Click'n Moms

You have probably heard me speak of them before, but if you are interested in learning more about your camera and join a HUGE forum. This is the one to join.

Click'n Moms is a fabulous forum that will help you not only learn your camera but also be comfortable taking photos and discussing your work. I highly recommend it. Click on the icon below to learn more information about it.

Enjoy!

Wednesday Word of the day! JPEG vs. RAW

Ok, a day late, I know, but I hope you will forgive me.

Since we talked a little about the different coloration you can do to photos last week, let's talk about image compression this week. As long as you haven't been living under a rock for the last couple of years you have probably heard of JPG or GIFs.

JPEGS - Joint Photographic Experts Group. This is the name of the committee that designed the standard image compression algorithm. JPEG was designed for compressing full color or grey scale digital images of natural scenes. It doesn't work so well with non-realistic images, such as cartoons however. JPEG does not handle the compression of black and white (1 bit-per-pixel) images or moving pictures.

The other choice often used is GIF. A graphic file format mainly used for Web graphic or small animated (GIF) files. Not good for photographs as it only contains a maximum of 256 colours.

Most cameras output directly to JPEG or RAW format. RAW files store the unprocessed image data at 12 bits per channel. Directly from the camera's imaging chip to its memory storage device. RAW image files must be processed with special software before they can be viewed or printed. These are normally in the form of a plug in for Photoshop or as a standalone product. . The advantage is that you have the ability to alter the white balance, exposure value, colour values, contrast, brightness and sharpness as you see fit before you convert this data into the standard JPEG or TIFF format. Professional digital photographers import RAW image data directly into photo-editing programs like Photoshop CS (which comes with a Camera Raw plug-in that works with most popular RAW formats.)

If you are serious about your photography, I would suggest shooting in RAW, it gives you so much more freedom and flexibility. Yes, it takes up more hard drive space, but hard drives are cheap! Especially when that perfect shot is just slightly off and you need to tweak something. RAW will save you most every time.

Wednesday Word of the day! - Sepia

I get this one a lot!

What is sepia?

Sepia. The (brownish) mono toned effect seen in images from the original 19th and early 20th Century cameras. This is now a special feature often found as a special image effect on some digicams and/or editing software. A lot of professional photographers offer tinted photographs, like sepia.

Sepia is similar to the black and white effect. Some of the higher end cameras can do this effect in camera. Look around in your menu.

Wednesday Word of the day! - Megapixels

How important are all those megapixels?

What are megapixels anyway? Digital cameras capture photographs on image sensors, rather than on film (ahh, the old days!).

The megapixel count is how many individual ‘dots’ are there on that image sensor, making up the photograph. 3 Megapixel cameras have 3 million dots on their sensors. 4 Megapixel cameras have 4 million dots . . . and so on.

You might assume then, that those extra million pixels will improve your digital photography. Not by much it won’t!I’ve shown the relative difference in size between image sensors below. The difference between a 3 and 4 megapixel camera isn’t all that much at all.

When you are making your digital camera comparison, don’t let the sales staff sell you on Megapixels alone! With a difference of only 1 million pixels you should look at what else the camera offers.

Other things to consider about the number of megapixels

Right, now we’ve got an understanding of pixels and sensor size, there are two things you should consider when making your digital camera comparison:

• How important is picture quality to you?
  
• How will you view your photographs, computer screen or print?

Picture quality:
This is determined by more than just the number of pixels. In fact, some cameras with a lot of megapixels produce worse pictures than cameras with fewer. The reason is twofold:

First, the more pixels crammed onto an image sensor, the smaller each individual pixel must be. The pixels are so small it’s difficult to accurately record the light hitting them. The results are what we call in digital photography ‘noise’ and ‘purple fringing’. (NB: Noise is a grainy effect to photographs, purple fringing is when light areas of the photograph bleed into the dark areas.)

Second, the quality of lenses. The best sensor in the world will be useless without a good lens to focus light onto it. At the same time, a lesser sensor, but with a good lens in front of it is capable of taking very good photographs.

How will you view your photographs?:

If you plan to use digital photography to take photographs that you will only ever view on screen, then you won’t need many pixels. A standard 15” monitor will be 1024 pixels wide, and 768 pixels high. The total is only 0.8 Megapixels. No point buying a 6 megapixel camera if you only need 0.8 of them!

Maybe someday you'll want to print them out

One day you may well decide to print the results of your digital photography. Most people do at some point, and therefore you’ll need to think carefully about the number of pixels when making your digital camera comparison.

The holy grail for printing is a resolution of 300 dots per inch. You will still get a good print from around 240 dots per inch though.

What does this mean for you in terms of megapixels? Have a look at the table below which shows how big a print you can realistically make:

Megapixels: (MP)	Quality prints up to this size:
minimum of 2MP	6” x 4”
minimum of 3MP	7” x 5”
minimum of 6MP	10” x 8”
minimum of 8MP	12” x 10”

Excerpt from Digital Photography tips.net