Exposure Compensation and Class

Class will be at the Studio tonight, but I'd bring a coat, just in case we get crazy. Is anyone allergic to dogs?

Nikon D700, 300mm f/4 lens, f/8.0, 1/5000s, ISO 400.

This picture has some interesting things about the camera settings in it. First of all, I've been telling you that your sharpest pictures come about when you use your lens' sharpest aperture (two full stops smaller than the widest aperture). This is most important on stuff that's far away; I often shoot portraits at the widest aperture, but I stop down (close the aperture) when I want to shoot something farther away.

This was shot with a 300mm prime lens (that means it doesn't zoom--it's always at 300mm) wit ha maximum (widest) aperture of f/4.0. That's pretty big for a 300mm lens! But since I was shooting at a pretty good distance, and I wanted a sharp picture, I dialed it down two full stops. Remember these numbers, they are the regular stop intervals: f/1, f/1.4, f/2, f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/8, f/11, f/16, f/22. Even though my camera is capable of increments of one third of a stop, two full stops is required--that's six ticks of my adjustment wheel in 1/3 stop increments. So, from f/4.0, two full stops would be....

Next, The sky is usually a very bright thing in pictures, even if it was kind of dark in life because the camera wants to make dark things bright, so we should use the exposure compensation button (+/-) to under expose (-) the scene to the make the sky nice and rich. However, we should over expose (+) the scene to brighten the white spires because the camera wants to make bright things dark. However, since this scens is about half and half dark and bright, the camera's average was just right! I didn't have to use compensation at all. The best thing for this picture was using the camera's built in Landscape mode, which adds contrast and saturation to colors.

Any questions? I hope so. See you in Class.

Flower Friday

Nikon D90, 55mm micro lens, f/16 (best recollection), 1/100s, ISO 200. 

Have I mentioned that this is an old lens? It's more than 30 years old. It doesn't auto focus (no matter the camera) and the light meter in my camera also won't work with it. That means that I have to make a guess when taking my first picture. After that first guess, I can then look at the picture on the back of my camera and refine the settings to make the correct exposure. However, the Sunny f/16 rule helps me get very close on my first shot.

Why would I do this, you ask? Why would I want a lens that doesn't even utilize all the fancy-pants capabilities of my expensive camera? Because it's a macro lens, I say. That means that I can get very close to something and still have it in focus. This particular lens happens to project an image into my camera that is the same size as the object being projected. That means that an M&M shot close up with this lens would be recorded at life size--which is great when I get it on the computer because now I can print it far larger than life size with perfect resolution. I could print this image as a 24"x36" poster and have it looking very good. With a non-macro lens, I would have to crop to bring my flowers up so close, and that means that I would lose resolution and enlargement size. 

I got this manual lens because it's a few hundred dollar less expensive than the alternatives. Plus, it's a great exercise in understanding what happens to make a good exposure...

New Season of D-Town!

Hey Gang! I'll see you tonight at the Studio. Don't forget to bring your pictures on a thumbdrive, or SD card, or CD, or whatever so that we can review them together. you'll find that you really learn a load from this sort of process.

also, have a look at this link--DTOWN TV is a short webisode each week about digital photography. I think it's a great resource, and it's handy when you have a few minutes to kill.

See you tonight!

NO class, two articles

No class, tonight, because I'm still in Delaware (see my blog for updates).

Check out these two articles, though: One from a dad who shoots his kid's soccer games, and this one with terrific landscape tips.

White Balance

Do you remember your film pictures that you took at your cousin Grace's wedding reception about 22 years ago? You know, the ones that you used your camera's flash to light up faces with. They're the ones with white faces, but everything in the background is orange.

This is a white balance problem. White Balance has to do with the color of light coming into your camera. Daylight is very white, and florescent lights are green, and lightbulbs are orange, while outdoor shade is blue. Each of these colors of light must be dealt with or the pictures won't look quite right.

With Film, we either have to buy film specifically made for the color of light (daylight is the default), or we can counter it with filters on the front of the lens--blue filter counters orange light, pink counters green. Fortunately, in the digital world our cameras can adjust to the light without physical filters.

Unfortunately, your camera's default setting is "Automatic". This usually renders skin tones cooler than I prefer. Look for the White Balance setting on your camera, sometimes just WB. This adjustment alone will make your pictures look better immediately.

For this image, I had some trouble. There were regular old G.E. incandescent (tungsten) lightbulbs lighting the back of the shop to camera left, and large windows to camera right. The sun was not shining directly in the windows, so the light coming in is coming from the blue sky, which means it's very blue light.

So, this would be a very mixed up set up for white balance. I solved the problem by "gelling" my flash. This means I put a gel, a colored piece of transparent plastic, on my flash to match the color of the lightbulbs. This still doesn't solve the blue light from the window problem, though.

When using a flash, shutter speed controls how much ambient light is allowed to affect the exposure. Faster speed, less ambient light. The flash is fast, so it keeps up with a fast shutter speed without trouble.

The result is that the light making the exposure is almost all from the flash. there's a little bit coming from the lamp above the bench, but only because we're looking almost right at the bulb itself.

Besides the gel, I also put a diffusion dome on the flash, and shot it through my Zumbrella (though you can get the same one at a better value here). The flash is to camera right, triggered with the Nikon CLS system (that's the real reason I use Nikon).

Most Powerful Light in your Bag

Here's a great little article on Tripods. Strobist.com is a great place to keep up on lighting techniques using flashes of all sizes.

On the Spot Portraits

Little E. gives his pops a hug when he gets home from work. It's cute, ya know? Plus, I'm still vetting one of my lenses, deciding whether I want to keep it. It's fast (f/1.8 maximum aperture), which makes for sharper images at wider apertures, but sometimes I feel like it's not as sharp as I'd like. I'm beginning to see, however, that it looks great for portraits, but perhaps not as good for landscape distances. This one was made at f/3.5, and E. has nice crisp eyes, but pops is out of focus. This brings the viewers' eye right to E.'s eyes and smile, right where the focus should be. This shallow depth of field sets this sort of snapshot appart from the kind that has everything in focus--this type feels more composed even though pops just walked in the house. But hey, with kids this cute you can't make a bad exposure.

The trick with kids is just being ready. I shoot in Aperture Priority modes ("A" on Nikons, "Av" on Canons). This mode allows me to control the depth of field and not worry about the other settings. This is optimal for me because nothing looks more professional than portraits with a controlled depth of field. 

Also, start coaching your spouse, kids, or whomever might be holding the little guys to turn toward the light automatically when you point the camera their way--that makes it much easier to get nice images. Remind your...mature mother-in-law that she is not the subject, and that she will look flatteringly out of focus; she'll begin to trust you, and she'll appear more relaxed and natural in pictures. Finally, show her the pictures on the computer or in print after you have finished them off with processing when she looks good--don't just show her raw on your tiny camera screen!

Nikon D90, 85mm lens, f/3.5, 1/160s, ISO 800, east facing window light in the afternoon (see the square catchlights in the eyes?).

Man, I love airplanes

Let me know if you ever hear of an airliner for sale--it'd make a great studio. The bright light from the near window with the opposite windows for fill light...it's excellent. Throw in a willing seat mate, and you've got the start to a great trip.

See you at the Studio--if they get their homework done, we may have some great models to work with.

Nikon D90, 50mm lens, f/4.0, 1/50s, ISO 200

Class for Wednesday @ BATC

Don't forget, we'll be in the lab at BATC on Wednesday. Bring one or two of your favorite photos that you'd like some tips for processing on. I will use Lightroom3 Beta to demonstrate my workflow for finishing my pictures (pressing the shutter is only the first step!). See you in Class!

Oh, yeah, and it's open lab time at the Studio tonight from 6-8 if anyone wants to swing by and print a picture, or practice using your camera, or try other lenses, etc.

Watch this Show

Scott Kelby and Matt Kloskowski are two fantastic photographers and excellent educators, to boot. Each week they host a show teaching tips about photography. this week's includes a terrific interview with Chase Jarvis, another of my favorite photogs. Check it out and keep an eye on D-Town TV for continuing education. I also recommend viewing previous episodes--especially anyone shooting Nikon.

Welcome New Photogs!

I'm really excited about this new year and this new session of classes. It's the perfect time to be a photographer. We have some really incredible tools available to us now, both for capturing images and processing them to become just what we had in mind when we clicked the shutter. I'm sure excited about it, and I'm stoked to be sharing this time with you.

Keep an eye on this blog before class each week for important updates and information, and always bring your camera and be ready to shoot outdoors.

Remember your four steps to becoming better photographers:
1. Take pictures--every day
2. Look at Others' pictures--every day
3. Read your camera's manual--every day
4. Let others' take you picture, and view them--often (you thought I was going to say "every day," huh?)

This is your homework for the duration of our classes, and for life if you really want to become better photogs. I look forward to improving with you all.

Product Shots

Monday and Wednesday we are trying our hands at product/food photography. We need some plain hite sheets, lamps (the brighter the better), stuff to shoot (food, jewelry...stuff), tripods, plexiglass would be great, and if anyone has a shiny black piece of granite (like a tile) that would be cool, too. A solid black piece of material is a great backdrop also. A good looking glass with soda and some things to drop in it makes a fun pictures. We can eat the food afterward...

So, empty your cards and charge your batteries. See you tonight!

Always bring your camera

This image was shot last night in the parking lot of Borders. I saw the colors coming on and quickly unleashed my camera phone on the scene. I had my camera in the car, but by the time I got to the car, the colors were already gone. Granted it's not the best picture ever, but I got some color from it. The best camera is the one you have with you...


My phone has both exposeure compensation/bias adjustment and white balance control. I set this one to the tungsten (lightbulb) setting to catch the cooler colors mixed with the reds, and turned the exposure compensation way down to -2.0 to saturate the colors more.

How's it Done?

Days are getting short, and pretty soon our day jobs will keep us indoors until the sun is already set: we're going to have to get creative through the winter.

See, if you let your language skills get rusty over the winter then you're going to have to relearn a whole lot of stuff and that's demotivating and frustrating. Keep your Langauge of Light skills up! Keep on conversing!

So, here's an attempt tonight to keep my inner creative going even though I couldn't get out for a walk with the sun. How's it done? Leave comments with your answer--camera settings, creation process, etc.--and extra credit to everyone who gets it right...don't think too long about the credit thing, just figure out the picture...