Imre Z. Balint, BSc, MPM, MBA

I had a great question posted to my YouTube profile asking how I backup my photographs. Now before answering it, I would like to say that as usual, there are many methods to handling files which may be better or worse than how I do this. Nonetheless, I've personally found that my approach works quite well and allows me to quickly find photos that I've backed up, whether recently or years ago. Bottom line, feel free to read what I've posted and modify the system to suit your situation or style. Downloading Let me begin at the point where I've shot some pics and I'm ready to download them into my system. I use a card reader, but depending on your preference many cameras can also be hooked up to the computer via USB cable. If you use that method, be mindful of how much juice your batteries have left, or use the AC adapter for your camera if you have one, to avoid running out of power part way through the copy and having to recharge and do it all over again. Folder...

I have to say that I'm quite happy with the way Part 2 of RAW vs. JPEG turned out! For the supplemental post I have quite a few things I'd like to share, so keep a look out for that coming in the next few days. And my 20th (!!!) episode will be a remake of Episode 1; more detail, more photo coolness there! After that, some "trick" shot how-to videos. Click here for the Photography with Imre episode index!

For convenience, here's a page that can be bookmarked and which I'll update when I have a new supplemental blog post written for the Photography with Imre series that I do on YouTube. Photography with Imre Episode 28 - Image Size, Resolution, and Cropping - Part 2 Episode 28 - Image Size, Resolution, and Cropping - Part 1 Episode 27 - Landscape Photography - Part 2 Episode 27 - Landscape Photography - Part 1 Episode 25, 25A, and 26 - HDR Photography - Supplemental Post Episode 26 - HDR Photography - Part 2 Episode 25A - HDR Photography Addendum - Part 1 Episode 25 - HDR Photography - Part 1 Episode 23 and 24 - Infrared Photography - Supplemental Post Episode 24 - Infrared Photography - Part 2 Episode 23 - Infrared Photography - Part 1 Episode 22 - Lightning Photography - Part 2 Episode 22 - Lightning Photography Episode 21 - Aperture Revisited - Part 2 Episode 21 - Aperture Revisited Episode 20 - Zoom Trick Shot - Part 2 Episode 20 - Zoom Trick Shot ...

Finally, the long awaited RAW vs. JPEG episode is live on YouTube. I had quite a long script for this one, so I decided to break it into two parts. The second part should be finished in a few days after I've completed some additional graphics for it. After that episode I'll be remaking my very first episode on aperture, followed by a few shows on various shooting tricks. So lots of goodies on the way (and I haven't forgotten about some of the music videos, but those will have to wait little longer). And I must say, the research alone for this (and the second part) took quite a while to conduct. Indeed, the list of web resources is quite large and I know there are a few I haven't even included. But for those of you who really like to explore the intricacies of every topic, you've got a good starting point to keep you busy for the next few hours. Overall, this episode pretty much speaks for itself. My intention here was to give a high-level overview of what happe...

Well I would say it's about time that I wrote up the supplemental blog post to this video ! I've been a tad busy lately with "life" things, but luckily those things are calming down. Now the Olympus FL-50 tutorial video was quite specific in that I fairly directly answered a viewer's question about using the FL-50R with the camera, an Olympus E-620, in manual mode and with the shooting done indoors. By the way, not a huge difference between the FL-50 and the FL-50R other than the "R" version has wireless and slave capabilities. Anyway, I have to admit that for what I thought would be a simple and quick video, really turned out to be a complex topic and a video length of almost eight minutes. But I believe the point was well made that you can indeed use the flash in TTL Auto mode, even though the camera is in manual. Actually, this turns out to be quite a simple method where one can more or less concentrate on shooting without much fussing around wit...

Alright, so I managed to finish up this nifty video tutorial about using the FL-50/R flash with the camera (E-3 and E-620) set to manual. I'm terribly sick, so off I run to bed; will write more later!

On episode 11 I had a viewer post a question about stacking ND filters and I wanted to address that. Really, this post could more or less apply to stacking almost any type of filter. To begin with, the viewer asked about stacking potentially three and wondered if getting filters with a larger diameter than the lens would be worthwhile. In my opinion, the short answer is yes, because if you're shooting with wide angle lenses and stacking filters that equal the thread size of those lenses, then vignetting could occur. It speaks for itself, but larger diameter filters could help avoid that problem. However, there is a longer answer as well... The vast majority of materials I've researched and even some advice I've gotten from more experienced photographers is that stacking several filters is generally not a good idea. Some of the downsides include loss of image quality (depending on the quality of the filter(s) this could vary from slight to very noticeable) to getting un...

Thanks to a sharp eyed person, some miisstteeeks were found in Episode 1 of my photography series. First, when giving an f-number, the correct notation is f/# (e.g. f/22 or f/5.6). Notice the "/" (forward slash)? It may seem like a small omission, but unless some viewers read through the websites I listed in the supplemental post to this episode, then the fractional nature may have been missed. Another way of writing an f-number is 1/4. So, in my video I've said that the larger the f-number the smaller the aperture. But, f/22 (or 1/22) is smaller than f/4 (or 1/4); we shouldn't just be considering the denominator. The fractions do make this easier to see. And, I misspelled the word "aperture" in a few places throughout the video! 8^P As time has progressed, I feel Ive improved my videos and indeed looking back at the early ones I can see the difference. A few weeks ago I contemplated doing new versions of some of the early shows, and on the drawing are Epi...