Landscaper tips

Posted on October 20, 2009 by Michael Willems

Today, a few quick tips for shooting landscapes.

Northern Israel, 2007

Follow these:

Tools:

Use a tripod. This is the one time you will need one. Landscape needs to be sharp. SHARP.
Consider using graduated filters to darken skies.
Consider using a polarizing filter.
Use small depth of field (e.g. set an aperture of f/11 or f/16).
Focus one third into the picture to ensure all is sharp.
Be careful not to over-expose. You may well need -1 stop exposure compensation when shooting foliage.
Did I mention tripods?

Composition:

Keep the horizon straight.
Shoot at sunrise or sunset if you can.
Use the “rule of thirds”.
Use S-curves if you can to gently lead into the image.
Look for small colour contrasts (e.g. red-green, and yellow-blue),
Consider adding close-by foreground subjects to show depth in your image.

And your pictures will be better!

Why oh why..

Posted on October 19, 2009 by Michael Willems

…are studio flash pictures so much sharper than available light pictures? Like, always?

Whatever you do, available light may look great – but when you zoom in close, it is not perfect.

Studio is much better. Look at this picture I just took with my Canon 7D at f/11, 1/125th sec, 100 ISO, using two studio strobes driven by a pair of Pocketwizards:

Zoom in and it is spectacular. This is the original size (once you click), and utterly unaltered:

Why is this so much better?

Let me tell you some differences. I count six:

Aperture – Studio light means f/8. Available light means f/2.8. Lenses are typically sharper and clearer at f/5.6-f/8.
ISO – Available light means higher ISO. Lower ISO, like in a studio, means sharper pictures.
Shutter speed – Flash is around 1/1000th second. Available light pictures, even at 1/250th second, will not be as clear.
Tripod – In a studio you are likely to be using a tripod. This is huge, in terms of focus and motion.
Light direction – Studio flash is directional. Available light is diffuse. So surfaces look clearer.
Exposure – In a studio, you are likely to expose to the right – the pixels will be bright pixels. Bright pixels are sharp pixels!

So it is not so much one factor. It is the combination of all of them. In a studio you have all of them your way; in available light, many, sometimes all, are not ideal. That is why studio flash is so much crisper.

Have I left anything out, anyone?

My friend "Mofia"

Posted on October 14, 2009 by Michael Willems

Mofia, pronounced as in “more Fire”, who is himself a talented photographer, in a few typical poses – his poses:

All this in my basement studio. You can equip a studio very quickly and easily (I teach people how to do this). And guess what? That’s all shot using one strobe. One light, that’s right. And a reflector. Not four or five lights!

Sometimes you can't get it.

Posted on October 14, 2009 by Michael Willems

Like the other day when I shot a company event in the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto. Shooting the Stanley Cup was tough, and sometimes you just have to take what you can get.

This quick grab-shot of the Original Stanley cup is illustrative. The cup reflects and you have to get close in a small room (the vault). Little space for umbrellas. The Plexiglas around the object reflects. The Plexiglas behind the object reflects, too. The existing lights cannot be turned off. Oh and there is limited time.

So then, you get this – best I could do under the circumstances. And my hands give it charm. That’s my theory and I am sticking to it.

One thing to keep in mind: flash systems will be confused by strong reflections. Either switch to centre-weighted flash metering, or use FEC (Flash compensation) of up to +2 or +3 stops, as needed.

The mysteries of life…

Posted on October 10, 2009 by Michael Willems

Take your flash and put it on your camera:

Aim at a subject while looking through the viewfinder. Take a picture.

Did you see the flash? Through the viewfinder? Yes you did.

How is this possible? When the picture is taken on an SLR, the mirror is raised. When the mirror is raised, the viewfinder is black. So it is impossible that you see the flash through the viewfinder. You cannot have seen what you just saw!

Those of you who do not know, click on.

Continue reading →

Flash help

Posted on October 9, 2009 by Michael Willems

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.

Exposure compensation for drama

Posted on October 8, 2009 by Michael Willems

…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.

Picture

Posted on October 6, 2009 by Michael Willems

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.

Exposing snow – etc.

Posted on October 3, 2009 by Michael Willems

Say you are taking a picture of your child skiing down a slope. A student asked me this the other day.

So I produced a kid on a hill and shot that:

OK, it was a white piece of paper with a scribble looking not very much like a skier. But still. The camera thinks my white sheet is gray (that’s the assumption built into reflective light meters) and produces a gray picture. The histogram will be “in the middle”.

If you now use “exposure compensation” (the +/- button) and turn it up to +2, you get something that looks much more like it:

And if the bump in the histogram is not yet close to the right edge, you can go even higher.. like +2 3/4:

And more and we bump against the right edge and lose detail, so we stop there.

Next time you shoot your kid skiing down a hill, and it’s all white, remember that. “Your picture looks grey unless you tell the camera otherwise”.

Indoor Flash

Posted on October 1, 2009 by Michael Willems

Here’s a few demo shots from a kind volunteer (a student’s daughter) at a recent camera course I taught. This bit was about “flash”.

First, pop up the flash and use “P” or “Auto” mode and you get the picture that makes people hate flash:

Then enable “Slow flash” or “Night portrait mode” and you get a better picture.. yeah, it’s better. But not all that much:

Then put your big flash on top of the camera (e.g. an SB-900 or 580EX II, or their slightly smaller equivalents SB-600 or 430EX II). And aim that flash behind you.

Yeah. Behind. So it bounces off ceilings and walls behind you.

Much better. Much. See:

And then if you want extra “character” and “depth”, bounce off a side wall, if you can find one.

Now you get three-dimensionality, depth, character as well:

I mean – how cool is that? And all this was done in “P” mode, with no special stuff, with no settings on the camera, no required knowledge of aperture, no complicated techniques.

Flash is wonderful once you learn how to play with it. And it is easier than ever.

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