Other Resources

The following are also wonderful resources for photographers looking to learn about equipment and how everything comes together.

• Digital Photography Review
• This site does a lot of great hardware reviews for all sorts of brands and kinds of cameras, no just DSLRs. There is also a large community of photographers and their egos.
• Ken Rockwell
• Speaking of egos, Ken Rockwell is a well known digital photographer who is either loathed or loved depending on who you're speaking to. In my opinion he does a good job of writing a manual that is a little more logical and user friendly than what was included in your box. However he is just one man, and it is important to take his opinion and reviews, like all others, with a grain of salt. He is a well known Nikon enthusiast and not afraid to speak his mind and let his allegiances known.

On top of these sites, communities are a great place for information and help. They're also a great place for misinformation too, because as one of the most cliche arts, photography is certainly a occasionally controversial subject! One can crown themselves a photographer simply by owning a camera and pushing a button, and more often than not, that's where you'll get your misinformation. The biggest community online for photographers at the moment is http://flickr.com and setting up an account there is easy. There are also boards specifically for the brand that you have chosen, Nikon, Canon, Pentax and so on, and these people will also be able to help and are usually quite enthusiastic.

ISO

ISO is the third key component of the exposure of a digital photograph. In my opinion, your choices regarding shutter speed and aperture are to be based off of this first decision. Choosing an ISO level is generally my first thought when setting up my initial exposure when I enter an environment because once it's set it's generally not going to be changed unless you go to a dramatically differently lit environment with different shooting needs.

But what is it? Simply put, your ISO is the level of sensitivity your camera's sensor is to light. But just as the other components of exposure there is no "best setting". Every situation will dictate a different set of exposure settings, and this is no difference.

And just like the other pros and cons we've discussed, for example wanting to capture crisp action but choosing too fast of a shutter speed that the image is too dark, ISO too has it's caveats. In a nutshell, a low ISO is going to make the sensor desensitized of the light however it will afford you vivid pictures with rich colors and little to no "noise". A higher ISO setting is going to make your sensor more sensitive to light (allowing you to shoot in darker conditions with a higher f stop and quicker shutter speed) at the expense of those rich colors and also the addition of unsightly digital noise created by the sensor straining for light. It's also safe to say that there is a certain amount of contrast related detail lost as well with these higher ISO settings. The highest ISO settings are generally very ugly a produce horrible photos are quite low light and I advise most people to never to consider using them.

The noise to ISO level ratio is very dependent on the quality of your sensor and you'll see a considerable quality jump with better cameras. All digital cameras regardless of weather they are a DSLR or point and shoot have this setting and lets you tinker with it. Most people with digital point and shoots keep it on auto which allows the camera to set the ISO setting which is for better of for worse. The following examples are from one of my favorite digital photography guru's Ken Rockwell using the model camera that I personally own.

Understandably these are just looking at ISO noise and ISO noise alone. The other components of exposure have been changed to compensate for the changing of ISO so that the pictures exposure remains constant. There are ways to hide and filter out this noise in post processing, again at the expense of detail, that I may discuss in a future post.

Flare for iOS

Remember our discussion of HDR Photography last week? If you found that interesting, than this application for iOS may be right up your ally! The built in camera app, last time I checked, has true HDR photography built in. This takes HDR Video and brings it to your iPhone. From what I understand, it's only doing HDR from a single exposure, so it isn't true HDR but it gets the effect across. There are video cameras that exist however that will do true HDR footage, but trust me- you can't afford them.

The video above is an example of the very new world of HDR video, however this was done with more than one exposure (and professional grade DSLRS) so the quality is considerably higher. I believe the iOS video app was developed by the same people however. The app is called Flare, and they have examples of footage up from the app itself on their site. You can find it at http://getflare.com/.

Aperture

Aperture is one of the more advanced components of exposure and isn't as straight forward as shutter speed. Simply put, it effects the rate at which the sensor of your camera is exposed to to the image during the period of time you have the shutter open. The graphic above shows you that the higher the number, or "f stop", the more contracted the aperture is inside the lens. Different apertures are good for different situations and this is that just the same reason that different lenses are good for different situations. Well, one of the many reasons why different lenses are good for different reasons. I say this because many lenses are not "fast" enough to achieve a 2.8 aperture. The image below, courtesy of spencerboerupblog.com, shows you within the same photo how these various sizes can critically effect your photo.

Take a moment to look at the photo and how the different elements change with each "stop" change. There are a few obvious elements, one being detail and clarity. In every photo the bulb is in focus, and can be seen clearly. However the background isn't clear until the higher f stops. This effect is known as depth of field. The background seems to be lost behind what is focus on the wider apertures. This is known as the "bokeh", and is desirable typically in portraits. Alternatively you sacrifice this depth of field for clarity with a higher f-stop, as you see when you go all the way up to 8. My photojournalism teacher once told me the key to being a photojournalist is "f8 and be there". Because f8 will capture the entire scene.

But there's a catch here, and it has to do with a key component of exposure, which is how bright and or dark the photo is. Think about it, a wider aperture is letting more light in all at once, while a tiny "pin hole" aperature is going to be the sensor be exposed to the image quite slowly. This trade off will effect your picture immensely. For example, if you are capture fast moving sports and you want everything to be clear, you're going to want a high f stop number, however the pictures will be darker because of this. The sensor isn't getting enough light fast enough. Make the shutter speed longer you say? The action will blur, if you recall our previous lesson.

What then is a budding photographer to do?

We'll explore that and more in the next exposure tutorial.

HDR Photography

image courtesy of stuck in customs

Take a close look at the photo above. Would you believe me if I said that this was taken by a photographer and not made in some 3D modeling program? It's true. This kind of photography is known as High Dynamic Range photography and what it makes it different than regular pictures can be somewhat inferred by it's name. The range of the lighting, the details including the shadows, is much more than one would get from an ordinary photograph.

The photo above is one of my all time favorite HDR photos. It's simply a surreal capture of Japan that really drags you into it with every detail, comparable to a immersive video game. You must want to know how to make some of your own now don't you? HDR is created using three separate photographs at 3 levels of varying exposure. Remember how we discussed that exposure controls how bright or dark the picture is, and is controlled by a few different elements on the camera?

One photograph is taken at the regular exposure, the brights aren't blowing out any detail, and the shadows arn't to harsh as to lose too much detail. The next photograph is taken, I believe, a third under exposed, for harsher shadows. The next photograph is taken a third over exposed. This can be done in a fast sequence if your camera supports a feature known as bracketing. It is imperative that the camera is steady and is framed the exact same way for each photo, so a tripod is preferred. Here's why:

There are various softwares that will then take these three photographs and combine them in a way that the details brought out and emphasized in the under and over exposed pictures are now visible and pronounced in the picture that is normal. One of the programs that will do this is the most recent version of Adobe Photoshop, and another off the top of my head is called photomatix. The style has become so popular in recent years that the new iPhone is also capable of doing this on it's own, and there are applications that allow for HDR Video as well.

HDR is somewhat of an art because generally the software allows you to control how pronounced the effect is. This means your photos can have a subtle surreal detail to them or look like a completely computer generated scene: the choice is yours. Alternatively you could simply ruin the photo.

Saturation

photo courtesy of Bair Art Edition

What is saturation?

"In graphics and imaging, color saturation is used to describe the intensity of color in the image. A saturated image has overly bright colors."

Saturation is a critical aspect of photography. It can bring your photo to life, it can make it a dreary sight, and it can completely ruin a photo by making it unreasonably inauthentic. How to digitally post process your saturation is beyond the scope of this course, however some cameras have some limited built in saturation controls. The images above you see, from top to bottom, an over saturated image, the original image, and desaturated image. Occasionally, amateurs will assume that more color is always better and that is not always the case. Its a fine line between a vivid strong blue ocean and an overwhelming fake and fictional blue. As you can see, with the over saturated image, no one would thinks this is a well crafted photo. This week's bit of advice, when you find yourself in post processing or changing settings on your camera, when it comes to saturation less is more .

There are times when a photo is made by the fact that it is desaturated. The are times a photo is brought to life with a little boost in the saturation. Too often are there times that a photo is ruined by too aggressive of a saturation boost.

Abode Carousel

Adobe Carousel gives you a new way to enjoy your photos, making all of them available across your Mac and iOS devices, so you can browse, enhance, and share them easily. No manual syncing, no storage limits, no differences in what photos are available to you. Your photography is everywhere you are.

Is this the "Adobe Lightroom" for iPad, the professional workflow batch photograph editing tool which is only available on desktops, that people have been asking for? It doesn't quite look like it, but it may be a adequate substitute. But for 60 dollars a year? It's interesting and this may be worth keeping an eye on, but seems to be a solution for something that isn't exactly being demanded. Many professionals would much rather drop 50+ dollars on a platform that would give them the power of lightroom on a mobile device. We don't need to bring buzzwords like the cloud or social media into this.

Lessons in Exposure: Day One

Shutter speed is arguably what is going to effect your photo the most. What it does can be inferred by it's name. Think about the basics of a digital camera. The exposed sensor takes the picture that is let in through the lens.

That being said: The shutter blocks the image sensor from the light. The speed is how long the sensor is exposed to that light, which creates the picture.

The flow of the light is augmented by the current aperture of the lens, which will be discussed in another post.

As you can see from the series images on the left, courtesy of Wikipedia, the shutter speed dictates quite a few things. This camera is clearly held stable by a tripod, and is taking pictures of the same spot. Each spot is take under a different shutter speed, all the way from 1/800th of a second to a single second. As you may know, motion with the shutter open for too long is going to blur your image. This blur can be shown somewhat tastefully to show motion, but the extreme will render a picture abstract and meaningless. The water looks very fluid and slick with the long shutter speed, the water is blurred but in a path so that it's atheistically pleasing. It's important to note that if the camera wasn't on a tripod, this would not have been achieved. Alternatively, you see the jagged edges of drops of water being caught in mid air with the fastest of the shutter speeds, which is also makes an attractive image. This kind of picture however, could be caught without a tripod mind you - whereas the shutter speed was fast enough so that a steady hand wouldn't ruin the photo.

Exposure also refers to, more commonly, how bright or dark the image is. If the shutter is open for too long, your image is going to be too bright and you wont be able to see anything. Even slightly over exposed pictures have details in highlights which are blown out.

If your shutter is too quick- you risk the opposite. Your picture will be too dark, and the slightest of shadows will seem like the darkest abyss.

These are two things you must balance, along side keeping in mind how you want motion to effect your photo. It makes for difficult trade offs in situations, with the most prominent that comes to mind being low light photography. How would one capture a crisp image without blurring in low light conditions? One would thing that the shutter would just need to be open for longer to compensate, but keep in mind it would be blurred.

This is where other elements of exposure come in to play, and can help you control other elements of your photo including light, but also detail and focus.

Digital Photography Made Easy

" You would never gain very much by jet-flighting from one fleshpot to another wearing an expensive camera around your neck like a rosary and expecting the world to stand still while you search for some elusive truth. But try covering the same distance in an old car that is guaranteed to break down every few hundred miles, and see what you end up with!" - George Rodger, Photographer, 1970

Thanks for visiting my blog! All too often consumers buy cameras that are more than they can handle. The salesmen assure you that it is the camera that makes the photo great, and that is the greatest fallacy in this entire subject. First and foremost, it is the photographer that makes the photo, not the camera.

And that is why this blog exists.

Just as a painter can paint an amazing painting with the same paints a 4 year old can make smudges with. It's about knowing your tools, how to use them, and their strengths and weakness. One of my photography teachers once told me of a student of his who used a very primitive digital camera, very old, for all of his projects. The student got an A in the course. His pictures were solid technically, and composed appropriately. Not only that- they played up the weaknesses of old digital cameras- and he used the pixilated pictures to his advantage!

In my opinion, it's important to start small, and learn the basics of what pulls a picture together. It's important to have a camera that fosters that. Things such as exposure and composition can be learned without even having a Digital SLR Camera in the first place! If you're asking, what is a DSLR anyways? Then it would be smart for you to not start with one.

Would you teach a child how to run before they learn how to walk?

Unfortunately, if you were in a big box retailer, and wanted a quality camera and got stuck with something with more dials and knobs and buttons than you know what to do with, you have been expected to run before you were even crawling.

And I'll be honest with you, I have one of those kinds of cameras, but I don't always use it. Sometimes a small portable non DSLR camera is what the situation calls for, and believe me, the pictures are just as swell and of the same quality. They're also more flexible as well, in terms of when where and how they can be used.

As I said, the first thing to learn and understand is exposure. Of course, every camera is different and how they have you set the key components of exposure is different. They are as follows:

• Shutter Speed
• Aperture
• ISO

These basic and crucial elements will be explained in an upcoming entry.

Photo Academy App for iOS

You could have a fancy DSLR, an expensive lens, a sturdy tripod, an extra battery pack, heck even a gnarly camera bag but if you don't know how to take pictures, you don't know how to take pictures. Photo Academy is an app that teaches you how to take better snappies.

It's like a tutorial app, or a how-to-in-an-app, that covers the basics like how to hold your camera and what tweaking ISO and exposure do to more complex instructions like professional photographer tips and editing ideas. There's literally hundreds of different tips for various situations along with ideal camera settings to maximize your pictures—basically, if you're an amateur photographer, you're bound to learn something.

You can even add your photos to "track your progress" though it's sorta unnecessary given that the app's goal is for you to take pictures with your DSLR and not your iPhone cam. $1

via Engadget

I'm excited to get this blog started, as well as explaining why I have created it, within the coming week. Until then, if you have an iOS Device (a iPad, an iPod Touch, iPhone) than the app outlined in this post by tech blog Engadget may be a helpful learning and reference tool to have! If I'm ever to drop a term you may not know, it could clear things up or shed more light on that area of the subject. To download it, check out the Engadget link for more details.

Looking forward to a great Fall Semester!