Flash vs. Natural light (plus “fill flash”)
The Great Debate: Many photographers will disagree widely on the use of flash—some swear by it, other dislike it. In general, flash is good to use on dark days or sometimes on sunny days to “fill” in shadows (this is often done automatically on modern cameras). Other photographers like to use available “natural” light and manipulate with a number of tricks (see “Reflectors” under Techniques below).

Indoor Flash: Unless you use a very fast film, a tripod, and perhaps even a colorcorrecting filter (to get rid of the yellow of incandescent lightbulbs), you’ll probably want to use a flash indoors: use a flash unless you have a fast film or tripod. Normal flashes tend to create harsh light and “red eye.” To reduce these ill effects, you can buy “bounce” flashes that allow you to bounce the light off a wall, ceiling, or a reflector; or use the “red-eye reduction” feature on your automatic camera.

My company, AMF, purchased a general-purpose digital camera five years ago, the Sony Mavica, model MVC-FD83. The digital capability and floppy disc drive media proved very practical for general documentation purposes. The floppy discs made it convenient for any employee to work with the images. After about 20,000+ images the floppy drive wore out and a new camera was needed. Meanwhile I had personally purchased a Nikon Coolpix 995 camera with a 3.3 Megapixel resolution (a big improvement over the Sony Mavica 0.9 megapixel resolution) and close focus (2 cm) capability. This became a consideration for an AMF camera and we ordered one on eBay, which was lost by the USPS - it was insured.

Earlier in 2005 I purchased a Sony T1 with a Magnify mode that featured a very close focus (1 cm) and 5-megapixel resolution. This camera has provided many of the images used on posters, reports, fundraiser book, procedures, and power point presentations, especially for the BPB project. The ability to produce a large image of a very small object has proved very useful for our engineering and publicity projects.

My Pelco equipment has three wires for lens con- nections but the brand X lens my dealer sold me has four! What do I do?

We’ve all heard this problem many times, but it’s really simple to fix once you understand how lens wiring works. All lens motors are DC powered with two wires each, so reversing the polarity on those two motor wires will reverse the direction of the lens movement. If you connect one wire to positive and the other to negative the zoom (or focus) will move in one direction; reverse the wires and it will move the other direction. Typically the wires will be clearly identified as to which pair is zoom and which is focus, but zoom in versus zoom out or focus near versus focus far often gets lost in the translation.

The most important technical step to a good print is a good negative. The key to a good negative is correct film exposure.

Three variables control film exposure:

• Lens Opening
• Shutter Speed
• Film Speed

Lens Opening:

1. The larger the opening, the greater amount of light that reaches the film.
2. The size of the lens opening is measured by f-stops. ( The larger the f-stop, the smaller the opening )
3. The f-stops are as follows:
   • f 1.4 ( most light )
   • f2
   • f 2.8
   • f4
   • f 5.6
   • f8
   • f 11
   • f 16
   • f 22 ( least light )

Shutter Speed:

1. The time for which film is exposed to light is controlled by the shutter speed.
2. The faster the shutter speed, the shorter the duration of film exposure, and the less light reaches the film.

About The Book

The Guide to Great Photography brings together some of the finest images uploaded to ePHOTOzine over the course of its five year history. The pictures were selected from over a quarter of a million that have been uploaded into one of the 13 gallery subsections. These, along with hundreds of facts, tips and techniques, bring together a superb resource for anyone interested in photography who wants to gain inspiration, learn new tricks or just enjoy
great images.

When an ePHOTOzine member, Seb Wheeler, suggested in our forums two years ago that we create a book of images, I had no idea what a mammoth task I was about to embark on! At that time we had a gallery of around 153,000 images, split into 13 categories. A book, full of the best images and accompanied by tips and techniques, seemed like a simple plan to pull together. After sounding it out with members to see whether it would be something they’d like, the answer was a resounding Yes. The nightmare began!