White Balance Tip

For Nikon users or others that have a live view setting on your camera for video.

You can also use this live preview to check out your white balance settings to view your colour of your shot with the lighting your using, moslty for indoor shooting or long night exposures.

Once your camera is ready instead of taking test shots on different WB settings.

Turn on your live view, hold down your WB button on the back of your camera.

Then use your adjustment dial, your camera will rotate through the WB setting changing colour

on your Live screen view.

Choose the best natural colour setting for the lighting you have or if your trying to force your colour to be a warm or cold choose that option then switch back to shoot.

Try your camera on fully manual exposure and white balance you can get some amazing effects.

Using iPad as Preview screen when tethering in Aperture

Challenge, You want to have a large preview screen of each shot as you shoot tethering in Aperture.
You may want your subject to see each shot as you take it, you have the thumbnails in Aperture which you can resize.

Tools you will need:
• iPad and Laptop connected to the same wireless network.
• DSLR that can connect via USB that Aperture can tether.
• Air Display software Mac or PC installed on laptop and iPad.

Steps:
Make sure both the Laptop and iPad are connected to wifi.
Purchase Air Display from Android, Amazon or Apple App store.
Install Air Display on your laptop and your ipad.
Actitvate it on your laptop then on the ipad, you can then go to display setup and arrange how you want them.

Once you have your screens setup the iPad can be anywhere to view the current image full screen.

Next step is to launch Aperture then plug your DSLR via USB and choose tether in the file menu

I set the shoot name then click viewer, it will set the current selected image to full screen on the iPad.
if your running Lion OSX set it to full screen.

Slide the zoom on the thumbnails to viewable size and shoot away.

Off the camera flash

I use a ittl ethernet cable option
Half the price of wireless triggers
There is a pixel product that supports three remote mounted flashes
I also use flash slave units to setup flash behind subjects or for bouncing

DSLR Camera Remote Control

Uses:
Able to remote fire your camera from your ipad or iphone
all images tether directly to your hard drive in the DSLR photos folder
For shooting still life or stationary portraits
If you need to be close to the subject and still be able to see and control
your settings on your camera from your ipad or iphone

 


Setup:
Both the computer and the IOS device must be on the same wifi
Install DSLR server software on your computer
Launch and set up Destination Folder
Install DSLR remote software on your iPhone or iPad
Connect your Nikon or Canon DSLR camera via USB to your computer
Launch Server software on computer and check that it finds your DSLR
Launch remote software choose DSLR server
Your camera rear LCD display should show up
You can now fire camera and if you have the professional version you can edit your camera settings.

My Additional Setup:
Using iPad for preview screen for models:
You can still use your camera handheld and shoot as you would all images still go to the hardrive. I use the iPad on a stand next to model so we can both see each shot and pose.


Creating your own Wifi on location:
I also make a new location setting on my laptop called NikonAir
With that location I have my wifi shared on my laptop so I can then connect my iPad or iPhone to my laptop shared Wifi when on location outside,or where there is no Wifi network to use.

Give it a try there's a free light version to test it on the App Store


Product that use: onOne Software
Software: DSLR Camera Remote

ISO on DSLR's

In the beginning for me anyway, I tended to use just 100 or 400 ISO film (or ASA as it was then) as I didn't really know any better. I used 100 ISO for normal, everyday use and kept the 400 for either indoors, black and white or colour "grainy" shots. 400 ISO was useful for indoor shots where flash couldn't be used, such as some shows, as with the extra sensitivity, I could still get some decent shots.

The major headache with film photography was that if you wanted to change the ISO settings, you had to change the film itself! Not good if you were in a hurry. There was a way to "push" the film by underexposing it to get faster shutter speeds, and sorting out the mess in the darkroom later, but you still had to "push" the entire film.

The beauty of digital, and I have found myself changing ISO settings so much more often now, is that you can alter the ISO for each individual shot. This means, should you come across a situation where you are in low light and cannot use flash, you can just up the ISO settings to 800, 1600 or even 3200 making the sensor a lot more sensitive to light, and fire away knowing the images will come out ok.