Tuesday’s Tip #15:
This will be my final Tuesday tip! I am moving on to another subject for my weekly posts, so check in some time next week to see what it will be!
I’ve helped many people with these tips , but I think I can help people more if they decide to take a mini class with me. The first one went well, and I’m offering another one for those who have requested it. The date is still up in the air, but I’m considering August 5th or 19th. If you are interested, please send me a message! I am starting to lose track of everyone who has said so in person.
So, onto the final tip, which is really more of the foundation of photography, getting the correct exposure…
I feel a little guilty not only posting so late on a Tuesday, but also for simply referring you to other articles about the subject I’ve been meaning to explain. I can explain things better when I can show someone in person. The subject of getting the correct exposure is extremely important and complex, and is best left to those who can explain it well through words. Digital Photography School is an excellent all around resource for photography, so I suggest that you explore the site for other information. You can start with this link, but be sure to first read the section on “The Basics of Exposure”. This will explain to you the foundation of photography and help you understand what you will be doing when you switch to manual mode. That’s right! No more auto for you! At least until you learn manual and you know it in and out.
So, read carefully, learn well, and practice, practice, practice! You can always leave me any questions you might have regarding the subject in the comments or on Facebook.
Have any questions? Leave them in the comments below. I will be happy to answer questions even after my final tip!
Tuesday’s Tip #14:
This week’s tip is all about getting rid of red eye in your photos. It’s not that hard to do, when you know what’s causing the problem. What causes this freaky effect is when the flash reflects off of the retina. This happens more frequently when your subject is in a dark room and their pupils are bigger. A lot of cameras come with a red-eye reduction setting, which fires a quick pre-flash to reduce the size of your pupils. This can certainly help, but it’s not always very successful.
The most effective way to stop this from happening is to get your flash away from the lens. Since most people look through the lens when they are being photographed, their eyes will be looking almost directly at the flash if it’s too close to the lens, thus reflecting light right back from their retinas. If you have an on camera flash, this is likely your problem. The external flashes that you can put on your camera’s hotshoe will help, especially since you can aim the flash to indirectly light your subject.
If you can’t use an external flash, or direct your flash’s light in any way, try changing the size of your subject’s pupils before taking the picture. This is easily done by moving them from the darkness into enough light to make their pupils smaller. You can also ask them to look just to the side of the camera, so that the flash doesn’t reflect directly back from the eyes. Easy peasy!
Have any questions? Leave them in the comments below. Maybe I can answer your question in next week’s post. 🙂
Tuesday’s Tip #13:
A little late, but it is still Tuesday! Since these tips are intended for beginning DSLR users (D stands for digital, FYI), you will eventually need to know how to edit your photos later. While I’m not going to get into every single possible way you can edit your photos, I can definitely give you a few tips.
A much debated topic amongst photographers is to shoot in Jpeg or Camera RAW. The option will be somewhere in your camera’s menu. Granted only a handful of great photographers will suggest shooting in Jpeg. One big reason you can choose to shoot in Jpeg is that the files take up less space on your memory card and on your computer. It also takes less time to “write” the file information on the card, so you can potentially shoot faster. Maybe those reasons work for you, but for me they don’t matter and the difference in speed is undetectable. I use RAW, because jpeg doesn’t record as much information, plain and simple. While you should always try to get your exposures right in camera, with RAW there is a lot more flexibility with any fixes you might need to make in post-processing.
Now, if you do choose to shoot in RAW, you need to know that not all editing programs will be able to open and make adjustments to these types of files. The latest versions of Photoshop do. A lot of people starting out use Photoshop Elements because it’s more affordable, and I believe that some versions will let you use RAW. One program that I can’t live without is Adobe Lightroom. Not only can it work with RAW files, but if you shoot a ton of images, this program will help you edit and manage all of them easily. Aperture is another program that does this, but it’s only for Mac users.
No matter what you choose to shoot in, if you have a final destination for photos, you should know how to process and save them appropriately. A basic rule of thumb is this: always keep the original, and save every other version of it with a different name. For example, if I take a picture of my dog, it will stay as is on my hard drive. I will then open it, edit and size it, and then “save as” something different. If I intend to print it, I may title it dog-4x6print. If I intend to post it online, I will size it differently (72ppi if you know how to adjust the resolution) and then”save for web”(in Photoshop) or export (in Lightroom) as a jpeg, and then name it dog-forFB.jpg (Facebook).
One very important reason to do this is to avoid degrading the quality of your image. If I took that image I re-sized for Facebook and tried to print it, it would not look good at all! It would be very pixelated, because I had reduced the resolution from 300 to 72! Images at 72ppi should not be printed. Also, beware of editing, saving, and reopening jpegs too much, because each time a jpeg is changed and saved, the quality is degraded. That’s another reason to work in RAW, but also another reason to “save as” a different name. One huge advantage to Lightroom, is that you can do as many edits as you like without actually changing the original file or worrying about saving anything. It’s kind of hard to explain if you haven’t tried it, but it is very cool.
So, if you do want to try it, you probably can. Most programs these days have free trials, so go find a good one to try out! 🙂
Have any questions? Leave them in the comments below. Maybe I can answer your question in next week’s post. 🙂
Tuesday’s Tip #12:
Ever hear of HDR? HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. It’s a way of merging multiple photos that have a range of different exposures. The effect is that, when combined, they balance out as a complete, perfectly exposed image. Challenging lighting situations, where brights are too bright and darks are too dark, are when I would use HDR.
  pinimage Highlights are too washed out here. Shadows are too dark here.
pinimage
I say “would”, since I don’t often use it myself. That’s only because I don’t like the look of HDR when I’ve tried it with the tools that I currently have. It’s more of a software rendering technique than anything, and the best tools are dedicated programs used for this purpose. One I would love to own (birthday, anyone?) and that I highly recommend is Photomatix . I used a free trial to generate the above image (hence the watermarks), and though I haven’t perfected using this tool for HDR, I can tell you that it far exceeds what I’ve been able to do with older versions of Photoshop. Although, I understand that improvements in HDR processing have been made in the latest versions of Photoshop, I still think this is the best tool for the job right now.
Anyway, if you simply want to experiment in Photoshop or anything else you can get your hands on, the first step is taking the pictures. Since you are trying to get a range of different exposures, I suggest taking a minimum of 3 shots. One will be overexposed (so that you can actually see detail in the shadows), one will be underexposed (so that you can see details in the highlights), and one that is in the middle (as balanced as you can get). I would say 5-8 exposures is a good amount.
You must keep in mind a few things when attempting an HDR image:
- Change your shutter speed, not your aperture. Changing your aperture will affect your depth of field and you don’t want that.
- Keep your camera as still as possible so that everything matches up when merged later. This is why most HDR is done with landscapes. Landscapes don’t really move and you can use a tripod. If you have a slightly moving subject, it’s still possible to use HDR. You simply have to set your camera up for taking 3+ exposures in a row. There should be an auto exposure bracketing (AEB) capability in your camera’s menu. Just look up bracketing in your manual to see how to set it.
- Be aware of how much editing you are doing. Some people love HDR so much that they push it beyond what I would consider photography and into the realm of illustration. In essence, a lot of HDR imagery you see on the internet (just Google it) is way over done in my opinion. Of course, you can decide for yourself what you like. 🙂
- Finally, I recommend only using HDR when you need to. As stated in #3, there are people who love it, and those people want to use it all the time. That’s fine if you like the fantastical look that is seen in a lot of HDR images. I’m only here to warn you. In my opinion, you should use it when it seems impossible to take a nice photograph of a scene because the brights are too bright and the darks are too dark. HDR is made for these situations.
And now that I have the free trail of Photomatix, I am itching to play with it some more! Try it yourself! Seriously, I think I need this for my birthday. 😉
Have any questions? Leave them in the comments below. Maybe I can answer your question in next week’s post. 🙂
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