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The Complete Guide To Photographing Fine-Art Nudë

Shivanand Sharma — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 15:00:09 +0000

Morning bell by Kr. B.

This is a multi-part post on photographing fine art nudes. Due to the nature of the topic some people may find this topic offensive. So if you are underage or feel uncomfortable with this topics you may want to skip this post. Several readers have expressed interest in this particular photographing fine-art-nudes. So here’s a post covering the subject in its entirety. The post shall be published in several parts and here’s Part I of this post.

Artistic Expression vs. Profane: If you are just starting, there are good chances that the works may have little or barely noticeable dimension of art. Thus you run the risk of having your hard-work mistaken for profanity. Try to make the art obvious. And one way to do this is by intellectualizing. Getting started along the right path shall help you get along with the initial phase which may not be an easy one. As a photographer you must build the imagination and foresight to be able to overlook the realm of color and reality and visualize the subject in the context of aesthetics and artistic expression.
The Model: If you are starting out, hiring an experienced model with help ease the air of tension and stress which builds around when working on intimate poses with a stranger. Additionally it will also give you an opportunity to draw from the experience of the model help you get started.
Interpersonal Communication With The Model: Keep the communication open, light yet professional. This shall ease up the model and make them comfortable working with you. Small talk helps. Also ensure that the model is physically comfortable in the environment so ensure proper room temperature etc. Remember they are working without any cover to their body.
The Modal Release Agreement: The modal release agreement defines the copyright usage, exceptions to it and other declarations and agreement between the photographer and the model. This is a legal document and the details should be worked out in consultation with a lawyer. The model release is signed on a per session basis. Nude photographs can be a subject of litigation for several reasons including “invasion of privacy”. Ensure that the legalese is proper and avoid working with under-aged models in all circumstances.
The Landscape: The human body is analogous to a landscape in more than one ways. Visualize the human body and explore your subject from various angles. Pose them against various angles and quality of light to realize the potential of a work of art.
Sensuality: The human body as a living (and lively) subject can be very expressive. Experimenting with the expressions of the sensuality of the human body can bring out some creative and interesting results. Try to explore the feel and intensity of the human skin, the hair strands, the texture to the liveliness of the human.
Plan the Session: Plan your session in advance in preparation of the shooting. Most of the times during such occasions, creativity doesn’t yield the expected results easily and it requires some getting used to and quite some vision and foresight. Keep scope for creativity in your planned session as you never know when creative ideas strike.
Expression: Expressions add life to a photograph. Eyes are the most expressive part of the human body and when combined with the complete human frame the intensity of the expression is enhanced. Expression is the communication — the language of any art-form. The more expressive your photographs, the more interesting and impressive they come out to be.
Use Black & White: Black and white helps you overlook the explicit and look into the world of aesthetics. It rules out most distractions that can be intrusive and kill the artistic expression of a work. Thus subtle qualities like reflections, contrast, etc. get highlighted thereby enhancing the quality of the photographic-work. Eliminating the color also helps keep the distractions to the viewer’s eye to a minimum while bringing focus to the subject.
Motherhood: Motherhood is an special occasion for the human body. Such phases give you an opportunity to capture and portray the human body from a unique perspective. There is a lot of emotion and life to such works when executed efficiently. Additionally photographs of pregnancy and motherhood are more welcomed and well received than the fine art works of nudity often because of cultural outlook of the societies.

Now that we are through with the basics, we’ll be exploring a lot of technique and skill in the upcoming part of this series. We hope you find this post informative and we welcome you to provide your inputs and point out omissions if any for the sake of completeness. Keep watching this space and if you like do subscribe to keep up with the latest posts here.

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Serious Photography: 10 Advanced Form Of Photography

poonam — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:38:04 +0000

"Reluctant Nude" by hall.chris25

While photographing day-to-day scenes are fun, there are several special, unique, artistic and field-specific forms of photography which require art and skill beyond photography itself. Here are 10 such advanced forms of photography which are relatively unfamiliar.

Aerial photography: This involves capturing the earth’s structures as viewed from elevated positions. Don’t be confused with the name, it just refers to those photographs which cannot be taken from land itself. Various platforms for aerial photography can be helicopters, balloons, aircraft, parachutes etc.
Astro-Photography: This photography relates to capturing the celestial bodies invisible to the human eye such as stars, galaxies, nebulae, etc. For this, you need powerful telescopic lenses mounted in a fixed position or on a tripod.
Aviation Photography: This form of photography is used for aviation purposes. It specializes in capturing the images of aircraft either flying or on ground. Depending on the location and position of the camera and the subject, this can further be classified into many forms like air-to-air, ground-to-air, ground-static, etc.
Fine Art Nude: Nude photography is an art to capture the naked body as a landscape. There are various photographic aspects to the human body. A photograph of a person that is meant to be recognized is called a portrait and nude photographs often do not show a face at all.
Photojournalism: It is specific part of journalism. It depicts those images which convey a story about a particular event, concept, phenomenon, etc. Photojournalism is trivially distinguished from documentary, street, panorama, banquet photography but the concept is similar.
Conceptual Photography: Conceptual photography focuses on a concept or an idea to describe and explore a particular theme, subject or topic.
Infrared Photography: Some films and (almost all) image sensors are sensitive to infrared light, if you want to filter out the visible spectrum of light and allow only infrared then you can use infrared filters. It gives a black and deep red effect, which can be converted to black and white, etc. Infrared photographs convey a lot of what you can’t see normally with your eyes.
Underwater Photography: Photographing subjects under water — in this photography, you find unique and vastly unexplored subjects like fish, marine animals, seascapes to shoot. Imagination and observation here become a challenge; you require special equipment and techniques to capture images. One of the biggest problems faced during photography is the loss of colors and contrast because the wavelength of sunlight is easily absorbed by the surrounding water. Thus even with the naked eyes, only the blue- green tones are visible and it becomes quite a challenge to capture other hues.

Swarm of Anthias by Erwin Kodiat
Ultraviolet Photography: Similar to infrared photography, if you only want to capture the ultraviolet spectrum of light then you can use the ultraviolet(UV) filters. An ultraviolet filter blocks all colors and allows only ultraviolet wavelengths to pass to the camera sensor.
Panorama Photography: It is a technique to capture images with stretched field of view. It is also called “wide format photography”. In a scene or composition when you want to capture a horizontally (or vertically) extended field-of-view, the shots are taken in parts and stitched together using a software to recreate the entire scene (which could not be composed/captured in a single shot).

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Time Lapse Photography: Tell A Story In A Sequence Of Shots

ruchika — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 13:27:42 +0000

You may have watched the videos of a blooming flower, melting ice, sunset or sunrise or the life cycle of a tree? Even you can give a try to something like making a video of growing grass or capture the busy market place with your camera. This technique is called Time-Lapse Photography. Time lapse photography is a sequence of shots over a period of time covering a particular event. These images can be arranged into a video or can be creatively super-imposed.

Here are 6 tips on how to get going with time-lapse photography.

Choose And Visualize The Event: The first and the foremost step is to decide on what event you want to cover. Is it a fast moving action or a gradual change? The entire photo shoot rests on this decision. If you want to cover some spontaneous act, you need to set your camera on tripod in continuous mode by setting the specific time interval. Some of the newer cameras have this feature built-in. Just in case your camera doesn’t offer this feature, you can use an intervalometer. And if you want to visualize a slow gradual change like growing of a seed into a plant, then you can periodically capture the process.
Tweak Your Camera Settings : The next important thing you need to do is to set your camera right. Just 3 settings and you are ready — ready to capture your event in pieces of information that will finally shape up your video.
- Depending on the size of the memory card in your camera set your camera to record JPG. RAW can eat up lots of memory space. Sometimes it is advisable to shoot RAW, for a better post-processing. Also cameras perform faster when shooting JPGs but this shouldn’t be a problem in newer DSLRs.
- Set your camera’s mode to manual to be able to control all the nuances. This helps you choose and fix your settings across the entire sequence avoiding any changes during camera’s auto modes. Thus, the DOF, shutter speed, white balance remain constant.
- Set ISO to auto so that the camera can compensate for the fixed shutter speed and aperture to ensure proper exposure. In case of high ISO, grainy and noisy images you can correct them during post-processing.
Spend Time On Post-Production: Once you have the photographs on your PC, you can start giving the final touches by cropping them or making the desired corrections. Sometimes these changes need to be applied to the entire sequence (cropping, etc); at other times you may want to make changes to only particular shots in the sequence. You can use Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom, GIMP, Aperture (Mac) or any image editor of your choice. You can even batch process the pictures. Format them to your requirement.
Compile A Video: Fire up Photoshop and turn your hard work into a well covered event crunched into a short span of time. You can use Adobe Photoshop, iMovie or Apple’s QuickTime Pro whichever you find easy.
OR Superimpose: Sometimes you can take your creativity to the next level and super-impose the images narrating the entire story in a single shot. Usually this can be done when the subject moves across various parts of the frame.
Review: Once you are ready with your video, its time for a review of your task. Review the entire sequence or video and make any final changes.
Showcase The Final Result: Take pride in your final masterpiece. There are poor chances of admiration of an art-work which is not admired by its master. Time-lapse photography is an advanced technique and a creative form of photography, narrating a story of the event.

Time for you to plan for your time lapse photography session.

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6 Tips: Using Natural Framing In Your Photographs

poonam — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 11:19:42 +0000

Natural framing is a composition technique through which you draw the eye and create interest and mood in a photograph. Natural objects in your surroundings can be effectively used as frames. All you need is some observation and an imaginative eye. Here are a few tips to give your photographs the beauty of natural frames.

Use Foregrounds: Foregrounds add a view-point to the photograph. They tell the story through the perspective of the photographer. Use foregrounds to point the viewer’s eyes to the subject. Avoid distracting foregrounds to keep the compositions focus on the subject rather than away from it.
Use Of Natural Bodies: Use natural bodies like windows, doors, low hanging branches, fences, bridges, cave like openings. Natural things always give a special effect to the subject. It draws the viewer’s attention to the subject.
Depth of field: A high DOF brings a larger part of the image into focus. Thus, consider using an small aperture setting to get a high depth of field. Don’t be afraid to experiment with narrow DOF.
Use Other Composition Techniques: Contrast, patterns and shapes add interest to your photograph. Intelligent composition and use of patterns and symmetrical frames naturally add symmetry and interest through patterns. Make sure that the subject gets exposed properly and that the frame does not affect the metering. Try to follow the rule of thirds or experiment with the golden ratio.
Tell A Story: Framing guides the eye to the subject, it portrays perspective and adds to the mood of the photograph. It draws the viewer’s eyes to focus inside the photograph rather than outside it. Use a natural frame to tell a story through your photograph. Experiment with silhouettes for additional effects.
Incomplete Frames: It is not mandatory to use complete natural frames. Sometimes we can use the half or a part of the frame also to emphasize the subject. There are many ways to capture an incomplete frame and you can frame with tree trunks on each side, two walls coming towards each other, etc.

Natural frames are everywhere as soon as your eye starts looking for them. Effective use of natural framing shall enhance interest in your photographs, add to the mood and naturally draws the viewer’s eye to the subject while adding a context to your story — the photograph.

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What Every photographer Ought to Know About Exposure Compensation

Shivanand Sharma — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 18:10:11 +0000

Today’s cameras are the the know-it-all kind of equipment — they have everything built-in to help you get the correct exposure. But as they say they are machines. Cameras don’t make photographs you do. Cameras only aid you in getting it right. And for that matter the definition of right and wrong is very flexible in the field of art. The cameras expose to get a well illuminated photograph of the subject. All is well until you want to get creative. And that is when you have to take control of the settings.

Many recommend learning to use manual exposure settings and getting used to them. But then for something as trivial as exposure why do you need to fiddle with ISO, aperture, shutter speed or bracketing? Not unless you want to get creative.

What is Exposure Compensation

The exposure compensation control is one such setting that saves you fiddling with ISO, aperture, shutter speed or bracketing and get the exposure of your choice. This comes in very handy when you just want to underexpose or overexpose a particular scene at your will. Depending on the mode that your are shooting in the exposure compensation will vary the shutter speed or the aperture automatically. For example let’s say you want to shoot in aperture priority mode. This means you want to take control of the depth-of-field. Thus using the exposure compensation will leave the aperture to the setting of your choice and alter the shutter speed instead.

Uses of Exposure Compensation

Capturing challenging lighting conditions

For certain scenes the smart camera is really dumb. For example, for an evening scene the camera will automatically set the exposure so that the shot is well illuminated. This results in a scene which looks similar to shot on a bright cloudy day – no harsh light but still so much that it doesn’t look like the evening any more. Setting the exposure compensation to -1 or -2 will help you bring down the exposure level to portray the scene correctly. Also see how you can portray weather and various levels of light.
Fine-tuning

At times you may not really like the default results of the camera. If you feel your shots are overexposed or underexposed in most situations you can change the exposure compensation by 1/3 stop or 1/2 stop.
Getting the Colors right

That red of the sunset will never come out right unless you set the exposure compensation to negative (i.e. -1 or -2 – your mileage may vary). Or you could bracket at the cost of wasted storage space. Hint: underexposing leads to darker colors. Overexposing leads to washed out colors. In other words the more the level of white (light/illumination), the less the level of colors. Or you could slightly underexpose to exaggerate the colors.

This was a sunset for which I had to climb 342 feet. I toiled around all day for a location and waited till the evening to get the light just right.

Setting the exposure compensation to one stop less gave me the strong red that I was expecting. It would have ruined the entire shot if I hadn’t used exposure compensation. Not only the cloud have a golden line, they look more three dimensional.
Using Shutter speed to your advantage

If you are shooting a low-light scene in the aperture priority mode, shooting RAW at high ISO and a negative exposure compensation (-2) gives you several stops (2 stops) of critical shutter speed. This means you have two extra stops of ability to freeze action in low-light. Isn’t that great! You will have to bring out some shadow details in the RAW editing program.
Using Aperture to your advantage

If you are shooting a low-light scene in the shutter priority mode, shooting RAW at high ISO and a negative exposure compensation (-2) gives you several stops (2 stops) of critical aperture. This means you can shoot at smaller aperture and gain more depth-of-field that you would without exposure compensation. You again will have to bring out the shadow details in the RAW editing program.

There is no such thing as an absolutely correct exposure. Unless you do something funny and obvious like shooting a portrait resulting in an unilluminated subject in the photograph (which makes it quite obvious to point out that you faulted), the right exposure is ideally the choice of the photographer. It is his expression – what he wants to capture or the feel and mood he wants to bring into the image. Exposure compensation button comes in handy

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HDR with any camera: Take control of the Dynamic range like a pro

Shivanand Sharma — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 15:46:32 +0000

HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography is the in-thing. If you are new to the subject do read more about what HDR photography is. So while HDR seems like a lot of fun and beauty, it looks surreal but fake. There are photographers going crazy trying to shoot HDR, bracketing trying to dodge the science behind capture, screen and print media. Some spend endless hours comparing the dynamic range specs of the latest cameras. Do you ever wonder how the pros spend this time? No wonder – they spend their time shooting beautiful pics which put the HDR to shame. The pros know all about HDR and they know what it takes to picture the extended dynamic range. Wondering how? Well that’s a secret you know… (just kidding).

Get the lighting right

Books have been written about the subject. It’s all about light. You have the right light means you capture the right light. There’s not much you can do to try capture bad light. If it’s a landscape look for the right time to get the light right. If it is indoors arrange the lights to your advantage.
Shooting against light
- Dark foreground against bright background
  
  Depending of the lighting conditions you may want to use a GND filter or the Graduated Neutral Density filter. This will help you tone down the highlights to bring the dynamic range of the scene in control. Here’s a before and after example.
  
  Here’s what I got after I put on the GND filter.
- Dark faces against bright background
  
  Light up the bulbs at the right places – that translates into using a good flash.
Get your metering right

Sometimes it is important to shoot in spot-metering, sometimes it is important to shoot in matrix/evaluative metering. Metering does not end there. Take control of the exposure compensation button and set the camera exposure right.

Sorry to disappoint if you expected more. There’s no better way to capture dynamic range than to tone it down. All the above methods do the same in their own ways. The outcome is real and beautiful unlike the fake HDR images that you see around. They are fake because no monitor can show you the scene in its true dynamic range yet – it’s a technical limitation. You want to be like the pros – use the techniques of the pros.

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White balance: Unlocking the secret to great color

Shivanand Sharma — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 15:22:54 +0000

White Balance is one of the most neglected controls on a digital camera. You can tweak settings like contrast and sharpness etc. but most of us still choose to set the white-balance to auto. While white-balance is used to correct the color temperature of the pictures, it is a very powerful tool to manipulate your photographs for some extraordinary effects- or even more original for that matter. Take the following image for example. I shot it in on a clear blue late morning with my D80 set to auto white-balance.

Compare the above to the following. See how the sky looks more neutral and the yellow of the flowers pops out. Done as a part of post processing, it’s best to neutralize white at the source or in-camera.

The reason this happens is that all cameras have different settings. Shooting under different kinds of lights changes white balance too. Thus the only way to get the perfect white balance is to painfully fix it during post-processing for every image.

Or, you could use filters depending upon the scene. That’s what filters are made for. When under a strong clear blue sky, you get cooler (more bluish) images due to the sky reflecting back on the scene. Depending on whether you are shooting indoors under the light you may get a warm color cast. These can be removed in-camera by using warming or cooling filters.

Welcome to the digital age. There’s another way to do it without filters. Depending on your camera you may have the ability to tune white balance and make it warm or cool. You can also do it in-camera as a post-processing step. Some cameras offer the ability to use a preset white balance or measure it in the scene.

So far the main idea is only to neutralize the color temperature. However some of the surreal effects are often achieved by choosing a custom white-balance not in the favor of neutrality but to blow the colors to your preference. After all photography is not only a science but also an art – an art to visualize the results before you shoot photographs. Here’s another image I shot with my D80 in the evening. This temple is built of white marble and was already glowing warm during the sunset after a rain under red clouds. Pretty much everything seems fine. Shot under the magic light, the marble glows beautifully.

But this is not what I visualized to achieve under magic light. I applied a warm filter (85 ) in Photoshop. The glow is prof0und yet subtle.

Warming up the warm colors and leaving the cool ones alone is what makes Fuji Velvia 50 the world’s standard for nature and landscape photography.

Beware it is too easy to overdo this. Using filters to do it in-camera keeps things in check. The main idea is to know the effects of the light you are shooting in. To extend it further feel free to experiment and bring out results that are truly what you feel look great – it’s your art and expression after all.

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Demystifying HDR: High Dynamic Range Myths and Truths

Shivanand Sharma — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:55:00 +0000

High Dynamic Range photography is a very interesting aspect of photography. HDR photos being out the never-see-before details in the photograph making it life-like. This post is dedicated to the subject and is an effort to shed light on some of the lesser known truths about HDR photography.

What is dynamic range?

Dynamic Range of a device signifies the ratio between the maximum and minimum brightness levels that a device can capture or render. Dynamic range is measured in f-stops or EV (exposure value) which is expressed in the power of two. Thus a dynamic range of 10 stops is 2¹⁰ = 1024 levels of brightness.

The dynamic range of the camera

Typically DSRLs have a dynamic range of 5-6 f-stops but it varies by the manufacturer. Film cameras have a higher dynamic range with black and white topping out at 9 stops. Thus from all the available levels of light in the original scene the cameras can only capture a limited range.

When you change the exposure (aperture, shutterspeed, ISO) you are basically shifting the dynamic range of the camera towards or away from the dark or the bright side thereby being able to capture daytime scenes or nighttime scenes. Due to the limited dynamic range of the camera, the less-than-dark levels of light are rendered dark and less-than-bright levels are rendered bright and the clipping occurs as evident in the histogram. This is better explained through an analogy. The human eye has an approximate dynamic range of 24 stops which is still limited as compared to the available light. The eye adapts to the available light depending on whether it is dark or bright which is similar to what happens when you vary the exposure of the camera. When you look at the sun the eyes are blinded which is what happens to the camera when it meters for the shadows and the highlights bloom out. On the other hand once your eyes adapt to seeing the sun you are again blinded when you look away. The camera similarly meters the underexposed as dark when trying to expose for the highlights.

Reproducing an HDR scene

There are two phases to this the first being capturing and the second being rendering. Ideally in order to reproduce a scene with its complete dynamic range you need a device that is not blinded by the sun or the shadows. You will need a monitor that can shine as bright as the sun (the sun being the brightest natural source of light and thus referenced as the upper limit) and render the darkest black levels in the shadows.

The dynamic range of the monitor

The term used to measure the dynamic range of the monitors is the contrast ratio however all monitors render 256 levels of brightness which is 2⁸ = 256 or 8 stops of dynamic range. (Another way to verify is to see how the rgb color space works – 0 is black while 255 is white).

The secret behind the so-called HDRs

On the face of it, it is nothing more than illusion. With the limited dynamic range of cameras and monitors what you see as HDR is nothing more than image manipulation. To render these HDRs multiple exposures are taken from a camera with varying f-stops. Thus each shot captures a different dynamic range. These are then blended to compose a single image which contains a greater level of dynamic range but still pretty much useless because of the bottleneck the dynamic range of the monitor poses. To get around this “Tone Mapping” is used more popularly known as curve manipulation is Photoshop. This is nothing more than mapping the darker areas in the image to render brighter thus visible on the monitor.

Making a real HDR

People have managed to capture a larger dynamic range with multiple exposure however the rendering is limited by the performance of the monitors. But technology is evolving fast. Brightside has been working on something promising. It has come out with a monitor which uses individual LEDs instead of a single bulb back-lighting the screen. This results in a very high bright screen with a very high contrast ratio. As time passes we’ll see more of such devices. Till then you cna play around with the so called High Dynamic Range images which are nothing more than surreal looking illusions of tome mapping or the more toned down, muted and realistic HDRs which look closer.

Photo by alexkess used under CC.

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Portraying weather and various levels of light

Shivanand Sharma — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:42:35 +0000

A high-key image by Ninja Please! (CC).

The topic needs some explanation before we proceed to the finer details. It is one thing to shoot a subject in various levels of light however when light itself is the subject, the entire gamut of generic rules take a paradigm shift.

Long time back in the earlier days of my fascination with photography, I choose to shoot a sunset scene. I set all the settings to auto and clicked. To my amazement the result looked like an afternoon scene. The camera had compensated for the low-light conditions by setting a longer exposure.

A low-key image by vincent-b (CC)

Limitations of light meters: The camera’s light-meter has several fundamental limitations when it comes to portraying levels of light. The camera tries to meter the reflected light and compensate for the levels by setting the right exposure. Thus if you are shooting pure black, the camera sets a longer exposure to compensate for the low light coming in and the result is a gray color. Similarly when shooting pure white, the camera again compensates for the brightness thereby resulting in a gray color. So what do you do when you have to portray a dark environment? This image has to be underexposed and show up as a low-key image in the histogram.
Unreliable metering. The camera’s built-in light meter is a reflected-light-meter. It used the light reflected off the subject’s surface to meter the lighting conditions. They try to adjust the exposure until the tones add up to mid-gray. But pure white is not gray and neither is black.
Overriding the camera meter: This situation necessitates overriding the light meter. A sunset has to be a low-key image and show up as underexposed. There are several ways to get such scenes right:
- Bracketing: Most of the DSLRs allow bracketing. The underexposed image will be pretty close to the original scene. The same goes for the high-key images – the overexposed image will be close to the original.
- Manually Underexposing and Overexposing: This is tricky and comes with experience. Here you are overriding the automatic settings and choosing the settings manually. Depending on the scene, if you are shooting a moving scene you may want to alter the aperture to control the light. This will make sure that you do not change the shutter-speed and introduce or reduce the intended blur or freezing of motion. For a static scene you can alter the shutter-speed as you may not want to disturb the chosen depth-of-field. However depending on the conditions similar effects can be received by altering the ISO as well.

Challenging weather conditions and light-levels like a bright desert-noon or a sunset demand creative use of controls. When light itself is the subject you must know when to take control of these controls.

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Black and White Photography-III: Utilizing the power of colors

Shivanand Sharma — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:42:19 +0000

Used under CC by isdky

Post-processing is not the choice of purists. But if you’ve chosen to shoot in color and convert to black and white, it is a part of the deal. Welcome to the third part of the series on Black and White Photography which comes after a big pause – let’s welcome a new member in the family In part 1 we saw how classy black and white photography is. In part 2 we explored all the elements of composition in black and white photography.

To have better control for black and white processing it is advised to capture as much information as possible which we can use later to our advantage. Thus shooting in RAW and color is recommended. This allows for great flexibility in post processing. However in this particular context, shooting in color has its distinct advantages. The presence of color information allows us to alter it for our purpose and bring out the results to our preference. Let’s see how we can do so.

Converting color into black and white takes new dimensions when it comes to playing with hues and saturation. Here are the various ways you can convert into black and white.

Basic: The easiest and the most straight forward way to convert color into black and white is to desaturate the colors in the image. This will give results identical to what the (black and white) camera sees.
Advanced: When you have colors in your image you can artificially alter the colors to get a desired effect in contrast etc. when you alter various parameters related to color like hue and saturation.

Advanced black and white conversion

Changing Hue: Hue is another term for color. A shifting in the hue results in different colors. With the colors manipulated the areas is the grayscale image will change colors resulting in different contrast and lightness. This gives you the flexibility and control over contrast and toning of the final grayscale image by shifting the hue in the image.
Channel Mixing: All images are composed of three basic colors red, blue and green. When you are editing these images in the RGB mode you have access to these channels and the ability to manipulate them. This gives you the digital ability equivalent to using color filters for shooting black and white. A detailed step-by-step procedure is beyond the scope of this article and will be a suitable topic for a dedicated post.
Toning or Changing Saturation: While we are at it it is worth mentioning that conversion to black and white doesn’t have to be complete. Certain pictures may look devoid of mood when showcased in complete black and white. A way around is to tone down the saturation to minimum while retaining a small amount of color. You can also choose to remove color completely and bring in a low tint tint of any particular color. Sepia looks great and the options are only limited by your creativity. Sometimes toning may result introducing a mood that you never expected.

As a last note its worth mentioning that advanced conversion to black and white may introduce artifacts and make the picture seem unnatural. It is thus best to learn the basics, take your time getting used to black and white conversion and only then step into risky waters. Keep the post processing to a minimum to retain the originality in the picture and before starting, always reiterate the final effect you want to achieve.

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Black and white photography-II: What to photograph beyond the colors

Shivanand Sharma — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 15:36:54 +0000

Once you’re ready to look beyond the colors you’ll discover the beauty of the colorless world. Welcome to the second part of the Black and White Photography series. In Part I we saw how black and white photography fell a class apart from the colorful world, the kind of challenges black and white photography poses and a brief introduction to looking beyond colors.

When shooting in black and white it is essential that you have a solid foundation on the very basics of photography, explore creatively, learn and then experiment. This post covers and summarizes various features and elements that you can highlight in your photographs to achieve the target results and draw viewers attention to your work. Most of these can broadly be classified into three components – composition, details and effects. Let’s get familiar with features and elements that you can highlight in black and whites.

Composition:

It is all about what you capture in the shot, what you choose to highlight and what you choose to leave out. Your viewpoint and what you frame – all is a pert of composition.
- Simplicity: Too much clutter distracts attention from the subject. Simplicity aids viewers’ interest and brings elegance to the picture.
- Rule of thirds: The rule of thirds guides you on how to place the subject at naturally pleasing positions in the frame to draw more interest and attention from viewers.
- The Golden Ratio: Just like the rule of thirds, the golden ration is another rule that guides you on positioning the subject such that the areas in the image form pleasing proportions and add a sense of natural balance to the picture.
- Lines: Lines lead the eyes. Vertical lines convey strength. Horizontal lines convey balance. Diagonal lines guide the eye and curves emphasize sensuality.
- Framing: Adding a natural frame to the image adds depth to the otherwise two dimensional view.
- Perspective: Perspective helps draw a lot of interest as it allows viewers to explore and appreciate the subject from newer viewpoints.
Details:
- Shades and Tones: Shades and tones are what the colors are in colored images. Shades and tones add definition to the image and various areas of the picture while developing an overall mood of the scene.
- Patterns: Patterns steal interest, can form the mood of the picture, emphasize energy and hypnotize the viewers. Used judiciously they are a very strong tool and make excellent subjects. However generally when not forming the main subject they are often distracting at the best.
- Shapes: Shapes distribute energy, create or offset the balance. They make excellent abstractions.
- Textures: Textures add fineness, sharpness and detail to the image.
Effects:
- Depth of Field: A narrow depth of field helps eliminate the subject from the background and introduces softness in the image. A high depth of field adds sharpness to the overall image.
- Blur: Blur emphasizes motion. Generally avoided, when intentionally introduced in the image a slight blur in the river water would liven up the image and add the perception of flowing water in the otherwise frozen waves and water reflections.
- Filters: Filter effects are often used to transform particular colors to shades and help distinguish various areas while adding definition to the image.
- Silhouettes: Silhouettes make excellent abstractions and create a strong mood in the image. The subject is totally black with a background light blinding the camera lens.
- Exposure: Overexposure and underexposure bring out details from the otherwise overshadowed or washed out areas at the cost of loosing details visible to the naked eye. They create some unique effects when used creatively.
- Quality of Light: A hard or soft light is often used to emphasize the mood, defining shapes and figures or highlighting the various areas of the subject.
- Direction of Light: Direction of light can help you highlight texture or create impressions of horror or mystery.
- Vignette Frames: Vignette frames redirect the attention to the subject and add a classy touch to the picture.
- Contrast: Contrast is the difference between the highlights and the shadows. A higher contrast forms a clearer image wherein various elements in the scene are clearly stand out. A lower contrast creates a softer image but also increases the risk of losing out a lot of tones and shades.
- Transparency: Transparency emphasize clarity and purity while making interesting subjects.
- Reflections and shadows: Reflections allude and hypnotize while shadows form abstract figures and form the mood of the picture.
- HDR: High dynamic range while visually captivating captures and retains more tones and shades than a regular image. They look more natural and life-like.
- Digital Manipulation: Other digital effects like image-overlays make abstract forms, moods or relations between the two overlays. It doesn’t even have to be black and white; desaturating the colors to the minimum while leaving a touch of hue created different mood depending on the hue. So experiment and break the rules.

While this list is not exhaustive it certainly highlights the fact that there’s lot beyond the colors which the human eye appreciates. Effectively photographing keeping in mind the above elements and guidelines will certainly get you some outstanding results.

Continue to part 3.

Photo by ~jjjohn~ used under CC.

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Black and white photography-I: Classy timeless pictures

Shivanand Sharma — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 16:10:26 +0000

Black and white photography – An Introduction

The language of grays is classy, timeless, moody, artistic and captivating. Black and white pictures draw a lot of viewers’ interest, attention and reaction. Color photographs tend to be boring at times because they are the same what our eyes see day and night. Unlike color photographs, black and white photographs speak a different language – they portray the same information in a different style and draw our eyes to elements and traits that our eyes don’t generally notice. They take out the dimension of color and showcase light, tones, texture, mood and time in a prominent manner. Of all these traits, the lack of color and the timelessness in black and white photographs capture the interest of even the ignoramous. Let’s delve into the colorless world in this part-I of a two part article.

Getting ready to sacrifice colors

This can be difficult for some. Especially if you are starting out. Black and white may just not appeal to you or you may like color better. Also visualizing in black and white is challenging and comes with experience. With digital capture it’s a matter of seeing the final results instantly. However there is greater difference between the reality and the results when shooting film. However this assessment need not be left to the camera. It is important to know what you want in the final result and what you are going for. Choose your location and subject accordingly. In black and white there’s no color to mark and differentiate between different areas in the image. Also two contrasting colors will result in the same gray level in the final print. It is thus important to start seeing in terms of luminance (brigntness or lightness) or various colors and areas in the image instead of chroma or color. So if I may, let me mention the RGB and HSL color-spaces here.

All image information can be represented in either of these color-spaces however there’s a considerable difference the way these color-spaces represent information. In the RGB color-space all image information is represented in terms of the red, green and blue colors. All other colors are a combination of two or more of these three basic components. In a gray (black and white) image all these three components are equal. Thus RGB is not very helpful if we try to draw analogy with respect to black and white images. HSL is another color-space which represents image-information in terms of hue (the color), saturation (the amount of color) and luminance (the brightness). When it comes to black and white, only the luminance component matters in the HSL color-space. We thus need to visualize in terms of lightness or brightness of the color instead of the color itself.

Once you are ready to look beyond colors you will be able to appreciate subtler qualities like geometry, shapes, textures, tones and the mood. It is these qualities that build the interest in the picture and convey a message. Thus it is important to have a firm understanding of the basics like composition, exposure etc.

Considerations in digital capture

With digital capture there are more technicalities to consider than while shooting film. One important decision to make is whether you want to shoot black and white or whether you want to shoot in color and do the conversion as a part of post processing. Manual conversion during post processing can be and overhead but allows great flexibility in differentiating and manipulating tones based of color. Whereas levels are pretty much all that you can play around while post-processing black and whites.

Filters add another aspect to black and white photography. The principle behind the use of color filters is simple – a filter allows a certain color to pass through while blocking others totally or partially. Thus as an example a yellow filter will block a lot of the color of sky thereby darkening the sky in the final result. It will also enhance the yellow areas in the picture whereby brightening them up into almost white. That’s quite as simple as it gets. A judicious use of correct filters can aid you in differentiating different tones based on the real colors in the original scene or subject.

It is also important to decide on the image format which you want to shoot in.

Conclusion

Black and white images put a photogapher’s skills to test. Black and white images are classy and are appreciated as art masterpieces by the connoisseurs. It is thus important to understand the basics and essentials. As we shall see in the second part, it is of prime importance that we look beyond colors and expand upon the photography basics to communicate in the language of texture, shapes, composition, tones and moods. Also we will briefly touch upon conversion to grayscale as a part of post-processing the digitals in the second and final episode.

Continue to part 2.
Photo by 3blindmice

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Splash Photography: How to shoot a splash scene

Shivanand Sharma — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 15:25:09 +0000

Splash photography is challenging and a lot of fun. The reason – it requires some precise coordination, the results are wonderful and you are going to have a lot of fun practicing some coordination with your assistant while witnessing some funny moments. Let’s get started with this fun e-workshop.

Items – You need 4 white acrylic sheets each of a size of 18 inches, a tripod to mount the camera, a glass, some water or a liquid of your choice, some ice-cubes and an assistant. (Of course you need a camera too – a DSLR works the best).
Setup – Let’s spend some time arranging the perfect setup. We’ll arrange the 4 acrylic sheets in a cubicle fashion with only 3 sides and a floor. Use a cellophane tape to hold the sides together. Further we’ll use side-lighting in order to highlight the splash and the drops. So use two softboxes (if available) or two strong light to shine through the two opposite sides of our cubicle. Place the glass right in the center and fill it up three-quarters so that the brim is low enough for the splash to fly out into the air. Mount the camera on a tripod and place it safely at a distance of about 2 meters – that way the camera lens stays away from any liquid drops.
The Shot – This is the fun and challenging part and needs some practice too. I remember my assistant breaking a few glasses so ask your assistant to practice dropping one ice-cube at a time right into the middle of a metal glass. Ask him to drop the ice-cube precisely as you count 3. That way you’ll make sure you get the splash when you are ready to capture it – there should be good synchronization of the action and the shutter-release. So far so good. Time to set the camera. Frame the scene first. The action is going to be so quick that your camera won’t have the chance to focus so either set your camera to manual focus and adjust the focus for the glass or use auto-focus and lock the focus waiting to capture the shot. Count three and capture the shot as the ice-cube lands on the surface of the liquid creating a splash.

TIP: It’s best to avoid peeping through the viewfinder and watch the action from the camera-side with your finger firmly placed on the shutter-release button ready to shoot. This will help you anticipate the action better.

How do your results come out be?

Photo by MyNameHere used under CC.

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Studio Photography Essentials II: Portraits and close-ups e-workshop

Shivanand Sharma — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 14:50:21 +0000

Shooting in your studio is fun since you are in complete control of the equipment. We looked at the basic and essential equipment for a make-shift studio setup in Part I of this post so just in case if you haven’t checked it out we’ll wait.

Light – For this workshop you’ll need to have two other members by your side of which one will act as your subject and the other one as the assistant – call out to your cousin or friends. Sit your subject against a plain background; any color darker than gray would do if your subject is in bright clothing. Position the softbox at the top front of the subject elevated at 45 degrees and about a feet from the subject - would do just fine for a closeup or portrait.
This small distance increases the effective size of the light source with respect to the subject thereby illuminating the subject more uniformly and softening the light further.
Camera - Set your camera to manual exposure mode. Mount the wireless flash trigger to the hot-shoe of the camera. Mount your camera on the tripod. Place the tripod directly in front of the subject comfortably at a distance of 12-15 feet (given that you are using a lens in the range of 70mm-200mm). Position the camera at the eye-level of the subject. Test fire the flash (strobe) to check the wireless trigger setup. For now you are done with the camera and we’ll return back to it later.
Metering - Grab your hand-held light meter, with the strobe turned on turn off all the other ambient light in the room. This will ensure that the lighting conditions are similar to the time when the camera takes the exposure. We’ll now need to measure the light as it will be at the time of exposure (the flash will provide additional intensity which we need to take into account now). So refer to your light-meter’s manual and set the light-meter to the mode where it will wait for the flash to fire before providing you the reading. Set the shutterspeed in the light-meter to 1/60 and the ISO to 100 (the camera also should be set to use the same). Now all that we need to know is the aperture which is what the light-meter will tell us. Position the light-meter under the chin of the subject (the mid-tones) with the bulb pointing to the camera lens. Ask your assistant to fire the flash. Take the aperture reading from the light-meter and set the camera to use the same aperture. Just in case the meter reads out an impractical aperture, you may want to decrease the shutter speed or the ISO and take the reading again.
Reflections - This is your call. You need to take a few test shots and determine if you want some fill light to bounce off a reflector and illuminate the subject’s surface opposite to the light. Depending on your choice you may want to bring the reflector close to the subject or move it farther away to increase or reduce the fill. Just like the soft-box, the reflector too can typically be as close as 1-1/2 feet to the subject.
The Shot – You are now ready to photograph the subject. Make your subject comfortable, ask them to pose and shoot. Given that you’ve followed this guide properly, you’ll get some commercial class results. But just in case you want to experiment, try repositioning the reflector or meter the light again just to be sure.

Good luck and do not forget to share your results with us.

Photo by adamrhoades

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Studio Photography Essentials: Tools and Equipment

Shivanand Sharma — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 12:35:58 +0000

Shooting indoors can be very challenging due to the limitations of indoor lighting. But indoor photography is one kind which allows you to explore your creativity to the maximum given that mostly the light sources are artificial and you can exercise complete control over them. While photography is all about light, indoor photography is also about the equipment you employ and how creatively you put them to use. In this two-part article lets get familiar with the equipment and why we need them.

Flash

The on-camera built-in flash is a generic-purpose do-everything light. While flash is not recommended for the kind of photography we are talking about, investing is an external flash-gun is highly recommended. Using it with a Sto-Fen diffuser will provide you with a secondary source of usable light.
Light

Photographers prefer to work in soft-light unless they have specific requirements for hard-light. Soft-light keeps the shadows and highlights in control while illuminating the subject uniformly. You need a soft-box for this purpose which diffuses the light and softens it. I’d recommend you to use a home-made soft-box unless your photography work is fetching you good returns in which case you should go for a commercially available soft-box with a strobe light which you can fire with a wireless trigger fitted on the camera’s hot-shoe.
Reflectors

When budget is a consideration, full-size thermocol sheets are the answer. Acrylic sheets also come in handy to build up a make-shift light-tent to photograph small objects. The purpose of these reflectors is to illuminate the areas which fall opposite to the light falling on the subject. In day-light these are often not a problem as the light source is larger than the subject and the shadows are negligible or soft. But for our purpose investing in two thermocol sheets and 3-4 acrylic pieces (about 12 x 12 inches) is economical and does the job. Now all you need is a an assistant to hold them in place or find a make-shift stand – the results are the same in either case – they are at par with commercial photographs.
Light-meter

Even as a hobbyist if you are serious about photography, invest in a light-meter. Not that the in-built exposure-meter of the camera is any less useful but there’s a fundamental difference. The inbuilt camera meter gives you the reading based on the light reflected off the subject while a hand-held light-meter gives you the reading based on the incident light or the light hitting the subject. A light-meter is thus more accurate and usable for serious photography. More on metering in my post on metering modes in your camera.
Flash Trigger

Just in case you choose to invest in a strobe light the flash-trigger will enable you to fire the slave flash. Get a wireless one and you won’t tri over the wires and multiply your camera into pieces.
Tripod

Due to the low-light conditions indoors, even at maximum aperture, the shutter-speed has to be way low. This warrants the use of a tripod. Even a table or a similar placement will do but tripod is recommended.
Lens

While a zoom provides a lot of flexibility is terms of subject distance and framing, a fixed focal-length lens provides you with better quality images. But that’s not the consideration here. When you are shooting indoors, you are shooting small subjects from a close distance. You have to keep the perspective correct and also need the ability to really zoom-in close. Go for anything above 70mm (ideally 100mm and above) and you shall be fine.
Miscellaneous

So far so good. But indoor photography and especially table-top photography is pretty much based on makeshift arrangements. When you have to splash liquid off a glass you won’t count on the ice-cubes but use transparent plastic cubes which do a better job being shot as ice-cubes and never melt away. Some glycerin mixed with plain water can be sprayed onto things to make them shine with highlights and add gloss.

So much of it is exploring, experimenting, getting creative and learning. But guess what, we’ll come back in part-two of this post to show you how to put all this equipment to use and get started with it in a “hands-on” post.

Continue to part 2.

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The secrets of shooting during the Golden Magic Hours

Shivanand Sharma — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 16:18:33 +0000

Lighting effects can bring out some of the most unique, interesting and dramatic compositions. We have already discussed the various features of light in a previous article and it is essential that you understand light before you proceed with this article. So if you haven’t read that article I’ll wait…

Natural lighting can be the most dramatic and brings out some unusual effects during certain times of the day. The dawn and the dusk are two parts of the day when the natural lighting is in its best and most unusual forms. These times of the day are also referred to as the “Magic Hours” or the “Golden Hours”. The light during these times has very special characteristics – the intensity is very low, the angle is unusual (as compared to the most part of the day when the sun is generally above us), the light is diffused, the sky and the clouds reflect in amber casting different hues and colors. The colors in the scene are varied and more saturated than during other parts of the day, the shadows are long and mysterious and the sky contains a variety of gradients from any one part to the other. The magic hour is one of the best times to experiment and shoot in natural lighting. It is no surprise that some of the award-winning shots of landscapes have been captured during the magic hours.

However shooting during these times of the day pose their own challenges so it is essential that you go prepared – especially when you sacrifice your morning sleep and leave the bed on a cold morning.

Low Light Conditions: When the sun is on the horizon, light is low in intensity. You will need to be prepared to take long exposures and it is very important that you carry a tripod along to reduce camera shakes.
Camera Mode: Most of the times I prefer to set the camera to auto mode and it takes care of everything. However auto mode tries to balance the light for optimal exposure of the subject which is not what we want during the magic hours. During the magic hours you want to make sure the auto mode doesn’t overexpose and make the photographs look like as if they were shot in the noon. Set your camera to programmed-auto or the manual mode and experiment. Read Digital Camera Modes: What do they mean.
Bracketing: You will definitely want to bracket your shots. The underexposed shot will most likely be the one that you will want to retain – it will have saturated colors and very dramatic effects. Read more on how to bracket your shots.
Timing: The biggest challenge photographers face during the magic hours is the timing of the shot. The light during the magic hours changes so rapidly that you’ll want to start with taking one shot every 5 minutes. Once the sun is on the horizon you’ll want to take one shot every minute. No matter how much you practice there will always be a chance that you may miss the moment. And you don’t want to repent and come back the next day. There are only a few minutes of the magic light during the magic hours. You don’t want to miss them.
Image Format: In tricky shots like these you want to shoot in RAW (if your camera allows). Though manipulation is not a way of the purists, technology can be leveraged upon to get the best out of every shot (after all beautiful photographs are generally post-processed in one way or the other to make them sell). RAW allows you full control on the picture data.
Angles: Try different angles. Light during these moments varies with every angle as does the reflection and gradient and the colors.
Peripherals: As always carry extra battery, storage etc. since you will be taking shots every few minutes, shooting in RAW and bracketing them too.

Now that you know what you need, set the alarm, go out and shoot some lovely pictures and share them with us.

Photo by Al Ebnereza

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How to clean the camera lens

Shivanand Sharma — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 18:24:18 +0000

Remember your first reaction when you saw that finger print impression on the lens of your camera? I do. Without delay I put on my thinking hat and wiped it with a soft cotton cloth. Looked great until I noticed the fine fiber left over from the cotton cloth. I then blew air from my mouth to blow them off. Alas, a drop landed from my mouth on to the lens. Finally I knew I had made a mistake. It had to be cleaned the way one would clean the head of a cassette player. I used medical spirit and a cotton swab to gently wipe it off. Well, no matter how much I rubbed, it always left a residue. I felt like pulling my hair off.

Several years down the line when I dumped my film point-and-shoot camera I upgraded to a DSLR. It’s lens does get dirty but I’ve learnt from my mistakes. The first thing that came to my mind was to use a disposable lens. I could if I had disposable money. But I could use a cheaper lens – or a filter. I used a lens hood. And I was better off. But at the end of the day something has to be cleaned up be it the lens of the front filter or the camera sensor for that matter. When it comes to your camera sensor you’d better let the manufacturer handle it. Cleaning the camera sensor at home is not something covered by the warranty. And when you leave a scratch or some residue, it will cost you almost as much as the camera. In fact the only people advising you to clean the camera sensor are the people trying to sell you those items. But you of course can clean the front-filter or the front lens element.

You won’t need to clean anything unless you see them result on the photograph. Better yet take a few shots to ascertain if there’s in fact any dirt on the lens. Chances are even if something is visible on the front lens element, it won’t show up in the photograph – you’ll have to hunt for it. Here’s how.

Testing for dust

Aperture: Set the camera to a small aperture setting. An f-stop of f/22 will be a reasonable number. Any smaller than this introduces other light artifacts known as diffraction.
Focus: Set the focus of the camera to infinity.
The Photograph: Take a nice shot of plain white surface.
The evidence: View the image full size and look for spots. They’d look like cells under a microscope.

Things you need

Just in case you find what you’ve been looking for and get eager to clean it up understand that it’s your money at stake. Forewarned, here are the specialized equipment you’d need.

Blower: When you blow from the mouth you risk sprinkling saliva. You can use an air blower to remove the dust and other particles from your lens. It will take away all loose dirt except the dirt that is stuck to the surface.
Microfiber Cloth: These cloths are available in all the stores. Always use this cloth for cleaning the lens. Do not use any other cloth or paper to clean your lens as you risk scratching the surface or leaving fine fiber residue.
Lens Cleaning Fluid: It is an alcohol based lens cleaning fluid – but it’s not alcohol. It is a special liquid which does not leave any residue on the surface. It is available in most of the camera stores.
Carbon based Lens pen: A carbon based lens pen has a carbon based soft tip. Cleaning Pens generally come with the brush on the other end. These can be carried with you in the bag as they can be used whenever required.

Cleaning Procedure

Depending on the kind and amount of dirt on the lens you may need one or more of the above equipment to do the dirty and interesting job. Your options are

Blower: Use the blower to blow off loose dust particles settled on the lens surface.
Microfiber cloth: Very gently wipe off the dirt with the microfiber cloth. Make sure not to use one twice and try not to over-clean the lens.
Cleaning Liquid: If you suspect some kind of greasy substance, take the lens cleaning fluid on a microfiber cloth and wipe the lens gently in circular motion. Do not put the fluid on the lens directly. Also, do not use access amount of fluid.
Lens Pen: The lens pen is your best bet. It’s an all in one thing to clean the lens surface. Make sure you’ve read the instructions that came with it. You’ll need to expose the tip and wipe gently to take out the dirt at once (see the tip in the image). I keep one handy and use it only when I’ve been shooting on the sea shore. There’s very fine moisture suspended in the air that settles on the lens while it’s exposed. I’ve never tasted it but I think it must be salty since it comes from the salty sea.

Again, my advise is to trust the camera manufacturer and get the thing cleaned. While a filter is something I’d be confident cleaning myself, I’d always go to them to get the camera sensor cleaned.

Have you tried cleaning the lens or the sensor yourself?

photo by .inFocus

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Metering Modes in your camera

Shivanand Sharma — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 16:33:00 +0000

Ever wondered how your camera makes sure you get the right exposure when you are not using manual settings? The camera has a way of metering the scene for the optimum exposure. Let me correct me correct myself. The camera has several ways of metering the scene for the optimum exposure. On a DSLR you can choose which of the metering modes you’d like to use. Let’s see what these modes are and when they are best put to use.

Spot Metering: In spot-metering the camera sets the exposure settings after evaluating a particular (user-defines) spot in the entire scene. This is a preliminary way of setting exposure automatically and mostly the off-spot areas in the image may remain underexposed or get overexposed. This works best when there is a high dynamic range in the scene and you have to force the camera to get the correct exposure for a particular area in the image. If you are shooting against light and do not have a flash, you can use spot metering to set the correct exposure for the subject irrespective of other areas in the scene.
Center Weighted: While spot metering evaluates exposure for a spot, the center-weighted metering meters a (custom) larger spot in the image. In this case if you have a subject that covers a large area in the picture you may want to use center-weighted metering. This was one good metering mode until the matrix metering came.
Matrix Metering: The matrix metering measures exposure at multiple spots in the scene. It then compares the results with a number of manufacture provided situations. And then it uses the exposure corresponding to the best match. Nikon for example embeds around 30000 exposure scenes into their camera for matrix metering. When you use matrix metering, the camera will meter the exposure at various spots in the image, find the best match from the library and use that exposure. This works very well since matrix metering has become very sophisticated over the years. However it’s not unusual to for the camera to get tricked into bad exposure settings in unusual scenes. For almost any use you can use matrix metering. However you may want to use center-weighted or spot metering in case you are covering a scene that has a high dynamic range.

Which one have you been using all this while?

Photo by ☑ ☥░▒☣Divine Rapier☣▒░☥☠☄

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Histograms II: How to use Histograms

Shivanand Sharma — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:42:40 +0000

What better way than to analyze some of the pictures and their histograms ? Just for this experiment I took various shots (and some from my old trips) to demonstrate the corresponding histograms.

Underexposed

- The following image is underexposed. it’s dark in color and all the details in the dark areas have been lost. The curve in teh histogram is shifted to the left which means overall there are more dark areas than the bright ones.
Overexposed

- The following image is overexposed. It’s bright and all the details in the bright areas have been lost. The curve in the histogram is shifted to the right and cut off at the right end.
Low Contrast

- This image has a very low contrast. If you can recognize it, it is a marble stone. This results in a very limited range of midtones and thus the histogram curve is concentrated to the center.
High Contrast

-This image has a high contrast. The areas in the image range from the darkest to the brightest and eventually cut off at the end. Here’s where you can’t do much other than try flash fill to expose the dark areas. The other way is to use bracketing and create an HDR image.
Balanced

-This scene is balanced. The histogram covers all the dark areas to the lighter ones bringing out detail throughout the range of exposure. The curve is quite centered to the left side since there are no bright areas in the image. An ideal histogram looks more or less like this and mostly the curve forms in the central part.

The next time you see a histogram you will know if you increase the exposure to get the curve towards the center or if you need to underexpose to shift it right. Hope you find this information useful. If you have any thoughts about this they are welcome in the comments.

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LCD vs Histogram: Who’s the winner?

Shivanand Sharma — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 16:27:54 +0000

Every time I took a shot, I paused briefly to look at the rear LCD monitor of my DSLR before taking the next shot. Sometimes I deleted shots which seemed to be perfect. My wife got inquisitive and asked back.

I was actually looking at one of the technological marvels which have changed the way many photographers shoot. I was looking at the histogram to assess the exposure and the overall image. Why? I didn’t trust the LCD.

Why not trust the LCD

There are two main reasons I don’t trust my LCD (or any LCD monitor of any sort). First the image is almost invisible when you are in the sun. Second, you can’t see the finer details that have been captured or missed in the photograph unless you view it full-size on a computer. So I looked at the histogram to make a judgment.

So what is a histogram?

A histogram is a kind of graph (don’t get scared, it’s simple). It can tell you at a glance the characteristics of the image you have captured. Cameras nowadays come with separate histograms for each of the red, green and blue colors. But we’ll keep it simple and use the combined one for this post. Once you know how it works, it’s the same for all colors. A few points first which go with the diagram.

Along the horizontal axis (x-axis) is the entire range of cameras exposure. The darkest on the extreme left to the brightest on the right edge. A camera can only capture this range of exposure from the darkest to the brightest. Anything beyond these edges is lost.
The vertical axis (y-axis) is the amount of detail captured – none at the bottom and maximum at the top.

The benefits of histograms

At a glance you can see if any highlights and shadows has been missed in the image (cut off on the edges).
It tells you the amount of shadows and highlights and mid-tones in the image right away.
It’s faster and more accurate than trying to judge the image with the naked eye on the LCD.

The second part of this post is coming tomorrow and I’ll update this post with the link to it as it comes. Keep watching this space and do subscribe to keep updated with the latest. Continue reading Part 2.

Photo on the top by Brian Auer

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AdvancedPhotography.Net » Advanced

The Complete Guide To Photographing Fine-Art Nudë

Serious Photography: 10 Advanced Form Of Photography

Time Lapse Photography: Tell A Story In A Sequence Of Shots

6 Tips: Using Natural Framing In Your Photographs

What Every photographer Ought to Know About Exposure Compensation

What is Exposure Compensation

Uses of Exposure Compensation

Capturing challenging lighting conditions

Fine-tuning

Getting the Colors right

Using Shutter speed to your advantage

Using Aperture to your advantage

HDR with any camera: Take control of the Dynamic range like a pro

Get the lighting right

Shooting against light

Dark foreground against bright background

Dark faces against bright background

Get your metering right

White balance: Unlocking the secret to great color

Demystifying HDR: High Dynamic Range Myths and Truths

What is dynamic range?

The dynamic range of the camera

Reproducing an HDR scene

The dynamic range of the monitor

The secret behind the so-called HDRs

Making a real HDR

Portraying weather and various levels of light

Black and White Photography-III: Utilizing the power of colors

Advanced black and white conversion

Black and white photography-II: What to photograph beyond the colors

Composition:

Details:

Effects:

Black and white photography-I: Classy timeless pictures

Black and white photography – An Introduction

Getting ready to sacrifice colors

Considerations in digital capture

Conclusion

Splash Photography: How to shoot a splash scene

Studio Photography Essentials II: Portraits and close-ups e-workshop

Studio Photography Essentials: Tools and Equipment

Flash

Light

Reflectors

Light-meter

Flash Trigger

Tripod

Lens

Miscellaneous

The secrets of shooting during the Golden Magic Hours

How to clean the camera lens

Testing for dust

Things you need

Cleaning Procedure

Metering Modes in your camera

Histograms II: How to use Histograms

Underexposed

Overexposed

Low Contrast

High Contrast

Balanced

LCD vs Histogram: Who’s the winner?

Why not trust the LCD

So what is a histogram?

The benefits of histograms