Discover Digital Photography

Rear or second curtain sync flash is a flash mode available on many (though not all) cameras. It is designed for use when you want to combine a slow shutter speed with flash. Unlike the standard flash mode, rear curtain sync flash will fire the flash at the end of the exposure, rather than the start.

In this article we'll take a in-detail look at rear curtain sync flash, looking at how the resulting image differs to standard flash, and why and when you might want to use this flash mode.

Action figure / toy photography is a relatively new genre of photography that has risen in popularity in recent years. Photos often feature well-known characters in unusual situations, or playing characters from different 'universes' off against one another.

In this article we'll look at why you might want to give action figure photography a try, the potential issues you'll come across and how to deal with them, and some tips for getting interesting and engaging photos.

A tripod can be a great help in getting sharp photos and making you think more carefully about your composition. Many landscape, architecture, and product photographers would rate the tripod as being an essential bit of kit.

But if you're looking at purchasing a tripod, you may be a bit bewildered by all the different options available. In this article we'll look at the various features and specifications of tripods, and how they relate to real life use.

EXIF is a form of metadata (data about data) that is recorded in digital photos. It includes information such as the camera model used to take the photo, the camera settings used, and the date and time the photo was taken.

In this article we'll look at how to view the EXIF data of a photo, how EXIF can be useful, and even how it can help you improve your photography.

Summer can be a bit of a paradox in terms of its suitability for photography. In one aspect it's great for photography - it's nice weather for going out, there's often lots happening to photograph, and there's plenty of light.

On the other hand, the sun spends a lot of the day high up in the sky, creating harsh lighting and strong shadows. The light is very contrasty and capturing an image with detail in both the shadows and highlights can be nigh-on impossible.

In this article I want to look at how you can deal with the problems of photographing in the summer. I'll also look at some of the good points of summer photography compared to other times of the year.

Soft focus filters are used for reducing the local contrast in an image, and sometimes also for adding a kind of dreamy glow. The main use for this is in portrait photography - the filter reduces the appearance of fine detail such as skin pores, giving a smoothing effect.

The effect is not the same as just blurring an image. A good quality soft focus filter reduces the contrast of fine detail rather than blurring it away.

Soft focus effects were often used in Hollywood films in the 1950s for scenes with the leading actress. If you look closely when watching these films you can clearly see how the look of the image changes when a scene alternates between showing the male lead and the female lead.

Because of their heavy use in Hollywood, the look given by a soft focus filter is sometimes referred to as the 'Hollywood look'. In this article we'll look at several ways you can produce the same effect in your own photography.

In this article I want to look at why using a different lens to the one that came with your camera might be a good idea. I'm not going to go into details about the quality of the lens - most 'kit' lenses sold with cameras today are perfectly fine.

Rather, I want to look at how restricting yourself to using a lens or focal length you don't normally use much can help you hone your photographic technique.

Before the advent of color photography, a process of hand coloring black and white photos was sometimes used. Color (often using watercolors) was simply painted on top of the photograph, to create a color image.

This process gives the images quite a unique look. In this article I want to look at how you can do the same, giving any image that hand-colored black and white photo look.

A double exposure is a creative technique where you combine two (or more) photos in a single image. It is quite an old technique, before digital it meant capturing two exposures on a single frame of film. But with today's modern cameras and software, creating a good double exposure image is much easier.

The Droste effect is the name given to the effect when a picture appears within a picture of itself.

It is named after a brand of Dutch Cocoa powder, whose box featured an image of a woman holding a tray with a cup of cocoa and the same box with the same image on it.

The infinite recursion of the Droste effect is an unusual technique, but can produce some great images. In this article I'll look at how to create two different versions of the effect - the frame within a frame technique, and the spiral technique.