Photo How To

It’s a choice between Scylla and Charybdis. Do you shoot Raw or JPEG format images?

We all love working with available light, but sometimes a bit of illumination from a simple flash can make a world of difference in an image, even when shooting outdoors. If you’re relatively new to flash photography, this tutorial is for you.

Zev Hoover is an 18-year-old photographer based in Massachusetts with more ingenuity than money. So when he became fascinated by the quality inherent to large format still photography, and wondered about the possibility of shooting stills and video with an 8X10 relic, he had only one option: Build it himself.

While there is no single “perfect lens” for all forms of photography, a few lenses offer more versatility, image quality, portability, and bang for the buck than others. One such lens is the 50mm “Nifty Fifty” we featured in a recent Shutterbug video, and as you’ll see in the video below, another is the 135mm f/2 short telephoto.

Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than smart. For me, luck means getting a decent picture even though I use precisely the wrong settings, or when I use exactly the wrong equipment for the situation. Yep, I admit that I benefit from luck a lot. 

It’s amazing how cityscapes that appear drab during the day are transformed into sparkling scenes at night—just begging to be photographed. And this time of the year, when festive holiday lights often adorn the urban landscape, nighttime photography in the city can be more interesting than ever.

How often have you captured what you thought was a great photograph, only to learn later that your “money shot” was soft and destined for the trash? We all miss focus on occasion, especially in low light, but the quick video below will help you keep those mistakes to a minimum.