Photo Tip--Thinking like your camera

Man, cameras these days. So smart.

There are so many options in making an image with a camera now. You can keep all of the control of the camera (this is what Crystal and I (Rachel) do. When people oooh and ahh over our cameras and say, "Wow, those must take GREAT pictures!", we smile and say, "Yep, we taught them everything they know!" ;)), you can keep some of the control of the camera, but let the camera make some decisions, or you can let the camera make the decisions. Each way has pros and cons, and some models of camera will only allow a one or maybe two of these choices. A point and shoot is a good example of a camera that will usually only allow you to let the camera call the shots.

Sigh...so that means you have no control, right? If the picture turns out good, it was all the camera? And if it turns out bad, there was nothing to be done? Should we just sit in the corner and sulk?

Absolutely not! You have a lot more control than you think, even if the camera is on auto mode.

So, we know the camera is looking at the picture you want to take, and SOMEHOW the camera is figuring out what settings to apply to that image. You can't usually SEE those settings, so how can you influence them?

That is where I come in! I am going to show you how your camera thinks! Once we learn this, we can apply it to other lessons. Once you're "at one" with the mind of your camera, you'll be able to have some measure of control in using even a point and shoot camera.

First of all, when a camera looks at a scene that you intend to shoot, it doesn't really see the scene like you do. Say you're shooting your kids at the park on the playground. There's green grass, a red slide, a blue sky. Junior's wearing a yellow shirt. The camera doesn't see that. The camera doesn't see colors. It sees TONES.



The camera sees the scene in gradations of brightness.

Ok, great! But how is it choosing the settings?

Well, the camera is looking at the whole scene you have framed and is averaging the scene to 18% or MIDDLE gray. It wants to pick the settings that will average the frame towards the middle of that pattern.

And lots of times, it works great!

But what if I want to shoot a picture of my kid standing against a black board, writing his name? Or something primarily black? (Or a VERY dark color.)



Is this a middle tone? NO WAY! But guess what? Your camera will let in enough light automatically to make it look 18% gray. So that chalkboard will no longer be black. It will be gray. Oh...and hmm. If that black is moved up the grayscale...then what do you think happens to all those tones (like skin, hair, etc.) that are LIGHTER than the black that has been shoved up the scale? Uh oh. It's not good. They're going to be WAY brighter than they should be. They might even get shoved entirely off the scale, into white nothingness.

We've all had those pictures right? The overexposed ones. ALL the detail is gone. Everything is just an icky, white blob. It looks bad on screen and prints even worse. All the details get shoved into the white category and they are gone forever. Let's all have a moment of silence for our fallen highlights. *sniffle*

Ok, so that's a time where our camera's plan of making everything middle gray has failed us. D'oh!

Let's think of another. And you all know this one too, I bet. Say you're darling and precocious child is sitting in front of the bright window reading a book. It is an ADORABLE picture in your mind. The angelic child is framed by the bright window, it's perfection! But...you take that picture with SO much of it SOOOO bright, and what happens?



The average of this scene is really white. Not middle gray. It's at the TOP of the scale. So, the camera pushes allll that white, bright light down the scale to 18%. And what happens to the child's face, which is pretty much in shadow? It also gets shoved down the scale. Suddenly you can barely make out the child for all of the shadow. Some of the details might even be lost to total blackness. *sniffle* Isn't this story just SO sad??? All of these missing details that we could have had!

By the way, the above technique is a good way to get a silhouette. So if that was what you were planning...a silhouette of junior reading in the window, WOOHOO! (It's always nice to know what you want to do and how to do it.)

Ok, so now we have an idea of what the camera is thinking. How it is trying to read the scene. This will help you choose lighting/color situations that your camera can better handle. (Or you can add flash to help even the exposure. There are pros and cons to using a small flash on your camera, but we'll discuss those later.) One thing that is very hard for a point and shoot is backlight. In general, it is best to steer clear if you want to be able to make out the faces of the people in your picture.

But here's my big tip for how to get a backlit photo with your point and shoot. But first, I have to share a secret. Shhhhh. Your shutter button is a double agent. Shhhhhhh. It lives a secret life. Not only can you push it and it will faithfully release the shutter and take the picture, it can also LOCK THE EXPOSURE!! So, all of what we were talking about above is the basics of making an exposure. We've learned how your camera determines the exposure it will use on automatic. SO now, let's use that knowledge. If you know that you want your child sitting in the window to be properly exposed and you want the window to be bright, then walk up to your child's face and fill most of the frame with it, push your shutter button halfway down and HOLD IT! This will lock what your camera is seeing as middle gray. It is seeing your child's face this way. (Which is technically a little underexposed, but not THAT bad for a snapshot with a point and shoot) Now, back up and frame the picture as you would like to see it (again, keeping that button halfway pressed down.) Now, once you have the picture framed as you'd like it, press the shutter down the rest of the way. VOILA! Your image is now properly exposed! Or a lot closer, anyway. (What can I say? I'm an exposure purist. I can't call 36% gray 18% gray. ;) )

Would it work the same as the child against the blackboard? You bet. Pick what you want to be properly exposed and press that shutter button halfway down and reframe your shot and then press the shutter button the rest of the way.

Now that you know how your camera thinks, you'll be able to start looking at what might happen if your camera is thinking the whole scene needs to be 18% gray. Sometimes it will be perfect, and sometimes it won't, so that is where you can either lock your exposure, add some flash, or change your angle to the light.

Getting more out of a new SLR

So you've gotten a new SLR for Christmas? WOO!

Excellent choice!

But now, there are all of those knobs and buttons and dials...not to mention the meters. And everything is labeled with enough photography jargon to make your head spin. But! Do not despair! I have a pretty simple tip that can get you making more creative exposures pretty quickly and painlessly.

But first off, a jargon moment. No, no, not to add to the confusion, but to clear some up.

I remember when I first started wondering about photography. I started Googling and reading and I kept coming across terms like shutter speed, ISO and aperture. Now, I kind of got what ISO was. Because when I bought film (yes, I am old) I chose which ISO I wanted. It was how sensitive the film (and now the sensor) is to light. Ok. Shutter speed seemed pretty self-explanatory. How fast the shutter clicked. I figured the faster it clicked, the less light came into the camera. (There's more to it for both of these than I am getting into, but we can talk about those in another post, right?)

But gosh, what on EARTH was APERTURE??

Well, I am here to clear up that mystery, and then tell you how your newly-acquired knowledge of aperture can immediately help make your photos more WOW!

So inside your lens, there are blades and they can open wide to let more light in, or close down tightly to let less light in. Obviously this will affect how bright or dark your picture will be, right? It is like turning the faucet on full blast and letting a lot of water out, or just nudging it on and letting the water trickle out. Even if you leave the water on the same amount of time, you'll get a lot MORE water from the wide-open, full-blast faucet. And depending on what you're trying to do, both are viable options with pros and cons.

But, wait! There's more! Order now and you too can receive a free helping of DEPTH OF FIELD with your aperture!! Whoa, whoa...depth of WHAT? More jargon.

Have you ever seen a portrait where the subject is in beautiful, crisp focus, but the background is lovely and blurry? (If not,look at some of our stuff, we do it all the time.) It really draws the eye to the subject. But HOW? Well, the wider the opening of the lens (aperture), the smaller the area that will be in focus. So the subject will be in focus, but the background will be all out of focus. That's called Depth of Field.

Focus is sort of like a pane of glass. You set your focus, and you can imagine it makes a pane of glass that touches that area of focus. But the glass extends across the whole picture. Everything that also touches the glass will be in focus. So if you focused on the eye of the subject, but you have ANOTHER person whose eye is on that same plane, it will be in focus too! Or if there's a tree that is close to that person (think next to them, not in front or behind them), then it will be in focus. Bonus! And the wider the aperture, the thinner that glass is. Sometimes it can be RAZOR thin. Maybe the eyes will be in focus, but the ears will not be. And the smaller your aperture, the thicker the glass is. More people, further back and forward can be in focus too! It's better for group shots or landscape or architecture photography. But the background won't be as blurry.

Okey dokey! Sounds simple, right? Ok, here's the LAST tricky thing for this post. How do you know if your aperture is wide open? Or closed down and narrow? What do the numbers on the camera look like? This will sound strange but the WIDER the aperture, the smaller the number that your camera will display (f/1.8, f/2.8, f/3.5, etc.) the NARROWER the aperture, the bigger the number will be. (f/16, f/22, f/32.) I know, I know! I assumed that the WIDER aperture would be a BIGGER number. But here's why it is not. Remember those blades we talked about? They opened and closed to make the opening in the lens larger and smaller? Well, the f/number is measuring how much of THOSE are left! So, if they are dilated all way and the opening is huge, there will be almost nothing left. Maybe 1.8 mm? AHH! And if they are super closed tight and the hole is tiny, then the blades showing will be BIGGER, right? Yeah, maybe even 22 mm! ;) Oooh! We're cooking now!

So, how do we USE this information? Well, let's get your SLR off of the program mode! Change your aperture into AV (Canon) or AP (Nikon) mode. Aperture-priority baby! Now, making sure you have enough light, change your desired aperture. Try it smaller. Maybe even 3.5! Focus on your subject's eye (assuming it's your child or a person) and shoot. Look how blurry the background is! Woo! The camera will decide what to set the shutter to, in order to make a decent exposure. But you'll have taken some of the control in making a good picture. Try it! It's fun. It's also the first step towards taking manual control of your camera, which let's you really get the most out of an SLR purchase.

I know this post was long, but getting into the more creative modes on your camera will be worth it!

Our WINNER

#4!


I am so so sorry that we had to change the contest location due to the apparent rule change on FB.

Thanks for you support.

Please contact me us at rachelrenee1@gmail.com to get your free set!

The contest continues...

Sorry for the abrupt change of venue, but we just learned of the rule change on Facebook regarding contests that they issued on the 1st of this month. Sorry for the switch midstream, but we want to be sure we are abiding by the rules.

I will post the entries below, along with a number. Please vote by posting the number you are voting for. Please, only one vote per person allowed.

Thank you for your understanding. The prize will still be one single set (not an Everything set) of the winner's choice, either for themselves, or to give as a gift.

Enjoy and vote!

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2)3)

4)

5)

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8)

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What's YOUR recipe?

Ok, so here's the scoop on the new contest.

Post your before and after photo and in the comments or description post what steps you took to get there using Pure actions. We will select 10 to go on to the next round.

Those 10 will be up for voting. The pic with the most votes by Monday morning will win a free single action set (so anything but the Everything sets) to keep for their own or to give away as a gift.

Ready, set....POST!

Pure Action Set 2 WINNER

Oh my GOSH that was SO close. There were a ton of votes ALL around but it came down to a neck and neck race between Nicole Watts Photography and Synethia Rosa Photography. You can tell both ladies are AMAZING photographers.

But Nicole Watts edged ahead and won.

Congrats!



Here is the winning image and edit.

Check out Set 2, folks.

Hey, wanna be our friend?

We love friends. We love chatting.

Our blog is sort of slow, because...I guess we've been doing most of our chatting on Facebook. It's a quick way to have a fairly immediate conversation with our friends and customers. We have tutorials for our YouTube channel that we post there. (Click here for our YouTube channel.) We chat, we tell people about other blogs we are featured on or that are doing giveaways with our actions. And we chat. And chat. And chat. Oh and post pictures. And sometimes flat-out giveaways.

So I just thought I would mention that, so you could come over and check us out on Facebook, because it really is a ton of fun. Or so we think. (Don't burst our bubble if you don't think it is as fun as we do. ;) )

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