Don't toss the cardboard box your Lowepro Magnum 650 AW camera bag came in. In some parts of the world it would be called "housing." The box is that big and so is the bag. This square-cornered, $250 photo and laptop bag holds every camera and lens you own or are likely to buy: two digital SLRs; up to 10 lenses and/or flashes; and a 15-inch laptop in a sleeve that opens to form a protective sunshade.  The Magnum 650 even makes sense for people with a lot less gear.

The Tamrac Aero Speed Pack 85 Dual Access Photo / Laptop backpack (model 3385, $110 street) could be the only backpack you ever own. With all the inserts in place, it holds a digital SLR camera, multiple lenses and accessories in the bottom half, stuff in the top half, and a 17-inch laptop in a padded slot against your back. Remove the inserts, then remove the top-bottom divider (it takes a lot of pulling, but it comes out), and you've got a big single-compartment daypack. You can access your cameras from the top or side (the Dual Access part of the name). There's not much to dislike about this backpack except the main zippers take effort to open and close, and that's because they're seriously weather-sealed.

Wyatt Earp meets Matthew Brady when you strap on the Shai Gear Spider Holster, essentially a cavalry gunbelt for your camera. Rather than slide your camera into this holster, you lock it in place onto the holster with a sturdy metal pin attached to the camera base; it hangs next to your hip. The Spider Holster is for photographers who don't want a camera around the neck as they walk, or for when there are two cameras and one around the neck is okay but not two. If the price seems high at $110 direct, you're not the customer. Later this year there'll be a sub-$100 prosumer version meant to carry lighter digital SLRs with mainstream zoom lenses.

Flash photos produce distinct, harsh shadows. The ExpoImaging Ray Flash ($200 direct) solves that by turning your Canon or Nikon flash into a ring flash, providing a circle of light around the lens. This geeky looking contraption works like a downward-facing periscope: Baffles, prisms and mirrors channel the light down from your clip-on flash to a ring around your camera lens. I found it produced better color balance (left photo above showing dried flowers in a vase) than direct flash.

Light loss is about 1 f/stop, meaning half the light gets through. It's automatically compensated by the camera's exposure sensor. In comparison, a dedicated ring flash from Canon is $495 and targets close-up (macro) photography, particularly medical photography. The Ray Flash can be used for general purpose photography, anything from shooting fashion models to product close-ups for eBay listings. In a close-up of a model, if you see a circular highlight reflection in the eye, that's a ring flash. The shadow behind the model often has a halo-like effect. When you use a ring flash with another flash off camera, or the ring flash alone outdoors, it softens shadows on a person's face, such as between the subject's neck and her long hair.

High dynamic range (HDR) imaging lets you capture brighter brights (the view outside your window) and darker darks (a black cat sleeping on a white bedspread) in one viewable image. You do it by taking bracketed exposures of the same scene - underexposed, normally exposed, overexposed - and then merging them with software that takes the best of each image. Adobe Photoshop includes an HDR tool. If you get hooked, as I have, you may want to look at a tool such as Unified Color PhotoStudio, $149 direct, used to make the image above.  Most HDR software merges and remaps the images so you see a greater contrast range but there still is a difference in how believable the image is, based on the quality of the software and the user.

.

Carbon fiber makes for the ultimate tripod: light weight, good at damping vibrations. But some cost $500-plus. The Manfrotto 732CY is an exception: It's just $200 street, $230 with a ball head (a variant sold by Best Buy). It's small (17 inches closed) and light (2.1 pounds). It works well so long as you don't ask it to hold rock-steady in extreme conditions a heavy camera and lens. It's best for a consumer or prosumer digital SLR and a normal lens or moderate telephoto lens, or a good point-and-shoot. The most important thing: The Manfrotto 732CY is so light, I found myself carrying it far more often than my family heirloom Leitz Tiltall that weighs in at six pounds.

Want perfectly color corrected photos? Stick a translucent white disc in front of your camera lens for one test photo and the rest of your pictures taken in odd lighting situations will have the same neutral color cast your eyes saw when you shot the picture. Correct color balance is the promise and delivery of the Expo Imaging ExpoDisc. It works this way: Set your camera for auto exposure, take one picture with the calibrated ExpoDisc filter in front of your lens, remove the ExpoDisc, then tell the camera to use that photo to set white balance. The photo above shows an image taken under incandescent light using auto white balance (left) and corrected with an ExpoDisc (right); the background in real life is off white, as the right picture captures. Of all the methods I've tried, ExpoDisc works best and is most idiot-proof. As well it should be, for the ExpoDiscs run $60 to $105 (direct) depending on lens diameter. Just buy whatever fits your largest lens and let it overlap the others. ExpoDisc isn't cheap if you're a casual photographer, but it does work in almost every lighting situation.

Around the corner from the PCMag.com office is a construction site for a hi-rise apartment complex. Last Tuesday, when I passed it on my lunch hour, I noticed one of the workers pointing his iPhone's camera up at the structure, so I tried to see what he was aiming at.

Above the building, I spotted a rainbow-like arc that I immediately recognized as a portion of a solar halo, and snapped a number of pictures of it (such as the one above) mostly with my Canon SD990 IS. (I even got a few good shots of it with my iPhone.)

In observing and photographing solar halo phenomena, the biggest obstacle, ironically, is the Sun itself. You must avoid looking at the Sun--even when partially obscured by thin clouds, looking directly at it can cause eye damage. As for photography, the Sun's glare can wash out much of the detail of the delicate arcs, and spots, as well as the structure of the accompanying cirrostratus (and sometimes cirrus) clouds. So be sure to hide the Sun behind a tree, a building, a street sign, or other object--even a hand will do in a pinch.

Note that in photographing a halo, you'll need to focus on the sky rather than the nearby object, or else the halo will be blurred. You can do this by pointing the camera at the open sky and engaging the autofocus if you're in automatic mode--usually, a green box will appear when the shutter is half-pressed. Then, while keeping the shutter half-pressed, you should return to your initial framing with the nearby object in view, and press the shutter fully to complete the shot) It's a good idea to move the camera around a bit to find the place with the least glare before you shoot. Although it's good to try both, I find that wider-field shots often work better than close-ups--for one thing, if you want to capture the entire solar halo, it may be necessary to go as wide as you can.

There is no right and wrong in photography. Seriously. Any advice I give is just that--advice. My goal is to get you to think a little differently before you snap the shutter. For instance, you've probably been told (more than once) to get off your butt. Not me. I'm telling you to get on your butt. It's often where the best shots lie.

In the two examples attached to this entry I'm shooting my subjects at eye level. For the single dog and master I sat on the sidewalk. For the little girl and dog I was on my belly! Eye level is the operative concept and the shots definitely benefit. In both cases being low allows the background to unfold and fill the top of the frame.

By the way, what works for children and dogs also works in landscape where being low allows you to include a little foreground color and texture. Try it, but not with your good pants on.

If you've got a DSLR you'll notice your lens will only focus so close. Maybe not close enough for you. That's especially true if you want to show detail in a flower or insect or some other small object. When your photo shows an object larger than real life it's called macro photography.

What's a shooter to do? Moving your lens farther from your camera's sensor with an extension tubes or bellows is an idea I've talked about before. That's a common method of reducing your minimum focus distance and getting macro shots.

There is another method--not always preferred. You can put corrective optics on your lens in the form of a close-up or macro lens. If you wear reading glasses the concept is exactly the same. Close-ups attach to your lens by the screw threads made for a filter. There are expensive close-up lenses and cheap close-up lenses. eBay is littered with the cheap kind, which is what I decided to try.

If you want to impress your friends and family, try shooting some panoramas. Panos are composites from multiple photos showing a wider field of view than a normal lens would provide. Because you're using multiple shots panos often have astounding detail. A pano shot of 100 megapixels or more is not that hard to achieve and you (Yeah, you) can do it with virtually any camera and free software!

Panoramas will be much easier if you're not shooting in "AUTO." Admittedly the purpose of this series is to get you to explore the other modes in your camera, but it's a really big deal here. You want your snaps to match shot-to-shot in depth of field and exposure. "AUTO" won't let you do that. You need to be in "MANUAL" or an aperture priority mode where your f-stop setting won't change between clicks.

I love this shot. It's totally unattainable in "AUTO." Your DSLR is crying for you to spin that dial and add some human intervention to the exposure process. With a little creativity you can use your DSLR to capture or create something that's not normally visible to the naked eye using a long duration exposure.

In Matthew Fang's "Super S." (above) you'll notice the headlight trails and other standing lights are overexposed. His decision was to run a long exposure, capture the detail in the naturally lit elements and not worry about the lights which have none. This 117.4 second exposure was captured at f/22 with a 14mm lens. With a wide lens and small aperture he got a huge depth-of-field which made focusing (often difficult in the dark) a lot less critical.

Most handheld pictures need fast shutter speeds otherwise the natural shakiness of your body will render shots blurry. You can fix a lot of things in photography. Blurry isn't one of them.

If you're just joining us, I've been writing a series of entries for neophytes with DSLRs--mainly people who have been too scared to move their camera off "AUTO." Think of me... think of us... as your online support group. We want you to succeed and start exploring what your camera can really do. Your knowledge is a whole lot more important than which specific camera you're gripping.

If you've had your camera any length of time you've probably pondered buying a new lens or lenses and you've been floored by the choices available. A friend of mine who worked his way through college selling men's suits says he used to bring them out one-at-a-time because with too many choices people would buy nothing at all! No one wants to make a mistake. It's that way with lenses. It would be easier to make a purchase if there were fewer to choose from.

So, what's it going to be? I'm not going to steer you toward a specific brand or size, but I do have some advice to help you narrow your choices. I can see this is going to take more than one entry to cover properly, so lets start with prime lenses versus zoom.

If you've got a snazzy DSLR and you've been slavishly relying on the camera's judgement by dialing up "AUTO" you may not have noticed there's more than one way for the camera to save your photo: JPEG¹ or RAW. By default most cameras save your files as JPEGs.

That's a good first step since RAW files aren't always handled natively by our computers. Imagine shooting photos and not being able to view them! That would give you a different appreciation for the word "RAW." Of course I'm here to convince you RAW is the way to go. Let me make my case.

Are the built-in flash units on your DSLR (or any camera) awful? I'll let Canon, which includes them on its cameras, answer that:

"We've all seen it in snapshots we've either taken ourselves, or been shown by others: the pupils of your subject's eyes are lit up in a devilish bright red color, unlike anything we're used to seeing in real life. And of course, you never saw it in your camera's viewfinder when you took the picture."

Red-eye! It's the bane of amateur photographers worldwide. The pros don't have the problem, because they move the flash away from the lens so a bolt of light doesn't illuminate the very red back of your eyeball. But red-eye is only one of the many bad features built into every on-camera flash.