Do you know what to do if one of your prints gets damaged by water? If you living in a flood prone area (or are clumsy), it’d be good to know.

The Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts (CCAHA) has an informative technical bulletin titled “Salvaging Photographs”, that provides a rundown on the response you should take to water damage.

One of the interesting tips is to freeze your prints to prevent further damage:

Freezing to help retard further deterioration by water or mold may be necessary if the materials cannot be treated immediately. Storage at low temperatures buys time in which to safely plan and organize the many steps needed to dry the affected materials and to prepare a rehabilitation site.

Vacuum freeze-drying can help you recover the prints:

In this method, photographic materials—either wet or frozen—are placed in a vacuum chamber. As the vacuum is pulled, a low heat source is introduced and the photographs are carefully dried at temperatures below freezing.

Some additional tips from the document:

• Keep immersion time to an absolute minimum
• Treat least stable items (i.e. prints rather than negatives) first
• Keep identifying information near the prints
• Never let the prints dry in contact with any surface, since it may stick permanently

If there’s any chance you might have to deal with recovering wet prints, this PDF would be a good thing to bookmark, save, or print out.

Salvaging Photographs (via Lifehacker)

Image credit: Flood series by cikaga jamie

If you are upgrading your camera gear, horray for you! That also means you’re probably planning to convert your old camera to cash for new gear or at least to free up room in your camera bag.

Camera bodies are probably the most difficult piece of photo equipment to sell, since new bodies and technology are released very frequently. They lack the longevity of lenses and depreciate over time.

We’ve posted a few previous tips about buying used DSLR gear and buying pro camera gear on a student budget, but now we’ll shift gears to the seller’s standpoint.

1. Think local — really local.

Selling your own camera gear can feel a little like selling an old project car.  It’s easy to become sentimentally attached, and you want to make sure it goes into good hands.

Before posting your gear advertisements anywhere, see if anyone in your immediate social circle is interested in buying. Co-workers or fellow students tend to be a good bet.  When I was working at my college paper, a lot of photo department staff would sell gear to each other, with the comforting reassurance that their equipment would be put to good use. There is also an added level of trust within colleagues, since they already know you and you’ll spend less time having to convince them that what you’re selling is in good condition.

Craigslist, when used with caution, is also a good way to find local buyers. Be wary of scams, though — a lot of falsely interested “buyers” might email you with a strange proposal. I’ve gotten a few generic emails from people interested in “the item,” offer a higher payment via PayPal, and then ask you to ship it to some remote relative in Africa. Yeah, right.

If you do find a real, local buyer on craigslist, do be careful. Propose to meet in a safe, public place during the day, and bring a friend or two along for added security. Cash is always most reliable, as well. It might be a good idea to meet near your bank, so you can safely stow your cash after you’ve made a sale.

2. Advertise the basics.

You don’t need to go into detail about small wear and tear that you notice, or anything beyond the camera’s model and maybe highlight some important technical specifications like megapixels and frames per second.

It is helpful to post a link with more detailed camera specs, either from the manufacturer’s site or dpreview.com, for the buyer’s convenience.

But the bottom line is to cut to the chase and don’t let your advert be hunkered down by unnecessary details.

Just tell them, it’s a Nikon D200. 10 megapixels. 5 fps. Excellent condition. Body specs here.

The less you tell prospective, but serious buyers, the more they might want to respond to your ad with questions. Once you begin a discussion with them, that’s your chance to answer more detailed questions they might have.

3. Don’t include more than you have to in the box.

Naturally, you’ll need to include a battery, charger, and other accessories that came with the camera body, but avoid including interchangeable accessories that you might use in the future.

Michael mentioned in his gear on a student budget post that he made the mistake of including a high-end B&W filter with a lens he sold, but later realized he still needed it.

Hang on to those memory cards and filters.

4. On the other hand, you’ll have a better chance of selling it if you bundle it with a lens.

Though this is a bit of a contradiction to the previous tip, but buyers will be much more interested in purchasing a used body if it comes with a lens.

You probably will not make as much back on the resell, but if the market is dry and people just aren’t interested, a lens can add a great deal of buyer incentive.

However, whether you need to include a lens or not really depends on what kind of camera body you are selling.

If you are selling a professional body, chances are, your buyers will be pros as well, and are likely to have their own lenses. In this case, there’s no need to include a lens.

If you are selling a lower-end DSLR, like a Nikon D40 or a Canon Rebel, prospective buyers are probably newer to photography, and will likely be looking for a bundle kit.

There’s really no need to K.I.T. with your kit lens, especially if you’re selling the body it came with. Ask yourself: are you really likely to attach that plastic 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 on your brand new D3x? Probably not.

Selling kit lenses alone is pretty pointless as well; brand new, they’re worth less than $150.

Instead, include it with the body you’ve got up for sale, and readjust your price. Be sure to check the street value of your bundle on eBay and craigslist.

5. Include your own photos of your gear on your advertisement.

If you provide photos with your advertisement, people are more likely to click on your posting. Additionally, if those photos are noticeably different from the standard manufacturer’s product shots, they can add to a feeling of authenticity and openness on the seller’s side. Also, when you post attractive product photos, the photos can imply your own skill as a photographer, and can give you more clout as a camera seller.

Conclusion

Understand the buyer’s standpoint when selling. Check out Michael’s posts on buying used DSLR gear and buying pro camera gear on a student budget.  Don’t sell yourself short, but be aware that you may need to make some concessions in order to make your gear marketable.

Finally, if you’ve got any additional tips on selling gear, feel free to share it with us!

Here’s a good tip for life: when flying, try to keep your camera gear with you at all times. A man named Harold found out the hard way after paying $40 to check in his gear, including a Nikon D60, worth over $900, only to find it missing after arriving home. He shares over at The Consumerist:

I wish to share an event that occurred to my wife and me with United Airlines. On 2-7-10 we were returning from Hawaii after a vacation. We left Honolulu on Flight #72 with stops in San Francisco and Los Angeles and our final destination of Tucson, Arizona. When we boarded in Honolulu the agent from United indicated that our carryon luggage was too big and had to be placed in baggage. We paid $40.00 for it. In my luggage was a Nikon D60 camera with the accessories valued at over $900.00.

Upon boarding we were not given any instructions regarding any liability or insurance for my baggage. When we arrived at home in Tucson I discovered my camera was missing. I contacted Honolulu Police Department and reported my loss. I then contacted United Airlines by phone and by the web to notify them of this theft. On 2-19-10 United wrote me a letter stating that they do not assume liability for photographic equipment. This item is excluded from their published baggage liability. I find this information from United lacking when you board their flights. Consumers should be made aware of this information before placing their luggage in United’s care.

It’s true. If you take a look at the Baggage Liability policy available online, United Airlines states,

For travel wholly between points in the U.S., United will not be liable for loss of money, jewelry, cameras, negotiable papers/securities, electronic/video/photographic equipment , heirlooms, antiques, artifacts, works of art, silverware, irreplaceable books/publications/manuscripts/business documents, precious metals and other similar valuable and commercial effects. [Emphasis added]

However, this policy is by no means unique to United. A quick check of other airlines such as American Airlines or Continental show the exact same thing.

Professionals have probably long known about this policy, but it’s something that would be good for amateurs to know and keep in mind. Keep your gear with you!

Image credit: United Airlines Boeing 777 by birdlike

When I’ve needed to take quick self portraits with my DSLR, one of the tricks I’ve discovered is to focus the camera using the reflection in the UV filter. As long as my eye is directly over the center of the lens in the reflection, then I know the center autofocus point is focused on my eye.

With smaller point-and-shoot cameras, it can be much harder to frame the shot (though focusing correctly is probably easier). Cameras are now coming out with an extra LCD screen on the front of the camera just for this kind of shot. noahw has a cheap, do-it-yourself solution – attach a small mirror to the front of your camera!

This project is dead simple: Digital Camera Sticky backed Velcro Small 1″ – 2″ mirror (convex is best, flat is ok, concave w/magnification is no good) Small mirrors are everywhere. Check out mirrors from compacts and make up. The one I liked best was from an “Inspection Mirror” made by “General Tools” bought for 2 bucks from a hardware store.

To get started you can watch the following video, or head on over to Instructables for a step-by-step tutorial.

Self-Portrait Camera Mirror (via Lifehacker)

A few days ago we came across this brilliant trick for protecting your valuable camera gear while flying. Most airlines don’t allow you to fly with your luggage locked, but there’s a clever way around the rule — bring a gun.

No, we’re not advocating violence, and no, you don’t need a real gun at all:

A “weapons” is defined as a rifle, shotgun, pistol, airgun, and STARTER PISTOL. Yes, starter pistols – those little guns that fire blanks at track and swim meets – are considered weapons…and do NOT have to be registered in any state in the United States.

I have a starter pistol for all my cases. All I have to do upon check-in is tell the airline ticket agent that I have a weapon to declare…I’m given a little card to sign, the card is put in the case, the case is given to a TSA official who takes my key and locks the case, and gives my key back to me.

That’s the procedure. The case is extra-tracked…TSA does not want to lose a weapons case. This reduces the chance of the case being lost to virtually zero.

It’s a great way to travel with camera gear…I’ve been doing this since Dec 2001 and have had no problems whatsoever.

If you’ve ever lost anything valuable while flying, or have had anything mishandled and broken (I have), this might be a good way to ensure your gear’s safety.

Expensive Cameras in Checked Luggage (via Boing Boing)

Image credits: B A N G ! by mr.beaver and Lufthansa by caribb

Recovering your camera after losing it is one of those things that most people don’t really think about until the situation actually arises. If you were to lose your camera today, would anyone be able to return it to you?

Andrew McDonald’s solution is to always keep his email address in a photograph that never leaves his camera.

In fact, he keeps a whole series of photographs that help him “speak” to the stranger (or thief) that found his camera.

It’s a pretty clever idea, since someone who finds a camera is bound to look through the photographs stored on the memory card. You don’t even need to take a fancy photograph – a simple hand-written note should suffice:

The reason you should save your contact information as a photo on the memory card rather than as a text file is because the text file won’t show up when viewing the photographs using the camera. Even if the person who finds your camera is tech-savvy enough to browse through the card using a computer, they might not see a text-file intended for them no matter what you title the file.

A problem with this simple approach is that simple altruism isn’t enough of an incentive for some people to return the camera rather than to keep it or sell it. Thus, the following “digital dog tag” might have a higher chance of success:

Notice how the prize is completely ambiguous. This might be a good way to get the finder to email or call you so you have some tangible link to your camera. What you choose to offer them as a “prize” is up to you. How much is your camera worth to you?

For the rest of Andrew McDonald hilarious set of images, check out the following link:

A Pictoral Guide to Avoiding Camera Loss

Everyone wants sharp images when they post their photographs online. After all, who wants to look at a blurry photograph? (Unless it’s intentional, of course). What many people don’t realize, however, is that displaying your images incorrectly in HTML can have a big negative impact on image quality.

Here is the main rule of thumb you should always remember: never, ever do image resizing using HTML.

For example, lets say I have the following 620px photograph:

The image is pretty sharp right? Now, lets say I want to display the same image as a 500px wide photo. The wrong way to do this would be to change the width=”620″ attribute in HTML to width=”500″. Here’s what would result if I did the resizing this way through HTML:

That’s the exact same image file. I simply copy-and-pasted the HTML, and changed the width from 620 to 500. This means the browser actually loaded the same 620px image, and then reprocessed it to display a 500px image to the viewer. Notice how the photograph instantly loses much of the sharpness it had when displayed in its actual dimensions.

To further illustrate my point, here is the same photo displayed at 500px. However, instead of telling HTML to shrink the large version, I used Photoshop to resize it down to 500px.

You can hover your mouse over this last image to compare it to the browser-resized version. If you’re using a browser that renders it correctly, try hovering over this link to see how other less-capable browsers render the same image (you might have to wait a couple seconds for the image to load). That’s a pretty big difference, huh?

The lesson to be learned is that you should always display your images in their exact dimensions. Even a single pixel difference can cause the photograph to become noticeably more blurry in most browsers.

Finally, another reason why you shouldn’t leave resizing to your browser is that the original, full-sized image is loaded anyway, regardless of what size you’re displaying the image at. This means that if you have a large, 1 megabyte, 1024×682 photograph that you’re displaying at 500px in width, the whole 1 megabyte image is downloaded by the visitor before the browser resizes it down to 500px.

Some of you might have thought that using larger, higher-resolution photographs and having them resized in HTML produces higher quality images, since there’s more information or detail in the file. It doesn’t. For best image quality and fastest loading time for your visitors, always resize your images to the desired size prior to uploading!

Update: I’ve added a second link under the mouse-hover comparison for those who are using more capable browsers. If you don’t see any difference in hovering over the image, try hovering over the new link to see how other browsers render the image.

Update 2: Just for your info: This doesn’t apply to uploading full-sized images to photo sharing services like Flickr or SmugMug. These services take your large resolution photograph, and reprocess it into multiple images of various sizes. Thus, when you’re viewing the 500px image on Flickr, it’s actually a 500px image that Flickr resized and sharpened using your original large image.