Category Archives: Technique

Shot of the day

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Here’s my Picture of the Day, taken last night:

For a picture like this, what are the challenges?

First and foremost: to get the exposure right for the candles, while still keeping the room dark. The usual “flash only” setting of 100 ISO, 1/125th sec, f/5.6 will not work: the candles would be dark. Too wide open, and the entire room would be bright. You have the find the right “in between” setting: in my case, 1/30th sec at f/5.6, 400 ISO. Room lights were dimmed slightly, to avoid dark areas from becoming light.

Second, to avoid flash hitting the entire room. I fitted the single flash, an off-camera 580EX, with a Honlphoto 1/4″ grid. This lit up the side of the model, and the centre of the floor, only. (You can work out where the flash is by seeing where the shadows converge.)

Third, to aim the flash correctly. This is of course a matter of taste: I like side lighting to emphasize round shapes (the arm, leg, and toes in this picture).

Finally, to get the flash to the right level of brightness. I used TTL with flash compensation, though normally I would have used manual flash power setting for a creative flash shot like this.

Try a shot like this, if you are up to the challenge!


Sunny Sixteen

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You have heard me talk about the “Sunny Sixteen” rule before. This is a rule of thumb that says:

If your shutter speed is set to 1/ISO (e.g. 125 ISO at 1/125th sec, or 400 ISO at 1/400th sec), then on a fully sunny day at noon, f/16 will give you the right exposure.

Like this, at f/16:

And if it is not sunny?

f/16 Sunny Distinct
f/11 Slight Overcast Soft around edges
f/8 Overcast Barely visible
f/5.6 Heavy Overcast No shadows
f/4 Open Shade/Sunset No shadows

(Source: Wikipedia)

This rule is a rule of thumb, so feel fre to vary – I often expose two thirds of a stop higher – but since the sun is always the same brightness, it holds well. And it is nice to be able to expose without light meters, if only in order to be able to check your camera.

Bonus question: how do you expose the moon?

Answer: f/16. The moon at noon is as bright as the earth at noon- they are the same distance from the sun!

 

 

Creative light

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Here for you are a few simple steps to a dramatic light portrait.

Step One: Start with a room. Like this one, with some of my students last night:

But for creative lighting we do not want to see the ambient light – it would just interfere.

Hence… Step two: make the ambient light disappear. You do this by selecting a setting for ISO-Aperture-Shutter that makes the room look dark. Like 200 ISO, 1/125th second., 200 ISO:

Yes, the room now looks dark, and no, I did not turn off the room lights. Your camera is a light-shifter.

Now we add the light that we do want to see. Step three: use an off-camera flash. All makes of camera support this: remote TTL works very well once you learn the ins and outs.

  • Nikons and some Canons can use the pop-up to drive the remote (“slave”) flash.
  • Others need a high-end flash on the camera to do this.
  • Ensure that the on-camera flash only issues “commands” to remote flashes but that its actual flash-during-picture function is disabled.
  • Use a modifier, like a grid (I use the Honl Photo modifiers) to ensure that light does not go “everywhere”.
  • You can soften the light with a softbox or fire direct at the subject. Yes, you can fire direct at a subject, as long as the light is not where the camera is.

Now we get what we wanted:

This technique is also good to learn lighting scenarios (like broad, short, butterfly, or Rembrandt lighting).

 

Weddings

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Apart from being busy driving (I picked up my son in Montreal yesterday: 1300km, 13 hours in the car, in one day).

But I have also shot a few weddings in the last days. And when I say “I” I mean “we”: look at this image: three photographers plus myself shooting the bride arriving at the reception:

That is Kristof, who shot the wedding with me, and our assistants Ola and Merav.

To do a wedding justice, you need several shooters:

  • You get the moments.
  • You get several points of view.
  • You have “equipment and CF card insurance”
  • You have “personal mishap insurance”
  • You avoid losing time due to constant lens changes.

A wedding is our mark in history, and it is worth doing well. If you are tempted to shoot one for a friend: engage a pro, or at least engage other shooters also.

TIP: wedding photography is in part fashion photography. Join Kristof and myself for a workshop on 19 May: http://cameratraining.ca/Fashion.html – you only have three days left to sign up! (The same urgency applies to the Africa workshop: click here)

 

Just a moment!

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Photography is about Light, Subject/Composition, and moment.

Like in this picture of Dan Bodanis of the Dan Bodanis Band, with Peel Region’s Acting Police Chief, the other night:

In a photo like this, “moment” is everything. A few tips, then:

  • If you take lots of pictures, you will succeed.
  • Look for moments.. “if it smiles, shoot it”.
  • During speeches, wait for a pause.
  • Do not shoot people while they are eating (or for that matter, while you are eating).

Sometimes it pays to simply shoot and not to worry too much about technicalities. In this case, I was bouncing a flash (behind me) while the camea was on kmanual, with settings chosen to capture enough ambient light (near or at the Willems 400-40-4 rule for indoors event flash: 400 ISO, 1/40th sec, f/4).

 

Inverse Square: It’s The Law

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The “inverse square law” regarding light dropoff says that light drops off with the square of the distance. I.e. an object 4 times farther away gets 16 times less light, and so on.

This law needs to be part of your DNA!

Why? Because it explains those dark flash backgrounds. And because it helps, too. Take this shot of my model Kim in a grungy garage, using an off-camera TTL speedlight through an umbrella on our right:

Fine. But what if we wanted a darker background? Remember Willems’s Dictum: “bright pixels are sharp pixels”.

The solution is simple: move the umbrella closer to her. Then the background is farther away in relative terms, so it gets darker with the square of that ratio. So now we get:

And if we move ourselves to get the umbrella out of the picture, here is what we end up with:

Simple solution to a vexing problem if you like dark backgrounds!

 

Before and After: Why we use light

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The following shots of yesterday’s student are a good example of why we use flash to create dramatic portraits outdoors, on a sunny day.

Say you take a snapshot, in automatic mode, of a person on a sunny day around noon. You get this:

A snapshot. Composition is fine, but the person is half overexposed, half underexposed; the sky is washed out. It’s why people say you cannot take photos at mid-day on a sunny day.

But flash comes to the rescue.

  1. Set your aperture, ISO and shutter speed to get a nice darker background. I like dramatic, so in my case this is a very dark background. Dark colour is saturated colour. Start by going to the fastest shutter speed you can use when using a flash (e.g. 1/250th second), then set aperture and ISO to get darkness. (I used manual mode, and set my camera to 200 ISO, f/13 in my case).
  2. Use a flash in a modifier – to “nuke the sun” (overpower sunlight). This needs to be a powerful strobe, or a speedlight very close to the subject. I used a Bowens strobe with a softbox, powered from a Travel Kit battery.
  3. Now meter the flash, using a flash meter (or trial and error). Adjust the strobe until you read the same aperture you just set.

Now you get this:

Isn’t that much better? The subject is now the “bright pixels”. And bright pixels, as you know, are sharp pixels!

 

Sin against the rules?

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Two questions.

First: Can you shoot an aquarium whose glass is dirty? Like this?

Furthermore, can you do that using a wide angle lens instead of a macro lens? And when there is little light? At high ISO? Surely not.

Yes, you can. Provided that you:

  1. Get close to the glass – very close. This defocuses the dirt.
  2. Do not overexpose (underexposure makes black blacker, and hence helps make grey dirt go away).
  3. Ensure that behind you, it is dark, so you avoid reflections.
  4. Shoot at fairly low F-numbers.
  5. Are patient.
  6. Are willing to do a little post work if needed (to makes blacks darker and whites brighter).

Examples here – shot this morning with my Fuji X100 camera with fixed 23mm lens (equivalent to 35mm), at f/5.6, 1/60th second, at 800 ISO.

800 ISO? Is that not grainy? Well, apparently it is quite acceptable.

(More aquarium tips elsewhere on this site – search for “aquarium” on the right.)

Next question. Can you shoot JPG and get quality?

No. Yes. Wait. Of course you can. As long as you get the shot right!

On the Fuji I tend to shoot JPG, against all my usual advice – because I tend to get everything right (white balance, exposure, and so on). And these are usually not client shots, hence I feel I can just shoot JPG, unless they are for publication.

So the above shots were shot as JPGs. So yes, it can be done – though I would normally recommend RAW, since more mistakes can be fixed more easily. But when you have to, and have the ability to consistently get “close enough”, you can indeed shoot JPG. QED.

 

What you do not light

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Lighting is all about what you do not light.

Like in this “implied nude” shot from the other day:

How did I light this?

  1. Camera on manual, with settings guaranteed to make the room look dark (it was not, but the camera makes it look like it was): something like 1/125th second, f/5,6, 200 ISO.
  2. One flash on the camera disabled, except for sending commands (“master”).
  3. One TTL “slave” flash on our left, slightly back aimed forward a little, with a grid to stop light spilling, and a yellow Honl Photo gel.
  4. One TTL “slave” flash on our right, slightly back aimed forward a little, with a grid to stop light spilling, and a red Honl Photo gel.

Easy technique, and a lot of fun. Try to not light everything all the time. A few flashes, grids, gels: all you need!

 

Lighting a garage shoot

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I did a garage shoot yesterday. Grimy garage with girl: a well known (and always good) theme.

But this depends on lighting it properly. And as usual for the Speedlighter, I did it simply:

  • One camera, set to manual
  • Aperture, exposure and ISO set to work well for a darker background: 400 ISO, 1/125th, f/5.6.
  • TTL off-camera flash.
  • One off-camera flash into an umbrella. The main flash is doing nothing.

This gives me shots like this:

Simple and effective!