We recently featured an eye-opening tutorial from photographer Fil Nenna who demonstrates a quick-and-foolproof test for determining the sharpest f/stop of every lens you own. He’s back again today, this time with an easy camera-sensor test that he refers to a “compulsory.”

While online charts and graphs can sometimes be useful, Nenna says, “Nothing will help you understand your camera’s sensor and its tolerance to ISO settings as much as this simple test.” In fact, he insists that with this knowledge in your back pocket, the photos you capture will always be as clean and noise-free as possible.

So forget about all the spec sheets and devote the next four minutes to learning how to find out for yourself. Then the quality of every image you capture will be better than ever from now on. Noise isn’t necessarily a bad thing until it become a major distraction, and the threshold for that is for you to decide.

The setup for this test is super simple, you just need a well-lit subject like the guitar in Nenna’s example. Be sure to set the camera to Manual focus so that you don’t accidently shift focus during the test. ISO settings will be the main variable, so you’ll want to fix the f/stop to a single value that doesn’t change during the experiment. Nenna recommends a few stops beyond maximum aperture.

You’ll be testing ISO settings In one-stop intervals from 100 to the maximum, which is ISO 51,200 on Nenna’s camera. He explains that “we’ll compensate for ISO changes using shutter speeds in one-stop intervals. That way the resulting exposure will be identical every time.”

Nenna pulls up the various images he captured so that you can pixel peep at the results delivered by various ISO settings. But here’s the surprise, “My assumption was that ISO 100 would result in the cleanest image and everything else would be a compromise. But now that I’ve done the test, I see that’s clearly not the case.”

In fact, his images all appear sharp and clean through ISO 1,600 and it’s only at IS0 3,200 that noise starts to take over and mask all the tiny details. Of course, Nenna is using a high-end camera, and lesser models will have different limits, but the same principle still apply.

So watch how Nenna conducts this very important test, and then pull out a camera and give it a try. We bet that you’ll be very glad you did. Be sure to check out his interesting YouTube channel where you’ll find instructional videos that differ from others you’ve seen.

And don’t forget to watch the equally important tutorial mentioned above, so you’ll know the best aperture setting on every lens you own. Once again, you may be very surprised by the results.

Do you struggle to perfectly blend your bracketed exposures in Photoshop or Lightroom? If so, this quick tutorial from Steve Arnold will help you get the job done to perfection.

Arnold is a professional landscape photographer whose post-processing tutorials are designed to help you level up your Photoshop and Lightroom skills. He introduces today’s six-minute episode by explaining that there are variety of exposure blending techniques available, depending upon the specific challenge at hand.

Thus, “It’s not just about knowing how, but understanding when and why to use each one for the best results.” He then demonstrates three “essential” techniques, with step-by-step instructions for each, that will deliver stunning results in just about any situation you confront.

There’s also a link in the description beneath the video for downloading his free Photoshop plugin that eliminates all the complicated steps. If you’re wondering why you’ll learn three different blending methods instead of just one, Arnold puts it like this: “The best way depends upon the type of scene that you’ve captured.”

In other words, you have to match the technique to the situation. And taking the wrong approach  can actually make an image look worse and waste a lot of time. Tip #1 is the fastest and easiest and it’s available in both Lightroom and Photoshop.

All that’s necessary is to select the photos you want to blend in the film strip at the bottom of the Develop window. Then simply right-click and choose the Photo Merge and HDR options from the two dropdown menus that appear. It’s also important to select Auto Align for reasons Arnold explains. Finally, click Merge.

At this point Lightroom or Photoshop will handle all the heavy lifting and deliver a new image that contains the full dynamic range of your bracketed shots—with more details in highlights, shadows, and everything in between.

Unfortunately, as you’ll see, there a few drawbacks to this automated method, which is why it’s often best to use one of the other two techniques that Arnold recommends. We’ll let him explain their advantages, the greater control they provide, and how they remove any guesswork regarding the results you’ll achieve.

There’s much more to learn about shooting and editing landscape images on Arnold’s instructional YouTube channel, so be sure to pay a visit when you have time to explore.

On a related note, don’t miss the tutorial we posted in the past with another pro’s take on how Photoshop’s Blend modes work, the concept behind them, and the way he uses these tools to achieve stunning visual effects.