More Long Exposure Chat

I get quite a lot of questions about long exposure shots. These are the shots where the sea goes all smooth or the clouds flatten out and end up looking like a water colour painting. Essentially, the longer the shutter is open moving subjects like water and clouds will be "smeared" across the photo.

However, the problem with this is the longer the shutter is open the more light gets in and if too much light gets in then the picture will become over exposed and possibly completely white.

I've talked about filters before but some of these are expensive yet you don't always need these to achieve a similar effect. You can just take your shots at night or before the sun has fully come up and that immediately means that the camera will keep the shutter open to allow enough light in which may buy you a couple of seconds.

Please bear in mind that you MUST have a tripod to do these kind of shots

Next reduce the aperture to a very small hole eg f18 or above. This again lets in even less light and increases the exposure time thus allowing even more time for moving subjects to smooth out.

Finally you can drop your ISO as low as it will go eg 100. This reduces the sensitivity of the sensor and therefore increases the shutter time. It's really worth learning about your ISO as it can help you out in many situations --> high ISO e.g 1600 = more sensitive sensor and therefore faster shutter speed (good for low light conditions e.g. night time or indoor shots), low ISO e.g. 200 = less sensitive therefore slower shutter speeds but good for bright conditions e.g.. sunlight.

So here are three shots using the above principles and no filters.

This shot was take at ISO 100 with an aperture of f8 and resulted in an exposure time of 0.6 sec. You can see that there isn't much movement in the cloud and it really just looks like a "snap shot".






This shot was take at ISO 100 with an aperture of f22 and resulted in an exposure time of 5 sec. Now you can see that the clouds and the smoke from the chimney has begun to smooth out due to the longer exposure time of 5 seconds.





This shot was take at ISO 100 with an aperture of f45 and resulted in an exposure time of 15 sec. The very narrow aperture allows hardly any light in so the time has to be increased in order to let enough light in and so the camera increases the exposure time appropriately - 15 seconds in this case. As you can see the clouds and the smoke have had a much longer time to smear across the shot and so it gives that smoothed out effect that everyone keeps asking about.

It's actually quite a simple technique but the results can be quite startling. You can try this yourself using these techniques and hopefully you'll get something similar. Also try it with running/moving water as you really can get some beautiful effects with rivers and the like.

Good luck.

Z

Star Trails

I've been meaning to try this for ages but wasn't really sure how to go about it. There is a program called startrails.de which is a PC based only and that was frustrating as I spend more time on my Mac. However, I found another program called Starstax which works on the Mac.

So to take a photo like this you need to set everything up in the cold and the dark first. This shot entailed using a wide angle lens (at about 20mm) and set to a wide aperture of f5.6 and an ISO of 200. The main focus was on the light house but with the wide aperture it made the stars slightly blurry which makes softer trails once processed.

Then I took about 40 shots in a row - each one a minute long (hence frozen fingers and toes due to the 40mins that it took to do).

Once you've got all your shots you stick them into lightroom and process the first one to get it bright enough and plenty of stars exposed. Then "sync" all the shots so they are processed the same way. Export them into a new folder of JPEGs.

Then open up Starstax and simple add all the photos and merge them. That'll create the final image that should look like this one (or hopefully a bit better even!).

Good luck.

More White Balance

So I've mentioned white balance before. It took me a while to really understand what it means but now that I know what this is I find it difficult to look at older shots without getting frustrated. Primarily the issues show themselves up in a wedding I shot a few years ago where the brides dress is yellow/orange inside the church. At the time I didn't even notice but now that I know what I'm looking at I would suggest that you all learn about this sooner rather than later.

White balance is easiest thought about as temperature - where 2000 kelvin is very blue and 10000 kelvin is very orange i.e. the "temperature" of the picture determines the overall colour of the picture. White balance is a way to make the "whites" white. The higher the white balance temperature the more yellow/orange the picture and lower the temperature the bluer the picture.

The most important rule in all of this is - if you have the ability to shoot in RAW as opposed to a JPEG then you MUST!!! RAW files can be fixed afterwards with software and it doesn't matter how it looks in camera however JPEGS are much harder to fix afterwards.

And now for another example. If you look at this first shot of Buachaille Etive Mor you perhaps don't notice anything wrong with it. However, if you really have a close look at the snow on the mountain and the water in the foreground you can see that it's not quite the right colour. It actually looks a bit yellow/orange. That's because I processed this with a higher temperature - 6411 Kelvin actually.

After looking at this for a while I decided that the shot was too warm and that it didn't look right. Afterall snow is cold and this actually makes the shot look too warm. So I went back into Light Room and reprocessed this too make it slighter cooler (not that it isn't already a cool shot! Lol).







So with a bit of tinkering I moved the white balance temperature slider down a few notches to 5350 Kelvin and the result was this shot. You can see that it's a bit colder looking and that the whites are now white and not yellow. It I'd moved the slider further down to , say, 4000 Kelvin the water would have turned blue so it's important to get it just right.

Having said that. Some shots benefit from a bit of warmth especially portraits so sometime is worth notching a shot up a few Kelvin. Anyway, as always, you should experiment as much as you can and I hope you find this post useful.

Good luck.

Focal Point

Was mucking about in St Cuthbert's grave yard today with the camera and thought I would post a bit about the focal point of a picture. I guess there are some rules like "always focus on the eyes" etc.

So with most cameras, half depressing the shutter "locks" the focus on whatever was in the center of the view finder. You then keep the shutter half pressed and re-compose the shot to your liking. Then press the shutter fully and snap your picture.

Why do this? Well you don't always want the subject in the center of the shot to be the focal point. The shots below show how the picture can change depending upon what you're focusing on. Give it a shot and see how you can create some unique images that you previously might have over-looked. (Click on it to see a larger image)

Toycolor Analogcolor

So there's a real growing love of the old fashioned looking hipstamatic-type pictures going around at the moment. Have a look at the following Flickr series to get the idea...

Hipstamatic Examples

I have a Mac and while there is an app for the iPhone there isn't a Mac plug-in for Photoshop Elements. You can achieve the same effect in about 5 - 10 mins with photoshop but it's a bit fiddly and requires a good knowledge of the layers palate.

So I went searching on the net for a free program that would do the same effects in a simplified way. Didn't take too long to find the Toycamera Analogcolor program which is great. A few clicks and you can give your pictures that 1970's feel with ease. See the comparison below...



Enjoy!

3Run Triptych

This is something that you might like to try. Creating a triptych is quite straight forward but you have to bear in mind that the 3 pictures are quite slim and so make sure the subject isn't occupying too much of each frame. When you come to cropping them you will lose a lot from the sides which would be a bit pointless.

This was done using a canvas of 30x20in and 3 crops of 8x17in to place on the canvas. "Stroke" is used to create the white outlines. Then place your text and bingo!

Sigma 70-200mm f2.8 - Revisited

So as you know, I've not been a fan of this lens. Was almost at the point of putting it on eBay when a mate of mine asked if he could have a play around with it.

"Knock yourself out. And if you smash the lens in the process, I'll not be that bothered."

Well after 10mins and some initial difficulties of a Canon user using a Nikon user's kit he'd come up with some very impressive pictures and notes to go with them. Essentially he was looking for the "Sweet Spot". This is the focal length and aperture that gives you the best picture. I know that the sweet spot on my Nikon 85mm f1.8 is about f4. However that lens has no zoom so f4 is always going to be the sweet spot.

The Sigma, however, has a focal length of 70mm to 200mm and so the sweet spot (or sweet "aperture") will vary depending on the focal length. He discovered the following ,very usable, results...

70mm max aperture for sharp focus - f4

105mm max aperture for sharp focus - f2.8

200mm max aperture for sharp focus - f6.3

So while I was right that this lens is not useable at f2.8 most of the time I was amazed to see that at 105mm it gave really great results wide open at f2.8.

I now intent to keep the lens (at least for the time being) and to some extent it feels like I've been given a new lens. Just goes to show how far a bit of time, patience and experience goes.

Sigma 70-200mm f2.8

So I've got the Sigma 70-200mm f2.8 lens which I've had for over a year. I've often said I hated it and I've had lots of folk arguing about it on Flickr etc. Seems it has quite a following but I really dislike it.

Don't get me wrong, it's brilliant at certain settings but at the larger apertures it's total pump. I mean the reason that you buy a large aperture lens eg f2.8 or wider is because you want 2 things...

1. Narrow depth of field

2. Ability to take pictures in low light.

With this lens you get neither! That's correct and I'll show you why.



This first picture is taken at f2.8. That's means that the lens aperture is open as wide as possible. That allows lots of light into the sensor and so should allow you to take pictures in low light. However, you can see from the insert that even though this was focused accurately, the picture is soft and the text is blurry.

If you imagine that you were taking a picture of someone and were focusing on their eyes then no matter how still you were and how well you focused, you would never get a sharp picture. This picture was taken using a tripod and still it's not sharp.



This shot is take at f8.0 and you can see immediately the difference. This picture is super sharp and a huge difference from the initial picture. The text is sharp (as far a the bleed from the ink allows!) and there is still a really usable depth of field.

This comes with a real issue and that is that f8.0, while sharp, doesn't let in all that much light. So if you were in a dark church shooting a wedding this aperture would not be wide enough - unless you have a flashgun like the AWESOME Nikon SB-900.

So you see there is a bit of a conflict of interests with this lens. The bokeh (background blur) at f2.8 is not very pleasing and the bit in focus is soft and not really usable. To rectify this you need to close down the aperture to about f8.0 and at that point low light becomes a problem. Don't get me wrong, this lens is brilliant from about f8.0 onwards but you really need lots of light to get the best from this lens.

Lenses that have large apertures are typically called "fast lenses" but in this case the Sigma 70-200mm f2.8 is definitely not a fast lens so I probably wouldn't recommend it.

Get something else.

Filters 'n Stuff

Filters come in a whole range of colours, styles and special effects. Photographers have used them for years to help alter the result of a photograph. For example, if you wanted to give a warm tone to a picture you could put a "warming filter" on the front of your lens. This can give the whole image a sort of orange glow and change the feel of the shot. Some cameras can now do this "in-camera" without the need of a filter.

The example I'm going to use in this post is what's called an ND-grad filter.

ND = neutral density which means that it should not put any additional colours in the shot as the filter is grey. But what it does do is cut out the amount of light reaching the lens. I've spoken about my ND10 before which cuts out 99.9% light allowing very long exposures even in bright conditions.

Grad = graduated, which means only half the filter is grey. The reason for this is that when shooting landscapes the sky is often brighter than the land. The ND grad filter blocks out some of the light from the sky but not the land and this balances the shot to allow for a better exposure of both foreground and sky.

This shot was taken today with the ND10 filter in place. It's straight out of camera with no photoshop work (except to make it a small file). The ND10 has allowed an 8 second exposure in the middle of the day and because of this the sea has flattened out and become smooth.

However, you can see how bright the sky is and there is not much detail there since it is over-exposed. I could shorten the exposure time but that might then make the rocks too dark.This is where the ND-grad filter comes in.

If we take the same shot again but with the ND-grad filter on the lens as well as the ND10 (filters can be stacked on top of each other to give multiple effects) you get a solution to the problem.

This is exactly the same shot, again without any tinkering in photoshop. Immediately, you can see how the sky has now been darkened to match the foreground. Quite a difference and certainly less trouble for the camera to distinguish between bright and dark areas.

Filters have been around for ages and although programs like photoshop can "fix" many digital pictures now it is still important to get the shot as correct as possible in-camera as that means less work afterwards.

Anyway, hope that gives you a bit of an insight into graduated filters. They are quite good fun especially the coloured ones but that's for another post.

A Trio of Pics

Ok, so there are tons of photo techniques and everyone has there likes and dislikes. Personally, I've had a thing for HDR for a while and now I'm keen to get the ND10 working a bit better. Actually, I think that the wide angle is the problem as it makes everything in the distance so small. Therefore clouds and distant hills etc seem tiny and this screws up the composition a bit.

Anyway, I thought you lot could decide what you like out of the three types of shots I would normally take.

First up is the "normal" shot. This was taken on a tripod on aperture priority at f10 and the camera chose to shoot at 1/50th of a sec. It was set on Matix exposure and you can see that it's done a not bad job of exposing everything quite well. However, it was still quite early in the morning and the sky was much brighter than the foreground and the detail in the rock is lost and even with fill light (in Adobe Camera Raw) I've not really been able to save the shadows. This can be a major issue with photography as I'm sure you might have noticed - shadows become silhouettes and bright parts of the photo can become almost white so all detail is lost in the highlight. You can manually "lock" your exposure when taking the picture in most DSLRs now using a button that says "AE-L" somewhere on the camera. Once you've focused on the main subject of the picture you can then press and hold the AE-L button to lock the exposure on that object and the camera will expose that correctly. Other options include using "spot metering" or "centre weighted metering" modes which will be in your manual. They are a bit tricky to use and if you've ever read Ken Rockwell's blog you'll know that he's a big advocate of just shooting in Matrix mode and nothing else. I guess it's the exposure version of "auto" mode.

Next up is the ND10 filter. This is a bit of black glass that blocks out 99.9% of light and therefore even in strong light you can coax the camera into keeping it's shutter for a really long time. This shot was a 30 second exposure. Over that length of time the movement in the water smooths out and the clouds can end up looking like they are streaming across the sky (not really happening in this one as they were moving too slowly). The other advantage of this style is that people and other moving objects disappear as they are not in the same place for long enough to register their photons on the sensor. Would you believe that a swan cruised past the front of this shot without leaving a trace. Cool eh? The main advantage of this type of filter is that it allows you to take long exposures and that gives you the sort of effect that you would get at night. However, at night time there isn't enough white light around to give good colour and that's when the ND10 comes into it's own. I'm still after that "special" shot with this filter but I'll keep at it.

Finally, my favorite, the HDR shot. High dynamic range is a real love-hate thing. Many of the photographers out there hate it and think that it's a cheats way to turn a badly exposed and poorly composed picture into something that has a real "wow" factor. I'm more and more tending to agree that HDR can be a cheap fix however lately I've seen more and more examples of HDR being pushed to the limit. People have started to ignore the purists and have mastered all aspects of traditional photography and then HDR has allowed them to add something to the shot that makes it fly out of the screen/frame at you.

Regardless what you think, it still has some advantages. This shot (compared to the other) has more detail in the shadows and it has also make the picture a bit more eye catching. I agree that this can sometime be horrid but I think the skill of HDR it to make it subtle in a way that the haters end up going, "Hey, that's a great shot... wait a minute! That's HDR. How dare you."

To each their own, I suppose. Anyway, hope you like seeing the difference in these shots and perhaps trying several versions of the same scene will help you decide what style you like.

Home Studio

So this shot here looks like one of those fancy brochure pictures but actually it's quite simple to do.

This is something that puzzled me for a while - how do you make the background and the table disappear from the shot? I'd tried loads of variations of curved paper and home made soft boxes but nothing gave the result I was looking for. I'd also played about with the exposure settings and various other software tweaks but I really wasn't getting anywhere. Then I spotted a picture of how this is carried out and gave it a shot. The answer? Well the glass is resting on a sheet of perspex with a white backdrop and various forms of lighting cause the "white" elements to fall away.

So here's a pic of my set up. Simple enough? It should be but B&Q don't seem to stock perspex so I used a sheet of glass from a picture frame. Gave the same effect but I wouldn't want to use it too often in case I dropped something on it and smashed it. The light for the shot comes from one flash set to slave mode and I was using the onboard flash as a commander unit (one major plus for Nikon over Canon which can't do this on most of their cameras). There is a reflector to bounce back some light and there is also a workman's light which is pretty cool as it'll clamp onto most things and most angles.

There are some issues with this set up, namely a white wall would be far better as there was lot of wrinkles in the sheet that showed up before processing. Also the lamp I have is only 120W and most studios use 400 - 500W lamps. An probably the most important issues is CLEAN THE GLASS!!! This glass was boggin' and I didn't notice it until I zoomed in on the pic. Then had to spend ages editing out my grubby finger prints etc.

So hope that gives you something to try with the camera indoors when it's raining outside - which is frequently the case in Scotland.

More Leading Lines

This post is just a quick follow on from the previous "Leading Lines" post. In all honesty I just really wanted to post this shot as I totally love it. In fact, it's already in a frame on the wall in the kitchen.


This is the Palacio Da Pena in the hills of Sintra in Portugal. It's an incredible place to visit and I totally recommend it. I could have spend weeks in this one spot taking pictures of the palace's crazy architecture. Also it's a real HDR-users paradise: interesting skies, wonderful foreground and complex structures. It's just awesome.

Anyway, the point of this post was to show how the wall leads the eye into the main part of the picture which is the palace itself. Another example of leading lines. What I have noticed though is that the lines seem to work better if they start in one of the lower corners of the picture instead of the middle.

Project: try taking a picture of some tram lines or rail way tracks and see if the end result is better with the lines in the middle of the picture or off to the side.

Flash antics

I'm told that the most important things in photography (apart from talent and skill) are...

1. The camera


2. The lenses


3. The lighting

At least that's what the counter monkey at a local camera shop told me when he was trying to get me to spend a voucher I had on a flash gun. I don't know that they necessarily go in that order but he was probably right although I'm sure I could think of a few other things that are more important like "Did I remember to bring a packed lunch with me?" and, "are there toilets near the shoot?"

Seriously though, flash guns are really worth looking into. They take a bit of getting used too and I'm still pretty poor at using mine. Have a look at the link to "The Strobist" on the side bar and see just how versatile and useful they can be.

What I suggest is the following --> Set up a wee studio like this...

One tripod is for the flash and the other is for the camera. On top of the table is some black paper and I've set up a little still life that contains some random coins and notes (which, alas, are now defunct thanks to the Euro!)

Have a bit of a think how you would like the ambient light to hit the scene. I've got this placed in such a way that the light from the window isn't really a factor in the picture. The reason for this is that I want the flash as the main source of light and I want control over that. If it was a ridiculously bright day outside I'd have it miles from the window, perhaps in another darker room for this experiment. Sadly, it's grey and raining outside.

So the next thing to do is start playing about with all the settings on both the camera and the flash and see what effects you can achieve. I also have a few attachments that I've built for the front of the flash like a diffuser (made from cardboard and a folded up opaque sandwich bag) and a grid-spot (made from cardboard and straws). There's plenty of websites that can show you how to make these for pennies.

Just a quick dig at the Canon users out there... Most of the Nikon DSLRs work as commander units for flash guns and can fire them remotely without the need for a cable - Canon can't unless you have the top end models. Just set the flash unit to "slave" and the camera's inbuilt flash to "commander" and you're laughing (although remember to also set the camera's own flash to the "--" position or you'll have 2 flashes going).

Here are a series of shots using various changes to the flash (although all taken at 1/16th power). The effects are subtle but if you were to translate these to shoot portraits etc then they can become quite dramatic.


This shot has no flash. The ambient light is diffuse and there are no harsh shadows but it lacks focus and makes the image quite poor. Also the wrinkles and folds in the black tissue paper I've used are very obvious and quite distracting especially in the background. You could probably rescue this by reducing the power of the flash but mine only goes down to 1/16th so I'm stuck. A bit of Photoshop work might also have helped here.


This shot has the flash pointing down from the left of camera at about 45 degrees. The flash has pretty much ruined the shot. The shadows are harsh and this is particularly noticeable on the tissue paper crinkles. Also the metallic nature of the coins means that they are reflecting a lot of the light in the form of glare.


Again the flash is pointing down from the left at about 45 degrees with the diffuser on. You can see that the shadows are less hard and also there is now less available light (due to the thickness of my sandwich bag) so the black paper is less "lit up" and now the focus of the picture is moving more to the money.


This shot is the same as the others but I've put the grid-spot on the flash. It makes a huge difference by narrowing the light that comes out of the flash and focusing it on the center of the picture. The black paper is almost completely black now and the eye is drawn to the object of interest instead of the rest of the frame.

Click here to see a great blog post by QH Photography on how the grid-spot works and the amazing affect it can have on your pictures.

So was the guy at the camera shop correct? Probably. However, flashes are really tough to get to grips with. I would suggest that you probably shouldn't be using a flash gun until you understand the "manual" setting of your camera. Having said that you can always put it on the horse shoe and set everything to TTL (through-the-lens). That means that the camera will make most of the lighting decisions for you and won't let the flash over expose the image. Pretty nifty.

Project: buy/borrow a flash gun and try some stuff on a little home made studio like the one in the first picture. Once you've done that, hang a black sheet on a wall and get a willing volunteer to pose for some shots and see if you can get anywhere near the impressive quality of QH Photography or The Strobist.

Good luck!

Photomerge

So your back's against the wall and the lens you are using won't go any wider but you really want to capture more of the scene in front of you.

What are your options?

1. Buy a wider lens
2. Knock down the wall and take a few more steps back (probably not practical)

OR

3. Take more that one picture and join them together.

Please excuse the fact that I've used my cluttered kitchen but it's pouring outside today so it'll have to do... but here is a pic taken with the 35mm f1.8 lens.



As I'm sure you realise, this lens has no zoom function and is a "prime" lens so it is fixed at 35mm and can't give you a wider shot (unless I was to take a few more step backwards).

So instead I took 9 shots (3 top, 3 middle and 3 bottom) making sure each one over lapped with the next one. Then I went to Photoshop Elements 8 and did the following...

1. Goto "File" --> "New" --> "Photoshop Photomerge"


2. Click "Browse" and select your pictures. As I said, I used 9 here but you can use as mew or as many as you like. I saw a 57 image photomerge once!


3. Click "OK" and Photoshop should start trying to piece everything together.

Here is the result...



Instant wide angle! OK, so it's not instant and takes a wee bit of processing. Also you have to crop the result too as Photoshop will create weird shapes with each pic to try and keep the perspective correct. The whole thing works best if you have at least 20% overlap so bear that in mind when you're lining up your shots.

Anyway, give it a shot but just start with two or three pics before you start trying some crazy 100 image of the Himalayas.

Leading Lines

There's always some blurb in photo mags and web sites about this. Often you'll post a picture on flickr.com and someone will post "nice leading lines" but to start with I had no idea what they were on about.

Yes it's obvious that they are talking about a "line" or "lines" in the picture and that they "lead" somewhere, but what's the point of them? Well they really can add something to a picture. They provide depth and 3-dimensionality to a shot and should act to draw the eye into the picture. Often this is from the foreground to the background (or to the main object in the shot) and this makes the picture more interesting.



This picture of the Tomar aqueduct in Portugal shows how the foreground part of the picture catches your eye and then the line or the aqueduct leads into the picture and almost forces you to look deeper into the frame. It's one of those composition things that the people in the know go on about but to be honest I've noticed that loads of folk use this in their shots without even realizing. I guess that's testament to how much they can improve a photography.

Project: Try it with roads, fences, railings, logs, railway tracks, etc.

Enjoy.