Sunday, October 28, 2012

Lighting images.

All of the photos with the backdrop were done at my wife's dance studio with my daughters. Used were my speedlight and some slave unit flashes. I've found when trying to light portraits that a 3part point of attack is great. Cross lighting from both sides will a fill light from the back.  That's the lighting used in all of the shots with the back drop.
























For this shot I used the flash to freeze the image and control the lighting in the background.

In this instance I wasn't able to defeat the bright sunlight, I was too far away, I wish her face wasn't quite so shaded.

Here the flash actually provided the really cool effect of mirroring the car off the wood.

For the next two pictures of my daughter the flash is used as a fill light to combat the sunset on her right. I like getting her face lit well but still getting the golden glow in her hair from the sunset.



While I know we're supposed to be using flash, I thought this silhouette of my wife was a nice shot of using light to be a bit more artistic. I didn't use a flash here and it provided a nice silhouette.


Here we were in bright sunshine and I used the flash to illuminate her face just enough while still maintaining the bright contrast on her back.

Flash



Flash can be something of a devil in disguise when it isn’t used properly. I’m not a fan of pop of flashes in any way shape or form. I know they serve a purpose by providing light in a pinch. But generally speaking on camera flash( the kind built in) generally washes out the image and leaves it feeling quite fake and honestly to me, rather ugly.
But in some cases it is a necessary evil. If you don’t have the resources to afford a speedlight, or the ability to travel with a large lighting kit( and lets be honest, not many of have the ability to lug around a ton of equipment on a day to day basis) then the pop flash can be your best friend when a high iso and slow shutter speed just won’t do.  I myself own a Canon 580ex ii speedlight which I love. It differs from a pop up flash in a plethora of ways. The biggest of which is that it isn’t actually apart of the camera. The speedlight slides into the hot shoe on the top of DSLRs. For those not familiar with the hot shoe it is the little metal bracket located on top of a camera. Multiple lighting devises can be placed into there and used to control lighting for your camera, from a speedlight like I own to a radio transmitter that allows you to control off camera lighting from the camera. This can be great for studio photography, you can avoid the hassle of having cords and wires laying all around the floor waiting to be tripped on and knock over all of your equipment.
Another beautiful thing about my flash is that it has the ability to control various other off camera flashes. Therefore when I fired my speedlight it can trigger other mounted (slave) speedlights in the room to go off at the same time. This can provide dynamic lighting and beautiful images. The speedlight also has the ability to rotate and revolve. This allows you to bounce the light from the flash off of a ceiling in a low ceiling room or diffuse the light a bit by not having it pointed directly at the subject.
Flash doesn’t always need to be used when it is dark out though.  While I wouldn’t using a pop up flash in the daylight because it won’t be strong enough to really have an effect, using a stronger flash can be a blessing in the bright sun. When used properly the flash can over power the sunlight and provide a gentle light on the subject instead of the intense lighting that can come from  the bright sun during early afternoon hours.
Using the flash also can be used to freeze and object. Even when shooting action shots in dim light you don’t have to worry about your shutter speed because the light from the flash freezes the subject in that exact moment. Having a slow shutter speed allows to keep the background well lit without sacrificing the crispness from a fast moving object.

Sunday, October 14, 2012

The first few images here all show a terrible white balance. The colors are off and the lighting makes them all shaded yellow.




Here the white balance is back to a correct level, followed by several that aren't tuned properly.


As you can see in this image the White Balance is a bit off. Everything has a tint of red/pink to it.

This photo is the opposite. I was a bit to cool with the white balance and because of it ended up with a blueish tint to my photo.

In this photo and the one below you can see the stark contrast in the color of the table cloth. In one it's a bit yellow(up above) and in the picture below it's a bit bluer.


White Balance essay



White balance is in it’s essence a control for the temperature of the photo. The temperature then controls how the color spectrum shows up in your image.  The hotter the setting the more yellowish and red the image will look. The colder the setting the more blue and turquoise shades will creep in.  Most cameras come with an automatic white balance option. I’ve found this to be a rather reliable way of capturing the white balance in all of my images. Another way in which to always have a foolproof fall back option is to always shooting your images in RAW. This allows you to change the white balance in post processing. So even if you mis gauged the proper setting for the location you are at it still gives you the peace of mind of knowing you can go back and change it at a later time. As you will see in my photos this is HUGE.
                Another function of my camera, and I believe of most DSLRs is the ability to set a custom white balance. Sometimes the auto settings just won’t cut it when you are in a room with many conflicting lights. For instance in my wife’s dance studio there can be an array of florescent bulbs, natural light coming through the large windows and some incandescent bulbs that are set up for mood lighting. This can make capturing a proper white balance nearly impossible for my camera on it’s own. Nearly all of my pictures come out looking jaundiced using a preset setting on my camera. They are always a bit warmer and therefore more yellow than I would like because of the mixture of light. What I’ve found to do is set a custom white balance in these situations. To do this one only needs a simple white piece of paper. Take a photo of it in the light you will be shooting in. Then go to your custom white balance setting and click on that photo. It will select the white from that picture as your white balance until you take it out of the custom preset. This allows you to get the correct colors for all of your images in that space up until you change the setting back to a preset or to auto mode.
                White balance controls the color spectrum you see when viewing your photographs. If you are set to the wrong preset, or your camera does a poor job of detecting the white balance I’ve found that the images will tend to be discolored quite a bit, almost as if someone layered a blue or yellow sheet behind your photo in Photoshop.  It makes the image seem tinted, which makes for poor quality images. 
As I said above, when shooting in raw however this can be altered after the fact.  In Photoshop for instance when loading a raw image the top section has two sliding scales along with it’s own presets for the type of environment that you are in. If you are unable to nail the coloring using these options it also affords you the ability to use the eyedropper tool to select a white portion of the photo and it will automatically tune the color balance properly from there.

Sunday, October 7, 2012

ISO



When buying a camera many people get captivated by mega pixels. The more a camera has the better it must be right?  This is completely untrue. The size of the sensor in the camera is what allows a camera to have a large number of usable megapixels.  This directly relates to ISO. The smaller the sensor with more megapixels will make for much more noise in an image.  This can be seen when using your iPhone in a dark room. Those 8megapixels look great when you’re in bright light or outdoors on a sunny day when your subject is stationary. But because the sensor is so small on an iPhone (in relation to a DSLR) those megapixels will become a hindrance when trying to shoot in dim lighting.
For the sake of simplicity I’ll speak to my cameras abilities for the remainder of this. My Canon T2i has an ISO range of 1-6400. This is a misnomer though, because any image taken at ISO 6400 is completely unusable. It will be entirely pixelated and noisy.  At ISO 3200 images can occasionally be salvaged by using noise reduction software such as Noise Ninja or Adobe Camera Raw.  At ISO 1600 and below images are generally usable.  I like to use this and ISO 800 when shooting inside of dark areas such as dance recitals or indoor sporting events.  Using ISO settings along with adjustments in shutter speed and aperture allows me to shoot in dim lighting without relying on external lighting like a flash or strobe lighting. Anything below 800 on my camera is generally crisp and noise free on my T2i.  The ability for cameras to handle high ISO shooting is the main crutch of camera technology advancements.  For all the fuss about new camera coming out with higher megapixels the truth is that the sensors in the cameras continue to get better and better. For instance the new Canon 5D Mark iii is supposed to be an extremely special camera when it comes to handling high ISO shots. It comes with a native ISO range of 100-25600 and is supposed to produce crisp clear images all the way up to ISO 6400. This is the new arms race for cameras. Competing not for MegaPixels which no one needs more than 20mp. Most entry level DSLRs are at this range already.  However most cameras still don’t handle noise reduction at high ISO numbers very well.  Full Frame cameras are dropping in price which will allow more people to be able to experience usable high ISO numbers.
This photo was taken with a high ISO, I was able to smooth out the noise in photoshop but it cost me a lot of the detail in the faces of the girls.  This is mostly true when reducing noise in post production. Noise can normally be reduced greatly, but it will cost you a lot in the details.