PopPhoto Flash

Tip of the Day: Creative Exposure

You usually depend on your camera’s built-in lightmeter for correct exposure. But sometimes the “right” exposure isn’t the best choice. Here are examples of when and how to get around it.

• Backlighting: When the dominant light comes from behind the subject,using your camera to take a reflected light reading of the entire scene will give you a bad exposure. Instead, take either a reflected or an incident reading (using a handheld incident meter) of the subject alone for the correct exposure.

• Silhouettes: To capture just your subject’s shape, with no details, meter only the brightly lit background to determine exposure, and let your subject fall entirely into shadow.

•  Halos: In extremely contrasty scenes, exposing for shadow areas will overexpose the highlights. For a realistic picture, you’d want to avoid this. But it can create an interesting halo around the subject, especially when you use strong backlighting or a softening filter.

Adapted from Studio Photography Essentail Skills , Fourth Edition by John Child (Focal Press , 2008; $30)

Tip of the Day: Dominant Tones

A reflected light meter reading measures the level of light reflected from the subject. An incident light meter reading measures the amount of light falling on the subject. The resulting exposure is an average between the light and dark tones present. When light and dark tones are of equal distribution this average light reading is suitable for exposure. When light or dark tones dominate the photographer must increase or decrease exposure.

Adapted from Studio Photography Essential Skills by John Child (Focal Press, 2008; $30)

Tip of the Day: The Basics of Exposure

The three elements are:

   1. ISO - the measure of a digital camera sensor’s sensitivity to light
   2. Aperture - the size of the opening in the lens when a picture is taken
   3. Shutter Speed - the amount of time that the shutter is open

The intersection of these three elements is where an image’s exposure comes from. A change in one of the elements will impact the others. This means that you can never really isolate just one of the elements alone, and should always consider how the others will effect it.

Tip of the Day: Bracket exposures and other settings

A common myth is that one perfect exposure exists for every landscape, floral study, or wildlife portrait. But by under- and overexposing a scene, you can come away with two (or more) interpretations, each different yet compelling in its own way. Bracketing exposure—simple, thanks to auto bracketing on most DSLRs—nets you a decent exposure, several variations, and the potential to blend different exposures into a single, superior version of a scene. For really killer images, go a step further, if time permits: Bracket white balance, focusing, crop, and camera orientation (horizontal and vertical).

(From 5 Nature Shooting Skills April 2009 issue)

Four Weeks to Become a Better Photographer (Part 2)

In August 2007, Assistant Editor Kathleen Davis participated in a four-week course with BetterPhoto.com. Click here to see what she learned that month.  For a refresher on how the classes work, click here.

Posing and Portraiture Techniques taught by Ibarionex R. Perello

Lesson 3: The Successful Candid

In this lesson Perello discussed the best methods for taking candid group shots at parties. He recommended shooting in Aperture Priority mode at f/5.6 with flash to get a good depth of field and exposure.

For low light situations with flash, when the subject is exposed well, but the background turns black, he suggested switching to Manual mode and using a slow shutter speed. This allows you to capture more of the ambient light, allowing a bit of flash ghosting and a feeling of movement in the image.

Perello also offered tips on observing groups for expressions and trying different angles, such as overhead shots.

Our assignment was to attend a party or event and photograph people having fun.

Luckily, I had been asked to photograph the launch party for ProjectExplorer’s Jordan Series.

Tip of the Day: Sunsets and Sunrises

Beautiful sunrises and sunsets are hard to resist, but photographing them can often lead to disappointing results.  To make the most of your shoot, plan ahead to find the best location. While considering locations look for landmarks that will frame the sunset or foreground elements that add and not distract from the sky. The weather will come into play so check the forecast, less than perfect weather won’t always ruin a photo and can sometime add a dramatic element. A sky with haze can create some beautiful colors as can mist or dust. 

Always be careful to not look or point your camera directly into the sun, take a meter reading off of the area just to the right or left of the sun, you may also want to bracket your exposure. When composing your image consider including foreground elements that will not only create an intriguing silhouette, this will also give your photo a scale and a sense of depth.  Consider the rule of thirds, don’t place your sunset in the center of the photo, give your viewer more to look at and room to move within the photo. Decide which is more compelling the sky or foreground is more compelling and show it off.

Remember your white balance and either set it manually or use cloudy or shade to capture the golden tones of a sunset. If you are using a point-and-shoot, it will likely have a sunset setting, which is useful to try. To minimize lens flare from the sunlight, use a lens hood or simply block the light with your hand.  For slower shutter speeds, use a tripod and a cable release or self-timer. Using a longer telephoto will compress the scene and make the sun appear closer and larger. With some planning and experimenting you will create beautiful images. 

—Melissa Macatee
Contributing Blogger

Tip of the Day: Automatic Exposure Bracketing

One way to ensure you get the right exposure in tricky lighting situations is to manually play around with your exposure control and take a series of shots - the problem with this is that it takes time and if you are photographing a changing environment (for example a sunset which changes from moment to moment) you can lose ‘the moment’ while you get things right.

Most DSLRs (and some more advanced compact cameras) come with a feature called "Automatic Exposure Bracketing" (AEB) which can be useful to learn how to use in such situations. Click here to Read Digital Photography School’s explanation.

Tip of the Day: Multiple Exposures

A multiple exposure image involves making more than one exposure on a single frame of film. Whether the two images are related or not is up to you, but multiple exposures offer a fun and easy way to experiment with imaging and design. Some SLRs (and some DSLRs) even have multiple exposure settings.
To ensure you get the multiple exposure method right, the best way to shoot is to plan ahead. Envision what you would like your image to look like, and then look for the shots. If you photograph one part of the exposure, and then see another image you would like to capture in its own frame, you will have to start from square one.

A simple rule of thumb: decrease the exposure by one stop for every exposure that you add to the frame. So if you are making a double exposure, decrease the exposure for each frame one stop lower than your meter.

Another, and maybe an easier way to play around with multiple exposure-like shots is to combine two images in Photoshop. The layers function is basically the equivalent of film’s multiple exposure. Read more at Fodors.com.

Letter of the Week: Perfecting Fireworks

Of course the point of this Toolbox was that if you expose the fireworks correctly you won’t have enough light to capture the scene…

To: POP Editor
Subject: Fireworks Photoshop fix

 

I would like to comment on the article “Make your photos of fireworks explode”  (July, 2008)

 

The fix proposed is elegant but unnecessary.

 

The reason for the needed fix is that the original images were not exposed correctly. The burst is clearly overexposed.  This causes the loss of color and you get ballooning of the trails.  This is not unexpected since you have small streaks of light on a mostly dark sky.  All the darkness causes the meter to over expose the fireworks.   

 

I have found that my fireworks images work very well when I just set the exposure compensation in the range of -1 to -2 f-stops.  I darken the images until I see color clearly.  I also try and select bursts that detonate in a different area of sky so the smoke from the previous bursts does not obscure the next burst.  Typically the finale does not work well since there is so much smoke the images look obscured and soft.

This is Popular Photography Magazine – not Popular Photoshop Magazine – so lets teach our readers to do it right – and reduce the dependence on having to fix mistakes after the fact.

—Peter W. Rulon   

Letter of the Week: Polarizing without a Polarizer

To: POP Editor
Subject: True Blue

Dear Popular Photography,

Recently I was out shooting without a polarizing filter. I wanted to achieve darker blue from the sky. I was pleasantly surprised to find that by increasing the shutter speed, the desired result was accomplished, while still maintaining adequate detail in shadows. Please see the attached spreadsheet with thumbnails as an example. Also attached is my favorite shot from the series.

Sincerely,
Jon Arnett
Beaumont, CA

(photo by Jon Arnett)
Click here for his spreadsheet: Download true_blue2.xls

How does this work? Senior Editor Peter Kolonia explains:

“It’s underexposure.  He gets away with it because the subject is strongly and evenly front lit, so can stand a little less exposure.  If the subject was darker or side-lit, the shadows would be fully blocked up/blacked up with an exposure that rendered the sky that blue.

He may also have the camera set to the super saturated mode.  The greens are just as goosed as the blues.”