Photography Tips Guide

Posts Tagged ‘Digital Photography Techniques’

Capturing movement in images is something that many photographers only think to do when they are photographing sports or other fast moving subjects. While there is an obvious opportunity in sports photography to emphasize the movement of participants – almost every type of photography can benefit from the emphasis of movement in a shot – even when the movement is very small, slow and/or subtle. Last week I featured 15 images that capture movement with creative blur – today I want to take a few moments to suggest some tips on how to do it.

Tips for capturing movement:

1. Slow Down Your Shutter Speed The reason for movement blur is simply that the amount of time that the shutter of a camera is open is long enough to allow your camera’s image sensor to ’see’ the movement of your subject. So the number one tip in capturing movement in an image is to select a longer shutter speed. If your shutter speed is fast (eg 1/4000th of a second) it’s not going to see much movement (unless the the subject is moving mighty fast) while if you select a longer shutter speed (eg 5 seconds) you don’t need your subject to move very much at all before you start to see blur. How long should your shutter speed be? – Of course the speed of your subject comes into play. A moving snail and a moving racing car will give you very different results at the same shutter speed. The other factor that comes into play in determining shutter speed is how much light there is in the scene you are photographing. A longer shutter speed lets more light into your camera and runs the risk of blowing out or overexposing your shot. We’ll cover some ways to let less light in and give you the option to have longer shutter speeds below. So how long should your shutter speed be to get movement blur in your shot? There is no ‘answer’ for this question as it will obviously vary a lot depending upon the speed of your subject, how much blur you want to capture and how well lit the subject is. The key is to experiment (something that a digital camera is ideal for as you can take as many shots as you like without it costing you anything). 2. Secure Your Camera There are two ways to get a feeling of movement in your images – have your subject move or have your camera move (or both). In the majority of cases that we featured in last week’s post it was the subject that was moving. In this type of shot you need to do everything that you can to keep your camera perfectly still or in addition to the blur from the subject you’ll find that the whole frame looks like it’s moving as a result of using a longer shutter speed. Whether it be by using a tripod or have your camera sitting on some other still object (consider a shutter release mechanism or using the self timer) you’ll want to ensure that camera is perfectly still. 3. Shutter Priority Mode One of the most important settings in photographing an image which emphasizes movement is the shutter speed (as outlined above). Even small changes in shutter speed will have a big impact upon your shot – so you want to shoot in a mode that gives you full control over it. This means either switching your camera into full Manual Mode or Shutter Priority Mode. Shutter Priority Mode is a mode that allows you to set your shutter speed and where the camera chooses other settings (like Aperture) to ensure the shot is well exposed. It’s a very handy mode to play with as it ensures you get the movement effect that you’re after but also generally well exposed shots. The other option is to go with Manual mode if you feel more confident in getting the aperture/shutterspeed balance right.

How to Compensate for Long Shutter Speeds When there is too Much Light

I mentioned above that one of the effects of using longer exposure times (slow shutter speeds) is that more light will get into your camera. Unless you compensate for this in some way this will lead to over exposed shots. Below I’ll suggest three main methods for making this compensation (note – a forth method is simply to wait for the light to change (ie for it to get darker). This is why many shots that incorporate blur are taken at night or at dawn/dusk): 1. Small Apertures So how do you cut down the amount of light that gets into your camera to help compensate for a longer shutter speed? How about changing the size of the hole that the light comes in through. This is called adjusting your camera’s Aperture. If you shoot in shutter priority mode the camera will do this automatically for you – but if you’re in manual mode you’ll need to decrease your Aperture in a proportional amount to the amount that you lengthen the shutter speed. Luckily this isn’t as hard as you might think because shutter speed and aperture settings are organized in ’stops’. As you decrease shutter speed by a ’stop’ you double the amount of time the shutter is open (eg – from 1/250 to 1/125). The same is true with Aperture settings – as you decrease the Aperture by one stop you decrease the size of the shutter opening by 50%. This is great because an adjustment of 1 stop in one means that you just need to adjust the other by 1 stop too and you’ll still get good exposure. 2. Decrease Your ISO Another way to compensate for the extra light that a longer shutter speed lets into your camera is to adjust the ISO setting of your camera. ISO impacts the sensitivity of your digital camera’s image sensor. A higher number will make it more sensitive to light and a lower number will make the sensor less sensitive. Choose a low number and you’ll find yourself able to choose longer shutter speeds. 3. Try a Neutral Density Filter These filters cut down the light passing through your lens and into your camera which in turn allows you to use a slower shutter speed. It is sort of like putting sunglasses on your camera (in fact some people actually have been known to use sunglasses when they didn’t have an ND filter handy). For instance, if you’re shooting a landscape in a brightly lit situation but want a shutter speed of a second or more you could well end up with a very over exposed image. A ND filter can be very helpful in slowing the shutter speed down enough to still get a well balanced shot. It is the use of ND filters that enabled some of the shots in our previous post to get a lot of motion blur while being taken in daylight. Another type of filter that can have a similar impact is a polarizing filter. Keep in mind however that polarizers not only cut out some light but they can impact the look of your image in other ways (ie cut out reflection and even change the color of a sky – this may or may not be the look you’re after). Two More Technique to Try – one more technique to experiment if you’re wanting to capture images with motion blur is to experiment with Slow Sync Flash. This combines longer shutter speeds with the use of a flash so that elements in the shot are frozen still while others are blurry. Read more about Slow Sync Flash. Another technique worth trying out is panning – moving your camera along with a moving subject so that they come out nicely in focus but the background blurs. Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips. How to Capture Motion Blur in Photography

Like a lot of photographers, I carry a camera around just about everywhere I go.  But it’s not always my preferred DSLR as the bulk and weight often preclude easy travel, especially if I’m just heading to the store. 

A Point & Shoot (P&S) camera, however, easily slips into my pocket or resides peacefully in the glove box of my truck.  With years of service, it has become invaluable in capturing special memories and spur of the moment shots. 

On a recent business trip to San Francisco, with my trusty P&S in my pocket and the DLSRs moping around back at home, wondering why I had forsaken them, I was bitten with by the photography bug.  I’m guessing most of you know this feeling.  Some of you are bitten every day.  But for some of us that don’t have a specific project or trip in mind, the photography bug doesn’t pay a daily visit.  Inspiration in us all comes and goes, like the tides.  When the bug does bite, though, a camera must be acquired, STAT!

For me the bite happened at night as I walked the streets of the Financial District.  With only my P&S along for the ride, I’d like to share some trips I have found handy in pushing a small camera to an often large task; night photos without a tripod.  In this case, I’ll limit it to a city landscape.

1. Use A Longer Shutter Speed

Without getting into specifics concerning one brand of a camera or another, most P&S cameras have some ability to adjust the shutter speed.  If you’re lucky, yours will actually have a shutter speed setting, but my Canon Digital Elph does not.  However, it does have a “Night Scenes” mode setting with an expanded feature.  This feature does allows for shutter speeds beyond its standard two second maximum in Program mode.  In fact, it can be dialed all the way up to 30 seconds if I desire.  And to be honest, it took me two years of using this camera to finally notice this setting!  I’d highly suggest checking your owner’s manual to see if your camera has such capabilities.  If not, then you might want to skip tip #2…

2. Try Different Shutter Speeds

We all know longer shutter speeds will bring in more light.  But chances are if you’re shooting at night in a city, there’s not too much light.  Meaning, your camera will have the latitude it needs in the aperture settings to keep the exposure well developed.  I found my camera was able to handle shots all the way up to about 20 seconds before things started to get too blown out.  Otherwise, different shutter speeds allowed me to capture headlight streaks with a varying degree of streekiness.  Longer shutter speeds and their corresponding smaller aperture also brought distant buildings into focus.

3. Find Something Sturdy

I can hear some of the comments now, “20 second shutter speeds without a tripod?  Are you crazy?”  While I mentioned the lack of a tripod, I didn’t mean you have to completely handhold each shot.  Find as many sturdy surfaces as you can.  Newspaper boxes, lamp posts, statues.  Just about anything will work.  Sometimes it will mean the surface will be in the shot (such as with a railing or ledge) so you’ll need to take that into account.  Some people can make decent handheld shots down to one second long.  Me, I need stability in the form of large objects.  Even then, technique matters (see example at right as a prime example of what not to do), which means you will want to…

4. Breath Easy And Squeeze

Keep your finger on the shutter release as you’re taking the photo.  Don’t attempt to remove it as it’ll likely cause minor shakes.  Breathe normal and steady, don’t hold your breath.  I read some place that sharp shooters are trained to squeeze the trigger while exhaling as the body tends to relax during that portion of the breathing cycle.  I’ve found this to be mostly true and it does help with longer shutter speeds.

5. Fiddle With ISO

ISO can be your friend or enemy in city night photos.  P&S cameras don’t often have the same noise reduction capabilities of their larger brethren (although they are constantly evolving) and this makes for some fairly grainy shots past ISO400.  Some people like this, some don’t.  If you’re not a fan of all that grain, take manual control (if you can) of the ISO setting.  This will, of course, mean longer shutter speeds, but that’s half the fun of learning photography; getting used to the interplay of the controls to manage how much light passes through to the sensor.  Also, if there is just a touch too much light in the scene, lowering the ISO may help darken those areas until they are acceptable.  Also, lowering the ISO may help you grab some light trails that didn’t exist before with a faster shutter speed.

6. Use Noise Reduction If You Have It

As previously mentioned, not all P&S cameras are equipped with decent noise reduction for higher ISOs.  However, a fair number of cameras DO have noise reduction for long shutter speeds.  My camera is such a unit and it has positives and negative aspects.  On the positive side is the fact that the feature is intended to be used with night shots.  It knows black should be mostly black and can handle night skies well.  One the negative side, the feature takes about as long to process an image as it took to shoot the image.  I’ve cursed this aspect as the scene I really wanted went zooming past while my camera took 20 seconds to process my 20 second photo.  It’s something to be aware of.

I’m limiting this post to just these six tips which I hope are the most helpful, otherwise a blabber mouth like me could go on and on and on.  I do have one more tip that is outside of the parameters I set at the beginning of this post.  Grab a GorillaPod and leave it in your vehicle.  Or carry it around with you, but that’s not always practical.  These little devices are very easy to use and perfect for night photos around a city.  They can also give you more latitude in composition as you’re not confined to straight forward shots on newspaper boxes.

Lastly, don’t forget to check out Natalie’s previous post How To Avoid Camera Shake.  While directed at the large DLSR lens crowd, it contains a number of tips that also apply to using a P&S at night.

Now then, let us hear from you!  Add your favorite night-photography-with-a-P&S-in-a-big-city tip in the comments section below.

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.

6 Tips For Better Night Photos With A Point And Shoot Camera

“Darren, it’s Fall here and the colours in the leaves in our town are wonderful. How can I capture their vibrancy? Every time I shoot them I end up with muddy and dull images!” - question by Grant

I love Autumn photography - you’re right the golden and red leaves on a background of lush green grass and beautiful blue skies is a wonderful thing. So how do you capture it? Here’s a few starting points to boost the colours in your Autumn photography (in fact they’re appropriate for boosting the colours in your Spring shots too):

1. Use a Polarising Filter

The saturation of colours that you get with one of these is fantastic. It is particularly useful in getting lovely blue skies but you’ll find that it decreases some of the haze that you often get at this time of year also.

2. Shoot in the Golden Hours

While you can get great results at any time of the day - I love shooting Autumn colours at the end of the day just before sunset when the light is golden. This accentuates the reds and golds even more than normal.

3. Don’t ignore the Overcast Days

Some people keep their cameras in their bags on days where the sun isn’t shining - but they can actually be the best days. I like overcast days because they help create a mood that you can’t get on a sunny day - plus the images are nice generally nice and rich.

4. Look for Contrasts

One way to accentuate the colours in your shots is to think about framing your shots in such a way that the different colours contrast with one another. Golden leaves on a blue sky - a red leaf on a lush green grass etc.

5. Avoid Shooting Into the Sun

Shooting into the sun will result in shadows, lower saturation of colours and lens flare (which further reduces the impact of colours. On Sunny days - keep the sun at your back. If you do have to shoot into the sun use a lens hood or shield your lens with something to avoid lens flare.

6. Play with White Balance Settings

Sometimes Auto mode with White Balance won’t give you the most vibrant results. Warm up your colours by increasing the colour temperature a touch (not too much). You can do this by increasing the kelvin numbers or by selecting a setting like ‘cloudy’ if your camera has semi-auto settings. Read more on White Balance here and here.

7. Warm Up Filters

I don’t use these anymore (I tend to make changes in Photoshop) but in my Film Camera days I did use a warm up filter on occasion to give my shots a slightly warmer glow.

8. Underexpose Your Shots (slightly)

Pull back the exposure on your shots a touch and you’ll find that it gives your colours a slightly deeper saturation. Again - much of this can be done in photoshop - particularly if you’re shooting in RAW.

Of course keep in mind that once you’ve taken your digital shots that you can always boost your shots on your computer afterward. This isn’t the place to go through it (as I mainly focus upon in camera techniques here) but if you shoot in RAW you’ll be in a good position to do some post production on your shots after.

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.

Autumn (Fall) Photography - Capturing Colours

Here’s a surprising little tip that a pro once shared with me when thinking about contrast in images. It’s not really conventional but it works!

When setting up an image to shoot you can assess the contrast levels in a scene and see how the camera will ’see’ it by squinting.

More specifically - close one of your eyes completely and then squint with the other.

With eyes wide open we’re able to take in a lot of visual information from a scene - more than even the best camera is able to process but what you’re doing by squinting is reducing the range of what you’re seeing and are leaving yourself with the highlights and shadows (ie you’re taking out a lot of the mid-tones).

Give it a try - you might look a little silly (probably not as silly as the guy in this shot) - but it might just help you improve your images a touch too!

PS: One of our readers ‘boyan’ also made this comment on this technique:

“Galen Rowell recommends the same technique in one of his books, but in a different context - it allows you to concentrate on shapes rather than colors, and helps you compose better. An alternative is to stop down the lens and use the DOF preview button - I believe that I read that on Thom Hogan’s site.”

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.

Assessing Contrast - The Squint Technique

It concerns me as a photographer when I see the numerous articles and ebooks about making cash from your camera. 8 Easy steps or 10 ways to turn those snapshots into cash. And, “Hi shutterbug here’s a foolproof way to turn those photos into dollars”. Or, earn $200-$400 per day from your camera. With all the resource boxes pointing to, you guessed it, books and cds that will help you make money from your camera or rather the authors make money from your purchase. All of us who are photographers would love to make a regular income from the hobby or profession we love. None of us want to be told that it is difficult, it takes time and not many people make it. These dubious dealers give the impression that anyone can make money from their photos. Rubbish! If you take a look at the stock sites and see the quality of images for sale, you’ll realise that unless you are really talented you will never produce the quality that the buyers are looking for. Do yourself a favour. Do a search on the name of the ebook author who makes all of these claims using Google and then go to the major stock sites and do the same. Where are these authors making their money? From you! If it was so easy why don’t they have thousands of images on the stock sites? I rest my case. Take a look at the guidelines for submission on the stock sites. Every last one of them requires a camera that takes a high resolution image. Some even state that they’ll only accept images taken on certain mid-range to high-end digital SLRs. Don’t even think that you will be able to compete with your compact camera. You stand no chance. Your images are just not big enough. I have been on seminars given by successful stock photographers from the microstock sites and all them state that it is tough, demands long hours of work and takes a long time to make a reasonable income. Some never make it despite quality, dedication and a lot of effort. It is not a part-time money making machine as claimed by the ebook authors. So what does it really take to make money from your camera, if it is at all possible for the amateur? You have to make a decision to dedicate yourself to your photography even if it is part-time. Carefully consider the following points: 1. Dedication to the art of photography If you are not a dedicated photographer striving for excellence in your art there is no real money to be made. Sorry that’s the bottom line. There are so many talented artists producing high quality images that you do not stand a chance if you cannot compete in this field. You need to up your standards and create images that are very high quality. 2. Dedication to detail Every detail in your image needs to be perfect. This is what the buyer is looking for. He doesn’t come along and say, “now which poor point-and-shooter can I help make money today”? When a buyer is planning to put a photo on a billboard every detail must be perfect. Examine your images and ask yourself, “Would I see this image in a magazine?” 3. Dedication to quality 99.9% of snapshots won’t make it past the stock site evaluators. Their standards are very high. Sharpness, great colours and perfect composition are just some of the factors you must take into consideration when planning to sell your images. You have to be a photographer, either a pro or dedicated amateur regularly looking at the quality of your images and pushing the limits. Look at the books and magazines and compare your photos. Do they compete? If the answer is yes then you are getting close. The ebooks say that there are millions of people looking for photos for the school and class assignments or projects who will buy your images. Get real! If they have the opportunity to buy an ordinary snapshot or a high quality image shot by a top photographer both selling for a dollar, which would they choose? 4. Dedication to discipline Discipline is key to any hobby or vocation and especially so with photography. You need to be disciplined in your learning and improving your skills constantly. You need to be disciplined in your shooting and editing your images. And, you need to be disciplined in your submission of quality images to the stock libraries and photo sites. It’s a numbers game. The more quality content you have out in the market the more chance you have of buyers selecting your images. You cannot do it on a whim or when you feel motivated to do it. It is essential to have a commitment to the task and a disciplined overall process. 5. Dedicated to achieving results If at first you don’t succeed try and try again. If at first you don’t get the results you desire don’t give up or try something else. Keep at it until you see results. It’s like the little green shoot popping its head above the soil or the tip of the iceberg. You are building the roots that will support the later growth of your business. If you don’t have a results driven motivation to see it to the end you will not achieve the success you set out to attain. It’s a hard uphill road to success with photography. The photo world is competitive and saturated with good quality images. If you are to succeed you must break through the barrier from great to outstanding. You must stand head and shoulders above the rest in your quality and excellence.