On 20 August 2009 I was driving westward, from Ajax back to Oakville, and around Vaughan I noticed the sky was getting increasingly unusual.

Churning skies…

Dark on top, light below. Dark, with light shining through. Green, then orange glow; very nasty. This was around 8pm.

It was no surprise to me that this was the night of the Vaughan tornadoes. I must have driven right by them.

Tips for this kind of weather:

• Always carry your camera. I suppose for legal reasons, before some of you protest, I should say that you should not shoot from the car while driving. Regardless: carry your camera.
• Use exposure compensation when needed to ensure the dark sky shows up as, well, a dark sky. Usually, a value around -1 stop will do this.
• Set the white balance to an appropriate value.
• Use a wide angle lens.

The wide angle lens makes it easy to show the screen in its perspective, but it also has practical benefits: (a) you get wider depth of field, and (b) you can shoot at slow shutter speeds without blurring your images.

If you always carry your camera, you will be able to document your life, and that of those around you.No camera = no images.

I am moving today from Mono to Oakville, ON. That means for once perhaps no post. Not that I would not love to write, but it looks likely that Internet connectivity may take a day to set up.

In the mean time, why don’t you, if I may make a suggestion, take the lens cap off and go shoot some pictures. Right now. With a 50mm lens (or if you have a crop camera, a 35mm lens, or a zoom lens set to the “35mm” focal length zoom position. With particular emphasis o:

1. Rule of thirds
2. Blurred backgrounds
3. Simplifying

I shall try to post later, but if not, you will know why.

On my drive home, almost there last night, I was struck by how beautiful fog is.

25th Sideroad, Mono, in fog

For the technically minded: 38mm lens on a 1.3 crop camera, meaning “standard 50mm”, the “nifty fifty” look. 100 ISO, f/5.6, 1/50th second.

Ever tried to shoot in fluorescent light?

Tough light. The colour is all green.

So you know what to do: white balance. Set it to “fluorescent” – that will make the colour appear more neutral.

But sometimes it gets really weird. Especially when you shoot with a good lens, i.e. a fast lens, one with a low “f-number”, a lens with a wide aperture. You can get some pretty weird images.

With a slow “kit” lens you get something like this, perhaps:

And then you switch to a faster lens with a wider aperture. Now perhaps you get this:

And then perhaps this:

Huh? What’s up?

The increasingly  blurry background should give you a clue. Can you guess?

Click on “more” to read the answer after the line:

Continue reading →

Today’s post will be delayed until later in the day. This rarely happens but at 1:30 I think I’ve done enough today!

Due to popular demand, below are a few beginners’ tips for today.

Michael Willems, March 2011

I occasionally throw in some of these, in case any of my readers may have missed one of these.

• “Focus” means “where it is sharp”. Focusing means “setting the distance at which the picture is maximally sharp”. Focus does not mean exposure! “I focused on the tree, so why is it too dark” is meaningless (unless you are using your spot meter linked to your chosen focus spot, but that is an advanced topic).
• The “mode” dial on the top of your camera sets the exposure mode, but not the flash mode. So “manual” means that aperture and shutter are set manually by you. Your flash has a manual setting too, but unless you engage that, the flash is still metered separately and set automatically!
• In any case, there are many “manual” settings on your camera and they are entirely unrelated. Manual exposure. Manual focus. Manual flash power. Manual ISO setting. Manual focus spot selection. The list goes on – and these have nothing to do with one another. Hence “I am using manual” is not enough information!
• Use one focus spot. Do not let the camera choose which focus spot: you choose it, and then aim that focus spot at your subject.
• Use AF-S/One Shot (as Nikon/Canon call them) focus modes, unless you are shooting moving objects; then, consider AF-C/AI Servo.

Photography is not “about” this technical stuff. It merely needs to be done. So I will throw in one more, about composition:

Avoid putting your subject dead centre in your photos. Instead, use the “rule of thirds” more often than not.

My friend (and Mercedes salesman) Steve Jones took a picture of me today, at the car dealership. Here is that picture:

I went through his camera setup for a flash picture with Steve, and I thought I would share that here.

• What mode should we be in? Manual, for full control. The flash is still metered, of course, but background is manual.
• What settings? In this case, in a big garage with much light, we will not go with the standard 400 ISO, 1/60th sec, f/4. Instead we will look at the light meter.
• We want the background to be two stops, say, below the ambient light. So the meter should point to “-2”.
• To get this, it needed 200 ISO, f/5.6, 1/200th second. With those settings the meter pointed to “-2”.
• The flash had a Sto-Fen type diffuser on it for a bit of light softening, and it was pointed forward (to make the light emitting area larger).
• White Balance was set to “Flash”.

And that’s it – that is how it is done: took a few seconds, means a nice shot.