they do nothing!”

Sometimes you have too much light, and that’s where Neutral Density (or ND) filters come in. Neutral Density filters are designed to simply reduce the amount of light that gets to your camera. They are dark filters that typically come in 1, 2 or 3 stop reduction increments, and are most often used outdoors under bright sunny conditions.

With most shooting situations (especially indoors or under low light) the issue is the opposite, so it’s hard to imagine needing less light. Typically, you need more light, faster shutter speeds, etc. That’s why ND filters are often used for landscape photography, where during a bright sunny day, light is in abundance. This may simply be because of the light amount, or because you have light hitting off a highly reflective surface such as sand, water, or snow and ice.

Left side with no ND filter, Right side with an ND4 filter.

Reduce the Light Intensity

Maybe you want to simply reduce the amount of light in the picture. All cameras have a maximum shutter speed they can attain, and every lens has a widest aperture they can open up to. If you have too much light, it can strain these limits. Also, every lens has a sweet spot which you may want to shoot in, which could require less light to achieve.

Slower Shutter Speed

If you’ve ever shot a picture of running water, you’ve likely tried using a slower shutter speed to indicate motion. There are a variety of other scenarios where using a slow shutter speed may be the technique required to get the shot, but you can only slow down the shutter speed if you can reduce the amount of light. If your aperture is already at it’s minimum, an ND filter will let you cut out some light so you can achieve this.

Wider Apertures

Perhaps you want a low depth of field in your picture, or (as above) you’re looking to shoot at your lenses optimum aperture for the best sharpness. If you have too much light in the scene, the camera will struggle to not blow out the image at wider apertures, so an ND filter will help you out immensely here.

Graduated ND Filters

Finally, you can buy graduated ND filters which go from dense (dark) to light in a gradient pattern on the filter. These are handy when only a portion of the image is bright (like the sky) and a portion is darker (like the ground). It will help to achieve exposure balance.