Photography Course Dates Oxford May/June

Here is the list of course for which we still have places during our summer term. Full details on our web site

Understanding Your Digital SLR: start dates  – 4th May;  21st May;  9th June
Understanding Your Digital Compact Camera -Due to the many Bank Holidays in May we are unable to run this course but it will be back in the autumn
Introduction to Photoshop and Photoshop Elements – starts 4th May
Composition In Photography – Seeing Pictures – starts 5th May
Portrait Photography – starts 9th May
Intermediate Photography – starts 3rd May
Black and White Digital Photography – starts 13th June
Travel Photography starts 9th June
One Day Understanding Your DSLR – 7th May; 19th June; 10th July; 6th August
Garden & Plant Photography 12th June

To book a place please send an email and we will make a reservation for you and ask you to call with payment details so that we can confirm your place. Payment will not be taken until a week before the course starts.

Tips for Light Painting

Light painting is one of the most searched topics on the blog, so any help I can give should be well received, here is a post with 10 tips to help you do it better plus a video if you prefer……..”Light painting is an incredibly fun technique in which photographers use flashlights, camera flashes, and spotlights to literally paint light into a scene.  It’s one of the most fun night photography techniques.  Many photographers have attempted it, but only a few have mastered it (and I’m admittedly NOT one who has mastered it).  Nevertheless, I want to share a few things that I have learned while trying out light painting.”……...more tips here

Here’s the daddy of all light painting images

Memory cards – things you need to know

“Photographers are gearheads.  We love to know what the latest-and-greatest technology is and what piece of gear will produce optimal results.  I admit it.  I love the technology side of photography and I enjoy pixel peeping even when I know it doesn’t really help my photos.  Surprisingly, however, I am frequently shocked at how clueless photographers are about memory cards.” this comes from the Improve photography site, they have lots of good posts, you might want to follow them, here is the rest of this post about memory cards

The difference between full frame and crop sensor DSLR cameras

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Back in the stone age when we all used film, 35mm became the gold standard film size.  When we switched over to digital, there was no film to be used.  On most DSLR cameras, the digital imaging sensor, which replaces film, is significantly smaller than 35mm film.   In 2002, the first sensor that equaled the size of 35mm film was produced.

Canon was the first mainstream camera manufacturer to produce a DSLR camera with a sensor the size of 35mm film.  I can just imagine how the meeting went when the executives at the Canon marketing department sat down and tried to think of a way to make their new DSLR seem ultra-incredible and make everyone else’s camera seem like it was half a camera.  They accomplished this task by calling their 35mm equivalent sensor a “Full frame” DSLR camera, and decided to call all other DSLR cameras “Crop frame” cameras.”……………..more including pros and cons of the various options

Here are some pictures that might help you understand the size ratios of the various sensor sizes

This explanation has images taken from full frame and crop sensor cameras from the same location using the same focal length of lens, it is a useful read also....here

In the image above I took two pictures from the exact same location with a 30D and a 5D. I used the same lens (Canon 24-105 f/4L IS) on both photos at a focal length of 24mm. By overlaying 100% size images on top of each other you can see how much more of the scene is captured by the 5D’s full-frame sensor (the color 30D image is on top of the black & white 5D image).

Here is another example of the two images                                                                            Crop Sensor

Full Frame Sensor

Learn Lightroom in a Week – Day 1: Workspace and Preferences

Looks like we missed the very first tutorial of this excellent series from photo.tutsplus.com so here it is

In today’s tutorial we’re going to start the process of learning Photoshop Lightroom from the ground up. Over the course of the seven article series, we’ll cover everything from setting up the application, right through to in-depth techniques for post-processing and organising your work.

In this first piece, we’ll investigate the Lightroom interface, adjust basic preferences, and personalise the software for your own business. Ready to jump in? Let’s get started!

Learn Lightroom in a Week – Day 5: Advanced Editing

Day 5 – here we go with another really great tutorial, you can find days 1 to 4 by searching in our search box

In today’s tutorial, we will go a step further in image development in Lightroom. We will also apply what we learned in the previous tutorials to various photo editing workflows….here