Imre Z. Balint, BSc, MPM, MBA

I thought I would take a quick moment and answer a question that was posted to my YouTube profile in regard to whether the foreground can be blurred when one is taking a photo. The answer is yes the foreground can be blurred and in fact is almost always blurry in almost every photograph taken. This may not be very apparent in many cases though, because quite a few scenes do not have anything present in the foreground; more specifically, there is nothing to see between the subject (that is in focus) and the camera lens, except for mostly invisible air. In addition, if you're using auto-focus as many of us do, very commonly the camera system will focus on the thing nearest to the lens. This is of course assuming a general setting where multiple points throughout the frame are used to determine focus. But there are a few different ways around this so you can get that blurred foreground and I'll present a couple of ideas here. To begin with, even if you're using auto-focus, s...

Well I figure I better finish up the supplemental post to my Camera Maintenance and Care viewer request video I made a few weeks ago, seeing as I'm almost ready to start making the next episode. Overall, I believe that most people take fairly good care of their camera equipment, especially the amateur enthusiasts and pros out there. On the other hand, I do know a novice photographer who used her fingers to wipe the lens clean... I still shudder to this day. This video was the longest I've made since I started my photography series, but it was comprised of many short segments succinctly covering many camera maintenance and care topics. In no particular order they included: Replacing the camera body and lens (front and rear) caps to help prevent dust from collecting on the inner components of the camera and the exposed glass elements, respectively, and from other damage occurring (e.g. scratches on the lens; a finger accidentally entering the mirror box and poking some cri...

It's been quite a while since my last video, but after receiving another request for camera maintenance and care, I thought I'd quickly whip up this show. In the next week or so I'll also finish off the supplemental post with some links to cleaning products and other websites on this topic. And if I'm not too lazy in the coming days, I'll also post a shot or two of my wooden shark as that project is progressing quite well. L8r!

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!