How to use Spot Metering for better results

Sorry all but I've been rather busy during the whole of this week. In the meantime, why not have a look at the following article? Metering has always been the bane of many beginners and not so beginners so when I chanced upon this, I just could not resist sharing it out here. Enjoy!!

http://digital-photography-school.com/fine-tune-your-exposures-with-spot-metering

Do I need expensive gears for good landscape shots?

HDR shot processed from 3 bracketed shots

For my first weekend on Blogspot, I will try to answer one of the most frequently asked questions to me since my landscape shots were first posted - "Do I need EXPENSIVE gears for good landscape shots?"

First and foremost, my answer is an outright NO!!! Now, I know that many out there will want to debate this with each other and both camps will obviously have their reasoning to argue till the cows comes home (errr.. no disrespect meant to the cows living comfortably in their condos, but that's another story)

Guess which camera took this shot?

To me, the most important thing in a GOOD shot is always about framing, composition and exposure. Sure, having expensive professional gears might make your life easier in terms of having better contrast and color saturation that might save you some time in post processing, but it definitely does not replace having a good understanding of the basics. I'm not saying that having good complements like the LEE or Singh Ray filters does not help but you can overcome it with exposure bracketing and a little bit of work in Photoshop or Photomatix for HDR post processing.

In a nutshell, you can have the most expensive gear in the world and you will still take crap shots if you do not bother to shoot correctly while someone with patience to frame and compose correctly will beat you even with their hand phone camera.

Okay, so much for my rant and raves. Appreciate your comments if any. Happy Sunday everybody. :)