DonaldG

These Tips & Hints will be added to as & when time and contributers permit.
If you have any hint or tip that you think will help and benefit others, please PM me & I will add them here.

At the moment these tips etc will be uncoordinated - as the forum grows and contributers come on line, they will become more organised.

* BACK UPS
Do you value all those family photos on your computer? With the advent of digital cameras, most 'family' photos are stored on a hard drive instead of being printed out by the chemist or photo booth/shop. How would you feel if that hard drive failed and all those pictures disappeared into thin air? Do you have a backup of those family treasures? At the very least, you should make regular copies of them on to a CD or DVD. Do not be tempted to make backups to a partitioned hard drive that holds the originals...If you have a second or external hard drive, backup up to that as an alternative

Do you have a backup regime? If not, have a look at SyncToy, a free utility written by Microsoft especially for photographers. Read this article then get your free copy of SyncToy here.


* Don't work on the original image
If you get into photo enhancing or manipulating, never work on the original image. Copy the original and save it with a different name. Then work on the copy. That way, if you make a mistake you can always re-copy the untouched original.

* Working on images.
In general, most amateur photographs will be in JPG format. It is important to understand that the JPG format is 'lossy'. When it is saved some of the data (and quality) is lost. If you open a JPG and save it again, more data/quality is lost. This happens each time you open and save the JPG.

Eventually the image quality becomes very poor. To avoid this happening, if you need to open and save a photograph many times while you work on it, then save it in a 'lossless' format such as Photoshop native format 'PSD' or in Paintshop Pro, 'PSP' format. Only when you have finished working on it should you save as a JPG.

* Essential check list before going out
Is camera battery fully charged?
Do you have a spare battery?
Is the storage card formatted and empty?
Do you expect to take many photos? Do you have extra storage cards?
(Learn from my mistake: a lifelong ambition was to visit the Grand Canyon. After over 50 years of wanting, I ended up on the rim absolutely dumb struck in awe. I lifted my camera only to see 'Battery Flat' error. Fortunately I had a 35mm camera with a load of film but if I hadn't, imagine the disappointment!)
VIP: do you have a plastic bag in your pocket to put your camera in if it starts to rain?

* The Golden Hour
The best time to take photographs is within 1 hour of sunrise and 1 hour before sunset. With the sun at low angle in the sky, the colour if daylight is different and gives a much warmer glow and colour rendition to the photos.

* Image Hosting
If you want to show off your photographs to friends and relatives around the world, or just want to post a photograph to a forum like this, you can upload your favourites to a variety of image hosting sites. The free sites may have size restrictions, subscription sites have much fewer restrictions.

Free image hosting:
Photobucket
ImageShack

Subscription image hosting:
Smugmug