Caring for a Camera and storing digital pictures.

[JoshuaD]

Can anyone give me some tips in these two fields? I'm still new to photography, and I don't have a lot of that basic experience that is so invaluable.

I currently have a Canon Digital Rebel XTI with it's stock lens and a Tamron 70-300mm f/4-5.6. Both have a glass "UV" lens attached to protect the lens glass from getting scratched. What's a good way to care for and maintain this equipment?

Secondly, how do you store your digital photos? I am currently taking pictures in the large, high quality setting, which results in about 200-300 pictures/GB. It wouldn't be very long before, even after pruning away bad pictures, my 500GB disk gets a little cluttered by storing the pictures.

I'm very interested in playing with post processing, so I want to keep the highest quality image available to me to process, but I don't have enough experience to say "X by Y is more than sufficient for processing and printing.". Can anyone give me some information here as well?

Thanks for the help

-Josh

[mwfanelli2]

Can anyone give me some tips in these two fields? I'm still new to photography, and I don't have a lot of that basic experience that is so invaluable.

I currently have a Canon Digital Rebel XTI with it's stock lens and a Tamron 70-300mm f/4-5.6. Both have a glass "UV" lens attached to protect the lens glass from getting scratched. What's a good way to care for and maintain this equipment?

Secondly, how do you store your digital photos? I am currently taking pictures in the large, high quality setting, which results in about 200-300 pictures/GB. It wouldn't be very long before, even after pruning away bad pictures, my 500GB disk gets a little cluttered by storing the pictures.

I'm very interested in playing with post processing, so I want to keep the highest quality image available to me to process, but I don't have enough experience to say "X by Y is more than sufficient for processing and printing.". Can anyone give me some information here as well?

First, I hope that UV filter is the best quality you can get. A cheap filter will be the major bottleneck for image quality. Better yet, use the supplied lens cap instead!

Don't overclean your equipment. Dust here and there will not have an effect. Don't constantly wash the lens or filter as some people do. Don't rush, do things right, not fast. Later on, you'll be able to do both together.

The storage of photographs is easy: get cheap USB external drives to store them on. I use two and backup to both as images are added.

If you are post-processing, get used to shooting RAW. That gives you the greatest amount of image information. Experience comes with practice, luckily you can shoot a million images at no extra cost with digital. Learn to use the histogram. Learn to see. My advice is to look at the details, not the whole scene.

Spend the time to learn about light, aperture, shutter speeds, etc. Don't assume the camera will automatically do these things for you the best way possible. You have a brain, the camera does not!

[JoshuaD]

Spend the time to learn about light, aperture, shutter speeds, etc. Don't assume the camera will automatically do these things for you the best way possible. You have a brain, the camera does not!

Yea playing with these variables is my favorite part of photography. I am pretty much always shooting in manual mode.

The biggest problem I'm having is with White Balance. I just don't seem to have any intuitive feeling for what white balance to use when taking a picture and how to choose quickly. It's usually just trial and error.

Is that something I can change after the fact with processing, or are certain facets of it necessarily locked into the picture?

What's the difference between Raw and Jpeg? Raw is an uncompressed or lossless bitmap format?

[mwfanelli2]

Yea playing with these variables is my favorite part of photography. I am pretty much always shooting in manual mode.

The biggest problem I'm having is with White Balance. I just don't seem to have any intuitive feeling for what white balance to use when taking a picture and how to choose quickly. It's usually just trial and error.

Is that something I can change after the fact with processing, or are certain facets of it necessarily locked into the picture?

What's the difference between Raw and Jpeg? Raw is an uncompressed or lossless bitmap format?

White balance is the color temperature you are using. Very hand-waving: the peak of light output has a temperature associated with it, assigned using the same temperature in a perfect black body. Common noon daylight is normally chosen as 5500 degrees Kelvin. Open shade, for example, is "colder." You don't see the changes in color with your eyes because your brain fixes the differences over a wide range. White balance can be adjusted after the fact in RAW images. Most people just adjust the WB of the raw image until the photograph looks right!

RAW is almost the image that comes straight off of the sensor. It is lossless and has none of the user-chosen attributes applied to it (color, contrast, WB, etc.). It gives you lots of post-processing leeway and also extra dynamic range. JPEG comes almost fully processed out of the camera, it is lossy and compressed. The format you choose depends upon the situation you encounter. My 300D is always on RAW, my P&S is almost always set to JPEG.