One of my favorite pass times, when I have time, is photography. What I find fascinating about photography, is that 1) I’m ”not” a very creative photographer and have to work hard to produce acceptable results and 2) it has nothing at all to do with technology! However, even though technology is a secondary issue, it is important to know thy camera. That means that you should be able to use the camera and all of its important features without having to fumble around and move your attention away from the subject of the photograph to the camera. In this post, I’ve tried to put together a list of useful links covering basic photography techniques, the Nikon and Canon systems and camera review sites.

• A Tale of Two Cameras gives an interesting overview of the differences between a “standard” digitial camera and a digital SLR.
• Focal Length and Depth of Field – This is another important issues which has to be fully understood, i.e. what is the relationship between aperture and focal length. I was a little surprised by what I read here!
• Digital Exposure describes how to get the best results from your digital camera by “exposing to the right”.
• Flash Photography Made Simple is an article for beginners who want to learn more about flash photography.
• Light and Lighting is an extensive set of articles covering what photography is all about – light. Easy to read and informative.

Here are some links relating specifically, or mainly, to the Nikon system – which is the system I currently use and prefer:

• bythom is a cool site full of useful information and reviews relating to the Nikon system.
• Nikon SB-800 Resources is a site full of links and information relating to the Nikon flash system.
• D70 Custom Tone Curve is a site which describes what custom curves are and makes some useful curves available for download.

Here are some links which relate specifically to the Canon EOS system:

• Canon EOS FAQ is a useful guide for Canon EOS users covering issues such as the differences between various models and the command dial.
• Canon EOS Flash Photography] is an absolute ”must read” for anyone using a Canon EOS camera with an external flash.
• PhotoNotes mostly contains articles relating to Canon equipment but some may find the photography dictionary useful.

Some of my favourite online photography sites which give detailed camera, lens and printer reviews, help and user forums are:

• Digital Photography Review has comprehensive reviews of high-end digital SLR and prosumer cameras, camera related news, technical help, user forums and sample galleries.
• Luminous Landscape is an excellent website and describes itself as “the web’s most comprehensive site devoted to the art of landscape, nature and documentary photography using digital as well as traditional image processing techniques.” Luminous Landscape also has instructive feature articles, reviews, portfolios, and a user forum.
• Rob Galbraith is an interesting website filled with good information relating to digital photography including camera reviews.
• Imaging Resource is a website mostly dedicated to, high quality, reviews. If you are looking into getting a mid to high-end camera, imaging-resource is a good source of information.
• Digital Camera Resource is a website mostly dedicated to [http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/cameraList.php reviews].
• Steves Digicams is, again, mainly a site dedicated to reviewing digital cameras and related hardware, such as printers and storage devices. The cameras reviewed range from entry to prosumer level.
• Photo.net is a good source of articles covering photography related issues for beginners, book reviews, digital post processing, and a whole host of other things.
• PhotoZone is another high quality website with some extremely useful lens reviews.

If you are looking for a place to host your digital photos, or you just want to browse the work of others, you should definitely check out the following sites:

• pbase is a popular photo gallery site amongst photography enthusiasts which has a very cool camera database which I use whenever I want to buy a new lens or camera.
• smugmug is another very popular photography enthusiasts gallery hosting website.
• flickr is a Web2.0 photo gallery which has some interesting social and tagging features.

powered by performancing firefox

One of the great things about Firefox is XUL and the ability to write extensions with a relatively small amount of effort – this is not the case with Microsoft’s IE. Anyway, two really cool extensions that I just found are: IE tab, which allows you to switch browser engines from within Firefox and Notefish (an extension is also available for IE). Notefish is a tool which I’ve been wanting for a long time and now it here – try it and use it! For more extensions, checkout the Mozilla site. If you don’t have Firefox – get a copy here.