Very few of this type of camera come across my reviewing bows and I see even fewer that can shoot High Def video as well as stills … the Sanyo Xacti VPC-WH1EX Camcorder is the first.
Fully weatherproofed and waterproof down to three metres, it’s a great example of water sealing: not only the battery compartment but tiny hatches that conceal the card slot, USB port and the DC input are cleverly protected from water intrusion.
The Xacti is also very tiny and nearly disappears in the average male hand. Fully kitted up with battery and card it weighs about 350 grams. The bright yellow body décor is a masterstroke: no danger of this puppy getting lost.
The lens has a 30x optical range, stretching from the 35 SLR equivalent of 43 to 1290mm. Capture is to 43MB of internal memory or to SD and SDHC cards.
One of the things that we can do with photographs is tell a story. Sometimes a story can be told quickly in a single shot, sometimes it can be told in several frames. This week we finished our Storyboards assignment where we wanted you to tell us a story in 3 images. One of the things we considered in this assignment was not only the quality of the images, but also their ability to tell a story. Our winner this week was nico_loss for Cat, 1, LEGO man, 0. We just loved this shot. Not only did the story have a distinct beginning, middle and end, the quality of the shots was high as well. The images were sharp with an effective use of depth of field, and the story had humor. This one was a clear winner this week.
This weekend’s photography challenge is to take a picture of yourself and your camera.
We’ve all seen these kinds of self portraits – usually taken with the help of a mirror – yes they can be a little cliche but I thought they might also be fun. Firstly they’ll help us put faces to one another’s names but secondly they’ll give us a quick visual snapshot of the type of cameras our community is using.
So grab your camera, find a mirror, plan a shot that not only fulfils the theme of ‘my camera and I’ but also is a visually pleasing portrait – and take your shot.
When adding vignettes to your images or correcting accidental ones, you have two options: lighten or darken. Darkening the edges of your photos can add a deep, dark, vintage or even macabre quality and feel to your image and you might not even entertain the option of doing the opposite and lightening the edges.
As with any art, you must let your heart guide you, but I always find it helpful to let the original image guide my decisions. If it is high key as is the image below (taken on a bright sunny day on the beach), I chose to lighten the edges.
Use vignetting sparingly! When I first discovered digital retouching, every single image of mine had a vignette and it became sickening very quickly.
I photograph people and I like tight shots. So if I choose to do a vignette, I use Photoshop to select the foreground (usually the person), make a new layer of out it and then vignette the background layer so as not to darken the person in the process.
The following tutorial on how shooting film can help you improve your digital photography was submitted by James Kerr of Sweet As Photography. An avid digital shooter he has recently been experimenting with film photography to help improve his results.
Olympus XA2 - The 35mm Zone Focus Camera I Use
Taking time out of your digital photography to shoot a couple of rolls of film can be a liberating and educational experience. Below are a few ways that digging out that old film camera from the attic can help you to improve the quality of the digital photographs you take as well as some of the benefits shooting film can bring to your photography.
One of the really handy features of Lightroom is its ability to create web slideshows quickly and easily. There are various options you can use and I’ll show you how to use the SimpleViewer slideshow which is good looking and very functional.
Step 1
To get started, prepare all your images and save them as a collection. Use a Collection rather than a Smart Collection so you can arrange the images in the order that you want to see them in the slideshow by dragging them into position using either the grid or the filmstrip.
Over the last two weeks and in the lead up to Christmas when a lot of camera gear is bought – we’ve published lists of popular DSLR cameras and popular point and shoot digital cameras – based upon the buying habits of our readers at Amazon.
Today we’re going to take a similar look at DSLR lenses that are popular with our readers.
One of the great things about GIMP is its portability. Small and agile, GIMP is easily loaded on a USB thumbdrive or even ‘digital film’, then taken with you for easy use on any PC (yes, I’m afraid I’m only talking about the Windows version here). Typically only requiring less than 30MB of space and featuring many of the tools photographers need for photo editing, Gimp is an excellent choice for the on the go photographer. If you’ve read this far and are still wondering what GIMP is, take a look at the post GIMP – An Introduction.
I remember this phrase from a tutorial that I read when I got my first camera: “you are looking at person, not your camera”. It can be really easy to turn into a robot with your camera just an extension of your mechanical parts, especially when you take photos for a living. Don’t forget that you are a human and so is your subject. For the purpose of this post, I’m not even going to call them ’subjects’. A tree is a subject. Today, we’re talking about humans. I have actually just gone back through the entire post and substituted the word ’subject’ with the word ‘human’ and it felt surprisingly uncomfortable to do so. And you might feel uncomfortable reading it. I really feel that it’s highlighting our discomfort with taking the technical and substituting it for that which is human and we should embrace that feeling because it will drive us to be better and do better.
As a photographer one of the most important aspects of your craft to learn about and get a handle on is Light.
To help you do this Travel and Documentary photographer Mitchell Kanashkevich has put together one of the better E-books that has come out in the last little while – Seeing the Light. As Mitchell says in the introduction of the E-book – ‘light is inseparable from the subject matter, it’s as important as the person in the image.’
I got myself a copy a couple of weeks ago and have found myself dipping back into it many times since.
When adding vignettes to your images or correcting accidental ones, you have two options: lighten or darken. Darkening the edges of your photos can add a deep, dark, vintage or even macabre quality and feel to your image and you might not even entertain the option of doing the opposite and lightening the edges.
One of the great things about GIMP is its portability. Small and agile, GIMP is easily loaded on a USB thumbdrive or even ‘digital film’, then taken with you for easy use on any PC (yes, I’m afraid I’m only talking about the Windows version here). Typically only requiring less than 30MB of space and featuring many of the tools photographers need for photo editing, Gimp is an excellent choice for the on the go photographer. If you’ve read this far and are still wondering what GIMP is, take a look at the post 
I remember this phrase from a tutorial that I read when I got my first camera: “you are looking at person, not your camera”. It can be really easy to turn into a robot with your camera just an extension of your mechanical parts, especially when you take photos for a living. Don’t forget that you are a human and so is your subject. For the purpose of this post, I’m not even going to call them ’subjects’. A tree is a subject. Today, we’re talking about humans. I have actually just gone back through the entire post and substituted the word ’subject’ with the word ‘human’ and it felt surprisingly uncomfortable to do so. And you might feel uncomfortable reading it. I really feel that it’s highlighting our discomfort with taking the technical and substituting it for that which is human and we should embrace that feeling because it will drive us to be better and do better.
