David Frazer

Another really good book for understanding the basics of lighting is “Light: Science and Magic: An Introduction to Photographic Lighting“. You do have to watch out which version you get, as some versions do have some immodesty. The version I know is decent is the third edition (bright red), which I linked to on Amazon.com

Right, the D610 with crop-frame lenses would essentially be a 10MP crop-frame camera.

What do you find the limitations / difficulties of the D3400 are?

Depending on your needs, it could be a better investment to get higher-quality (ideally full-frame compatible) lenses rather than a body upgrade. Of course that would mean you still only have one…[Read more]

No time to give any in-depth insights right now, but the D610 is a full-frame camera and you will need full-frame lenses to go with it. What lenses do you have right now?

I had gotten two off-brand batteries a couple years ago, but they don’t seem to hold a charge very well…
and lately they sometimes kinda get stuck in the camera

That is exactly my experience with off-brand batteries. I finally ended up getting another Nikon-brand battery. They are about 4 times the price (ouch), but they last 4 times as l…[Read more]

A 24-70 or something similar would be what you will be looking for, as that will be the same effective focal length as what you are used to. There are a few possibilities. If you are used to f2.8 you will want something that goes to at least f4.0 on full-frame.

A few things that will affect the price:
– Image stabilisation (othewise known as…[Read more]

Personally I use the default name right from the camera, or with the date before the file name. It makes finding/identifying them at a later date a whole lot easier, and saves time for me.

IMPORTANT! If you put the date in the file name make sure it is Year-Month-Day, all numerical. ex.: 2021-01-21. Any other format can cause confusion or…[Read more]

I just got a screen when I switched from my iMac, so some of this is still somewhat fresh in my memory… You will find that Mac screens are hard to beat as far as quality is concerned. For accurate colours you would be looking for a monitor with In-Plane Switching (IPS) or equivalent technology such as PLS. OLED is great, but they tend to be a…[Read more]

There are basically two ways of getting decent real estate shots: HDR and Flash (There are hybrid techniques that work really well too.) The reason for this is the enormous difference in brightness between the outdoor light and the indoor light in most cases. The best results can generally achieved using external lighting (flash), but the HDR…[Read more]

I was curious as to why you can change the settings on your full frame camera quicker than on your crop sensor camera? And what some of the extra features are? 🙂

In short, there are a lot more buttons! an advanced crop will have a similar array of buttons.

So for example to change from auto iso to fixed iso, on my D5300 I had to hit something…[Read more]

Equipment upgrades can be both exciting and daunting. I realise you have already thought about most of these questions, but for those others who are reading, remember that what exactly you are planning on doing and what other equipment you already have may affect how you will upgrade. Just saying “you need the Canon EOS R6” may be true for some,…[Read more]

Personally I use stars – I go through everything really quickly and anything that has some potential gets 2 stars. (one finger over the 2 key, the other finger on the arrow key) Then I limit the view to see only 2 star photos and go through again, bumping the best up to 3 stars. When I get to 3 stars I sometimes have narrowed it down enough but…[Read more]

It’s probably best to check the trick out for yourself, as different people have different sizes of arms and hands …

You can select your camera type from the drop-down on that site. So a Nikon crop-frame camera is listed as Nikon DX/APS-C; Canon crop-frame would be Canon APS-C.

So by extension…

In the field I find a trick like this is much quicker, though not perfectly acurate: hold out your hand at arm’s length.
– 1 finger width = 800mm
– fist width = 120mm
– index to pinkie streched out = 80mm
– span (thumb to pinkie stretched out) = 50mm
– two spans (same as above but both hands, pinkie to thum) = 25mm

This website makes it really…[Read more]

Bear in mind that larger pixels being “better” applies notably to a 1:1 (100%) view. So, If you have a 12MP photo taken on a crop sensor and a 32MP photo taken on a crop sensor of equal age and quality, viewed at 1:1 the 12MP photo will be much sharper. I suspect the quality will be nearly identical once both are scaled to 8MP. (such as an 8×10…[Read more]

If you want a single free tool that can do just about anything video editing related, you should look at Davinci Resolve. If you are going to need 3d look at Blender. Both are free, but Davinici is more video and colour oriented and Blender is more 3d rendering oriented. Blender will take longer to learn. You will need a powerful computer.

they have said a better camera can help get the blue or darker white out that I seem to pick up on my phone camera.

If she makes small pieces of art her money would go farther by creating (or buying) a portable photo studio box and keep taking the pictures with her cell phone. A couple of examples:…[Read more]

Actually, I would say that it almost does follow the 12% margin rule – the parts that are in focus (except the whiskers which you could argue don’t really count) are all at least 12% from the edges except the nose, which is just a hair closer. Personally I would have cropped a bit more off the top if the idea was to have a tight crop, but that is…[Read more]

That is a neat thought! I have rarely seen a favourite photo where the main focus of the picture has less than that 12% margin “rule”. Of course just like the “rule” of 3rds, this is not a “rule” but a guideline.

Just to test the theory, here are three examples from an international dog photography contest: (1st 2nd and 3rd prize, puppy…[Read more]