Tip of the day:
To see the colour of the light you are shooting in, to really see it, take a first test-shot in every shoot with the white balance set to daylight (the sun symbol). That will show you the real colour of the light. Then you can take it from there.
You can judge by yourself, by looking at the back of your camera, or you can look at the colour histogram, if your camera supports that.
A beginner’s question this time:
What does zoom have to do with wide angle? I thought they were two opposite things!
Not necessarily. A “zoom” lens is simply an adjustable lens. As opposed to a prime lens.
What you are perhaps confusing with a “zoom” lens, dear student, is a telephoto lens.
Let me explain.
There are two main types of lenses:
And, an entirely unrelated classification, there are various lengths of lenses:
So a 10-20mm zoom lens is a wide angle zoom lens. A 24-105 zoom lens is a wide-to-telephoto zoom. A 24mm prime is a wide angle prime lens. And so on!
Sometimes it can be simple: off-camera flash can be really easy. Like in this student’s recent portrait:
Off-camera flash portrait
You can also see how nice the splash of colour is in the background, right?
A matter of choosing manual mode with just the right combination of aperture and shutter speed and ISO to get enough light into the background. And Flash White Balance makes the tungsten light look nice and orange.
My message today: although flash can be done in a very sophisticated manner, it is not always necessary to make it complicated. Often, very simple is all you need. “Off camera” is often enough to just make it work. And an off-camera flash cable, while not cheap, is the simplest way to achieve this.
So why would you use flash outdoors during the day?
Sometimes it is obvious: to fill in shadows on backlit subjects. Or to soften hard shadows. But sometimes you do it for more artistic reasons.
Let me illustrate this with a shot taken during the Get Out and Shoot run we did in Toronto early this week – the workshop I wrote recently.
Imagine you are shooting someone – me, say – on a bright day, but in a spot where I am in the shade against the shady side of a grey building. Before you know it you get a dull picture: grey and low-contrast on all counts: blaah.
So that’s when you bring out the flashes. Say, two remote “slave” flashes, fired by a “master” flash on the camera. One slave to the camera’s left, shining into a Honl reflector, and aimed at the subject’s face, to add bright light to the subject. The second flash is equipped with a Honl Speedstrap and on it, a green gel, and this flash is aimed at the grey wall behind the subject to make it less grey.
Now you get this:
Outdoors Flash Used During the Day
You will agree, I hope, that this is a lot better than it would have been without the help of flash. Even, no, especially, on this bright day.
Want to learn about all this stuff: read here of course, but also: join me for training.
(Thanks to colleague photographer Rob Corrado for the picture)
For those of you in the Toronto Area who want to learn more about flash, there’s some great opportunities coming up in the next days:
Take advantage of these unique opportunities and kick-start your use of flash and light this month. Sign up today and enjoy sharing your passion with the pros and with other enthusiasts.
A reader asks:
“Question: I understand why you would use most of the modes ( av, tv, etc.) but what are the main applications where one would/should use the manual mode? Thks”
Great question.Why use manual? Here’s why you want to use manual (“M”) exposure mode (the dial on top of your camera).
That means you will want to use manual exposure mode in the following circumstamces:
Some photographers say “always, and use a meter”, but for me, the above captures it nicely.
PS: be careful: there are many types of manual. See here: http://blog.michaelwillems.ca/2010/03/11/manual/
A few quick setup tips – for portable studios like mine, here today for a corporate shoot:
Portable Photo Studio Setup
In no particular order:
That is, I trust, helpful. Efficiency is all, or a two-hour shoot can turn into four hours with setup and takedown.
A studio like this one, the one I built this morning, took me half an hour to build and 15 minutes to take down.
I often get asked “what wide angle lens should I get?”. Of course that is a difficult question to answer: there is no “should” about it. But in general, unless of course you are shooting an African lion safari, wide angle lenses are the most flexible.
Here’s my son Jason driving the car the other day:
Why do I use a wide angle lens for this?
So is it “the wider the better”? Yes, pretty much, but watch out for a few things:
So not a panacea for all cases. But in general, wide is great and at least one of your lenses ought to be very wide – in the range of 10-20mm on a crop camera, and 16-35 on a full-frame camera.
Quick Tip of the day: carry some small things at all times. Namely:
These cost almost nothing, weigh almost nothing, and are worth more than than their weight in gold for a photographer. Solutions can be low-tech.
Since I just got back from shooting a junior Lacrosse game, here’s another few quick tips.
And they do not apply just to Lacrosse!
Here’s one I like:
