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Some thoughts on improving your photography
Jan 22, 2019 01:41:30   #
RichardTaylor Loc: Sydney, Australia
 
This will mostly be technical.

Introduction.

Understanding light is a necessity to advancing your photography however to take complete advantage of the light you will need to be in control of your camera.
To do that you need to get it off auto exposure mode (A? or "the green box") and move into some of the other "creative modes" (Canon term).

There is a basic introduction to exposure, of mine, here on UHH

https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-573456-1.html

You will need to know what aperture, shutter speed, and ISO changes make to the image captured by the camera.
The above link will help with this.

You will also need to know how the in-camera metering system works so you know when it will be in error so you can make the appropriate corrections.
More to come on this.

You will alsneed to know how to read a photographic histogram, both for when shooting and post processing.
Here is a link a tutorial. It is off site.
https://digital-photography-school.com/how-to-read-and-use-histograms/

And here is an introduction, of mine, to available light on UHH.

https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-512965-1.html

Have your camera instruction book handy as it will tell you how to do things, and although maybe not why you would do it.

More to come.
.

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Jan 22, 2019 01:47:12   #
RichardTaylor Loc: Sydney, Australia
 
Camera shooting modes.

A lot of cameras are capable of shooting in different exposure modes.

Some of these may be:

Auto: Whee the camera automatically optimizes settings for the current scene.
The good
It is simple to use and may meet your needs for some subject and in "straight forward" lighting, (sunshine from behind your back etc). See example #1
File sizes can be small which means more pics on memory cards and possibly allows images to be viewed by other people without extra hardware or software.
The not so good.
THe photographer has very little input to the photograph, except framing the picture and when to press the shutter button.
Information may be discarded when creating the small file sizes (.jpg files).
Tricky lighting (example #2) may fool the in-camera metering system (more to come on this).
The camera deisgners have no idea of what you are trying to achieve.

As always check your camera manual - it may give some more options when shooting in Auto exposure mode (my Olympus M4/3 bodies do).

More to come (in about 12 hours or so) and feel free to contribute and/or ask questions.
.

#1 Straight forward subject and lighting
#1 Straight forward subject and lighting...
(Download)

#2 Tricky lighting, shooting into the sun, and a fast enough shutter speed (1/400) to freeze the spray.
#2 Tricky lighting, shooting into the sun, and a f...
(Download)

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Jan 22, 2019 02:46:16   #
User ID
 
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Jan 22, 2019 05:30:00   #
RichardTaylor Loc: Sydney, Australia
 
User ID wrote:
`


Your image???
or somebody's else???
Reported

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Jan 22, 2019 06:22:37   #
martinfisherphoto Loc: Lake Placid Florida
 
In second photo your camera was in Aperture Priority which means it at least chose the shutter speed if the ISO was fixed. In other words you let the camera do the thinking. How can this be a lesson in Tricky Lighting, you made No decisions.

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Jan 22, 2019 06:49:35   #
RichardTaylor Loc: Sydney, Australia
 
martinfisherphoto wrote:
In second photo your camera was in Aperture Priority which means it at least chose the shutter speed if the ISO was fixed. In other words you let the camera do the thinking. How can this be a lesson in Tricky Lighting, you made No decisions.


Thanks.
It was (and it has been a while) in aperture priority.
Shooting into the sun is almost always tricky.

I would have been happy with the shutter speed it chose.
The ISO would have been fixed, by me, as auto ISO is not real good in that older camera model.
Also there is sone exposure compensation (more to come on that by me)

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Jan 23, 2019 00:04:11   #
RichardTaylor Loc: Sydney, Australia
 
P or program mode.

In this exposure shooting mode you can start to take control of your camera.
The camera will select an exposure as it does in auto. However you can overide the choices the camera makes.

In the cameras I have used you can (at least):
Shift the aperture/shutter selected speed up or down (Program shift?)
Adjust the ISO
Correct the exposure set by the camera - expsure compensation (more to come on that)
You can shoot RAW files - for me this is the most important option as I now have a file with all the data the camera has captured. That give me a lot more control when post processing.
.. The downsides are much bigger file sizes and all images must now be post processed.

Example #3 is a vacation shot by a friendly waiter. I just handed him the camera in P mode and he took the photograph.
The original was under exposed (because of the bright lights?) however a 1/2 decent holiday memory could be recovered.
This was shot at the start of my digital photography experience, back in 2006, and my post processing skills, and photography skills have improved (along with beter software)

Canon EOS 350D Digital + 17.0-85.0 mm lens (image stabilised)
1/10 @ ƒ/4.0, ISO 800 F=17.0 mm
Flash (off, did not fire)

As always check your camera manual - it may give some more options when shooting in Program exposure mode (my Olympus M4/3 bodies do).

More to come and feel free to contribute and/or ask questions.

#3 Vacation snapshot
#3 Vacation snapshot...
(Download)

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