I just wanted to share a fabulous composite picture I just received from reader and student Ray. It’s so much fun I thought I should share it, and use it to wish you all the best of the season:
Happy holidays
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Category Archives: Learning
A portrait technique
One very good portrait technique is to have a person in the foreground, and then to have one or more people in the background, out of focus, adding to the mystery, the story. So you wonder what the story is.
A bit like this picture of two lovely students at my recent Phoenix workshop:
Ideally, the second person would be even farther and would perhaps be looking at the subject instead of looking at the camera, but you get the idea.
How do you do this?
- You use a “fast” lens (low f-number), open wide to, say, f/1.8.
- You would be using aperture mode or perhaps manual for this.
- You can use flash, although at f/1.8 you would most likely not need to.
- You would accurately focus on the closest eye. Using one focus point.
- If the ISO is very hiogh and the lught low you can get some noise (“grain”) – in that case consider making the picture black and white, which “likes” a bit of noise.
Have fun taking holiday season portraits of all your visiting relatives!
Family snapshot tip
If you are new to cameras, let me give you a quick tip for the holidays.
When you shoot pictures of your family, use “slow flash” (enable “slow” on Nikon, or use Av mode on Canon) and an ISO of 400 or even more if it is dark indoors. That allows the background light to show, as well.
You will need flash, too, around the tree. But rather than the popup flash, use an external flash. And above all, do not do this with that flash:
Instead, do this:
That’s right – point the flash backward above you. Your happy snaps (photojournalists call them “grip and grins”) will be infinitely better.
What memory cards do I need?
This is a frequently asked question. Like many such questions, it has some suggestions rather than one definitive answer. And those suggestions are:
- Buy brand name cards. Lexar and Sandisk are the main brands, and they are very good electronically. They have anti-aging mechanisms built in that some cheaper cards do not.
- Get a lot of them. Often, I would rather have two 8GB cards or even four 4GB cards than one 16GB card. This spreads your risk. Memory cards die, get lost, get stolen, and so on.
- Speed is less important unless you shoot sports (many repeated shots) or video. For video, the sustained throughput (the small 1-9 number surrounded by a circle) is very important. But if you do not shoot video or constant shutter mode shots such as in sports, speed only affects the read/write time from buffer to card and from card to computer, (not the quality) and you may well prefer a $30 “slow” card ran a $150 “Super Generation 6 Extra Extreme Screaming Speed Pus Pro” card.
- That said, I think everyone should have one very fast card – for when you shoot repeated large images.
- Do not open the camera when the LED at the back, that indicates “wait, I am writing to the card” turns off.
- Format your card every time you re-insert it into the camera – but only after you have copied all you images to the computer and made a backup.
- Use a CF/SD card reader for connecting to the computer. Many people find this more convenient than connecting the camera. The choice is yours, though.
I hope that is useful – and remember, shoot a lot and fill those cards, especially this season.
Nick
OK, so I spent the day photographing St Nicholas, i.e. Santa Claus, in the mall. The real one (pull his beard, it’s the genuine thing).
So how do you do this? See yesterday for the tethering article, but I thought it might be useful for you to see how this is done in other equipment terms.
I used, and with the help of my assistant Daniel set up, the following in this order:
- Lights:
- Two 400 Ws strobes (Bowen) on light stands, firing into umbrellas.
- A pocket wizard on each light to fire it.
- Power set to 4/5 as a starting point
- Camera:
- Canon 1Ds MkIII, with power supplied by mains adapter.
- A tripod
- Wire release for the camera.
- 50mm f/1.4 lens (any lens would have done)
- Pocket wizard (to fire the other two)
- USB cable to the computer.
- Computer, tethered as per yesterday’s article
First, I set my camera to manual exposure, 100 ISO, 1/125th second, f/8. Then I set the lights to that, using a light meter.
Then I tried a test shot without flash:
This is very important. I wanted the ambient light in the mall, which varied due to a large skylight, to not affect exposure. So that picture above should look dark. Else variance in the sunlight will affect my pictures. One lovely thing about studio lighting is that it is consistent.
Then I did a custom white balance (I had to shoot JPG for the printing company, so this was very important). So I shot a grey card on Santa’s seat, and set my custom WB to that exposure.
Then I set the camera “style” settings to extra saturation by one click. (I am shooting JPG and we have bright Santa- and kid-colours).
And then I was ready. Here’s me:
Having tuned a bit (set my aperture to f/9 instead of f/8 to reduce exposure a bit), I am now ready for shots. And for Santa!
And the great thing is that I was able to stay at these settings all day. And every picture was sharp as a tack, exposed perfectly, and the right neutral colour. This is what I love about studio light. Even in a mall, with a portable studio. Of course it is important to check every now and then that you are still set right – JPG, 1/125th sec, 100 ISO, f/9. But if you make no mistakes, you get the same great light all day.
And Jolly Old Nick will be happy, as will the kids – and more importantly, their parents.
Lights… camera… action!
A quick reminder for those of you who shoot action shots: shots where the subject is moving.
For anything where the subject is moving, you may want to:
- Use Tv/S or manual mode (or Av/A mode with a large aperture) to set the exposure time to 1/200th sec or faster – the faster, the better, typically..
- Use a high ISO (in hockey arenas and wedding dance halls, you may well need 1600 ISO).
- Use the center focus point
- Set the focus mode (the “how does the camera focus) to “Continuous” (AF-C/AI Servo).
- Set the drive mode to continuous.
- If you are moving with the subject, turn off your lens’s stabiliser, unless you have a “mode 2” for panning.
- You may want to try JPG shots for these.
And finally, do think about how you want to show or freeze motion. It is not a given that all motion must be frozen. A hint of motion blur can show the viewer that something was actually happening, and that they are not staring at a statue.
Turn baby turn
One thing that snappers often ask me is “when do you turn your images”?
There is no one answer, but it is almost certainly “more often than you do”. I turn my picture diagonally when:
- I think it makes a nice composition
- I want to turn diagonals into horizontals and verticals
- I simply want to fit more in
- I want to introduce a more dynamic feel
Here’s a few recent examples:
So while for the sake of your viewers’ stomachs I would not recommend you turn for every picture, I do think we could all do this a lot more than we do today. For that professional look.. or just to get everything into the picture. Which still gives it that professional look.
Flash
Yesterday, I spent the evening with six pro and emerging pro shooters who spend their time shooting weddings and similar events. I taught them both basic and advanced techniques for using flash, including small strobes, i-TTL/CLS/eTTL, modifiers, and creative techniques. I love this stuff, and I get taught to teach it. Can you imagine? Pinch me!
Red Green
Here is my Canon 7D with a few of my speedlights (pro speak for “flashes”), pocketwizards, and cables:
Sometimes I use them for standard lighting. Sometimes I use effects -more often than not colour. Here’s four of them firing at once, with some of those excellent (try them) Honl gels:
I try to add a splash of colour every now and then. Like here in this outtake from a recent shoot (see the slight green on the subject’s left, our right?)
And I recommend that you try this, also. Recommended.
This season, think “red ” and “green”. Seasonal family pictures, but add some splashes of green and red light to the fun.
For this, I would use manual and pocketwizards. But here’s the key: I would still use TTL for the main (bounced-off-the-ceiling-behind-me) flash. So the normal flash is on the camera (or with the 7D, off the camera), while the “effect” flashes are fired with PW’s from the x-synch socket, and set manually to, say, 1/4 – 1/16th power.
That’s what is happening th that “four flashes side by side” shot above: the two left flashes are fired by the 7D’s popup flash using e-TTL, while the right two are fired by Pocketwizards that are driven by the sender PW on the camera’s x-synch contact. Yes, that works fine!
Bright sun = flash
The brighter it is, the more you need your flash.
Huh? That sounds counter-intuitive?
Not when you think about it. Bright sunlight means harsh, contrasty sunlight. Contrast means that part of your picture will be too dark or too bright.
Here is Sedona, AZ, last week:
Not bad. But can you see how dark the foreground is?
“But you can use exposure compensation, Mike, plus one or two stops”, I hear you say.
Yes, but then the entire picture goes brighter, so the background would be all washed out – too bright.
So the only way is to turn your flash on. And now you get this:
And that is why you should always carry a flash – even on the beach, even in Mexico, and even in Arizona. The brighter it is, the more you’ll be likely to occasionally (or more than occasionally!) need it.