Lightcrafters

Essential Basics 3 - Focussing

2010-03-08T01:01:00.000-08:00

One of the commonest error you can see with people who just started photography (myself included) is that they tend to focus on the wrong things.

This leads to a typical picture of subject out of focus and background in focus.

In this article, I will talk about how to focus properly and get sharp photos 90% of the time.

The first thing you need to realise is that the shoot/shutter button has two stops. You can half press the button and then press it fully.

When you half press, the camera will focus the lens on the subject that is in the center of the targetting braket.

When the subject is focussed a beep will sound (or it will turn green depending on your camera) and your subject is in focus. Then you press it down fully to take the shot.

In conclusion:

1. Note the targetting braket. (if it is in auto braket/auto focus point mode don't worry where it is. ) Place your subject into the targetting braket.

2. Half-press the shutter button to focus.

3. When the picture is foccused a beep will sound. Press the shutter button fully.

That's basically it.

Off-center subjects

However, there will be times when your subject will not be in the center right? Like when you want to follow the rule of thirds. What do you do?

It's simple. Just put the subject in the middle of the braket and half press. When it is in focus, keep your shutter half-pressed and move your camera to recompose the shot. When you are happy with the new composition, press it fully and take the shot.

The subject will be focussed.

You may be able to choose the focus point in some cameras. It is not entirely necessary but it makes life easier since you don't have to recompose your shot after you focus. This is useful in fast action situations like sports where you won't have enough time to recompose.

Moving objects

Have you tried to take a picture of a fast moving object, like a fast car for example? If you had, you may produce a picture where the object is completely blur and the background is clear.

This is because unless you have a fast enough shutter speed to "freeze" the subject, the subject will appear blur.

What you can do in this situation is either:

1. Get a higher shutter speed: Get a bigger aperture (lower F- number) or higher ISO or both (remember the consequences of both).

2. Pan the shot.

Panning a shot is a simple thing to do, yet hard to master.

Imagine a car is moving quickly from right to left. What you do is you place the car in the center of your focus point. Then half press your shutter to focus on the car while the car is moving. At this time, move your body together with the car (i.e pan your camera together with the motion of the car). While you're still panning, take the shot.

The result would be a sharp car and a blurred background. It also portrays a sense of motion, since the background would be blur in a line.

Remember to hold the camera steady while you pan, otherwise your shot would be messed up.

The shutter speed makes a difference here, the higher the shutter speed, the less dramatic the effect will be but the more sharper your subject will be and vice versa.

Essential Basics 2 - Composition

2010-02-22T06:08:00.001-08:00

The next thing you need to think about when taking a picture after correctly exposing the picture would be composition.

Composition simply refers to how the picture is framed.

While there are certain guidelines or "rules" that exist, you need to remember that they are just rules, nothing more. The following basic composition techniques can be broken and still will yield interesting or excellent results. You just need to know when to break them. Composition is also a form of art, so it really varies depending on what you wanted to achieve.

I will now discuss a few pointers in terms of composition.

1. Rule of thirds

One of the most fundamental compositional rule is known as the "rule of thirds". The crux of the idea is that placing the object of interest in the thirds of the frame rather than the center is better. It is simply where the human eye is trained to observe a scene and is more pleasing for the eye.

For this rule, most cameras allow you to display the grid while shooting.

Imagine a frame that is split into three parts vertically and horizontally by two perpendicular lines.

Simply place the object of interest in either one of the four possible intersection of the lines and you'll get better results than placing them dead center.
Additionally you should also place the horizon on one of the horizontal lines. Place the horizon on the lower line if there are more interesting things in the sky or place it on the upper line if there's more stuff on the lower line.
When taking shots of a person, place the eyes along the upper horizontal line.
If the subject is in motion (running person, moving car, etc.) try to align them so that they move into the frame instead of out. I.e if the car is moving to the left, align it on the right verticle line. This is sometimes called the 'active space rule'. (Break if you want to create a sense of mystery, action, drama).

When to break?

Break if you purposely want a symmetrical composition (such as a long straight road leading towards the horizon).
You can also break it if you want a shot with symmetrical reflections in the water

2. Keeping the horizon horizontal

One of the most important thing to keep in mind and master is to take a picture that is straight in the horizon. One of the worse thing you can do is to take a crooked shot of a scenery. Simply use the grid from your camera view as a guide and snap.

If you fail, simply correct it in post-production.

When to break?

It is effective if used correctly in portrait shots. It conveys energy and movement.

How to break?

The key to breaking this is not to just do it slightly but do it purposely with more twists. This is because if you do it just slightly, it will give the impression that you have failed to keep your shots straight.

3. Leading lines

Sometimes is it useful to lead the viewers eyes towards your subject. Use the surroundings to your advantage such as power lines, roads, drains, walls, etc. It will create a more pleasing picture.

4. Get low, or get high

Simply taking a shot from a standing position is fine. However by getting lower than the eye level or higher, you can add a different perspective to your shots.

This is useful if you're taking group pictures. Simply stand on higher groud and have everyone look up to you and you'll notice a difference. Getting low also allows you to compose according to the rule of thirds by moving the background in relative to the subject.

5. Think foreground and background

This is an important issue to take into account. Always think a scene that is made up of foreground (subject interest) and a background.

A photograph is essentially two dimensional with no depth. Using this principle will infuse a sense of depth into your shots.

Try this, the next time you go out to shoot a scene, look around your surrounding and move around. Try to compose with something interesting (a chair, rocks, flowers, etc) in the foreground to add into the background. It will make the picture more pleasing and interesting instead of just having the background.

Essential basics 1 - Exposures

2010-01-24T19:55:00.000-08:00

Before going into exposure, it's worth while taking a step back and understanding how your camera works.

A camera is essentially a tool to capture light, and light is manipulated via a set of glass in the lens to create photographic effects such as magnification, etc.

Observe the diagram below (forgive my crap drawing, hehe),

Light reflected off a subject travels through the aperture and a set of glass that acts as lenses, ending up on the sensor where the light information in then picked off and converted to digital images.

For this article, we will discuss about exposures. You should strive to get correctly exposed photographs. A picture can either be underexposed, correctly exposed, or overexposed. And underexposed picture appears dark while and overexposed picture appears overly bright. Too much light entering the sensor leads to overexposed images while too little leads to underexposure.

Exposure is determined by three variables, known by some as the triangle of exposure.

The variables are:

Aperture
Shutter speed
ISO sensitivity

Aperture is essentially the gate to the lenses, the larger the aperture opens, the more light enters. (I.e, the larger a gate opens, more people can pass through them at any one time).
Shutter speed is essentially how long the gate stays open. So logically the longer the shutter speed, the more light is able to enter and reach the sensor.
Finally, ISO sensitivity is just how sensitive the sensor is to light.

Behind 'Auto'

Exposure Compensation
In the 'auto' setting, the camera does all three automatically. It 'meters' the subject (i.e, calculates the exposure) and then adjusts the variables to achieve the correct exposure.

However, there are some circumstances when the camera fails to 'meter' correctly. In general, two situations will almost always cause the camera to fail:

Subject is too white. When the subject has too much white in it, the camera gets confused and tries to compensate the whiteness by decreasing the exposure. It will result in an underexposed picture. A good example is taking pictures while skiing, with snow in the background, or during weddings, where everyone dresses white.
Subject is too dark. When there's too much black, such as taking a picture against a dark wall, taking pictures when everyone dresses in suits. The camera thinks the scene is darker than it actually is and tries to increase the exposure.

To correct this, you'll need to override your camera's automatic metering by doing 'exposure compensation'. It's like trying to tell the camera "dude, you're wrong".

In most cameras, the exposure compensation setting should look like this. The button is usually the +/- button seen to the left of the picture. Just move the cursor left (more -ve) to the "Zero" or right (more +ve) to undercompensate or overcompensate.

In general:

In white places overcompensate.
In black places undercompensate.

The decision on how much to set the exposure compensation is partly guided by the histogram, and partly guided by what you wanted the picture to end up as.

The histogram looks like this:
It usually is a bell curve with the apex of the curve more towards the left or right depending on how bright or dark the picture is.

More importantly is the ends of the curve. You'll want to adjust the exposure compensation so that the ends of the curve touches the end of the graph.

In this example, the picture is underexposed. You should increase the exposure compensation in the camera. This would shift the whole curve to the right and finally corrects the exposure.

On the other hand, an overexposed picture will have nothing on the left side and you simple need to decrease exposure compensation.

Here's an explanation I shamelessly copied from another site. hehe

The great thing about a digital camera in this aspect is that you can do this live while preparing your shot. The preview screen can usually overlay this information.

For the rest of us however, the only way to get it right is through trial and error.

You can, if you wish do this during post processing using any programs in the market, including free programs like Picasa or more expensive and powerful ones like Photoshop CS4. The good side is you don't have to worry too much about exposure while shooting, the bad side is that doing this usually increases the noise levels of the pictures and you might loose some details.

It is safer to underexpose that to overexpose. When overexposed, the information of a picture is lost as 'highlights'. The part of the picture looks purely white and there is no way to recover that data through post-processing.

Beyond 'auto'

This portion of the article may not be too relevant to digital camera users. However, a knowledge of some of this may help in your photography.

Most prosumers and dSLRs come with manual and semi manual functions. Using these functions gives you more control of your scene and allows you to be more creative than simply point and shoot. Although some may find it difficult to understand, here's some simple explaination on how it all works.

As you can see above, Nikon labels the manual function as M for manual, A for aperture priority and S for shutter priority. Canon's a little less intuitive with M, AV and TV respectively. In manual --> you can set both the shutter speed and aperture manually

In A/AV --> you set the aperture manually and the camera sets the shutter speed automatically (you can use exposure compensation here since the camera is still doing automatic metering)
In S/TV -->you set the shutter speed and the camera automatically sets the aperture.

In all three cases (and auto), you can decide on which ISO sensitivity to use.

The next question is, what settings should I use?
Look at the triangle of exposure again. In general, increasing one variable increases the overrall exposure, therefore another variable needs to be decreased. Which variable you increase depends largly on what you wanted to achive and what tradeoffs you want to sacrifice.

Aperture is measured as f-stops. The larger the number, the smaller the aperture.

picture taken from http://jackarcestudio.com/?p=291

A wider aperture (f2.8, f4.0) gives you more light, but less depth of field.
A narrow aperture gives you less light, but more depth of field.

picture taken from http://tomasellodesign.wordpress.com/2009/04/20/little-tip/

A smaller depth of field allows you to focus on the subject and blurs the background. This allows the viewer to concentrate on what you really want them to see and creates a nice creamy background as a backdrop. This effect is called 'bokeh'.

This picture of the bee for example shows a clear bee and blurred backdrop.

Shutter speed:
Shutter speed is measured in seconds and fraction of seconds.

A faster shutter speed allows less light (less exposure) but freezes movement. This allows sharper images to be taken and also allow you to creatively freeze objects in midair, freeze sports, etc.
A slower shutter speed allows more light (more exposure) but it leads to blur and camera shake if no tripod is used. It is more suitable in night photography, night scenery, fireworks, etc.

ISO sensitivity:

ISO sensitivity is how sensitive the sensor is for light. The more sensitive it is, the more light you can get and it allows for a faster shutter speed and narrower aperture to be used. It sounds all good but it also translate directly to more noise in the camera.
Noise in some aspect is good, it gives a nice texture to black and white photographs.
Typically use 200 ISO for normal light, about 400 ISO for indoors with adequate lighting and in dark areas, you can push the ISO as high as you like within limits of your camera and the noise produced.

In conclusion, before you shoot, decide what effect you want (freeze, scenery, less/more noise) and select the appropriate settings.

Feel free to drop by any questions in the comments area. Thanks for reading!

Essential basics of photography

2010-01-24T19:51:00.001-08:00

From now onwards, I will be discussing about the very basics of photography. This should allow users of all three types of cameras to gain better understanding of what actually happens within your camera everytime you try to take a picture. Briefly, the two main topics are exposure and composition.

Selecting SLR cameras

2010-01-03T02:13:00.001-08:00

While buying consumer or prosumer cameras are pretty straightforward, selecting a suitable SLR require a little more thought. This is because there are lots of different camera bodies and lenses to choose from and they don't come cheap.

Before commiting yourself to a SLR, ask yourself whether you really need one. If you are just going to get an SLR with just the standard kit lens (the lens that came with the camera) and not thinking of getting anything else, often a prosumer camera will be a suitable choice. The kit lens, while good, is not useful for many situations, such as close-up or macro photography. In some situations, a good prosumer can outperform a low end SLR at a lower price.

Additionally, if you're not going to upgrade or add more gear, its rather pointless to own a SLR. In my opinion, unless you are really serious into photography, go for prosumers.

These are the things you need to consider:

1. Budget

The amount of equipment you can buy when going into the SLR path is endless, so you'll need to know how much you can afford.

From this budget, you can decide what combination of equipments you can acquire.

For most beginners, a budget of $2000 should be a sufficient investment.

2. Purpose

There are many sub-specialities in photography, and more importantly so when considering SLR since the lenses are quite specialised.

Think about what you will do with your camera, is it:

portraits
macro/close-up
sports
events
nature
scenery
holidays

The list may go on but these are the general ones. Each of these require their own set of lenses and other equiptment. Having said that, some of the equipment can be shared between them.

3. Research

With an idea of how much you have to spend and what you are going to spend it to do, you can now begin browsing for your first SLR. It is essentially a similar process as discussed in the previous article.

I will not discuss exactly which model or brand you should go for, since it is really a matter of preference. Instead, I will discuss in general the principles of a SLR so that you'll understand the terminology.

4. Brand

In general, there are 4 major brands that I know of that sells good SLRs.

1. Nikon
2. Canon
3. Sony
4. Pentax

There are others of course, but I do not have enough experience with them. I personally own a Nikon and have friends that uses Canon cameras. I feel that if you go for Nikon or Canon, it'll be a good choice because there are many people who uses them and you'll be able to talk with others about your equipment or even share lenses with your friends. These brands are also in the market for the longest. Sony and Pentax are good because the camera bodies come built-in with image stabilisers (nikon and canon places the component in the lens instead).

In general, you'll need to decide two components of your SLR.

The camera body,

and the lens.

Its really simple, the lens takes in the light and alters them (magnify, etc) and the body has the sensor which receives the light and convert them into digital information.
BODY

In general you can divide the body into three generations:

First generation
Second generation
Third generation

It gets a little confusing (and stupid) here. For nikon, the first generation cameras has 2 digits (D40), second generation has 3 digits (D300), and third generation has 1 digits (D3). Now there's a new nomenclature with 4 digits (D5000, D3000), which is essentially a first generation camera. The Canon cameras are less confusing, first generation has 3 digits (400D), second has 2 digits (40D) and third generation has 1 digit (5D).

In general, the higher the generation, the better the body are in terms of dynamic range (discussed later), speed of action, megapixels and other small details. They are also significantly more expensive as you move up a generation.

For our consideration, a first generation camera is sufficient as a beginner. There are other stuff like full frame and 3/4 frames but that's complicated. A first generation camera is almost usually a 3/4 frame camera.

LENS

This is where your earlier consideration comes into play.

In general when buying lenses, these are the factors that comes into consideration:

Focal length
Maximum aperture
Vibration reduction

Focal length:
Focal length is pretty much how much you can zoom the lens. the numbers vary from 10mm to 500mm and pretty much a smaller number is how much you can zoom out (wide) and the larger number is how much you can zoom in (tele).

For example:

The Nikon D90 kit lens:

The markings you can see is: AF-S NIKKOR 18-105 MM 3.5-5.6G ED.

For this lens, the focal length is 18-105mm. 105mm doesn't really give you much a zoom, a good zoom should be about 200mm in a crop sensor. 18mm is wide enough for scenery, but a real wide angle lens is about 10 or 12mm wide.

Note: There are also 'prime' lenses, which are lenses that does not allow zooming, they are fixed lenses. A good cheap prime lens is the Nikkor 50mm F1.8 prime lens.

Lastly, there are also all purpose lenses for those lazy to change lens on the go, they are usually 18mm-200mm so cover both wide and tele. However, they usually perform less better in terms of colour reproduction, sharpness and other factors.

Maximum aperture:
If you look at the lens again, there's this 3.5.5.6 marking on it. That's the maximum aperture. Significantly, when they place the max aperture from one number to another, it means when you zoom in, the maximum aperture decreases. Basically the larger the aperture, the more light you can take in at night and the more bokeh you have. (will be discussed in detail later).

Note: the larger the number, the smaller the aperture.

In general, a good lens should have a fixed maximum aperture at F2.8. The Nikkor 50mm F1.8 prime lens allows a max aperture of F1.8.

Vibration reduction:

Vibration reduction VR (or image stabiliser in Canon) is an important aspect. It reduces camera shake and allows better pictures at night. It is also important to consider in telephoto cameras since shake is amplified the more you zoom in. However, these lenses usually cost more.

Brand

One other thing to think about when choosing lenses is the brand. In general there's the brand of the manufacturer of the chosen body (canon, nikkor) and there's also 3rd party lenses.

3rd party lenses are generally cheaper but in terms of performance may not match that of original lenses. However, there are some instances where 3rd party lenses outperform the original.

The better known brands are:

Tamron
Sigma
Tokina

I personally use a Tamron lens and it has performed wonderfully.

So in general:

portraits --> long focal range, large aperture + external flash
macro/close-up --> large aperture, specialised lenses + external flash
sports --> very long focal range (300-500mm), large aperture
events --> average focal range 200mm, large aperture
nature --> very long focal range
scenery --> wide angle (10-12mm, 17mm)
holidays --> all purpose lens (17-200mm)

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If you don't want to commit to any particular style, you can go for something like:

Nikon D90 body
Tamron 17-50mm F2.8
Nikkor 55-200mm F4.5-5.6
External flash SB-600

That would cost a little more than AUD2000 but you can do most things with that.

Step one: Tips on choosing a digital camera

2009-12-26T23:58:00.001-08:00

Many people feel lost when they are deciding to get their first camera, since there are so many different brands and types to choose from.

Here's what you should do if you are thinking of getting your first camera.

1. Think about what you want to do with your camera.

Uhh.. take pictures? Well, that's right, but there are many different types of situations requiring different types of cameras.

In general, there are three categories of cameras to choose from:
1. Point and shoot/compacts/digicam
2. "Prosumers"
3. Single Lens Reflex (SLRs)

For most people wishing to use their cameras for simple use like parties and holidays and don't really care about the fine details, a "point and shoot" (PNS) camera would be sufficient. PNS cameras are the typical cameras you see tourist hold, they are small and compact and are easily used without much hassle. However, these cameras are usually limited to some extent, especially in terms of night performance (high noise), slower reaction time and terrible flash results. They also have limited manual control which IMO limits the usage in some situations.

If you are looking for better results, faster responses, better night performance and still maintaining the versatality of a PNS camera, then a prosumer is the one for you. These guys are relatively small yet are able to perform well in most aspects of photography (landscape, portraits, etc.). Additionally, most newer models also support external flashes that greatly improves your photography. Downside is, they are stuck in the middle: not good enough in any fields and not too light to be truely compact. IMO, you'll feel like upgrading after a few months using them. If you just want a better camera for holidays and can't be fussed about carrying big equiptment, this is suitable. PS: they also usually have swivel lcds that allows lots of cam-whoring!

Finally, if you are more serious in photography, often zoom into pictures and look at pixels (i do!), demand more results and don't mind the extra weight then SLRs are the one for you. The advantages of SLR is it allows you to change lenses to fit into the specific shooting event, in other words, specialise. This means you can switch to a wider lens for landscapes or longer lens for portraits, etc. It also performs much better at night and supports external flashes (often more than one). The downside is the weight, which often is about 2kg (or more) and the cost.

Note: At this time however, big players making prosumers such as canon and panasonic lumix are improving so much that their performance rivals lower end SLRs.

2. Decide on which camera to buy

Now that you have an idea of what to look for you can start choosing. The following is for PNS cameras.

Step 1, Brand: Browse internet review sites. A good site I used for my first camera is dpreview. They usually have reviews for new camera models. Also look at user revieww
In my opinion these brands are good (the others not listed are not as good in my experience, but this is subjective).

Panasonic Lumix (best performance in my experience)
Canon IXUS
Sony

Look through what each brand has to offer and compare the cameras in terms of price and specifications.

Step 2, Specs: There are lots of specifications to look at and its a bit confusing. In general essential components are:

Megapixels (effective pixels) - this is how high the resolution of the pictures the camera will produce. Basically the higher the megapixels, the more you can zoom in on it in your computer and the larger you can print the pictures. It also directly translate to larger file sizes (though you can usually shoot at lower MP if you want). Most people say about 1MP is enough but I think that's not true. For adequate quality even for facebook, 3MP should be used (IMO). I personally shoot at the max MP (10.2) my camera gives me simply because I like to have the best i can get. Choose cameras that support up to 10MPs or anything within your budget. For most people, something more than 6MP is adequate. It's really not a big deal anymore since most cameras come with at least 6MP nowadays.
Image stabilisation - this is essential, it prevents blur pictures due to shake.
Zooms - there are two kinds of zooms, optical and digital. Digital zooming is useless so choose the one with higher optical zooms. (more on this later)
Macro focus range - the less the better. Indicates how close your camera can get to the subject to focus.
Min shutter speed - the more the better, my first camera can go up to 60 seconds. With this you can take interesting night shots (stars, light trails). Some camera only go up to 30 seconds.
Aperture range - the smaller the number it can go, the better (more on this later). Try to get cameras that can go at least down to F2.8.
Self timer - most cameras have this function but the essential bits is the ability to set the time to 3 seconds or similar, this allows you to shoot with less shakes (more on this later)
Autofocus - latest models have face detection, which IMO is a good function especially if you are new to photography. It will make sure all your shots are correctly focussed on the face.
Tripod - models that support tripods are better because tripods are required for cam whoring and night shooting

Step 3, Feel: Once you have an idea of which model you are interested in, you should head to your store and check it out physically. Have a feel if you like the shape, weight, etc, and also take a few test shots to see if the response speeds are acceptable for you. Also notice the time taken to turn on the camera.

While you're there, it's a good idea to talk to the shopkeeper about the camera. Keep in mind that he's just trying to sell you the product and sometimes they don't really know anything about it anyway. Sometimes however they know their stuff and would recommend you to another model they feel is better (it happened to me). Don't make up your mind if that happens. Simply go home and search for reviews and make informed decisions.

Step 4, Negotiate and Shop hunt: When you are ready to buy, head to the shop and negotiate for his best price. It may be a good idea to hunt around since camera prices actually varies alot. You can also try to buy online from eBay or other sites. Checking www.shopbot.com.au is a good idea to get a price range. Also keep note on other details such as warranty periods, etc.

And congratulations! You just landed yourself a new toy!

Introduction

2009-12-26T23:43:00.000-08:00

Hello, this blog is intended to be a tutorial site for those interested to begin photography. Essentially the aim is to include everything I've learnt about photography from my experiences for the past year.

Nothing here is absolute since photography is essentially an abstract thing. However there are still certain things that forms the fundamentals of what we do to take a good picture. Having said that, everything I share here is from my own experience and my own opinion. If you have a better way, I welcome your contributions in the comments section.

Additionally, anyone who would like to contribute their tutorials on this site is welcomed to do so. Just drop a comment and I will get back to you via email.

It doesn't matter if you're looking to get your first camera or already own one, or have a point and shoot or DSLRs, I hope any reader can learn a little from this site. Share your techniques with me and we may all learn something new!

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First off I shall start with some opinions on how to choose a camera, then moving on to basic photograpy techniques.

-Lightcrafters