Broaden your technical and creative skills. Unleash the artist within you.
Capturing the essence of Burney Falls. Turning what the camera saw into what the photographer saw.
“What was he thinking? What kind of picture is that? It’s not very good.”
I had heard about Burney Falls at MacArthur-Burney Falls Memorial State Park for some time. It sounded intriguing. Located in Shasta County in Northern California I wanted to see what Teddy Roosevelt called “the Eighth Wonder of the World.” Continue reading ““What Was He Thinking?””
(416)
There are only 12 skills you need to learn to master your camera. Check out what they are.
I’m not the only one that contends that mastering your camera is an important first step in mastering photography. You’ll see it in blog posts, articles and videos.
Let’s take a deeper, more detailed look at what it means to master your camera and show that it’s not an impossible task, as intimidating as it may seem when you first start.
It starts with the question, “What does a camera do?” The hundreds of pages in the camera’s user manual and a similar number of options in its menus make it look like mastering it is a massive if not impossible task. It appears daunting, especially if you are not technically inclined. But in reality, what you need the camera to do comes down to just two things – control the exposure and control sharpness. Let’s see what core skills are required to master these two things.
The purpose of exposure control is to ensure the right amount of light enters the camera so that the sensor can record the image you are photographing. You and the camera need to respond to both bright and dark scenes. The exposure controls are what makes it possible to match the exposure to the kinds of lighting conditions you encounter.
There are three variables that can be adjusted to respond to the amount of light in the scene – ISO, aperture and shutter speed. These three variables form the famous exposure triangle.
Tell Me More About the Exposure Triangle….
Continue reading “Mastering Your Camera”
(387)
The three exposure settings come together in the exposure triangle.
The exposure triangle is a way of visually depicting the relationship between the three variables that, together, control exposure – ISO, aperture and shutter speed. They are represented together as a triangle to illustrate that if you change one of the variables, you need to change the other if you want to keep the same exposure.
Suppose a proper exposure has an ISO of 100, an f/stop of f/5.6 and a shutter speed of 1/125 of a second.
But you decide you want to increase the depth of field. So, you change the aperture by one stop from f/5.6 to f/8. This darkens the light coming through the lens and, if you don’t do anything, darkens the exposure by one stop. To keep the same exposure, you have two choices. You can change the ISO or the shutter speed.
If you changed the ISO you would have to change it from 100 to 200. That change in sensitivity would require half the amount of light to get the same exposure.
But you don’t want to compromise the quality of the image with a higher ISO. You decide to change the shutter speed. You need to make the shutter speed longer to offset the reduced brightness. So, you change the shutter speed from 1/125 of a second to 1/60 of a second and you get the same exposure
If you take the same scenario but this time you are shooting aperture priority, the camera makes the adjustment for you. Here’s how that works…
You have set the shooting mode to aperture priority with an ISO of 100 and an aperture of f/5.6. The camera determines the shutter speed needs to be 1/125 of a second.
When you change the aperture to f/8, the camera adjusts the shutter speed to 1/60 of a second to compensate for the reduce brightness. The exposure does not change.
Join me on an exciting workshop. Click here to see what’s available.
Read more:
Tell Me More About Exposure
Tell Me More About ISO
Tell Me More About Aperture
Tell Me More About Shutter Speed
(84)
Explore shutter speed in depth and see what it can do for your creativity.
Every camera has a shutter that controls how long the sensor is exposed to light when taking a picture. Shutter speed is the interval during which the shutter is expose to light. It can be as long as 30 seconds or as short as 1/1000 of a second or even shorter.
Shutters have for a long time been mechanical devices with two curtains with one of the curtains covering the sensor (or the film). When the shutter button is pressed, the curtain covering the sensor moves horizontally and snaps out of the way. The sensor is now exposed to the light coming through the lens. When the exposure is done the other curtain snaps across the sensor to cover it up again. Between exposures the shutter curtains are reset.
The interval between the time the first curtain snaps out of the way and the second curtain covers the sensor again is what determines the shutter speed. The camera has a built-in ability to determine how quickly the second shutter must snap to give the required shutter speed. With very short shutter speeds it’s possible that the second shutter snaps before the first one is finished.
Mirrorless cameras (and smart phones) do not have curtains. The sensor is always exposed to light. It has to be this way because the camera does not have a traditional view finder. The only way you can see what you’re photographing is by the LCD screen on the back of the camera or the tiny LCD screen in what used to be an optical viewfinder. And for those to work, light has to be shining on the sensor all the time.
A mirrorless camera must operate the shutter differently. It is done electronically. When the shutter button is pressed, the camera’s processor knows that the steady stream of signals that has been coming from the sensor now needs to be captured for the image. So, for the period of time that the shutter speed has been set for, that part of the stream is captured and turned into a file that is saved on the memory card. After the image is captured and saved, the camera goes back to sending the sensor data just to the displays.
Shutter speeds have an effect on the sharpness of the image. When shooting hand held, a longer shutter speed has a greater chance of the camera moving ever so slightly during the exposure. Also, action shots taken at a slower shutter speed will often be blurred.
So high shutter speeds like 1/1000 of a second are used for action shots. And the rule of thumb for getting sharp hand held images is to use a shutter speed that is 1/focal length or shorter. For example, if the focal length is 100 mm, then a shutter speed of 1/100 of a second will give a sharp image as long as you are careful to steady the camera.
Long shutter speeds, on the other hand, can produce intentional blurs, even when shooting from a tripod. If you want a waterfall to be blurred, you can use a shutter speed of 1/5 of a second or longer, depending on the amount of blur you want.
Shutter speed is one of the sides of the Exposure Triangle. The other two sides are ISO and aperture.
All of the sides of the exposure triangle are measured in stops or EV (Exposure Value), where one stop is a doubling or halving of the amount of light.
With shutter speeds, this calculation is quite simple. An exposure of 2 seconds allows twice the amount of light to shine on the sensor as a 1 second exposure and the exposure increases by 1 EV.
Join me on a fantastic workshop. Click here to see what I have in store for you.
Read more:
Tell Me More About Exposure
Tell Me More About ISO
Tell Me More About Aperture
Tell Me More About the Exposure Triangle
(65)
Explore ISO as part of the exposure triangle and the role it plays in getting a proper exposure.
To start at the beginning, ISO stands for International Organization of Standards. It sets the standard for measuring the sensitivity of camera sensors. It dates back to the film days when it referred to the film’s speed or, as it was called then, ASA which stands for American Standards Association.
Films had a fixed ISO. To change the ISO, you had to load a different film in your camera. Digital cameras can change the ISO whenever it is needed. This is a huge advantage as the digital photographer can instantly respond to changing light conditions.
Changing the ISO increases or decreases the sensor’s sensitivity. What that means is when the sensor is set at a low ISO it is less sensitive, requiring more light go get a proper exposure. When set at a higher ISO it is more sensitive, requiring less light to get a proper exposure.
In most cameras the lowest ISO is 100. With the advancements that have been made in recent years, it’s common to see the high ISOs around 12,800.
The ISOs are laid out in f/stops or Exposure Values (EV). These measures are based on doubles or halves. Doubling the ISO from 100 to 200 doubles the sensitivity resulting in needing half the amount of light to get a proper exposure. Increasing the ISO from 100 to 400 quadruples the sensitivity resulting in the amount of light needed for a proper is reduced by 4.
The technology that allows us to change ISOs has gotten very sophisticated. And different sensors (CMOS vs CCD) employ different technologies. Part of the ISO increase is by increasing the voltage to the sensor. This can occur in the sensor itself or outside the sensor. The signals coming out of the sensor need to be converted from analog to digital and in some cases additional ISO boost is done to the digital signal. The engineering that goes into this is highly sophisticated as I’m sure you can imagine.
Lower ISOs produces higher quality images. Most landscape photography is shot at ISO 100. Higher ISOs make it possible to shoot in low light conditions, but they run the risk of increased noise, especially in the shadows. Noise manifests itself in a way that is similar to grain in high ISO films. It produces a blotchy look.
But the technology has progressed so far that ISOs in the 800 to 1600 range that were unthinkable just a few years ago now produce excellent results. And one can expect the situation to only get better. This is great news for night photographers.
Most landscape photography can be shot with the lowest ISO, especially when using a tripod. However, higher ISOs are available for tricky low-light conditions and can be used with confidence.
ISO is one of the three sides of the Exposure Triangle. It works in conjunction with aperture and shutter speed to get a proper exposure.
The sides of the exposure triangle are measured in stops. The ISO determines how much light is required to get a proper exposure. An ISO of 100 requires twice as much light as ISO 200.
Join me on an exciting workshop. Click here to see what’s available.
Read more:
Tell Me More About Exposure
Tell Me More About Aperture
Tell Me More About Shutter Speed
Tell Me More About the Exposure Triangle
(41)
Dig into the mysteries of exposure and explore how it works and how it is controlled.
When we photograph nature, some scenes are very bright like sand dunes in the middle of a sunny day. Others are very dark like the deep shade of a forest. Other scenes are both bright and dark like a blazing sun that just rose above the horizon on a brilliant morning.
There are many unique situations with different amounts or intensities of light.
Exposure is basically dealing with these different levels of light and making sure the sensor gets enough light to make a good photograph without getting too much light.
One way to think of it is that in low light situations (dark) the camera needs more light. In bright light situations it needs less. But that’s not true. The camera needs the same amount of light in either situation. A more accurate way of looking at it is in low light situations, it will take longer for the camera to get enough light than in a bright situation.
But there’s another aspect to this so let’s take a deeper look.
The image that passes through the lens is captured by the sensor and eventually stored as a file on a memory card. (There’s a lot that goes on between these two steps, but they are not important for this discussion.) The sensor, as you know, is made up of millions of pixels, microscopic elements that are sensitive to light. Actually, a pixel is three light-sensitive elements, one for red, another for green and a third for blue. But let’s keep it simple and speak of it as just one element that captures tones of gray.
When a picture is taken a different amount of light falls on each pixel depending on the subject photographed and the nature of the composition. In the shadow area there may not be enough light to even register on the sensor. This is called ‘shadow clipping’ and will produce a black dot.
In the bright areas there may be so much light, more than the sensor can measure. You can think of this as a glass filled to overflowing. There’s a limit to how much water a glass can hold and light a sensor can capture. This is called ‘highlight clipping’ and results in a white spot.
If a moderate amount of light falls on a pixel, it will capture the light and that pixel will render a gray spot that falls somewhere between black and white, depending on the amount of light.
Now, if the difference in the amount of light between black clipping and white clipping is ten stops, then the sensor has a dynamic range of ten stops. That is fixed and cannot be changed.
Back to the question – how much light does the camera need to make a proper exposure? If you took the amounts of light recorder by all of the millions of pixels and average them, the camera considers it a proper exposure when they average out to a neutral gray, a gray that is perceived as being neither dark or light but right in the middle. The definition of neutral gray is very precise. It is a gray that reflects 18% of the light.
There are different metering modes that go beyond just taking a simple average of all the pixels. There is center weighted which pays more attention to the pixels in the center of the frame, spot which only looks at the pixels covering about 5 degrees in the exact center of the frame and matrix which attempts to analyze the image and make a smarter determination.
But whichever metering mode you choose, the basic goal is to have the result produce a neutral gray.
The processor in the camera (all digital cameras are computers after all) has the logic to make this calculation. With the results, the computer can set the exposure settings.
The camera has three exposure settings that can be adjusted to get a proper exposure. They are ISO, aperture and shutter speed.
ISO controls the sensitivity of the sensor. The higher the ISO, the greater the sensitivity and less light will be needed.
Aperture controls how much light comes through the lens. You can think of it as adjusting the brightness of the image falling on the sensor.
Shutter speed controls how long the sensor is exposed to the image.
Most cameras have at lest four shooting modes – Auto, Aperture priority, Shutter priority and Manual. The setting you choose determines how many of the exposure settings the camera sets and how many you control.
Auto – The camera decides all three exposure settings.
Aperture priority – You decide the ISO and aperture and the camera decides the shutter speed.
Shutter priority – You decide the ISO and shutter speed and the camera decides the aperture.
Manual – You decide all three exposure settings.
To sum it up, an exposure is the amount of light falling on a sensor, taking into account the sensor’s sensitivity. A proper exposure from the camera’s perspective is one where the amounts of light captured by all of the pixels being monitored average out to a neutral gray.
In a bright snow scene where most of the pixels are registering the bright white of the snow, the camera will make the snow a neutral gray.
In a dark scene with most of the pixels registering deep shadows, the camera will make the shadows a neutral gray.
But in a scene with a balance of bright and dark areas the exposure will be more like what we see.
Join me for a great workshop. Click here to see what’s possible.
Read more:
Tell Me More About ISO
Tell Me More About Aperture
Tell Me More About Shutter Speed
Tell Me More About the Exposure Triangle
(52)
AI is in our future as photographers. Take a look at where it is today and where it is likely to go in the future.
I recently became interested in the growing role that Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is already playing and will be playing in photography. Make no mistake, AI has already been deployed in our smart phones. And Adobe and a host of competitors have already enhanced their products with the first round of AI improvements. What effect will AI have on us, whether we be casual or serious photographers, amateurs or professionals? We will all be affected sooner or later. So, let’s take a look and see what’s happening right now and where AI is likely to take us.
Continue reading “The Future of AI in Photography”
(320)
Finding the soul of a photograph is a journey that can take many paths.
I often get asked if I manipulate my photographs. My answer is always, “Yes, of course!” But no one has ever asked, “Why?” And I have an answer for that too. “Because my camera doesn’t know what I’m feeling.”
For me, making a photograph is making art. I want to do more than capture where I’ve been and what I’ve seen. I want to share with you what I feel when I’m out there. And that is often more intense than what my eyes see.
I was in Long Valley last summer preparing for a photography class I was teaching for the Mount San Jacinto Natural History Association. It was midday and I was walking around wearing my amber tinted Polaroid sun glasses. Why do I mention my sun glasses? Because I was getting very excited about what I was seeing. And for those of you that know about midday light, it is anything but exciting. But the amber tint of the glasses and the effect of the polarization on the sky and foliage got me excited. Added to that was how good it felt to be back in these mountains after an absence of 15 years.
I want to share what I feel…. And that is often more intense than what my eyes see.
So, I asked myself if it was OK to make photographs that reflected my mental state when it contradicted the physical reality of what my eyes saw.
Continue reading “Finding the Soul of a Photograph”
(207)
Color Management can be a difficult topic. But we’re breaking it down for you. This is the third in a series of articles on the topic – from the Computer to the Print. For a full understanding, read all three.
Color Management is the science of getting the colors you want in your photographs – consistently. And in my workshops I hear all too often that people are disappointed because the colors they get in their prints are not what they saw on their monitors. They often go to a lot of work preparing an image and when they print it it’s as if all that work was a waste of time.
Color Management is indeed a science and can be very complicated and technical. But getting the same colors on the print that you see on your monitor is essential if you are to have control over the creative process. For that, color management is the key and in these series of articles I’m trying to break it down to make it more understandable and accessible for all of us.
In the previous two articles I presented the concept of a color space and what happens behind the scenes when you move the image from the camera to your computer. See Color Management Made Simple – Color Space and Color Management Made Simple – From Camera to Computer. In this article I’ll be covering the all important aspect of getting your prints to look like what you see on your monitor; that is, from Computer to Print.
Continue reading “Color Management Made Simple – From Computer to Print”
(3285)
Get post processing started by importing your photographs into Lightroom.
An important part of post processing is importing your photographs into Lightroom. The goal is to copy the files from your camera or laptop and store them on your desktop computer. At the same time you also want to make a backup of all of your files.
You might be interested in the configuration of my desktop computer. It has about 5 terabytes of storage. This is where the image files will be stored. I also have several terabytes of external storage – external hard drives. This is where the backup copies go.
In this example I’ll be copying files directly from the camera. The plan is to copy the files as they are to the backup storage. But the files I store on the desktop storage will be converted to DNG format. More on that in another post.
So with the big picture in mind, let’s get into the details.
Continue reading “Lightroom Tutorial – Importing Photographs”
(3455)