Fireworks Photo Tips [via Gizmodo]
Ed Krimen at Photobird gives us his top five tips for shooting fireworks, which might just make the difference between bringing the shot home to momma and ending up with some, uh, modern digital art.

That’s quite cool. Some nice handy tips for how to get that just-right shot of fireworks displays with your camera. Most of the tips really only apply to SLR-esque cameras, as you need to be able to tweak such settings as exposure time and shutter speed, which most point-and-shoot cameras don’t allow.

One thing I don’t have for my camera is a remote-release, maybe I should invest in one… Allthough it apparently doesn’t make *that* much of a difference, you *can* pick up some minutest amount of camera shake when pressing that shutter button, which could impact on the final shot.

Tags: Fireworks, Photo, Photobird, camera, SLR

Strobist: Strobist Boot Camp: Rules, Guidelines and First Assignment
Welcome to Strobist’s first-ever Boot Camp! It starts now. This is where you make the transition from “talking the talk” to “walking the walk.”

The main point of SBC is to nudge those photographers out there who have not made the transition to actually trying this lighting stuff out to make the jump. Secondarily, we will hopefully all get a chance to see what many different photogs – from all around the world – do with the exact same assignments. You’ll also be able to ask “how’d you do that?” questions to your fellow photographers. Using Flickr, we will effectively become a virtual classroom.

Very nice. Strobist started a Boot Camp for photography. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on his site.

Tags: Strobist, Boot Camp, photography

Anyway. After watching the guys from Project 3 demo some stuff on a 30″ Apple Cinema (More drool here…) display, and some other people arbing around some other Mac hardware, we were ushered into the cinema for a demonstration.

Welcomed by some Apple guy, then over to Kevin Miller, a Scotsman living in Paris, head of Product Marketing or something. “Part of the product evangelism team” he was introduce as. Heh.

He started off by mentioning the Apple hardware that everybody should have. “Hands up who owns a Mac?” “OK, hands up who doesn’t own a Mac?” “Right, don’t worry you guys, this is not a cult, you are not here to be converted. But you’ll see why you want to.” it all started with. He showed some slideshows showing the hardware, the white and black Macbooks, the oh-so-much-better Intel Core Duo Macbook Pro, and some pics of the iMac too. Then onto the juicy bits.

iLife ’06
Kevin started with the different productivity apps that form part of the iLife ’06 suite. I’ve never seen these apps in action, and he took each of them (except for GarageBand) for a test drive on a Macbook Pro plugged into a projector, projecting the images onto the whole movie screen. It was awesome.
Anyway, iPhoto was great. It felt very much like Google’s Picasa, but with a whole bunch extra. iMovie also looked very good. iWeb not *that* great, but good for a quick create a webpage/photoblog type thing.
I couldn’t help but feel that most of what iLife ’06 had, has already been done by other applications elsewhere. I don’t know if there was any version of iLife before ’06, but there were things like theming and auto-create-a-movie type features that I’ve seen in Pinnacle’s Movie Studio, etc. I wouldn’t know who came up with these things first, and I’d actually guess that it would be Apple, seeing that Apple’s been in the publishing and video editing market for quite some time. But that’s besides the point.
In a nutshell? iLife ’06 is a brilliant addition to the default install of MacOSX, and made me want to buy a Mac right there and then. Anybody have R23k for me?

iLife ’06 was not the highlight of the evening though.
Kevin went on to demonstrate the sheer awesomeness of what is Aperture.

Aperture is the post-production application for professional and serious amateur photographers. It costs $299, but if you’re any kind of serious about photography, and you own a Mac (PowerPC or Intel version, as of version 1.1 it’s a universal binary), you want Aperture. And besides, those of you that can afford a R23000 (nee $2799) for a Macbook Pro, you can afford the extra $299 for Aperture. Anybody that takes any kind of photos with a Digital SLR camera (hell, even point-and-shoot digicams) would do well getting this software to manage their photos.

Aperture is not a replacement for something like Photoshop. It’s a pre-Photoshop(maybe) app. It links in seamlessly with iLife ’06, and makes touch ups and investigations into each photo (RAW format preferred, but not required). I wasn’t taking notes during the session, I was too busy gaping at the features of this app. Import management, stacking pictures based on time between shots, a loupe to zoom in and check out detailed portions of a photo, the speeeeeed of it all, the fact that you can apply a filter or touch up (white balance correction or whatever), and “stamp” that change to several other photos,to name but a few of the features that stuck in my mind.
Managing large amounts of photos is *so* much easier with Aperture.

OK, enough of the harping on about the awesomeness of Apple and their software. I’ve said enough. Go check out the Aperture website for yourself to see for yourself what it can do.

One day, I’ll have all I need to use this app. Two 30″ displays, a MacBook pro, a nice Nikon or Canon DSLR camera, lots of memory cards for the camera, and a room to put it all in. Oh, and an iPod. Just because.

Tags: Apple, Macbook, Macbook Pro, iLife ’06, Aperture

How to crop images (and make your photos look awesome) [via Lifehacker]
Take your photos to the next level by learning how to crop them properly – that’s right, cutting things up actually can be a good thing. The Digital Photography School has a fantastic tutorial on how to crop images and make your photos stand out from the crowd; instructions include learning how to cover framing mistakes, finding balance, and experimenting with new formats.

I’m sure I’ll learn how to do this at the Apple do tonight.

Tags: photos, crop, framing mistakes

If you have a digital camera, and you are an enthusiastic amateur or a seasoned professional – this free seminar hosted by Apple will show you how the Macintosh is the most powerful platform for taking your digital photography to the next level.

I’m already registered, and just forgot that it was tonight. It’s not too late to register I think, and there’s a Johannesburg event tomorrow night (14 June) too.

Have to make a plan to go… I don’t own any Apple gear myself, although I’m in the “Damn I’d love to” camp, but I can’t quite justify the outlay in cash. Hell, I can hardly justify keeping my current PC upgraded.

I’ll try to attend and report back here on it after the event.

Tags: digital photography, Apple

Photography Tip: Understanding camera basics [via lifehacker.com]
The Photography Jam blog has posted a beginners tutorial covering several camera basics.

The write-up covers most of your basics such as shutter speed, aperture, etc. The nice thing is that it applies to both the dying film photography and to digital photography (with the help of your more expensive SLR type cameras though. Not many point-’n-shoot cameras allow you to change settings such as aperture priority or shutter speed…)

All in all a good read, with pictures!

Tags: lifehacker, camera basics, Photography, shutter speed, aperture

How To Hold A Camera [via Gizmodo] [also on lifehacker.com]
You’ve bought that fancy new high-ass optical zoom digicam, gotten home, unwrapped it, and started shooting. Problem is, all your shots are coming out blurry. What gives? You may be holding your camera incorrectly.

I know I’ve had to show the kids quite a few times how not to hold the camera (“Take your finger off of the flash!”), but I never really knew the right way to hold a camera. Now I do.

Tags: Camera, digicam