back to the basics - with a point and shoot

So I decided I would take our little point and shoot out to work... maybe this will be a regular occurrence. At any rate, I wanted to see what I could capture on it.

So I stopped at Walmart on the way to work to look for a spice that it frankly a little hard to find. As I turned into the parking lot, I noticed the sun kissing the top of the mountains to the West. So I stopped in the parking lot. Granted, the foreground is not very aesthetic; but it is what it is. Honestly, it seems like half of the roads in Utah are under construction (but I won't get started with that).

Back to the picture. I am shooting in P (program mode) which is the next closest thing to Auto.
My thoughts are this... I want it to be a little under exposed so that the light hitting the mountain will be exposed, not the surroundings. So I changed my exposure bias down to -2/3. Did you know you could do that? Tell your point and shoot to underexpose? Yep. My exposure button is a little +/- in a square (button). I push that and I have the chance to overexpose or underexpose my shot.

Next I want to make sure that my ISO is on 100. Due to this being a point and shoot, pictures above 200 ISO, especially underexposed shots, turn out really grainy and the colors are noisy. So ISO 100 I was willing to maintain. [the only time I would dare go higher than ISO 400 on this point and shoot is in sufficient lighting and I just want the shutter speed to be faster]

Oh, and my flash is on Force-Flash OFF mode (I don't know if this makes any difference, but I think it does).

Finally as I compose my picture and press half way down, it tells me in the display what shutter speed it has chosen. This was 1/60 of a second. This is quick enough to be handheld, but I need to make sure that when I press that shutter, I don't move the camera. A big problem with small point and shoot cameras is that when you press the shutter, the camera has movement, and thus blurry photos if the shutter speed is slow.
As a general rule, if you are slower than 1/60 of a second, brace your camera on something solid, like a tree, a car, or even a tripod.
Well, enough of the talk. Here are the shots.

Here is a crop of the first image...

using available light

At times, a flash is inconvenient or even not available. So how do we maximize the light that we have? First of all, use the lowest f-stop you can while still maintaining a good focal length (see this link for more on f-stops and focal length)

The bigger the aperture (the lower the f-stop number: like 3.5 or 2.8 or even 1.4) the more light we let in. So we are able to use the available light. In addition, we can increase the ISO to around 800 to 1250 (or even to 1600)

Camera set on A (aperture priority) So with these 2 preparations, we are ready to capture some images. Wait, we need a setting and a subject. So, I took my kids... naturally. I put them in a reflected light. The sun was coming through the window and bouncing off of our white fridge. It was actually a little hot (too bright) but it worked. At first, my images were too bright because my light meter was set on "spot metering". Because the center of the image was darker, it overexposed the reflected light. To fix that, simply put the metering to "matrix metering" and it should compensate for that light.

Place the subject out of the direct light coming in, or you will get hot spots like this image...

From 20101212

Move the subject so that the back of their head is in the direct light and it looks like this...

From 20101212

Move them out of the direct light all together...

From 20101212

And finally, one more...

From 20101212

So, the pick of the day will be a different setting. Subject with one light coming through the window. Window at 2 o-clock and photographer at 6 o-clock.

From 20101212

Same settings used on the camera for all shots.

worth noting

I have mentioned Dave Black previously. Here is a snippet of him using some serious lighting power (eight SB-900's )

Flash as sunlight

In today's world of bazillion wedding photographers, it really seems that if you have a style that stands out, you are more likely to attract business. Many photographers have grasped the low depth of field that makes their subjects stand out. But what about using light to make your subject stand out. So I have been studying this photographer's images and tried to recreate his style. For me, it's a challenge that extends my abilities, like going to a restaurant, finding something you like, and then trying to recreate it at home from scratch.

So, how were these images captured? The highlights that you see are not from the sun, but from a flash a couple of feet above the subject. So, I underexposed the image by about 2 stops (change the EV on your camera to -2) and then put the flash on TTL (auto) +1 stop. Then take the image into adobe bridge and give a little more exposure to your subject. If I have time later, I will put this in detail as a tutorial. Give it a try.

From 20101003_to_post

From 20101003_to_post

Grouchy face  mommy :)

From 20101003_to_post

From 20101003_to_post

Depth of Field

So, here's a tool that I have found quite useful lately. It's called Simple DOF and it help you determine how much of your subject/s will be in focus. This is critical to understand while shooting portraits of more than one subject.

To illustrate... let grab an image...

So my girl is in focus. My boy... well, there goes the picture... he's not in focus.  The boy is about 2 feet further from the camera than the girl.
Clearly I intended for both to be in focus.  But it appears that we are giving some precedence to the girl here. I need to explain what I could have done to avoid this error.

First of all, because it was in the evening and I wasn't willing to push my ISO up (it is at 125 for this shot), then I had to use a larger aperture (f3.5 here). So I should have pulled out my DOF calculator (Simple DOF). I punch in that I am roughly at 34mm on my D300s camera (51mm on a full sized sensor), I was roughly 5 feet from my subject in focus (girl). The calculator tells me that my DOF is 0.85 feet. That's 10 inches.  In other words, everything from 5 foot 2 inches to 6 feet away from camera will be the sweet spot of focus.  Because the boy was more like 24 inches away, he falls in the out of focus zone.

So what could I have done differently? Well, I could have placed them equal distance from the lens. Pull the boy closer or move the girl further, or simply repositioned myself to be equal distance from both. Well, 10 inches isn't much room for error in estimating distance.
But here is an example of the same area with the same fstop. Notice both subjects are in focus here.

Same f3.5, but I backed up a bit, maybe 10 feet away, and 55mm. Now my Simple DOF calculates the focus to be 1.4 feet. That gives me almost 17 inches of focus rather than only 10. In addition, the two subjects are almost equal distance from the camera. So that gives me the focus on both of them while still getting the blurred background, so as to not distract from my subjects.

Well, that was a lot of talk... but hopefully you've learned something about calculating the dof. Google DOF or depth of field and read up a bit. It is very critical. I will end with this one where I shot 23 people and needed them all to be in focus. Fortunately, I had my ipod with me with Simple DOF on it, I used it, and it worked out. I was about 35-40 feet from the subjects, f2.8, and 70mm. That gives me around 7-10 feet of focus. I also tried to place everyone semi-equal distance from the camera by pulling in the sides and pulling forward the people on the top row. And it was nice to still have some background blur to contrast with the focused people.

2 light sources, one sun, one strobe

Just a note about evening light and fill flash.  Sunsets can produce nice warm lighting; but can also produce long harsh shadows.  This evening I took this one without a flash in my front yard... forgive the subject matter, it's not the most aesthetic.

I am shooting at ISO 100, f4.0 and 1/320 at 38mm.

For the record, I metered at around /125 and then stopped it down faster a few stops so that I wouldn't have the sun blowing out (too bright) on the back of the subject.  Plus, I knew I would be adding a flash to fill in the underexposed areas.  This is a nice trick, because then the background is also a bit underexposed and doesn't get all the attention it would if it too bright.  So, I add a flash to the right.  While the sun is coming in camera left, the flash was placed directly opposite.  No umbrella, just straight flash.  I put it on manual and stopped it to 1/16 power.  Here's the difference..

I could have used a reflector, but then there is the element of not knowing how much light is really reflecting.  The flash allows me to control that power.   Although the flash is cooler light than the reflector would be.
I zoomed in a bit to 55mm and found a bee for the final shot.

Notice the lighting from the right still fills in some of the shadows that would otherwise be a bit too dark for my liking.

Pick of the Day









I have added this photographers blog to my reader for some inspiration on lighting examples of weddings. He's got some good stuff. I would be interested what the source of light was for the front of this subject. Definitely the sun is behind her, but is it a flash or a bounce reflector in front??? Very possibly, there was someone holding a reflector down in the lower right, but he may have added this dark feature in photoshop to cover that person. We may never know.

Skies

An incredible evening of light and magic. When the light from outside starting pouring yellow abundantly in through the windows, I knew it was time to grab the camera and head outside last night.

Tip of the day... if you have a PC (heaven forbid ;) ) and you are looking for a good program to manage your images, I have a favorite. Thanks to Rich (whom Spence and I met in Yellowstone) for turning me on to this... it's called FastStone Image Viewer. Check it out... you may convert. I use it at work since I don't have Adobe Bridge/Photoshop.

This first shot is straight from the camera, no editing.