Photography for Beginners

Sky Stuff 1: Apps & Websites for Weather and Celestial Events

/ Seattle Park Lover / 2 Comments

This post is the first in a new series about things that happen in the sky. This topic relates to parks because city, county, state, and national parks are often the best places to go to observe or photograph stuff in the sky.

For Part One I am providing suggestions for apps and links to websites in a variety of categories. You have to know when and where things are happening in order to go see them and these resources help with that. The tools are particularly useful for photographers.

Upcoming posts will have tips for when you might want to use specific sites and apps, where to go, and details about chasing the aurora borealis.

Many of the links below take you to pages for Seattle. But once at the site you can enter a zipcode (postal code) or name of a town to find the info for your part of the world. Once you’ve done that, I recommend bookmarking the site if the info looks useful to you. I have all the links sorted into my Sky Stuff bookmarks folder in a web browser so they are easy for me to find and use.

All apps listed are free unless otherwise noted.

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Photography for Beginners Part 27: Back Button Focus

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Each post in this series builds on information discussed in previous posts. See the Photography for Beginners page on the menu for links to all the posts.
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Back button focus (BBF) is an autofocus method that uses a button on the back of the camera body to tell the lens to focus, rather than the usual method of half-pressing the shutter button.

Once you are comfortable with using a camera it’s a good idea to set it up to give BBF a try. It takes some getting used to and you need some time to develop new muscle memory, so you’ll want to try it out over several shooting sessions before you decide if it’s for you or not.

If you end up not liking BBF after giving it a fair chance you can reset your camera and go back to the default method of half-pressing the shutter button to autofocus. Many photographers feel BBF is the only way to shoot and once they start using it never go back.

I’m not sure how common people like me are, but I use BBF situationally. It depends on what I’m doing and sometimes just my mood.

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Photography for Beginners Part 26: Buying a Camera – The Shopping Process

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Each post in this series builds on information discussed in previous posts. See the Photography for Beginners page on the menu for links to all the posts.

Part 25: Buying a Camera – Features

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In the last few posts we’ve covered the things that need to be considered when you’ve decided to buy a new camera. However, deciding what kind of camera you want is only half the battle. Once that’s decided you have to actually shop for and pick one.

Some people are expert shoppers who relish the research and comparison process and they need no tips from me. But if you hate shopping so much you don’t know where to start, feel overwhelmed when you look at retail sites, or are afraid that you might miss noticing the perfect camera for you, maybe I can help.

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Photography for Beginners Part 25: Buying a Camera – Features

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Each post in this series builds on information discussed in previous posts. See the Photography for Beginners page on the menu for links to all the posts.

Part 23: Types of Cameras
Part 24: Sensor Sizes

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In the previous posts about buying a camera we discussed when it’s a good idea to buy a new camera, the different types of cameras, and the different sensor sizes.

At this point you should have a general idea of what you want and how much you’re willing to spend to get it. But you still need to figure out which specific camera models of that type will best fit your interests and needs.

That’s where camera features come into play. Features and technical specifications are the nitty-gritty details that can differentiate one model from another.

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