Tag Archives: Camera

Give your holiday landscapes a little extra punch

How to make a digital camera

How to make a digital camera

Do something different with your summer shots.

Holiday times always give us a chance to capture a few landscapes. Often they are a more difficult to get right than is appreciated. In fact a little thought can make all the difference. Think about your composition and your colours. The key to a good landscape is to find impact and contrast. In the video below Gavin Hoey shows you two things. First he shows how to think about your composition and colours. Next in the context of colours he shows how to turn your landscape into black and white in Photoshop (actually you can use any full featured image editor to do the same thing).

B&W Landscape Tips


AdoramaTV

Making black and white images

In the video Gavin Hoey made a great point about shooting in RAW. Landscape pictures often look great to the eye when in the field but they lose their appeal when the image is created on-screen. So in order to make your landscape pop some post processing is essential.

This video shows how to bring out contrasts to make the scene look great in black and white. However, he makes an important point about shooting in RAW. You don’t lose the original colour, it is retained in a RAW file. Then you convert to black and white afterwards. This is not possible in *.jpg. That format does not have the colours stored like the RAW format. If your black and white *.jpg is less than successful you lose the colour option too.

Gavin Hoey points out that you should test that your camera will process a RAW file in monochrome mode on its screen, but still leave a full colour RAW file. It is possible your camera converts the RAW file to a *.jpg file in the colour scene mode. So cover your options and try it before going in the field.

Gavin showed the conversion method to black and white using the colour sliders. Most image editors have two basic ways to create monochrome shots. Your shot can be simply colour converted to shades of grey, or you can use the colour slider method where you have some control over the intensity of colour which greys are created from. This latter method gives you much greater control over the contrasts in the picture. When working in monochrome that is the most effective way to ensure the picture has visual impact. So always choose the colour slider method to get better control of the conversion.

There are some additional links below to show how to improve your black and white shots in other ways.

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By Damon Guy (author and Photokonnexion editor)

Damon Guy - Netkonnexion

Damon Guy (Netkonnexion)

Damon is a writer-photog and editor of this site. He has run some major websites, a computing department and a digital image library. He started out as a trained teacher and now runs training for digital photographers.
See also: Editors ‘Bio’.

The street photographer who showed no pictures

Vivian Maier - Outstanding street photographer

Vivian Maier – Outstanding street photographer 1926-2009

A new documentary reveals Vivian Maier.

A new documentary has been shown on British television. It tells the tale of Vivian Maier. A lonely nanny, she spent most of her career photographically documenting the streets of Chicago in her spare time. She was unsung as a photographer, unknown to almost everyone, unrecognised as an artist. She died as a virtual pauper in 2009.

Within a short time of her death the most astonishing hoard of photographs was revealed. Her belongings had been sold off at an auction. The chance find by a keen photographer revealed the work and fortunately made the find public. With the most detailed care and exquisite vision she pictured her subjects with both passion and journalistic fervour. She pictured some of the most painful poverty and opulent richness of Chicago in the 1960’s and 1970’s as well other places in her travels.

Now her photographs are selling for thousands of dollars a piece. This new BBC documentary showcases her insight and some of the more interesting photographs from her fascinating body of work. It also tries to get an in side look at her life – a secretive and largely unknown story which few people were involved in.

With over one hundred thousand photographs in the collection it is an incredible find. Almost a complete record of her work is available. She showed her work to very few people. Most of the shots were never printed.

The enigma that Vivian Maier represented is almost the same clichéd story of the pauper artist of previous centuries. Unrecognised until long decades after their deaths these artists often represented important interpretations of their eras. And so it has proven to be with the work of Vivian Maier.

She had little family, very few friends and only the contacts made through the jobs she held as a nanny. She was largely unschooled and a European immigrant to the USA. Yet with extraordinary wit and dedication she taught herself English apparently through going to the movies and the theatre and mixing with people. She also appears to have taught herself photography – there is no record of a photographic education.

The amazing thing about Vivian Maier was her dedication to the task. The BBC documentary chronicles her life – what’s known of it. But it also raises a lot of questions about what motivated her. Clearly she was a lonely person. Obviously she loved photography and the streets of Chicago where she spent most of her life. Beyond that we know little.

She had the most incisive skill with a camera and great insight as an observer of people. She went everywhere with her equipment, obsessively capturing everything in which she saw meaning. Her main interest was in the people she met – her qualifications for undertaking the work were non-existent. Yet over the period of fourty years she proved herself to be a great artist.

Hit rate

Many of todays digital photographers don’t realise what really lies behind a body of work. According to the academics examining Maier’s work she had an excellent hit rate. One very famous photographer once said…

Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop.

Ansel Adams

…yet Vivian Maier apparently managed many, many thousands of high quality pictures on her large format Rolliflex  External link - opens new tab/page camera.

There is something interesting about Maiers hit rate, dedication to photography and the detail of her work. It says a lot about her as an artist. Artists spend years learning, experimenting and often apprenticed to other artists before their work begins to mature. But their dedication is by necessity, absolute. And, their progress and interests can be charted by the type of work they produce and how it varies and changes focus during their careers.

The character of an amateur body of work

Amateurs by contrast to professional artists have much more spotty bodies of work. They do not have time to dedicate to devoted study and development. Years of experimentation and concentration on particular aspects of their work is not possible. Family life, work, the simple needs of normal life reduce the amount of work a typical amateur can put into developing as an artist. Typically amateurs tend to be more erratic in their interests, or they concentrate most of their work on one focal interest.

Vivian Maier apparently dedicated pretty much all her personal time and a good proportion of her work time as a nanny to her photography. As a result her achievement is similar to a professional artist. Her work is of a similar standard too. Her work appears to exhibit a gradual and focused experimentation and development much like a professional artist.

Dedication and concentration

A large proportion of Vivian Maiers work is still unprinted. Most of it is still unseen by the public at large. We clearly have a lot more to see and to learn about her. Most of her life is a mystery, much of her story untold.

One thing is clear. For someone who was clearly a very talented street photographer she had a lot to teach photography learners about concentrated dedication to the things that interest us. If we really want to get to the bottom of what interests us as artists, we photographers need to be pretty single minded.

Have fun with your photography, but remember, the way to reveal real truths, like street photography, requires some pretty deep interpretation.

How to see the documentary

For those of you who have access to the BBC iPlayer you can still see the full Vivian Maier documentary for the next few weeks from the Home page for the “imagine” series of arts documentaries  External link - opens new tab/page (posted 05/07/2013).
Update: This documentary has now been taken down from the BBC site. However the link above now goes to the “Imagine” series website so you can see what is coming up and some past episodes are sometimes available on BBC iPlayer.

Other useful Vivian Maier resources

Here is a link to the BBC website where there are two clips about this documentary…
Vivian Maier: Who Took Nanny’s Pictures? Clips and other information.  External link - opens new tab/page

Want more on Vivian Maiers work on video? Here’s a Google search for YouTube videos about her…
Search YouTube for Vivian Maier Videos  External link - opens new tab/page

Vivian Maier on Wikipedia  External link - opens new tab/page
Vivian Maier – Her Discovered Work  External link - opens new tab/page

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Do you understand the play of light on faces?

Video

Video

Understanding light involves seeing it on your subject…

That understanding comes from seeing light in different environments. Next time you are outside look at the light and shadow on the faces of people around you. Look for light/shadow relationships and look out for light playing on the face – how it moves around as the face moves in the light.

The play of light on faces is interesting, but often ugly

When you study faces and light together you will see that there are some pretty ugly shapes and shadows created by light on the face. We are programmed to follow edges, lines and contrasts with our eyes. Oddly, we see these on faces all the time but tend to ignore them.

Normally we ignore the ugliness of bad light because we have no control over light on other peoples faces. And, our familiarity with the face turns off our attention to light. It allows us to forget that faces can be pretty ugly in bad light or a bad position relative to the light.

Somehow, when we translate a scene to a 2 dimensional picture, these shapes, contrasts and lines created by light on the face become more obvious than in real life. They seem to take on an ugliness that we normally do not see.

‘Picture-awareness’, what we see on pictures but not in real life, happens in a lot of things. With faces it is pretty important. For photographers doing portraits it can make or break a picture. Becoming familiar with the concept is important if you want your portraits to succeed.

How to use natural light and fill flash Portrait tutorial

In the video Tony Northrup shows how light and shadow can be changed to your advantage easily and simply.

Tony Northrup  External link - opens new tab/page

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Lenses and designations? Confused? An easy guide

• Lenses •

• Lenses •
Buying lenses optimised for your sensor is confusing.

Lenses are a big investment…

It is difficult to know which lens is optimised for your digital image sensor. There seems to be so many different designations. Here is a guide to which lens designation you want.

Explaining the differences

Brands like Canon and Nikon have their own lenses range. Third party manufacturers, like Sigma, Tokina and Tamron etc. manufacture lenses for brands like Nikon, Canon and others. if buying lenses the third party manufacturers have lenses which are equivalent to the Camera brand manufacturer or possibly better. Look around at online reviews to see what standard of lenses and prices are available.

Make sure you buy lenses fitted with the correct lens mount for your camera. Older models of cameras may have the correct mount but some of the more recent lenses might not be suitable to work with the camera. So check the mount and camera are compatible before buying.

Why are lens mounts specific to brands? It’s mainly historical – the development paths of the manufacturers differ. However, they also want their customers to stay loyal to the brand. This unfortunate situation means you have to reinvest in a new range of lenses if you change your camera body. Hmmm! Expensive.

There are two types of camera sensor. There are cropped sensors – which is a small size. These are more often referred to as APS-C format.

The other sensor format is full frame sensor. These are the size equivalent of the old film SLR frames on a roll of film.

Full frame digital sensors are less common than cropped sensors. The cropped sensors are easier and cheaper to manufacture. However, in recent years we are seeing an increase in full frame releases of new cameras. The higher resolution (more pixels) and potentially bigger print sizes are attractive to consumers. As full frame format gets cheaper they are likely to become more common.

The full frame sensor size is the same size as a 35 mm (36mm ×24mm) film frame in old SLR cameras. Because of the historical significance of the 35mm format modern DSLRs are based on the same standard. Lenses are normally designed to fit either the full frame format or the cropped format.

Lenses designed for the full frame sensor have an image circle that covers the whole 35mm sensor. These lenses tend to be more expensive because they need a wide circle of light thorough them to cover the sensor. They have bigger glass elements as a result.

Full-frame sized lenses are able to fit a camera with the same mount and a cropped sensor. The image circle from the lens remains constant. The smaller sensor size (APS-C) is therefore only able to process the light from the centre of the circle – the rest of the light spills over the side of the sensor. The resultant photograph is like a zoomed-in crop of the image that would have otherwise been taken with a full frame sensor.

This image-cropping effect of smaller sensors is known as the “crop factor”. It represents the ratio of the size of the full-frame 35 mm sensor to the size of the smaller format. The apparent zooming effect also gives rise to an alternative name – the “focal-length multiplier”.

The ratio of full-frame to crop tends to lie in the range 1.3–2.0 for most cropped sensor DSLRs. You might say that a 100 mm lens on a camera with a 1.5 crop factor creates an apparent zoom multiplying the focal length by 1.5. A 100mm lens would then appear to produce the same picture as a 150mm lens. This is not a true magnification since the focal length of the lens is the same on both cameras. Instead the cropped sensor is likely to produce a lower quality result than than the full frame sensor while revealing a closer result.

You can use lenses designed for full frame sensors on cropped sensors. It does not work the other way. A lens designed for a cropped sensor creates an image circle smaller than the full-frame sensor. It would create a circular image with very strong vignetting around the sides. Manufacturers recommend not using lenses designed for cropped sensors on full frame cameras.

Designations

To ensure that buyers purchase the correct lenses for full frame or cropped sensor manufacturers designate them with specific marques. Here is the breakdown of the most common designations…

 Manufacturer  Full frame
(and APS-C)
 APS-C
(cropped)
    Canon           EF pEF-S
    Nikon          FX DX
    Sigma          DG DC
    Tokina          FX DX
    Sony     Various‑incl.
3rd party mounts
DT
    Tamron          Di Di-II
    Samsung   Not available‑2013 NX
    Pentax Check manufacturer
specification
DA
  Konica‑Minolta Check manufacturer
specification
DT
Other related sources…

Lens manufacturers (Wikipedia) External link - opens new tab/page
Photography equipment manufacturers (cameras, lenses etc) (Wikipedia)  External link - opens new tab/page

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By Damon Guy (author and Photokonnexion editor)

Damon Guy - Netkonnexion

Damon Guy (Netkonnexion)

Damon is a writer-photog and editor of this site. He has run some major websites, a computing department and a digital image library. He started out as a trained teacher and now runs training for digital photographers.
See also: Editors ‘Bio’.

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The top twenty phototips that you should know

20 spots - twenty tips

• 20 spots – twenty tips •
Click image to view large

Learning photography is about…

Doing the simple things really well. Although there are a lot of things to learn, the important ones are a few things you do over and over again. If you improve them you will automatically improve your photography.

Work on these to make the biggest improvement
  1. A proper stance will provide a proper, steady hand-held camera position.
  2. Go everywhere with your camera. Use it every day – improve every day.
  3. Learn with what you’ve got, better equipment will not improve your skill.
  4. Three essentials – camera, lens, tripod. Learn to use them all equally well.
  5. Get close, fill the frame, your shots will probably be better.
  6. Think about every shot before you push the shutter button.
  7. Count to two before taking your camera away from your face.
  8. Never just look at others’ photos – do a critique every time.
  9. Work on your composition skills at least as hard as your technical skills.
  10. Be inspired by other photographers, but develop your own style.
  11. Discuss photography as much as possible with other photographers.
  12. Look for contrasts in colour, light, shape and other variables.
  13. Declutter your shots, show it as simply as possible.
  14. Use natural light as much as possible – get to know its properties.
  15. The rule of thirds works more than 95% of the time.
  16. Try different perspectives, points of view and heights at each scene.
  17. Vary shutter speeds, ISO and aperture settings to experiment with exposure.
  18. Make people, and especially faces, a central study in your photography.
  19. Great photos can be found everywhere – you just need to look out for them.
  20. Be completely obsessed with the study of light and the language of light.

If you pay attention to these important tips you will find your photography will develop.

Photography becomes a way of life, but don’t make it the only thing in your life. You need other interests to bring new perspectives into your photography.

Most of all enjoy what you are doing. Photography should be fun… don’t take it too seriously. Laugh a lot.

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By Damon Guy (author and Photokonnexion editor)

Damon Guy - Netkonnexion

Damon Guy (Netkonnexion)

Damon is a writer-photog and editor of this site. He has run some major websites, a computing department and a digital image library. He started out as a trained teacher and now runs training for digital photographers.
See also: Editors ‘Bio’.

How to tackle the problem of reflections and highlights with glass

• Photographing anything translucent requires treatment that defines the shape •

• Photographing anything translucent requires treatment that defines the shape •
Photograph by Phillip McCordall

Make the best of your resources.

Making the best of your resources is important. Expensive equipment is out of reach for many photographers. Using simple equipment and home resources helps. Glass presents particular problems. This tutorial will help you to tackle the problem with glass and learn more about using simple resources.

The problem with glass

By its nature, the translucence and reflectance of glass creates special problems for photographers. Translucence means that the definition of glass is lost against the background. Reflectance means that general highlights and specular highlights in particular can cause problems. Success in photographing glass is about learning to control those things. It is all a matter of using reflectance to define the glass and placing the light in the correct way for it to illuminate.

Using a simple house light and white and black cards, this tutorial helps you to control highlights to emphasise the glass and not create nasty highlights. You learn about good quality composition with a glass and a few tricks of the trade. Win:win I think.

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By Damon Guy (author and Photokonnexion editor)

Damon Guy - Netkonnexion

Damon Guy (Netkonnexion)

Damon is a writer-photog and editor of this site. He has run some major websites, a computing department and a digital image library. He started out as a trained teacher and now runs training for digital photographers.
See also: Editors ‘Bio’.

Can you write? Of course you can!
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How to get the sky right in your holiday pictures

Cornish Vista

Cornish vista
Think about how to get the best out of your sky.
Cornish Vista • By Netkonnexion on 365ProjectExternal link - opens new tab/page

Getting the sky right is important.

With the holiday season approaching we want our holiday photographs reflect the happy memories. All too often the sky is over-white, washed out or blown-out. There are a number of techniques you can use to get the sky right, in camera and in post processing.

What are you really looking for in a good sky? Deep blues for the sky, fluffy white clouds and well defined horizons are the ideal situation. To get them like that in the camera you have to pay attention to the time of day, the type of sky, the weather and have a sense of drama. Here are some ideas to help you…

Polarizing Filter

One of the photographers important tools for sky photography is the polarizing filter. It is a glass or composite material that is set into the inner of two metal rings. The first ring screws directly to the front of your lens. The other rotates inside the screw ring. The filter itself cuts out some of the wavelengths of light. You turn the ring with the filter mounted in it so that it can be set for maximum effect. The filter action reduces the glare and haze associated with reflective surfaces like water and glass. Amazingly it also deepens the blue in the sky. So what we see in the photograph is a sky that is darkened with emphasised blues and the air has a crispness and clarity. These effects are not reproducible in post-processing software. It is invaluable to have this effect in camera and will really liven up the drama of the sky.

Critical view-line

If you gaze out across a wide open sky on a bright sunny day you will notice that the blueness of the sky is not uniform. It is a deeper blue in places and a whiter blue elsewhere. In fact the sky gets to be a deeper blue if you are facing away from the sun. It is at its deepest blue at the opposite end of the sky from the sun. So where you can, shoot with the sun at your back.

Of course having the sun at your back is not always possible. A good rule is not to let the sun be in front of you. If it is at your shoulder (90 degrees to your shot) it will still allow you to get a reasonable blueness in the sky. If you have to shoot with the sun in front of you, even if at a wide angle, the blues will start to whiten. The more you are shooting toward the sun the more the sky will wash out.

The mid-day washout

During the middle of a sunny day the sky will be at its most washed out. As the sun is at its highest at this point you should avoid taking photographs if you can. The more the sun falls toward the horizon the more the atmosphere will act as a natural filter and increase the blues at the opposite end of sky. The middle of the day is also bad for photography because the sun being overhead means that objects on the ground have little shadow around them. This gives the landscape a flat and unappealing look. Washed out skies and flat appearance at ground level makes convincing photography difficult!

Use an ND graduated filter

Neutral density filters are great. They are fun to use and give you back some of the blueness in the sky caused by over brightness. They don’t enhance the blueness like the polarized lenses. They are a way of cutting the light down so its intensity is reduced.

Without an ND filter the sky will tend to be over-bright, or the ground will tend to be too dark on a bright day. The graduated ND is an ideal tool for helping to balance the light levels. A full ND filter will reduce the incoming light right across the lens. However, a graduated ND filter allows the full amount of light to enter the lens from the lower half – which keeps the foreground bright. On the upper half of the filter (pointing at the sky) the neutral grey graduates from the very light across the middle to its darkest at the top of the filter. You place the beginning of the neutral grey on the horizon and then the grey graduates darker up the filter so the most washed out or over-exposed parts of the sky at the top of the picture are the parts with the most reduced light levels.

It is worth remembering that you can use both an ND graduated filter and a polarizing filter. However, also remember that each time you put a glass element in the line of light you will be reducing the light that can get into the camera. So remember to adjust your exposure to compensate for the additional glass.

The use of ND filters helps to bring out the clouds too. Brightness in clouds can be pretty harsh, especially if they are very dense. This tends to make them featureless. The use of ND filters for clouds (an ND 2 or 4 – the lowest filter levels) will help to reduce the brightness and enhance the contrasts in the darker parts of the cloud. This brings out its features and helps the cloud to take on a little depth.

Post processing sky enhancements

In post processing you can do a number of things to enhance your sky. However, after years of working on my skies I know that you can get better results in camera… try that first.

On trick to enhancing a washed-out blue sky is to use a saturate tool. Simply wipe the tool across the blue of the sky to deepen and lift the crispness of it. The saturate tool in most image editing applications tends to turn sky blue to turquoise blue. Don’t use full saturation. Set your saturation tool to between 10% and 20% and wipe it several times rather than one heavy wipe. With most tools/brushes it is better to use low exposure/opacity rather than be heavy handed. Not only is it more controllable but you can also build up to a reasonable blueness without over-doing it.

You should watch out that you do not wipe the saturate tool over the clouds. You will find that the clouds look white, but contain a high blue component. If you saturate them they turn blue to the eye – which looks highly unrealistic.

The trick to increasing the contrast in clouds is not the saturate tool. It is to deepen the grey of the darker parts of clouds using the burn tool. The burn tool darkens a colour by increasing its black component. Again, with the burn tool use a reduced exposure. I like to work with about 15% in clouds. Set the tool to mid-tones so the grey parts of the cloud don’t turn black. The idea is to increase the contrast not to give the clouds harsh deep lines – that would hardly match with the surrounding blue sky.

Blue sky thinking

If you really want to get the best skies then work later or earlier in the day to get lower wash-out levels in the sky. Make sure that where you can shoot away from the sun = especially toward the horizon with the sun at your back. Where brightness levels are high and you have to shoot you can reduce the wash-out with polarization and ND grad. filters. You can also post process the skies after your shoot, but this is not as easy as it sounds.

True blue-sky thinking is done before you take the shot. Deploy all the suggestions above and your skies will be blue. Have a happy holiday.

By Damon Guy (author and Photokonnexion editor)

Damon Guy - Netkonnexion

Damon Guy (Netkonnexion)

Damon is a writer-photog and editor of this site. He has run some major websites, a computing department and a digital image library. He started out as a trained teacher and now runs training for digital photographers.
See also: Editors ‘Bio’.