Photography
See also Digital Images for more on processing and organizing images.
My Camera
I have a Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3 and a Canon PowerShot SD450.
When I was considering the Lumix, I also considered:
For my upcoming BurdensLanding:Korea trip, I'm considering a new camera:
Camera | Thoughts | Links | Examples |
---|---|---|---|
Canon G11 |
| ||
Canon S90 |
One day, I'm going to get a Leica M8:
Other possible equipment:
Managing Photos
Most of my public pictures are on Flickr. View analytics via flickrstats.
I wrote some of my own tools for cataloging my digital prints, which are now heavily outdated. They were inspired and based heavily on Gerald Oskoboiny's digital photo publishing software.
I'm experimenting with exiflow for managing my digital photography workflow (renaming files, metadata, etc.). F-Spot has an extension that supports an exiflow workflow.
I'm constantly disgruntled by F-Spot, but I keep returning to it, because it keeps getting better.
I'm not crazy about F-Spot for importing images off of my digital camera, so I'm thinking about switching the default to gThumb.
I pondered a move to Google Picasa, but decided against it due to lack of development of its Linux client. If I ever do make the move, I'll need to import my F-Spot albums.
Other tools of interest:
Notes
Tags + types. Tags can have types. If I want to get really funky, types can have relationships -- an ontology! For example, the "Eugene Eric Kim" tag could be of type "People." This would allow me to do faceted classification.
Collections (or albums) cannot be tags, because you want to be able to do special things, like define cardinality and other metadata within a collection. However, you ought to be able to assign a photo to multiple collections.
I'd love to integrate Greg Elin's Fotonotes for granular annotations.
Favorites from Eugene Chan
- lobsters
- under the golden gate
- pig pastries
- piano
- leaf
- underwater calder
- Bay Bridge
- sailboat
- ray
- jellyfish
- rays of light
- bus
Techniques
Introduction to White Balance. Use an 18% gray card for better color balance.
Wide aperture (smaller f-stop) decreases depth of field and gives you blurry background.
Try increasing the ISO for darker shots or action shots.
My camera doesn't have aperture or shutter priority modes, but they're good features to be aware of.
8 Guidelines to Taking Panoramic Photos with any Camera.
Aperture
A nice explanation of apertures and focal lengths, and why you can't get good depth-of-field in point-and-shoot cameras (like mine).
In general, to [get shallow depth-of field], especially w/ point-and-shoot cameras:
- Lower F-stop numbers (larger apertures)
- Longer focal lengths (zoom in)
- Get closer to the subject
Online Depth of Field Calculator
High-Dynamic Range Images
Panoramic
Photo Mosaics
The best tool for doing these on Linux seems to be metapixel:
- Generating Awesome Photomosaics on Linux with Metapixel
- Create Photo Mosaics with Metapixel
- Three photo mosaic apps compared
See Also
- The Ideal Digital Photographer's Workflow, Part 1, Part 2
- Top Ten Digital Photography Tips
- Legal Misconceptions
- DIY Photo Booth (on Mac)