Photocritic photography blog

As all photographers know, travel photography can be about more than safeguarding memories. Holidays are the perfect time to discover new cultures and customs, be outside of one’s comfort zone, eat new food, and, of course, really get stuck into the different lenses and ISO numbers. Coming home with that perfect picture of something or someone that fascinated you makes the enjoyment of the getaway last that much longer.

The way the local population expects you as a photographer to behave with your camera may be very different in countries other than your own. This Photo Etiquette may, however, not be easy to understand or adhere to, especially when it comes to photographing people as a subject, so we decided to have a closer look at what you might encounter… Read the rest of the article »

There are tons of reasons for using RAW instead of JPG when you’re taking photographs. Your photos will be sharper, you will be able to unlock your camera’s full dynamic range, and you have a better flexibility over things like white balance.

It seems as if people are cottoning on in a big way, too - I ran a poll about 2 years ago about whether people were shooting in JPEG or RAW… And I re-ran the same poll earlier this month.

The changes are staggering… Read the rest of the article »

Following from my post about dynamic range in cameras a few days ago, I did some further research… I give you: The 25 cameras with the best dynamic range!

Interestingly, it seems as if Nikon is generally doing quite a bit better than Canon, and that a camera launched almost 5 years ago is actually one of the ones with the very best dynamic ranges out there - And it’s not the brand you’d think, either!

Oh, and interestingly, there’s been a serious shift in the number of photographers shooting in raw - more about that in the end of this article.
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So far, we’ve covered the pre-film and the film era, so no prizes for guessing what today’s history lesson is going to be about - yup, that’s right, the digital era is upon us, and we’re taking a look at history as it’s happening all around us…

Let’s launch into the third and final installment in our 3-part series: The history of photography: The Era of Digital. Read the rest of the article »

Right, yesterday’s post was all about how photography came about before film was invented. We had people printing on pewter and inventing the photographic negative, but we all know that the real fun began when we started losing our films down the back of sofas and ruining them when clumsily pressing the wrong button on the camera…

So without further ado, the second installment in our 3-part series: The history of photography: The Era of Film. Read the rest of the article »

A few weeks ago, I had a long and interesting discussion about the History of Photography with a friend of mine, and I discovered that while photography is incredibly close to my heart, I didn’t really know all that much about everything that has happened in the past.

Obviously, that had to change - I give you the first in a 3-part series entitled, without a shred of originality, History of Photography. This time around, we’re having a look at what happened before they went ahead and invented film… Read the rest of the article »

Shutter speeds? Yaaawn. ISO speeds? Oh-god-not-again. Megapixels? Oh puh-bloody-lease, that’s so 2003. The newest frontier of digital photography is dynamic range - and it’s arguably the most exciting (r)evolution that’s happened in dSLR-world so far.

Interestingly, most manufacturers are continually improving the dynamic range of their cameras, but somehow seem to forget to tell us about it - which means that we’re witnessing - or should I say not witnessing - a quiet revolution.

It seems as if ‘dynamic range’ gets forgotten in PR world, where a bigger screen, better battery life or Live View is an easier way of getting regular consumers exited. The real technological leaps have been happening under the bonnet, though, and the result of the ongoing improvements will mean that your next camera will be significantly better than your current one - but you wouldn’t be able to tell from just reading its specification sheet.

So, why, exactly does this make a difference to us as photographers? All will be revealed… Read the rest of the article »

Haunting, surreal, and quite possibly the first major way in which digital photography does something which film photography can’t emulate - or even come near. HDR - or High Dynamic Range - photography is nothing new, but as new tools and techniques make the artform more available, HDR photography is taking off in a big way.

If you’ve never had a go… and especially if you don’t even know what I’m on about - you’re in for a real treat… Read the rest of the article »

You know how it goes - you want to find a photo of the Mona Lisa, so you go onto Google Images, you type in Mona Lisa, and you get hundreds of results. But what if you have an image, and you want to find out what it is of? Or what if you want to find out where else on the world wide interwebs this image is used? Cue Idee’s Tineye.com, an image search engine.

We decide to take it for a spin… Read the rest of the article »

A photo from 100 years ago is quaint, mysterious, and informative - partially because there aren’t that many of them. Today, everyone has a camera, and everyone is taking photos - In the pub a few months ago, I was talking to a historian about photography, and about what photos taken today would mean to historians of the future.

We’ve all got a string of iconic photos in our heads. The ones that capture a particular time, place, or event - for example the VJ Day celebrations in London that marked the end of the Second World War or the fall of the Berlin Wall. But have you ever considered what it is that makes a photograph historically valuable, or what you might need to do to take one of those photos?

Says Daniela: “Haje and I were talking about this a while ago, and seeing as I’m a historian to whom he’s taught an awful lot about photography, he thought I might have something to say about it. Turns out, I do…” Read the rest of the article »