Play With Your New Camera!

Dec 242011
 
 December 24, 2011  Posted by Habenero at 11:47 am How To, Photography , , , , ,  No Responses »

There are several ways in which you can become familiar with your camera; read the manual and study it carefully, put it in automatic or program mode and shoot without ever learning about its other features, talk to other people who have a similar camera, or pay somebody to teach you to use it. My way to learn about a new camera is to go out and shoot things I have shot before but change the camera’s settings so I can get an idea of what it is capable of doing. In other words, I play with the camera.

Paying someone gets you further ahead than shooting in auto, but you must follow the lessons with lots of shooting on your own to really learn the camera. Reading a manual can teach you lots about the camera, if you can manage to stay awake while reading it. Talking to others with similar cameras, may or may not help you, as most of the people I have encountered do not use the advanced features of their camera. So that leaves playing as the most practical way to learn how to use it.

It is by shooting with your new camera that you become comfortable using it. When you revisit familiar settings, you place yourself in a situation where relaxation makes you more receptive to play than a formal setting. I used to consider the first 10 rolls of film (with digital technology, the first 8 gigs of images) as my way of learning what the camera is able to do. Every shot afterward would be better than the first ones as I could then concentrate on composition and lighting.

Get out and shoot!

Getting the Most from a Point and Shoot Camera

Jul 092011
 
 July 9, 2011  Posted by Habenero at 1:24 pm How To, Photography, Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , ,  No Responses »

With the advancements made in technology, point and shoot cameras are able to produce images that far surpass images made in the film world by what would be considered their equivalent! Often users of these cameras assume they are just a point and shoot device and never take time to read the manual or change the settings for optimal shooting.  This leads to pictures that are well made, but often could have been better.  Here are a few tips to ensure you get the best images possible from any camera without regard to make or model:

1:  If you can control the aperture, try shooting in aperture priority mode.  This allows you to control the depth of field.  A wide open aperture creates a shallow depth of field, which is often used for portraiture.  When only the subject is in focus, it will stand out and be notice better.  A closed down aperture creates a very wide depth of field with as much of the scene as possible kept in focus.  This makes for a better landscape image.

2:  By controlling the shutter speed, you can decide whether to capture single drops of spray from a fountain, or to create a milky texture from the water.  You may be able to stop the action of a race car, or let it blur a bit to indicate a fast object.

3:  In the days of film, ISO was set strictly by the film maker and could be manipulated through processing.  Modern cameras allow you to change the ISO on the fly.  The ISO determines how sensitive the sensor will be to the light hitting it.  A high ISO charges the sensor so that it responds faster and with more intensity and noise than a low ISO at the same light level.  IT is by manipulating the ISO that one can make the adjustments of aperture and speed fall into a range that creates a good image.

4:  White Balance is probably the most misunderstood adjustment modern cameras have.  In short, it adjusts the sensor’s idea of what white looks like.  The human eye can recognize a white object at many different light levels.  The films sensor can not do this.  A bright day with lots of sunshine has a color temperature of close to 5000 degrees kelvin.  An object that looks white in that light will look more yellow-red than white if viewed under tungsten light.  It might also appear a bit green under older style fluorescent lights.  A white balance control enables you to compensate for the lighting conditions at hand.

By taking the time to learn about these controls on your camera, you can start creating better images.

Using Adjustment Layers

May 082011
 
 May 8, 2011  Posted by Habenero at 12:31 pm How To, Photography , , , , , , ,  No Responses »

The control freak in me likes to be able to exercise absolute authority over my images.  As part of my regimen,  I shoot in camera raw in order to maintain as much control as possible and save the initial camera files on their own hard drive.  The first sort is copied as a PSD file to a different drive, and JPG files are derived from the PSD drive and stored on yet another drive.  Yet even when shooting this way, I do not always capture a scene the way I envision it.  That is where Photoshop comes in.  The power of Photoshop lies in the ability to manipulate an image as much or as little as you desire.  But if you do this recklessly, you can easily destroy your image.  You have a couple of ways to preserve your image, copy the original file or work in layers.  I choose to work in layers.

When working in layers, there are a multitude of adjustments you can make without harming the background image directly.  Levels, Brightness, Contrast, Hue, Saturation, Vibrance, and more can be applied either through a layer or directly to the background image (the latter is not a wise choice because you can not undo it if you decide you don’t like it at a later date).  To further enhance your ability to play with the image, one can also add masks to any layer so that the adjustment made only affects those parts you intend it to (a feature far more powerful than dodging and burning in the chemical darkroom).

Adjustment layers are made by either going to the drop down menu for layers and selecting “New Adjustment Layer” or by clicking on the half filled circle icon at the bottom of the layers pallet and selecting the style of adjustment you want.  You can use many layers and mask them as needed to create the image that satisfies you.

Masks will be discussed in a later article.

Sports Photography, Spray and Pray vs. Click on time!

Jul 242010
 
 July 24, 2010  Posted by Habenero at 1:07 pm How To, Photography , ,  No Responses »

Sports photography requires one to know 3 things, where to set up for getting the shot, which lens gives the best view of the shot, and the time delay of your camera.  A knowledge of the time delay gives you an edge over the guy next to you that is shooting in multiple shot mode.  If you have lots of opportunities to work with and only need one shot, go ahead and spray and pray. The trouble with that method is that a little timing errors, delays in writing, and the exposure itself,  over rides the accuracy of your camera’s shutter button.  That means that even if you know that you started the camera far enough in advance for the 3rd frame to be perfect, there is no way to reliably predict that the camera will expose that frame when you thought it would.  Think it out, if you are shooting in a multiple frame mode, at best you are shooting 10 frames per second (30 frames per second if in high def video mode).   That gives you a 10% chance of capturing the exact moment (33% for video) you want, and a 90% chance of missing it (67% for video).  The odds of getting exactly what you are aiming for are not in your favor and are much worse when you reduce the frame repeat rate.  Do you still want to spray and pray?

By shooting in single frame mode, you learn to adjust your own timing for the shutter delay inherent in your camera.  When your own timing is honed to a high level, you will know when to hit the shutter for best results.  You are no longer basing the timing of your exposure on the false assumption that the camera will be lucky.  You are in effect creating your own luck.

Long Exposure vs. High ISO

Jun 242010
 
 June 24, 2010  Posted by Habenero at 8:31 pm How To, Photography , , , , , , ,  No Responses »

Shooting in low light can be a challenge.  One has to strike a balance between using a high ISO, or a slow shutter speed to capture an image.  The choice you make can make all the difference in getting a memorable image.  Using film, a high ISO meant 400 most of the time, and in the late 1980′s, the limit crept up to 3200 (if you liked large amounts of grain in your image).  I tended to keep my film selection to the finer grained ISO’s.  I rarely shot at 400 ISO, preferring to shoot with 25 to 100 for most of my early images.  A heavy tripod was an essential part of my equipment.  Now that I am shooting digitally, I tend to keep my ISO around 400 and I like to hand hold most of my shots.  My gear is lighter, and my knees appreciate the lack of excess weight.

The biggest advantage of long exposures is better color saturation.  Slot canyon photographs are prime examples of what long exposures do best.  Notice the colors and richness that a long exposure provides.  This image was shot using 100 ISO film, f-16, and about 37 seconds for the exposure.  I would probably use similar techniques had I shot this using digital equipment.  The most important thing to keep in mind when making long exposures with a digital camera is that longer exposures introduce more noise in the image.  This is because the longer the sensor is energized for capturing an image, the more it heats up.  The extra heat is seen as Gaussian distributed noise in your final image.

Images made using higher ISO’s in digital cameras also have a larger amount of noise.  It is caused by a sensor that is being driven at a higher potential (voltage) than the lower ISO images.  Thus you will see more noise in the lighter areas with a high ISO than in the darker areas.  This non random noise is similar to that of film grain and can be exploited in the creation of old style images and Sepia tones.  This image of some swing dancers is indicative of a low light level, short exposure, high ISO digital shot.  

Your selection of ISO and exposure should always be made so as to achieve your desired image.  Get creative and play around with them.  Nikon, Canon, and every other camera maker out there do not have your vision in mind when they set their camera’s Auto settings.

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