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.