Photography

Some of the books and software that I have found useful are :

Sensor Cleaning

At some point in time you will get dust on your digital sensor. Detailed below is the method that I use. If you follow these tips then you do so at your own risk, sensors are expensive to replace !

1. Take a photo of a white piece of paper with the aperture wide open.
2. Open this photo is photoshop (or photoshop elements) and use the auto levels option. This will show up where the dust spots are on your sensor and provide you with a reference shot.
3. Either put a fully charged battery in the camera or use the power adaptor. I also put the camera on a tripod, it means I still have two hands free.
4. From the menus use the mirror up function (full details are in the manual)
5. Remove the lens; you then have access to the sensor.
6. For the "first" pass at cleaning I use a blower (not canned air..) to try and blow the loose dust off the sensor.
7. Replace the lense, release the mirror and take another photo as detailed above to show what dust is still remaining.
8. If you still have large visible spots then repeat steps 4 & 5. I would then try a sensor brush to remove the dust from the sensor. This normally does the trick. I bought my sensor cleaning brushes from Warehouse Express their website shows exactly how these should be used with some video clips.
9. If you still have dust spots then you will need to use a PecPad and Eclipse sensor cleaning fluid (NOT lens cleaning fluid!!) This takes osme practise and initially it may look as though you have made it worse. Don't worry ! The trick is to use only 1 or 2 drops of fluid, wipe from edge to edge turning the pad over to use a clean side each time. The PecPads I use are pre folded around a spatula. I bought these and the Eclipse fluid from Park Cameras they are the right size for my camera and individually sealed.

Transferring Images from Camera to PC

As I have said before I use Photoshop Elements to organise all my photos so to me it makes sense to use Photoshop Elements to transfer my photos from the camera to the PC. I used to connect the camera to the PC using the USB cable but this is SLOW..... I could go away, have a cup of coffee, come back and still be waiting for tehimages to finish downloading. I would then forget to turn the camera off and drain the battery !

I have recently bought a SanDisk USB Compact Flash card reader (CF was the only type of card that I couldn't put into the slot on my laptop) This cost me £14.99 and has been well worth the money. I now just watch my images fly from the card to the PC. When I take the "used" card out of the camera I replace it with an empty card so that I don't forget and go out without any card in the camera !

Using PSE to transfer images is easy. I tend to switch off the autorun popup boxes in windows so within the Organiser I click on the little "Get Photos" button that looks like a camera and select from Camera or Card Reader. The following box is displayed :

I then select the card reader from the drop down box in Step 1, and then choose the folder and file names that I wish to use. I used to just let the software create a subfolder using the date and time of import but if you want to view your images with any other software this can make it difficult to remember what they all are so now I name the subfolder using the date in the format yyyy-mm-dd and then a couple of words about what the photos are or where they were taken. Using the date format as the first part of the folder name does keep everything in chronological order and this does make it easier to find photos !

I also rename the photos but using the keywords first followed by the date and then let PSE add a sequential number; again this makes it easier to identify photos later.

I leave the Automatically Fix Red Eyes box unchecked otherwise the software will check each and every photo for red eye; if I need to correct red eye I do this for the one or two photos in which it occurs otherwise it slows down the photo import !

When the photos are imported I tag them all with a tag for the lens that I used (to make it easier to remember !) and any other tags that are relevant (I have tags set up for Family, Flowers, Sunsets etc) I then also add them to a collection ie "Mar 2006 Holiday" to make it easier to find them and view them in a group later.

I then use F11 to view them fullscreen stepping through and deleting all the really bad ones. (The ESC key is a quick way out of fullscreen).

I have found that this is the best method for me. Everyone is different and there are many methods for transferring images and keeping track of them on your PC.

Links

Links to useful websites: