Shoot Green

Site Ported Out

2009-06-01T19:13:00.001+01:00

Well, the information contained here has been all ported to the main site and put in an easily referenced table at the bottom of the page.

The link to that page is right here and contains a column on beginner information.

If you're e-baying, then I suggest taking a look at, "Light Tent," which is under the Suplimental Equipment - Lighting" column for you.

If you own any type of camera, then you might want to pick your camera from under the "Camera Equipment - Flash" column to find out about using your flash.

Porting to the main site

2009-04-07T07:25:00.001+01:00

Well, what can I say? A blog like this is of a nature that the information contained here is difficult to extract. Anyone wanting information has to trawl through all the posts. I have tried to run a menu system on Shutter Fug, but it is proving difficult to maintain. The information is just getting too large to be effective for people.

As a result, I'm slowly revamping the photography section of my main web site and am transferring the information here ... to there.

It will probably take a couple of months to transfer all the hints and tips to there, so as long as this is the latest post, I'm still doing the transfer so there is likely something here that isn't yet on there ... if you know what I mean.

I'll post again when the transfer is complete; but it is going to take time.

Mixing flash and ambient

2009-04-03T07:43:00.000+01:00

Now that you've read about the relationship between the shutter speed and the flash, you can understand better how the balance of flash and ambient works.

It is a straightforward technique which has been gaining increasing use over the years and massive use recently in many different forms; so much so that some would argue that it is being overdone, but that is another issue for another day. It is nevertheless a very impactful way to create an image and so it is very much worth having as a shooting technique.

The long story short is that the shutter speed is used to control the brightness of the background while the aperture is balanced with the power of the flash. The usual way to execute the technique is to set the camera for the ambient light. You then bring in your subect and use a flash, off camera, to light them.

As you've effectively got a landscape in the background while a person is in the foreground, you don't want to be giving up too much in terms of aperture, so aim for a good aperture and then try and dial the flash power to match it.

Having the flash on the camera is a bit of a negative because it will just throw flat light on the person and it won't be a very dramatic portrait, so you really want to get the flash off the camera and off to one side, above, below, whatever will give you the drama that is suitable for the portrait. Using difusers will enable you to get the light close (to make the most of the power) while still being soft (to make flattering soft shadows of the features)

The Shutters relation to Flash

2009-03-30T16:43:00.000+01:00

This might sound like a long story, but in fact, it isn't. Attention is drawn to the "important" relationship between the shutter speed and your flash pulse because of your sync speed. This actually puts your focus on the shutter speed when you really should be thinking about your aperture and ISO speed, which have far more to do with your flash pulse than you might at first think.

To start the explanation, we'll get the shutter speed out of the way. The standard curtain shutter consists of two curtains. When the shutter opens, the first curtain starts its journey, exposing the surface of the film/sensor as it does so. When the time delay has finished and it is time for the shutter to close, the second curtain starts its own journey, effectively closing the shutter behind it.

Think of two curtains in your living room. One is scrunched up against the left side, and the other is completely covering the window. Open the window by pulling the stretched curtain all the way to the right, and then pull the left curtain all the way over to join it, so that the window is obscured agagin. This is, basically, what happens.

So, now you should get the idea. Although the flash pulse is extremely short in duration, it only has an effect on the frame if the WHOLE frame is exposed at the same time as the flash actually fires.

If the shutter speed is so fast that the second curtain starts its journey before the first curtain has finished its journey, then there will never be a point where the whole surface of the frame is exposed at the same time. This is what shutter speed sync is all about.

Of course, the flash pulse is actually so small and short, that it doesn't matter if the shutter is open for a 1/250th of a second or thirty seconds ... the pulse will have the same effect and the same registration on the scene.

The things that will REALLY matter as far as the flash pulse is concerned, is the ISO ... the higher the ISO, the more impact the light will have ... and the aperture ... the more open the aperture, the brighter the light will seem.

This is important later, because it will allow you to balance the flash pulse against the ambient light, as we'll see later.

Quick and dirty flash

2009-03-29T07:49:00.000+01:00

This is a quick and dirty flash trick to get better light out of your on-camera flash.

Having a good quality and flexible on-camera flash unit is a serious boon for many people as it has a plethora of uses, not only indoors but outdoors as well if you have the courage to use it.

On top of the camera, the TTL abilities of the flash are a perfect match. The quality of light that comes from such a flash, however, are legendary for causing red eye and making the scene look flat and unhealthy. But there are occasions where you have to act fast and get the images as they happen.

The light is easily softened by putting a diffuser cap on the strobe, but this still results in a hot spot. An easy way to get out of this is to angle the flash upwards so that the, "feathered," light is what hits the subject, but the problem with this is the issue of power; so this is circumvented by programming compensation in to the flash to tell it that, whatever the camera requests, pump out one stop higher in light.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IhUOX0py30&feature=channel_page

Introduction to metering

2009-03-26T15:54:00.000Z

This quick introduction to metering shows you the difference between incident metering (done by holding up a light meter by the subject) and reflective metering, the type done by the camera.

The problem with reflective metering is that the subject has altered the light before the camera sees it; so a dark subject won't properly reflect the light back and the camera will compensate by overexposing. The opposite is also true that in a snow picture, the white snow will reflect so much light back at the camera that it will under expose, turning the crisp, white snow in to a dull and boring grey.

You don't have to use a hand held light meter, however, as there is always the 18% grey card. By placing a card with a known 18% grey tone, where the subejct is, the card will reflect the light back to the camera in a known manner. This allows the on-board meter to get a better handle on the light that is being reflected at it.

EV Compensation

2009-03-26T06:35:00.001Z

EV compensation is how you can quickly take control of the automatic decisions that a cameras built in light meter is making. There are situations where other light will fool the camera in to believing that there is more light available than it thinks; such as light streaming through a window in the background of your frame. This will fool the camera in to underexposing and your subjects will end up in shiloette; so you have to use EV +/- to compensate. When you are shooting snow, the same thing happens; the light meter wants to turn the snow to 18% grey. Whey you are shooting someone in a dar, moody environment, the camera will try to brighten the scene up. Whatever the automatic mode you're shooting, this is how you achieve your ultimate in fine exposure control.

STILL trying to get that Canon G10

2009-03-19T06:14:00.000Z

Well, by the time I get the money for the G10, the G39 will be out. Apologies folks, but abnormal service will be resumed shortly ... I hope.

Night & Low Light Photography - Lee Frost

2009-02-17T07:29:00.000Z

The blog has a bit of a gap as I'm still tracking down a Canon G10 to continue the blog with. In the mean time, however, if you really want to get to grips with photography then this book by Lee Frost, explains all about shutter speed, aperture, etc. in good detail. Written about a decade ago before digital film cameras came in to their strength, it nevertheless details all the mechanics of photography and is definatley worth a look, if not borrowing it from the library.

Well, what can I say? Lee Frost is obviously an old time film photographer from way back when and this book is definatley aimed at the amateur photographer. If you don't know what a shutter speed is or how aperture affects depth of field, you will know by the time you're nearly a third of the way through this book.

I find myself recommending this first third to someone starting off in photography; possibly even before they've bought a camera as it tells people in no uncertain terms that the camera does not, a photographer, make.

Among the advice in these early pages is also a heads up on filters and how to get the best use out of a tripod, monopod, small bean bags, shuter release cables, the difference between medium format and 35mm ... it is a good read and contains a lot of information written in an understandable way. I can envisage those new to photography having to read some sections two or three times, however, in order to get the concepts straight in their head.

A lot of the writing is about film balance type and filters; this tells as it is a 2008 reprint of a book first published in 1999. To this book, digital cameras and in-camera light temperature balance are a distant dream. It does make a good point, however, which is that a handheld light meter can be very important for some of the shots as some modern cameras don't go beyond thirty seconds and require a bulb mode; handheld metres can go well down below this range.

Despite the decade age of this book, the advice within its pages is still good and solid; right down to the grey card and how to read incident and reflective light. It covers bracketing, flash sync in relation to the shutter and all sorts of tricks that not only form the basis of a photographers trick bag but go right up to the things that any skilled photographer will use. This advice, if taken on board and practiced, will take a beginner in to a seriously advanced amateure; but I have to admit that it will take some time for all the techniques to be practiced and mastered.

In all, this book will take someone new to photography and bring them up to speed with a multitude of techniques. An experienced photographer might pick up some inspiration in going beyond the standard sunset and sunrise photography but not much more. The subjects covered go indoors, outdoors, light painting, fairgrounds, candles, well to be honest the list would be much, much shorter if I detailed what the book leaves out.

The only downside is that the book seems to be a reprint but not a rework. It doesn't take account of digital cameras but to be honest, that's no biggie. An essential book for a beginner, but not for someone already used to photography.

A quick recap

2009-01-14T23:17:00.000Z

OK - so to recap what has happened so far.

You should have learned that composition is a key to good photography and know a couple of tricks for positioning yourself. Where you position yourself depends on whether you're camera has got a zoom ability.

If you're taking pictures to put on e-bay, you should now have all the advice you need on hard and soft light and how to get pictures that look half decent. You might be considering the investment in a light tent and, may the good Lord help you, be planning a trip to your stationers and fishing supplies store to make yourself a stand.

You'll know about the on board flash and how to decrease the distance between the subjects and the background to get the best flash coverage. You'll also know that there are times to surpress the flash to use natural light and also to force it to fire to get a fill in and overcome shilouetes.

You'll know how to use the ISO and white balance settings, if available to you, to get a better quality picture, and how you will pay for it if you do. You'll know how to use macro mode to get in close and how saving bits and pieces can help complete a scene.

You will also know about megapixels and the effect they have on the cameras storage and response times; also just how many megapixels you actually need.

In short, you'll actually now know quite a bit.

Now it is your turn. Sling any questions in the comments of this post and I'll start to address them for you. If you don't have a blogger account and you happen to know me, then drop me an e-mail or acost me in the corridor with your question.

Shutter lag and Turn On Time

2009-01-13T22:00:00.001Z

There is a difference between turn on time and shutter lag. It is important to know the difference between the two and how they will affect the decision you make when buying a camera.

Turn on time is the time taken from you telling the camera that you want it to turn on, and it being ready to take the first picture. For DSLR units, even cheaper ones, the turn on time should be instantanious from a human perceptive point of view. By the time you're finger has flipped the on switch, the process of it moving from the switch to the shutter button should see the camera being ready to respond.

With point and shoot cameras it is a different kettle of fish. The turn on time can be three seconds or for models that have to extend a motorised lens assembley it can be seven or eight seconds. This was important for me and although my Fuji S5000 was a great little camera, the turn on time was enough for me to miss the moments that I wanted to capture. It won't necessarily be an important factor for everyone, but it depends on what you're shooting.

Shutter Lag is a part of the process between your pressing the shutter release and the camera actually taking a picture. Again with point and shoot cameras this can be a second or two which is enough to wreck a candid shot. The shutter lag on a point and shoot is perhaps the most common complaint I hear from people who start talking cameras; especially those with kids or cute pets, because they press the button the moment a cute expression happens, but by the time the camera has responded, the moment has gone.

With SLRs the moment you press the shutter button, the camera should near instantaniously take a picture. That's where some of the money goes in an SLR, getting the fast response so that you get the moment.

There are other aspects as well, such as the turnaround time and burst mode. The turnaround time is the time taken between taking one picture and the camera being ready to take the next. My SLR, in RAW mode, can take about twenty full resolution pictures at three per second, before it starts to stutter a little. If I switch it to high quality JPEG then I can keep my finger on the button and it will take and take and take and take until the memory is full. This isn't the case with a point and shoot.

Think about the response you need from the camera. Things are improving, but they can only go so far. If response is needed but you can't go to an expensive camera, look at ones that don't have motorised lenses as they can be faster to switch on and can autofocus much more quickly.

Rullers, gut and soft light

2009-01-11T16:49:00.000Z

Now and then I can be siting down and get one of those Eureka! moments. It is some time later that reality comes along and bites me up the arse.

For those who need to shoot jewelry, getting the light in the right places can be a complete nightmare. It would be wonderful if you could just hang it in mid-air. Yes? Well here is one way that is put-awayable and costs less than a tenner.

With twelve wooden rulers (I tried using the plastic non-shatter ones ... trust me, it didn't work.) a hack saw, the corner of a chisel, some fishing gut and my favourite paper clip, you can make a frame work on which you can hang your subject. The plans are relatively straightforward, but they got adjusted a few times on the way!!!

Now I'll be completely honest with you; I threw this together and didn't take much time over it; it was a proof of concept. I would recommend that you take some time over the measurements of your joints and do the job properly, or else it just comes apart way too easily. The key thing to take away from these two videos is how to cut the wood and use the corner of the chissel to cut the wood out so that you don't split the wood, and to get an idea as to how this whole thing goes together.

Here, you can see how the top part of this goes together in a close up.

Sadly, the bottom needed support, which is why I wrote twelve rullers are needed. The uprights need sections cut in the bottom and two rullers need sections cut at either end of them, just light the uprights. Here, however, I didn't have another wooden ruller so I had to use two of the plastic ones and just cut in to the ends of them instead...

The gut is another point. I talked about drilling holes and feeding the gut through, but the tension on the gut through the sharp angles meant that it managed to cut itself quite easily. I ended up tying a loop of gut on one of the cross pieces and then tying a piece the other side with a paperclip hook so I could fasten it easily; that meant I could put product in or out without having to take the top section apart each time. I didn't use a fishing hook for the reason that it had a very sharp point.

The good thing about this is that being 30cm long, the whole thing should fit inside a 40cm cubed light tent ... well, it does, but only just...

Add in the light from the sides (I didn't get very inventive, I just slung the light in there to take the shot) and you've got a nice product shot. Change the background to taste and you're sorted.

Here is a 1:1 of the gut being taken out of the picture...

... and a couple of other shots with different lighting positions...

Finally, here is a picture of a coaster held up with some blu-tack and a paper clip. The paper clip is subsequentially edited out, but the key thing you need to be on the look out for here is the quality of the light on the wood contained under the plastic covering. Despite the strength of the light and the reflective nature of the plastic, you can still see below it and appreciate the quality of the wood grain in the picture.

Of course there is one other thing that you're looking at here, which is that this is a straight-on picture. If you wanted to try and get this kind of a full face picture without using this kind of frame, you'd have to lie the object flat and try and shoot from above, which means you'd have difficulty in getting soft light on to it from those angles. Either that or hang it on a wall which means you'd still have trouble getting the light close enough to the wall and the wall itself would be close to the object and thus in focus, showing up any marks on the wall. Also, you wouldn't want to have to repaint your wall every time you wanted to change the background colour!

The legal stuff (UK)

2009-01-08T21:23:00.000Z

It is a sad fact that many police officers are widely overstepping the mark with photographers using DSLRs. They have been for some time now. If you've got a point and shoot, you're liable to get away with photography (unless you have the missfortune to come across a real jerk) but even then, certain rules always apply.

The first rule is that if you're stood on publically accessible land, then you can take pictures. You don't even need a licence; basically there isn't one. This includes parks and the like which are owned by public bodies which are open air; if you are in a public office building then the front door is treated as a barrier to private land. If you are on obviously private land, such as a gate where you have had to pay entry or surrounded by a fence, even a low one, then you're going to need permission to take pictures. This is what has enabled many press photographers to get pictures using powerful zoom lenses; they have been stood on publically accessible land.

You can take pictures of who you like; adults, children, whomever or whatever so long as you don't do it agressively. Continued aggressive photograph taking can be deemed to be harassement, but generally speaking no one can stop you.

The second rule is where and how you publish your pictures. If you're publishing for no gain, then you can use the pictures wherever, but the moment commercialism steps in, you need a model release for any identifiable person in the photograph or else you are liable to be sued if you haven't got a proper model release form signed by every person in that frame. The press can get away with a lot of this rule as it is in the public interest, but private photographers have to be careful. Even publication in a non-commercial method could carry risks, for example if the identifiable person is defamed as part of the text. If in doubt legally, check it out.

Outside this, however, things seem complicated when some half arsed numpty who thinks they know the law gets involved...

Deletion of pictures can only be demanded by a court order. Pictures on your camera are considered evidence; if not of someone elses guilt then of your own innocence. A police officer without a court order, can not demand the deletion of your images. If they attempt to do it themselves then they have committed a serious crime ... destruction of evidence.

Terrorist powers of search can only be used in two cases. The first is if you are photographing a building or are in an area designated as protected by the terrorist legislation. The second is that the officer MUST have reason to suspect you of terrorist activities; and simply the act of taking pictures is not a justifiable reason to enact the terrorist legislation.

This is under Pace Code A, section 2.1(a) ...

powers which require reasonable grounds for suspicion, before they may be exercised; that articles unlawfully obtained or posessed are being carried, or under Section 43 of the Terrorism Act 200 that a person is a terrorist. ... and any officer deeming taking pictures as justification enough is going to get their arse striped by their superior when you follow through and demand a discipline of the officer concerned.

...also in the same legislation, section 2.19...

An oficer of the rank of assistant chief constable (or equivalent) or above, may give authority for the following powers of stop and search under section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 to be exercised in the whole or part of his or her police area if the officer considers it expedient for the prevention of acts of terrorism: meaning the area has to be previously defined, and on record as having been defined, an area where the terrorism act can apply.

Seizure and retention of property is another clear cut point under PACE part B, section 7...

7 Seizure and retention of property.
7.1 Subject to paragraph 7.2 an officer who is searching any person or premises under any statutory power or with the consent of the occupier may sieze anything:
(a) covered by a warrent
(b) the officer has reasonable grounds for believing is evidence of an offence or has been obtained in consequence of the comission of an offence but only if siezure is necessary to prevent the items being concealed, lost, disposed of, altered, damaged, destroyed or tampered with
(c) covered by the powers in the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001, Part 2 allowing an officer to sieze property from persons or premises and retain it for sifting or examination elsewhere
See note 7B
7.2 No item may be siezed which an officer has reasonable grounds for believing to be subject to legal privilege, as defined in PACE, section 10, other than under the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001, Part 2.

A bit long winded that one, but the long story short is that a Police officer can't just take your camera. They need justification for doing so.

Basically, unless the officer has some form of belief (that will stand up to scrutiny) that you are a terrorist, then the most they can ask you to do is move along.

Remember - a court order is required for the deletion of images and never accept a caution from an officer and of an officer is making the law up as they go along, press for a discipline.

Light has a temperature

2009-01-04T10:06:00.000Z

Believe it or not, but light has a temperature. This is why the camera has to employ what is known as white balance. The long story short is that white, when under different lights, will appear to be a different colour, so the camera has to adjust the, "temperature," in order to get it back to white again. If it didn't make this adjustment then the picture would end up with a colour cast.

Our brains do this automatically if we are in a room with a certain lighting, but they wouldn't do it if a picture was in the wrong setting, eg. looking at a warm picture in a cool room. Warm and cool are used to describe light temperature like the two torches you can see below, the warm tungsten on the left and the cool LED on the right.

This table of pictures was taken in two different lighting conditions. The table on the left was taken with daylight through the window. The table on the right was taken while lit with two tungsten temperatured lights. The results will show you just how dramatic an effect having the wrong colour balance can have on your pictures...

Shot in daylight	Shot under tungsten
Sun

Shade

Tungsten

Fluorescent

Cameras are usually set to AWB or Automatic White Balance in the hope that the camera works it out automatically. Actually, many people don't even know of the existance of white balance. Sometimes, however, switching the balance can work in your favour for some effects. If you are shooting in daylight and want a blue picture, rather than try and mess it up in post, you can switch the camera to tungsten mode and, because the camera assumes a warm tungsten light, it tries to, "cool," it down. Net result is a blue picture.

But why do you need to know about this ... the camera should sort it out itself, right? Well, yes and no. There is an old addage that if something can go wrong, it will go wrong at the moment that it would have the most impact. As a result, if you're taking an important shot that you can't repeat then it is worth setting the white balance manually.

Christmas Quiz - Answers

2009-01-03T16:00:00.000Z

Here are the answers to the Christmas Quiz...

*ist-DS - telling the DS and K20's pictures apart wouldn't be easy, but the K20 has an edge on the sharpness.

i8510 - the shallow depth of field should have given the game away that this was one of the mobile phones. Comparing this to the other should have told you that this was the higher quality mobile.

K20d - telling the DS and K20's pictures apart wouldn't be easy, but the K20 has an edge on the sharpness.

U700 - Again, shallow depth of field but the lowest quality of the two.

HP R847 - the most noisy of all the cameras at the best ISO.

Back 'em up.

2009-01-01T16:13:00.000Z

If you've got to use the on board flash, back your subjects up against the wall if you can. This gets around a couple of problems. The first is when the camera reads off the background instead of the subjects and lets loose far too much flash, blowing your subjects out. The other is that the background doesn't get enough flash and your subjects look like their flying in outer space.

Before

After

The other way to get around this, of course, is to get relative ... ie. back away from the subject and use the zoom function to compose them better. The distance between them and the background will be less (relatively) than the distance between you and them ... so there is a better chance of getting an even coverage of flash power.

Daylight Quality

2008-12-28T21:59:00.000Z

Consider this. The diameter of the earth is about 8,000 miles. The thickness of the atmosphere (the bit that sits between us and the sun) is only about 23 miles thick. The drawing below is to scale; you can barely see the red line representing the thickness of the atmosphere. What does that tell you, photographically?

What it tells you is that when the light is coming at you during morning or evening, the light has to get through much more atmosphere than it does during mid day. There is considerably more atmosphere to get in the way of the sun light when it comes at you from the side, so there is much more alteration done to it by the air it passes through it. As the sun gets higher, there is considerably less atmosphere to interfere with the suns rays so it gets seriously harsh and powerful.

Think of the atmosphere like the side of the light tent. It difuses the light. This is why the sun is more harsh at mid day because there is less to get in its way. Of course, this is added to by any clouds that are in the atmosphere as well as that if you are further north or south of the equator then the sun usually never does get to be at the highest point in the sky, but in general if you consider all things being equal, that is one of the main controls on sunlight and it is why morning and evening photography are generally better ... they have softer light because the atmosphere is difusing the sun.

It is also why photographers generally don't like strong sun at mid day - the light is way too hard and produces harsh shadows. Most half decent photographers have some of the Spanish and mexican in their blood ... mid-day = siesta.

Take away

Avoid mid day sun on a clear day for photorgaphy as the shadows will be harsh.

Softening desktop light without a light tent

2008-12-27T12:19:00.000Z

D.I.Y'ers will love this little tip. It isn't hard. The thing you've got to avoid is putting any fabric too close to your desk lamp ... the heat will fry it.

The trick is to find a large enough old photo frame and cut up an old sheet. Stretch the sheet over the picture frame and Bobs you're Uncle, Fanny's your Aunt and don't ask about your brother.

Shine the desk lamp through the frame and you've got it sussed. Depending on how the frame supports itself, you might have to rip off its own stand and jam it between some books to stop it falling over. You can vary the thickness of the sheet to vary the softness of the light; but the more layers you attach to the frame, the more powerful the light you're going to need to get through it.

There are other options - anything that will make a frame. Plastic pipe for one. Cutting a hole in a sheet of ply for another. Take a look at what you've got to hand.

A Christmas Quiz

2008-12-24T15:26:00.000Z

I've done my best to take these pictures with each of the cameras. See if you can guess which of the following were taken with which camera, the u700, i8510, hp, ist DS or the K20. They've all been downgraded to the u700's 3.2megapixel resolution (blogger won't let me post at full res anyway.) Answers in 2009!

Know when to call a pro

2008-12-24T07:27:00.000Z

There is another aspect to this instruction which I am hoping that you are picking up on.

That aspect is that there are limits to technology and the equipment that you have. While people at home will be able to use their camera phones, point and shoot cameras and these techniques to better shoot an object to sling up on e-bay, blogs or whatever, there is also another conclusion that you need consider...

If you're putting together a brochure, magazine or the like, you now know that there is a limit to the technology that is available to you. You now have an insight in to the massive difference that properly lighting and presenting a product has on the end resulting picture. You can now see that there are a load of tips and tricks that are used to shoot pictures that have to stand up to a highly competative market place and there is no replacement for experience when it comes to this aspect of photography.

If you're relying on the quality of pictures to make a serious business work and to get the customers to buy your product or service ... for crying out loud, hire a pro. It's worth the money and you can see why. It is not worth doing this kind of photography on the cheap, because all that happens is that it makes your business and product look cheap. Also, buying yourself a load of expensive camera gear that you don't know how to use is also going to make you look cheap. Do you really want to cut corners on the very tool you most rely on to get customers money in your till?

Light Tents and Mobiles

2008-12-24T06:53:00.000Z

If you click on this image, you'll get the large picture as it came off the camera phone (the i8510) and you'll be looking for a few points...

1) Look for the noise speckles, despite this being force shot at ISO 50 they are still there. You can get rid of these by sampling the image down from 8 megapixels to about 6 or perhps a bit lower for older cameras that generate more noise, but that means sacrificing size.

2) Look at the depth of field. In macro mode, a camera phone won't have much depth to it. I think it has managed three inches of DOF here. DOF (depth of field) can be seen as artistic, so make sure you've got the camera phone focussed on where you absolutely need it to be sharp.

If you're shooting model soldiers and the like, DOF shouldn't be a problem. If you're shooting trains, you could let the coaches go out of focus in to the distance, but if you're shooting larger things like this you could have a problem. The solution? More light or ramp down the ISO setting a little so that the camera gives itself more depth of field. (some lenses are fixed so this might not work) You could also shoot in standard mode rather than macro, but you won't be able to get so close to the model like that. You could turn the model side on so that there isn't so much, "depth," to the picture. Play around and see what works.

The zoom camera definately has the advantage from being able to work at a distance and get better depth of field than a camera working in, "macro," mode.

Shock! Horror! - this picture is big enough and good enough to hang on my wall if I wanted to.

Lighting take away

2008-12-24T06:30:00.001Z

What you're taking away from the last two posts on desktop lighting is the difference between hard camera flash and using desktop lights. You're also taking away the artistic difference between hard and soft light, especially when it comes to shadow projections. The other thing that you have to think of is your background, in other words actually having a background as opposed to taking a picture on a kitchen table with all the daily clutter getting involved in the image.

If you can take an image from top down, then sometimes a table top is ideal providing it support the colour and form of the object that you're taking the picture of. I even take some pictures on the floor because the carpet colour and texture supports the shot. One shot was even done on a leather-look piano stools and the lights carefully placed not to light up the background...

It doesn't take much thought for you to make the massive leap from flash-shot crap-shot, to well lit and structured.

Light Tent

2008-12-23T23:25:00.001Z

Light tents come in various shapes and sizes. My main tent is 80cm cubed, but I bought this 40cm version so that I could more easily show you what to expect.

Once expanded, the tent consists of what appears to be a nylon cotton mix. The main job of the walls of the tent is to difuse the light; it does this beautifully and makes product shooting a walk in the park. It turns the hard light of the desk lamps in to a nice, soft light. We'll see more of this later, but for now here is a look at the tent.

Tents usually come with four material backgrounds. The white one is installed here and you can see the difference between it and the more creased and uneaven walls of the tent itself. Be warned that the material comes folded up and can be a nightmare to iron the creases out of. Once the creases are out you probably won't want to fold them back up again so think about rolling them on to a cardboard tube or something for storage.

The tent should also come with a front pannel with a slit. The slit is actually for you to poke your lens through. This is where having a camera with a small lens pays off. It is for photographing reflective objects, so that as little as possible gets reflected back in to the camera when it takes the picture. ie. you don't get a reflection of you standing there taking the picture!

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Just look at these two photographs of the tea pot and bowl. Notice the lack of shadows on the surface compared with the pictures in the previous post. You can also notice the reflections in the bowl and against the surface of the tea pot. The good side of the light tent is that it has, "diffused," the light in to a nice soft source. The down side is that it normally drinks up a lot of the light when it does this, so you definatley have to keep the camera steady.

The better position is to get the camera further away from the object and use the zoom to get the picture. This is because if you use the wide angle and get close, you'll catch the edges of the background material in the picture. So get back and zooom in for an easier frame.

The other thing you're definately going to want to see is what the soft light has done for the metal geisha model. If anything convinces you about the qualities of soft light, this will.

Yes, I know I could have chosen a better background colour but I wasn't about to iron another cloth sheet ... plus to be honest I'd rather use the 300gsm card as it holds its form well.

The prices of light tents has gone up recently. My 80cm tent cost £15 including postage, while the 40cm more recently has cost me £22. If you want to make you're own, a cardboard box and some greaseprof paper or, better still, tracing paper will certainly be a step in the right direction; but in my experience they can't deliver the same quality of soft light that the cloth light tent can. It's you're call. Just make sure you get something that is big enough for your needs ... but I have to admit to using the 80cm version on the floor. There is a 100cm version out there, but it was too big for what I needed.

Here is a comparison of the hard light as opposed to the soft light. The soft light is nice, easy and safe. The hard light can be a bit edgy, but that's the artistic decision.

Simple Desk Lighting

2008-12-23T20:40:00.000Z

There are a number of tricks to shooting a product well, and these tricks work very well no matter what camera you use. All you need from a camera point of view is some method of keeping it still, a means of turning off the on-board flash and preferably some sort of control over the ISO setting.

Background is one of the major things. A nice clean background benefits the shot and if you have an art shop around, you could do a lot worse than spend a couple of pounds on some 300gsm A1 sized card. I keep a range of colours, as different colours will work better with different subjects. White through to black.

Why the 300gsm paper? Personally, I find it to be a nice balance of being thin enough to hold a nice curve, but thick enough to not crease too easily. All you then need is a table up against a wall and you've got it sussed.

A table lamp or two should then complete you're armourment. If you can, make them two of the same lamp (or the same type of bulb at the very outside - the reason will be shown later) and if you can get lamps with adjustable power ranges that is even better; the reason for that will also become obvious later as well.

You might want to suplement this with a reflector. This can be anything from a professional reflector (decent ones can be had for about a tenner) or you can make one by gluing a piece of scrunched up tin foil, or a sheet of white paper, to the side of a cerial box. (A scrunched up foil difuses the light better than a flat piece of foil which is more like a mirror and reflects hard light just as hard. We'll look at softening light later.)

The reason we are going to use the desk lamps is because the on-board flash is too close to the lens. This makes the whole thing appear very flat and doesn't make the object look very nice at all ... it has no, "depth," which is something we humans like to see. Lighting from the sides enables us to greatly enhance the light that is falling on the object and that makes all the difference. Let's see this in action...

Here we have a bronzed statue. The flash on the camera is firing (the HP in this case) and as the flash is to the right of the lens, the shadow is on the left. You can see just how harsh this is.

Now we kill the flash and use a desk lamp to light the model. This is a single lamp off to camera right. We'll come to colour balance later, but for now just see how the lamp has changed the light. Look at the background ... no longer washed out. Also look at the item itself ... much truer colours.

Now we introduce a reflector off to the left to bounce some of that light back in to the face. You can see the effect here by lifting the face and the arm. OK, the light here doesn't get in underneath to bring out the blue of the obi, but, hey, this was shot in five minutes flat ... I'm not selling this model!

Just to finish the tutorial you can see how light coming from behind the model can separate it from the background and give it even more depth. I've just moved the envelope around a bit further, basically. You're looking at the sliver of light on the side of the face and the hand ... this can be used in conjunction with front light to give some, "separation," and depth.

The long story short is that this lamp is not power controllable; it is either on or off and it is strong. That is why I got such a bright reflection coming off the metal. We'll see, later, how to tame this further.

It could have been improved by reflecting some light in underneath the arm. Also, a second light on the other side would have given a stronger, more wrapping light than the little that was reflected off the envelope. Either that or a larger envelope would have done the trick by reflecting more light. It is an art, part of which comes with experimentation.

Here is another two minute throw together. Here, you're looking at the quality of the tea pot handle and the quality of the glaze in the bowl. Also judge the shadows thrown by the straight flash as opposed to the desk lamps. I'll introduce you to soft light later on.

Here is a video looking at the action of the light on the model as I move the white envelope around...

And in case you were wondering what would happen if I took a little more time over lighting the model, this is what happened with two desk lights, a mirror and a change of background colour...

Which do you prefer?

Quality Comparison

2008-12-23T13:16:00.000Z

Let's take a look at the quality that these cameras are putting out. All these shots were taken from the same point with the cameras set on the best quality possible and as close to the same overall framing as I could manage. I chose the most contrasty segment to take the segments from and when you view them, you're going to see the straight pixel for pixel rendition.

Just click on each picture to get the 1:1 rendition.

What you're looking for is the degree of noise in the green leaves, the silver in the car and the tarmac on the road. The worst performers are the U700 and the HP R847; despite taking the R847 to ISO100, the degree of noise in the picture is easily seen either as colour blocks or speckles. The noise in the i8510 is a serious improvement but a quick look at the tarmac and the silver of the car shows that it still has a way to go. The ist DS and the K20, despite being out of focus, shows you how smooth the colour rendition is on their sensors.

The other thing of interest as you look at the pictures, is the amount of information in the pictures themselves as against the number of megapixels. Double the number of megapixels, for example, doesn't result in double the linear resolution. The point of this post is to show you that it is better to go for a better quality sensor and lens system than it is to go chasing megapixels.

U700 no control available, 3.2 megapixel.

i8510 ISO 100, 8 megapixels

HP R847 ISO 100, 8 megapixels

*ist DS ISO 200, 6 megapixels

K20d ISO 100, 14 megapixels

Take Away

What you should be taking away from this is how to check the camera you're going to buy. At this point you should know what ISO means in an image and the level of control. You should also be able to see, judging by the above images, the kind of quality being returned by a camera. Just take a picture at the highest quality level in daylight, and view the result on a 1:1 zoom. You can then see for yourself what kind of quality the camera is capable of returning for your money.

In fact, taking a look at the cost of the various cameras involved above, there does seem to be a strong relationship between quality and cost.

Shooting something macro

2008-12-23T07:00:00.000Z

Right ... we're going to start putting some of these options to work.

Macro shooting in the point and shoot world means something uncomfortably close to the camera. In SLR world you're talking about going eye to eye with an insect so you can see all the divisions in their eyes ... but not in point and shoot world.

This is the macro symbol and is means getting really up close with the subject ... we're talking shooting something like a leaf on the ground or in the trees, or something else that is small that catches your eye.

There is something that you usually have to think about with this kind of picture and that is whether or not you use flash. Now here is the rub - flash against a close up object, will usually blow the subject completely. When it was usually the natural lighting that made the object catch your eye, the flash with dramatically change the light that is hitting the object and will change the way it looks.

So how you aproach the subject needs only a few steps to follow through. First, switch the camera to macro mode and get close up. Let the flash fire. This will give you your first shot. If you don't like what the flash has done to the picture, then switch the flash off.

Of course, if you switch the flash off, the camera has got to make up for the lack of light some other way. It usually does this by hammering the ISO so you end up with a blocky picture. You can take a second picture of the subject like this and see what it gives you. If it looks hazy or there are colour dots or blocks, then it has turned down the quality too far.

Now, you need to deliberately control the quality by forcing the ISO level that the camera shoots at, something like ISO 100. The camera will probably give you the "hand shake" warning and it is now up to you to hold the camera as steady as you can while taking the third and final shot.

Practice makes perfect trying to hand hold a camera. Typical tricks include holding your breath, pushing the shutter release very slowly and leaning against any available obkect ... even using your knees to support your elbows if you're kneeling to take a ground shot.

Here is the difference between the natural room light and the enforced flash. What you need to take away from this is that although they are the same, they are dramatically different pictures, so you need to be thinking about when you do and don't use the flash.

Basic flash

2008-12-22T08:39:00.000Z

The flash on a point and shoot isn't that powerful, but you can pull a few tricks with it. There are also a few hazards of using it which are inherant with a flash firing so close to the lens.

The problem is with a small source of light it is considered to be, "hard," light. Is also isn't diffused. It will reflect off glasses and even the back of a persons retinas if they're looking at the camera ... and bounce straight back in the camera's lens. (it is the light bouncing back from the retina which reflects the red blood vessels and causes red eye)

I'm going to take this moment to actually mention White Eye. This is especially important for young children and the pictures on Daisy Eye Cancer Fund's web site show you the issue. If you get a white reflection from the childs eye and red from the other (not while they're wearing glasses) then there is a chance that the child could have Leukocoria in the eye that records a white reflection, or something else that shouldn't be in the eye. To do this, you need to get a red reflection from the other eye (so you know that red eye reductions technologies are switched off and you have actually got a true response) so if you get a picture like that, then it is time to go see the GP and take a copy of the pictures with you.

Forcing the flash off
Let's take a look at some pictures of my long suffering friend, Ben. I asked him if he wanted me to use a psudonym for him but he declined saying that the name Brad Pitt was already taken. Anyway, here are two pictures of him indoors. One is lit naturally while the other is flash lit. You can easily see how hard Ben's face has now become and how the background has dropped dramatically in exposure. The important thing to realise is that in this kind of environent, the camera would have decided to fire the flash ... it was my decision to over ride the flash to get the ambient picture.

If your flash is too fierce then something you can do is to carry a tissue or grab a piece of toilet roll from the loo. Puting a couple of layers of this in front of a flash will help difuse the light and send it all over the place. It helps take the hardness out of the light and although it does drop the power of the flash a bit, it is sometimes preferable when you're taking subjects up close. You might want to keep a tissue in with your camera pouch for this. Be warned that retaining light means retaining heat, so be careful not to overdo it or you'll overheat the flash and could damage it; let it cool for a few moments between shots.

Some manufacturers seem to be building in more diffusion in to their flashes already but none seem to be building in any sort of slide mechanism so you can choose between hard or soft light.

Forcing the flash on
Flash can be used when shooting against the sun. In these shots, Ben is starting to turn towards being a siloette by the sun overpowering the camera, but by forcing the flash to fire regardless, the flash actually picks up his face and generates a contrast between Ben and the background. (for those of you who know you're beers, this is the Shepherd Neame brewery; the company whos products include the gorgeous Cherry Brandy that is sitting downstairs waiting for Christmas! Only important backgrounds here ... none of your picturesque beach shots or fancy sunsets) ... but this is what can really make a portrait sing ... deliberately using the on board flash to fire against the ambient. Just remember that you still need enough ambient to make a picture; trying this technique against a night sky won't do very much.

Note, also, that as the camera knew it was firing the flash, it also changed the, "colour," or white balance of the calculations which has caused the tone of the background colouring to change. So if you find yourself taking a portrait of someone against a natural sky, try force firing the flash. "Night portrait," mode exists on some cameras to do just this.

Gone in a flash

2008-12-22T08:35:00.000Z

How much should you expect from the flash gun on a camera? Well, there are a few things you have to consider. The first is whether or not it really is a flash. Most camera phones don't have a, "flash," as such. They have an LED light or something similar which switches on to light the scene and then the camera tries to take a picture. It doesn't have very much range usually and is quite weak.

The point and shoot flash units aren't much good either. Typically powerful enough only to light the average room if you're lucky. Also, the flash units are static, so the only thing the camera can adjust is the power output. If you're little cherrub is on stage and you're at the back of the audience, you're point and shoot isn't going to do it. If it does record anything, it will have had to ramp down the quality of the picture it takes.

Neither, come to that, will the SLR flash gun. Even with its larger tube, better capacitor and nice, handy trick of being able to, "zoom," the flash gun to make a more powerful tightly focussed beam of light.

So what CAN you do? Well, everything is limited by its abilities and all flash guns have their drawbacks. Usually, if the situation warrents it, try switching the flash OFF. Sounds stupid but if you're in a larger area turning the flash off forces the camera to rethink its game and use only ambient light instead. Where significant distance is involved this is usually the better option of the two, but take one of each and see which one works out best.

Some, "modes," include theatre mode which tells the camera that the flash wouldn't be considered welcome in that sort of environment so as a result it doesn't bother to try to use the flash.

Flash can be a blessing and also a curse, especially with things like the dreaded red eye, but rather than use software to get rid of the red there are other things you can do to prevent it happening in the first place. We'll come to red eye in a later post.

We're going to look in to how much you can expect from your flash and give you a rough guide to how much it can, or rather surprisingly can't, do. This is a calculator on the back of the large dedicated flash unit pictured above. At 100 ISO it will throw 20 feet at f4 ... at ISO 400 it will go 40 feet. You can expect the average point and shoot flash to operate in the average household room, but that is about it. Outside this you're better off turning the flash off and shooting ambient. We'll look at some of the situations using flash in a later post.

A look at - Samsung i8510

2008-12-22T07:13:00.000Z

The i8510 is an upgrade from the u700's phone, but by and large isn't anything that will have people dancing in the aisle or industry awards falling through the door.

The increases over the U700 are a few small steps in a very positive direction, however.

The megapixel count has gone up from 3.2 to 8 and this gives the opportunity for good images to be produced at a size that will fit on the wall.
There is the ability to control the ISO which gives the chance to override the 1/60th hand held rule and get detailed shots in less than perfect conditions.
The camera has modes and allows the basic control over how the camera takes its pictures.
It has a nice night mode for low light level shooting.
EV compensation is present for further control over lighting resolutions (if you're shooting in to sun for example.)
A form of anti-shake is present.
It has control over the exposure metering system.

As well as the major improvements a few minor things are present, with some being absent. Gone is the fun shooting mode which imposes custom artwork on top of the picture you're taking. There are face and blink detection functions. A self timer, panorama mode, GPS tagging, wide dynamic range and control of the sharpness, saturation and contrast.

Control options	u700	i8510
ISO
Shutter speed
Aperture
Mode
Flash
Quality
White Balance
Exposure Compensation
Zoom

The long story short is that the camera still needs a good amount of light to make a picture; with the exception of the night mode there is no significant difference between the i8510 and the u700 ... except that the mode shooting, exposure metering and the EV compensation does allow for better control of the light that you are shooting in to, which is most of the battle.

If you tilt your camera phone to the right, however (keypad on the left) then there doesn't seem to be an easy way to rotate the screen that way (I haven't found it yet.) or even for portrait operation. On the plus side, it actually has a line grid that can be superimposed on the screen to allow you to see the effect of the rule of thirds on the picture you're taking ... great for initial learning but the heavy lines could be a hinderance in composing a subject quickly ... the secret is to practice composition before using the skill in anger.

Here is the night shot picture taken with a laptop screen switched on and about six feet away from the bear. The camera is hand held. It is a bit blocky but to catch these kinds of tones overall is quite cool!

Here is a, "night shot," picture of the East Grinstead Choral Society singing Christmas carols outside Standen House a few days ago. The light level was such that with any other camera I would be using a tripod and long shutter speed. The camera reported a half second exposure (handheld! That must be some cool anti-shake technology) at iso 400 with the lens reporting f2.6 ... f2.6 is a respectably fast lens if those figures are accurate; and to return this much depth of field at that level.

A look at - Samsung U700

2008-12-20T20:09:00.000Z

I've messed around with various camera phones over the years and Samsungs have always impressed me (well, I wasn't going to waste my contract phone choice for the sake of the blog!)

This review is going to set the bar, so reading this through will give you a base line for everything else that follows. You'll see how even such a humble camera like this performs quite well, but as we look at the cameras on the next steps up, you'll see the difference between them.

Camera phones are catching up with the digital point and shoots of a few years ago, but this is an example of a phone released around mid 2007. The controls are basic; not even any mode control. You have a choice over the light temperature (quite important as we'll see in the e-bay selling posts in the future) and the size/compression of the picture that comes out of the camera, but that is about the lot.

This is the business end of the U700's camera. You can see how tiny that lens is. It's the little black hole that is in the middle of the black circle surrounded by the text, "Auto Focus."

It also provides a mirror if you want to take a picture of yourself (even though there is another, lower quality camera mounted in the front of the handset) and an LED unit replaces a flash. A maximum of 3.2 megapixels it doesn't return a bad image, overall. See the end of the post for some examples.

A bit of pedigree information is that Samsung make the sensor that goes in to the Pentax range of cameras, and you'll see how well they perform later on. The high end camera range is also made and rebadged by Samsung. Pentax, while known for their cameras and having a history as Japans oldest camera company, are also heavy players in surgery optics, like the keyhole surgery tool stuff. In short, the technology behind this camera series is not something thrown together; there is collaboration going on by some serious companies here. It is worth thinking of things like this when choosing a camera phone; see if you can find out which manufacturer is behind the camera component of the phone and look up their reputaiton.

Control options
ISO
Shutter speed
Aperture
Mode
Flash
Quality
White Balance
Exposure Compensation
Zoom

So, all I can control here is whether the flash fires; and that is an LED torch rather than a more powerful actual flash tube. The camera is basically fully automatic which means I haven't got control of very much at all. There is no way to tell the camera that I have taken the extra trouble to steady it, so if I want to take high quality product pictures I've just got to turn off the flash and provide a good source of light. If I want to lower the quality to get a faster response for sports pictures, I can't.

This camera is limited to daylight snapping. It does have auto focus which does help to render sharp images and of the pictures it does take in daylight, it is not a bad little camera at all for a cameraphone. Looking at the exif data, (the notes that a camera makes whenever it takes a picture, and it stores this information along with the picture file) the camera just about records its name and model number in the files, but doesn't record any other technical details on the settings, so there is no way to work out what it is doing.

The results from it, however, aren't that bad. When you get down to 100% then you can see where it starts to show the creases from the compression, but overall it isn't that bad a result. 3mpx, as you can see, is more than adequate for copying the details from a piece of paper legibly.

The U700 also packs some fun modes, however, including a good collection of templates that can be applied to a picture as you take it. Here is our teddy bear preparing for a scuba dive. However, it drastically reduces the resolution of the picture that it takes.

It also has various other options, including sepia, that can be applied to a full size picture as you take it. Something like colour inversion is also good for strong coloured objects if you want to get arty.

Samples
As you can see in this shot, taken during strong daylight, the camera is a very mid range camera that doesn't perform well in extremes, so if you're going to take a quality picture, make sure it isn't in harsh sunlight or a dark room. In other words, this isn't the best camera to take clubbing, but it does a decent job.

As you can see, it holds its own, matching Photoshop's level 6 quality setting, which is perfectly acceptable for most personal web work. You can even get a good 6x8 print out of this.

It is also good for snaping those funny bits and pieces that people put up on their walls around the office ... and also for snapping bits of writings and reports; sort of the modern version of the spy camera.

Conclusion
As you can see, the output of the camera is actually quite usable. If you start hitting the extremes of light and dark, it struggles. You can also forget about capturing sports with any degree of accuracy, but if all you want is a camera to take every day shots then this will do you perfectly well.

So ... you think ... job done? Well, maybe. This is the basic control level of the phone...

Saving bits and pieces

2008-12-20T19:52:00.000Z

Obviously the extent to which you do this really depends on how much storage space you've got and how much you can get away with before the other half threatens to leave with the kids.

Personally, I've got a large picnic basket and that is where I keep my odds and sods for photography. It contains things which I otherwise wouldn't use in everyday life but I would actually use to suplement a photograph. For example, there are some cheap wine glasses there which aren't really that thick, but they look the business in a photograph. I wouldn't use a marble mortar and pessle, but they are in there too because I saw it going cheap in a shop and it appealed to me photographically.

Part of the key here is knowing what you're going to be taking pictures of, as some times a product or object can look just too clinical when it is put on a piece of colored card. Sometimes it needs that visual something to spice it up. While the pros have got flashy lights, gels and start shoot things on stunning reflective glass tables, the average amateur hasn't got that kind of equipment. The trick is to keep an eye out for those things which could wave that little magic wand in a picture.

A section of this comes down to what you're going to photograph the most and what really could do with pepping up the picture and making it different. It is actually forethought. It isn't restricted to product shots either; if you're going to an office party and you want shots of people under the mistletoe, then you need to think whether you can bank on mistletoe being there and, if not, taking some along. Try to use your past experience and think ahead.

This was also the case with a plastic Christmas tree which is now playing peek-a-boo out of the dustbin lid. I saved a few of the choice branches for use in photography. They're plastic so they'll keep and they'll also scrunch down for space saving.

Obviously, this technique doesn't work with everything. You can see that with the K20 which I helpfully plonked on the branches to try and flatten them.

But here is the kind of thing that can be achieved. I know it isn't exactly very artistic; like most things for this blog I threw it together in a hurry. I laid the plastic branches out, plonked a few pieces on it and took a picture. No, I didn't inform health and safety that I was lighting the bleedin' candle; or else I wouldn't have been able to take the picture until several forms had been filled out, the fire service had been informed and I had St. Johns Ambulance on standby in case I sprained my thumb operating the lighter.

... but it looks a lot better for not having been shot on a piece of green card; yes?

Image Quality Settings

2008-12-20T08:06:00.000Z

The quality setting on a camera determines how the camera deals with the image itself. You can see the difference here between a high quality image and a low quality image. You're looking at the background (top right) and also the mirror image in the phones display. See how blocky it gets, and how the colours loose cohesion?

The quality setting is behind the scenes and concerns how much space is used to store the image. It doesn't make any difference to taking the image itself, so you can't sacrifice image quality to gain speed or depth of field, therefore it makes sense to keep this option as high as you can get it. It is easy to confuse the thought process with ISO, but they are separate. Image quality is usually referred to in terms of low, medium, high, best, better and terms like that. Sometimes they are given, "star," ratings.

It does make a difference in picture quality and the space on the memory card, but not as much of a difference as lowering the resolution. I can't honestly think of any situation with a modern camera, where I would consider lowering the image quality setting from the maximum it is capable of.

Think of how you use a can crusher to reduce the space that the can will take in the recycle bin. It takes up less room, sure ... but now think that you want that can back, so you have to uncrush it ... there are going to be creases in the tin that you'll never get out. As you continue to crush and uncrush the can, it gets worse and worse.

That is what happens with your image. It eventually degrades to the point where it doesn't do its job and you can't stand to look at it.

Mode Shooting

2008-12-20T06:25:00.000Z

Many cameras have a, "mode selector," which helps you to tell the camera what you want it to do. Here are some of the most common modes and the most common interpretations of them that I've seen...

The "auto" mode is the "Green" mode and as such doesn't directly influence the camera. This is your way of telling the camera, "Just do what you can, and I promise not to throw you at the wall if you do a bad job."
"Spotrs" mode is where you're trying to capture fast action. The bias here is for the shutter speed to get a more favoured balancing to freeze motion. As most fast action takes place a fair distance away from the camera, it is possible that it will give quality more priority over aperture.

Portrait mode usually balances towards aperture because the camera wants to capture the depth of the face, like the bear face photos in the previous post. Sometimes secondary concern will be given to quality as well, but the camera still knows that you can't hand hold faster than 1/60th of a second, so in most indoor lighting conditions it is likely to try to use the flash.
Landscape is a big aperture hog as you're normally trying to need a wide depth of field to photograph a field. Geddit? Field? ... Don't worry. The depth of field is needed to capture detail both far away (at what is called "infinity") and also closer to the camera in the same shot. Quality is also high up in the stakes in a landscape shot, so the camera is likely to sacrifice the shutter speed ... be ready to use a tripod.
Theatre mode can be taken one of a number of ways, but the camera figures something like this ... "I'm in a social environment where it is likely dark and using flash would be frowned upon." so it knows that it needs to keep up the quality as there usually won't be much light around; although there are a number of different thoughts on this.
Night portrait mode is a real awkward situation. The camera now knows that it is dark and it will attempt to use its flash. At this point you are probably wondering why it is important to tell the camera why it is dark ... it should work out the lighting itself anyway, right? Well, extreme black and white will fool the cameras exposure system and it will get it wrong, which is why it is important to tell the camera about these things, so it makes the right adjustment.
Macro mode is a special mode that tells the camera that you want to take a picture of something that is much closer to the camera lens than usual. Rather than trying to zoom in to something, the best option is to use the macro mode. This is because the camera will usually make some adjustment to its lens to make it easier for you to shoot close up things. As for the balance, it could go any way. Depth of field is normally quite important in macro photography as, when the lenses are ajusted, there isn't much depth of field, so boosting the aperture is one of the most common considerations.

The Bermuda light triangle

2008-12-18T07:34:00.000Z

Now, this is going to look a bit daunting to some people, but it is the basic principle on which photography has always been based, and as long as we continue with the systems which we are currently using, it is still true today, so it is worth your while investing a few brain cells on this post.

Let me explain. I know it as a lighting triangle although others will know it under different names. The job of this diagram is to explain what the camera is having to do. Understanding the decisions that are being made here, will affect how you choose various controls on the camera. It is understanding these controls which will enable you to pull off some of the more difficult shots, so it is worth spending some time understanding this.

You start in the centre of the triangle. The more light you have, the further you can travel to the corners, but if you don't have much light, you can only go so far. Indeed, you can sacrifice one for another, but only to a degree.

The three points are these...

1) ISO - Image quality. If the sensor has to work harder to capture lower light, then the quality drops. Here, you can see the best quality (100) against the worst quality (1600) so if you let the camera chose this for itself, you might end up with an image that is no use to you whatsoever because it is far too noisy. You can see how the dark colours in the background quickly go to black and then turn to noise.

2) Shutter Speed - the ability to capture moving objects ... or even to take a hand held picture without blurring. The shutter is normally open for a fraction of a second. Nominally a hundredth of a second, or a 250th of a second ... that's quite fast. The camera is also programmed with a simple fact ... that if the average human being tries to hand hold a camera, then if it has to open the shutter for more than a 1/60th of a second, then the result will be a blurred image, like this one.

3) Aperture - depth of field, shooting a crowd of people without the people at the front or the back coming out blurred. Aperture is measured in what we call "f" stops - the lower the number, the more shallow the depth of field will be. To get a greater depth of field, needs more light. These two were taken at f4 and f8. The camera could actually have gone to f22, and I'd have had everything pin sharp if I had wanted, but the camera wanted me to hold it still for one and a half seconds ... which I would have had to use the tripod for.

Both of these pictures were actually focussed on the nose, but you can see how the eye is much sharper in the bottom picture and even the fur is starting to become less blurred.

So every time you take a picture, the camera has to make a decision how it is going to balance the three points of the triangle. The more light that is available, the better the picture it can make.

You, as the photographer, have your chance to affect the decisions that the camera makes through choosing the, "mode," of the picture. Your choices won't be able to affect how much light the camera has to work with (unless you turn on a light!) but you can affect the decision that the camera makes.

The next post will be about these different, "modes."

Mega Pixel Mania

2008-12-16T09:58:00.000Z

Barely can I open a photography magazine without seeing the latest camera sporting more megapixels than any other camera. They have, however, reached a point where wonderful pictures can be created from the sensors that were actually available some years ago. So what is the deal with megapixels?

Years ago, the quality issue of film versus digital was a serious matter. Indeed, with even the latest digital cameras the quality is argued to still be lower than medium format film. But that is an argument for another day. The key thing here is to give you a heads up on the kind of thing you can do with the megapixels that are available to you today.

This is a picture of what is available to you with a ten megapixel sensor, indeed one of my professional photographer friends says that he can achieve this with eight megapixels. It is a wall mountable picture 600mm by 400mm ... and that is the picture area, the frame area is on top of that. That's a lot of picture area.

But what are the overheads and do you need it? If you did, then WHEN would you need it and, more importantly, when can you do without it? The number of mega pixels you need also depends on your usage. If I'm taking a picture for this blog, for example, the largest they'll be is 500 x 800 pixels ... that's less than half a mega pixel! If you're printing the average 6'x4' family print from the local shop then two or three megapixels will more than suffice for that.

"That's rubbish!" you say. "I can just buy a massively large memory card and store whatever I want!" you say. "Ah!" says I, "but if you spend your money on a smaller card with a better performance, you'll get a better response."

"You what?" says you.

It's quite simple. When you take a picture, the camera processes it and then dumps the image to the card. The less data the camera has to dump to the card, the sooner it is ready for the next picture. With some things like landscapes and the odd snap of your friends, this isn't going to matter, but if you're shooting the kids sports day you're going to need the response.

Of course, the performance changes from camera to camera, so spending a little bit of time working out how your camera responds to different resolutions will be worth knowing to prevent you fouling up when you encounter a situaiton that needs the response.

How the blog will grow

2008-12-15T09:33:00.000Z

As the time goes on, we're going to look at a number of things including the choices you make when buying a camera, batteries, zooming, protection and all importantly taking control of the small number of elements that are available to you when you are using a lower end camera where almost everything is automatically done for you.

There is no real argument that even the basic modern camera can perform better for you, providing you know what the limtations are and when and how to get around them when you have the chance.

The main things that people seem to be using their cameras for are touristy snaps, family snaps, down the pub or club with the mates, watching the kids in the school play and putting pictures up on e-bay. Over time, I'm hoping that people come back to me with other questions that we can look at as well.

We're also going to have to get technical, compare the different cameras side by side on a number of counts and show their good and their bad points. The last thing you want to do is spend money on a camera which isn't right for you, but while the intention here isn't to point you at a specific piece of kit, you should end up knowing the questions to ask both the sales person and yourself when it comes to actually buying the equipment that you will be using to record your precious family memories.

We're also going to take a look at storage and printing your precious picures. My main job is I.T. and one of the things I get called to most often than not is a computer hard drive that has failed and taken all the family pictures with it.

So, we're going to really follow the whole gamut of amateure photography here. I will be including DSLR's in here so that people can compare things and know when they need to go forther, but I'm not intending to start going in to the heavy side of professional shooting and lighting. I'm going to keep this as everyday as I can.

A taste of what is to come

2008-12-13T11:57:00.001Z

Yes, I know you can probably taste this gorgeous bar of almond chocolate just by looking at it, but you KNOW that this isn't what I'm talking about! A taste of what is to come includes how to shoot very simple and quick things like this as well as using minimal lighting to improve the look of product shots that you want to take, whatever the reason. It has a hint more professionalism about it than suffering the floral background of your typical plastic kitchen table cloth, and it doesn't require anything seriously professional or much in the way of hard work either. This was done in about a minute with the cheap point and shoot, but most of my blog post pictures are actually done with the 3 mega pixel camera phone.

Truth be known, I should have taken the extra minute to screw the camera on to the tripod because it did come out a bit blurred, but no matter. The key to this is to have some sheets of large 300gsm paper around. The weight is a nice balance between stiff enough not to crease too easily, but also stiff enough to be able to act as a nice seamless paper. A desk lamp is used to light it and a sheet of white A4 is used to bounce some of the light back on to the bar.

We'll be going through things like this in more detail in later posts, including using light tents, desktop lamps and taking control of even the most basic point and shoot cameras to get a better class of product shot for your e-bay listings, web sites and blog posts.

I had to act fast, else I melted the chocolate; that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it ... the fact that the entire bar of chocolate no longer existed ten minutes later anyway is a mere inconvenience of the situation.

Breaking the Rules

2008-12-12T07:00:00.000Z

Of course, the rules of composition are there to be broken, but only once you understand what they are and how to break them. The classic is those shooting for media where a photographic assignment already has an intented target page.

In the media industry, they have a language all their own. If someone was sent out to shoot this, they would already know that it is destined for the front page before they arrive at the shoot. This is when, while composing, they would deliberately leave a gap at the top for the publication title.

The other typical instances also include when the whole subject fills the frame. The harder instances are where there are multiple subjects at drastically different heights; a family or group portrait is often one of them, making the process of trying to compose the shot very difficult indeed.

This shot is included just to show you that composition is done whatever camera you use. Here, I'm composing a shot of the bear with a camera phone. With the camera phone you have to do a bit of zooming with your feet, but it is all still perfectly possible and realistic; and also as important as if you were shooting with the flashiest DSLR.

Taking the shot opposite which was discarded in the previous post, now you can see how the gap at the top is available for a title without obscuring the face.

I was talking with someone time served in the newspaper industry and when they were told the jargon for where the picture was going to go, they would know where to leave spaces. They would even actualy darken specific areas of the picture to give the editor somewhere to put the text without messing up the photograph.

Fortunately, for most poeple, this kind of question won't, "crop," up, but cropping itself is an issue we'll tackle later on.

The other section I talked about was when the subject filled the whole page. Let's take a look at a couple of shots of this and see how, when dealing with a full frame subejct, leaving a very little even border around each edge, can break the rule of thirds and still make a good photograph...

You can argue that those two shots, despite showing the full subject, still have an element that is on the XO lines. Even that isn't true for these two shots where the subjects are dead centre and there isn't any supporting text anywhere. That firmly raises the question of why these pictures actually, "work," at all. The answer lies somewhere in the way that the background supports the foreground. In truth, it is one of those inexplicable thing of the human psyche and there are times where you really must ask yourself, "Is this a good shot?" and trust your own instincts.

Take Away

What you should be taking away from this information on composition is that there are rules which will help you compose a picture when you're not used to visualising the shot. Getting used to composing a picture will make your picture taking much faster, which will not only help you capture the moment, but your friends will also be grateful that they could get back to their own lives very much quicker.

That technique alone has led to my photography being described as, "painless," by one of my subjects. Practice equals speed, and speed equals a happy subject who will be more willing to pose in the future, as well as getting the target shot.

As you practice, (flowers, the family cat, a model train, anything) you'll find yourself starting to think about the photograph even before you've got to the point of shooting it ... and then, dear reader, you're hooked on becoming a photographer!

Simple Composition

2008-12-10T17:25:00.000Z

No matter what camera you're shooting, whether it be a DSLR with a viewfinder or a camera phone with a small LCD display on the back, the easiest and cheapest way to up the quality of your photographs is to learn how to compose your subject. In this case, I'm using my fluffy friends to illustrate what I'm talking about, because they're the only ones who will stay still long enough. Learning how to compose quickly will help you whether you want to get a picture of a single friend or a group of you at a pub.

The most effective tool to learn the basic rules of composition is something called, "The Rule Of Thirds." This is, basically, a case of splitting your camera screen up in to an XO grid and placing your main subject along one of the lines. It might sound stupid, but it has been a composition technique that has worked since the days of painters in the 1600's. Let's take a look...

This is a look at a portrait of a stuffed bear (Hey, don't complain, it didn't moan about a modelling fee!) which is one of the most favourite bears in my little collection. As you can see, I've disected the picture with the afforementioned lines. You can see how the main focus, the head, is disecting one of the lines.

It doesn't take too much to look at the two pictures below and see which one feels more natural, the one on the right which obeys the rule of thirds, or the one on the left with the face bang smack in the middle of the frame.

I don't think I've ever read an explanation as to why this is the case, but it certainly seems to work. Indeed, it is such a powerful compositional tool that many SLR cameras have grids which, when you look through the eye piece, have some form of segmented grid super imposed on them so you can compose more quickly.

The other thing that you'll notice about that picture is that the camera is about level with the subjects face. These next two shots show how, if you were in a pub taking a picture of all your friends, it pays to squat down to take the picture, as opposed to standing up and pointing the camera down at their faces. You'll also notice that the head is, once again, not in the centre of the frame, but much closer to the XO line.

So, as a result of this lesson, no matter what camera you are using, you should be practicing you're composition. Heads between the center and the top of the frame, and get level with the heads of the people you are shooting.

If you practice this simple compositional rule, then you'll start to do it automatically and you should see an immediate pay off in the pictures you're taking. As we're coming up to Christmas, it is a technique which should pay dividends when taking pictures of your works party or family get togethers.

Shoot Green

2008-12-10T14:48:00.001Z

The, "Green," setting on a camera is the fully automatic setting. Hence the name of the blog. This blog is aimed at people who have bought cameras, be it a digital SLR, a point and shoot, right down to a camera phone. The box has been opened and there, within, is a wonderful book that tells you what all the buttons do, but not how to use them.

This blog will take the reader through some of the basics of stills photography in this age where digital media is changing so rapidly.

Who am I? Well, I'm an amateure photographer and I journal my life in Shutter-Fug but I have been approached so frequently over the last few years to teach people the basics of photography, that I thought I would write a book. In putting it together, the shear weight of photographs needed to bring many of the discussions to life would take it well beyond a commercially viable production. So ... blogging seems to be the only viable way to work this out.

I'm still trying to gather the necessary cameras to gear up for this, but I'm aiming at the following ...

A low-end camera phone (Samsung U700 - got)

A quality camera phone (Samsung i8510 - got)

A lower end point and shoot (HP Photosmart R847 - got)

A high end point and shoot (Canon G10)

A low end DSLR (Pentax *istDS - got)

A high end DSLR (Pentax K20d - got)

...so only one more device to source and the blog will be ready to rock and roll. The first lesson will be the all-important, "composition."