Pages with tag Photography

A quick guide to buying the best SD card for a digital camera to shoot movies As I wrote in (davidherron.com) a recent post, I'm buying a new digital camera.  That means thinking about which SD card is best to get for the camera.  Fortunately the memory card format war is largely over, meaning pretty much all digital cameras today use the SD card format, but there are multiple types of SD cards.  Primarily they vary on memory card speed and most of the card makers print a speed like "15 MB/second" on the card, like on my two-year-old card, or the one shown here which says 94 MB/second.
Canon introduces a new mirrorless digital camera, Canon EOS M5, 24 MPixels of goodness Canon has expanded their line of mirrorless digital cameras, the Canon EOS M series, with a new entry, the Canon EOS M5. It has a 24 Mega Pixel APS-C sensor. Also introduced is the new Canon EF-M 18-150mm f/3.5-6.3 IS STM lens, offering a an almost 10x zoom ratio.
DIY Convert Canon SX530 to full spectrum and infrared photography Digital camera sensors are often sensitive to infrared (IR) or ultraviolet (UV) light. The manufacturers add filters to cut out that unwanted light in order to have sharp images. To do infrared photography requires removing that filter, the IR/Cut filter, allowing the digital camera sensor to see infrared light. Given the success I've had with a Lumix DMC-ZS3 converted to Infrared, I wanted a better camera for the purpose. I found a Canon Powershot SX530 and found that it would be possible to convert it for infrared photography. While it doesn't natively shoot RAW mode pictures, the CHDK firmware can add that ability plus a whole lot more. Further with an adapter you can attach filters to the front of the SX530, making it far more suitable for infrared photography than the ZS3.
DIY Convert Lumix DMC-ZS3 for infrared or full spectrum photography Digital camera sensors are often sensitive to infrared (IR) or ultraviolet (UV) light. The manufacturers add filters to cut out that unwanted light in order to have sharp images. But some of us want to do other kinds of photography. The DMC-ZS3 was at one time a top end point-and-shoot camera and is still very good and available at very low cost, making it a good platform for experimenting with IR Conversions of digital cameras.
Editing infrared photos with Graphic Converter, Gimp and the like An infrared picture straight out of the camera usually has a strong pink overcast, and you're probably thinking "I paid how many dollars to convert a camera to get garbage pictures like this?" After quite a bit of studying and learning, I'm finally getting the hang of making interesting-looking pictures with simple photo editing tools (like Gimp or Graphic Converter) from pictures taken with a converted infrared camera. There are some simple techniques like swapping the red and blue channels which are widely recommended, but that's just the start and of course photo manipulation programs have a zillion options to explore.
How to convert a cheap digital camera into a night vision camera If you have an old digital camera gathering dust in a corner, you can easily convert it into a night vision camera. The difficulty level is generally easy, but does depend on how the camera you choose is built.
How to detect if your camera can see infrared light What if you could take infrared pictures just by screwing on an IR filter? While most digital cameras have built-in filters to block infrared light, some do not. That makes infrared photography possible simply by attaching an IR filter, rather than undergoing a conversion process.
Shooting (pictures of) the moon with a digital camera Taking pictures of the moon is challenging because of the huge contrast between the dark sky, and the brightness of the moon. The automatic exposure calculation will be completely wrong causing the moon to be an over-exposed blob of light, plus the camera might have a hard time with autofocus. The trick is to remember (or learn) some old school tips and tricks, and to put the camera in fully manual mode so you can get things just right.
Shooting infrared photography at night, or by moonlight Most infrared photos are shot during the daytime when there is lots of light available, including infrared light from the sun. The core of any kind of photography is capturing light, so we have to think about capturing infrared light. Therefore successful night-time infrared pictures are scenes containing infrared light. For instance urban lighting has an infrared component, and it is possible to buy or build infrared illuminators which can light up a scene.
Sony's new QX10/QX100 cameras are a marriage between Internet and high-res Photograph Is it still a camera if there's no viewfinder or display screen?  Sony just introduced a pair of cameras meant to pair with smart phones.  But these are cameras unlike any we've ever seen before.  They're just a lens, sensor, and memory card, no display screen or viewfinder.  Which might leave you wondering just how to compose a shot.  However, these cameras are meant to clip to the back of a smart phone, and use the smart phone as the display.
The history of infrared photography How do we discover the existence of invisible things? Some claim ghosts exist, but none of us can see them. Similarly infrared light cannot be seen by our eyes, but it is now known by scientists that visible light and infrared light are only a small part of a broad spectrum of "light" phenomena.
What is infrared photography, and what is it used for Infrared photography is a portal into an invisible world that's in front of our eyes but which we cannot see. Our eyes see only a portion of the light spectrum (from red to purple). While most digital cameras can see the infrared spectrum, in most cases the camera must be slightly modified to remove the filter which blocks infrared light. With infrared photography the sky is dark, the grass and any other plants are white, and it's like seeing a bizzaro other-world that's opposite the world we inhabit.