When is the golden hour?

The question should be when are the golden hours? The golden hours are the hours around sunset and sunrise when the sun is low in the sky. The best light normally lasts from around 10 mins before sun rise until 5o mins after and vice versa at sunset.

What makes the light so good?

When the sun is low in the sky it has a few characteristics that make it perfect for photography. It is softer and more diffuse, a bit like the difference between using an on camera flash vs professional studio lights. Shadows become more pronounced but less harsh than at mid day. This creates contrast in the image which the eyes love without having very bright spots which can’t be exposed properly. The hue of the light is warmer and this brings out the colours in landscapes or even peoples skin tones, hence the name golden hour.

What do I need to think about when shooting in the golden hours?

Plan ahead. You don’t want to miss the best light so look up on the Internet when your local sunrise/set times are and get to your location before that time. If you want to catch the morning light, which some people consider to be the best light, your going to need to set your alarm very early!

Careful with your composition. With the sun low in the sky it is much more likely to be in frame and although its not as bright as at mid day its still too bright to shot directly into. Move your feet to take advantage of the light with the sun at your back.

Keep shooting. The light changes very quickly through the hour. Keep taking shots and be aware of when the sun hits the horizon for some spectacular sunsets. Even when the sun is below the horizon the is some light to create wonderful details in the sky.

Take a tripod. Arround sunset the light is minimal so if you want to capture it at its best you will need some long exposures and for that you need a tripod to keep the camera steady.

Learn Photoshop. There are lots of effects that can only be accomplished if you know how to ‘develop’ your pictures. Multiples exposures, HDR, panoramas all work really well in golden hour light. (The shot above is from two exposures, one for the sun and sky, one for the land, shush, don’t tell anyone!)

So get out there and get shooting. And take a torch, it gets dark after the sun sets!

I came across a rocky outcrop while on the moors looking for landscapes to photograph. The is some interesting detail in the sky so I set up and take the first shot. It looks like this. The sky is blown out with no detail. Eeeuuugh.

So I increase my shutter speed and take a second shot. Hope fully this will reduce the exposure in the sky, keeping the detail that made the shot interesting. Oops, That didn’t work either. A bit less blown out but still not very nice.

So I increase the shutter speed again, reducing the exposure further. Success? Not quite. The sky looks better but now there is not detail in the shadows and a lot of the rocks are too dark. How frustrating.

So what is the simple solution? HDR? Multiple exposure blending? Complicated filters? Nope! None of these, Its even simpler than that. Move your feet. The problem in the shot above is not my settings, just that sky is simply too bright in comparison to the rocks. If you change your composition you can change the brightness in the shot and make the exposure more even. Here I simply spun through 180^o and caputred the shot in one easy exposure. The light from the sun at my back created lovely colours in the sky and deep shadows for contrast.

So next time you are struggling to expose correctly, move your feet.

Auto

Some times this is indicated by the word “Auto” sometimes a green square. What does it do? Exactly what it says on the tin. In this mode the camera will decide everything for you, the shutter speed and aperture, the ISO, whether to use the flash etc. All you need to do is aim and click. The camera will base its decisions on average conditions though so anything out of the ordinary may confuse the camera and you need to use another mode.

P – Program

Normally signified by a P. In this mode you are still using the cameras auto exposure calculations but you have more ability to override the camera choice. You can set the ISO yourself, decide on the correct metering mode, choose when to use the flash. You do not directly set the aperture and shutter speed, however if you are presented with anything but average conditions you can indirectly control the settings using exposure compensation or P shift mode (more on these at a later date as they are quite advanced).

A – Aperture Priority

(On Canon this is called Av mode, the awkward lot!) Here you have all the same control as P mode with one key extra setting to be controlled. The aperture value. You set the aperture based on the type of shot you want, shallow DoF then set a low number, landscapes then crank it up. The camera will do all of the rest for you, pick the shutter speed and ISO (if you let it). This a great mode for learning about aperture control (and the one I use for at least 60% of shots)

More info about the use of aperture here

S – Shutter Priority

(Tv on Canon – Even more awkward!) This is like A mode but instead of setting the aperture manually you set the shutter speed. Simple! Why? When you need to ensure the shutter speed is a certain speed to freeze motion, blur motion, stop camera shake etc you can use this mode. The camera will choose the aperture and ISO (again if you let it).

More info on the use of shutter speed here.

M – Manual mode

(Canon call this M as well which is nice of them) Here it is down to you. You need to set everything to get a correctly exposed photo. Aperture,  Shutter Speed, ISO, the whole triangle! Some people swear by it and never shoot in anything but manual, some people are scared of it, me I’m in the middle, M has its uses, but sometimes it just not that necessary. The key for me is that you need to know when the camera has got it wrong in the (semi) auto modes, that is when you move to manual. You need to be hot on your knowledge of the Exposure Triangle

Scene Modes

Lots of modern cameras have a multitude of scene modes, designed to help you get the right shot in certain situations. I don’t find much use for them as I know how to set the camera in either P, A, S or M to achieve the same effect but understanding what they do can be useful and a helpful fallback if you don’t know where to start. The key things these mode control are the white balance and other JPEG conversion settings if your not shooting RAW and some elements of exposure. Here are some of the more common modes:

Landscape mode

Favours smaller apertures to maximise DoF.  JPEG conversion favours blues and green and boosts saturation. May also switch WB to daylight.

Portrait Mode

Favours larger apertures to create nice blurry backgrounds. JPEG conversion favours skin tones.

Macro Mode

Very different in a DSLR to a P&S. In a DSLR it will favour medium apertures and vivid JPEGs. In a P&S it will allow closer focusing and create (slightly) more blurry backgrounds.

Sports Mode

Favours faster shutter speeds to freeze motion and turns on continuous shooting mode.

Night/Scenic Portrait

I find this the most useful scene mode as it is the hardest shot to set up manually. It is also a scenario that you often want snapshots without having to worry about manual settings. It will set the camera to slow sync flash to expose for the background but fire the flash to exposure your portrait.

There are loads of other scene modes on some cameras but we would be here all day of I tried to describe them here. As with everything the best way to work it all out is trial and error so get out there and shoot some pictures

Sorry for the lack of pics in this post, I’ll come back and add some when I find the time!

Peak District Landscape, Yorkshire, England

Taking the right photo

Not every photo will look great in black and white so there are a few things to consider when either taking a shot or picking which shots to do the B&W thing to. Look for strong compositional elements that don’t rely on colour to convey the story of the picture, contrast between light and dark is very important as well otherwise the photo may come out grey and dull. Experiment, it can’t hurt but if your B&Ws aren’t exciting you it may be the photos rather that the post processing that needs to be improved.

The wrong way to convert

Probably the easiest way to convert an image to greyscale is to reduce the saturation to zero (this is what will happen in your camera if you shoot straight to black and white), don’t do it. You will end up with dull photos lacking in drama, this is because all of the colours will be converted to the same amount of grey, regardless of their importance within the image. This is also why you should always shoot in colour and convert later.

The right way to do it – The tutorial bit

1. Pick a suitable suitable image and open it in the full editor within Photoshop Elements. If you shot in RAW then you will need to all of your normal adjustments but those relating to color such as white balance are less important than usual but I like to get a half decent colour version anyway as a base for what comes next. Duplicate you background layer and you should have something a bit like this.



2. Select the “convert to black and white” option via the Enhance menu or press Ctrl+Alt+B (cmd+opt+B on the Mac) to bring up the B&W dialogue box. Here you have various options for different types of black and white images and some sliders to play with.
   The sliders control the relative brightness applied to the different colour channels of the colour image. This gives you much more control over the final outcome of the B&W. The styles down the left are simply different presets for positions of the sliders and are the best place to start with your conversion, just flick through until you find the one you like the most. For this pic I chose Vivid Landscape.
3. You now have your black and white image which can be edited as you normally would a colour image. I have added some contrast using levels, darkend the sky to add drama and applied some sharpening to accentuate the detail in the shot. What you do will depend on your image but the beauty of Photoshop Elements is that you can easily do a bit of trial and error until you get what you like.
   

That’s it – Done

Simple wasn’t it, so get out there and try it. Try shooting with black and white in mind and you may get some spectacular results and just have a play around in PSE. Keep the original file to go back to if your screw it all up and in the end you might just get something you really like.

Snowy Tree, UK Snowstorms, Feb 2009

Free bundled software

I started of using the software that came with my camera, Olympus Master. However I quickly became frustrated by certain elements of the program and how it worked. Here are the main things that bugged me about it:

• It’s slow as hell. Doing any adjustments took time and converting a RAW to JPEG took over 60s and killed the rest of the computer while doing it.
• Lack of features, particularly for RAW development
• Ropey looking results (although this is probably user error!)
• Destructive work flow. Any edits made to pics are permanent so seeing the effect of what you have done is difficult.

So I decided to upgrade. I chose Photoshop Elements but why?

Photoshop Elements

Something to bear in mind is that Photoshop CS is the industry standard editing tool and therefore if you aspire to the best you should aspire to Photoshop, however it costs £600 ($700) so you need to be serious. First thing to do when choosing any software is to download the trail version to see if you can get along with it. I did that with Photoshop Elements (PSE) and this is what I found:

Things I like about Elements

• Adobe Camera RAW(ACR) – This is the RAW conversion program that is bundled with PSE. It uses the same RAW engine as Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop CS (the top of the range software packages) so produces excellent results, just with a few less features than in the full PS version.
• Layers – PSE editing software supports layers which a method of applying adjustments. Very useful for non-destructive regional pixel level editing. I.e. you can edit the sky separately to the land in photo and easily see the effect it has.
• The tools all work in the same way as Photoshop so all the tutorials on the web are easily used.
• Cost – Its costs about 10% of the full version of Photoshop

PSE is often call Photoshop for photographers. I estimate it has around 90% of the tools you get in full PS that are useful to your average amateur photographer. Of course the more and more your progress the more likely it will be that you will outgrow it and want full PS or Lightroom. However my rule with full Photoshop is “if you don’t know why you need it then you don’t need it”, stick with PSE.

Things I wish elements had

• Layer masks – This is a tool useful when using layers to edit a small part of a photo. They are not native to PSE but you can get them with a free plug in so not a huge issue.
• Curves – Curves are a tool that is fantastic for editing colour and contrast in an image. Again they are available as a free plug in but you can’t use them as an adjustment layer.
• The full version of ACR – Photoshop CS4 introduced a fantastic version of ACR that allows you to do all sorts of new tricks such as regional edits. It cuts down the amount or work you need to do in PS by a lot. However this will probably never be in PSE as Adobe has to maintain the benefits of spending £600

What next?

Well if you are struggling to get that zing out of your new camera or find you photos just lack a certain something then give editing software a go. Photoshop Elements is a great place to start (and no I don’t work for Adobe).

As you may have seen I have already posted one tutorial showing you how to do an editing trick – Out of Bounds. I’m going to start posting some more like that but a bit more useful rather than the trick things (although I might show a few more tricks!)

I’ll get round to showing you how to do it sooner or later.

What is exposure though?

The technicalities of exposure are rather convoluted and a bit mathsy, however the end result is that exposure refers to how bright or dark your photo is due to the amount of light that is recorded by your cameras sensor. A properly exposed photo should (normally) resemble the brightness of the original scene. A poorly exposed photo will either be too dark or too bright and may contain areas that are so dark or bright that they contain no detail (know as blown out). So how can we control the exposure of a photo? That is where the exposure triangle comes in.

What is the exposure triangle?

The exposure triangle is a useful way of describing the relationship between the three aspects of exposure. Each corner of the triangle represents one of the three variables, aperture, shutter speed and ISO. Adjusting just one of these will make the photo darker or brighter and will change the appearance of the photo based on what you have changed. E.g. using a longer shutter speed will introduce motion blur to your photo but also make the photo brighter (increased exposure) due to more light hitting the sensor. The easiest way to understand it is to see the picture.

So why is understanding the Triangle the end of auto mode?

The workings of the exposure triangle are all your camera’s ‘brain’ is using to achieve a correct exposure. Now that you know how it works you can take over and make the decisions for yourself. What can you do that your camera can’t? You can make creative decisions to get a better output, your photo. A few scenarios (it probably helps if you understand the affect of shutter speed, aperture and ISO before you read this so follow the links)

• You are at a wedding in a church, the light is dim. You have to hand hold your camera as you don’t have a tripod. Therefore you have set your shutter to 1/60s, the min you can hand hold at. You want a small aperture for a large depth of field to get the whole church in focus, you pick f/8. You take a photo and its too dark. Using the exposure triangle you can see than you can record more light by increasing your ISO. This will create more noise in your photo but you will still be able to achieve the DoF and sharp shot you require. If you decided the noise was too much you could use a larger aperture but this would cause less of the shot to be in focus.
• You are at a waterfall in the woods. You want to create silky smooth water with motion blur. You put your camera on the tripod, to reduce the amount of light entering the camera you use the smalled aperture f/22 and the lowest ISO, 100. Using the exposure triangle we can see the only way to let enough light into the camera is to use a longer shutter speed (which we want). This gives us a shutter speed of 1/2s, perfect for blurring the water.

What is all this I keep hearing about ‘stops’ then?

A stop is a term that photographers use to describe the amount of light, the exposure value. You can adjust the amount of light recorded using either of the corners of the exposure triangle. ISO 100 will record 1 stop less light than ISO 200, a shutter speed of 1/125 will record 1 stop more light than 1/250 and finally an aperture of f/5.6 will record one stop less light than f/4. Practically all this means is that you can achive the same brightness of photo with different combinations of settings

1/60, f/11, ISO 200 and 1/1000, f/2.8, ISO 200 will both achieve the same brightness of photo but the depth of field will be different.

What if I can’t change my settings?

If you need 1/60, f/2.8 and ISO 400 to achieve the photo you want but its just too dark you do have another option. Right at the centre of the triangle. Change the amount of light, the flash being the most frequent example of this. The other way you can use filters to reduce the light.

What next – try it out, take the camera out of Auto mode and see what happens. In future posts I will talk about the modes dial and exposure compensation as ways of putting the exposure triangle to use.

What is RAW?

RAW is a file format that your camera can use to save your photos, you have probably hear of JPEG which is probably the other format your camera can use. JPEG files have the extension .jpg but, confusingly, RAW files have different extensions set by your camera’s manufacturer. My Olympus creates .orf, Nikons .NEF and Canons .cr2. So how is a RAW file different from a JPEG? The RAW file is just that, raw data straight from the camera’s sensor where as a JPEG file has had all of the camera’s settings applied to it to process the image into a use-able format. The JPEG image has also been compressed to a smaller size by discarding some of the RAW data it no longer needs now the settings have been applied. The flow chart below is probably the easiest way to describe it.

So the RAW file is just a file containing the data straight from the cameras sensor and a JPEG has had all of the settings selected by the camera applied. What settings? Well things that decide how the final image will look such as contrast, saturation, sharpness, colour balance etc.

So what is the difference between shooting in RAW and JPEG?

There are lots of differences between the two formats and what you can do with the files when you have them, here is my take on just a few of them.

• File size – RAW files are much larger than JPEG files, about 4 times in fact. My 1o mp camera produces 10MB RAW files and 2.5MB JPEG files. That means I need four times as much memory on my camera’s memory cards and computers hard drive but memory is relatively cheap these days, a 2GB card can hold around 200 RAW files which is a lot.
• Continuous shooting speed – As RAW files are larger that JPEGs they take longer to record to your camera’s memory card, this either reduces the speed at which you can fire of a load of shots or reduces the number of shots you can take a the camera’s max speed. This may be an issue if you are shooting sports or wildlife but for most situations it wont be a problem.
• Editability – As RAW files contain all of the information from the camera’s sensor there is a lot more information available to make editing changes with out degrading  the image as you would with a JPEG where all of the edits have already been applied once by the camera at the time of shooting. (For all the techies out there RAW files are either 14 bit or 12 bit, JPEGs are only 8 bit). These setting can be applied on the computer using RAW converter software and different settings can be used based on each shot rather than the average settings applied by the camera.
• Compression – RAW files are not compress like JPEGs. The compression stage in creating a JPEG can degrade the image. If all you ever do is print at 6×4 or post low res images on line you may not notice but you will if you print large.
• Need for post processing – RAW files are not really image files, they are just the data from the camera’s sensor so they need to be processed into images before they can be used for anything such as printing or posting online. When shooting RAW this is just done in your computer rather than in the camera. It takes some time to do but you get to control the process in more detail. RAW files can be processed as a batch in you computer as well, creating JPEGs with the default settings but missing out the bit where you get to control the settings.

• Control Over Exposure – As a RAW file is just the RAW data from the camera you can do what you want with that data. One of those things is changing the exposure (brightness) of the photo after you have taken it. This is very useful in tricky light or just to rescue that shot that went wrong.

Which one should I pick?

Well that is entirely up to you and hopefully some of the info above has helped you understand how to make that choice, basically its a trade off between image quality and the ability to edit or rescue a photo after you have taken it versus the pain of large files, the slower shooting speeds and the time you need to take on the computer after shooting to “develop” the images.

I choose to shoot in RAW. Why? I don’t want to loose image quality, even though at 6×4 or online there isn’t any difference every so often I get a shot I want to print large and with RAW I don’t risk not being able to. I like to edit my images and it gives me less to worry about when shooting, instead of worrying about white balance I can concentrate on Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO and the composition of the shot. Shooting speed isn’t important with the type of images I shoot and I’ve got more than enough memory to save them all.

You may decide to do something different given the requirements of your photography and by all means choose to shoot JPEG if that is best, just do it in the knowledge that it is a trade off rather than that you don’t understand RAW yet.

If I didn’t shoot RAW then this shot would just not have been possible, the left is the developed RAW file, the right the JPEG with default settings. The difference is quite apparent.

ISO is often referred to when discussing the settings used to obtain a correct exposure but what is it, what affect does it have on your photos and when do you need to change it?

ISO actually stands for International Standards Organisation who are a group that define univeral standards in industry so that everybody is working from the same hymn sheet. What does this have to do with photography? Not a lot. The reason we use the term ISO is because the organisation defined the standard for the sensitivity of 35mm film called the ASA. Anyway enough of of pointless facts, what does it affect in my photographs.

Light Sensitivity

The ISO setting on your camera defines how sensitive it is to light. Normally ISO 100 is the least sensitive setting on your camera and as the ISO numbers double so does the light sensitivity setting of the sensor. 200 is twice as sensitive as 100, 400 half that of 800. “So what?” I here you ask. “What affect will this have on my photos?” Well as long as you maintain the same settings for aperture and shutter speed increasing the ISO setting will increase the exposure (brightness) of the photo you take and this can be very useful in certain situations.

Why don’t I just use the highest setting all of the time?

Good question, surely most sensitive is best. Well there is one big reason not to use max ISO (often 1600) all of the time. Noise – Noise is evil. It is a problem that occurs in digital cameras where some pixels in an image do not get recorded correctly and appear as speckles in a photo. You can noise in the images below taken at ISO 1600. The first image is a 100% crop of the smaller image and you can clearly see the noise speckles causing the photo to have a grainy effect.

100 % Crop

Full Image

Noise is worse at high ISO. To get all techy for a second this is because at high ISO settings the signal from the sensor is amplified more than at low ISO, this not only amplifies the signal but also the noise present in all electrical circuits, this noise then appears in the final image. Anyway the why is not that important, what is important is Noise = Bad, High ISO = More noise. Therefore we should always try to use the lowest ISO possible.

One of tha advantages of a DSLR over a compact is that they have less noise at high ISOs, but the still have noise as the image above, taken with my Olympus DSLR shows.

OK, so why don’t I just use the lowest setting all of the time?

Good idea, unfortunately some times it just not possible given all of the other constraints. Suppose we want to use a small aperture (large f number) to maximise the depth of field. The small aperture will decrease the amount of light let into the camera, if we don’t use a longer shutter speed the picture will be too dark. But suppose we want to hand hold the shot and the shutter speed is now too long. In this situation we can increase the ISO, useful isn’t it! Before I said noise = bad but is is better than not getting the shot.

Should I use Auto ISO?

If all the stuff above makes no sense to you then leave the ISO on Auto by all means, you will get the shot. However I like to leave it on the lowest setting in my camera, 100, and only increase it if it means I won’t get the shot.

Now go test it out. Fix the shutter speed and aperture and take a shoy each of your ISO settings, you should see them get progressively brighter.

The effect is called “Out of Bounds” or sometimes “3D Border Breakout”. First off you need to pick a suitable picture. Photos with a strong subject help, one that has some depth in the frame. Movement is also good but make sure your subject is sharp otherwise it won’t look great later on. There are a few different ways to get to the end product so this isn’t a definitive guide, it may not even be the easiest way but it works.

Create the Frame

Create a new blank layer above the background layer containing your photo. Using the rectangular marquee tool draw a rectangle over the image roughly where the frame is going to be.  Use the Fill Selection action (Edit>Fill Selection) to fill the square with the colour of your frame (I chose white). Your image will now have a white rectangle over your image. Without deselecting your original rectangle contract the selection by the width of your frame (Select>Modify>Contract), on the image above I used 60 pixels but each image will be different. Press delete to remove the centre of your rectangle, leaving you with a rectangular frame.

Distort the Frame

To give the frame the 3D effect with the frame layer selected use the distort or perspective adjustments (Image>Transform>Distort or Image>Transform >Perspective). Grab and move the corners of your frame until it is in the shape and position that you want. Its really just trail and error to get it right but think about which parts of the image will be “Out of Bounds” when you do.

Create the Background

Create a new blank layer above the background but below the frame layer. Using the gradient tool to fill this layer with a transition between two colours. I have used two pastel shades of green, one slightly darker than the other, shades of grey also work well. It also looks more natural if you create the gradient diagonally. You should now just have your frame on your background with none of your photo visible.

Put the Picture in the Frame

Duplicate the background layer, position it on top of the frame layer and create a layer mask for this layer. To use a layer mask in PSE position a levels layer below the layer to be masked and group the two layers (ctrl + G), you can then “borrow” the levels layers mask for the photo layer. Now fill this layer mask with black to mask the whole layer. With the frame layer active use the Magic Wand tool to click inside the frame, selecting the area inside your frame. Now reactivate your layer mask on the photo layer and fill your selection with white. This will reveal the portion of the image in the frame. Like so…

Create the Out of Bounds Bit

This is the clever bit! (Its really simple actually but shush, don’t tell anyone.) All you need to do is paint white on the layer mask you just created to reveal the image below. I normally create the correct shape using a combination of the Brush tool or the Quick Selection tool. In this image I used a soft brush on the water to create the feather into the background and the Quick Selection tool on the cliffs to create the hard cut out. Play around a bit until to get the correct bits poking out of the frame.

Create the Frame’s Shadow

Create a new blank layer above the solid back drop layer but below the frame and change the blending mode to multiply. Again using the magic wand tool select the area of the frame, right up to the outside edge this time. With the new blank layer active fill the selection with black. Now move this layer slightly so the black pokes out beyond the frame in the position of the shadow. It will look a bit “solid” so you need to blur this layer. With the slayer selected create a Gaussian Blur (Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur), you will need to play with the slider until the blur creates a natural shadow look. You can also reduce the opacity of the layer to make the shadow less harsh, its just a case of trial and error. If the OOB portions of your image also needs a shadow you can paint this onto the shadow layer before you get to the Gaussian Blur stage using the Brush tool.

That’s it. Once you are finished your layers pallet should look something like this. (I have also added some text layers so “sign” the image.)

Leaving you with the final image.

Have a go, I’m sure you will love it.

Here are a few more I have done but they aren’t as good. The pool one is an example of why the subject needs to be sharp and neither have a gradient on the background which just doesn’t look as good.