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.

Tone down that pop up flash already!

Do you use your camera’s pop up flash? So how’s that working out for you? I’m willing to bet that your shots are getting blown out, cold looking, and any ambient light that is available is being lost. So what can you do about it? There’s a couple of solutions available.

First is to go out and buy a hot shoe flash, these run from $50 and up. Depending on what you want to spend will determine what features and power you get out of it. I know what your saying, “I know this Mark. If I had the money don’t you think I’d be owning one by now?”

Yes I know you would have done this but for those who haven’t here’s solution number two. Get a thin piece of white paper, nothing thicker than typing paper. Pop up the flash and tape the paper to the back of the flash. Now curl the bottom of the paper down and tape it to a non moving part of the lens or camera body. Keep the paper loose so that you don’t bring the flash down.

Now you have a nice “soft box” to calm down the flash and turn it into a fill flash. This will cut down the distance the flash is effective, so a normal or short lens will work best for this (50mm or below). All you have to do now is focus and fire without changing the cameras settings. Not only will your subjects be better lighted but the ambient light will give nice warm lighting to the background.

Here’s examples of the what you can get:

Ambient light only.

Pop up flash, no paper soft box.

Pop up flash with paper soft box (I used notebook paper in this shot).

You can experiment with different papers and get different results. Some will allow more light than others and color paper gives a gel like illumination. Happy shooting.

Related Articles

• 8 On-Camera Flash Tips: How To Get Better Lighting From Your On-Camera Flash (digital-photography-school.com)
• Which Canon Speedlite Flash Is Right for You? (digital-photography-school.com)
• Two ways to freeze action with a camera flash (macworld.com)

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:

Viewfinder: answering photography’s most persistent questions

I would like to announce a new weekly feature on the blog “Viewfinder”. Every week questions sent to me by the readers through email or twitter will be answered. Well that sounded way more cool in my mind, but never the less this will be a fun way to connect with you all of you.

So send the questions my way and I look forward to hearing from all of you.

Sometimes not taking pictures helps

I found that sometimes not being behind the lens is helpful when your pictures are being a bit dull. Instead I turn to sketching and painting (digitally). It tends to free up your imagination and helps your mind to work through composition issues.

Doing sketches that involve shading helps you better understand the zone system used in black and white photography. If your sketches turn out flat and boring because of the flat shading then your mind will see this and correct its mistakes and produce  better picture next time.

Recently I’ve been practicing my skills painting in Photoshop and sketching in my book to help me get better both in art and b and w photography. Here’s what I’ve done so far:

It doesn’t matter how good you are at drawing. What really counts is getting your mind to get fresh ideas for new shots. Don’t let your mind get bored. The more it works the better your shots.

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.

Importance of Values in Your Pictures

When you paint, draw, or even take black and white photos you must have  good understanding of values. How light interacts with objects and shadows is very important to have knowledge of and without it your images are flat and boring. In this tutorial by Henning Ludvigsen will help you with exercises on doing value.

Making your sketches into paintings

Currently I’m working on getting my concept sketches transformed into digital illustrations, so naturally I’m scouring the internet for tutorials on this. I stopped at Imagine FX magazines site and found this tutorial by Michael Kutsche. It’s pretty good and doesn’t use any specific programs to create the illustration.

Click on the picture to go to the tutorial. Keep in mind that this tut uses Adobe reader to view it. If you don’t have it download the reader here.

Junk Tree Paradise a step by step

I personally love seeing the creative process of how an illustrator makes a painting. This step by step was made by Corey Loving and details how he made this illustration “Junk Tree Paradise”. His other works can be seen at his site Corey Loving.com.

Click on the header to see the tutorial.