Archive for the ‘Tips and Techniques’ Category

You Don’t Need That Flash!, Proper Theme Park Photo Etiquette

Saturday, July 17th, 2010

With summer upon us a frequent activity of mine and I’m sure many others is visiting a theme or amusement park with family and friends. The wealth of colors, sights, people, shapes, and the occasional furry bear make theme parks an excellent venue for taking some really amazing photos. However, it is important to make sure that you’re using the right settings on your camera. Not only to make sure you get a great shot, but also to make sure that you do not disturb others around you who are trying to enjoy the ride!

The idea for this article came out of a trip I recently took to Walt Disney World in Orlando, FL. More specifically while riding one of my favorite attractions, Spaceship Earth, at EPCOT. You know Spaceship Earth it’s the one that people claim looks like a “big golf ball”. In actuality it is one of the world’s largest geodesic spheres. It is while riding this iconic attraction that an incident occurred that prompted me to write this post.

Spaceship Earth

Spaceship Earth at Night (f/16, 20s, ISO100)

In general, this particular blog post is aimed at anybody who will be visiting a theme park and taking photos in the near future.

However, more specifically this post is aimed at the gentleman of average-description who was sitting 4 cars behind me on June 30th, 2010 at precisely 1:34 PM in the afternoon who decided it would be a bright idea to continually use his flash approximately every 10 seconds while taking photos, thus ruining the ride for not only me, but the other 25 people around me who were all taking the “slow-moving journey through the history of civilization” that is Spaceship Earth!

I can only hope that this man is a reader of my blog, and if so, my friend, you’d better listen up because I’m talking directly to you on this one! *End of rant*

For those who don’t know, Spaceship Earth is what is known as a “dark ride”. These types of rides usually take place in some sort of a vehicle, which brings you past various scenes of a story, such as a haunted house. The key thing that some people don’t seem to fully understand is the “dark” concept.

These rides are meant to take place in the dark and often times have extremely low-light levels. Naturally, it is very difficult to take photographs under these conditions and have them come out. This, I assume, is why there are people who take photos in these “dark rides” with their flash on.

There is a better way. Let me show you some techniques that you can use on “dark rides”. Not only to help you take better photos, but also so that you’ll be able to take the photos you want without disturbing the other people around you who are also trying to enjoy the attraction.

There is also a third reason why you shouldn’t use flash on “dark rides”. This is because the photos will never look like what you see on the ride. The people who create these rides use special lighting, and projections to create all the effects that you see, and to give the scene an illusion of realism. When you take a photo your flash is so strong that often times it overpowers all of these special effects and you end up with a photo of a very fake looking mannequin.

Let me give you an example…at the very top of the Spaceship Earth ride is a beautiful projection of the planet Earth. Naturally, everyone loves to take a picture of it. And of course there is always one person who will ruin the scene with their flash.

What this person doesn’t understand is that they just took a photo of a big white nothing! You see the image of planet Earth on the ride is a digital projection, like when you watch a movie. So when you shoot your flash at it, it ends up being so bright that it drowns out the projector and all you get is a photo of a blank white screen.

Earth

Image of Earth (f/1.8, 1/10s, 1600 ISO)

Earth with Flash

Image of Earth taken with Flash

As you can see from the images above clearly the flash doesn’t work in this type of situation, and all you have done is upset the other riders around you. So how can we get a nice photo of the Earth projection or any other scene in a “dark ride”? The first step is to turn off the flash! Every camera has a way of doing this, usually you should look for this symbol on your camera. This is where you can change the flash setting on your camera to OFF .

Once you have your flash off, there are some other settings on your camera that need to be “tweaked”. You’ll want to increase your ISO. We’ve talked briefly about ISO before. ISO is the setting that controls how sensitive to light the sensor on your digital camera is. If you’re using a film camera the ISO is determined by the type of film you place in your camera. The higher the ISO that you use, the more sensitive it makes your camera to light an therefore makes it easier to take photos in low-light.

Great so let’s crank our ISO setting to full blast and take some “dark ride” photos. Wait just a minute, it’s not quite as simple as that. You see although increasing the ISO makes our cameras more sensitive to the light coming through the lens, it has a very detrimental side effect that we must take into account.

Increasing the ISO also increases the amount of noise in your photo. This means that if you set your ISO too high your photo will turn into a big grainy, noisy mess. What’s worse is you won’t realize this until you download the photos to your computer, because on your cameras tiny little screen everything looks sharp and clear.

Spaceship Earth Scene with ISO set too high

Fear not though, today’s modern digital cameras can usually use ISO settings as high as 1200-1800 without showing any noise at all. In addition, camera manufacturers are pushing the ISO envelope all the time, creating better and better sensors that can take high ISO’s without showing any noise at all. Just this year 2 of the major camera manufacturers came out with cameras whose maximum ISO settings are over 100,000!

Changing our ISO will allow us to take better photos without flash, but what other settings do we need to know about when taking photos on “dark rides”? As you know, in nearly all “dark rides” there is some sort of movement or vehicle that you travel in, this is the “ride” part of the “dark ride”. When you leave your camera on it’s automatic settings it wants to slow down your shutter speed so that it can allow the most light possible into your camera.

Your camera’s shutter speed controls how long the sensor or film in your camera is exposed to light. Slowing the shutter speed down will allow more light to enter your camera because the shutter is open for a longer period of time which makes for better photos. There’s only one problem, when you combine a slow shutter with the movement of a “dark ride”, you get blur. Basically your photos would be a big blurry mess if you simply used your camera’s automatic settings on a “dark ride”

In order to correct this, we must tell the camera which shutter speed we’d like it to use. This way we can pick one that’s slow enough to be able to take decent photos in low-light but still fast enough so that you don’t get any blur from the moving ride vehicle. To do this we must put the camera into Shutter-Priority Mode, or S-Mode. You should be aware that not all cameras have an S-Mode setting on them. For those that don’t you can usually use either a “Night Mode” setting or “Portrait Mode” setting on your camera. These modes limit how slow the shutter speed will get so you can prevent or eliminate blur.

For those of you with cameras that have a Shutter-Priority Mode I would recommend using a shutter speed of 1/15 – 1/30 of a second. I find that setting is usually sufficient to get a nicely exposed photo while eliminating blur. If you’re not sure what kind of settings your camera has, consult with your owner’s manual to see if it has an S-Mode setting, and to see what other exposure presets it may contain.

Some digital cameras today come with over 15 programmed exposure modes. With everything from a “beach” to a “fireworks” setting there should be one offered on your camera that will allow you to limit your shutter speed. For more information about S-Mode you can click here to view our previous blog post about it.

SSE Scene

Properly exposed scene without flash (ISO 1600, 1/10s, f/2.8)

As you can see from the above photo when you combine a high ISO with the proper shutter speed you can walk away with a great photo of any “dark ride” without using your flash, just as the designers intended the scene to look. And more importantly, without disturbing your fellow riders! So the next time you find yourself at Epcot, riding on Spaceship Earth, I beg you, please keep in mind what we’ve discussed here today. Not only will it help you take better photos, but as you can see Mr. average description gentleman sitting 4 cars behind me, I might just be the one who is on the receiving end of your flash bursts.

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The Sunny 16 Rule, It has nothing to do with a hippie teenager

Sunday, May 9th, 2010

Imagine if you will a beautiful sunny day. You’re walking along, have your camera of course, and come upon a beautiful place to snap a shot. You get all ready to shoot and then it hits you! Uh oh, you left your light meter at home! This is terrible, how are you going to set the proper exposure for your sunny day photo? In fact not only did you realize you left your light meter at home, you remember that it’s really the light meter you’ve only been thinking about buying, you don’t even own a light meter yet!

Fear not, it turns out there is a way that you can set a close to perfect exposure on a nice bright sunny day without a light meter. This is excellent news for those of you who left your light meters at home, or haven’t gotten around to buying one yet (you know who you are out there). Enter…the Sunny 16 rule! It’s not just a record title by Ben Folds.

The Sunny 16 rule can be used as a guide to set a near perfect exposure when shooting on a sunny day. Here’s how it works. First switch to Manual Exposure mode on your camera. Not sure about Manual Exposure Mode? Just check a few blog posts back for our series on Exposure Modes. Next set your aperture to f/16 (that’s the 16 part of the Sunny 16 rule for those of you who were curious). Then set your shutter speed to the nearest full stop reciprocal of your ISO (what did he just say, did he just curse me out?).

Relax, reciprocal simply means to take the inverse of your ISO setting. So if your ISO is set to 100, then the reciprocal is 1/100. If your ISO is set at 200 then the reciprocal is 1/200. Hang on a minute though, I did say the “nearest full stop” to the reciprocal right? This is true, there are many cameras that only let you set your shutter speed to full stop settings, 1/100 and 1/200 are not full stop settings so you may not be able to use those on your camera. This is why we use the nearest full stop to the reciprocal. So if your ISO is set to 100, the reciprocal is 1/100 and we would use a shutter speed of 1/125. This is because 1/125 is the nearest full stop to 1/100. If our ISO is set to 200, the reciprocal is 1/200 and we would use a shutter speed of 1/250 because that is the nearest full stop to 1/200. Here is a list to refresh your memory about the full stop values with regard to shutter speed.

Shutter Full Stop Values: 1s, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/15, 1/30, 1/60, 1/125, 1/250, 1/500, 1/1000, 1/2000

So what is ISO? ISO is basically a setting of how sensitive the sensor in your digital camera is to light, or how sensitive your film is to light. The difference between the 2 is that with a digital camera you can change your ISO with the touch of a button, in a film camera you actually have to put a new role of film in. Most digital cameras set the ISO automatically for you, and use ISO 100 or ISO 200 most of the time, of course it is possible for you to change this setting, and then you would take the reciprocal of whatever you currently have your ISO set to. As a rule of thumb though on a bright sunny day you would typically use a low ISO of about 100 or 200, this is because there is plenty of light around you so your sensor or film doesn’t need any extra sensitivity.

That’s all there is to it! So the next time you find yourself shooting on a bright sunny day and don’t want to drag that light meter out of the camera bag you can use the Sunny 16 rule to make sure you have perfect exposure almost every time. It’s May, the weather is beautiful, go put the rule into practice and shoot some bright sun scenes. As always feel free to post the results or comment.

Here is a photo using the Sunny 16 rule, as you can see a very nicely exposed photograph, ignore the funny looking guy on the Segway, he thought he was in the 3 o’clock parade.

Properly Exposed Photo Using the Sunny 16 Rule, f/16, 1/250, ISO 200

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Why is everyone a silhouette?

Sunday, April 25th, 2010

Properly exposed background, dark subject

Do your photos sometimes look like this?

There must be something wrong with your camera right? You were trying to take a nice photo in front of a sunlit scene and for some reason the background looked great, but the people are just way too dark. What happened? They didn’t look this way in real life. Perhaps they’re unlucky. Perhaps they walk around with a preverbal “dark cloud” above their head which always puts them in a shadow.

NO that’s not it, but how cool would that be to have your own cloud follow you around? The reason the people in your photo are dark silhouettes is because your camera did not pick the right exposure for that scene. First a little background(no pun intended)…

Just before snapping a photo your camera employs many many sensors to create the finished photo, including an exposure sensor. This sensor measures all of the light in the scene and computes an average amount of light in the scene you are about the photograph. Oh there’s one more thing you should know about most exposure sensors it has a bit of a handicap, it can only see in black and white.

Aww the poor thing…I know it’s a sad story, but that’s ok because the exposure sensor has learned to deal with it’s disability and it excels at picking the proper exposure for your scene, most of the time. You see the exposure sensor is programmed so that everything it sees in the photo will look like a middle gray.

Now what’s a middle gray, well it’s a gray that isn’t too white, or too black, it’s sort of in the middle :) Actually in terms of numbers middle gray for digital cameras is about 18% gray. It’s different for film. So when your camera’s exposure sensor averages all of the light coming into your scene it compares it to middle gray. Middle gray is your camera’s “happy place”. Your camera would love all photos to average out to middle gray.

In fact, that’s what it tries to do. When the average light in your scene is compared to middle gray the camera will choose an exposure that comes as close as possible to making the average light in your photo register as middle gray. This works very well in most situations. Plus several newer digital cameras have pre-defined exposure templates built-in which help your camera to nail the exposure correctly more times than not.

So then how did your people in front of the sun turn out to be dark silhouettes? Well when your camera “metered” the light in your scene it detected many bright areas, this is because you were shooting towards the sun. So imagine the photo as your exposure sensor sees it, in black and white. From the cameras point-of-view it is on average a very brightly lit scene. So the camera does what it’s programmed to do and compares this very bright scene to middle gray.

As you can see from the photo above, the few people in your scene are very dark compared to the rest of the brightly lit scene. So when the average light in the scene is compared to middle gray the camera says “the average light in this scene is much much brighter than middle gray, so I need to choose an exposure value which will darken the scene.” Hence, you get a lovely exposed sky and background, but dark silhouetted people.

A great choice if you were taking a photo of the bright background. However, you wanted the camera to set it’s exposure for those people in the scene, not the big bright background. So what can we do about it? Well your camera realizing that it’s only right about 80% has a feature that will allow you to fix this problem when taking your photo. Allow me to introduce….Exposure Compensation!

Almost all digital cameras and film cameras have an exposure compensation feature, sometimes known as “backlight compensation”. Just look for the universal symbol for exposure compensation . Exposure compensation allows you to adjust the camera’s exposure to suit your scene. In our case where our people are silhouetted we would increase the exposure by +1 or so which would properly expose for the people in the scene, but the background would tend to be a bit overexposed. This is acceptable since our main subjects are the people and not the background.

I know you guys though…you’re saying “Scott, why can’t I just move my subjects so that the sun is in front of them and not behind them, wouldn’t that work too?” Of course it would, but there are many times when exposure compensation needs to be employed, not just when the sun is behind your subject. How about taking photos of your kids in the snow? All of that white snow everywhere reflecting into your camera’s lens will cause the exposure sensor to underexpose your subjects just as if it was in bright sunlight. So we can employ exposure compensation to expose those kids properly.

Exposure compensation isn’t only for bright scenes, it works the other way as well.

What if you have a friend who enjoys boating on a lake, it can get pretty dark on there, especially towards the end of the day. Say you take a picture of him or her.

Here we have your friend against a dark blue lake background. When your cameras exposure sensor meters the light it’s going to average out as a very dark scene, much darker than middle gray. So what’s going to happen?

Your camera is going to choose an exposure that makes the whole scene brighter. This is fine if you’re goal is to shoot the lake, but you’re trying to shoot your friend, who is now very overexposed and washed out.

So what do we do to fix this? Drain the water and shoot them on sand!!! No, not quite, we can employ exposure compensation to fix our exposure but this time in the negative direction. Maybe -1. Now our friend is properly exposed. However, the lake is a bit dark now, this is acceptable though because your friend is the main subject of the scene.

So the next time you find your cameras exposure sensor is not seeing things as you see them, employ some exposure compensation and make your camera expose the scene as you want it to!

Feel free to leave comments and post some of your results.

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M-Mode, You’re on your own

Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

We’ve finally made it to the end of our 5-part series on exposure modes. We finish with the king of all creativity, Manual Mode. This is the mode that lets your knowledge of photography and creativity shine through. Manual Mode is the one where you basically tell the camera to “shut-up” and let you do the driving.

Are you in a dark room where the camera is telling you it’s too dark to make  a proper exposure? No problem, Manual Mode will let you take that photo. Do you want to take a photo with a very deep depth of field and also freeze the action, but don’t have enough light? Switch to Manual Mode, and give it a shot, you’re not paying for film!

Ok ok, so Manual Mode is not a magical cure for exposure problems, but it does allow you to go out of your camera’s, and possibly your, comfort zone to take some photos that the camera might not allow you to take while in one of the other exposure modes.

Let’s review a bit…we’ve already learned about the other 3 exposure modes..

Programmed Auto Mode (P-Mode) your camera does all the thinking. Aperture and shutter speed are set for you automatically.

Aperture Mode (A-Mode) you set the aperture and the camera determines the shutter speed for you.

Shutter Mode (S-Mode) does just the opposite, you set the shutter speed and the camera sets the aperture value.

By now I’m sure you have guessed that in Manual Mode (M-Mode) you’re flying solo. You’re responsible for  setting both the aperture and the shutter speed yourself. That’s a big responsibility! Are you ready for it? Can you handle it? I think you can.

Even if you don’t think you’re quite ready, I implore you to try Manual Mode. Nothing will teach you about exposure settings and the relationship between aperture value and shutter speed faster than being out there on your own making your own exposure settings.

Plus, if you make a mistake, you might it’s a part of life, because you’re shooting digital it costs you nothing to try, and it’ll be our little secret if it doesn’t turn out quite right the first time. If you’re shooting film however, you may want to borrow your friend’s digital camera to try it out. You’ll most likely be going through a lot of frames, plus the digital camera allows you to get instant feedback, instead of having to wait for the film to be developed to see what worked and what didn’t.

The toughest thing to shooting in Manual Mode is picking a starting point. When choosing your aperture and shutter speed where do you begin? It can be very overwhelming. Sometimes when shooting in Manual Mode professional photographers will use a light meter. A light meter is a hand-held device that measures the light in the scene around you and gives you values for what your aperture and shutter speed should be.

Now wait a minute…that sounds just like what your camera does when it is in P-Mode. Well you’re right, your camera has a built-in light meter which is how it determines the proper exposure values for the scene you are shooting. So what do you do when you’re new to Manual Mode and your light meter is in the shop? Put your camera in P-Mode and press the shutter down half-way.

This is going to give you an exposure reading. In P-Mode the camera will use it’s built-in light meter to “read” or “meter” the scene and tell you the aperture and shutter values that it comes up with. So now armed with this new information we can switch back to Manual Mode and plug in those values we just got from the camera’s built-in light meter. You now have an excellent starting point for setting up your shot in Manual Mode.

You know these values are going to give you a relatively decent exposure to begin with, so now you can start getting creative by varying either the aperture value or shutter speed to achieve your desired results. Want a shallower depth-of-field? Go ahead and dial in a larger aperture value, just keep in mind that you’ll need to adjust your shutter speed to keep your exposure well balanced.

A good rule-of-thumb to remember is that for every full stop of aperture value you increase or decrease you should also change your shutter speed by a full stop to maintain the same Exposure Value (EV). We learned about this a while back when we discussed reciprocity.

So for example, if our light meter (built-in or hand-held) chooses an aperture of f/8 and a shutter speed of 1/125 and we want a shallower depth-of-field. We can change our aperture value to f/4. That is a change of 2 full stops. So in order to keep the same Exposure Value (EV) we will need to raise our shutter speed by 2 full stops bringing us to a shutter speed of f/500.

This is because when we make our aperture value larger by a full stop we are letting in double the light. Since we changed our aperture from f/8 to f/4, 2 full stops, we are now letting in 4 times the light at f/4 than we did at f/8. So to compensate we use a faster shutter speed by 2 stops from 1/125 to 1/500. This causes 1/4 of the light to be let in at 1/500 than we had at 1/125 which cancels out the 4 times more light coming in from our aperture value.

How do I know that is 2 full stops you ask? Well I have included a chart at the end of this article that shows the full stop values for both aperture and shutter speed. Some high-end cameras will let you change your aperture or shutter speed in 1/2 or 1/3 stops as well, but all cameras will let you dial in full stop values.

Manual Mode also comes in very handy when shooting with flash, especially external flash. A full discussion on shooting with external flash is a topic for another blog post, but we’ll touch on it briefly. When shooting with an external flash the cameras light meter may not take this into account. Therefore it might choose a very slow shutter speed automatically for you because it is metering the available light in the scene. The light meter may not know that an external flash will be used. This is the perfect time for Manual Mode.

By shooting the scene in Manual Mode you are able to tell the camera that you would like to use a faster shutter speed. We know this still will result in a good exposure because the flash is going to provide quite a bit of light to our scene. Shooting in Manual Mode let’s you choose the shutter speed and also the aperture value that will work for your flash lit scene.

There are some people who are perfectly content taking all of their photos in P-Mode and letting the camera do all their thinking. Most of the time this yields decent photos. However, you cannot truly begin to explore the creative possibilities of photography or take your photos to the next level until you turn that dial and try shooting in one of the other 3 modes.

Maybe you feel Manual Mode is a bit too much for you to try right now, but Aperture Priority Mode or Shutter Priority Mode are just begging for you to give them a shot. They let you start taking control of the exposure in your photos without having to fly solo. And as with most things, there is no better way to fully understand your cameras exposure modes than to get out there and shoot as much as you can!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this multi-part series about exposure modes, even if the end was a long time coming. Feel free to ask questions, leave comments, and share your creative photos. Until next time.

Exposure Value Chart

Chart of full stop values and Exposure Values (EV), Courtesy of thecrosseyedbear on Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/thecrosseyedbear/2124175721/

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S-Mode, Freeze-frame!

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

I’d like to continue our series of discussions on exposure-modes. Yes, I know with the last installment over 6 months ago, it can’t really be called a continuation. Perhaps an extension, extended-leave, or vacation, whatever you’d like to call it we’re going to chat about our next semi-manual exposure mode, Shutter Priority Mode (S).

Shutter Priority Mode or S-Mode functions very similarly to Aperture Priority Mode or A-Mode, it just does it from another point of view. Shutter Priority Mode allows you to manually set the shutter speed of the camera, or how long the shutter will remain open when you take a photo. In Shutter Priority Mode the camera will automatically set the aperture for you based upon the shutter speed that you choose.

Shutter speed is measured in time (seconds). Usually very small parts of a second such as 1/500th of a second, or 1/1000th of a second for shooting in very bright conditions, such as high noon on a bright sunny day. Or in full seconds such as 1 second or 30 seconds for shooting in low-light conditions, such as indoors by candle-light.

The shorter the shutter remains open for, the faster the shutter speed. For example, a shutter speed of 1/250 means that I could take roughly 4 photos in the same amount of time than if I was using a shutter speed of 1 second. This is because at a shutter speed of 1/250 the shutter is open nearly 4 times shorter than if I was using a shutter speed of 1 second; hence we say that 1/250 is a faster shutter speed than 1s.

By using a faster shutter speed, the cameras shutter will be open for a shorter amount of time, which means less light will be allowed to hit your digital sensor, or film. This is why we use faster shutter speeds when we are shooting in bright conditions. When we use a slow shutter speed, the shutter remains open longer and therefore lets more light into the camera to hit your digital sensor or film.

Now I know what you must be thinking at this point…”Scott this is all very fine and good information, but if I wanted to change the amount of light that enters my camera I could’ve just used the Aperture Mode that I learned about 6 months ago and not have wasted my time with the last 4 paragraphs.”

It is true that aperture also controls the amount of light entering your camera by varying the size of the shutter, and you will recall from our earlier discussions that aperture size and shutter speed are linked together. So why would you want to change the shutter speed instead of the aperture?

Well just like varying your aperture controls your depth-of-field, shutter speed has a side-effect as well. Changing your shutter speed allows you to “freeze” the action in your photos. The faster the shutter speed the more “frozen” your subject will be.

Imagine if  you were trying to photograph your child in his or her first little league game. They are about to make the winning slide into home plate. By using a very fast shutter speed we would be able toshow the exact instant their body touches the plate, and it would be extremely sharp and in focus.

Some digital cameras that do not have a Shutter Priority Mode may have a “sports setting”. Using the “sports setting” will force your camera to take photos using a fast shutter speed, usually 1/500 of a second or greater. Just keep in mind that you’ll need bright sunlight in order to shoot at such a fast shutter speed.

Take a look at this photo of a car doing aerial stunts, caught in mid-jump. Shooting with a very fast shutter speed, 1/800 in this case allowed me to “freeze” the action of the car while making sure it retained sharp detail. Also notice that the photo was taken in very bright sunlight as anything less than that would have yielded a photo with blur.

Jumping Car

"Frozen" Jumping Car, 1/800

So now that we know some exciting things that we can do with fast shutter speeds, when are some appropriate times to use slow shutter speeds? Slow shutter speeds allow you to create some very beautiful artistic effects in your photographs.

Imagine a beautiful waterfall cascading into a pool of water. If we used a fast shutter speed to shoot the waterfall we would end up with a very boring photo of sharp, “frozen” water. All of the beauty of that waterfall rushing over the mountain would be lost. There would be no sense of motion.

We can correct this by using a slow shutter speed. If we shoot the waterfall using a shutter speed of say 2 seconds, we will retain all of the motion and power that waterfall has, and end up with a beautiful photo of a nice silky waterfall. Just resist the urge to dive in, remember your camera doesn’t like water. :)

In the photo of a carousel race horse below, we are able to convey a sense of the motion of the carousel to the viewer by using a slow shutter speed. Although the main horse is relatively sharp and in focus, if you look to the other race horses moving around in the background you’ll notice they all have motion blurs, thanks to the slow shutter speed that was chosen. The slow shutter speed helps to instantly evoke thoughts of a moving carousel to anyone looking at the photo.

Derby Horse with Blur 1/30

Derby Horse with Blur 1/30

Slower shutter speeds are also used in low-light situations. It is important to remember that our cameras have a very different definition of low-light than we do. Think about it, how many times have you been in what you would consider a perfectly bright house, but when you try to take a photo, your camera almost always wants to pop up that flash! This is because our eyes are much more sensitive to light than even the most high-end camera.

Have you ever tried taking that same photo without the flash? It usually winds up dark and blurry. This is because your camera naturally chooses a slow shutter speed. With such a slow shutter speed your subjects will not be “frozen” so even the slightest movement of either them or you causes blur.

This is why god invented tripods. It was dark in those tents in biblical times, how else were the photos going to be sharp :)

For those of us with cameras that don’t have an S-Mode, your camera might have a “night mode”. When you place your camera in “night mode” it forces the camera to shoot at a slow shutter speed, usually 1/30 or slower. How many times have you heard someone complain “my camera is broken, every time I shoot in night mode my photos come out blurry”! Now you know why. You weren’t one of those people were you? :)

Now that you have a new creative tool in your photography belt, I implore you to go out and give it a try! Next time we’ll combine the best of Aperture Priority Mode and the best of Shutter Priority Mode into one big manual mode that we call…well we just call it Manual Mode :)

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A-Mode, Would you like your depth-of-field deep or shallow?

Friday, September 4th, 2009

I’d like to continue our series on exposure modes. I know it’s been a while, I was just waiting for your comments and photos from the last post. It’s ok, I forgive you, I know you were just waiting until we got to the manual exposure modes so your creative juices can flow free :) So we pick up where we left off with Aperture Priority Mode (A).

Aperture Priority Mode is the first semi-manual mode that we’ll discuss. This is the first opportunity for you to have some say on how your camera sets it’s exposure. So let’s get to it. What is Aperture Priority Mode?

Aperture Priority Mode allows you to manually set the aperture on the camera and then have the camera set the shutter speed automatically. As you recall from our previous discussions, aperture, controls the size of the opening of the shutter, or how much light is allowed to hit your film or digital sensor during the time the shutter is open. It is measured in f-stops. So why would you want to set your aperture manually when your camera does a perfectly good job of setting it in P-Mode?

Well, you may recall that aperture not only controls the amount light entering the shutter, but also has the side effect of controlling your….come on, you know this one, depth-of-field! This is an excellent reason to override the camera’s settings and set the aperture yourself. Say your taking a portrait of a beautiful model in a lovely woodland setting…what’s that? No models around you say? No problem, let’s say you’re taking a portrait of your cute as can be 10 year old in a lovely woodland setting. Huh? No woods near you….hmmm ok you’re taking a portrait of your cute as can be 10 year old in a very crowded city park.

This situation is even better, you have all these other people around, and even worse they are in the background of this lovely photo that you are trying to take! What are you to do? You turn to Aperture Priority Mode (A) of course. By manually taking over control of the aperture and using a very large aperture setting of say f/1.8 or f/2.8 you can take that beautiful photo of your cute 10 year old and have all those people in the background become just a blur, so the cuteness of your subject shines right through. Like in the example below:

Bird with shallow depth-of-field

Bird with shallow depth-of-field f/2.8

Ok so my cute 10 year old happens to be a bird :) The point is that this photo has a very shallow depth-of-field and a lovely blurred background because of the large aperture setting of f/2.8 that was used. Working with the camera in Aperture Priority Mode (A) allowed me to manually set the aperture to f/2.8 and ensure that setting is what the camera would use when it took the photo.

Now those of you have been reading carefully, might think I’ve made a mistake about something. You might even think I’ve completely lost it, because it seems I’ve made that mistake in more than one place. You may be thinking, “dingus over here doesn’t know that 2.8 is a small number..he keeps saying that f/2.8 is a large aperture, how can that be??!!” Let me assure you it is no mistake, and it is something that does take getting used to.

You can think of it like fractions, 1/2 is bigger than 1/10 even though 10 is a larger number. It turns out that aperture numbers work the same way. The larger the f-stop value the smaller the aperture size. You can see an example of this below:

Aperture sizes and depth-of-field (Courtesy of http://howtotakepics.blogspot.com/2009/03/basics-terms-of-dslr-photography.html)

Aperture sizes and depth-of-field (Courtesy of http://howtotakepics.blogspot.com/2009/03/basics-terms-of-dslr-photography.html)

The diagram above clearly illustrates that the larger the aperture, the smaller the f-stop number. You can also see that the larger the aperture, the more shallow your depth-of-field becomes. This is why photographers love to get lenses with the largest aperture possible. Since a larger aperture lets more light in, this allows you to use a faster shutter-speed when shooting in low-light (remember reciprocity from our previous discussion). For those of you that own DSLR cameras, you may have noticed that the lens that is included has an aperture range of approx. f/3.5 – f/5.6. This means that the largest aperture that can be set is f/3.5 and as you “rack-out” your zoom the largest aperture your lens can achieve is only f/5.6. By the way, to rack-out, means to zoom your lens out to the maximum focal length.

This is why camera companies can afford to include these lenses in the kit with your camera. As you can see they do not have a particularly large aperture. Or as we say in the industry, they are not very “fast” lenses. A lens that has a larger aperture compared to another lens is referred to as “faster”. The faster a lens is, the larger the aperture setting that can be used, and also the more expensive it is! You will find that most people who shoot with the lens that came with their camera always feel they cannot get great photos in low-light situations. This is because as we’ve seen before the kit lens is usually not very fast, or the camera companies wouldn’t be able to afford to give it away. It is not uncommon for a photographer to buy a faster lens, either an f/2.8 or f/1.4 after shooting with the kit lens for a while.

We’ve learned before that when shooting portraits a large aperture is usually used to achieve a nice shallow depth-of-field. So what if we’re shooting landscapes? Well for that we want just the opposite, we want to use a very small aperture like f/16 or f/22 (remember small aperture, large f-stop). This will give us a very large depth-of-field or high degree of sharpness throughout the photo. This is exactly what we want for landscapes. Picture a beautiful mountain scene with water, hills, trees, in a photo like this we want to make sure that everything in the scene from the water in front to the mountains in the distance are nice and sharp. How do we do this? With a small aperture of course!  Take a look at the example below:

Reservoir, large depth-of-field, f/16

Reservoir, large depth-of-field, f/16

Wow, look at that, not only is everything in the photo nice and sharp because of the small aperture we used, but the content of the photo actually matches what I was describing, how unusual :) By the way when we want to refer to an area in the photo which stretches on as far as the eye can see past the horizon, such as the one above, we refer to that point as infinity. So for a photo like this you would actually set your focus to infinity when taking the shot.

Now that you have a new creative tool under your belt, go out and start shooting! Don’t be afraid to experiment with your aperture settings. Try out what we talked about above, or mix it up a bit. Sometimes using an unconventional aperture setting can create some very interesting results. Shooting in Aperture Priority Mode (A) really opens up a whole new world of creative possibilities. I actually find that I shoot in Aperture Priority Mode about 90% of the time. And don’t forget that the camera still sets the shutter speed automatically, so the camera still ensures that you get a nice even exposure. That is until next time when we discuss Shutter Priority Mode (S).

Until then, please feel free to comment, ask questions, and absolutely send or post some results!

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P-Mode, Let the camera be your guide

Monday, August 3rd, 2009

In the last post we introduced the 4 different exposure modes, Programmed Auto Mode (P), Aperture Priority Mode (A), Shutter Priority Mode (S), and Manual Mode (M). We also introduced the concepts of shutter and aperture. This time we will explore the first and simplest of the exposure modes, Programmed Auto Mode, or the P-Mode. Simplest from the photographer’s point of view as the camera makes all the decisions for you, but from the cameras point of view, there are many complex calculations going on under the hood of your camera.

As you know from our previous post, there are 2 items that are involved in creating proper exposure, shutter speed and aperture. The shutter speed controls the length of time that light is allowed to hit your film or digital sensor. Aperture controls the size of the opening of the shutter, or how much light is allowed to hit your film or digital camera during the amount of time that the shutter is open. These 2 values combine in a very fancy mathematical formula to create a value known as Exposure-value or EV.

Exposure-value (EV) is basically the unit that is used to measure exposure.  Similar to how we use Miles-per-hour to describe speed. When you are traveling, your speed is made up of how far you are going and how long it takes you to get there. We combine these 2 items to get your speed or Miles-per-hour. Same thing with EV. EV is made up of shutter-speed and aperture-size which combine to get your exposure measured in EV.

I don’t want to bore you with the actual formula for EV, nor is it really important for you to know the formula at this stage in the game. “Yay, Scott said we don’t need to know about EV”! Wait a min, hold the phone, I DIDN’T say that :) I said you didn’t need to know the actual formula, but you definitely need to know some things about EV, even while you are shooting in P-Mode. This is because even though the camera is making the exposure decisions for you, it is important for you to know why and how those decisions are being made.

So what do you need to understand about EV? We already know that EV is made up of shutter-speed and aperture-size. The important thing to always remember is that these 2 items are inversely proportional. (Scott, you’re using those fancy words again). I know, bear with me a moment. Shutter-speed and aperture-size are inversely proportional, what does this mean? This means that they are opposite of each other.

Let’s say we have a certain shutter-speed of 1/125 s, remember shutter speed is measured in seconds or fraction of a second, and an aperture value of f/4.0, recall that aperture is measured in “f-stops”. These 2 values combine to create an EV of 11. If we change either of these values we will end up with a different EV. Such as if we use a faster shutter speed of 1/250 s. This will allow light in for half the time of the previous setting of 1/125 s, and we’ll end up with an EV of 12.

But something interesting and unexpected happens if we now use a larger aperture value of f/2.8, this allows double the light in of our previous aperture setting of f/4.0 and we actually end up back at EV 11. This is because, as we mentioned before shutter-speed and aperture are inversely-proportional. If you make one bigger and the other smaller you’ll end up back at the same place. There are many different combinations of shutter and aperture that will produce the same EV. This is known as reciprocity.

Reciprocity is an odd concept to grasp, but makes sense if we relate it to something we know. Let me take you back to Kindergarten…no it’s not naptime, it’s math time! Yeah naps are more fun..let’s take addition:

2   +   2   =   4

Let’s say the first 2 is aperture, the second 2 is shutter-speed, and the 4 is our EV. If we increase the shutter-speed…we get a different EV result of 5:

2   +   3   =  5

However, if we change the aperture…we get back to the original EV result we started with of 4:

1    +   3  =   4

We can use several different values to combine and achieve the same result. Same thing with exposure, we can use several different aperture and shutter values to combine to get the same exposure. This is important because, as you recall from our last post, aperture and shutter also control 2 other things. Shutter-speed controls just how “frozen” the action is in your scene, and aperture controls your depth-of-field or how much of the scene is in focus. This allows us to have many options when it comes to exposure. Allow me to explain…

We have our camera in P-Mode, and press the shutter button down half-way to focus and measure the light in our scene. The camera decides it will use a shutter-speed of 1/250 s and an aperture value of f/4.0. This calculates to an EV of 12. So we know that in order for our photo to be properly exposed we need to have an EV of 12. However, I forgot to mention that we are  actually taking a portrait photo of a little kid and I want the background to be a nice blur, with a shallow depth-of-field. In order to do this, I want to use an aperture value of f/2.8. This will create a very nice shallow depth-of-field. But, by increasing the size of my aperture to f/2.8 I’m now allowing double the light of my previous aperture value of f/4.0 to obtain an EV of 11. This means our photo will be over-exposed because I need an EV of 12 for proper exposure. So in order to bring things back into balance I want to increase my shutter speed to 1/500 s. This will halve the time that the shutter is open and therefore bring me back to my proper EV of 12, while still retaining that beautiful blurring of the background which is so great for portrait shots.

When you’re in P-Mode not only does the camera have to think about all of these fancy exposure calculations and equivalents, but it also has to determine the type of scene that you are shooting. Today’s cameras are very sophisticated machines, with all kinds of sensors that can determine whether we are shooting  a portrait by a lake or a fast moving baseball player as he slides into home. Of course sometimes, the camera can be fooled or get confused and choose an aperture value or shutter-speed that may not be correct for the type of scene we are shooting.

This is where the other exposure modes come in…next time we tackle Aperture Priority Mode (A).

In the meantime, go out and try shooting many different types of scenes. Take a look at the aperture and shutter values that your camera chooses for the particular scene you are shooting. Did the photo turn out the way you were expecting? Did the camera choose values that make sense? What would you change about the photo, should it be sharper? Should there be more or less in focus? Should the action have been more “frozen”? Ask these questions each and every time you take a photo in P-Mode. If you continue with this logic you will quickly find that staying in happy P-Mode where the camera does all the thinking for you may not be the best choice, and that you want more control over the finished look of your photos.

Feel free to comment and post some of those results. Until next time…

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Why does my camera dial spell MAPS?

Saturday, July 18th, 2009

Ok, ok, so it doesn’t exactly spell MAPS, it spells PASM big difference :) But what do all those letters mean anyway?

That dial on your camera with all of those letters P, A, S and M are actually different exposure modes that you can use on your camera. These particular settings control how much of the decision for the exposure you want to use is left up to the camera. In other words, do you prefer to choose your own exposure settings, or would you like the camera to make all the decisions for you. You use the different exposure modes P, A, S, and M to tell the camera just how much of it’s brain it should use when setting proper exposure for your photo. For those who don’t know, exposure describes the light that is hitting your film or camera sensor (in digital cameras), used to create your image. Specifically, exposure describes the amount (brightness) of light hitting your film or digital sensor, and for how long that light is recorded by the film or sensor.

This is actually quite a large topic to discuss so let me tell you a bit about what’s to come. The next 4 blog posts will be related to just this topic. Today’s post is an introduction and overview of all 4 of the exposure modes, and then in subsequent posts I will explain each one in detail. Back to the content…

There are 2 terms you should know about before we continue as they are going to come up a lot in this discussion, shutter and aperture.

The shutter – is a very small opening in your camera that sits just in front of the film or digital sensor. It can open and close like a window. Most of the time the shutter is closed and does not allow any light to reach your film or digital sensor. However when the shutter release button is pressed on the camera, to take a picture, the shutter opens and allows light to strike the film or digital sensor for a pre-determined length of time which creates a photograph. This length of time is known as your shutter speed, and is usually measured in seconds or parts of a second. It can range anywhere from 1/8000 of a second to 60 seconds depending on the type of camera you use.

Aperture – refers to the size of the opening in the lens of your camera. This determines the amount of light that will be allowed  through your shutter and ultimately reach the film or digital sensor. You can almost think of aperture in terms of a water pipe. The larger the pipe, the more water that will flow through it. The larger the aperture setting used, the more light that will flow through your lens and shutter hitting your film or sensor. Aperture sizes are usually referred to as “f-stops” and range from f/1.2 to f/22 depending on the lens used on your camera.

So if those letters don’t spell MAPS, or PASM or even PAMS, what do they stand for? Programmed Auto Mode (P), Aperture Priority Mode (A), Shutter Priority Mode (S), and Manual Mode (M). Let’s take a look at what each one does.

Programmed Auto Mode (P) – This is the full automatic exposure mode of the camera. Basically in this mode the camera makes all the decisions for you when it comes to exposure. The camera will automatically set the aperture and shutter speed for you in this mode. Not only that, it will decide which aperture and shutter speed will work best for the particular photo that you are shooting. This is the mode where most beginning and intermediate photographers live. It’s very easy to let the camera decide how your photo should be exposed. But not always the best choice as the camera is merely an electronic piece of equipment and lacks the creativity and artistic eye of a human being. One way to vastly improve your photos is to take a trip out of the P mode once in a while and make some of the exposure decisions yourself. I know it can be scary, but remember #4 from the last blog post, this is digital, it doesn’t cost us anything to play around and try new things. If it doesn’t turn out quite right you can always delete it before someone else sees, the camera won’t tattle on you, promise!

Now this is where the apprehension and panic will begin to set in for some of you. In fact, there may be a few of you out there who will come to this point and say “Scott, I’m perfectly happy living in P mode and letting the camera think for me” and actually not continue to read the rest of this post. First, everyone take a deep breath, count to 3, and RELAX. There is nothing to be worried about…even if P mode is your “happy place” to shoot photos, and I’m sure for some of you it is, I do request that you at least give me a chance and read through the rest of this post. It may just make you think twice about keeping that camera in P mode for the rest of it’s life. Do cameras even have lives? Well I suppose that’s a topic for another post, anyway moving forward…

Cactus with a shallow depth-of-field, large aperture

Cactus with a shallow depth-of-field, large aperture, 75mm, f/3.5, 1/500s, ISO 200

Aperture Priority Mode (A) – In aperture priority mode you set the aperture manually and the camera automatically calculates the optimal shutter speed for your photograph. This mode allows you to take some control over your exposure while still allowing the camera to make some decisions for you. Why would you want to do this you ask? Well we know from above that aperture controls the amount of light coming through your shutter, but what you may not know is that aperture also controls your Depth of Field or (DOF). Depth of Field refers to how much of your photo is in sharp focus. Take a look at this photo of the cactus. The cactus is perfectly sharp and in focus, but if you notice the flowers in the background they have a nice soft blur on them. This draws the viewers eye directly to the cactus which is the main subject of this photo. This shallow depth of field is controlled by your aperture. The larger the aperture the “more shallow” your depth of field will be. In other words the larger the aperture setting the smaller the area that will be in sharp focus in your photo. To achieve the results shown in the cactus photo, use a larger aperture. We’ll discuss aperture and depth of field a lot more in a future post.

Stuntman captured mid-fall, fast shutter speed

Stuntman captured mid-fall, fast shutter speed

Shutter Priority Mode (P) – This mode is the opposite of the A mode discussed above. In this mode you set the shutter speed manually, and the camera determines the optimal aperture setting. As we discussed before, the shutter controls the length of time that light will be allowed to strike your film or digital sensor. However, it also controls how “frozen” the subjects are in your photograph. For example, at a baseball game when a player is just about to slide into home plate and a photographer snaps the award winning shot perfectly freezing the moment when the players hand makes contact with the plate. Or when you take a photo of a beautiful waterfall and the water looks like beautiful creamy flows. The sense of movement in these photos are all controlled by the shutter speed. The faster the shutter speed, the more “frozen” and sharper, the action will be in your photo. Take a look at this photo of a stuntman captured in mid-fall. To freeze his motion a very fast shutter speed was used for this photo. We will discuss shutter speed more in depth in a future post.

Manual Mode (M) – For those who want the ultimate control over their exposure, this mode is for you! In this mode the camera does no thinking at all. Both aperture and shutter speed are set manually by the photographer, hence why the call it Manual Mode. This mode can seem a little daunting to use at first, but after you play around with it for a while you’ll get a very intuitive sense of which aperture and shutter speed to use for a particular situation. As they say necessity is the mother of invention, and when you don’t have the camera helping you out with exposure settings you pick up real fast what works and what doesn’t.

We’ve barely scratched the surface of exposure modes in this post, but I implore you to take a trip out of the P zone every once in a while. Please comment with your experiences and share some photos with us. Next time we’ll begin to look at the 4 exposure modes more in depth. Until then, go out and shoot some great photos, it’s the only way you’ll become a better photographer.

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5 Ways to Improve Your Photos

Friday, July 10th, 2009

Everybody wants to take better photos right? Here is a list of 5 easy things that you can do to improve your photography.

1. Rotate that camera! Most beginners always hold their camera horizontally or in what photographers call a “landscape” format. You’d be amazed at how much better your composition can be with certain subjects if you simply rotate your camera to a vertical, or “portrait” format. The position you hold your camera in should reflect the subject matter that you are photographing. Nature shot on a lake landscape format is best, 20′ cactus in the desert use portrait. Alternatively, you could hold the camera still and get a body builder to come and rotate you, just dont’ have any loose change in your pocket.

2. Fill the frame. Photos are small by nature and people want to see the greatest detail possible when looking at one. Get as close to your subject as you can, whether this means zooming in closer or actually moving closer to your subject (your legs do work when composing a photo, I promise). This will give your audience a clearly defined central point of interest in your photo. You’ll know your at the right distance when your subject looks just a little too close in your viewfinder, then take the shot, you’ll be amazed at the results and the detail.

3. Speaking of viewfinders, use it! Now it’s true that not all cameras today have a viewfinder, but if yours does this is one of the best ways to improve the composition of your photos. The viewfinder allows you to better visualize how the composition of the final photo will come out. Plus it helps you to steady your camera as you are now using your head to add extra support and your arms are tucked close to your body.  As opposed to holding it at arms length away from you while trying to compose a shot in a tiny, dim, LCD screen.

4. Take more photos. Remember when you owned a film camera and you only had 24 shots? 36 if you splurged. And then you had to pay $6.00 and wait 2 days to see if those photos that you took looked good or even came out? Now we have digital and it’s a whole new world. You can snap away all you like and it doesn’t cost you a dime. Feel free to experiment. Not sure which is the best angle to make a particular shot look it’s best, try them all. Not sure if you should shoot in front of the tree or the swing, why not shoot both. The more you shoot, the better the chance that you will get that “perfect” shot. This is where those large capacity memory cards come in handy.

5. Look before you click. Take a moment to look around the background of your photo before you click the shutter. Check to see if there is anything unsightly in the background that may detract from your photo. Things like garbage cans, litter, someone getting arrested in handcuffs, anything that would take away from the center of interest, your subject. This is something you have to conciously keep in mind when taking a photo as your mind tends to focus on your subject, rather than the entire photo as a whole. And, while we’re at it, please make sure your subjects aren’t sprouting trees from their heads :)

Happy imaging and feel free to share your results with everyone.

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Photographing Fireworks

Saturday, July 4th, 2009
Dengrove Studios - Fireworks over building - f/11, 1/3s, ISO 1600

Dengrove Studios - Fireworks over building - f/11, 1/3s, ISO 1600

With the 4th of July upon us, I figured I would touch on a topic appropriate to the occasion. Who doesn’t love Fireworks? Well maybe there are some who don’t like the loud noise, but you have to admit they sure are beautiful and mesmerizing.

So mesmerizing in fact, that anywhere you see people watching fireworks you also see plenty of people photographing fireworks. Unfortunately, for various reasons most of those fireworks photos never come out the way people hoped they would. They may be too blurry, or too dark, or just not have the same sense of awe that they had when they were bursting above your head. So what can we do about it?

I present to you some excellent tips to make this 4th of July the one where you capture your best fireworks photos ever! Ok, maybe not the best ever, but certainly better than last year :)

The first tip I have is to TURN THE FLASH OFF! I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve been at a night event of some sort (fireworks, a ball game) where people are taking photos and all you see is *FLASH* *FLASH* *FLASH*, come on, you guys who are guilty of this know who you are, don’t deny it. Maybe it’s because you didn’t realize you had the flash on, perhaps it’s because it’s easier just to leave the flash on, or maybe you never learned how to use all the buttons on that shiny new camera you bought? Don’t worry about it, whatever the reason I won’t tell on you, because I know after reading this you’re going to make sure to turn that flash off next time you’re photographing those beautiful bursts in the sky and you’ll be well on your way to making those photos better.

Now, some of you may be saying, “but Scott…I’m taking photos at night time, and the flash makes things brighter and light up, so shouldn’t I use it when taking pictures of fireworks, since they are shot at night time”? Allow me to explain… the effective distance of a standard pocket-sized digital camera’s flash is about 10-15 ft depending on your exposure settings (aperture and ISO). Basically what this means is that when you take a photo in the dark with your pocket-sized digital camera it will only light up objects and people that are 10-15ft away. Most fireworks shell bursts occur between 300 and 1200 ft up in the air. As you can see your camera flash, which can only reach a couple of yards at best won’t do anything for a burst of light in the sky (or at a pitcher throwing a ball while you’re sitting way up in the stands for that matter).

Once you’ve turned your camera flash off it is extremely important that you follow my next tip, or your fireworks photos are guaranteed to come out blurry if shooting with your camera in a full auto mode. You must find a way to steady your camera. The absolute best way to do this is to use a tripod. However, some of you may not have tripod’s available, so then what do you do? Leave the camera at home and don’t shoot the fireworks? Of course not! Find useful objects nearby that can help you. If you’re in a park for example, find a nice bench with a bit of an angle, or a trash can, or lamp post, that you can rest your camera on while you shoot. This will help to steady the camera and will undoubtedly sharpen those fireworks photos right up.

For those intermediate readers that have ventured beyond the “automatic” mode on your camera, I have some tips for you as well. For those that are happy with the camera making the decisions, feel free to skip to the next paragraph. When photographing fireworks you want to use a slow shutter speed. You may think that you want to use a fast shutter speed as fireworks seem to burst in an instant, but in reality it is the long trails of light that give fireworks their awe. These trails of light are around for a bit of time after the initial burst of the shell. This is why if you want to capture the full beauty of fireworks you must use a slow shutter speed, so that you can get all those gorgeous light trails in the photo as well. I recommend a shutter speed anywhere from 1/2 second to 4 seconds. You should experiment a little bit to find the shutter speed that works best for the types of fireworks they are shooting at your display. Incidentally, this is why it’s important to turn the flash off on your camera. When the flash is on it typically sets your shutter speed much higher than 1/2 second, usually a minimum of 1/30 – 1/60 of a second. This is much to fast to adequately capture the beautiful light trails of the fireworks.

Don’t forget your aperture while shooting fireworks. Ideally your aperture should be set anywhere from f/8 to f/16. Why do you want to use such a small aperture while shooting at night? Typically at night we would want use a large aperture to let more light into our camera for a better exposure, but now when shooting fireworks. Here’s why, the light from fireworks are actually quite bright, even though they only last a few seconds at most. In addition, as I mentioned before fireworks bursts can occur quite high in the sky, nearly at infinity distance. With that type of range you want to have the greatest depth of field possible. In other words, you want the greatest amount of focus you can get in the scene. Choosing a small aperture of f/8 to f/16 will allow you to have a very large depth of field. Combined with a tripod or other steadying technique I talked about those fireworks are guaranteed to be crystal clear and perfectly sharp.

Now I know there are some of you out there who would love to take better fireworks photos, and follow my advice, but feel it seems like a lot of work. Good photography often is, but there is a shortcut… most digital cameras today come with a “fireworks” mode. By setting the camera to “fireworks” mode the camera will automatically turn off the flash, set your aperture to a the right range, and the shutter to a slow speed all with the touch of a single button. You’ll still need to find a way to steady the camera though. For more information you should check your cameras user guide. You remember the user guide, it’s that thick book that came with your camera that you’re probably using to balancing your table leg :) Well replace it with a stack of napkins and take it out and learn a bit about your camera.

I would like to wish everyone a great 4th of July, stay cool, stay safe, and have a hamburger for me. Most importantly though, go take some amazing photos of those fireworks tonight! Feel free to comment on this post, ask questions, and share some links to some of the photos you have taken.

Dengrove Studios - Multicolor Fireworks Bursts - f/8, 1/2s, ISO 100

Dengrove Studios - Multicolor Fireworks Bursts - f/8, 1/2s, ISO 100

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