Actions Photography Workflow Made Simple
Post-processing photos using Photoshop or other software programs has generally been a step-by-step, labor-intensive process. There are certain tweaks you want to do on an image as soon as you get it into Photoshop. Some of these tweaks you'll want to repeat for many images. That's when Actions comes into the picture. In Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, Actions are steps that you perform on an image. The program automatically records your actions so you can repeat the same steps on another...
FineArt Printing
The biggest leap in printing technology for consumers came when printer manufacturers came out with printers using pigmented inks. In 2000, Epson introduced its first pigmented-ink printers the Epson Stylus Pro 7500, 9500, Stylus Photo P2000 printers.1 Each model prints at different sizes, with the higher numbers corresponding to the wider print sizes and higher cost . These were the first pigmented-inkjet printers with six ink cartridges. Pigmented ink lasts much longer more than 200 years...
Creating New Pictorialist Photographs Digitally
The techniques that produced pictorialism are now available to the masses with digital cameras and image-manipulation software. To be sure, many film and digital photographs look like paintings, but the process used to make them has changed as the technology has. There are methods to produce photographs that look like paintings everything from photographing in a mist to using special-effect painting filters in Photoshop. To make a pictorialist photograph today, all you have to do is search the...
Photomontage
Photomontage is another art form that includes photography one that Russian photographer Alexander Rodchenko brought to life in his work during the Russian Revolution. It involves cutting, pasting, and matching images to create a new work of art. The art has roots since photography's inception in the late 19th century, and it's a craft that is thriving today among scrapbookers and hobbyists, who create both digital and cut-and-paste works, often posting them on the Internet. Gary Ortman creates...
The Future of HDR
HDR technology is advancing rapidly. There are already cameras that can take HDR photos. Sony began including HDR capability in its 14.2-MP Sony Alpha DSLR-A550L with an auto HDR function. It takes two shots at different exposures and combines them into one. The updated Sony DSLR-A580, a 16.2-MP camera, includes auto HDR, which uses three shots to make an HDR photo. According to an August 2010 press release about the camera, Auto HDR is now refined further compared with previous-generation a...
The Strange Found Art of Walker Evans
Walker Evans, a master of photographing text, grew up in a family closely connected to the advertising world his father was a copywriter. Evans photographed found signage of any kind from billboards to graffiti, including signs on the street, inside buildings, on storefronts, on clothing, in parades, and among people involved in everyday life. In his work, Evans was able to seek out the strange perceptions of man. In The Grand Man about 1935 , he photographed a poster of the body of a man, each...
Inkless Printers
The newest technology in printing devices is low-cost inkless printers. You can print 4x6 photos with no ink using the Pandigital portable printer see Figure 13.2 , which reads your camera's memory card. The printer's magic lies in the Zink paper, which has dye embedded in it crystals of magenta, yellow, and cyan. The printer uses heat to develop the photo paper. Zink paper is required available at pandigital.net it costs 17.99 for 40 sheets. A similar printer, the Dell Wasabi PZ310, makes...
New Type of Lenses
Engineers, scientists, and small companies are using different liquids to make tiny lenses for cell-phone cameras. Unique imaging technologies are being used with these lenses in a race for the tiniest, fastest camera that needs minimal amounts of power. ScienceDaily reported in 2008 that miniature lenses can be created by the power of water, sound and surface tension.1 The process begins when the sound oscillates a pair of water droplets. When light passes through oscillating water droplets,...
Smartphones iOS Android and BlackBerry
Photoshop Mobile PhotoForge Photogene Photo fx Image manipulated using the Pixel Perfect iPhone app. Throughout their existence, camera phones have put some businesses on edge. Having a camera, access to the Internet, and a phone all in one device enabled the instant broadcast of life's most revealing moments. It provided new opportunities for voyeurism. Consider the gym locker room. But by 2015, cell phones may be required to make an audible sound when users take a picture. In 2009, a bill2...
Sensors of the Future
Bio-inspired is the latest buzzword for digital camera sensors sensors built to replicate a human eye. In 2008, Yonggang Huang, a Joseph Cummings Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, collaborated with John Rogers, the Flory-Founder Chair Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to begin testing a paraboloid, or curved...
Sensor Design
You can relate the film-frame size of a negative to the size of a sensor in a digital camera however, there is a bigger difference in the variety of sensor sizes today than there was in filmframe sizes in the film days. Although most cameras from the film days took 35mm film, today only the more expensive dSLR cameras have sensors of that size. Sensors that are the same size as 35mm film 24x36mm are called full-frame sensors. Sensors come in a variety of sizes, but all are rectangular see...
The World Between
There are cameras that lie in limbo between a dSLR and a point-and-shoot. These are the point-and-shoot class with interchangeable lenses currently available from Sony, Olympus, Panasonic, and Samsung. These cameras take dSLR-quality photos without using mirrors, making them smaller and more lightweight than dSLRs. They also can have smaller lenses because the flange-back distance is half the length of that in a dSLR because there are no mirrors. Sony NEX-5 camera. Image courtesy of Sony.com....
Rangefinder and Medium Format Cameras
On the M9, the 28mm Summicron gives me the finest detail, a punchier image, along with amazing color. Although the dSLR is the most popular camera for professional photographers, other camera models have been used throughout the years, developed first as film cameras and then as digital cameras. When considering other models, you should take into account both the way the camera focuses and the size of the film sensor. The cameras discussed in this chapter are the tools of mostly professional...
Image Stabilization
In 1994, Nikon came out with a vibration-reduction lens for film cameras the Nikon Zoom 700VR QD. That was the beginning of an effort to give photographers an opportunity to get a sharp shot using a hand-held camera. Sensor-based image stabilization works within the body of the camera, so you don't have to purchase a lens with image stabilization. Sony, Pentax, Samsung, and Olympus all offer image-stabilization cameras. Canon and Nikon don't offer image stabilization in-camera, but they do...
The dSLR Camera of the Future
With a reflex you tend to make the picture in the camera. The dSLR camera replaced the SLR camera at the beginning of the 21st century. The former has a sensor and other components that record and save an image on a memory card the latter uses film. Both have a mirror system and a pentaprism, and they accept a variety of lenses. Other than the sensor taking the place of film, not many changes in the structure of these types of cameras have been made. As you'll see in this chapter, many of the...
The Daguerreotype
Photographic images evolved from an artistry of technology that was constantly in flux. In the 15th century, scientists worked with the first step in the photographic process, which was to use light and mirrors to capture a setting and have it reflected on a wall. Several centuries later, they worked to find materials that would record the image. Initially, plates had to be prepared, exposed to light, and then developed. The first photographic process to do this the daguerreotype see Figure 1.1...