43
votes
How to photograph distant objects (10km)?
You can't. I don't care what you've seen on CSI, this just isn't possible in the real world. Even taking Canon's ridiculously big (and now discontinued. Oh, and $100,000) 1200mm lens, The Digital ...
- 21.8k
40
votes
How can a smartphone take pictures of a landscape with everything in focus?
It's worth noting that sensor size plays a huge role in depth of field and behavior of the lens.
A smartphone has a tiny camera sensor, often around 25 square mm. This gives the camera a crop factor ...
- 830
35
votes
Why am I getting a small black patch when I take photos?
To investigate sensor dust, perform the following test:
Close your aperture as much as possible (high F-number). This makes the sensor dust more visible.
Increase the focal length as much as ...
- 1,490
34
votes
Accepted
Why in a photo light lines of street lamps? How to remove them?
It looks like there are parallel light trails below each streelamp -- going down, then right, then down some more (ASCII art):
/
|
|
|
\_
\
|
And ...
- 3,772
34
votes
Accepted
How to convey a sense of depth & distance in a landscape?
If we start by just numbering them 1 - 6 for easy reference...
Personally, I'd discount 5 altogether as it has none of the aspects we're looking for.
2 is a bit naïve & perhaps achieves a lot of ...
- 23.1k
30
votes
How to photograph distant objects (10km)?
By specifying that you want to do your surveillance photography in "good sun light", you have already shot yourself in the foot. The best time to do this kind of photography is at night or in the very ...
- 1,047
27
votes
Why am I getting a small black patch when I take photos?
There's probably something on the sensor - maybe a dust particle.
You can check if the Canon camera has a sensor cleaning option and use it or take the camera to a local repair shop and have the ...
26
votes
How can I take advantage of the transparency of water in a landscape photo?
You'll want to use a polarization filter. Rotate it until you get the effect you want.
By the way, make sure you get a circular polarizer (most modern ones), the older linear polarizers can confuse ...
- 3,161
24
votes
Accepted
What's the difference between "Fake HDR" and real, bracketed exposure HDR?
What's the difference between “Fake HDR” and real, bracketed exposure HDR?
The only difference is how broadly or narrowly you decide to define the term High Dynamic Range Imaging (HDR). Do you use ...
- 175k
21
votes
How to photograph distant objects (10km)?
The general consensus in this thread is that detailed photography of a subject at a range of 10km is exceedingly difficult, and probably impossible using commercially available equipment — and there's ...
- 658
21
votes
How can a smartphone take pictures of a landscape with everything in focus?
If by "landscape" you mean something like this:
then the answer is simple: at very large distances, depth of field is extremely large even at large apertures. That is, at any aperture if you focus at ...
20
votes
Why do people not use large f-numbers (small apertures) when shooting landscapes, when you want large depth of field?
First people want to have (when making photos of landscape) almost all in focus. But they do not use F22-32 because on such aperture diffraction degradate the quality of images.
Second, when shooting ...
- 11.6k
19
votes
Why is 16:9 aspect ratio rarely used in professional photography?
I expect that this is mostly due to technical limitations. DatAperture wrote it very nicely on Reddit:
Lenses project circular images. To get the most resolution out of a
lens, you should use a ...
- 1,530
17
votes
Accepted
Landscapes: why *narrow* aperture?
Or am I misunderstanding how aperture works?...I thought the further away something is, the greater the depth of field. So when an object is three and a half miles away, it's going to have a huge ...
- 31.7k
17
votes
Accepted
What are the practical advantages of fast lenses when shooting landscapes?
When used at the same aperture and focal length, a faster lens will have less vignetting than a slower lens.
For example if you choose to shoot at 35mm f/4.0, then a 24-70mm f/4.0 lens will have the ...
- 745
17
votes
Accepted
Why are my dSLR-shot landscapes consistently overexposed vs. the same shots on my smartphone?
I think what you're really seeing is the difference between 'photography' and 'computational photography'.
Nothing I can see in the first photo hits 0,0,0 or 255,255,255, it all fits quite neatly ...
- 23.1k
16
votes
Accepted
How can I maintain brightness in a landscape without overexposing the sky?
How can I make my shots look like this one?
I added an emphasis to the question you asked, which is pretty much the answer: You make an image like that.
There's no way your camera will produce an ...
- 8,504
16
votes
Accepted
What is a good example for artistic ND filter applications?
Aside from moving water, what other motion blur applications can one achieve with an ND filter?
Pretty much anything that moves in relation to the camera.
One can make people moving through a scene ...
- 175k
15
votes
How to photograph distant objects (10km)?
As others have said, 10 km is not feasible due to the physics of light and atmospheric distortion. However, I'd like to address another aspect of this that hasn't been mentioned yet: if someone is ...
15
votes
Accepted
Why is 16:9 aspect ratio rarely used in professional photography?
Adding on to @Orbit's answer regarding area of an inscribed rectangle in a circle, the following graph shows the area of 4:3, 3:2, and 16:9 aspect ratios.
Area versus aspect ratio:
square: 100% (...
- 2,831
14
votes
How is this changing vertical perspective effect achieved?
This picture is a composition of slices of many photos taken from different heights, likely from a drone. The key to understanding it is to examine the camera's perspective or point of view from ...
- 32.3k
14
votes
Why am I getting a small black patch when I take photos?
Dust on the sensor, as other answers have suggested, is a strong possibility. Another possibility is dust on the rear element of the lens. If you change to a different lens and the spots go away, that'...
- 658
13
votes
What are the practical advantages of fast lenses when shooting landscapes?
A faster lens (= low F-stop) allows easier manual focus and better auto-focus, given the camera has AF sensors which can exploit faster lenses. For landscape however, there is usually enough time that ...
- 1,316
13
votes
Why do mountains look so much smaller in a photograph?
If you want something to look impressive, don't make it a little thing in the middle of a big picture. Frame to make it dominate the picture:
This is your picture with much of the distracting fluff ...
- 17.4k
13
votes
How can a smartphone take pictures of a landscape with everything in focus?
Aperture is only one factor in depth of field. Others are: sensor size and focal length. Large format camera lenses often have max apertures in f/4-f/5 range, yet they yield very shallow DOF - because ...
- 2,090
11
votes
Are three different exposures enough for a good HDR image?
It all depends on the scene in terms of overall brightness, the total dynamic range, and how fine the graduations are between bright and dark.
The wider the difference is between the brightest part ...
- 175k
11
votes
Why is 16:9 aspect ratio rarely used in professional photography?
The 35mm camera evolved into an image size that is 24mm x 36mm. This format was chosen by the German camera maker E. Leitz. One of his engineers, Oskar Barnack designed a 35mm still camera in 1913. At ...
- 38.7k
11
votes
What is causing the "bright spot" artifact in my picture?
This artifact falls under the heading of flare / ghost image. It is caused by internal reflections. The camera lens is a complex array of multiple polished glass lens elements. Some elements are ...
- 38.7k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible