Digital Camera - Ken Gilbert

96
PhotoAdvisor
your photos critiqued
SpeeDy
SoLutIonS
dECISIONS dECISIONS
Q Iwant
to replacemyold
digital SLR, but I’m torn
between buying afull-frame
camera or one with a smallersized
sensor.
Malcolm Peterson, via email
aGeoff says: For portraiture,
a full-frame camera offers
the advantage of a narrower depth
of field. For wildlife, sports and
action, the crop factor of a d-sLr
with a smaller, Aps-c sized sensor
means youcan use relatively
compact, lightweight lenses, and
you’ll often get faster burst rates
in continuous shooting mode.
MEMORYCARdS
Q Ineed
to buysome extra
memory cards, thanks to
the RAW files generated by my
newCanon 550D being nearly
30Mb each. Should Ispend extra
on faster cards or will cheaper,
slower ones do the job?
Kevin roberts, via email
aAli says: you only really need
super-fast memory cards if
you shoot long sequences of rAW
or top-quality JpeG images in
continuous mode. on the 550d,
however, you’ll definitely need fast
sdhc cards of class 6 or above
if youwanttouse the top-quality
video setting of 1080p at 30
frames per second.
DigitalCamera July2010
RAte My photo Pro
Leaning Flower
By Jeff harwell
Canon eOS 450D/ tokina af 100mm f/2.8 at-X Pro D lens/ 0.7 secs at f/4, ISO100
Jeff says: Itook this
picture in my kitchen,
with just available
light. I attached some
purple poster board to a box
behind the flower because the
walls are a yellowish-orange,
then set a large aperture of f/4.
there was a white spot on
the right of the flower where a
waterdrophad blown-out,so
I cloned that out. I also added
a vignette and cropped the
flower to get rid of some of the
dead space, then increased the
contrast in Apple’s Aperture
and boosted the vibrancy.
rayCoxsays:this
is a fairly typical
but nicely executed
close-up of a flower
using a100mm macrolens.
Rather than place the subject
on a horizontal plane to shoot it
“thisisafairly
typicalbut nicely
executed close-up
of aflower”
straight on,Jeffhas chosento
lean the flower at an angle and
it fills more of the frame. this
effect has been taken further
by cropping on screen to
remove needless background.
A shallow depth of field
resulting from the use of the
macrolens and close proximity
to the subject has been
deliberately exaggerated by
Jeff’s choice of a wide aperture
(f/4). decidingwhere to focus
verdict
ray's done well to angle the
subject and the crop is strong
the shallowdepth of field
works and the focus is spot on
Get
critiqued!
Email photosto
digitalcamera@
futurenet.com with
the subject 'Rate
My Photo Pro'
when photographing plant
portraits is not always easy,
but Jeffhas got it about right.
the choice of background
colour is largely a matter of
taste and it works OK, although
I’mnot sure aboutthe image’s
reddish-yellowcolour cast.
Jeffsays he used "available
light", but this cast might have
resulted from using tungsten
(electric) rather than natural
window lighting. Changing the
colour balance in Photoshop
by increasing the greens and/or
blues would improve what is
a not particularly original but
otherwise good effortat a
plantportrait.
the choice of lighting has
resulted in a slight colour cast
the shot is not overly original, so
Jeff should keep experimenting