DIYPhotography.net

If you are an iPhone user like me, you must hate the way the battery drains after about 3 hours of use. Michael Herb came up with a super cool way to keep your iPhone charged at all times. The Xtend portable generator.

OK, you got me, the Xtend does not really exist in real life (though it would be such a cool DIY project). But not all is lost. Instead of charging your cell, you can have a behind the scenes look on how this photograph was created. Michael was kind enough to walk DIYP readers through his workflow of creating this image.

It may be hard to believe but using some image magic, the photograph was taken using a small bath and a bed sheet. (You can watch the entire process on video at the end)

It's all Michel from now on... Click to continue ›

Ever seen those pictures where the stars streak across the sky in a big arc? Or maybe the whole sky looked like it was spinning?

What you saw was star trails. The streaks were light left behind on the sensor or film from the star as it traveled across the sky in front of an open camera shutter. In fact, it only seems that way. What actually being recorded are stationary stars and the rotation of the earth that makes them spin. Kinda like you were standing on a vinyl record while it is playing. (yes, vinyl record, it is a form of ancient iPod).

For me, the images seem to have a certain magic or mystery about them. You must have heard a photographer talking about capturing that perfect moment in time. Well for capturing star trails you will need to capture the perfect hour or two in time. For such amazing looking images the technique to capture them is really quite simple. Keep reading for a complete set of instructions from start to finish. Click to continue ›

It looks like where ever we look HD-DSLRs are gaining momentum and more and more photographers are using videography as a way to express themselves, to offer services to their customers and to create art.

No wonder with HD-DSLRs like Nikon's D300s and Canon's EOS 5D Mark II you can use all your exquisite optics and get results that will not shame a pro video cam.

With all that it is no wonder that video DSLR started getting some hacks and mods.  [image by blhphotography] Click to continue ›

Last week I have talked about an important aspect of any picture - contrast. It was only natural to follow up with an article about low key and high lighting as both are tightly related to contrast.

After covering the definitions and some samples of High Key and Low key images, it is time to show some setups that will enable you to take High Key and Low Key pictures. I'll start with Low Key images today and will follow soon with some High Key setups. Click to continue ›

After discussing contrast at a very top level view, I would like to introduce two twins, closely related to contrast - High Key and Low Key.

Both High Key images and Low Key images make an intensive use of contrast, but in a very different way. When approaching a shoot of a dramatic portrait, the decision of making it a High Key, Low Key or "just" a regular image has great impact about the mood that this picture will convey. While High Key images are considered happy and will show your subject as a tooth-paste poster; Low Key portraits are dramatic and convey a lot of atmosphere and tension. Let's explore those two dramatic lighting alternatives. Click to continue ›

In the last few weeks I've covered the basic exposure controls like aperture and shutter speed. I've also discussed the concept of depth of field as an important aspect of the subject in a picture. Continuing with the Back to Basics series, it is time to explore another important aspect of the picture - contrast. Contrast is the difference in tone in your picture. Specifically the difference between the brightest colors in the pictures (called highlights) to the darkest colors in the picture (called shadows). Usually talking about contrast goes hand in hand with talking about hard light and soft light. Click to continue ›

After discussing exposure in great detail, I would like to turn to a different kind of control - Depth Of Field (A.K.A. DOF). OK. Don't jump - you are right. Depth Of Field is not a real control, but more of a result of how you used the aperture control.

In simple words Depth of field is the term you use to describe what is inside the focused area of your image and what is left outside of the focused area (and will stay home alone, and eat dry bread and drink stale water. Sorry Jewish mom syndrome...)

As I said before the control that has the most impact on depth of field is aperture. Bigger apertures tend to provide shallower depth of field. That means that if you open a wide aperture (say f/1.8) you will have a narrow location in your image which is focused. If you set your aperture to a small value, say f/22, you will have a huge focused area. The other two controls you can employ to control depth of field are Zoom focal length and camera to object distance. Click to continue ›

After talking so much about exposure and the controls you can use to, em.. well... control it, I thought I'd bring up some info that can help bring all the control info together.

As a solid base for demonstration, I chose to display and discuss a bit about a rule know as the "Sunny Day 16" rule. I guess that this rule is known to film photographers, and is of little use nowadays when all the cameras have built in light meters. But we can explore this rule and learn something about exposure from it.

The rule is simple: on a sunny day, set your aperture to f/16 and set your shutter speed to be as close to the ISO setting as possible. (There! All the three exposure controls in one coherent sentence. Pat on the back!). This is where this rule got its name - Sunny day 16. Image by Stefan Mendelsohn. Click to continue ›

In the previous few articles, I have discussed some basic aspects of photography. The first subject to get a close look was exposure, and I have discussed two of the three components that control it: shutter speed and aperture. In this article, I will bring in the missing piece - ISO (or film sensitivity). After that I will conclude the exposure subject.

We have learned that the sensor (or film) can get the same exposure if we prolong the duration the shutter is open, but use smaller aperture (or shorten the duration that the shutter is open, while using a bigger aperture). If we want to be absolutely honest (which, at least for now, we do), we have to include the third part of the equation: film sensitivity (AKA ISO).

In short - ISO sets the impact that light will have on the sensor. High ISO will make our exposure brighter, while low ISO will make our exposure darker.

So how can we use ISO to produce better photographs? Click to continue ›

In the previous article, I talked about exposure, and how it affects the final image. I mentioned that there are three controls the one can use to change the outcome of the clicking the shutter button: ISO, Aperture and Shutter speed. This article will focus on Shutter Speed. As I said, Shutter Speed is one of the three exposure controls. Luckily for this article, it is the easiest to understand. It simply controls the amount of time the shutter is left open for light to come in and hit the sensor.

I am saying sensor, but the old experienced folks may remember a time when the light was actually hitting film. Both the sensor and film collect light. The longer the shutter is open, they see more light - so the longer the shutter is left open the brighter your image will be. But shutter speed also affects other aspect of your image. Let's try and have a look, but first let's set the groundwork so we better understand each other. (Shutter image by brighterworlds) Click to continue ›