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Bumper Holiday Special! BONUS DOUBLE EDITION! NEW ______________ DIGITAL Essential phot°graPhv skills /*^4 Camerausfff Issue Eight | December 2023 | 100% INDEPENDENT Learn How To Shoot Amazing Photos! Master Professional Tips and Techniques with Ease. 520S-! Expert Tutorials & Tips Photography! Expert Image Processing with Adobe Lightroom! Perfect Your Portrait Want to Upgrade Your Photography! Photographic Gear? From Black & White to Natural Light covered Inside. We Reveal Stacks of Cool Accessories to Inspire You. Take Your Photographs to the Next Level with Our Help. < OVER> 180 <PAGES! /
Want to master Photo Editing? Bumper Holiday Special! BONUS DOUBLE EDITION! । nen uon t miss our NEW Photoshop magazine on Readly now! NEW Professional Photo.Editing .100% INDEPENDENT Technique. FEATURING Assemble Your Images to Make Amazing New Artworks. Photoshop Mega Tips We Show You How to get the Very Best from Photoshop! Compositing Walkthrough Photoshop Creative Zone Improve Your Image Compositing Skills! From Colour Matching to Lense Flare, We have it covered. Essential Photoshop Delve Deep Into Our Mega Tips & Tricks! Creative Artwork Projects! Quickly Learn the Essentr Skills to Create Professional Looking Images! Ш I * i Master Photo Click our handy link to read now: https://bit.ly/3xKgzFX
шл DIGITAL Camerazi USER When you pick up a modern digital camera, you hold in your hands a small technological marvel, the like of which could only be dreamt of just a few decades ago. Not only that, you also hold the key that can unlock the door to a hugely popular medium of expression and creativity. So do you want to explore that medium? Are you thinking of getting into photography, or are you looking to brush up on the skills you already have and then take them that one step further? We can help you. Photography is a multi- faceted and jargon filled discipline that can sometimes put people off. It is also a cluttered minefield of brands, models, lenses, and accessories. However, It doesn’t have to be that way. Photography can be as simple, or as advanced, as you need it to be and we hope the information within these pages can help you decide what kind of cameras and lenses are right for you and also what kind of photographer you want to be. Learning the skills and techniques required need not be a chore when it is applied to such a creative outlet as photography and we hope to show you that now.
Take Your Best Shot 8 A gallery of some great images to get you inspired and eager to create your own 19 Canon Zoemini instant camera 20 Fujifilm XF10 21 Olympus Tough TG-5 22 PixaproCITI600 23 Lowepro Pro Runner X450II 24 Crowd pleasers FUJIFILM XF1O The Handy GearGuide 18 Canon EOS 80D ON/OFF Getting Started 24 Know your camera 28 The right camera for you 32 What lenses do I need? 36 Why do I need a tripod? Why the tripod is essential Technical Quick-Start 42 Aperture and depth of field explained 46 44 How does shutter speed affect photos? 46 How ISO works on a digital camera 48 Photography software
Learning New Skills 52 The exposure triangle 54 Shutter speed 58 Shutter speed: how it’s done 60 Aperture and depth of field 64 Aperture and depth of field: how it’s done Control the look of your images with shutter speed RZ Creative Projects 68 Natural light portraits 70 After it gets dark 72 Black and white portraits 78 High speed photography New to Post-Processing? 88 Lightroom top tips 90 The history of Photoshop 92 The history of Lightroom 94 Photoshop versu s Lightroom 96 Shooting in raw mode 98 What is Photoshop Elements? www.pclpublications.com 5
Take Your Best Shot The Handy Gear Guide 100 Anothercollection of great imagestogetyou fired up and eager to create your own 110 The Nikon Z series 113 NIKKORZserieslenses 114 Cokin gradual ND kit 115 Canon Pixma Pro - 100S 116 Sony VCTR100 tripod 117 GitzoGK1555T-82TQDSeriesl 118 Memory cards 119 LeeSW150filtersystem Getting Started 122 Flashes and lighting 124 Typesoflightmodifiers 126 Filters and filter systems 128 Digital storage Technical Quick-Start 132 Methodsforgettinggoodfocus 134 Bethemasterofmetering 136 Lensesand focal length 138 Exploreyourcamera’s scene modes 140 Camera shooting modes 6 www.pclpublications.com
Learning New Skills 140 Focusing 142 Focusing: how it’s done 144 Focal length and zoom 146 Focal length and zoom: how it’s done 148 Exposure and metering Creative Projects 156 In-car long exposure 160 Tabletop photography 164 Shooting musical and stage performances 170 Light painting 172 Off-camera flash 188 How just a few subtle adjustments transform an image Lightroom Classic 178 Lightroomunderwentabigupdate, so let’s start with what’s new in the most recent version and show you the latest new features. 188 Images transformed 190 Exploring the workspace www.pclpublications.com 7
Nikon Z 7 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8 135.0mm 7/11.0-1/40s-IS0100 TAKE YOUR BESTSHOT A gallery of some great images to get you inspired and eager to create your own amazing photography No matter if you’re an old hand at photography or a newbie with their first digital camera, there’s no greater way of getting inspired by exploring the work of other photographers to gain ideas, inspiration and a greater sense of what others are shooting right now. Unless you are a photographer with clients and all the demands and requirements that come with it, you have free rein on what you shoot, where you shoot and how you shoot it. It makes a great deal of creative sense to always •Г- „ keep an eye on what’s hot and what’s not. You never know when you may be called upon to shoot a specific technique or genre. We thought we’d kick off with a few pages of photography in all styles and taken with all manner of cameras and lenses. Much is made of havingVie latest camera or best lens which some expect to make them better photographers. More should be made of just getting out and shooting the kinds of images that make you happy and learn as you go. 8
Exposure control Long exposure photography has been immensely popular for many years. If you have never dabbled with long exposure techniques, particularly during the daytime, it’s worth getting hold of some neutral density filters and exploring new areas of photography. 2 and 4 stop filters are the most popular, but there are also 10 stop filters you can use for very long exposures even on bright days. Why not try shooting long exposures in less conventional locations? A subway train rushing by with a longer exposure creates dramatic, abstract imagery.
INSPIRATIONAL IMAGES Black and white You might imagine that the starting point for any black and white photography would be to grab your camera, set its functions to black and white mode and start shooting. Be aware that many photographers always shoot everything in colour in order to maintain as much tonal variation in the Raw image as possible; it just gives you more data to play with when it comes to the conversion process. www.pclpublications.com 15
THE HANDY GEARpUIDE A quick guide to some cool gear, accessories, and gadgets We can’t speak for other photographers necessarily, but do you feel like you are always on the lookout for a new camera, lens, or device that can enhance your photography? Perhaps it’s a new filter, backup camera, or a cool gadget that can make a part of your photography experience a little more creative, or just a little easier to achieve? Over these next few pages, we thought we would list off a few items that, in no particular order, we thought might be of interest. Some items may be brand new; some may have been around for a while but are still worth a look 18 Canon EOS 80D 19 Canon Zoemini instant camera 20 Fujifilm XF1Q_______________ 21 OlympusToughTG-5 22 PixaproCITI600______________ 23 Lowepro Pro Runner X450II 24 Crowd pleasers none the less. Some might even still be in a crowd funded development stage, or even just a silly toy that can offer a pleasing distraction. Whatever the case, whilst we believe the old adage that a new camera or gadget will not make you a better photographer, it may just offer you a new feature that you can use on your next shoot. You never know, a new gadget or lens type might yield a benefit that somehow lifts your work and creates a signature look that you can be identified by. When all is said and done though, we will forgive you if you just want a new bit of gear ‘because you do’. r. I “You never know, a new gadget or lens type might yield a benefit that somehow lifts your work and creates a signature look that you can be identified by." 16
THEHANDYGEAR GUIDE
Canon EOS 80D Affordable power in this great all-rounder In today’s fast-moving world of tech, a digital camera more than a couple of years old, is often discounted as being out of date and not worthy of people’s time and hard-earned cash. There’s no doubt that can be true in some instances, but in the case of the three year old canon 80D, we think not. The Canon 80D isa 24.2MP APS-C camera that replaced the much older 70D. Aimed squarely at enthusiast photographers, the 80D is simple enough for new users, but offers enough advanced features to grow with you as you become more experienced and creative. The 80D represents a very viable option for those new to photography altogether, or those looking to upgrade from an entry-level model whilst keeping an eye on their budget. Looking at canon’s line-up, this model sits somewhere in the range between the 750D/760Dandthe7D Mark II. It is testament to the longevity of the 80D that it is still a sought after quality enthusiasts model. The beauty of a camera of this nature is that it is able to fulfil the needs of the enthusiast photographer, who may actually be harder to please than full-on professionals, since they need to be able to shoot a little bit of everything, in various conditions, with just the one camera. They also want access to many of the camera’s top-level controls and features. Having said that, it's not without its problems. One of the key features we’ve come to expect in our digital devices of late is the ability to shoot 4K video. Unfortunately, the 80D only offers Full HD, but it can at least shoot at 5Ofps for x2 slow motion effects. The 80D does boast improved dynamic range over its predecessor, but Specification at a glance Sensor APS-C Resolution 24.2MP Mount Canon EF-S Continuous shooting 7fps Image processor Digic6 Video FullHD30p Display 3.0 inch vari-angle 1,040,000 dots ISO range 100-16,000 MaxISO 25,600 Viewfinder Optical 100% coverage AF points 45 cross-type Memory SD/SDHC/SDXC (UHS-1) Weight 730g Dimensions 139 x105 x79mm Connectivity Wi-Fi/NFC Battery life 960 shots Price £879/$1199/€939 it cannot quite compete with the competition. That said, it still produces great quality, detailed images for an APS-C sensor, and with its new metering sensor, updated autofocus system, and well-design ergonomics, it remains a competitive choice for the budding enthusiast with a taste for photography and videography. 18
CANON EOS 80D / CANON ZOEMINI INSTANT CAMERAS Canon Zoemini instant cameras Fun, fast, on-the-go photography and printing (f you are a self-confessed selfie addict and love to share photos with your friends and loved ones, then you need something that is stylish, portable, and can give you instant results with the minimum of fuss. For every special moment that needs to be captured, you can have a camera and printer small enough to fit in your pocket and with such a compact system, it has never been easier to shoot and print on the go. Canon offers several options that range from 2-in-l models with cameras and printers built in, to the option to use a portable printer that connects to your mobile devices for on-the-spot image capture and printing, just when you need it. You might wonder how it is possible to build a printer into a compact camera and make it small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. It’s all made possible by Canon’s Zl NK Zero Ink) photo paper. ZINK paper is infused with a layer of micro crystals that react when heat is applied by the device. If you’ve ever had a receipt printed in your local store, it’s a colour version of that technology. Let’s be honest, it isn’t archival quality, but it is a great little toy for creating prints instantly. There are several flavours of Zoemini devices that you can choose from, depending on your needs. The basic Zoemini is just a printer with a 10 sheet capacity that connects to your smart device via the Canon Mini Print app. Next up is the Zoemini C, which lets you both capture and print from the same device, incorporating a 5MP camera and 2x3’’ ZINK paper prints. If you need more resolution, you can opt for the Zoemini S with an 8MP camera and 314 x 600dpi prints. It’s all you need for snaps on the go. Specification at a glance Zoemini S Camera resolution 8MP ISO range Auto ISO 100-1600 Print technology ZINK Print resolution 314 x600 dpi Colours Matt Black, Pearl, White, Gold Features Selfie mirror and ringlight Battery life 25 prints Connectivity Bluetooth Weight 188g Price £149/$159/€169 Zoemini C Camera resolution 5MP ISO range Auto ISO 100-1600 Print technology ZINK Print resolution 314 x500 dpi Colours Pink, Yellow, Green, and Blue Features Selfie mirror and ringlight Battery life 25 prints Connectivity Bluetooth Weight 170g Price £109/$99/€119 Zoemini Print technology ZINK Print resolution 314 x400 dpi Battery life 20 prints Connectivity Bluetooth Weight 160g Price £80/$99/€Ul
Fujifilm XF10 A premium quality, pocket-sized compact camera Today’s smartphones are equipped with some pretty nifty camera technology and the shots you can take are amazing to say the least. If you really are looking to step up from selfies to more creative and higher quality images, then the Fujifilm XF1O may be just what you are looking for. The XF1O pulls off a neat trick by being able to appeal to a number of photographer types. It was designed partly as an upgrade path away from smartphones. It has a noticeable improvement in the quality of the images you get versus your smartphone and lets you get hands-on with some proper camera controls. The image quality it offers, thanks to a large APS-C sized sensor, is also suitable for enthusiast photographers who already own a DSLR, but are looking for a backup camera that is small enough, and light enough, to fit in a pocket and offers the same kind of creative control that they are used to having with their advanced compacts, mirrorless cameras, or DSLRs. Before you go rushing off to the nearest Internet shopping site though, the XF does have some surprising and possible deal breaking features. The lens it has built-in is non-interchangeable and is a fixed focal length of 18.5mm. This is equivalent to 28mm in full-frame terms and that makes it a wide-angle lens. Sure, it has a nice bright f/2.8 max aperture, but that fixed wide angle does make it a fairly niche camera. It could be ideal for a bit of candid photography at parties and events, or for travel and street photography, but the moment you need a bit of ‘reach’ you’ll be looking for your DSLR again. It doesn’t have an optical viewfinder, relying on a fixed rear screen. There is no optical image stabilisation but thankfully, it does have some great high ISO performance and this coupled with the f/2.8 max aperture, means you should be catered for in low light situations. There are those that might enjoy the fixed focal length as it encourages you to move about in order to frame images the way you might if you had a zoom lens, and just be more creative with your angles and composition. The impressive image quality is also worth noting since it does use a large APS-C sensor that you find in a lot of DSLRs and more advanced mirrorless systems. With 4K 15fps burst shooting modes, and 4K video capability, you have a little gem of a camera if you are not put off by its limitations. Specification at a glance Sensor APS-C Resolution 24.2MP Continuous shooting 4K 15fps burst mode Lens 18.5 (28mm equivalent) Max aperture f/2.8 Video UHD Display 3.0 inch touchscreen ISO range 200-12,800 MaxISO 100-51,200 Digital zoom 1.8x Memory SD card Weight 278g Dimensions 76 x 43 x 73mm Connectivity Bluetooth 4.1 Price £449/$449/€438 20
FUJIFILM XF10 / OLYMPUS TOUGH TG-5 Olympus Tough TG-5 One of the best, rugged, and waterproof compacts you can get We make no bones about it; DSLRs are the ideal option if you want the best optical quality in your lenses, and the best sensor technology in your camera body. There is a downside of course. The prices of new DSLRs are not exactly wallet-friendly and once you have invested in your amazing bit of kit, you are going to make sure no harm comes to it. That will put a limit on the kinds of shots you can capture. For those with a more adventurous streak, capturing action in precarious and more perilous locations, both above and below the water, will require a camera that is somewhat more rugged and suited for purpose. This is where a rugged action compact will stand you in good stead. Enter the Olympus Tough TG-5. As the name no doubt suggests, it is designed to survive in situations where a typical DSLR would fear to tread. Short of being bombproof, the TG-5 is built to survive and keep shooting in some very arduous conditions. One look at the design of this camera shows its intent. It has a chunky build quality and claims to be crush-proof up to 100kg. It can be submerged to depths of upto 15m. If you wanttogo deeper still, then you can use the optional PT 058 waterproof case and dive to 45m while still having control over all the main camera functions. Forthose with butter fingers, it is also designed to be drop-proof from a height of 2.1m. For colder conditions, this camera is also very capable, being able to operate in conditions as low as -10°C. There is not much doubt about its toughness then, but what about its image quality and video capture? The good news is that it uses the TruePic VIII image processor. This isthe same processor you’ll find in the flagship OM-D E-l Mark2. Compact cameras are not usually renowned for ultra high image quality, but here, you will get class-leading quality, enhanced dynamic range and better, high ISO performance. Couple that with Raw file support, a four-mode variable macro system, and 4K video capture, and you have a super-rugged digital compact that can deliver images and video worthy of your next great adventure. Specification at a glance Sensor 1/2.3 inch Resolution 12MP Lens 25-100mm Zoom 4x optical Max aperture f/2.0-f/4.9 Continuous shooting 20fps Image processor TruePic VIII Features Waterproof, freeze proof, crush proof, shock proof Video 4Kat 30p Slow motion FullHD120fps Display 3.0 inch screen 460,000 dots Price £299/$449/€389 www.pclpublications.com 21
Pixapro CITI600 A mighty go anywhere battery powered flash First things first. The CITI600 is something of a chameleon. The flash unit itself is a Godox AD600 and in the USA it is known by another name, the Flashpoint XPLOR 600. Once you have that straight in your mind, you can turn to the flash and its capabilities. This is a self-contained high powered flash unit. Units of this type are referred to as monoblocs. It even comes with a 10W modelling lamp to let you gauge where shadows will fall on your subject before you take the shot. Battery power is supplied by a hefty 8700mAh lithium power pack. This does make the unit fairly heavy overall but that’s the price you pay for true portable power that can last you for a day’s worth of shooting. With a guide number of 87m at IS0100, there is plenty of power for the most demanding lighting conditions. At close range, you can even use the flash to correctly light a deliberately unexposed scene. Fashion photographers use this technique of overpowering the sun for some memorable images. Flash settings can be easily access and changed via the user- friendly LCD screen located on the side of the unit along with a number of control buttons and dials. At full power, the unit has a flash duration of l/220s but if you drop it down, you can achieve action freezing flash durations of 1/10000. Used as an outdoor portable unit, the wireless capabilities mean you can work with it at distances of up to 100m with radio triggers and link multiple units together for more complex lighting scenarios. There are two versions available. One is the TTL version compatible with Nikon and Canon cameras and there is also a full manual version where you are required to setthe poweryourself. This manual unit is cheaper and certainly anoption if you are lookingforthis much power at a more wallet friendly price. Specification at a glance Guide number 87 at ISO 100 Max power 600Ws Power range 1/1-1/256 Battery life 500 full power flashes Recharge time 4 hours from empty Recycle time 0.01-2.5 seconds Flash duration l/220s - 1/lOOOOs Sync mode Uptol/8000s Wireless system 2.4GHz radio transceiver Range 100m Mount Bowens S-mount Metering Supports full TTL Size 220 x245 x125mm Weight 2.7kg Price £599/$749/€590 I Although the battery pack is something of a beast, it will keep you shooting for up to 500 photos. 22
PIXAPRO CITI600 / LOWEPRO PRO RUNNER X450 II Lowepro Pro RunnerX450 II Take it all with you with this pro backpack design Over time, as your camera gear list grows, you might be faced with the possibility of how to transport your precious equipment. Eventually, you are going to be looking at getting a camera bag. For a typical day out where you might only need one camera body and a couple of lenses, you are well catered for if you want a simple and small backpack to keep your gear in. Once you step up to the next level and you need to transport more gear, then you need something that can accommodate your equipment in as versatile a manner as possible and still be portable enough to be useful. With that in mind, here is another product with an incomprehensible model name. The Lowepro LP36876 Pro Runner RL X450 AW II (which we’ll just call the Pro Runner II) is a camera bag with a difference. The Pro Runner II is made by Lowe who are one of the best know manufactures of camera bags and backpacks. It is a backpack that can convert to a roller case for those times, at an airport for instance, where you can pull it behind you like an normal piece of luggage. These days, there’s every chance that you’ll need not only your camera gear, flashes and accessories but your digital workflow equipment too. Luckily, the Pro Runner has been designed to accommodate not only two cameras, up to 7 lenses and a tripod butyour laptop as well. This is like having a studio on two wheels that can fit into the luggage compartment ofanairliner. Specification at a glance Material 680D nylon Style Backpack and roller case Features 3D mesh padding Contoured shoulder straps Waist belt Weather cover Internal size 31 x 16 x 43.3cm External size 35 x 22.9 x 52.5cm Weight 4.36kg Fits 2 DSLRs (one with lens attached) 5-6 lenses (one up to 300mm) _____________________________15" laptop______ Smartphone _____________________________Tripod__________ Accessories Price £235/$299/€228 “The Pro Runner has been designed to accommodate not only two cameras, up to 7 lenses and a tripod but your laptop as well ” www.pclpublications.com 23
Crowd pleasers Take a look at the best gadgets and new tech for photographers, videographers, and geeks of a LI types! PetNow Wearable HD Dog Camera (Kickstarter) Capture the world from your pet’s point of view with the PetNow Wearable HD Dog Camera. If you’ve ever wondered how your dog spends their day whileyou’re not around, now you can find out. Attached to an adjustable vest that comes in five different sizes, to suit all breeds, is a H D 1080p video camera with a 136° field of view that can stream video directly to your phone, so you can always see what your beloved pet is up to. The camera works in any lighting conditions and has an automatic night vision mode. It even has a 2-way on-board microphone so you can hear your dog and speak to it as well. With the addition of an SD card, you can store videos and photos up to 64Gb. Alternatively, you can remove it from the vest and set it up as a security monitor in your home. edelkrone FlexTILT Head 2 (£132/€149/$149) FlexTILT Head 2 is a cool, pan and tilt solution that allows you to mount your camera and frame your shots easily and quickly. Free yourself from the restrictions of your tripod mount with a flexible system that has no buttons, locks or dials to master. The constant friction technology employed by this device allows instant height adjustment without having to resort to extending the legs of your tripod. It also allows forward and reverse movement, so you can extend the camera out beyond the tripod for unobstructed top-down shots. This device can rotate 360° for precise and smooth panning and as a bonus, should you need it, the FlexTILT Head 2 can also work as a camera stand on flat surfaces without the need for legs. Anamorphic iPhone Video Lens icno/eus/sisfi Designed with professional mobilefilmmaking in mind, the SANDMARC Ana morphic lens allows you to capture, on your iPhone, footage that is hard to distinguish from the kind you would see in the cinema. It can capture an ultra-wide field of view by squeezing the image. It is a method popular among moviemakers such as J J Abrams and Stephen Soderbergh. Crafted from best-in-class optics, the Anamorphic lens can take your iPhone based filmmaking to the next level. If it contains any bright point light sources, such as car headlights, streetlights, or any hard light during night shoots, it creates a dramatic lens flare similar to those seen in the movies. This multi-element and multi-coated lens simply clips over the top of your iPhone's built-in lens and since it only weighs 46g, it will not weigh your phone down or make it bulky and hard to handle. Alter RFS - Rapid Filter System (Kickstarter) Anyone who likes to shoot with some extreme screw-on filters, such as Infrared (IR) filters and 10-stop neutral density (ND) filters, will no doubt be awa re of the annoying issues faced when trying to set up their compositions and getting the framing just right. By design, IR filters and 10-stop NDs are very, very dark. When you attach the filter, you can barely see anything when looking through the viewfinder, and this can be a pain since currently you have to remove the filter, set up the composition and then screw the filter back on. A company called Alter has been working on a crowdfunded project that uses a nifty screw-on hinged filter adapter that simply flips the attached filter out of the way when not required and then flips it back down when needed. Strong magnets hold the front ring in place while you work; a simple but brilliant idea. 24
CROWD PLEASERS Puluz Foldable LED Light Cube (£10/€13/$12) Anyone who needs product photos on a regular basis, particularly if they are trying to sell items on certain popular auction sites, will benefit from being able to take good quality and well-lit photos of the items for sale. So. you want professional lighting but you don’t have the space, or the money, for a professional lightbox setup. What do you do? Well, a company called Puluz may have the answer in the form of a small, lightweight, foldable studio tent. It measures 20cm x 20cm x 20cm and is equipped with two banks of LED lights, which can be plugged into a USB port to provide power and allow you to shoot with strong, continuous light that is flicker-free. It provides 6 coloured backdrops that can be placed inside the tent, which fastens together using Velcro material. Assembly takes less than a minute and then you are ready to shoot. There is even an aperture in the top of the tent to allow top down shooting of your products. Woodsum Wooden Pinhole Camera (Kickstarter) How about this for a uniquely retro approach to photography? It actually combines good, old. analogue, pinhole film photography and DIY, model making since it requires assembly before use. The camera uses 35mm roll film and is a lovely and memorable gift idea. The camera design uses premium wood components and is UV coated for a quality feel. They offer five different wood finishes including Maple, Walnut, and Pine. The assembly is quite straightforward thanks to easy-to-follow instructions. The camera is essentially a 3D puzzle with precut interlocking pieces that require no tools or glue. The camera is designed with a removable viewfinder and a mechanical shutter button to open the aperture and allow light to fall on the roll of film inside. For ease of use you can add a strap, since it provides mounting hooks either side, and you can use the mounting screw underneath to attach the camera to a tripod for more stable shooting. Simply insert your film, close the back panel, and use the winder on top to advance the film for the next shot. Anker Bluetooth Selfie Stick (emis/sui You love your smartphone right? You are a self-confessed selfie addict. Have you ever been a bit irritated that you can’t extend your arm out any further, particularly if you’re trying to get a group shot of you and your best friends? Then there is the question of activating the camera to take the shot. You can use a timer, and a lot of selfie sticks use a cablethat connects to your device. Anker, a Chinese electronics brand well known for producing computer and mobile peripherals, has come up with a selfie stick that can hold a large number of different sized phones in its cradle, extend out to 29 inches and be used as a monopod. Best of all, it has Bluetooth connectivity. This means you can seamlessly pair it to your phone, or even a GoPro action camera, and control the taking of shots just when you want them. It has a 20 hour battery life, so plenty of time to get all those awesome selfies in the bag. Bird Photo Booth 2.0 ($199 via www.birdphotobooth.com) This is a great gadget that allows you to feed the birds in your garden and also photograph them with spooking them. The Bird Photo Booth 2.0 is a bird feeder, styled to look like a retro Rol lei flex twin reflex camera, with space inside it to place a small action camera that is perfectly positioned to view the action outside as birds land and peck seed from the feeder. You don’t have to use the action camera, you can use your own iOS or Android smartphone, or GoPro if you have one, but the one provided by Bird Photo Booth is motion activated and optimised for the enclosure. The camera itself shoots 4K 30p video; it can also capture 16MP photos and can be controlled wirelessly from the comfort of your armchair. It has a very wide 170° field of view and can shoot bursts of photos in high- speed mode. It can also live stream the action for your very own wildlife show as the birds go about their business undisturbed. The enclosure itself is weather proof, so you can place it anywhere without fear of water ingress damaging your camera. This is a bird feeder like no other. www.pclpublications.com 25
'V 1 v* * • *’- .. y » * ’ * । •''*? GETTING STARTED Make sure you choose the right camera and accessories Are you looking for a camera? Are you a little unsure about the various kinds of camera that are available and which ones might be more suitable than others? For any newcomer to photography, many questions need to be answered in order to have a clearer picture of what kind of camera, lenses and accessories will be needed to set you up ready to start enjoying the hobby. Then you may turn your thoughts to flash lighting and light modification, software and filters. There is a whole world to explore and we can show you where to start. 28 Know your camera 32 The right camera foryou 36 What lenses do I need? 40 Why do I need a tripod? “A re you a little unsure about the various kinds of camera that are available and which ones might be more suitable than others?” 26
“Cameras come in many shapes, sizes and prices. At their heart though, they all do the same thing: capture light on a sensor and turn it into a digital image.” Knowyour camera A quick guide to all the major dials and buttons Cameras come in many shapes, sizes and prices. At their heart though, they all do the same thing: capture light on a sensor and turn it into a digital image. That’s a gross oversimplification but you get the general idea. Modern cameras also come with many features and functions. Although it would be difficult to list them all, here are the main dials and buttons that you can expect to find on many cameras. Different brands and models vary in their button and dial layouts as well as certain naming conventions but we’ve put together a little guide to the main controls and displays. 28
KNOW YOUR CAMERA Qz AF-Assist illuminator If your subject is poorly lit, the AF-Assist illuminator lights upto help with focusing. Q/ Power switch A simple lever you can rotate to turn the camera on and off. Qy Shutter release button This is a typical two-stage button. Press halfway to focus, then fully depress to take a photo. Aperture/Exposure Compensation Pressing this button lets you alter either the aperture or exposure compensation value. Q/ Movie record button This button is pressed to begin video recording and pressed again to stop recording. Q. Live view switch Click the live view switch in order to display the view through the lens on the camera's LCD screen. Mode dial Rotate this dial to choose which shooting mode to use such as Aperture, Priority or Manual mode. Q) Pop-up flash A small built in flash. They are quite low power, but they can be used to help illuminate poorly lit or backlit subjects. Q) Flash modes and flash compensation This button allows the choice of different flash modes such as Red-eye reduction and control of output power. Function button You can assign a preferred function to this button that activates when you hold it. Lens release button Push this button in order to release an attached lens from the camera's lens mount. Infrared receiver (front) You can activate your camera remotely by using a controller pointed at this receiver. www.pclpublications.com 29
THE REAR OF THE CAMERA Q/ Menu button Pressing the menu button will give you access to most of the shooting options on the camera. Q; Stereo microphone Many cameras have a small stereo microphone built in to capture audio whilst shooting video. Accessory shoe This mounting plate lets you attach optional flashguns to use instead of the built in flash. Eye sensor When you place your eye to the viewfinder, the LCD display will automatically turn off. Info button Press the info button to activate the LCD screen and view the current information display. Command dial The command dial lets you alter the values of the main camera settings by rotating it to the left or right. You can activate your camera remotely by using a controller pointed at this receiver. A small speaker unit to let you listen to any audio that you have captured. Q/ Viewfinder eyepiece Through the viewfinder you will see the main framinggrid and the camera settings displayed. Here you can adjust the focus of the viewfinder to suit your eyesight. Play button © Playback zoom Pressing this button will display pictures on the With an image displayed on the screen, you can LCD monitor. zoom in up to 33x magnification. When you press this button you can change settings such as image quality and metering. © Multi selector The multi selector acts like a cursor to letyou navigate menu screens. © OK button Used in conjunction with the multi selector, it lets you select highlighted items. If you wantto delete a currently displayed image, press this button to remove it. Vari-angle monitor All information about camera settingsand image playback can be viewed on the screen. 30
KNOWYOURCAMERA THE LEFTSIDE Accessory terminal Wireless controllers and GPS units can be plugged in to this terminal. Microphone socket Optional external stereo microphones can be connected to this port. Q; USB and A/V connector You can directly connect your camera to a computer or printer from this port. Flash and FEC button Activate your camera’s built-in flash when required. You can also activate the flash exposure compensation. Function button Pressing this button in conjunction with other buttons allowsyou to access more features. THE RIGHT SIDE Q, HDMIconnector Allows the camera to be connected to a high-definition HDMI device like a TV. Q, Memory card slot This is where you insert the digital storage media such as an SD card. Power connector A terminal allowing a mains electrical source to be plugged in. Q/ Battery compartment cover The battery is inserted here. Infrared receiver Fora remote control device. Mains power slot Mains power adapter/powerpack lead access slot. www.pclpublications.com 31
The right camera foryou 'e highlight the main types of digital camera become quite blurred as the quality and the capabilities of these devices keep expanding. With that in mind, we have put together a little guide to the main types of camera out there. Hopefully it will help point you in the right direction so you get the right camera for the job. The number of camera models available to the budding photographer is vast. All the main manufacturers have a large number of different models and types of camera to suit every taste and also every pocket. A wide variety of choice is fine but it can be somewhat overwhelming when it comes to choosing a camera for yourself. It isn’t helped by the fact that the distinctions between various types of camera system have “A wide variety of choice is fine but it can be somewhat overwhelming when it comes to choosing a camera for yourself.”
THE RIGHT CAMERA FOR YOU Compact and Point and Shoot A large number of entry-level cameras fall into this category. They tend to be fairly small and light, measuring about 100 x 50 x 25mm and weighing around 120-130g. Modern compacts are normally fully automatic, although some may offer basic manual exposure options. They usually have a zoom lens of up to 12x which folds flush with the camera body and an LCD monitor of about 7cm diagonal size. Unlike larger camera systems, they don’t have an optical viewfinder, relying instead on the LCD screen to be used as a live view monitor. Extra features may include HD video recording, image stabilisation and Wi-Fi connectivity, and they often come in a range of colours. As sensor technology has improved, it has also given rise to a range of compact cameras for the more advanced photographer. Sporting larger sensors, these offer greater image quality as well as superior versatility, manual controls and better low light capability. As you would imagine, these more advanced compact cameras can be significantly more expensive but they will give you much greater creative control than the standard models. These models typically offer 16MP - 24MP sensor sizes. Superzoom Superzoom cameras are a fixed-lens design of camera that are built to offer both wide angle capability and very large levels of magnification without the need to invest in additional lenses, asyou would with a DSLR. In this case, the amount of magnification can be any where up to 60x or more. That is equivalent to a 1400mm super telephoto lens. This immense magnification means it can do the job of much more expensive DSLR cameras, that would require the purchase of telephoto lenses that could cost thousands, all in a relatively compact body. The downside to having a model of this kind is that although you can cover a huge zoom range from medium wide angle to super telephoto, that is all you can do. If you wanted to shoot a very shallow depth of field macro shot, for instance, you would not be able to do so: nor could you use a fast pri me lens for low light shooting. That said, these superzooms offer image stabilisation, manual control, electronic viewfinders and HD video recording capability too. You can view these types of cameras as a great stepping stone for people who want to move up from compact cameras but don’t want the extra expense of DSLRs and multiple lenses to worry about. www.pclpublications.com 33
Mirrorless Cameras This area of the camera system world has seen quite an increase in popularity in recent times. Essentially a mirrorless camera, as the name suggests, does not have the movable mirror seen in larger DSLR formats. Although you get a viewfinder as well as a rear mounted LCD screen, the image thatyou see is an electronic representation provided by the image sensor. Like the larger DSLR cameras, these devices have an interchangeable lens system, giving you greater creative control over any shooting conditionsyou might face. A mirrorless interchangeable lens camera (MILC) is smaller, lighter and less complex to build than most DSLRs. MILC systems usually offer around 20MP sensor sizes and although the quality of the images may not be up to full-frame DSLR standards, it is shown to be improving with each new camera that comes out. The price point and compact nature of this MILC system makes it a popular choice but be aware that lens choices are not as varied as those you would get with a standard DSLR. However, they do have a growing range of accessories such as flashguns. They have also become increasingly popular with filmmakers who love them for their good autofocus ability with HD and even Ultra HD video resolutions. Adventure Cameras This is anothergrowth area in the camera market. Adventure cameras are compact cameras that are tougher than the average camera. If adventuring is your thing, then perhaps a large, heavy, expensive and relatively brittle DSLR might not be the most apt choice. Although DSLRs are touted as ‘weather sealed' that won’t protect them from a dunking in a muddy river or being dropped on some granite outcropping. This is where the adventure camera shines. Agood adventure camera is fully waterproof and capable of going on a scuba dive down to 50ft. They are also shockproof, being able to shrug off a small drop onto a hard surface. Their sensors usually offer about 16MP resolution and plenty of shooting modes to make them useful as day-to-day cameras too. An offshoot of this area of photography has given rise to mini action cameras such as the GoPro range. They are the darlings of surfers, snowboarders and the like who want to be able to mount very small, very light cameras to their boards, or to themselves. Their ability to shoot 4K video also makes them very useful in the videography arena. 34
THE RIGHT CAMERA FOR YOU Digital SLRs Digital SLRs. or DSLRs as they are i IT I, Wwlh T'V'Tf! t- |t I use a mirror mechanism to reflect light from the ens up nto a viewfinder The К ЯИ viewfinder is optical, meaning that you are actually seeing what the lens sees. not an electronic representation like the LCD screens on compact cameras. ' . When you take a photo, the mirror is flipped up out of the way and the light entering through the lens is allowed Kfergj to fall onto the camera sensor and an image is recorded. DSLRs are generally heavier and more complex than mirrorless and compact cameras. DSLRs have interchangeable lenses and most can use the same lenses as their older film-based predecessors, giving you plenty of creative scope and lens choice. With specialist lenses available for particular tasks. DSLR systems are the choice of most serious amateur and professional photographers, offering superb image quality. Most DSLRs use a sensor size called APS-C but a few top-end cameras use the larger full-frame sensors that are the size of a 35mm film frame. The range of available lenses is vast, particularly with the main manufacturers. The downside is that DSLR bodies, lenses and accessories can be quite expensive. Camera Phones There is no getting away from it, the smartphone has turned the idea of a point- and-shoot camera on its head. Smartphone imaging technology has come a long way and your average smartphone is now capable of shooting 16 megapixels with impressive low-light capability for such a compact device. Moreover, many smartphones now have the main camera backed up with a front-facing, lower resolution, ‘selfie’ cam as well. Typically, the camera built into a mobile phone is around 16MP with a small f/2.0 main lens and an 8MP front camera. They also have LEDs built in to act as a small flash unit to light your subjects at night as well as electronic image stabilisation. Camera phones are much simpler in design and use than standard DSLRs. Their smaller sensors and tiny lenses put an upper limit on image quality, although a few current models now allow the capture of images in Raw format as well as the more usual Jpeg format. Some models do boast larger Г sensors that can rival the quality of some compact cameras. The main advantage of the camera phone is that it is built into a mobile phone; wherever you go, the camera goes too. www.pclpublications.com 35
What lenses do I need? We take a look at the main lens types available foryour camera It’s no surprise that if you purchase a new camera with an interchangeable lens system, one of the first questions you might ask yourself is ‘which lens should I buy for my camera?’. That is not quite as easy a question to answer as you would hope. Manufacturers offer increasingly varied lenses to suit different photographers’ requirements. To add to the confusion, there is also quite a varied range in price and quality to take into q consideration. On top of that there is also the cropped sensor and full-frame issue to consider. Certain lenses will only work with certain camera bodies because of the mounting system used, and so on and on it goes. Everyone shoots differently, with a different style and preference and the type of shot you are trying to capture will also greatly influence the kind of lens you need. If you are a diehard landscape photographer, then lenses with a greater angle of view are what you will want to capture the environment in all its sweeping glory. If however, you are a portrait photographer, then your lens requirementswill be quite different. It’s a bit of a minefield but we’ll try to break down the main types of lenses available as you look deeper into your next choice of lens.e “If you are a diehard landscape photographer, then lenses with a greater angle of view are what you will want to capture the environment in all its sweeping glory ” 36
WHAT LENSES DO I NEED? Prime lens A prime lens is a lens that is a fixed focal length. That means that it cannot zoom in or out, so you have to buy a prime lens with a focal length that suits your needs. Prime lenses are light and usually of better optical quality; but you will have to carry more of them to around cover a range of focal lengths. Although people might prefer the convenience of a zoom lens that covers a wide focal length range, the main factor in considering getting a couple of prime lenses in your gear bag, is that they offer models that have a very wide maximum aperture. Primes can be purchased with apertures of f/2.8 to f/1.4. This allows greater flexibility in low light conditions and also allows you to shoot images with very shallow depth of field for those lovely out of focus backgrounds. Zoom lens Zoom lenses have the advantage that they are more versatile than prime lenses. So much so that just a couple of lenses can cover a very wide range of focal lengths. You could for instance have a 16- 35mm wideangle lens, a 24-105mm lensand a 100-400mm super telephoto and not need another lens for most of your shooting requirements. From a framing and composition standpoint, you do not have to physically move, you can simply zoom the lens to achieve the framing you are after. There are even certain zoom lenses that cover a focal length range of 18-300mm. For most practical requirements, you could use that one lens for every shoot you do. The main downside is that optical quality is often not as good as a prime lens and you will need to be aware of camera shake when using the longer focal lengths as any small amount of unwanted camera movement will be magnified and potentially ruin your shots. www.pclpublications.com 37
Pancake lens (prices range from £80 - £400) Typical focal length: Wide. Normal. Telephoto Simply put. a pancake lens isa very flat prime lens. It is shorterthan it is wide and very small and light. Photographers use them primarily when they are after a small, compact camera and lens system and are used with DSLR and Micro Four Thirds cameras. Relative to their diminutive size, they can produce very good images. Despite being a prime lens, they generally have a maximum aperture of no greater than f/2.8. although there are a couple of exceptions. Standard zoom (prices range from £100- £800+) Typical focal length: 24-105mm (full-frame equivalent) This is the most common focal length, suitable for general photography and useful for everything from landscapes to portraits. Most systems will include a couple of lenses in this focal length range: usually a cheaper, slower version often included as a kit lens with a new camera, with a maximum aperture that is usually around f/3.5-f/4; and a premium quality lens often costing a lot more that may offer a maximum apertu re of f/2.8-f3.5. Ultra-wide zoom (prices range from £200 - £1500) Typical focal length: 16-35mm (full-frame equivalent) Ultra-wide zoom lenses are primarily used for landscape photography. They are more specialised than standard zooms, and consequently are usually more expensive, although some systems include both standard and premium types. A good quality wide-angle zoom can have a maximum aperture of f/2.8 but will be very expensive, whereas a lens with a similarfocal length but with a maximum aperture of f/4 will be much cheaper. Macro lens (prices range from £90 - £1500) Typical focal length: 50-100mm (full-frame equivalent) A true macro lens by definition should be able to record an image at 1:1 scale on the sensor or medium it was shot on at its closest focusing distance. This magnification factor means that a macro lens is able to fill the frame and reveal amazing detail on very small objects. Some of the more recent models have image stabilisation built in, to assist with camera shake that can potentially ruin a shot. 38
WHAT LENSES DO I NEED? Medium zoom (prices range from £80-£1000) Typical focal length: 70-300mm (full-frame equivalent) The medium telephoto zoom is useful for amateur wildlife or sports photography and portraits at the shorter end of its focal length range. Telephoto zooms have a smaller effective aperture than standard zooms, usually ranging from f/3.5 to f/5.6. A decent 70- 300mm lens can be purchased quite cheaply. Tilt-shift (prices range from £100- £2500) Typical focal length: 17mm 24mm 35mm (full-frame equivalent) A tilt-shift lens is quite a rare breed and not many of its type are available. It is the modern equivalent of an old bellows film camera. The lens can be rotated relative to the sensor to control the position of the area of sharpest focus, as well as moved parallel to the sensor to move the image area. www.pclpublications.com 39
Why do I need a tripod? An essential piece of equipment Camera ownership goes through a number of phases. First is the decision about which camera to actually buy, then comes the choice of lenses. Then come the choices with accessories. It may sound like an exaggeration, but one of the best accessories you can get to improve your photography, is a good tripod. In fact, it might be safer to upgrade it from the status of ’accessory’ to ‘essential purchase’. You might wonder why a tripod would be considered one of the top key factors in taking better photographs. Well, have you ever wanted to take photos in challenging low light conditions and wondered why your images are coming out blurry? Have you ever taken photos of some distant subject with your superzoom camera at its maximum magnification and wondered the same thing? This is because one of the primary causes of unsatisfactory photos is camera shake. Camera shake is the unwanted movement of the camera during the capture of the provides a very stable platform onto which you can mount your camera, preventing it from moving and spoiling your shots. Tripods come in various makes, models and materials. They are either made from plastic, in the cheaper models, to metal alloys in the mid-range versions, all the way up to light but rigid carbon fibre in the professional models. As the name suggests, the tripod consists of a three legged arrangement upon which your camera sits in a tripod mount. The legs come in 2 or three sections and can be telescoped out to different heights. The tripod mount can be tilted, rotated and flipped so you can shoot at a wide variety of angles as well as in landscape or portrait orientation. Key factors when choosing a tripod are rigidity and carrying weight. The tripod you choose has to be able to support the weight of your camera and hold it perfectly still. Some cheaper tripods with plastic heads and thin aluminium legs are too ‘bouncy’ J to be used with anything heavier than а уШ compact or light superzoom. Set the g tripod up and press down on the top ш of it. If it flexes by more than a few я millimetres it’s not going to be ш stiff enough to support the ш weight of a heavy camera. g Top Tip i fult9of equi‘pmamera ba9 your tripoq ?S aent Under Of Adding extra91?3* Way to it- This it ' ^ability Usef“<witb LPr"cu(aHy mate^^nd° shot. This translates as blurry photos, often blurry enough to ruin the shot completely. The tripod is instrumental in eliminating camera shake. It Pocket tripods (prices range from £20- £40) These are miniature tripods designed for small compact cameras and are ideal fortabletop use, or for positioning you r camera for a self-timer group shot. They’re small enough to slip into a jacket pocket or into your camera pouch. There are several different types, including ones with telescopic legs, ball or pan-tilt heads, and even flexible legs. One unique and extremely versatile design is the GorillaPod, which can grip onto almost any object or work as a tripod. If you want something even smaller to support your light compact camera, then the XShot mini travel tripod is the one for you. “Tripods come in various makes, models and materials. They are either made from plastic in the cheaper models, to metal alloys in the mid-range versions.” 40
WHY DO I NEED A TRIPOD? Entry level tripods (prices range from £10-£50) There are many cheap tripods on the market, made not only by brand name manufacturers but many third party manufacturers too. It’s fair to say that the cheap tripods are cheap for a reason. If you are serious about your photography, particularly if you are shooting outdoors with a heavier DSLR. then you may find these a bit of a false economy. If they are made primarily from plastic, then they are not going to be rigid enough for any kind of long exposure photography, particularly when telescoped out to their full height. You would be better off spending a little more on a metal frame tripod. Mid-range tripods (prices range from £50- £250) Often referred to as travel tripods, these are designed for general use where low weight and portability are important factors. It is a good compromise to use a mid-range metal tripod when you need to be mobile. They are made of lightweight materials, usually aluminiumor carbon fibre and are suitable for most types of camera from compacts up to mid-range DSLRs, although not with large telephoto lenses. If you can, get one with a quick release plate that makes mounting and demounting your camera a much quicker process. The ability to lock the legs at different angles and fold in reverse for greater compactness and portability is important too. MeFOTO Professional tripods (prices range from £250 - £800*) Top quality tripods are made from high-tech materials like carbon or basalt fibre, with magnesium alloy fittings and superior workmanship. They offer the best rigidity and support for even the heaviest cameras and lenses. They are goingto be heavier than entry level ormid-rangetripods but they offer quick release plates, different types of mounting platforms, variable angle legs and even the centre column can pivot in a wide arc. Although they are very expensive, you do get a lot of tripod for your money. Monopods (prices range from £40- £200) If you want supportforyourcamera but don’t want the weight or bulk of a tripod, then a monopod is a good alternative. As the name implies, it is basically a one-legged tripod. Although not as stable as its three-legged cousin, the monopod can dramatically reduce camera shake. They can also be quite handy when shooting from a cramped space where the larger footprint of a normal tripod might inhibit your ability to shoot. Typically made from aluminium or carbon fibre, they provide helpful stability and also a good measure of portability. www.pclpublications.com 41
TECHNICAL QUICK-START A handy quick reference guide to some key photographic techniques If you are new to photography or simply brushing upon your skills, the core elements that make up good photography are your key to getting better exposures, better composition and more creative results as a by product. Once you have a good grasp of the essentials, your photography will feel more natural, intuitive and you can be the one making the all-important decisions about how you want your shots to look, rather than the camera's best guess. We will explore more in further issues, but for now, let’s tap into the fundamentals with our handy quick-start guides. 44 Aperture and depth of field explained 46 How does shutter speed affect photos? 48 How ISO works on a digital camera 50 Photography software “Once you have a good grasp of the essentials, your photography will feel more natural, intuitive and you can be the one making the all-important decisions about how you want your shots to look, rather than the camera’s best guess.” 42 www.pclpublications.com
TECHNICAL QUICK-START
Aperture and depth of field explained A key technique that controls how much of your photograph is in focus Aperture is one of the three main aspects of photography that help control the brightness of your photographs, and also how sharp your photos are throughout the scene. Aperture is responsible for how much of your scene is blurred or sharp; it is also known as an f-stop. This is a reference to the early days of photography when the aperture was actually adjusted by using cards with different sized holes in them. They were slotted into the camera behind the lens and were known as ‘stops’. That terminology has stuck and it has been with us ever since. The f number These days, cards have been replaced with mechanical diaphragms which use a series of curved blades that can expand or contract to alter the size of the aperture and allow varying amounts of light into the camera to alter the exposure of your image. A very small aperture will let only a very small amount^ of light into the camera, whereas a large aperture lets much more light fall onto the camera’s sensor. The numbers used to indicate the size of the aperture can run from f/1.4, which is a very large aperture, all the way to f/32, which is a very small aperture. That’s the thing to remember: a large f-number is equal to a small aperture and vice versa. Depth of field Not only does the aperture help control the exposure of a photo, it also adds another quality to your photos, in the way it handles depth of field. Depth of field (DOF) is simply an area of a scene that is in sharp focus. When you hear someone refer to a deep depth of field they mean that, from the foreground of the shot out to the far distance, the image is acceptably sharp all the way through. Deep DOF is achieved by using very small apertures such as f/16 up to f/32. Conversely, shallow depth of field means that only a very small area of the shot is in focus. The near foreground and distant backgrounds will be out of focus. Shallow DOF is created by using very large apertures such asf/1.4to f/2.8. Fast glass Lenses that offer very large maximum apertures in the f/1.4 area usually tend to be fixed focal length prime lenses around the 50mm area. You can get zoom lenses that have f/2.8 maximum apertures but they tend to be quite expensive and are referred to as A good prime lens has fewer lens elementsand theyoffer very large maximum apertures up to f/1.4,and someasmuchasf/1.2. “Not only does the aperture help control the exposure of a photo, it also adds another quality to your photos...” 22> | ^22 50mm ‘fast glass’. The minimunfe|5?rture of a lens tends to be less of an issue, as even basic kit lenses can achieve at leastf/16 if you need much deeper DOF. Very large apertures let you shoot in lower light situations with higher shutter speeds, rather than if you were shooting with smaller aperturdSn the same conditions. Smaller apertures are often used eV landscape photographers to get their shots as sharp as possible and capture as much detail as they can. 44
APERTURE AND DEPTH OF FIELD EXPLAINED Aperture and depth of field quickreferenceguide Note: this guide is for illustrative purposes only. www.pclpublications.com 44
How does shutter speed affect photos? Shutter speed is an important setting and worth taking time to master Shutter speed is another of the three main pillars of photography. It is used in conjunction with the aperture and camera sensitivity settings on your camera to get a correct exposure of your subject. A camera’s shutter is just a mechanical curtain that stays closed, covering your camera’s sensor, until you press your shutter button. When the shutter button is pressed, the shutter opens and allows light to fall onto the camera’s sensor. Based on the settings used, the shutter stays open for a certain amount of time until enough light has been collected for a correct exposure, and then closes again preventing any more light hitting the sensor. The amount of time the shutter allows light to hit the sensor is referred to as shutter speed. The slower the shutter speed, the longer it stays open and therefore more light is allowed to hit the sensor for longer. A faster shutter speed means that it stays open for a much shorter period of time and light only hits the sensor for a very brief moment. Shutter speeds can vary over a large range, from many minutes all the way up to a very brief l/8000th of a second. Motion and blur Although shutter speed is one setting that helps control your exposure, it also has another quality that can dramatically enhance, or indeed ruin, your photos. Forexample, if you are photographing waves against rocks using a fast shutter speed of l/640th of a second in bright conditions with a handheld DSLR.anythingthat is moving will appear to be frozen in place. Any movement of the camera whilst you are holding it will not be recorded either since the shutter was only open for such a brief period of time. However, if you are taking a similar shot but in lower light conditions with a shutter speed of around 1/4 of a second, to make sure you are capturing enough light for a good exposure, the movement of the waves will be noticeable since the shutter is open for a much longer period of time compared to the first example. Now the waves will be blurred in the direction they were moving. Again, since you are shooting handheld, any movement imparted by you to the camera during the exposure will create even more blur and possibly ruin the shot. Care needs to be taken when using slower shutter speeds where camera shake is a danger. Use a tripod A tripod becomes essential if you want to take photos with long shutter durations. The problem also becomes magnified if you use longer focal length lenses. A wide angle lens of about 14mm is less of an issue when compared to a telephoto lens of 400mm, where even the slightest movement of the camera creates a large amount of movement in your subject - as seen in the viewfinder. Much faster shutter speeds are great for capturing and freezing fast action but do need plenty of light. Slower shutter speeds are perfect for turning moving water into mist but you will need a tripod. 46
HOW DOES SHUTTER SPEED AFFECT PHOTOS? Typical uses of your camera's shutter speeds Note: this guide is for illustrative purposes only. 1/IOOOs up to l/2000s 1/2OOOS up to l/8000s www.pclpublications.com 47
How ISO works on a digital camera What impact does ISO have on your photography? Back in the old days of film photography, ISO, in its simplest sense, was a measure of how sensitive your camera’s film stock was to light. On modern digital cameras, altering the ISO value does not technically make your sensor more sensitive to light. What, in fact, happens is that the resulting image has its tonal values amplified, to simulate greater light sensitivity. Low I SO values mean the image is amplified less to simulate less light sensitivity and high values mean it is amplified to a much greater degree to simulate more sensitivity. Lower ISO means that you require more light, over a longer duration, for a good exposure and high ISO means that you require less light, over a shorter duration, for the same conditions. This assumes your camera’s settings are unchanged apart from the alteration of the ISO value. It sounds like a win-win situation: you’re shooting in low light, but you need a faster shutter speed, so you just increase the ISO until you have the shutter speed you want. That’s fine, but whilst you can easily employ your sensor’s extremely high image amplification, be aware that it does come at a cost. As the I SO value increases, so does the amount of noise it generates as a by- product of the amplification applied to the photo. Avoid grain Most DSLRs offer a base ISO of around 100, howeveryou can. with some, use ISO settings around 64 to 50. This is the lowest setting available and also the one that produces the least noise for the cleanest images possible. Stepping from ISO 100 to ISO 200 amplifies the image by a factor of 2. An ISO setting of 6400 means it appears to be 64 times more sensitive to light. This means the camera requires 64 times less lightto capture an image, at the cost of increased image noise. A lot of new cameras can now offer ISO sensitivities that range from base 50 all the way up to an expanded range of 204,800 and more. Those highest values should only be used as a last resort since the images will be very grainy. The rule of thumb is that you should always try to use the lowest ISO setting based on your current shooting conditions. Auto ISO A lot of cameras have an auto ISO function that will dynamically alter the ISO based on the lighting conditions in which you are working; to always make sure you have a reliably fast shutter speed and therefore avoid camera shake. One effective remedy to image noise is to use larger, more sensitive photocells; digital SLRs have a major advantage in this area, since they have physically larger sensors. Compact camera sensor technology continues to improve, in image processing and sensor design, and we will undoubtedly see further advances in the future, but for now image noise is something we just have to accept. I With each new model and make of camera, theirhigh ISO ability improves everytime. However, noise at high ISO is notyet a thing of the past. 48
HOW ISO WORKS ON A DIGITAL CAMERA Typical uses of your camera's ISO settings ISO 1600 Note: this guide is for illustrative purposes only. www.pclpublications.com 49
Photography sof t wa re Howto bring your photos to life Back in the days of analogue film cameras, the process of taking photographs used to be the key part of the creative workflow. Producing prints or negatives in the darkroom did not allow for much scope when it came to maximising the quality of the images that had been taken. These days, in the world of digital photography, it can be argued that the capture of the images is only half the workflow. I ndeed, some regard the post-process workflow as the overriding factor in producing great images. We have always extolled the virtues of shooting your images in the uncompressed and unprocessed Raw format. Raw files are so named because they only contain the raw data straight from your camera’s sensor; there has been no processing of the image as you would get with a Jpeg file. However it does mean that you have to put in a little work to extract the very best from the Raw format. This is where you need some software that can process your photos. Using Raw processing software is the first step in the workflow. Here you can make all the necessary basic edits to your images such as distortion correction, saturation, tonal adjustments, sharpening, noise reduction and so on. Once you have made all the main edits to your photo, you can save it out to your preferred image format such as Jpegor Tiff and call it done. However, if you want to do some additional photo manipulation, then you will also need to invest in software that can let you apply extensive photo retouching, layers, masks and effects. When it comes to software, you have a large number of options from which to choose. In fact, there is so much choice, it can be nothing short of confusing. If you are new to photography or even an experienced photographer looking for some new applications to take your images to the next level, we’ve produced a small overview of some of the software options currently available. Note, that from the list, Adobe products feature quite prominently. That is no accident as their popularity cannot be denied, but there are also more options to discover. "These days, in the world of digital photography, it can be argued that the capture of the images is only half the work flow.”
PHOTOGRAPHY SOFTWARE Adobe Photoshop (Windows and Mac - £120 annual subscription) Photoshop is probably one of the best known editing programs out there; so much so that the name of the software has actually become a verb, as in ‘that image has been Photoshopped’. The great thing about Photoshop is that it is relatively easy to use, if you only need to bring the simplest tools to bear on your images, but it is also hugely sophisticated if you require the most advanced editing tools available. It is the go-to application not only for photographers but digital artists, designers and even videographers and 3D artists. It is probably the most popular layer- based image editing and photo retouching software currently available. Photoshop is now available as part of Adobe’s Creative Cloud subscription service. ACDSee Photo Studio (Windows - £50 one-time charge) ACDSee has actually been around for some time now and can be considered a competent alternative to both Photoshop and Lightroom. From its humble beginnings, this high-end version of the software has developed into a fully featured image management tool, Raw processor and image manipulation program. Anyone who has used Lightroom will note that ACDSee has a number of different workspace environments. Each workspace has a specificf unctionand each can be activated and accessed easily, producing an efficient one-stop workflowe xperience. You c an u se t he Manage mode to findandcatalogueyour photos, then jump into the Develop mode and process your images, before diving straight into Edit mode to manipulate your photo with some extensive editing tools. Qcd$ee r>. 6 ^oStudo Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic (Windows and Mac - £120 annual subscription) Lightroom Classic is an image processing and photo organiser that allows the organising, non-destructive enhancement and retouching of images in large numbers. It is a very powerful program that not only sets the standard for image enhancement but also for its ability to organise, catalogue and add keywords to all the images in your library. It also boasts the capability to create photobooks, print parameters such as layout and orientation andean produce web galleries for websites with a number of display templates provided for easy styling. Luminar 4 (Windows and Mac - £65) Another powerful all-in-one option for photographers and digital professionals is Luminar 3. This is another example of a hybrid Raw processing program, image management system and layer-based image editor. Luminar 3 is being touted as a strong contender in the growing list of applications trying to topple Photoshop and Lightroom from the top spot. Luminar 3 has a number of workspaces from which you can choose, or even create your own custom workspace to suit your workflow process. The benefits of this mean that, unlike Lightroom where you might make a series of global adjustments and then save the image and work on it in Photoshop for more targeted edits, Luminar 3 letsyou do all of that under one roof. Affinity Photo (Windowsand Mac - £50) Created by Serif, Affinity Photo is a raster image editor very much in the same vein as Photoshop. It allows the creation of multi-layered compositions and has a varied toolset for graphics professionals and photographers alike. Amongst its arsenal of tools and features is the ability to edit Raw images, create stitched panoramic photos, retouch photos and make other non-destructive adjustments. It can also import and export to the Photoshop PSD format, and is compatible across iOSand Windows. Corel PaintShop Pro (Windows - £55) Corel Paint Shop Pro pulls off a great trick by being several programs in one package. You are able to use its file managementcapabilities to tag, rate and keyword your images. Then, you can move to the edit suite and process your images and make all the main enhancementsand image adjustments that your image needs; there are also a number of preset art filters, similar tot hose you find on apps for your mobile phone. Then you can move to the edit suite and use the layer-based editing that makes it a worthy alternative to Photoshop. www.pclpublications.com 51
LEARNING NEWSKILLS The fundamental knowledge on which all good photography is based Photographers come in various shapes, sizes, and skill levels. They range from professional photographers, who have studied at college and honed their technical skills over time, to accomplished photographers, who have just picked up a camera and learned their craft with a trial and error method. There are also enthusiasts who may have stepped up to a more advanced camera and are beginning to explore the new creative possibilities, and there are those who have been happy taking snaps on full automatic but now want to ramp it up and take control. No matter what kind of skill level you are, the basics of photography are essential to all and they all need to have a firm grasp of the fundamentals before they can get their camera out of full automatic mode and truly start to explore the creative aspects of the medium. If you just want to brush up on your theory, understand a little more about how light works, or just improve your composition, this next section has what you need with some examples thrown in for good measure. 54 The exposure triangle 56 Shutter speed 60 Shutter speed: how it’s done 62 Aperture and depth of field 66 Aperture and depth of field: how it’s done
LEARNING NEWSKILLS www.pclpublications.com 53
The exposure triangle The holy trinity for photographers If you are keen to express your creativity and learn more about the nature of photography, then you will need to be daring and take your camera out of fully automatic mode and explore the skills required for shooting in manual mode. When you shoot fully manual, you have to be aware of the interplay between each of your camera’s main settings of ISO, Aperture and Shutter Speed. Connect them up The exposure triangle is a popular visual method to connect the three main variables of aperture, shutter speed and ISO amplification that govern the f inal look of your image. Photography is a balancing act of these three elements when you capture an image. Once you have your camera ready and have a set of variables in place to give you a balanced shot, as soon as you adjust one of the three, at least one of the others has to be adjusted as well, in order to maintain the desired effect you are after in the shot. You are not only altering the exposure but also the quality and appearance of the image. 54
THE EXPOSURE TRIANGLE An example We'll try and sum it up in a theoretical example that should demonstrate the basic principle. If you are shooting a subject such as a tor on the moors, withyour camera in manual mode (this is important to keep in mind), you will need to balance your ISO, aperture and shutter speed to give you a well exposed image. The parameters you choose are down to your personal choice of course and depend on prevailing lighting conditions. In our theoretical example the settings we used were as follows: ISO 100, aperture f/4 and shutter speed 1/500 of a second. Making changes If you decide however, that you need greater depth of field, you might change your camera's aperture to f/8, making the diameter of the aperture smaller, blocking more light but increasing depth of field. If you take the shot now, your image will have more depth of field but it will be very underexposed. What happened? Now that you are in manual mode, you have currently altered only one side of the exposure triangle. You would need to alter at least one of the other two in order to bring your image back to its proper exposure. You decide to keep the ISO at 100, so the shutter speed will have to alter. If you increase the duration that the shutter is open, you can allow the camera togather light for an extended period of time. In this case, because we changed from f/4to f/8, which is 2-stops, we need to allowfor 2-stops more light gathering from the shutter speed we use. 1/500 of a second would need to become 1/125 of a second to allow for the 2-stop alteration you made to the aperture with the ISO remaining unchanged. A basic ruleof thumb to keep in your mind is that a 1-stop alteration is equal to either a halving or doubling of a particular parameter. In this case the 2-stop alteration to our theoretical shutter duration means 1/500 of a second slows to 1/250 and then slows a second time to 1/125. A word about ISO Although ISO is included as part of the exposure triangle, it is worth notingthat on digital cameras, higher ISO settings amplify the amount of light recorded in a scene dependingon the ISO value you use. ISO is often referred to as the sensitivity of the sensor to light, but it is more accurate to understand that it is light/image amplification, rather than sensor sensitivity. Back in the days of film, if you used a film stock of IS0200for example, you set your camera's ISO to match. From then on, only the other camera settings of shutter speed and aperture were used to get the correct exposure you wanted, as well as supplemental lighting if needed. The ISO value always had to remain at 200. These days, changing the ISO value only simulates different light sensitivities. www.pclpublications.com 55
Shutter speed We look at what shutter speed is and why it is one of the key ingredients in photography he shutter of your camera is simply a mechanical barrier that prevents light from entering the camera until it is needed, controlling when and for how long light is allowed in to expose the sensor. The latest digital cameras have high-speed electro-mechanical shutters capable of timing exposures with an accuracy measured in fractions of a millisecond. Along with the aperture setting and the ISO control, shutter speed is one of the three ways that photographic exposure is adjusted. When a picture is taken, the shutter is opened for a precisely measured amount of time allowing light to pass through. The duration of the exposure is set either automatically by the camera’s light meter or manually by the photographer. The wider the range of available shutter speeds, the greater the creative versatility of the camera. Modern digital SLR cameras have a very wide range of shutter speeds available, usually ranging from 30 seconds to as high as 1/8,000th of a second, and most also have a ‘B’ setting, in which the shutter stays open for as long as the shutter “The wider the range of available shutter speeds, the greater the creative versatility of the camera.” release is held down. The ‘B’ is from bulb. Very old cameras commonly used an air-bulb attachment as a remote shutter release. Shutter speed can be manually adjusted in either full manual exposure mode or in shutter priority mode, the latter usually denoted by an ’S’ or ’Tv' on the exposure mode dial. Shutter priority is a semi-automatic exposure mode in which the photographer sets the desired I shutter speed, and the camera’s exposure system adjusts the aperture accordingly to produce the correct exposure. In automatic and program exposure modes the camera will set both the shutter speed and aperture automatically. Under normal daylight conditions, the shutter speed will usually be set to between l/125th and l/1000th of a second, since this is fast enough to freeze most movement and to reduce the effects of camera shake. However in low light conditions the camera may set a slower shutter speed, and with this comes an increased risk of movement blur caused by camera shake. Most cameras will display some sort of warning if this occurs.
SHUTTERSPEED Avoiding Camera Shake Camera shake is a term used to define the act of accidentally shakinga camera during shooting due to unsteady hands, which results in blurry images. This generally occurs more often if you’re shooting on a low shutter speed or with a heavy lens, and can be avoided by using a tripod and cable release setup. When shooting hand-held and wishing to avoid camera shake, as a rule of thumb you can safely use a shutter speed roughly equivalent to the reciprocal of the focal length you are using. For example if you’re using a 100mm focal length then you can take a sharp hand-held shot at a shutter speed of l/100th of a second or faster. If you're using a 35mm focal length then l/35th of a second is safe, and so on. Here’s an example shot h taken hand-held at a У focal length of 100mm and a shutter speed of l/100th of a second. As you can see it’s sharp and shake free. Here’s the same hand-held | shotbutthistimewitha > shutter speed of l/10th of a second. At this speed and focal length it’s much more difficult to hold the camera steady. As you can see, the result is quite blurred. Many modern cameras includetechnology which can reduce the effects of camera shake at low shutter speeds. Many compact cameras use electronic processing to counteract movement, which does work but produces relatively poor image quality. AmongdigitalSLRandCSC manufacturers thereare two types of image stabilisation in common use. Nikon, Canon and Panasonic favour optical stabilisation, where elements within the camera lens are moved to counteract camera shake. Other brands including Pentax and Sony employ a system which moves the camera’s sensor to achieve the same effect. There is no clear advantage between moving-lens and moving-sensor systems. Modern image stabilisation systems of both types can provide around three or four stops of additional stability, however the sensor-shift method has an advantage for SLR users because the non-stabilised lenses are usually considerably lighter and are often also cheaper to buy, since the complex anti-shake system is built into the camera body. It also means that photographers using older predigital lenses can still have the advantage of image stabilisation. This example shot was taken with a focal length of 100mm at l/10th of a second as before, but this time the image stabilisation (in this case a sensor-shift system) is switched on. It has detected the vibration and corrected it by moving the sensor to compensate, resulting in a much sharper shot. www.pclpublications.com 57
Motion Blur Any movement in the frame during the exposure will be captured in the picture, resulting in motion blur. Anti-shake systems can do nothing to correct this: the only solution is to use a shutter speed fast enough to effectively freeze the action and eliminate any sense of motion. With a fast enough shutter speed you can Fixingthe camera on a tripod eliminates camera shake. You now need to get the slowest shutter speed you can. The image at the top of the page was taken from a similar position as the previous shot, but with an aperture of f/22 to get a shutter speed of 8 seconds. freeze even very fast-moving objects, as this next sequence of photos will show. They were taken at shutter speeds ranging from a fairly slow l/60th of a second up to l/2OOOth of a second. As you can see, at l/2OOOth of a second the blades of a desk fan can almost be frozen in place. Misty Water 0 ne of the most effective uses of long shutter speed is photographing flowing water. It’sa beautiful if slightly over-used effect, but it is very easy to achieve. Any moving body of water, f lowi ng stream or waterfall will do, as long as it has moving and splashing water. This scene is a local beach in Torquay. If you just point the camera and shoot on automatic, you’ll end up with something like this (below). It looks nice enough, but it’s a bit dull. This example was shot on at a shutter speed of l/20th of a second and an aperture of f/4. 58
SHUTTERSPEED Capturing Movement Freezing the action with a fast shutter speed produces a nice sharp image, but sometimes you might want to allow a controlled amount of movement blurto show that the subject was in motion. Therearea number of waysto accomplish this. In this first movement example, the camera was held motionless, with a shutter speed of 1/100 Oth of a second, while an athlete runs past in front of the lens. No camera movement ensures that the background is sharp and the fast shutter speed has frozen the movement. The result is sharp but looks slightly odd, as though the runner is now simply at a standstill. Car Lights Another interesting effect achieved using long shutter speeds is streaking car lights at night. The camera was set up on a tripod, using manual focus and full manual exposure, with a cable shutter release. Starting with an aperture of about f/4, you will need to dial in your settings toget a balanced exposure. If your exposure duration is still too short, stop your aperture down to f/5.6 or smaller until you get a longer exposure duration that renders car lights as long streaks. Generally, a shutter speed of around 4 seconds is a good starting point. When shooting near heavy traffic at night it's obviously important to stay safe. Wear something bright and reflective, and don't get too close to the road. Also, never use a flash when taking photos of traffic. You could dazzle a driverand cause an accident. Fireworks In this additional example, this time with the camera mounted on a tripod, the settings were adjusted to allow a shutter speed of l/30th of a second while athletes ju mp the hurdles seen in the foreground. This time the background remains sharp, but the slower shutter speed has resulted in lots of movement blur, making the runners appear to streak across the frame and remove any sharp detail. In order to capture the feeling of movement (top image), the best technique is to use a slow shutter speed, but to pan the camera (move it side-to-side) to follow the moving subject as you press the shutter. It is a technique that requires practice, since you need to be able to keep the camera moving smoothly as the exposure is taken, and avoid up-and-down movement as you press the shutter. It may take several tries toget it right, but when it works the results are very effective, with the subject stationary against a movement-blurred background. Shots like this can be taken hand-held at a shutter speed of arou nd l/20th of a second or slower. Some recent cameras have a setting on the image stabilisation system to correct vertical movement but not horizontal, which helps with this kind of shot. One way to take good f i reworks photos is to set your camera on a tri pod some distance from the display, with the zoom set to a very wide-angle. Set a shutter speed of 2 seconds and as wide an aperture as you can manage. Getting the framing exactly right is simply a matter of luck, timing, and then cropping the photo later. www.pclpublications.com 59
Be in full creative control of your shutter 60
SHUTTER SPEED: HOW IT'S DONE www.pclpublications.com 61 Knowing when to use your camera’s shutter speeds to their greatest creative effect is something that is easily learned but can often take time and practice to master. You have an immense range of shutter speeds to play with, from the fastest shutter speeds of l/8000s down {^durations measured in minutes or even hours. That is a lot to take in, but once you start exploring the effect of shutter speed on your images?you can start to understand its impact on your shots andlts great potential Camera shake notwithstanding, in scenes where there arenomoving objects at-all^he shutter speed istess iimportant than in scenes • where therous a Iqtbf rhoVement going.cn. You can chQpse to freeze movement from l/250s upwardsio comtJat camera shake ^Qd stop any ’stew moving objects™ their tracks. However, there are times when slower shutter speeds can be used to great effect. In our examples, notice the differencebetween thetwc/action shots. Although both images are surf action images. w the choice of shutter speed has created two very different looking images entirely. The shot on the left was taken in failing light and the photographer has^ptedto use longer shutter speeds to capture the flow and movement of surfer and water. 0 * the other hand, the shot on thisfl^e was taken in brigjj^nditions with a much faster shutter speed • to freeze movement. • g .
Aperture and depth of field With aperture you can control how much of your picture is in focus Of the three main controls common to nearly all cameras, shutter speed, focus and aperture, it is aperture adjustment that is the least well understood. This is because it not only helps to control exposure, but also affects something called Depth of Field. Understanding the effects of aperture size is a vital skill for any keen photographer. At least there's nothing mysterious about the name. The aperture is literally a hole through which light passes after it enters the lens. The diameter of this hole can be altered, allowing a greater or smaller amount of light to pass through on its way to the sensor. In the early days of photography, aperture was adjusted by slotting cards with different sized holescut in them into the body of the camera behind the lens. These cards were known as ‘stops’, and this is still part of photographic terminology today. On modern cameras the aperture is controlled by an arrangement of curved shutters inside the body of the lens, which move to produce a continuously variable aperture, however the aperture settings are usually still referred to as ‘F-stops’. Aperture adjustment is used in combination with the shutter speed and ISO amplification to control photographic exposure. However it is also the primary means of controlling something called depth of field, a concept that may need a bit of explanation. If you take a photo of a subject at a distance of about 3 metres with standard zoom lens, in good light with the focal length set to about 30mm, as 62
APERTURE AND DEPTH OF FIELD “Understanding the effects of aperture size is a vital skill for any keen photographer” How aperture works Explaining exactly why altering the size of the lens aperture alters the depth of field is a little complicated, but a few simple diagrams should help to shed some light on the matter. For a start, let’s clear up some popular misconceptionsaboutthe difference between focus and sharpness. This is a highly simplified diagram of the arrangement of lens, aperture and sensor inside a modern digital camera. I n this first diagram .three subjects at different distances from the camera lens are represented by the red, green and blue dots. The lens is focused on the green spot, so light from it passesthroughthe aperture and the lens and appears sharply focused on the sensor. Light from the red and blue spots also passes through the aperture and lens, but light from the red spot focuses a short distance in front of the charged coupled device (CCD), while light from the blue spot focuses a short distance behind it. The light from these other spots still hitsthe CCD, butdueto light scattering it is unfocused and spread over a wide area. What this means is that the red and blue spots will appear as large blurred spotson the final image, while the green spot will be sharp and in focus. The size of the blurred area of the red and blue spots is called the ‘circle of confusion.’ long as the lens is focused correctly the subject should appear nice and sharp in the image. However you’ll usually find that objects about 1.5m in front of the subject, and for about 4 or 5 metres behind the subject, also appear sharp. This distance, from the closest point of acceptable sharpness to the most distant, is known as the depth of field. By altering the size of the aperture it is possible to control the extent of this depth of field, either reducing it so that only the main subject is in sharp focus, or expanding it so that an entire landscape can appear to be just as sharp. If you have an older camera to hand, take a look at the lens. It will have a ring for controlling the aperture setting, labelled with numbers usually from about F2 to about F22. The focus control ring will have distances usually calibrated in feet and metres, and alongside it you’ll usually find lines marked with the same numbers as the aperture ring, arranged in pairs either side of the focal distance mark with the larger numbers toward the outside. The purpose of this aperture scale is to help estimate the depth of field at a particular distance for any given aperture setting; with the focus set to a particular distance, anything between the two lines for the selected aperture setting should be acceptably sharp. Some older zoom lenses have a series of curved lines etched into the lens barrel for the same purpose. For some reason this scale is missing from most modern auto-focus, auto-aperture lenses, which is a shame because it makes the whole concept of depth of field much easier to understand. Lens The diagram below shows the same arrangement of camera and subjects, and the coloured spots are the same distance from the lens, but this time the aperture has been reduced to just a small hole. Again the lens is focused on the green spot, and the red and blue spots are out of focus. However the narrow aperture restricts the light scattering and the relative angles of the light Lens paths, and as a result the ‘circles of confusion’ are much smaller. This makes the red and blue spots in the final image appear much sharper. They are still out of focus, but the effect is not so noticeable. To make circles of confusion as large as in the first image, the red and blue spots would have to be much further away from the green one. Film or CCD l www.pclpublications.com 63
Focal Length and Depth of Field The focal length of your lens, in other words how much you zoom in on your subject, also has a large effect on depth of field. Short focal lengths have much greater depth of field than longer focal lengths. This is one reason why, when taking a portrait shot, it’s a good idea to step back a bit and zoom in rather than using a wide- angle lens up close. In optics, particularly as it relates to film and photography, depth of field (DOF) is the distance between the nearest and farthest objects in a scene that appear acceptably sharp in an image. Although a lens can precisely focus at only one distance at a time, the decrease in sharpness is gradual on each side of the focused distance, so that within the DOF, the unsharpness is imperceptible under normal viewing conditions. In some cases, it may be desirable to have the entire image sharp, and a large DOF is appropriate. In other cases, a small DOF may be “In optics, particularly as it relates to film and photography, depth of field (DOF) is the distance between the nearest and farthest objects in a scene that appear acceptably sharp in an image.” more effective, emphasizing the subject whilst de-emphasising the foreground and background. In cinematography, a large DOF is often called deep focus, and a small DOF is often called shallow focus. In the examples shown here, at f2.8, the yellow chess piece was the point of focus. It is the only object in sharpest focus and the orange and green pieces either side are completely out of focus. At f5.6 the area of acceptable focus has increased so that the orange and green pieces are starting to come into focus. Shooting at fll brings the orange and green pieces into sharper focus and the green is less blurred than before. Stopping the camera down to its narrowest aperture of f32 has all pieces looking reasonably sharp along the entire row of chess pieces and the background is looking acceptably sharp as well. 64
APERTURE AND DEPTH OF FIELD Landscape Photography Practical uses for depth of field There are several situations where controlling depth of field is important. The most common is portrait photography. Subjects shot on an automatic camera using a medium aperture usually have a lot of sharp foreground and background detail, which can distract attention away from the main subject. Another situation in which depth of field is an important issue is landscape photography. Here it is often important to maximise depth of field, so it is usual to use the smallest possible aperture. Shots li ke this, taken using an aperture of f/16, ensure that both the foreground and distant background are in focus. It also uses something called Hyperfocal Distance, which involves a bit of maths to calculate. Asyou can see in this example, which has a larger depth of field, the subject is in focus and the background is visible, which draws the viewer’s attention away from the subject. By using a wider aperture, and movingthe subject further from the background, only it is now in sharp focus. A blurred background is much less distracting, and concentrates your attention on the foreground. The result ensures that the subject really stands out from the background.
Aperture and depth of field: how it's done Sharp or beautifully blurred, you decide Much like learning when to use fast shutter speeds or slow ones, howyou use aperture to control depth of field in your shots is just as important a creative choice as any in photography. Whilst it does come down to personal preference, there are a couple of golden rules we’ve mentioned that are worth bearing in mind. A good portrait photo with a cluttered background for instance, is not going to work if the background is in sharp focus along with your subject. The shot will be confusing and that background will just be an eyesore. That’s when setting your lens to its maximum aperture to create shallow depth of field will help massively. A good prime lens around the 50 135mm focal length range with a wide aperture of f/2.8 or even f/1.4 will blur your background beautifully whilst drawing the eye to your subject. Alternatively, if you are shooting a landscape and you want as much of the scene in focus as possible, then a wider angle lens, typically something in the range of 14-24mm, is your go to guy for that situation. Correctly focusing the right distance into the scene and stopping down your lens to about f/16 will ensure as much front to back sharpness as possible. Whilst these are guidelines rather than hard and fast rules, they are a great place to start as you develop your skills as a photographer Practi willingness to tryd will result in better you'll have fun along the 66
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CREATIVE PROJECTS UnLeash your creative side and learn even more techniques used by the pros So, you’ve learned the fundamentals, brushed up on your theory, and armed yourself with your favourite camera gear and accessories. Now what? Well, we would say get out there and have some creative fun. Shoot, adapt, make mistakes, and learn. That is easy to say, and sometimes you need a project to get your teeth into. Something you genuinely enjoy and can use to really help you stand out as a talented photographer in contrast to one who’s merely a skilled technician. It comes down to an eye for the creative and a desire to learn and do more. By learning and trying out new ideas and techniques, you can turn your photographs from snapshots into works of art that you can be proud of. We start with a couple of projects that can be done from the comfort of your own dining table, which are potentially useful if you get stuck in another lock-down. Over the coming issues, we reveal some interesting projects that we hope will inspire you to achieve greater things, explore more genres, and really get passionate about your photography. 70 Natural light portraits 72 After it gets dark 74 Black and white portraits 78 High speed photography 68
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Taking photos of landscapes is one thing, but when you decide it’s time to get involved in portrait photography, it can seem quite a daunting prospect. You might imagine it requires armfuls of expensive equipment and lots of lighting gear. Don’t worry; there are a few simple things that you can try to see if portrait work is for you. Indoor natural light is certainly a great and easy way to dip your toe into the portrait world. There are a few basics to be aware of, but it’s nothing that a photographer of any skill level can't handle. Natural light portraits You don’t need an expensive studio to get some great portrait shots "There are a few basics to be aware of, but it’s nothing that a photographer of any skill level can’t handle.”
STILL LIFE AND PRODUCT PHOTOGRAPHY The camera For most applications, the camera can be anything from a simple point and shoot up to a pro level DSLR. One consideration, that elevates portrait shots from the ordinary, is lens choice. A lens that has a large maximum aperture will give you two major benefits: Firstly, since you are in an indoor, natural light environment, there may not be as much light as you would wish and your shutter speeds may be quite low. You can boost the ISO of course, but you want to retain as much quality in your shot as you can. A wider aperture allows more light to enter the camera, giving you the chance to use higher shutter speeds and therefore reduce the risk of camera shake. The second benefit is more of an aesthetic one. Large apertures also have very shallow depth of field. This fact may be beneficial, when shooting a portrait, if you have a subject with a distracting background. Once focused on your subject, the background will be blurry and less intrusive. Canon The light Natural light entering a room is your primary source of illumination. It can be as simple as a window, roof light, bay window, conservatory, or doorway. If the light source is near a plain wall then, if you need it. you instantly have a backdrop. If it is a harsh, sunny day and the light entering the room is very strong and directional, you can always hang a white bed sheet over the window to act as a diffuser and take some of the harshness out of the shadows. Bounce A large piece of white card is a very cheap method of creating a reflector. You can use defectors to bounce light onto your subject and create some extra fill light that can. if the light is too harsh, illuminate shadows. If you also happen to have some lamps in the room, you can employ them as simple secondary light sources. A bed sheet hung in from of them can soften their output if required. The shot Placing your subject relative to the light source is a creative decision, but start by trying shots where the subject is square on to the light. This will provide even illumination that keeps harsh shadows away. Avoid the light source dropping below their head level. Lighting from below is best used only in horror films! If you pose your subject at an angle to the light, you will start to create shadows that fall across the face away from the light source. This can help make features more three-dimensional. If the shadows are too dark, get some extra light in there by using a white sheet, or card, to bounce light into the dark parts. Settings and technique Longer focal lengths are more flattering for portraits. Using a wide-angle lens and getting closer to your subject will distort their proportions and make them look like they are reflected in the back of a spoon. Try focal lengths around 50mm-100mm for more flattering images. It is best to begin by setting the camera to your lens’ widest aperture. Keep an eye on shutter speed. Nothing ruins a shot more than camera shake. Focusing is key to a good portrait. Always make sure you have the eyes in sharp focus. If your subject is turned to you at an angle, make sure the closest eye is the one in focus. Aperture priority works well in this instance, although you can go to manual mode if you are feeling more confident. Keep ISO as low as you can. but never let your shutter speed drop below l/60s. www.pclpublications.com 71
After it goesdark Time to try out the dark side of photography •e ЯИИП □ /W « «E ra Ml n I ЛНН111П .im m n* pi > л Whether it’s the lure of bright city lights, barren moorland bathed in moonlight, or a tumbledown barn in the country under a starry sky, night- time photography is a big draw for many photographers. It can be challenging, very frustrating and time-consuming, but it’s a hard habit to break when you get such great results. You are normally dealing with much longer exposures than usual, while having to carefully compose and focus your shots and, as such, it forces you to slow it all down and take a much more considered approach. We have some helpful insights to lure you over to the darkside. w IW • M w * 1'4 . I w !!'«' - this may sdtTffiTabit obvious, but i phQfographs^re exposure times opietimes be in the tens of rntfitttes? you’re going to need something sturdy on which to put your camera. You can, of course set your camera to its highest ISO setting, open t^ aperture as wide a^ it’wiII^o and ---TV--------------------------------O’ justice you should in’ est in a solid tripod. i «1: О “ ®МЬг и'1 A к •IfcFWCW . MMMIII !► MWID IIMJI/IWI’P 'i -• * "•ЗД UjHjir T.b r i Ы \* СВ*' ИТ » WT 7t can be challenging, very frustrating and time- consuming, but it’s a hard habit to break when you get Г such great results X.________________________
lens you are using. Shield the lens During the day, the use of a lens hood may seem quite obvious, but, sometimes, new photographers assume they don’t need to use one at night. Any night scene with bright city lights, or other points of bright illumination, can cause lens flare just as easily as a daytime scene. Avoid any unwanted flare and get in the habit of always having the correct type of lens hood for the Stop the shakes At night, your camera's shutter is going to open for long periods of time. The one thing that can kill a great shot is camera shake. People don’t realise that the damage to the shot can be done right at the start, when you press the shutter button and cause a momentary shake in the camera body and tripod resulting in a blurred image. Try using a remote release cable, or setting a 10 second countdown timer on your camera, so you are not touching it when the shutter opens. Also, if your camera has the option, you can flip up the mirror and lock it before the shot is taken as. sometimes, even the 'slap' of the mirror going up can create small shakes. The right priority Depending on what kind of shots you are after, it is a good starting point to put your camera in AV mode (aperture priority). This lets you decide what aperture will be used, until you opt to change it; f/8 or f/11 are a good jumping in point. Stopping down to f/16 or f/22 will give you greater depth of field and much longer exposure times. Opening up to f/4 or f/2.8 will have the reverse effect. Static or blurred? To keep the static objects in your shots sharply focussed, you will, as we've mentioned, need to lock down your camera on a tripod. Longer exposure times will render any moving objects blurred. Traffic trails are classic example of this. If you want moving objects to also appear static, then you are going to need to open up your aperture and increase your camera's ISO settings so your shutter speeds are capable of freezing the motion of your subject. AFTER IT GOES DARK Add light Have you ever thought about light painting in your image? Light painting refers to the technique of illuminating parts of your scene with additional light sources. Light painting has become very popular and ranges from simply using a flashlight to illuminate a dark foreground subject, to using all manner of light sources, such as strobes, sparklers, coloured LED lights and even steel wool set alight - to create huge showers of sparks. This ‘light art’ is very popular and great fun to try. Quick guide Below is a quick list of exposure times for a number of general night-time scenes. These are ballpark figures, but they will help give you a place to start when it comes to setting up your camera and sorting out the settings you need. Our guide assumes an aperture f/11 and an ISO of 200. City at night 10s Landscape at dusk 25s Fairground at night 6s Fires at night l-2s Candles indoors 30s Full moon landscape lOmin Startrail 8min Fireworks 2-15s www.pclpublications.com 73
Black and white portraits Add power and depth to your portraits through black and white he power of the black and white portrait cannot be denied. A wise soul once said: ‘If you want fashion, shoot in colour. If you want emotion, shoot in black and white.’ As we’ve mentioned before, there is a power and depth to a black and white shot that is often swamped by colour. The story behind a shot is easier to comprehend when it is in black and white and the distraction of colour has gone. Even if there is no real story being presented in the shot, you can suddenly find yourself paying more attention to a black and white portrait. Texture, form and tone become important to the shot. It draws you in more than a colour shot ever could. ‘Ifyou want fashion, shoot in colour. Ifyou want emotion, shoot in black and white
BLACK AND WHITE PORTRAITS Although this portrait presents the subject side-on to the camera, the eyes are still the point of focus. It is a point worth remembering when shooting people in profile. A basic rule in a close-up portrait is to have the eyes in focus. The eyes convey emotion - whether sad, happy, playful or mysterious. If the eyes are not in focus, then the connection to the subject is lost. That doesn’t mean the subject must always be staring down the barrel of the camera lens. It is generally considered that if subjects are staring at the camera, they are portraying confidence or arrogance; if they are looking away, then they can be said to be nervous or mischievous. This is not always the case, but it can be a starting point in the portrayal of your subject. Even if the subject has their eyes closed or is facing away from camera, always think about making the eyes the point of focus. This can even be true when photographing non-human subjects. Dogs, for instance, are soulful creatures too, and our connection to them is through the eyes just like any person. www.pclpublications.com 75
Head shot or portrait? The jury seems to stilt be out on that one! The location you shoot your subject is also important. If you shoot in a studio with a plain backdrop, then the story is told only by your subject’s face. If you shoot on a location, then it too can help convey emotion or a context. Shooting a portrait of a fisherman on his trawler or a lawyer in his office are some obvious examples where the location is expanding upon the story being told. It can be argued that a subject on their own, in close-up with no background, is a head-shot. A subject photographed in an environment that is part of the storytelling, is a portrait. A fine line perhaps, but there are those who would argue the definition. Lighting is an interesting subject when shooting portraits for black and white conversion. There are so many different styles out there, it would be folly to try and pigeonhole one as being better than another. Light is there only to illuminate the story being told, or the emotion being captured. Just keep in mind the basics of lighting such as trying to avoid shooting in direct sunlight, as it creates harsh, dark shadows with no detail in them. Using a large white surface to reflect light back on to your subject will create a fill light that can lessen dark shadows. Alternatively, move to a more shaded area. If possible, avoid shooting with a camera- mounted flash, as you run the risk of getting ‘red eye’ where the light from your flash bounces of your subject's retina back into the camera causing the pupils to look red. 4/, J 76
BLACK AND WHITE PORTRAITS I The AF-S 50mm f1.8G and AF-S 85mm f/1.8G prime lenses. Superb portrait lenses, great for soft, out of focus backgroundsforyour portraits. Also, give some thought to the lenses you use. Wide-angle lenses are not considered appropriate for close-up portraiture as they distort the features; but a good 50mm, 85mm or even 135mm prime lens is much prized for portrait work. Watch out for too much depth of field; it can be a great distraction for your background to be as sharp as your foreground. A little blur in your background is a great way to separate your subject from their surroundings, keeping them the focus of the shot. Also, keep your eyes peeled for the classic error that can crop up, where an item in the background appears to be sprouting out of the top of your subject's head. (No.notawi2ardshat.justthespire c apXrAS'ledireC''ybehindtWs error. Try mixing it up a little when shooting. Close-up portraits are fine, but perhaps there is a great shot to be had in a full-length portrait. Trying both landscape orientation and portrait orientation is also good practice. It is also a great idea to try shooting from different levels, both above and below eye- level. Don’t be afraid to experiment; you never know what you will discover. www.pclpublications.com 77
Highspeed photography A great tabletop project for the artistically adventurous Just to clarify, when we say high speed, we don’t mean that we are doing it very fast! In point of fact high speed, in this context, refers to being able to catch rapid movement in such a way that you effectively ‘freeze’ the action. There are two basic ways we can do this. First is to have enough light pouring on to your scene to give you the required shutter speeds (in excess of l/2000th of a second) to have a hope of stopping an event dead in its tracks. The second method relies on the stopping power of flashguns and not the settings used on your camera. The camera, depending on how many flashes you are brining to bear on the scene, is normally set to ISO 100 or 200, the aperture somewhere around f/7.1 and the shutter is set at the max sync speed of your camera, in this case l/160th of a second on my 5DMk2. It can sometimes be hard to wrap your head around the idea that the shutter speed is not really a factor when using this method. You only need to make sure that if you press the camera button without the flashes turned on, the shot should look totally black. The light will be provided by the flashes of course, but in a very short ‘pulse’ that stops the action. Here’s how this is achieved: “It can sometimes be hard to wrap your head around the idea that the shutter speed is not really a factor when using this method.” Thewaterdroplet. Probablyoneof the most recognisable high speed imagesand a very popular one to try andcapture.Tocatchonethoughyou would need someclever equipment or a very accurate shutter button finger! This image does prove that it can be done, with a little luck and a lot of trial and error. 78
The technical bit to capture, and is easy enough to set up. The Flashes (strobes or speedlights as they are camera is set on a tripod [1] in front of a makeshift also known) have an interesting operating characteristic. Their output brightness is not governed by the unit’s power. The effective brightness of the flash is always the same. It is only the duration of the flash that changes, so less power means shorter flash duration. For instance, a Canon 580EX flash at full power has a duration of 1/1,OOOth of a second. Dial the flash down to l/8th power and the flash duration becomes 1/9,OOOth of a second. Set it at l/64th power as I have done here for my shoot, and you can achieve a flash duration of a mind-boggling 1/30,OOOth of a second! Now imagine if this incredibly fast pulse of light was your only light source in a dark room. If you take a shot with your camera with the flash set as described, even though your shutter speed is l/160th of a second as we mentioned above, your subject will only be lit for 1/30,OOOth of a second during the time your shutter is open. The trade-off with this method is that your flash is at a very low power setting and has to be very close to your subject. As this is a tabletop project, it’s not an issue because you are going to be shooting at very close quarters anyway. The setup Our shot is going to be a very simple water droplet splashing down into the surface of a small body of water. It is quite a popular photo mini-studio. A table [2] is turned on its side and a piece of opaque Perspex [3] is set on top. A sheet of white card is placed at the rear of our ‘set’ [4] to create the background. Our water receptacle, a simple glass [5], is placed on the Perspex, in the middle, and filled to the brim with water. This example has three flashes [6] [7] [8] that were originally set up, although after a few tests, it was only two that were finally used. Just for the sake of creativity, one was set underneath the Perspex, firing upwards, to create a nice pool of light at the base of the glass. Again, just to be a little creative, the flash underneath the Perspex and the flash to camera left had coloured gels [9] put over them. After some trial and error [10] [1Ц [12] it was decided to use blue underneath and red on the left [13]. On reflection One aspect to consider is that when photographing clear liquids, it can be more effective if you cast your light on a surface that the liquid can reflect [14], rather than firing directly at the liquid itself. The flash on the left was aimed at the white card at the rear of this setup so that when it fires, it illuminates the white card and colours it red. Our water will reflect this colour as well as the blue light coming from below and this combination will hopefully create a nice dramatic effect. www.pclpublications.com 79
The shoot The flashes are controlled by a wireless transmitter [15], but you can also use a camera mounted flash, bounced off coloured card on to your scene if needs be. You could also get your flash off-camera by using a hot-shoe cord. After a few test shots to get framing and flash power dialled in, the settings worked out as follows: the camera was set at ISO 50, aperture f/7.1, shutter l/160th [16] and was shooting Raw. The lens is a 24-105mm f/4 zoom lens [17] .Theflash firing up from below was set at 1/16 power [18] and the flash on the left was set at 1/32 power [19]. The area of focus was the point where we were attempting to get the water droplet to land. We could generate a reasonably consistent flow of drips by using a syringe filled with water [20] and slowly depressing the plunger and aiming our drops at the centre of the water surface. Trying to capture a single drop hitting the surface without the aid of specialist timing equipment could have you trying all day long with no success. This way at least, you can create a steady series of drops that will increase your chances of capturing the decisive moment of splashdown. ZOOM LENS EF 24-105mrnI 1:4 L IS USM Drip, drip, drip The process was to gently drip water into the glass and shoot at the same time. It can be a bit random, but as mentioned before, without special equipment that can time the camera’s firing down to milliseconds, you just have to persevere. The sample shots you see here were all done by one person with syringe in one hand and the other hand pressing the shutter release button. So, many frames later, a fairly decent number with usable droplet captures, it was time to go for the big one! The water drop images are very cool and do make for good fflzoo. 24 17 18 IMAGE STABILIZER The shot of a droplet of milk dripping down intoa small pool of the same liquid can create the ever popular and quite iconic image of the droplet splash. Even though the milk is white, it is reflecting the light cast by the flash with the blue gelon it. 80
HIGH SPEED PHOTOGRAPHY “The water drop images are very cool and do make for good abstract images. abstract images, but it was time to end on a big splash. With the glass full to the brim, an ice cube was dropped in from a decent height to create a big splash. It took a couple of goes, but some great captures were in the bag. Finally, a quick experiment to see if another liquid could be used. The Perspex was cleaned and a pool of milk was dripped into place by the syringe. Then more milk was dripped from above and captured in the same way as the water. Different coloured gels were tried on the flashes and another set of interesting images were captured. To finish The preferred shots were processed in a Raw editing package and then edited, rotated and cropped in Photoshop. Some colour values were altered even more to give an interesting surreal look to the pictures. So, with some initial trial and error, the end results could easily end up as a large format canvas print and be adorning the wall of some happy art lover! www.pclpublications.com
Still life and product photography Get hands-on and improve your still life photos 1/160 If you’ve ever been on certain auction websites where people are selling items, chances are you’ve encountered a lot of product photography. Chances are equally good that you’ve encountered a lot of bad product photography too. Ifyou want something to look good in a photograph, then you need to take care about how it is lit. Placing it on a table and snapping away with direct flash is not going to render you results that people will be attracted to. You’d be amazed at how a little extra care when photographing the item, will yield results that stand head and shoulders above the rest. We’ve already covered how to get some great captures of glass objects like wineglasses, and now we’re going to have a look at some more objects that can be equally tricky to get right. We have a couple of cool watches to photograph. They each have their own little challenges but with a bit of thought regarding lighting and some card and paper handiwork, you can be taking some sexy still life product shots that really catch the eye. ISO 100 1/16 power "You’d be amazed at how a little extra care when photographing the item, will yield results that stand head and shoulders above the rest." y 82
STILL LIFE AND PRODUCT PHOTOGRAPHY I A light tent is designed to make small to medium-sized products easy to photograph with a minimum of fuss and a minimum of unwanted reflection from the room. A light tent If you are serious about your product photography, you might consider a light tent. This is basically a wire frame cube with white translucent material stretched over it. There is a large aperture on one face where you can place the camera and shoot into the cube where your product is placed. You can buy various size cubes both with a set of lights or without. You then set up your lights at strategic places around the cube to illuminate the contents as you see fit. These tents are usually collapsible and very quick to set up. For our project though, we are going to get hands-on and make something ourselves. A tiny studio Firstly we will need to set up a studio that you can shoot in. Although we use the term studio, it is a sort of miniature version but it still functions exactly like its full-sized counterpart. You will need a surface on which to place your object, some additional card to control how reflections and light interact with it, a piece of translucent white Perspex or even a white sheet to use as a diffuser and a light source. We are using just one light again for this. A flash is great as its output colour is daylight balanced but you can use a bright lamp if you have one. Rather than a flat surface to rest on, the watches will be placed on a white paper sheet that has been curved up on either side [1]. We’ve done this by placing the paper sheet inside a small upturned table [2]. The sides of the table hold the sheet in place nicely. This is the first step in controlling reflections. Then you can place a sheet of white card [3] on the back face of the set to bounce light back into the scene. Lighting With the table upended, it means we can place our light source across the top of it, facing down into the small set we’ve just made. We have our Nikon SB700 Speedlight [4], inside a small foldable softbox [5], which we’ve placed on top of a white translucent Perspex sheet [6]. The light will fire straight down onto the watches which were placed on a small velvet display pillow. We could tweak the placement and angle once the camera was set up and we could see the composition through the viewfinder. Theflashfacesdownintotheset, through the white Perspex sheet, to create a bright overhead lighting rig for yoursubject. The flash was fired inside a small foldable softbox, which in turn was placed on top of a white Perspex sheet to help diffuse the light. A small upturned table provides the base upon which we can build our little product photographystudio. www.pclpublications.com 83
Camera and lens For this project, we used a Nikon D5500 and NIKKOR 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6 zoom lens. The camera was set up on a tripod and the shot was framed and focus was set to manual, with additional tweaking of the placement of the watch, until we had something we liked. A TwinLink wireless trigger was attached to the Nikon’s hot shoe and the receiver was attached to the SB700. If you have a flash which you still use atop your camera, the purchase of a cheap set of radio triggers and receivers will pay dividends when it comes to getting the flash off the top of your camera without the need for trailing cables everywhere. It also means you have a lot more creative lighting opportunities than before. Sorting out settings The only light we want in the scene will be provided by the flash. We chose manual settings with an aperture of f/6.3, shutter speed of 1/160 and ISO 100. A shot taken without flash is going to be very dark, if not black once the curtains are drawn and any extraneous light is removed. Then it was time to get the appropriate flash power settings to light the scene. Because of its proximity to the subject, the flash only needed to be set at 1/16 power. A few test shots were taken, and the watch position and angle was tweaked again to avoid the brightly lit translucent sheet above it completely reflecting on the watch’s surface and turning it white. One other thing that was also very apparent was that no matter how clean you think something may look, when it is lit in this way, it can never be clean enough. The lighting showed up several fingerprints on the watch glass. After a thorough clean and reset, it was ready. More test shots showed us a good, well-lit shot. Controlling the light Now you can take control of the scene. With additional pieces of black and white card, you can decide where any additional light or dark reflections will be seen on your subject and how light falls upon them. In the case of both watches used in this project, you could place a piece of white card on the base sheet and angle it in such a way as to bounce even Getting Set Up I The Nikon D5500and the 18-105mm 3.5/5.6 zoom Lens. Plenty of resolution from the camera and compositional leeway with the lens. I Once your camera is set up and the composition set, use manual focus and Live View to get the focus point exactly where you want it. I Checkyour surfaces are clean. Fingerprints and shiny surfaces do not mix when lit from above like this. I The camera settings above would give an almost black image when shot in the darkened room but in combination with the flash settings shown below, which was ouronly intended light source, it worked out well. Although made of card, paper and a small upturned table, this tiny studio functions in the same wayasa large, professional studio. 84
STILL LIFE AND PRODUCT PHOTOGRAPHY more light coming from the flash above back up into the watch face. You could use a black piece instead and actually reduce the amount of light being bounced back onto the watch. You could Try bouncing Light off a piece of angled white card back up into the watch face, this can help brighten any areas that may be darker than you want. Don’t be afraid of bright highlights on the glass surface of the watch ifyou are intent on showing a smooth, glassy surface. It’s your shot, go with what you feel looks right to you. Just try to avoid highlights that wash out all detail. Beware of too much reflected card showing in your shot. In this one, the whole card was at such an angle that the watch's inner bezel looks pale grey when it should be black. do the same with a piece of black card for a darker reflection instead. You have a number of possibilities that can affect the look of the shiny surfaces of you subjects. The key is to place a piece of white card above the watch face, out of shot, and use its white reflection to add a highlight that runs diagonally across the watch glass at whatever angle you choose. You can shoot and experiment. Review your shots and decide where best to place your reflectors to get the best out of your product. Most of all though, have a little fun too. www.pclpublications.com 85
NEW TO IMAGE PROCESSING? Whether you’re using Photoshop, Lightroom or Elements, we have plenty of guides to help you get the most out of your photos One of the great things about digital photographs is that it’s very easy to improve or alter them using the right computer software. There are dozens of image editing packages available, ranging from simple, easy-to-use programs all the way up to the professional-standard Lightroom and Photoshop, which is available in a number of subscription packages. For anyone interested in photography as a hobby our preferred choice is the range of editing programs from Adobe. You have Elements for hobbyist users and Photoshop, Camera Raw and Lightroom for the more serious photographer. On the following pages and subsequent issues, you’ll find a selection of information, tips and techniques to help you improve and edit your images. We’ve barely scratched the surface when it comes to processing and creative image editing, but hopefully you’ll enjoy these techniques and produce the results you’re looking for. 88 Lightroom top tips 90 The history of Photoshop 92 The history of Lightroom 94 Photoshop versus Lightroom 96 Shooting in raw mode 98 What is Photoshop Elements? 86
NEW TO IMAGE PROCESSING? V' www.pclpublications.com 87
Lightroom top tips Less is often more The cloud-based version of the Lightroom program is as powerful an app as you could wish for. It gives you complete control of your images and you can turn a lacklustre Raw file into a colourful and dramatic photograph. Getting familiar with the basics of processing is important in order to get the most out of your photos. Photographers as a general rule do not tend to like images that are way over- processed and have every preset and colour effect thrown at them. The truth is, if you want to go crazy with your processing, Lightroom CC has the power to do that but it also has the subtlety when you need it. The kinds of adjustments shown here, which we will begin to cover in this and future issues, are a good example of less being more; allowing your images to look their best.
AFTER.
The History of Photoshop Before we begin, here’s a little background information Thomas and John Knoll created Photoshop in 1988 with the release of Photoshop 1.0 following in February 1990. It is a raster graphics editor and has become the predominant industry standard for digital image editing. At its heart, it has a suite of tools that allow the user to edit, assemble and compose images using multiple layers and masks. It is this use of layers and masks that are the core features of Photoshop’s power. Such layer-based editing means you can build very complex images and create incredible works of art using this method. Photoshop’s Strengths p t Photoshop is a pixel-level editor. Where Lightroom allows you to adjust pixels in an image, Photoshop lets you move them and manipulate them in a way that’s nothing short of magical. p s Photoshop allows multiple layers to be applied to an image. You can keep images and edits on separate layers and modify them accordingly and independently. This is the basis of non-destructive editing. p s It’s huge. Mind-bogglingly huge. The toolbox alone is the stuff of legend and contains everything the professional designer and photographer would ever need from a piece of software. p s You can record specific actions within Photoshop, allowing you to apply those actions to other images with a click of a button. p s You’re able to blend many different layers together, masking areas of an image to protect it from being edited, even down to the pixel level. ps Almost anything is possible in Photoshop. If you can imagine a scene, then you’re able to turn your wedding photos into a dramatic space battle or have a picture of the kids playing with a Т-Rex. Remove objects, add objects, touch up skin tones, the list goes on and on. 90
THE HISTORY OF PHOTOSHOP Photoshop: The Power to Create plug-ins require specific versions of Photoshop to run, but a few of them can also act as stand- alone image editing applications. Formats and Versions The Tools for the Job Photoshop also has a large variety of tools that allow the user to edit their images in numerous ways. Broadly speaking, the tools cover areas such as drawing, painting, navigation, content selection, text, masking and retouching. Many of the tools have additional variants that allow you to perform different tasks and functions. As well as the ability to create pixel-based images and art, it can also create and manipulate text and handle a number of vector graphic formats, including EPS files and Adobe Illustrator files. Older styles of Photoshop had extended versions that allowed the creation and handling of 3D graphics, whereas Photoshop When a Photoshop document is saved, it creates a default file that has the .PSD file extension. This stands for Photoshop Document and it contains all of the layers, adjustments, masks, transparent items and other content that make up the finished document. There is another Photoshop file format known as .PSB, which stands for Photoshop Big. This is a large document format that lets you use vastly increased image dimensions and file sizes. CC, the cloud-based subscription service version, has 3D capabilities built in as standard. It can also, to a limited degree, import and edit video files. The program’s main functionality can be enhanced with the addition of numerous, small add-on effects and programs called plug-ins. Although Adobe has a number of plug-ins, such as Adobe Camera Raw, it is mainly third party companies that develop them. Most of the The program has had a large number of updates and version numbers. In 2003, the numbers were replaced with CS plus a number, to reflect its current Creative Suite branding. It wasn’t until 2013, when Adobe changed its business model to subscription-based rental and the introduction of the Creative Cloud brand, that CS was replaced by the suffix CC which has recently been dropped altogether. Photoshop is currently in stable release 2022 (23.1.0). www.pclpublications.com 91
The History of Lightroom Let’s take a closer look at the development of Adobe’s specialist app for photographers, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. Ever since digital cameras first became popular in the early 1990s, photographers have sought ways to adjust and improve digital images and replicate the darkroom tricks and techniques that film photographers have used for decades to get the most out of their pictures. There are dozens of digital image editing programs available and almost everyone who’s ever taken a digital photo, whether they use a top-end digital SLR or just the camera on their mobile phone, has used some sort of editing software to adjust and enhance the image. Most smartphones come with some sort of image editing app as a standard feature. Adobe Photoshop For more than two decades the industry standard for image editing software has been Adobe Photoshop and ever since it was first introduced in 1990 it has been the go-to program for professional photographers. The editing tools that you take for granted in your smartphone app were all inspired by tools first introduced in Photoshop. Photoshop is an amazing piece of software and in skilled hands it is capable of making almost any adjustment or alteration imaginable to a digital image. However, in recent years Adobe has expanded Photoshop’s capabilities to include elements such as video editing, 3D texturing and text editing, making what was already a very complex program even more difficult to master. Of course, these expanded capabilities “...it was clear that a new app was needed, that catered more specifically to the needs of photographers.” have been reflected in the ever-increasing price, making Photoshop a very expensive piece of software indeed. Nobody likes to pay for something they’re not using and photographers found that most of Photoshop’s expanded features were surplus to their requirements; so it was clear that a new app was needed, that catered more specifically to the needs of photographers. This was the remit under which Adobe Photoshop Lightroom was developed. Shadowland Mark Hamburg is a veteran software engineer who has been working at Adobe since 1990 and, along with Thomas Knoll, was part of the original team behind the development of Photoshop. In 1999 Hamburg started working on a new project codenamed Shadowland (a reference to a k.d. lang album, of all things). He brought on board Andrei Herasimchuk, the interface designer responsible for the distinctive look of Adobe Creative Suite, and development was started later that year. Some people are under the impression that since it’s officially named Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, it is essentially just a repackaged version Photoshop with some of the features removed, but this is not true. Hamburg, Herasimchuk and their team wrote the new program virtually from scratch, even writing a large portion of it in a completely different coding language. Initial development took three years and in 2002 Hamburg was able to demonstrate an early version of the program. An interface was added the following year and in 2004 full scale development started at Adobe’s development facility in Minnesota. In early January 2006, Adobe took the unusual step of releasing a beta version of their new program for public evaluation, initially on Apple Macintosh computers only, and used customer feedback to continue development of the program. Further beta versions followed later that year, adding new features, including support for Microsoft Windows in July, and integration with Adobe Photoshop in September. Finally, the full retail version of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.0 was announced in January 2007 and released to the general public the following month. 92 www.pclpublications.com
THE HISTORY OF LIGHTROOM Lightroom Classic Over the years since its initial release as a stand-alone product, there has been major stand-alone versions released and multiple minor sub-version updates. Then Adobe launched its subscription based Creative Cloud service. You were able to choose from the entire suite of Adobe Products either singly, or in various packages. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC (2015) as it was initially called, has received various updates over the years of its release and at the time of writing is in the stable release version 11.1 as of mid-January 2022. It is now known as Photoshop Lightroom Classic and is the powerful desktop-focused version of the app. It is widely regarded as the go-to app for serious photographers. The Map Module is a great addition to recent versions. Utilising GPS technologies, you’re able to stamp location specific metadata to your photos. Lightroom easily imports your photos from many different sources. You can create Collections, add Presets and custom Filters to each or all of your images. Lightroom Photoshop Lightroom was launched mid-September 2017 and at the time of writing is in its stable release version 5.1 as of mid-January 2022. Photoshop Lightroom is a cloud-based photo service which caused a bit of a stir at its release. Not only was it an unexpected new product, it was a much pared down version of its much more fully-featured cousin Lightroom Classic. You can only work on images that are stored in the cloud and if you need extra storage space, then further storage has to be purchased. There is no doubt it is a faster and more streamlined product for enthusiasts to use across multiple mobile platforms, but if you are a professional photographer, then Lightroom Classic might be your better option. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Г Adobe Creative Cloud Apart from basic exposure adjustments, you can crop, heal and add graduated and radial filters. There are also a number of Presets for one-click adjustments. The Lightroom interface is a much simpler affair, designed to be less cluttered with just the main tools for processing your images and adding keywords. www.pclpublications.com 93
Lightroom versus Photoshop At some point in your digital image editing life you’re going to face the question: Lightroom or Photoshop? It’s not always an easy answer though as it depends on what it is you want to achieve. Both are heavyweights in the photographer’s toolbox, but which is right for you? Lr or Ps? It’s not always an easy choice but there are vast differences between Lightroom and Photoshop that can help make your mind up. These differences depend on the situation and what you intend to do with the finished product. Let’s break down a few strengths of each. VS Ps Lightroom Classic CC Strengths Photoshop Strengths Lightroom can manipulate and edit Raw files directly from your camera, without the need to install or use another plugin. Photoshop is a pixel-level editor. Where Lightroom allows you to adjust pixels in an image, Photoshop lets you move them and manipulate them in a way that’s nothing short of magical. Workflow and image management is one of Lightroom’s main draws. You can easily import, organise, edit and manage each of your images without too much in-depth knowledge of advanced design techniques. There are less features than with Photoshop, which lessens its learning curve and thanks to a well-planned user interface, it’s relatively easy to adapt to if you’re already familiar with other photo editing tools. Lightroom has an impressive number of presets available to the user. Exposure levels, contrast, toning, colour presets, video presets, effects and many more are readily available via the Navigator. You can arrange the images you’ve imported by keyword, tags and metadata. You can easily publish finished work and there are many more under-the-hood tools and preferences to play around with. You don’t have to dive into the program’s inner workings to see great results. Most of the common functions that provide you with a superb image are just a few clicks away, and available on the surface of the interface. Photoshop allows multiple layers to be applied to an image. You can keep images and edits on separate layers, and modify them accordingly and independently. This is the basis of non-destructive editing. It’s huge. Mind-bogglingly huge. The toolbox alone is the stuff of legend and contains just about everything the professional designer and photographer would ever need from a piece of software. You can record specific actions within Photoshop, allowing you to apply those actions to other images with a click of a button. You’re able to blend many different layers together, masking areas of an image to protect it from being edited, even down to the pixel level. Almost anything is possible in Photoshop. If you can imagine a scene, then you’re able to turn your wedding photos into a dramatic space battle or have a picture of the kids playing with a Т-Rex. Remove objects, add objects, touch up skin tones, the list goes on and on. Q Q Q □ Q 94
LIGHTROOM VERSUS PHOTOSHOP So which one should I use? In short, Lightroom is designed for photographers. It’s a powerful image management tool that you can use to quickly organise and edit your photo collection. Most photographers will utilise Lightroom’s features over that of Photoshop, but that’s not to say it’s the only tool they’ll use. The beauty of both products is that where one reaches the limit of what it can do for a photographer's workflow, the other can then step in and take up the baton to get the image to its finished state. Once you’ve used up Lightroom’s features and you want to do more with an image, then you can take it over to Photoshop for that intricate level of control and possibly image enhancement and manipulation. It makes sense to do as much processing work in Lightroom as you can to get it as close to completion as possible. Photoshop can then let you do any layer- based editing on top of that. Both programs are an integral part of the design process and workflow, but for the sake of this book and photographers the world over, we’re opting to start your post-processing adventure with Lightroom. Lightroom is a great image editor and organiser, and is remarkably easy to use, considering how powerful it can be. Photoshop has an incredible array of benefits on offer; with it you can just about do anything your imagination comes up with. Most photographers will use Lightroom for their post-processing, moving to Photoshop for advanced techniques and edits. www.pclpublications.com 95
Shooting in Raw Mode To get the best out of your digital images with Adobe Lightroom, you should always shoot in Raw Mode. If you’ve bought this book, we can safely assume that you know something about digital photography, so you’re probably already aware that the vast majority of digital images are stored in a file format known as JPEG. Nearly all digital cameras and the majority of users, professional photographers want the best images possible and so any loss of quality is unacceptable. For this reason, most high-end cameras have an option to store photos in an uncompressed format usually known as Raw mode. mobile phones record their images as JPEG files. You can spot a JPEG file because it will usually have the filename extension .jpg or .jpeg. The JPEG format has been around since 1992, when the standard was first specified by the Joint Photographic Experts Group (after which it takes its name), a standing committee of imaging and software industry experts. There have been various attempts to update or replace the JPEG format over the years but it is now so entrenched in the digital world that it will likely be with us forever. Advantages of Raw Mode A full explanation of JPEG compression would take up much more space than we have available in this guide and you really don’t need to know most of it. For our purposes, the major difference between JPEG and Raw mode is the amount of information used to describe each pixel in the image. In JPEG mode each pixel is described by 24 bits, that is 24 ones and The JPEG format is great for digital images that are shared or published via the Internet or stored on digital media, because it is a compressed file format. File compression is a way of shrinking file sizes by removing redundant information and encoding the rest in a more efficient way. For digital images this means that a photograph that is maybe 35 megabytes as it comes off the camera sensor can be compressed down to a fraction of that size without losing too much image quality. This obviously means that you can store a lot more images on your memory card or hard drive and view your friends’ photos on Facebook without using up your entire data allowance at once. Whilst a slight loss of image quality, as a trade-off for more efficient storage, is not a problem for zeros, 8 for each colour channel of red, green and blue. This 8-bit encoding allows 256 gradations of brightness per colour channel, meaning that it can display 256 x 256 x 256, or 16,777,216 different shades of colour. That might sound like a lot but if you look at a JPEG image of a clear blue sky you may still see lines between the different tones of blue rather than a smooth gradation of colour. In uncompressed Raw mode, each pixel is usually described by 12 or even 14 bits per channel, giving 36 or 42 bits per pixel. This might not sound like a big difference but whilst a 12-bit Raw file can describe 68 billion shades, a 14-bit file can describe four trillion. This means that not only will your colours look smoother and more lifelike, much more shadow and highlight detail can also be recorded, giving your pictures much more dynamic range. This means that when you’re processing a Raw mode shot you can pull out much more detail from shadows and highlights. See the sample photos shown here to see the difference. AF-ON Quality RAW Skfcv.'ll JPEG 03OK IL IL IM IM RLCQH Canon 96 * ON OFF 8Ш2 IS IS О 1196 В 3528 File Format JPEG Recorded Pixels JPEG Quality RAW File Format C@®Cancel RAW ? PEFB DNG wb QK ti
SHOOTING IN RAW MODE This photo was shot using in-camera JPEG compression. As you can see there is almost no detail in the shadow areas and no amount of brightening can change that This is the same photo shot in Raw mode and processed in Lightroom. With the greater exposure, latitude and colour depth this mode provides, shadow detail and colour saturation are improved, producing a much nicer shot. Disadvantages of Raw Mode For day-to-day use there aren’t many disadvantages to shooting in Raw mode. High capacity memory cards and multi-terabyte hard disks are now so cheap that storage capacity really isn’t a problem and if you want to send a photo via email or share it online it’s very simple to convert a Raw file into a more manageable JPEG. The only real disadvantage is that there is very little standardisation of Raw file types between different camera manufacturers, and all of them have their own proprietary formats. This means that when you buy a new camera you may find that Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw won't be able to open or process the images until a compatibility update is released, which can sometimes take several weeks. One way around this is to use the Adobe DNG Raw format, which is an open-source Raw file format that is available on some cameras, notably Pentax DSLRs and some other high-end cameras. All Adobe software can handle this format by default. Adobe also offer a Raw to DNG converter that can batch-convert all your Raw files to the more compatible DNG format. The downside being that you then have native Raw and DNG versions of all your images. Raw or RAW? Most books, magazines, websites and even camera menu screens refer to Raw mode all in capital letters: RAW. There’s really no reason for this as it’s not an acronym and just means that you’re recording the Raw uncompressed information from the camera’s primary image processor. As far as we’ve been able to determine, the practice of writing it in caps started with a Canon press release circa 1998; and was carried on by other PR departments and camera journalists who didn’t know any better. Since we do know better, in this book we’re going to write it as‘Raw’. О О и > - 1^23466789 Б Image Size L12M E? Aspect Ratio 3:2 ^Quality RAW & JPEG BRAW File Type Uncompressed Panorama: Size Panorama: Direction ____________________________ax www.pclpublications.com 97
What is Photoshop Elements? Lets take a moment to get to know a little more about the software and how it can help you with your day to day image editing. Adobe Photoshop Elements is a great option for those who want an extensive toolset that can take on most of their image editing needs, without the requirement of highly advanced features such as you would find in Photoshop CC. It is also a great choice for those who only need one- click solutions to their image editing needs, or perhaps want to start to learn how to take on the more involved techniques and tools that Elements has to offer. Another big plus point in its favour is that it is one of the very few remaining Adobe products that can be purchased outright, without the need for subscription. A Worthy Alternative There was a time when, in certain quarters, Elements was considered a dumbed-down version of Photoshop with a limited toolset, that was only meant for beginners with no aspirations to advance to the more technically advanced techniques seen in Photoshop. However, recent versions of Elements have shown that it is a worthy standalone alternative to using Photoshop. It is a focused image editor and cataloging application that is more than capable of taking on any image editing task you care to send its way. In its current form, Adobe Photoshop Elements is comprised of two main components. One is the image editing module of the software where you can touch up your photos or even manipulate and transform them beyond recognition. The Edit section is broken down into three sections. The first is the Quick Edit mode, then comes the Guided Mode section and finally there is the Expert mode. Make the Most of Modules Each module has its own set of tools and preset options that can quickly get the job done. Quick Edit, as the name 98
WHAT IS PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS? The Adobe Photoshop Elements and Organiser interfaces are designed to be as intuitive as possible with plenty of options for beginners and experienced users alike. suggests, contains the basic editing tools such as colour correction, cropping, quick selection, spot healing, sharpening and lighting fixes. You can also apply some one- click presets such as Smart Fix, Exposure and Lighting. Helping Hand The Guided module is also fairly self- explanatory. Here you can make any number of popular image adjustments to your photos, with guided step-by-step tutorials, such as altering brightness and contrast, resizing photos, rotating and straightening your images and adding vignettes. It also has a number of specialised and fun options for restoring old photos, creating your own frames and replacing backgrounds. More Advanced Options Finally comes the Expert mode. This has more of the feel of its big brother, Photoshop to it. It has a toolbar ranged down the left hand side of the workspace and on the right is the layers panel that behaves much in the same way as Photoshop's layers palette. Here you also have access to a number of photo colour presets such as Faded Photo, Glow and Monotone Color. There are also a number of filters for more artistic effects such as coloured pencils, watercolours, distortion effects and sketch filters. You can also add Bevels, Patterns, Strokes, Photographic Effects and much more by accessing the icons in the lower right of the taskbar at the bottom of your workspace. Expert mode is the most hands-on of the three modes you can employ and gives you access to all the tools, so you can apply all your own advanced edits to your photos. Getting Organised The second main component of the latest Adobe Photoshop Elements is the Elements 2019 Organiser. At its heart, this is a cataloguing and photo organising program that lets you import, sort, tag and rate your photos. If you wish, you can create albums and use names, locations, date, time and GPS data to sort them. The program can even employ face recognition to find and sort photos of people and tag them much as you would in Facebook. Indeed, you can actually import your list of Facebook friends as an aid to tagging the people in your photos. If it detects a similar name being entered as a tag, it will display those existing names similar enough as a match to be an option for tagging. The two components of Photoshop Elements and Elements Organiser are separate programs, which can be a bit of nuisance if you need to keep switching between them but you have at your disposal a set of powerful editing tools that will keep beginner and expert happy. Over coming issues we'll begin to delve deeper into the workspaces offered by the Editor and Elements Organiser. It is best to consider the Editor module as your digital darkroom and design studio and to think of Elements Organiser as your library, where you keep all your media items such as photos and videos. www.pclpublications.com 99
TAKE YOUR BESTSHOT More images to inspire you as your journey conitnues... Love photography? Then welcome. Pull up a camera and make yourself comfortable. We want to continue to share our love of photography with you. Doesn’t matter if you’re a total beginner or seasoned pro, we do it because we love it, right? Photography can be a very solo endeavour or group experience. Either way, we believe there’s always something new and exciting to learn and certainly always something about your technical skills you can improve. If you're down on your local beach shooting the coastal landscapes or just setting up a little shoot on your dining room table, we hope we can spark a desire to go on and attempt even greater projects and really give your images that 'wow’ factor. These first few pages are yet more examples of images we like. Seeing other people's work can get you thinking in more detail about your own and perhaps giving you a little more impetus to see how far you can push your own skills. 100 www.pclpublications.com
TAKEYOUR BEST SHOT www.pclpublications.com
Hasselblad L1d-20c 28.0mmf/2.8 10.3mm 7/5.0-1/120S-IS0100 102 www.pclpublications.com
Nikon Z 7 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8 102.0mm 7/11.0-3/5s-IS0100 www.pclpublications.com 103
INSPIRATIONAL IMAGES r Black and white Ansel Adams \ISs an American landscape photographer known for his black and white images of the American West. He helped found Group f/64, an association of photographers advocating "pure” photography which favored sharp focus and the use ?)! the full tonal range of a photograph. When it comes to shooting in black and white he is famously quoted as saying: “I can get a far greater sense of ‘colour’ through a well-planned and executed black and white image than I have ever achieved with color photography."
Long exposure sunrise With the aid of a 10-stop neutral density filter, you can slow down your shutter speeds to soften moving elements in your shots such as water and clouds. On a crisp morning, down at the seafront, screwing a ‘big stopper’ to the front of the lens meant that a normal exposure of about l/30s could be extended up to about 30s. The sea became flat and mirror-like and the clouds soft and less well defined. The flags, flapping on their poles were reduced to ghostly shadows. 106 www.pclpublications.com
INSPIRATIONAL IMAGES of attention in this shot. Safe to say, a tripod is a must have accessory to avoid camera shake. www.pclpublications.com 107
THE HANDY GEAR GUIDE This issue reveals more cool gear for aspiring photographers The number of cameras and photographic accessories on the market today is simply staggering and can be extremely off-putting for those who are looking to upgrade their gear. This is particularly true for those who may have had an older camera for some time and are not familiar with the specifications of the current range of cameras. If you are thinking of upgrading your gear simply because you fancy a new camera or you are looking to expand your creative abilities with a more advanced camera, lenses and accessories, then these next few pages are worth a read. We’ve picked out a few items that are of great interest to us. There is an old adage that a new camera will not make you a better photographer and whilst that is true, it may just offer you a new feature that you use on your next shoot. 1 “Something as simple as getting ' the flash off your camera to be use remotely or just buying a reflector^ to use on your next portrait Я I -лА4 > лм. ч • -i г' -1 110 The Nikon Z series 111 NIKKORZ series lenses 112 Cokin gradual ND kit 113 CanonPixmaPro-100S 114 Sony VCTR100 tripod_______ 115 GitzoGK1555T-82TQD Series 1 116 Memory cards 117 Lee SW150 filter system J brand new creative photograph! J ^possibilitie^” 108 www.pclpublications.com
THE HANDY GEAR GUIDE www.pclpublications.com 109
The Nikon Z series A mirrorless system designed to capture more detail, more colour and more light Nikon have created a camera system that ushers in a new era of photographic possibilities. Mirrorless cameras have been with us for some time, but now Nikon have changed the game with their two Z series cameras. Both the Z7 and the Z6 use the new Z Mount full-frame lens mount; this new design is actually the widest mount on any camera. At 55mm, it is 17% larger than a standard F Mount, which allows for more light capture and places the lens closer to the sensor, allowing smaller, lighter cameras and lens design. The build and ergonomics of the two cameras have been carefully crafted to be lighter than standard DSLR bodies and allow intuitive control. Combined with an articulating touchscreen, navigating and adjusting settings has never been easier. The new cameras have impressive specifications. The Z7 sports a huge 45.7MP sensor and the Z6 weighs in at 24.5MP. The Z7 also boasts 493-point on-sensor PDAF technology, to increase the focusing speed, while the Z6 employs 273-point PDAF. Both are powered by the latest EXPEED 6 image processor, for unrivalled handling. The Z6 has a native ISO range from 100 - 51,200 and can capture 12fps in continuous shooting mode. TheZ7 has a 64 - 25,600 native ISO range and can capture 9f ps in continuous shooting mode. Couple all the features listed above with the cinematic 4K UHD video capability and you can see why the Nikon Z system will capture the imagination of photographers and videographers everywhere. Specification at a glance Nikon Z7 Effective pixels 45.7MP sensor Native lenses New Nikon Z Mount system Image processor Powerful EXPEED 6 ISO range 64 - 25600 Autofocus 493 PDAF focus points Video 4K UHD movies, 8K time-lapse movies Max burst 9fps continuous shooting Vibration reduction 5-axis optical LCD monitor 2.IM dot tilt display Weather sealing Yes Connectivity Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Price £3462/$3500/€3699 Nikon Z6 Effective pixels 24.5MP sensor Native lenses New Nikon Z Mount system Image processor Powerful EXPEED 6 ISO range 100-51200 Autofocus 273 PDAF focus points Video 4K UHD movies Max burst 12fps continuous shooting LCD monitor 2.IM dot tilt display Connectivity Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Weather sealing Yes
NIKON Z SERIES/NIKKORZSERIES LENSES NIKKOR Z series lenses Amazing sharpness and Light gathering capability with the new NIKKOR Z lenses The new Z Mount NIKKOR Z lenses are no less impressive than the Z series mirrorless cameras for which they are designed. Their optical performance takes photography to the next level and they boast amazing specifications of their own. They are comprehensively sealed to prevent the ingress of dust and moisture, but are still lightweight and well balanced. At the moment, there are 4 lenses available with more to be rolled out over the next two years. They cover useful focal ranges such as the 14- 30mm f/4 wide-angle and 24-70mm f/4. If you need fast primes, then 35mm and 50mm f/1.8 lenses give you the ability to shoot in darker scenarios and gather more light. Soon to be added to the list is the 58mm S Noct; this is the fastest NIKKOR lens in production and boasts a maximum aperture of f/0.95. This is a low-light performance lens with incredible depth of field control and amazing bokeh for portraits. With the FTZ mount adapter, if you already own NIKKOR F Mount lenses, you will still be able to use all your favourites on the new system camera bodies. Specifications at a glance NIKKOR Z14-30mm f/4 S Lens type_______________Wide-angle zoom Lens mount Nikon Z Focal range 14-30mm Format FX/35mm format Max aperture f/4 Min aperture___________________f/22 Construction 14 elements in 12 groups Diaphragm blades 7 Filter size 82mm Min focus distance 0.28mm Weight Approx. 485g Price £1349/$1296/€1449 NIKKOR Z 24-70mm f/4 S Lens type Wide-angle zoom Lens mount Nikon Z l|MB Focal range 24-70mm Format FX/35mm format Max aperture f/4 Mg* Min aperture f/22 K|||l ' Construction 14 elements in 12 groups Diaphragm blades 7 III ' Filter size 72 mm MBS b Min focus distance 0.3mm Mlb Weight Approx. 500g Price £999/$996/€1087 ; NIKKOR Z 35mm f/1.8 S m-п Hi Lens type 35mm prime ^M Lens mount Nikon Z Focal range 35mm FX/35mm format Format Max aperture f/1.8 Min aperture f/16 Construction 11 elements in 9 groups Diaphragm blades 9 Filter size 62mm Min focus distance 0.25mm Weight Approx. 370g Price £849/$846/€898 www.pclpublications.com 111
Cokin Gradual ND Kit Shoot more creatively with filters for your camera The more you grow in experience as a photographer, the more demanding lighting conditions you may possibly encounter in your search for more interesting and varied images. You may also demand more in-camera control of how light is falling on your sensor, to give you more balanced exposures at the point of capture and minimise the amount of shots lost to incorrect exposure thus reducing the amount of post-processing you have to do with your images once you are back at your computer. This is where filters come into play. They vary in size and type but all have one function, to modify the light levels falling on your sensor. This can be as simple as affecting exposure of the entire image, or a part of it. It could also be altering the colour of the light captured with coloured special effects filters. The most often used filter is the graduated Neutral Density (ND) filter. It is an optically neutral sheet of organic glass that is dark at the top and fades to transparent near the middle. Using this, you can make over bright skies darker to match the exposure of the usually darker foreground better. There are many manufacturers of photographic filters and Cokin is one of the most well-known. They are a French manufacturer who introduced their creative filter system in 1978. The choice of filters today is vast but they also provide starter kits of specific filter types and the Gradual ND Kit is perfect for landscape photographers who need an affordable entry into filter systems. The kit comes with a P-series filter holder and three ND grads of various strengths. You will need to purchase adaptor you r photography. rings depending on the diameter of the lenses you use. The adaptor screws into your lens and the filter holder screws into that. Then you can slide your ND filters into place in the holder. Two filters are hard grads, meaning that they transition to clear quite sharply. These are ThePseriesfilterholderis a great all round system. It can accommodate lenses up to 82mm in diameter. Specification at a glance Material CR-39 Organic Glass Includes GND2-lf-stop GND4-2f-stops GND8-3f-stops lx filter-holder Holder size P series Dimensions 84 x 84mm Lenses Up to 82mm diameter Adaptor ring Sold separately Price £62/$00/€00 great for landscapes with uncluttered horizon lines such as the sea. The other is a soft grad that blends more smoothly from top to bottom. This one is perfect for horizon lines that have more going on in them such as mountainsand trees. The beauty of the system is that once you have the holder, you can build u p your collection of filter types for even more creative control of GRADUALND ND DEGRADE 112
COKIN GRADUAL ND KIT/CANON PIXMAPRO-100S Canon PIXMAPRO-100S A professional A3+printer with amazing long lasting colour If you are one of those photographers who loves to print and frame their work, rather than keep the shots buried deep within one of your hard drives, never to see the light of day, then it’s worth considering the PIXM A PRO-IOOS for top quality prints. With a maximum of 4800 pixels, this thermal inkjetfrom Canon uses an 8-ink colour system including three monochrome inks for deep, saturated colours with a quoted 30 year permanence. This printer is fast too, it can a print an A3+ photo, with a border, in about 90 seconds. The PIXM A PRO-IOOS is wireless and printing can be done from either your desktop computer or mobile devices using the Canon PRINT app. If you are a Photoshop and Lightroom user, you can take a lot of the guesswork out of your printing and colour settings and produce more accurate images by using the Print Studio Pro plugin. This way you can print directly from your preferred pro editing software. A large number of media and specialist paper types made by Canon and other paper manufacturers is supported by the printer, as well as a CD printing option that lets you print directly onto compatible disks. Thankfully, although it uses an 8 colour individual cartridge system, when one runs out, you only have to replace the empty one. People are reporting that as printers go, it is quite thirsty, and although you get a great printer that produces high quality prints at a reasonable price, the ink costs will probably have you using itfor those special print requirements only. Specification at a glance Technology Thermal inkjet Maximum resolution 4,800 x 1,200dpi Maximum paper size A3+ Number of colours 8 Photo durability 30 years Standard interfaces USB, Ethernet, 802.11b/g/n wireless Optional interfaces None Dimensions 215 x689 x385mm Weight 19.7kg Price £345/$75/€480 Cation www.pclpublications.com 113
Sony VCTR100 tripod A lightweight tripod solution We can never extol the virtues of tripods enough. After the purchase of a camera and lens, we would always recommend the purchase of a tripod. You never know when you might encounter that perfect low-light scene or challenging condition that merits the use of a tripod for steady, shake-free shots. Tripods, for the most part, come in two flavours depending on your particular requirements. Travel tripods are small and lightweight, sacrificing robustness and rigidity for maximum portability and a small compact size when folded away. Professional tripods are larger and heavier for maximum rigidity and robustness in all shooting conditions. Some also offer a range of compatible tripod heads for different needs and can be reconfigured to allow the centre column to flip out over a 90° angle, to quickly shift your camera’s perspective, to get into some more tricky shooting angles that more basic tripods don’t allow. They are also designed to be able to support much larger cameras and lenses. The Sony VCTR100 falls under the lightweight travel tripod category. Itsaluminium design allows itto be ultra portable and light enough to carry easily over distance. The 3-way pan and tilt head is designed to be easy and convenientfor stable shooting with a centre brace for extra stability when using either camcorders or small cameras. The three-leg sections allowyou to adjust the tripod up to a maximum extended height of 100cm. Whilstthis is only just above waist high, it does mean it retracts to a very convenient 35cm for carrying or putting away in a backpack. As small, affordable tripods go, this is a good option for photographers on the move. Specification at a glance Colour Black Maximum Height (cm) 100 Maximum Load (grams)______________1000 Minimum Height (cm) 35.5 Number of Leg Sections 3 Primary Material Aluminium Weight (g)_______________________________660 Price £35/$40/€45
SONY VCTR100 TRIPOD / GITZO GK1555T-82TQD SERIES 1 Gitzo GK1555T-82TQD Series 1 When you demand the best After you’ve spent several minutes just pronouncing the Gitzo’s model number, you can settle down and marvel at this flagship tripods specifications, and its price. This is not a tripod for the hobbyist photographer, unless you have a large disposable income that you would like disposed of very rapidly. At this price point, you are paying for a lot of engineering that makes the Gitzo one of the highest quality and stable tripods out there. Add to that the brand-name kudos and you have a Rolls Royce among tripods (at Rolls Royce prices of course). At this price you would expect some great features. First the Gitzo weights just 1.4kg thanks to its carbon fibre construction. Fully extended, it reaches a height of 148.5cm and can support a maximum payload of 10kg, equivalent to a large DSLR with a big zoom lens attached. The ball head is engineered to be smooth and precise and thanks to the 180° folding mechanism that lets the legs fold back on themselves, it fits snugly between the legs making an easy to carry package for such a tall tripod. If you are looking for a taller tripod, then Gitzo does offer the GK2545T-82QD Series 2 that fully extends to 165.5cm and can support upto 12kg. Specification at a glance Leg sections 5 Max height Min height Weight______________________________1.42kg/3.1lbs Payload__________________________10kg/22lbs Price £850/$1000/€980 The folding mechanism means the tripod can be folded down into an easy to manage configuration. 148.5cm/58.5" 35.5cm/14.0’ www.pclpublications.com 115
Memory cards SanDisk Extreme Pro SDXC UHS-I If you are a pro shooter or even just an enthusiast who is keen to maximise the speed of their image capture between camera and card, then you can’t go wrong with a SanDisk memory card. They have become one of the leading brand names when it comes to digital storage. Their product is reliable and backed up with a lifetime limited warranty. Their Extreme Pro range of SD cards are also fast. When we say fast, it means that the card can can have data written to its solid state memory very quickly. Fast, in this case means at around 95M В per second. You might wonder why the speed is so important and what scenario you would find yourself shooting in to be worrying whether your card is fast enough. Well, for 95 per cent of the time, you probably wouldn’t need to worry, unless you find yourself in a situation where you’re shooting bursts of images in Raw format, or shooting high resolution video. We can give you a simple example where the speed of the card hindered a shoot though. We were shooting a portrait using a technique known as the Brenizer method. This involves not only shooting the subject at close range with a 50mm lens or longer at its minimum aperture, but also capturing the entire scene around them by shooting something in the order of 30-60 overlapping frames that can be stitched together later to create a wide angle shot with an apparent depth of field matching an f/0.5 lens. It does require those 60 frames to be captured in rapid succession, to not only make sure light levels don’t change but that your subject does not move too much in the period of time it takes to capture all those shots. We started the sequence and it became apparent very quickly thatthe card couldn't handle the data beingfed to it from the camera's processor and it felt like an eternity waitingfor the meagre few shots it could manage to be written to the card. It was an old SanDisk Ultra II card and it just wasn’t able to handle the Rawfile data comingfrom the Canon5DMark III. We swapped it out for a SanDisk Extreme 16GBcard with a write speed of 60MB/s and the next attempt went much more smoothly with the card happily handling the flurry of shots. The same can be said for sports shooters where they might be shooting a continuous burst of shots, tracking the action, hoping to pick out the Class 10 This has a minimum sustained sequential write speed of least 10 MB/s. Other Classes There are also 2,4 and 6 class ratings which indicate their minimum write speed in MB/s. U1 rating Recommended for 1080p video recording and has a minimum write speed of at least 10 MB/s. U3 rating If you are shooting 4K video, the faster U3 cards offer a minimum write speed of 30MB/s. UHS-I This stands for Ultra High Speed Phase-1. This is the first iteration of ultra high speed cards with a theoretical bus speed of 104MB/S. UHS-II The second iteration of the Ultra High Speed Phase for SD cards. This offers theoretical bus speeds up to 312MB/S UHS-III Released in 2017, the third iteration of the SD specification allows bus speeds up to 624MB/S and is perfect for huge amounts of data such as shooting 8K video. Video speed You may notice newer cards with V6, V10, V30, V60 and V90 ratings on them. This is a rating that guarantees minimum levels of of video capture performance. one shot from the sequence that perfectly captures the moment. Use a slow card and you are going to struggle to write the data quickly enough and cause a data log jam that may lead to missed shots. At 95MB/s the SanDisk Extreme Pro is not the fastest card, there are cards that can handle write speeds up to 300MB/S, but it does represent great valuefor money. There are also a number a storage size options from 32GB up to 512GB, although be prepared to spend acres of cash if you go for the latter. A quick glance at the Internet and you may also see that there are many designations and ratings for memory cards that can be a bit confusing. To help out, here are some of the main rati ngs to look out for. SanDisk MB/s 95 mb/s’ 64 GB SanDisk
MEMORY CARDS / LEE SW150 FILTER SYSTEM Lee SW150 filter system Now you can use filters on ultra wide lenses Countless landscape photographers use filters to coax as much image detail and tonal range out of their shots as possible. The simple use of a graduated filter that darkens a bright sky but leaves the darker foreground unaltered is a popular example of a filter in use. That’s fine for most lenses you can buy but there are issues if you want to shoot with a lens that has a shorter focal length than usual. A good 16-35mm focal length zoom lens is perfect for most applications but if you want to use focal length lenses around the 14mm, 12mm and 11mm range, there are going to be some physical drawbacks to those lens designs. The problem is that ultra wide lenses may have a domed front element with a built in petal lens hood to which filters cannot be screwed. Another issue is that most are too large for standard filter system sizes. With that in mind, Lee have developed the SW150 system and lens adaptors for a range of ultra wide lenses that can hold filters in place without the fear of vignetting at the widest end of the zoom range. You will need to purchase the SW150 system and also an adaptor that is design to fit over the lens you wish to use. Opposite is a list of ultra Supported lenses Nikon AF-S Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8G ED Nikon 14mm f2.8DAF ED Nikon PC NIKKOR 19mm f/4E ED Tilt-Shift Canon EF 14mm f2.8 LII USM_________ Canon EF ll-24mm f4L USM Olympus 7-14mm Pro f2.8 Pentax FA 15-30mm f2.8 ED SDM WR Samyang 14mm f/2.8 ED AS IF UMC Sigma 12-24mm f4.5-5.6 DG HSM II Sigma 20mm fl.4 HSM Art Tamron 15-30mm f2.8 SP Di VC USD Tokina AT-X 16-28mm f/2.8 PRO FX You simply attach the lugged adaptor ring to your lens and then attach wide lens adaptors supported by the system. the SW150 filter holder and light shield to it. Then you can use Lee filters as you would any standard filter system. www.pclpublications.com 117
GETTING STARTED Filters, storage and lighting are revealed in this isse Buying a new camera is an exciting time, whether it is an upgrade to Ian existing DSLR, or a step up from using your phone. Either way, exciting possibilities will present themselves when out shooting. Once those all-important first big decisions have been made, your mind may turn to what comes next in terms of equipment purchases. As ever, the choices of howto augment your gear with new items is pretty vast, but we personally feel that the next few pages wiH outline possible next steps in your journey as a photographer. 120 Flashes and lighting - 122 Types of light modifiers 124 Filters and.filter systems 126 Digital storage “Once those all-important first big decisionshave been made, your mind may turn to what comes next in terms of equipment purchases. ”
Flashes and lighting Add Light and boost your creativity Once you get beyond the basics of photography and you find yourself wanting to add a little creativity and take more control of how the light affects your shots, then that is when you need to take a look at additional lighting in the form of flashes. Your first experience of flash might be the tiny pop up flash you find on the top of a lot of compact cameras and a number of DSLR models. They are useful to light a subject when all else fails, but to be honest, ifyou want your shots to appear more than just selfies, then you need to look further afield. We are referring to the dedicated flashguns that can be mounted in your camera’s hot shoe, or for even greater flexibility, used off-camera and fired remotely by a wireless trigger. They are known by various names such as flash, strobe, speedlight (or Speedlite) and monobloc. They are usually battery powered, which makes them very portable. They emit a powerful and brief flash of light that can illuminate your scene. Monoblocs, or studio lights as they are known, are larger, more powerful and less portable lights that are usually powered by mains electricity. Some studio lights can be used outdoors with the help of large lithium batteries. Pop up flash Most compact cameras and entry level DSLRs will have a small flash built in. Most are designed to pop up when light levels are deemed too low to get a usable exposure. Pop up flashes by their nature are very small and produce a very harsh direct light that is not flattering for your subjects. Because the little flash tube is front-facing, you don’t have a lot of scope to get creative. You can use it to fill in dark shadows but beyond that you’re probably going to struggle. Some people will put a small piece of white card bent at an angle in front of the flash to direct the light upwards in order to bounce the light off the ceiling but this can be a bit hit and miss. Add to that the fact that they are not particularly powerful, then you can see why you need to step up your gamea little to the next level. TOP TIP- . When using ^^Vstand '°rm'vnTspee'd'vm'’^5'^our h0W > hasa maximum sync “""Id that means it can fire XO-txXo-
FLASHES AND LIGHTING Continuous light (prices range from £50- £10000*1 An alternative to the various forms of flash lighting we’ve mentioned here is to use continuous lighting instead. Sometimes also referred to as hot lights or photofloods. Rather than emitting a powerful but brief flash of light, continuous lights are always on. They are not as powerful as flashes but you do have the benefit of always seeing how the light is falling on your subject without needing to do a test shot as you would with flash. At their simplest, they are either an incandescent bulb housed inside a large reflector, or powerful daylight balanced fluorescent lights that are more energy efficient. For more powerful options, you are going to be looking at arc lights; these were developed for the film industry and are insanely expensive. Third party flash (prices range from £25- £150) Just like cameras, there is a bewildering choice. Not just from the major brands like Canon and Nikon but from 3rd party manufacturers like Nissin, Yongnuo and Gloxy. With big name brands costing hundreds for top of the range equipment, the temptation may be to trawl the pages on eBay looking for a bargain flash unit. It is fair to point out thatthe phrase‘you get what you pay for' has never been more relevant. You may find yourself some unknown brand for a quarter of the price of one of the major brand names that seems too good to be true, and it probably is. Take the advice of those whofound out to their cost, stick with a major brand or well-regarded 3rd party manufacturer. Checkout user reviews wherever you can. Make the best informed choice you are able within your budget. Nissin Brand name flashes (prices range from £100- £600) All the manufacturers make a variety of flash models for their cameras. They range from simple front facing small flashes, right up to their professional-level flashes with wireless control, powerful flash tubes with variable power control, tilt and swivel flash heads and a host of customisable features and accessories to create your own portable studio setup. These models are notcheap but they are the choice of professionals fora reason. They also have the added bonus of letting you shoot high-speed photography because, when used at lower power settings, the pulse of light from the flash is so brief that you could use it to illuminate a scene for a fraction of a second and catch a bullet in flight, freezing the action dead in its tracks. 0.6'4./ * Studio lights (prices range from £150- £4000*) Studio lights can actually be broken down into two categories. First is the flash head kit. Flash heads are just the light emitters. A separate power pack supplies the required voltage and the controls are actually on the power unit itself. The other variety of studio light is the monobloc, or monolight. These are either mains powered or lithium battery powered flash units but all the controls are built into each unit. This limits their power but it does J make them more I portable and more easily used outdoors. Flash heads tend to be more powerful and you have the advantage of being able to control multiple flash head setups directly from the power pack. www.pclpublications.com 121
Types of light modifiers Make light yours to command 4 When you use flash lighting, especially if using it to directly light your subject, you will be aware of how harsh the shadows it casts can be. You can’t always be near a large picture window on an overcast day, where the softness of the light coming through that window makes it difficult to take a bad photo. You have to work with what you have, so that means you need to go back to your flash. However, there are some techniques that al low you to modify and shape light to suit your needs. This is where light modifiers come in. A lighting modifier is just what the name suggests. It is an object, surface, or material that alters the way the light travels from its source to the subject. If you shoot with an unmodified flashgun, the light that is emitted is traveling in a concentrated beam from a very small light source. If this light passes through a modifier, such as a softbox, the light is diffused, scattered and less concentrated. A modifier can also turn a small light source into a large one. A flash, fired from several feet away onto a large translucent material, for instance, creates an illuminated hot spot that is much larger than its source. This is the basis of light modification. Here are a few of the types of light modifier you could be working with. “A lighting modifier is just what the name suggests. It is an object, surface, or material that alters the way the light travels from its source to the subject”
TYPES OF LIGHT MODIFIERS Omni-Bounce In effect, this is a tiny sof tbox that covers the head ofyourflash.lt enables light not only to emit forwards but also around the sides. This gives a closer approximation of a bare bulb and allows for wider lighting coverage at the expense of reduced flash power because not all the light is thrown forward. Even from a relatively short distance, there would bea visible difference in shadow softness compared to a bare flash. Snoot (prices from £15) A snoot is a tube that concentrates the light output of your flash. It gives the resulting beam a searchlight quality that creates a tight pool of light, ideal for highlighting a small part of your scene. Moving the flash further away will enable you to define a larger spotlight. Because the beam of light is so narrow, the rest of your scene would be in relative darkness. Since the light is effectively reduced in size, the shadows it creates will be fairly sharp. Dome diffuser (prices from £50) The dome diffuser takes the idea of the omni-bounce and expands upon it. The larger physical size of the dome allows you to use it like a true, large, bare bulb. With it, you can illuminate larger areas with a more even light source. Bear in mind that, like the omni-bounce, light is spread in all directions so your subject illumination will appeardiminished. Shoot through umbrella The shoot through umbrella or‘brolly’ is regarded as one of the best types of light modifier for those new to flash photography. It is a white translucent material stretched over an umbrella wireframe through which the flash is fired. It is a great way to spread out light from a very small original source. The downside is that shoot through umbrellas can be quite easily broken. Reflector umbrella A reflector umbrella works in the opposite manner to a shoot through. The flash is fired into the umbrella which uses its inner silver liningto reflect the light backout onto the subject. This method allows you to light large areas within a 180° radius. The wide, even light pattern it creates is ideal for lighting large groups from a distance of around 6m to 7m. The sof tbox A softbox is used to soften and diffuse the output of your flash into a visually pleasing even light with no harsh shadows. The closerthe softbox is to the subject, or indeed the larger the softbox, the softer the light appears. In fact, many use softboxes to emulate window light when shooting portraits or even product photography. If used as a key light in portraiture, the large rectangular surface creates some lovely catchlights in the subject's eyes as if they were looking outof a window. (prices from £35) www.pclpublications.com 123
Filtersand filter systems Some must-have filters for creative photography some of the different “Levs take a look at types of filter and how they can help to improve your photos. TOPTIP'- If you are buying a filter system that uses ‘a mte7holder. always remember to get the t system for У°иГ COu ?i!ns A very wide widest ten . lenS^„yeS of your filter the edges от у holder if it is for your current setup liters have been an essential part of photography since its very beginnings. Used creatively they can improve a hard- to-capture scene, add an extra artistic element to an image or just provide a bit of fun. Modern digital photo editing has provided an, almost too easy, method to add filter effects to an image after it has been captured; some effects are better when applied by actual physical filters fitted to the camera when the photo is taken and this is particularly true with black and white photography. Let’s take a look at some of the different types of filter and how they can help to improve your photos. 124
FILTERS AND FILTER SYSTEMS 1. UV filter (prices from £15) This screw-on filter was used originally to block UV lightfrom hitting the film in old cameras. Modern digital cameras have U V and infrared protection on their sensors now, so a UV filter is employed as a method of defence against scratches and dust getting on the front lens element. Optionally you can just use a good quality clear glass filter instead. The higher the quality of glass the better, so as to avoid ghosting and flare in your shots. 2. Circular polarizing filter (prices from £25) Circular polarizers are ideal for digital cameras. When correctly aligned, the filter can render blue skies darker with brighter, white clouds. They can also increase saturation and reduce reflections on shiny surfaces and water as well as reduce haze. Polar isers work best when the camera is about 90° either side of the sun. The polariser has to be rotated until the maximum effect is achieved, blocking certain light waves. These filters come in both screw-on and filter holder varieties. 3. Neutral density filter (prices from £35) ND filters limit the amount of light that is able to fall on the sensor and therefore require much longer shutter duration. They are made from darkened materials that are designed to be optically neutral in order not to create a colour cast. The darker the filter the longer your exposures can be. ND filters can range from a 2-stop filter to 10-stops of light reduction. They are excellent for use in daytime to create motion blur in moving objects like water and clouds. 4. Graduated ND filter (prices from £40) ND grads work similar to standard ND filters but instead of being one solid dark material, the filter fades from dark to clear. They are useful in high contrast situations such as a bright sky versus a dark foreground where you can use the filter to darken the sky enough to balance the overall exposure in the scene. Screw on filter Rectangularfilter Filterholder Filter types 1. Circular screw on filters are the most common type that fits directly on your lens filter thread. They come in different thicknesses, the thickest of which can potentially cause vignetting to your shots. Ultra thin filters get around this but can be more expensive. 2. Square filters are popular with landscape photographers. A holder designed to house the filters directly attaches to the lens filter thread and can hold several filters. Generally they range in size from around 75mm to 150mm 3. Rectangular filters are another popular choice among landscape photographers. These are mounted in the same fashion as their square counterparts, the main difference is because they are rectangular; they have more scope to move up and down within the holder. 4. Filter holders are plastic and metal mounting devices that screw onto the filter thread of your lens. They have several slots moulded into them to accommodate several filters at once. The most popular filter system manufacturers are Cokin and Lee and Hitech. www.pclpublications.com 125
Digital storage Your precious holiday photos in safe hands As camera technology develops and the megapixel count increases with every new camera that is released, the file sizes that these cameras create when shooting in Raw format can be substantial. As an example, ifyou were to shoot a highly detailed landscape image with lots of trees, grass, clouds and mountains, an uncompressed 12-bit Raw file from something like a Nikon D810 could be as much as 55MB. Now imagine shooting an action scene of ponies running across the moorlands in burst mode and capturing twenty shots in just one sequence, you can imagine how quickly you would start filling up any digital storage. There’s more to it than just the amount of storage you have. A memory card of 64GB will let you store a lot of images, but if that card cannot write the data from the camera fast enough, that burst mode sequence of photos, that your camera should be able to shoot at 8 frames per second, is going to hit a digital log jam after a couple of shots because the buffer can’t get the image data written to the card and therefore it all gri nds to a halt while it finishes the task. Clearly, there is more to memory cards than meets the eye. Premium or Budget? The popularity of SD cards has led to a large number of budget brands springing up, and many supermarkets and chain stores sell their own-brand cards at often very low prices. However the best advice is to stick to the premium brands such as SanDisk, Lexar, Pretec, PNY or Kingston, or to camera brands such as Fujifilm or Panasonic. Although they may be more expensive, their higher standards of quality control mean that premium cards are usually much more reliable. Ifyou’vegot a high-performance camera it's also worth spending a bit extra for faster data transfer rates to get the best out of it. 126
DIGITAL STORAGE SPEED RATINGS MEMORY CARD USAGE Premium cards have higher data transfer speeds, which meansthey can store and retrieve data more quickly, an important factor when shooting video or a rapid sequence of still images. The speed of the memory card can have an effect on the overall performance of the camera, especially on high-end models. Unfortunately many manufacturers have their own ways of describing the speed of their cards, which can be very conf usi ng for the consumer. Some use the *x’ rating, comparing the read/ write speed to that of a CD-ROM, approximately 150 kilobytes per second (150 KB/s), so a memory card rated at 40x’ speed has a transfer rate of 6 megabytes per second (6MB/s). The more widely accepted speed rating is the Class system, usually denoted by a number inside a letter C. Most budget cards are Class 2, with a minimum read/write speed of 2MB/s. Most mid-range high-capacity cards are Class 6, with a read/write speed of 6MB/s. The fastest class currently available are Class 10 cards, which have a read/write speed of at least ЮМВ/s. The newer ultra-high speed UHS-I cards are rated at speeds of up to 45MB/s 90MB/s and the UDMA 7 Compact Flash cards can reach 160M B/s. Some cards offer storage capacity up to 256GB in size. All this from a card that is not much bigger than a postage stamp. Kingston SDHC 8 GB Class 4 £5/$4/€6 Best for: compact camera usersand holiday shooters. SarDisk SanDisk Extreme Pro UHS-3SDXC 64GB.95MB/S Class 10 £37/$35/€44 Best for: pros shooting Raw files and 4K movies. MULTI-USE 16s Le\a SDHC 200x ® Lexar Multi-use 16GB Class 4 £5/$9/€6 Best for: compact users and amateur DSLR users. Lexar Premium SDHC 32GB 200X Class 10 £15/$12/€18 Best for: varied storage intensive DSLRs and devices. Transcend SDXC Flash 128 GB Class 10 £35/$44/€42 Best for: serious DSLR and video enthusiasts. Extreme PRO 64^ Sa (Disk Extreme PRO 256. “0MI“ SdiDisk SanDisk Extreme Pro Compact Flash 64GB, 160MB/S £75/$85/€90 Best for: high bit rate DSLR and HD video. SanDisk Extreme Pro 256GB, 160MB/S. £275/$300/€330 Best for: extreme image and video performance. ! 512 | €• Lexar 128tr Transcend ( । зомв/s 200x SO HOW MANY PICTURES CAN I TAKE? The total number of pictures that can be stored on a memory card is a difficult thing to quantify for a couple of reasons. Digital cameras usually store images usingthe JPEG file format, which compresses image data to save storage space. Most cameras have a menu setting for image quality which varies the rate of compression, with high quality images taking up more space. The compressed size of the Lexar Professional 512GB, 525MB/S. £1043/$1200/€1228 Best for: the highest possible performance. “The speed of the memory card can have an effect on the overall performance of the camera.” image can also vary depending on the subject being shot, since more detailed images contain more data. For a typical modern 16-megapixel digital camera the file size can vary between about 4.5MB for a good quality jpeg and 30MB for an uncompressed Raw file, which means an average8GB card will be enough for approximately 1400 jpegs or 260 Raw files. to₽t,p! he Although it may be tempting * &X ridiculously large memory card for an 'extended shooting session, where yo disaster befalls yo memory card. www.pclpublications.com 127
TECHNICAL QUICK-START Our easy-to-follow key photographic techniques continue At the outset, it is fairly common for us to rely on the automatic settings provided by our cameras, allowing us to simply point-and-shoot to take a photo. We feel that an automatic setting has its place but it does disconnect you from the actual process of taking a photograph. To be able to take your shots to the next level, you need to understand the main principles of photography. In this section, we uncover more details that help you understand your camera and how you can start taking the photos that you really want to capture. 130 Methods for getting good focus 132 Bethemaster of metering 134 Lenses and focal length 136 Explore your camera’s scene modes 138 Camera shooting modes “To be able to take your shots to the next level, you need to understand the main principles of photography ” 128
Methods for getting good focus Here’s howto getthe most out of your autofocus system here are a couple of autofocus systems in use today that intelligently adjust the camera lens in order to obtain and hold focus on your subject. Compact system cameras use something called contrast-detection AF, which samples the image from the sensor and detects sharp high contrast edges in the details of the scene. Phase detection is a more complex system but is usually much faster, more accurate and works better in low light. However both systems require some detail in the scene to ’lock on’ to. Try and point your camera at a plain wall or a sheet of white paper and see if it will focus on it. Even if you own a top-of-the-range DSLR it won’t be able to focus on a featureless surface. Modern DSLRs have several autofocus modes available to make the process of getting good focus on your subject that much easier. If you look through your viewfinder, you will see that there are a number of points on the viewfinder screen which are called AF points. They vary in number from 9 up to 51 or more. These are what the camera uses to focus on the scene. Anythingthat falls beneath one of these points will be the ideal point of focus. You can select which one to use or even which groups of points can be used. If you leave the camera in its automatic mode (known as AF-A) you leave the choice of focusing method up to the camera. The more focusing points you have the better it is for this mode. Take control For more control, you can use the AF-S mode, known as single-servo autofocus. If you half press the shutter button, you can lock and hold the focus on a particular part of the scene. A good example of this method is in stationary photos where you lock focus on a subject's eyes and then fully press the shutter button to take the shot. You can select a single AF point that falls over your subject's eye and achieve focus or you can use the default centre AF point, place it over your subject’s eye, get focus lock and then recompose the shot how you want it before taking the shot. For moving subjects, things can be a little trickier. That's when you can select the AF-C mode. This stands for continuous- servo autofocus. Now, when you press the shutter button halfway, the camera will continuously track and lock focus on whatever falls beneath the selected AF point or group of points. It attempts to predict the subject’s motion and distance from the camera. A,,h^9haJ'P! craft “as₽ects of t^t,in9 9Oord\rDP°r,anl ‘here is По softuPOSure' the >vor(d tha,ft are P an°utoff‘ ®tcansave '°CUs"»age ? Worth worb® ,achn'4ue be"'9h0n°drk'n9onan4de anyth'n9eZUCh Go manual Sometimes, it may be advantageous to use manual focusing methods instead of the automatic mode. Autofocus can be difficult to achieve if the scene is very low contrast or contains lots of overlapping fine detail. The camera may often focus on the wrong thing entirely in auto so watch out and switch to manual mode if required. Getting your subject in focus Is the key to agoodshotbutyoumayencountermore difficult shooting situationsthat require different focusing strategies. 130
METHODS FOR GETTING GOOD FOCUS Get to know your autofocus modes AF-A AUTO-SERVO AF The camera decides which focusing mode to use and can work to best effect if your camera has a larger number of Appoints. It will assess the scene based on its content and use all the AF points to focus the shot. AF-S SINGLE-SERVO AF You can lock the focus by half-pressing the shutter release button. This allows you to select a focus point and recompose the shot. It is good for simple static subjects where you can focus once and know your subject is not going to move. AF-C CONTI NUOUS-SERVOAF This time, when you press the shutter button halfway, it starts to track and continually focus on the subject beneath the selected AF point. This mode is good for tracking a moving subject such as in sports events. When autofocus fails www.pclpublications.com 131
Bethemaster of metering Know when to use the different types of metering modes Nearly all digital cameras, from top- of-the-range DSLRs to the humblest budget point-and-shoot compacts, have multiple light metering options. Knowing how and when to use these different metering modes can make a dramatic difference to the quality of your photography; unfortunately most people don’t understand what the different modes are for, how they work, or how to use them. Know your modes Depending on your camera, you'll find metering options either in the menu or with their own separate control. In cameras with a fully-automatic setting, this will usually disable the metering options; automatically selecting multi-zone metering as the best option for day-to-day scenes and snapshots. The most common light metering modes are found on nearly all digital cameras. They are spot metering, centre-weighted metering and matrix Getting your exposure correct at the time of shooting means that you are retaining more detail in the file; this can be enhanced when it comes to post-processing. quality of your photography... ” metering. The symbols used for these modes are just about universal. Multi-zone metering is shown by a rectangle filled with a centre spot surrounded by a pattern of shapes: centre-weighted metering is usually shown as a centre spot with shapes above and below it: whilst spot metering is usually a rectangle with just a centre spot. What they do Matrix metering, also known as Evaluative metering, is usually the default setting and it is a great multi- purpose metering mode for evenly lit scenes and places emphasis around the AF point used while applying appropriate exposure compensation. Centre-weighted behaves a lot like Matrix metering but it place more emphasis on the centre of the “Knowing how and when to use these different metering modes can make a dramatic difference to the image and doesn’t take the AF point into consideration. Spot metering is the most accurate by metering the scene over a very small circular area. Partial metering takes the precision of spot metering and expands the size of the circle used to measure the light. 132 www publications.com
BE THE MASTER OF METERING (E-WB AF-DRIVE ISO-00 £ ваза not гм Matrix or Evaluative metering This mode is great for evenly lit scenes where there are not a lot of tonal variations. It meters the whole scene and is usually the default metering mode on a camera. When shooting scenes with large tonal variation, spot metering allows you to pick exactly which part of the scene you want to accurately meter for. Centre-weighted average Since this mode concentrates on the central portion of the frame, it makes it perfect for portraits and head shots. Details around the edge of the frame are not metered. Essentially, partial metering is an expanded version of the spot metering mode. This makes it easier to use although the metering is not quite as precise as the spot meter mode. www.pclpublications.com 133
“Knowing how focal length affects how much you see in a shot means you can control the composition of vour shots in much more Go wide ang le to c)ef mi leInyourshot or choose telephoto to pick out a smaller detail and bring it cldser. A lens' focal length lets you alter youf compositions with ease. Д'"', Х.1Ч . чЛаРЯКЁ Most modern digital cameras have zoom lensesand it’s likely that if you own a major brand DSLR, you will have a couple of zoom lenses in your kit bag. Zoom lenses let you alter the focal length of the lens. For example, a 24-105mm lens lets you change the focal length from 24mm up to 105mm, but what is focal length? Focal length explained Focal length is usually represented in millimetres. A 100mm lens is not the actual length of the lens but rather the distance between the point at which rays of light from your scene enter the lens and create a sharp image on the camera’s sensor. Altering the focal length has a dramatic impact on the scene you are photographing. A 20mm wide angle lens can see more of the scene than a 200mm lens can. This is because as the focal length increases the angle of view becomes smaller as the image is magnified. Zooming from 20mm to 200mm for example, means there has been a lOx magnification of the scene, so small details at 20mm are suddenly made much larger and appear much closer at 200mm. A popular lens like the canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 can zoom from 70mm to 200mm. At 70mm the angle of view of the scene is about 95° At 200mm the angle of view is about 12°. A 15mm fisheye lens is designed to see as much as possible and has an angle of view of 180° which is comparable to the peripheral vision of the human eye. Composition Knowing how focal length affects how much you see in a shot means you can control the composition of your shots in much more creative ways. If you are shooting a portrait and using a 24-105mm lens for example, it means you can quickly reframe your shots from very close-up shots to much wider angle images that include more background as well as your subject. If you are an avid landscape photographer, and you want to get as much of some wide panoramic vista in your shot in one go, you’ll need a lens with a focal length somewhere in the 14-16mm area for a very wide angle of view to capture the scene in its entirety. Best uses As a rough guide, lenses that cover a 16mm to 35mm range are generally classed as wide angle zooms that are good for general landscape and architectural work. The range between 35mm and 70mm are classed as standard lenses that mostly capture the world with roughly the same magnification as the human eye sees it and are great for portrait work and general photography. The 70mm to 135mm focal length are medium telephoto lenses with greater magnification and narrower angles of view than the previous ones. These are still often used for portrait work as well as some wildlife photography. From 200mm up. they are telephoto and super telephoto lenses, capable of capturing distant wildlife and sports action with their greatly increased magnification and narrow angle of view. 134 wwwpclpublications.com
LENSES AND FOCAL LENGTH What is focal length? How angle of view changes with focal length Note: these values are based on a full-frame sensor. Diagrams are for illustrative purposes only. 1. Fisheye 180° 2.24mm 84° 3.35mm 62° 4.50mm 46° 5.80mm 28° 6.200mm 12° 7.400mm 6° I----------------------- Lower magnification. 25mm Wide angle www.pclpublications.com 135
If you find you need a little help to get the right settingsfora particular scene, thenyourcamera can help you with scene modes. Good to get you started but try not to rely on them. Explore your camera's Ik f' 1 * scene modes Let your camera help out with scene modes •'I. A 1* ' ” .. A fi rtT.S* I Ik J| ost modern cameras have a selection 1%/I of scene modes, usually chosen by a I w I dial on the top or back of the camera via a menu. Easy-to-use, mainly automatic cameras in the range will only have a few scene modes, whilst the more sophisticated cameras such as the DSLR may have as many as a dozen, including manual exposure options and user- irogrammable special settings, v • 7 ‘ What are scene modes? Scene modes are provided on the majority of ca floras to aid new photographers, They are :a number of presets that set the camera up automatically to shoot in a variety of lighting conditions. You simply need to match the settings to the scene you are about to shoot and then you canttake the photo safe in the knowledge that it sho0d come out properly exposed. Whilst they do take control away from the photographer, they can ease the transition of a relatively inexperienced photographer who has just upgraded to a more advanced camera. Scene modes get them up and shooting quickly whilst they learn the ropes on a new system. , Scene modes in action If for example you want to shoot a close-up and would like the background to be as blurred as possible, then you either use the mode dial on the top of your camera if it has one, or use your camera's menu to pick the dlpse up or Macro setting. Your camera will then be automatically set up to shoot with a large apertureto blur the background and the ISO set at a value that^eeps the shutter speeds from falling below a va|up that might create unwanted rqotion blur or camera shake. Capture the action Another exarpple is if you Choose the Sports scene ; mode. This is intended to set up your camera so it can freeze fast action such as your dog running after a ball ora horsetand rider galloping by. ISO sensitivity will be increased to drive up the shutter speeds so you can be assured of action stopping settings. When newer modelsappear in the range or older models are updated, the shooting modes available will be revised and possibly expanded. We have a few of the more popular dnes'iisted here for your reference and I the settings that aroused th.get the shots. I \ : > Whenever “ footing sceJ^'^lar °°k a> 'heSe(lr'0’ fa*e a Car^era adnnJ n9s У°иг ^^atiOn if Pts f°r that Zhath^chany°u^s^ ,e09'nt°^e^y0U^ y°Ucan mail and how ,!hoolin9de^ your°wn hecamera in 2°ns «nd use !*T 'Vi
EXPLORE YOUR CAMERA'S SCENE MODES Typical scene modes and what they do Beach/Snow If you encounter a scene with a lot of very bright surfaces and light colours, a camera would normally underexposure the scene. This mode ensures that the exposure compensation used gives an accurate representation of bright beach or snowy scenes. Night Scene Used primarily for general nighttime shots where there is no main subject that needs particularly special lighting. The camera will boost the ISO sensitivity and deactivate the flash. Slower shutter speeds will be used. Night Portrait Uses similar settings to Night Scene but the flash is turned on with red-eye prevention active and also facial recognition is switched on if the camera has it. Settings allow for a well-lit flash portrait but also captures enough ambient light for the background. Fireworks This takes the settings that are used for the Night Scene mode and uses even slower shutter speeds to allow the capture of bright objects such as fireworks and other moving lights like traffic. Useful for lights against dark backgrounds. Landscape For use in brightly lit landscapes or cities in full daylight. A narrow aperture is used to get a deep depth of field. If the camera has zoom control, the widest angle will be chosen and focus is set to infinity. It may also boost saturation. Macro This is ideal for close-up shots of objects or portraits where you want to isolate the foreground subject from the background. It allows close focusing and a wide aperture to blur the background. The ISO is adjusted automatically. Candlelight Although similar to Night Scene, Candlelight is more focused on low light scenes that are lit with small nearby point lights rather than general ambient light. Flash is disabled and the colour temperature is pushed to the warm end of the spectrum. Sport This requires strong lighting or full daylight in order to freeze fast action or sporting events. ISO sensitivity is boosted in order to push shutter speeds as high as possible. If it is supported, the camera may also enable continuous shooting and focus. www.pclpublications.com 137
Camera shooting modes Which one should you use? Shooting m with Scene camera’s setti for specific lighting and scene conditions. Shooting modes are the main core of camera operation and can often be a source of confusion for new s should not be confused es that alter your photographers, or those moving up from a simple compact camera or even camera phone. The main shooting modes on any DLSR are Auto, Programmed AE, Shutter Priority, Aperture Priority and Manual Exposure. There is also the Auto (flash off) feature and Bulb mode for exposures longer than 30 seconds. Different models of DSLR have other modes available and they vary by manufacturers as well; but the main modes, often abbreviated to PASM, are the key ones that are worth getting to know in a little more detail. It is very useful to know what each mode actually controls, so you know what input is needed from you in order to get a well-balanced exposure. Not only that, each mode has certain advantages and disadvantages that are key to getting the shots you want.H “Shooting modes are the main core of camera operation andean often be a source of confusion for new photographers.” Canon shooting mode dial I Some manufacturers have slightly varying names for theirshooting modes but their function remainsthesame forall cameras. For example, Canon refer to Shutter PriorityasTvand Aperture Priorityas Av. 138 www.pclpublications.com
CAMERASHOOTING MODES Your camera's shooting modes explained Full Auto As the name suggests, this mode controls pretty much every aspect of the camera. It is often used so the photographer does not have to worry about any settings and they use the camera as if it were a less advanced point and shoot camera. Shutter speed, aperture, ISO, white balance and the metering mode are all controlled by the camera. Even the flash is under the control of the camera and will automatically pop up if it feels there isn’t enough light to get a good exposure. Although easy to set up and get you shooting quickly, you have no control over the look of the shots. If you use it as if it were a point and shoot with built in flash, then that’s the quality of the shots you can expect. Program Mode Program Mode or Programmed Auto mode is similar to Full Auto but it does allow the photographer a measure of additional control. Settings such as ISO, White Balance, Focus Mode and Metering Modes are able to be altered. Bear in mind though that shutter speed and aperture are still in the hands of the camera. This mode, rather than Full Auto, is a good place to start out if you are new to DSLR photography and want a greater measure of control over the appearance of your photos, rather than the camera. However, you may still find that the guesses your camera makes about which main settings to use for the shot, are not giving you results that match your expectations. Shutter Priority This mode starts to hand over control to you in a more meaningful way. In the case of Shutter Priority, you get to control the shutter speed as well as ISO, White Balance, Metering and Focus Mode etc., while the camera will take care of the aperture. This allows you to concentrate on taking shots where the shutter speed is important to you and under your direct control. The capture of fast moving objects with action-freezing shutter speeds is the popular usage of this mode. If however, you’re shooting well-lit static objects, shutter priority is less of a concern. This is when you might want to consider switching to the next available mode that allows control of other factors. Aperture Priority In this mode, you now have control over Aperture as well as ISO, White Balance, Metering and Focus Mode etc. The camera is now in charge of the shutter speed, which it will alter according to the values you use on the other settings under your control. Now you can alter the aperture for much greater creative effects. Shots with very shallow depth of field can now be set. if you have a lens that has large maximum apertures such as f/2.8 or even f/1.4. Alternatively, if you need much deeper depth of field, for a landscape photo for instance, then you can use much narrower apertures such as f/16. Be aware that shooting with very wide apertures in well-lit scenes may result in very fast shutter speeds in excess of your cameras maximum. You’ll either have to reduce the ISO to its minimum or even use a filter to help reduce the ambient light. Manual Mode Now you are really flying solo! The control of the camera is all yours and it is up to you to produce settings that give you the shot you are after. You do need to be confident when it comes to shooting in full manual mode, especially if you are in situations where lighting changes or is inconsistent. That means you will really need to be on top of the settings and watching out for the exposure. Full manual mode is often used when you have plenty of time to consider your shot, such as shooting a landscape or setting up a night time shot. It’s also a useful mode to employ when using flash as it allows you to control how much ambient light is also present in the scene. Manual mode is more difficult to master since you need to keep all settings balanced, but it can yield the best photos. Full Auto (no flash) This one is fairly self-explanatory. It uses all the same settings as full auto but will not allow the flash to deploy and light the scene. This means you can capture scenes using ambient light only. > BULB , Bulb Mode In effect, Bulb Mode is a setting that is used in conjunction with either Full Manual Mode or Shutter Priority. It allows you to keep the shutter open for durations much longer than 30 seconds. I n fact, when using Bulb Mode, you can keep it open as long as you want. www.pclpublications.com 139
LEARNING NEWSKILLS We presentyet more fundamental knowledge to help you develop further as a photographer Photography is an ever-evolving skill with new ways of working being added to your repertoire. There are also times when going back to the basics is a great way to revive a love of a particular kind of photography that you just don’t shoot any more. Have you been content taking snaps on full automatic but now want to ramp up your game and take the next step? In order to take better photos, a good grasp of the fundamentals of photography is going to pay dividends in the long run. Don’t be put off by what is sometimes considered photographic ‘hocus pocus’ - there’s really nothing to fear about it. Whether you just want to understand more about the basics, understand a little more about how exposure works, or just improve your focusing hit rate, this next section has what you need. 142 Focusing 144 Focusing: how it’s done 146 Focal length and zoom 148 Focal length and zoom: how it’s done 150 Exposure and metering 140 www.pclpublications.com
Focusing Getting the best out of your autofocus system “Autofocus technology has improved immensely and these days even the most basic modern AF systems are generally fast, accurate and reliable. ” With only one or two exceptions, all current digital cameras have automatic focusing. The first autofocus systems were developed by Leica in the 1970s. The first autofocus compact camera, the Konica C35 AF, was introduced in 1977, and the first autofocus 35mm SLR, the Pentax ME-F, was launched in 1981. Since that time autofocus technology has improved immensely and these days even the most basic modern AF systems are generally fast, accurate and reliable. Although we now rely on autofocus for the vast majority of photographs, anyone who has tried taking a photo in low light, with fast-moving subjects or using very longtelephoto lenses will have noticed that sometimes even the best AF system can run into problems. We’ve all stood there with the lens whirring in and out of focus, trying to get a lock on our subject, and eventually missed the shot. It's very frustrating when this happens, but with a few simple tips you can help your camera to focus quickly and accurately even in difficult situations. There are two main types of autofocus system in common use today. All compact cameras and most CSCs use something called contrast- detection AF, which samples the imagefrom the main picture taking sensor and detects sharp high contrast edges in the details of the scene. Meanwhile all digital SLRs and Sony’s new SLT cameras use something called phase-detection AF, which uses an array of separate dedicated sensors usually mounted below and in front of the 142 www.pclpublications.com
main imaging sensor. Phase detection is a more complex system, but it is usually much faster, more accurate and works better in low light. However both systems require some detail in the scene to ’lock on’ to. Try it for yourself: point your camera at a plain wall or a sheet of white paper and see if it will focus on it. Even if you own a top-of-the-range DSLR it won't be able to focus on a featureless surface. There are a couple of ways to help your camera to focus quickly on a scene. Most digital cameras have the option to select either single or continuous autofocus. Yourcamera will normally start to focus on the scene as soon as you half- press the shutter button. In continuous focus mode it will continue to update the focus if you then move the camera, but in single AF mode it will hold the same focus setting as long as you hold down the button, until you actually take the shot. You can use this to focus the camera on low detail targets by findingan object in the scene that's the same distance away as your chosen subject, focusing on that, and then holding the focus and reframing the shot. Similarly you can use it in reverse to focus on objects that aren’t in the centre of the frame. Moving targets Compact camera AF systems are usually somewhat slower than those in DSLRs, which means they can have a real problem focusing on moving subjects. The way around this is either to use continuous AF or, if your camera has this option, to use manual focus. If you can tell where your subject is going to be, such as a car going round a tight corner on a race track or a child on a swing, you can pre-focus the camera on this point and wait to take the picture at the right moment. This method takes some practice and good reflexes, but it can produce excellent results. Close-ups All cameras and lenses have a minimum focusing distance, a closest point beyond which they cannot focus. For many compact cameras this distance can be very small, in some cases as little as 2cm (lin), but for standard DSLR lenses the distances tend to be longer. Most compact cameras have a 'macro' setting, usually denoted by the symbol of a flower. To get closer focusing with a DSLR or CSC, special close- focus macro lenses have to be used. Depth of field is greatly reduced at very close focusing distances, and you may find that your AF system doesn’t focus on the right part of the subject, for example if you are trying to photograph the centre of a flower, but the AF focuses on the petals, because they’re closer. The best option is to use a tripod, and manually set the focus to the closest distance. Move the tripod until the front of the subject comes into focus, then carefully manually adjust the focus point to get the right part of the flower to look sharp. www.pclpublications.com 143
Focusing: how it's done Choose your focusing method for the job in hand Along with unwanted camera shake, one easy way to ruin a shot is to incorrectly focus on your subject. This can be down to the camera’s autofocus system being confused by other obscuring objects in the scene and attempting to lock on to that instead of your subject; or just good old human error in the way you might have set up your autofocus options. We can speak from embarrassing experience where a number of portrait shots at an event were taken when the lens’ autofocus button was knocked onto manual and we didn’t pay enough attention to the fact that the focus confirmation light wasn’t coming on. Luckily we noticed during a quick review of the shots taken, and could remedy the problem, but could you imaging getting home only to find all the shots being out of focus? That’s a bit of a nightmare. Of course, the nature of your subject and their movement is key to deciding your choice of focusing technique. A studio-based still portrait or still life shot, for example, is fine with focus set to manual as you can determine your point of focus and leave it there without fear of anything moving and the focus shifting. Portrait shots with the camera in portrait orientation mean you can use a one-shot autofocus mode. You can lock focus by pressing the shutter button halfway, recompose the shot to how you want it and take the shot by fully depressing the shutter button. AV F8.0 ^AUTO -3..2..1..®..1..2.:3 QjH -o- E0‘O I^Sl EE0 fes ONE SHOT o°ogo [®] ЕШ+lL One-Shot AF 144 www.pclpublications.com
FOCUSING: HOW IT’S DONE For unpredictable moving targets like pets, you need to use a continuous-autofocus mode. You select an AF point and with the shutter pressed halfway, keep the AF point over the subject you want the camera to attempt to keep focus lock on as it moves. Tracking moving subjects can be quite tricky but as always, with practice it is a great technique to have at your disposal. AF operation Al Servo AF ONE SHOT Al FOCUS Al SERVO Drive mode High speed continuous □ V Q ds Qbs KS www.pclpublications.com 145
Focal length and zoom Understanding how focal length works in composing shots Nearly all modern compact cameras have zoom lenses, and most users of digital SLRs or CSCs will also have at least a couple of zooms in their kit. Focal length is one of your primary tools for adjusting composition. Selecting the right focal length for the scene allows the photographer to control perspective, angle of view and magnification, and can radically alter the mood and style of the photo. Some focal lengths are more suited to particular types of photo, and the properties of wide-angle and telephoto lenses can be used to produce particular effects. Understanding how focal length works and how it affects your photos is a vital photographic skill.
FOCAL LENGTH AND ZOOM Lenses and Focal Length There are basically two types of lens: those with fixed focal lengths, also known as prime lenses: and those with variable focal length, or zoom lenses. They both have their own advantages and disadvantages. Prime lenses are usually smaller and lighter than zooms, and also generally have much faster maximum apertures than a zoom lens at equivalent focal length. The optical quality of prime lenses is also usually a little higher than the equivalent zoom lens. Zoom lenses however are much more convenient, allowing the photographer to cover a wide range of focal lengths with just one or two lenses, rather than carrying around a bulky collection of prime lenses. There are some fast zoom lenses, but they tend to be extremely expensive. The focal length of a lens is an expression of its magnifying power, and is usually stated in millimetres. If you look on the front of your camera, usually inscribed around the front of the lens you’ll find the focal length, or a range of values for zoom lenses. For a typical DSLR kit lens this will usually be around 18-55mm. For digital cameras it is fairly usual to see two figures quoted, both the actual focal length and the ‘equivalent’ length. The reason for quoting both is simply that most people are more familiar with the sizes of 35mm lenses, so they know that 28mm is wide-angle and suitable for panoramic shots, or that 200mm is a telephoto lens, suitable for long-range subjects. Real and equivalent focal lengths are different because most digital camera sensors are a lot smaller than a frame of 35mm film, and are fitted much closer to the lens than the film would be. Most consumer DSLRs use the APS-C sensor format. Exact sizes vary from one manufacturer to the next, but are typically around 22.5x15 mm. A frame of 35mm film measures 36 x 24mm, which means that the edges are 1.6x longer, so the focal length of the lens would need to be 1.6x greater to produce the same image size and magnification. This is usually referred to as the ‘conversion factor’ or ‘crop factor’. It means that a typical 18- 55mm DSLR zoom lens is roughly equivalent to the popular 28-80mm zoom lens often used on 35mm systems. Compact camera sensors are even smaller still. Because there are several different sizes of sensor in common use it is more usual for compact camera zoom lenses to be rated in terms of their magnification power, such as 3x, 4x, lOx etc. This relates to the difference between the minimum and maximum focal lengths. A lens with a range of focal length from 5.8mm to 17.4mm is called a 3x zoom, because 17.4 = 3x5.8. While in older prime lenses a 200mm lens would literally be 20cm long, modern optical systems use multiple “Selecting the right focal length for the scene allows the photographer to control perspective, angle of view and magnification.” lens elements working in combination, which means that the light path can be shortened while still maintaining the same effective magnification. As a result quite powerful telephoto and zoom lenses can be relatively compact. Wide-angle and telephoto are relative terms. On a 35mm film SLR a 50mm lens produces approximately the same perspective and magnification as the human eye, and has traditionally been the standard lens for this type of camera. Anything longer than 50mm is considered a telephoto, while anything shorter is considered wide-angle. Digital SLRs tend to follow this rule too, although considering the crop factor the mid-point is approximately 35mm. 50-200MM ZOOM 18-55MM KIT LENS 14MM WIDE-ANGLE www.pclpublications.com 147
Magnification The most obvious effect of altering focal length is the change in magnification. Anyone who has ever used a zoom lens will be familiar with this effect. Ifyou want to take a photo of something a long way away, you zoom in and the subject appears closer. This series of photos shows the effect of a wide-angle zoom equivalent to 25mm, medium zoom of 100mm and a telephoto of 400mm, all taken from the same position. What is happening here is not the subject being brought closer, but the angle of view “A cropped-down section of the frame has far fewer pixels than the full-fra me zoomed-in image.” being reduced so that a smaller proportion of the scene fills the frame of the sensor. If we look at a cropped-down section of the centre of the wide-angle 25mm view we can see that it looks very similar to the 400mm view, although rather less sharp, because this cropped-down section of the frame obviously has far fewer pixels than the full-frame zoomed-in image. This is the way that digital zoom works on a compact camera, and is why digital zoom should never be used as a substitute for optical zoom. Angle of View Changing the angle of view can be used to produce some interesting effects. If we move closer to the subject while shortening the focal length we can see that although the subject fills roughly the same area of the final image, in a wide-angle shot a lot more of the background is included. Take a look at this series of five pictures, each one taken at approximately half the focal length of the previous one. As the focal length is reduced more of the background comes into view behind the subject, while objects in the foreground appear much closer to the camera, increasing the appearance of extreme perspective. Watch out for unflattering distortion on human subjects as you getclosertothemand shorten the focal length. 148
FOCAL LENGTH AND ZOOM Distortion Wide-angle shot E'-at Changing the angle of view is important to remember when shooting portraits. If you use a short focal length to take a facial portrait at close range the parts that are closest to the camera will appear disproportionately larger, distorting the facial features. The result is a ‘ballooning’ of the face as it appears to bulge outwards, like a reflection in the back of a spoon: not such a flattering look, as illustrated above. Most portrait photographers prefer to step back a little and zoom in. The most popular choice is a focal length of about 80-100mm, since this gives a flattering, natural-looking perspective. Depth of Field The perspective-flattening of long lenses can also be used in other circumstances, such as drastically reducing depth of field. You can use this to isolate a subject by blurring out the background, as in the shot above on the left. Compare this with the same shot on the right, but taken with a wide-angle lens from a much closer range. The relative size of the subject is the same in both shots, but due to the increased depth of field in the wide-angle shot, the background, although apparently more distant, looks sharper. Telephoto lens Wide-angle shot Telephotolens Careful focusing with a long telephoto lens can pick out individual subjects from a wider view, such as focusing on a classic car by a lake. A similar scene shot using a wide-angle lens presents a very different image. The examples we’ve used here are extremes intended to emphasise the effects we’re demonstrating, but in fact a lot of people only ever use their zoom lenses at either maximum or minimum settings. Don’t do this out of habit; instead use the full range of the lens to explore all the different possibilities it offers. Focal length is one of your primary creative tools, so make good use of it. www.pclpublications.com 149
Focal length and zoom: how it's done Use of focal length is a key tool to shot composition FISHEYE LENS EF 15mm 1 When buying new lenses, it is important to know what different ones are used for and which are right for you. The focal length of a lens is actually measured from the point of converging inside the lens to the sensor, not from the front of the lens. Ultra wide-angle Usually in the 14-24mm range, these lenses are considered specialty devices and do command some very high prices. Ultra wide lenses are often used in landscape, architectural and event photography to get the maximum amount of scene into a single photo, or when space is restricted. Wide-angle With focal lengths starting at 24-35mm. these lenses are widely included as kit lenses starting at 24mm with a zoom range up to about 105mm. They are often used by photojournalists or people who want a good ‘walkabout’ lens. We have two examples taken at opposite ends of the zoom range. One was shot with a 15mm fisheye lens, covering a 180° field of view and the other was shot with a 400mm telephoto lens on a crop sensor body to create an effective focal length of 640mm. 150 www.pclpublications.com
A Telephoto 105-400mm covers the range of telephoto lenses. Used for bringing distant objects closer and flattening perspective. Above this range you are into super telephoto lenses used by sports and wildlife photographers reachingfocal lengths of up to 800mm. Standard Within the range of 35-70mm, a lens will reproduce the world roughly as our own eyes see it. A 50mm lens is considered one of the best focal lengths at which to shoot portraits because they look more natural with less distortion than a wide-angle lens. Medium telephoto Between 70-105mm is the top of the zoom range for kit lenses. This range is also equally good for shooting portraits. www.pclpublications.com 151
“Apart from camera shake, bad exposure probably ruins more photos than any other single cause. The main problem is over reliance on automatic metering. ” Exposure and metering Accurate exposure is the key to good photography Understanding exposure and how it affects your photographs is probably the single most important technical skill you can learn in photography. It's certainly the one that most people get wrong, and apart from camera shake, bad exposure probably ruins more photos than any other single cause. The main problem is over reliance on automatic metering. Most modern cameras, even relatively cheap compacts, have sophisticated built-in TTL multi- zone evaluative exposure meters that measure light levels at dozens, in some cases hundreds, of points within the frame, instantly comparing the results with a built-in library of exposure situations and automatically adjusting the shutter speed and aperture to deal with problems such as back- lighting. close-ups or moving subjects. In most cases these automatic exposure systems are very good, and can reliably cope with most common circumstances. However even the best automatic meter can be fooled, resulting in poorly exposed photos. By overriding the camera’s automatic settings and adjusting exposure manually we can avoid these problems and take much better photos. Let’s take a look at a couple of examples. In this first scene we have a portrait of a brightly lit fair skinned model shot against a dark background. This was taken using a typical DSLR camera set on automatic exposure. As you can see the camera has badly over-exposed our model’s face, losing details in the highlight areas. In this second example the same camera has been used to photograph the model, but this time standing in front of a brightly lit background. In this case the camera’s automatic exposure system has seriously under-exposed the shot, leaving the model’s face in deep shadow with little detail visible. The same usually reliable exposure meter took both of these shots, so what went wrong? In order to understand what happened and accurately correct it, it is necessary to know how light meters operate, and the rules by which exposure is calculated. 152
EXPOSURE AND METERING Fade to grey Take a look at the main picture above. What you see there is a photograph of a meadow in early sunrise conditions, with a good tonal range, plenty of colour, and some nice moody light. What your camera’s light meter sees is very different as our example above shows. Try it out for yourself. Find any nice, average snapshot scene, properly lit and with good contrast like our example FIG 1. Start upyour image editing software and open your picture. Light meters only see in black and white, so reduce the saturation of the shot to zero. Your light meter doesn’t see detail, so set your Gaussian blur filter FIG 2 to maximum diameter and apply it a couple of times. Use the eyedropper tool to measure the RGB colour value of the resulting tone. You should find that it averages out to a mid-tone grey FIG 3 with an RGB value of around 127,127,127. It’s an interesting and curious fact that any average scene reflects 18% of the light falling on it. Look out of your window, and unless you live in Antarctica the scene you see is reflecting exactly the same amount of light as the scene out of my window. That 18% reflection is exactly the same as a mid-tone grey, midway between black and white. Light meters are calibrated with this fact in mind. When your camera takes a light reading, the meter averages the scene and adjusts the exposure to produce that mid-tone grey (or 12% luminance, but that’s another discussion altogether). If you point the camera at a black stage curtain, it will try to make the black into a mid-tone grey, so it will over-expose. If you point it at snow it will try to make the white into grey, so it will under-expose. Adjusting exposure Let’s take a moment to explain how exposure is controlled, and what is meant by some of the terminology. If you already know the basics, feel free to skip to the next page. On all cameras, exposure is adjusted by altering two settings; aperture and shutter speed. Between them they control the amount of light that hits the sensor when the shot is taken. Shutter speed is self-explanatory, it is simply the amount of time that the sensor is exposed to light. This is usually controlled by an electrically operated mechanical shutter in front of the sensor that opens and closes very quickly for a precisely measured period of time, usually in the order of a few hundredths of a second. Obviously a shutter speed twice as long lets in twice as much light, one half as long lets in half as much. The aperture is literally just a hole through which light passes on its way to the sensor. The diameter of that hole can be adjusted to precisely calibrated sizes. A smaller hole lets in less light, and a larger hole lets in more. www.pclpublications.com 153
These calibrated aperture sizes, for largely historical reasons, are called stops, or f-stops. An aperture setting one stop larger lets in twice as much light. For reasons that are both historical and mathematical, the standard full-stop aperture settings that you are most likely to encounter go f/1, f/1.4, f/2, f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/8, f/11, f/16 and f/22. The smaller numbers refer to larger apertures, and the larger numbers to smaller ones. Many cameras can set apertures in increments of l/3rd of a stop, but the whole-stop numbers are the ones to remember. Let’s consider an example. With your camera set to automatic exposure point it at a scene and take a light reading. For the sake of argument, say the light meter sets an aperture of f/8 and l/2OOth of a second. You can produce the same exposure by increasing the aperture by one stop to f/5.6 and halving the shutter speed to l/400th of a second, because this lets the same amount of light through to the sensor. Similarly, reducing the aperture to f/11 and setting the shutter speed to l/100th of a second will also produce the same exposure. However by altering one setting without altering the other you will change the exposure. In our example, changing the aperture to f/5.6 but leaving the shutter speed at l/2OOth of a second will increase the exposure by one stop, or one exposure value (EV), making the picture brighter. Decreasing the aperture to f/11 will reduce the exposure by one EV, making the picture darker. Similarly, changing the shutter speed whilst leaving the aperture alone will also change the exposure. Double the shutter speed to l/400th at f/8 and you reduce the exposure by one stop, halve the speed to l/100th and you increase the exposure by one stop. The Zone System In 1939-40 the pioneering photographers Ansel Adams and Fred Archer developed an exposure system based on this fact, a system that is still used today. It is called the Zone System, and is quite possibly the most useful piece of photographic "The difference between one zone and the next is equivalent to the difference between one exposure setting and another one exactly one stop higher or lower. ” knowledge you’ll ever learn. There are several variations on the original system, but I'll go with the one that is easiest to understand. Starting with 18% grey as the mid-point, the system divides all the tones between black and white into 11 zones, numbered 0-10. Zone 0 is featureless black with no details visible, which in your image editor would have an RGB value of 0,0,0. Zone 10 is pure white with no details visible, and an RGB value of 255,255,255. The mid-tone 18% grey is zone 5, and should have an RGB value of about 127,127,127. The zones represent exposure values, or EV. The difference between one zone and the next is equivalent to the difference between one exposure setting and another one exactly one stop higher or lower. 154
EXPOSURE AND METERING Putting it all Together If we relate the tone scale of the Zone System ZoneO Pure black, no details or texture visible. scale to real world objects we can use it to help produce accurately exposed photos. The zones are roughly equivalent to the following scene elements Zonel Black tone but no texture. This is normally as black as you want to get in a picture. Zone 2 First hint of texture and detail, very deep shadow. (adapted from Adams’ descriptions). Zone3 Dark materials, details visible. Zone 4 Dark foliage. Dark stone. Landscape shadow. Shadow on portraits in sunlight. Zone 5 Clear north sky. Dark skin. Grey stone. Weathered wood. 18% mid grey. Zone 6 Average Caucasian skin value. Light stone. Shadows in sunlit snow. Zone 7 Very light skin. Light grey objects. Snow with side lighting. Zone 8 White with texture. Snow in shade. Highlights on Caucasian skin. Zone 9 Glaring white surfaces. Snow in flat sunlight. White without texture. Zone 10 Light sources, reflections of sunlight on metal. Pure white. Let’s go back to the two troublesome portraits from the first page. If we use the spot meter to take a read ing from the subject’s face, we know that the light meter will give a reading that would make the face mid-tone grey, which is zone 5. However from the zone chart we know that average Caucasian skin should be zone 6, so we need to increase the spot metered exposure by one stop, in this case from l/640th at f/5.6 to l/640th at f/2.8. In the resulting shot the background details are all burned out, but the subject is correctly exposed. For the over-exposed portrait against the dark background, we can use a similar approach. Spot metering the background gives an exposure setting of l/3rd sec at f/5.6 to render it as zone 5 mid-grey. By reducing that exposure by four stops to l/3rd at f/8 we can make the background come out as what it should be, zone 2 deep shadow, leaving the model’s face also correctly exposed. The zone exposure system can help with difficult exposures, but it is helpful in another way. Learning to think of images in terms of tone and dynamic range will encourage you to approach these concepts in a creative way, and to use them to produce better pictures. Controlling exposure is the primary creative tool of the photographer, and learning howto use it will make the difference between what are mere snapshots and professional artistic photographs. This system has been used by professional photographers for over 70 years. Used properly, it can help to improve your photography immensely, probably more than any other single technique. www.pclpublications.com 155
CREATIVE PROJECTS Variety is the spice of life when it comes to keeping your passion for photography alive I 11 A varied set of projects awaits you this issue. They are a little assemblage of projects to test your skills at tabletop shooting, stage performance capture, off-camera flash photography and a little technique called light painting. Obviously after the outbreak of the pandemic, group gatherings are subject to restrictions that change quite frequently, so be vigilante of any updates. Also, the skills required for any of these are very transferable to other situations. This will make you a very flexible photographer, able to tackle any shooting requirement. 158 In-car long exposure 160 Tabletop photography 162 Shooting musical and stage performances 164 Light painting 166 Off-camera flash “They are a little assemblage of projects to test your skills at tabletop shooting, stage performance capture, off-camera flash photography and a little technique called light painting. ” 156 www.pclpublications.com
In-car long exposure A different take on traffic trail long exposure images On a personal level, this is something I always wanted to try. We have all seen long exposure images of night skies and the infamous traffic trails. This just takes that basic idea and changes the point of view to favour a driver in his car with the world going by outside at hyper speed. It goes without saying of course that the speed is achieved with a long shutter duration rather than breaking either the speed limits or the laws of physics! In our example we will show you the basic setup to achieve the end result you see here. Because it was shot at night, the shutter speeds we are working with are right in the so-called ‘butter zone’ to get a good ‘hyperspace’ look to the streetlights and car tail lights zooming by as you drive at a nice and legal limit. In our case that was a leisurely 30mph. You could shoot an equivalent daytime version but it would mean being able to get a shutter speed somewhere in the order of 2-4 seconds. This can be done if you have a neutral density filter capable of cutting out enough ambient light to give you the exposure time you’d need. www.pclpublications.com
Back to our night time version. The checklist for this effect is fairly straightforward. You will TheGorillapodcan secure smaller cameras with its strong but flexible and multi-jointed leg arrangement. This cable release makes the process of shooting long exposures much easier and also doublesasan intervalomter. cabin and the front windscreen and side windows. A 10-22mm crop sensor lens (16-35mm equivalent) will also do well. It may be that you have to set the camera further back in the car to get a wider view if that is what you want. The camera will need to be kept immobile for the period of the exposure. A tripod will be essential. That said, if you are tight for space in the vehicle and the tripod doesn’t really fit, you can always bungee the camera to the passenger seat headrest or secure it on the rear parcel shelf. If you are working with a smaller, light camera, the Gorillapod by Joby is a good option for securing a camera. The Gorillapod is small, light and very flexible. So, you have your camera, lens and means of securing it inside your vehicle. You can set yourself up in the back with the camera and get your driver of the vehicle to start driving around the night-time roads. This option is great of course as it means you can do test shots to get the look you are after. It is worth noting that the previously mentioned ‘butter zone’ for this long exposure effect is based partly on personal taste. Our experience of this type of shot leads us to recommend exposures somewhere between 2-4 seconds. We say this as we think a longer exposure time has greater streaking of lights but less detail and a shorter exposure time just looks too normal. We are after a good hyperspace effect but with enough detail left to see that you are driving on a road. Sitting in the back with the camera and doing testing shots on the move is not an option for many as they may get terribly motion-sick if not looking where they're going. So in this case we found somewhere where the lighting would be similar to what we’d encounter on the road, set up the camera and lens on a tripod and positioned it above the passenger-side headrest looking out through the windscreen. The focus was set manually on the windscreen as this offered a good degree of sharpness in need your camera that is either able to shoot up to 30 second exposures or, in the case of exposures longer than 30 seconds, is capable of bulb exposures. A bulb exposure, usually shown as a В on your camera’s settings, is a setting that allows the camera to keep the shutter open for an indefinite amount of time. This period of time can be controlled either by the photographer with their finger depressing the shutter release button for the desired amount of time, via a shutter release cable attached to the camera or using a device called an intervalometer which can automate the process without your input. You just set an exposure time, how many shots you want taken and the interval between each shot. Our example has us working around the 2-4 second area, so in this case the camera can be set accordingly just using manual settings. Lens choice comes down to personal preference. Our example was shot using a 15mm fisheye lens so you can see a lot of the car’s The Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 fisheye lens. Great for ultra wide angle capture if you are in crampedconditions. I Forthose using crop-sensor camerasa 10-22mm(16-35mm equivalent) isagreatwideangle zoom lens for wide FOV. the shot both inside and out. Because of the wide angle there was a lot of the cabin on view. A few test exposures had settings of 2 seconds at f/6.3 with ISO 200 to get the best exposure of the cabin and the world outside. Now the problem was how to drive a car and be able to take shots whilst on the move. The cable release mentioned earlier would have been a good option as it meant you could activate the shutter release with one push of a button and keep your attention on the road. There is also the option for wirelessly activating your camera. For a modest £60 you can get a device such as the Giga T Pro II. It is a 2.4GHz wireless remote control and intervalometer. It comes with a transmitter and a receiver which you attach to your camera’s hot shoe and plug into the cable release port with the supplied cable. It doesn’t require Iine- of-sight and can actually be used through walls to set off your camera. 160
IN-CAR LONG EXPOSURE ттуоиагетеёйпд brave,you can attach your camera to the outside of your vehicle, or at the very least, have it lashed to the door pillar looking outan open window. Although it is definitely worth having someone on hand to grab it if it comes loose. We were good to go and set off with the Giga T Pro II transmitter on the driver’s knee. All that was needed was to press the button and the camera would fire using the manual settings. The trick was to shoot on a straight stretch of well-lit road and keep both driver and the steering wheel as immobile as possible because any movement during the exposure would result in too much motion blur. The only blur we want is the world outside streaking by. We traversed a stretch of road a couple of times and then pulled over to review the result. This is where we found a 4 second exposure was slightly too long and anything under 1 second was too static. 2 seconds seemed to be the ideal result for the road conditions we were driving in. If you were driving on a fast motorway doing 70mph then the amount of light streaking would be greatly increased for that exposure. It is just down to a case of personal preference. All we had to do then was get home and review and process the favourites. The result is what you see here. There are those that take this idea one step further and attach the camera to the outside of their car or motorcycle. If you have a suitably robust method of securing your equipment, then this can make for some supremely dynamic images. www.pclpublications.com 161
Tabletop photography You don't need huge studios and expensive equipment to get good results With the pro photographer’s studio space packed with equipment worth many tens of thousands it must seem like us mere mortals could never enjoy a studio of our own. The thing is, even the greatest professional had to start somewhere. In this guide, we can show you that even your own dining table can become a studio, albeit in a much more modest way. However, all the principles involved in a large studio shoot are just as valid for a humble tabletop setup too. All you need for this setup is your camera and tripod, a prop to photograph, two cheap desktop lamps and some white paper, oh, and your table of course. 162 www.pclpublications.com
TABLETOP PHOTOGRAPHY Getting set up Our studio needs a basic floor. Some white paper laid flat on the table is a good start, but if you can set your table against a wall you can create an infinity curve. Simply put, an infinity curve is a surface that has no corners that show up when photographed. All you do is tack the top edge of your sheet to the wall and curve the paper down to the table. The radius of your curve is down to your personal preference or indeed how much space you have to play with. One thing to note, an infinity curve is usually just one surface, unlike an infinity cove, which takes the idea of a single curved sheet and expands it into a whole room with no edges. Let there be lights You can set your camera and tripod at table level just in front of your curve and now we can add some light. In the spirit of keeping it as simple and cheap as possible, all we have used are two basic, tiny, desk lamps from a hardware store. They are ideal as they have flexible necks which mean we can bend them to face any direction. The lamps can be set either side of our table. Now you can grab yourself a prop to shoot. Here, we’ve used a perfume bottle and some jewellery arranged on the white surface. At this point you can focus your camera on the prop and get your framing and composition just how you want it. Keep your focusing set to manual so it doesn’t try to refocus during the shoot. We can dial in our exposure settings once we have our lights set. If you had no lights at all to use, you could set your table near a window and shoot with natural light, this can work great but you are tied to a single light source and you can’t change its direction. So. for our purposes, we are going to return to our studio setup with our lamps as our only light source. Out of the shadows Assuming the camera is set at the 6 o'clock position and your prop is centre of the dial, your lights can be at the 8 o’clock and 4 o’clock positions, just above your prop and pointed Above is the most basic setup of our tabletop studio. Asimple sheet of white paper that curves up from the table surface and tacked to the wallbehind with enough slack in it to create a curve to keep any hard edges at bay in the finalshot. The two lampsareextremelycheapand, although notvery bright, are perfect for the scale we are working at here. directly at them. This is a basic, but tried and tested setup for lighting. Setting lights is a matter of personal creative taste, but it is usually a good idea to set one light at a time rather than just turning them both on and seeing what happens. www.pclpublications.com 163
Not only that, if you work with one light at a time, you get to see how each light source interacts with your prop and also what effect the lights have on each other when they are eventually both turned on. If you turn on the left light first, you'll probably notice straight away that the shadows are probably quite sharply defined and dark [1]. This is to be expected as the source of the light is a very small point-light and there is no other light to fill in the shadows. The same will be true of your right hand light too [2]. With both lights on at the same time, the effect is going to change. You may notice now that you have two sets of shadows, of course, and they are still quite sharp, but the additive effect of one light on another means that not only is our scene brighter, but the shadows are filled in and not quite so dark [3]. So we take the shots now? Well, there are a couple of simple tricks we can use to enhance the lighting further. Bigger is better As mentioned earlier, the shadows are quite sharply defined because the light source is small. Flash photographers encounter this problem all the time. Often, what they will do to soften their shadows, is to bounce their flash off another larger surface like a wall or ceiling, that surface is now their light source, and because it is much larger than the flash head, the light is more diffused and therefore softer shadows are the result. Our humble desk lamps don’t have the power to bounce off a wall or celling, but we can introduce a sheet of paper into our setup and bounce the lamp light off that onto our prop. Because of the scale we’re working at, the difference may not be huge, but every little helps. Repeat that on the other side as well and the improvement is visible [4]. Roughly speaking, our lamp’s 20mm light has become a 100mm light source. Its power will have been diminished by having to travel further, but we can account for that in our exposure when we finally take the shots, which is now, right? And another thing There is more we can do. The more diffuse light we can get into our scene, the better it will be. How about putting a sheet of white paper across the top of our setup? It will act as another reflective surface and bounce some more light back into the scene [5]. Finally, just when you think it's all over, adding two more reflectors at the front of the setup with a gap between them just large enough to shoot through [6], we are ready. We have softened the original harsh lighting and as a bonus, the metallic surfaces on our props are reflecting the white surfaces and have changed from flat black reflections to more interesting white highlights. 164 www.pclpublications.com
TABLETOP PHOTOGRAPHY Finally, we can shoot. We're all set up, the camera is set to shoot Raw and we are in Aperture Priority Mode, so we just need to dial in the exposure. Our first test shot, with settings of aperture f/11, shutter speed l/15th second and ISO 200 yielded an underexposed image. This is because the scene is predominantly white and the camera's metering system is set to try to produce an image that conforms to a mid- grey image. This results in whites that are too dark. We can compensate for this by dialling in some exposure compensation, where we deliberately make the camera overexpose the image [7] to make our whites the correct brightness. In this case +1EV (1 stop) is enough to get us our final shot [8]. The extra stop made the exposure time l/6th second, essentially doubling the length of time the camera was letting light fall on the sensor. Coloured lights You could pack up and be happy with what you've learned, but you could always add yet another light source to pep the image up a bit. We didn't have another desk lamp, but we did have a powerful led torch, and as luck would have it, some coloured gels. You can get coloured cellophane from art shops but there are those resourceful types out there who have been known to use the coloured wrappers from sweets to create their coloured lights. We used purple to cover our torch and simply shone the light onto the curve behind the prop to add an extra bit of zing to the image [9]. Processing the shots All that remains is to get your shots into your favourite Raw processing application and review the results. This is a good time to check your colour balance as it is likely your little desk lamps use tungsten bulbs that throw an orange colour cast over your scene. However, because you have shot in Raw mode, you can easily dial out the colour cast by altering the colour temperature of your shots, or using the White Balance tool to select an area of your shot you know is white (which, let's face it, is quite a lot of it) to automatically correct the colour cast [10]. You’re done! In our own, cheap to assemble, modest way, we have just gone through a shooting process that is used by all photographers regardless of whether they are using a vast state-of-the-art facility to shoot the latest Ferrari, or a tabletop enthusiast wanting to shoot an item to show on a certain popular Internet auction site! 7. Exposure compensation www.pclpublications.com 165
Shooting musicaland stage performances How best to tackle indoor events with stage lighting It is probably going to happen to you at some point as a photographer, be you beginner or enthusiastic amateur. The friends and family that surround you might approach you and ask for a ‘favour’. You might be asked if you can photograph an event, a wedding, someone’s 40th birthday bash, who knows? We would always advocate that you say yes to these offers as a means of developing your skills as a photographer, on the understanding that you are a beginner and not a paid professional. Normally, when friends or family approach you, it is a much more relaxed proposition anyway. You can go along and take photos, if they like them, great, if not, no harm done. We know what this is like, since we have been approached on various occasions to come along and capture a record of the event. One that sticks in the mind was a gala dinner at Dartmouth Royal Naval College some years ago. We had been asked, via family members who were involved in the organising of the event, to set up in a vestibule near the college entrance and photograph anyone who wanted a quick portrait of themselves dressed in their finery. What we hadn't quite grasped was the enormity of what was about to befall us. Guests were arriving by the coach load and rather than all going into the reception area, began queuing for their photographs. We estimated that there were somewhere in the order of 400 guests that evening and a large percentage of them eventually had their photos taken by us. It was a fraught evening to say the least. We were lucky, in that we were experienced enough to handle it and were using a pro lighting system that was up to the task for the number of shots that needed to be taken. An inexperienced photographer with one camera that had a built-in flash would have had a very bad night. Okay, that’s an extreme example which also required additional lighting equipment, however, what if it's your child’s Christmas play, a production by students at your local school or your favourite local band playing a gig at the pub down the road, the pressure is off in terms of what might be asked of you. That said, with a few solid techniques under your belt, there’s no reason to take bad photos. Small staged events like these are a great way to flex your creative muscles and learn to work in more demanding locations and lighting scenarios. We have a few tips and suggestions to help make your assignment go as smoothly as possible. Where do you start? With indoor events such as a musical performance, the venue will dictate what you need to take with you. Not only that, if you are shooting at a venue with a paying audience, there are additional issues you will have to address that will also have an impact on how you shoot, where you shoot and with what equipment. Wherever possible, if you are going to be attending a performance, scouting the venue ahead of time and talking with the organisers is a key aspect of preparing for the shoot. Turning up on the night with no idea what to expect is not the best approach, even if it is just a small local event. As a photographer, ‘that will have to do’ is not the kind of mantra you should have in your head. Even those new to photography should always strive to improve. Dress rehearsal If you are going to be attending a musical or theatrical performance, try to find out when they will be doing a dress rehearsal or sound check. In many ways, this is the opportune time to get the bulk of your shots done, since you can check out the venue, see the actual lighting being used and see the performance. Crucially, since there will be no paying audience, you can ask for permission to get on stage to capture more intimate close- ups of the action and even get some actual eye contact with the performers. You can also try out the best spots from which to capture images. If they will allow it, you can also get some backstage and behind the scenes images too. 166 www.pclpublications.com
Alongerfocal length lenssuchasa70-200mm telephoto, allows you to geta lot more reach if you cannot get close to the stage. Add a large maximum aperture of f/2.8 and you also get lovely out of focus areas behind your subjects and the opportunityfor faster shutterspeeds. ИЦ I Lighting I n nearly all cases, flash photography at a stage performance is prohibited, as it can be a massive distraction to the performers and audience members alike. Given that it is an indoor performance, it follows that there will be either house lighting rigs involved, or the performers will bring their own, as well as their usual equipment. Stage lighting, in any form, can be a challenge for photographers and the gear they use. When watching a performance with stage lighting, it can look quite bright to the human eye. To a camera, it is not quite as bright as you might imagine. You need to keep a careful eye on settings, particularly shutter speed, as the lighting patterns and indeed the colours alter throughout the performance. If the lighting rig is static and there is no colour cycling, you should be able to dial in settings that work for the camera and lens setup you are using, without the need to keep changing them as the lighting changes. Gear choice Let’s assume a worst-case scenario for the venue; Flash is prohibited so you only have the stage lighting to work with, there is a paying audience and the choice of vantage points may be limited. What do you do? First, if you are required to stay out of sight at the back of the hall, you will have little choice but to use a long lens; the longest you have in fact. Even in a medium sized venue, a 70-200mm lens may struggle to get you extreme close up action. A better 168 www.pclpublications.com
SHOOTING MUSICAL AND STAGE PERFORMANCES option is a 75-300mm zoom lens to give you the extra reach. Failing that, you always have the option used by sport and wildlife photographers, which is to use a full frame lens on a crop sensor body. Take our 70-200mm lens example. It is a lens designed for full-frame DSLRs, but will also work on the same manufacturers APS-C crop sensor DSLRs too. Because the lens projects a 36mm x 24mm sized image onto a smaller 25mm x 16mm sensor, this crop factor of about xl.5 can effectively turn the 70- 200mm lens into a 105-300mm lens. Quiet and invisible Since you will be among paying guests, it is expected of you to be quiet and invisible as much as possible. Modern DSLRs have so called ‘silent’ shooting modes that stifle the ‘click-clack’ noise, made by the mirror as it flips out of the way of the sensor and then drops down again, by slowing the motion down. Turning this on does not affect image quality and although it is not exactly silent, it is worth turning on. It is also recommended that you turn off any notification noisesyour camera might make. Chief among which is the chirping noises it makes when you acquire focus. You will still see a green confirmation light in your viewfinder, so it shouldn’t be an issue. Try shooting during the loud parts of the performance or applause, not when it is quiet. Try to avoid viewing your images too as, in a darkened room, the glare of your LCD monitor screen can be distracting. If you have to check, retire to an area where nobody can see you. Normally, we would recommend a tripod or at least a monopod to help keep your shots stable and free from camera shake. In certain venues, things like these may be prohibited, so you will need to check in advance if there are areas where you can use a camera support. If not, you may be shooting handheld. An image stabilised lens will greatly reduce camera shake but if not, make sure you keep those shutter speeds as high as you can. Fast glass In a darkened environment, you are subject to lower light levels that will usually result in slower shutter speeds. If your performers are moving and dancing, shutter speeds slower than l/60s will only result in blurry images, especially if you are using long lenses that magnify even tiny camera movements. Don’t be afraid to ramp up your camera’s ISO sensitivity and get shutter speeds beyond l/125s. Modern DSLRs can still give acceptable image quality, even at ISO 3200 or more. Think in terms of it being better to have a noisy image, rather than a blurry one. Lenses with wider maximum apertures, to let in more light, can help. Most lenses offer f/3.5 or f/4 as their widest aperture, if you have lenses with f/2.8or even f/1.4 maximum apertures, they will allowyou to shoot low light with higher shutter speedsand lower ISO. One point worth bearing in mind is that sometimes it is worth shooting with longer shutter durations to emphasise movement, rather than just trying to freeze the moment. It can be as simple as the movement of a hand strumming a guitar. It could just as likely be a performer or dancer moving rapidly, or jumping on stage. Using shutter speeds around the l/30s - l/60s area and panning with your subject, will create motion blur and add a certain dynamic to your shots. Shooting settings Always shoot in Raw. We’ve said this many times, but it's important because shooting in challenging low light situations may result in image files that need some extra processing leeway, to get the most out of them, when you are back at your computer. Stay away from the Auto settings on your camera. As a www.pclpublications.com 169
The shots on this page were taken with a Nikon I D810teamedwithaverycheapsecondhand H Tamron 70-300mm f/4-f/5.6 zoom lens. The .smaller maximum apertures meant pushing the I ISO to 6400, but the noise was very acceptable В underthecircumstances. photographer, you will learn nothing if the camera is making all the decisions for you. Instead, try Aperture Priority (Av) mode or Shutter Speed Priority (Tv) mode. This will give you access to more camera functions and you can decide if you are making Aperture or Shutter Speed the main priority in your shot-taking, decision making. You will no doubt find you have to keep your apertures at their widest maximum setting to allow as much light in as possible. This means a shallower depth of field and therefore focusing needs to be precise to ensure your intended subject is sharp. A good panningtechnique, to follow subjects, is useful to increase your chances of capturing more shots in focus. If you are using a single AF point to achieve focus, you can either use the centre point, which is usually the most accurate, to lock focus and then recompose your shot, or you can try one of the other selectable AF points that will position your subjects, as you want them in the frame, without the need to recompose. Over and above that, if you are feeling confident you can try manual focusing, if the distance between you and your subject is unlikely to change. If your subjects do not move much, you can probably keep your camera’s drive mode in single shot. If, however, they are active like dancers, then perhaps it’s worth switchingto continuous and shooting sequences as they move. Modern cameras can shoot bursts of images at anywhere
from 3 frames per second (FPS) up to 12 frames per second on professional models. When trying to catch the right moment in a moving subject, shooting a burst will dramatically improve your chances of capturing the perfect moment. Metering If the lighting on the stage is fairly even, you can use your camera’s default Evaluative Metering mode, which assesses the whole image and works out the best exposure for it. If the lighting is more dynamic and changes, then you may be better off using either Spot metering or Partial metering. Spot metering lets you measure the light in a very small area of the frame, for example a performer’s face, to make sure that area is correctly exposed. Partial metering works like Spot metering but the area being metered is slightly larger. However, don’t be afraid to be creative by deliberately underexposing or overexposing shots by using Exposure Compensation. Controlled from your camera’s menu, or by a control dial, you can usually expose 3 stops darker or 3 stops lighter than normal. Underexposure is actually a great way to generate silhouettes, if your subject is brightly lit from behind. Go wide too Although we’ve concentrated on getting as close to the action as possible, with long lenses, don’t neglect to shoot wide too. Wide shots of the venue, with the crowd as your foreground, give a greater sense of place. If there are a number of people on stage, it also means you can get them all in one shot together. You also might want to take a shot of the cast and crew, once the performance is over. If it’s a big crowd, then that wide-angle lens was worth bringing. On stage With a little luck, if you were able to attend the dress rehearsal, you will have a sense of how the performance plays out and how the players behave on stage. Although you will be capturing the principle players, don’t forget any supporting cast members. Try to also catch reactions from those that aren’t necessarily in the spotlight. Catching performers at rest can also make for interesting cameo moments. Another good piece of advice relates to composition: where possible, adheringtothe rule of thirds can make shots more dynamic and interesting. Placing your subject over one of the intersecting points of the rule of thirds grid creates better balance in your shots. If you struggle with placement and composition, don't be afraid to shoot a little wider than normal, so rather than getting in as close as possible, shoot with a little extra space around your subject. You can always crop more creatively at the post-process stage. Remember, the picture that people see after you've processed it is the one that counts. www.pclpublications.com 171
Light painting Light up night shots with some simple techniques Light painting is a photographic technique in which exposures are made by moving a hand-held light source. The term light painting also encompasses images lit from outside the frame with hand- held light sources. The latter is what we are looking at in this example. You don’t necessarily need huge, complicated, flash setups to produce some amazingly lit images. With a subject to photograph, your camera on a tripod, one torch with a couple of coloured gels [1], you can light paint to your heartscontent. This is an example of one type of light painting technique that uses, ‘a big brush', shall we say, to colour a scene in large swathes of light. In our example we have a car parked with a nice evening sky behind it. The camera was set on a tripod and recorded a basic reference image [2]. Then it was 172 www.pclpublications.com
LIGHT PAINTING “The method of creating individually lit images gives you more control over the look of the final shot.” IThefinal image of the mini isa combination of 6 shots where it is lit from various angles with different coloured lighting. It also includes the lit interior and the headlights. time to introduce some more colour and light. Each light painted exposure was set at f/5.6 for 20 seconds at ISO 200. This meant that the background was slightly underexposed and our ‘paint’ would show up well. It took a bit of trial and error, but for each 20 second exposure, the torch could be used to paint the car for about half of that exposure time - so about 10 seconds. The torch was kept at roughly the same distance from the car each time. So all that we had to do now was take a succession of exposures, lighting the car with the torch and using different coloured gels [3]. Basically you can experiment all you want as all the single exposures could be combined in Photoshop later. We even put the torch inside the car to light the interior. You could of course set your exposure to give you enough time to do all your light painting in one go. This would take a bit of working out with both the camera settings and the amount of light you need from the torch. One error means the shot is potentially ruined and you have to start again. The method of creating individually lit images gives you more control over the look of the final shot by being able to add and subtract the shots you don't feel contribute to the overall look you are after.
If you have a flash in your camera setup, you have no doubt been enjoying the benefits of having an available light source when conditions demand it. You may discover there are times when you want a little more creative control over the end result. At the moment, your flash sits atop your camera providing one light source, perhaps with the option of bouncing it off a nearby wall or ceiling if you happen to be indoors so you can modify the light to soften the shadows. Anything is better than the direct flash rabbit-in-the-headlights look right? This is great, bounce flash can create some lovely images. If you were outdoors though, trying to do a portrait, where would you bounce the flash? Options become limited, and you may have to resort to direct flash which can kill the mood of the shot. You want to be able to control the direction of light and create some highlights and shadows to add modelling and depth to the scene. This is the point where you would want to get your flash/strobe/speedlite (whatever you want to call it) off your camera. But how do you do that? “Although there are a bewildering variety of options out there, the truth of the matter is, you do have plenty of choice” 174 www.pclpublications.com
OFF-CAMERA FLASH ЗЛ Detaching the flash from your camera and still being able to control it from a distance is not as daunting a prospect as it might seem to the fledgling strobist. The basic methods are: Sync cords A wired system of cables and adapters. Basically, this is an extension cable that connects one end to the hot-shoe of your camera and the other to your flash. You can use multiple flashes if needs be, but it will require additional cabling, adapters and splitters. Also, with the correct cable, all the flash’s original functions and things like eTTL metering and High Speed Sync will be preserved. The distance you can get between you and your remote flash is determined by the length of cables available. A standard off camera cord is usually about lm. We have seen videos on YouTube where people buy several cables and hack them together. It can be no surprise that the big manufacturers might possibly limit cable length because they most likely want you to go for a more expensive wireless system. Opticaltriggers These are very cheap to buy, simple to operate and readily available. In fact eBay is overflowing with cheap non name-brand camera accessories such as this. Simply put, it is a wireless system that uses optical triggering i.e. a trigger that attaches to your flash unit and will activate it remotely when it senses another flash (usually the one connected to your camera) firing. This does, of course require a second unit on your camera (or maybe attached to a sync cord) to ‘pop’ and fire the optical unit attached to your remote flash. When outdoors, the optical trigger may become erratic or, at worst, even useless depending on the power of your trigger flash and the prevailing lighting conditions. www.pclpublications.com 175
Yongnuo transceivers may not be the most feature-rich wireless system you'll ever come across, but they are cheap and an excellent choice for a first foray into creating a wireless light setup. PLUS The Canon 600EX-RT, a powerful flash that can be controlled bytheST-E3-RT.A wireless controller that can work with multiple groups of flashes upto 16 units at once. on the market have wireless control built-in. Multiple flashes can readily be triggered with this system. Wireless systems A wireless system that uses 2.4GHz radio Pocket Wizards are a very popular choice for pro photographers. There are a number of systems to choose from and can run to very high prices, but you do get what you pay for. Remote infrared A wireless system that makes use of infrared signals from a sender unit to trigger a flash with a built-in IR receiver. IR is good for indoor use, but does need line-of-sight for the sender and all receiving flash units. IR setups are also infamous for erratic behaviour in bright, warm, sunlit conditions outdoors. The big name brands have their own native IR-based wireless systems but it does mean you are tied in to a specific manufacturer to match your camera system meaning that this type of setup can be quite expensive, particularly if you have to buy a sender unit to control the flashes. You may be lucky, however, as the newer batch of cameras frequency from a transmitter to any number of receivers attached to flashes to trigger them. The latest crop of wireless systems are based on what are called transceiver units. This means each trigger can be set to either send or receive a flash fire signal just by setting an appropriate option in a menu or by a flick of a switch on the unit. Once again, eBay has you covered for any number of cheap alternatives like Cactus V2’s. You can pick up a Yongnuo RF 603 twin pack for about £30. If you are feeling a little more flush, then £300 will get you a pair of Pocket Wizard Plus III transceivers. I have to put my hand up and admit to getting a native brand wireless system for my Canon setup. It is an ST-E3 wireless transmitter and multiple Speedlite 600EX RT’s. All these systems, cheap or eye-wateringly expensive all benefit from not needing line- of-sight. You can have a flash in the next room and it will still get the signal to fire ok. They also have a good range and work equally well indoors or out. Bear in mind though that the cheaper units are cheap for a reason. Any flash connected to them will have to be controlled manually and individually. TTL metering is not available in cheaper units as well as High Speed Sync. Greater control of your flashes, such as eTTL metering and even High Speed Sync (even something called HyperSync in top of the range models), along with advanced control of multiple groups of flashes, comes at a price. Although there are a bewildering variety of options out there, the truth of the matter is, you do have plenty of choice and within a wide price range. You just need to assess how you want your equipment choices to work in your standard shooting environment. If you shoot lots of close-up portrait or macro work, then you don’t necessarily need a high-cost wireless system that supports multiple flashes that can be operated from a large distance. A wired, sync-cord approach, is a great way to start out. Besides, it is a useful accessory to have in your kit bag anyway. As with everything photographic, you always have the option to upgrade to other systems later if needs be. With the cord approach in particular, if you find yourself running out of hands to hold and operate flash and camera, consider a cheap light stand to perch your flash on while you are concentrating on shooting. 176 www.pclpublications.com
OFF-CAMERA FLASH Bailey the dog gets his close-up We wanted to show a basic before and after setup using a sync cord and one flash connected to my camera to show the beginning of possibilities that off-camera flash can give you. No flash Camera settings f/3.51/1000 ISO 50 With flash Flash at 3/4 power. Camera settings f/10 1/200 ISO 50 In the first shot, Bailey is sitting on a wall down by the beach. It is a bright day with some great cloud formations going on behind him. We metered the shot to try to balance out the shadows and highlights. The end result has Bailey correctly exposed but the sky looks a little washed out. You can probably do a bit to recover the sky using post- processing, but overall the shot lacks any punch or drama. Note the shadow from the sun. For the next shot, knowing we were going to light the subject using the flash off to the left side, We set the camera at its maximum sync speed (1/200) and adjusted the camera settings to underexpose the scene by about 2 stops. The flash was on manual and set at about 3/4 power several feet away from Bailey. Now, the sun has been turned into a fill light rather than the main light source. The shadow cast by the dog in the previous shot is gone to be replaced by the shadow cast by the flash. At this close range, the flash has become the main light. The shot has more drama now, not least because the sky is much stronger now that it is underexposed. Now that the flash is off to the left hand side, there are strong highlights and shadows to a give more ‘pop' to the image, rather than a direct flash which can create the white-faced rabbit-in-the- headlights look. Off-camera lighting is a creative and endlessly variable world that can take you from a ‘sunlight only, shooter' to a full-on ‘strobist’. Hope we have been able to light the way a little. I The shots of Bailey the dog were taken using a sync cordand flash. It is probably thesimplest way of getting your flash off the camera hot-shoe and is a cheap way to begin exploring these new lighting possibilities. www.pclpublications.com 176
LIGHTROOM CLASSIC This issue, we reveal more about an Adobe application that can take your images to the next level We continue with our section on digital image processing. Namely, using Lightroom Classic on your desktop. When it comes to the processing of digital images from your DSLR, Lightroom Classic is unparalleled in terms of the tools available to you to get the very best out of your images. Let’s look at a few more aspects of this amazing suite of programs. We will cover the mobile version of Lightroom in subsequent issues, but for the moment, let’s take time to see all the new updates and improvements available to you in the latest 2022 version. Then we have a quick tour of the main workspace just to get you up to speed on things. Stick with us as in subsequent issues, we look in more detail at how you can begin to unlock the power of Lightroom Classic on your desktop. 180 Colorgrading 180 Customize metadata 181 Additional library filters 181 New Presets 182 Masking 182 Select subject (simple) 182 Select subject (complex) 184 Select sky/Brush 185 Linear gradient 185 Radial gradient 185 Color range 185 Luminance range 186 Depth range 186 Intersect 188 Images transformed 190 Exploring the workspace 178 www.pclpublications.com
LIGHTROOM CLASSIC "WhenTtJcomes to the processing ofdigitaTimages from your DSLR, Lightroom Classic is unparalleled in terms of the tools available to you to get the very best out of your images. ” www.pclpublications.com 179
2 ) Customize Metadata ----------------------------------------------1------------------------------------------------- • Customize Metadata Default Panel ► Q Basic Info ► Q Camara Info к IPTC Content ► О IPTC Copyright ► О IPTC Creator ► IPTC Image P Q IPTC Status P IPTC Extension Administrative P IPTC Extension Artwork Color Grading is one of the adjustment tools found in the Develop Module. It is a graphical user interface replacement of the Split Toning panel. It works in the same way by letting you adjust the hue and saturation in the highlights or shadows of your image, but the methods by which you interact with it have been updated. Rather than using a series of sliders for highlights and shadows, you now click and drag your cursor over a series of colour wheels. Now you are able to alter not only highlights and shadows, but also the mid-tones too. You just choose the corresponding colour wheel and drag your cursor over it. As you do, the colour selected will be injected into the image, creating a colour cast. Dragging the cursor towards the centre of the wheel decreases saturation, closer to the edge and the saturation increases. The slider below each wheel lets you control its luminance and the Blending and Balance sliders also control how dominant that colour is in relation to the others. When you click on the colour wheel, if you hold the Shift key, you can constrain the choice to Saturation only, if you click on the wheel and then hold the Cmd key, you can constrain it to Hue selection only. p Q Basic Info ▼ □ Camera Info a Megapixels Q Dimensions □ Cropped Make О Model Q Camera О Camera ♦ Lens Г Camera ♦ Lens Setting Serial Number “ Exposure Q Exposure Time Q Shutter Speed Q F-Stop 3 Aperture a Max Aperture In photography, metadata is a piece of information that is generated by your camera and is appended to your image file. The data this information contains tells you everything you need to know about that image. It tells you when it was shot, what camera took the image and what lens was used. Important technical aspects such as ISO sensitivity, shutter speed, aperture and lens focal length are included. It goes far beyond that too. It can contain keywords, copyright information and even GPS co-ordinates if your device is suitably equipped. Until recently, when you processed your images and saved them as other formats such as Jpeg or Tiff, you had just a few choices as to what aspects of the full range of original metadata could be saved to your resulting photo. Now, however, you can click on the Customise button for a single image or a whole batch and decide for yourself precisely what metadata is allowed to been seen and what is not. There are a lot of tick boxes to choose, but you can tailor it exactly to how you want it. As an example here, we’ve simply added more camera settings data to what had previously been set. File Name cliffs.NEF Folder SuperMac 27 Title Caption Copyright Creator Rating................ Capture Date 23 Sep 2018 Dimensions 7360 x 4912 Megapixels 36.2 MP Camera Nikon D810 #6040721 Camera ♦ Lens Nikon D810 + TAM...8 Di VC File Type Raw Exposure Time ’/,60 sec Shutter Speed ’/,60 sec F-Stop //7.1 Aperture //7.1 , f ,/2 8 180 www.pclpublications.com
UPDATES AND IMPROVEMENTS Filters Off 3 J Additional Library Filters When you are working in the Library Module, you can go to the top right part of the thumbnail grid and click on the Filters - Q Off button and choose what filters you can employ to help you search for your images. Until recently, the search by Date filter only gave you the option to search by year. That meant that if you have taken many images in one particular year of your search, you will still have a lot to go through to find what you are looking for. Now though, you al so have the newer filter options of both Month and Day. If you have a set of images you know were taken on the 21st August in 2020, then your filtering options have become much more focussed, letting you get to your photos just a bit quicker. Date ► 2014 ► 2015 22 ► 2016 76 ► 2017 ► 2018 45 ► 2019 ► 2020 63 Month_____________________________________________________________________ All (4 Months) June I July 55 August 6 November ✓ Default Columns к p Exposure Info • Filters Off | Flagged Location Columns Rated Unrated Save Current Settings as New Pres Restore Default Presets Delete preset ‘Default Columns*- ▼ Subject: Travel II ▼ Subject: Urban Architecture ► Style. Cinematic II j. ▼ Presets ► User Presets iTi TR11 ► Subject: Travel ► Style: Cinematic ► Style: Futuristic is UA01 Presets are a set of ready-made adjustments that you can apply to your images with just k one click. Lightroom has a growing number of presets available for free and the most 1 recent update to 2022 saw a few more being added to the roster. Presets are Г accessed from the left-hand panel when in the Develop Module. Simply click on - the Presets tab to expand the list of current choices. Most notable additions are: Futuristic, Urban Architecture Cinematic II and Travel II. As you scroll over each preset, you will see a real-time preview of each one. When you are happy with your selection, click the chosen preset to apply its adjustments to your image and you are free to carry on with more edits. www.pclpublications.com 181
Preset Ш 0 A Lightroom previous version Basic 5 ) Masking The mobile version of Lightroom has undergone the same update, but just like Lightroom Classic, the Graduated Filter, Radial Filter and Adjustment Brush have been relocated and amalgamated under the new Masking tool. Images edited in older versions of Lightroom have all their masking data kept intact when opening them in the 2022 version. Library Develop Map I Book Slideshow I Print Web Lightroom Classic previous version The main update that sets this most recent version of Lightroom Mask 1 Classic and Lightroom is the Masking toolset. Previous 4 । versions of Lightroom had a L±J Subject1 set of editing tools that could be found next to the histogram ___ in the top right corner of the Develop workspace. Those tools are still in that location, but they have altered slightly. Until the 2022 update, they were: Crop Overlay, Spot Removal, Red Eye Correction, Graduated Filter, Radial Filter and Adjustment Brush. Now, you'll find it runs: Crop Overlay, Spot Removal, Red Eye Correction and Masking. It is the Masking feature that is the latest and greatest addition to Lightroom's arsenal. Although the Graduated and Radial filters appear to have gone, don't worry. They are now located within the Masking tool. Any images you edited using brush adjustments, graduation and radial filters prior to the 2022 update are still intact. If you open the Masking option and look at the small layer palette that appears, all your edits will still be there. Masking also contains a number of new and powerful features that give you new and creative ways to select and mask areas of your photos for much greater adjustment control. Bear in mind that although there may be some graphical user interface design differences, the Masking tools available in Lightroom Classic are the same as can be found in the mobile version of Lightroom. The Graduated Filter, Radial Filter and Adjustment Brush are now found under the Masking feature along with the other Masking tools. Note their name changes. Other than that, they work the same. X Select Subject яй Select Sky Lightroom 2022 Select Sky Mask 1 Exposure О Contrast —о (К) (M) (Shift-M) (Shift Ч) (Shift+Q) Select Sky MasK i Exposure o- Contrast Lightroom Classic 2022 Add New Mask: Select Subject Select Sky Brush Ц Linear Gradient (•) Radial Gradient Color Range '•& Luminance Range 182 www.pclpublications.com
UPDATES AND IMPROVEMENTS 6 ) Select Subject (simple) If you open an image with no previous edits and click the Masking Д Maskl button, a panel will appear ™-----------------beneath it listing the Add New * i—I Mask options. At the top of the list I x I StJbject 1 is Select Subject. Click its button and Lightroom will automatically ЧЭ Add/ scan your jmage and apply a mask to what it considers the main part of the image. Obviously, how well it selects its subject is going to based on the content of the image. A very complex photo with an abundance (or lack) of detail is going to confuse the Al when making its choices. This example is of a portrait of a woman against a plain background. Relatively easy for the Al to mask. When the mask has been created, a layer panel appears which lists the masks currently active in your photo and what kind of mask it is. A colour overlay is applied by default to indicate it is ready for adjustments to be made, you can change what kind of overlay you want if required. If at this point, these features look familiar, then you are correct. Lightroom's Masking feature is derived from the Photoshop Al that does the same tasks. If you click the Subject 1 menu button (the three small dots), you have some options that allow you to affect the mask in certain ways. In this case, we simply clicked Invert. Now the background of the image has been selected. With any active mask, you can use its adjustments panel to alter its temperature, exposure, contrast etc. he previous example was quite simple in terms of masking. This next one is a little more complex. We have a toucan on a brach with a leafy background that we want to adjust. We clicked Select Subject and a mask was created. It made quite a good job f it. Various adjustments were made to the bird's exposure to reveal a bit more detail. What happens if you want to alter the background? Since our bird already has a good mask, we can actually click on its Mask 1 icon in the layer panel and choose the Duplicate option. The duplicate is renamed Background and is inverted. Any adjustments made to this mask means that only the background is affected. The green background is adjusted to a new colour, but as you see, the branch is also colour-shifted too. Below the mask layers are two buttons. One is Add and the other is Subtract. These two buttons let you add or subtract masking information to the chosen layer using any of the masking options such as the Linear Gradient, Radial Gradient and Brush etc. In this case, we are going to use the Brush tool to subtract some of the mask from the Background layer. A New Brush layer is added to the layer stack under Background. Now you can use a brush to paint over the branch and erase any mask data to reveal the original branch colour. All the masking options can be used in conjunction with one another for complex masking shapes. www.pclpublications.com 183
8 ) Select Sky 9 ) Brush As with Select Subject, Select Sky does —I what it says on the tin. When you choose Maskl this option, the Al will scan your image ____ for an obvious horizon line and attempt ।—। to mask out the sky. As before, the Г—I Sky1 p complexity and detail present in the image will determine how good a mask Q- Add you get. If there is plenty of blue sky in the shot, you should get a decent mask. If you have a busy horizon line with not much contrast, the Al will struggle, so be aware. In our example, after clicking the Select Sky button, it takes a moment and then masks the image. The far horizon, which is misty, gave it some work to do, but it feathered the mask and decreased opacity there in order for it to blend a little better into the ground. Some colour adjustments to alter the sky to a warmer colour were added and the overall effect is quite pleasing. As with any masks created by the Masking feature, you can go in and edit the masks to your heart's content. ry I Develop I Map I Book I Slideshow I Print Maskl Q)Add As mentioned before, adjustments made using the brush feature pre-2022 and к now in the current version, remain the 1 same basic procedure. You just need I to open the Masking tool in order to V find the Adjustment Brush option. By * default, when you apply an adjustment with the brush, there is no effect other than activating the colour overlay so you know where you’re painting. You can begin to dial in your adjustments after. Note that as soon as you add any adjustment, the colour overlay is turned off so you can see the effect you're having on your image. When the Brush tool is active, note that you have Brush settings available that govern the size, softness and density of the mask you're applying. These can be easily adjusted using the sliders. You also have the option to use the Auto Mask feature. When turned on, as you brush over the image, it will look for obvious changes in contrast that might indicate an edge and attempt to mask up to the edge. Turn this off if you don't need it to refine the brush strokes you're making. Add adjustments to the brush mask as necessary. Remember that this mask, like all the others can be edited, added to, removed from, and intersected with, the other masking options available. 184 www.pclpublications.com
UPDATES AND IMPROVEMENTS Radial Gradient Linear Gradient Mask 1 This masking option allows you to create a gradient on your image that runs from J/ 100% of its adjustment visible, down to 0% of its effect. The effect runs in a straight line. It can be vertical, horizontal, or at any angle you choose. A Linear Gradient is most often used to simulate a graduated filter used on a digital camera to help darken an overly bright sky in comparison to the ground. Our example does such a thing with the gradient being dragged down from the top of the image. The colour overlay shows you the extent of the grad you've created. It can be tweaked any time. Then, you can make your adjustments as you see fit. Altering colour and exposure are common adjustments to skies in photos. Again, any of the other masking types can be used in conjunction with this mask to finesse the gradient’s effect. www.pclpublications.com 185
12 Color Range 13) Luminance Range Maskl This new feature is another interesting method by which you can select and mask Sy areas of your photo. As the name would suggest, it makes its selection based on Add colour values that are chosen by you. As seen in our example, if you wanted to mask the foreground sphinx and pyramid, you could decide to use Select Sky, invert the mask and alter it that way. If you choose Color Range, you are given the option to select a range of colours using the color picker tool. You can pick a single colour, drag out a sample area box, or click and press Shift to add additional data points to your selection. Because the orange tones all fall broadly within the same range, selecting the sand colours only, is fairly easy to do. Then you are free to make your adjustments as required. photo creates a mask that falls within the tonal values selected. All other tones are protected by the mask. However, you can use the Luminance Range panel to alter how many brighter or darker tones are included in the mask. Think of this a bit like the Levels adjustment in Photoshop. You're simply telling the mask to include the darker tones and lighter tones most directly similar to the ones already selected. When you are happy with the tonal range selected, you can make your adjustments to the image. ♦ Qtek anywhere to sample luminance To remove areas, create a subtract tool Effect Custom : Temp Tint 186 www.pclpublications.com
UPDATES AND IMPROVEMENTS 14 Depth Range You may notice that the _-i final option of Depth Maskl Range is probably I greyed out. It only k i—q becomes active when 1^1 Depth Ran₽' using photos taken by the most recent iPhones that have taken photos and used the Portrait mode with depth information contained within it and saved in the НЕ1С/ HEIF format. This is the High Efficiency Image File Format. If you are able to access a photo in this format, you can activate the Depth Range feature. It enables you to use a picker on your photo and wherever you click, it will use the depth information contained in the photo and set the point you click as the sharpest area. Areas in front of and behind that chosen point will fade to an out of focus state and the mask created will reflect that. The depth Range sliders will let you refine just how much is in, or out, of focus. You can add adjustments just as you do in the other masked options. The areas that are darkest on the mask will remain untouched. The lightest areas will have the greatest effect visible on them. X Select Subject Select Sky / Brush g Unear Gradient M (*) Radial Gradient (ShrtuM) Color Range (ShUUl) Luminance Range Depth Range . <shrt”ZI 15) Intersect w Sky1 One feature in amongst all the new tasking tools is the Intersect function. It lets you combine masks in interesting ways that give you a lot of scope when it comes to more precise application of masks during your workflow. We have a simple example to show you where we wish to create a bright halo behind the lone tree atop a hill. Our first step would be go to the Masking tool and choose the Select Sky option. Lightroom will assess the image and mask the sky out (Sky 1 under the Mask 1 layer). Since the tree and the horizon both provide strong outlines to work with, the selection is quite refined. Now we want to remove most of the mask apart from a halo around the tree itself. You can click the Sky 1 menu tab and then click Intersect Mask With to open a second menu where you can choose which option you’ll intersect the current mask with. We opted for the Brush tool. We set its size and positioned it over the tree and clicked to apply it. What happens next is that all of the Select Sky mask will be removed apart from whatever area sits within the Brush stroke you just used. You now have that area of sky with the tree and ground still masked out. You will see a Brush 1 layer added to your Mask 1 layer set to indicate what you've done. Adjusting the Exposure, Temperature and Color gives you the desired effect of the halo within that very specific area. Linear Gradient Radial Gradient Select Subject Select Sky Note: at the time of writing, the Intersect function is only available in Lightroom Classic. www.pclpublications.com 187
AFTER BEFORE www.pclpublications.com Lightroom offers some impressive results from very little effort on the part of the user. The conversion from the before image to the after image took a few minutes and just a few clicks of the mouse button. This is how powerful and intuitive Lightroom is. This striking wide-angle shot of a sunny day on the Cornish coast started out looking a little lacklustre but thanks to Lightroom there’s huge scope for adjustment and improvement. We can emphasise the dramatic light of the daytime colours and boost Clarity, Shadows and Saturation; the image is transformed. Additional use of graduated filters in the sky ensures a good tonal balance between foreground and background. Images tranformed Image Conversions and Tweaks
IMAGES TRANSFORMED
Exploring the Workspace The default workspace you view when launching Lightroom Classic can look a little confusing to begin with. However, with a little exploration the many menus and options soon become second nature. Here, we show you around all the basic areas before you get stuck into editing. О User id_____________________________ This is the Identity Plate for Lightroom, displaying the user’s logged in account name, with further options available to be expanded that connect to Adobe’s cloud services. The Identity Plate can be further personalised, using either set templates or customising your own for branding your own photos. These can be text- based, or even a graphical Identity Plate to add that little extra personal touch to your Workspace view and image edits. Q Presets: Catalog____________________ The Catalog Preset is a database that stores a record for each of your photos. This record contains key pieces of information regarding each of the photos you import into Lightroom, such as a reference to where the photo is stored on your system, instructions for how to process the photo and metadata relating to the photo. ф Presets: Folders____________________ The Folders Preset displays where your photos are stored in the system. These reflect the folder structure on the drive itself and appear in an alphanumeric order for you to browse through. The triangles can be expanded to display sub-folders within each root folder level and each folder will display the number of images or videos you’ve imported into Lightroom; there’s also information on the amount of space on the hard drive that the images have taken up, with the total space displayed too. 190 www.pclpublications.com
EXPLORING THE WORKSPACE Q Presets: Collections________________ Collections provide a way for Lightroom to group photos in one place for easy viewing, or for performing a variety of tasks. For example, to assemble photos into a slideshow collection, or a web photo gallery. You can create as many Collections as you need from Regular, Smart and Quick Collection listings. These can store custom defined rules, temporary groups and various other clever features. Q Presets: Publish Services The Publish Services options menu allows you to export collections of photos to your hard drive or a variety of defined online services, such as popular social networks as Facebook and Flickr. Additional information can be added to the export process and you can find от Classic * Library 9 Library Develop Map Book Slideshow I Print I Web I A Histogram № more services online via the available button. It’s even possible to publish entire folders or collections of photos, reducing the process considerably compared to manual uploads. These can be used in much the same way as the Collections, with various options and custom defined rules if needed. ф Film Strip_________________________ The Film Strip view bar is where you can quickly display and also access the photos you are working on as you move between the modules. This scrolling bar contains photos and all images from the currently selected Library folder, your photo/image collection, or keyword set. By using this option you can quickly access your images without having to open additional folders outside of the Lightroom software. You can quickly and easily move between each of the photos in the Filmstrip using the Left and Right Quick Develop Q Modules Keywording Keyword List Metadata Comments Arrow keys or by choosing a different source from the Filmstrip Source Indicator pop-up menu to the right of the navigation buttons. A Histogram and Adjustment Panels The Histogram is an often overlooked feature of Lightroom, which is a shame as it’s an extraordinarily useful tool to master. However, we have covered this and these areas will be looked at in further detail as we move through the various Lightroom modules, such as the Develop Module and other elements of the software in this book. ф Top Toolbar________________________ The top toolbar contains the familiar aspects of a traditional program, with File, Edit, Library, Photo, Metadata, View, Windows and Help. Most of these are self-explanatory, and function in the same was as any other program. Others though, contain elements and options to enhance each of the modules. You could spend a lot of time trawling through the many different menu options and we cover many of them throughout this book. For now though, take a moment to explore what’s available and see just how in-depth Lightroom can get with just a few clicks of the Mouse button. Lightroom has seven workspace modules available: Library, Develop, Map, Book, Slideshow, Print, and Web. Each module offers a unique set of tools and features tailored to your workflow: importing, organising and publishing, adjusting and enhancing and generating output for screen, print or web detail. These tools, within each Module, are startlingly powerful in their use, whilst still being relatively simple to use. We’ll look at these Modules and the tools within, as we progress through the book. Show or Hide Panel Groups To show or hide a single panel group, click the triangular Show/Hide Panel Group icon. A solid icon indicates the panel group is showing. To show or hide both side panel groups, choose Window > Panels > Toggle Side Panels, or press the Tab key. To hide all panels, including side panels, the Filmstrip and Module Picker, choose Window > Panels > Toggle All Panels, or press Shift-Tab. www.pclpublications.com 191
In our next issue of f* DIGITAL CamerausEf? essential photographic guides and tips to help you on your way to mastering your camera. There are plenty of new skills to learn and more great image processing guides to explore too. On Sale March 2024 via digital platforms
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Don't miss out on more great USER magazines on digital platforms now! NEW Bumper Holiday Special! BONUS DOUBLE EDITION! NEW Bumper Holiday Special! BONUS DOUBLE EDITION! iPhoner—: L/SEff YourFirSt iPhone Mastered! The Essential User Gude for the New iPhone Owner! > IVIhcjes? USER И"REE^ SPECIAL BOMUS macOS I Sonoma^ Mastered! The Essential User Guide for the Mac Owner! SPECIAL B0WU5 V TECH SHOPPER TECH - • I Bumper Holiday Special! BONUS DOUBLE EDITION! NEW Bumper Holiday Special! BONUS DOUBLE EDITION! L/StM Windows!» Windows 11L — 23H2 A Beginners Guide The Essential User I Guide for the New I Windows User! —|—I Xfree'4 u I TECH www.pclpublications.com Digital Camera User Issue Eight | December 2023 | ISSN: 2752-5060 Published by: Papercut Limited Managing Editor: lames Gale Production Director: Mark Ayshford Editor: Mark Frost Production Manager: Mark Ayshford Design: Mark Frost, Mark Ayshford Editorial & Photography: Mark Frost Digital distribution by: Zinio, Pocketmags, Readly & Magzter 2023-2024 © Copyright Papercut Limited. All rights reserved. Notice: Before purchasing this publication please read and ensure that you fully understand the following guidelines, if you are in any doubt please don't buy. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system or integrated into any other publication, database or commercial programs without the express written permission of the publisher. Under no circumstances should this publication and its contents be resold, lent, loaned out or used in any form by way of trade without the publisher's written permission. While we pride ourselves on the quality of the information we provide, Papercut Limited reserves the right not to be held responsible for any mistakes or inaccuracies found within the text of this publication. Due to the nature of the software industry, the publisher cannot guarantee that all software and/or tutorials, tips, guides will work on every version of the required camera or hardware. It remains the purchaser's sole responsibility to determine the suitability of this magazine and its content for whatever purpose. Any images reproduced on the front and back cover are solely for design purposes and are not representative of content. We advise all potential buyers to check listing prior to purchase for confirmation of actual content. All editorial opinion herein is that of the writer as an individual and is not representative of the publisher or any of its affiliates. Therefore the publisher holds no responsibility in regard to editorial opinion and content. Papercut Limited reserves the right not to be held responsible for any mistakes or inaccuracies found within the text of this publication. The publisher, editor and their respective employees or affiliates will not accept responsibility for loss, damage, injury occasioned to any persons acting or refraining from action as a result of the content with this publication whether or not any such action is due to any error, negligent omission or act on the part of the publisher, editor and their respective employees or affiliates. Our articles are intended as a guide only. We are not advising you to change your camera or device, and would actually advise against it if you have even the slightest doubts. There are potential risks to the camera hardware/software involved, and you must be aware of these before you decide to alter anything on your device. Read all of the information here carefully and then make up your own mind whether you want to follow our guides. We take no responsibility for damage to your camera or any other device used in the process. If you are unsure, please do not buy this publication. This Papercut Limited publication is fully independent and as such does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the manufacturers or hardware and software, applications or products contained within. This publication is not endorsed or associated in any way with Canon, Nikon or any associate or affiliate company or any other photographic equipment manufacturer. All copyrights, trademarks and registered trademarks for the respective manufacturers, software and hardware companies are acknowledged. Additional images contained within this publication are reproduced under license from shutterstock.com. Some content may have been previously published in other volumes or titles. We advise potential buyers to check the suitability of contents prior to purchase. All information was correct at time of publication. a Papercut Limited Registered in England & Wales No: 04308513 ADVERTISING - For our latest media packs please contact: Brad Francis - email: brad@papercutltd.co.uk Web: www.pclpublications.com INTERNATIONAL LICENSING - Papercut Limited publishes many high quality publications and all are available for licensing worldwide. For more information email: jgale@pclpublications.com