A couple of years back, when digital "filters" started appearing, a number of us sat around and joked that there would soon be a Van Gogh or a Monet filter for images, with push-button conversion of any image to look like Starry Night or the lily pond in the Gardens of Giverny. It turns out that some code writer must have been listening; we now have plug-in filters...

You might think that with digital offering a unique ISO setting for every frame, and with the coordination of high ISO and sophisticated noise reduction software, that there would be less and less demand for and use of auxiliary lighting. Yet, use of flash, from built-in to ringlight to large portable battery packs and softbox location gear, has risen, and with it the potential for more finite...

Backlight has been bedeviling photographers for years, particularly in landscape
pictures and those where you want to take a shot but simply showed up at your
location at the wrong time of day. Backlight in and of itself is not the problem;
it's how your meter behaves and how you make the reading that creates
it. Simply put, when the subject falls within its own shadow because the brightest
illumination is behind it the meter can be overwhelmed by the illumination and
"fooled" into thinking it has more light for the exposure than the
main subject dictates.

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