Wrong vs Right and Spare Parts

Ladies you know how it is – you buy something, it comes with instructions, we read them and we follow them. Men, you buy something, throw the packaging and instructions out and put it together … several times and then finally get it right, possibly with left-over parts? Sound familiar to you all?

Well last night I made a purchase, followed the instructions and nothing! So hmmmm, start over, read slower … NOTHING! Grrrrr … start over, read r e a l l y   s l o w … N O T H I N G!!!! Ahhhhhhh. Dan says, “what’s wrong honey?” I know he is gonna laugh when I say the directions don’t work! So he comes over and helps me and through trial and error the light bulb goes on! Eureka, those damn instructions were wrong and we figure it out – No fork needed through my monitor!

Okay, so one for the guys – instructions in the garbage or I will add them to the box of leftover parts when men build stuff!!!

Have a great long-weekend everyone, it’s the last kick at the cat so to speak and the weather looks nice!

Shelly ♥

Here Comes The Bride!

Weddings can take place is so many different locations – some better lit than others. This weekend, the challenge was a candle-lit ceremony – something new for me as a photographer. Game on I say, I love a good challenge! Knowing my camera well and shooting in RAW instead of JPEG as well as manual mode on my camera, gave me the flexibility to adjust for the low light and not use flash. Above is one of my favorite shots of the ceremony – pulled back to include the ambience and the crowd.

Now comes the behind-the-scene task of culling images and editing/processing which gives you those beautiful final photos. Well a culling I go ….

Have a great week everyone, the weather looks fantastic!

Shelly ♥

How many Megapixels is enough?

Have you ever wondered how many megapixels is enough?  Well the answer is….. it depends!  There are a few things to consider.  The photograph’s intended end result is one of the most important factors to consider.  If you are wanting to create your own computer desktops, virtually any camera including cellphone cameras will generate the 3.6MP required to fill even the largest computer monitor.  Printed photographs however up the ante a bit.   Generally speaking, a 4×6 photo only requires about 2.1MP, where as an 8×10 needs about 7.2 megapixels!  That’s a significant difference, and you may wonder, why the big change in the file size?  Printed photos require greater pixel density for the same percieved image quality as what you see on your average 19″ computer monitor.  Since most cameras are 10MP or greater, there’s no problem right?

There is another factor to consider – how your photo is composed when you take it.  Most photos end up being cropped to some degree before being printed.  The size that the subject of the photo, takes up in the photo…  is an important aspect to consider – confused?  Lets look at it another way.  Lets say you’ve just taken a photo of your kids, or your pet dog in the park.  When you go to print the photograph, you realise that there’s some random stranger, or something else distracting in your photo, or perhaps you think should have zoomed in more – no problem you’ll just crop out the distraction right?  Here’s where you can lose a lot of image quality or photo size.  If you crop out 30% of the photo, you also lose 30% of the megapixels in the file, that 10MP master image just became a 7MP cropped image.  You can quickly see how important it is to properly compose your photos.

So remember, you want to shoot wide enough to allow for some cropping, but not too wide or you’ll lose too much image quality when you edit that final image.

Happy Snapping!

Ðannψ

How to Clean Your Camera Lens

Have you ever taken a fantastic picture with your camera, copied it onto your computer and found smudges, dust or finger prints on it because you didn’t notice the lens was dirty? Very frustrating!

Let us give you a few pointers on how to clean your camera lens safely and save you some time in Photoshop.

Whatever you do, DON’T blow on the lens. You could end up spraying saliva on the lens and make more of a mess.

Carbon-based lens pens (Lenspen is my favourite) can be used for cleaning the lens. They are very convenient because they have a soft brush on one end and a cleaning tip on the other end. These are great if you just have dust on your lens, otherwise if you have fingerprints or something that may be oily, you will need to use the liquid lens cleaner. I always start with the brush to remove dust and grit so as to not scratch the lens. If I see something more, I move onto the next step.

To use the liquid cleaner, put a drop or two of a lens cleaning solution onto a lens tissue and wipe the lens in a circular motion starting from the center and moving out. Don’t put the liquid directly onto your lens! If you don’t have lens tissue available, use a soft, lint-free cloth, like a microfiber cloth.

Have a great week!

Shelly ♥

That Sinking Feeling …

Ever turn on your camera and it shows NO images? You turn it off and on again. Nothing. A sick feeling starts to grow in the pit of your stomach. You haven’t transferred the images off your card in months. Your mind races and thinks back to what events were on that card. Oh boy!

It’s a doozy … Your child’s first birthday … Your great-great grandfather’s 90th birthday … A before & after home reno still in progress. The list goes on.

Many of us have been there and it’s not pretty. For those that haven’t, you think … Meh, won’t happen to me. But really it could.

I wanted to blog about a few simple things you can do to significantly lower your risk of this happening. First things first. You should regularly copy important images to your computer AND back them up (keeping a third copy off-site is also a good idea). Secondly, once you copy them over to your computer (and back them up) you should reformat your card in-camera before using it again . Why? Because when you just copy over what was deleted, there is more chance of a card error because the camera is trying to write over info instead of saving on a “clean slate”.

There are recovery programs out there, just Google and you’ll find a whole whack of them. I hear of good results, but sometimes you just can’t get those images back. Better to be safe than sorry … make a back-up!

Have you ever lost precious images or were you able to save them?

Shelly ♥