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

The Magical Tricks of Taking Explosive Firework Pictures

Back on 2004, someone asked me how to set his camera to take pictures of fireworks. It was 2 days from July 4th. I was in a hurry and could not give him a tutorial.

But, I wrote him back with a quick and simple step-by-step instructions. It turn out to be so helpful that I want it to share this with you too. Here it is:

Fireworks are a little trickier because of the situation and timing.

* First arrive early to find the best spot. Again, walk around to
find the best angle and location to shoot what you want. If it's windy, you want the wind blowing from your back towards the firework - that way the smoke won't be in front of your pictures.

* Bring a tripod and extra memory cards and plenty of batteries.

* Set your image to the highest resolution - this is to get the best picture and you can always tone it down with your computer.

* Now, start to take pictures with shutter of 1/125 to freeze the motion or 1/30 to blur the fireworks.

* Your aperture should be set as high as possible - start with f8.

* Set ISO at 100.

Once the firework starts, take a shot with the initial settings. View it in your screen. If it's overexposed, increase your shutter speed or narrow your aperture openning. If it's underexposed, decrease your shutter speed or open up your aperture. Increase or decrease the shutter or the aperture one at a time...not both.

If you are a beginner, I would recommend to start with shutter priority setting. Set the shutter your want and let the camera set the aperture to compensate. Make sure you see what aperture the camera choses before taking the picture. Take the picture and preview. If it looks good, then it was a good setting. If you want to go a step further, put it to manual setting and set the same shutter speed and aperture you had. Then increase and decrease the shutter or aperture settings.

Start simple with one or two settings. Take pictures and preview. Change one setting, take another picture and preview. You will see the difference everytime. Write down or remember what your settings are and look over what you did...this is one of the best way to learn!

I want to add a little more to it.

* Another thing to remember, it's to keep the camera very steady when taking the picture. Use the 2 seconds self-timer to take the picture if you can't keep the camera steady - the only bad thing is that you will need to have good anticipation and timing if you use the self-timer.

* Also, don't autofocus. The autofocus might not focus what you want and everything could be blurry. Manual focus first and leave it at that setting.

* Turn the flash off - there will be plenty of lights from the fireworks.

* Try to use the highest aperture setting as possible for sharper images.

* This is the hardest one... make sure your spot is not too close. You will have a harder time capturing everything into the picture's frame. I would stay a little far away so I can fit the whole explosion of the firework in the picture.

* Go in with a goal... what do you want to accomplish? Do you want freeze motion or blurred motion in your pictures? Do you want to include the crowd too or just the firework or do you want to catch some buildings that are near by? Try to envision what your pictures will look like to get an idea of what you want first. It doesn't have to be concrete, but it will help.

Don't be scare to take a lot of pictures. It's ok to take many pictures. You can discard the bad ones later on.

Have fun and take explosive pictures.

David

Digital Camera Training: The Trick To Distort The Size Of Your Photographs

Digital Camera Training: The Trick To Distort The Size Of Your Photographs

The Trick To Distort The Size Of Your Photographs

One of the nice trick in photography is that you can change the size of near and far objects. You can make far object look closer to your subject in your picture. Or you can increase the distance between the subject and the background.

The trick is with the lens. There is no special skills.

If you want the background closer to the subject, zoom to a high setting - usually around 80mm or higher. Step a little back as you zoom your lens so the subject will appear bigger in your viewfinder. I would normally step back enough so the subject would fit well into the picture frame. Once you take the picture, you will see that the background is closer to the subject... sometimes, just behind it.

Now, if you want the background farther away from the subject, use the wide angle. Set your wide angle to the lowest number as possible - usually 28mm or 35mm - and get step closer to the subject... close enough so the subject fits well into the picture frame. You will notice that the backgound extends farther away from the subject.

Play with these settings. You can create dramatic and artistic effects by distorting the proportion.

And remember, practice and practice. It can only make you a better photographer.

David

How to Take Interesting Photography With Two Settings

The first goal of many beginner photographers is to take clear and sharp pictures. But, once you achieve this goal, you will most likely move into something more creative and different.

Imagine for a minute. If you were taking portrait pictures of your family, your photo album would be full of the same pictures but in different scenes. You will have a picture of uncle Joe in his birthday for this year, uncle Joe's birthday picture from last year, uncle Joe in aunt Jane's birthday, and so on.

I have to say that for your family, this is usually great. It's always nice to see how changes happens every year and how different each event is. But, if you wanted to show it to some friends, it will just look very repetitious to them.

Now, I went over aperture and shutter speed already. You know by now that both controls the amount of lights into the camera. The shutter speed can be changed to blur or freeze actions and movements. And, aperture, can increase or decrease the depth of field.

One thing you should understand that shutter speed and aperture works in tangent. As you increase the shutter speed one setting, you will need to open up your aperture one setting to maintain the same amount of light exposure to your picture. That is, if you take a picture at f/16 aperture using 1/125 shutter speed, you can take the same picture at f/11 using 1/250.

Combining the two controls in different settings can produce very interesting and diffferent pictures with the same digital camera.

Remember, if you want to blur some actions... then, decrease your shutter speed and narrow down your aperture to compensate the amount of light. On the other hand, if you want to freeze the same actions, you will increase your shutter speed and open up your aperture.

If you are also looking at the foreground or background, you can increase or decrease the depth of field. At the same time you can blur or freeze the action to create some visual effects.

Try testing this in a park with birds. Take pictures with the same subject and background and use different shutter speed settings while compensating the aperture settings in your camera. Look at the results. Then, use the same scenario. This time use your aperture settings to increase and decrease the depth of field while compensating the shutter speed settings in your camera.

You will see that you only need to do very little to achieve extraordinary effects by playing around with these two controls. Many savvy photographers have achieved different special effects in their photographs using these two controls. You can do the same.

Again, practice and practice. You will see how easy it is.

David