by Damian
Remember Joe’s video tutorial on How to Smooth Skin? Photo Pro, Lauren CYMK, found his video tutorial and shared some great before/after photo edited photos at the Bacon Lettuce Photo Flickr group. Here’s a sample:
Check out the Bacon Lettuce Photo Flickr group for more before/after examples from Lauren.
by Joe
It’s all about Aperture.
Aperture is what controls your cameras ability to create depth of field (DOF). Remember those nice portraits of someone with their face crystal clear and the background all blurry? That’s aperture. How about those photos of beautiful landscapes and sceneries where the foreground and background are all in focus? Aperture.
Here is an example, this is a little fun Valentine’s Day photo that I took.
Notice that part of the cupcake and the M&M are in focus while the rest of the image is blurred. That blur is called bokeh.
In technical info, the aperture is referred to as the f-stop. If you see data such as f/1.8 or f/22 it is referring to how open or closed the aperture is in the lens. The photo above was taken with a 50mm lens with an aperture of f/1.8
Think of aperture as the pupil of your eye. Expanding and contracting to allow light in but also allowing you to focus. If you close one eye, like a camera, and bring your finger close to your eye and focus on it, you will see bokeh in your peripheral vision.
To reduce the bokeh you just close down your aperture more by increasing the f-stop number. This will reduce the DOF.
Here is a photo that I took below is with an aperture of f/8.0
Notice that the background is clearer.
Here area couple diagrams.
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Now if you can think about how aperture works in coordination with shutter speed and ISO, you are on your way to taking great images.
by Joe
Shutter Speed is usually how photographers refer to exposure time. A photographer uses a combination of shutter speed and aperture to attain the a correct exposure. Depending on the available light and aperture the shutter speed may need to be adjusted. The shutter speed is always measured in seconds or fractions of a second.
The shutter allows the light in to expose the film or sensor to what you’re capturing. So, the faster the shutter the less light is able to enter the camera and viceversa. Imagine you’re taking a photo at night, do you think you need a faster or slower shutter speed to capture the image? If you said slower, you are correct! Give yourself a high five. Check out this image:
The photo above is of the ‘Iolani Palace in Honolulu, HI. I took this photo at night. The reason it came out so clear, without flash, and at night is because this photo has a 20 second exposure. Yup, took 20 seconds to actually capture this image. I used a tripod to make sure that the camera didn’t move, if any movement occurred the photo would actually be blurry. If you notice the trees are a bit blurry and that is because it was breezy that night.
Have you ever taken a photo and it came out blurry? The reason is because your shutter speed was not fast enough so you were not able to effectively capture the motion.
You can use a slower shutter speed during the day by closing down your aperture and limiting the amount of light that enters the lens. That’s how you can attain this effect:
Above I closed the aperture and slowed the shutter speed down but followed the moving car leaving it clear.
Try to imagine light as paint and your camera sensor as a blank canvas. As light hits the sensor your picture is being painted. At night, you have to let your canvas hang around longer to allow the paint (light) to trickle in and paint the image.
There are some tricks you can do with your photos by adjusting the shutter speed. One of those is introducing the sense of motion into your photos.
For instance, have you ever seen a photo if a waterfall where the water seems to be flowing? Here’s an example -
How the photographer attains a water flow is by slowing down the shutter speed. How I was able to do that despite it being the middle of the day is another lesson but it is achieved by slowing the shutter down.
Here’s another example of slowing down your shutter speed to give a sense of motion -
Some photos take even longer to capture which result in a motion that sometimes we don’t think of -
Hope that all makes sense, if you have questions feel free to comment or email us. I think we will go ahead and tackle aperture next week.
by Joe
Exposure is a term that has a couple different meanings but the one we are going to be looking at is in the context of shutter cycles. All cameras have some sort of shutter, something that flips open the sensor/film and then shuts. That process is what “exposes” the sensor/film. Exposure is also the amount of time that you’ve left your sensor to capture the image. Ever get a picture that’s too dark? We would say that the photo is under exposed. Ever get a picture back that’s too light? Over exposed.
Almost all cameras come with built in light meters. Back in the day photographers would have to carry a light sensor separate from that of the camera. That sensor was called a “light meter” because it measured the amount of light and would recommend certain settings for the camera. Here are some photos of some light meters if you’re interested.
Ok, so all modern digital single-lens reflex cameras (or DSLR’s for short) all have built in light meters but what about Point and Shoot cameras (POS; no hidden meaning intended)? Well, yes, your POS camera does indeed have a light meter. That is how the camera can correctly adjust itself to get the best photo, however, most times you are not able to see it.
How to control your exposure? You can control your exposure with a combination of ISO, aperture, and shutter speed.
I took these images on medium format film camera called a Holga. It’s a cheap toy film camera and it’s pretty easy to mess up a photo. The pictures below were taken at a church in Costa Rica.
Notice how one image on the left is too light and can barely make out the church, where as the other one is perfectly exposed?
The reason one photo is more exposed than the other is because I left the shutter open for too long. Changing the shutter speed is a way to change the exposure or the amount of light that hits your sensor/film. Which brings us to next weeks topic, shutter speed.
by Joe
So you wanna know what ISO is? Even if you’ve never heard it, you should definitely know.
In film, ISO, sometimes referred to as ASA or “film speed”, is the films sensitivity to light.
In digital photography, ISO/ASA, is the image sensors sensitivity to light.
I’m going to continue talking about ISO in the context of digital photographer since most of you guys are using digital cameras.
Some basic concepts. The higher the ISO the more sensitive your camera is going to be to light which means you won’t need as much light for the exposure.
Pretend it’s night time. You’re trying to take a picture of a landscape but it’s coming out too dark? Try raising your ISO. Most point and shoot cameras do this automatically.
The trade off to raising your ISO is something called “noise.” On film it’s called “grain” and there is a difference.
If you have ever taken photos on let’s say a camera phone at night you’ll notice that the photo isn’t as clear as it is during the day. That’s because the camera is automatically implementing ISO so that you can take a picture without it being too blurry.
So, the higher the ISO the less light is needed to take a photo.
If I were to take my camera out to the beach on a full and sunny day, I would want my ISO to be as low as possible because I don’t need to amplify the light. If I do, all I’m going to accomplish is a photo with more noise.
Here is a general understanding about ISO setting:
Auto ISO - Ok, you don’t want to mess with it. Let the camera figure it out. BUT, you are not in control. That is NOT how you’re going to become a better photographer.
ISO 100 - Bright light situation. Most times the lowest ISO setting a digital camera offers.
ISO 200 - Cloudy day, overcast. Noise may start showing.
ISO 400 - Indoor photography, maybe sports stop action photos. Most cameras will start showing noise at this point which results in reduced image quality.
ISO 800 and up - Who coughed on the photo and… oh wait. It just looks horrible.
Different cameras handle ISO and noise differently. I know photos taken on my Nikon D80 with an ISO over 800 tend to start looking horrible. Where as, photos on a significantly more expensive Nikon D3 at ISO 800 look just as clear as ISO 100.
Here I will show you an example, one of my very own images where you can see ISO.
Here is the photo:
You may not be able to see the noise with the image so small so here is a larger, close up version of the top of the photo. Can you see the noise, especially on the right side?
This would be a good opportunity to whip out your camera and play with it. It’s the only way you’re going to get better and play around with the ISO. Try it in different situations and scenarios.
Learn these tools one by one and soon you’ll learn to use them together to create just the image you want. Come back next thursday to learn about exposure.
by Joe
Thanks to Adobe Photoshop CS3, panoramics have never been easier to do.
Below I’ll give a step by step on how I to “stitch” together several photos to make amazing, well blended, panoramics. Of course, there are more ways then one to skin a cat and photoshop you can just about do anything in multiple ways but I’m going to show you how I do it. If you can skip a step or know of an easier way by all means post in the comments!
First, select the photos that you are going to be using and bring them into Photoshop:
Second, create a blank canvas and drop the photos onto the canvas, each photo making a new layer:
Third, this is where the magic happens, select all your layers except the background layer. Go Edit -> Auto-Align Layers. It will ask you how you want to do it align the layers, you can play around with these options on your own but I usually leave it on Auto-Align. Sit back, relax, let Photoshop do the heavy lifting.
Now the images are aligned but they look all funky because you took the photo in different spots so the camera metered them all slightly differently depending on the necessary exposure. The outcome should look like this
Fourth, keeping the layers selected, go Edit -> Auto-Blend. Sit back and let Photoshop again do all the work for you. Maybe take the time to open a notepad and begin writing a lovely, well thought out comment for the blog post.
Fifth, you’re done! Well, almost. Gotta make it look good right? Crop and save.
Congrats! All done! Here’s what mine looks like:
Post your’s if you got one… I’d love to check it out!
by Joe
1. Perspective
Portray the subject in a way that a viewer might not ordinarily see it. For instance, you can either take a picture of a toddler from 6ft above or you can get down on the toddler’s level and give the photo the perspective from the child’s point of view.
2. Preparation
Point and shoot. Those are what those little cameras are called and that’s exactly what people do with them. STOP, take a second and look through the view finder, compose your shot. Look at it. Ask yourself:
Asking those questions in your head really quickly can improve your photos drastically. With the new digital age we see a depreciation in the quality of images that are out there. Back when film was costly people actually thought about the shot before they took them.
3. Composition
For example, you are walking down the street and you see a cute dog tied to a fire hydrant looking bored. Imagine the normal point of view that you have looking at the dog. You are standing up and looking down on the dog. That is how someone would normally photograph the dog. It is not very interesting, it is not unique.
There you have it, three simple ways to improve your images right now. Come back and we’ll touch more in depth on some of these things above.
