It’s hard to compare apples to apples when you want to buy a camera. Product descriptions throw all these numbers at you, such as the number of megapixels and the sensor size, but you may not understand how each affects image quality. Plus, for interchangeable lens cameras, many people will tell you the lens is more important than the camera Continue Reading
Photodoto
Posts Tagged ‘Matters’
Megapixels, Sensor Size or Lens: What Matters Most?
23
Jul
Black and White Still Life Photography: How to Do It (And Why It Matters)
18
Feb
The post Black and White Still Life Photography: How to Do It (And Why It Matters) appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Rick Ohnsman.
In the quest to improve your photography, sometimes the best approach is to slow down, concentrate on the basics, and be purposeful and deliberate. Working in black and white will do that. Making still life images will do that.
Combine the two, and you get black and white still life photography – which is an excellent way to make some great images and become a better photographer while you’re at it.
The power of monochrome
I will often use the terms monochrome and black and white interchangeably, but there is a subtle difference.
Black and white photos are just that: images with tones from white through black and all shades of gray, but with no color information whatsoever.
A monochrome image, on the other hand, might have a color tint. For instance, you can create a warm, sepia-toned shot or a cool, cyanotype photo. A single color – with various shades – would be present in the image.
But note that this article applies to both black and white photography and monochrome photography equally.
Why black and white?
Early photographers had no choice because they couldn’t shoot in color. Monochrome images were all they could make.
Of course, this ultimately was not a serious limitation; many of the most iconic photographs ever taken are black and white. Surely even non-photographers have seen what might be one of the most famous black and white still life photos of all time, “Pepper No. 30” by Edward Weston. And I can confidently say that Weston’s photo would not be better if it had been made in color.
Today, the default choice of most photographers is color. Because our world is in color – as are most of the photos we encounter – “seeing” in black and white is a skill you must develop.
You must learn to look at a subject with an eye toward the basics – the “bones” of an image, if you will. Shape, form, tone, and texture are those bones, and the best black and white images play to those strengths, where color is unnecessary and even a distraction.
Learning to see in black and white will, of course, make you a better black and white photographer. But if you can see in black and white while recognizing and taking advantage of the structural elements of a subject, you’ll become a better color photographer, as well.
Color then becomes an enhancement to an already-good image – one with a solid “bone structure” of shape, form, tone, and texture.
Why still life?
My two favorite genres of photography are probably still life and landscape.
Why?
It could be because they are so opposite. In landscape photography, you can rarely move the subjects in your scene, you compose by where you stand, and you don’t have much control over the light. Often, you must wait for the light to be just right, and you must be ready if and when such a moment happens.
Still life photography makes you the master. You set the scene, deciding what to add in and take out. You arrange the objects for the best composition, you choose the camera position, the lighting, and any additional components comprising your shot.
Then, when you’re satisfied and ready, you take the photo.
In a word, still life photography give you complete control.
Then add another distinct advantage. Consider this definition:
“A still life is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or man-made (drinking glasses, books, vases, jewelry, coins, pipes, etc.).”
A real advantage of still life photography is that your subjects are still. They don’t move.
So in still life photography, it won’t matter if your shutter speed is 1/30s or 30 seconds. Being able to have such flexibility over your choice of aperture, shutter speed, and ISO is huge, and it opens up all kinds of possibilities that other genres of photography don’t offer.
Light painting is one of those unique possibilities. Since you don’t have to deal with a moving subject, you’re free to “paint” a subject with light during an extended exposure.
And this makes for some dramatic still life shots:
Lighting
Lighting for black and white still life photography comes back to the advantage we already identified:
Control.
The lighting instruments you choose, the modifiers you use, the number of lights and their placement – it’s all within your control.
Let’s break this down a bit more:
- White balance – Since you’re processing in black and white, you can ignore the color temperature of your lighting instruments. And this frees you up to use all kinds of light sources, from flashlights, LEDs, and daylight to candlelight, fluorescent lights, and incandescent lights. Yes, as you convert an image into black and white, the color tones will respond differently. But you can handle adjusting your black and white tones if your white balance is initially off. I’ve often “rescued” impossibly bad color images simply by converting to black and white.
- Placement – We spoke about the “bones” of shape, form, tone, and texture, which exist in all photos but are more readily apparent in black and white. In black and white still life photography, you get the opportunity to accentuate these “bones” with your careful consideration of lighting placement and control. Want to emphasize texture? Rake a hard light across the subject from the back or side at a low angle. Do you want a soft look? Try a broad light source, like a softbox, that illuminates the subject from the front. You can light your subject to create the look and mood you’re after. As the saying goes, “No rules, just right.”
A camera trick to help your visualization
In order to make this trick work, you must shoot in RAW.
(Also, I highly recommend you shoot in RAW all the time. Here’s why this is important.)
Now, when shooting in a RAW format, your camera will always capture a color image (and that is what you want).
The playback image you see on the rear LCD, however, will not be the RAW file. Instead, it’ll be a JPEG representation of the image.
So if you want to get better at seeing in black and white, why not switch the JPEG to black and white while keeping the RAW image in color? That way, after taking an image, you can immediately see it in monochrome – but you’ll still keep all the color details for post-processing later.
Bruce Wunderlich, a fellow dPS writer, describes how to set up your camera to do this. He promotes it as a way to better compose color photos, and it is good for that – but if monochrome is where you’re headed, it’s even more beneficial.
So read Bruce’s piece, set up your camera accordingly, and you will have a real aid in making black and white photos.
Editing for black and white
After a session of black and white still life photography, you’ll bring the images into post-processing as RAW color images.
Color?
Yes. Even if you’ve set up your camera using the recommendation above – where the LCD displays your images in black and white – your actual RAW images are still in color.
That’s a good thing. It’s during editing that you will convert your photos to black and white.
This will allow you to determine how various colors will be converted to monochrome. For instance, back in the black and white film days, you could darken the sky by shooting with a red filter. Because the red filter would block most of the blue light, the sky was rendered very dark on the black and white film.
Today we can create those effects during editing. When converting from color to monochrome, you can adjust the luminance of specific colors (e.g., you can darken the reds, the blues, and the yellows), thus affecting the overall look of the image.
Lightroom offers a nice black and white conversion tool, and there are a number of good articles on black and white conversion in Lightroom, such as this one by Andrew Gibson. You may also wish to try other methods of black and white conversion. A popular option is the Nik Silver Efex Pro plug-in from DxO, but there are dozens of other programs and methods for converting from color to black and white.
Without the limitations of having to make the color in a photo “look right,” you are free to creatively take the tonality in your black and white images wherever your creativity leads you.
Age your photo
Here’s another fun black and white still life photography trick:
Replicate a vintage black and white look!
First, make sure you find the right subject. I recommend working with old collectible objects. Then capture the shot and enhance it afterward with effects such as sepia toning.
It can be a fun and instructional exercise to gather some objects, set up a pleasing composition, light it, photograph it, and create a monochrome file complete with sepia toning.
Canon 50D | Canon 50mm f/1.8 | 1/15s | f/22 | ISO 800
Black and white still life photography: Now go do it!
You can and should read up on the concepts and techniques of photography, but there’s only so far “book learning” will take you.
Black and white still life photography will slow you down, make you think, concentrate your efforts, and force you to really study things.
You just have to dive in and do it!
So gather some subjects, decide how to arrange and light them, determine where you want to place your camera, what focal length you will use, how you will expose the image – all of those things.
Think about what you’re doing, what you’re trying to communicate, and why you’re making the photo.
Take your shot, evaluate it, consider what might make it better, and shoot it again.
Then repeat! There’s no hurry. You’re making photographs, not taking snapshots. You are the master when you practice black and white still life photography.
And that, as they say, is the beauty of it. Go make some great shots!
As always, leave your comments, questions, and photos in the comments section below. Best wishes!
The post Black and White Still Life Photography: How to Do It (And Why It Matters) appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Rick Ohnsman.
6 Reasons Why Photography Matters
27
Jan
The post 6 Reasons Why Photography Matters appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Guest Contributor.
Why does photography matter?
It’s a question that we all ask at one time or another. After all, why do we keep waking up at 4:00 AM to photograph the sunrise, when we could be warm and comfortable lying in bed? Why do we spend long hours tweaking our compositions and learning about photography fundamentals when we could be watching television or out with friends?
And some days, when we have no creativity at all and pressing the shutter button seems like the hardest thing in the world, we continue to persevere – but why? What is it about photography that’s so compelling?
What motivates us to keep going?
In this article, I’m going to share six reasons why I think photography matters. Hopefully, these ideas will help you find clarity and motivation – and will encourage you to capture images, even when it feels like everything is pointless and you should put down the camera forever.
Let’s get started.
1. Our photographs tell us what is important to us
When you ask people what possessions they would rescue from their burning house, one of the most frequent answers is a photograph album or a computer with all their digital images.
Interesting, isn’t it? We would grab photos over valuable jewelry, even in moments of panic.
This impulse to save our recorded memories is a powerful force, one that tells us much about the role of photography in our lives – and speaks to our constant desire to distill our most precious moments into images.
We preserve the important events and people in our lives. The ceremonies of birth and birthdays, marriages and anniversaries, holidays and new houses are all recorded because they matter.
Photographs are our personal story, a timeline of our lives filled with faces and places that we love. They are our story, which we can then share with others.
Ultimately, the thousands of images we take come together to form a narrative of our lives.
2. Photographs are part of our legacy
I remember sitting on a train as it passed a playground where children were standing at attention for the annual school photograph. In the front row sat the teachers, and behind them, hundreds of children were neatly preened and uniformed. For the briefest second, the entire assembly was motionless. We passed just as the photographer clicked the shutter.
Then, as if in slow motion, the huge group scattered as children escaped their enforced immobility. The neat rows dissolved and broke down into individuals who were kicking balls or huddled with friends.
None of those children realized that the photograph was probably going to outlive them. A couple of generations later, the school photo might resurface among old papers in an attic, and someone would search for their grandfather among the fresh, young faces.
Photographs matter because they freeze moments of our lives that pass unremarkably and which seem to have little importance to us at the time. The significance of a photo might not even be ours – instead, it might be for others who search for the person we once were or the places we once knew.
Each photo can be a small piece of a jigsaw that completes the larger picture of our lives.
3. Photographs allow us to share and to communicate
Images are much more than a simple record. Photography speaks to the best and most generous part of our human nature – the desire to share what we find beautiful and interesting with others.
You only have to look at the multitude of photo-sharing sites to see this impulse at work, where millions of people share their personal, passionate, and sometimes quirky take on the world around them.
In other words, our images can share our lives with strangers. How powerful is that?
4. Photography makes us artists
Photography allows us to express ourselves through an art form. We notice a beautiful landscape or an old man’s lined face and we want to capture it.
Each of us will have a different specific reason to take a photo, but we all want to create something.
However humdrum our nine-to-five lives may be, the creation of an image makes us an artist. It feels good.
5. Photography is a complex language
Our images can express joy and sorrow, wonder and sympathy. Every human emotion can find a place in photography.
For many years, I never valued my photographs of overcast landscapes, because I believed there was no beauty in a land with muted colors and a leaden sky. I wanted the land to be alive with color and vibrancy.
However, the lack of color in a landscape makes you search for other things that often go unnoticed in bright sunlight. This could be the symmetry of hills or a tree standing out from a forest of thousands.
To expand this further:
I have suffered from depression for most of my adult life, and photography gives me a language to express feelings for which I can find no words. We have a miserably poor vocabulary for mental illness, but photography has allowed me to develop a visual language for some of my most difficult emotions.
6. Photography has the power to move us
Photographs can grab our attention and speak directly to our emotions. There are plenty of powerful photos – such as Nick Ut’s photograph of a crying Vietnamese girl whose clothes have been burned away by napalm – that can make us feel things.
On a more subtle level, photography teaches us lessons about a whole range of emotions. Grief has the power to wash away the brightness and color of our lives. There is no magic way to restore these. We have to be patient. But while waiting, we can search for the shapes and patterns that are still present in the grayness. They will lead us back to color eventually. During moments of great sorrow in my life, I have used images to express that hope of returning color.
Photography, at its best, is a powerful language that speaks to our emotions. It allows us to tell our story and shows others our framing of the world around us.
Why photography matters: Conclusion
Hopefully, you now have a better sense of the different reasons people pursue photography – and why photography is important.
Now I’d love to know:
Why do you do photography? What motivates you to keep taking pictures? What is it about photography that inspires you?
Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Declan O’Neill is a professional photographer who lives in the South Island, New Zealand. He travels extensively, capturing the beauty of New Zealand’s extraordinary landscape. The photographs that accompany this article are part of a series entitled “The Anatomy of Melancholy,” which is dedicated to the memory of his sister, Ann, who died from Multiple Systems Atrophy.
The post 6 Reasons Why Photography Matters appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Guest Contributor.
Sony a7S II vs a7S III: What’s new and why it matters
13
Nov
Introduction
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The five-year gap between the launch of the a7S II and the announcement of the a7S III had some people wondering whether Sony had given up on the idea of a video-focused a7 model. The enhanced video capability of the core a7 line made that seem plausible (the a7 III does many of the things the a7S II did).
But the Mark III is here and it represents more than just a Mark II brought up to competitive spec. Instead it’s the most serious video camera the Sony Alpha range has ever seen and makes the older camera look rather basic, by comparison.
More frame-rate flexibility
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The biggest changes come in terms of video spec, as you might expect. The a7S II could shoot UHD 4K at up to 30p and the highest-quality setting captured 8-bit 4:2:0 footage at up to 100Mbps in the X AVCS format. It’s fair to say the a7S III goes a little beyond this.
In terms of frame rates, the a7S III can shoot 4K at up to 60p using the full width of its sensor or at up to 120p if you accept a very slight crop down to a native 3840 x 2160 region of the sensor. Its thermal management has been significantly re-worked to ensure that these capabilities don’t come at the cost of reliability: Sony says it should be able to shoot over an hour of 10-bit 4K/60 footage.
High bit depth/bitrate video
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The a7S III also gains 10-bit, 4:2:2 internal capture for the first time, which means its Log footage is much more flexible in the edit and has better color resolution than the 8-bit 4:2:0 capture of the a7S II.
There are also many additional format options on the newer camera. In addition to XAVC S footage, the a7S III can capture video in the H.265-based XAVC HS format (which uses more efficient compression to offer higher quality at the same bitrates). This pushes the burden of decompression onto your computer, but if this is too demanding on your editing machine, the Mark III can shoot All-I footage in the XAVC S-I format. This is less compressed so means bigger files but less processing work for less powerful computers. It’s possible to capture All-I footage at up to 120p if you use the camera’s slow-mo function to reduce the frame rate to 30p or 24p and, therefore, the write-speed to a more reasonable level.
If you need still-more flexibility in your footage, the a7S III can output a Raw stream to an external recorder, over its full-size HDMI socket. The a7S III allows for full-frame (4264×2408) 16-bit RAW output (up to 60p) with a choice of color space; while also recording supported formats internally.
The Mark III also records the information from its gyro sensors, which can be used for applying more effective shake correction when post-processing.
Autofocus
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Another major change in the a7S III is the adoption of on-sensor phase detection autofocus. This is far more useful for video than the contrast detection autofocus used by the Mark II, which inevitably involves racking focus back and forth while recording, which can be visually distracting.
By contrast, the a7S III uses the latest AI-trained phase detection system that can identify and track eyes, faces, heads and bodies of humans, making it generally very reliable when it comes to staying focused on a subject, even if they look away from the camera. There’s also a subject tracking mode if you tap the screen to choose a subject.
That said, we have seen instances of it trying to re-focus mid-clip with static shots featuring subjects who aren’t moving. You can reduce the risk of this by setting the AF Subj Shift Sensitivity, but this makes the camera less likely to refocus if your subject is moving back and forth a little.
So, while lots of a7S users are likely to continue to manually focus their footage, the provision of decent autofocus should extend the types of use the a7S III can be put to.
Card slots
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To accommodate the increased video bitrates, and to make the camera more usable, generally, the a7S III has more storage options than before.
The a7S II had a single UHS I card slot: fast enough for its ~100Mbps (12.5MB/s) max output rate, but without any redundancy or overflow capability. The a7S III has twin dual-format card slots, which can use either UHS II SD cards or CFexpress Type A media in each slot (the connection pins are on opposing sides of the slots, so SD cards need to be flipped over). This provides more shooting options and means that capture at up to ~600Mbps (75MB/s) is possible.
Menus and interface
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One thing that upgraders will notice is that the a7S III features a completely re-worked menu system. The essential ordering and categorization is similar, so it shouldn’t take too much adapting to, but the arrangement is flipped 90 degrees and there are more obvious visual cues to help understand where you are in the menu structure and where the setting you’re looking to change might be.
The camera’s customizable ‘Fn’ menu remains essentially the same but can now be configured separately for stills and video modes, which wasn’t the case on the a7S II. In fact much of the menu system is now separated for stills and video, meaning that your settings for one style of shooting need not carry-over to the other. This makes switching back and forth much faster.
The Mark III also has a My Menu tab, so you can assign the settings you access most often to that tab for quick access.
Better buttons and dials
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Sony’s ergonomic design has come a long way in the five years since the launch of the a7S II. The grips are better proportioned, the dials are better positioned and the buttons are easier to press.
On top of this, the a7S III gains an AF joystick and a much more prominent AF-On button, which can be used to initiate a single AF acquisition when in Manual Focus mode. Collectively, these help add up to a camera that’s quicker and more comfortable to use.
Screens and viewfinders
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Sony has made a lot of the new viewfinder in the a7S III. At 9.44M dots, it’s the highest resolution viewfinder we’ve yet seen, and way beyond the 2.36M dot panel in the a7S II. On paper that’s twice the resolution in each dimension, but the camera only really makes full use of this in playback mode.
For most a7S III users, the bigger difference is likely to be the provision of a fully-articulating rear LCD screen, rather than the tilt up/down example on the older model. It’s a layout familiar to, and preferred by, many videographers.
What’s more, the a7S III finally makes comprehensive use of a touchscreen, allowing it to be used to position the AF point, navigate menus and zoom/swipe in playback mode, providing another means of operating the camera.
Battery
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Another major improvement for the a7S III is the inclusion of a much larger battery than its predecessor. The a7S II is one of the last of the series to use the rather small NP-FW50 battery, whereas the a7S III uses the NP-Z100. This greatly increases the camera’s recording duration. And, while there are plenty of circumstances in which both cameras will simply be powered over their USB ports, the inclusion of a larger, higher-capacity battery means the a7S III can be used for longer as a standalone unit, making gimbal and drone work simpler, for instance.
For photography
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We’ve always considered that the a7S series makes more sense for videographers than stills shooters: the ability to quickly read-out the relatively low pixel count as 4K footage sets the camera apart to a much larger degree than any difference in low light stills performance. It’s no coincidence that this model has the most comprehensive video feature set of any Alpha-series camera, so far.
Stills shooters will certainly benefit from the ergonomic and autofocus improvements of the new camera, along with the revised menus, but we wouldn’t expect the a7S III to offer a significant difference in low light stills performance at anything other than very high ISO settings, thanks to the upgraded Exmor R backside-illuminated sensor and other signal processing improvements.
Conclusion
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It should come as no surprise that the a7S III is a much better camera than the preceding version: the general level of technology has moved a fair way forward in the past five years, particularly in terms of video. And Sony’s ergonomics have certainly progressed a long way in that time, too, with the a7S III moving things beyond any of its recent stable-mates.
But this feels like more than just a camera brought up to contemporary standards. The a7S II was a relatively minor update to the original a7S: the addition of in-body stabilization was a big deal, as was the ability to record its sensor’s output as 1:1 4K rather than the superlative 2:1 1080p of its predecessor. But it always felt like a dependable, but unambitious camera, and its core capabilities were added to mainstream a7-series models within a matter of years.
By contrast, it’s hard to imagine 10-bit capture, 4K 120p, 16-bit Raw video output being extended out across the a7 range so readily, simply because non-videographers don’t necessarily need them. Rather than being a basic video tool whose appeal was its large sensor, the a7S III feels like a much more complete compact video production camera, making it a much more credible rival to the likes of Panasonic’s S1H.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Equipment Versus Photographer – Which Matters More?
19
Sep
The post Equipment Versus Photographer – Which Matters More? appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jaymes Dempsey.
Flatlay image: Jeff Hopper. Photographer image: Alexander Andrews
Equipment versus photographer, which matters more?
It’s a common question without an easy answer. It’s one that pretty much every photographer has asked themselves at one time or another.
In this article, I’m going to start by identifying the ways in which the equipment matters. And then I’m going to cover the ways in which the photographer matters.
Finally, I’ll address the main question:
Which is more important?
So let’s dive right in.
How does equipment change your photography?
Here’s the thing:
As much as photographers hate to admit it, equipment does matter.
If it didn’t, why would professional photographers spend $ 5000+ on a camera setup?
It’s not a question of whether equipment matters, it’s a question of how much it affects your photography.
So here’s a list of the key reasons equipment matters:
Why your equipment matters
Continuous shooting speeds
Cameras with high continuous shooting rates make it possible to capture amazing action photos without leaving much to chance. A camera that can shoot 12 frames-per-second is going to maximize your chances of getting a gorgeous image in the thick of the action.
Autofocus capabilities
Cameras with more autofocus points, greater autofocus coverage, better tracking, and better autofocus points (e.g., cross-type points) will make it easier to quickly lock focus on your subject and track them as they move. This is useful for any genre of photography that is fast-paced.
Ruggedness
Metal cameras with weather-sealing can handle much more difficult conditions than cameras made of non-weather sealed plastic. You can shoot for longer in the rain, snow, and freezing temperatures without your camera failing, which increases your chance of capturing a once-in-a-lifetime shot.
High-ISO capabilities
Cameras with the most advanced sensors are able to capture noise-free images when shooting at high ISOs. This makes shooting at night without a tripod a much more feasible option.
Resolution
The greater your camera’s megapixel count, the more you can crop your photos. This gives you additional flexibility in post-processing and helps you compensate for a shorter lens.
High dynamic range
Cameras with a high dynamic range maximize the amount of detail you capture in a scene. This gives you more latitude when selecting an exposure. It also allows you to photography high dynamic range scenes without resorting to HDR techniques.
Accurate previews
Mirrorless cameras with high-quality electronic viewfinders (EVFs) give you fairly accurate previews of your images before you press the shutter button. This allows you to get your exposure and depth of field correct, right from the beginning.
Size and weight
Smaller and lighter cameras are easier to carry on long treks and on travel expeditions. And the easier your camera is to carry, the more likely you are to have it with you when a once-in-a-lifetime scene happens right before your eyes.
Image stabilization
Cameras and lenses with some form of image stabilization make it possible to handhold at low shutter speeds. This increases your shooting opportunities in low light and allows you to increase your depth of field during the day.
Optical quality
Higher-quality lenses are sharper and have fewer problems (such as color fringing and distortion). This makes it possible to get tack-sharp shots that look great straight out of the camera.
Focal length
Lenses with different focal lengths allow you to capture different types of shots. If you want to capture sweeping landscape images, you’ll want an ultra-wide lens on hand. If you want to capture a detail shot of a perching eagle, you’ll want a 500mm or 600mm lens. Therefore, different lenses give you different photo opportunities.
How do you, the photographer, change your photography?
Now that we’ve covered the ways in which equipment affects your photography, it’s time to talk about you, the photographer.
What impact do you have in the photo-making process? How do you make a difference in your photography?
Why you matter
Focusing skills
Even if you have the best autofocus system in the world, it won’t matter if you don’t have the capabilities to use it. It takes serious skill to track fast-moving subjects, and it’s something that takes lots of practice to master. If you want to capture gorgeous action shots, you can’t just press the shutter and hope for the best. The autofocus system is part of the equation, but so are you.
Handholding skills
Your ability to handhold is often the difference between a sharp photo and a blurry photo. You’ve often got to keep your hands steady while in the thick of the action, never an easy task. Image stabilization helps, but if your technique isn’t sound, you’ll end up with blurry photos anyway.
Exposure skills
Cameras are pretty good at identifying the right exposure for the scene. But there are plenty of times when the camera’s choice just doesn’t look good. That’s when you have to step in, as the photographer, and take control of your camera’s exposure.
Working with light
As great as modern cameras are, they still can’t tell you how to find good light, and they definitely can’t tell you how to use the light for great shots. That’s all up to you, and it’s something that photographers spend their whole lives studying. Expertly used light can be the sole difference between an amazing photo and a mediocre photo.
Compositional skills
I’m putting this under a single header, but it’s a big one. Composition isn’t something that’s innate, and it’s definitely not something that your camera can control. It’s something that you learn through practice and hard work. And if you don’t bring composition skills to your photography, it’s going to look plain bad. There’s no way around it.
Working with aperture
Choosing a composition is a skill. It’s also a skill to be able to pull off that composition – to be able to use camera settings to your advantage. That’s where you have to leverage your knowledge to choose the aperture and shutter speed you need to capture the perfect shot.
Post-processing skills
This is another huge factor as post-processing skills allow you to take a shot and really turn it into something incredible. Post-processing is how you put the finishing touches on your photos, and it’s how you give your photos that professional flair.
Equipment versus photographer. And the winner is…?
Now that you’ve read this far, you and I can surely agree that both the equipment and the photographer matters.
However, if you look over the two lists, you’ll notice that there are certain aspects of photography that the gear can barely contribute to such as working with light, choosing a composition, putting the final touches on a photo in post-processing, and more.
These are huge aspects of being a photographer. If you can’t do these things, your images will be consistently poor. There’s no other way to say it.
But if you can do these things well, you’ll get amazing photos. Yes, high-quality gear will help. It will increase your chances of getting beautiful shots – if you’re already very skilled. However, while the equipment is important, gear will never get you an amazing photo. At best, gear will get you ultra-sharp, well-exposed, in-focus snapshots – and that’s all. At worst, gear will get you blurry, poorly-exposed images.
In other words, you don’t need incredible gear to get incredible photos. But you do need to be an incredible photographer to get incredible photos.
So…
Which is more important, the equipment or the photographer?
The photographer.
No doubt about it.
What are your thoughts on equipment versus photographer? Do you agree that the photographer matters more than the equipment? Share your thoughts in the comments!
The post Equipment Versus Photographer – Which Matters More? appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jaymes Dempsey.
How Aesthetic Differs from Style and Why it Matters
10
Jul
A question often seen in photography groups and forums is, “How do I develop a photographic style?” or, “How do I know what my style is?”
What they are really asking about is more to do with the aesthetic look of their images. How can they create images that look uniquely theirs and are identifiable as such? How do they get consistency in the way their images look?
Style and aesthetics are two sides of the same coin, similar but different.
Photographic style relates to the way you physically create your images – the mechanics behind how you shoot and the way you physically set up to shoot.
- The camera, lens, and focal choices you make.
- Camera settings used to create your images.
- What you choose to shoot and some of the ways the images are composed.
Aesthetics encompasses the way your images look and how they make the viewer feel.
- Your choice of color – tones, colors, contrast.
- Subject choice – do you always shoot the same kind of subject?
- Subject placement and composition – is the subject often posed or placed in a certain way in the overall composition?
- Editing choices – what choices do you make when editing that affects the image outcome?
- Creative decisions – what creative choices do you incorporate when crafting and editing your images?
What are aesthetics?
According to Britannica, aesthetics is the philosophical study of beauty and taste. It is closely related to the philosophy of art, which is concerned with the nature of art and the concepts in terms of which individual works of art are interpreted and evaluated.
Why Does it Matter?
This matters to us as photographers because we want our images to be judged as visually appealing. We want them to be seen as beautiful. How that expresses itself in our digital world is usually in likes, and sometimes comments.
But most of all, in a world that is saturated with millions of images posted every day (Instagram alone has over 95 million images uploaded daily) it can be a struggle to even get your image seen, let alone commented on.
It almost becomes a competition, the most extreme location, the most stunning sunrise, the most colorful sunset, the most adorable kids, the cutest puppy or kitten, the most romantic wedding shot. Fads come and go as a particular image or look becomes popular, people rush to emulate it.
Yet the question then becomes – do you want your images to look like yours? Or do you only want the attention that comes from copying a style or look that is momentarily popular?
Developing a Style
There are many articles on this subject you can read, many are full of vague advice, some are more specific and more helpful – and of course, different people learn in different ways. It’s my opinion that you can have a style but not necessarily an aesthetic, and quite possibly the reverse as well.
What do I mean by having a style and not an aesthetic?
Say you are a landscape photographer – you have loads of landscapes shots – often shoot wide-angle, and get low to the ground to add some intimate foreground interest. Lots of mountains, lakes with pretty rocks, sunrise and sunsets, the occasional selfie in your tramping gear for a change. Yet how do they all look?
If you line up all your favorite or best shots do they all look similar? Are they composed consistently? Is the lighting tone and angle usually the same? Are the colors of similar saturation or vibrancy?
Of course, as you proceed along your own personal photography journey you will learn new things and incorporate them into your techniques. Accounting for that growth, are they a group of images that look and feel like they were created by the same person?
Perhaps the physical elements of the image and the way they were composed and shot are consistent. A tendency to set up your tripod in a certain way, a specific lens choice, a commonly used focal length, a preference to shoot at a certain time of day or in defined lighting conditions – that is your style.
The way that they look in relation to color, light, tone, intensity, clarity, subject, etc. How the view is made to feel when they look at your image – that is your aesthetic.
How do you shoot?
When you shoot, what is your approach? Do you have an idea how you will compose the image in your head already? Is there a certain kind of light you want? Are you traveling on a limited timeline and can only snap and go?
If you have time, depending on what you shoot, is there a concept already in mind? Do you know what you want to shoot, how you might shoot it, and what the final image should look like?
When you have that final image in your mind, do you then set out to shoot to achieve it specifically? Or perhaps you aim for it but come away with something different, which is okay because it is still a good image.
Do you compose your images consistently? Are you thinking about how elements in the image interact with each other, what the light is like and how it will affect your image? If the situation isn’t perfect can you adapt or will you shoot regardless?
Is your voice present in your images?
When you copy a style from someone else, or if your editing consists solely of adding a filter and posting online – how are you making the image yours? Where is your voice visible in the image? What about the image ties it to other images you have created?
When people see your work, does it remind them of other images of yours, or of someone else’s?
How comfortable are you trying to create an image using someone else’s style or method? Does it have the soul and the spark that you want it to?
When you start out on your photography journey it’s common to try shooting images similar to those that inspire you. It gives you an objective, an obvious goal to aim for. As your skills develop, and you start to produce work consistently, you will then have the knowledge and ability to be more creative.
One thing I’m pretty certain of is that you cannot produce amazing images unless you are truly connecting with your subject (if it’s landscape, travel or street photography this may encompass the greater environment). You can be technically very competent with a camera, but unless your image has true soul embedded within it, people will struggle to connect to it, as a result.
Putting that soul into your images requires you to create with your voice, your vision, your unique view on whatever that image is about. The more you tune into that creative voice in your head, the closer you will come to your personal style and aesthetic.
Identifying your aesthetic
Are there images that you’ve seen online that particularly appeal to you with regards to how they look? Do they resonate with you and inspire you to create your own variation? Put together a collection of those images and analyze them for both style and aesthetic.
What specifically about their look appeals to you?
- The way light is used in the image.
- How colors are managed – are they vibrant and intense or muted and subtle?
- Contrast – do they have high dynamic contrast or is it softer?
- Color or black and white?
- Strong and bold or soft and gentle?
- Sharp or softly focused?
- Appealing subjects or abstract?
What visually pleases you in an image? What do you find beautiful? How do you express that in your own work?
Then take a look at your own body of work
Pick out some particular favorites of yours, then compare them to other images of yours that people like. Something I find frustrating is the images I like the most are not the ones other people like. It’s possible we get too emotionally attached to some images for external reasons.
When you do the comparison and look at what you like and what other people like in your work – is there a pattern? Can you see visually what works and what doesn’t? Is there variation across your different styles?
Honing your aesthetic
If you have undertaken the exercise above, the next stage is to assess your images for their aesthetic look. Are you happy with it? Do they have the feeling that you want them to have? If now, what is missing?
When you compare your images to that of some you admire, are you happy with the comparison? Is what you see a representative of your creative choices?
It can be difficult to see our own work objectively, so maybe find a friend and ask for their opinion. I find the viewpoints from non-photographers as powerful as they see the world very differently than I do. It’s a great learning opportunity.
Changing or tweaking your aesthetic might be as simple as changing your editing process. You may opt for a very different look for a certain group of images as an experiment. What you shoot and the way you shoot it in your style may not vary at all, and it all changes in editing.
Or you may decide to have some goals to shoot more consistently, perhaps the quality and tone of light, your subject matter, and the way you frame it.
Some examples from my personal experiments
There are a lot of dark moody food photography images that I love and I’ve spent around a year trying to figure out how to shoot in that style. The way I would set up and stage a shot isn’t any different from a standard or a high key image, it’s the same studio, camera, tripod, lens, aperture, and focal length combination. So my style is pretty consistent.
Where it differs relates to the way the image is lit and exposed and how I edit it. It’s deliberately done for a dark intense mood with rich colors and lots of shadows. My aesthetic in lighting and editing these images is very different as I want a specific style, and I can replicate it consistently too.
Doing some fine art self-portraits, inspired by Brooke Shaden, has been a great learning experience as everything about them entirely relates to the aesthetic. Using color, light, and shadows deliberately to create a specific feeling or emotion in an image is challenging.
Eventually, I found that the aesthetic that worked best for me is a very high-key bright white image that still has enough contrast and detail to have depth and interest. A particular aesthetic choice is to use mainly black and white tones with subtle splashes of another color, usually red. But the way I shoot these images is no different from a properly exposed image. The way I compose them, and set up the camera to shoot is the same.
Conclusion
Figuring out the difference between how you shoot something and the way you make it look is a pretty subtle difference (I expect many comments telling me there is no difference at all). However, given that I have shot landscapes, birds, wildlife, macro, still life, food, and fine art self-portraits, you can look at my catalog and identify the style elements pretty clearly. As my skill and experience grew and began to try different things and be more creative, it becomes easy to identify my specific aesthetic choices too.
Yet if you combine a bunch of different images together, there are still the common style threads linking them visually. They feel like a group of shots from the same person, with the same eye. It’s taken me about 10 years, and it feels like my style is finally beginning to be its own thing.
Many photographers shoot lots of different subjects. A landscape photographer might also do macro shots of flowers, with the occasional bird and wildlife images captured while on location. A wedding photographer has all the people shots as well as churches, gardens, interior event shots, and close-up details. Sometimes different subjects require you to shoot technically in different or certain ways.
Despite the differences required, if your aesthetic is actively engaged, the images will still be uniquely and identifiably yours.
In the rush to make everything the same as what is popular, don’t forget that unique has its own appeal as well. That there are many millions of people viewing your photos and the way you specifically create your images is special for some of them.
Maybe for commercial reasons you can’t always go in a particular direction for everything. But try and make time to explore a project and try that thing you have had tucked away in the back of your mind for ages (as I know you do!).
Embrace your vision, your voice, and your unique way of seeing the world, whatever that looks like. Stylistically and aesthetically.
The post How Aesthetic Differs from Style and Why it Matters appeared first on Digital Photography School.
Subject tracking: Why it matters to us and why it should matter to you
19
Mar
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| On many cameras, subject tracking (choosing your subject and letting the camera track as you hold your composition) has gotten very, very good. Nikon AF-S 24mm F1.8 @ F2.8 | 1/8000 | ISO 320. Photo by Rishi Sanyal |
Digital cameras, and for that matter, film cameras, have offered autofocus for a number of decades now. It’s evolved from just one point to many hundreds of points over the years, allowing for varying degrees of control. You can leave the whole focusing process up to the camera and let it choose what it thinks is your subject; you can just use a single point of your choosing; or you can dance in the middle-ground using a zone or group of points that you select and keep over your subject, while the camera attempts to compensate if your subject veers toward the outside of that zone.
Outright subject tracking, though, is something else. You select the subject you want, usually with a single point or a single zone, initiate focus, and the camera does the rest. It will attempt to identify the size, color and distance of your chosen subject and do its best to track that subject around the frame, whether your framing changes or your subject moves.
This isn’t a particularly challenging use case, but it’s a good demo of how subject tracking works on Nikon’s D5 in 3D Tracking mode. Note focus is initiated at the beginning of the run, and the camera automatically keeps an AF point over Richard while constantly refocusing; even when shooting at 12fps.
Many people don’t have trust their cameras to do this, and until the last few generations of digital cameras, we wouldn’t have recommended it; but manufacturers continue to invest in pushing this technology forward. Established professionals in particular are highly unlikely to shoot this way, because once you’ve worked one way and can reliably get results you’re happy with, why would you change?
But believe us; good subject tracking is really something special, and it’s worth your time to give it a go. Frankly, it has the potential to forever change the way you shoot, for the better.
Why does it even matter anyway?
There are cases both for and against using subject tracking. In high speed, peak action sports, an experienced photographer would likely do a fine job (or better job) by using a cluster, group or zone of autofocus points and follow the action his or herself. But for those who are less experienced, or when shooting at longer focal lengths where following the subject can be more difficult, or when just shooting really erratic and unpredictable motion, subject tracking can be a tremendous help. It got me a number of keepers at a rugby match on a Panasonic camera even though it was the first time I’d ever photographed rugby, and the Nikon D5 was great for low-light soccer.
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In the above example from a Nikon D5, our tech editor Rishi Sanyal initiated focus on the kayaker, fired a short burst, kept tracking him with the shutter half-pressed, and then fired another burst that kept accurate focus despite the kayaker basically disappearing underwater for a moment. This gave Rishi an abundance of options for editing, allowing him to get just the moment he was after with that may not have been possible without the use of 3D Tracking. Click here to see the final edited photograph.
It’s true that most manufacturers, despite constantly improving their tracking algorithms with newer models, somehow still don’t recommend subject tracking for these sorts of situations; but in our experience, it still seems to work most of the time anyway.
What other sorts of situations could benefit from using subject tracking? Turns out, a lot.
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| Weddings are one situation in which I find subject tracking invaluable. For this shot, you could frame up your composition, initiate autofocus on the bride at the beginning of her walk down the aisle, and fire away as she moves through the scene with the camera constantly focusing. Ironically, I didn’t use tracking here because on this camera it’s a menu-dive to access that setting, and single AF is super fast; but the catch is I ended up with fewer options this way. Leica Q | ISO 2500 | 1/125 sec | F2 Photo by Carey Rose |
Events and weddings are great use-cases for subject tracking. You can initiate focus on the bride (or groom) in a scene, and simply keep continuously focusing on them as they move around, dance, interact with guests, and so on. You don’t have to take the time to move your focus point around, which could results in missed shots, and you don’t have to focus and recompose, which can result in missed focus when shooting at really wide apertures. You can end up with a greater variety of images and more options to choose from when it comes time to edit.
Another use case is candid portraiture. When you can reliably lock focus on a subject’s face or eye and are able to move the camera around while it continues to track focus, that allows you to sample multiple compositions really quickly. It also allows you that much more creative freedom to focus on those compositions in the first place instead of constantly having to move your focus point to catch up to what you’re seeing in your head. Autofocus point placement becomes just one less thing you have to think about.
The elephant in the article – just give it a try
Now, you may have noticed that most of the examples and references in this article are from high-end Nikon cameras, and the reason is not a personal bias; we’ve consistently called out this feature for a while now on mid-to-high end Nikons because we find it to be industry-leading.
But if you’re not a Nikonian, don’t fret! Almost every major consumer camera manufacturer has subject tracking in some form. Panasonic’s tracking system works reliably well, in both rugby and in social situations. Sony’s Eye AF feature is truly amazing. Olympus’ C-AF + Tracking is fairly robust, and Canon’s Dual Pixel AF is probably the best face detection and recognition system out there.
In short, experiment a little, give it a try and happy shooting!
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
The Importance of an Anchor – Why Foreground Matters
13
Mar
Most everyone is familiar with the concept of an anchor in the nautical sense. The anchor keeps the vessel from drifting away, due to current or wind. It fixes the vessel to a certain position. While this is easily understood, fewer people are aware of the need for a similar concept in photography.
I enjoy using wide angle lenses for landscape photography, but I also recognize that a wider focal length brings additional compositional challenges. While a wide focal length can produce visually exciting images, it can also produce really boring, empty feeling images. The nature of wide angle lenses is that they create the feeling of space, of distance. That distance can really disconnect the viewer from your subject, if you are not careful. When using a wide focal length, it becomes incredibly important to anchor your image with a strong foreground.
The trailhead in the foreground of this image, leads you into the grander scene.
The nature of a wide angle means that it distorts the perspective of the objects, closest to the camera. There is a feeling of distance from your background, so the eye needs something closer to engage it, before moving on to the grander scene beyond. I’m sure you’ve seen visually stunning images of famous mountain ranges, sunsets, waterfalls, or wild natural scenes. I’m willing to be that your favorites all feature a small scale object in the foreground. Patterns in the ice or snow, wildflowers, rocks, or fallen autumn leaves. These serve as the visual anchors of the scene. Without them the image becomes much more boring, and far less grand.
There are many beautiful places on our planet, but photography, much like everything else, is very trendy. It is rare that you have an opportunity to capture something that has never been photographed before. The challenge then, is to find a way to set your work apart from the crowd. Anchoring your image through something unique is one of the key ways to accomplish this. Take for example, the new One World Trade Center in New York City. It has an incredible amount of emotional capital invested in it, because of the events of September 11th, 2001. So, it’s been photographed hundreds of thousands of times already since its completion. I wanted something different, and I saw the opportunity while in Battery Park further up Manhattan Island. Green space is at a premium in the big city, so when I saw an opportunity to shoot the tower, with the anchor of some flowers in the park in the foreground, I jumped on it, and am happy to have a different perspective on a familiar sight (image below).
The sunrises and sunsets of Arizona, in the American Southwest, are breathtaking, but can be challenge to capture because of the scale of the wide open spaces. This particular morning brought a gorgeous sunrise with a great, nuanced sky. I composed with a 15mm lens that could capture a lot of the context, but to keep it visually interesting I got about as close as I could to a clump of cholla cacti, that was catching the directional morning light. That grabs your attention first, and as your eyes move on through the scene, you have a great sense of depth of the wide open space because you are already visually anchored to the scene.
Here’s another example from Ontario, Canada. This was the first snow of the winter, and the rivers and lakes were still not frozen. I shot a long exposure, that has a lot of subtleties in the sky and vibrant blue, wintry tones. But it’s made special by the patches of snow, caught amongst the plants, on the water’s edge in the foreground. These anchor the image, and give depth to it, along with providing some bright points in an otherwise dark scene.
Your anchor can also help to lead you into the scene. In this snowy scene on a cold, clear, winter day, the footprints featured in the foreground help lead your eye through the scene below.
Finally, the path that anchors this beautiful autumn image, eventually leads you to the elderly couple walking hand in hand. The name of this image is “Seasons of Life”, and the use of the anchor to lead the eye through the scene has helped me tell a story, and provide some emotional resonance.
Another purpose of the anchor is to make a scene more visually engaging. Use the wide angle distortion to your advantage. I was driving through Ontario, Canada’s famous Algonquin Provincial Park, and noted the cool frozen cascades along the road. I wanted to include a road sign for more visual interest. Note how this first image, while not distorted, is not particularly interesting.
In this second image, however, I got close enough to this sign that the wide angle lens I was using, distorted it. Distortion sounds bad, but the end result here is a more visually interesting image, where the sign helps point the eye into the scene, where you can see the frozen cascades along the road.
You can also use this to tell your story. I shot a visually lush scene, but wanted my anchor to tell the story of people “Dumping in Paradise”. By getting close to the old tire it becomes unnaturally prominent, but by shooting it with a wide angle lens I’m also able to give the larger context in one shot. I’ve suddenly got an image with a cause attached to it, because of the anchor. Shooting a closer shot of the tire stuck in mud wouldn’t have had the same visual impact.
One final way that an anchor is important, is to prevent a scene from feeling empty. The way that long exposures blur water is very cool, of course, but this image would have felt very empty with nothing but blurred water. It would have lacked any true feature. But the foreground rocks that I’ve included in the composition, give the eye something to look at, and that in turn causes the brain to appreciate the image more as a whole. The rocks also point you toward the island in the distance, creating some tension between the little rocks in the foreground, and the big rock beyond.
These are but a few examples to help you understand the relationship between the foreground and background of an image. The foreground is your anchor, and without that anchor there is a good chance the image is going to, well, drift. A good anchor will help build strong, visually appealing images that will help to set your work apart – and isn’t that what we are all looking for?
Do you use anchors in your wide angle landscape photography? Share your ideas in the comments below.
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The post The Importance of an Anchor – Why Foreground Matters by Dustin Abbott appeared first on Digital Photography School.
Size matters: Hands-on with Canon PowerShot G7 X
18
Sep
Canon has been busy – its latest high-end compact, the PowerShot G7 X slots in beneath the G1 X Mark II, and offers a 20MP 1′-type sensor, 24-100mm equivalent F1.8-2.8 zoom lens and a host of other enthusiast-friendly features. We spoke to Canon recently and got access to a pre-production G7 X. Click through for a hands-on tour of the new camera.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
26 August, 2013 – Why 4K Matters
26
Aug
What is 4K? It’s the next evolution in TV and video, and LuLa plans to be in the forefront. Find out what it’s all about in Why 4K Matters.
"Having been to Antarctica with Michael and Kevin, I would say after having traveled the world and shot nearly my entire life as an exhibiting photographer, it was one of my highlights in my life and I talk about it, all the time. The images and experience of seeing something visionary and nearly extinct from the world, to see and experience the wildlife and scenery that does not fear humans is amazing. The images I shot there won me two Smithsonian awards and nearly 18 other international awards". – Tim Wolcott
Find Out More Now
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