Attended a very interesting, informative lecture today at Fry’s Electonics Sunnyvale store given by Bruce Dale. He mostly focused on tips and tricks. In these two photos, taken at the end of the session, I tried to use a little of what he said though there are certain limitations imposed by my four year old, one megapixel camera; Bruce is wearing the grey-ish sweater and has the gray hair and beard:
 |
 |
Dale, as far as credentials, has published over 2000 photos in National Geographic. He has a how-to book on digital photography coming out next year, which I hope to beta read since when I asked him about it, I seem to be the perfect target and am (*cough*) pretty good about giving concrete, useful feedback.
Some of his tips:
Close one eye and squint. This makes up for the monovision and lower resolution of cameras compared to the human eye. Frame the picture with your hands (you know, just how you see the directors do it on film) to see the way the shot will be captured. Along the same lines, try to compose in the camera and don’t shoot with the expectation that you’ll crop the photo in software.
Don’t be tricked by your camera’s Auto Color Balance setting! Try the manual settings, especially cloudy (4200 degrees K), to get warmer colors rather than ‘perfect’ ones.
Make sure to focus on your subject’s eyes when shooting humans, not their ears. When taking pictures of buildings or lights at night, include a little sky in the shot and wait until it’s darker than you think is necessary to get good contrast. And remember that sometimes a detail of your subject, such as a really interesting pait of hands or jewelry, speaks more powerfully than the whole.
Use a tripod whenever possible for maximum sharpness but compose your shot first and do not let the tripod dictate positioning. Since Dale had a TiBook driving his presentation, one audience member asked why he chose Mac over PC. “I have both,” he said. “I hate them both equally.” Another question: JPEG, TIFF, or Raw format in the camera? Surprising to me, Bruce said JPEG for convenience and because, although there is some information loss, there isn’t enough to be really noticable. He just finished an assignment in Hawaii that will show up next year in A Day in the Life of the Military and did all his work in JPEG.
The lecture was sponsored by Panasonic and Dale was recommending the new 4MP Panasonic LUMIX camera, “the first digital camera line to combine world-renowned Leica DC optics with Panasonic digital technology, including the SD Memory Card.” A little pricy at $699 (not sure if that’s list or retail) but he went over the feature set and I have to say I was impressed–not that I know a heck of a lot about digital cameras. Lots of features that my current Kodak DC doesn’t have.
Of course garret may disagree with all of this, he does know a lot about this.
BillSaysThis 