Blogz – Page 2 – Focus On Ottawa

January 9, 2011

ISO Illustrated (or How I Learned To Not Fear The Noise)

Back in film days there were two things you could change on the fly to adjust your exposure, you could change the shutter speed, which determines how long you let light expose on the film, and the aperture size, which determines how much light is let in at one time and then hits the film.

Films had different sensitivities to light, also called “ISO” (or “ASA”). For argument sake, I’ll state that changing the ISO on film cameras was not something you could do “on the fly”.

Then along came digital cameras, and they also had the concept of ISO, which was a simulation of film sensitivity via how sensitive the sensor of the camera was to light.

As a photographer you may be used to changing the aperture and shutter speed to get the proper exposure. But what if you are shooting in a low light situation, you have your aperture wide open (say f2.8), and to get a proper exposure, you are shooting at 1/15 of a second. You’ll find that as things move, including the natural shake of your hand, the pictures come out blurry.

So instead of shooting at 1/15 of a second, you can bump your ISO from the default of 100 or 200, to a higher number, like 400, 800, or 1600, etc., and speed up your exposure to something more manageable, such as 1/60 of a second.

Every “doubling” of the ISO value doubles the brightness of the image, which is one “stop” brighter.

So for example if you are shooting at a fixed aperture of 2.8, and shooting at 1/60sec (a decent speed for hand holding your camera and not getting blur, most of the time), then increasing your ISO from 200 to 400 doubles the brightness of your image; and ISO 800 is twice as bright as ISO 400, etc., etc.

To summarize using an example, you are shooting indoors at a concert, and you can’t go any wider on your aperture (let’s say your lens goes to 2.8, and you are set to 2.8), and your shutter speed can’t go any slower without your hand shaking blurring the exposure, and your photos are coming out too dark, then your only option is to bump up the ISO.

The downside of bumping up the ISO is that you introduce noise. Noise is seen similar to grain in film cameras, but I would say it’s not as pleasant.

Fortunately today’s modern DSLRs are pretty good at keeping down the noise. The better the DSLR (usually meaning more $$), the better it is at handling noise.

I shoot with a Nikon D90 and a Nikon D40x. The Nikon D90 is fabulous at higher ISOs. I can shoot at ISO 800 reliably with little noise, and can shoot up to ISO 6400. ISO 1600 – 3200 has a fair bit of noise, but the pictures are still usable, particularly if you use a noise reduction software (such as Adobe Lightroom or Nik DeNoise), or convert to black and white. If you convert to black and white, the noise looks more like film grain.

Pro cameras such as the Nikon D700 and D3 handle noise even better. That’s why you pay the big bucks.

My D40x is an entry level DSLR, and the noise is pretty bad at ISOs higher than 400.

Here are some sample images of the D90 shooting in minimal lighting conditions. I shot by an LED light, shooting in manual mode at aperture f1.8 and shutter speed 1/250s. Each photograph represents one stop of ISO sensitivity. You’ll see that the photos start pretty dark, and as the ISO increases, the brightness of the photo increases, along with noise levels (look in the dark areas and within the solid colour areas for weird patterns of incorrect colour), and loss of detail. I think up to ISO 800 is very good, and ISO 1600 to maybe even 3200 is usable. Note I haven’t run any noise reduction software on these photos – when I say “usable” at 1600, I mean after cleaning up with noise reduction.

You’ll see that if I wanted a fast shutter speed to freeze action (1/250s), and I have my aperture at it’s widest (f1.8), that ISO 200 is just too dark. If I don’t have the option of slowing down my shutter, I can increase my ISO to a brighter image. ISO 200 is too dark, and I’d say ISO 6400 is getting too bright. ISO 800 and 1600 is about right, with acceptable levels of noise to work with.

Please let me know if you have any comments or questions. If you want to share links with the ISO experiments from your DSLR (read: Canon users), I would love to see the results. Just take a picture of the same object in manual mode in reasonably low light, with a fixed shutter speed and aperture, while increasing the ISO by doubling it each time.

Click on the image to zoom in to see the detail and noise. (Click on the image again to zoom in).

January 3, 2011

Lightroom 3 and my workflow

I do most of my “darkroom” workflow with Adobe Lightroom (version 3). Adobe Lightroom is a very powerful and cost effective application that manages your photo library (think database), and also has very effective photo editing capabilities.

Let me break down the application into it’s five modules, and I will also quickly describe my workflow with Lightroom. The five modules are: Library, Develop, Slideshow, Web, Print.

My workflow always starts with Import to Library, Library workflow, Develop workflow, and optionally Web or Print functions.

Library

If you don’t use any software to manage your pictures, and you take as many pictures as I do, relying on your Operating System to find pictures is not an option. For example, let’s say I want to find all the pictures of my son, or all the pictures of people that I like enough to put into my portfolio. With thousands of pictures on your computer, browsing folder by folder would be daunting.

Lightroom manages your files both at the Operating System level (file system), and at a logical level via Collections. Let me illustrate. After taking pictures, I put my SD memory card into my computer (via card reader). I then go to Lightroom’s Import Dialog. The dialog allows me to tell it where to put the files, auto naming it by date if I desire (I do), and allow me to quickly choose development presets and keywords.

Keywords are key to finding pictures again, as you can search by keyword (eg. “River”, “Model”, “Daughter”, “Sunset”), and you can even create smart collections based on keywords.

In the Library module, you can see a tree view of your computer’s folders and images; you also see the Collections, which are the logical folders you create. A photo can be a part of one or more collections, and collections can be “smart” – i.e. find photos based on criteria you provide it.

In my workflow, I have a Collection set called “Complete”, and a Collection set called “Work in progress”. These “sets” contain my collections. (Collections can be hierarchical, like folders in your computer file system).

When I add a large quantity of photos, I will create a collection under the “Work In Progress” set. Within that collection, I will make a sub collection called “picks”, which will contain all of the pictures I have flagged to indicate that I like them.

I then go through the pictures I like, and choose my favourites amongst the ones that are similar (or near identical). These go into my “selects” sub collection.

I then start developing the “selects”.

The keys to the Library module are the different representation of your photo storage: physical (file system) versus logical (collecti0ns, collection sets and smart collections).

The Library module manages your metadata (keywords and camera settings). It also allows you to tag images by colour flag, by rating (1 to 5), or by “pick” or “reject”. I mostly use “pick” or “reject” to sort through my images, and I use the colour flags to indicate “processed” and “exported” (e.g. to web).

Develop

The develop module allows you to do common photo development and correction, such as converting to black and white, fixing colours and exposure, minor blemish touch up, etc. This description definitely understates how powerful the develop module is; however for advanced editing, such as the need of a “clone brush” for certain photos, or if layers are required, another photo editor, such as Photoshop, is required. Lightroom integrates with Photoshop naturally.

In my workflow, for serious editing, I export photos to Photoshop Elements. Once I am finished editing in Elements, I will re-import the adjusted image back into Lightroom.

Other external editors that I export to from Lightroom include Photomatix, for HDR images (merging 3 images of different exposures), and Topaz plug-ins. I’ve discussed Photomatix in a previous post. Topaz plug-ins are very powerful plugins that provide “filter” effects, such as detail enhancement, colour modifications, and noise reduction. Oh did I mention that Lightroom 3 has superb noise reduction capability too?

Lightroom allows you to specify external editors, and being able to open a photo for editing in other editors right from the Lightroom interface is invaluable to my workflow.

Slideshow

The slideshow module allows you to create slideshows of your pictures. I don’t use this much, but it’s a cool feature should I ever want a slideshow. 😀

Web

This module allows you to publish photos to your website for your portfolio or for customers. This is so easy and powerful, you have to see it to believe it. There are a few templates you can choose from, and Lightroom will automatically create the webpage and upload it to your website (provided you give it the right login information).

There are other great web templates you can download for free and for purchase. I personally like the templates from the Turning Gate (http://theturninggate.net/)

Print

The print module is a powerful print engine that allows you to layout and print (with many options) your photos. Since I mostly outsource my printing, this module is rarely used in my workflow.

Exporting

While this isn’t a module per se, exporting is a huge part of my workflow. With many available plugins available for Lightroom, I can easily export photos to Flickr (a photo sharing site) or Facebook, with my favourite settings remembered. You can see many of the images I have exported from Lightroom in my Flickr stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/focusonottawa/.

November 3, 2010

Nik HDR Efex vs. Photomatix Pro 4

Originally uploaded by Tukay Canuck

HDRSoft’s Photomatix Pro has been the undisputed leader for HDR processing for years. Now Nik Software, which produces amazing filters for Photoshop, has released HDR Efex. I am a Photomatix user, and recently gave the Color Efex demo a whirl. I also recently upgraded from Photomatix release 3 to release 4.

These two images were created with what I considered my favourite presets from each of the applications.
I definitely like the presets available in HDR Efex better than Photomatix (and there’s more of them).

I’m sure you can get a picture of similar quality (saturation, tone and contrast) in Photomatix as you can in HDR Efex using the sliders, but the bottom line is – which of the two improves your workflow?

Photomatix Pro has 12 presets to choose from. These are divided in 3 methods of HDR tone mapping: enhancer, compressor, and fusion. The ability to see previews of the presets is a new feature in version 4.

The Nik Color Efex has over 30 presets, which are more than just HDR settings, but add effects like gradients, vignetting, and tonal contrast. Since these are things that I will typically add post-Photomatix in my workflow, this is a significant workflow improvement.

One key difference between Photomatix version 3 and 4 is the addition of (semi) manual ghosting handling. What version 4 does is allow you to circle parts of the image that have ghosting problems, and it will focus on those components. Nik Color Efex has ghosting handling too, but it only offers automatic.

I haven’t put ghosting handling to the test in these versions, but this blog has a great comparison of the different versions and how they handle ghosting, and clearly Photomatix handles ghosting better.

When I shoot, I try to avoid situations that lead to ghosting (i.e. people walking, animals, wind blowing vegetation, etc), so fixing ghosting is usually a non-issue.

In my personal opinion, although I’ve only just started playing with the HDR Efex demo, and I’ve just only started using Photomatix version 4 (having recently upgraded from 3), I prefer the output from HDR Efex. I’m not sure if I like the difference enough to warrant shelling out US$150, as I do own the less expensive and still very powerful Photomatix Pro, but it is tempting.

September 13, 2010

“What a nice, sunny day for taking pictures”

One of the biggest misconceptions I hear from people is that a nice sunny day is a good time to take pictures. Wrong.

The sun is a harsh light source. It creates harsh shadows that are not flattering on even the most beautiful of us.

One of the best times to take photos is when it’s cloudy out. Clouds act as a giant diffuser, casting soft light on your subject and removing the harsh contrast of shadows.

Direct sunlight can lead to harsh unflattering shadows

So let’s say you know that the sun is bad, so let’s move the subject under the shadow of trees. Wrong! Unless the trees cast an absolute shadow on your subject, any light shining through the leaves creates nasty distracting contrast.

Shadow from trees looks better than direct light, but light shining through the trees is distracting

If there isn’t a cloud in the sky, you have more options.

1) Shoot with the sun at the subject’s back, and add a bit of flash or reflector to light up their face. The sun will act as a hairlight, and the reflector or flash should add a hint of light to fill in the shadows and bring out the subject’s features. You can place the subject between the camera and the sun, so you don’t get flare from the sun, and the sun casts a nice halo behind your subject.

2) Shoot the subject in perfect shade. Even if it seems dark relative to in direct sunlight, it’s probably bright enough for your camera. If not, add a bit of flash.

3) Add a diffusion panel between the sun and your subject. This is a semi-transparent material (even a bed sheet will work). This is a bit harder because you will need 1-2 assistants to hold the panel, and if it’s windy, good luck. But the results are like shooting in a cloudy day or having a giant softbox.

Shooting with the sun behind the subject looks best, with flash or reflector to fill in the shadows

I also prefer to shoot in the morning or evening, when the sun isn’t directly overhead. Overhead sun is the harshest, and can leave shadows in the subject’s eye sockets. A reflector or flash fill will help, but getting good results at noon is a tricky proposition. Evening sun at sunset casts a warmer light, and looks better.

September 8, 2010

Need your help!

Focus on Ottawa needs your help! It will not cost you a dime though, and it will not take much of your time.

Focus on Ottawa is looking for a new logo. We have started a contest for graphic artists to submit logos for consideration. Now we need your help to decide which one to choose.

Take a look at the submissions at the following website:

http://www.crowdspring.com/project/2287769_photography-company-simple-logo/

Please vote on your favourite by indicating the artist name and a brief description – unfortunately the submissions are not indexed in any way.

You can let me know via comment here, via tweet at @tukaycanuck, or email at information@focusonottawa.com, or our Facebook page.

The deadline is in a couple of days. Thanks for your assistance!

September 4, 2010

The best camera…

Humid

Originally uploaded by Tukay Canuck

World renowned photographer Chase Jarvis says “The best camera is the one you have with you.”

My camera was in the shop for repairs, and I saw this flower. I could have kept walking past it, resigning to the fact that I didn’t have my good SLR camera with me. But instead I took this picture with my phone (iphone). And I think it turned out pretty good.

Most people have cameras on their phones, which means most people always have a camera with them. So if you see something interesting and you don’t happen to have your SLR with you, don’t give up. You could have a top end super camera, but if you come across something rare and extraordinary, the best camera isn’t your top end camera, it’s the one you have with you.

July 1, 2010

Lens compression (Perspective Distortion)

Lens compression is a peculiar effect that occurs when you change the focal length of the lens.

There are two effects of changing your focal length (either by zooming in and out with your telephoto, and/or changing to a different lens size on your SLR camera).

The first effect is the potential distortion of your subject at a small focal length, such as at 16mm, or a flattering perspective at a larger focal length (such as at 200mm).

The second effect is the relative size of background objects in relation to your subject.

Let’s take a look at these two effects in an example.

When you look at these images, if you haven’t seen this effect before, it can be quite astonishing. There’s no trickery here – we didn’t move the trees or the model or the vehicles in the background. This is all done by changing the focal length of the lens and repositioning the camera either further or closer to the subject (the model).

In the first image, note how flattering the capture of the model is. There is no distortion of the appearance of her body.

Also note how close the black truck and the background tree appear to be in relation to the foreground tree and model.

Continue reading “Lens compression (Perspective Distortion)”

May 20, 2010

DIY: Do-it-yourself Beauty Dish

Let’s face it, photography equipment is expensive. A beauty dish, which is just a reflector that wraps around your studio strobe, can cost you up to $1000. Take a look at some of the prices here.

A beauty dish casts a harsh(er), direct light onto the subject. But since the light is reflected outwards, it makes a larger light source. And since there is a go-between that blocks the light from coming directly from the bulb, the light is not as harsh as a bare strobe or a strobe with a reflector.

Short definition: basically a beauty dish is harsher than a softbox, but softer than a bare light.

So if you want to experiment with different light modifiers, but don’t want to mortgage your house, why not build your own?

Now professional beauty dishes are typically bigger, and they are engineered to evenly distribute the light from the small reflector into the larger dish, but we’re just playing around here – this is good enough for us to play with, unless you are shooting for a high end glamor magazine (IMHO).

I purchased the metal bowls at Wal-mart, in a box of 5 mixing bowls for under CDN$13. A great bargain!

Note I am building this for my cheapy Cowboy Studio strobe. I wouldn’t recommend jamming this DIY beauty dish on an Elinchrom or Prophoto strobe – it does scuff it up a bit.

Items needed

34cm metal bowl

16cm metal bowl

3.5 inch, 1/4 machine screws x 3

1/4 hex nuts x9

Black spray paint (optional)

Equipment needed

Dremel tool for cutting and cleaning

Metal cutters

Screwdriver

Pliers

Marker

Protection glasses!

Work gloves!

Step 1:

Take your 34 cm metal bowl, place your studio strobe on the bowl. Center the strobe.

Using your marker, draw where you need to cut the bowl to fit the studio strobe through.

Step 2:

Use your Dremel tool with a cut-off disk to make a triangular incision in the middle of the bowl.

Step 3:

Use your metal cutters to work out from the incision, to cut around the circle you drew for the diameter of your strobe.

Step 4:

Use the cleaning tool and/or sanding tool to smooth out the inside cut in the bowl. You don’t want any sharp bits that could cut you.

Step 5:

You now have a bowl with a nice clean circle in the center. Congratulations! You won’t be mixing any salad in this bowl anymore.

Step 6:

Test fit the bowl around your studio strobe. You may have to widen the hole a bit if you cut too conservatively.

Hopefully you didn’t make it too loose. (You can use a speedring from a softbox if you made it too loose, but let’s hope it doesn’t come to that).

Hold the small bowl in front of the light so you can see what the end result will look like.

You can move the bowl forward and backward to see the optimum position of the small bowl for the most even light distribution.

Step 7:

Mark where you will be drilling to place the machine screws on the big bowl.

Put the holes at equal distance near the center – but don’t put it too close

to the center where you might break the edge.

Do the same to the small bowl – but again – not too close to the edge.

Step 8:

Drill your holes. Make sure you are wearing your saftety goggles! Metal will fly everywhere.

Note I didn’t really drill on the ground, this is just for demonstration purposes.

Step 9:

Drill your holes on the small bowl too. Use a workbench, not the ground!

Step 10 (optional):

Spray paint the outside of the small bowl to make it look professional-like. Make sure none of the paint goes on the concave part of the

bowl, because that side needs to reflect. (You can use the Dremel polisher if some paint does get on the reflective side).

I used Tremclad glossy black spray paint.

Step 11 (optional):

Use masking tape to cover the big and small holes on the big bowl, and spray paint the rear of this bowl too.

Step 12:

Feed the 3 machine screws through the small bowl.

Step 13:

Put two hex nuts on each screw. One hex goes on the opposite

side to the machine screw head (against the small bowl) to keep it from sliding. The other hex will be pressed against the

large bowl to prevent sliding.

Feed the machine screws into the large bowl. This might require some “persuasion”- i.e. brute force.

Step 14:

Secure the machine screws with hex nuts on the outside of the large bowl, then tighten the “inside” hex nuts against each

bowl to properly position and secure the small bowl. Again, refer to figure for Step 13 for this.

Step 15:

Attach your dish to your strobe head – hopefully it should just slide on with a snug fit.

Turn on your modeling light and bask in your success.

Some sample pictures taken with the beauty dish will be forthcoming.

Continue reading “DIY: Do-it-yourself Beauty Dish”

May 10, 2010

Posing help

If you are an aspiring model, you should check out this link. It has great tips on posing, and other things you should concern yourself with when modeling.

This is also a great resource if you are a photographer learning to pose models.

May 7, 2010

Vibration Reduction / Image Stabilization

No VR versus VR

Originally uploaded by Tukay Canuck

If you’re shopping for a lens, you may want to consider vibration reduction (on Nikons) or image stabilization (on Canons). These are marketed as “VR” and “IS” on the lens model name. Other brands have this technology too, and may have different marketing terms.

Image stabilization is a technology that stabilizes the lens even if your hand is shaking (your hand shakes – trust me). This allows you to shoot at slower shutter speeds and still get sharper images.

As a rule of thumb, you should shoot at 1/ (without using image stabilization). So if you are shooting with a 50mm lens, you shouldn’t shoot any slower than 1/50 of a second. If you are shooting with a 200mm lens, you shouldn’t shoot any slower than 1/200 of a second.

This is a rule of thumb, but you may be able to hold your camera more sturdier than the average person, and may be able to operate at slower shutter speeds.

Without image stabilization, if you are shooting at slower speeds than you can hold and keep the camera stable, then you will need to lower your f-stop (increase the aperture size), or boost your ISO.

Lowering the f-stop is a good option, as this will allow you to use a faster shutter speed. But if you are at your widest aperture (in this example, I’m at f2.8, which is as wide as this lens goes), then you are stuck.

Boosting the ISO is an option; this will also allow you to use a faster shutter speed while keeping the same f-stop. Boosting the ISO however introduces noise into the picture, and this may be undesirable. The more you have to boost your ISO to get the optimal shutter speed, the more noise you get. If it’s very low light, you may get a lot of noise due to a high ISO.

Vibration reduction/image stabilization introduces a new option – you can shoot at a slower shutter speed while keeping your f-stop the same and without having to increase your ISO as much (or not have to increase it at all).

In the example provided, I shot the freezer at f2.8, 70mm at 1/3 of a second, at ISO 200. Using my rule of thumb, I would need to quicken my shutter to 1/70s to get a sharp picture. Since I’m at the lowest f-stop number (2.8) that my lens will allow, I would have to increase my ISO to get 1/70, and the picture would get noisier (if I didn’t have VR).

In the second image, I have VR enabled. Note that even though I am shooting much slower than I should be able to steadily hold, the picture still looks reasonably sharp.

This is the great value from VR.

(Note: anther option in addition to boosting the ISO or lowering the f-stop is to mount your camera on a tripod. This is sometimes a good option, but a tripod is not always convenient, and sometimes not allowed.)