Photo Dissection - Skateboarder

This is the second entry in what I hope will become an occasional feature dissecting how some of my photos - and those of the Cheapshooter community - were taken. These photo dissections will highlight how a photo concept is developed technically on a limited budget and will be geared for more advanced photographers. [...]

Canon 40D Focusing Problems

Just a heads up for anyone looking to buy a Canon 40D. I purchased a 40D last week, took it home, slapped on a lens and couldn’t get it to focus. It didn’t matter if I used autofocus or did it manually - something wasn’t calibrated correctly (I think). Even though the [...]

Getting Started with Smoke Photography
(Guest Post by Nuno Correia)

Note from Dan: I’ve always been impressed with Nuno Correia’s smoke photography over at Photoassignment.net, many examples of which he’s shared with Cheapshooter readers. I asked him to write a tutorial on how he approaches smoke photography, and he gladly obliged. Thanks to Nuno for this great post - I’m excited to try [...]

Five Free Firefox Extensions for Photographers

If you aren’t using Firefox yet, you should. Not only is Firefox more secure than other popular browsers like Internet Explorer, but also has a strong developer community creating extensions to make your browser do more. And as a result, there’s a plethora of plugins to turn your simple browser window into a [...]

Earn Some Photo Money While Searching Google

I’m not typically one to hype online contests, because usually the odds of winning are pretty terrible. But I ran across LuckySearch last week and have earned $25 in Amazon gift certificates already.
Here’s how it works. LuckySearch uses the same search results as Google. Every search gives you a shot at winning [...]

Backlighting for Hairlights, Translucence and Silhouettes

Note: This is the first of four articles exploring four different kinds of natural light you can use in your photography.

Ever been told not to shoot into the light? Forget it.
Backlighting is one of those effects that looks difficult and expensive but isn’t all that tough to achieve. With a little knowledge even [...]