DSLR CAMERAS ONLINE DSLR CAMERAS ONLINE Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 135 0 41 2538

Articles from DSLR CAMERAS ONLINE

Getting a Grip on Shutter Lag 2007-10-10 08:29:00 Shutter lag, first-shot warm-up delays, and those annoying pauses between photos do more than interrupt your photographic momentum - they can cause you to miss photos. Of all digital cameras, dSLRs (digital single lens reflex cameras) do the best job of reducing those awkward moments to a minimum.Most of the time, digital SLRs seem to take the picture as soon as you press the shutter button. The actual elapsed time might be 0.2 seconds, or at least three times faster than what you get with a typical point-and-shoot digital camera.Minimizing shutter lagShutter lag is primarily caused by the delay in locking in autofocus between the time when you press down the shutter release halfway and when you fully depress it to take the picture.Even the best-performing dSLR might not take a picture at the exact instant you'd like the shot to be captured. A 90-mph fastball travels 132 feet per second, so during a 0.2 second delay the ball moves 26 feet. That's almost half the distance between the ...

DSLRs and Close-Up Photography 2007-10-09 14:28:00 Digital SLRs (dSLRs) are the almost perfect choice for close-up photography because of the increased accuracy you can get with framing and focusing, as well as the greater control that most dSLRs provide over your picture-taking. Here are a few things to consider when using a digital SLR for macro photography. Some of these also apply to cameras with electronic viewfinders: Don't forget to use depth-of-field preview. The digital SLR typically shows you a bright, clear image with the lens wide open and then closes the aperture at the moment of exposure. The depth of field at that smaller aperture is likely to be much greater than what you saw with the lens wide open, so if selective focus is important to you, you'll want to use your camera's depth-of-field preview button to glimpse the true focus just before you shoot. An object that appears soft and out of focus through the viewfinder can be objectionably sharp in the final image, as you can see in Figure 1.Investigate add-on fo ...

Understanding DSLR Exposure Controls 2007-10-09 03:23:00 Point-and-shoot cameras don't give you much input into adjusting exposure. You point, you shoot. You have a dozen or two Scene modes that can adjust exposure and some other settings based on the kind of picture you're taking.As you'd expect, digital SLRs (DSLRs) have the same roster of exposure controls found in even the most advanced non-SLR digital cameras. But DSLRs give you a lot more to work with, too, because, while getting a good exposure is relatively easy, getting the best exposure can be tricky.Metering modesAll digital cameras have built-in number-crunching routines that let the camera read the lightness and darkness values from a range of locations (or matrix) in the scene and calculate the best compromise in terms of exposure. So, your camera can offer the following metering modes: Matrix metering: This is usually the default mode. The camera collects information from multiple locations in the scene, which can range from a dozen or so to more than 1,000 locations, a ...

Gauging Tones with the Histogram on a Digital SLR Camera 2007-10-09 02:12:00 A histogram - a chart that appears on your digital camera's LCD - displays the number of tones being captured at any brightness level. The number of pixels at each brightness level is shown on the histogram as a vertical bar, and there are 256 of these bars. The far-left position represents the darkest tones in your image, and the far-right slot shows the tones in the very lightest parts of your image.The histogram helps you determine if a photograph is or will be under- or overexposed. The trained eye can also see whether an image is likely to have excessive contrast or look particularly flat, based on the distribution of tones in a histogram.Typically, a histogram looks something like a mountain, as shown in Figure 1. Most of the tones are clustered in the middle of the image because the average image has most of its detail in those middle tones. The bars are shorter at the dark or light ends of the scale because most images have less detail in the shadows and highlights. However, i ...

Knowing How Digital Camera Lenses Work 2007-10-08 14:46:00 When shopping for a digital camera, people often overlook the camera lens. Serving as your camera's "eye," the lens determines what your camera can see - and how well that view is transmitted to the CCD (charge-coupled device) or CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) chip for recording. The following sections explain the basics of how digital camera lenses work.Focal lengthDifferent lenses have different focal lengths. On a digital camera, focal length measures the distance between the lens and the image sensor, measured in millimeters.Focus on these focal-length facts:1. Focal length determines the lens's angle of view and the size at which your subject appears in the frame:Wide-angle: Lenses with short focal lengths are known as wide-angle lenses. A short focal length has the visual effect of "pushing" the subject away from you and making it appear smaller. You can fit more of the scene into the frame without moving back.WarningSome wide-ang ... Digital Camera

Understanding DSLR Focus Controls 2007-10-07 16:07:00 Correct focus is important because, although you can often at least partially correct for bad exposure after a shot is taken, there isn't a lot you can do when your picture is blurred beyond recognition. Point-and-shooters actually have less of a problem with correct focus (in one way) than digital SLR (dSLR) users do because the short-focal-length lenses on cheaper cameras render almost everything in sharp focus. Of course, that makes using selective focus (creatively placing parts of an image out of focus to emphasize other portions) more difficult; you win some and you lose some.Digital SLRs give you back selective focus, while making it more critical to focus correctly. Fortunately, you have two ways to focus - manual focus and autofocus. Manual focus is accomplished by twisting a focus ring on the lens until the image looks sharp in your viewfinder. (Some cameras provide a viewfinder signal when you have manually focused correctly.) Automatic focus achieves the same results but w ...

Cleaning and Protecting DSLR Image Sensor 2007-10-06 10:51:00 If you own a digital SLR and notice what looks like dust specks on your images, you may need to clean your camera's CMOS or CCD. You clean the camera image sensor by removing the lens and then using a menu command to flip up the mirror. While the mirror is locked in the upward position, use a gentle burst of air from a blower brush to dislodge any dust that may have accumulated on the image sensor when you changed lenses. Do not touch the image sensor with the blower brush. Never use a compressed air canister to clean the image sensor because compressed air canisters contain liquid propellants that will be blown onto the image sensor. If you foul the image sensor with a liquid, you'll have to take your camera to a camera store to professionally clean the image sensor. Refer to your camera manual for detailed instructions on cleaning your camera image sensor.If you own a digital SLR, consider purchasing a skylight filter for each lens you own. The filters are relatively inexpensive an ...

Contending with Digital SLR Camera Quirks 2007-10-06 10:42:00 If you're entering the digital SLR world from the realms of film cameras or non-SLR digital photography, you'll note some significant differences that can only be called quirks. They are idiosyncrasies of the dSLR that you must compensate for or grudgingly put up with. Some might even drive you crazy. The following sections offer some advice for contending with these quirks.Cleaning the sensorEvery time you remove your dSLR's lens to replace it with another, you could be admitting tiny specks of dust that could, if you're unlucky, find their way past the shutter when it opens for an exposure, and thence onto the sensor. It might take a few weeks or a few months, but eventually, you're going to end up with artifacts (tiny blemishes) on your sensor.You can easily miss this dust because it's most apparent when using the small f-stops that produce the largest range of sharp focus. If you take most of your pictures at f8, f5.6, or larger, any dust on your sensor might be blurry and al ...

Clothes Show Live and Young Fashion Photographer 2007 2007-10-05 13:07:00 After a very successful debut year, Clothes Show Live is continuing its support for young fashion and design talent with the return of the second ever Young Fashion Photographer of the Year Competition in association with Nikon. The award is the first of its kind in the UK and aims to celebrate up and coming British talent within the world of fashion photography.This year’s competition invites budding 16-25 year old fashion photographers from across the UK to create a picture that encapsulates the historical era ‘Cool Britannia’, a term coined to sum up the mood in Britain during the late 1990s which was closely associated to the fashionable London scene, the Britpop music movement and the early years of the New Labour government of Tony Blair.The brief requires entrants to revisit this era and use their imagination and photographic skills to create and shoot an image which demonstrates what Cool Britannia means to them in 2007. Entrants must also complete an application form exp ...

Shooting Digital Photos with a Digital SLR 2007-10-05 12:15:00 When you shoot images with a digital SLR, you have the utmost in creative freedom. You can capture images with a wide array of lenses—everything from a super wide-angle fish-eye lens, to a long telephoto lens with a focal length of 500mm or greater. You can use a wide-angle lens to record a picturesque landscape and then quickly change to a telephoto to capture a close-up of a distant animal. The following illustration shows a digital SLR with additional lenses. You have complete creative control when you shoot images with a digital SLR.Select the proper lens for the scene you are going to capture and swap it with the current lens. CautionWhen you change lenses, you run the risk of getting dust on the CMOS image sensor because the current to the CMOS can act as a dust magnet. Dust on the sensor will show up as specks on your image. You can reduce the risk of getting dust on the CMOS if you turn off the camera power prior to changing lensesTurn the camera mode dial to select the de ...

Discovering the Great dSLR Features 2007-10-05 12:08:00 All digital SLRs (dSLRs) have six killer features that make your job as a photographer much easier, more pleasant, and more creative. These features are described in the following sections.A bigger, brighter viewThe perspective through a dSLR's viewfinder is larger and easier to view than what you get with any non-SLR's optical window, back-panel LCD, or internal electronic viewfinder (EVF). With a dSLR, what you see is almost exactly what you get (or at least 95 percent of it), although you might need to press a button called a depth-of-field preview if you want to know more precisely what parts of your image are in focus. The dSLR's viewfinder shows you a large image of what the lens sees, not a TV-screen-like LCD view. (See Figure 1.) If you have your heart set on using an LCD, you can still review the picture you've taken on your dSLR's LCD after it has been captured.Faster operationAny non-SLR digital camera suffers from something called shutter lag, which is a delay of 0.5 t ...

Under the Hood: Sensor, processing at heart of DSLR 2007-10-04 13:20:00 Digital SLR cameras have improved drastically in performance over the past year alone, with 8-megapixel cameras now commonplace and at reasonable prices. That said, all such cameras remain constrained by a well-defined optical format and lens design base, the physical geometry of the camera and, of course, cost. Add to that the exponential cost associated with scaling CMOS sensors to reach the size of 35-mm film, and therein lies a problem: Camera manufacturers are forced to trade resolution for the noise associated with shrinking pixel size.Enter the Foveon X3 14.1-Mpixel image sensor. X3 image sensors have three layers of vertically stacked pixels. The layers are embedded in silicon to take advantage of the fact that red, green and blue light penetrate silicon to different depths, allowing it to show full color at every point on the captured image, vs. the interpolation of RGB pixels in a typical array. "The big advantage is that we can do more per unit area," said Richard Turner, vi ...

PENTAX DA 18-250mm 2007-10-03 16:27:00 High zoom ratioMounted on a PENTAX digital SLR camera body, this zoom lens offers approximate 14X zoom ratio that covers the range from 27.5mm wide angle to 383mm super-telephoto in the 35mm format. Without the need for lens changes, it can be used for a wide variety of applications — ranging from such standard applications as landscape photography, snapshots and portrait at frequently used focal lengths, to specialized applications like sports and wildlife photography at the super-telephoto range.Superb image description assured by extra-low dispersion (ED) and aspherical optical (AL) elementsIncorporating two extra-low dispersion (ED) elements and two aspherical (AL) elements, this lens effectively compensates for the adverse effects of various aberrations, assuring outstanding image description.Digital SLR exclusive designThis lens is exclusively designed for use with PENTAX digital SLR cameras, with its image circle perfectly proportioned to their image sensor size (23.5mm x 15.7 ...

Hasselblad H3D-II 39-megapixel 2007-10-03 16:02:00 Hasselblad has launched the Mark II version of its super high-end H3D DSLR.Available immediately worldwide, this 39-megapixel moster will set you back around £18,500, although there are 22 and 31 megapixel versions available for less.The biggest hardware change is the introduction of a 3-inch LCD display, while tweaks have been made to the controls and the sensor is now specially cooled to reduce noise.Christian Poulsen, CEO of Hasselblad, said: "With the introduction of the Hasselblad H3D-II, we believe that the world’s best high-end DSLR camera has just got better.""By further raising the level of integration by improving the controls, functionality and sensor cooling, and adding a new and more intuitive user interface, and a bright, 3-inch display, we continue to address the needs of professional photographers and to reassure them that, by investing in Hasselblad, they’ve made the right choice.""The Hasselblad H3D-II continues the evolution of the world’s most advanced DSLR c ...

How to Buy Digital Camera Lenses 2007-10-02 13:22:00 With new technology comes new opportunity. This statement is particularly true in the case of digital cameras, and more importantly, as the title of this article suggests, in the case of digital camera lenses.There are so many different lenses with varying specifications available that it can be quite overwhelming to find exactly what it is that you require from a lens, but that is where we step in to help.This article acts as a guide to explain the jargon and to allow you make a better-informed purchase the next time you are shopping for a new digital camera lens.Choosing a Suitable Focal LengthFocal length is probably the most important factor that should be considered when choosing a lens, and for good reason: focal lengths determine the field-of-view of the photos you will be able to take successfully with your camera.The two main types of focal length are telephoto and wide-angle, and while telephoto lenses have a narrow field-of-view and are best suited for close-up shots and por ...