For most people, it is natural when they bring the camera up to one eye, to close the other. In most situations where you may be taking a photograph, this works just fine. There are situations however where you may find it advantageous to keep both eyes open.
When photographing a subject where you are waiting for an event to occur, such as a baseball player about to hit the ball, there is a definite advantage to using both your eyes. Once you image is composed within your viewfinder, open your second eye. Through some practice, you will be able to see both what you have framed in your camera and also, through your other eye, what is happening outside your camera. In this case you might be able to see the pitcher wind up and release the pitch.
Keeping both eyes open can help prepare you to capture the best image you can.
I have mentioned in the past that I am a member of the Niagara Falls Camera Club, which in turn is a member club of the Niagara Frontier Regional Camera Clubs (NFRCC). The NFRCC holds an annual convention that is open to the public. This year we will be meeting the weekend of April 11, 12 and 13. If you live or will be in Western New York that week end, it is a great opportunity to hear some excellent speakers talk about photography. Our keynote speaker this year is George Lepp who is a wonderful nature photographer and a pioneer of digital photography. For more information visit http://www.nfrcc.org/convention.php
Until next time, happy shooting.
A couple of weeks ago Download Squad posted about the DVD Rip utility, which makes it easy to backup DVDs:
There are plenty of applications that help you rip DVDs to your computer. But for the most part, you need to click through a series of long and tedious menus. DVD Rip provides a one click DVD archiving solution, no headaches required.
Rip DVD was put together by the folks at productivity blog Lifehacker. It’s designed to work with the popular DVD archiving application DVD Shrink. In order for Rip DVD to work, you’ll need to install DVD Shrink. But if you don’t already have it, don’t worry. DVD Rip includes a download link.
So what exactly does DVD Rip do? Basically, it answers all those tricky questions that DVD Shrink asks which you may or may not have good answers for. So all you have to do is insert a DVD in your drive, click the executable file, and wait a few hours until your disc is ripped.
Check out the posting as well as the comments at Download Squad, as some people have other suggestions.
ZDNet has a couple of postings about how to delete a hard drive (see “How to REALLY erase a hard drive” and “How to REALLY erase a hard drive - Update“). There is lots of talk about how best to delete the data on a hard drive so it is unrecoverable. You may want to give a hard drive away to a friend or another good cause, but you don’t want anyone to retrieve the sensitive data that may have been on the hard drive.
Here is how the Storage Bits blog describes it:
Something called Secure Erase, a set of commands embedded in most ATA drives built since 2001. If this is so wonderful, why haven’t you heard of it before? Because it’s been disabled by most motherboard BIOSes.
Secure Erase is a loaded gun aimed right at all your data. And Murphy’s Law is still in force. But hey, if you’re smart enough to read Storage Bits, you’re smart enough to not play with Secure Erase until you need to.
How does Secure Erase work?
Secure Erase overwrites every single track on the hard drive. That includes the data on “bad blocks”, the data left at the end of partly overwritten blocks, directories, everything. There is no data recovery from Secure Erase.
I had never heard of this, but it sure sounds interesting. If you are going to be giving away a hard drive, it would be a good idea to read these postings and try the software mentioned.
If you are a fan of fonts, then you should check out MyFonts:
MyFonts is your complete online source for finding, trying, and buying fonts. Purchased fonts are available for immediate download. With 58,938 fonts on one easy-to-use web site and the best search tools in the business, MyFonts is sure to help you find the perfect font! MyFonts has sold 3,838,274 fonts.
If you find just the perfect font, then it is worth buying. If you are looking for free fonts, then you can still visit MyFonts. In the search field, search for the word free and you’ll find hundreds available. Another neat feature of the site is WhatTheFont?! You can upload a sample of a font, and they will try to tell you what font it is.
I have mentioned in a past post but Graham pointed out that I haven’t really explained what Magic Hour is.
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Magic hour is the first hour of sunlight after sunrise and the last hour of sunlight before sunset. During this time the quality of light is softer, more diffuse, producing more pleasing tonal transitions and shadows. The colour of the light is much warmer during midday and the directional quality of the light is a wonderful tool at enhancing texture. The soft light helps to prevent the chance of blown out highlights as the typical tonal range from darks to lights is smaller. The magic hour certainly does not always last one hour. Depending on your location it could be much longer or much shorter.
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Between the two options of shooting in the morning or shooting in the evening magic hour periods, I believe that the morning provides better results. The air is typically calmer. There is typically less particulate matter in the air providing for clearer views. One of the other big factors in my preference to photograph in the morning light as opposed to the evening light is there are much fewer people around as sunrise to interfere with the photos. Most people simply do not have a tendency to be up at 4:30 am to watch a sunrise. I know I sure don’t …unless I am shooting!
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Not to be overlooked either is the time before the sun rises and after the sun sets. There continues to be wonderful light in the sky that is useful for making beautiful images, so be sure not to put your camera away too early.
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Until next time, happy shooting.
The digital photography tip of the week is written by the PCIN Assistant Editor, Chris Empey. Chris is a long time photographer and is currently the President of the Niagara Falls Camera Club. You can see more of his photography at his Photo of the Day website.
If you have a tip to send Chris, or a question about digital photography he can address in the newsletter, send it to chris@pcin.net.
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