Don't Have Time? Take 60 Seconds To Improve Your Photos

idigitalphoto.com has a great blog post entitled "Improve Your Photos 60 Seconds at a Time". It's perfect for people like me who really don't have the time to read through a long and thorough tutorial on various photography techniques and skills.

The post is broken up into a number of different sections:

1. Light
2. Landscaping
3. People
4. Color
5. Composition
6. Being Ready

Each section has between 3-7 short "tutorials" in point form (e.g. "Framing the lines") that should take you only 60 seconds to read and absorb. Great job!

Maybe only taking 60 seconds at a time is the reason why I still need to take hundreds of photos to try and get a couple really good ones.

Almost 100 Online Photography Resources

I don't know why I didn't post this when I read it but last month Mashable had a great post for photography buffs like us that listed 90+ Online Photography Tools & Resources.

Read their post for the full list, but here are my favorites in each category:

Online Photo Editors:
Fauxto - The closest you can get to Photoshop online because it provides support for layers.
Phixr - Not just editing but supports uploads to Flickr, Fotopic, Livejournal, Photobucket, and others.

Photo Sharing:
Flickr - Everyone is using it anyways...
SlideShare - I love how easy they make it to embed a slideshow on your own page.

Free Photo Hosting:
Photobucket - MySpace's favorite.
AllYouCanUpload - Like the name says, no limit to image size you can upload.

Photography Blogs:
DPreview - One of the sites that ProductCritic summarizes reviews from. Still good after being bought by Amazon earlier this year. Not exactly just a blog.

Mashups:
Colr Pickr - Allows you to search Flickr photos based on their color. This one is fantastic!

Mobile:
Shozu - Upload to Flickr from your phone.

Photo Mixing and Slideshows:
Mixercast - All the ones listed in the category are good but this one stood out for me.

Photo Printing/Book Creation:
I didn't like the ones Mashable listed. I prefer Blurb and MyPublisher.

Photo Search:
Besides Google's Image Search, these ones stood out for finding stock or public domain photos - Yotophoto & EveryStockPhoto.

Stock Photos:
Alamy - Over 9 million photos to search through.
Stock.xchng - Only 300K photos but they're free.

Super Cool Do-It-Yourself Tripod That's Better Than Mine

I have one of those cheap bendable tripods that you can get for your point-and-shoot camera. I've seen the Gorillapod which looks to be a pretty good improvement on my cheaper version.

I saw this video on creating a cool do-it-yourself tripod though that doesn't look as pretty but would do a much better job than my cheap tripod and would also work for my camcorder. Even better than that is that it costs about $1 in materials and about 10 minutes of your time to make (if you're not very handy with tools).

Learn To Use Scene Mode On Your Digital Camera

Most Point & Shoot cameras these days have a large number of "scene modes" that set up your camera automatically to take a variety of pictures in a variety of locations (e.g. "fireworks", "beach").

While you might use "landscape" or "portrait" or "night shot" once in awhile, it would be helpful to learn what the other modes do. TeachMeToShoot.com has a summary of some of the scene modes:

• Night Portrait/Night Landscape
• Sports Mode
• Sunrise/Sunset
• Copy Mode
• Beach/Snow
• Panorama
• Party/Indoors
• Backlight

I've seen some cameras with as much as 50 pre-programmed scene modes. My bet is that most users never use more than a handful.

What's Happening To The Popular Camera On Flickr?

Since one of our main focuses is Digital Camera Reviews, we regularly look at the popular cameras owned by users of Flickr and we've blogged about these popular cameras (and their ProductCritic Scores) in the past.

I was surprised when I recently looked at the charts on Flickr and noticed a distinct drop in the use of the most popular cameras. Is there a simple explanation for this? Are people just replacing their cameras with newer models and those models have not shown up on the popular charts yet? Are they switching to other brands that also don't have enough market share yet to show up on the top lists? This is happening for both DSLR's and point and shoots though.

Anyone think they have an explanation?

The Secrets Of Taking Camera Phone Pictures

ABC's Good Morning America did a segment on tips for taking camera phone pictures. To summarize:

1. Get to know the camera phone settings for different lighting conditions
   
2. Learn to store your pics properly
   
3. Shoot lots of pics
   
4. Try black and white if you can
   
5. Understand the limitations
   
6. Try to get enough light
   
7. Get close when scene is backlit
   
8. Anticipate shutter lag
   
9. Set to highest resolution you can
   
10. Get a case for your phone to avoid lens scratches
    

Given that the segment was on Good Morning America, I'll give them a slight break on the "absolute beginner" nature of the tips.

With the cameras on phones being better and better, I'm even amazed by the quality of some pics you can get from phones now. Unfortunately, I still haven't bought a new cell phone yet and am stuck with a Motorola that has a pretty poor camera in it. Worst yet, the lens in it is very recessed so dust covers the lens over time and the placement of the lens makes it tough to clean.

Amazon Purchases DPREVIEW.COM!

On Monday, one of the largest and most-trusted camera review sites, dpreview.com, announced that they had been purchased by Amazon.

Almost immediately, some in the community were skeptical that dpreview.com could maintain its objective reviews as poor reviews would mean less people would want to purchase that particular product from Amazon. Also, would Amazon ruin the site by putting Amazon links all over the place?

ZDNet has a good article about the questions involved in the dpreview purchase.

On ProductCritic's digital camera reviews, we weight the reviews from dpreview very high as they are among the most comprehensive and objective of all the reviews on the Internet. I hope it stays that way because they are a fantastic resource for consumers and the community in their forums are composed of very knowledgable, helpful people.

Most Insane Tourist Photographer Ever

I've travelled fairly extensively and as a tourist, you know that you usually only have a limited time in any one spot and you want to get the best photos that you can.

When I read this post about an ultimate crazy cameraman at the Grand Canyon, it was hard for me to even imagine what must be going on in this guy's mind to go to these lengths to get a shot (especially when it looks like you don't really need to - why not just take the shot on the higher outcropping?) The shot below is the crazy cameraman's leap to the safer rock...with camera and tripod in his left hand.


Luckily, DigiSniper added a PS at the bottom of the post that gives you the whole story. Great stuff!

Top 10 Digital Camera Mistakes

The Photo Mentor has a post describing the Top 10 Digital Camera Mistakes. I'm summarizing below:

1. More Pixels Doesn't Mean Better Pictures
2. Don't Use Digital Zoom
3. Take The Highest Resolution Pics You Can
4. Have An Extra Battery
5. Optical Viewfinder Isn't What The Camera Sees
6. Be A Tripod
7. The LCD Is Misleading
8. More Pixels Are Better At High ISO
9. You Can't Always Fix In Photoshop
10. Printing At Home Doesn't Save Money

Most of these mistakes are geared towards people who have just bought their first digital camera (how many of you are there?) but I think everyone should pay attention to mistake #10 as it's easy to think that you should print out all your pics just because today's printer, ink, and paper produce such great results.

The BEST And ONLY Digital SLR Buyer's Guide You Will Need

Running a site like ProductCritic, I read a lot about digital cameras. It's hard not to get almost bored (or at least unaffected) with some of the articles out there and it becomes a rare occurance when I sit up and really take notice.

Here's one of those times. I'm nearly speechless by how good this article is by Gear Digest (the same network of sites that is part of Tom's Hardware Guide) providing a Buyer's Guide to Digital SLR's which includes details and comparisons on 26 DSLR cameras. The article is so good because it gives you a really detailed explanation of many aspects of DSLRs like sensor types, lenses supported, and shutter speeds and how each aspect will apply to your final purchase decision.

Finally, the article ends with a comprehensive features chart comparing all 26 DSLRs against each of the aspects that the article described previously. Great work!

So, if you're in the market for a new DSLR or are a beginner looking to move up to your first Digital SLR, then do yourself a favor and read the Buyer's Guide. Barry Gerber, the author deserves acknowledgement of a great, well written, article.

Quit Boring People With Your Travel Slideshows

I wouldn't say I've travelled extensively (like some of my friends) but I have been to quite a few "exotic" countries (India, Egypt, Turkey, all over east Africa) and have taken gigabytes and gigabytes of pictures (that's one of my pics in this blog post).

I never seem to get around to putting all my pictures together into a nice slideshow that I can burn onto a DVD with nice music to show others though. Everyone has had the experience of going through other people's photos and being bored so it's hard not to feel a bit intimidated when putting a slideshow together of your own travel photos. After all, who wants to bore others?

Brave New Traveller has a good article about Creating Memorable Slideshows. They have some great tips to help you avoid embarrassing yourself:

• Tell A Story
• Use Appropriate Transitions & Movement
• Insert Movie Clips
• Pick A Good Soundtrack
• Avoid Photo Repetition
• Mix Scenery With People
• Keep It Short
• Don't Narrate It

This article is inspiring me to get my photos together into a show...if not for others, at least for myself. The article ends with "When the lights come back on, they will applaud your genius, and wonder when you're going on your next trip". That's the best outcome. I'm only hoping they won't be fast asleep.

Now Is A Great Time To Buy A Digital SLR Camera

I've owned a DSLR camera (a Canon 20D) for a couple years now. I bought it to go on a trip to India and don't regret the price or the cost of the extra lenses one bit. The pictures I'm able to take with the camera make me look like a better photographer without actually being a better photographer!

The camera has been invaluable in capturing pictures of my first kid and again, some of the pictures turn out so fantastic, I'd be happy if a professional captured ones like them. Then again, that's what happens when you take hundreds of pictures in a session...you're bound to get at least one "show quality" photo! That's my strategy, shoot enough quantity so that you get lucky and get some quality.

If you've been contemplating upgrading to a digital SLR, there is no better time than now! There are plenty of good options out right now at very reasonable prices.

In addition to reviewing hardware and software, Macworld, for some reason, also reviews digital cameras (the only "consumer electronics" they review). Normally, the reviews aren't of incredibly high quality (like ones you find at DPReview) and I'm not usually to impressed by them. Regardless, Macworld has posted a great six-page article entitled "How to buy: DSLR cameras" written by Ben Long, author of "Complete Digital Photography" that gives a fantastic overview on what to look for and how to buy a digital SLR. It's kind of like a very short "Buying a DSLR Camera for Dummies".

In addition to providing easy to understand definitions for a variety of terms (ISO, Autobracketing, Histogram display), the article provides great advice for people who may be intimidated buy purchasing a DSLR. Here's a couple of the best pieces of advice:

• "You shouldn't buy a DSLR without handling it first" - all cameras feel different, you need to find one that fits your hand and strength and just feels right in terms of button placement, weight, and balance.
• "Don't sell your point-and-shoot...keep it" - you don't want to carry the DSLR with you in every situation. That's where the compactness of a good point and shoot come in. Very useful...especially with kids. I have the Canon SD500.

Finally, the article lists 5 recommended DSLR cameras that you should look at. I've listed them below along with their ProductCritic scores:

1. Canon Digital Rebel XTi (ProductCritic Score = 85)
2. Nikon D40 (ProductCritic Score = 83)
3. Nikon D80 (ProductCritic Score = 91)
4. Pentax K10D (ProductCritic Score = 90)
5. Sony Alpha A100 (ProductCritic Score = 83)

Although I am a Canon fan, the Nikon D80 and the Pentax K10D are getting overwhelmingly glowing reviews from the professionals and are in the Top 5 rated cameras on ProductCritic.

If you've been waiting to buy a DSLR, why wait any longer? Read the "How To" and go get one! You won't regret it.

Not Sure What Type Of Camera To Buy?

I read a lot of forum posts on Yahoo and CNET and a lot of the questions are very general in nature and are usually of the type "What is the best camera?" or "What camera should I buy?"

This is a very difficult question to answer because, like cars, the type of camera you buy depends highly on what you will use it for, how much you want to spend, etc.

About.com has a very simple Digital Camera Selector Quiz that may help you by at least pointing you in the right direction about which cameras you should do some research on (of course, you should then do that research on ProductCritic). I tried the quiz acting as different types of buyers and I think it retured fairly decent advice...although it said I should get an advanced camera instead of the dSLR that I thought it would recommend given my answers to the quiz.

If you are looking to buy your first digital camera and are a little intimidated by all the choices, do yourself a favor and take the short quiz.

The Easiest Way To Understand All Those Camera Functions

Although many of us have digital cameras, how many of us really know what all those camera terms like f-stop, aperture, and ISO mean? I own a Digital SLR (Canon 20D) that has almost every imaginable setting but even on my pocket camera (a Canon SD500), I can adjust some of these settings.

It's taken me awhile to understand what all these terms are and how they affect the picture I'm taking (I still don't have a full grasp of it all) but that took a lot of time as I learned through lots of trial and error. Each of these settings affect the other settings and all these combinations can definitely be overwhelming to learn.

Photonhead.com has a load of fantastic tutorials on how to use a digital camera:

• Beginner's Guide to Photography
• Digital Camera Buying Guide
• Photography Tips
• Photo Editing

But, the very best thing on Photonhead is SimCam which is an online Film and Digital Camera Simulator. It gives you the ability to play around with things like f-stops and apertures, take a "virtual picture" and see what the results would be. I think you would find it very useful in learning how all the various settings interact with one another.

In the end, Photonhead has a great tip to learn to take better pictures...take more pictures! I couldn't agree more.

Kodak Is Struggling...Is It Really Surprising?

The BBC website has a short article with the headline "Kodak to cut an extra 3,000 jobs". The article notes, "Struggling US camera company Eastman Kodak is to cut at least 3,000 extra jobs this year as it continues efforts to fully adapt to the digital age."

Since they made all their profits on film, Kodak was slow to warm up to the digital camera age. Instead of jumping ahead of the pack, they spent more resources on advancing the quality of film (and, in my opinion, proceeded to stick their head in the sand).

Still, once a giant like Kodak decided to get into the digital camera business, you'd expect that their brand alone would sell cameras...and it does (although not as well as Canon or Nikon).

Given the quality of Kodak cameras, is it really surprising to anyone that Kodak has the lowest workforce they've had since the 1930's? I've listed a couple Kodak cameras that we've aggregated reviews for on ProductCritic:

• Kodak EasyShare C743 - ProductCritic Score = 63
• Kodak EasyShare Z650 - ProductCritic Score = 73

These two cameras currently hold the distinction of being the worst and third worst rated products on ProductCritic.

While Kodak has targeted 2008 to be the year that they are back in the game, although they've recently had their first quarterly profit in two years, my take is that the lead that the other companies have in the digital camera market may be too much to overcome.

The Secret Behind "More Megapixels"

When I bought my first digital camera, I didn't know much about how many megapixels the camera should have. I went for the most megapixels I could get within my budget.

Now that I've bought a few more cameras, I've learned that how many megapixels a camera has plays a very, very tiny part in the final quality of the pictures. I currently have a Canon SD500 (7.1 megapixel) and a Canon EOS 20D (8 megapixel) but when I look back at the pictures I took with my Canon G1 (3 megapixel), it's interesting to note that the pictures are every bit as good as my current cameras (I've included one with this post...the elephant scared the crap out of me). I took my Canon G1 to Africa in 2002 and of course I would have rather have had something like my Canon EOS 20D but I'm not disappointed in the resulting pictures that I have from that trip.

The NY Times has a good article debunking the megapixel myth. As they state:

But one myth is so deeply ingrained, millions of people waste money on it
every year. I’m referring, of course, to the Megapixel Myth.
It goes like this: “The more megapixels a camera has, the better the pictures.”
It’s a big fat lie. The camera companies and camera stores all know it, but they continue to exploit our misunderstanding. Advertisements declare a camera’s megapixel rating as though it’s a letter grade, implying that a 7-megapixel model is necessarily better than a 5-megapixel model.

Read the full article to understand what I've learned through trial and error.

Follow up to Memory Cards for Digital Cameras

As a quick followup to our previous post on Fast Memory Cards and Digital Cameras, I wanted to call attention to an article by The Photography Bay that provides all the details that you should need about which memory cards to purchase to get the most out of your digital camera.

It's a very well written post that's clear and concise. Whether you're a beginner or a "prosumer", I think you'll get something out of it.

Get The Most Out Of Your Digital Camera...Take This Free Course

The original motive for starting ProductCritic was because we were tired of the hassle of keeping track of all our research before we bought a product. In fact, the current three categories of consumer electronics that we provide review aggregation for on ProductCritic were chosen because we had recently bought a camera, camcorder, and cell phone.

So, part of this blog is also about the products that we cover. I definitely consider myself a very amateur photographer who really enjoys the creative outlet that photography brings. Although I'm not sure that my own photography skills have improved a lot, my pictures have turned out better just because of my current camera, the Canon 20D.

In order to actually improve my skills (and not just my tools), I've recently started going through one of the best free online photography courses I've found. From instructor, Jodie Coston, it's very well written and gives good background information behind the instructions.

The 10 lessons are broken down into:

1. Composition and Impact
2. Aperture and Shutter Speed
3. The Lens
4. ISO, Grain, & Transparency
5. Fun Effects
6. Landscape, Nature, & Travel Photography
7. Portraits and Studio Lighting
8. Studio Lighting
9. Tying It All Together
10. Special Requests

If you want to be happier with the pictures you're taking from that fancy new digital camera you bought, I suggest reading through the course. Also, be sure to check out the best DSLR Tutorial that I wrote about in a previous post.

Does A Fast Memory Card Matter For Your Digital Camera?

When you buy a new digital camera, they usually include a tiny memory card (e.g. Compact Flash or SD Card) that is big enough for you to immediately try out the camera and fill it with....5 pictures. For most cameras on the market, you will want to purchase a much larger memory card. These days, depending on the megapixel capabilities of your camera, I would suggest a minimum of 512MB or a 1GB card. On my 8 megapixel Canon 20D, my 1 GB card allows me to take about 230 pictures (in jpeg format) before I have to empty the card. Unless I'm specifically taking a day for improving my photography skills, that makes it very convenient to take the camera out for the day and usually not have to worry about running out of room on my card.

Memory cards (of which there are many different types) come in a variety of prices as well. Should you be spending the extra money for these "ultra fast" cards?

Here is a good article from BobAtkins.com that gives you a lot of information about memory cards for your digital camera including which cards to buy and which ones to avoid. Do you need a super fast (60x speeds and greater) card though? His tests show that for some cameras, it makes a huge difference but for others, the camera has a limit on its write speed that even slower cards (12x speeds) can may reacn. The article shows tests from four Canon cameras (the first number is the transfer speed of fast cards and the second is the transfer speed of slow cards):

• Canon Digital Rebel: Fast=1.4 MB/s Slow=1 MB/s


• Canon EOS 10D: Fast=1.4 MB/s Slow=1 MB/s


• Canon EOS 20D: Fast = 5 MB/s Slow=1 MB/s\


• Canon EOS 1Ds mark II = 7 MB/s Slow=1 MB/s

As you can see, if you have a Canon 10D, it might not be worth it to pay the extra money for a super fast card but for a 20D, it would be worth it. Check the specs on your camera to see if it makes sense for you. Of course, you may also decide to spend the extra money just to get a more reliable card. I use Sandisk Ultra II's and have been very happy with both their speed and reliability.

Help! I Bought A Camcorder And Suck At Shooting Movies!

I must admit that my camcorder skills are kindergarten poor. My still shots with my dSLR camera are quite a bit better than they used to be after I learned some key tips such as The Rule of Thirds but I haven't learned the same level of tips for camcorders.

PC World has put up a short list of 5 tips in an article entitled "Making Movies: Tips for New Camcorder Owners". Even though I've owned a camcorder for a couple years, following some of these tips would have certainly helped me.

If you received a new camcorder for Christmas, I'd suggest investing one day going online and learning some key tips. It'll pay off hugely in the quality and watchability of your home movies.