Digital Photography Tips

Computer Care: Tips to shoot high-quality digital photos

	By Arthur Glazerglazer.tech@gmail.com

UPDATED: March 16, 2012 11:40 p.m.

Computer Care: Tips to shoot high-quality digital photos By Arthur Glazerglazer.tech@gmail.com UPDATED: March 16, 2012 11:40 p.m. Aside from being a technician and writer, I am a photographer. People often ask what kind of camera I have when they remark about my shots. The fact is, I only paid a few hundred dollars for my camera; it's not a professional model by any means. I explain that I don't have a great camera, but a good eye. Too often I see photos posted on Facebook, websites or blogs that people are proud of. They have the potential to be good shots but were simply posted prematurely and unedited. You don't need superior knowledge or special software (although the latter is nice), to transform an average photo into an extraordinary one.Most PHD cameras (Press Here, Dummy) come with software. Alternatively, you can download free software at download.com. Just use terms like "free photo editor" in your keyword search. A wonderful (free) open-source program is GIMP. It's a Photoshop-like program for the serious photographer. Download it at http://www.gimp.org. Whether you use Photoshop, GIMP or another freebie from the Web, there are a few simple steps to enhancing each photo you take. Crop your image, especially if you didn't get close enough when you took it. Try to delete extraneous background matter that could draw attention away from your subject. Optimize the picture. Lighten shadows, darken bright spots and add contrast when necessary. Some photo editors have a one-click button that does it all automatically. Watch for things like trees and telephone poles coming out of subjects' heads. Shooting from a different angle or asking your subjects to move could avoid this. If unavoidable, with the use of software, a clone tool can place sky or foliage where a pole may have been. Be aware of your background; if you can avoid it, keep stray people out of your shots (although you can learn to get rid of them with the software). Try to have subjects looking into the shot instead of out of it. The same goes for flying birds, sailboats, etc. It makes for a more interesting picture. Use the Rule of Thirds while composing your photos. Having your subject off-center just looks better. Wikipedia provides a good explanation of this concept at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thirds. Be aware of the sun and try not to shoot into it; but don't have your subjects squinting either. Consider its position in the sky. A high sun is the brightest, but causes facial shadows. A low sun has a softer light but causes long shadows. Watch for reflections in glass, especially if you're using a flash. Don't be afraid to use a flash outdoors. It will get rid of facial shadows. Keep in mind that most cameras' built-in flashes will reach only 6-8 feet, so make sure you are close enough for it to have an effect. If you do use a flash, watch for red eye. Your camera may have pre-flash burst that eliminates red-eye or you can easily treat it with your software. If you use a DSLR, you can be more creative and have more control over the camera by taking it out of Auto Mode. There is a direct relationship between shutter speed and aperture size. To get the same exposure, for each F-stop you decrease (higher number yields a smaller aperture), you need to add a time element.For example: shooting at 125th of a second at F-16 is the same as 250 and F-8. There are times you may need a faster shutter speed (to stop the action) and times that call for a smaller aperture (it yields a greater depth of field). Set your DSLR to bracket your shots. It will take photos at the exposure you want and one or a few on either side of that to ensure you'll get a good one. Remember the resolution: it all depends on whether you're posting an image online or printing it. To do the latter you want a hi-res shot. To get a good 8 X 10, you'll want at least a 4 MB image. For Facebook, you can put up a 60k image and it will look just fine, but you couldn't print it. Film and the processing of it used to be expensive. Digital photography is not. Take lots of shots. I often shoot a few dozen images just to get one or two good ones. Some will have a poor exposure, others may be blurred and a few will have the subject either not smiling or with their eyes closed. If you take enough shots, you are guaranteed to have at least a few quality photos. Even those few that appear to look fine will warrant some tweaking. Unless they were cropped while you took them, if you do no other editing, crop them with your photo utility. With just a $90 camera, a trained eye, some free software and this advice, you'll soon hear your friends tell you what nice shots you've posted. Arthur Glazer is a freelance writer and computer technician in Gainesville. His column appears biweekly on the Business page

Computer Care

Let a computer sleep or turn it off?        

By Arthur Glazer

glazer.tech@gmail.com

One of the most common questions I get asked by clients is: “Should I turn my computer off when I’m done or leave it running?” Many leave them on 24/7.  I have read good arguments on both sides of this debate. Here is my take.

Unless I’m done for the day, I leave mine on. However, when I’m finished working at night, I do absolutely power it down.

On my laptop I have it set to go into sleep mode when I close the lid. On both desktop and laptop I use power settings to first dim the display, then a few minutes later, kill the hard drive and finally after an hour I have them go to sleep.

To awaken from a sleep mode, all you need to do is tap the space bar or shake the mouse. Give it a few seconds and the display will come back alive, waking the rest of the system with it.

This is good at times when you’re working, but get called to the phone or to dinner. There is no reason to keep the computer running if you’re not using it.

There is sleep or standby mode and there is hibernation. Let me say that I don’t advise an XP machine to hibernate. Often an XP PC will fail to awaken properly from hibernation to experience data loss. I recommend you turn off that feature if you use XP.

The difference between the two modes is that in standby, all your work is saved to RAM (system memory) and comes back quickly. When a system hibernates, the data is saved to the hard drive. It takes another few seconds to recover when you wake it, usually by hitting the power button instead of the mouse or keyboard.

Don’t confuse screen savers with sleep mode. They are nothing but a distraction and were initially used to prevent phosphor burn-in on the old cathode-ray tube monitors. Today they are just something to look at or something to block your screen from prying eyes.

There is an argument that a computer can’t handle daily power cycles. I don’t subscribe to that theory. Your television, stereo, game box and a plethora of other electronic devices power down often with no ill effects. Computers are manufactured to actually withstand up to 40,000 on/off cycles before failure. Considering they will last 5-7 years, most computers will fail from something else in that time frame.

By cycling down computers, the fact is not only are you saving electricity (we’ll get to that in a moment), but it is actually better for the system to be turned off every now and then.

By turning your cell phone off every day or two, you reacquire the signal from the cell tower. By turning off your computer, you refresh the system memory. It also fixes little ailments.

Often my wife will shout across the house that her browser won’t open or that she can’t play a song. After I ask her if she tried rebooting, I get a “Never mind.”

When you terminate a program in Windows, you don’t get the entire amount of RAM back that it was using. Some simply gets lost. Only by using a memory utility that refreshes it or rebooting the computer, will all that system RAM be available again.

Aside from the fact that your computer can benefit from turning it off, it will save electricity as well as the planet.

It’s not just your computer either. I walked in my dark lab one evening and thought I was at NASA. There were glowing LEDs from assorted PCs, monitors, battery chargers, power adapters/transformers, devices in standby, devices with illuminated clocks, power strips, my modem and router. Except for the last two, I have since changed what I leave on.

You don’t think it adds up, but it does. Even a cell phone charger not connected to a phone still draws current. Multiply that by everyone who leaves theirs connected. That’s a lot of wasted electricity.

Using sleep-mode on a computer that is on only four hours a day will have a 70 percent energy savings over leaving it on 24/7. Experts claim that electronic devices in standby mode burn up 5 percent of all the electricity used in the United States.

Energy Star says that by using devices with their logo on it will conserve a considerable amount of electricity by powering them down when not in use. Smart power strips monitor power usage and will terminate electricity at appropriate times.

Even non-smart strips have power buttons on them. If you toggle it off when done, it will help save electricity.

Turning off your devices not only reduces energy consumption, it also reduces pollution that is created by the power plants that makes our electricity, no matter by what method unless wind or solar.

On the average, you could save approximately $200 annually by turning off your computer when you’re done with it.

So I say to those power abusers who never power down their systems: Get with the program. Save money, save your computer and save the Earth.

Arthur Glazer is a freelance writer and computer technician in Gainesville. His column appears biweekly on the Business Page and on gainesvilletimes.com.