Photocritic photography blog

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.
Read the rest of the article »

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 »

My post about being down and out over dance photography the other day garnered quite a lot of comments and more e-mails that I’ve had over a blog post in quite a while… So now I’m properly curious… Read the rest of the article »

I don’t usually use Photocritic as a soap-box, and I’m not planning to start, but this one is worth it so I’ll keep this super-short…

* Prostate cancer is the most common male cancer. It’s nasty. I wanted to do something to help fight it

* Movember is a fun fund-raiser in the fight against Prostate cancer: Grow a moustache in the month of November.

* I’m participating in Movember this year. For pictures of me looking a rainbow of wrong, check out this page. You can also see how much I’ve raised so far or make a donation yourself

Thanks for your attention!

In July about 3 years ago, I gave up my freelance photography business, Photocritic Ltd, and suddenly had a spare internet domain. As a promotional exercise for my company, I had written a few article for PhotoCritic, and I decided that perhaps it was worth putting those articles out there… An idea which came to fruition exactly 3 years ago today. So; what better excuse for a retrospective of what’s been going on, and sprouting lots of completely pointless statistics at you? Read the rest of the article »

A couple of weeks ago, we did a guide on how to set up your own photo blog (and, of course, how to make Google love your photography site from a few months back). What struck me, however, is that while having a photo blog is a good start - what should you do to take it from a merely funky collection of photos to a fantastic, highly successful blog?

I decided to have a chat to my friend John Cassimatis, who runs a very popular, very successful, and a near-award-winning blog over at johncassimatis.com… Read the rest of the article »