Wired magazine’s Gadget Lab has a very appropriate article about the use of tripods.  Unlike an article you would read in a Photography magazine, this article is written with the casual photographer or videographer in mind.  The article discusses the basics, the head and the legs, of course.  But it gets into a lot of the add-on features that you might find with higher end tripods.  That’s right, there is actually a basis for the price of high-end tripods.  But knowing what you need and what you don’t is always tricky.  That’s where this article tries to educate its reader.  As it points out, “Both [legs and heads] are equally important, and both can have a lot of extras, some of which are very handy and some of which are useless.”

This is a good read for anyone looking to buy a tripod any time soon.

Read the full article:  Three Legs Good:  A Guide to Tripods

For those of you who aren’t regular readers of Shutter Photo, this column, Educational Failures, is dedicated to revealing my failed attempts. In my own experiences, I have found that there is far more to learn from the mistakes that I have made than from my best work. As I analyze my own failed attempts, I share them with you so that you may also learn.

The subject in this out-of-focus photograph is my son. It was not a particularly great day for candid photography. But that day was a rare case where he and his cousins were able to be at the lake together. I wouldn’t pass up an opportunity like that. The cloudy weather causes light problems for candid photography, especially with fast moving children. Ideally, I needed a much faster shutter speed for this shot. But trying to freeze a moving child in motion is no easy task. Normally, if light were an issue and I had no preference for my depth of field, I would open up the aperture. The problem with this, however, is that you have a very narrow focus window. So when you’re dealing with erratically moving subjects (such as children), most of your shots will end up out of focus. To correct for this, you need a deeper depth of field for a better error buffer, so you need a smaller aperture. Therein lies the problem. As you know, a smaller aperture means less light getting to the image sensor. On a cloudy day, this solution doesn’t work well, especially with candid photography such as this where tripods are a hindrance. I tried to pick an aperture that was small enough to ease my focusing problems, but wide enough to let in enough light. In this particular case, I didn’t quite reach that point.

There are a few possible solutions that I could’ve applied for this photograph. A gut reaction would be to use a tripod. As I mentioned earlier, tripods aren’t ideal for this type of candid photography. A monopod or a collapsed tripod would help to provide some stability for this shot, but it would have limited my vertical movement. Another alternative would be to use a faster film or increase the ISO (this was shot with a ISO of 200). The drawback is that you will introduce grain or noise to your photograph. But what’s a little grain if you have a shot like this in focus?

I bet you never knew who created the world’s first digital Camera. It was Kodak. I also bet you can’t guess when it was created. 1975. Crazy, eh?

So it wasn’t the most beautiful camera you ever saw.  And it didn’t have a comfortable hand grip.  But it’s a prototype, it’s not supposed to be so refined.  Besides, you haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen the pictures of the import hardware (you’ll have to read the article for that gem).

A patent was issued for the technology, but it was decades ahead of its time. Sasson kept the prototype as he moved around the company, but Kodak didn’t publicly acknowledge the creation of the world’s first digicam until 2001.

Read the complete article, Kodak’s First Digital Camera, at Retro Thing.

With the ease at which we can post-process an image these days, the concept of using a lens filter is often overlooked. Filters do a lot to improve the quality of your photos, head and shoulders above any post-processing that you can apply. The reason is simple: You are controlling the data that actually gets to the film or sensor. Filters serve one primary function: Controlling light.

If you are a landscape photographer, you should have a fairly nice collection of filters in your bag. You’re dealing with an uncontrollable light source (the sun or moon), the best way to control light in your shots is to use a filter. Here are a few filters that no landscape photographer should be without.

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This instructional video is a quick do-it-yourself (DIY) project. The goal of this project is to create an image stabilizer system for your camera. The materials needed are very cheap (about $1 USD), and it’s actually quite effective. It’s not nearly as effective as a tripod, but it will at least get you another f-stop or two.