Tips on being a better photographer- Tuesday Tutorial | Victoria Photographer November 17, 2009

Here are some tips I got from school and around the web on some ideas of how to improve your photography skills.

1. Don’t go crazy buying the most expensive equipment right away. Equipment helps but it doesn’t make a photographer. You can take amazing pictures with toy plastic cameras. Buy something only when you find you can’t live without it.
2. Tripod. TRIPOD! Sure it limits creativity but it teaches you to slow down and really look at your subject. There is also a tendency to see only the subject and not see distracting elements in the background. It also eliminates camera shake.
3. Keep your camera with you all the time. Or, keep A camera with you all the time. Chase Jarvis, one of the big names in advertising photography, takes a picture a day with his iphone. His stuff is amazing and would have been missed if he didn’t have something to take the image with.
4. Don’t overlook the mundane. Look around your house. There maybe something amazing but you just need to look at it in a different view. Or, try this experiment – map out 1 meter by 1 meter square in a park or your room. Stay there for 30 minutes. See what you can find.
5. Enjoy the learning process. There is always something new to learn in photography. You will never be done. So you might as well enjoy it.
6. Experiment with your camera’s setting. Try something different. If it doesn’t work, try to figure out why it didn’t. You have digital…. Errors are free.
7. Learn the basic rules. Technical. Composition. Then learn how you can break them.
8. Take photos regularly. You will forget what you have learned if you don’t practice. Try a 365 project.
9. Try a different eye. A switch may spark new creativity. Also, most right handed people use their right eye.  However, the left eye is connected to the right side of the brain – the creative side.

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White Balance – Tuesday Tutorial | Victoria Photographer November 3, 2009

White Balance

In the digital world, white balance is the term used to describe the ways to account for colour shifts in photographs. What is a colour shift? Have you ever taken a picture under florescent lights and have then come back green? That is a colour shift caused by the temperature of the lighting.

Colour Temperature	Light Source
1000-2000K	Candlelight
2500-3500 K	Tungsten Bulb
3000-4000K	Sunrise/ Sunset (clear sky)
4000-5000K	Fluorescent Lamps
5000-5500 K	Electronic Flash (these have the whitest light)
5000 – 6500 K	Daylight with Clear Sky (sun overhead)
6500-8000 K	Moderately Overcast Sky
9000-1000 K	Shade or Heavily Overcast Sky

Using a grey care, you can customize your white balance to any situation. But really, why bother? The presets on your camera work extremely well. Also, auto, which is based on algorithms, is a fantastic thing. I personally only shoot on auto. I still get colour shifts but I correct them later in Lightroom and Photoshop. Auto doesn’t work very well if you have a majority of one colour in the shot. If you have all red leaves for example, the camera thinks that there is a warm colour shift and will introduce cyan to compensate. This might be a good time to use your custom white balance tool but overall, the presets are the way to go. In another lesson I will show you how to use custom.

Colours

This is a good time to dispel a myth perpetrated by the primary school system. The primary colours of light are RED, BLUE and GREEN. Yes, it’s true. Yellow is only a primary colour in pigments (i.e. Paint). The colours of ink when printing are MAGENTA, YELLOW (amber) and CYAN. The colour system of light looks like the following diagram.



All these mixed together make white light. White balance used to be achieved by figuring out what colour the light is and putting a filter on your camera to compensate. For example, in fluorescent light, the colour is green. To compensate you would put a magenta filter on. This is what your preset white balance for fluorescent is doing. But maybe you want a colour shift. I love pictures with a warm tungsten amber glow. It’s all about how you look at it. Just don’t let people have a blue cast to them. Tends to make them look corpsey.

S.

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Tuesday Tutorial – Why Meters Lie | Victoria Photographer October 20, 2009

Why meters lie!

All meters are great. They tell you what you need for a correct exposure. But they are machines and thus, stupid. Yup, that’s what I said. Stupid. They do a great job with middle grey but give them black and white and you will see how stupid they are.

Take a picture of something completely black (like a dress). Your meter will say that the exposure is correct. But when you take the picture, the black dress is grey. What? That is because your camera does not like the extremes of black and will meter it so that it appears as middle grey.

Take a picture of something complete white (like marshmallows). These too will become grey with the camera meter. The camera cannot see what you are taking a picture of, and thus just thinks that it is metering correctly. It doesn’t care what is in the picture, just that the tones come out to middle grey.

Annoying? Yes. This also happens if you spot meter a black or white person. Their skin tones will not come out correctly. It is easy to correct but is a bit contrary to the way that you would think.

How to correct for black. Fill the frame with the black thing you want to take a picture of or spot meter it. The camera will try to make this middle grey by opening up too much. It takes the black thing and OVER EXPOSES it so that the light makes it grey. So for black, you need to let less light in by closing down one stop. Same thing if you want to accurately take a picture of black skin tones.

How to correct for white. Fill the frame with the white thing you want to take a picture of or spot meter it. The camera will try to make this middle grey by closing down too much. It takes the white thing and UNDEREXPOSES it so that the light makes it grey. So for white, you need to let more light in by opening up one stop. Same thing if you want to accurately take a picture of white skin tones.

Remember, Asian skin tones are middle grey.

Now that you know that the camera lies, you can use your hand as a grey card with the correction. Just put your hand in the light you want to expose in and compensate accordingly.

Now that you know all about metering, don’t think you always need the “correct” exposure. Overexposing gives a high key look with light filling the frame. Underexposing can create a moody image or can make light sources look more defined. It is all up to you. You are the boss, not the camera!!

 

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Tuesday Tutorial – Metering | Victoria Photographer October 6, 2009

Further Metering (it never does end!)

So now you have used a grey card to find a correct exposure for the light and have gotten your needle in the middle. Now what?? That doesn’t mean that is your exposure is where you want it creatively. So how do you take needle in the middle and make it applicable to the creative? Think of aperture and shutter speed as ingredients and exposure is the recipe. So to get the creative that you want, you just have to change the recipe.

Let’s say you have needle in the middle at F8 1/30. Technically that is a correct exposure but you don’t want 1/30 because it will have camera shake in it. How do you get to 1/60? Remember when I said that changing one stop is either doubling or halving the amount of light exposing your sensor. So going from 1/30 to 1/60 is halving the amount of light. That will underexpose the picture. So to compensate, you need to open up on the aperture one stop (1/30 to 1/60 is one stop) to double the light coming, which makes up for the halving of light with the shutter speed.

Before we go on, some terms:

Opening up – either going to a larger aperture (i.e. F5.6 to F4) or having a slower shutter speed (from 1/125 to 1/60). Opening up is done when you need more light on your sensor.

Closing down – the opposite of opening up. It is going to a smaller aperture (i.e. F4 to F5.6) or a faster shutter speed (from 1/60 to 1/125) and is letting less light hit the sensor.

Back to the example, you have F8 1/30. You want to go to 1/60 which is closing down the shutter speed. To compensate you need to open up the aperture one stop to F5.6. Think about it like a graph (I have just put the big numbers of the shutter speed for ease).

30 —-> 60 (Shutter Speed)

5.6 <—-8 (Aperture)

Basically, if you have needle in the middle, for every stop that you change on one of the elements, you need to go the equal amount of stops the opposite direction on the other element.

Another example. Needle in the middle is at F4 1/500. F4 is a small depth of field, and you want more. You want F16. How do you do it?

4 —> 5.6 —> 8—-> 11 —> 16

30<—60 <—125<—250<—500

You are closing down four stops on the aperture, so you need to open up 4 stops on the shutter speed. And you will need a tripod with a shutter speed of 1/30.

This is why it is important to know the aperture and shutter speed numbers. If you can’t get them in your head, then just count the number of clicks you change in one direction and change the same amount in the other direction. This is a good approach if you are using ½ stops or 1/3 stops as well.

And that is how you meter and change your settings.

Check out my other tutorial – > click here

And because posts are never complete without a picture…

S.

Visit my website www.sharinakagawa.com or drop me a line on Facebook.

Tuesday Tutorial – Metering with your Camera| Victoria Photographer September 29, 2009

So now we know about aperture, shutter speed and ISO… how do we put them all together?

Welcome to the world of Metering!

Ah, metering… easy concept… difficult to master.

Each picture is like a measuring cup. You need exactly the right amount of light to expose a picture correctly. If you shoot on automatic, the camera does this for you. But it takes away creative control. If you shoot on aperture or shutter priority, you decide only a portion, and the camera decides the rest. And as I will show you later on, the camera is a just a box and is a tad on the dumb side. You don’t want to cede control to it.

So what is metering?

Most cameras these days have in camera metering systems. But before we get into that, let me introduce the all mighty grey card.

18% Grey

When a camera meters, it is looking to find 18% grey. Ansel Adams measured his black and white photographs way back in the day, and found that 18% grey reflective was the perfect middle ground to expose pictures at. This is why it is also called middle grey (half way between black and white on a value scale). It is highly technical and you really don’t need to know the specifics. What you need to know is that no matter what meter system you use, you are exposing for 18% grey. The camera wants all tones to read as close to 18% grey as possible. This is why on bright sunny days a point and shoot camera will take a dark picture. Basically, 18% grey is “technically” correct. It is what you camera does when it set to anything other than manual.

Set your camera to manual and look through the view finder. You should see a little line at the bottom with a vertical line in the middle. That is your meter.  It should look something like this:

———-|———-

That line in the middle? That is middle grey. Depending on what metering system you are using, the camera takes in the part of the scene that you are metering and figures out what will make most of the image 18% reflective or middle grey (don’t worry, the colours stay as they are).

First there is center weight metering (check your manual to find these settings). Most point and shoot cameras are center weight. What this means is that the camera takes in to account the center circle of the photo and disregards the outside. The center will be correctly exposed but the outsides won’t be.

My advice? Don’t use center weight.

Matrix or Evaluative is a much better system. It takes the entire image and divides it into five sections. It then takes readings of all five quadrants separately and then averages them to get a correct reading. It is a remarkably accurate system.

Spot metering is used by most professionals. Instead of reading a huge area, spot metering reads just a small square of the image. With spot metering, you read the highlight and the shadow areas and YOU decide what part of the image you want correctly exposed. Want a face to be correctly exposed but don’t care if the sky highlights blow out? That’s fine. Same with dark shadows… you are in control.

So how do you use the meters?

First decide what ISO you want to use. Then decide if either shutter speed or aperture are a priority for this picture.

For example, I decide I want to use ISO100 for this shot. I want to have a shutter speed of 1/125 to eliminate camera shake. I would then change my aperture until the needle is in the middle of the meter (or in other words, set to middle grey). Sounds easy enough but it takes a lot of practice to get good at it. It is a recipe. ISO + Aperture + Shutter Speed = needle in the middle. You want to get it so the picture is balanced… ie. in the middle.

So, what does the grey card do? If you put a grey card into the scene, you automatically know that that is middle grey. So if you are using evaluative metering, fill the frame with the grey card, find your exposure, remove the grey card and take the picture. You will get an accurate exposure. The camera isn’t being tricked by highlights and shadows but instead is taking a picture of the light available. This is a great tool to learn. Don’t have a grey card? Other things that are known to be 18% grey are the pavement, and the blue sky (away from the sun and not a cloudy day). The trick is to put the grey card into the scene with exactly the same lighting. There is no point taking a reading in the shade if the picture you want is in the direct sun.

Here are some examples of the metering patterns. Not the greatest pictures but maybe you will get an idea.

Center Weight

This is actually not a bad job. The frame is blow out but the majority of the picture is correct. Center weight does a decent job. It just has a tough time when you have highlights or shadows that you want that are in the corners of the picture. You can see at he top of the picture the wall is getting blown out because it is outside of the metering section and the camera didn’t take in to account the light there.

Evaluative or Matrix

This has done a better job overall. See how the whites are going a tad grey. That is how the camera meters them (we will get to how to outsmart the camera another day). This metering pattern has toned down the picture so the frame isn’t as blown out.

Spot

I metered the TV in this one. See how it is nice an evenly exposed.

I metered for the picture frame in this one. The whole picture is dark but the picture frame is better exposed. It is still blown out because it is directly under my light. If I wanted an even better exposure of the frame, I would put something between the light and the frame, so you don’t get that glare.

In this one I metered for the planter. It is correctly exposed but the highlights are getting blown out and some of the shadow areas down below are getting dark.

In this shot, the crate was exposed for. See how everything is starting to blow out but the shadows down below are nice and visible.

So you see… metering is just another way for you to control the shot. Play with metering and get to know your camera. Then you will be in control and not your expensive toy.

Check out my other tutorials – > click here

Questions? Drop me a comment or visit me at my facebook page.

S.

Visit my website www.sharinakagawa.com

ISO – Tuesday Tutorial | Victoria Photographer September 22, 2009

What is ISO?

ISO is the third component in controlling the light hitting the sensor or film (the other two being aperture and shutter speed). It is sometimes called ASA. In film terms, it meant the films sensitivity to light. The lower the number, the lower the sensitivity to light, the lower the grain (fuzziness) on the film. That means that an ISO 50 had more level of detail without grain as opposed to an ISO 400. It also means that an ISO50 film needs more light present to develop correctly, making ISO 400 a better option in low light situations.

Since we aren’t using film, how does this relate to digital? It is exactly the same principle… how sensitive the sensor is to light. The difference is that we call the fuzziness in digital is called ‘noise’, not grain. The longer digital cameras have been out, the less noise there is on the ISO’s. Some of the new professional cameras are clean all the way up to ISO 1600. What does noise look like? It will look like little bits of random colour and lines when you blow up the picture.

What does this mean for you?

If you really want a certain shutter speed (i.e. 1/125) to eliminate camera shake but it is too dark in the area to achieve it… up your ISO. Each jump in ISO is the same as one stop on either aperture or shutter speed. You want a perfect detailed shot of a flower (and you are using a tripod)… go down to ISO 100 or even ISO50 or ISO25. You will get a gorgeous clean shot even when you enlarge the picture. Of course we all want clean shots. But sometimes the noise is okay. Dark auditorium, wedding venue, or sporting event? You will need to bump the ISO up or you will have a very slllooooowwww shutter speed. Why a slow shutter speed? Because you need to let light in some way. Either up your ISO, slow down your shutter or open your aperture all the way. Something has to give in the quest for the right mix of light. But we will get to that. It’s part of the world of metering. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, check out some different ISO’s. And don’t worry, noise or grain isn’t bad. It can lend character to a shot. Just make sure it is intentionally used and not that you forgot to change your ISO down from 3200 (not that EVER happens to me heheh).

Original Shot

This shot is at ISO 100. Look at the enlargement in the corner. Pretty clean.

Next I took a shot at ISO 400. My camera is pretty clean here. Again, depends on the camera.

For the next shot I jumped up to ISO 1600. I take alot of my 365 shots at this ISO because my apartment is dark at night. You can see the noise at this ISO.

Finally, ISO 6400. On my camera this registers as High 1. Some SRL’s don’t go this high. But you can really see the noise on this shot.

How much noise you see all depends on your camera. So get out there and experiment with different ISO’s. And if you have any questions, leave me a comment or shoot me an email.

Check out my other tutorials -> Click here

S.

Visit my website www.sharinakagawa.com

Photography Tutorial – Shutter Speed | Victoria Photographer August 24, 2009

What is Shutter Speed?

Shutter speed is another way we control the amount of light hitting the sensor. The shutter is the mechanism that opens and closes and makes that satisfying “kachunk” sound. Basically, it controls the amount of time that your sensor sees the scene you are attempting to capture.

Shutter speed is also measured in stops but it is not written with an F, rather as a fraction (as in a fraction of a second).

1/1, ½, ¼, 1/8, 1/15, 1/30, 1/60., 1/125, 1/250, 1/500, 1/1000 etc.

The higher the shutter speed number (i.e… 1/1000), the faster the shutter moves. The length of time is the measure of how long the sensor is exposed to light. So 1/250 is open less time than 1/1.

If you are hand holding your camera you will probably need a shutter speed of 1/60 or faster, or you will have photos will camera shake. This means that the picture is not in focus because of the physical shaking of the photographer (even if you think you aren’t moving, trust me, you are).

If you are going to use a slower shutter speed, you will need to use a tripod. It is also recommended to use a cable release, or self timer.

Why different shutter speeds?

Just like aperture controls depth of field, shutter speed controls motion. The higher the shutter speed, the more you stop motion. At very high shutter speeds you can freeze a hummingbird. But do you always want to freeze motion? Sometimes motion adds to a photograph. Have you seen the photographs when the background is streaks of colour? Or when a rushing stream is soft and magical looking? Those are slow shutter speeds.

The faster the shutter speed, the water becomes more stopped

I could have gone even faster on these shutter speeds but my aperture was limiting me , so 1/60 was the fastest. If I had gotten up to 1/1000 you would have seen every drop.

Check out my other tutorials – > Click here

S.

Visit my website www.sharinakagawa.com. All images Copyright 2009 Shari Nakagawa

Photography Lesson – Aperture | Victoria Photographer | Shari Nakagawa Photography August 10, 2009

Happy Monday.

I have been trained as a photographer. It makes me happy like nothing else. I have also been trained to teach. Not like the scary teacher you had in grade 4 but rather, as a fun, hands on teacher. I was a teacher for 3 years in Japan, teaching English to 3-15 year olds. And let me tell you, there is nothing like being in a room full of 3 year olds who don’t speak the same language as you. That is truly scary.

So I have decided to combine my loves and offer photography lessons. I will be offering one on one or small class lessons in the city of Victoria (see my price list or email me for more details). I will also have small tutorials on this blog.

Today – APERTURE

What is Aperture?

Aperture is the size of the opening in the lens when the picture is taken.  It is like the iris in our eyes. The larger the hole, the more light the sensor in your camera gets. The smaller the hole the less light. Think about when it is super sunny outside. Your iris gets small, to limit the light getting in your eye so you can see. And walking into a dark movie theater? Your iris gets HUGE, because there is no light and to be able to see you need all the light possible. That is the aperture of the camera. It allows measured light in to strike your sensor (or film if you are old school).

Aperture is measure in f-stops. You will often see aperture referred to as f/number – for example f/2.8 or f2.8. To get really complicated the number refers to a fraction (hence the F) that has to do with length of lens to your shutter. But you really don’t need to know that. What you do need to know is that when you move from one F-stop to another you either double or half the amount of light you are allowing to hit the sensor.

F stops – 1, 1.2, 1.4, 1.8, 2, 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22, 32, 45, 64, 90

small f- stop numbers and smaller apertures (where less light gets through) have larger f-stop numbers. That means that F2.8 is a larger opening than F22.

Here… an easier way to see it.

Aperture

These are the most common apertures. This is from my lensbaby which you put the aperture in manually. But rest assured, all lenses have these aperatures. Even point and shoot cameras have these apertures. You can see the one labelled 2.8 has a huge opening and they get smaller as the number goes up. They get smaller but exactly half.

Depth of Field and Aperture

Aperture is one of the ways that we control the amount of light in a photograph. It is also the way we control Depth of Field.

Depth of Field (DOF) is the amount of your shot that will be in focus. Large depth of field means that most of your image will be in focus (both close to and far away from the camera). You accomplish this by using a small aperture (ie. F22).

Small or shallow depth of field means that only one part of the image is in focus and the rest will be fuzzy. The larger apertures (i.e. F2.8, F4) accomplish this.

F 1.8 and F4

F11 and F22

Can you see that at 1.8 the man in the background is completely blurry and not very recognizable? As the aperture gets smaller (the numbers get bigger), the man gets more in focus. That means at 1.8 there is a shallow depth of field and at F22 there is a large depth of field.

What does this mean?

If you want to photograph a larger group of people, a landscape, or something that you want a lot of detail to be evident – use a small aperture (and probably a tripod).

If you want to do a single portrait, or macro photography – use a large aperture.

Let’s Practice

Turn that dial on your camera off of program mode (your camera does everything for you) and put it on A for aperture mode. Get a subject in the foreground and something in the background. Take pictures at different apertures and note what happens in the background. This will be more evident if you are close to your subject. Go on… get closer. And when you think you are close enough, try getting closer. Robert Capa, the great war photographer said, “if your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough.”

Check out my other tutorials – > Click here

Any questions – please email me at sharinak@gmail.com

S.

Visit my website www.sharinakagawa.com. All images Copyright 2009 Shari Nakagawa all rights reserved.