light Archives

Five Reasons to Invest in External Light

People more or less start the same way. Someone somewhere loves us dearly enough so as to send us a camera for Christmas gift. Some of us may have even inherited it from their granddad or maternal uncle. Regardless, of the origin a camera arrives in our lives. That’s the ‘Allspark’ that we needed. Life never remains the same after that seemingly inert incident. We end up getting hooked to our camera and to photography for the rest of our best days. Read more...

A technical term that you are likely to hear a lot is lens vignetting. Lens vignetting (sometimes also referred to as light fall-off) is a phenomenon that causes light to not reach the entire sensor after travelling through the lens aperture. A number of reasons are attributed to the phenomenon of lens vignetting. They are mainly segregated into two – mechanical and optical. The result however is the same, dark shadows in the shape of a circle at the corner of the image. Read more...

Butterflies are one of nature’s most beautiful creations. They are colorful, bright, gentle, everything that sums up Mother Nature. Harbingers of new life they are instrumental in pollination of flowers. People have long been fascinated by them, catching them and collecting them for their personal collection. Thanks to photography we now have a new way to capture them, one that wouldn’t lead to their death and yet we can enjoy their beauty for years to come. Read more...

As a photographer, digital or otherwise, one thing that you need to have a good idea of is the camera metering mode. By metering, I am referring to the process of assessing the light that is reflected off a surface and then the evaluation of the right exposure values for a properly exposed picture. All modern digital cameras employ the reflected light method when it comes to metering a scene; meaning, it actually measures how much light is reflected and not how much light falls on it. This process has its own limitations, but, we shall not be delving deeper into that. Here, however, we shall be looking at how to use the right metering mode for a given scene. Read more...

7 Tips to Shooting Great Portrait Photographs

Portrait photography is like a bread and butter thing for professional photographers. No matter which other genre their passion might be so far as photography is concerned, they ought to be able to shoot portrait photos for a living. For many it is the only way to make some decent amount of money doing photography as a professional. Read more...

Understanding the Basics of a Good Exposure

Exposure is the key concept that governs all forms of photography where light in some form or the other is used. Regardless of the camera, lens or other gear you may have, or post processing skills you may possess, if you are unfamiliar with the concepts of exposure and are incapable of getting a good exposure 9 out of 10 times, in camera, you will never be a good photographer. Even if your concept is a good one, a poor exposure is going to ruin the image. Read more...

Congratulations on buying your first DSLR! Now you are well and truly on the road to photographic nirvana! Your DSLR is a very powerful tool for making images. With it you can control the amount of light reaching the sensor, thus, allowing you to balance an exposure, pursue creative ways to express yourself through your images and in essence capturing more than just light inside the small box. For all practical reasons a DSLR is the only camera you will ever need.

But there are more to good compositions than just the camera. A good composition involves not only a good subject matter or a moment but also good light and of course clever use of all the elements to put together an image. Literally, you don’t take an image, you make it.

Good light is unfortunately something which is not within the control of a photographer. However, if you are really good with a camera and have an astute sense of lighting, you will be able to make better use of the available light than most. But even the most experienced photographer, at times, require additional lighting tools to fine tune a composition. In this article we shall be looking at one such tool - speedlight or an external flash.

1. Dress appropriately

Check the weather for the altitude you’ll be shooting at. The temperature and weather conditions will be completely different at ground level as they are up the hill. Never wear cotton. Cotton will soak up any sweat you may produce and the cold temperatures will freeze it. So you’ll end up wearing freezing cold clothing.

Invest in some great gloves. You won’t be able to wear glove all the time. You may need to get your hand out to change your camera settings or access gear in your camera bag. I had a pair of gloves that came with little glove liners, so when I pulled them out of the big warm shells I was still somewhat protected. The shells were big enough to slim my hand back in without much effort and I could still press the shutter to take a picture.