Dengrove Studios Blog

Welcome all, with Thanksgiving just around the corner and other many holidays not too far behind I thought we would spend some time talking about how to take some decent photos of your friends and family during these happy gatherings.

The first hurdle that we are faced with is all of these holidays occur during the Winter time, which means indoor photos, which also means FLASH.

Flash can sometimes be a dirty word amongst photographers. It can conjure up images of super bright blown out blown out faces with harsh unflattering lighting that can make even the most attractive person in the world look like Frankenstein. So let’s discover some ways that we can minimize the negative effects of flash lighting and still capture some awesome photos of your friends and family this holiday season.

Let’s discuss those of you using a point and shoot camera first. With these small compact cameras the flash is so tiny that the light it produces is always very harsh. In addition due to the small size of the flash it can only provide illumination for just a couple of feet in front of you.

Pretend you’re shooting a photo of some family members in a room at your house during Thanksgiving. Everyone has 5 foot tall mice in their family right? Although the room looks well-lit to you, to your camera it’s a very different story. Your camera decides that flash is needed. You snap your photo and your family members end up looking like a disjointed faces and torsos floating in a sea of dark murkiness.

Family Photo with regular flash

This is despite the fact that they were actually standing in what you would consider a well-lit room. Come on admit it, how many of you have photos that turned out this way, but you never knew what to do about it? It’s ok you can raise your hand, I’ll look away.

So how can we prevent this. The first and one of the simplest things you can do is increase your ISO. Even the most inexpensive digital cameras have a function to increase ISO.

As we learned in a previous article, ISO determines how sensitive your digital camera’s sensor is to light. The higher the ISO the more sensitive your camera will be to light, which means it can perform better in low-light situations such as when shooting inside your house. In fact you might even be able to raise the ISO high enough that you won’t even need to use the flash at all.

There is a side-effect to be aware of, however. As you increase your ISO setting you also increase the amount of noise or grain that will be captured in your photo. This is an undesired effect and something you need to keep in mind when increasing your ISO setting. Most recent digital cameras will perform reasonably noise-free to ISO levels of 800 or even 1000. Some of the newest digital SLR (DSLR) cameras will even peform well at ISO levels  of up to 6400.

You can learn more about ISO from this previous article on the Dengrove Studios blog.

Now that we have our ISO set properly; high enough to allow make our camera more sensitive to the low-lighting conditions in the room, but not high enough to cause excess noise, what else can we do to make our flash photos better?

We can also change the mode of our flash. Most cameras allow you to change the way that the built-in flash operates by changing it’s mode. There are usually several to choose from.

There’s Standard Flash Mode, which causes the flash to fire when the light meter in your camera determines it’s necessary. There’s Fill Flash Mode, which causes the flash to fire every time you take a photo. Red-Eye Reduction Mode which is supposed to prevent subjects in your photo from getting those nasty devil eyes. More often than not it simply just annoys the heck out of people because they get blinded  with 3-5  flash bursts before taking the photo.

But the one we want to look for  is Slow-Sync Flash Mode. Some point and shoot cameras refer to it as “Night Mode” or “Party Mode”.

Ordinarily, when shooting with flash the camera chooses a fast shutter speed in order to “freeze” the action in the scene. Slow-Sync Flash allows the camera to use a slow shutter speed when shooting with flash. As you may recall from a previous article, shutter speed controls the length of time that ambient light or the available light in the scene is allowed to enter your camera and hit your camera’s digital sensor or film.

By using Slow-Sync Flash more of the available light in the scene or ambient light will be allowed to hit your camera’s digital sensor or film. Allowing you to capture not only your main subject which is illuminated by flash but also the background of your scene which is being illuminated by ambient light.

Remember that floating head photo you shot of your family members earlier? When we take that same photo again using Slow-Sync Flash just look at how much better it comes out! Now, not only is your main subject visible from the flash light but we can now see the actual room they’re standing in versus the scary abyss of darkness from before.

Family photo with Slow-Sync Flash

For those of you shooting with Digital SLR cameras there are even more things you can do to make your indoor flash photos look better. One of the absolute best ways of improving flash photos is to get the flash off the camera. This is because the built-in flash of your camera is actually in the worst possible position it could be in for making people look their best in photos.

The built-in flash rests nearly at eye level and right in front of your subject. This causes a bright harsh burst of flash light to fall on your subject from directly in front of them. So how can DSLR cameras help with this situation? Because, when shooting with a DSLR camera you have the option to use an external flash unit instead of the built-in one.

Nikon SB-900 External Flash (photo courtesy of Nikon)

Using an external flash compared to the built-in one is the difference between night and day! External flash units, when used properly, can simulate overhead lighting, side lighting, and even help to improve your photos in natural daylight. Since all of these types of light are what you find in most everyday lighting situations your flash photos will come out looking very natural, almost like you never used a flash at all.

Even using an external flash unit in it’s simplest configuration, mounted directly on the camera, it is still a vast improvement over the built-in one because it adds 1-2 inches of height. This means that the flash is no longer at eye level of your subject which makes the light softer and more flattering. It also helps get rid of that nasty red-eye.

For  even better photos you can rotate the angle of your external flash which you can then use to “bounce” the light coming from the flash off of a wall or ceiling. When “bouncing” your flash off of a ceiling it simulates the look of your subject being lit from overhead lights. This is excellent, now we can light our subject using flash but have it look more natural.

Nikon SB-900 External Flash rotated for bouncing light off the ceiling (shown with diffuser) (Photo courtesy of Nikon)

For the ultimate in natural looking flash photos you’ll want to get the external flash completely off the camera. “Why is this” you ask? Moving the flash off the camera allows you unlimited possibilities in positioning and directing your flash when taking a photo. This even allows you to light your subject from above at a 45 degree side angle, simulating natural daylight from the sun.

In order to make this work you can purchase a sync cable for your external flash unit which allows you to connect the flash to your camera while still being able to move it around. Some external flashes will even communicate wirelessly with your DSLR camera allowing you to position the flash on the other side of the room and still be able to set it off.

So as you can see no matter what type of camera you’re shooting with there are a number of simple techniques that you can employ to get better indoor flash photos of your friends and family. Most only require the turn of a simple switch to activate. With the holidays just around the corner I’m sure you’ll find plenty of opportunities to use these new techniques. Feel free to post your results, we’d love to see them and get introduced to your families.

As always, please feel free to leave comments, ask questions, and share some of your results on this blog post.

Scott Dengrove is a professional photographer from the NYC area. Scott’s work has been featured in many national photography competitions and published in several nationally circulated magazines and publications. In addition, his work can currently be seen in 3 exhibits at Cosi® restaurants in New York and Connecticut. For more information, and to see more of Scott’s work visit his website at www.dengrovestudios.com and connect with him on his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/dengrovestudios

Picture it…(already he’s starting in with the puns?) Yes, Picture it….a lovely day, a good friend and a photograph. Let’s say you and your friend are out at a park and you decide what a lovely setting it would be to take a photo of your friend.

Remembering a tip you read somewhere on the internet about how portraits look better when the sunlight is diffused, you decide to have your friend pose under a big, leafy, shaded tree.

You shoot *click*. One more time just to be sure *click*. Then you look down at your lcd screen to see the gorgeous image you just captured…WHY THE HECK IS IT BLUE???!!!!!

Photo with blue color cast

Well now that you’ve destroyed the peace and quiet in the park, and scared your friend off, let’s examine why the beautiful image you were trying to capture came out with a horrible blue color cast.

It all has to do with something called White Balance. White Balance is a camera setting that allows the camera to adjust or compensate for color differences in the surrounding light of the image you are trying to capture.

“Now wait a minute Scott”…you say. Go ahead say it, I know you’re thinking it. “I just shot this photo on a nice sunny day under a tree, trees are green, sunlight is white, where did this blue color light you speak of come from?”

Well you’re only partially right, trees are definitely green, but sunlight isn’t always white. In fact sunlight is rarely pure white. You can check this for yourself, put on a white shirt and go out in the sun at various times during the day.

You’ll notice that at sunrise your white shirt takes on a pinkish hue. As you approach early morning it turns into a bit of a cream color. At sunset it turns into a nice gold. And if you happen to go under a shaded tree you’ll notice that it does indeed appear to be a bit blue.

Shirt Color at Sunrise, Mid-Day, Sunset

This isn’t only limited to sunlight. Go into various rooms in your house, if you have incandescent lights you’ll notice your white shirt takes on an orange tint. Fluorescent tube lights, those appear kind of green.

So how come we don’t notice these color changes all the time? Well as we’ve said many times before the human eye is the best camera ever invented, and it can compensate for this differences in the color of light very well.

Think about it, a lot of us work in offices with overhead fluorescent lighting, but do you spend your whole day at working saying “gee, everyone looks so green in here today”? Of course not, because our eyes and brains compensate for the color shift.

Our cameras are not so lucky they record the color of light exactly as it appears. So when you took that photo of your friend under that shaded tree,  the camera recorded the blue color of the light that is cast by the shade of the tree.

You may ask why this doesn’t happen every time you take a photo? Your camera actually has an automatic white balance adjustment built-in which automatically compensates for the differences in the color of light. Since it is a machine though it can sometimes be fooled by an object in your scene and actually choose the wrong white balance setting. Hence you get a photo with a blue color cast.

The auto white balance adjustment on your camera does a good job most of the time, but for the times that it gets confused, that’s when you switch to manual white balance. Most cameras will have a couple of manual settings that you can choose from:

– Sunlight  - use this setting when shooting in bright sunlight

- Overcast – use this setting when shooting on a cloudy day, it will add a little warmth (orange tone) to the photo

- Shade – use this setting when shooting in shady conditions, it will add quite a bit of warmth (orange tone) to the photo to counteract the blue cast caused by the shade

- Tungsten – use this setting when shooting indoors with tungsten lighting, it will add coolness (blue tone) to the photo to counteract the orange cast coming from the indoor lighting

– Fluorescent – use this setting when shooting indoors under standard fluorescent lighting, it will add a reddish tint to your photos to counteract the green cast caused by the fluorescent light

Each of the settings above will allow you to achieve a nice proper white balance when shooting under those various conditions. Luckily since you have a digital camera you can instantly see what effect each setting has on your image right after you capture it.

Does your photo look a little too blue? Try the Tungsten White Balance setting, that will add a bit more orange to it so your whites will look perfect. (Such as the image we shot above)

Tungsten Setting-cancels blue color cast

Subject looking a bit too green? Use the Fluorescent White Balance setting, it will shift the color a bit more in the red direction so your whites will look just as they should.

Did you happen to notice before how I said “since you had a digital camera”? Why is that? Remember when you used to shoot with film, there was no white balance setting on your film camera was there? That’s because when shooting with film the white balance setting is controlled by the film itself.

Actually the everyday, standard film you purchase at CVS or Walgreens is balanced mostly for sunlight. However, there are many specialty films that can be purchased which are white balanced for shade, tungsten, or even fluorescent.

So when shooting film you never had to worry about setting your white balance for each shot. If your camera was loaded with film balanced for shade you were pretty much stuck with it until you used up that roll of film. So with digital unlike film we have to worry about white balance for every shot, but it gives us better control and therefore better looking photos.

Now that we know how to set our white balance, what happens if you have a mixed lighting set up? For example, you’re shooting some photos indoors with both tungsten and fluorescent lighting, which setting should you use?

Well in this instance your camera can easily get fooled into using the wrong white balance setting. So the best way to deal with a situation like this is to calibrate your camera using an 18% gray card. “Hmm…” you say, “I seem to recall something about 18% gray when we learned about exposure a while back”.

Yes you are correct, when we talked about exposure we mentioned that your camera’s light meter tries to make everything in your image even out to a nice 18% gray. Your camera not only does this for exposure, it wants to do it for white balance too. Thus enters our 18% gray card..stage left, TA DA

There are many different companies that make gray cards for making sure your white balance is properly set. Below is an image of the one that I use from a company called Photovision. It not only helps you with your white balance but it helps check exposure as well.

Whichever one you choose to buy, make sure it is calibrated for digital cameras. Older gray cards, or ones made more for the film age are usually calibrated at 13% gray and will not work well for your digital camera. So you went out and bought an 18% gray card…now what do you do with it?

Aside from the white balance pre-sets we talked about above, most cameras have a setting that allow you to measure the white balance from what the camera sees. Sometimes this is called a manual white balance, custom white balance, or measured white balance. In this mode your camera will take a photo and then choose a white balance based upon the scene that it sees.

So to use your 18% gray card simply have your subject hold the card and then zoom in real close to it with your camera. The subject should hold the card under the same location and lighting conditions where you will take the final photo. Set your camera to the measured white balance setting and then snap your photo.

Since we know that our card is 18% gray, and your camera wants to make the white-balance of the scene in front of it measure 18% gray this will allow your camera to choose the perfect white-balance setting.

For example let’s say you’re shooting under shade. When your camera takes it’s measurement photo, the gray card will come out with a blueish color cast as we learned earlier. Therefore, your camera will shift the white-balance more towards the orange or warmer setting until the measurement photo measures 18% gray. Since the photo just happens to be of an 18% gray card we know that this will be the perfect white-balance setting for the scene we are about to shoot.

You only have to perform this calibration once for your scene. As long as you don’t change locations or change the lighting your new white balance setting will work perfectly for each and every photo you shoot under the same conditions. If you decide to move your subject somewhere else or your shade turns into sun, then simply re-calibrate your white balance with the 18% gray card again and you’re ready to shoot!

Some of our more advanced readers may be wondering if there is a way that they can set their white balance after they take their photo. Perhaps you’re not sure which white balance setting will work best for your scene. Or perhaps you have to shoot your subject very quickly and there’s simply no time to perform the calibration before you take your shot. Is there anything that can be done?

The answer is yes, if you shoot RAW. “Scott you’re talking crazy, these aren’t vegetables this is photography, what does RAW mean?” Shooting RAW means that the images that come out of your camera will look exactly the way that your camera’s sensor captures the scene.

Most digital cameras save their images as JPEGs. When this happens the camera does some processing of the image before it saves it to make the image look its best. But this is all very subjective, whose to say that the way your camera processes your image is truly the way you wanted it to look. This is where RAW comes in.

RAW means that the camera will save the image in it’s native format without any processing at all! This gives you unlimited creative possibilities with your photo. The down-side is that often times RAW images don’t look very good right out of the camera because no processing has been done to them. This requires you as the photographer to add some processing to the images to make them look their best. This can be a bit time-consuming.

RAW photo (left) vs Processed JPEG photo (right)

However, the upside is (and this is a good one…) that since no processing has occurred to the image, your image does not actually have any white-balance setting applied to it. So what does that mean in terms of our discussion. Basically it means that you are free to choose whichever white-balance setting you would like for your image, after you have shot the photo!

This is great, it means that you can try different white-balance settings to see what would work best for your scene. It also means that if you happened to choose the wrong white-balance setting when you shot the photo, you can get a do-over!

Let’s say when you shot that photo of your friend under the shade of that big tree you accidently had the white balance set to Tungsten. You will recall from our discussion earlier that a Tungsten white-balance setting will actually add more of a blue color-cast to your photo. This isn’t what you wanted, your photo already had a blue color-cast due to the shade of the tree; now your photo is really blue.

Of course if you shot RAW this is no problem at all! You can simply change your Tungsten white-balance setting to the Shade setting after you’ve transferred your photos to your computer. Your photo is saved, yay! You definitely can’t do that with a JPEG.

In conclusion exploring the many white-balance presets built-in to your digital camera will allow you to virtually eliminate any color casts you may find when shooting your photos. To nail the perfect white balance every time you should pick yourself up an 18% gray card and use it to calibrate your camera’s white balance before each scene change. And for those of you advanced shooters who want the ultimate in white-balance control, shooting RAW will not only allow you more control over your photos but also give you the opportunity to correct your white-balance mistakes long after you’ve shot the photo and gone home.

As always, please feel free to leave comments, ask questions, and share some of your results on this blog post.

Scott Dengrove is a professional photographer from the NYC area. Scott’s work has been featured in many national photography competitions and published in several nationally circulated magazines and publications. In addition, his work can currently be seen in 2 exhibits at Cosi® restaurants in the New York area. For more information, and to see more of Scott’s work visit his website at www.dengrovestudios.com and connect with him on his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/dengrovestudios

With summer upon us a frequent activity of mine and I’m sure many others is visiting a theme or amusement park with family and friends. The wealth of colors, sights, people, shapes, and the occasional furry bear make theme parks an excellent venue for taking some really amazing photos. However, it is important to make sure that you’re using the right settings on your camera. Not only to make sure you get a great shot, but also to make sure that you do not disturb others around you who are trying to enjoy the ride!

The idea for this article came out of a trip I recently took to Walt Disney World in Orlando, FL. More specifically while riding one of my favorite attractions, Spaceship Earth, at EPCOT. You know Spaceship Earth it’s the one that people claim looks like a “big golf ball”. In actuality it is one of the world’s largest geodesic spheres. It is while riding this iconic attraction that an incident occurred that prompted me to write this post.

Spaceship Earth at Night (f/16, 20s, ISO100)

In general, this particular blog post is aimed at anybody who will be visiting a theme park and taking photos in the near future.

However, more specifically this post is aimed at the gentleman of average-description who was sitting 4 cars behind me on June 30th, 2010 at precisely 1:34 PM in the afternoon who decided it would be a bright idea to continually use his flash approximately every 10 seconds while taking photos, thus ruining the ride for not only me, but the other 25 people around me who were all taking the “slow-moving journey through the history of civilization” that is Spaceship Earth!

I can only hope that this man is a reader of my blog, and if so, my friend, you’d better listen up because I’m talking directly to you on this one! *End of rant*

For those who don’t know, Spaceship Earth is what is known as a “dark ride”. These types of rides usually take place in some sort of a vehicle, which brings you past various scenes of a story, such as a haunted house. The key thing that some people don’t seem to fully understand is the “dark” concept.

These rides are meant to take place in the dark and often times have extremely low-light levels. Naturally, it is very difficult to take photographs under these conditions and have them come out. This, I assume, is why there are people who take photos in these “dark rides” with their flash on.

There is a better way. Let me show you some techniques that you can use on “dark rides”. Not only to help you take better photos, but also so that you’ll be able to take the photos you want without disturbing the other people around you who are also trying to enjoy the attraction.

There is also a third reason why you shouldn’t use flash on “dark rides”. This is because the photos will never look like what you see on the ride. The people who create these rides use special lighting, and projections to create all the effects that you see, and to give the scene an illusion of realism. When you take a photo your flash is so strong that often times it overpowers all of these special effects and you end up with a photo of a very fake looking mannequin.

Let me give you an example…at the very top of the Spaceship Earth ride is a beautiful projection of the planet Earth. Naturally, everyone loves to take a picture of it. And of course there is always one person who will ruin the scene with their flash.

What this person doesn’t understand is that they just took a photo of a big white nothing! You see the image of planet Earth on the ride is a digital projection, like when you watch a movie. So when you shoot your flash at it, it ends up being so bright that it drowns out the projector and all you get is a photo of a blank white screen.

Image of Earth (f/1.8, 1/10s, 1600 ISO)

Image of Earth taken with Flash

As you can see from the images above clearly the flash doesn’t work in this type of situation, and all you have done is upset the other riders around you. So how can we get a nice photo of the Earth projection or any other scene in a “dark ride”? The first step is to turn off the flash! Every camera has a way of doing this, usually you should look for this symbol on your camera. This is where you can change the flash setting on your camera to OFF .

Once you have your flash off, there are some other settings on your camera that need to be “tweaked”. You’ll want to increase your ISO. We’ve talked briefly about ISO before. ISO is the setting that controls how sensitive to light the sensor on your digital camera is. If you’re using a film camera the ISO is determined by the type of film you place in your camera. The higher the ISO that you use, the more sensitive it makes your camera to light an therefore makes it easier to take photos in low-light.

Great so let’s crank our ISO setting to full blast and take some “dark ride” photos. Wait just a minute, it’s not quite as simple as that. You see although increasing the ISO makes our cameras more sensitive to the light coming through the lens, it has a very detrimental side effect that we must take into account.

Increasing the ISO also increases the amount of noise in your photo. This means that if you set your ISO too high your photo will turn into a big grainy, noisy mess. What’s worse is you won’t realize this until you download the photos to your computer, because on your cameras tiny little screen everything looks sharp and clear.

Spaceship Earth Scene with ISO set too high

Fear not though, today’s modern digital cameras can usually use ISO settings as high as 1200-1800 without showing any noise at all. In addition, camera manufacturers are pushing the ISO envelope all the time, creating better and better sensors that can take high ISO’s without showing any noise at all. Just this year 2 of the major camera manufacturers came out with cameras whose maximum ISO settings are over 100,000!

Changing our ISO will allow us to take better photos without flash, but what other settings do we need to know about when taking photos on “dark rides”? As you know, in nearly all “dark rides” there is some sort of movement or vehicle that you travel in, this is the “ride” part of the “dark ride”. When you leave your camera on it’s automatic settings it wants to slow down your shutter speed so that it can allow the most light possible into your camera.

Your camera’s shutter speed controls how long the sensor or film in your camera is exposed to light. Slowing the shutter speed down will allow more light to enter your camera because the shutter is open for a longer period of time which makes for better photos. There’s only one problem, when you combine a slow shutter with the movement of a “dark ride”, you get blur. Basically your photos would be a big blurry mess if you simply used your camera’s automatic settings on a “dark ride”

In order to correct this, we must tell the camera which shutter speed we’d like it to use. This way we can pick one that’s slow enough to be able to take decent photos in low-light but still fast enough so that you don’t get any blur from the moving ride vehicle. To do this we must put the camera into Shutter-Priority Mode, or S-Mode. You should be aware that not all cameras have an S-Mode setting on them. For those that don’t you can usually use either a “Night Mode” setting or “Portrait Mode” setting on your camera. These modes limit how slow the shutter speed will get so you can prevent or eliminate blur.

For those of you with cameras that have a Shutter-Priority Mode I would recommend using a shutter speed of 1/15 – 1/30 of a second. I find that setting is usually sufficient to get a nicely exposed photo while eliminating blur. If you’re not sure what kind of settings your camera has, consult with your owner’s manual to see if it has an S-Mode setting, and to see what other exposure presets it may contain.

Some digital cameras today come with over 15 programmed exposure modes. With everything from a “beach” to a “fireworks” setting there should be one offered on your camera that will allow you to limit your shutter speed. For more information about S-Mode you can click here to view our previous blog post about it.

Properly exposed scene without flash (ISO 1600, 1/10s, f/2.8)

As you can see from the above photo when you combine a high ISO with the proper shutter speed you can walk away with a great photo of any “dark ride” without using your flash, just as the designers intended the scene to look. And more importantly, without disturbing your fellow riders! So the next time you find yourself at Epcot, riding on Spaceship Earth, I beg you, please keep in mind what we’ve discussed here today. Not only will it help you take better photos, but as you can see Mr. average description gentleman sitting 4 cars behind me, I might just be the one who is on the receiving end of your flash bursts.

We’ve been talking quite a bit about technique lately, so I thought we might take a break from that and talk a bit more about digital photography in general and what to look for when buying a new camera. This one is aimed more at the beginner to intermediate crowd.

So you’re in the market for a new digital camera? It seems everyone is these days and there are more choices than ever! So how do you choose the one that’s right for you?

The first question you need to ask yourself is what type of shooter are you? Are you looking for something small and compact that you can throw in a purse or a pocket for just general use, or are you looking for a more professional camera with interchangeable lenses?

There are 2 main categories of digital cameras point and shoots and SLRs (Single Lens Reflex). Point and shoots are aimed more at everyday photographers who stay on Automatic settings most of the time and simply want to be able to quickly pull out a tiny camera from their bag and click off a few photos. SLRs are aimed more at the intermediate to advanced crowd that wants the ultimate control over their photos.

Point and Shoot Camera (Nikon Coolpix S570)

SLR Camera (Nikon D90)

In today’s digital camera market the line between these 2 categories is actually becoming rather blurred as new hybrids come out all the time such as the new “Pen” type cameras that have the body of a point and shoot but can use interchangeable lenses like an SLR. Not to mention the fact that a lot of digital cameras can also take HD Video that rivals some video cameras.

Once you have decided what category of camera you’d like to buy there are still a number of different features to consider. The first thing everyone asks when looking at a new camera is “How many megapixels is it?” But, do megapixels really matter, and just what is a megapixel anyway?

When your digital camera takes an image it is made up of millions of very small dots. Each one of these dots is called a pixel. Mega means million, so if you have a digital camera that shoots at 8 megapixels, that means the camera is capable of taking an image made up of 8 million pixels! That’s a lot of dots, so just how many do you actually need, and is more better?

Digital Images are made up of pixels (Photo courtesy of pixelkids.org)

Well as it turns out the importance of megapixels really comes into play only if you are printing your digital images. You see all websites and computer screens display images at a very low resolution. An average image that you see on your computer screen is only made up of a couple hundred thousand pixels.

Wait? only a couple hundred thousand pixels to show an image on a screen? Yes, that’s what I said, so if you’re the type of shooter that mostly displays their images on a digital device such as a computer, tv, ipod, or digital photo frame and doesn’t do a lot of printing of images, then getting a high megapixel camera will most-likely be a waste of money for you!

Even if you’re the type of shooter that prints every image they take you still probably don’t need all of those megapixels. An 8×10 printed image actually only contains about 7.2 million pixels, so even if you’d like to blow up that cute picture you took of your dog to an 8×10 you would still only need an 8 megapixel camera!

Then why is everyone so obsessed with megapixels? It’s just one of those industry numbers that everyone has heard of so they want you to think more megapixels = better images = buy this camera! Now if you’re looking to print larger photos such as 11×14, 16×20 or even posters, than sure go out and buy that 10, 12, or 14 megapixel camera, but if you’re only printing smaller photos or not printing at all and only sharing online then you can save yourself quite a bit of money when buying a new camera.

What else should you look for when buying a new digital camera? One feature that I highly recommend is optical zoom. Be careful not to confuse this with digital zoom. What is optical zoom? Optical zoom means that when using the zoom function to get closer to your subject the lens actually moves and that is what makes the image appear larger.

This is different from digital zoom, which is when the computer in your camera does the zooming in order to make your subject larger. This can cause your photos to be less sharp and will reduce the resolution of the photo.

Some cameras use a combination of both optical and digital zoom to make your subject larger. Try to look for a camera that has just optical zoom or both optical and digital. Stay away from cameras that only have digital zoom. You will get much cleaner and sharper photos from an optically zoomed image.

Digital vs. Optical Zoom (photo courtesy of bobatkins.com)

Another feature you want to look for in your digital camera is how well it will perform in low-light. This is super important because what you consider to be a low-light situation is very different from what your camera considers to be low-light.

This is because the human eye can see much better than any camera ever invented. Our eyes have no problem seeing a person perfectly clear in a dimly lit room or even by candle-light.

Your camera on the other hand can sometimes have trouble seeing clearly. Even when it is in what a human might consider a reasonably well-lit room.

Try to take a photo by candlelight and you’re likely to wind up with a blurry mess if your camera doesn’t have the right features! Now of course you could always turn on your flash, but that would ruin the mood wouldn’t it.

What you need to shoot low-light photos is a camera with a very fast lens. When purchasing a point and shoot camera or even a lens for an SLR camera you want to look for one that can open very wide to let the most amount of light in. This is called the aperture of the lens. Being this is an article aimed at beginners I’m not going to get very technical about the aperture here, to learn more about it you can view our previous blog post, A-Mode, Would You Like Your Depth of Field Deep or Shallow.

How do you know if a camera has a fast lens and will perform well in low-light? You need to make sure the camera or lens has a wide aperture. The size of the aperture is measured in f-stops. So it will look something like this “f/4″.

Or it may be written as a range if it’s a zoom lens such as “f/3.5-5.6″. Or possibly it may be written in an abbreviated format such as “1:3.5-8″. Either way, you should  look for a camera whose lens’ smallest number  is f/2.8 or smaller. So if you see a smaller number such as f/1.4 or f/1.8 that would work as well.

Having a camera with a fast lens (wide aperture) will allow you to capture much better images in low-light while other people without a fast lens will have to use their flash to get the same results.

The largest aperture size on this lens is f/3.5 which means it won't perform well in very low-light you want to look for f/2.8 or smaller

To summarize, we have reviewed a few things that you should keep an eye out for when shopping for a new digital camera. Cameras today have all sorts of bells, whistles, and especially features. They come in every size, color, shape, and price. It is not as important who makes your new camera, as it is that it has the particular features that you are looking for.

We were only able to cover a few in this article, as covering them all would require me to write a book, but I hope I’ve given you some things to look out for, and some options to consider.

If you have any questions or would like some further advice on purchasing your new digital camera please feel free to post a comment or get in touch with us.

Imagine if you will a beautiful sunny day. You’re walking along, have your camera of course, and come upon a beautiful place to snap a shot. You get all ready to shoot and then it hits you! Uh oh, you left your light meter at home! This is terrible, how are you going to set the proper exposure for your sunny day photo? In fact not only did you realize you left your light meter at home, you remember that it’s really the light meter you’ve only been thinking about buying, you don’t even own a light meter yet!

Fear not, it turns out there is a way that you can set a close to perfect exposure on a nice bright sunny day without a light meter. This is excellent news for those of you who left your light meters at home, or haven’t gotten around to buying one yet (you know who you are out there). Enter…the Sunny 16 rule! It’s not just a record title by Ben Folds.

The Sunny 16 rule can be used as a guide to set a near perfect exposure when shooting on a sunny day. Here’s how it works. First switch to Manual Exposure mode on your camera. Not sure about Manual Exposure Mode? Just check a few blog posts back for our series on Exposure Modes. Next set your aperture to f/16 (that’s the 16 part of the Sunny 16 rule for those of you who were curious). Then set your shutter speed to the nearest full stop reciprocal of your ISO (what did he just say, did he just curse me out?).

Relax, reciprocal simply means to take the inverse of your ISO setting. So if your ISO is set to 100, then the reciprocal is 1/100. If your ISO is set at 200 then the reciprocal is 1/200. Hang on a minute though, I did say the “nearest full stop” to the reciprocal right? This is true, there are many cameras that only let you set your shutter speed to full stop settings, 1/100 and 1/200 are not full stop settings so you may not be able to use those on your camera. This is why we use the nearest full stop to the reciprocal. So if your ISO is set to 100, the reciprocal is 1/100 and we would use a shutter speed of 1/125. This is because 1/125 is the nearest full stop to 1/100. If our ISO is set to 200, the reciprocal is 1/200 and we would use a shutter speed of 1/250 because that is the nearest full stop to 1/200. Here is a list to refresh your memory about the full stop values with regard to shutter speed.

Shutter Full Stop Values: 1s, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/15, 1/30, 1/60, 1/125, 1/250, 1/500, 1/1000, 1/2000

So what is ISO? ISO is basically a setting of how sensitive the sensor in your digital camera is to light, or how sensitive your film is to light. The difference between the 2 is that with a digital camera you can change your ISO with the touch of a button, in a film camera you actually have to put a new role of film in. Most digital cameras set the ISO automatically for you, and use ISO 100 or ISO 200 most of the time, of course it is possible for you to change this setting, and then you would take the reciprocal of whatever you currently have your ISO set to. As a rule of thumb though on a bright sunny day you would typically use a low ISO of about 100 or 200, this is because there is plenty of light around you so your sensor or film doesn’t need any extra sensitivity.

That’s all there is to it! So the next time you find yourself shooting on a bright sunny day and don’t want to drag that light meter out of the camera bag you can use the Sunny 16 rule to make sure you have perfect exposure almost every time. It’s May, the weather is beautiful, go put the rule into practice and shoot some bright sun scenes. As always feel free to post the results or comment.

Here is a photo using the Sunny 16 rule, as you can see a very nicely exposed photograph, ignore the funny looking guy on the Segway, he thought he was in the 3 o’clock parade.

Properly Exposed Photo Using the Sunny 16 Rule, f/16, 1/250, ISO 200

Properly exposed background, dark subject

Do your photos sometimes look like this?

There must be something wrong with your camera right? You were trying to take a nice photo in front of a sunlit scene and for some reason the background looked great, but the people are just way too dark. What happened? They didn’t look this way in real life. Perhaps they’re unlucky. Perhaps they walk around with a preverbal “dark cloud” above their head which always puts them in a shadow.

NO that’s not it, but how cool would that be to have your own cloud follow you around? The reason the people in your photo are dark silhouettes is because your camera did not pick the right exposure for that scene. First a little background(no pun intended)…

Just before snapping a photo your camera employs many many sensors to create the finished photo, including an exposure sensor. This sensor measures all of the light in the scene and computes an average amount of light in the scene you are about the photograph. Oh there’s one more thing you should know about most exposure sensors it has a bit of a handicap, it can only see in black and white.

Aww the poor thing…I know it’s a sad story, but that’s ok because the exposure sensor has learned to deal with it’s disability and it excels at picking the proper exposure for your scene, most of the time. You see the exposure sensor is programmed so that everything it sees in the photo will look like a middle gray.

Now what’s a middle gray, well it’s a gray that isn’t too white, or too black, it’s sort of in the middle Actually in terms of numbers middle gray for digital cameras is about 18% gray. It’s different for film. So when your camera’s exposure sensor averages all of the light coming into your scene it compares it to middle gray. Middle gray is your camera’s “happy place”. Your camera would love all photos to average out to middle gray.

In fact, that’s what it tries to do. When the average light in your scene is compared to middle gray the camera will choose an exposure that comes as close as possible to making the average light in your photo register as middle gray. This works very well in most situations. Plus several newer digital cameras have pre-defined exposure templates built-in which help your camera to nail the exposure correctly more times than not.

So then how did your people in front of the sun turn out to be dark silhouettes? Well when your camera “metered” the light in your scene it detected many bright areas, this is because you were shooting towards the sun. So imagine the photo as your exposure sensor sees it, in black and white. From the cameras point-of-view it is on average a very brightly lit scene. So the camera does what it’s programmed to do and compares this very bright scene to middle gray.

As you can see from the photo above, the few people in your scene are very dark compared to the rest of the brightly lit scene. So when the average light in the scene is compared to middle gray the camera says “the average light in this scene is much much brighter than middle gray, so I need to choose an exposure value which will darken the scene.” Hence, you get a lovely exposed sky and background, but dark silhouetted people.

A great choice if you were taking a photo of the bright background. However, you wanted the camera to set it’s exposure for those people in the scene, not the big bright background. So what can we do about it? Well your camera realizing that it’s only right about 80% has a feature that will allow you to fix this problem when taking your photo. Allow me to introduce….Exposure Compensation!

Almost all digital cameras and film cameras have an exposure compensation feature, sometimes known as “backlight compensation”. Just look for the universal symbol for exposure compensation . Exposure compensation allows you to adjust the camera’s exposure to suit your scene. In our case where our people are silhouetted we would increase the exposure by +1 or so which would properly expose for the people in the scene, but the background would tend to be a bit overexposed. This is acceptable since our main subjects are the people and not the background.

I know you guys though…you’re saying “Scott, why can’t I just move my subjects so that the sun is in front of them and not behind them, wouldn’t that work too?” Of course it would, but there are many times when exposure compensation needs to be employed, not just when the sun is behind your subject. How about taking photos of your kids in the snow? All of that white snow everywhere reflecting into your camera’s lens will cause the exposure sensor to underexpose your subjects just as if it was in bright sunlight. So we can employ exposure compensation to expose those kids properly.

Exposure compensation isn’t only for bright scenes, it works the other way as well.

What if you have a friend who enjoys boating on a lake, it can get pretty dark on there, especially towards the end of the day. Say you take a picture of him or her.

Here we have your friend against a dark blue lake background. When your cameras exposure sensor meters the light it’s going to average out as a very dark scene, much darker than middle gray. So what’s going to happen?

Your camera is going to choose an exposure that makes the whole scene brighter. This is fine if you’re goal is to shoot the lake, but you’re trying to shoot your friend, who is now very overexposed and washed out.

So what do we do to fix this? Drain the water and shoot them on sand!!! No, not quite, we can employ exposure compensation to fix our exposure but this time in the negative direction. Maybe -1. Now our friend is properly exposed. However, the lake is a bit dark now, this is acceptable though because your friend is the main subject of the scene.

So the next time you find your cameras exposure sensor is not seeing things as you see them, employ some exposure compensation and make your camera expose the scene as you want it to!

Feel free to leave comments and post some of your results.

We’ve finally made it to the end of our 5-part series on exposure modes. We finish with the king of all creativity, Manual Mode. This is the mode that lets your knowledge of photography and creativity shine through. Manual Mode is the one where you basically tell the camera to “shut-up” and let you do the driving.

Are you in a dark room where the camera is telling you it’s too dark to make  a proper exposure? No problem, Manual Mode will let you take that photo. Do you want to take a photo with a very deep depth of field and also freeze the action, but don’t have enough light? Switch to Manual Mode, and give it a shot, you’re not paying for film!

Ok ok, so Manual Mode is not a magical cure for exposure problems, but it does allow you to go out of your camera’s, and possibly your, comfort zone to take some photos that the camera might not allow you to take while in one of the other exposure modes.

Let’s review a bit…we’ve already learned about the other 3 exposure modes..

Programmed Auto Mode (P-Mode) your camera does all the thinking. Aperture and shutter speed are set for you automatically.

Aperture Mode (A-Mode) you set the aperture and the camera determines the shutter speed for you.

Shutter Mode (S-Mode) does just the opposite, you set the shutter speed and the camera sets the aperture value.

By now I’m sure you have guessed that in Manual Mode (M-Mode) you’re flying solo. You’re responsible for  setting both the aperture and the shutter speed yourself. That’s a big responsibility! Are you ready for it? Can you handle it? I think you can.

Even if you don’t think you’re quite ready, I implore you to try Manual Mode. Nothing will teach you about exposure settings and the relationship between aperture value and shutter speed faster than being out there on your own making your own exposure settings.

Plus, if you make a mistake, you might it’s a part of life, because you’re shooting digital it costs you nothing to try, and it’ll be our little secret if it doesn’t turn out quite right the first time. If you’re shooting film however, you may want to borrow your friend’s digital camera to try it out. You’ll most likely be going through a lot of frames, plus the digital camera allows you to get instant feedback, instead of having to wait for the film to be developed to see what worked and what didn’t.

The toughest thing to shooting in Manual Mode is picking a starting point. When choosing your aperture and shutter speed where do you begin? It can be very overwhelming. Sometimes when shooting in Manual Mode professional photographers will use a light meter. A light meter is a hand-held device that measures the light in the scene around you and gives you values for what your aperture and shutter speed should be.

Now wait a minute…that sounds just like what your camera does when it is in P-Mode. Well you’re right, your camera has a built-in light meter which is how it determines the proper exposure values for the scene you are shooting. So what do you do when you’re new to Manual Mode and your light meter is in the shop? Put your camera in P-Mode and press the shutter down half-way.

This is going to give you an exposure reading. In P-Mode the camera will use it’s built-in light meter to “read” or “meter” the scene and tell you the aperture and shutter values that it comes up with. So now armed with this new information we can switch back to Manual Mode and plug in those values we just got from the camera’s built-in light meter. You now have an excellent starting point for setting up your shot in Manual Mode.

You know these values are going to give you a relatively decent exposure to begin with, so now you can start getting creative by varying either the aperture value or shutter speed to achieve your desired results. Want a shallower depth-of-field? Go ahead and dial in a larger aperture value, just keep in mind that you’ll need to adjust your shutter speed to keep your exposure well balanced.

A good rule-of-thumb to remember is that for every full stop of aperture value you increase or decrease you should also change your shutter speed by a full stop to maintain the same Exposure Value (EV). We learned about this a while back when we discussed reciprocity.

So for example, if our light meter (built-in or hand-held) chooses an aperture of f/8 and a shutter speed of 1/125 and we want a shallower depth-of-field. We can change our aperture value to f/4. That is a change of 2 full stops. So in order to keep the same Exposure Value (EV) we will need to raise our shutter speed by 2 full stops bringing us to a shutter speed of f/500.

This is because when we make our aperture value larger by a full stop we are letting in double the light. Since we changed our aperture from f/8 to f/4, 2 full stops, we are now letting in 4 times the light at f/4 than we did at f/8. So to compensate we use a faster shutter speed by 2 stops from 1/125 to 1/500. This causes 1/4 of the light to be let in at 1/500 than we had at 1/125 which cancels out the 4 times more light coming in from our aperture value.

How do I know that is 2 full stops you ask? Well I have included a chart at the end of this article that shows the full stop values for both aperture and shutter speed. Some high-end cameras will let you change your aperture or shutter speed in 1/2 or 1/3 stops as well, but all cameras will let you dial in full stop values.

Manual Mode also comes in very handy when shooting with flash, especially external flash. A full discussion on shooting with external flash is a topic for another blog post, but we’ll touch on it briefly. When shooting with an external flash the cameras light meter may not take this into account. Therefore it might choose a very slow shutter speed automatically for you because it is metering the available light in the scene. The light meter may not know that an external flash will be used. This is the perfect time for Manual Mode.

By shooting the scene in Manual Mode you are able to tell the camera that you would like to use a faster shutter speed. We know this still will result in a good exposure because the flash is going to provide quite a bit of light to our scene. Shooting in Manual Mode let’s you choose the shutter speed and also the aperture value that will work for your flash lit scene.

There are some people who are perfectly content taking all of their photos in P-Mode and letting the camera do all their thinking. Most of the time this yields decent photos. However, you cannot truly begin to explore the creative possibilities of photography or take your photos to the next level until you turn that dial and try shooting in one of the other 3 modes.

Maybe you feel Manual Mode is a bit too much for you to try right now, but Aperture Priority Mode or Shutter Priority Mode are just begging for you to give them a shot. They let you start taking control of the exposure in your photos without having to fly solo. And as with most things, there is no better way to fully understand your cameras exposure modes than to get out there and shoot as much as you can!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this multi-part series about exposure modes, even if the end was a long time coming. Feel free to ask questions, leave comments, and share your creative photos. Until next time.

Chart of full stop values and Exposure Values (EV), Courtesy of thecrosseyedbear on Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/thecrosseyedbear/2124175721/

I’d like to continue our series of discussions on exposure-modes. Yes, I know with the last installment over 6 months ago, it can’t really be called a continuation. Perhaps an extension, extended-leave, or vacation, whatever you’d like to call it we’re going to chat about our next semi-manual exposure mode, Shutter Priority Mode (S).

Shutter Priority Mode or S-Mode functions very similarly to Aperture Priority Mode or A-Mode, it just does it from another point of view. Shutter Priority Mode allows you to manually set the shutter speed of the camera, or how long the shutter will remain open when you take a photo. In Shutter Priority Mode the camera will automatically set the aperture for you based upon the shutter speed that you choose.

Shutter speed is measured in time (seconds). Usually very small parts of a second such as 1/500th of a second, or 1/1000th of a second for shooting in very bright conditions, such as high noon on a bright sunny day. Or in full seconds such as 1 second or 30 seconds for shooting in low-light conditions, such as indoors by candle-light.

The shorter the shutter remains open for, the faster the shutter speed. For example, a shutter speed of 1/250 means that I could take roughly 4 photos in the same amount of time than if I was using a shutter speed of 1 second. This is because at a shutter speed of 1/250 the shutter is open nearly 4 times shorter than if I was using a shutter speed of 1 second; hence we say that 1/250 is a faster shutter speed than 1s.

By using a faster shutter speed, the cameras shutter will be open for a shorter amount of time, which means less light will be allowed to hit your digital sensor, or film. This is why we use faster shutter speeds when we are shooting in bright conditions. When we use a slow shutter speed, the shutter remains open longer and therefore lets more light into the camera to hit your digital sensor or film.

Now I know what you must be thinking at this point…”Scott this is all very fine and good information, but if I wanted to change the amount of light that enters my camera I could’ve just used the Aperture Mode that I learned about 6 months ago and not have wasted my time with the last 4 paragraphs.”

It is true that aperture also controls the amount of light entering your camera by varying the size of the shutter, and you will recall from our earlier discussions that aperture size and shutter speed are linked together. So why would you want to change the shutter speed instead of the aperture?

Well just like varying your aperture controls your depth-of-field, shutter speed has a side-effect as well. Changing your shutter speed allows you to “freeze” the action in your photos. The faster the shutter speed the more “frozen” your subject will be.

Imagine if  you were trying to photograph your child in his or her first little league game. They are about to make the winning slide into home plate. By using a very fast shutter speed we would be able toshow the exact instant their body touches the plate, and it would be extremely sharp and in focus.

Some digital cameras that do not have a Shutter Priority Mode may have a “sports setting”. Using the “sports setting” will force your camera to take photos using a fast shutter speed, usually 1/500 of a second or greater. Just keep in mind that you’ll need bright sunlight in order to shoot at such a fast shutter speed.

Take a look at this photo of a car doing aerial stunts, caught in mid-jump. Shooting with a very fast shutter speed, 1/800 in this case allowed me to “freeze” the action of the car while making sure it retained sharp detail. Also notice that the photo was taken in very bright sunlight as anything less than that would have yielded a photo with blur.

"Frozen" Jumping Car, 1/800

So now that we know some exciting things that we can do with fast shutter speeds, when are some appropriate times to use slow shutter speeds? Slow shutter speeds allow you to create some very beautiful artistic effects in your photographs.

Imagine a beautiful waterfall cascading into a pool of water. If we used a fast shutter speed to shoot the waterfall we would end up with a very boring photo of sharp, “frozen” water. All of the beauty of that waterfall rushing over the mountain would be lost. There would be no sense of motion.

We can correct this by using a slow shutter speed. If we shoot the waterfall using a shutter speed of say 2 seconds, we will retain all of the motion and power that waterfall has, and end up with a beautiful photo of a nice silky waterfall. Just resist the urge to dive in, remember your camera doesn’t like water.

In the photo of a carousel race horse below, we are able to convey a sense of the motion of the carousel to the viewer by using a slow shutter speed. Although the main horse is relatively sharp and in focus, if you look to the other race horses moving around in the background you’ll notice they all have motion blurs, thanks to the slow shutter speed that was chosen. The slow shutter speed helps to instantly evoke thoughts of a moving carousel to anyone looking at the photo.

Derby Horse with Blur 1/30

Slower shutter speeds are also used in low-light situations. It is important to remember that our cameras have a very different definition of low-light than we do. Think about it, how many times have you been in what you would consider a perfectly bright house, but when you try to take a photo, your camera almost always wants to pop up that flash! This is because our eyes are much more sensitive to light than even the most high-end camera.

Have you ever tried taking that same photo without the flash? It usually winds up dark and blurry. This is because your camera naturally chooses a slow shutter speed. With such a slow shutter speed your subjects will not be “frozen” so even the slightest movement of either them or you causes blur.

This is why god invented tripods. It was dark in those tents in biblical times, how else were the photos going to be sharp

For those of us with cameras that don’t have an S-Mode, your camera might have a “night mode”. When you place your camera in “night mode” it forces the camera to shoot at a slow shutter speed, usually 1/30 or slower. How many times have you heard someone complain “my camera is broken, every time I shoot in night mode my photos come out blurry”! Now you know why. You weren’t one of those people were you?

Now that you have a new creative tool in your photography belt, I implore you to go out and give it a try! Next time we’ll combine the best of Aperture Priority Mode and the best of Shutter Priority Mode into one big manual mode that we call…well we just call it Manual Mode