Gadgetory

hey everyone and welcome to cnet's to fix a show about DIY tech and how to i'm eric franklin I'm Donald Bell and this week we have some tips and tricks for all you budding photographers out there yeah we're good focus on DSLRs we're gonna start off with some tips on choosing the right lens fear camera if you're in DSLR owner the lens that came with your camera is great for getting started but eventually you will grow out of it so if you're ready to purchase a new lens I have a few recommendations on exactly how to go about it hands down my favorite lens is the 50 millimeter 1.8 fixed lens it's great for portraits food photos and still life it is a prime lens or fixed lens so it doesn't zoom which means you'll have to get really close to your subject in order to frame up but the trade-off is huge it's a fast lens with a wide aperture which means super sharp photos even in low light the best part is that it's only one hundred dollars and that's not as cheap as it gets when you're shopping for a portrait lens what you want is a lens that won't distort your subject you want the person to look like they do to the human eye you also want that really cool blurry background effect on a full sized sensor camera like the canon 5d get a lens with a focal length of 80 millimeters to 100 millimeters on a crop sensor camera like this one that translates to about 50 millimeters if you want to go any shorter than 50 millimeters your subject will start to look a little too stretched out so stick with this range for food photography you don't necessarily need a zoom lens instead go in the prime lens like the 35 millimeter 1.4 at this focal length the shots will be just wide enough to get a crisp photo of an entire plate of food without distorting it since it's fixed you will have to move around to get closer or wider but really that's a part of the intimacy of food photography when you're traveling there's a good chance you'll want to lens it will take great landscape photos letting you capture wide sweeping shots of whatever exotic place you're in if you have to choose one lens to take with you on a trip the 18 to 35 millimeter 1.8 is the way to go and it's widest you'll get great sweeping views of landscape and it's still great for close-ups of food and portraits of people all around this is a great go-to ones I could seriously geek out on lenses all day long you are seriously geeking out right now I know I have to save myself from the dough I pretty much just shoot with a 50 millimeter prime for all my stuff no it sounds like a good waves all right when we come back we're gonna show you how to photograph your favorite four-legged friends during that split second where they're actually standing still welcome back everybody loves cute photos of cute pets are you sure about this yeah you sure it's not everyone loves cute photos a few kids check the internet nice all right hi but it's not always that easy to take photos of pets right no I'm gonna stay here for me I'm gonna stick around what do you think no maybe these guys yeah so we've got some insider tips that I help you do just that we love our pets like there are little furry children but I'm like a real kid pencil emblem want to sit down and stay put for a while we take their picture so how do you get a great pet photo with the DSLR I'm going to show you some universal tix first off make sure you dial in all your camera settings before you take the shot you're gonna need to act quick to get some good photos and dogs and cats not gonna want to sit still for you while you're feeling around your ISO much less have time to focus on your shot and this is the frustration two pet photography right here this is why it takes a lot of patience and time how about you sit down that's cold dirt there you go so here are some tips for settings you're going to want to make ahead of time for example let's say I want to take a nice close-up portrait of their face I want the ice being really sharp focus and I like the background to be nice and soft to do that I'm going to put my camera into aperture priority mode and now I'm gonna open the aperture all the way up in this case is an f-stop of a 1.8 I also recommend turning off your Flash because not only is it going to possibly spoof your pets but it's also gonna give them red eye another setting I recommend changing is your auto focus setting you should keep auto focus on for the sake of speed but instead of it being an intelligent focus or multi-point focus that might zero in on their snout you want to have a single point focus so you can really point out their eyes and get that tight focus on the eyes it's key I'm looking at those eyes really trying to use the auto focus to get in on the eyes finally I recommend putting your camera into a burst mode or a continuous shooting mode instead of a single shot a great pet photo is like a needle in a haystack of a hundred photos you're gonna take so just go for quantity take a bunch of shots well that's a good one the tongue is hanging out there sloppy tongue i think i got some great ones here yes yes it's a tasty ear I shouldn't put that peanut butter behind my ear this morning all right the rest really just comes down to patients and experimentation you try a few different environments they're looking sad you can take them out on a walk or try to engage them in something they like to do hopefully with any luck by the end of the day you have a few different shots worth Frank dude that was so adorable you're having the time of your life out there it was a really hot day but the dogs were being super cute big thanks to our friends at wags on polk for letting us photograph their dogs for something totally different we're going to show you how to use a tablet or a smartphone to remotely control your DSLR yeah you don't even need to be behind the camera to trigger it it's also if you have a DSLR camera you know it can take some pretty amazing photos but if you're looking for even more options with the ability to take remote snapshots we've got a cool device we think you should check out it's called trigger trap it's compatible with both Canon and Nikon cameras it costs twenty-five dollars for this dango you connect one end to your iOS or Android device and the other to your DSLR camera then you download the free trick or trap app trigger trap lets you control many of the functions of your camera on your mobile device in a simplified unique and fun way first need to make sure that your camera settings are appropriate for the shot you're trying to accomplish let's say you want to take some cool action shots you can use a time-lapse feature to accomplish that it's not something your camera can't do on its own but it's a lot easier here open time-lapse select the amount of time between each shot click OK and press the big red button and it starts photos will be taken until you stop it one of my favorite features is sound sensor which uses your mobile device's microphone to initiate a shot from your camera basically you turn it on and if there's a loud enough sound like this clap you get the shot immediately this is an excellent way to get yourself in pictures but I'll have to worry about a timer you can even customize it to delay the shot by a few seconds to make sure you strike the perfect pose these are just a few of the options available on trigger trap there plenty more have fun exploring it it's a really great way to utilize the power of your smartphone to get more interesting shots with your camera that's it for this week's show thank you guys so much for watching we'd love to hear your thoughts about how we're doing what you'd like to see next you can send us anything you want to send us your dog photos you can reach me at Donald on Twitter you can reach me at wied opal look forward to hearing from you see you next time bye you