Digital Photography - Class 2
Capturing
- Camera Controls
- Two Factors Determine "How Light is Written"
- Length of time the camera's "Shutter" is open
- Size of the opening or "Aperture" of the lens
- Most cameras allow you to change these settings
- Metering
- Multisegment - Good most of the time. When you want to take in entire scene.
- Center Weight - Traditional method. When you are shooting a portrait.
- Spot - When you want one particular area with the correct exposure.
- "Correct" Exposure
- Clean spectrum of tone from whites to midtones to blacks
- No excessive dark or blown highlights
- Accurate detail in subject area
- Light is "written" accurately onto a light-sensitive sensor
- Exposure Compensation
- In certain situations the meter gets "fooled" and doesn't give a proper reading
- Some cameras have +/- buttons for compensating exposure
- By dialing the exposure up or down you can achieve a better exposed picture
- Taking several pictures by tweaking the compensation is called "bracketing"
- Exposure Compensation Tips
- Aperture Effects
- Wide aperture (small f-number) creates shallow depth of field
- Small aperture (large f-number) creates sharp depth of field
- Shutter Speed Effects
- Freeze time (sports, moving on a boat)
- Blur an image (waterfalls, night sky)
- Create effect with a moving background and still subject
- Flash
- Has many uses other than strictly low light or indoor situations
- Turn flash off for long exposures on a tripod
- ISO - Light Sensitivity
- Low ISO (100) has low sensitivity. Not as forgiving in low light but also has less noise
- High ISO (400) has high sensitivity. Forgiving in low light but has more noise
- White Balance
- The kind of light in the environment you are shooting in affects the color reflected from the subject.
- Daylight, Incandescent, Fluorescent, Flash all have different color temperatures.
- Cameras use "White Balance" to compensate these various light sources. Auto WB works well.
- Lower white balance makes images more red or yellow while higher white balance makes images more blue.
- If you can't adjust white balance by numbers try the icons used in most cameras.
- Consider adjusting for heavily overcast day, deep shade, tungsten lamps and fluorescent lights.
- Don't forget to reset the white balance if you tweak it for a shot.
- Some Shooting Tips
- Steady the camera by tucking in your elbows. Use a wall if you can. Tripod
- Don't use "digi" zoom
- Use flash outdoors
- Always flash when a person is wearing a baseball cap
- If shooting from a tripod use the timer if no shutter release
- Beware of lens flare especially with wide angle
- Focus on subject and recompose
- Use off-center framing
- Shoot high quality
- Look at postcards when travelling
- Lock in shutter speed to about 500/sec when on a boat or moving object
- Be obvious with your camera when travelling
- Shoot for the magic light
- Shoot from subject eye-level or even lower
- Trick subject when shooting portraits
- Monitor Calibration
- At the very least use system built in calibration for CRT
- If you have a LCD just use canned system profile
- The profile is saved in Library -> ColorSync -> Profiles -> Displays
- Much better to use third party hardware
- MacWorld Review
- Beyond Monitor Calibration
- You can calibrate printers for specific inks and paper
- Other devices such as scanners, digital projectors, and cameras can be calibrated
- GretagMacbeth is the leader in this world
- Color Spaces
- Device-independent working RGB spaces
- Adobe RGB (1998) is a good all around space
- sRGB common for web
- You can use the "Color Settings" dialog box to convert at opening
- ProPhoto is used for 16bit color neg scans
- Good general intro to Color Management
- More in detail
- Batching
- HUGE time savings by batching a lot of photos
- Resizing a folder of pictures
- Changing .jpg compression
- Able to also create droplets
- Get files to resize here
- Sending photos over the web
- After batching a folder of pictures create an "Archive"
- Archive's are .zip files that is compatable with Windows
- Create .zip right from Apple's Finder
- Assignment #2
- Send me (appel@savvystudios.com) a .zip archive with the following files no larger than 400px either direction:
- correct.jpg
- compensation.jpg, org_compensation.jpg
- f3_aperture.jpg, f16_aperture.jpg
- shutter_jpg
- flash_jpg