Maklumat Berkaitan Penggunaan DSLR..

Baru-baru ini saya mendapat maklumat dari seorang kawan berkaitan satu E-Book bagaimana menggunakan DSLR Nikon dengan secara lebih efisien. Pengunjung boleh ke lama web berikut untruk mendapatkan E-Book tersebut secara percuma (Walaupun saya tahu ia tidak beretika..):

http://dmzwarez.info/2010/02/11/nikon-dslr-the-ultimate-photographers-guide/

Namun, atas dasar keterbukaan ilmu, harap ia dapat dimanfaatkan dengan secara lebih baik lagi. Penghargaan diberi kepada pengelola lama web terbabit. Saya ada juga cuba berhubung dengan pengendali laman web http://dmzwarez.info tetapi tiada balasan yang kunjung tiba.

Semoga berjumpa lagi pada lain waktu. Cheers!!

A Brief History of Lenses .

 

The lens is the eye of the camera. Its function is to bring light from the subject into focus on the film. A camera can have a single lens or a complex set of lenses. Together with the shutter, the lens controls the amount of light that enters the camera.

The modern camera’s predecessor, the camera obscura, consisted of a simple pinhole in the side of a room or box. In the 17th century people discovered they could produce a brighter, sharper image by fitting a camera obscura with a convex (outward-curving) lens. The first such lens came from a pair of eyeglasses. Over the next 300 years, interest in telescopes and microscopes led to the development of better and brighter lenses.

With the invention of photography in the 19th century, the need for camera-specific lenses increased, leading to rapid developments in the field of lens making. These developments took place along two fronts: The first was the invention of new types of glass that refracted light more effectively; and the second was the discovery of ways to combine several pieces of glass, or elements, to control optical distortion.

Quality modern lenses are made of many individual elements of ground and polished glass (6 to 14 elements is common). These elements, each of a different shape and purpose, are cemented into groups; each group is then assembled in what is called a lens barrel. On a manually controlled camera, the lens barrel incorporates an aperture ring and a focusing ring. By turning the aperture ring, the photographer adjusts the opening of the lens diaphragm, which determines how much light reaches the film. The focusing ring is used to focus the image on the film plane by changing the distance between the element groups.

Source: Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2006.

A Brief History of Cameras.

 

I think  useful if I put some history of our topic here before I continue. So, here it is.

Today’s cameras all derive from the 16th-century camera obscura. The earliest form of this device was a darkened room with a tiny hole in one wall. Light entered the room through this hole and projected an upside-down image of the subject onto the opposite wall. Over the course of three centuries the camera obscura evolved into a handheld box with a lens replacing the pinhole and an angled mirror at the back. The mirror reflected an image onto a ground-glass viewing screen on the top of the box. Long before film was invented artists used this device to help them draw more accurately. They placed thin paper onto the viewing screen and could easily trace the reflected image.

Folding Camera

(Folding cameras, favored for their compact design and movable bellows, have been in use for many years. The camera’s lens is incorporated into the bellows, which is slid back and forth along a rail to change focus. The dark cloth covering the photographer and the box body of the camera blocks out undesirable light, which might otherwise interfere with the picture.)

The inventors of photography in the early 19th century adapted the camera obscura by adding a device for holding sensitized plates in the back of the box. This kind of camera, with some improvements, was used throughout the 19th century. One notable enhancement for the box, pleated leather sides called bellows, allowed the photographer to easily adjust the distance between the lens and the plane of focus. Professional photographers still use a similar camera today, a large-format camera known as the view camera.

In the 1880s the invention of more sensitive emulsions and better lenses led to the development of lens shutters, devices that could limit the time of exposure to a fraction of a second. At first the shutter was simply a blind dropped in front of the lens by the force of gravity, or by a spring. Later designs featured a set of blades just behind the optical lens. In 1888 George Eastman introduced the first Kodak camera, which used a cylindrical shutter that the photographer turned by pulling a string on the front of the camera. The Kodak was one of the earliest handheld cameras. It made photography available to amateurs for the first time and created a snapshot craze at the turn of the 20th century.

In 1925 the Leitz Company in Germany introduced the Leica, one of the first cameras to use 35-millimeter film, a small-sized film initially designed for motion pictures. Because of its compactness and economy, the Leica and other 35-millimeter cameras became popular with both amateur and professional photographers. All but the earliest Leicas used a focal-plane shutter, located just in front of the film. Because it blocks light from the film even when the lens is removed, the focal-plane shutter allows photographers to switch lenses safely in the middle of a film roll.

Source: Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2006.

Getting Steadier Hand-Held Shots.

 

I picked up this trick from photographer Joel Lipovetsky (pictured here) when we were out on a shoot and I saw him hand-holding his camera with his camera strap twisted into what he called "The Death Grip." It’s designed to give you extra stability and sharper shots while hand-holding your camera by wrapping your camera strap around your arm (just above the elbow), then wrapping it around the outside of your wrist (as shown above) and pulling the strap pretty tight, which makes your camera more stable in your hand. You can see how it wraps in the photo above, but the pose is just for illustrative purposes you still would hold the camera up to your eye and look through the viewfinder as always. Thanks to Joel for sharing this surprisingly cool tip.

Another trick the pros use (when they’re in situations where they can’t use a tripod) is to either:

(a) lean themselves against a wall to help keep themselves steady if they’re steady then the camera’s more steady, or

(b) lean or lay their lens on a railing, a fence, or any other already stationary object as kind of a make-shift tripod. Keep an eye out for these tripod substitutes whenever you’re without your sit can make a big difference.

Source: The Digital Photography Book: The Step-By-Step Secrets for How to Make Your Photos Look Like the Pros’! By Scott Kelby.

Hand-Held Sharpness Trick.

 

Anytime you’re hand-holding your camera in anything but nice direct sunlight, you’re taking your chances on getting a sharply focused photo because of camera shake, right? Well, the next time you’re hand-holding in less than optimal light, and you’re concerned that you might not get a tack-sharp image, try a trick the pros use in this sticky situation switch to continuous shooting (burst) mode and hold down the shutter release to take a burst of photos instead of just one or two.

Chances are at least one of those dozen or so photos is going to be tack sharp, and if it’s an important shot, it can often save the day. I’ve used this on numerous occasions and it’s saved my butt more than once.

Source: The Digital Photography Book: The Step-By-Step Secrets for How to Make Your Photos Look Like the Pros’! By Scott Kelby.

Pro Sharpening.

 

This particular sharpening technique can only be done in the full-blown version of Photoshop (in other words, not in Elements), because it requires access to Photoshop’s Channels palette (which Elements doesn’t give you). So, if you have Photoshop, this is the method most widely used by pros because it lets you sharpen more without creating nasty halos and color artifacts which might otherwise occur when you use lots of sharpening. Here’s how it’s done:

1. Go under the Image menu, under Mode, and choose Lab Color.

2. Go to the Channels palette and click on the Lightness channel. (Note: This Lightness channel contains only the detail and not the color in the photo, which is why you sidestep some of the color problems you get by sharpening the full-color photo.)

3. Now apply the Unsharp Mask filter using the settings shown on the previous page.

4. Try applying the Unsharp Mask filter again, using the same settings. If your photo appears too sharp, before you do anything else, go under the Edit menu and choose Fade Unsharp Mask. In the Fade dialog, lower the Opacity slider to 50%, so you only get half-strength on the second application of the filter.

5. Now go back under the Image menu, under Mode, and choose RGB Color.

Source: The Digital Photography Book: The Step-By-Step Secrets for How to Make Your Photos Look Like the Pros’! By Scott Kelby.

Sharpening After the Fact in Photoshop.

 

If you’ve followed all the tips in this chapter thus far, and you’ve got some nice crisp photos, you can still make your photos look even that much sharper by adding sharpening in either Adobe Photoshop (the software darkroom tool the pros use) or Adobe Photoshop Elements (the semi-pro version). Now, which photos need to be sharpened using Photo-shop? All of them.

We sharpen every single photo we shoot using Photoshop’s Unsharp Mask filter. Okay, it sounds like something named "unsharp" would make your photos blurry, but it doesn’t the name is a holdover from traditional darkroom techniques, so don’t let that throw you. Using it is easy. Just open your photo in Photoshop, then go under Photoshop’s Filter menu, under Sharpen, and choose Unsharp Mask.

When the dialog appears, there are three sliders for applying different sharpening parameters, but rather than going through all that technical stuff, I’m going to give you three sets of settings that I’ve found work wonders.

 

1. For people: Amount 150%, Radius 1, Threshold 10
2. For cityscapes, urban photography, or travel: Amount 65%, Radius 3, Threshold 2
3. For general everyday use: Amount 85%, Radius 1, Threshold 4

 

Source: The Digital Photography Book: The Step-By-Step Secrets for How to Make Your Photos Look Like the Pros’! By Scott Kelby.

Zoom In to Check Sharpness.

 

Here’s a sad fact of digital photography everything looks sharp and in focus when you first look at the tiny LCD screen on the back of your digital camera. When your photo is displayed at that small size, it just about always looks sharp. However, you’ll soon learn (once you open your photo on your computer) that you absolutely can’t trust that tiny little screen you’ve got to zoom in and check the sharpness. On the back of your camera there’s a zoom button that lets you zoom in close and see if the photo is really in focus. Do this right on the spot right after you take the shot, so you still have a chance to retake the photo if you zoom in and find out it’s blurry. The pros always check for sharpness this way, because they’ve been burned one too many times.

Custom Quick Zoom Settings: Some of today’s digital SLR cameras have a quick zoom option, where you can set a particular amount you want your zoom to zoom in to. Check your owner’s manual to see if your digital camera has a custom quick zoom setting.

Source: The Digital Photography Book: The Step-By-Step Secrets for How to Make Your Photos Look Like the Pros’! By Scott Kelby.

Avoid Increasing Your ISO, Even in Dim Light.

 

When you’re shooting on a tripod in dim or low light, don’t increase your ISO (your digital equivalent of film speed). Keep your ISO at the lowest ISO setting your camera allows (ISO 200, 100, or 50, if your camera’s ISO goes that low, as shown on the Nikon menu above) for the sharpest, cleanest photos. Raising the ISO adds noise to your photos, and you don’t want that (of course, if you’re hand-holding and have no choice, like when shooting a wedding in the low lighting of a church, then increasing the ISO is a necessity, but when shooting on a tripod, avoid high ISOs like the plagueyou’ll have cleaner, sharper images every time).

Breaking The Rule: So what do you do if you can’t use a tripod (i.e., the place where you’re shooting won’t allow tripods)? In this case, if there’s plenty of light where you’re shooting, you can try using very fast shutter speeds to minimize hand-held camera shake. Set your camera to shutter priority mode and choose a speed that matches or exceeds the focal length of your lens (a 180mm lens means you’ll shoot at 1/200 of a second).

Source: The Digital Photography Book: The Step-By-Step Secrets for How to Make Your Photos Look Like the Pros’! By Scott Kelby.

Good Glass Makes a Big Difference.

Does buying a really good lens make that big a difference in sharpness? Absolutely! A few weeks back I went shooting with a friend in Zion National Park in Utah. He had just bought a brand new Canon EF 2470mm f/2.8L, which is a tack-sharp lens. It’s not cheap, but like anything else in photography (and in life), the really good stuff costs more. His other lens was a fairly inexpensive telephoto zoom he had been using for a few years.

Once he saw the difference in sharpness between his new, good quality lens and his cheap lens, he refused to shoot with the telephoto again. He had been shooting with it for years, and in one day, after seeing what a difference a really sharp lens made, he wouldn’t shoot with his old lens again. So, if you’re thinking of buying a zoom lens for $295, sharpness clearly isn’t your biggest priority. A quality lens is an investment, and as long as you take decent care of it, it will give you crystal clear photos that inexpensive lenses just can’t deliver.

Source: The Digital Photography Book: The Step-By-Step Secrets for How to Make Your Photos Look Like the Pros’! By Scott Kelby.