Many digital cameras don’t do black and white natively. Those that do shoot in black and white are actually shooting in color and converting in-camera – and they usually do a less than adequate job of it.

Something happened around the late 1990′s that saw a dramatic decrease in the number of black and white pictures being published. Though there were still a good number monochrome pictures being produced, it suddenly became more trendy for commercial photography and photojournalism to be shot in bright color.

I think with the loss of film, many of us started losing our taste for black and white images. Maybe that’s because it’s trickier to get a good looking black and white image now, as the one-stop “convert to black and white” button in cameras rarely do a stellar job.

Though black and white is still a very popular way of finishing a picture, within the realm of digital photography it’s more realistic to shoot in color and convert the picture in post-processing after the fact. This can be done differently in different software, but we’ll approach the Photoshop and the Lightroom method. Any application that gives you control over color channels and a conversion tool will allow you to get similar results, though. » 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

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

It would be easy to tell people “Raw is better, shoot in Raw”.

It may be of a better quality, but it’s not for everyone. JPG is a standard format, and because of it’s universality, it’s understood by almost every application these days. Photoshop, Aperture, Picasa, even Microsoft Word… they can all open up a JPG file. Almost all the photos you see on the internet are JPG files.

The advantage of this standardization is that a JPG is easy to share. If you email a picture to someone, it’s best to email a JPG, and they’ll be able to easily open it up for viewing. For sharing on the web (like eBay, or Flickr) it’s going to be converted to a JPG form. JPG is also fine for making small prints, even though it doesn’t technically have the same high quality as Raw due to being compressed.

…and that’s the downside. JPG is a compressed file format. Without going into the details of how compression works, it’s enough to know that when you shoot a JPG, you are literally throwing away image data when you take a picture in order to make the file size smaller (and thereby allow you to get more pictures on a memory card). This process is called compression.

When you resave a JPG file (if you’ve been editing it) you will sometimes recompress it, meaning that your compression is accumulating and making the picture look exponentially worse. Many newer photo editing applications feature “non-destructive editing” to avoid this.

Raw files come in two flavors. They can be uncompressed files, or they can be “virtually lossless”, meaning that they are compressed, but it’s extremely minimal (to the point of being not visually noticeable), and it doesn’t accumulate. Raw files are named differently from different manufacturers. Canon uses the CR2 extension. Nikon is NEF. Olympus calls theirs ORF. And so on.

There is no standardization with Raw. Raw files are different from manufacturer to manufacturer, and even from camera model to camera model. In other words, the Raw file from a Nikon D70 is different than that from a Nikon D80, or a Canon 5D. Therefore, the software you use to open and edit your files needs to understand your camera in specific.

Adobe (the software giant) is trying to market a practical Raw standard they call DNG, which they provide a free converter for. The converter lets you turn your Raw files into DNG files. There doesn’t seem to be much benefit from doing this, other than converting your files to a format that may outlast your Raw file format, but it’s a gamble.

While all this may seem a little troublesome at first, once you have a workflow in place, it will pay off. I shoot everything in Raw these days. I edit in Raw, I print from the Raw file, and I archive in Raw format. I only convert a Raw file to a JPG if I want to email it or send it to the web.

Raw files store the entirety of the raw pixel data seperately from the image optimization settings on the camera. Those settings are embedded inside the image and are editable in software, which will draw the image using those settings.

For example, if you shoot the image using DAYLIGHT white balance but it was actually shot under FLOURESCENT lighting, you can make this adjustment using software after the fact and the software will redraw the raw photograph using that new information.

If that had been a JPG, you could make color adjustments like that, but would sacrifice a lot of image quality to do it, and it likely wouldn’t be as easy an edit.

Raw

• Better quality
• Easier and more flexible to edit
• Larger files

JPG

• Smaller files
• More universal
• Lower file quality and tougher to edit

Dude, you just like… totally found the sweet spot on your lens, brah.

Every lens has an optimum aperture at which it operates, called it’s Sweet Spot, a term likely coined by a surfer photog. At this aperture, images will have greater clarity and sharpness. If you set your aperture too wide, you let in too much light and the sharpness degrades. If it’s too small, you run the risk of diffraction causing your images to become less clear.

Even fast and expensive lenses are subject to this. That nice 85mm f/1.4 you bought won’t be sharpest at f/1.4. In reality, the point of optimal sharpness is about two stops over the widest aperture. In the case of the 85mm f/1.4, it’s sharpest at about f/4.

Each lens will vary slightly, of course. So how do you find the sweet spot on your lens? Test it! Stick your camera in Aperture Priority mode and shoot the same subject at all the various apertures your lens can afford you. Afterwards, when you have those pictures on your computer, view them at 100% and compare them to one another. When you find the one that’s sharpest, check the shooting data on it and BAM, whatever aperture that image was shot at is the “sweet spot” of the lens.

Surf’s up.

It might be one of the most overlooked features on digital cameras, but it’s likely one of the most important to get the kind of color you expect in your pictures. White balance demands your respect!

Since color temperature is fairly easy for a camera to measure in most scenarios, the automatic white balance usually works quite well – at least good enough for most people. Still, there are situations where you want to have consistent or more accurate color, and where automatic white balance just won’t cut it. That’s where you step in.

Automatic white balance is usually done by the camera measuring the entire scene and assuming that the area of the image which has the lightest tones is white (or the next best thing). It then uses the color temperature of this area to balance the color for the rest of the image. The problem is that maybe you don’t have anything in the image that the camera can use to measure off of properly, or maybe you’re shooting with a flash and the camera can’t make an accurate measurement of the scene because the flash hasn’t fired yet.

There are numerous scenarios for why automatic white balance wouldn’t work as it should. That’s why the camera has other white balance options. Most will feature presets for daylight, tungsten light, flourescent, shade, and flash. These are fairly self explanatory. The advantage of using a preset white balance over automatic is that it will give you consistent color across the board since it’s locking in to a certain color temperature. Usually this is almost a necessity when shooting with flash.

Going a step further is the custom preset white balance feature, which you will find on most digital SLR’s. This feature will let you set your own white balance by measuring it off a white or grey card. If you need consistent color, but the available presets aren’t adequately measuring the color (because it’s a strange or mixed quality of light), doing a white balance preset off a card may be your only option. When you’re shooting under controlled conditions (like in a studio) there’s no reason not to measure the white balance yourself. It will save you headaches later when you’re trying to post-process.

The question I often get asked is whether there’s a difference, when manually measuring, between using a white or grey card, and the answer is no. The idea is to take a measurement off something that has no color cast, and the camera will then give you a nice neutral (and balanced) image.

One gadget that’s attracted a lot of attention and received good reviews is the ExpoDisc, which is almost like a filter that you use when presetting your White Balance. It’s a more portable solution to carrying a white card with you, and depending on who you believe, it may even yield more accurate results.

One thing is for sure though, that when you pay attention to your white balance and set it properly, you will get more accurate, more consistent color each and every time. So throw away that automatic white balance and try it out, you’ll be surprised at the results.

One of the trickier natural phenomenons to take a good picture of are rainbows. You’ll be driving along in the rain or looking out your window from work when you see it, and by the time you’re ready to take a picture – it’s gone (or less brilliant then it was when you saw it at first). This time of year (and spring) are great for catching rainbows though – if the conditions are right.

The conditions in the atmosphere change so quickly, however, and rainbows require a certain set of circumstances to form. Because of this, you need to move quickly and be ready for one to happen whenever the skies seem right. The conditions that usually result in a rainbow are a mixture of dark skies where rain is falling and light skies where the sun is shining. Somewhere between the two is where you’ll find your rainbow… (I know, that sounds so corny).

Framing

Taking a good rainbow picture is mostly a matter of framing it properly. The surroundings are the bulk of the picture, and if your landscape looks awful, so will the picture – no matter how beautiful the rainbow is.

Dark skies are great for backgrounds, and the quality of light that results from a dark/light sky combination is usually pretty good, resulting in some nice saturated color on the ground.

Foregrounds are also important. Check for power lines and manmade objects and make sure they don’t detract from the picture. Positioning yourself and your camera can sometimes compensate for, or eliminate altogether, the presence of poorly framed elements.

Polarizing Filter

A polarizer will help you get more vivid, saturated color out of your skies and any foliage (trees, grass, etc) in the picture. It will also help bring out detail in the clouds. By turning the ring on the polarizer, you can highlight various different parts of the rainbow and get different effects (which you will see through the viewfinder before you take the picture).

For further reading on polarizers and their use, check out this article.

Tripod

Often times the whole sky above you is dark when you’re framing your rainbow picture, and if you’re using a polarizer, you also lose some light. With all this going on, you’ll end up with shutter speeds that are typically a little low to be hand held. Since you want to get the sharpest picture you can get, a tripod is a good way of handling that.

Having trouble defining a certain “look” for your photos? You might want to try experimenting with the Lightroom editing technique outlined in this tutorial video.

The effect adds an “edgy” and “surreal” quality to your images, and it’s really easy to do (especially with Lightroom’s presets). It’s definitely not an effect for everyone, and certainly not for every photo, but it might open up some new ideas and give you some new inspiration. (Thanks, Garrett)