PERSPECTIVES : Oh the Pain!!! Dealing with Noise

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PERSPECTIVES : Oh the Pain!!! Dealing with Noise

I have to be straight up here. I’m writing about digital noise in photos and I am going to tick off some readers who have different perspectives, some of them finely polished and honed by years of incoming BS. I’m not suggesting that these folks are stupid, but that they may have chosen to believe crap from some alleged experts, or are, to be blunt, doing things incorrectly and building skyscrapers out of tiny bits of Meccano.

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Revisiting Neutral Density Filters

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Revisiting Neutral Density Filters

It’s been about six years since I wrote on this topic and while the concepts have not changed, some of the vendors and methodologies have evolved. A recent question via email has prompted this new article.

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PERSPECTIVES : Why AI is Often Synonymous With BS

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PERSPECTIVES : Why AI is Often Synonymous With BS

The buzzword in photographic editing is AI or Artificial Intelligence. Sorry mirrorless lovers, Mirrorless is no longer the buzzword of the year. AI sounds all marvellous and such but are these software packages really artificial intelligence, or are they really just a package of more sophisticated algorithms. Or worse, are they encodings of popular looks to be found on Social Media.

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What Lens Should I Buy?

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What Lens Should I Buy?

If you are a photographer of any kind of tenure or success, at some point you will be asked this question. Most of us really want to be helpful, but many times we end up doing the wrong thing in our desire to help. I try not to make this mistake any longer, but certainly did in the past. Some of that comes from having worked in a camera store where the A priority was rarely what the customer actually needed and partly because I failed to understand that what I liked had a strong probability of being completely inappropriate to the buyer’s needs. If you are the person seeking the recommendation, you are most likely to approach knowledgeable friends or family or if you have the good fortune to know and trust a professional in a camera store, you may go there.

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Where Should I Mount My Camera/Lens to my Tripod or Monopod

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Where Should I Mount My Camera/Lens to my Tripod or Monopod

This question keeps coming up. Let’s deal with it quickly.

All cameras of any real utility have a tripod mount. If yours does not, this doesn’t mean it’s junk, only that this article will not be relevant for you. If your camera takes interchangeable lenses, that’s when this article really matters.

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Will I lose access to today's RAW files tomorrow?

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Will I lose access to today's RAW files tomorrow?

A reader of my work recently sent me this question, as noted in the title. He had been worried by an article suggesting that he could/would lose access to converting his existing RAW files at some point in the future, and was curious to know my thoughts on using JPEG and or TIFF as an independent archival methodology. I so appreciated the question, I decided to turn my response into a formal article.

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Breaking the Rules

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I was asked by a client to write about this topic and thought that it would have even wider resonance because it can be such a great conversation. I have often heard that it’s important to break the rules of photography, but what is consistently left out is that to know when to break the rules, one has to first understand them.  Doing otherwise, is very much putting the cart before the unicorn.

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The Death of Aperture (the product not the lens function)

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The Death of Aperture (the product not the lens function)

It’s been a number of years since Apple pushed their professional grade photo editing solution onto an ice floe to die quietly out of sight and out of mind. Many customers still lament the decision because Aperture was a really great product and Apple shill marketing notwithstanding, Photos is such a pale replacement as to be nearly transparent.

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Run in Circles, Wave Your Hands and Scream!

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Run in Circles, Wave Your Hands and Scream!

Recently there has been a flood of information pertaining to Adobe removing their $10 USD per month Photography Plan from sale. As was pointed out in a recent email from Dave Cross, a superb independent Photoshop instructor, it’s an exciting story that just isn’t true. Not right now at least.

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How to Be Miserable By Worrying About Sharpness

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How to Be Miserable By Worrying About Sharpness

Is my tongue embedded firmly in cheek?  A little bit.  Nonetheless as a moderator on the KelbyOne Community, I see lots of posts by nice people worrying that their images are not sharp.  

Join me as we explore the validity of these concerns and why so many of them exist

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Are Today's Image Makers Fools?

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Are Today's Image Makers Fools?

In case you had not heard, Costco has announced the closing of the Photo Centres in many of their US based stores. Costco does not process film. They make prints. They can put those prints in frames or in books or on greeting cards. The common element is the print.

So who cares? You should and if you don’t you may have earned your Fool badge

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