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Monthly Archives: February 2012
What lens should I buy!
Boy, that’s a tough question. And I get it a lot.
Today, student Dave asks:
[POST EDIT – CORRECTION MADE TO THE QUESTION]
Michael – I have been researching lens for my D800. I currently own three FX lenses – 60mm 2.8 Macro (we used this for the portraits on my D90) , 105mm 2.8 macro, 70-200 2.8. My other lenses are DX – I will end up selling some of these. Is Kijiji the best?? I have a great 12-24 F4 G DX lens.
I am debating between (1) a mid-range zoom and (2) a good wide-angle zoom and a fast 50mm prime. I am thinking about going with (2) – getting the Nikon 16-35 F4 G with VR (gets great reviews) and a 50mm 1.4 G. The 24-70 2.8 would be about the same price in Nikon as the two other lenses. However, the Nikon lens does not have VR. Tokina has just announced a forthcoming 24-70 with their version of VR. It won’t be available for a while I think.
Also, some commentators say that mid-range zooms aren’t that useful – use your primes, and wide-angle and tele-zooms (and your legs if you need to!). However, I must admit I find I use my mid-range for my DX quite a bit.
So, a little confused. Advice?
So. First, like many pros I do like the mid-range zoom. In a shoot yesterday with talented Make-Up Artist (MUA) Anastasia, as so often I used my 24-70 f/2.8L lens.
It goes wide-ish like this:
And it goes longish like this:
So that makes it very versatile for “I’m not quite what I am expecting” shoots.
Both the Nikon and the third-party 24-70s are fine, and you do not really need VR/IS on a widish lens like that. On a long lens (the 70-200 range) it is essential but on wider lenses you can easily live without it.
So the idea of “the Nikon 16-35 F4 G with VR (gets great reviews) and a 50mm 1.4 G.” is a good one. My 16-35 f/2.8L lens is a lens I totally love, as is a fast 50. So: my vote is for the wide lens and the fast 50, and keep your existing 24-70 lens.
That said – these are personal choices, I love the wide lens for newspaper work, for travel, for landscapes. My six lenses, by the way, are:
- 16-35 2.8 zoom
- 24-70 2.8 zoom
- 70-200 2.8 zoom
- 100mm f/2.8 macro prime
- 50mm f/1.2 prime
- 35mm f/1.4 prime
All are EF lenses, meaning they fit on any Canon body (none are EF-S lenses, which are like Nikon’s DX lenses).
So if you shoot a lot of things that need wide, I strongly recommend it – a wide wide lens (10-20 for crop bodies; 16-35 for full frame sensor bodies) is my strong recommendation for everyone. IS/VR is not that important until you get beyond 70mm.
But whatever you choose will be right – just tune your shots to the lens you have at hand (eg do not do headshots with a 16-35mm lens). And remember to shoot prime whenever you can: quality, consistency and speed will thank you.
Does that help?
Expose brightly = decrease age
Ah.. who does not want their face and skin to look smoother and younger? I thought so.
So here, from a Flash class I taught at the School of Imaging the other day, is a simple example. All of you can do this – simple camera, simple lens, and simple flash, in a small room with white walls and ceilings. To ensure that only flash light shows in your image, set the camera to manual, at 1/25th second, 400 ISO, f/5.6.
First, let’s do it wrong (sorry and apologies to my volunteer): aim the flash straight up at the ceiling. Result: dark circles under the eyes, many wrinkles: ouch. Do not do this at home!
Instead, when close to your subject, aim the flash behind you, up 45 degrees. That gets you a much better image:
That’s a nice portrait. But now look at this: let’s “overexpose” it by one stop: to do this, set your Flash Exposure Compensation (FEC) to “+1.0”.
Aha, that is better! We have taken years off the subject’s age just by lighting brightly. These images, basically straight out of the camera, show very clearly how you light and expose well: now go try to do it yourself!
Flash rocks, once you know how it works. This post shows just one small sample of what I teach you in my Flash courses and coaching.
Tilt-Shift
You may have heard of “tilt-shift-lenses”. These are lenses that.. well, tilt and shift. You can tilt the lens to the right or left (or up and down), and you can shift the entire lens up or down (or left and right).
Today, I am using the Canon TS-E 45mm f/2.8, a lens I borrowed from my friend Kristof, a very talented photographer. You can see that lens reviewed here, on The Digital Photographer: I shall not bother to add to that.
What I will briefly explain is this. A tilt-shift lens is not just used to bring converging verticals back to vertical. Yes, that too: but as many people point out, you can do that in Lightroom or Photoshop too. Same, I suppose, with the crazy weird “dollhouse” focus effects a Tilt-Shift lens can give you.
What you can not do in Lightroom or Photoshop is this: focus in a plane that is not perpendicular to your camera.
I mean this. Let’s look at a picture of some of the spices and condiments I use when cooking:
They are lined up front to back… the back is farther away from me. So at f/2.8, the back is way out of focus (click to see large: you will see by how much). Even at very small apertures like f/11 or worse, I would still see this effect (because I am so close); plus, I would lose the blurred background I want.
So here is where Tilt-Shift comes to the rescue! When I tilt the lens to the left (so it is more perpendicular to the desired plane of focus), I can shoot with everything sharp. In this case, a shift to the left of just 2.5 degrees did it:
Problem solved – all sharp where I want it to be, even at f/2.8.
So why not use Tilt-Shift lenses all the time? Well, for one, they are expensive (partly because the larger image circle needed means more glass). Also, they are manual focus lenses: no autofocus. And you need to take the time to get the effects right, and to focus accurately. You will want to use a tripod, and you will want to take your time.
But for many shots there is no substitute – like portraits where you want both eyes sharp, but the background blurry; architecture; and many types of studio product shot – even the shifting comes in handy there since you can shoot up or down without converging/diverging verticals.
Direction is everything
In yesterday’s class at The Granite Club, I emphasized that you can do professional artistic pictures with very simple means. Any DSLR camera; a normal lens, slightly wide to slightly long, and one on-camera flash in a small room. That can get you shots like this:
The secrets:
- Shoot in a small room with white walls and ceilings.
- Shoot long if you can – avoid wide except when you have to in the small room.
- Try to “fill the frame”, and use good composition (e.g. the Rule of Thirds).
- Camera on manual – say, f/5.6 at 1/125th sec and 400 ISO.
- Try to include props – perhaps special clothing, sunglasses, anything interesting.
- Simplify your shot – take things out that do not belong! You can do this by positioning, tilting, and even by post-shoot cropping.
- Expose high: use Flash Compensation (“FEC”), to a positive setting (perhaps +1 to as much as +2). Light bright = smooth skin.
- Especially: aim the flash accurately “where you want the virtual umbrella to be”.
That last point is illustrated by me here. Look carefully:
Can you see how I am holding the flash, and aiming it accurately behind me? You can see the white ceiling – where my flash lights it up, i.e. the “virtual umbrella”) right in front of the model.
(Cool shot, no? I am lucky to have a regular good model, and all the equipment – but with a little practice, we can all do this, with any model and any camera and lens. Learn the technique – then develop your eye.)
Demonization
Society’s demonization of photography continues. As a photographer, I am more than a little bothered by this.
Take this example. My son’s school just sent a press release email to all parents. It read, in part:
Dear Parents/Guardians,
The Halton Regional Police Service has arrested and charged a man after he was seen following and believed to be photographing two teenage girls. On February 2nd and again on February 6, 2012, just after 3:00 p.m., the two girls were walking home from school in the area of Monks Passage and Oak Meadow Road when they observed a man following them.
The man was driving a white Cadillac and appeared to be photographing them.
The girls were able to obtain the licence plate of the vehicle and subsequent police investigation led to the driver being identified.
The letter then went on to give some common-sense safety advice (play safe and play together; walk together, and so on).
What bothers me is not the way in which authorities watch over out children’s safety (I have kids too). What bothers me is the “…and believed to be photographing” part. As though that in itself is bad; the implication is that photographing is a step worse than merely following and harassing.
Photographing someone is no more illegal or wrong than looking at someone or speaking to someone. Both are perfectly legal. And both can, when done in a harassing manner, be wrong.
Yes: it is legal in Canada to photograph anyone and anything you like, in a public place. Of course there are limits: harassing is wrong. But that is the harassing – it has nothing to do with photography itself. Imagine if the press release had read:
“The Halton Regional Police Service has arrested and charged a man after he was seen following and is believed to have spoken to two teenage girls”
or perhaps
“The Halton Regional Police Service has arrested and charged a man after he was seen following, and is believed to have looked in the direction of, two teenage girls”
Or maybe
“The Halton Regional Police Service has arrested and charged a man after he was seen following, and is believed to have listened to, two teenage girls”
That would sound silly – but photography – oh, that is bad: it steals people’s souls. Worse if he was using a long lens – never mind that an iPhone has lots of megapixels too, but a long lens makes you extra evil.
I am not exaggerating. Last summer, a fellow newspaper shooter I know was interrogated by police after “he was seen photographing children with a long lens” – and two cars, not one, were sent to intercept this photojournalist, who was merely getting a “weather picture” for the Oakville Beaver, our local newspaper.
Can I suggest we use slightly less incendiary language? As a photographer who carries a camera at all times, I do not want to start being seen as a threat – thanks. Photography is not sinister and it must not be turned into anything sinister. It does no harm – and the pictures teens put up as Facebook profiles are, I am sure, more revealing and provocative than anything you could capture in the streets.
Oh, and I received the 2008 Halton Police “News Photograph of the Year” award. Which I captured with, yes, a camera.
Crop, or not?
There is a decision you need to make both when shooting and later, when cropping in “post”. Namely, how to crop.
Perhaps you “fill the frame”: often good technique to add quality to a picture. Yes, you can cut off heads, etc, as in this recent shot of my favourite model:
Or you frame carefully to both include the subject and to exclude the distractions that make an image look amateurish – this, you often do in post. In order to simplify, I cropped out some small distractions in the following set-up shot in post-production in Lightroom:
In both cases, keep one thing in mind: you may want to crop to particular aspect ratios. Like 5×7, or 8×10. In that case if you have shot too close, you cannot print at your selected ratio without losing essential elements.
That is why
- I sometimes shoot a little wide, so I can crop later.
- On the other hand, I am not bound to using the aspect rations the frame industry wants me to use.
Your choice – as long as you know what the consequences are!
Self portrait
The other day I decided to do a quick self portrait. And instead of the normal “traditional” portrait, I did the following:
Moody, dark – I don’t smile much in pictures and life is serious! And as you see, lighting is all about what you do not light.
I made this picture as follows:
- I put up a grey backdrop.
- Using paper tape, I put a cross on the floor where I was going to be standing.
- I put a light stand there.
- Having put the camera on a tripod, I aimed at the light stand and focused on it; then set the focus to “manual”.
- I set the camera to self timer.
- I selected 1/125th second at f/11 (you want f/5.6 – f/11 for these shots normally).
- Using my light meter, I set my main light, which I fire with pocket wizards, to these values. That main light is a Bowens strobe with a softbox.
- I added a background light: a speedlight with a Honl Photo grid and a Honl Photo Egg Yolk Yellow gel. I set this to quarter power (experience). The speedlight was also fired via pocket wizard; if you have a Nikon speedlight you can use SU-4 mode (cell).
- I pressed the camera shutter button and took the exact place of the light stand. 10 seconds later: flash!
And that was that – simple once you know. Now you try!
Panta Rhei
Thought for today: Greek philosopher Anaximander said “Panta Rhei” – everything flows. The river constantly changes: we can never stand in the same river twice. We, too, are like that river. That is why we should be photographed – often, and well. If you are not having proper photos made of yourself and your loved ones, or if you are not doing it yourself: start today. Panta Rhei.
Not too shallow
I hear people say sometimes that “you cannot shoot portraits at wide open apertures”.
So then how this available light portrait, shot on a full frame camera with a 50mm lens at f/1.2 (yes, f/1.2!)?
Well yes, it is shallow, but not too shallow. Because I have enough distance.
Remember: depth of field (“DOF”) is a function of three things: aperture, distance, and lens focal length. The closer I get, the lower my f-number, and the more I zoom in, the more I get shallow depth of field.
So portrait like this, with the person small enough like this, gives me plenty of DOF. Of course I would not want to do a full headshot at these large apertures, but in this type of portrait the shallow DOF is not too shallow, and the super blurry background makes things better.
So -get yourself an affordable 24- 35- or 50mm lens!