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Cory Photography with Tom and Pat Cory |
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Newsletter November 2005 Continued |
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Cleaning Digital Sensors
It happens to all of us with SLRs sooner or later. We start seeing spots in lighter areas of our images. Digital SLRs tend to attract dust and other gunk onto their sensors, particularly when we change lenses. On the preventive end, the following may help:
* Always turn your camera off before changing lenses. * Clean the back side of your lenses before mounting them on the camera. * Hold the camera with the lens mount pointing down when you change lenses. * Change your lens as quickly as possible to minimize the time dust can get into your camera body * Avoid changing lenses in dusty, sandy places if at all possible. * Consider buying a new back pack or camera bag if your old one is dirty.
To check your sensor: After each photo session take a picture, preferably out of focus, of nothing but sky. Review this image carefully on your computer monitor. Any gunk or dust on your sensor should show up on this image.
Of course if you get spots on your images from a dirty sensor you can fix them in Photoshop. But eventually you have to clean your sensor. If it's a real mess you can have a professional repair person clean it (cost=approximately 60-85 dollars.) If you opt to clean your sensor yourself never use canned air. You may be able to use a blower brush--Giotto makes a nice one for about $10 to remove dust. If that doesn't do it, we suggest contacting a Canadian company-- Visibledust.com--and obtaining their cleaning kits. Be very careful to follow the instructions to the letter. Always read your owners manual carefully and follow any tips they have. And always start cleaning with a fully charged battery. If you're at all uncomfortable with the thought of damaging your sensor-it can happen-have your camera professionally cleaned.
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/accessories/arctic-butterfly.shtml Fall Foliage
After having wonderful fall colors on our High Sierra workshop, we came back to a pretty bland Southeast. Our lack of rain and warm temperatures seems to have resulted in a less than spectacular fall. So this year we've been concentrating on macro images of individual leaves and using our telephoto lenses (around 200-300mm) to compress and intensify what color there is. What we found on our recent Fall Creek Falls weekend workshop were a number of nice "leaves in the stream" opportunities. A really interesting image can be made if you can find an area of a stream or river where the water kind of goes in a circle around a rock or in a miniature bay. Use a long exposure to let the leaves carried around by the current "streak." Also look for wet leaves on moss covered boulders--a polarizer may help get rid of unwanted reflections. Finally, find individual or small groups of well-spaced leaves that are back-lit and have almost a "stained-glass" look to them. Creates a nice image.
Upgraded Products
Elements 4 has been announced. While some cool new features have been added, the Browser Feature has been removed, meaning that you now must use the Organizer. According to some reviews this can be a real disadvantage if you have a lot of images and a real headache if you are using Raw images.
Epson recently announced the new P-4000 multimedia storage drive with an increased storage capacity of 80Gb instead of 40Gb and an improved battery.
Rumor has it that within the next few days Nikon will announce the D200 with an expected 10.2MP sensor, an optional vertical grip, and high image buffer and frame rate.
Click here for a list of our upcoming workshops |
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Adare Ireland, 2005 |