Flash makes a difference.

Sydney Opera House - filling with flash

The above photos could be used to illustrate a variety of photographic principles, but the one I really want to talk about is using flash.  Everyone should be comfortable with the idea of using flash to brighten a scene when there is not enough light.  What might surprise you though, is that flash is actually very useful even when your subject is already well lit.  There are a few reasons for this, but the biggest one of all is the benefit from filling shadows.

Shadow is a natural phenomenon; it occurs wherever existing light is blocked.  The lady in the top photo is dark because she is in shadow; something is blocking the light coming from the sun which is illuminating the Opera House.  Now, the photographer could have exposed for the lady, but that would leave a glowing hulk in the background which would be massively overexposed.  By exposing for the background the building came out fine, but it was the person who was severely underexposed.

The solution is to use flash.  It sounds simple enough, but in fact there are problems.  It turns out that the lady requires a great deal of extra light.  A built-in flash may not have enough power.  Fortunately, there are ways around this.   Part of it depends on equipment, part of it depends on understanding, and part of it requires some playing around.  The reality is that it takes time, and patience both on behalf of the photographer and the subject(s).

The camera being used is an important factor in achieving a proper shot.  A cell phone just can't do this well because the built-in flash can not possibly throw out that much light.  A compact with a built in flash can work, but there are certain things you have to do.  This is also true for some cameras with a non-mechanical (electronic) shutter.  If I was using a compact I would take the following steps:  set mode to aperture priority, choose wide angle, dial aperture down as low as it would go, turn on flash, take a picture and look at image and histogram if possible, adjust exposure using exposure compensation and flash exposure, possibly move closer to improve flash power (built in flash is very weak - moving closer makes it relatively stronger), try again and repeat until you have it right.  In all of this ISO may play a factor, so you could try bumping it up, but keep in mind it affects image quality if it gets too high.

If I was using a DSLR or other camera with a mechanical shutter I would consider the following.  First select shutter priority then pop up the flash.  Then make sure ISO is set to 100; some may think that a higher ISO helps, but it is thwarted by the mechanical shutter limiting shutter speed.  Set the shutter speed as high as it goes; this will be anywhere from 1/180 of a second to 1/250 of a second. Have the person move and use the exposure lock button to determine the best exposure for the Opera House.  Have the person move back into the shot and take a picture.  If the person comes out dark you have to move closer to the person, which will mean using a wider angle shot.  You could also try to bump up the power on the flash using flash exposure compensation, but if it is at maximum already you are hooped.  Repeat as necessary until you have the right shot.  Looking at the review and histogram also helps.

I forgo a lot of this by shooting in manual mode.  I know that the flash synch speed is 1/250th of a second so that is what my shutter speed goes.  I shoot at 100 ISO where possible.  My aperture would be as low as possible to give me the best image of the background.  After this is set, I would attach my external flash which has insane power.  I would then shoot at whatever focal length I wanted and check the result.  I would use the flash's exposure controls to increase or decrease power as needed and shoot again if necessary.  I find I can usually get the image on the first or second shot.

Yes, this sounds like a lot of mucking around.  When it comes down to it you have to understand that the camera usually can't do it on its own.  You have to help it.  That is why they come with so many silly buttons and a manual that has seen the demise of at least three trees.  The trick though is to play with it all until you figure it out.  It takes time, patience, and energy, but it is worth is if you want this kind of picture.

Happy shooting.  www.ericspix.com

Angle of view

Shooting position - it makes a difference.

When I am out taking pictures, I am always cognizant of a variety of factors.  These include the obvious things which each of us includes in our mental processing, but also things like shooting elevation.  I take a lot of my shots, as most do, of things from standing position eye level, but occasionally something extra ordinary needs to happen.

In this particular shot I did not like the background (above) which resulted in the captured image.  There was little information the viewer received regarding the subject's environment. Although I like photos of old farm machinery (who doesn't), I felt something was lacking.  I like images to tell a story, and this old derelict had something more to say.  So, to those in the car, I did the unthinkable.

I drove off road and got as close to the farmer's fence as possible.  Bump, bump, bump went the vehicle.  Disapproving looks did not prevent me from doing what had to be done.  I got into the position I wanted then it was time to do the unthinkable again.

This time I climbed on top of the vehicle.  When I had a truck I used to bring a ladder with me for such events.  However, those days were gone.  I needed a higher point of view and this was the only way possible (sitting on someone's shoulders would be way too demeaning).  I learned the hard way though that climbing up the front of the vehicle is a bad idea, as windshield glass can only stand so much force from above.  So I mounted my iron stallion from the side, as all good cowboys should.

Moving carefully and with respect to my ever aging body, I got to the spot needed and took my shot.  The perspective on the world was much better.  A little binder twine and duct tape could cement my position up here, but as such my steed required a driver.  So I climbed back down and off we went.

Some would ask, "Wasn't that a lot of work for just a shot?  I mean, you will probably never use it."  My response - "Yes it was worth it, I got a blog out of it, and a fun story to boot."  You never know when you may use a photo.

www.ericspix.com

White balance choices - part 2

How white balance affects an image

It was a perfectly clear day up near Brackendale and the sun was shining brightly.  I was traipsing around in the woods with my camera and came across a creek. The sun did not penetrate the bush above me; only the light from the open blue sky made it through.  I thought I would take a photo of the creek for fun.  The camera's white balance was set to "auto".  When I pressed "play" after taking the shot the rear display clearly presented a blue image, the one one the left.  I was shocked by the result.

My eyes did not detect the intense blue shade associated with the ice and snow.  There was some neural processing going on which prevented me from seeing the extent of the colour cast.  I then decided to use the camera's "manual white balance" option.  This is a feature most digital cameras have.  It is a little complicated to do it the first time, and referring to your manual or watching a short video on it is not a bad idea if you want to try it. 

After setting the camera's white balance to "custom" I had to tell the camera what white looked like.  I found a patch of snow in the same light and followed the procedure.  Then I took another shot of the same scene previously attempted.  After pushing play and viewing both images I clearly saw the difference between the two.

There are several options for managing white balance.  Most people leave their camera set to full automatic, which means that everything is done for them automatically.  This includes things like exposure, flash, ISO, file type, and white balance.  While capable of producing good photos, there tends to be a few things lacking; one of those things is often an accurate white balance.

The next thing step some people will take is to use a program like Photoshop Elements to adjust the white balance.  There is actually a very good utility present, Colour Cast, which allows you to improve a photo's white balance.  The up side is that the photo improves.  The down side is that it is done at the expense of data.  However, most would agree that the difference to the average person is not significant and are happy with the result.

The two best options involve going a step further.  The first one was done in the above photo the right.  The user is not on full automatic but rather on a semi-automatic or even manual exposure mode and chooses custom white balance.  Then, after setting it using the prescribed procedure, shoots the photos in that environment.  When doing many shots in the same lighting situation I will often select this option.  It always produces good results.  Then, for the final method, there is the RAW option.

RAW is a shooting mode that saves the digital file as a RAW image.  There are a host of pros and some cons for this, but for the moment we will address white balance.  RAW settings let you adjust the white balance for the image after it has been taken.  You could take 1000 shots, in each one the white balance could be different, and you could get the correct white balance for each one while you are sitting at your computer instead of having to do it, very inconveniently, in the field before each shot.  This is the way I do 95% of my images.  I don't always get the perfect white balance, but I certainly come close.  And, it turns out, to be closer than what the camera estimated on its own.

How you work with white balance is up to you.  I would encourage you to play with custom white balance.  Refer to your manual or go on line and type in the camera model and "setting custom white balance" and hit return.  You should be able to find something which helps you along the way.

White balance and skin tones - part 1

Kathryn and white balance options - it makes a difference.

Light is made up of colours.  We know this from our experiences with things like prisms and rainbows.  We expect that light from any source can be broken up into its spectral components, and that those resulting spectrums should be equally balanced; that the amount of blues and greens and reds and all the infinite colours in between should be similarly proportioned.  After all, white light is white, isn't it?

The problem is that our eyes compensate for any colour shifts and what we see as white may actually not be.  For example, if you took a white sheet of paper and photographed it with the same white balance setting (say 5500° Kelvin) in a variety of settings, you would find that those resulting images would be different.  Even though that paper looks white to our eyes in those circumstances, it in fact is not.  This is because the light falling on it does not have an equal balance of all colours.

We know light from the sun is fairly evenly balanced, but that really depends on the time of day, the latitude, and the time of year.  When the sun is blocked by something and produces a shadow, you can still see inside that shadow.  It is not pitch black.  That is because light from the sky falls on that shaded area, allowing us to see.  That same sheet of paper would look fairly white in the sunny photograph but would look decidedly blue in the shaded one.  Take it indoors and photograph it under the old tungsten (incandescent) lights and it would look very yellow-orange.

The reason why these strange off colour balances occur is because the "white" light being produced has different amounts of the colours making it up.  For the shadow situation, there may be a lot of blue but little in the way of reds.  In the case of tungsten there will be a significant amount of yellows and oranges but little in the way of greens and blues.  Fluorescent tubes, CFLs, LED bulbs, mercury vapour bulbs, and so on all produce different shades of lighting because the balance of colours is not all the same.  We can say then that they have different white balances.

Most digital cameras have a white balance setting on them.  There is the fluorescent setting, the flash and tungsten setting, the outdoor and the shade setting, and maybe a few others.  Each one is preset to a particular white balance.  The problem is that those lighting situations are not necessarily exactly equal to what those white balance presets are.  Then there is the auto white balance setting.  The auto white balance feature lets the camera determine what white looks like.  The problem is that it is often wrong.  Sometimes it is off by a bit, other times it is off by a lot.

There are three great solutions for this.  I will go into this more on my next blog.  Thanks for reading.

www.ericspix.com

Dogs with adamantium skeletons

Notice the "adamantium" nails on Rookie's feet (lower right) - a born digger.

Think "Wolverine meets Pluto" and merges into one beast; a dog with an adamantium skeleton and claws which are harder than rock, resist wear, and are sharper than any razor blade.  Well, I can tell you it won't be sitting on my lap for starters.  Of course, when it wanted a cookie treat, you can bet it wouldn't have to do a string of tricks like "sit" and "roll over" first.  And to make its own bed, it wouldn't have to run in circles twenty or thirty times to make it comfy; it would simple paw a couple of times on a couch and voila; instant shredded mattress.  Meals would be taken when desired; in fact meals would be whatever it desired.  Who needs a can opener?  Tins would melt on demand and boxes would be a mere formality.  Then there are trees; do you think a dog as such would be thwarted by wood, made out of soft fibrous cells?  Regular claws might fail it but the adamantium ones would work like crampons on an ice climber's boots.  Cats all over the world would pay homage to their canine foes and take up duties such as facilitating exercise, making even more cat videos, or playing a dog's favourite music on piano.

What we should be really impressed at though is the capacity for work.  We call dogs "man's best friend" for a reason; they are loyal to a fault and have served us in phenomenal ways.  Traditional roles played by our furry friends would be enhanced.  Blind users wouldn't have to worry about traffic any more; the dog could cut through traffic easily.  In fact, it could cut through cars, bikes, trucks, trains, - whatever got in the way.  And the whole time it would wag it's tail and the "master" would just follow along as it left carnage in its wake.

Another example of enhanced doggy duties include drug and explosive detection.  These adamantium assisted hounds would still have their acute sniffing abilities, only now when it found something it would just tear through whatever was about.  I can just imagine the conversations between border guards and those crossing.  "Sorry about your motor home, sir, but you really shouldn't have had illegal substances stored in it.  Please pick up the pieces first before we arrest you."

Then there are all the new things these beasts could do; jobs we never thought up for them before.  Mining could be a whole new industry.  Sniff, sniff, sniff.  OK, that's what gold smells like.  Next thing you know a dog sized hole is burrowed into a cliff face straight to a seam.  Imagine jobs with lumber or pulp; tree climbing was just for starters.  A dog could shred any tree into powder which could then be turned into paper of whatever variety.  Want big pieces; get a doberman to do it.  Little ones; bring the shiatsu in.  The same is true for recycling, making gravel, and so on.  

Thankfully our adamantium assisted assets would become even more helpful to its owner.  Man and beast working together to make a better world.  OK, cats would take back stage, but what if they developed the ability to make people do what they wanted?  Oh wait, they already do.

Depth of field in the field

Point of focus and depth of field choices will change how you look at an image.

Take a minute to examine the three above photos.  They were all shot from the same position with the same amount of available light.  In each one though there is something different.  In the first one (far left) you can see that the pillars are in focus but the church windows are not.  The middle one is reversed with the pillars being out of focus and the church being in focus.  The last one (far right) has both in focus at the same time.  There was no photoshop magic going on here; it all has to do with how the camera is set up.

There are three different parameters which were altered to create the different images.  The first involves aperture setting; that's the "iris and pupil" of the camera lens.  Once it is set the second parameter, shutter speed, falls into place.  In the case of the first two images that is f/5 at 1/200th of a second (ISO was constant in all three being set at 100).  The third image used an aperture of f/14 at 1/20th of a second.

Both the aperture and shutter speed (including ISO, but don't worry about that now) are responsible for the exposure component of the shot.  The f/5 aperture setting lets in a lot of light but also gives very little depth of field.  Since the aperture is open so wide, the shutter speed has to be faster to give the correct exposure.  The f/14 aperture is much smaller, letting in much less light; at the same time though it gives more depth of focus to the photo.  Since there is so much less light a longer shutter speed is needed to provide the same exposure, which is why the last shot has a shutter speed of 1/20th of a second.

The third parameter is point of focus.  Since the first two shots use low apertures causing little depth of field, the lens is focused on the pillars (first) or the church (second) causing the other components of the shot to be blurry.  It is interesting how focus will help draw your eye; the way you look at an image is partly based on what is in focus.  In the third photo the point of focus is about a third of the way to the church from the pillars.  Greater depth of field means there is more in focus in the shot; in this case it is just barely enough to allow both parts of the scene to be in focus.

Playing with aperture, shutter speed, and point of focus will allow you to develop an understanding of how these things work.  As you play with them more and more you will get better at it.  The basis of this is one of the cornerstones of photography.

Perspective on a church

Perspective change from varying focal length and position

One of the great things I love about traveling is the opportunity to go to new places and see things I have not previously had the opportunity to enjoy.  The word "travel" is a very broad term and means many things to many different people.  It could be taken in the simplest of concepts through just leaving your house or it could encompass global relocations by car, plane, train, bike, or even foot (and any combination thereof).  There is one thing I have learned though, and that is your photographs tend to improve as you broaden your whereabouts. 
In photography, the term perspective has a specific connotation.  It refers to how the camera sees the world in front of it.  Although our eyes are built to see things in one specific way, the camera lens has the ability to change its focal length, thus altering perspective.  Focal lengths (the millimeter value that you alter on the lens to go from wide angle to telephoto) affect perspective.  A wide angle lens allows you to perceive a scene differently than a telephoto.  Most of us are really aware of how a wide angle lets you see more of something while a telephoto "zooms in" to reveal less of it but in greater detail.  What most of us don't recognize is how it affects perspective.
While mulling about in Alberta we came across this great church.  Not only was the building itself interesting, there was a small duplicate of it positioned just in front of it and off to the side.  I saw it as an opportunity to not only shoot an interesting subject, but to play with perspective.  The photo on the left was taken quite a distance from the buildings using a mild zoom lens (65 mm on a full frame camera); the one on the right with a wide angle lens (28 mm) fairly close to them.  The results speak for themselves.
Telephoto lenses cause an effect called "compression".  Backgrounds are brought up relative to foregrounds.  Notice the how the trees on the left image appear larger and closer to the buildings than the trees on the right.  The small church is clearly much smaller than the large one.  Telephotos also narrow how much background you see; the right shot indicates that another building is present whereas there is no such suggestion on the left.  Look at the large church itself.  Notice how the dome is about the same size as the front entrance on the left but is clearly smaller than on the right.
Wide angle lenses cause "distortion".  Foregrounds are made to look larger than backgrounds and distances between the two are exaggerated.  This is why portrait photographers use mild telephotos lenses to do close ups of people instead of wide angles - faces end up looking strange with large eyes and noses if low focal length values are chosen.  Notice how the larger church looks stretched out on the right; the foreground (entrance) looks larger than the tower.  The small church in front also looks larger than the one in the left photo.
I use these properties of wide and telephoto lenses when shooting to capture relationships between foregrounds and backgrounds.  Want to exaggerate a foreground feature?  Move close to it and use a wide angle lens.  Need to bring the background up relative to the foreground?  Back up and zoom in.  Playing with focal length and your subject's relationship to what is around it brings an entirely new way of thinking about what will make a shot work.  Play with your zoom lens; move around as you shoot, and discover a new perspective on the world.