The Light Side of Photography

One of the challenge for a beginner photographer is to understand the use of lightning. The easiest thing to do is to always leave the flash on the camera before taking every picture. However, the results will not always be the best.

Flash is a useful feature, but with improper use, it will make the human skin look too pale, and it can cause unwanted shadows in night photography. If you must use it, make sure you are as close as you can to the subject instead of staying back and zooming in.

But, if you want to get better, you need to start turning off the flash and learn to use the available light. One rule to follow is that if there is enough light to read a book, then, use the available light without any flash.

Also, taking picture without a flash will force you to adjust the shutter speed, aperture and ISO settings. At first, this will be a challenge. And you might overexpose or underexpose your pictures. But, with a little practice, it will get easier. The rewards is that you will learn how to use all your settings and take even better pictures.

Now, try this for today, take some pictures using the available light and no flash. And see what happens - you will learn a lot just doing this.

David

The Low and High of Contrast

Contrast is heard a lot of times in black and white photography. It is used in many ways. It could be good or could be bad. It all depends what you are trying to accomplish.

When you increase the range of tones and details, this is referred to increase of contrast. It is like having black and white together. The sharper the point where black and white meets, the higher the contrast. You can tell what is black and what is white.

Decreasing the contrast is when there is more haze and there are more soft ranges of tones in the picture. The difference between black and white is less noticeable.

Now, neither low nor high contrast is better than the other one. Again, it all depends what you are trying to accomplish. High contrast will give some sharpness and details will pop out. Low contrast will look softer and gentler.

The main point is to bring out the details that you want people to see.

Ok, go take some pictures and play around and try to take some high and low contrast pictures.

David

What Is The ISO Setting Used For?

In the digital photography age, ISO measures the light sensitivity in the image sensor of your digital camera.

Its settings are normally 80, 100, 200, 400, 800 etc. The higher the ISO setting in your digital camera, the more sensitive the image sensor will be to the light - but the noisier (grainier) the image will be.

Here is one way to better understand how ISO works.

When you are asleep in a dark room and someone wakes you up and turns on the light, what happens to your eyes? At this point, they are very sensitive to the light. It's like you are blinded by a little amount of light. Your eyes are extremely sensitive to the light at this point. And you don't need much light to see well. Well, that's equivalent to a high ISO setting - where you don't need much light to expose the picture correctly.

It is also the same when you are outside in a bright sunny day and go inside a house with poor lightning. Your eyes won't be sensitive to the light. You need more light to see well. This is equivalent to the low ISO setting - where it will need lots of light to expose the picture correctly.

What does this means for you?

Well, if you are in a low light situation, then you might want to use a higher ISO. For example, if you want to take pictures of the city at night (flash will be worthless since it's only effective to about 12-15 feet).

The reverse is true, if you are in a bright and sunny day, you want to use a low ISO setting. The pictures will be less noisier (less grainier - which means sharper too) with low ISO settings.

Remember, when you set the ISO in your camera, you’ll impact the aperture and shutter speed to take a well exposed shot. For example - if you increased your ISO setting from 100 to 400, you can shoot at faster shutter speeds or smaller apertures. For this condition, the trade off is that your picture will be noisier.

Another thing to be aware about setting ISO is to know what you are going to do with the picture. If you are using it for e-mails or small prints, then high ISO settings won't have much impact. But, if you want to blow up the picture to a 8X10 inch or a poster size, then you should try to keep it to the lowest ISO possible - you will be able to see the grain in the large image if you take it in a high ISO.

A simple way to see the difference, it's to take your camera and take the a picture with the highest and lowest ISO setting on the same subject. Use your digital zoom in your camera or in your computer and look at particular spot. You will see that the highest ISO setting have more noise than the lowest ISO setting.

Ok, now go take some pictures and keep practicing.

David