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Features Featured Articles Choosing A Camera For...
Features Featured Articles Choosing A Camera For...
Choosing A Camera For...What inspires you? |
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Page 9 of 10 Nature & Landscapes: Select high-performance features and compact, lightweight designs for the best field experience By Zachary Singer 
LensFor most photographers, landscape images mean wide-angles, preferably an equivalent of a 28mm lens or shorter. In spite of that, powerful landscape images can be made with long telephotos, too. With this in mind, the camera’s lens—or lenses, when choosing for a D-SLR—should have as wide ranging a zoom as possible. Since landscape work frequently involves the use of smaller apertures for maximum depth of field, getting a fast lens isn’t as important as obtaining a good selection of focal lengths. The lens also needs to accept filters easily. You’ll often use polarizers, graduated neutral-density filters and close-up lenses. RAW File Capability RAW files contain much more tonal information than JPEGs, allowing you to make stronger adjustments to your image’s curves, levels, saturation and other settings without fear of banding or posterization. As a plus for color work, you can reset the white balance after the shoot—since the new settings are applied to the original data, it’s the same as if the picture actually had been shot that way. Not all advanced compacts can shoot RAW files, and some that do can take a long time to record them. All current D-SLRs offer RAW file capability, and an increasing number also produce a JPEG at the same time for convenience in rough editing. External Flash Many cameras feature a hot-shoe that accepts a portable flash unit. These small strobes have greater power than the cameras’ built-in unit and are a boon for filling in shadows during the day. Look for a wired or wireless means for allowing your flash to maintain electronic communication with the camera when the flash is removed from the hot-shoe. This capability for off-camera flash opens a wealth of creative possibilities. Mirror Lockup Some digital SLRs offer a mirror lockup feature or can be set to automatically raise the mirror a few seconds before exposure. Either approach will improve image sharpness by eliminating the vibration ordinarily caused by the reflex mirror’s sudden motion. Advanced compact cameras don’t need this feature because they don’t use reflex mirrors.   |
