Evita on "Digital black and white"

Evita — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:18:16 +0000

Most cameras include built-in settings to convert shots into B&W.
That's just one second away from a plain color shot.

Scila on "Digital black and white"

Scila — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:16:56 +0000

How do I photograph in black and white with a digital camera?

kirpi on "Fireworks"

kirpi — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 11:43:09 +0000

A bean bag is basically a cloth bag loosely filled with dried beans, sort of a compact cradle for your camera to rest and do not shake while shooting.
Sand, rice, lentils, pvc pellets, small Lego bricks, bird seeds (i.e. sunflower) or other dry pet food, small and clean gravels and pebbles, bubble-wrap pieces, polystyrene chips and tenths of other similar materials can do as well as fillers.

Bean bags conform to any surface and are used as a semi-stable support on which to steady position your camera. Advantages over tripods are that bean bags are lightweight, small, flexible and quick to handle: it is a matter of seconds to setup and adjust. They are usually part of any photo "survival kit".
They also have disadvantages, of course; one of them being that a bean bag cradle conforms to many but not any camera angle, and the same is true for height: you need to find an extra support (be it a car, a post, a fence or whatever) on which to let the bean bag rest in case you do not want to shoot at ground level. More than often a standard tripod is the real choice.
There is no absolute solution in photography, you know :-)

You can craft your own bean bag yourself with about any available piece of cloth: it should be flexible but have a friction factor (silky, satin, sliding clothes are unpractical).
The most simple idea is a pair of old socks (with no hole in the toe :-) that you can fill with beans or rice and close with a tight knot. It is a one-minute, no-money, effective solution to start with. Once you experiment with such a bean bag, no matter how bare it is, you will most probably want to keep using it in many occasions. In which case a more advanced tool could be advisable: I suggest you consider The Pod as an interesting choice. The Pod was carefully designed to eliminate camera shake and has a universal screw bolt built-in for securing your camera.

Andrea Sullach on "Fireworks"

Andrea Sullach — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:35:01 +0000

What is a bean bag?

kirpi on "Fireworks"

kirpi — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 11:48:45 +0000

Basically, fireworks are rather easy to shoot at, provided that you follow a few easy steps:

Camera should be steadily placed on a tripod or any other available support; tape it to a pole or use a bean bag at the very least.
Iso setting should be normal; something around 100-200 is fine, while higher numbers will result in grainy pictures and whashed out colors of the fires.
Focus is to be manually set to infinity or, even better, to the appropriate hyperfocal distance; disable autofocus, definitely.
Set exposure to "Bulb" (B setting) or the longest one available on your camera; some seconds or also one minute are fine.
Keep aperture reasonably small; try with f/11 as a starting point.

Once all the above is checked out, do not forget that:

Digital photography has the advantage of letting you shoot a couple of test, see the results and react appropriately.
It is a good idea not to close the shutter once the first fire has expired: wait for more fires "add" on the picture instead; richer images are more easily attained this way. Of course one could add more pictures as layers in postproduction, but this is different story.

Sure, there is much more about fireworks photography, but these steps are the basic ones I suggest you start with.

Scila on "Fireworks"

Scila — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 10:57:13 +0000

How do you photograph fireworks?
I tried several times but the result is always bad: black sky with some spots of color that do not seem fireworks.