Nikon D3x leaked.

Nikon has leaked their own announcements themselves by mistake. How did this happened? Well, it appears that they released their magazine named “Nikon Pro Magazine” in Europe to early, before they could launch the “official announcement”.

The new Nikon D3x is a full-frame DSLR camera with a 24.5 megapixel 16-bit EXPEED image processor. Here are some more specifications:

• 24.5 megapixel the highest resolution seen in a Nikon DSLR to date
• 16 bit EXPEED image processor (35.9 x 24mm)
• 51 point autofocus system
• 5fps continuous shooting (or 7fps at 10 megapixel)
• ISO range 50-6200
• Extra High Active D-Lighting
• Live preview shooting mode
• 3 inch LCD screen with 922000 dots
• Extremely durable magnesium construction with economically optimized and weather-sealed
• Dual CF slots

According to cameraworld.co.uk the price of the D3X camera is expected to be around £5500 (they even take pre-order deposits of £20). And it is said that will be released  in December.

I wonder if it’s worth buying it. Beside the high megapixel number there is not much improvement compared to D3. I guess that this D3X it will be a relief for fashion/portrait/product/etc. photographer , but a disappointment for wedding and sports photographers photographers where they need speed and god image quality at very high ISO.  But we will wait and see how it will present itself.

You can read more here or here.

Tags: DSLR, Gear, Nikon, Photography

Take better Photographs tips.

Often happens that when we copy the brand new photographs from the camera on our PC and look at them we, see a lot of “very good photographs”, but when we show it to others we find that are quite not that good. That is because our photograph has a lot of visual and compositional mistakes and doesn’t tell a story ( being a wide subject I will talk more about the composition in another post ). This facts can make your photo very unappealing. We are often fooled by the fact that we know the whole story of a photo because we were there, but our viewer wasn’t there so he must understand from the little point of vie caught in your photo (We have a subjective look on our photos and might block us from seeing the mistakes). But it’s always a good idea to have a “fresh eye” so don’t be afraid to ask for opinions.

So here are some advices to follow that will improve your skills in taking better photographs:

Read more…

Tags: Composition, Photography, Tips & Tricks

ShutterVoice, control your DSLR camera by voice.

As a photographer you always try to learn new things and try to find different and better results for the same problem or want to improve you skill in photography area.  So, you have a day off and you want to practice a little at home or in you studio. You set your camera and your lights, but you need a subject to take a photograph of. Sometimes is hard to find a subject wiling to loose time just to be you guinea pig, so the best subject which is always willing to be photographed “in the name of evolution” is you. But all the time you find yourself running to you camera to see results or change settings.

That’s why developer Scott Forman started the creation of ShutterVoice software and was originally created to ease the process of shooting lighting tests with himself as the subject, This enables you to control the Canon EOS Utility software ( that comes with your DSLR camera ) with spoken commands. This is programmed to be out on the market by the end of the next month.

Without touching the keyboard, ShutterVoice allows for broad control of EOS Utility, it’s possible to use command phrases that adjust aperture, shutter speed, ISO, set focus distance (autofocus in Live View is possible too, though with the EOS 50D and EOS 5D Mark II only), rotate pictures and enable the control of EV compensation, color temperature, white balance and more, shown in the screenshot and video bellow:

Read more…

Tags: 50D, 5D Mark II, Camera Gear, Canon, DSLR, News, Photography, Software

Histogram. What it is and how we can use it?

You often saw this “histogram” when editing a photograph in, for example, Photoshop. Or you saw it on your camera screen right near your photo. Some of you might of ignored it, others even asked themselves but thought that it’s not that important to know.

Well, histogram it’s a powerful tool in digital photography because it can tell you whether or not your image has been expose properly, it can tell us whether the lighting is flat or harsh.  It will not only improve your skills on editing on the computer, but as a photographer as well.

Read more…

Tags: Brightness/Contrast, Histogram, Photography, Photoshop

Brightness/Contrast, got better for editing photographs

A few years back when i seriously started to use Photoshop, i was a heavy user of the “Brightness/Contrast” adjustment, until some day i have read an article that said that’s incredibly wrong to use this adjustment because it shreds your histogram.

Increasing Brightness with any version of Photoshop until CS3 will add whatever you set the control at to every pixel in the image, shifting everything towards the right in the histogram. When are decreasing the brightness , all will be shifted equally darker. The tone of every pixel moved right or left equally with the same value, even when some parts of an image needed it more than others. The traditional version of Contrast adjustment was equally simplistic in how it operated, stretching or contracting contrast equally over the entire range of the histogram.

A photograph can contain 256 brightness levels ( from 0 which means pure black to 255 which means pure white). Let’s say that our photograph has a brightness level from 20 to 180. When we increase the brightness by let’s say 20, the new photo will have  a brightness level from 40 ( the old vale + 20) to 200 (the old value +20). So the Whole histogram is move to the right, when decreased move to the left.

So for the last two and a half years i only used Curves and/or Levels adjustments for increasing contrast and brightness. Now I saw that “Use legacy” option and started googling to see what exactly does and I found out that… Read more…

Tags: Brightness/Contrast, Comparation, Editing, Photo Test, Photography, Photoshop

Color management. Adobe RGB or sRGB?

We all happened to get lost in this, sometimes, crazy and very weird subject, and end up asking ourselves: “Why my photos aren’t looking the same on the paper as on my computer?”. What, are we going to do?  We are going to search Google, and we will see ourselves surrounded by thousands of websites and each other having a different opinion about this subject, and everyone advising different things base on technicalities , few base on tests. It’s true that you cannot show the exact differences because the web browsers shows the photographs, that are in any color profile, into sRGB. So i will try to explain myself as clear as i can.

I recently got myself mixed up in this and I have spend  a few days reading and reading about what anybody else think of it, what are the experts saying, and i came to the conclusion that first I have to see for myself. And i have been pretty amazed and a little relieved of the results.

Read more…

Tags: Adobe RGB, Color Management, Color Profiles, Photo Print, Photo Test, sRGB

Hello world!

Being the first post of this blog and in the honest attempt to maintain the “tradition of blog-starting”, the first words must be “Hello world”.

Through this post I would like to firstly present myself, the blog and my vision about this blog.

So, my name is Constantin Chirila and I am an ambitious photographer. I am in the pursuit of “seeing” the other face of the world, the face that is hidden by our sometimes ignorant eyes. I want to see details and forms, objects and textures that we usually walk by without even notice them.  And finally I want to capture this to share it with you and others.

Photo-Skills.com is my way to share my always developing skills, share my thoughts about different aspects of photography and other linked subjects. I will share my way of doing things from taking the photograph to editing and manipulating it. I will share with you my knowledge perfected and improved along the years by reading thousands of pages about photography and spending hundreds of hours of shooting and experimenting. I consider this blog to be as another way of improving my skills, because the best way of learning, beside practicing, is teaching others.

So I hope you enjoy this as much as I do.

Tags: Photography