DIGITAL CORNER
By Bob Dean
Digital Photo Resources
We are deeply into the digital age in photography. If anyone is still skeptical, then just do an internet search on DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY LEARNING and a search engine like Google will provide over 28 million hits, and that is just the filtered English language sites. Well over twenty million digital cameras were sold in the US in 2005 and the growth in sales is slowing, indicating that the digital camera market is maturing – meaning digital is the standard and film cameras have pretty much been replaced. We are all looking for resources to help with ‘going digital’ or improving our skills in digital photography. This month we wanted to take a look at how to dig out the good resources, both on line and in print, which can help.
First, let’s address the basics. The craft of photography has not changed, just the tools we use. The concepts of composition, exposure, and creativity are as important today as when we used film as a medium. The classic books by the best teachers are still valuable. But where can we go to get help for digital issues such as white balance, noise reduction, etc.? There are literally hundreds of books being written every year on digital photography, and the critics are close behind in evaluating them. Check out the photo magazines or their websites for book reviews. In our investigation, most books are pretty close to each other in what they cover. The standard approach is to set the stage with how digital works, how it differs from film, how to use the digital specific creative controls and then the authors typically go into standard photographic lessons on composition, etc.
Most of the books also address how to fix your images on the computer! We are now seeing a bit of a backlash from the experienced photographers, as they spend more and more time in front of the computer monitor. The hue and cry is to get back to basics, expose properly, compose well, and all of the other stuff we did with film. Then you don’t spend all that time fixing problems that were eliminated in the camera.
But we digress! Before you spend your money on digital photo books, classes, or lots of cool software, try the free information route first. Remember we opened with the 10’s of millions of Google hits? Well, here are a few that we found had good, free information, tips and ideas. Some of these are pretty basic, some get in to quite a bit of detail and several provide additional links for more information. We tried to limit the sites to those with minimal advertising and offers to sell stuff, but the internet is now a commercial tool so buyer beware!
http://www.kodak.com/ and go to consumer photography and taking great pictures. This site has pretty basic stuff but it’s well done.
http://www.photo.net/learn/ Covers film and digital with some interesting stuff on toning.
http://www.lexar.com/dp/tips_lessons/index.html This commercial site has lots of good stuff in lesson by lesson format.
http://www.shortcourses.com/ Good stuff but embedded sales links
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/ A wealth of information with links to all kinds of stuff.
http://www.nyip.com/ Get past the ads and go to the reference shelf
http://www.shutterbug.com/techniqueslp/ Like most magazine sites, this provides access to a lot of past issue articles.