by Welcome back to HDR News! This issue is all about technique and workflow with some intriguing travel photography added in for good measure. If you’ve ever struggled with getting your landscapes truly sharp from front to back we bring you the best explanation of focus stacking we’ve seen yet. We also look at software for batch archiving your scans and the best photo monitors for your unique needs. Finishing up we bring you a hands on look at Apple RAW, the new raw file format that’s been added to iOS 14.3. Let’s get going!
How To Use Focus Stacking For Sharper Photos
Here’s the truth you didn’t want to hear. You can’t get those deep depth of field images sharp, in camera, unless you’re using a tilt-shift lens or a larger format camera with adjustable front and back planes. Sorry but it just can’t be done, even if you’re shooting at f22. And, you don’t want the chromatic aberration that happens at f22 anyway. Your solution is focus stacking. It’s a very straight forward technique where you shoot multiple images of your scene, focusing on successively different areas and stitching the resulting images in your imaging application.
Learn focus stacking HERE.
The Ultimate Long Exposure Guide
Most likely your camera has a slow shutter setting of 30 seconds or more. And, you most likely have a bulb setting as well. They’re there for a reason and learning how to use them can bring you some serious delight when you open up your long exposure images on your monitor. Long exposures have always been used to capture images of the stars but, even more interesting are the landscape images with wonderfully blurry streams, lakes and shorelines. This guide will give you the info you need to get out there and capture those images yourself.
Get the long exposure guide HERE.
Travel Photographer Of The Year
There are so many Photographer-Of-The-Year competitions out there that it’s hard to distinguish between those created as marketing tools by manufacturers and those created by photographers for the love of photography. The international Travel Photographer of the Year awards were founded in 2003 by professional photographer Chris Coe and his wife.. You’ll see from the quality of the winner’s images that they know and love photography and, you are the beneficiary.
See the great travel images HERE.
Best Monitors For Photography And Photo Editing
After you’ve made your image, photography is all about the monitor on which you do your editing. In fact, you’ll spend way more time in front of your monitor than behind the viewfinder of your camera. To do your best work your monitor needs to be high resolution and color accurate. But, how do you make sense of all the monitor options out there? Which ones perform the best and which ones represent the best value? Read this valuable article to find out.
Find your new monitor HERE.
Archiving Your Negs And Slides – Best Software
Most of us dedicated photographers are not traveling freely during the pandemic. This is giving us a lot of extra time and many are using that time to attack an issue we’ve been putting off and putting off. That’s digitizing our priceless slides, negatives and prints from our film days. As you know, that’s a lot of work to look forward to but, wouldn’t it be great if you could batch process your archives? You can and there are a number of software applications you can use instead of the app that came with your scanner. Here’s a great review of some of the best packages out there.
Evaluate batch scanning apps HERE.
Apple Raw Can Transform Your iPhone Photography
If you’re serious about photography you shoot your images in RAW format so that you can work with the actual data that hit your camera’s sensor; free from the artifacts and data loss caused by an in-camera jpeg conversion. Apple’s new RAW format gives you much of the power and flexibility you’ve come to expect from your DSLR on your iPhone. Remember, the best camera you have is the one you have with you.
Read about Apple RAW on the iPhone HERE.