How to embed Instagram photos and videos -- without hacking!

Instagram now offers video as well as photos. But embed the content into your site requires some understanding of HTML coding ... until now.

In this post on Hubspot, Genny Soskey provides a step-by-step tutorial.

4 good reasons to buy a pancake lens

From Andrew Gibson at Picture Correct:

1. Simplicity: Pancakes are prime lenses. From an optical design point of view they are pretty simple, much like a 50mm prime lens. The Canon 40mm pancake lens has six elements, whereas zooms usually have ten to twenty elements. This translates to high image quality and lower manufacturing costs.
2. Price. Pancake lenses tend to be inexpensive. You get a lot of bang for your buck in terms of image quality.
3. Aperture. The maximum aperture of my 40mm pancake lens is f2.8. This is not especially impressive for a prime lens, but better than most zooms. If your main lens is a kit lens you will certainly appreciate the improvement.
4. Short minimum focusing distance. The 40mm pancake lens can focus on a subject within 28 centimetres of the camera. This is quite close, and you can get even closer by using extension tubes.

Just learning to shoot photos? Go manual, not auto

Beginning photographers often make the mistake of depending way too much on the automatic features in DSLR cameras, Peter Phun at PhotoCorrect says. He suggests learning in manual mode:

When you’re learning, the best you can do is to learn to adjust the settings on manual. That way you can figure out what you did wrong. Shooting on auto will not tell you much when you’re trying to troubleshoot. Programs that can read exif information which record shutter speed, ISO, aperture, White Balance are revealed when a picture is taken on Manual Mode but not so in Auto.

In this post, Phun lists nine more common mistakes that that beginners make.

3 simple steps to buying (and using) your first DSLR camera

For many folks, the hardest step in learning to shoot photos is deciding on a camera. Here's some
great advice from Chaz Curry at PhotographyBlogger:

1. Buy the cheapest Canon or Nikon DSLR (body only).
2. Buy a 50mm 1.8 lens.
3. Start shooting immediately.

For details, follow the link.

A pocket-sized tripod for iPhoneography

From blogger Glyn Evans:

The portable and flexible tripod makers Joby, have just released their latest creation, the GripTight Micro Stand. Designed for any smartphone with or without a case, the GripTight Micro Stand grips your smartphone safely and securely via a spring loaded mount/grip, allows multi positioning via a machined aluminium mini ball head, that lets you tilt your smartphone 36 degrees in any direction, and can be quickly unfolded when you need it and folds up compactly to about the size of a car key when you don't.

How to control your GoPro Hero camera from your smartphone

Here's the tutorial from GoPro. You will need a smartphone, the GoPro app, and a GoPro Hero camera armed with a GoPro wifi backpack.

It's all about the light: A short guide to getting the most out of aperture

Mobile publicists must master a wide range of media. It's no longer enough to understand just writing copy. We have to learn (among many other things) how to shoot our own photos.

Even if you are shooting with a smartphone, it's a smart idea to understand what photographers call the exposure triangle: shutter speed, ISO and aperture.

Shutter speed is simply how long the shutter allows light into the camera. If you want to stop a runner in mid-stride, you want to use a short speed. If you want to capture the moon at night, you need a long speed.

The ISO is a concept from the analog days of photography. It is the "speed of the film." A low ISO is good on a sunny day. A mid-ISO is good for indoor work. A high-ISO is good for darkness. But beware: The higher the ISO, the more "noise" you are likely to capture on your image. Generally, an ISO of 200 to 800 is considered all-purpose, except for the most extreme situations like night photography.

Then there's aperture, which controls how much light reaches the shutter. The smaller the aperture, the deeper the focus. So if you want everything in the shot to be in focus (think "Citizen Kane"), you want the smaller aperture you can reasonably use in your situation. If you want to blow out the background or the foreground, and focus entirely upon the main subject, then you want to open up the lens to the widest aperture that is reasonable for the situation.

It's all a matter of balancing how much light goes to through the aperture to the shutter, and how much light your camera registers on the image.

OK, that's the executive summary. Here's short guide to walk you through getting the most out of your aperture settings from blogger Ashley Beolens:

• Aperture – PictureCorrect

Baffled by all the new cameras coming out these days?

 Me, too. But I'm finding this online guide to be pretty damn useful:

• Photokina: An Easy-to-Follow Guide on the Latest in Cameras! (And then some) | Photojojo