Archive for April, 2011


Three Studio Portrait Lighting Techniques using one light

If you getting into studio/simple off-camera flash, then you’ll enjoy this tutorial by prophotolife.com. In this tutorial they go over three simple but effective lighting setups that you can do using just one light. Have a look at this video here.


Looking to buy a new lens?

For every lens out there, there are tons of different reviews and opinions that can help make up our mind about which lens you would like to buy. Often, though, you’ll find one review that calls a lens sharp and another review that calls the same lens not so sharp. One of the best sites that I have found for reviews is dpreview. They do a very professional review and they will show you MTF charts and sample pictures. Still, this doesn’t make it very easy to compare to another lens. This week, I found another great site that does a really good job of comparing lenses- The-Digital-Picture.com.

This site allows you two select two lenses and compare them side by side by looking at a test pattern shot by both lenses. A really cool tool to help you make that final decision. (Click on the picture below to go to the site)

The Mountain

If you haven’t seen this video floating around the internet yet, its worth a watch. One of the better time lapse video’s I’ve seen recently. Also have a look at the author’s Vimeo channel for a few more… (click on the picture to view)

Lightroom Layers

This week OnOneSoftware released a new plugin for Lightroom that adds layers functionality. Its still under development so they are giving the beta version away for free till June.

If you’ve never used Lightroom and want to try it out, download the 30 day trial from Adobe. Lightroom is a fantastic piece of software and a real time saver. I can honestly say that 90% of my image processing happens in Lightroom.

Clever Canon Ads

Came across these clever ads (PetaPixel) created by Copywriter Jean Saxon Morrow. The tagline is “Remember your story”. Click here to view more.

Behind the scenes

Click on the picture below to see a behind the scenes lifestyle photo shoot in Florida by Chris Crisman

That’s all for this week. Have a good Easter. Travel Safe…

No need to worry, just yet. The background image has temporarily been removed and I would like you to let me know if you see an improvement in the loading speed of pages, general speed, etc. Thanks.

Click!
Chas.

Marc Silber visits Ansel Adams

In this video, Marc Silber visits one of Ansel’s homes. He gets a tour with Ansel’s son who shows him some of his father’s most iconic pictures as well as the darkroom where Ansel made a lot of his work. If you like landscapes, then you going to like this video. You’ll see that photoshop is nothing new. It was invented in the darkroom a long time ago….

The Best Photoshop Tutorials of March 2011

Check out “creativefan‘s” most popular Photoshop tutorials of the month right here.

FUSION

This week Digital Pro Talk did a good Webcast on what they call “Fusion” (this refers to the fusion between photo and video in today’s SLRs). In this webcast they had a guest (Ariane Fisher from StoryMix Media). Ariane covered everything from preferred microphones, DSLR cameras, small video cameras, and camera/video settings for capturing your video clips for FUSION products.

You can watch the webcast video HERE.


The gallery of submission results for February 2011 (Set Subject – Sport) has been uploaded. Image problems have been resolved, please endeavour to size and name your images correctly if you are intending to hand in images at the meeting, prior to judging.

Click!
Chas.

The latest issue of SNAP (April 2011) was emailed to the members of the WCC. Should you not have received an e-mail regarding SNAP then tell us about it. Also let us know if you received the e-mail without attachments (some mobile device users had problems)

Navigate to the SNAP page to read/download.

Click!
Chas.

Nikon D5100

Nikon released a new entry level camera this week… The D5100. Its a 16.2 megapixel camera with a 1.5x crop factor has a 3-inch swiveling LCD screen, 4fps continuous shooting, an ISO range from 100 to 6400 (which you can boost to 25600), 1080p video recording at 30fps, and built in sensor cleaning.

Has a couple of different features on it that are quite interesting… It has a “Night Vision Mode” that is effectively the equivalent of ISO 102400. Also has a built in HDR mode that combines two exposures to give you a more dynamic photo.

Light Painting

The following photos were created by photographer Denis Smith. He creates them by taking a long exposure photograph while spinning a light around and rotating his body at the same time …

You can watch a movie on how he does this here. Its not just a video on his technique. He has quite an inspiring life story as well.. Worth a watch.

Video Editing

At this year’s rally I took down a cheap little video camera with me. The idea was to shoot a few clips while taking photographs. I had never tried to do any video editing before. I found a series of helpful video tutorials here. Really got me up the learning curve very quickly. The tutorials are for Premiere Pro and Final Cut but there’s links to a free editor as well. Its called Lightworks.

Check out my Rally video HERE.

Hi there,

This is an alternative route from the NPN Shell Service Station to Coedmore Castle. 30 minutes traveling time.

Starting point:
NPN Shell Service Station
St Johns Ave/M19

1. Head south on St Johns Ave/M19 travel 240 m
2. Continue onto M7 travel 13.8 km
3. Turn right at Bellair Rd/Wakesleigh Rd/M10 travel 160 m
4. Slight left at Cliffview Rd travel 1.1 km
5. Turn left at Sarnia Rd travel 900 m
6. Take the 1st right onto Coedmore Rd travel 1.8 km
7. Turn right at Coedmore Ave travel 1.6 km

Destination :
Entrance to Kenneth Stainbank Nature Reserve.
44 Coedmore Ave
Durban South 4011, South Africa

Click image below to enlarge it.