Posted by Constantin Chirila on Nov 27, 2008 in
Photography 
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:
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Tags: 50D, 5D Mark II, Camera Gear, Canon, DSLR, News, Photography, Software
Posted by Constantin Chirila on Nov 26, 2008 in
Photography 
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.
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Tags: Brightness/Contrast, Histogram, Photography, Photoshop
Posted by Constantin Chirila on Nov 24, 2008 in
Photography,
Photoshop 
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
