Even though the photographers broke the rules stated, they used other standard rules and techniques to make their images work (“Breaking the Rules,” August 2003). Take the “mud” image (right). The foreground provides leadin lines to the brighter, warmer mountain.
RIP THIS OUT ...and pass it along. Your friends will thank you.
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JOHN OWENS
Am I right? Whenever anyone you meet discovers you’re a photographer, they ask, “Which digital camera should I buy?” You say, “How much do you want to spend?” “I dunno. How much do I have to spend?” Then it begins—that back-and-forth asking how they’ll use the camera, what do they really want from it, and on and on.
Photography, olé! You're snapping serpentine stone streets. Crisp, azure skies. A Mexican sunset—from 6,400 feet above sea level.Too good to be true? It’s not: Check out the upcoming Santa Fe Workshops schedule. Beginning in October, they’re offering 12 one-week photo workshops in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
Each month, we get thousands of entries from photographers with the gear, the skill, and the eye.What do we say? “The envelope, please....”
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"Your Best Shot" Entry Rules: To enter, send prints, transparencies, or CD-ROM to "Your Best Shot," POPULAR PHOTOGRAPHY -AMP;AMP; IMAGING, P.O. Box 1247, Teaneck, NJ 07666, or e-mail your best shots to yourbestshot@optonline.net. Up to five entries per month (digital image size: 50K-75K recommended, 100K maximum, JPEG format only; 3MP or larger images required if accepted for publication). Photos not chosen may be selected for "The Fix" feature.
If the first thing you do is obsess about the megapixel count every time a new digital SLR is introduced, you may miss the point of Nikon’s new 4.1MP D2H (street price rumored to be $3,000-$3,500 for the body only). That’s OK with Nikon, since its engineers designed this camera not to impress the pixel-counters, but to wow the pros (especially photojournalists) looking for a camera that captures high enough image quality for publication and gives them a performance advantage over their competitors. Based on the preproduction model we saw, Nikon seems to have succeeded. The D2H features a new, extremely fast focusing system with 11 AF sensors that cover over 75 percent of the horizontal viewing area. It also packs Focus Tracking and improved low-light sensitivity, fast shutter speeds up to 1/8000 sec, and flash sync to 1/250 sec. But the D2H really impressed us with its ability to capture up to 40 high-res JPEG images (or up to 25 NEF RAW files) at a superfast 8 frames per second. To verify that you got the shot, there’s a large, 2.5-inch color LCD. And the camera’s new lithium ion cell not only supplies power, but also indicates the number of remaining shots left. The optional wireless attachment (WT-1) lets you send images to a computer or Wi-Fi 802.11b network from up to 100 feet away. In a studio, the High-Speed USB 2.0 connection helps speed up image transfer from the camera to a computer. Nikon claims that a combination of the D2H’S new 4.1MP (2484-AMP;AMP;#X00D7;1636) CCD image sensor, advanced white balance control, triple-sensor metering, improved image-processing algorithms and hardware, and sharp DX-Nikkorseries lenses should help the D2H capture images with higher color accuracy and sharpness, comparable to a 5MP camera. We’re eager to find out if that’s true. Nikon plans several new DX-Nikkor lenses, out when the camera ships in the fall. The D2H includes Nikon Capture 4.0. (Nikon USA; 800-645-6627; www.nikonusa.com)
Nikon USA
ProOptic Super Fish Eye O.25× lens
$80
How much do you have to spend to get a fisheye lens? $500? A grand? How does $80 sound—for a fisheye lens adapter that fits onto your digital SLR? Adorama's new ProOptic Super Fish Eye O.25× lens street) won't give you a perfect view on a digital camera with a film SLR), but the pictures, complete with rounded edges, will be mighty close. Just screw the lens onto a 50mm lensfilter holder using the supplied adapter ring. When shooting with a lens wider than 50mm, some of the image area will be blocked. But for the price, what's not to like? (Adorama; 800-223-2500; www.adorama.com)
Nikon USA
iZotope
$49
iZotope's PhotonTV ($49 download; additional $10 for CD) is an inexpensive-yet-robust program for creating slideshows that can play on most DVD players (all you need is a CD-R or -RW writer). The Windows-only program can handle high-resolution images, and lets you add moving transitions and sound to your slideshows (it supports MP3 and .wav files in surround sound, and can record voice captions for each image). Unlike with many similar programs, you can dress up your PhotonTV slide show further with DVD menus. There are several predesigned templates to choose from, or you can build custom layered templates in Photoshop or other imaging programs. (iZotope; www.photontv.com)
In Pennsylvania's Bucks County, all roads lead to history...and photos
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Bob Krist
From its early days, Bucks County has been classic country retreat—William Penn built his home here instead of Philadelphia, the city he founded farther down the Delaware River. Despite being such a small place, Bucks County played a major role in colonial history.
Forget the direct approach! For amazing color and detail, twist those grad filters!
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TIM FITZHARRIS
Most photographers use graduated filters for boosting color and drama only in skies. Grads can do a lot more, such as restrain overly bright areas of the picture field to increase color saturation and improve highlight and shadow detail. But doing this isn’t always as simple as pulling a single filter out of your camera bag and slapping it over the lens.
Turn your world on its side for better photographs
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BRYAN F. PETERSON
Every month, when the editors of POP PHOTO look through entries for “Your Best Shot,” we see that the vast majority of the photos are horizontal. “If only we had some verticals,” moan our judges. Want to give your shots a competitive edge in contests—or for publication?
Some photographers have a natural talent for taking beautiful shots— you may even be one of them. However, I doubt if anyone is born with the talent for making great prints, whether in a traditional darkroom or with a digital printer. In fact, all of the master printers I know screw up reguadjust the image’s colors (usually with slider controls) to counteract the color casts on your first “wasted” print.
I’ll never forget one of my early assignments at Rochester Institute of Technology: Take a studio shot of a box. Yes, a box. Unless the shot was perfect, you would have to reshoot, and reshoot. Until you got it just right. This assignment was one of our first in learning the purpose of the swings, tilts, and shifts of a 4×5 view camera; a perfect grade depended upon getting all the vertical lines of the box exactly parallel.
As a generalist pro who shoots portraits, weddings, and products, lightmeter is about as important to my livelihood as a working phone. Tyros, who swear by their TTL 35mm’s, don’t live in the pro’s world of big manual flash units, where consistency in ambient exposure is also required.
Measurement stew: Why is a square-format 120 rollfilm singleor twinlens reflex called a 2¼×2¼ (inch) camera, while a rectangular-format 120 rollfilm SLR becomes a 6×4.5, 6×7, or 6×8 (centimeter) camera? Why are lens focal lengths measured in millimeters?
THE PROBLEM Dramatic action is lost among the distracting elements at right and left and the dead space in the foreground. The bright orange cones also draw the eye away from the subject. WHAT NOW? crop! Crop! Crop! In our "after" picture, we simply removed the extraneous clutter and left in just enough background to provide a sense of place, so all you see is the unfolding drama.
How much is image quality worth to you? If you’re a pro, you’re used to paying a premium for cameras and lenses that guarantee the highest quality images—because that’s what your clients expect. And increasingly, those clients expect you to deliver digital files.
Hewlett-Packard’s Photosmart 935 steps up to the plate with image quality that leads the field in its price range ($450 street), plus speed on the base-paths—as in fast e-mailing and computerless printing. And for those who recall HP’s, ahem, ergonomically challenged camera bodies of the past, the 935 ranks as almost svelte.
Samsung’s digital compacts have, in the past, been a mishmash of oddball designs and undistinguished cameras. Strange for a company whose film point-and-shoots have such sharp looks and sharper optics. This year, Samsung dumped its entire digital lineup, brought in top consultants, and began anew.
Want to print great photos and CDs? Here's your Rx.
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Megan Dey
When you see that Epson’s new Stylus Photo 900 ($185 street) prints T-shirt iron-ons, scrapbook pages, greeting cards, and even CDs, it’s hard to take it seriously as a photo printer. Any low-buck printer that can stray so far from photo stock is more toy than tool, right?
But has Pentax jammed too much into this 35mm mighty mite?
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"Is that a piece of jewelry around your neck or a real SLR?" someone asked one day when we were shooting field tests on the street with the Pentax *ist. It was said in jest, but the *ist may be as close as we ever get to an SLR that falls into both camps.
Does it pay to spend big bucks on a top-class zoom when you can buy one with approximately the same focal length range for much less? To answer that question, we spent a month testing comparable highand low-cost optics from Minolta, Canon, and Nikon.
Stop zooming that lens back and forth! Just stop it, y’hear? Zoom lenses are not for zooming. If we were in charge of naming things, we’d call them framing lenses. Take a look at all the pictures in this portfolio, and pay special attention to the edges.
What's new, what's different, what's in, what's out. All the top specs for all the top zooms!
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Julia Silber
Peter Kolonia
In the year since our last directory, zooms have been, well, zooming! Couldn’t get a really wide-angle optic for your digital SLR? If it’s a Nikon, you now can...and more ultrawides are on the way for those and other DSLRs. In fact, Nikon and Olympus have begun making zooms that operate only on DSLRs.
A huge room and not enough outlets? All you need is three lights—and Photoshop
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Mason Resnick
There you are, in a big, dark, detail-filled room, ready to show your eager photography students the right way to flood the space with enough light to get a perfectly lit shot. Then—horrors! You discover there’s only one working outlet! What to do?
THE INCREDIBLE TALE OF HOW UWE OMMER PHOTOGRAPHED OVER 1000 FAMILIES ALL OVER THE WORLD
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Herbert Keppler
It came to Uwe Ommer one evening “like a flash.” He would photograph 1000 families all over the world. “I never had made a family photograph in my life,” admitted the Cologne-born, Paris-based, commercial and fashion photographer, who was more at home shooting ads for Revlon, DuPont, and Kodak, and had already produced two photographic books of Black and Asian women.
FALL AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHIC EXHIBITION WHAT: The Hubbard Museum of the American West believes that "anyone capable of producing museum-quality work should be recognized and honored." Is that someone you? Amateurs and pros are invited to compete in: Landscape, People, Architecture, Open, and The American West.
POCKET PHOTO MIRRORS: the latest craze in collectibles
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H.K.
Time was when no lady worthy of the name went anywhere without a pocket-size mirror in her handbag, and inevitably, makers included one in each handbag they sold. But the plain surface on the back of these mirrors was too tempting for advertisers to pass up.
If you've had experience shooting close-ups with ring light flashes, you know they're great when you need light that penetrates deep into complex mechanisms, and eliminates most shadows. The downside? Glare is hard to control, and reflective surfaces can be frustrating to photograph.
When Kodak announced that Kodachrome 25 PKM was to be discontinued, a number of people stocked up on the film and froze it for future use. Is this a good idea? I ask because I recently discovered some 40 rolls of Kodak's Royal Gold 400 and Max 800 at the bottom of my freezer.
Great picture-taking and gear-buying tips from our web site’s forums
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Mason Resnick
All thumbs Storm 1098 has run into a snag, preparing photos for a web site. "Is there a way to take all of my image files and make them thumbnails at once, automatically? Can they be linked to their larger photos en masse? I have not been linking my thumbnail images to larger photos because of the work involved.
While working on a photographic series of birds, commercial photographer Gay Bumgarner was able to capture this magnificent cardinal by staking out her garden’s daily visitors. Bumgarner set up her camera, knowing the precise path the birds would take from the nearest tree limb to a strategically placed bird feeder.