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!

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.

Lens Repair

Jun 132010
 
 June 13, 2010  Posted by Habenero at 8:58 pm General Notice , , , ,  No Responses »

There are no user serviceable parts for most good lenses. Does this mean one should avoid taking their lenses apart if they break down? Short answer is YES. The longer answer is it depends upon your background, the tools you have on hand, your comfort zone when it comes to working with parts with very small springs, switches and screws, and the area in which you can work. That said, I do not recommend you take your lenses apart unless they are completely out of warranty, and you have already committed to buying a replacement.

That said, I just opened up a Sigma 28-105 with a Canon mount (it is not my lens, but the owner had nothing to lose by anything I did to it) that had stopped working. It would focus and zoom, but the iris was stuck somewhere around f/11.  The problem manifested itself after prolonged exposure to the Arizona torture chamber known as a car trunk.   There are only a few reasons an iris that is electronically controlled will stop working.

  • The contacts to the camera are too dirty, not this time.
  • The gears that couple the motor to the iris have lost teeth, not in this case.
  • The iris is jammed, it works just fine manually.
  • The ribbon cable that provides power to the stepper motor, BINGO!

Now I can only hope to remember where all the parts go by the time I find a replacement for the ribbon cable.

Camera Controls (Part 4, White Balance)

May 272010
 
 May 27, 2010  Posted by Habenero at 8:17 pm How To, Photography , , , , , , , , ,  No Responses »

White Balance is one of the least understood settings on a digital camera and one that can make the most difference in keeping colors accurate. Where our eyes are able to discern white objects as white throughout a wide range of lighting conditions, digital sensors have a problem. Film wasn’t good at it either. We used filters to compensate for shooting daylight balanced film under tungsten lights, or vice versa. With most digital cameras, you can dial in the color temperature that best matches the light at the time you shoot. If you are shooting in JPEG mode, it becomes a critical step, your camera is going to throw away the information that makes it possible to safely make the adjustment in post processing software. Some cameras use a simple pictograph of sun, clouds, lights, flash, and possibly other symbols to enable you to choose a setting that matches the condition you are shooting in. Better ones let you pick the actual temperature setting in degrees kelvin you are in, or let you shoot a target with a black, white and 18% gray area in the actual scene and set a custom white balance.

It is better to make a choice than to leave the white balance become determined by the camera. The primary reason for this is that when there is no true white, the camera’s pick may not be accurate. This is due to the camera checking for flesh tones as a second best target and you may not have anyone in the shot. Setting the temperature is fairly easy, normal sunlit scenes are between 5,000oK and 6,000oK. Lower light levels have a color temperature less than 5,000oK, and at those settings, blue is added to compensate for the overly reddish tones. Higher color temperatures add red to the mix to compensate for the deeper blues at higher temperatures. Then, again, there are further adjustments one can make to be a bit more creative. That permit one to increase or decrease the amount of enhancement done at a particular level. This is of great use when you wish to emulate some of your favorite film stocks. One word of caution, if you know that the fluorescent lights you are shooting are daylight balanced, do not set your camera for fluorescent lights. The old tubes used to appear too green to film and the setting on the camera attempts to take that into consideration.

For those who shoot in camera RAW mode, you may find it easier to set your white balance in the mid range and make your critical adjustment on your calibrated monitor within your software. It is just one of the big advantages you gain from not tying your hands prior to shooting.

Must All Visitors to Your Site Be Human

Apr 292010
 
 April 29, 2010  Posted by Habenero at 1:35 pm General Notice , , , , , , , , ,  No Responses »

Some people get flustered when they go through their visitor statistics and see that there were multiple hits on their images or pages in a time frame that is humanly impossible.  I am not one of them.  Bots, spiders, crawlers, or any other name one wishes to use for the tools that search engines use to examine your site and its content are welcome to drop in on my site at any time.  If you exclude them, you miss the chance of having Google, Yahoo, Alta Vista, Dogpile or any other search engine recommending your site to others.  It doesn’t matter that the bots can’t buy your work, you are not going to lose any potential sales because a bot is on your site.

Let’s face it, if you have a web presence, you want others to be able to find you.  If you want anonymity, the world wide web is clearly not a place you should be.  To be reading this means that you have no problems in using technology to enhance your ability to increase your knowledge.  If you were not sent a message that this page was created, via twitter, facebook or direct email, then you can thank a bot for having found it and recommending it to you.

If only humans I know see my posts, it would make it very difficult for me to show off my creations.

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