Seriouslyish

I'm much better looking in person. So much for the funhouse mirror.

On Thursday night, I taught Session One of my six-week Seriously Fun Photography course. We covered the basics on the three elements that make up photographic exposure, then touched on ways we can use these elements to control the look of our images.

Here are my notes from the session:

Aperture:

The f/stops to memorize are:

f/1.4 - f/2 - f/2.8 - f/4 - f/5.6 - f/8 - f/11 - f/16 - f/22

If you forget these, make two columns, and at the top of the left one write 1.4 and at the top of the right one write 2.0. Now double each number as you go down the column (rounding off when needed).

Changing one stop lets in twice as much light (or half as much, depending on which direction you go. f/2 lets in a lot of light, f/22 lets in very little light. If you take a picture using f/8 and it seems a little too dark, switch to f/5.6. If you take a picture using f/8 and it is too bright, switch to f/11.



Shutter Speed:

The common shutter speeds:

1/1000th of a second
1/500th
1/250th
1/125th
1/60th
1/30th
1/15th
1/8th
1/4th
1/2
1 second.

Notice that the relationship of these shutter speed settings is also doubling (or halving) the amount of light that hits your sensor.

Sensitivity:
This is the ISO "speed" of a digital sensor or of film. ISO 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600 and 3200 are available on many cameras (but not all), and you should take some test shots with yours to find out if the higher ISO settings are usable or not. Figure out the fastest ISO speed you find produces acceptable shots on your camera -- you'll need to switch to it sooner or later. Notice that each ISO speed is twice as sensitive (or half as sensitive) as the next.

MODES:

P = Program
A = Aperture Priority
S = Shutter Priority
M = Manual

We also addressed confirming exposure by viewing the Histogram.

Above: an iPhone snapshot taken in a subway mirror.

Sprung

I took my Seriously Fun Photography class over to The Highline on a cold and clear Saturday. There's a not a lot of in the way of flowers, yet, but the grass is beautiful and energetic.

This week is the last class of the current "Seriously" series. On Wednesday, a new Advanced Seriously Fun Photography is scheduled, so if you're interested get in touch with Hunter College Continuing Education today.

So No One Can Sneak Up On You

There are a lot of different lenses out there. This, I'm not so sure of. I suppose it makes a panoramic image. I tried to ask its owner, but he was really not much help.

If you look closely, you'll see some members of my photo class and also my 24mm lens depicted in the reflector.

How To Travel With Your Pet

I took my photo class to The Highline today. I packed a 24mm f/1.8 lens -- I like a challenge -- and we met at 20th Street and 10th Avenue. It never occurred to me that I should zip a dog into a suitcase and wheel it behind me, but I'm still new to this whole "New York" thing.

Wide Angle Wednesday

In my last post, I mentioned how you might use a telephoto focal length to shoot a portrait of a person. It's usually a great idea.

Don't think I don't love wide-angle lenses, however. Again, of course, you have to work purposefully to use them well. Here's my main tip: don't leave your wide angle lens trying to do the thinking for you. If you just point it without using your eyes and brain, its main characteristic is that it will just lump everything together into a jumble. Sometimes, by chance, a fantastic jumble. More often, a confused jumble. It will include objects near and far, and without much relationship between these objects.

To use it at its most photographic, think flat or think deep.

The shot above -- just a snap from my iPhone from Tuesday, nothing special -- is about thinking flat. It's two large elements in relationship to each other. There's no jumbled confusion because the image has been conceived as a flat space. The relationship is "this shape against that shape." What's left out of the shot is more important than what's in.

An even more exciting way to use a wide-angle lens is take advantage of its depiction of space and get something in the foreground in relation to the rest of the image. That's really an idea that should be in your mind as soon as you move to wide focal lengths. Let something close fight with the large background. Put a person close to you and the space they exist in behind. Put an object close by and some sort of opposition behind. Let a visual story develop: this against that. Let the wide field of view show more than we're used to seeing (a repeated pattern, an overwhelming amount of something, a vast space) and give us a close element to make that pattern / space / aggregation seem even vaster.

Don't think of your widest lens as a way to "get everyone in the picture." Think of it as a way to depict depth.

One last note: play with what happens when you tilt the lens down. If you study some of the Garry Winogrand street photographs you'll find that he often used the strategy of getting right up to a person, using a wide focal length, and tilting the lens down a little. That puts the viewer right into the photographic subject's space -- a feeling quite different than that provided by the "normal" lens of Henri Cartier-Bresson's street photos.

Tuesday Tele Tip

Most DSLR cameras are sold with a "kit" lens included. That's usually a zoom lens, almost always with a focal length of 18-55mm or 18-70mm. That can be a useful lens, but often our first impulse in how to put it to work results in disaster. Here's what I mean:

I ask one student to photograph another. Almost every single time, the student will stand up, point the camera at the other student and -- without thinking -- zoom out. That leaves them a few feet away from their subject using a focal length of 18mm. The resulting portrait isn't great.

Here's the thing: an 18mm focal length provides an "expanded" space. To see this, stand in a corner of a room and look with your eyes. Now look through your camera with the 18mm focal length and look at the space: you'll get the impression of a much deeper space. Zoom to a longer focal length and you'll feel as if the space is more compressed.

That "expanded" space is not flattering to the human face, generally: there can be an impression of a larger nose and larger chin, for example. The "compression" a longer focal length provides tends to create a more flattering image. Take a look at the next magazine rack you walk past: most of the faces you'll see there tend to be photographically compressed.

Try a further experiment: using the 18mm focal length, frame a person from just above their head to just about the second button on their shirt. Take the shot. Now, move yourself backward, change your focal length to 55mm (or 70mm) and get that same "two-button closeup" framing. Take the shot.

Compare the two and you'll see: focal length can have a transformative effect on a face. The same person may look quite different in these two shots. Usually, the longer focal length is perceived as making a significantly more flattering portrait.

Also, notice that most likely you'll now be throwing the background out of focus when using this longer focal length, depending on the distance between you, the subject and the background.

So consider forcing yourself to automatically zoom to telephoto when you decide to take a picture of a person. That 55mm or 70mm length can work just fine -- but you have to decide that's what will work best and, as always, force yourself to take control of the photograph you are making.

Manual Mode Monday

This week I'm posting just a few hints for photographers. There's a tendency to focus on the complicated elements of the field and to forget the basics, so here are some reminders / tips for using a digital camera. These are all topics covered in my "Seriously Fun Photography" course at Hunter Continuing Education.

Using Manual Mode with a DSLR

One topic many photographers find confusing is how to work in manual mode on a digital SLR camera. Let's demystify it:

1. Turn the big knob on top of the camera to M.

2. Point the camera at your subject and press the shutter halfway down. You'll see in your viewfinder if the camera thinks you are underexposing or overexposing -- there's a little indicator that will let you know. (Your camera may have a little triangle, or a light or another indicator that tells you if it thinks you are over or under on your exposure.)

3. Your camera will either have two wheels -- one in front for your index finger and one on the back for your thumb -- or just a single wheel.

3a. If you have two wheels, turn one of them and notice if it is changing your shutter speed or aperture. Then turn the other. Now you know the two elements you are controlling in manual mode (you've already set your ISO setting).

3b. If you have one wheel on your camera, turn it and see if you are adjusting shutter speed or aperture. On most cameras, you then press and hold the "+/-" button (Canon) or the Exposure Compensation button "AE-L" (Nikon) and that will allow the wheel to adjust the other element. In other words, if you turn the wheel and it changes shutter speed, press the "+/-" button (Canon) or the Exposure Compensation button "AE-L" (Nikon) and now the wheel will adjust your aperture setting.

4. Adjust aperture or shutter speed until your camera's indicator is in the middle (or at zero).

5. Take the shot.

6. Then look on your viewscreen, and see if you've got it right.

CL A.S.S. Y

Despite the bad weather we've had the last few days, I managed to make it over to Park Avenue and teach -- and now the first "Seriously Fun Photography" for 2010 class is ... ahem ... behind me.

That's good, as I continue to use a dumb acronym to force students to remember the three elements we need to master to understand and control exposure.

A. S. S.

That's right: we need to work with three related elements: Aperture, Shutter Speed, and Sensitivity.

Aperture:
The f/stops to memorize are f/1.4, f/2, f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/8, f/11, f/16, f/22. If you forget these, make two columns, and at the top of the left one write 1.4 and at the top of the right one write 2.0. Now double each number as you go down the column (rounding off when needed). Changing one stop lets in twice as much light (or half as much, depending on which direction you go. f/2 lets in a lot of light, f/22 lets in very little light. So if you took a picture using f/8 and it seemed a little too dark, you would switch to f/5.6. If you took a picture using f/8 and it seemed a little too bright, you'd switch to f/11.

Shutter Speed:
The common shutter speeds are:

1/1000th of a second
1/500th
1/250th
1/125th
1/60th
1/30th
1/15th
1/8th
1/4th
1/2
1 second.

-- As a rule of thumb, if you are moving and you're subject is moving, you'll want to be shooting at 1/1000th of a second to get a sharp picture.

-- If you are still but the subject is moving along, it would be good to be at 1/250th or faster.

-- If you and the subject are both relatively still, you can probably handhold the camera as slow as 1/60th, but slower than that and you'll get a soft picture because of camera shake caused by pressing the shutter.

-- At speeds that are slower, you'll need a tripod to steady the camera, and probably want to trigger it using the self-timer or a release.

-- Many decent cameras have higher shutter speeds, and these are very useful for action or sports.

Notice that the relationship of these shutter speed settings is also doubling (or halving) the amount of light that hits your sensor.

Sensitivity:
This is the ISO "speed" of a digital sensor or of film. ISO 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600 and 3200 are available on many cameras (but not all), and you should take some test shots with yours to find out if the higher ISO settings are usable or not. Figure out the fastest ISO speed you find produces acceptable shots on your camera -- you'll need to switch to it sooner or later. Notice that each ISO speed is twice as sensitive (or half as sensitive) as the next.

At this point, we experimented with finding a good exposure for the lighting in our classroom. It turned out to be: f/2.8 and 1/125th of a second at ISO 1600.

Then we decided to start applying our general knowledge about the relationship between apertures and depth of field. While we start to get the idea when we say "f/2 -- shallow depth of field and f/22 - deep depth of field" actually trying this out in with some real world shots is always a good experiment.

So we set up an experiment: we set our aperture at f/1.4 and and focused on the eyes of a person sitting close to us. Upon reviewing the photo, we found that the that the person sitting further behind was out of focus. So, to see how depth of field changes, we ran through the whole series of aperture settings available finding the person in the background more in focus as we changed our aperture -- f/2 to f/2.8 to f/4 to f/5.6 to f/8 to f/11 to f/16 to f/22.

Since we were in manual mode, we had to change the shutter speed to keep our exposure the same while we ran through these apertures.

But then we realized changing manual settings can be slow -- so we explored using "Shutter Priority" and "Aperture Priority" as a quicker way to choose the factor that is most important to us, and let the computer choose the other setting.

We learned that a faster way to try this experiment was to switch to Aperture Priority mode -- then, we would pick the aperture and the camera would select the shutter speed -- so when we changed aperture, the camera would change the shutter speed and we were able to keep the same exposure.

We finished our class with an experiment in learning to see the environment around us -- finding assigned alphabet letters in our seemingly boring classroom -- and then with a game of photographic "telephone" -- about learning to communicate complex ideas through visual images.

Our homework: shoot a manual exposure, getting the best exposure you can and then checking this by looking at the image's histogram.

Then: try a series of shutter speeds with a moving object -- such as a spinning umbrella, a bouncing basket ball, or a hula hoop.

Next week we'll begin to look at composition, framing, and related issues.

Above: an iPhone snapshot from Tuesday. In Manhattan, it's important to be able to coordinate animal prints in any weather.

Photo Class Postponed to Feb 25th

My Seriously Fun Photography class has had its start day postponed one week. That means you can still enroll if you like. (More details soon, or you can look at previous posts on this blog.)

Above: an iPhone snapshot from today at Bronx Community College.

In NYC? Take my Photo Course at Hunter CE

Photography sure can be fun. If only there were some sort of class about that, taught locally starting next Thursday.

SERIOUSLY FUN PHOTOGRAPHY / SERFUN
Build on the basics and master the skills and ideas advanced photographers use in a fun, low-pressure class. Open to anyone able to shoot a photo and import it into a computer (and welcoming advanced students as well), in this class we'll use the digital camera as a fast way to learn the essentials of photography. We'll learn-by-doing, exploring professional techniques while creating a portfolio project (on any topic of your choice) to show your advanced skills. If you've always been interested in photography, but have put off becoming great at it, this is your chance.

Course/Section: SERFUN/1 6 Session(s) 12 Hour(s) Tuition: $250.00
Day(s) Meet: Thursday Date: 02/18/10-03/25/10 Time: 06:00PM-08:00PM
Location: CS, 71 E 94 ST./
Instructor(s): FISHER, TED

You can register online at Continuing Education at Hunter College

Above: an iPhone snapshot taken today.

Winding Down, Frantically

I'm trying to finish ... everything. Edit: done. Then another edit. Then my last editing class. Then my last online classes, grades turned in. Very little sleep.

Tonight I taught my last photo class for the year. For the decade, if you think that 2009 is the last year of the decade. (Which I don't, but that post will have to wait....)

Times Square

Took my Seriously Fun Photography class on a little outdoors shoot. Here's a grab shot taken Thursday night.

Bryant Park

Actual DSLR photos soon, but for now, here's an iPhone snap from tonight's photo class visit to Bryant Park. It's like a mini photo-lab -- you can experiment with shutter speed, depth of field, panning, exposure.... Next week: students bring their final portfolios.

Revealing Form, Texture And Shape

At the end of my photo class last week we finished a session on lighting people, then tried a quick experiment to see how light can be used to create texture.

My students worked with a medium softbox and a reflector and explored ways to reveal an interesting space around three small rings, and to reveal the detail in the rings. One of the keys was to realise how important directionality is as a property of light. We wanted soft light, but we still wanted to create shape and reveal form.

Advanced Seriously Fun Photography, Week 2

In last night's Advanced Seriously Fun Photography class our main goal was to really tune in and see light. We looked at the qualities of light, then tried to apply that to how the camera sees light. A few ideas became obvious right away: because the eye opens up when it looks at dark areas and closes down when it looks at bright areas, usually the camera records a more contrasty version of a scene than our eye sees. Dark tones become darker, falling into solid black, and light areas may burn out in a photograph even though our eye can preserve detail in the same scene.

We started our exploration by making a purposefully "bad" shot -- taking a person into tricky or unflattering light and trying a photograph there. We noticed where light falls on the human face, and it creates a shape (for better or worse). We then followed that up by trying to "repair" the light in that spot. We added a reflector to fill in shadow areas, or used fill flash to try to better light the subject.

Fill flash can be tough, and we struggled with it. That's not a problem: it's tough for photographers at every level. We again practiced methods of balancing ambient light and on-camera flash, and we looked at what happens when we're able to bounce light off a ceiling or wall. We also tried bouncing off a reflector or using a reflector as diffusion material.

We attempted to understand the qualities of light: hard light versus soft light, the directionality of light, the color of light, and then tried an experiment in seeing how we could "short" light a person's face. Our basic technique here was to put the subject in a position where they turned slightly to the right or left. We then looked at which cheek was "leading" (toward the camera) and experimented in giving that cheek more light or deemphasizing it by letting shadow fall on it. This clearly changed the shape of the face as read in the photograph.

We also looked a bit at how focal length effects the face: we compared the same framing of a face at medium and telephoto focal lengths and realizing that longer focal lengths appear to compress or flatten the features.

We also tried to put all these elements together for a casual portrait, trying to train our eyes to see the light, while still choosing a good framing, appropriate focal length and maintaining a relationship with our portrait subject.

In the end, however, our goal was to stop projecting our expectations of what we'd see and really see the light present. As well, this was a lead in to next week, when we will be using studio lighting and trying to really see and control light.

Our homework was to shoot one portrait of this type, using natural light or adding flash as needed.

Advanced Photography, Week One

Last night I taught the first session of Advanced Seriously Fun Photography.

We started by developing our goals for the class. I tailor the class to the people taking it, so we have some freedom with choosing topics and how we learn those. After some review of technical basics (I'll put that at the end of this post) we explored a range of possibilities using shutter speed. We worked at figuring out the correct exposure in our dimly lit classroom, and then realized that for a still life we could overcome that by using longer shutter speeds. Of course, below 1/60th of a second we found that handheld shots can soften or blur, so we started using a tripod. By using slower shutter speeds, we were able to shoot a still life even at f/16 or f/22.

Then we explored how much blur a pen falling off a desk would have at various slow shutter speeds. We then figured out how fast we could push the shutter speed to freeze the pen -- under the existing available light conditions. In our dark classroom, we found the limit on one of our cameras was an exposure of 1/500th of a second at f/5.6 and ISO 3200.

We then learned that this control over shutter speed was very helpful if we were going to try to balance on-camera flash with an exposure for the background. So we went through a process of determining a good manual exposure for a background, then adding flash to a shot to light our subject. After a bit, we were able to control both: we could make our ambient exposure one stop dark and adjust flash compensation, and that gave us good control over both our subject and the ambient background.

We later tried "dragging the flash" -- holding the exposure lock button in a dim situation and letting the camera use a slower shutter speed. This helped us to quickly get a balance between the background exposure and our subject.

Next we explored the amount of blurring that shutter speeds allow. We started with exploring someone walking as we tried 1/30th of a second and 1/15th of a second. We then added flash to this and discovered how a trail was created, and then how we could control where the trail was by using second-curtain or rear-curtain sync.

Then we spun umbrellas at varying speeds and explored slower shutter speeds in relation to the amount of blur. We also explored using fill flash on a person to fill-in areas where ambient lighting was leaving heavy shadows.

After clarifying the techniques available to us changing shutter speed, and a few basics on adding flash, as a last technical experiment, we lined everyone up in the hallway and explored how we could use aperture to control depth-of-field, taking a range of shots from f/5.6 to f/22.

The homework for this week is to explore that ambient / flash balance. You can hear Ted talking about this subject here: Ted explaining matching flash and ambient lighting.

Also, try out your own version of our Depth-of-Field experiment.

The photographers to research this week are Mary Ellen Mark and Elliott Erwitt.

BACKGROUND:

We learned that to control exposure, we need to work with three related elements: Aperture, Shutter Speed, and Sensitivity.

Aperture:
The f/stops to memorize are f/1.4, f/2, f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/8, f/11, f/16, f/22. If you forget these, make two columns, and at the top of the left one write 1.4 and at the top of the right one write 2.0. Now double each number as you go down the column (rounding off when needed). Changing one stop lets in twice as much light (or half as much, depending on which direction you go. f/2 lets in a lot of light, f/22 lets in very little light. So if you took a picture using f/8 and it seemed a little too dark, you would switch to f/5.6. If you took a picture using f/8 and it seemed a little too bright, you'd switch to f/11.

Shutter Speed:
The common shutter speeds are:

1/1000th of a second
1/500th
1/250th
1/125th
1/60th
1/30th
1/15th
1/8th
1/4th
1/2
1 second.

-- As a rule of thumb, if you are moving and you're subject is moving, you'll want to be shooting at 1/1000th of a second to get a sharp picture.

-- If you are still but the subject is moving along, it would be good to be at 1/250th or faster.

-- If you and the subject are both relatively still, you can probably handhold the camera as slow as 1/60th, but slower than that and you'll get a soft picture because of camera shake caused by pressing the shutter.

-- At speeds that are slower, you'll need a tripod to steady the camera, and probably want to trigger it using the self-timer or a release.

-- Many decent cameras have higher shutter speeds, and these are very useful for action or sports.

Notice that the relationship of these shutter speed settings is also doubling (or halving) the amount of light that hits your sensor.

Sensitivity:
This is the ISO "speed" of a digital sensor or of film. ISO 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600 and 3200 are available on many cameras (but not all), and you should take some test shots with yours to find out if the higher ISO settings are usable or not. Figure out the fastest ISO speed you find produces acceptable shots on your camera -- you'll need to switch to it sooner or later. Notice that each ISO speed is twice as sensitive (or half as sensitive) as the next.

Then we decided to start applying our general knowledge about the relationship between apertures and depth of field. While we start to get the idea when we say "f/2 -- shallow depth of field and f/22 - deep depth of field" actually trying this out in with some real world shots is always a good experiment.

So we set up an experiment that can be repeated at home: set your camera on a table or a tripod, and in front of it arrange people or objects in a receding line. Put the first person or thing just 3 feet away from the lens, and have the furthest be at least 12 feet away. Now set the widest aperture you can -- I use a lens that goes to f/1.4 for this -- and focus on the closest person or object. You'll probably find that the people / objects behind that are out of focus. Now run through the whole series of aperture settings you have available (you'll probably want to be in "aperture priority mode" so that the camera sets the corresponding shutter speed for an acceptable exposure. Or you can set that yourself). Try this and compare each shot -- more and more will be in focus until you should be able to get everyone in focus.

Now, keep in mind there's one other factor here -- the focal length you shoot with. Usually the effect of getting a main subject in focus and the background out of focus is much easier to achieve if you use a lens of at least 50mm or set as zoom to 50mm focal length or a more telephoto setting.

Many photographers think that "telephoto lenses have shallow depth of field and wide angle lenses have deep depth of field" -- it turns out that isn't exactly true, but for pragmatic purposes it isn't a bad way to think. If the goal is a sharp subject and a blurry background -- grab a 90mm or set your zoom lens about there.

(For a discussion on why the wide focal lens = deep depth of field idea isn't precisely true, read Do wide-angle lenses give you greater depth of field than long lenses?.)

Another thing that comes up at this point: some lenses allow your camera to reach to f/1.4 or f/2 or f/2.8, but many times the "kit lens" zoom that comes with a DSLR or the zoom lens built into a compact camera will not go to that wide-open an aperture. And to further add to the confusion: many common lenses that go from 18mm to 55mm (or 70mm) let you go to f/3.5 when using the widest focal length (18mm) but only to f/5.6 when you are using the long end of the lens (55mm or 70mm). That's just how those lenses are built.

Now, once we know a technique to control depth of field -- go towards f/2 to get a sharp person, blurry background or toward f/22 to get subject and background both focuses -- we want to think about why we would do it. Well, it's that kind of control that lets us emphasize or deemphasize what a viewer sees in a photograph, so we want to master it so we can control our images. Need to photograph a person against a cluttered, distracting background? Use selective focus. Need to show that a person has kids but keep the emphasis on the person? Use selective focus to make the kids visible but de-emphasized.

So, from a technical standpoint, as we approach any photo situation we'll want to decide on an ISO setting, a shutter speed and an aperture. The three are interrelated and all use a doubling / halving system so it is easy to calculate how to change them when needed.

Last Call, 6-Week Advanced Photo Class

Sorry to be all commercial-like, but this is probably the last chance to register for my Advanced Seriously Fun Photography class at Hunter Continuing Education. It's scheduled to start November 5th, and held at 94th Street and Park Avenue, fairly close to the 6 train.

The way to see the listing and register is to go to this interface and type "photography" into the search box.

"SERIOUSLY FUN PHOTOGRAPHY ADVANCED
Ready to stretch your creativity, and master the techniques you need for your photography? In this advanced photography class, we will address three topic areas of intermediate / advanced photography technique -- chosen by the students during our first session -- and we will have three special class photography sessions. (These sessions may include a class photo shoot, a museum / gallery / auction house visit, and a studio lighting shoot.) Students will also prepare a small portfolio project over the six weeks of the course, with a critique session in our last week.

Course/Section: SERFUNII/1 6 Session(s) 12 Hour(s) Tuition: $250.00
Day(s) Meet: Thursday Date: 11/05/09-12/17/09 Time: 06:00PM-08:00PM
Location: CS, 71 E 94 ST./
Instructor(s): FISHER, TED

Advanced Photo Class, Register Now

My Advanced Seriously Fun Photography class starts at Hunter Continuing Education starts November 5th. So, register now.

They've changed the Web site, so the way to see the listing and register is to go to this interface and type "photography" into the search box.

"SERIOUSLY FUN PHOTOGRAPHY ADVANCED
Ready to stretch your creativity, and master the techniques you need for your photography? In this advanced photography class, we will address three topic areas of intermediate / advanced photography technique -- chosen by the students during our first session -- and we will have three special class photography sessions. (These sessions may include a class photo shoot, a museum / gallery / auction house visit, and a studio lighting shoot.) Students will also prepare a small portfolio project over the six weeks of the course, with a critique session in our last week.

Course/Section: SERFUNII/1 6 Session(s) 12 Hour(s) Tuition: $250.00
Day(s) Meet: Thursday Date: 11/05/09-12/17/09 Time: 06:00PM-08:00PM
Location: CS, 71 E 94 ST./
Instructor(s): FISHER, TED

Quick Note On Balancing Flash and Ambient Exposure

Last night in my Seriously Fun Photography class we tried balancing on-camera flash and ambient light. A few notes on that:

1. First, let's set a manual exposure based on the ambient light available. For example, in the low-light conditions of a classroom at night, we found a reasonable exposure was around a sensitivity setting of ISO 1600, a shutter speed of 1/60th and an aperture of F/5.6. I tend to recommend dropping this exposure one stop -- after all, you may want your main subject to "pop" and the background to be a little darker. So switch to manual mode, and set an exposure that is about one stop underexposed.

2. Now pop up your on camera flash. Check the flash mode: "fill flash" will give you the best balance between subject and background. There's also a "flash compensation" setting, so if you are finding your flash is overexposing the subject, set the flash compensation to -1 or -2. Take the shot, and look how the subject and background are balancing.

3. For a more sophisticated take, consider "dragging the shutter" -- using a shutter speed that's a bit slower (for example, try 1/15th of a second). The flash will freeze the main subject, and the slow shutter may create a more interesting background to the shot. You can even purposefully move the camera to create a little bit more interest in the background -- you might get streaking lights or an overall warmly lit look.

In general, good compact cameras and good DSLR cameras do a reasonable job of balancing subject and background when handled this way, but usually you'll want to dial that flash compensation down a stop.

Seriously Fun Photography, Session Two

Last Thursday night was the second session of Seriously Fun Photography

We reviewed what we learned Week One then thought again about the relationship between aperture and depth of field. While we start to get the idea when we say "f/2 -- shallow depth of field and f/22 -- deep depth of field" actually trying this out in with some real world shots is always a good experiment. So, to make a photo where a person is in focus but the background is out of focus, we did the following:

1. Set your zoom lens toward telephoto -- 50mm or longer -- or use a telephoto lens. 90mm would be an excellent choice.

2. Set your aperature toward f/2 -- on most basic zoom lenses, you might only be able to go to f/3.5 or f/4 or f/5.6, but that's okay. If you can get closer to f/2, that will work even better.

3. Position yourself, your subject, and the background. Generally, you should be close to your subject and the background should be far away to achieve this result.

We experimented, and soon everyone was able to produce a photo with the subject in focus and the background somewhat out of focus. This is a great way to emphasize the main subject of the photograph.

We then went on to begin the long and complicated process of thinking about compositional strategies. For example, we introduced the "rule of thirds" -- which I have posts on here and here and here.

We then looked at how to create a relationship in a photo -- between a subject and the negative space around them, between two or three people, and in various other senses.

Nearer the end of class, we looked at ways to think about the space we are photographing in and how this can change / work with our compositional idea.