Quick Tip: When you shoot into a mirror, for your next Facebook avatar (go on, admit it, you’ve done this shot), then you get a mirror image – which is incorrect (eg you cannot read any text in the image, and faces look very different, since we are not totally symmetrical).
The fix is simple: in Lightroom, go to the DEVELOP module and use function Photo – Flip Horizontal:
You can now read the writing on the front of my lens.
Do I need a macro lens for close-up photography?
Yes. No. Depends. Depends, like so many things.
Often, a long lens will do well. As in this image, taken with my 70-200 2.8L stabilized lens:
And the next thing you need to ask yourself is: how large does the picture need to be? What is it for? A large poster, or a small print, or a web site?
If the answer is one of the latter two, i.e. “not large”, and your sensor has lots of pixels, you can simply crop. As in this image I took just now with my 45mm tilt-shift lens on my 1Ds Mk3 camera, a full-size sensor camera. This is not a macro lens, so I cannot get close:
But because my camera has lots of pixels and this image was meant for web sites or smaller prints (like 5×7, say), I can crop down to just the watch, and I am still left with 1833×1222 pixels. Even that is too much for this web site: when you click on the image below to see full size, you will see a large image on your screen that is downsized to just 1024 pixels across.
And that is plenty here. In other words, you may not need a macro lens!
A few more tips:
So… the obvious answer is not always the whole answer, or even the right answer. The world is not black and white; it is 256 shades of grey.
(PS: Isn’t that tilt-shift lens disgustingly sharp?)
I have been asked to write more about a special lens I mentioned a little while ago: the tilt-shift lens.
This, as you recall from that prior post, is a manual-focus, prime, special lens that allows you to tilt the lens (change its angle so it does not point straight forward) and shift the lens (so that it points straight forward, but not inline with the camera’s viewpoint). Rather like a view camera. Mine is the Canon TS-E 45:
Shifting with TS-E 45
Tilting with TS-E 45
The question is: but when do you actually use it? Can you show examples?
Sure, here’s a few more examples.
You use this type of lens when you want to introduce “dollhouse”-type distortion:
Or when you want to fix perspectival line convergence or divergence in architectural photos, say, like when pointing the camera UP or DOWN.
My Door
Top of my door, when I point the camera UP
Top of my door, when instead of pointing up, I shift my lens up
Now those effects of a tilt-shift lens can be mimicked in Photoshop (or Lightroom, in the case of the perspective distortion) quite well.
The third is different: focal plane shifting.
Say I shoot my shoes. I am at f/2.8 because I need light. Unfortunately, that also gets me too-narrow depth of field.
Sometimes I want that, but sometimes I want to see the shoes back to front. With a tilt-shift lens that is easy:
Now you will get what you want:
The same applies to any object close to you:
No Tilt-Shift lens used, focus on back
No Tilt-Shift lens used, focus on front
Tilt-Shift lens used: focus everywhere
Another example:
f/2.8: No Tilt-Shift lens used: Blurred background
f/2.8: Tilt-Shift lens used: Background also in focus
And one more example:
f/2.8; No Tilt-Shift lens used; focus on back
f/2.8; No Tilt-Shift lens used; focus on front
f/2.8; Tilt-Shift lens used; focus shifted
Notes to observe when using a tilt-shift lens:
So when would I (do I) use one?
First, whenever I run into any of the above. Typically, product and architectural photography are two areas that come to mind instantly. The 45 is not a wide-angle lens, so it is suited to “natural looking” images.
But also whenever I feel like shooting things at an angle. And in creative portraits. And when the environment is not great so I need other ways to make portraits and other pictures look interesting. Do not discount a tilt-shift lens for portraits, or anything else. Here’s me a moment ago, with 5 degrees down tilt:
See that nice selective focus effect?
I also use a T/S lens when I want extra narrow DOF. This is what a normal f/2.8 gives me:
And this is what f/2.8 with the lens tilted away from the chair gives me:
See? A T/S lens is for much more than just products and buildings. Don’t discount this type of lens by thinking it is just for those disciplines: a wedding photographer or a portrait pro can use one too! In many of these types of photography, manual focus is a mere inconvenience – or maybe not even an inconvenience: it’s kind of cool to do it yourself.
PRO TIP: if you are interested in this type of lens, rent one. Play for a few days, plan some product, some architecture, some landscape, and some portraits, and have a blast for a day or two. Then you will know what this lens does for you and whether it is worth the money. Only you can decide!
Since you presumably shoot RAW, the White Balance (WB) setting (and I do wish they had called it “Colour Balance”) is unimportant: you can set it later in Lightroom or your software of choice, for one image or for an entire group, with no penalty.
Yes, but, as you have heard me say here before, you might as well feel good about yourself. Say you shoot indoors on a sunny day, and the “Auto” setting produces this, as it did for me yesterday agt my exhibit:
Looking at the back of your camera, you wil not feel great about your shots. So why not, jst to make yourself feel better, set the WB setting to “Shade”? You will get something more like this:
Looks better to me – more like what I was actually seeing. And if I do manage to get it right in the camera, there is less work to do later.
So what do I normally do? My strategy is to leave it on AUTO unless I have extra time; then my strategy is to get it right.
I can also
One time-saving note: if I do neither of those and leave White balance on AUTO, I do try to take one picture of a neutral gray object – like a gray card – in each lighting situation. That way I can quickly grab each ;lighting situation with the dropper in Lightroom and get the colours exactly right instantly in post-production.
As you see, there are many possible strategies. choose the one that best matches you and the particular shoot you are doing, and it will be one thing less to worry about. So that you can concentrate on your compositions!
Here is (Part of) the “To Find A Muse” exhibition, yesterday prior to its daily opening.
The exhibit is open until the end of August; Daily, Noon-5pm, at the Kodiak Gallery in Toronto’s Historic Distillery District.
All prints are for sale, framed or unframed: here’s your chance to make one of them – a unique original! – your own. See you there?
As you make more and more photos, backups become more and more important. And of course you make them. Right?
This is what I do:
Details:
OK, so I am pretty well backed up.
Except I am not. All my data lives on the two drives attached to my iMac. That is very dangerous – many things can go wrong. Things like:
To solve this, there’s a few things not to do:
So here’s the solution:
A lot of work. But worth it, because I can sleep. Are your memories (or your business) worth less? I didn’t think so – so come up with an off-site storage strategy today!
GR, a reader, asks:
____
Hi Michael,a few weeks ago I attended one of your Nikon Workshops in Oakville. It was a great workshop and I took a lot of info home from it.
Now I’m in the market for my first Telephoto Lense and thought you could give me some help what to look for – just keep in mind I can’t afford a 2000$ lens like you prefer. I’m already looking around for a while and found 3 lenses, I would like your oppinion when you find a moment.
The two main reasons I’m looking for a tele lens are: my boys play soccer, and we are going on vacation to Nova Scotia on August 9th.
First lense
Nikon AF-S DX 55-300mm VR 4.5-5.6G EDIn the online reviews I could find they say it’s a great beginner lens but it looses focus after the 200mm range. same goes for the next one
NIKON AF-S VR 70-300mm 4.5-5.6G IF-ED
Third lense
NIKON DX VR 55-200 F4.5-5.6G IF-EDCan you give me some information what’s the difference between those lenses, which one you would recommend and why I should choose one over the other.
If you know off a lense in the same price range that would work better for my purposes, let me know.
Thank you for your help and see you at the NIKON 201 hopefully this fall
My reply:
I teach and coach privately – cameratraining.ca – and at Vistek Mississauga, and at Sheridan College.
In a word or two:
– The more a lens does, the more it is a compromise.
– The VR feature is important.
So the third lens looks like an option. Not too ambitious; good for outside where you do not necessarily need f/2.8…did you read the recent article on speedlighter.ca? A few days ago? This will help you make the decision, and only you can make it!
(All that said… For travel, I would usually prefer a very wide angle lens.)
Michael
Some more “post-production technique” for you here today, again using Lightroom – but if you are a Mac user, you can also use Aperture if you so prefer.
Let’s say that for some reason (you are testing a lens perhaps), you want a picture of your bathroom and hallway, using a very wide-angle lens. Like this:
But no – first, let’s retake that to get some of the foreground mess out of the picture. Remember: simple is good… simplify, simplify, simplify. Pretty much everything you can take out of a picture improves it.
So take this shot again after you aim up a little:
Better. But it’s too dark, the colours are wrong, it’s all distorted.. waah.
Can we save this, and how long will it take?
Let’s attend to the white balance first. Go to Lightroom’s DEVELOP module, enter the Basic pane, and use the dropper on a white area to set an OK white balance. You can adjust more later, but at least get it close. You shoot RAW, so white balance can be set after you take the picture (if you shoot JPG, you have to get it very close in camera).
OK, here we go.. click:
Better. Now go to Lens Corrections, and apply the Profile correction, if Lightroom knows your lens/camera combination. This fixes the dark edges and the curved lines (I was using a 16mm lens here on a full-frame camera):
The curved door is now straight!
Now, still in Lens Correction, go to MANUAL, and fix the converging lines that you got because you aimed the camera up. Dragging “Vertical” to -27, and then cropping off the excess picture, gives me this:
Good!
Now, finally, let’s fix brightness and colour properly.
Brighter; adjust the colours again, highlights down to fix the window… a last White Balance fine tuning, and hey presto:
That entire fix took about 30 seconds. Doing this in Photoshop would take much longer. It’s still a silly “I’m just playing around” snapshot, but at least it is a technically proficient snapshot, in mere seconds.
You can see how Lightroom (or Aoerture) change your life as a photographer. Again, as in yesterday’s article, I am not advocating taking bad pictures and fixing them later, but you will sometimes want to adjust your images, and with modern software and RAW images, this is very simple.
One reason to shoot RAW is that it enables you to handle difficult situations, like those with too much difference between bright and dark areas, like this one, today at The Distillery, where I was attending my exhibit:
The shadow area is dark, the sunny area is way too bright.
Normally, when shooting a close-by object, I would use a flash for this. But with a wide angle like this, you would need a lot of flashes to light up the dark area. So, RAW to the rescue!
The original image look like this in Lightroom. The histogram shows that the bright areas are stuck right up against the edge:
And the original settings in the BASIC pane:
Fortunately, we have enough room in the RAW image to fix this: the bright areas have detail in them still. They may be overexposed, but they are still present in the data. So now we drag the bright areas down, thus changing the Basic settings to something more like this:
Which when you check gives you a histogram like this, much more like it – from dark to light without anything getting too close to the edge:
Which gives you a picture like this:
Simple, takes a second or two. This is a little like creating a HDR image from one file – which in fact is exactly what we have done here. The dynamic range in the original was too difficult for our camera to handle, but since it was only a few stops out of range, we were able to fix it in post-production.
I am not advocating doing this all the time – but sometimes, you have little choice. In those cases, expose to the right – overexpose the brights a little, because as long as it is just a little, you can fix the issue later.
How much is a little? I find that if I get some blinking (in the “blinkies”-view), I am good. Blinking is supposed to mean “no detail”, but on most cameras, blinking means something rather more like “watch out, you are getting close to losing detail here”. If the entire area is one solid black/white blink, then I have done too much to save. Stay clear of that and you can rescue the image. And Lightroom makes this very easy and quick.
One more image:
Incidentally, one reason to visit my exhibit (http://www.michaelsmuse.com), apart from the obvious one (to see my work and to buy an original framed print for your wall!), is that it is held in the Distillery District, one of Toronto’s most photogenic areas – it cries out to be photographed.
So bring your camera. I shall be there again tomorrow afternoon (Monday) – 1-5pm, come say hi. (Sssshhhh, don’t say anything: if I am at the gallery, and you mention reading this post to me, I’ll even give you a 10% discount on a print).
Namely: keep it simple. One of the easiest ways to improve your photos is to take stuff out.
You can do that in many ways. Zoom in. Get closer. Rotate. Blur the background. Move things. Change your position. Use obstacles in between. Use light, or rather darkness. Even for simple shots, always think “what can I take away?”.
Like in this snap of one of my bedside lamps, just now:
Just a Fuji X100 snap while testing a setting. But even for a simple snap: what is the alarm sensor at the top doing in the picture? A simple change of viewpoint and rotation gives me this:
Now what would you do in addition?
Personally, I would crop off the bottom. That joint between the two rods has no place in a picture. Since the x100 is a fixed lens camera, it is best done in post-production here.
Simplifying your pictures is easy, as long as you remember to do it. My rule: everything in a picture has to be in it for a reason – or it shouldn’t be in it. If you start doing this even for snaps, it will become second nature, and your photos will look more “professional”.