Tag Archives: basic photography

Computers, Free Software, Internet, Windows

Five Must-Have Pieces of Free Software

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Everyone loves free stuff, right? I’m writing this post just after Christmas and free software is about the only thing that I can afford! I’ve mentioned all of this software in other posts. In this one I will simply highlight the best of the best of the best.

1. VLC Media Player – VLC is amazing, really. Not only is it the fastest player out there, it’s a wizard when it comes to repairing video files. If you’ve got an AVI that is somewhat corrupted, VLC will repair it. Save the repaired version and you’re done. As far as playback is concerned, VLC lets you slow down the action or speed it up with a simple keystroke for each. I don’t use VLC for music playback but it does that, too.

2. Irfanview – Once you have tried Irfanview, I defy you to live without in the future. I’ve been using it for years, putting it on every computer in the house. Irfanview is quick, efficient and offers a feature list that boggles the mind. Screen capture, batch processing…it’s got it all. Make sure you download the plugins and make sure you download it from Tucows. CNET is reportedly putting malware in its downloads.

3. Google Chrome – Why is a browser on this list? Aren’t they all free? Sure, they’re all free but other browsers pale in comparison to Chrome. I can safely say that Chrome has opened up a whole new world for me, simply because it translates every website that I visit. The Internet is more than the boring English sites that you’re used to surfing. Check out what people around the world are doing on the web, visit and investigate your next international vacation spot, or just see what cool things are for sale in, say, China or Japan.

TIP: One of the best things about the Internet is that most sites are designed in English, even if they use another language for navigation. If you’re stuck on a site and can’t figure out what some of the buttons do, simply hover your cursor over a link and look down to the left of your window. Nine times out of ten you’ll find out what the button leads to, written in plain English.

4. Dropbox – Dropbox is both software and a service. With 1 gigabyte of free storage, Dropbox allows you to share documents from one computer to another around the world. Even if you are on someone’s computer in India, you can access your files via the Internet. There is no need to have the Dropbox application installed. Additionally, you can share files of any type with friends and relatives by giving them guest access to your online folder. Need more than a gig of storage? Open up a few free accounts. You can’t go wrong.

5. Burnaware Free – Burnware is a free, fast and dog-simple burning app. DVDs/CDs/ISOs, Burnaware takes care of it all. Roxio makes a fine product from what I hear but I have only used Burnaware for the past ten years or so. In my opinion, you don’t need any more than this for your daily burning chores. I back-up my computer religiously and you should too. DVDs are cheap and losing lifetime photo memories is expensive. Don’t let a crashed hard drive ruin your life. Get Burnaware and some DVDs for 20 bucks and relax. Your kids will thank you!

All of these applications have full sets of options and features that will make your computer experience much more fulfilling than any piece of retail software would. For that reason, if you’re a bit flush with cash, consider making a donation to the creators. Good karma will follow.

Thanks for reading!

 

 

Photography

Photography 101

A friend of mine was having some issues with his digital camera, a new DSLR , which means digital single lens reflex, as opposed to a point and shoot. Reflex means you look through the lens when you put the camera up to your eye, allowing you to focus and frame your picture much easier. (There are dual lens cameras, hence the ‘single lens’ designation.)

I’d noticed some camera shake in his pictures so I suggested that he change a few settings in order to help get rid of the shake. Since this person isn’t a techno-weenie like me, he had a hard time figuring out what I meant so I explained it in non-technical terms. If you are new to photography, here’s my explanation:

Think of a room with a single window. The window is equipped with a blind that is able to shut out all of the light, part of it or none of it.  The room is the inside of your camera, the window is the lens and the window blind is both the camera shutter, the thing that allows light into the camera in measured portions depending on how long it is open AND the aperture. The aperture is a measurement of how wide the blind is open, not how long it is open.

Three things affect how much light gets into the room. Three things affect how much light gets onto your ‘film’ inside the camera, too. Let’s look at them one by one.

1. The window blind lets light in. You control how much light gets in by opening the blind or closing it. Wide open, lots of light. Halfway open, some light. Closed down, almost no light or no light at all. This is the aperture in your camera.

2. The blind is also the shutter, right? Flinging the blind open for a second, some light will get in. Open it for a longer time and even more light gets into the room.

3. The room, for now, is painted black. This would represent a low ISO. Don’t worry about what ISO is or means, just remember that a low ISO means a black room which would need a lot of light for anyone to be able to see anything in it. Stay with me, this will make sense soon.

Let’s say you are looking for something in the room. When you consider the three things that let light into the room, you will see that you need a combination of two of them to be able to find whatever it is you are looking for.

1. The room is black, there is bright sun outside so you fling open the blind a bit and the object can be found quickly.

2. It’s night time, the moon is out so you open the blind almost all the way and you find the object but it takes some time.

3. It’s a dark night, no moon so you have to open the blind all the way and keep it open until your eyes adjust to whatever light there is. After a long time, you find the object.  You think to yourself, ” I should paint this room white so it would be easier to see things on a dark night”.

After painting the room white, which is the same as changing the ISO to a higher number, you run through the same exercises as above. In each example, the blind is open for a much shorter time, even on the dark night. You decide to change the room again, this time by putting mirrors on each wall. This is the same as changing the ISO to an even higher number.

Running through the exercises, you notice that with the mirrors reflecting whatever light hits them, the blind can be opened for a shorter period of time. You’ll notice that the time that the blinds are open is less, also.

These examples should give you an idea of the settings for your digital camera. The aperture can be open or shut or anything in between. The shutter can be open a long time or not very long at all. The ISO can be changed from low and slow to high and fast, just the same as you can paint your room a lighter color to increase the reflection of light, or darker to kill reflections.

Shake comes into the equation now. If the shutter is open for a tiny fraction of a second, there is no risk of shake or blur. If the shutter is open for anything longer than say, 1/125th of a second, there is a great possibility of shake. Keep that shutter open for half a second and you’re begging shake to pop into your pics. What’s the answer?

Look at the examples above. To decrease the time that the shutter is open, we have to adjust the aperture or the ISO. There is a setting for a perfect picture and that setting is a combination of three things. Shutter opening time, aperture width and ISO setting. Each one affects the other.

Fast shutter speed eliminates shake but requires a wider aperture. Once the aperture is open as wide as possible, there is only ISO to play with. After that, you need a tripod and a shutter release to ensure a blur-free photo.

There are two other variables besides the big three. They are ‘noise’ and ‘depth of field’. I will get into these in the next two entries. For now, get used to the big three and see if you can adjust them to eliminate shake. Your camera will have (or should have) three settings other than Auto. One is Aperture Preferred (you tell the camera what aperture you want and it does the rest), Shutter Preferred (you tell the camera the shutter speed you want and it does the rest) or Manual. Manual means that you’re on your own. You decide everything. Good luck with that! You’ll get to be an expert if you practice using these settings.

Thanks for reading! Follow me on Twitter: @_BrianMahoney

Photography

Basic Photography

I wrote this a couple of years ago. The principles are still the same but my writing was a bit stilted back then. No matter. Short concise sentences will help you understand Basic Photography.

Photography is light:
1. Light hits something, film or a sensor
2. The film or sensor reacts to how much light hits it
3. The film or sensor saves the image.

An automatic DSLR camera makes adjustments for you. It reads how much light is hitting the object you want to shoot and adjusts three things to ensure you take a good picture.

An automatic camera adjusts :

1. The size of the opening the light goes through. (Aperture)
2. How long the opening is actually open. (Shutter speed)
3. How sensitive the sensor is to the light that hits it. (ISO setting)

You can manually adjust all of these three settings yourself. This will change the other two settings. If you think of all of this as an equation, A + B + C = D, it might make more sense. D is a constant, it’s a fixed number which represents a perfect picture.
A is aperture, B is Shutter Speed and C is the ISO setting. Since D must always be the same, you can see that if you change any of the variables, A, B or C, then you have to adjust one of the other two variables.

If you open your aperture (the hole) more, you have to leave it open for less time, right? If you make the sensor more sensitive to light, you have to either make the hole the light comes through smaller or shorten the time you let the light into the camera. Any change that is made in one, affects the other two. If you remember these variables, you’ll begin to understand what makes a good picture as well as understanding the terms ‘underexposure’ (too little light, too little time open or low sensitivity or a combination of all three) and ‘overexposure’ (too much light, etc.)

Next time I will explain why you might want to adjust one of the three variables.

Thanks for reading. If you like this post, tell others about it. OK? Follow me on Twitter: @_BrianMahoney