Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
Are you just starting out with photography? Have you ever wondered why that expensive, brand new, professional grade DSLR in your hands is betraying you and not giving you perfectly exposed photos – every time?
Read this article and you can learn the secret to correct exposure with any DSLR camera – revealed for the very first time – right here on the internet.
(Warning – the truth about getting correct exposures from your DSLR camera may shock some readers – discretion is advised.)
One of the first things we learn as photographers are F stops and how we can use them to properly expose a photograph, but there is also such a thing as T stops and we don’t always give them the attention they deserve. Of course, a T-stop may not be essential knowledge on every photo you take, but understanding what a T stop is will give you a better understanding of light, which is never a bad thing for a photographer to have. (It’s also helpful information to have in your bag if you’re going to be lens shopping soon!). And Matt Granger does an amazing job of explaining the difference.
One of the most commonly asked questions by new photographers is what exposure settings they should be using to get correct exposures. Unfortunately, this is also one of the most difficult questions to answer because of the seemingly endless amount of variables involved in calculating such settings. There are always situational elements such as available light, motion, and other things that we can use to help us determine correct camera settings, but outside of those tangible variables, a photographer must also take creativity into consideration. How do you want the photo look?
In this quick primer on exposure settings, Bryan Peterson discusses the notion that just because a photograph is exposed correctly on a technical level doesn’t necessarily mean the exposure settings were the right ones.[Read More…]
Looking on the back of the camera to see if you got a shot properly exposed can be misleading. The LCD may not be calibrated showing a too dark or a too light image. Or the sun hitting the LCD can be laying tricks on you.
Yet there is a tool, that is often ignored that can give you a very quick and good indication if you exposed correctly – The Histogram.
In a nut shell, the histogram is a graph that show how many pixels of each brightness level are present in a frame. John Greengo of CreativeLive give a full back to basics course on photography, in this installation he discusses the Histogram in very easy to understand manner.
Generally, John mentions that you would want a histogram that looks like a mountain with a strong peak in the middle and a slope that goes out to either end. While specific captures may be unique, (such a capturing snow, or night shots), a strong peak on the right may indicate an over exposed image, while a strong peak on the left may indicate an under exposed image.
With the sensitivity of the Sony a7S reaching up to an ISO of 409600, the camera itself has had some pretty high expectations to live up to. Just recently, Photographer Yosh Enatsu took the a7S out for a test run and uploaded some results showing what the camera truly can be capable of. Considering the a7S doesn’t have its own internal 4K codec, the shots were done through a setup utilizing an external Blackmagic converter. Filmed in the middle of the night, the final two videos we see paint an impressive image of what the a7S can do.
A participant in one of my workshops asked me about taking a photo of their iPhone while using an off-camera flash. The main problem he had was that he couldn’t see the iPhone’s screen when using a flash.
So for this week’s article I am going to talk about dragging the shutter – or in layman’s term – how-to or why-to lower your shutter speed while using a flash. I will show different scenarios so you can better understand much how (and why/when) to do this.[Read More…]
After talking so much about exposure and the controls you can use to, em.. well… control it, I thought I’d bring up some info that can help bring all the control info together.
As a solid base for demonstration, I chose to display and discuss a bit about a rule know as the “Sunny Day 16” rule. I guess that this rule is known to film photographers, and is of little use nowadays when all the cameras have built in light meters. But we can explore this rule and learn something about exposure from it.
The rule is simple: on a sunny day, set your aperture to f/16 and set your shutter speed to be as close to the ISO setting as possible. (There! All the three exposure controls in one coherent sentence. Pat on the back!). This is where this rule got its name – Sunny day 16. Image by Stefan Mendelsohn.[Read More…]
In the previous few articles, I have discussed some basic aspects of photography. The first subject to get a close look was exposure, and I have discussed two of the three components that control it: shutter speed and aperture. In this article, I will bring in the missing piece – ISO (or film sensitivity). After that I will conclude the exposure subject.
We have learned that the sensor (or film) can get the same exposure if we prolong the duration the shutter is open, but use smaller aperture (or shorten the duration that the shutter is open, while using a bigger aperture). If we want to be absolutely honest (which, at least for now, we do), we have to include the third part of the equation: film sensitivity (AKA ISO).
In short – ISO sets the impact that light will have on the sensor. High ISO will make our exposure brighter, while low ISO will make our exposure darker.
So how can we use ISO to produce better photographs?[Read More…]
This is the first article of the Back to Basics series which tells allabout the basics of photography, and it deals with Exposure. Do you know that click sound that cameras make? It originates from a “flip” of a mirror that allow light to fall on the camera’s sensor (or for the old skool photographer – to fall on the film).
The effect of light falling on a sensor is called Exposure. That is because the sensor is exposed to light. (OK, great, so exposure happens when something is exposed. Big deal! no wait there’s more…) When the sensor is exposed, it gathers the light and depending on how much light is gathered it creates an image.
Exposure is relative and is comparable by something called stops. (or F stops). The main trick for understanding exposure is that “opening” or “closing” a stop, doubles or halfs the amount of light that falls on the sensor. Lets have a closer look.[Read More…]
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