All posts by Ken Formella

Depth of Field Conversation

After a day at Yellow River Game Ranch, Alicia asked me to help her pick the better of two photos which led to a discussion about “working” the depth of field setting can help to remove foreground distractions such as fences.  I told her I’d post a few photos to demonstrate this.

Alicia, as discussed, the following three photos were taken using a tripod set in the exact same spot, with the camera pointed in the exact same direction.  However, the point of focus is different in each so that you can see how much “working” the depth of field can affect your final photo.  These were all taken using a very narrow depth of field, ie. a wide open aperture (smaller number remember) on a telephoto lens.

This first picture is focused on the grass that is right in front of the camera (about two feet away).  You can see (blurry) the two cows in the middle and the mountains in the background.

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This picture is focused on the barbed wire fence about 15 feet from the camera.  As you can see, the cows are in much better focus already, so much so that you can tell what the picture actually was.  If you look closely, you can still see the grass in front of the fence but it is already getting lost.

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Finally, I focused on the cows about 50 yards away.  As you can see. even the mountains are in pretty good focus but the fence is only slightly visible and the grass is “gone.”

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So like we discussed, the closer you can get to the foreground fence you want to make disappear, the better, and the greater the distance between your subject (the cows) and your foreground (or background) distraction, the blurrier it will get.  Note in the last photo how the grass gets blurrier and blurrier as you get closer to the camera, but everything past the cows is in focus.  This is because the cows were already quite far from the camera so the difference to the mountains didn’t much matter!  Note how even the fence just 15 feet away is too blurry to make out in the first picture because the grass was so much closer – relatively speaking.

OK, so the giraffe photo I told you about…  Notice how the left side of it’s face (right side of the picture :-) ) and it’s nose looks sort of hazy compared to the other side?  If you zoom in, you’ll see that both eyes are in perfect focus as evidenced by the eyelashes.  The “haze” is caused by a light pole that came between us (the tram was moving) just as I took the picture.  Because the light post was so much closer to me than the giraffe, even the six inch or so wide post nearly disappears!

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OK, so it still ruined what would have been an awesome shot, but it does make for an interesting depth of field example.  LOL

Another project would be to take the same sort of pictures without moving the camera, focusing on the same subject for each, but changing the aperture two stops each time and going from the largest to smallest opening.  Then compare the photos like this to see the difference the various apertures make on what is otherwise the exact same subject.  How ’bout you try that one?  :-)

Fireworks Challenge – Dad’s Entries

I think Alicia may have won the challenge.

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At Aunt Jan’s , the fireworks were launched pretty much right behind the palm trees.  While that worked pretty well for some shots, it was hard to frame a good burst without either cutting off the tops of the trees or having only the tops of the trees in the bottom of the frame.  On top of that, the camera had trouble with auto focus and manual focus was hard to get right.  I tried f22 to offset focus problems, but that didn’t allow enough light in.  Finally I was able to manually focus on a burst and then leave it set that way.  I had to use f4.5 with a 10 second shutter speed to get multiple bursts because there was a lot of delay between shots.  I also had to just frame the palm trees and keep the shots that burst in that frame.

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The worst part is that the breeze that always blows in from the ocean was carrying all the smoke toward us so many of the bursts were behind the smoke.

Below is my best entry into the challenge.  I like it mostly because the burst looks a little bit like a larger, lighted palm tree.

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Lessons learned:
– Manually focus on the first burst and then leave it.
– f4.5 works well at 10 seconds except when they did do rapid fire.  Then you end up with way too much light.
– ALWAYS find a place to watch up wind.  In this case that will always be from a boat which would prevent long exposures because of the rocking of the boat!

This is one of Alicia’s entries from the “qualifying round” with a little bit of cropping.  I think it wins… until she posts something even better from the final round!

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Step 2: Get Composed

This section includes tips on composition and includes things like ensuring you have a subject, framing, the Rule of Thirds, perspective, and so on.  The comments that follow are attempts to apply one or more of the tips.  To kick it off, I took the following photos on the patio yesterday morning when the early sun was backlighting the hanging baskets and the grapes.  I was trying to find an angle that captured how “awakening” the scene is every morning.  Here’s what I got…

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This first photo is the “standard” picture of the scene.  I did make sure I cleaned off the counter top and turned all of the wine bottle lights so that the labels were facing the camera, but other than “documenting” the scene, the photo is otherwise not particularly interesting.

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For this one, I tightened up the framing a little bit.  I wasn’t sure I’d like it since it didn’t include the whole outdoor kitchen, but the framing was better.  We now have the plants as our subject but we still don’t have the impact of the lighting effect.

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This is what I was after.  Using the rule of thirds and the rule of balance, I placed the bougainvillea in the upper right third, and the reddening grapes in the lower left third.  I shifted the camera just slightly in order to include the patio post on the right to help frame the whole thing.  Now the plants are clearly the subject and we’re close enough to see how the light is highlighting them against the shaded slope.  In the full resolution picture (click on it to open it), you can even see that some of the grapes are backlit as well!
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So, what’s a flower scene without a close up?  Yeah, I had to do it, and while it turned out to be sort of interesting with that tiny little white flower in sharp focus amidst the brightly lit and colorful bracts, the angle is terrible.  I should have climbed up on the counter and taken the shot at a downward angle.  :-(     There’s always tomorrow, right?

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Finally, just because it was there, I shot this one before getting to work.  I was intrigued by the single red flower brightly lit against the dark green shaded leaves.  I took just this one shot because it worked.  Too close and you have just another flower close up from the wrong angle.  Too far and you have another busy picture.  So instead, I included enough to show that it’s a hanging basket, but I used the widest aperture I had, and my telephoto lens in order to create the smallest depth of field I possibly could.  I had to stand back about ten feet because of the telephoto lens.  But… if you look closely, that single lit flower is the ONLY thing in the photo that is in perfect focus!  The leaves right in front are blurred just a bit, and any background distraction is gone.

OK Alicia… Can’t wait to see what you do with the composition tips!  :-)

Step 2: Forty Absolutly Easy Tips to Improve Your Photos

Now that we’re done getting more familiar with our cameras (Step 1) and we’ve delved into the technical aspects of making photos vs. taking pictures (Step 5), we’re moving back to Step 2.  But since there are “forty” tips, let’s break this section up and create one post for each tip category.  We can post new photos as comments nested in the appropriate category.  Be sure to explain which tips you applied and why!  :-)

Get Composed

Get Sharp

Get Lit
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Get The Shot

 

Aperture, Shutter Speed, and Focal Length (…and ISO)

After reading Step 1, I wanted Alicia to skip forward to Step 5.  As stated earlier, the author wanted to save the technical nature of Step 5 for later so the reader wouldn’t get discouraged.  Knowing that Alicia is committed to this, I encouraged her to read this section next because these concepts are central to understanding how to get the photo you picture in your mind.

Have you finished Step 5 Alicia?  For everyone else, here’s a summary.  If you are done with it Alicia, does the following capture your understanding?  Do you have questions?  Examples?

Aperture, shutter speed, and ISO are all inter-related and make up the exposure value.  You can get essentially the same exposure by making offsetting changes in these three settings.  In other words, if you speed up the shutter, you can either open the lens wider or change the ISO to make the light sensor more sensitive.  Either offset will yield the same exposure as the original settings (before speeding up the shutter in this example.)  This allows you to get more creative by using a faster or slower shutter speed and/or a wider or narrower aperture depending on the situation and the desired effect.  Personally, I use the lowest ISO setting the camera has as the default because the higher the setting, the more “noise” it can introduce into the photo.  Therefore, I only change the ISO if I really need more range on the shutter speed.

Why would you want a faster or slower shutter speed?  Creative effects is one reason.  A very fast speed can freeze action and a very slow speed can blur action.  Faster speeds also make it easier to hold the camera steady for the duration.  Slower speeds may require a tripod or other stabilization technique, especially when using telephoto lenses because they magnify movements as well as everything else.

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Why care about a wider or narrower aperture?  Creative effects again.  A wide aperture can blur background and foreground features, emphasizing the subject.  A narrow aperture can ensure everything is in focus regardless of varying distances.  This is a phenomenon known as depth of field.  The camera is focused at a particular object or distance and the narrower the lens opening, the greater the range of distances that will still be in focus.  Conversely, the wider the opening, the more precise the focus must be because the depth of field can be extremely small.  Again, this is exaggerated by telephoto lenses.  The more the magnification, the smaller the range of the depth of field.  This is also affected by distance to the focus point since depth of field is relative to the focus distance, ie. if the focus point is far away, the depth of field will be greater than if the focus point is much closer.

Finally, I specifically said “telephoto” lenses in the two paragraphs above.  Often times people refer to them as “zoom” lenses, however, in this case that would be less than accurate.  How much of a scene a lens can capture has everything to do with it’s focal length.  A smaller or “shorter” focal length than “normal” implies that the lens will shrink and distort the image to fit more into the camera’s frame.  This is referred to as a wide angle lens.  A larger or “longer” than normal focal length implies that the lens will magnify the image.  This is referred to as a telephoto lens.  A zoom lens on the other hand, COULD be a telephoto lens, but more accurately is one that can ADJUST the focal length.  When set to it’s shortest focal length, it captures more of the scene.  When moved to a longer focal length, it magnifies everything and it all seems to get closer.  We often refer to this as “zooming in” on the subject, but remember that although it is common usage, a zoom lens can be a wide angle only zoom, a telephoto only zoom, or a combination from slightly wide angle to normal to slightly telephoto.  Also, a telephoto lens does not have to be a zoom lens.  You can have a lens of any focal length which does not zoom (wide angle, normal, or telephoto) and these “non-zoom” lenses are known as “fixed” lenses because they only have one focal length.  There are many reasons why you might want a fixed lens.  Often the quality is better, they usually allow more light to pass through them making them “faster” or more capable of faster shutter speeds and lower light conditions.  While often “better” for their specific purpose, fixed lenses are not nearly as versatile as zoom lenses so most cameras without the capability to change lenses utilize a zoom lens, and most people with SLR cameras use a zoom lens as their default lens.

So…  On to step 2 and a little closer to our projects!  It’s funny though, we held off on the projects until Alicia was done with school for the semester and got her dance recital behind her.  Now that she should be ready to dive into projects, I’M in school and busier than all get out.  Still, I’m looking forward to the fun of this!

Camera Modes Trial – Unexpected Results

Below are two photos of a rose in our backyard taken with my standard lens and the camera on a tripod to avoid any user induced blur.  I took several “identical” photos of this rose, as well as several of lake Mission Viejo off in the distance.  Unfortunately, for both subjects, the minor differences in settings from one mode to the next did not yield very noticeable differences.  And when I uploaded them here, the reduction in file size led to a reduction in detail which wiped out any changes you might have noticed!

Lesson learned:  The modes will likely be most helpful for the specific circumstances they’re designed for.  Still, understanding them COULD make subtle differences if that’s what you’re looking for.  For example, the two photos below do show a difference you can see.

This first photo was taken in Landscape mode which is designed to use a small aperture to increase the range of distances that are in focus (depth of field).  The smaller aperture forces a slower shutter speed, but since it was a bright, partly cloudy day, there was plenty of light and the camera selected f10 at 1/250th of a second.  I was intending to show the depth of field difference between this photo and the next one, but it is so slight it was lost in the upload.  On the original image, you can see that the thorns on the bud above the rose, and the veins in the leaf below it are clearer in this one but I was hoping for more difference.

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The second photo was taken in Portrait mode.  Oddly enough, Portrait mode and Close Up modes used almost the same exposure settings (f5.6 at 1/500 vs. f8 at 1/250) so rather than post the Close Up photo with no discernible depth of field difference after the upload, I posted this one because you CAN see the tonal difference rendered by the Portrait setting.  Notice how this photo is just a little “softer” than the one above.

Lesson learned:  Even though this is not a “portrait,” the Portrait setting can be used to soften whatever the subject is.

Meet Your Camera Modes

I’ve read “Step 1:  Meet Your Camera Modes” and picked up a few tips I can use when I don’t want to hassle with doing things totally manually.  Up until now, I’ve either use fully automatic, fully manual, or occasionally aperture or shutter priority.  I had never used any of the other mode settings.  Using them when appropriate will make things a lot easier.  I’m so convinced of this that my next step will be to pull the user manual for the camera back out and read the information it hasThis substance pricks the pituitary levitra uk gland that releases leutinizing hormone. However if this is a normal issue, it needs to selling here levitra generic no prescription be checked online, other than one can opt for any version. Kamagra is a canadian discount cialis medication therefore has the same qualities and the same safety like the brand medication other pills like Silagra Tablets, Caverta Tablets UK and silagra UK 100mg via Ekamagra.com Several males are suffering from sexual disorder – semen leakage. They have already been given the permission for use by viagra price afflicted consumers that are putting up with the problem. about the mode settings.  Where are you with the reading Alicia?  Have you tried any of the other mode settings yet?  Which ones do you have?  My camera has Portrait, Landscape, Sports, Kids, Night Portrait, and Close Up in addition to the various manual and semi automatic modes.  I’m going to take a couple of pictures of the same things using the different settings and will post some of them for comparison.  Then I will have to start reading my text books now that I’m home.  :-(

The Project

The book that got this idea off the ground was titled “52 Weekend Photography Projects” but upon closer inspection, the projects were far too complex and required quite a few pieces of specialized photography equipment such as remote flashes and triggers, studio light reflectors, etc.  So I looked a little further and found a book I thought would be particularly helpful to Alicia.  It is titled “Better Photo Basics, The Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Taking Photos Like the Pros” by Jim Miotke.  This book will be the basis for our project because in addition to it’s basic tips and techniques, it has twenty “popular photography projects,” thirteen “advanced creative techniques,” and ten “easy fixes you can do on your computer” so it will be perfect.  Jim also has a website called BetterPhotos.Com which we may eventually turn to for more information and ideas but for now, we intend to blog about our learning experience as guided by the book.

When I reviewed the book it was kind of funny.  I read the introduction and “Step 1:  Meet Your Camera Modes” followed by “Step 2:  Forty Absolutely Easy Tips to Instantly Improve Your Photos.”  I was a little disappointed because the author dove right in to taking pictures.  He wanted his readers to have fun right away before they lost interest in “complicated” technicalities.  But I wanted Alicia to learn the relationships of the important “variables” on the camera and how they each affected the photo because she was already motivated and now wants to IMPROVE.  So I planned to find another resource for her to read first.  Then I went on…  “Step 3:  Twenty Popular Photo Assignments.”  “Step 4:  Master the Light to Take Your Photos Further.”  “Step 5:  Aperture, Shutter Speed, and Focal Length” – THERE THEY WERE!  The important variables I wanted to start with.  So I gave the book to Alicia and told her to read the introduction and Step 1, and then to skip to Step 5!  I added ISO to the mix and we discussed the 1:1 relationship between these variables.  Basically, if you speed up the shutter, you have to open the lens wider to achieve the same exposure and vice versa.

Anyway, after Steps 1 and 5, we will move on to Step 2, and then we’ll start working on the twenty projects in Step 3.  Yeah!

So…  Give us a few more weeks to get school, dance, Army duty, etc behind us so we can do some photography learning and playing before digging in to the projects this summer!

Oh… I cheated!  Project 2 is “Capture a Scenic Landscape” so I went to Yosemite National Park.  hee hee hee!  You don’t have to be a great photographer in a place like this.  The scenic landscape does all the work!
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Yosemite Valley
Yosemite Valley. El Capitan on the left, Half Dome in the center background, and Bridal Veil Falls on the right.

 

Thanks for following!  We’ll be back soon…

Figuring Things Out

I’m back, and Alicia and I are figuring things out here.  First of all, I thought I had this set up to email me a notification if someone left a comment so I hadn’t logged back in until now.  As it turns out, Jennie left one eons ago!  The system WAS supposed to notify me by email, but perhaps it got caughtIn developed regions of China, diabetics in the rural population are potential groups who are more likely to suffer from buy cheap viagra ED. I’ll bet your blood pressure would go up tremendously if they suddenly glacialridgebyway.com viagra 100 mg became affordable for people without health insurance, but the profits wouldn’t quite be the same. These tablets are usually orange in colour. viagra pills uk It is viagra pfizer glacialridgebyway.com a PDE-5 inhibitor and reacts very quickly after swallowing it. in a junk mail filter?  I’ll have to check.  Either way, once someone’s comment has been “approved” by one of the authors, then that same person SHOULD be able to comment freely after that.  Please post a simple comment or two just to check in once and awhile.  It will help us figure out how this all works!

Legwork

Alicia and I discussed this photography project idea back in February and agreed that we would try to begin in June – after school was out and dance was done for the year.  In the meantime, she was going to try to do some reading on the basic techniques and principles as much as she could.  After we were given the blogging idea, we discussed that too.  Both of us knew what a blog was naturally, but neither of us knew how to set one up and manage it so I said that while she is learning a little more about her camera and photography basics, I would learn what I could about blogging.

Over Easter weekend (since it was rather lonely here in CA), I played around with our new internet hosting provider’s tools and did some research on blogging.  By the end of the day on Saturday, I had a new website shell established with a blogging page but after experimenting a little with it, I realized that there would be no way for Alicia to add her own input to the blog so I went back to the drawing board.  By the end of the day Sunday, I thought I had what I was looking for but I couldn’t test it because our service was down!  First thing Monday morning I tested it and it worked like a charm.

So, now that I had that figured out, I set it aside and got back to real work.  At the end of the day, I decided to tweak everything before “going live” and I accidentally wiped out the blog page!  :-(  Yes, I had to start over.  But this time it was easy because I’d already figured out what I needed and wanted so I just had to go through the motions of setting it up again.  And… because I’ve been around computers enough to know, I had saved the text of my “In The Beginning” post to an offline file so all I had to do was paste it back in.  :-)
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So now we’re here, we’re live, and we’re ready for summer so we can start our project!  Watch for a few new posts in the coming weeks as we get this ball rolling, and hopefully we’ll be running full steam ahead by Father’s Day.