What I do (or should be doing, since -like everybody else- I can’t stick to my good resolutions) in order to obtain beautifully detailled photographs. It’s even more important if you want to make them ready for printing in large size (on your brand new A3 inkjet printer or poster-size at a print shop).

A quality lens

The first advice I should give it to choose a high-end lens. Even if the trans-standard zoom lens of the kit for most digital SLR cameras provide very good results in an exceptionnally compact form factor, that we all love to use. But these are also the result of so many compromises where image quality cannot be always the only factor.

Professionnal zoom lenses (the most expensive) are often capable of really impressive achievements, but prime lenses (with a fixed focal lenght) can reach quality levels that no zoom lens can reach. Some say that this is their unique (and only) selling point: Quality.

Thus, in the Minolta-Sony lens catalog, I rushed onto the white tele-lenses from the APO G pro family that, even today, produce exceptionnally good images (for a price no less astonishing if you don’t purchase them second-hand). But each serious camera/lens manufacturer has a few very nice lenses in its catalog.

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I have collected a few posts at LifeHacker that I wanted to share with you because they are concentrating on some easy and powerful techniques to be used with Photoshop.

• Create Eye Catching Color Effects on Black-and-White Photos
• Create Photorealistic Reflections in Photoshop
• Reduce Redundancy by Creating Photoshop Actions

I don’t know why (maybe because I’m looking for them) but I seem to find plenty of posts about optimizing your photography of food. Let’s share some of the best ones here:

• First, a real collection of them in one place: Big and Tasty Food Photography Tips Roundup.
• A smaller list of them: The Ten Tastiest Food Photography Tips, giving a list of things to manage correctly from the beginning.
• DIY: Light Beer describes a lighting problem for shooting clear bottles of beer.

Some GNU/Linux lovers like to optimize their Linux kernel with many recompilations. This is not absolutely needed, but a quite common hobby there. However, it is quite difficult to do correctly. Tips for successful Kernel Recompilation in Linux by bobcares.com.