Tech Check Dual card slots

What are the bene ts of more than one slot?

Why do some cameras have dual memory card slots?

Having two separate memory cards in the camera gives you various options for image storage as you shoot. Depending on the model you have, you can record to two cards simultaneously or on some models, record video to one card and still images to the other, or raws to one card and jpegs to the second card. Alternatively, you can simply have two cards in the camera and when one is full, the camera automatically records to the other.

Why would you want to record on two memory cards simultaneously? By having two cards recording the same images, you have a failsafe

system where, if one card happens to fail, the other one has recorded your images safe and sound. This is something that many professional wedding photographers prefer to do, to make sure they have the precious images of someone’s big day fully backed up.

Does auto-switching from one card to the other make much di erence?

Now that card capacities are so much larger than they used to be, auto-switching is perhaps less useful. But even so, imagine that you’re trying to capture the shot of a lifetime and your card runs out. If you had a second card installed and the camera set to auto-switch, you wouldn’t have to worry – at least not until the second card was full.

So how does it work? Depending on the camera you use, you can put the same type of card in both slots. Other cameras allow for two di erent card types, such as an SD card and a CompactFlash card, or a CompactFlash card and CFast card. Check the owner’s manual to see what your camera allows.

I like the minimalistic Q style of photography, so what can I do to make my images like this? Sue Rogers

It’s always di cult to de ne A a ’style’ of photography as everyone has di erent interpretations of what it means but, to me, the term minimalism simply means trying to show the subject in as simple a way as possible. So think of an image that is uncluttered in terms of composition, colour and tonality and you might have something that could be termed minimalist. How simple or how stripped-back the elements are is down to artistic interpretation.

Minimalism isn’t restricted to any particular genre of photography, so you can take minimalistic landscapes, wildlife images, abstracts and so on. If you think of a landscape photograph, it becomes a minimalist image if the elements within the frame are stripped right back. For example, a long-exposure seascape image, where there is one sharp subject and everything else is blurred so detail is lost, is an obvious minimalist-style picture. Take that one step further and create an Intentional Camera Movement (ICM) photo of the same scene and your image might be even simpler.

When you can’t use a long exposure technique that naturally simpli es a scene, then you can use other tricks, such as limiting depth of eld by using a wide aperture or by shooting with a long lens to blur the foreground and background. Whatever you shoot, make sure your image has an ultra-simple composition. Keep to a single focal point, with surroundings that lack detail to draw the eye away.

As an example, I’ve picked an elephant image I took a few years ago. There is a lot of space within the frame and the animal is the only point of focus. The blue tones created by the early morning light help to further simplify its visual appeal.

Spoiled sunsets

I only shoot jpegs Q and recently took a beautiful sunset. But when I downloaded the images onto my computer, I was disappointed with them because all their natural colour was gone. What happened?

Nancy Fullerton

There are several potential A reasons for the issue you’ve experienced, with the most obvious one being that you are using Auto White Balance. This setting tends to cool down the warmth and vibrancy of a scene because it thinks it is correcting an unwanted colour cast. The result is that the image’s colour impact is reduced. If this is the case, then next time you are lucky enough to photograph similar conditions, simply switch your White

Balance setting to Daylight for a more natural colour capture or, if you want to enhance the warmth further, then it’s worth using Cloudy white balance.

If you were shooting raw les, then you could tweak WB post-capture but with a compressed le like a jpeg, your postcapture editing options are reduced. You can increase vibrancy and saturation in Photoshop, but this can make the colours look over-cooked and unnatural. The other issue you might have as a jpeg user is that the camera will be capturing the image style to set parameters.

I don’t know what camera you have but, if it’s a Canon, you should look in your menu for ‘Picture Styles’ (Nikon calls it ‘Picture Settings’). If you’ve never changed the setting from the camera’s default, you will be capturing a Žatter jpeg than you want. Change yours to Landscape for a more saturated, richer image and it will help.

If your sunset images are disappointing, you can alter the white balance, change the picture style or shoot in raw format.

Is there any way Q I can keep a person in colour but make the background black and white in Lightroom Classic? Dave Glover

Since Adobe introduced A Masking in Lightroom, our editing options have greatly increased and it’s now really easy to do what you want to do. Go to Masks and use Select > Background to select the area you want to be black and white and then simply take the saturation slider back to zero. If the background Mask selection isn’t perfect, you could also use Select > People to identify the area that you want to remain in colour and then invert the selection before desaturating the background as before.

Re ections often turn out darker than the subject, so use a graduated ND lter.

Re ecting on re ections

Why do re ections Q in landscape pictures appear darker than the subject they’re re ecting?

Hugh Percy

They don’t just appear darker, A they are darker. When light hits an area where a reƒection is – typically a body of water – some of that light is absorbed. You can make both the subject and reƒection the same light intensity if you want, either by using a Graduated Neutral Density

lter when shooting the scene or by adjusting the image in post-production afterwards.

The brightness di erence between the subject and reƒection can vary but for a more natural appearance, the reƒection should be between 0.5 to one stop darker than the rest of the scene.

My birds look too dark

I took some photos at Q an owl centre, but the birds came out so dark against the sky it’s like a silhouette. What happened? John Hillier

When you are shooting a bird A against the backdrop of a bright sky, there can be a big exposure di erence between the bird and that background. The camera’s meter thinks the scene has plenty of light so isn’t worrying about the details of the bird’s body and so the subject is underexposed. What you do is add in some positive exposure compensation. Somewhere between +1 to +2 stops should be enough to give you more detail in the bird, but will also brighten the sky, so you have to be aware of overexposure and

nd a balance between the two exposure ranges.

There are many advantages to using dual card slots, not least for backing up essential images.

For minimalistic images, aim to simplify details, such as this silhouette of an elephant against the early morning sky.

Auto White Balance

Daylight white balance

Andrew James