RSS Feeds
|
US Edition
Babblebaby
|
Defamer
|
Gizmodo
|
Kotaku
|
Lifehacker
Results for posts tagged "photography" on Lifehacker Australia.
Posted by Angus Kidman at 10:00 AM on October 13, 2008
Following its recent one cent photo printing offer, Snapfish is running a similar deal: enter the checkout code 1CENTHPAU and get up to 50 shots for 1 cent per print. In practice, it costs 7 cents a print once you include postage, but that's still a good deal.
New image recognition webapp ALIPR (Automatic Linguistic Indexing of Pictures in Real-Time) is a on a mission to assign relevant tags to digital images based on their content, and wants you to help it learn. While digital image recognition has come a long way in recent years, it's still got a long way to go, and ALIPR's got its share of hits and misses. Upload an image to ALIPR or hand it a URL of an image already online, and the engine will suggest tags, and ask you to add to its list. Some of ALIPR's suggestions are spot-on, but others are way off. You can confirm the hits and suggest other tags to help the engine learn. Check out how ALIPR did with a few images from my Flickr photostream.
The R-Strap, a sling for DSLR cameras that hooks into the tripod socket, makes it easy to keep a camera slung low during idle moments, then quickly bring it up for shooting without scraping your neck or twisting the strap. The Photojojo site points out two DIY R-Strap how-tos that require just a few dollars of gear and not too much hardware work to get the same effect. Best of all, you can use nearly any strap you like, so if you've always felt comfortable with your laptop tote or guitar strap, you can get the same effect while shooting. Check out the original R-Strap in a video demonstration below.
The Photojojo photography site parcels out 10 tips for looking good in portraits, whether you're setting the timer and running or handing over your rig to another shooter. Along with choosing the right time of day (morning or late afternoon) and a vibrant background, the site recommends a trick I've heard from many news photographers taking portraits:
Ask the photographer to count to three before taking the picture. Close your eyes and breathe in. Then, just before the shutter clicks, breathe out, open your eyes and smile. Your face will look relaxed and your smile will be real.
Simple, but effective. Got your own shutter secrets for better portraits? Spill 'em in the comments. Photo by !!!! scogle.
Taking any kind of photo at night isn't easy, but especially when you're camera's pointed towards the heavens. When you want to start capturing your star-gazing on film (or, er, memory card), check out Wired's How-To Wiki's guide to photographing the stars. Photo by DJMcCrady.
The Photocritic blog posts a cheap and clever DIY project for digital SLR camera owners who want to take seriously crisp shots of tremendously tiny surfaces, using a Pringles potato chip can as the main component. By hollowing out the can, wrapping a standard lens in dark fabric, and putting the lens in backward, you've got a makeshift bellows with adjustable focus. The proof is in the photos, so check out the seriously up-close-and-personal shots the author pulled off at the link below.
Photographer Natalie Norton offers up six different tips on keeping your shot steady when you're shooting indoors, at a slow shutter speed, with no flash, or other situations where shots often turn out blurry. Some are pretty specific to long-lens DSLR cameras, but any amateur shooter can try this tip on for size:
As often as possible pull your elbows in to your body and exhale completely before depressing the shutter. When you're working with a wide aperture or low shutter speed (or both), even a breath can introduce shake. Pulling your elbows tight to your body can really help keep you steady. I also press my elbows firmly into my chest for even greater stability.
The Wired How-To Wiki looks through the loupe at black and white photography, offering up tips for consumer-grade camera owners on how to take shots that look great converted to black and white. When other pictures look dull and dreary, for instance, black and white shots can pop, with the right focus:
Most photographers will tell you that gloomy, overcast days are perfect for shooting in black and white. So the next time the fog rolls in or the clouds hang a little too low, take it as your cue to get creative with the shades of gray.
The first consumer-priced, one-megapixel digital cameras hit the streets just over ten years ago, and today digital cameras are everywhere—hell, one megapixel is tiny for even our cell phone cameras. As a result, we snap picture after picture without giving a thought to the price of film, which means you've got hundreds of pictures to share with friends and family. Earlier this week we asked you to tell us your favourite photo sharing web site, and today we're back with the five most popular answers. Hit the jump for the low-down on the five best photo sharing tools the web has to offer.
The iPhone-toting blogger at Minddriven says that the cameraphone is often within reach when he wants to capture a task to his to-do list—so he snaps a photo of what needs to be done instead of writing it down. If he needs to buy more toothpaste, he snaps a photo of the empty tube and stores it in the to-do album. When he buys new toothpaste? He deletes the photo. Definitely a nice way to track tasks for the more visual folks among us, though I wonder what happens when he thinks of the empty toothpaste tube but isn't standing in front of it.
