New and Enthusiast Photographer Tip
OUR TOP 10 PHOTOGRAPHY RELATED WEB SITES and BLOGS worth visiting:
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Luminous Landcape -
Strobist -
Dan Hellers' Photography Business Blog -
Tim Grey's Digital Darkroom Questions (daily email)
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Digital Photography School -
Willian Jans Live Shows & Travelogues
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Art Wolfe Photography -
Digital Photography Review
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Circle Stock A Virtual Stock Agency -
Digital Photo Pro magazine
Great audio souces for your multimedia shows
iTunes Now every song in the iTunes Store is an iTunes Plus song. Purchase high-quality, DRM-free music and pay just 69¢, 99¢, or $1.29 for a song.
Music CD's use the free iTunes software to "rip" music CD's as MP3 files for your computer and slide shows; and manage all your audio files.
CCMixter ccMixter is a community music site featuring remixes licensed under Creative Commons where you can listen to, sample, mash-up, or interact with music in whatever way you want
The Internet Archive The Internet Archive, a non-profit, is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public.
ALL ABOUT ISO
 The introduction of High ISO low noise digital cameras in the last year have created quite a stir in the photography world. The ability to shoot at a high ISO such as 3200 ISO means being able to photograph low light scenes without a flash and tripod.
The letters ISO come from the Greek work for "equal" (isos). These three letters have been adopted by the International Organization for Standardization, to reflect their objective of equalizing industry standards across all nations. ISO is not an acronym for the organization.
ISO numbers follow a common scale on all digital SLR cameras:
| 100 |
200 |
400 |
800 |
1600 |
3200 |
The higher the ISO number, the faster the camera sensor absorbs light. Each step above is a doubling of the sensitivity of the sensor to light (or 1 f stop; or 1 Exposure Value EV). An increase in ISO also causes an increase in image noise. In a digital camera, noise is comparable to the static heard on a radio from a long distance AM radio station. Modern digital SLR cameras, and sespcially new ones released in 2009) are getting better and better about suppressing noise even at high ISO settings.
Image noise is the by-product of using a high ISO setting on your digital SLR camera — it is also often called "grain", from the world of film chemistry when more granules appeared on high ISO (old timers will remember ASA/DIN; ASA=ISO) films. When a photo has image noise, areas of color that should look smooth have a mottled or speckled appearance. On some images this is a cool creative effect but most photographers struggle to keep the noise levels low.
Why worry about ISO settings? Increasing the ISO setting on your digital camera is most frequently used when you're taking photos in dim light. When there's not a lot of available light, your camera automatically slows down the shutter speed to capture a balanced exposure. A slow shutter speed means that the shutter stays open longer, giving the sensor plenty of time to gather light.
Unfortunately, there's a problem associated with this: when the shutter stays open for long periods of time, any motion is captured as blur. If your subjects move they will be blurry or the entire photo may be bluury if you're holding the camera in your hands due to camera shake
One way to deal with the problem of slow shutter speeds and motion blur in dim light is a simple one: just add more light to the scene using a flash. The additional light from the flash will ensure that your subjects and photos turn out nice and clear. But flash is not always a good solution since it isn't flattering for people images or it is too weak to make a difference.
The answer is simple increase your ISO setting on your camera. If your camera is set to Auto ISO it will be set higher for you automatically. Voila! Clear photos even in dim light - without using a flash.
Buying Tip Look for a camera with low noise at high ISO if you enjoy taking photos in dim available light, enjoy natural light images and don't want to use your flash a lot, and don't want to carry around a tripod all the time. Don't make ISO noise into a big issue if you intend to take photos during the daytime in plenty of light, you don't mind carrying a tripod to keep the camera stable, or faced with a low-light scene, you'd rather pop the flash than fiddle with ISO.
To see more on ISO read an excellent article on ISO at Digital SLR Guide
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