Flash photography – Guide to better photos – Post 3

So I almost forgot to write something today as I continue to write about my journey to taking better photo’s and sharing them with you.  So it is 11:55 at night, it was a long day at work, so I really didn’t want to write anything, but felt I needed to write something, since it is my goal to write something every day.

So the topic is Flash Photography.  I will probably write a future article about Flash Photography, as this can take volumes.  So there are  a couple of tips on flash photography.  I will update a future entry and give some examples of what I’m going to discuss today, but I really don’t have anything good in my portfolio that illustrates what I’m going to mention here, so you’ll have to take my word for it.

Tips:

1. Never, never, ever use the flash that comes on camera.  It is worthless, doesn’t give enough light and will make your photos look terrible. No matter how much editing you do, they will look like an amuerter took the photos.  Now if you want your photos to look like your 6 year old took the photo, then by all means use the pop up flash.
2. Get a Flash that actually sits on the top of the camera.  But don’t get one that only points straight ahead.  Get one that rotates, especially straight up in the air.
3. Get a diffuser for your flash.  Sometimes the Flash will come with one.  My Nikon SB700 came with one, it works great.  My SB600 didn’t come with one, but I found one online (amazon.com) that I picked up for about $20.  I also have a more expensive diffuser the Gary Fong LightSphere.  I love the light sphere, definitely does a great job, but it is about $60.  My wife says when I have the dome inverted, it looks like a diaphragm.  I’ll let you be the judge.  You can also get a collapsible Softbox, which I have one of those two.
4. Find out if your camera can use a Commander / Slave setup and move the flash off the camera.  Even when the flash is on the top of the camera, the flash can make the photos look a little washed out.  But by moving the flash off camera, generally 45 degrees either to the left or right of your subject, you will create dimension in your photos, by casting nature shadows, that will look more realistic.
5. If you camera doesn’t work with Commander / Slave mode, then look for wireless triggers or even wired triggers.  Do google searches and find out there are 100′s of options.  Find the right one that works for your particular Camera and Flash.
6. When you get more advanced and want to get into portrait photography, you can get inexpensive or expensive Strobe Lights.  I’ll do a future post on Strobes for Portraits.  But be prepared to spend at least $500, but more than likely even over $1000.
7. Learn to use your flash by moving it around, bounce it off of walls or ceilings.
8. Learn to use gel’s on the front of your flash to change the temperature of the light coming out.
9. Learn how to manually adjust the power of your Flash.  You will find that the default setting is to bright and will need to move the flash farther away from the subject.  If you lower the power of the flash you can get enough flash light to take great photos.   The biggest problem I had when I started doing flash photography was having the power too high and washing out my subject.  So learn to lower the power.
10. Flash photography can freeze action, which allows you to use lower shutter speeds.
11. Learn the advantages of rear-sync flash.  I’m not an expert in it, but can make for some pretty cool photos when the object your photographing is in motion.
12. Get a 2nd Flash and learn to remotely fire both flashes and start making your photos look very professional.  Illuminate a dark background with the 2nd flash while the 1st flash is brightening your subject.  This can make a decent picture look great.  Again apply the different power settings using manual mode on your flash to get the desired effect you want.
13. Use a Flash when it is sunny outside.  The sun may be blocked by Tree’s, or behind the subject causing the subject to be cast in shadow, or the subject is under tree’s and you are getting shadows across the body or face that don’t look good.  A Fill flash can brighten up the subject and still look nature.

White Balance – Guide to better photos – Part 2

White Balance, what is that?

If you haven’t heard of White Balance, it means you probably haven’t read your Manual.  If you read in my last post, we discussed using Manual Mode to set the correct Exposure Level through the ISO, Aperture, and Shutter settings.  Well White Balance (WB) is something that is very important when you take a photo with a Digital Camera.

Have you ever taken a photo and the picture had a blue tint too it or it looked yellow or Red, and you don’t remember it looking that yellow or red or even blue when you took the picture.  Well that is because your eyes, automatically adjust to the available light and color correct based on how the brain works.  In a digital Camera though, it isn’t very smart.  It does try to guess how warm or cool the available light is, but it isn’t 100%.  I don’t even know if it is accurate 50% of the time.  So on your camera there is probably a button that says “WB” or a menu setting that says “White Balance”.  Some camera’s even have a dial that lets you set WB.  There are most commonly the following WB settings (Auto, Sunlight, Cloudy, Shade, Tungsten, incandescent, florescent, Flash, or Manual).

The reason there are so many, is for you to look at the available light when you take your photo and accurately set the White Balance.  When you do then the camera know how warm or cool the light is based on some pre settings that determine the temperature of the light.  All light sources have a temperature measured in Kelvin.  So when you set the White Balance correctly the internal computer and image sensor will auto correct the available light that is coming into the camera and correct the colors so they look more natural.

So if you are outside and there are no clouds, you should set the WB to Sunshine.  If you didn’t set it to Sunshine and had previously set it to Tungsten the photos would have come out a little Blue.  In one of my Photography Tips, I show an example of having an incorrect White Blance.  If there is Clouds blocking the Sun, you would probably want to set the WB to Cloudy.  If you are outside and taking photos under shade, then you would use the Shade WB Setting.

If you incorrectly set the white balance in a photo, then you are going to have to use Computer software and try to change the warmth or coolness of the photo later.  If you shoot in .JPG mode, you won’t have a lot of control on correcting WB problems.  So it is very important that you set it correctly before you take a photo.    If however you shoot in RAW picture format, then using applications like Photoshop, Aperature, and Lightroom, you can change the WB to the correct setting with a lot less issues.

When I take a photo, I always remember to set my White Balance before I take the first photo.  (But sometimes I choose the wrong WB setting and have to correct it).  Now these White Balance settings on your camera aren’t exactly accurate, depending on the time of year, winter, Summer, Fall or where on the planet you live, the Sunshine WB setting may not be 100% correct.  So what can you do to get the “Right” WB setting?

There are a couple of choices.  In most DSLR camera’s you can set the WB manually by sampling the available light using a couple of techniques.  The first technique is to use a Gray Card and take a photo of the grey card in the current light conditions and use the Camera to sample the Gray card and determine the correct White Balance.  This is done through the Manual WB Mode.  The exact method of how to do this can be found in your Owners Manual.  Another technique is to take one photo of someone holding the Gray Card or even a white piece of paper and when you get back to your computer you can determine the WB (Temperature) of the light in something like Lightroom and then auto correct all your pictures in Post Production.  This will require a lot of more manual steps in the Computer, but it allows you to correct some WB mistakes.

I use something called an ExpoDisc, that allows me to put it on the front of my camera lens and take a picture of the available light and set my white balance through the manual mode.  This by far is the easiest method and gets my WB very fast.  I personally like this method the best and can change the WB quickly if lighting changes because of clouds or sunsets or if I’m using a flash all in the same day.  The only thing you have to remember is to take the ExpoDisc with you.  I try to remember to keep it attached to my Camera Strap. But even if I forget, I can always fall back to one of the other methods mentioned above.

How to take better photos with your DSLR Camera

I’ve been asked, “Dave, How did you learn photography?”  or “Dave, How did you learn to take such great pictures?”  It is such a difficult question to answer, because it isn’t something you learn over night or even in a few days.  To be honest with you, I learned photography by trial and error.  I tried a lot of things and made a lot of errors.  I even put the camera down and said “I quit!”  Then I came back and tried some more and made some more errors.  Then I started read books, watch YouTube Videos and read Blog posts from other photographers.

To tell you the truth.  The very first time I started reading, it sounded like advanced Physics.  So many concepts and things to learn and calculations.  Uggh, it just made my head hurt.  I would learn something and 10 minutes forget it.  I was just trying to learn to much to fast.  Some of the things just didn’t make sense until I read them over and over and practiced with my camera.

Now I added something new to my Trial and Error, Knowledge! One of the most difficult things I did was  trying to learn everything at once and mastering it all at the same time.  This might work from some people and but to be honest it didn’t work for me.  I got really good at a few of the things I learned and struggled with a lot of others.  In hindsight I  should have tried to learn a few simple things first and then build on that knowledge and continue to grow! Sound like something you learned when you were in school, doesn’t it?  Well this is my attempt to try and teach some things I have learned about Photography and pass them on to the readers of my blog.

This is going to be the 1st of several blog entries.  I don’t want to say it is the 1st of five or 1st of 10 blog entries, to be honest, i don’t know how many I’ll write.  I didn’t start out with an outline of what I want to teach about photography.    This is just going to be the first entry to let you know there is more to come.

Well, I’ll give you the first most important thing to learn before you begin.  Read  your manual “Cover to Cover”.  I’m joking of course, just read the section that is in English, (LOL) depending on your camera manufacture, this could be the whole thing, half, a third or a quarter of the manual.  Seriously, you should read enough of the manual to understand what every button and dial and menu is on  your system or at least how to find it pretty quick. That’s actually quite a bit to learn.  And it will make your head hurt.   I can’t teach you every unique manufacture’s cameras many different models.  There are just to many.  I’m going to talk about camera concepts and you will need to apply this to your camera.  Have your manual handy, refer back to it if your not sure how to do something.   I’ve had my camera for 2 years, and I still refer back to the manual because I forgot how to do something.  Don’t even get me started on trying to figure out the Flash.  And now I have two Flashes, and they are different models with different functions and capabilities.  Will the nightmare never end????

Let me share with you.  I have a Nikon D90 as my primary DSLR camera, and have many different lenses, in a future blog post, I’ll tell you more about Lenses.  So continue on to the next Blog Post – “Guide to taking better Pictures – Manual Mode – Part 1a” and let me know what you are thinking.  You can follow me on my Facebook page – Dave Larson Photography.

Manual Mode – Guide to better photos – Part 1a

The most important thing I have learned when taking photos is learning how to use your camera.  By this I mean, learning to using the Manual Mode, usually there is a dial on the camera that has an M on it, this is manual Mode.  You will probably see additional letters and pictures on this, stuff like P – Program, A – Aperture Priority, Auto – Automatic, S – Shutter Priority (also known as speed – the shutter speed). There could be pictures of a Track star, Mountain Top, and a few other types of pictures.  This is a picture of my camera dial on my Nikon D90.  Let me begin by talking about the different modes from a high level and what they do.

Modes:

Auto – This is pretty much point and shoot, the camera determines what settings to use based on some pretty good computer algorithms and makes the choice on the White Balance, ISO, Aperture, Shutter Speed, or if to use a Flash if one is attached.

Program – This is an extension of Auto, but allows a few things to be set by the Photographer, such as ISO, White Balance and the Camera’s computer figures out the rest.

Aperture Priority- The photographer sets the Aperture and the Camera’s computer determines the shutter speed to use based on the Internal Exposure that the internal Light meter in the camera is reading.  This is very useful if you know what the depth of field you need (I’ll discuss depth of field later).

Shutter Priority- The photographer sets the Shutter Speed and the Camera’s computer determines the best Aperture to use.  This is best used for taking action shots, such as sports or cars racing by, or if the Subject and the photographer both have motion.

Manual - The photographer sets everything manually.  This give the most amount of control and takes the most amount of practice to learn.  There are some complicated math that goes into determining the best settings for ISO, Aperture, and Shutter Speed.  But when you figure this out, you can take the best photo’s.  Just by setting these settings correctly, you can turn darkness into daylight and daylight into darkness.  Make everything in Focus, or just a specific subject in your photo.

So I have told you the 5 different modes that your camera can use.  I didn’t talk about the different pictures on the Dial, mostly because, I never use them and I don’t want some Programmer in Japan, determine what the ideal settings are to talk a Portrait, picture of a flower, action photograph or pictures of mountains.  I want to determine that myself.

So lets discuss what each of the different items in a camera that are part of the picture taking process.  There are three Primary things that effect the quality of a photo. These three things effect the amount of light that is allowed into the camera to capture a photo.  Let to much light in and it will be very Bright, let too little light in and it will be dark or even Black.  The three primary components required to take a photo are: ISO, Aperture, Shutter Speed.

ISO during the time when everyone took photos with Film was sometimes called Film Speed.  Basically this is the sensitivity setting of your camera’s Image sensor.  The Image Sensor in your camera actually captures the available light coming into the camera and then saves it to your memory card.  The more sensitive the Image Sensor the Higher the ISO can be set, meaning you can have less light available to capture an image.  On your DSLR, you can set your ISO to one of many different settings 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200, 6400, or 12800.  These are the most common ISO settings on many cameras, there might be additional values on your camera depending on what your Exposure Level  has been set to.  But the way that ISO works is that 200 ISO requires half has much light as 100 ISO, and 400 ISO requires half as much light as 200 ISO.  The higher you set the ISO the less amount of light is needed to get your photo to proper Exposure.  Now you might be asking why don’t I set my camera to a higher ISO all the time.  You would think this would be a good idea, and you might be right if you had a VERY EXPENSIVE Camera, which as a very SENSITIVE and expensive Image Sensor.  The downside of using a higher ISO, is that the picture quality starts to degrade, this can be anything from be less sharp or blurry, or the photo have a lot of ‘noise’.  Picture Noise can be though of an a very old photo that has lots of specials or dots like you might see of a picture in the newspaper.  The photo isn’t as sharp or very good quality.

The rule of thumb I use, is that if you camera has a max ISO of 3200, then picture quality will start to degrade at about 800 ISO, if you have a camera that does 12,800 ISO then the picture will probably start to degrade at 3200 ISO.  This doesn’t mean you can’t take pictures at a higher ISO, just know that your pictures will have little spots or noise in them.  If you use your camera in Program or Automatic mode, you have probably seem this in your photos when you took a picture when it wasn’t very bright or the Flash didn’t work very well.

Aperture is the size of the hole in your camera lens that effects how much light is allowed in and placed on the camera sensor.  Now this is going to sound funny, but the lower the number the wider the or more open the Aperture is going to be.  The larger the number, the smaller the hole is going to be.  So if you have the Aperture set to 1.4 or 2.8, then there will be a lot of light coming into the Camera Sensor.  If the Aperture is sett to 22 then it will be very small and very little light will be let into the Camera Sensor.  Now Aperture does two very important things, first was the amount of light it lets into the camera sensor and second it affects the depth of field.  Depth of Field, is basically, how much of the photo will be in focus.  If the Aperture is a low number like 2.8, then very little of the photo will be in focused.  An Example of low depth of field, might be taking a photo of a little girl in front of a field of Sun Flowers.  The little girl if she is the object that you focused on, she will be sharp and the flowers behind her will be fuzzy.  Now if you set the Aperture to a higher number say 22, and you focused on the little girl, it is possible that the little girl and the field of Sun Flowers will both be in focused.

In summary, Aperture effects Field of View or what is in Focus and Available light that allowed into through the Lens to the Camera Sensor.

Finally Shutter Speed, the shutter speed is the amount of time light is allowed through the Aperture and  on to the Camera Sensor.  Shutter Speed is measured in Seconds or fractions of a second.  I.E. 3 Secs, 2 Secs, 1 Sec, 1/2 Sec, 1/4 Sec, 1/8 Sec, 1/16 Sec, 1/32 Sec, 1/64 Sec, 1/128 Sec, 1/200 Sec, 1/400 Sec, etc.  The amount of time your shutter again is affected on what your Exposure Level  has been set in your camera.  Shutter Speed also effects movement in your photo.  A very slow shutter speed can be used to allow a lot of light to the Camera Sensor, but if the item your taking a picture of moves, then there could be motion.  One important thing that effects motion is the photographer himself.  It is very difficult to impossible to stop from moving when taking a photo.  It is very hard to be perfectly still when taking a photo.  You probably have seen the photo, that you took that you remember looked perfect, no wind was blowing, it was in the later afternoon, the subject was stationary (like a building or tree) and the picture you took was blurry.  More than likely you were moving just enough to cause the picture to be blurry.

So you might be asking how, do I take better pictures that aren’t blurry.  Well, the best thing to do is set your camera on a Tripod and take the photo.  This will take the absolute best and sharpest photo as long as your photo is properly exposed.  Now realistically this won’t work, since you might be on vacation walking through the streets of Paris, and you don’t have the time to pull out the Tripod and setup a shot and take the photo.  One, the lighting conditions may have changed by them that won’t be what you wanted, you could be a nuisance to the the other tourists because you just stopped in the middle of the side walk and setup a tripod and they have to walk around you.   There is a time and place for a tripod, and this may not be it.

So how do we make sure we take sharp photos when you can’t be perfectly still?  Well this is where Shutter Speed comes into play.  If you can take a photo at a shutter speed of 1/150 or faster (up to 1/4000 sec on some cameras) you can freeze action and take a photo that is very sharp.

You’ll probably be thinking to yourself, “Is that it?  just take photos at a 1/150 sec or faster?”  Well in Part 1b, I’m going to help bring this all together and talk about why that isn’t it.

Continue to  Guide to taking better Pictures – Manual Mode – Part 1b

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