Using flash to darken your background. If you have been following along so far you have learned about the exposure triangle (Understanding exposure - exposure triangle) and how it controls timing and depth of field. Now were going to completely confuse you and throw in a fourth element; flash. In a previous post we learned how to use fill light in high contrast scenes. When using flash for fill we are simply taking our existing exposure and adding light to the dark areas.
The nice thing about using flash is that we can control the way the camera captures ambient light just by using the power of the flash unit to compensate our exposure. One simple technique to illustrate this is the "invisible black background" technique as illustrated in the photo at right. Here is a scene of our model, Bri, several group members and our softbox with a single speedlight. I want to take this time to mention that this technique works best when the light is not glaring down creating hard shadows. 10 Street Photography Tips from an Anonymous Street Photographer. I recently got these 10 street photography tips from an anonymous street photographer who wanted to share this information with you. I found these tips to be very insightful, and I hope you will too! Keep reading more to learn about all the goodness. 1. Meter off your hand When there is nice light, hold your hand into the light and meter off that. This will result in a great exposure, and works especially well if you are shooting in manual mode.
Often time when you are shooting in automatic modes (Aperture-priority or program) the camera doesn’t always give you the best metering or exposure. 2. When waiting in a certain area (e.g. an area with great light), keep walking around. 3. Always have our camera in your hand and ready to shoot. 4. Hold the camera behind the wrist so it’s out of view. 5. If right handed and you shoot off camera flash, walk along the right hand side of the street. 6. Try fiddling with your camera, like Winogrand. 7. 8. Frame the background. 9. 10. Digital Photo Secrets » The Sunny 16 Rule. Have you ever heard of the sunny 16 rule? It seems to have all but disappeared in most modern discussions of photography.
As a matter of fact, it’s one of many rules that photographers seem to have forgotten. That’s a shame because the sunny 16 rule serves as a nice way to check your current exposure settings. Let’s have a look at how it works. Long before the time of digital cameras, photographers invented rules to help them navigate their camera’s manual settings. And it’s still pretty handy to know what manual mode settings to use with your camera. How does the sunny 16 rule work? The sunny 16 rule works like this: On a clear and sunny day, at an aperture of F/16, you will get a correct exposure if you use a shutter speed that’s the inverse of the ISO speed you’re using.The second part is probably the one that’s confusing you (if any of it is). The easiest way to explain is with an example. ISO speed is your camera’s sensitivity to light.
Let’s use another example. You bet there are. How to Get the Perfect Exposure Using Your SLR Digital Photography Camera's Histogram. Edit Article Edited by Robert Benson, Teresa, Flickety, Maluniu and 4 others The most important tool in digital photography besides the camera - the histogram! Learning to expose photos properly can be a headache for new photographers. If you are relatively new, you are probably using your camera's automatic functions to shoot most of your images.
Not only is that a poor habit to get into but you are wasting some of the extra $1,000 or so that you paid for a digital SLR vs. a "normal" digital camera. Ad Steps 1Understand what a histogram is. 4Read the next section for the explanation of how to use the histogram to gauge a proper exposure. Tips So, you stack all the black tiles (tone 0) in one pile all the tiles that are one tone lighter than black (tone 1) and so on all the way to white and there are all stacked in order in a straight line, that is a histogram.A Histogram ExampleReading a histogram.
Things You'll Need SLR Digital Photography CameraYour Camera's Owner's Manual. A Simple Explanation of F-Stop. 10 Ways to Take Stunning Portraits. How do you take Portraits that have the ‘Wow’ factor? Today and tomorrow I want to talk about taking Portraits that are a little out of the box.
You see it’s all very well and good to have a portrait that follows all the rules – but it hit me as I was surfing on Flickr today that often the most striking portraits are those that break all the rules. I want to look at some ways to break out of the mold and take striking portraits by breaking (or at least bending) the rules and adding a little randomness into your portrait photography. I’ll share ten of these tips today and a further ten tomorrow (update: you can see the 2nd part here). 1. Alter Your Perspective Most portraits are taken with the camera at (or around) the eye level of the subject. Get up high and shoot down on your subject or get as close to the ground as you can and shoot up. 2. It is amazing how much the direction of your subject’s eyes can impact an image.
A. B. 3. 4. 5. The shots were amazing, surprising and quite funny. 35mm or 50mm for street photography ? » Yanidel Street Photography. Obviously, any focal length will do in street photography and your creativity is really the only limit to how you perform with them. It is therefore not uncommon to see people hit the street with a 21mm, 28mm or even 75mm lens as their standard focal length. Nevertheless, the 35mm and 50mm focal lengths have traditionally been favorites of street photographers due to their versatility and ability to reproduce a field of view similar to the human vision. Many photographers, especially in reportage, actually do use both focal lengths (or have a zoom that covers both), yet they most often do have a preference for one or the other. Indeed, one is either a 35mm or a 50mm shooter.
So what kind of shooter are you ? Looking to buy your first lens for street photography or having doubts on your own preferences, here are some clues to help you to choose the focal length that will suit best your needs. The Kiosk – Leica M9 with 35mm Summicron IV at F2.0, 1/250, ISO200 A) Distance to subject. The correct way to hold a DSLR camera (Great tips!)
Hold your mouse over the picture and click "PIN IT" to put this pic on your Pinterest! Introduction My inbox is filled each morning with questions from students in my online photography classes asking various photography questions. I’m glad to get the questions because it helps me to think of what I should write about here on Improve Photography. You would be shocked to see how many of the questions are about sharpness and how to avoid blurry pictures. Most of the time, the question goes something like this… “Hey Jim. This is a huge problem and it is nearly impossible to answer in an email which of the dozens of factors is contributing to the lack of sharpness; however, I also teach A LOT of in-person photography workshops, and I can comfortably say after watching hundreds of beginning and intermediate photographers that 99% of sharpness problems are caused by errors in the photographer’s form–and not by the lens.
Why does it matter how I hold my DSLR? Lens Elements and Groups. Lens Elements and Groups When shopping for camera gear, you've undoubtedly encountered listings detailing how many "elements" and "groups" certain lenses have. They generally don't come right out and say it, but such listings often imply that more is better. But is this really true, and just what the heck are elements and groups anyway? In order to answer the first question, we need to start with the second.
"Elements" are the individual pieces of glass used in the construction of lenses. Each one is individually ground and polished using computer controlled equipment to perform a specific purpose such as focusing the light passing through it in a specific way, or helping to correct any of several different kinds of aberrations introduced by another element. "Groups" are groupings of elements, cemented together using optically transparent glue and intended to act as a unit. Rule of Thirds. The Rule of Thirds is perhaps the most well known principle of photographic composition.
The “Rule of Thirds” one of the first things that budding digital photographers learn about in classes on photography and rightly so as it is the basis for well balanced and interesting shots. I will say right up front however that rules are meant to be broken and ignoring this one doesn’t mean your images are necessarily unbalanced or uninteresting. However a wise person once told me that if you intend to break a rule you should always learn it first to make sure your breaking of it is all the more effective! What is the Rule of Thirds? The basic principle behind the rule of thirds is to imagine breaking an image down into thirds (both horizontally and vertically) so that you have 9 parts.
As you’re taking an image you would have done this in your mind through your viewfinder or in the LCD display that you use to frame your shot. Another Rule of Thirds Example. Canon EOS Beginners' FAQ III - Lenses. Flash exposure lock and compensation. Exposure for flash photography used to involve time consuming calculations based on guide numbers, subject distance and apertures. Evaluative through-the-lens (E-TTL) flash metering has changed all this. Flash photography, is now about as easy as a two times tables. Evaluation The evaluative metering system, used to take daylight readings, is shared by the E-TTL flash system. When you are shooting with daylight, exposure adjustment is sometimes needed with very light or very dark subjects.
Since E-TTL flash uses the same metering system, the flash meter readings can also be thrown by light or dark subjects. Flash exposure lock Flash exposure lock (FEL) enables the camera to remember the exposure for any selected area of the subject while you recompose the image in the viewfinder. FEL gives you total control over the flash exposure. FEL is especially useful when there are highly reflective surfaces, such as mirrors, within the subject area.
Warning signals Second curtain − the problem. DLC: Article: Speedlite Tip Series, Part 2: Beyond the Instruction Manual. As long as your shutter speed is at or below the flash sync speed and your subject is within flash range, your Speedlite will automatically output the correct amount of light for your foreground subject. This is the second part of a three-part series on Canon Speedlite flashes, written for the Canon Digital Learning Center by Gordon Lewis: Having once been a technical writer myself, I have great sympathy for the people who write instruction manuals. They often have to write while the product itself is in development and while the only samples available are prototypes. They also have to be economical in how they explain things. The idea is to tell you just enough to keep you out of trouble but not any more than you need to know. An extra wrinkle for the guys writing Canon’s Speedlite flash manuals is that Canon’s flash system is so closely integrated with their EOS and Rebel cameras that the same feature can be set either on the flash unit, the camera, or both.
Power options. DLC: Article: Using Auto Exposure (AE) Lock. All EOS camera models, film and digital, have a button on the back of the camera that's marked with an asterisk or star icon. This is the AE Lock button. Auto Exposure Lock (sometimes called AEL) is a feature on all Canon EOS camera models, as well as some PowerShot cameras. It’s an excellent method of gaining added control over exposure, without losing the speed and convenience of automation. In fact, since most photographers today use some form of auto exposure the majority of the time, an understanding of how AE Lock operates can add a new dimension to their photography. Photographers experimenting with the EOS 5D Mark II Movie Mode may find it necessary to master the use of AE Lock, as this function offers something close to manual control over the exposure during filming (you can read about Vincent Laforet's experience with AE Lock on the EOS 5D Mark II during the production of his short video Reverie here.)
What is AE Lock? Evaluative metering and One-shot AF mode: The AE Lock button: Depth of Field. A Simple Guide to Depth of Field. Online Depth of Field Calculator. Danny Santos II - Street Photographer in Singapore. How to Shoot Street Portraits | Danny Santos II - Street Photographer in Singapore. Photo above taken by photography hobbyist Paulo Legaspi About a month ago, I was invited by street photographer Eric Kim to be a guest writer for his blog. He wanted me to write a few tips on shooting street portraits. Although I’ve already blogged about my thoughts and experiences while working on my Portraits of Strangers project, I haven’t really provided any direct tips on how to work on a project like this. So I started writing down a few quick tips based on what worked for me. I’d like to share this article with you guys. Hope this helps :) Shooting street portraits of strangers is a very daunting task. 1.
When I was doing my strangers project, I was scared shitless most of the time. 2. 3. 4. 5. I always bring Moo cards that has my contact details and a sample photo at the back. These are some quick tips on how to approach strangers. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. If you guys have any more questions about this, just post it up in the comments :) 10 Things Not To Do As a Street Photographer. (Above image “Untitled” by Christos Kapatos) I just finished reading “The Black Swan” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, where he discusses many misconceptions and fallacies that we face as humans. He talks from a scientific-philosophical viewpoint, and has many fascinating insights. One of them was about knowledge—and that it isn’t necessarily additive—rather something subtractive. For example, a good stock-broker won’t tell you what to do, but rather what not to do. Therefore for this blog post I will share some of my insights and experiences in street photography in terms of what not to do. 1.Dont shoot standing up One of the things I always advise people against when shooting street photography is shooting standing up.
Of course this depends on the situation. 2.Dont shoot street performers or the homeless Shooting street performers or the homeless are easy targets. Street performers have their photo taken all the time, and aren’t challenging to take photos of. 5.Don’t waste time focusing. Flash Photography with Canon EOS Cameras - Part I.
Flash Photography with Canon EOS Cameras - Part I. Copyright © 2001-2014 NK Guy Version 1.8. 12 December, 2010. The invention and subsequent automation and miniaturization of electronic flash revolutionized photography. If you’re a photographer you’re no longer tied to available light. A reliable and portable light source is immediately at your disposal if you choose. But flash photography has always been a very difficult technique to master on any camera system. It’s easy to take a snapshot of your friends in a restaurant and get that hideously blown-out rabbit-in-the-headlights look from built-in automatic flash.
But using electronic flash well - achieving natural-looking images - is quite tricky. Table of Contents Part I - Flash Photography with Canon EOS Cameras. 1 - My camera already has a built-in flash. Flash metering systems used by Canon EOS. Controlling flash exposure. EOS system compatible flash units. Internal flash. Flash terminology. Depth of Field Strategies for Street Portraits. The 7 Keys to Improving Your Photography This Year. 17 Excellent Examples of Narrow Depth of Field. Crop Factor (Focal Length Multiplier) Crop factor and interchangeable lens cameras. Bernie’s Better Beginner’s Guide to Photography for Computer Geeks Who Want to be Digital Artists | Bernie Sumption :: Photography. Bernie’s Better Guide to Depth of Field for Geeks Who Want to be Digital Artists | Bernie Sumption :: Photography.
Field of View Crop Factor (Focal Length Multiplier) A Tedious Explanation of the f/stop. Photography | Photo Editor | Photography Tips – FroKnowsPhoto.com.