Discover Digital Photography

A film rebate border refers to the black border around each frame of film, which often contains the name of the type of film. If you were shooting film, to include this border as part of the image would mean scanning the film yourself. Film processing companies would only scan or print the actual image area of the film, and wouldn't include the border areas.

With digital though, we can quite easily add in a faux film rebate border ourselves. Adding a border can act as a nice way to frame the image. It can also be used for adding copyright and branding text, rather than putting a watermark over the image.

In this article I'll go over how you can create a medium format style film rebate border using Photoshop CC / CS. We'll create a flexible border that can be easily resized to accommodate images of different aspect ratios and dimensions. And I'll also cover using a scan of a real film frame, which can be an easier and more realistic (though less flexible) solution in many cases.

Image incorporates Film rebate by Graham Richardson (licensed CC-BY)

Continuing on from the previous article 10 non-essential but useful accessories for your camera bag, here's another ten items that aren't essential, but can be very useful to have in your bag, depending on what you're shooting.

Let's be honest, the only 'essential' for your camera bag is a camera with lens attached. Everything else is just an extra, something that makes your life as a photographer that bit easier, or gives you more creative options.

In this article we'll look at a range of accessories that can be very useful to have in your camera bag. You're unlikely to want to carry all of them with you all the time. Some of the accessories are more suited to some styles of photography than others. But you might want to consider them when packing your bag for a specific shoot.

Just remember that while taking more accessories with you gives you added flexibility, it also adds more weight to your bag. While many of the accessories discussed here are small and light, you should still think carefully about the actual likelihood that you'll need an accessory before packing it.

Full auto mode is a shooting / exposure mode found on most cameras. In this mode the camera decides all the settings for you, and all you have to do is point and shoot. While it can often produce decent results, the fully automatic nature of the mode means that you can't make any corrections when the camera gets it wrong.

In this article I'll cover a bit about how full auto mode works, the various problems you can have with it, and when it can actually be a good shooting mode to use.

This is a very common problem that almost everyone will come across. You take a photo of a scene with a nice sky, but the photo comes out with a white or very bright pale colored sky.

The issue here is that your eye has a much greater dynamic range than your camera. Dynamic range is the range of tones from dark to bright. Our eyes can see a wide range of tones, while a camera can only record a limited range. Any tones that exceed the top of that range come out as pure white, any below the bottom come out as pure black.

Thankfully, there are quite a few different things you can do to remedy this situation and capture a scene in which both the sky and foreground are properly exposed.

Modern cameras offer a lot of semi-intelligent automation that makes it fairly easy to get a photo where the technical aspects (such as exposure and focus) are correct. But what they can't do (at least not on purpose) is to take a creative photo - that relies on you. In this article we'll look at some tips to help get you taking more creative and compelling images, and improving your photography skills.

If you own an interchangeable lens camera, then you may be faced with a dilemma if you decide to upgrade your kit. Should you prioritize upgrading the camera body, or purchasing a new lens?

To answer this question you need to look carefully at what your current gear doesn't do satisfactorily. By looking at the main problems you have with your current gear, you can better understand whether it is a new camera or new lens that will best resolve those problems for you.

Some photographers feel a good tripod is essential for their photography. Others don't use one at all, feeling that a tripod encumbers their freedom. Most of us like having one available so that we can use it for certain shots, but don't like having to carry one around with us. Never the less, a tripod can help us capture images we otherwise wouldn't be able to.

In this article I'll look at the pros and cons of using a tripod from the specific point of view of photographing flowers. I'll also cover the features that you should look for in a tripod if you want to use if for flower photography.

Nowadays everyone is a photographer. I don't mean that in a condescending way, but rather as a matter of fact. The cost of shooting with a digital camera is much less than it was with film, and almost everyone has a camera built into their phone they can use.

A lot of people like to just point and shoot with their cameras. And there's nothing wrong with that. But with just a little bit of knowledge and effort they could be capturing much better images than they take at the moment.

In this article I'm going to look at five things people often don't pay attention to when taking a photo. But by paying attention to these things, you can easily end up with a much better photo than a simple point and shoot image that had no thought put into it.

Long exposure photography allows you to capture movement in a still photo, rather than just freezing a moment in time. You can capture silky smooth moving water, or clouds blurring as they move across the sky. Even blurred trails left by people as they move about.

In low light conditions, long exposure photography is quite easy. There's not much light, so exposure times will necessarily be long. But in daytime there is lots of light, and getting a shutter speed slow enough to blur anything but very fast movement can be almost impossible.