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.

Do Megapixels Matter?

Apr 172011
 
 April 17, 2011  Posted by Habenero at 10:03 pm General Notice, Photography , , , , , ,  No Responses »

Digital cameras are constantly evolving.  One of the most prevalent ways the public sees is through the megapixel count published by the camera manufacturers.  Is a 6Mp camera good enough for you or do you need something considerably larger?  The correct answer is, “It depends”!  If you are shooting primarily for web use and have no intention of creating an image that is going to be printed larger than 4″ X 6″, you can probably get by with nothing more than the same number of pixels found on a high end cellphone (about 4Mp).  The problem is that cellphone cameras do not have interchangeable lenses and are mainly good only for fairly short distances. If you never print larger than 8″ X 12″, or shoot mostly jpeg files for web or newspaper publishing, a 6Mp camera will do.

As with film cameras, serious photographers are not satisfied with something that is adequate for the average user or the press.  There are “gadget freaks” who buy only high end gear because they have the mistaken idea that owning a high end camera makes them a better photographer.  Camera manufacturers take these things into consideration and create new cameras for these people and the race for the highest pixel count is one of the ways we get to see results.

The biggest advantage of a high pixel count is resolving power.  The higher the pixel count, the finer the detail the camera will be able to record.  Of course the disadvantage of very high resolution camera bodies is that if your lens is not also of high quality, you may not be able to take advantage of the better sensor.  If you have higher resolving power, you give yourself room to crop out more of the image and still retain enough detail to make a decent print.

The most important factors in deciding how many mega pixels you need should be how large of a print do you plan to make and how much cropping do you plan to do to the image before you make that print!

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.

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.

Camera Controls (part 1, ISO)

May 162010
 
 May 16, 2010  Posted by Habenero at 5:36 pm How To, Photography , , , , ,  No Responses »

I’d like to go over some basic digital camera settings, ISO, f-Stop, shutter speed, and white balance. The only functions not found on film cameras are ISO, which is determined by the film you have chosen to use in your film camera, and white balance, which is partially a characteristic of the film and the color temperature of the light it is being used in. The rest are the common functions every photographer should get to know intimately. In order to make good choices, one should at the very least learn what the functions on your camera do so that you can determine how they should be used for the image you wish to create.

I will start with ISO, for that is going to be the starting point whether you are putting film in your camera or adjusting the sensitivity of your camera’s sensor. ISO determines how much light is going to be needed to properly expose an image. The lower the ISO, the greater the amount of light is needed, and the finer the amount of noiseless data recorded. On film that means very fine grain, on a digital camera it means a higher image to background noise ratio. A high ISO means that less light is needed, but the grain size in film is larger, and because the sensor is charged at a higher voltage more random background noise gets recorded along with the image. Just as with film, I choose my ISO in order to optimize my choices in accordance with the light level, aperture, and shutter speed I plan to shoot at. If for example, I plan to shoot an auto race in bright light using an aperture of f-8 with my shutter speed set at 1/4000th of a second, my ISO should be set to 1000. The simplest rule of thumb for determining exposure is the sunny 16 rule, where for a normal bright day, ISO is equal to the shutter speed when your f-stop is f-16. With f-8 being 2 stops brighter than f-16, my ISO must be ¼ of the shutter speed. A common mistake is letting the camera determine your ISO, as if you do that, you will have no control over the noise levels in your images, which may not matter in some situations, but it will when you are shooting an event that has no repeatability.

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