David Frazer

Pipe organs being largely custom-made and unique, as well as a major part of most buildings where they are found, I would consider it wise to get a property release form signed, but perhaps there are others here that have additional insights.

I am far from being a wedding photographer, but I would be inclined to say that you don’t expose for the dress – you expose for the faces, and if you shoot in RAW you should still have enough detail in the dress. Of course, if the bride has very dark skin, and is wearing a white dress you could have issues…

@austinvinar I like your idea of using the furnace heat to warm the camera up – it means that the heat is very dry heat! When doing real estate photography, I have to take pictures outside and then come inside and take pictures inside, so waiting around for an hour while the camera warms up is out of the question. I just make sure I put the lens…[Read more]

I guess it depends what you mean by cold… I knew a guy here in Quebec who would go out on the lake in winter with his dad to take pictures of wildlife. He said that when it gets much below -30 the lenses’ autofocus starts to squeek after a while. (I don’t remember how long, but knowing him it was probably at least an hour.) He thought that was…[Read more]

I can hardly say I have a lot of experience with gels, although I do use them occasionally. Here is the setup I use – its main advantage being that it’s very inexpensive…

Required Equipment:
– Rosco sample gels from B&H: 1.84 USD
– clear plastic from just about any plastic packaging: normally 0$, unless you specifically buy something for the…[Read more]

Here is a quick overview of how I use dropbox:

1) Create a folder (I always start the name with YYYY-MM-DD ex.: “2018-11-15 123 Main street – Client Name” That way they stay in order and are easier to find. (I also often put a folder or two inside the main folder)

2) Click “Share”

3) Do NOT use the built-in email share feature. Instead,…[Read more]

As with anything, it’s important to know what you are buying. You can get cheap equipment and you can get inexpensive equipment… I recommend doing your research before settling on one or two possibilities. (B&H and Adorama are great places for that!)

If on the other hand you are asking the difference between buying a particular lens from one…[Read more]

I normally deliver by Dropbox, but sometimes I use box.com. I make a folder for each project and share the folder. The advantage of box.com is that if you send as a link they are less pushy about trying to get people to sign up with an account, and therefore it is less confusing to the average user. Of course sharing as a link also means that…[Read more]

For starters, I would recommend installing Darktable or RawTherapee (both are free). If you want more power over individual pixels and want layers (very useful for major cloning work), Affinity Photo would be a good one to try out. (for about 50$ USD). It takes a while to learn how to use them, but once you have learned these programmes they…[Read more]

Here is a post that talks a bit about the science behind catchlights… In this case it was a sheep, but eyes are all basically the same – small reflective balls, from a camera’s point of view. 🙂

Lambs

Basically, you need a large bright area that will be reflected in the subject’s eye.

You mentioned that your intended use is for studio work, and you haven’t really talked about what gear you already have, so I thought I would simply mention that what will make a much bigger difference in the final results than the camera body is the lighting system. What you you already have in terms of flashes, strobes, continuous lighting,…[Read more]

“lens corrections” is to correct vignetting and lens distortion (pincushion/barrel distortions)

There is another module called “chromatic aberrations”, if I remember rightly.

You’re right, @hayhand02 that is a Nikon lens, but it is for the Nikon 1 series, and will not work on their DSLRs. Currently, the closest there is that I am aware of is the Tokina 12-28mm f/4.0 (currently 430 USD at B&H).

@rmadaris, sorry I’m rather late seeing this… As far as software goes, I personally use Photomatix Pro 6 (about 100 USD – they also have a trial version) and Darktable (free). I also occasionally use Gimp (free).

Here is how I started:
Most of my work was shot in aperture mode, and bracketed -2 0 +2 although I occasionally need more, and…[Read more]

As a real estate photographer and real estate broker, I think I can probably help you a bit. Here are some of my thoughts:

Real estate photography has a very specific purpose: to create a desire to go see and eventually purchase a property. Depending on the agent, that can be approached in different ways.

Photo #1 is not a real estate photo.…[Read more]

There could be a couple of possible reasons for that. The most likely problem is the screen you are using to view the photos. Have you tried viewing the same photos on various screens? The more different screens you can try the better, even if they are only cell phone screens. If they all look pretty similar, and equally bad, it could be the…[Read more]

It looks like nobody here has experience calibrating their monitors (myself included). Getting the “correct” colour is rather tricky.

In general, grey should look grey (gray will do, too) and white should look white. But that changes depending on what kind of lights you have around your computer, too. A white paper sitting in front of your…[Read more]

Here’s a quick edit of your original, with a sky replacement, slight colour correction, and the verticals straightened. I would make one suggestion – shoot a bit wider than you want your final picture to be: it is easier to crop things out than to add things in. Yes, you loose some resolution by cropping, but the D3200’s 24 Megapixels is plenty…[Read more]

So far, what do you like best? Do you find Photos gives you as much editing power as you like? If so, don’t bother adding more software to your computer.

If you find that you would like to do a bit more than Photos does, a couple of other programmes you could try are Darktable (free) and Affinity Photo (50 USD, has a 10 day trial).

I have used RAWTherapee, Darktable, Gimp (all free) and have also used the free trial versions of Affinity, Photoshop and Lightroom.

In my opinion these programs can be divided into two distinct categories:

1) sorting and basic editing (including non-destructive global adjustments for RAW and jpg images, as well as some local adjustment…[Read more]