Monthly Archives: February 2010

Late day and sunset reminder

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A quick reminder for those who shoot sunset or late-afternoon pictures, shot during that wonderful “Golden Hour”.

This is a picture I shot in Sedona, AZ, last December.

For late-day pictures,  this:

  1. Set your exposure right. This may well mean exposure compensation of minus one stop.
  2. If you shoot JPG, ensure your white balance is not set to “Auto”; use “Daylight” (the sun symbol) instead.
  3. Ensure that all is sharp: us a small aperture (a large “F-number”)
  4. If a setting sun is in the picture, then use a long telephoto lens to make the sun seem large.
  5. Use a tripod.

Have fun!

Tilt chair

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No, not the chair – what I mean is, I tilted this to get the chair in:

Dutch Angle, they call it. Hollywood term, mispronunciation of “Deutsch” – i.e. German.

As I have mentioned before, I tend to use angles for four different reasons:

  1. To add dramatic interest
  2. To add energy, dynamic motion.
  3. To make diagonals horizontal or vertical.
  4. To fit it all into the picture.

Don’t discount that last reason. People will assume I was being creative, but often I just want to fit it in. And -depending, of course, on the subject- that suits me fine. I once heard Peter Power, one of Canada’s premier photojournalists, say the same at a workshop I took. I agreed then, and I still agree!

And sometimes you til because you can’t stand up straight:

Just kidding. Really.

Curves

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Tip: always look for, and when you see them consider using, curves.

We like curves. While straight lines take us (and in the case of photos, our eyes) like a freeway to our destination, curves are more like a gentle river, or a winding mountain road, where it’s more about the trip than about getting there.

Imagine putting a bride on these stairs: wouldn’t that look good?

Backgrounds

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Another recent user question:

How do you determine the background you use for portraits?

That’s a tough one, because there is no one answer. What’s better? Look at these three “Autumn” and “Hollywood” series Honl gels:

Or this?

Or this?

Of course as usual, the answer is “it depends”.

  • For business, white is good, as is a very light blue.
  • For women, more elegant colours can be used (the purple above, for instance, is not usually considered a male colour).
  • Black is possible for dramatic low-key portraits.
  • Colours depend on hair colour, skin colour and suit colour.
  • You may, for instance, want to contrast with the suit.
  • You certainly want to contrast with the hair – avoid blending your subject into the background. (Or you use a hair light).
  • And sometimes, you may want to match the background to, say, a bright red suit, again in order to make the face stand out.

In general, the most important concerns I have are:

  1. It has to match the mood (conservative is blue, etc)
  2. Ideally, it go with the person’s clothing. That means either complementary colours (yellow and blue, say) or identical colours (A suit with purple in it? Then I can use purple in the background).
  3. Above all, I try to make the face stand out and avoid blending it into the background.

The basic rule: have fun, and keep it simple if you can. Try different colours but avoid very bright colours except for special effect. Have some very subtle blues and yellows and greens available just in case you want to add a splash of tint.

Tint is a good thing. Colour is more difficult!

I hope this gives those of you who use colour gels some ideas to try.

Tip of the day

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When shooting a subject in a studio or studio-like setting, ensure that there is always music playing in the background. It sets the mood and avoids awkward silences as you grapple with your equipment and test settings and light.You will get a much more relaxed shoot.

Yesterday snap

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Just one image from a portrait shoot of a very nice realtor, yesterday:

Lit with a Bowens key light in a softbox, an Opus fill light into an umbrella, an Opus hair/kick light with snoot, and for the background, a 430EX speedlite with Honl gel (fired through a Pocketwizard).

I like tilting realtors a little, for that contemporary dynamic look.

Focus-recompose-shoot?

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Reader Jeffrey recently read my post about focus points and commented to me. Because this is such an important issue – sharpness is essential – I thought it would be a great idea to reproduce his point here and to give my response below.

The distance to the plane of focus is the shortest in the center, longer
everywhere else. If you compose focus then recompose, you’re guaranteed to put the target in front of the plane of focus.

To test an exaggerated example, use your 16-35 2.8L at 16mm f/2.8, and
focus on something relatively close to the minimum-focus distance. Then
recompose with that something to the far edge of the frame, and shoot.
Inspect in Lightroom.

Unless unintended in/out movement of the camera during recomposure just happens to offset the change in distance to the focus target, you should find quite a difference… (and even if you don’t, do you really want to rely on a two-wrongs-make-it-lucky close-your-eyes-and-hope philosophy?).

Modern bodies have a bazillion focus points for a reason… so you can have one in the part of the frame you actually want to focus on, specifically so you can avoid the pitfalls of “Focus, Recompose, Shoot”.

Jeffrey is right that there is an issue. I understand the geometry (I am an engineer): when you recompose, the plane of focus as you move about your camera in a circular fashion around you is not a plane: it is a sphere. The sphere of focus means that seen from the subject you focused on, your focus points gets closer to you as you swing the camera.

But there’s a few moderating factors, and reasons focus-recompose-shoot often still makes sense:

  • There are only so many focus points. Specifically, few cameras have any around the “rule of thirds” points.
  • The centre one is more sensitive and is both-way sensitive.
  • Moving points takes a lot of time on many entry-level cameras.
  • It is only when you are close that this matters. Unless you’re close and at a large aperture, you will not see the difference.

That is why “focus-recompose-shoot” makes sense, or is often even necessary. But Jeffrey is right that it should be used with caution when close.

In fact when I use my cameras wide open at f/1.4, I hardly recompose, and when I do do it, I compensate by moving my camera ever so slightly before pressing the shutter. Works for me, but be careful and check your focus!

Reader Question

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Reader Craig asks:

Is it possible to get auto ISO to play nice with external flash (I’m using Nikon equipment)?  I haven’t played with it in a while, but I specifically stopped using auto ISO because I was finding it would give me ISO 800 based on the camera metering when the flash had plenty of power to push it to say ISO 200.  It seems odd to me that since there’s a preflash, that that information wouldn’t be shared with the camera to set the proper ISO automatically.  Just curious if that’s your experience as well or if there’s a way around it.  There are a a few scenarios where I’d be happy to use a (functional) auto ISO limited to ISO 800 and just deal with the noise reduction in post.

Good question. And as always… the answer is “it depends”.

First: if you take my “Advanced Flash for Pros” workshop, I go into all the nitty gritty details of both Nikon CLS/iTTL and Canon E-TTL. That will answer some.

But let me give a simple answer here. Typically when I am using flash, I will not use auto ISO. I prefer to keep things simple. Setting it myself means simple.

You expose the background using Aperture and ISO and Shutter Speed.  You make it look as dark as you like – say, two stops below ambient as a great starting point. Auto ISO means the camera will likely overrule your brightness/darkness settings. Manual exposure settings become a sort of “exposure priority” setting instead.

So while auto ISO can work well when using flash (just set expsoure two stops below ambient in S/Tv mode), it is not necessarily ideal when using flash:

  • In M mode, you cannot set exposure compensation
  • In S/Tv mode, you may get funny apertures
  • In Av mode, you may get slow exposures.

In fact on a modern Canon DSLR like my new 1D Mark IV, when using flash, ISO will automatically go off auto and will set itself to 400 when the flash is detected.

The preflash helps the camera set the flash power level for the foreground, lit-by-the-flash subject. The aperture, shutter speed and ISO settings set the background brightness. And again, typically I will be in manual exposure, and will set that to -2 stops, metered average (two stops below ambient). Auto ISO negates that!

So while it depends, it does not depend that much.  When using flash, I will usually set ISO to a manual. Yes, you can set limits to auto ISO (Nikon is much better than Canon at that!), but it is still better to do your own, and to keep control.

The above applies to indoors flash shots where the light is consistent enough for you to use manual exposure settings. Outdoors it would be different – except there is so much light you do not need auto ISO.