Tag: Camera

Lesson 109 (DSLRs): Lightening and Long Exposure

by dkrashb, posted in Featured, Photography, Photography Lessons
I am testing the Noiseware noise reduction plug-in–all of these images were very noisy before post-processing. Notice the tilted building in the background–this is caused by a combination of using a very wide lens and an upward-pointed angle. It can be fixed in post, but would require severely cropping the image. 16mm (slightly cropped), 9.3 seconds, f/16, ISO 200
This is an example of a strike in the clouds with no landscape showing in the frame. I prefer images with landscape to show scale, personally. 16mm (cropped), 17.3 seconds, f/16, ISO 400
I used both the Noiseware and Nik Color Efex Pro plug-ins with some minimal post-processing adjustments in Aperture no this one to try to pull out the 3 dimensions of the clouds as well as eliminate noise. Not quite happy with it, but the lightening strike was amazing. 16mm (cropped), 9.8 seconds, f/16, ISO 200
16mm (cropped), 10.9 seconds, f/16, ISO 200
1.9 second exposure using bulb. ISO 200 and f/11.
It took 16.5 seconds to get this strike (ISO 200 and f/11)
Using bulb, I held the shutter open for 2.7 sec when this bright strike came along. (ISO 200 and f/11)

Since I promised more examples of things you can do with long exposures in Lesson 108 and then we had a storm that offered a great opportunity to shoot lightening, here’s the first follow-up example.

Before we go into how to shoot lightening, let’s start with a little background on the shutter setting I prefer for this.

For lightening shots, I think it’s easiest to use that mysterious shutter speed called “Bulb.”   The first step is to find how to turn it on.  In some cameras, the shooting mode dial on the top of the camera has a “B” for Bulb and turning the dial to B is all you need to do.  In other cameras, “bulb” is at the end of the shutter speed options just past the setting for 30 seconds.  In this case, turn the shooting mode dial to “M” (for Manual) and then set the shutter speed to “Bulb.”

So now you’re in “Bulb” and you may be wondering what the heck that means.  This setting let’s you to open the shutter and keep it open until you decide to close it.  To do this, you either have to hold the shutter button down the entire time you want the shutter opened or you need to use a remote.

I am currently using a Pixel Pro Oppilas wireless remote, which was amazingly cheap.  In fact, I accidentally ordered 2 and decided for the $20 price tag, it was worth keeping the second one as a backup.

In any case, whether you choose a cheap 3rd party wireless remote, a wired remote, or a high-end wireless remote, you will definitely want a remote for bulb exposures.  There are two reasons for this:  1)  It’s very annoying to have to stand around holding the shutter button down for extensive periods of time, and 2) It’s extremely difficult to hold the shutter button down without introducing camera shake, which will cause blur in your images.

So, you’re in bulb mode and you have a remote attached to your camera.  You will also need to put your camera on a tripod.  This is a must.  And a solid tripod that won’t allow your camera to vibrate helps tremendously.  Alternatively, you need a really solid place to set your camera.  A fellow photographer friend says setting the camera on a large bean bag will help keep it stable if you have a flat surface to put it on.

Next, you need a safe vantage point to shoot from.  A safe vantage point is not, for example, the middle of an open field, under the one tree in said open field, on a roof top, or anywhere above timberline on a mountain.  A safe vantage point generally means that you are indoors.  Some folks shoot lightening through car or home windows using a polarizing filter to remove glare from the glass.  This is definitely the safest thing to do.  For recommendations on lightening and safety, go here:  http://www.lightningsafety.com/nlsi_pls.html

I will make no recommendations and I am not going to tell you where I shoot from because I don’t want to be responsible for anyone besides myself when it comes to lightening safety.  🙂

That said, let’s assume you’ve found a good, safe place to shoot lightening from.  Now that you’ve found your place, you next need to be there at the right time.

Since night time lightening is more dramatic, if you are at home in the evening, having a spot you can get to on a moment’s notice increases the odds that you will be able to capture some great shots.  Otherwise, watch the weather forecast and be prepared to go to your favorite location only to be disappointed.

Let’s say all has aligned and now you have your camera in Bulb, with a remote, on a tripod, in a safe location, and there is lightening!  You are 90% of the way there!

There are lots of different opinions on what to do next.  This is my personal preference:

  1. Use the widest focal length you’ve got.  It greatly increases the odds that lightening will be captured inside the frame since you cannot predict where it will strike.  The examples for this post were shot at 16mm on a camera with a full frame sensor (meaning 40% wider than if you’re using a crop-sensor camera).  Images were then cropped in post-processing.
  2. I use one of two options for focusing.  If there is enough light to focus either automatically or manually, I like to focus on an object in the landscape that will result in getting everything in the frame sharp.  I like to include foreground objects (like buildings) for scale.  If it is too dark to find focus, I set my lens to manual focus and then turn the focusing ring until the mark aligns with the infinity symbol (this is called focusing at infinity).  If everything in the frame is at the hyperfocal distance or further from the camera, this will keep everything sharp as well.  (If you don’t know what hyperfocal distance is, it just means from that point on, everything to infinity will be acceptably sharp.  You can use a Depth of Field calculator to get an estimate of this distance.  See Lesson 106 for more info on calculating this.)
  3. Stop down the aperture to something around f/16ish.  I like f/16 because it gives me so much depth of field that I don’t have to worry about everything being sharp and, more importantly, allows for very long exposure times without overexposing the image between lightening strikes.  That said, when you are shooting with a very wide angle focal length and your subject is far away, you don’t need to be on f/16 to get a lot of DOF, so feel free to try opening up the aperture if you find that works better for you.
  4. Set the ISO as low as you can.  I started with ISO 400, over exposed a strike that was very close, turned it down to 100, under exposed several strikes that were further away, and then turned it up to 200.  This is not an exact science, but be aware that long exposures, especially at night, tend to get very noisy (speckled and grainy).  Setting a high ISO will also add noise, but decreases the length of time the shutter needs to stay open.  In this case, what we’re trying to do is keep the shutter open as long as possible with the least exposure until lightening actually strikes.  So, we really want just enough light amplification (what the ISO setting controls) to allow for a great exposure during the lightening strike.
  5. Get your camera all set and pointed at the sky (don’t forget to level it) and then take a comfortable seat.
  6. Some people claim they can sense lightening before it strikes.  I suggest that if you find your arm hairs standing on end or have some sense of an electrical charge, it’s time to move–quickly!  I open the shutter with my remote and watch and listen.
  7. I leave my shutter open for a while and watch how many flashes there are in the sky and how bright they are.  If they are not very bright, I will wait through several flashes and then close the shutter (by pressing the remote shutter release a second time). 
  8. This next step is critical:  look at the exposure you got.  I do not have a scientific way to predict what exposure you will need for lightening.  This is very much a feel thing.  The longer you sit there watching the storm, guessing at how much light has reached your sensor and checking to see if you guessed right, the better you will get at this.  The important thing to bear in mind is that when lightening strikes, if it’s very bright, it’s time to close the shutter and start the next exposure.  Conversely, if you’ve been getting lots of flashes in the clouds but no bright strikes and you’ve had the shutter open for a while, it’s probably time to close the shutter and start over.  If the sky gets too exposed before the lightening strikes, the lightening will not show up as well.

One word of caution:  leaving your shutter open for extensive periods of time will drain your battery quickly.  Make sure you have a fully charged battery (and a spare if you have it).

In a nutshell, my approach to get lightening shots is to have the right equipment, show up in the right place at the right time, get ready, and then open my shutter and adjust as things happen.  Kind of like life.  🙂

Lesson 95: A Change of Perspective

by dkrashb, posted in Featured, iPhoneography Lessons, iPhoneography Tips, iPhonography, Photography, Photography Lessons, Simple Photography Lessons

A little on the squat side
Big waterfall or small dog?
Paws
Half Dog
Relaxed Dog
Tisen Rolling
Tisen Sleeping
Surprised Dog

 

How many times have you seen or taken a picture of a dog that looks a lot like this?  (You could probably replace the word “dog” with “child” here as well.)

02 Tisen grateful for Jack

Now, I don’t mean that all dogs (or children) look alike.  Rather, I mean that our default way of looking at a dog is from a standing position looking down at them.  Most dog photos dog owners snap are taken very quickly, spur of the moment without time to think or plan how we want to shoot.

This is usually because each of our dogs is the cutest, most brilliant canine kid in the world and we want to capture that hilarious thing he or she is doing that makes him or her that much cuter.

However, sometimes changing the perspective just a little can make a big difference  For example, compare these two photos:

Surprised Dog
Relaxed Dog

In the first one, we have a funny expression that still cracks me up every time I look at it, but notice that the camera is above the dog’s head shooting down and the angle of his head to the camera makes it look considerably skinnier than it does in the photo on the right.  The one on the right was taken about level with the dog’s face, straight on to the nose.  If these were the only two pictures you’d ever seen of my dog, would you still feel certain these were both of the same dog?

Let’s compare a couple more:

Tisen Rolling
Tisen Sleeping

Notice how in the image on the left, we have a cute snapshot of a dog rolling in the grass.  The camera is held almost parallel to the dog, leaving us no sense of the height of his body relative to the ground (except perhaps because of the stray foot that snuck into the shot).  But look at the leash that starts at the lower left corner and creates a line down to the dog.  It looks like it could be 10 feet long!  (It’s only 4 ft.)

Now look at the length of my dog’s front legs.  The are folded and parallel to the camera.  Compare that to the front leg in the photo on the right.  Notice how the leg now forms a similar angle to the lens that draws the eye back to the dog.  But this time, it’s his leg that looks exceptionally long.

Next, let’s look at wide angle perspectives that create a sense of size.

Big waterfall or small dog?
A little on the squat side

In the photo on the left, you could argue that the dog (and man) look really small, or, if you imagine the dog and man to be average sized, you might see this more as the waterfall looking really big.  On the right, we have an example shot tighter, but again, it’s wide, the camera is further back, and it’s shot from a standing position angled downward.  This creates the impression that the bench, man, and dog are all a little shorter than they really are.

Finally, here’s a perspective that creates a little bit of an optical illusion:

Half Dog
Paws

Both images were shot from the floor looking up at my dog hanging over the edge of a sofa.  In the photo on the left, the back legs are not visually connected to the front end of the dog.  They visually look like either there is a second dog in the photo or the visible dog was cut in half with his back legs moved to the side.  I can assure you that no animals were harmed in any way in the making of this post.

In the photo on the right, I got up tight to my dog’s back paws and created more of a silhouette effect.  By changing the perspective so that I am both closer and looking up, the paws look huge!  Notice that the one on the right looks significantly bigger than the one on the left.  This is because it was closer to the camera and it’s turned at a slightly different angle that makes the full breadth of the pad visible, but angled to the camera.

Your Assignment:  Experiment with the visual effects you can create by changing where you’re angle to the subject.  Move up, move down, move all around.  Try shooting from above and shooting from down low.  Try head on, too.  None of these angels are right or wrong; they just create a different perspective that affects the way the eye perceives the shape of the subject.  Bonus Tip:  want to look taller and thinner?  Have the iPhotographer get down low and shoot at an upward angle.

Lesson 32: Fast Camera

by dkrashb, posted in Featured, iPhoneography Lessons, iPhoneography Tips, iPhonography, Photography Lessons, Simple Photography Lessons
Pause in motion
Rapid movement
Pause in Motion
Pause in Motion

Seems like it’s about time to download a new app–it’s been quite a few lessons since we did that.  Since yesterday’s lesson was about dealing with moving subjects, let’s continue with that theme and give Fast Camera a try.

Fast Camera is an app designed to take a bunch of photos really quickly.  That’s its forte.  There are settings in other camera apps that will take bursts of photos in rapid succession, but there are 2 particular features about Fast Camera that made it worth the $1.99 to me:

  1. The default setting is to start shooting as soon as you launch the app.
  2.   You can take a series of still photos and then export them as a video from the app.

Let’s talk about why I like these 2 features so much.  First, when I’m out with my dog and he does something cute, it’s pretty standard that he stops doing whatever it was by the time I get my camera app out and start shooting.  The only thing that would make it better is if I could set the camera button on the iPhone lock screen to launch this app instead of launching the default iPhone camera app.  None-the-less, it’s still a time saver to launch the app and point.  I can adjust the settings while it’s shooting if needed.  It just keeps firing away.

Second, I love making movies from stills.  I don’t know why.  There’s just something fun about the gap in time created by stills being run together as a movie.  Here’s an example of a movie from stills of my cooperative husband jumping up and down:

Isn’t that much funnier than if I would have recorded it as a video to start with?

But here’s the thing, whether you like the instant launch or not (you have to remember to stop it if you’re not ready to keep shooting or you’ll end up with 1000 photos–this setting can be changed if you don’t want it to start shooting on launch), the fact that it fires lots of super-fast photos helps ensure you get at least one good shot of a moving subject.

It’s really hard to stop motion with an iPhone camera.  But, as you can see in these photos of my husband jumping, there are often moments when a moving subject is moving slowly enough that the motion can be stopped.  Here, when my husband reached the peak of his jump and gravity took over, there is a moment when his momentum is switching from upward to downward.  In those moments, I was able to get relatively sharp photos:

Pause in motion
Rapid movement

Similarly, when my dog walked into my frame and stared (bewildered) at my husband’s antics, I caught him in the moment he was holding still.  Compare that to the photo on the right when he turned his head quickly to figure out what I was doing.

You’re Assignment:  Consider if you’re willing to spend $1.99 for this app.  If so, download it and go chase something moving.  Launch the app and stop it when you have enough photos of your moving subject.  Here are a couple of settings to check out:

After you’ve taken a series of photos of a moving subject, try exporting them as a video.  To do this: