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Tutorials - The RAW File Format. The RAW file format is digital photography's equivalent of a negative in film photography: it contains untouched, "raw" pixel information straight from the digital camera's sensor. The RAW file format has yet to undergo demosaicing, and so it contains just one red, green, or blue value at each pixel location. Digital cameras normally "develop" this RAW file by converting it into a full color JPEG or TIFF image file, and then store the converted file in your memory card.

Digital cameras have to make several interpretive decisions when they develop a RAW file, and so the RAW file format offers you more control over how the final JPEG or TIFF image is generated. This section aims to illustrate the technical advantages of RAW files, and makes suggestions about when to use the RAW file format. A RAW file is developed into a final JPEG or TIFF image in several steps, each of which may contain several irreversible image adjustments. So which is better: RAW or JPEG? Silverlight photography tutorials. Loading a spiral.Loading a spiral. Loading a spiral takes about two minutes, once you learn how to do it that is. This is a source of great frustration for many.Basic film processing..

Develop your black and white film.Part I What you need.Part II What you have to do.Part III Some things that may go wrong along the way.Basic print processing. Make your first prints.Part I What you need.Part II What you have to do.Darkrooms and safelightsPart I Darkrooms.How dark and how bright.Part II A bit about safelighting.Part III Wrong way to test your safelighting.Part IV Better way to test your safelighting. Theory New Developer. What it's made of and what the bits do.Latent image. Depth of Field Calculator. Basics - Aperture. Aperture is one of the three main controls you can use when you are taking a picture. Along with shutter speed and ISO, aperture controls how light will hit the sensor (OK, old schoolers – hit the film). In very simple words, aperture is the “size” of the hole the light goes through when it passes the lens. So large apertures will let more light go through then small apertures.

Going back to the pipe allegory analogy, we can see the following: If we use smaller aperture, then to keep our exposure unchanged we have to use longer shutter speed, or higher ISO. Sink image by Andrew Mason. Measuring apertures – Aperture values are given in incremental F stops. starting fro 1/1.4 up to 1/64 (there are more F stops out there in the world but 1/1.4 to 1/64 are the most common ones). The F stop is related to the diameter of the hole though which light comes through.

F stops – As I said before, we use F stops to note the aperture size. Low depth of field image by global-jet (Aperture = f/5.6) Basics - ISO. In the previous few articles, I have discussed some basic aspects of photography. The first subject to get a close look was exposure, and I have discussed two of the three components that control it: shutter speed and aperture. In this article, I will bring in the missing piece – ISO (or film sensitivity).

After that I will conclude the exposure subject. We have learned that the sensor (or film) can get the same exposure if we prolong the duration the shutter is open, but use smaller aperture (or shorten the duration that the shutter is open, while using a bigger aperture). If we want to be absolutely honest (which, at least for now, we do), we have to include the third part of the equation: film sensitivity (AKA ISO). In short – ISO sets the impact that light will have on the sensor. High ISO will make our exposure brighter, while low ISO will make our exposure darker. So how can we use ISO to produce better photographs? I’ll try to show that by giving an example. This is it!!! Lighting tricks. Painting with light is a fun technique that gives great results. It is called painting with light because this is what you are actually doing while taking the shot – painting with light.

You don’t need much to experiment with this kind of shot, just make sure you have the following items: 1. A camera capable of long exposures – film cameras will work OK, but if you really want to get the most out of the shooting session, use a digital camera. You will be able to see the results in “real time” and make corrections as you go. 2. 3. 4. Here is how it’s done: Set your camera on the tripod and take a sample shot with flash / lights on. Set the exposure to a relatively long value. Make the click. Once the shutter closes, you are a free person again. Here are some great ideas to use this technique with: Product like shot – In a closed (dark) room place your product on a table and paint it’s contour. Image by Rodrigo da Cunha Location shot – find a location with some ambient light. Image by Aitor.

Basics - Exposure. After talking so much about exposure and the controls you can use to, em.. well… control it, I thought I’d bring up some info that can help bring all the control info together. As a solid base for demonstration, I chose to display and discuss a bit about a rule know as the “Sunny Day 16” rule. I guess that this rule is known to film photographers, and is of little use nowadays when all the cameras have built in light meters.

But we can explore this rule and learn something about exposure from it. The rule is simple: on a sunny day, set your aperture to f/16 and set your shutter speed to be as close to the ISO setting as possible. (There! All the three exposure controls in one coherent sentence. Pat on the back!). How to use sunny day 16 to set exposure? Take shutter speed rule into account – Once you have the base aperture/shutter speed combination as a baseline, you should take the shutter speed rule of thumb into consideration. Basics - FOD. After discussing exposure in great detail, I would like to turn to a different kind of control – Depth Of Field (A.K.A. DOF). OK. Don’t jump – you are right. Depth Of Field is not a real control, but more of a result of how you used the aperture control.

In simple words Depth of field is the term you use to describe what is inside the focused area of your image and what is left outside of the focused area (and will stay home alone, and eat dry bread and drink stale water. As I said before the control that has the most impact on depth of field is aperture. To conclude the first part – Depth Of Field controls what is in focus. Here is a fact about depth of field Depth of field has two sides – a short side that goes from the object to the camera, and a long side from the object away from the camera. the long side (i.e. object and away is twice as long as the short side). Depth Of Field and zoom focal length – The longer focal length you use, the shallower depth of field you will have.

Custom shaped Bokeh. Bokeh is an adaptation from a a Japanese word meaning blur. In photography this term is used to describe the quality of the areas in the picture which are not in focus. When referring to Bokeh, we can distinguish some of it characteristics: – Is the light/dark gradient smooth or sharp? – What shape will a small dot of light take what it is in the Bokeh area?

(mirror lenses for example, create a bagel like Bokeh) We can play with those two variants to create a special Bokeh. You will need : One large aperture lens (a Canon 50mm F1.8 (B&H) is used here, but Nikon 50mm 1.8 (B&H) will also do, and the superb Nikon 50mm 1.4 (B&H) will work even better)One sheet of black paperboard 1. 2. 3.

Here are two shots to demonstrate this technique – one with a bare lens and the other with the hearted hood. Here are the parameters for the example shown above: Lens – Canon 50mm F1.8“Lens hood” Diameter: 70mm (2.75 inch)Hole diameter: 15mm (0.6inch) Do you have a cool bokeh?