WBF Photography Tips!

amirm

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Apr 2, 2010
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Seeing how we have a number of capable photographers amongst us, I thought it would be nice to have a thread where we publish our best learned tips and tricks.

No, we won't rival the wealth of information in various photo sites. But perhaps we can have a to the point thread with highlights of major tricks we use to better our images.
 

JackD201

WBF Founding Member
Apr 20, 2010
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Not a pro by a long shot but chasing my kids around, I do two basic things to avoid losing the moment so to speak.

1. Bracket Exposure

2. Shoot Wide, Crop later if needed
 

amirm

Banned
Apr 2, 2010
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Setting the right exposure

In days of film and prints, we all tried hard to find the right exposure for our images. Today though, we are able to modify the exposure easily in the computer.

This gives us a tool: instead of targeting the right exposure, we can target it so that it optimizes the maximum dynamic range out of the sensor. As with all things, there is a noise floor in the system, and there is a maximum, after which we get digital clipping. The former shows up as noise in the image. The latter whites with no detail.

Fortunately, we have great tools in mid to higher-end cameras. One is called the historgram. Here is the Canon version:


What you see in the X axis is the pixel values from black to the left and white to the right. To maximize exposure, you do what is called "exposure to the right." You attempt to increase exposure until the curve gets close to the right but never touches it.

These images may turn out to be too bright but per above, you then bring the exposure down in your photo application to where it needs to be and in the process, also attenuate the noise!

The above can be tricky to do sometimes as danger of clipping is ever present. So there is another tool called "blinking highlights." This is a feature of the camera where the preview image on the camera LCD shows blinking dots for any pixels clipped. You want to strive to never have blinking pixels.

Note that there is a school of thought that says to expose the right amount even in digital as a) that would avoid the need to manipulate the image later and b) easier ability to preview images and not be thrown off by the apparent overexposure.

I personally practice halfway down this path. I try to push the exposure to the right but don't go insane about it. New cameras have very good noise floor so I am not sure we need to keep maximizing the exposure latitude.
 

amirm

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Apr 2, 2010
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Seattle, WA
Light direction

This tip will save you $1,000 To $2,000! I am serious. There is a bird photographer called Arthur Morris. He has photo workshops where you pay thousands of dollars to accompany him to various wildlife sites. There, he will teach you a couple of tips. This is one of them (and the one he pushes the most, and practices the most).

The tip is to always put the light directly behind you. Light in this case means the sun. The sun is a huge light source. If it is directly behind you, it gives you a pleasing image as it washes the images, leaving almost no shadows.

The way you do this is that at all times you watch your own shadow and line up the camera and its lens to point in exactly the same direction.

The trick also works quite well for people photography. After all, if it can make an animal look good, it surely can do the same for a person :).

I don't practice this religiously as it can compromise composition and bring in undesired background into the image. But where I can, I try to come close to it. Here is an example:
Canon 1D MK II, ISO 400, 500 mm lens + 2X teleconverter (1000mm total), F8, 1/800



And another: Canon 1D MK II, ISO 100, 500 mm lens + 1.4X teleconverter (700mm total), F 7.1, 1/500



Here is what happens when you violate the rule: Canon 1Ds MK III, ISO 100, 70-200mm f2.8 zoom with 1.4X teleconverter (280mm), f4.0, 1/1250


See how the neck is overexposed and there is a strong shadow cast under the wing. Alas, it is so hard to capture anything in flight that I still cherish these images :). But all else being equal, I strive to remove the shadows by having the right angle toward the bird. (in this case, I was shooting later in the day and the sun angle was mostly from above -- not a good thing).

Here is another image violating the rule and kept for the same reason: Canon 1D MKII, 300mm F2.8 lens, ISO 100, f3.2, 1/4000



So practice this next time you are out taking pictures of people or animals. Put the sun directly behind you and see if it improves your images. Pay attention to work from major photographers and search the shadows to see if they practice the same :).
 

JackD201

WBF Founding Member
Apr 20, 2010
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Wow!
 

naturephoto1

Member
May 24, 2010
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Amir,

Very nice photos. Art Morris is one of if not the top bird photographer in the North America and one of the finest in the world. Unless things have changed, he and I both use the same printer, Bill Nordstrom. Bill used both of our photos of Great Blue Herons for his booth at Photo Plus at the Javits Center in NYC some years ago. It is/was the largest photo show in North America. Art's photo was one of his best known. All of my images below are Copyrighted. This is the one that I took with an 800mm Leica Modular lens on loan from Leica Camera USA with my Leica R7 (as I recall) on slide film in 1998; this was an award winning photo for Professional Photographers of America and was used by Leica Camera USA:



Taken with the same lens and as I recall the same camera on slide film in 1998; highest honors by Professional Photographers of America, Print Collection, and used by Leica Camera USA:



and several others with the same lens in 1998:

The first of which was supposed to be used by Fuji Photo Film at Photo Plus West, but they changed their mind:









and this one with the same lens and a 1.4X Apo extender (total focal length of about 1120mm):



One of my recommendations is to whenever possible use some sort of support, particularly a tripod.

Rich
 
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rblnr

Member Sponsor & WBF Founding Member
May 3, 2010
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Coupla things:

I know Amir was not suggesting front light (sun behind the photographer) as an in-stone rule. What's good for birds is not necessarily good for a face. I would suggest that for people anyway, this if often not the best way to go. Hard sunlight often looks better used to backlight people -- that's how you get the bright rim that defines shape, hair, etc. -- that sometimes golden glow -- that separates people from the background. That bright sunlight is often not flattering on faces, and skin tone is often better a bit underlit, meaning not at exposure. The trick then is to expose properly for the flesh tone, and this comes down to understanding what you want to expose for and the metering pattern of your camera (often selectable). A little subtle fill flash can be very helpful here. You will see in so many movies and outdoor stills of models that they are down in brightness vs. the background. This comes from how the subject is placed vs. the light source (usually the sun) and whether overhead diffusive materials are used to cut the sun on the subject, letting everything outside of the covered area go brighter.

It may be that the difference between the brightest highlights -- in the hair, on the shoulders, the window curtain, etc. and the fleshtone exceeds the dynamic range that your camera can handle. It's OK to let the highlights burn in this scenario, particularly if you're not going to spend much time post-processing you image.

When shooting landscapes, the light right behind you is often the worst place in that it flattens out the textures and topography that can make for a striking image. As a simple tip, your best shots will usually come early morning/late day, particularly for landscapes, when the light is most angular and soft because it's passing thru more atmosphere.

Another tip is to learn the impact of focal length. Rather than standing in a spot and zooming to the frame you want, experiment by shooting the same frame from very different focal lengths , perhaps both ends of your zoom. Wider angle lenses/settings present a very different spatial perspective, depth of field and emotional feel from longer focal lengths. (I could go on a long time about this, but feel like I'm rambling enough already!) When shooting wildlife, we're generally stuck with being far away so our lens choice is made for us. When we can change our position relative to the subject, don't just zoom to the frame you want, try to think about what you want the pic to look like, and what focal length will deliver that. Then get yourself to where you need to be. A big downside, btw, of shoot wide and crop is that you're now shooting everything more or less wide angle, and for people anyway, this is often not particularly flattering. Doing so takes a major contributor to the image out of the equation.

I find irony in that I'm now about to hit 'post quick reply'
 

garylkoh

WBF Technical Expert (Speakers & Audio Equipment)
Sep 6, 2010
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www.genesisloudspeakers.com
Those are awesome pictures, Amir and Rich.

One of the most valuable accessories I've discovered has been the blow-up inflatable softbox. I sometimes wonder why it is not more popular. It diffuses the on-camera flash and flash pictures come out with softer shadows.

http://www.amazon.com/Opteka-Inflatable-Universal-Diffuser-External/dp/B001GRU1AA

It has never come off my flash since I bought it.

There are various brands, but I can't find the one I have anymore - PhotoFlex.
 

amirm

Banned
Apr 2, 2010
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Seattle, WA
Don't be afraid to crop

Thanks guys :).

One of the key rules of photography is to only put in the absolute necessary elements in the picture and no more. When shooting wildlife at least, this is hard to control many times. Animals move and backgrounds are changing all the time. But even in other circumstances you may have unwanted elements such a road sign half chopped off on the corner of the image.

Also, artistically, the fixed aspect ratio of your sensor may not match what you are shooting. I will post more about this later but you will see some aspect of this in this post.

For these reasons is you want to learn and use the easies photo manipulation available to you, namely cropping. This is a process where you select what you want to keep, what you want to remove.

Here is an example: note that the image is wider than it would normally look in 35 mm. I did not stretch the horizontal dimension but rather, chopped off vertical.
Canon 1D MK II, ISO 160, 500 mm f4 lens, F4, 1/640



Here is an example for composition where I did the opposite by removing the horizontal pixels. This image would look "wrong" if I used the above horizontal look.
Canon 1D MK II, ISO 125, 500 mm f4 lens + 2X Teleconverter (1000mm total), F9, 1/800



Another example of cropping vertical pixels:
Canon 1Ds MK III, ISO 100, 600 mm f4 lens, F5, 1/640



And horizontal:
Canon 1Ds MK III, ISO 200, 600 mm f4 lens, F5.6, 1/400



Applying the same to flowers:
Canon 1D MK II, ISO 200, 180 mm macro lens, F6.3, 1/250



And plants turned into abstract art. I struggled to get a good shot out of this image for hours until I applied the crop and it all clicked in place:
Canon 1D MK II, ISO 100, 180 mm macro lens, F14, 1/30

 

amirm

Banned
Apr 2, 2010
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Seattle, WA
Keep eyes in focus

This is a very important thing when taking pictures of people and animal. If something has an eye, it must be in focus or the brain interprets the whole image not to be sharp. From evolutionary point of view, we are used to making contact with the eyes first and then expanding out to the rest of what we are seeing.

Obviously, you achieve this by making sure your camera focuses on the eye(s). If you leave your camera in automatic however, it will choose its focus point, not you. It will often look for areas of maximum contrast and focus on that, literally. You need to find the menu option that lets you select the focus point and use that force the camera to focus on the right area. This unfortunately is not available on low cost cameras.

Now, even if you have the focus point, it is still possible to wind up with eyes out of focus slight due to camera focusing error, subject movement, or camera not having enough time to focus. And advanced trick, which I won't drill into here, calls for selecting just the eye in a photo manipulation program and sharpening that portion more! And with it, making the image right again (sharpening an entire image might create too many artifacts elsewhere).

See this example of "street shooting." If I had let the camera pick something, it may have opted for the foreground image:
Canon 1D MK II, 70-200 F4 shot at F4.5, ISO 500, 1/125



Note that I only had a short second to take the above picture as these are street fashion girls in Tokyo who are doing their own thing and rarely post for you (and when they do, it is an awful artificial pose which I avoid). Yet I had made sure I had her eyes in focus.

And another:Canon 1D MK II, 70-200 F4 shot at F4, ISO 200, 1/400



Now, I should put a disclaimer I should have included in the first post. Sometimes you want to break these rules. I would say you better first master the rule and then figure out when it makes sense to break it. Only then will you appreciate if the image with broken rule is better, or flat our wrong. See this example:
Canon 1D MK II, 70-200 F4 shot at F4, ISO 640, 1/125



I just love this image. It emphasizes the Japanese female fascination with treating their cell phone as jewelry with ornaments and such and yet, it brings the feel of the way they wear their street fashions. That said, if I asked my wife if she likes this image, likely she would ask for a version with the girl in focus. :) What do you think?
 

garylkoh

WBF Technical Expert (Speakers & Audio Equipment)
Sep 6, 2010
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www.genesisloudspeakers.com
Thanks, Amir.

When you crop, the most pleasing proportions are somewhere between 1.5:1 to 1.77:1. Gustav Fechner, the father of the aesthetic psychology studied human preference for rectangles with various side-length ratios. In his studies, he found that 35% preferred the Golden Ratio (1.618:1), 20% preferred 1.5:1 and 20% preferred 1.77:1.
http://www.yorku.ca/christo/papers/goldrev3.htm

Applying the same thing to people, go in tight, and I like asymmetry. Seems more pleasing to the eye.

Canon EOS 20D, EF 24-105 F/4 L @ f/5.6 1/200sec - lighting was: 2 Broncolor monolights - one 2' x 4' softbox and a white shoot-through umbrella, a Canon Speedlight in the back for the color, another speedlight on camera with PhotoFlex inflatable softbox for keylight and as trigger to all the other flashes.

View attachment 1131

View attachment 1132
 
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amirm

Banned
Apr 2, 2010
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Seattle, WA
I do. It is my main goto tool although recently I have also installed Lightroom from Adobe which lets you do some level of image manipulation there.

I should say that I despise Photoshop :). I find it totally non-intuitive. It is incredible that a software that has created billions of dollars for Photoshop, never has gotten a usability make over. But we digress :).
 

amirm

Banned
Apr 2, 2010
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Thanks Steve. Good suggestion. I just put them all in above the pictures. Hopefully there are no typos :).

BTW, one of my goals for posting those pictures is to inspire people to go and shoot images. The advice by itself is rather dry and not motivating. Winter is a wonderful time to go and shoot wildlife in warmer places. Palo Alto area near you Steve should be full of shorebirds. Florida and New Mexico are also in their peak.
 

amirm

Banned
Apr 2, 2010
15,813
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0
Seattle, WA
Your light meter is "dumb" on cloudy days

I don't use a light meter. I use the one in the camera together with the histogram.

This brings me to another tip from Arthur Morris. In that if you use your meter in the camera in evaluative mode (the default), it tends to work a lot better in sunny weather than cloudy. Reason he gives is that when the camera notices bright sun, it recognizes that effect and dismisses its strong contribution.

In cloudy weather, the meter mistakes the cloudy sky for subject brightness and lowers the exposure too much. For this reason, in such condition manual metering may be more effective.
 

rblnr

Member Sponsor & WBF Founding Member
May 3, 2010
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NYC/NJ
I should say that I despise Photoshop . I find it totally non-intuitive. It is incredible that a software that has created billions of dollars for Photoshop, never has gotten a usability make over. But we digress .

I find it totally non-intuitive too, but need to know how to use it because it's the industry standard. Just got CS5 which I'm told improves some interface issues, we'll see.

I'll post some pics w/info when I'm back home a few days from now.
 

Bruce B

WBF Founding Member, Pro Audio Production Member
Apr 25, 2010
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Snohomish, WA
www.pugetsoundstudios.com
Those are all execellent photos... but now I want to see some great low level light indoor shots of listening rooms and studios.
I had someone come in here to take some shots of the studio for our website and they put some cells behind the speakers for that dramatic effect, but everything in the foreground was washed out. All the estimates I get for professionals to come in here are over $2-3k!!
 

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