Shutter speed, it’s different than what you think.

It’s important to know when your taking a picture what elements are used in the camera to make the proper exposure. “Why, my camera automatically sets things. I don’t even have to think about it” you may say, but if you want more control over the control of light and consider what the camera “believes” is correct then you’ll want to know this.

There are three things that make an exposure. ISO (the camera’s sensitivity to light), aperture (this control’s how much main or active light is used), and shutter speed (how much ambient or background light is used). The balance of these three create a correct exposure. By manipulating any of these three you can greatly affect the mood or purpose of the image.

Today we’ll focus on shutter speed alone. In the following images the ISO and aperture will remain the same at ISO100 and f/ 8.0. The flash is camera left about one foot away set at 1/32 power with a diffusor set in front. The room has an overhead dining room light on and there is a window with closed blinds behind the camera with daylight coming through. The only thing that’s going to change is the shutter speed with it initially being set at 1/100th of a second.

 

You’ll notice that all ambient light is eliminated and only the flash is lighting the scene. If the flash power was set little closer to the cup there would be only a black background and the cup would be brighter.

In this shot the shutter speed is slowed to 1/60. Notice how the background is starting to show and the window light is lighting and little on the right side of the cup.

At 1/40 the scene is still primarily lit by the flash but the chair back on the right is beginning to show like a shadow.

Now at 1/25 of a second the ambient light is beginning to light the scene a little. You can see the back wall and the shadow top left is filling in. Also you’ll notice the right side of the cup is being filled in by more of the sunlight from the window.

At 1/15 more of the light is used for the background. It’s a bit moody but could be used as a very early morning concept.

1/10th is really using the ambient light better than the previous settings. You’ll need to forgive the color balance. I set it for the flash lighting and not the window and overhead tungsten light.

1/6th of a second is, in my opinion, showing nicely exposed. The flash is illuminating the left side of the cup as fill and there is nice specular highlights on top.the rest of the cup is lit by the window and the overall background is lit by the overhead light.

The last couple of shots will show how dragging the shutter even longer to 1/4 and 1/2 respectively brings in more of the ambient light and mostly eliminates the flash.

 

Next post we’ll see how by changing the aperture we can control how much active light is used.

How Do I Get a Laptop Screen to be a Main Light?

Wow, look at that hansom man doing his taxes and it’s just incredible how well that laptop lit his body, it’s almost unbelievable. Well as it is said on Looney Tunes, “Don’t you believe it.” What we have going on here is actually a slightly clever off camera flash, on camera pop-up, and continuous light setup. Notice I left out the laptop, it’s not even on (key element. I’ll get to this later).

The premise for this shot is a man doing his taxes finds that doing online is easier than by hand. Issue #1 was that the light from a laptop screen is far to low for fast shutter speeds and also not white balanced to 5500K (white strobe color). Issue #2 was if I went without lighting from the screen then the whole scene falls apart because it would be obvious that I was pointing and smiling at a dead computer, “oooo! Look at the amount of black on my screen, I must be getting a great return!” Time to bring in the off camera flash.

How I set this up is simple, to my left I have a continuous light with umbrella on, with a 150 watt CFL 5500K balanced bulb in it. This gave me my fill light and was lower in brightness than the main flash so I would define the shadow areas better. On the laptop keyboard setting on the little flash stand that came with it, is my remote triggered flash. I set it at it’s lowest power setting since I was so close to it. Anything brighter would overexpose the shot. Finally, on the camera I opened the pop-up flash and placed over it a paper towel to lower the amount of light that is thrown on the scene. I wanted it to trigger the main flash and light the front of the tax book, but not light anything else.

Once everything was in place, I set the delay timer, tripped the release, ran over to my spot, and smiled. Yes, I did this alone. This was done on the same day I actually did my taxes and the wife and kids left me completely to myself the entire day. Anyway, everything worked great. All the flashes fired and the scene is color balanced as opposed to the blurry yellow tungsten type lighting I got with the laptop screen. Total time for shoot, about 1 hour but only because I never did this kind of setup before.

Viewfinder Episode 2: Weather and Landscapes

It’s an exciting time for me. I have been listed on an international blog and I received my first email from India by Mr. Mitesh Patel:

I am sending you some photos which I snapped …in monsoon days, but the camera is not good so it might be not looking good in zoom ….please… give comment on it.

Well this brought up an interesting thought, How does one get good weather and landscape pictures? Well it’s a combination of skill, timing, and mostly luck. I’m going go through some steps to take to get a good landscape shot which will result in people saying, ” WOW!”, Well maybe not wow but definitely them remembering your picture.

First lets take a look at Mr. Patel’s photo’s.

Copyright 2010 Mitesh Patel All Rights Reserved

Copyrightright 2010 Mitesh Patel All Rights Reserved

Copyright 2010 Mitesh Patel All Rights Reserved

Copyright 2010 Mitesh Patel All Rights Reserved

Copyright 2010 Mitesh Patel All Rights Reserved

Now the biggest issue here is that there is no dominate foreground subject, except in the last shot. The clouds are very dramatic and do make for a good scene but without a foreground subject (i.e. cityscape, a road with car lights streaming on it) there’s nothing to give the viewer the feeling of how vast the storm clouds are. This is what makes landscapes tricky. Without the foreground subject the story of the picture is lost. What does the image say to the viewer?

What I would suggest is have the bottom 1/3rd of the frame (either in landscape or portrait orientation) be a subject on the ground. This can be a city skyline, a nice beach and ocean, the vast beauty of the land stretching out into the distance or any other subject that can fill the frame on the bottom. A key point here is to have the camera up higher than ground level. With a higher vantage point your composition is much more dramatic and you can see further into the distance.

After you have your foreground now compose the background which takes up the rest of the frame. See if there are any tall objects that distract from the scene, such as the tower or light pole in pictures 2 and 3. How does the sunlight effect the color of the clouds? It is a rare occurrence when the weather actually works well with human timing, but if you can get a shot just as the sun is on the horizon, the colors on the clouds are incredible and really make the shot memorable. Make sure the horizon line is level by using a tripod or by bracing yourself against something sturdy. If your horizon isn’t level in a landscape it wont matter how good the composition is, people will feel there’s something off with the shot.

Now, take your picture. Once it’s done take several more just to make sure you got a good shot. Move slightly from one spot to another, change the viewpoint some, or even, if you have enough time, go to a location across the street and set up again. The different angle might make a better composition; You can never tell until you do it.

I think the best shot of the group was picture 5. It has a strong foreground with the two building sides showing and an interesting cloud formation above it. The thing here, and this is not Mr. Patel’s fault but rather the camera, is that the picture contrast is flat and hazy.

Here, however is where the digital world helps. Import your picture into any photo editing program. Next you’ll want to deepen the shadows a bit to bring out the clouds and the shadow side of the building, so just lower the brightness a few points. Next adjust the contrast up a little to separate the building from the clouds and remove the haze and there is a very nice and dramatic photo of monsoon clouds. Here’s what it looks like:

Copyright 2010 Mitesh Patel All Rights Reserved

I hope this helps Mr. Patel, thank you for reading and I hope you come back to see more. Practice will improve your skills with the camera and train your eye to see the composition better. Keep a camera with you as much as possible and use it often. Have a great time with your photography.

Viewfinder Episode 1

Last Friday Blustocking asked, “Mark what kind of filter did you use to make the sky stand out so much? I’m curious cuz on Black and White film (what I use) the sky tends to come across as white.”

The camera I use is a digital SLR and I shoot in RAW then edit the shot in photoshop to get my black and white look. Now since you use film you have a variety of options of film and filters that will give you different contrasts to your composition. An excellent resource of different films and their outputs is I Heart Film.

Now the types of filters to use is determined by how dark you want a certain color range you want to be. I know what your thinking, “black and white aren’t colors, it’s tones.” Your right, however if you want the color blue to be darker in tone then you’ll want to use a filter color that will allow that to happen. So the question really is which filter color will darken which object color on film.

The main types of filters are yellow, orange, and red. There are others (blue and green for instance) but you’ll get what you want from these colors. Now a filter will lighten it’s own color while darkening it’s complementary color or opposite color on a color wheel. Yellow will lighten yellow colors and darken blue colors or red lightens red hues and darkens green.

Keep in mind that the darker the color of filter the less light that gets to your film. Yellow, orange, and red filters have a -1, -2, and -3 stops respectively. So keep an eye on your cameras TTL metering or use a hand held light meter to be sure your exposure is correct.

For shots that involve mainly blue sky, use a yellow filter. This will darken the blue and keep the clouds the same (since white is a neutral color).  If ,however, you have landscape or other objects in the shot you’ll want to use the orange filter instead. This will affect a wider range of colors since it’s between red and yellow on the color wheel.

Thanks for your question Bluestocking and happy shooting.

Original:

Yellow filter:

Just tri-toning around

I’ve had a wallpaper design on my desktop a little to long and wanted something different. So I decided to use the Duotone mode in photoshop to tone this flower.

The process is simple:

1. Make sure your color picker is black and white.

2. Go to image>adjustments>gradient map and select the first gradient. Now your image is black and white with a nice tonal range (better than just gray scale).

3. Now go to image>mode>gray scale and click flatten image (if you have any layers) and then discard color information. Your image will not change any from the black and white but this step is needed so that the duotone mode is available.

4. once again go to image>mode>duotone. Now this is where you’ll need to do a little hunting (but only once). In the dialog box click load then locate your adobe photoshop CS3 file, then presets, then duotones.  Now you’ll see three folders Duotones, Tritones, and Quadtones.

5. Select any folder, that will open to more subfolder selections. Click on any of those you feel like (it’s a cruel joke by PS developers I think). Now, finally, you have weird filenames on your screen select on one and click load.

6. There you are, your picture is now toned. The computer will remember the location of the duotone file from now on and you’ll be able to get to the tones much easier. I like using the quadtone folder for black and white pictures because it gives great richness to the scene. But if you want a nice color tone try the tritones.

Experiment with the different file presets and create your own. Have fun toning.

ArtRage 2.5 review

Recently I happened upon a nifty program called ArtRage 2.5. It’s a painting program that’s simple but still has has powerful features. For over ten years I have been a Photoshop only guy and didn’t really venture out to other programs.

A couple of weeks ago I purchased the ImagineFX magazine which comes with a goodies DVD. ArtRage was included on this DVD and I installed it. I give two thumbs up even though I had the feature limited free edition. The price for the full version is $25 and can be downloaded from the website. There is also a very helpful forum full of advice, resources, and art from other ArtRage users.

So if PainterX is daunting and Photoshop is just to much for your first trip into the digital world, check out ArtRage 2.5. It is an excellent way into digital art without breaking your pocketbook.

This painting was inspired by my older son who was on a Star Wars drawing frenzy. The Red guard was done in ArtRage and the background was an old promotional poster for Star Wars III that was modified in Photoshop.

Christmas balls

3B digital asked:

Very nice! I see the castle. Did you do this with the “Balls and Bubbles” effect? (maybe that’s only in Paint Shop Pro–??)

Well actually no. This picture involes a stock image file of christmas decorations in a bin at a store and previously made pictures. Once my source files were set up I would select an area of one of the digital illustrations with a circular selection tool.

Then I selected Filter>Distort>Spherize and set the distortion value to 100% giving the selected area a good rounded sphere look. After that I copied the selection and went to the decorations image. I picked the ornament I wanted and selected it (I went into quick mask to make sure the edges that go behind objects were correct).

Next I went to Edit>Paste into, this places the copied selection into the ornament selection. I used free transform to fit the image to the right size of the ornament. Next I changed the blend mode to overlay and lowered the opacity to show more realisim.

Now it’s a rinse and repeat process.

Happy Thanksgiving

Birks Photography would like to wish you and your family a very happy and delicious Thanksgiving.

How to make that skin look real.

foolscircle asked “That’s awesome! I just found your blog, and I love the effect. How did you achieve the effect on her skin?”

Well here goes, I was walking through the desert one day and I saw a lady with really bad skin and… well ok not really. It basically involves the use of three stock images, some steady hands, and a lot of spare time.

1. I first removed unwanted elements from the models picture and placed her on top of the desert background using free transform to get the model to the correct proportions.

2. I next chose a texture to place on her face that would have similar colors to the models skin. in this case I choose an image that was of dried mud with cracks. I then placed that layer on top.

3. reducing the opacity to 20 or 30 percent so that I could see the image below I began erasing large areas that were not needed of the texture leaving a rough outline covering the models face and hair. Next I went back to 100% opacity and then changed the blending mode to overlay to allow the colors of the lower level to show through to the top. (Depending on your texture you may want to experiment with your blending mode to find what works best)

4. Now comes the steady hand and spare time part. Select the eraser and remove all unwanted texture from the hair, eyeballs (not the eyelids), clothing, and any other part that isn’t related to the face. It’s very important to be exact here to give the allusion that the lines are a part of the face and not just laid on top. Zoom to 200% and reduce the erasure width to 1 or 2 pixels to get individual strands of hair cleared.

5. Now that fun was done you’ll notice that some of the lines go straight over areas that curve away like the bridge of the nose or ear canals. These straight lines must be broken by placing a 3 pixel gap just after the point that the curve happens. This give the allusion that the line curves with the skin and then continues on after it comes into view again. Look over ever part of the image, it will only take a few missed lines to ruin the whole effect. Once your certain you got the details done (triple check) merge the texture with the model.

6. Ok, we’re getting close to the end now. Put on your surgical mask because we are becoming Photoshop cosmetic surgeons. Go into Filter>liquefy and select bulge. Choose a small size (only a few pixels wide) setting for the brush and slightly poof out the edge of the bottom lip. This will give dimension and curve to the lines that cross over the mouth. If you feel like changing the eye color magic wand the eye color and then change the saturation.

So there you go in a nut shell, that is how you make a perfectly good model have a really bad skin condition and radiated eyes. In all this picture took me about three or four hours to complete. The biggest help to you will be to find a texture that somewhat matches the skin tone of the model so that the overlay blend matches and doesn’t wash out.

Have fun and don’t forget to blink when your working on the hair.