Dave Johnson - Author - Good Gear Guide

Stories by Dave Johnson

Article | 22/04/2008 Four handy photo rules

It's not expensive gear or fancy software that separates great photographers from ordinary ones. After all, even $200 pocket-sized digital cameras are...

Article | 3/03/2008 Take Better Flash Photos

Make your flash photos come alive, and eliminate that "taken in a cave" effect.

Article | 6/03/2008 Use ISO to Take Low-Light Photos

Light can be a photographer's best friend and worst enemy. Which will it be for you?

Article | 8/02/2008 Fix Your Exposure Before You Take the Photo

There's been something of a silent revolution in the world of digital photography in recent years. Digital cameras are amazing marvels of modern engin...

Article | 5/02/2008 Free Digital Photography Goodies

The holidays might have tapered off a few weeks ago, but I'm still paying for them. Indeed, my checkbook has an "out of order" sign on it, and my teen...

Article | 4/02/2008 Digital Focus: Fixing torn, damaged photos

For the last couple of weeks, we've talked about scanning your old slides, negatives, and photos. There's more to it than just putting the images on a...

Article | 1/02/2008 Digital focus: restoring faded photos

For 150 years, film reigned supreme. But today our photo archives are in danger of being lost forever as prints fade and the emulsion on slides and ne...

Article | 15/01/2008 Get rid of that ugly date stamp

One of my pet peeves is the ugly red date that sometimes gets stamped onto the lower right corner of a photo. (That, and people who talk in the movie ...

Article | 23/10/2007 Understanding file formats

I tend to change the file format of my photos frequently -- usually from JPEG to TIFF or JPEG to Adobe Photoshop's PSD format. Why would I do that? Us...

Article | 24/10/2007 Make your photos pop with color

Surely you've seen television commercials in which everything is rendered in black and white except for one item -- a person, perhaps, or the featured...

Article | 7/11/2007 Turn real life into a miniature

There's something magical about macro photography. Getting up close to a tiny subject is one of the most exciting ways to use a digital camera. But wh...

Article | 8/11/2007 Take better portraits

Most of my family lives a cab ride, three connecting flights, and a rental car away, so I don't get to see them very often. But when I do make the tri...

Article | 26/10/2007 Shake hands with Elvis, part 2

Even Homer Simpson has been photographed shaking hands with a former president, so why can't you?

Article | 25/10/2007 Shake hands with Elvis, part 1

A lot of folks have had brushes with fame. When I was in sixth grade, to celebrate the U.S. bicentennial, I was assigned the task of writing a letter ...

Article | 23/10/2007 Tag Your Photos by GPS

I remember showing photos of my trek through Grand Cayman to a friend a few years ago. "Where were these taken?" she asked me about a particular set o...