Yesterday’s snap of the day was about b/w. Today’s is about colour. Colour can be subtle:
Toronto, September 2009
Colour
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Author Archives: Michael Willems
Flash help
Excellent session tonight: I did a training session with two truly excellent wedding photographers: Ruby from Phoenix and Baz from Ottawa. The subject was modern-but-complex flash technologies: multi flash, custom settings, dramatic flash, modern modifiers, and more.
Believe me, wedding photography is a tough job that takes enormous talent – and these two people have it in droves. If I have been able to contribute even the slightest amount to their excellent shoots becoming even more successful, that is enormously gratifying. And we had fun.
My workspace
A snap of my office I just took:
Like that? It’s a snap, but it looks… well, three-dimensional. Doesn’t it?
Do you know why? Those who have been in my classes do. It is because I am using the “close-far” technique. I zoom all the way out to the widest angle I can (which was 16mm on the 7D, meaning about 25mm), and then I get close to something. Very close. As close as I can.That makes the close object look extra big – hence extra close, while the background looks small – hence, far away.
Sad Dave's?
Ft Worth, Texas, Sept 2009
3200 ISO JPG
People talk about the 7D’s noise, I hear. Well, I saw that too – my first impression was, it seems noisy in Lightroom. On the other hand:
- That is without a proper Lightroom import filter.
- The 7D has auto-ISO and my 1Dx bodies do not, so of course I am shooting at higher ISOs than I am used to.
And look how a 3200 ISO JPG looks:
Real size sample:
Well, real sized when you click on it.
Noisy? I think that is great. Remember, this is full sized detail; shot at 3200 ISO, and taken from a JPG! A few years ago, 800 ISO would have been unacceptably noisy.
Exposure compensation for drama
…is the most important control after focus, if you use your camaera’s semi-automatic modes.
What does it do? It makes the picture darker and light.er But how? Does it change the pixels? Adjust the ISO? Change aperture? Do processing in the chip? What?
Actually it is very simple.
You use exposure compensation (the +/- button on your camera) only in modes where the camera is already adjusting something.
If you are in aperture mode (A/Av), the camera constantly adjusts the shutter speed to match the light. If you are in shutter speed mode (S/Tv), the camera adjusts the aperture. In Program mode (P), the camera adjusts either/both.
All you are saying with +/1 is “I want you to do that as usual, but to do it slightly differently to how you’d normally set it. + means do what you do but make it brighter than you’d normally do; – means do what you do but make it darker than you’d normally do (like in the picture below).
So in Av/A mode, it adjusts the time as usual but to a slightly different value. In Tv/S mode, ditto for the aperture. In P mode, either.
No magic, then.
My new Canon 7D
…just locked up. Out of nowhere. I was not even doing anything. Even turning it off did not do anything – I had to remove the battery.
I’m not concluding anything from this, but have to wonder: if this that famous Canon QC again? I shall await the software update…. months from now, presumably.
My first 'real' camera.. back in the late 1960s
Or maybe it was the early 1970s. I wish I knew where it was.. a real 6×6 camera.
Aerial picture tips
Since I have not been on an airplane for a year, I thought it might be time to tell you how to take pictures from one. And in sort, it is like this:
- Carry your camera, no bag, “underneath the seat in front of you”. Keep it discreetly when flight attendants walk by. A camera does not in any way endanger the aircraft. You could put the strap intop your seat belt to avoid the camera flying off in case of turbulence.
- Sit near a window (but not over the wing…).
- Wait until the plane banks, after take-off or before landing (as when turning final in the picture of Manhattan above).
- Aperture mode, wide open, perhaps 100-200 ISO. Or you could try “sports” or “portrait” modes.
- Get close to the window – close, but no touching.
- Zoom in, but not extremely so: use the widest angle you can to still get the right composition. Wide angles are less susceptible to vibration.
- Shoot repeatedly, as much at right angles to the window as you can.
Finally: you will find many aerial shots to be somewhat hazy. That can be fixed if the problem is not extreme. In Photoshop, do a “levels” adjustment to ensure the histogram goes from black to white.
It is as simple as that!
Picture
Wide angles are nice. And so are the colours we see in cities when buildings reflect light. Like in Toronto the other day, on my way to work on Queen and Church:
For a handheld picture like this, I do the following:
- Set exposure compensation (the “plus-minus button” on your camera) to minus one stop as a starting point and adjust as needed (to +1 if needed!). That gives me the nice rich blue.
- Set the camera to pick a focus point by itself, out of all the available (3, 9, 11, or 39, depending on your camera) focus points. This is about the only time I do this: usually, I pick a focus point myself so that I can determine focus accurately where I want it.
- Select a high enough ISO (400 is a good starting point to ensure a fast enough shutter speed);
- Zoom to the widest angle (this way, your camera is less sensitive to motion and less sensitive to selective focus). And I like the wide, wide angles you get with something like the 16-35 mm lens, set to 16mm on a full-frame camera.
It’s simple – set it up that way, and then you just snap away.