Beyond Phototips

Here’s a short list of problems that you may encounter on your journey of discovery in photography, along with an equally short list of fixes to get you back on the road.

1. Red-Eye: Red, Alien-like eyes that appear to infest regular human-beings when using on-camera flash.

REASON: On-Camera Flash being too close to the lens’ axis.

FIX: Move your flash off camera; Get a little creative with it.

2. Blur: Blur were an English alternative rock band that formed in Colchester in 1989.// Oops, wrong Blur.

Blur is when objects in the frame or photograph seem soft, blurry (duh!) or streaky.

REASON: There are two main reasons, actually. 1) Relatively fast moving objects 2) Soft, or incorrect, focus

FIX:

1) Moving Objects. Use a faster shutter speed, fast enough to freeze it, or use a flash.

2) Soft Focus: Make sure you focus correctly, get better spectacles if you need ‘em. (I know I do…)

3. Shake: Similar to blur, but instigated by the camera and / or photographer.

REASON: Incorrect posture, bad camera holding technique, or use of a slow shutter speed

FIX:

1) Make sure your shooting posture ensures that you’re well balanced and stable when you actually press the shutter release

2) Learn how to grip the camera correctly. (Video)

3) Use faster shutter speeds, use flash to freeze your subject, or just shoot in better light.

4. Flash reflected off Glass: This is the all-too-famous blotch of white light that you see in airplane windows, in aquariums and offices.

REASON: Flash bouncing off the glass and back into the camera’s lens.

FIX: When shooting in to glass, remember not to shoot perpendicular to it if using flash. If possible, turn off your flash, else, if you have a camera with a lens that sticks out, go right up to the glass so that the lens is almost touching the glass itself, and then take a picture. That way you wont get reflections of your flash!

5. Flare: White diffused area next to a light source, or circles of light radiating out from a light source that’s directly in the photograph’s frame.

REASON: Light that comes directly into the lens sometimes does not get absorbed, but bounces off the surface of the lens. The best lenses have great coatings to reduce this, but a cheap filter most certainly will bounce light.

FIX: Use a lens hood to keep stray light out, get a lens with better coatings, Dont shoot directly into the light.

6. Vignetting: Dark edges in a photograph

REASON:

1) Light that is focussed by the lens starts falling-off towards the edges.

2) Filters on a wide-angle lens infringing on the corners of the frame

3) A Low quality lens

FIX:

1) All lenses have some degree of vignetting. The expensive ones just have less.

2) Don’t use filters that need step-down ring adaptors

3) Some cameras like the LOMO use low quality lenses intentionally. If you don’t want a vignette, don’t use them.

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You’ve all had digital pictures with “noise” in them… want to know why?

Digital cameras have sensors that receive photons (the thingies that make up light). These sensors are analogue devices that turn analogue signals into digital data. These charges are converted to digital data in cells that are sensitive to three different colours of light: Red, Green and Blue (RGB). The cells that receive more photons have a higher charge and are designated ‘lighter’ while the ones with a lower number of photons are darker.

Now, what happens when you take a photograph in a really dark place? Once you’ve opened up your aperture to the max, and used the lowest shutter speed possible, you turn the ISO up, right? And voila! Your sensor is more sensitive, right? Naah! The sensor can’t really adjust it ‘sensitivity’; instead, what your camera does is, it turns up the amplification of the photons that are received. Making them seem brighter. Simple!

So why are higher ISO photographs so grainy, and noisy? If you guessed “because of the amplification,” you’d be right… Its similar to amplification on your stereo. If the signal level is low, the more you amplify it, the more likely it is that you’re going to amplify the background static too. And this will give you lower quality sound.

Your camera’s sensor has a basic charge, so if we turn up the amplification because the signal level (number of photons) is too low, this charge, along with the charge from neighbouring cells interferes, creating ‘noise’. This ratio of ‘signal’ to ‘background noise’ (or static) is called, quite simply, Signal to Noise ratio. If the signal to noise ratio is high, you’ve most likely got a clear picture, if it is low, you’ll have a noisy one (how about that, next thing you know, I’ll be talking about loud-mouthed pictures!).

Simple Work -around
Ok, now don’t ask me how to keep the S/N ratio down, that’s something that the engineers who built the camera will have to figure out. What I can tell you, is that if you stick to lower ISO numbers, and use higher ISO numbers only you absolutely have to, you’ll have significantly less-noisy pictures (always keep in mind that a good picture is meant to be seen and not heard).

I’ve tried hard to keep this post jargon-free. Do let me know if you would like a more techie explanation, and I’ll give you the whole story with diagrams and tech-talk.

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Portraits
Portraits try to evoke an understanding between the viewer and the person being photographed. Or at least that’s what the photographer is trying to do most of the time. Other times, he’s just trying to make the subject pretty, but that’s a different kind of portraiture…

When you look at a portrait (taken in the first school of thought,) you wonder what the person in the photograph is like in character… are they serious, jovial, nutty or geeky? Apart from their usual outlook, what other emotions are they likely to face on a daily basis? These are the questions that a strong portrait makes people think about; and hopefully find answers to.

Environmental Portraits

by Katrijn Michiels

Now, Environmental Portraits introduce an exciting factor into portrait photography. You guessed it, you dawg, it introduces the viewer to the subject’s (sitter) environment. Big words? Ok. Its a picture of a person in a place that has some connection with whom they are and what they do… So, instead of just the person being the subject of the photograph, elements of the surrounding area become part of that subject too.

[Read more →]

Have you ever noticed the way in which you seem to be able to focus on just one object of a scene (say a spoon on a table or a shop’s signboard on a street) when in fact your eyes are covering an entire scene? No? Make a mental note of the way you look at things the next time you walk down a busy street or drive down a busy road. [If you live in India you'll always notice the cyclists in the middle of the road, or the Public Transport buses barreling down on you...]

I think of this as a biological zoom function. This concentration on a single object can happen while you’re taking your photograph and you’re following the proceedings in one section of the frame intently. This is OK if you’re an experienced photographer and you know that you need to remember your framing, but it could lead to clutter and an ambiguous photograph if you’re just starting off in the world of photography.

It is always a good thing for the photographer to take a look at the entire scene - sometimes outside, and sometimes inside the camera’s frame - to actually ’see’ the various other elements that will be part of the scene being photographed; to evaluate how these elements can either add to, or detract from a composition and frame his photographs accordingly.

Often, the photographer’s biological zoom turns on while he’s using a wide angle lens, and though he can see just a certain part of the photograph, the camera is still going to take a picture of the entire scene. In this case, taking a look at the entire frame, and consciously registering its edges will help establish the size-distance relationship between the actual object being photographed and its framing in the camera. Doing this always prevents those pictures where you can’t really make out why the picture was taken in the first place!

Happy ‘Biological’ Zooming!

We’ll be doing a series of small articles where we talk about how the mind interprets the images that we actually see and makes it more pertinent to our immediate needs (which are not usually tuned to photography).

If you find this article interesting and have something to share, do add a comment at the bottom of this post.

I’ve often heard people look at a photograph exclaim, “Oh, that’s photoshop!” when what they really meant was “Oh, that’s retouched!” making the name “Photoshop” synonymous with “digital retouching”. Now, Photoshop is by no means easy to learn and the newbie can be quite intimidated by it, so having someone teach you how to use it is a great help.

Photowalkthrough.com is a great way to learn how all this retouching is done. Hosted by John Arnold, Photowalkthrough is a video Podcast that shows you how you can process your digital images in Photoshop and other programs. John explains how to use photoshop’s tools and explains various techniques in an un-hurried, in-depth fashion. Each photograph is typically worked on over the course of 3-4 shows and you can watch as each decision that John takes leads to the final processed image. I vote a big thumbs up for this podcast!

If you ‘re interested in subscribing, head on over to www.photowalkthrough.com or go to the iTunes store and search for the podcast through iTunes.

Here’s a short tutorial with tips on how to take distinctive party pictures. You’ll find both equipment tips and photo tips on how to take the best party pictures ever!

There are party pictures and there are party pictures, but how do you make sure that yours stand out from the crowd? This series of tips is for all you compact digital camera users who want to make sure that every one else ogles at your pictures. The first few tips are about your camera, the rest are tips about technique.

As always, know your camera. You’re not at that party just to take photographs! You’re there to have fun! Now, where’s the fun in trying to figure how your camera goes into rear-curtain sync with a slow exposure while the rest of your pals are on the dance floor? My suggestion to you is to take a few pictures with the techniques that I’m about to describe even before you go to the party so that you’re already familiar with them.

Your flash is your friend. Most parties aren’t lit all that well and you’re going to need the flash that’s on your camera to light up almost every scene. Knowing how to use your flash along with the existing light, is the first step to in creating stunning pictures!

Stay away… Going really close to your friends will usually end up with them looking like they were lit by the light from an atom bomb’s explosion. Stay at least 5-6 feet away from them to ensure that they retain that pearly complexion.

…but not too far away! If you go too far away you’ll end up seeing only the whites of their eyes, in spite of the flash. Most compact digital cameras have a tiny flash that can illuminate objects only at a maximum of 12-15 feet. Each camera is different, so experiment with yours to find the best distance to take pictures at, and maintain that distance.

Use red eye reduction mode. Nobody likes their eyes looking like they’re a deer caught in a car’s headlights! It’s true that programs like Picasa and Photoshop Elements have tools to remove red-eye from your photographs, but why bother when all you need to avoid it is to push a button?

Turn the flash off; sometimes. Sure, the flash is your best buddy at a party but you don’t want to be hanging around together all the time, do you? Especially if there are coloured strobes or lasers… If you’re at a club or a disco and there are a lot of coloured lights, you will most probably be able to get some really good photographs in those lights. Wait till your subject is lit up with one of these lights and press the shutter, or get some really good silhouettes. You won’t know where to find your friends’ jaws when they see your pictures.

Zoom out. Most low-light photographs come out better when your camera is zoomed out fully. This is because the pictures end up with less shake. This also ensures that you don’t cut off somebody’s head or feet by accident.

Try slow shutter speeds. Use the night exposure mode and set the flash to rear curtain sync. You’ll need to hold the camera steady in this mode because the shutter will stay open for a while before the flash goes off. The payoff is that you’ll be able to see things which would otherwise be too dark. You can get really artistic with this mode. Try moving the camera around to get some streaks of light, but make sure that you have the picture framed as you want it when the flash goes off. You’ll end up with some really amazing shots of your friends swirling in a sea of lights if you do this right! (Hint: this is really great on the dance floor at discos & clubs) you can also try this mode without the flash if there’s enough ambient light around you.

Use a higher ISO. Your camera can be set to be more receptive to light. Setting a higher ISO ensures that you can take pictures with a faster shutter speed so that there is less shake. You have the disadvantage of more noise though, and with older compact digitals this tends to be quite a problem. However, you can always turn a disadvantage into and advantage by using it creatively. Think of the noise as a photoshop filter that adds a gritty texture to the photograph and take pictures with that in mind.

Try different angles. Try taking pictures from high up, and from low down. Try taking a picture of the entire room from as close to the ceiling as you can get, try taking a picture through the fish tank, or through a book shelf, there’s no limit to where you can position the camera to get a different view of the party.

Find Uniqueness in every party. Try to find something unique at each party, say a funky decoration, lamp, rug or maybe just a great balcony with a view, and make sure that it plays a key part of some of your pictures. If it is something that your host takes pride in and they like the way you’re showing it, you’ll be invited to every party that happens for the rest of your life…

Take sequences. Take a sequence of pictures that relate to each other. It could be a sequence of people with a cigarette in their mouths, or one with different people standing next to the same lamp, or sitting in the same chair from the same camera position. This will give people something to look at and compare the different reactions that people have alongside something that does not change.

Use multi-fame capture. If your camera can take more than one picture in a row, take some pictures of people dancing or laughing in that mode. Make sure that the camera does not move too much so that the effect is heightened. Seeing a progressive sequence in the midst of a lot of still photographs makes for some interesting viewing.

Put new batteries in. This may sound really duh! but very often you’ll find that having new batteries in the camera or spare batteries in the camera bag can make all the difference when that new band comes on and you find that they’re really cool, or when one of your friends decides to convince you that David Blaine is just a glorified party magician.

Free up that flash card. You never know how many pictures you’re going to take at a party! You may find that you have space for only 10 pictures and you’re about to meet Arnold Schwarzenegger’s PR manager! A good practice is to delete pictures from your flash card when you transfer pictures to your computer, and to transfer pictures frequently.

Have fun at the party. Remember, the party’s not worth taking pictures of if you’re not having fun… so put the camera down for a while or let somebody else have a go at it while you take centre stage. (Added Bonus: you can laugh at the other pictures when you’re showing off your art pieces)

Remember that with party photographs, anything goes, so don’t be afraid to explore new settings on the camera and new ideas in your mind…

Note: Photographs have been used with permission of their respective owners and copyright remains with them. Please click on the images to be taken to their respective flickr pages.

Three years in the Advertising business has convinced me that ideas are really powerful and that a photograph that has a strong idea is the most powerful tool to convey a message. A strong idea is always brought out in a simple, clear picture that has a strong subject and minimal interference from un-necessary elements.

Everyone’s seen pictures where things have gone wrong; Bleached out faces, heads cut off, tilting horizons and telephone poles sticking out of heads! All of which interfere in our understanding of what is happening in the photograph itself.

So our question is “How do you make a better picture?”

1. Take pictures with the sun behind you! No, don’t blind your family or friends, with the sun directly in their faces! In fact, doing that may make their faces lose their shape, giving them a flat appearance. Keep the sun at an angle behind you and it will cast pleasing shadows, making the shape of their faces more apparent while still lighting them sufficiently. I’ve found that it is best to keep it between 30-70 degrees from the person.
2. Use ‘depth of field’. Though it sounds all complicated, depth of field is only the area of a photograph that is in focus. Try to get the background out of focus if it’s cluttering up the photograph. You can do this by moving in close, using a large aperture and zooming in close.
3. Fill your frame with the subject. This will make it clearer, more defined and easier to appreciate. If your subject is both a monument as well as a person, make sure that the height of the person is at least one third that of the viewfinder frame. This makes sure that people wont have to squint to figure out who it is that’s in the picture.
4. Try Unusual viewpoints. Try looking down from up, or up from down… sideways and around corners! You never know how a different viewpoint could change the entire look of your photograph.
   
5. Look at the background. A cluttered background will always interfere with the photograph. Try to un-clutter with simple, textured walls, patterned windowpanes or anything that is striking, yet non-intrusive. Remember that the telephone post sticking out of your mother-in-law’s head isn’t funny to anyone except you!
6. Really look at the picture that you’re taking. Elements in a photograph interact with each other because there is no real sense of ‘depth’ in the photograph. Remember that your camera’s frame is also an element and that unlike something that you see with your eyes, a photograph has a defined border. So place these elements in relation to each other as well as in relation to your camera’s frame.
7. Try to use the rules of composition as far as possible. These are ‘rules of thumb’ that can be broken if you want. The rule of thirds, golden section, and usage of perspective, line, rhythm and texture among others, can greatly improve the ‘viewability’ of your pictures. You can find a comprehensive list at this wikipedia entry, and I’ll deal with them in detail in a future ‘photography tip’ post.
8. Try to frame your subject within a shape if possible. Doors, windows, walls and hangings are good ways to emphasise the shape and size of the person that you’re photographing. Sometimes photographers take photographs framed within ‘created frames’ such as a person’s legs, to add depth.
9. Try a variety of pictures when you’re on vacation. Variety both in subject and style. Take some portraits of the locals, some close ups of curios with interesting backgrounds, some landscapes of the hills or the beaches. Take pictures of locals, restaurants that you liked and things that you did. This gives you more to look at than just people’s faces, and adds dimension to your memories when you look at the pictures years later.
10. Remember that your brain sees things differently. Your eyes see things, of course, but it’s the brain that interprets what you see. You may see a speck in the distance but its movement gives you a cue that it’s a car. Those cues are absent in a photograph. Also, the brain has the ability to concentrate on just one object in a scene, like a pair of binoculars! All too often we look at pictures in which we see just a bare beach or just hills when in fact we were trying to capture the strange bird on the beach or the cute house nestled among the trees below the hill. Remember that as a guide, an object needs to fill up at least 1/30^th of the camera’s frame to be clearly visible.
11. Keep taking pictures. By this I mean take pictures every week. After all, you do need to practice if you want to keep taking good pictures. Imagine trying to win a table tennis match after practicing once a year! Same case with photography. Here’s a great exercise; choose a household object and take a single photograph of it every day for five days. Try to make each photograph as distinct from the others as possible. This will keep you in touch with your camera and hone your compositional skills to a great degree.
12. Read your camera’s user manual. Learn how to use the different modes that your camera and flash have. You’ll learn how “fill-flash” can help you when you’re taking pictures in the sun and how “red-eye-reduction” can help reduce the ‘deer in the headlights’ feel that you sometimes get. Believe me, I’m not trying to turn you into a book worm! The reason I’m not trying to explain them here is that each camera is laid out just a bit differently and it would be pointless trying to give directions for every camera.

Taking photographs is always a learning experience and even the most experienced photographer learns with every time that he shoots. And always remember, its not your camera that takes the photograph. Its you! Like veteran wildlife photographer T.N.A. Perumal said in an interview with The Hindu, “No matter how good the camera, and how many more frames you can click per second, it is instant visualisation, legwork and immense patience that produces that masterpiece.”

So go ahead! Make that masterpiece! And do mail me a copy!

For many years now, I’ve been a person who’s been caught up in the equipment game… partly because my father - a frequent traveller to european countries - is an equipment enthusiast and for as long as i can remember, has always brought home classic cameras like the Zeiss Ikon Contaflex Super B, the Hasselblad 500c, the Canon AE-1, the Yashica FX3, and some decent cameras like the Minolta X700 and the X7A. He used to buy these cameras and marvel at the quality of the construction, the ingenuity of the makers and the remarkable optics. The pictures that these cameras took were also remarkable…

Then I got my own camera for the first time… as a present. It was a Carena, a Taiwan-made camera that my father bought in Hong Kong. One that looked exactly like the Minolta X7A and later on, one of my father’s 2 Zeiss Ikons, a camera that I’d been eyeing for a while…

Well, I started taking more pictures than before (which was still not many). Now, some of those pictures were good, and some of them were bad… I especially had a tough time with on-camera flash and messed up entire rolls of film with that on both of my cameras…

Years later, after working with film in the dark room, and a whole lot of ‘gowing up’, I bought myself a Nikon F3 that I’d had my eye on for quite a while. I spent about Rs. 10,000 (~ USD 200) on it and I was suddenly taking much nicer pictures… unfortunately I don’t have any of these digitised or I’d actually be able to convince you!

So, now where am I going with all this? Where’s the tip? I’m getting to it, don’t rush!

Better camera = Better pictures?
Well, not really. My buddy Umesh had just an Electro 35 GTN Rangefinder camera and created great images when I was messing them up back in college! He still uses his tiny Sony P-72 to create great pictures!

What I’ve found is that with time, my understanding of the principles of photography have grown… especially my understanding and appreciation of the principles of composition, lighting and design. Allowing me to take better pictures “in my mind”.

Lets back up a moment… I’m taking pictures in my mind?
Well, not literally, but yes, that’s where they start off… When I’m looking through the viewfinder or just looking at a scene, I imagine it the way I want to see it. Ansel Adams, the master of the Zone system called this Previsualisation. You imagine the picture the way it can be finally, and then expose, develop and print it to achieve that previsualised image. So where does the gear get into the picture? Simple answer… It doesn’t! your equipment is just a tool in aiding the process of previsualisation. It makes the job simpler. It does not define what you previsualise… It just helps you attain what you have previsualised.

Let me put it this way, its not the brushes that make a work of art! Its the artist! If anything, a well balanced brush will make is easier for the artist to paint the picture, but the brush does not make the picture itself, its the artist. The same applies for photography. You may have just a Sony P-72, but you can still make stunning pictures!

Previz? Here’s an example.
Now lets see, these two pictures to the left… They did not start out that way. They started out being plain old dull pictures, but when I took the photographs, I knew that i was going to tone them in this particular fashion. I also knew that i was going to remove almost all detail in the darker areas and make them silhouettes… I did all this with the RAW file format. No Photoshop. Read my previous post to learn a bit more about RAW.

In the good old days, such toning, dodging and burning would be done in the dark room. Today its done in Photoshop or an equivalent photo editor. Its all a part of the evolution of photography so do try to learn how to use these new tools. In the end, thats what they are… tools made for you to accomplish what you see in your mind’s eye.

Happy previz, shooting and post production!

Susheel

I Love RAW…

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking… WWE! But no, we’re talking about Digital Photography today, and ‘RAW’ is the RAW image format!

Welcome to the world of Digital Photography, a world where Negatives have been swapped for sensors, film grain has been swapped for noise, where ISO and Colour balance are no longer difficult to deal with, and where the photographer processes his own photographs! It’s a great place to be in, and photography has never been as exciting as it is today!

So where does RAW fit into all of this? To explain that, I’m going to have to get into some of the basics…

Sensors and things like that

Digital Cameras capture light using either a CCD or a CMOS sensor. Sensors are made up of tiny photo-receptors that are sensitive to either Red , Green, or Blue light. The images that we see are a combination of different intensities of these three basic colours.

The information from these photo-receptors are processed by an image processor microchip and are encoded into JPG or TIFF format files that we can see on the LCD of the camera or on a computer. There are some disadvantages to this method of obtaining ‘finished’ image files … let me list them for you.

• Further tweaking of the image after it is saved as a JPG or TIFF results in some loss in the tonal range of the image and increased noise levels in some cases.
• If your white balance mode is not set correctly, you could have one hell of a time trying to correct it and when you do, you’ll have a relatively noisy image … bad, bad thing to do!
• Highlights that are blown (overexposed without much detail) can never be recovered.
• Any edits on the file are destructive edits. Meaning that once the file is modified and saved, the change to the pixel data is permanent and cannot be reverted. This, coupled with saving JPG files is a designer’s recipe for bad image quality!

RAW to the rescue!

Now, how does RAW help you overcome this?

The smart people among you would have realised by now, that the ‘RAW’ file format gives you the raw, unprocessed data thats recorded on the camera’s sensor. This enables you to forego the camera’s built in image processing algorithms (also called de-mosaicing algorithms) and use one that you prefer. Personally, I prefer Adobe’s Camera Raw plugin and Phase One’s Capture One Pro software… They give me more control over the white balance, the amount of sharpening applied, access to the “curves” and “levels” tools, and the option to use different colour spaces and bit depths.

Even more impressive than this list of +points, is the fact that all the changes that I make are not directly to the actual RAW file, but to a settings file or database… This means that if, at a later date, I decide that I don’t like the way that I’ve processed the file, I can go back to the file, revert to the original image and process it all over again (believe me, this will happen to you…). It also means that I can get different looks by processing the same image in different software.

Think of it as a Digital Negative! In fact, that’s what Adobe is calling their standardised RAW format… the DNG format… There are some issues about the standardisation of raw formats at the moment because different manufacturers use different standards to define raw files… but that is something that we can discuss at a later date… for now, lets talk about RAW’s problems.

One of the major setbacks that photographers will face with the RAW format is the large size of RAW files. JPG files on my Canon 5D come to about 4MB while RAW files come to about 12-13MB with their automatic compression enabled. This means that it will end up eating away at those megabytes on your CF cards and Hard Discs much faster than JPGs and storage and archival will eventually become an issue.

I swear by RAW

However, the benefits far outweigh the problems when it comes to RAW, and as an advanced amateur and a professional photographer there are immense benefits to the creative workflow… click on the images to see what I mean…

Try out RAW today if you have it on your Digital Camera… photography becomes all fun, and no work…

Have fun! there’s lots to be had…

This was first published for Umesh Gopinath (check out his cool photographic style here) at his tech blog, whitespace you can find the article here.