Category Archives: Technique

Learning technique

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Today, a tip and a request.

First, the tip.

How do you learn to “pan” your camera along with a moving object (like a bicycle travelling traversely through your picture)? So that the object appears to not move much, while the background is a streak? How do you learn this in the absence of cyclists riding through your living room? You pan and follow your hand. That’s how.

  1. Set your camera to S/Tv mode
  2. Select a shutter speed of 1/15th second (a good starting point).
  3. Hold your hand out as far as it can go.
  4. Focus on it. Wait for the beep and then hold your finger on the shutter to lock that focus distance.
  5. Now rapidly move your entire body around, so your hand describes a circle around you.
  6. Half way through that circle: click. (Do not stop moving to click!)

Try this technique, and repeat until you are happy. Your images may look somewhat like this:

You thus get to practice the technique that gets you images like this:

Did you find that a useful tip? Then I have a request for you.

I teach these and many photographic techniques –  a tip a day! – because I want to give back and help disseminate information and knowledge as widely as possible. I want the world to learn photography, and I think I can be a small part of that.

But you can help me too.

First: send me questions. About anything photographic.  I’ll do my best to answer them in a timely manner right here. That way, your question benefits others too.

Second: help me with the blog. Apart from small contributions, which are always welcome (see the link on the right), even more importantly, you can link to me. Mention my blog to friends and to others who many be interested. Link from your blog or from your facebook page. Tweet. Mention me on your web site. If you are helped by this, you can do me a big favour by spreading my name, and that of this blog, as widely as possible. This is an ongoing request!

That way I get better known, and I get to help more people. In this way, we all help each other. I firmly believe that this is the way the new economy works. Social media, sharing, the Internet: we now grow value by collaborating, not by “hoarding and hiding knowledge”. People who do not yet understand this will eventually find out that the old “make money by keeping knowledge secret” paradigms are dead.

And the world will be a better place for it.

Michael

Creative Bokeh

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Bokeh means the blur, or the quality of the blur, in parts of your image that are out of focus.

And you can use this to effect. For instance when shooting city lights, or Christmas tree lights, you can make them into circles by throwing them out of focus:

That was shot with a Digital Rebel with a 50mm f/1.8 lens. You cannot get simpler than that!

Metering

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A few words on light meters.

When shooting studio shots like the ones I talked about, you use a flash meter. When doing that to accurately judge the right exposure, keep this in mind:

  • Have a spare battery at hand
  • Move the dome out. Do not leave it screwed in.
  • Use the meter in Flash-metering mode!
  • Only flash one flash at a time. Turn off other flashes when you meter one.
  • Start with your key light; then one by one meter the other flashes. These will be darker generally.
  • Ensure your meter is set to the right ISO.

Then use the measured aperture as your starting point and check the histograms on your camera for fine adjustments. I believe that “exposing to the right” is generally a good idea.

Also, don’t forget to use a grey card to get a nice white balance reference target.

A standard portrait setup

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Back to the standard “small studio” setup I described earlier. This time I shall talk a bit not about how it works – I assume light sensitive slave cells and Pocketwizards and cables are all old hat to you now – but instead, I will talk about how to use it.

As a reminder, here is such a four-light setup, again:

Four lights; and after the click, more about how you use them.

Continue reading →

That portable studio

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So when I pack by bags to do a location shoot, like today’s executive headshots shoot, you saw in a recent post that I bring rather a lot.

And what do I use? How does it look when it’s all set up?

That setup process, which takes about 45-60 minutes including carrying it all from the car in stages, results in this:

This setup consists of:

  1. A grey backdrop. I like grey because you can make it any colour, from black to white.
  2. The main (“key”) light: a light stand with Bowens 400 Ws monolight in a softbox. This is fired by a Pocketwizard (just visible, top left)
  3. The fill light: a light stand with a Bowens 400 Ws monolight into an umbrella. This is fired by the slave cell.
  4. The background light: a mini  light stand with a 430EX Speedlite, with a  Honl speed strap and a Honl 1/2 CTB gel. This light is fired by a Pocketwizard, using a Flashzebra cable.
  5. The hair light: another a light stand with a 430EX Speedlite, with a  Honl speed strap and Honl snoot. This light is fired by a Pocketwizard, using a Flashzebra cable.
  6. A stool.
  7. The camera set to 1/100th sec, f/9, 100 ISO, and equipped with a PocketWizard to fire the other flashes.

It doesn’t look like all that much, but when you write it out, and then add the power cables, connection cables, bags, and so on, it’s quite a lot.

Fluorescent

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A word about shooting in fluorescent light.

Unlike Tungsten light, which stays on and glows in between cycles, Fluorescent flashes on and off 60 times a second or more.

This means two things to photographers:

  1. Light may vary during a cycle
  2. If the flashes are short, your shutter needs to be all open when they occur. Meaning you need to stay well below your flash sync speed.

The second is most obvious.

Look at these images, shot at 1/320th second just now:

See what’s happening? They vary and from top to bottom the brightness is different in both. This is because the (vertical!) shutter is not all open when the brief flash happens.

So when shooting fluorescent,

  • stay well below the sync speed
  • if possible, stay at a discrete multiple of the light flash frequency.

If you do not know what “discrete multiple” means (how would you – you’re not an engineer!) then just stay at 1/30th second (and often 1/60th will work as well). and you are safe in both cases!

Shooting hockey? Well then just shoot a lot, and you’ll get lucky for some images. Fortunately, hockey lights flash at a higher frequency, so the problem is much less common.

Best setting for… stadiums

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Reader Ray asks about shooting in a stadium. In this case, he will be shooting Monster Jam at the Air Canada Centre.

Whether you are shooting monster trucks or skaters like the young lady below (who is not exactly in a stadium but is in similar light), this kind of shoot is interesting.

Here are some pointers and questions:

  • Are you even allowed in with a long lens? Many venues restrict this.
  • It may seem like there’s lots of light, but if you are shooting action (things move!) you need fast shutter speeds, so your light may still be insufficient. Look through the camera: do you see a shutter speed twice the lens length or more (if 200mm, you want 1/4ooth sec or faster)? Depending on the action you may need much more.
  • So to get this, turn up your ISO as needed. 1600 ISO is not uncommon, although in bright stadiums you may not need to go this high.
  • Use the fastest lens you can get (lowest “F-number”). This is important!
  • Pan with the action (follow the action). When panning, turn your IS/VR off, or to “mode 2” or “Active” if your lens has that.
  • Shoot RAW.
  • White Balance is unimportant when shooting RAW. Still, you may want to set it (e.g. to “Fluorescent”).
  • Use manual exposure mode (“M”) and check the histogram to set it. The light will not vary so you should use manual to ensure that your exposures are consistent. Use evaluative metering. You can start at, say, 1/250th sec at 1600 ISO at f/5.6 and vary from there (you’ll probably need to open up more or, alas, slow down the shutter, if you are using a kit lens).
  • Set your camera to continuous shutter release
  • You may want to use “AI Servo” / “AF-C” continuous focusing if the subjects move to ward you or away from you.
  • And finally: shoot a lot. A lot! You will get some good shots. The better your lens, the more you will get, but even with a less bright lens, you will get some winners if you shoot a lot!
  • Shoot when the subject is “standing still”, e.g. when the truck is at the top of an arc as it jumps.

Using all those guidelines should help!

Also – check out my book, which will be coming out soon, for many such “Quick Recipes”.

Michael

One more "Studio" post

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I thought I would add one more picture of the small studio, and how it works.

This consists of:

  • A grey background
  • A main (“key”) light: a Bowens 400 Ws monolight, fired into a Bowens 60×80 softbox.
  • This light is activated through a PocketWizard; all other lights have a photocell that follows this light.
  • A fill light, 250 Ws fired into an umbrella
  • A 100 Ws background light with a yellow gel
  • A 250 Ws hair light with a snoot
  • A stool for the victim to sit on

The camera is set to manual exposure and has a Pocketwizard on it which drives the flashes. Don’t forget to set your camera to manual low ISO, and to check that your exposure time is under the synch speed (e.g. 1/125th second). Then meter for the right light (meter key and fill lights individually).

And this very vanilla setup leads to:

Photographers will know: the biggest challenge is to focus on yourself. That is why we are always hassling people to model for us.

Simple setup for budding pros.

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You saw my picture the other day. That was shot quickly, and I’ll explain how.

Here’s a very simple studio (or portable studio) setup for such quick portraits:

  • Two lights aimed either at a white wall behind you or into (or through) umbrellas. Both of these 45 degrees above, on either side. (45 degree high and 45 degrees left or right).
  • The main light (which is usually two stops above the other, fill, light) preferably through an umbrella; the fill light can reflect off an umbrella.
  • One light behind the subject aimed at the wall behind him or her, perhaps through a grid.
  • Optionally a hair light, perhaps using a snoot.
  • As a starting point, set your camera to manual mode, 1/125th second, f/5.6, at 100 ISO.
  • No flash on the camera, of course.
  • Check the histogram. Adjust aperture or light power accordingly.

For the shot here, we aimed both lights at the wall/ceiling: quicker than an umbrella and since here we did not need accurate pointing and shaping, it did fine.

When the histogram looks good, finally remember to get your subject to smile, as my colleague photographer Dani Valiquette did today, when I asked her to take a portrait for me. I don;t smile, except she made me.

And hey presto, one minute later you have a simple portrait.

You need to click and then view at original size to see exactly how sharp this is. Bright flashed pixes are sharp pixels.

Personally, I prefer the serious one, but I am told by many that I look less handsome when grumpy. Surely not?

This will be a common occurrence for you as a photographer: you like one shot, and the subject likes another – often the one you think is the inferior one. Get used to it and shoot both. Without giving up your artistic integrity, you can give the customer what they want.

Snow

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I have a reminder for you of how to expose for snow.

Snow and sand (yes, beaches to a camera look just like snowscapes) are brighter than your average scene.

So to get them to look natural, i.e. to get them to look bright, you need to tell the camera it is looking at a bright scene.

Unless you do this, the scene will look dark.  The camera, by virtue of its reflective light meter technology, tries to make everything look mid-grey (we call this “18% grey”). Like this:

Not bad. But unless you want the dark look for effect, it’s not good either; it was brighter than that outside my second home, the other day.

With +1 stop exposure compensation (that’s the plus/minus button), it looks like this:

And that is better. Your guideline:

  1. Snow should look white, not grey.
  2. The histogram should have a peak (the snow) on the very right, just before the end of the graph.

So use Exposure Compensation, have fun, and dress warmly.

Or if your thing is a beach, don’t dress at all.