Photocritic photography blog

Okay, so technically it’s ‘hacking’ rather than cracking, but that’d ruin my beautifully alliterative subject line.

Anyway… If you’re using a consumer grade point-and-shoot Canon digital camera, you’ve got hardware in hand that can support advanced features way beyond what shipped in the box.

With the help of a free, open source project called CHDK, you can get features like RAW shooting mode, live RGB histograms, motion-detection, time-lapse, and even games on it.

Pure, unadulterated awesome - check it out here! (via)

Right, the winners for the competition have been picked! By deadline, there were 151 competition entries, and I used Random.org to pick the winners.

The winners are:

#2 - ryan97ou
#88 - Luís Brás
#120 - John Jimenez
#116 - Tim Norris
#98 - Aaron Snowden

I’ll e-mail you all as soon as to get your addresses so I can ship the books out to you. CONGRATULATIONS!

Original competition for posterity: Read the rest of the article »

It is relatively self-explanatory that doing a photo critique is quite difficult. What few people stop to think about, however, is that receiving a photo critique can be as difficult - if not more difficult: When you move beyond mere snapshots and start putting more of yourself into your photographs, you are a lot more intimately involved with the work you are putting out there.

Putting your photos up for criticism - whether it is at your local photography club, via a site such as DeviantArt, or even when asking a good friend to give some feed-back - is like putting your own head in the guillotine and taking a chance.

Nonetheless, it’s one of the best ways to improve as a photographer, and one of the best lessons you’ll learn is to discover how to deal with negative photo critiques… Read the rest of the article »

To understand exposure in photographical terms, EV is probably the single most important number you will have to understand, to understand the theory behind the art of photography. This goes from your tiniest, least significant compact camera, to your cock-on-the-table style medium format camera with a digital back. Read the rest of the article »

You’re working as a photographer, you take fantastic photos, and you’ve even got a pretty sweet website to show off your work… So why is your web server just sitting around in the corner, smoking a fag and nipping at a cup of coffee? Why aren’t the buyers running the door off its hinges, and, come to think of it, where are your damn groupies, already?

The internet is a cold and heartless place, and the biggest source of traffic to any website should be coming from search engines (Photocritic, for example, gets about 70% of its traffic from search engines. Mind you, it’s mostly people looking for pictures of nude women. Go figure.)

Luckily, there are quite a few things you can do as a photographer to make your site really zing in the search engines - and for the sake of making a nice round figure (and, of course, so the Digg and Reddit crowds will love it like a kitten loves tuna fish) - here’s a lovely top-10 list to get you started! Read the rest of the article »

In the past, we’ve covered why it is important to sharpen your photos, and how you can use the Unsharp Mask tool in Photoshop to make sure your photos look their best.

I am a firm believer of understanding how things are done manually, however. If you are to take shortcuts, you have to know the long road to get there first. So… If you have a darkroom, how can you sharpen your images without letting the film go anywhere near a computer?

Here’s how… Read the rest of the article »

Imagine, for a second, that you are a young person with a camera. There are other cameras in the world around you, and there are people who use those cameras, too, but nobody really knows what they are doing, nobody can teach you anything you don’t already know, and the only tool you have in the world is the internet. All hope is lost … Or is it?

I was recently speaking to Elisa Longhitano, who found herself in the same situation. As she was telling me about how she was teaching herself photography, I found myself smiling, and wishing I had access to the internet back when I was learning. Either way, Elisa’s story is a lovely reminder of the fact that all you need to do to learn the dark (well, technically, the perfectly gradient) art of photography, is to be curious, and just that little bit inventive… Read the rest of the article »

This week, I received a rather good question from one of my old friends, Cindy. She was wondering “how come that whenever I’m taking digital images, I have to sharpen them afterwards?” Good question, and of course, it’s already one step ahead of the curve, in that the question presupposes that yes, you DO have to sharpen your images. Which is correct… But why?

Back in the days of film, things were simple: If you wanted your photos, you got prints made. These prints were predictable: They’ll be on paper, have a certain dynamic range, etc. Then digital photography came along and turned everything on its head, because suddenly there are so many more things you can do with your photos… Read the rest of the article »

Recently, Wired.com has started doing a series of very cool photography contests, and I’ve been meaning to recommend them to people for a while.

Participating in photography contests is generally a good idea, actually: It keeps you on your toes, and it very much helps to keep thinking about what you are doing with your photographic work. This week’s contest is particularly interesting, though… Read the rest of the article »

If you’re reading Photocritic regularly, you could be forgiven for thinking there’s nothing in the world of D-SLR cameras beyond Canon and Nikon.

Of course, nothing could be further from the truth: Competition is stronger than ever, and there’s a lot of other manufacturers bidding for your entry-level-cash…

So we’ve had a look at the top entry-level dSLR cameras, and what professional reviewers think of them - who knows, it might just come in handy when you’re ready to buy your next camera! Read the rest of the article »