Digital Shutters

Exposure Composition is usually done automatically by your camera using its light metering system. The camera measures the incoming light and adjusts the aperture, and shutter speed, to give you pictures with the correct exposure.
Most digital cameras will adjust the aperture first; once it can no longer adjust the aperture to get the correct exposure it will then adjust the shutter speed.
If your camera can be adjusted manually you can use a light meter and set your own exposure and white balance to get the effects that you want.
Color is on a spectrum. The white balance setting tells your camera what objects in your frame is white then the camera itself will fill in the spectrum. The spectrum is determined by the temperature of the light that is given off of each color.

References
Photoxel.com
Wikipedia.com

PHOTO OF THE DAY
HEN EGG MOUNTAIN; Terlingua, TX
Olympus E-500
Zoom lens set at 150
Auto Landscape setting
UV filter

A Telephoto lens and Zoom lens are not the same. Some people refer to their Zoom lens’ as a telephoto lens. The construction of the lens is what makes the difference.
The telephoto lens will bring objects into close view while blurring the background. Some portrait photographers will use a telephoto lens over a zoom lens. The big difference is that a telephoto lens has a narrower angle of view than a zoom lens
A zoom lens is constructed the same as a regular lens. Most zoom lens are used in binoculars, telescopes, and still photography. Zoom lens brings distance objects closer without distorting the background images. .
As you can see in the 2 example photos I took of the Rio Grande River. The first is the regular 14mm then I zoomed using the same lens to 40mm. Also I changed the angle of the camera in the second photo to capture more of the river and rocks.
Do not confuse digital zoom to that of regular zoom lens. With digital zoom (your auto zoom function) the quality of the final photograph is considerably less. It is always best to step closer to your subject if possible than use your digital zoom.

I love going on vacation and taking photos. Since my family and I are on vacation sometimes it is hard to post my blog. So to my readers I am sorry I missed my blog yesterday. We are in Terlingua, TX which is between Big Bend National Park and Big Bend Ranch State Park. This photo is of the Contrabando movie set at the Big Bend Ranch State Park. The movie was was for the Spanish speaking movie Contrabando. I have never seen the movie the, but little town left behind is quite impressive. Contrabando was never a real town but the Contrabando trail was real. A trail between Mexico and the United States were smugglers would bring cattle and wax across the border into the US to avoid the customs taxes. One Rancher tired of having his fence cut down reported the smugglers to authorities and was gunned down in the Alpine City Post office a few months later. This area is rich with history and the country side is beautiful.

PHOTO OF THE DAY
Olympus E-500
Auto Zoom set at 150
UV and PL Filter

As I talked about in a previous article, when shooting wildlife you have to be on your toes. It’s important that you don’t mess with the natural habitat of your subject. You want your scene to be as natural as possible. A lot of professional photographers will sit and wait for hours or days and some even set up remote cameras to snap off shots when there is movement to capture that elusive shot.
In my Photo of the day, you can see that my bunny was taking flight. I was across a parking lot at the State park to get pictures of it. I was actually able to get a few shots off before another car drove by and scared him.
Camera Olympus E-500 DSLR
Zooms lens set at 150 Auto Focus
Scene set for action.
Some great wildlife Photography of course is at National Geographic.

When out shooting wildlife you normally want to stay back so that they will not run or attack you. A telephoto or zoom lens is a good tool to have.If all you have on your camera is auto zoom, it will work just fine. You want to have your camera settings on action shot so that you can stop any movement without getting blurred images. Be ready to snap as fast as you can because you may only have a few seconds to capture the shot. Don’t spend to much time focusing on the animal unless you are using a telephoto lens or long range zoom. If you are to close to the animal it may bolt on you.
My husband and I live by a wildlife refuge and State Park. We often love going there at night for our walks and taking pictures. It’s a great place to see animals that you don’t normally get to see.
The other night when we were out for our walk we were taking sunset shots and to our delight 2 Javalinas (pronounced have-a-lean-a-s). They don’t come out in the open to much and usually stay in the brush but every now and then you can see them run across a road or open area. We were at an advantage point up in a tower looking down at them but I had less than 2 minutes to capture 6 shots.
Our picture of the day
Pair of Javalinas, taken at dusk
Camera an Olympus E-500
Zoom lens set at 150
Auto setting on Action shot

Yesterday I talked about how to take the photos to make a panoramic now I will tell you how to use the new Photoshop upgrade CS3 to turn them onto one image. This is a new simple feature added to CS3 to help with “stitching� photos together to create one image.
First open your Photoshop program and click file. Scroll down and find scripts then select load files to stack. Once the files are open select all the photos. When all the photos are selected go to edit and select auto align. The program analyzes the content of each image and finds the common features of each photo and automatically blends the photos into one panoramic image.

Look at the new Panorama and you will see that some of the colors are not the same and you can see a few of the seams, and the edges are somewhat jagged. Go back to edit and this time you will select auto blend layers. As you can see now Photoshop color corrected the image and no seams are visible. Crop your image to remove the jagged edges and you’re done. Save the image as a JPEG do any more editing that you feel is necessary.

Here are some other helpful links on this subject.

Web Photo School

Olympus digital School

About.com

Creating has a panoramic view was usually left up to the professionals in the past. Wide angle lens, large format camera; but with today’s photo editing software you can create these shots yourself. A simple technique and a tripod can help you with this.

You will be taking lateral shots which will require you to move your camera to different areas. And then later you will blend these shots together with your photo editing software.
First find the shot that you want to take set up your tripod to stabilize your camera and get the exact height on every shot. Look at you shots and determine where the edge of the shots is at, a scenic marker like a rock, tree, or something that is not going to move on you.
Next snap off a couple shots
Pick up your tripod and without making any adjustments move down to another location a few feet away you will want to overlap your scene; using your scenic maker as a guide snap off a few more shots. Most panoramas are done with 2 or 3 photos blended or stitched together.
This method is helpful to me in Real Estate Photography where I can get the whole area into one photo without loosing any detail with my wide angle lens. Sometimes I will use up to 6 Photos 3 on top and 3 on bottom to blend.

Tomorrow I will talk about how to blend these 4 photos together to make together to make that panoramic view.

Here are some other helpful links on this subject.

About.com

Olympus digital School

Web Photo School

In the world of Camera reviews, mostly Digital Photography ReviewI often wonder where they get their info since it seems to pop on their website the day the news is released. But according to them Panasonic has announced that in July it will release the worlds first 12.2 MP wide angle camera. Of course I like to check out the official press releases before commenting on them but I could not find anything on Panasonics website.
They also announced that Casio was releasing a new Camera, the EXILIM Zoom EX-Z1200 this one I found! This is a small camera that packs a lot of punch! A 3.1 optical zoom with blur reduction, tonal range and auto-tracking AF help maintain sharp focus using motion detection and face detection. It even boasts to have eBay Best Shot mode exclusive to only Casio. This camera is expected to be released in mid July at about $399.00
Casio has an impressive spec sheet for this little camera that is worth checking out.

LENS
One of the most important features of your camera is your lens. One of the most common misconceptions is that all camera lens are the same. This is not the case. Digital camera lens are not the same as a regular 35mm film lens. The framing area for a digital camera is smaller than that of a 35mm and if you have a DSLR your lens are not interchangeable with your 35mm. and the same goes for your 35mm is not interchangeable with your digital.

In digital photography as in 35mm photography there is terminology to help explain different events that happen when you are taking a photo. Checking out Wikipedia on Line here are a few terms.

Blown Highlights
If you ever took a photo and had areas of pure white, you have what is called blown highlights. Digital cameras record the brightness of a photo in 256 different shades, white being 0 and the black being 256. When you get the blown high lights then your camera cannot read color so it records white. If there is no light then the camera will record black. To make sure that you don’t receive these effects on your photos make sure you use a light meter and set your f-stop accordingly. Many photo editing programs can correct this.

Depth of field
This is simply how much of the scene you are shooting will be in focus. If you are shooting macro image then the depth of field is shallow and only the close up object will be shown and the background will be blurry. For Landscapes you want as much of your scene in view. Your depth of field is controlled by the aperture setting of your camera.

PHOTO OF THE DAY This was taken at Lake Corpus Christi in South Texas. I enhanced the photoin Photo shop to bring out the colors and the rays of the sun. This photo was taken with an HP 315 auto focus.

In March Tiffen announced the Dfx digital filter suite, to be released and available in early spring. Holding true to their word an email confirmed that the program is now available. Dfx promises to be a major breakthrough in total image control software! This looks promising for the digital darkroom. A sneak peak into the program revealed that it has various filter effects that before you could only get with a real camera filter. This program is can stand alone or be a plug-in for your Photoshop, After Effects, and other Programs. Price ranging from $99.00 to $299.00 depending on how much stuff you want with it!