Category: Uncategorized

Christmas Holiday Photo Tips

How to take the best Christmas Photos

Christmas comes but once a year, here are some tips to help you capture the moment.
  • Make sure you know your camera

    • Great you got that new camera last month and now its time to prove it was worth all that money. Make sure you have experimented with your camera and know how everything works before the holidays. If you can set the white balance for indoors.

  • Charge your batteries, empty your camera

    • There is nothing worse then missing your child opening a present because your batteries died. So make sure you have them fully charged and maybe buy yourself a early present an pick up a new battery. If you have Thanksgiving pictures or worse yet last Christmas pictures still on your camera now is the time to move those over to your computer and free up room on your memory card.

  • Don’t stage photos too much


    • Candid moments can often be more memorable than staged photos. Let the day flow, you will be less stressed and your photos will look more natural.

  • Make sure you have enough light

    • Natural light is almost always better then camera flashes, so try to get as much natural light into the room as possible. Open blinds, turn on lights.

  • Change your location

    • Variety is the spice of life, so don’t be afraid to move around and get a photo from a different location. Get down low and take photos from a child’s perspective.

  • Let someone else take pictures for a while

    • Don’t be left out of the photo, you will want to remember the holiday together as a family.

  • Share your photos

    • Don’t procrastinate too much, take your photos of your camera, edit them and share them with your family (Facebook, print them, flickr)

  • Put down the camera and enjoy your time together

    • A great photo is wonderful, but your time with family is priceless so enjoy it.

Our favourite Big Picture's of 2010

Lightning streaks across the sky as lava flows from a volcano in Eyjafjallajokul April 17, 2010. (REUTERS/Lucas Jackson)

Unsafe Journey. A woman is riding between the railway carriages of a local train heading north from Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. Her luggage is tucked under the carriage in front of her. It is the month of Ramadan, a fast which culminates in Eid-ul-Fitr, a three-day celebration. Tens of thousands of people leave the city to go to their home village and celebrate with their families. Trains are packed and many who fail to get tickets before they sell out or can’t afford buying them at the black market ride on the roof of the train or, like this woman, finds a quiet spot between the carriages. (Photo and caption by Amy Helene Johansson)
A view of the badly damaged presidential palace – the center portion formerly 3 stories tall – after an earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti on January 13, 2010. (REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz)

Residents look at a Collapsed building in Concepcion, Chile, Saturday Feb. 27, 2010 after an 8.8-magnitude struck central Chile. The epicenter WAS 70 thousand (115 kilometers) from Concepcion, Chile’s second-largest city. (AP Photo)
Lights switched on in Toronto’s financial district, Ontario, Canada. (© Bill Ivy/WWF-Canada


Police officers in riot wear contain student protesters on Westminster Bridge on December 9, 2010 in London, England. (Oli Scarff/Getty Images)


A resident holding a baby hides behind a door as an armored police vehicle patrols during an operation at the Complexo do Alemão slum in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday, Nov. 28, 2010. (AP Photo/Andre Penner)



Firefighters spray foam and water on the lower portion of an apartment building on fire in the downtown area of Shanghai on Monday Nov. 15, 2010. (AP Photo

Lightning Strike NY Harbor. This shot was captured during a major electrical storm. There was little wind and no rain which allowed me to stay safely inside and shoot from an open window. This was the 82nd exposure out of 150 made that night. The camera was mounted on a tripod, exposures made with a cable release for 5 seconds at f10. Except for a some minor level adjustments and a square crop this was what came out of the camera. (Photo and caption by Jay Fine)


Pakistan army soldiers pass a baby across a channel in the floodwater as they help people flee from their flooded village following heavy monsoon rains in Taunsa, Pakistan on Sunday, Aug. 1, 2010. (AP Photo/Khalid Tanveer)


Crude oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill washes ashore in Orange Beach, Alabama, Saturday, June 12, 2010. (AP Photo/Dave Martin)

Serbia’s Milan Jovanovic (center) scores past Germany’s goalkeeper Manuel Neuer (right) and Arne Friedrich during a Group D match at Nelson Mandela Bay stadium in Port Elizabeth June 18, 2010. (REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach)


Jon Montgomery of Canada celebrates after he won the gold medal in the men’s skeleton on day 8 of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics at the Whistler Sliding Centre on February 19, 2010. (Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)

In the outskirts of Port Au Prince, bodies, apparently of the victims of the earthquake, are dumped in piles just off the roadside. Photo taken January 15, 2010. (Boston Globe/Bill Greene

ISO the new megapixel – Really?

The short answer is yes, the long answer maybe not. At this point many savvy buyers get that megapixels aren’t that important, but we suspect that most people still don’t realize its largely a marketing tool.

Low noise in high ISO is a much better thing to look at, largely because its harder to fake, it requires some sort of objective performance measurement. Our article on true resolution talks a bit about why we prefer to actually calculate resolution instead of using the rated number.

One thing I wanted to address was whether ISO should be the new megapixel.  Ignoring noise reduction algorithms and advancement of ccd and cmos tech and assuming we’re comparing two cameras with similar gen tech, the noise performance is largely a result of how much light each pixels is getting.  The amount of light is directly related to the pixel size in microns – you can search for cameras with the biggest pixels on our site (which we think is a really cool way to find high quality cameras) and not surprisingly they tend to excel at low light shooting as well as many other areas.

Funny the bigger the pixels the less megapixels the manufacturer can stuff in a given sensor so perhaps big pixels should be the new megapixel – resulting in cameras with less megapixels – ironic.  And yet we’re already seeing that.  Many high end cameras are using the newer backlit 10MP sensor while cheaper cameras are throwing in smaller 14MP sensors.

Consider the D3x vs D3s – both current gen top of the line SLRs from Nikon – so why the huge difference in mega pixels, high speed shooting is definitely a reason but when you look at their DXO mark ISO scores you start to see that big pixels might just be the real reason behind the difference.  The D3s has pixels which are twice the size 71.1 vs 35.2 microns of surface area and offers a significant advantage when shooting in low light.  Everything is just faster and better on the D3s.

12 clean megapixels is more than enough, heck most manufacturers should just stuff a slightly bigger digicam sensor with 6MP in their entry level cameras and the photo quality of most cameras would go through the roof: less compression needed, faster to process, faster shooting and response time, less noise, better color and dynamic range, etc.

Remember when you watch a great encoded blu-ray on a 80″ screen you’re watching 2MP and it looks fantastic, so of course you can do large prints with a really clean and sharp 5 or 6MP.

Snapsort launches digital camera recommendations

Today Snapsort released a significant update to its digital camera site: http://snapsort.com, as well as comparing cameras the site now recommends cameras for any price range and for any combination of features that are important to you.

Just tell me which camera to buy!

Not sure which camera to get?  Not interested in spending a lot of time figuring it out?   Simply enter your budget, and Snapsort will give you a few recommendations depending on whether you’re looking for a small camera or one with a lot of zoom (for example).

For example:

Recommendations on the fly

You can explore digital cameras at Snapsort, to find cameras with the features that are important to you, instead of just putting the cheapest or newest camera at the top of the list, Snapsort ranks all the cameras instantly against your criteria to show you which ones are the best.

For example:

Compare any two cameras to quickly see the differences

Once you’ve narrowed down your choices, you can compare any two digital cameras and have Snapsort tell you the advantages of each, and give its recommendation.  Snapsort even customizes the recommendations based on your exploration criteria.

Examples:

There’s much more to the site too, so dive in and take a look around!

Follow us on twitter: @snapsort