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How to turn household lights into cheap DIY lighting modifiers

27 Nov

This article was originally published on Jake Hicks blog, and is being republished in full on DPReview with express permission from the author.

There is an almost endless supply of lighting modifiers available on the market right now—some are cheap, and some of the better ones are certainly a lot more expensive. But does cost directly relate to quality?

Well, a lot of the times yes it does, especially if you’re referring to build quality. In general, the more you spend, the better-made and more durable the modifier will be. But does that extra money you spend mean you’re getting a better lighting modifier overall? I would have to say no; in fact, for less than £15/$ 20 you can get some stunningly beautiful light from a homemade lighting modifier.

Read on to see examples of the stupidly cheap DIY lighting modifiers I’m referring too.

I’d like to think that my work is known for its creative approach to lighting. The reason for that is because I strongly believe lighting is the single most important subject in a shot.

I can honestly say that I’ve ‘saved‘ some frankly awful shoots through engaging lighting alone. Terrible locations, inexperienced or even no experience in the model/subject can certainly make a shoot hard, but far from impossible to pull off engaging results. Dynamic lighting can bring a boring room to life and flattering lighting can enhance any subject, lighting really is the one and only tool you need and should have complete control and mastery of.

So what makes good lighting? Well that is probably a topic/article/book/anthology for another day as there are certainly a lot opinions on the subject, but I think no matter how experienced or inexperienced you are as a photographer, we all know what we don’t like and we definitely know what we do like when we see it.

In this article I aim to show you a couple of very cheap alternatives to professional lighting modifiers that I think create some beautiful light that are very functional in a lot of situations.

Regular Household Lights

The lighting modifiers we’ll be taking a look at are the dome-like frosted globes. These can be fantastic at lighting a scene in a shot, as they spread light everywhere very evenly. It also turns out that, not only do they spread light everywhere, but they also create a beautiful portrait light as well. Let’s take a closer look at the lights in question.

I purchased two white frosted dome lights from IKEA. One was small and the other was far larger. The smaller one is intended to be used as ceiling light in a bathroom. The reason it’s intended for this is because it casts light everywhere from a very small source close to the ceiling making it ideal for small rooms and corridors.

Small bathroom ceiling dome light.

The second one I purchased was far larger and is actually originally intended as a table lamp. Again this dome-like design is perfect for casting light over a large area without being overly harsh.

Large table lamp dome.

Where can you get them?

I got mine from IKEA and they are silly-cheap.

The small globe is a ceiling light called VITEMÖLLA and it can be found here for £13. The one in the picture looks slightly different as it has a white base compared to my silver one but the dome (the important part) is the same.

The large dome is a table lamp called FADO and that can be found here for £15. It’s worth pointing out and making sure that you get the white one. There are several of these FADO’s in a variety of tones so just make sure you choose the white one as the others will be fairly useless.

Regular Photographic Modifier

I also wanted to get a bit of a gauge on how the light from these domes looked compared to a regular photographic lighting modifier. For the sake of this test I actually compared them to a few shots taken with a 22″ white beauty dish.

There’s a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, it’s probably my most used lighting modifier so I have a very good idea of how the lighting looks with it. And secondly, the beauty dish is pretty pricey compared to these domes so I thought it would be an interesting comparison.

The image above also gives a nice size comparison and it clearly shows how all three of the modifiers used in the test look when side-by-side.

Getting the Domes ‘Shoot-Ready’

Obviously the domes are designed for an alternative purpose to a photoshoot, so I needed to do make a few adjustments before they were ‘shoot-ready’.

Small Dome

The smaller dome was fairly simple: I just removed the inner wiring and bulb housing and then I simply rested it atop one of my standard dish reflectors. I could have taped it on but there was no fear of it moving or tipping out so I just left it as it was and it was fine.

The small dome was easily made shoot-ready by removing the inner workings and then simply resting it in a current reflector dish.

Large Dome

The larger dome took a little more work, but not much. I simply removed the inner workings once again and then found an old speed-ring to attach it too.

A speed-ring is the metal rotating mount that attaches modifiers like softboxes to your flash head. I’ve acquired a few over the years that I no longer use so I simply taped one of them to the dome. With strong tape like gaffers tape it was surprisingly snug and there was no fear of it coming loose even when mounted on its side.

The large dome was taped snugly onto an old speed-ring which enabled me to attach it to my light horizontally if needed.

The Setup

The actual lighting setup was nothing fancy, but I also wanted to try out some alternative colouring ideas at the same time.

The model was positioned about 5 feet from the white wall behind her. I had the main lights positioned about 2 feet in front of her and above eye level, and then I also had a small softbox on the floor at the models feet with an orange gel* in place for the entirety of the test.

*Obviously you don’t need to the orange gel but I was seeing how much the gel was washed out by the modifiers so that’s why I had it in place.

A very simple setup that involves two lights; a key and orange gelled fill light.

The Results

After I had taken a few shots with the beauty dish, I switched that out for the larger dome. Then, after a few more frames, I changed it too the smaller dome. The resulting images should speak for themselves.

Beauty dish Images


Beauty Dish Shot – Click to Enlarge	Beauty Dish Shot – Click to Enlarge

The Small Dome Images

The small dome setup


Small Dome Shot – Click to Enlarge	Small Dome Shot – Click to Enlarge

Large Dome Images

The big dome set-up


Large Dome Shot – Click to Enlarge	Large Dome Shot – Click to Enlarge

CAUTION: I’m using LED modeling bulbs in my flash heads which produce very little heat. If your flash heads have tungsten modeling bulbs, these globes will get VERY HOT as there is nowhere for the heat to escape when the globes are in position on the heads. Be sure to turn them down or off entirely.

Conclusions

I think you guys can draw your own conclusions from the images above and however you feel about the three looks, I think one thing is very clear that we can all agree on: you don’t necessarily need to spend a lot of money on expensive modifiers to produce beautiful light.

The beauty dish obviously produces a more directional light, and you can see that by how dark the background is compared to the other setups. The other dome shots throw light everywhere so more light is spilling onto the background. Because of this beauty dishes directionality and lack of spill, you should notice that the shadows on the models face are darker too. In contrast, the domes are bouncing light around the room and that spilled light is filling in a lot of the shadows on the models face. This gives the appearance of a far more flattering light as a result.

This dome spill is far from being a bad thing either; in fact, if you’re using the domes in a small space you can use that spill and bounce to really blend the subject into a scene with just a single light. This type of modifier is perfect for location shooting or environmental shots, and it’s certainly something I’ll be using for that type of work.

The small dome actually produced a far better light than I expected. Its small source creates a contrasty light that falls off quite quickly, leaving brighter highlights and darker shadows as a result. I also found that this creates some nice shimmering effects on the skin and makeup as a result of the hard-light properties.

I was really excited to try the big dome, as I thought it was going to be far and away the best looking lighting. Although I wasn’t disappointed, I still feel the resulting light didn’t look like I expected. The light was very clean in that there was a very smooth transition from shadow to highlight, which was nice, but it was still darker overall than I expected.

As a singe beauty light I think the small dome won for me with its look. If I was shooting in a larger area and wanted to illuminate more of the subject in a scene then the big dome placed a little further away would surely be the best choice.

In hindsight, I think I know where I went wrong with this test and what I would like to do differently next time.

You’ll notice that the light stand did not move the entire time, so from the small dome setup to the big dome setup the angling of the flash head caused the light source to get a lot closer to the model, which required me to turn the power of the head down. That’s not a problem normally, but when I turned the power of the head down, I also reduced the amount of light that bounced around the room. This in turn reduced the amount of light falling back into the shadows making the light appear darker than it actually is.

I would like to try this big dome again, but move it further back from the model, thereby allowing that light to bounce around the room and giving a far softer impression to the lighting—perfect for environmental shots.

Closing Comments

So there you have it: a couple of great lighting modifiers and at the cost of just over £25 for the both of them! That’s pretty damn impressive in my book, and you’d be crazy not to grab at least one of them and give them a go. Of course, if you really wanted an excellent dome modifier then you can always grab the Profoto frosted dome one here for a cool $ 177! I’m sure that’s miles better 😉

As always, if you have any questions then let me know. If there was something that didn’t make sense and you wanted clarification on then let me know. Also if you’ve ever tested a DIY modifier that has provided excellent results, I’d love to hear about it. Let me know in the comments!

Jake Hicks is an editorial and fashion photographer specializing in keeping the skill in the camera not just on the screen. To see more of his work or read more tutorials, be sure to visit his website, like his Facebook page, and follow him on Instagram and Twitter.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Sony a7R III sample gallery updated

27 Nov

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We’ve been shooting with the a7R III pretty much non-stop since it arrived in the office. From hot air ballooning to mountain biking, we captured all kinds of action as we prepared our review. In case you missed it, take a look at all of the images we added since publishing our initial gallery.

See our updated Sony a7R III
sample gallery

Read our full Sony a7R III review

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Watch Drew Geraci’s latest time-lapse masterpiece, shot with Sony a7R III

27 Nov

Drew Geraci is a master of time-lapse photography. His work has taken him all over the world, and his client list contains some of the biggest names in sports and entertainment. Even if you don’t know his name, if you’ve ever watched ‘House of Cards’ on Netflix, you’ve seen his work.

Drew has been using a Sony a7R III for some time, and prior to its official launch last month he spent some time in New Zealand, to see what the new camera could do. We caught up with him recently to ask about his inspirations, workflow, and tips for successful time-lapse photography.

What first got you interested in time-lapses?

The real reason I became interested in time-lapse photography wasn’t because of anything ultra profound or mind-blowing. It was because someone I looked up to (as a pro-photographer) looked at my early time-lapse work and told me that it was, bluntly, garbage.

Since that day I’ve channeled that negative energy into something positive, which has lead me down an incredibly successful career path which I’ve very thankful for.

Why would/should you shoot a scene using timelapse techniques rather than a conventional single exposure?

Timelapse tells a story that a single frame or even series of video frames can’t. The passage of time is something that you can’t really ‘see’ normally, and this is why timelapse photography is so useful – it showcases short or long passages of time which can show the grandness of an event or place in a unique way. Timelapses always seem to dazzle and amaze audiences.

How is the process of planning a timelapse shoot different to a conventional landscape shooting session?

Planning a time-lapse shoot can be quite difficult depending on where and when you want to film. You have to think of all of the elements of motion that will be in your scene and how light will effect the scene over time. There are so many random variables that most photographers/videographers don’t have to worry about, but for time-lapse it’s different.

You really have to be aware of your scene, to an even higher degree than normal. You need to make sure there you account for things that could destroy your shot like birds, people, or lights. You have to work all of this out before you start shooting.

What’s the single most important factor to consider when making timelapse movies?

For me personally, it’s about creating something that’s going to wow your audience and keep them entertained for the few seconds or minutes that you get their attention. I want to shoot scenes that are unique, vibrant, and invoke some type of emotion to really draw the viewer in.

Music is key as well. Selecting the wrong music can be fatal. As a case in point, there’s an M83 song that has been used so many times now on timelapse videos that it’s getting ridiculous. I always try to find something original to use instead of mainstream music.

What does your workflow look like when planning and shooting a time-lapse movie?

The workflow is chaos. It usually consists of a shot list, scouting notes and it’s all subject to change when I get to the location. I make sure (most of the time) to do a 2-3 day scout visit to each location before the actual shooting occurs. This gives me a better idea of what to expect when I shoot it for real. I look at the lighting, the atmosphere, and all of the elements of motion, because I want my shots to be as dynamic as possible.

What was your big break?

For me, my big break was the title sequence of Netflix’s House of Cards. I had lunch with David Fincher to discuss a new project and it turned out to the the intro to his new show. Completing that sequence was a fun and grueling 6 months of shooting but the end result is something that 100’s of millions of people have viewed – which is quite humbling.

I’ve had some other big name clients before this, like the NFL and Apple, but shooting the intro to House of Cards pushed things over the top. It’s fun being known as the guy who shot the intro to a now iconic (and infamous ) show but I want to continue pushing boundaries and exploring new techniques to keep things fresh.

How do you control the camera trigger when you’re shooting?

My personal preference is a manual, external intervalometer because it provides the fastest method for setup and shooting. Internal intervalometers are great, but they can be limited and awkward to use – especially if you have to adjust the interval or number of shots. I use the JJC micro-USB – it’s cheap, and it’s reliable.

Can you give us 3 top tips for photographers planning on getting into timelapse shooting?

Turn off anything automatic on your camera (Auto WB, ISO, Aperture, Shutter… even stabilization – turn it off!)
If you’re not using a manual aperture lens, make sure to “lens twist” or detach your lens from the body, just enough so the connectors that send data aren’t touching. This will ensure that the aperture blades don’t change position from exposure to exposure and it will reduce the amount of flicker in your footage substantially.
Always shoot Raw!

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Why Photography is Beneficial for Your Mental Wellness

27 Nov

I initially took up photography for one simple reason – I couldn’t draw. My 16-year-old self reasoned that photography must be pretty easy. Just point the camera and shoot, right? But as I worked away in the high school darkroom, I realized how powerful the camera is for artistic output. And as I built up my own photographic practice, I got to see another side of photography too, its therapeutic qualities.

It tasks photographers with the opportunity to truly see an environment, making the most out of any situation. Photography requires adaptability and focus, driving photographers to chase that elusive perfect shot. This is why many people find photography so effective for cultivating good mental health.

Why Photography is Beneficial for Your Mental Wellness

There is a unique satisfaction in executing a photograph you are happy with.

Mental health is a vast topic. It plucks external experiences and mashes them with physiology indiscriminately. Personally, I feel like photography isn’t just about cameras and photos, but consistency. Something I can fall back on when times get tough. Often I find that photography can be the difference between a good or a bad day – that’s pretty powerful stuff.

Here are a few ways that I’ve found photography to be beneficial for my own mental wellness.

Motivation

From the earliest stages of photographic study, the camera trains the eye to seek out detail and opportunity. Whether you notice it or not, chances are you’ll quickly begin to see the world through the perimeter of the viewfinder – camera in hand or not. A photographer’s process is often cyclical – seeking out subjects will drive you to document them photographically. And to photograph those subjects adequately, you’ll need a discerning eye. One feeds the other and motivation fuels both.

I’m a bit of an aviation nerd, so taking photographs of something I love always picks me up emotionally.

But the relationship between photography and motivation can be tenuous. Sticking with photography in better times creates a sense of stability in harder periods. Chasing the elusive “perfect shot” and the afterglow of a photo session slowly starts to become a necessity – instilling resilience.

We photographers are lucky in that we have a self-contained tool to reach out to. Photography opens an inexhaustible amount of doors, providing opportunities to explore, travel, experiment and grow experience. It also helps form relationships with different places and subjects, leading to tangible locations that are a haven for low days. A valuable self-care technique.

People on the outside may not understand a photographer’s inner workings or mental well being, but even the smallest of accomplishment spills over to a new day, easing the complex difficulties experienced in a low. Photography has many benefits and it all comes down to taking a camera in your hands.

Photography can take you to amazing places.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness can be an important fixture in mental health. Usually, you’d think of yoga or meditation when discussing it. But it’s no different for photographers.

This is a time to take stock of your mental landscape. It encourages a state of attentiveness to your surroundings and your own thinking. Whenever you bring awareness to your own senses, you are being deliberately mindful. It’s almost like hitting a reset button for a moment, taking a breath, and paying attention to your sensory experience.

Mindfulness has been found to reduce stress and rumination, working memory, focus, and self-insight.

Why Photography is Beneficial for Your Mental Wellness

Photography isn’t just like mindfulness, it is mindfulness. Photography requires a deep focus on all of the body’s sensory input to seek out photographic subjects. It prioritizes the actions involved in photography first – avoiding some sort of sensory overload.

This deep sense of a photographer’s surroundings transforms a moment into a carefully considered image, even in a split second And it all comes together to form one fluid moment, with each click of the shutter activated with purpose and reason. As Don McCullin, documentary and war photographer said,

“Photography for me is not looking, it’s feeling. If you can’t feel what you are looking at, then you’re never going to get others to feel anything when they look at your pictures”.

Green is the color our eyes are most sensitive to. Seeking out nature, even in an urban environment can cultivate mental well being.

Perspective

From it’s earliest incarnations, photography has shaped our understanding of the world. Eadweard Muybridge is known for his photography of the Mid West. But he shifted his focus to a more scientific endeavor when Leland Stanford, a race-horse owner asked that he could study the dynamics of a horse’s gallop.

Muybridge had been tasked with breaking down what the eye could not. Up until Muybridge’s efforts, most artists painted horses at a trot with one foot always on the ground. But Myubridge’s use of photography revealed the horse’s gait was performed with all the feet in the air over the course of each stride. His method was one of the early uses of perspective in photography, revealing the scientific potential of the camera.

Taking advantage of an interesting perspective is a valuable form of-self expression.

Photography can reveal beauty with a simple change in perspective. The mental gymnastics required to form an unusual image slowly becomes second nature, aiding with racing thoughts and anxiety.

Photographers make use of both mental and physical perspective to re-imagine the world. Sometimes a new perspective is physical, or it reflects the inner machinations of a photographer’s process. Inspiration can hit at any time – that’s why I try to keep a camera with me as much as possible.

Thinking, planning, investigating, scouring. Photographers make use of personal experience to convey a new way of digesting a scene, both deliberately and on purpose. The result is an unusual insight into a subject. This genuine approach can reveal a greater faith in your own photography. But it also encourages relationships between a viewer and the photographer.

This contentedness cultivates awareness, thoughtfulness, and insight. This sharing of ideas is also cathartic and mentally beneficial – a problem shared is a problem halved.

Conclusion

Photography leaves your mark on the world.

Artists have always translated art from the mental manifestations of the artist. Photography cultivates thought, inspiration, awareness, and focus. Your photography reflects your own experience – creating new perspectives and connections with people. Art can flip perspective upside -down.

Buy honing in on your own experiences, you can cultivate a mindfulness in your practice that flows into the heights of creativity and eases some of the burdens of mental lows.

The post Why Photography is Beneficial for Your Mental Wellness by Megan Kennedy appeared first on Digital Photography School.

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Gear of the Year 2017 – Carey’s choice: Sony FE 85mm F1.8

27 Nov

Maybe it’s not everyone’s choice for a ‘landscape’ lens, but I like using the 85mm focal length for just about anything.
Sony a7R II | ISO 100 | 1/320 sec | F8

There are times when I find myself dreaming of a make-believe world where I don’t worry much about camera gear. A world where I’ve simplified, and simplified, until I’m down to the bare minimum of what I think I need to accomplish the sort of photographic work that I like to do.

Obviously, that is not the world that I live in.

Nonetheless, in that carefree fantasy land of plentiful-yet-lucrative corporate jobs, wedding ceremonies and endless travel assignments, I skip like a child with a balloon from gig to gig with two interchangeable lens cameras, and a single lens for each; a fast wide-angle for one camera, and a fast 85mm for the other.

The FE 85mm F1.8 is exactly the sort of 85mm lens I’ve been looking for in Sony’s system since I started at DPReview.

I find the compression and reach of the 85mm focal length – neither of which are too extreme – make it a great contrast for 28mm and 35mm lenses, even just for walking around the city. Also, notice the roundness of those out-of-focus highlights, even at F4.
Sony a7R II | ISO 100 | 1/3200 sec | F4

The Sony FE 85mm F1.8 is an affordable, sharp and lightweight lens for Sony’s full frame E-mount cameras. No, you don’t have to just pick two of those.

On an a7-series camera, the 85mm F1.8 balances beautifully, focuses quickly and is more than sharp enough for the 42MP of the a7R II (or a7R III, for that matter). In Sony’s lens lineup, it sits below the FE 85mm F1.4 GM which is a great lens in its own right, but focuses slower and is far bigger and heavier.

And that’s really the kicker for me with this lens. Sony’s a7-series bodies are usefully more compact than full-frame DSLRs, but often, the lenses can be large and unwieldy. With the 85mm F1.8, you’ve got yourself a truly compact kit.

Though this verbiage is always to be taken with a grain of salt (a flake of snow?) the Sony FE 85mm F1.8 has some degree of weather-sealing.
Sony a7R II | ISO 800 | 1/60 sec | F2.8

So, why 85? In general, I find the 85mm focal length a great complement to 28mm and 35mm lenses. Historically, my most-used gear for shooting events were two Nikon D700s, a 35mm F2D and 85mm F1.8D. I first fell in love with this lens combination on a six-week trip to Nepal during college, photographing endless portraits, landscapes and urban life, and was never left wanting.

With longer lenses, like a 105mm or 135mm, I always feel like I’m backing myself into a corner. And yet, I consistently found that a fast 50 was way too close to 28/35mm to be truly useful as far as getting some variety.

Focusing close to your subject with a wide aperture gives you a nice, dreamy look on the FE 85mm F1.8, while maintaining sharpness at your point of focus.
Sony a7R II | ISO 100 | 1/400 sec | F1.8

But with 85mm, you can move in for a tight head-and-shoulders shot or a decor detail, back up to get a candid of a group interacting, and even with some distance, you can still get background separation if you shoot at a wide enough aperture. Speaking of wide apertures, I rarely use 70-200mm F2.8 zooms because of both their weight, and because I often am shooting at F2 or wider as the lights go down and the reception warms up.

I’ve said this before, but I’m a big fan of gear that ‘gets out of your way.’ For me, the FE 85mm F1.8 does just that. It’s straightforward and has a solid feel. I’ve never felt it’s too heavy, or focuses too slowly, and I can just concentrate on what I’m seeing through the viewfinder. If I were considering a new kit to start out with, a couple of Sony a7-series cameras with the FE 28mm F2 and FE 85mm F1.8 would be on my short list to check out.

Out-of-camera JPEG.
Sony a7R III | ISO 800 | 30 sec | F2

Sony FE 85mm F1.8 Sample gallery

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Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Beginner’s Guide to Metering Modes on Your Camera

26 Nov

Should you bother to learn about metering modes? I’m confident I can sell you on it. Your camera’s automatic metering will only carry you so far. As your digital photography ability grows, you’ll start to feel frustrated in scenes with mixed light. Learning metering modes is the key to making tricky light conditions seem much less intimidating.

Let’s jump right into this beginner’s guide to metering modes.

Beginner's Guide to Metering Modes on Your Camera

Giant dragon lantern in honor of the Mid-Summer Ghost Festival – Keelung, Taiwan. Metering mode: Spot.

What is metering?

This is vital to understand before you learn about your camera’s individual metering modes. “Metering” means taking a light reading. A properly exposed image is made up of three tones of light: the shadows, mid-tones, and highlights.

The image below demonstrates these three tones well. The forested hills in the foreground and dark cloud represent the shadows, the temple roof and figure represent the mid-tones, and the bright clouds represent the highlights.

A figure on the roof of a temple looks out across forested hills – Jiufen, Taiwan. Through the use of my camera’s light meter, I had more creative control to slightly underexpose the image giving viewers the same sense of foreboding that I felt from those dark, rumbling clouds overhead.

Your camera has an ingenious tool called a light meter that enables it to determine a correct exposure with a balance of shadows, mid-tones, and highlights. You’ll see it at the bottom of the frame when you put your eye to the viewfinder.

Taking light readings from the scene

Your camera’s metering modes control which part (s) of the scene your light meter uses to take a reading. Consider the example below. If you were to meter only off the dragon and take the photo, the dragon would be correctly exposed. However, the sky would probably be too bright.

Alternatively, if I was to meter only off the sky, the sky would be correctly exposed but the dragon would be a bit too dark. However, if I metered from a wider section of the scene, I would get a more balanced exposure.

Detail from the Land God Temple at Badouzi Harbor – Taiwan. Metered off the dragon the exposure is a bit too light.

The four main metering modes

Now, let’s get down to the crux of the article. Here, I’m going to explain what each of your camera’s four metering modes does and how this affects your images.

But before we begin, a note about how your camera meter works. Very bright and dark tones can trick your light meter. Why? Because it is designed to bring every tone to something called “18% gray.” Imagine a snow-covered mountain or a jet black car. Would you want your camera to correct these tones to appear 18% gray? Or would you want their tones to be rendered as truly as your eye sees them? The answer is obvious, but not to your light meter.

So it is your job to review your image on the histogram and decide if it is correct for your scene or not. If it’s not you can use Exposure Compensation to adjust it (when shooting in Aperture or Shutter Priority modes).

Evaluative (or Matrix) Metering Mode

Evaluative metering is the natural mode to explain first because it’s the one your camera uses as standard or default. Your light meter takes a reading from across the whole scene. With that information, your camera’s onboard computer makes multiple calculations to determine a correct exposure with balanced highlights, mid-tones, and shadows.

A scene from Mother’s Market in Imphal – Manipur, India. I wanted to read the light from across the whole scene here and so used Evaluative Metering Mode.

On Asahidake, Hokkaido’s highest mountain – Japan. Shot in the Evaluative Metering mode the camera attempts to make an exposure that is an average of all the light tones of the scene. This is particularly useful when you’re learning to shoot landscapes.

Center-Weighted Metering Mode

Imagine that you’re now zooming into the frame slightly. Whereas Evaluative Metering mode reads the light from across the entire scene, Center-Weighted Metering mode reads light with a preference towards the middle. It still reads from a large proportion of the frame, just not the whole thing. This varies between camera manufacturers, but it’s usually between 60 % and 80 % of the frame.

An accordion player in Central Vienna – Austria. Center-Weighted mode would have been a solid choice for this portrait because there is nothing much of interest in the four corners or along the edges; it’s all within the central 60 %–80 % of the frame.

The area inside the red circle is roughly what will be metered with Center-Weighted mode.

Fuyou Temple in Tamsui, a riverside town in New Taipei – Taiwan. I would not have used Evaluative Metering mode for this scene because my camera would have tried to brighten the image – seeing it is mostly dark. Whereas, I intentionally wanted more of a silhouette-like feel.

The area inside the circle is roughly the percentage of the frame that will be metered when using Center-Weighted mode.

Partial Metering Mode

If Center-Weighted metering meant zooming in a little, Partial Metering is a huge jump inwards again. This time, your light meter will read the light from an area the size of 6-15 % of the center of the scene, depending on your camera manufacturer.

Boatman on the Ganges – Varanasi, India. Partial Metering mode is where things start to get really interesting. You begin taking more control than ever before of where you meter from in the scene. As you can see, this man’s face is just on the limits of a central point of approximately 10 % of the frame. It’s exposed exactly the way I wanted, but I didn’t just get lucky.

With the Varanasi boatman above, I was shooting in Aperture Priority mode. I aimed my center focus point at his face before composing the shot. This allowed my camera to read the light from 10 % of the frame around his head.

Then, I used the exposure lock button (read that article if it’s the first time you’ve heard about it). Note that this is for use mainly with Aperture or Shutter Priority mode. With this button held down, you lock in the exposure and can recompose the shot without the settings changing.

On the same boat ride, the sun sets over the ghats – Varanasi, India. Again, I aimed my center focus point at the flowers to meter. Because there was just a pinprick of sunlight still peeking over the tops of the buildings, the sky wasn’t overpoweringly bright in the final image; however, I did dim the highlights slightly in Lightroom later.

Spot Metering Mode

The final push inward; Spot Metering mode reads light from between 1-5 % of your scene. I personally use Spot Metering mode more than any other, but it may be more challenging for you if you are just learning about your camera and metering.

It is particularly useful to use spot metering in conjunction with the exposure lock button and the center AF point selected. Aim the center point of your viewfinder at the subject or light source to meter from it. Lock in the exposure and recompose, then focus and shoot.

I find that spot metering mode is goodfor portraits and getting the correct skin tones. Also, I use it for specific light sources, such as a beam of light through a window, but only when I’m also happy for other regions of the photo to be underexposed. I do not recommend using it for landscapes unless you are looking to experiment with silhouettes.

Spot metered off the sky to get a silhouette sunset and deeper tones in the sky.

Silhouetted figure toasting marshmallows at a community bonfire – Matsumoto, Japan. Of all its many versatile uses, Spot Metering is the mode you should select if you want to create silhouettes. Meter off the brightest part of the scene and select your settings. Lock in the exposure and then compose the shot. The brightest part of the scene will be well exposed and your subject will be cast in dramatic black shadows.

Inside a 500-year-old tomb at Lodi Gardens – New Delhi, India. Spot Metering mode is gloriously precise. You can meter off a light source as specific as a single sunbeam coming through a window. In this image, I crouched down so that the artificial light source was directly behind the sign and spot metered off the bright area of the floor.

Conclusion

The next step on from here is full manual mode, in which the exposure lock button is not required. But first, master metering modes using Shutter and Aperture priority modes.

Now that you’ve learned about each metering mode, get out your camera and go practice. Don’t forget to share your thoughts and images in the comments.

The post Beginner’s Guide to Metering Modes on Your Camera by Ben McKechnie appeared first on Digital Photography School.

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Gear of the Year 2017 – Barney’s choice (Part 2): Nikon D850

26 Nov

In the first part of this article, I wrote about the camera I’ve used most in 2017 – the Leica M10. In Part 2, I want to write about a camera that I’ve used very little. In fact, aside from bringing it to my eye and playing around with the reviewable sample that came into our office earlier this year, I’ve barely even managed to get my hands on it.

That camera is the Nikon D850. Undeniably one of the most important products of 2017 (and in terms of traffic, definitely among the most popular on DPReview) the D850 is an impressive DSLR by any measure.

The Nikon D810 is one of our favorite DSLRs of the past several years

It used to be the case that if you wanted high-resolution stills, you had to make do with a relatively slow camera. And conversely, if you wanted high-speed capture and ultra-long battery life, you had to drop $ 5000-6000 on a pro-grade camera that didn’t have the pixel-count required for really demanding applications. The Nikon D810 is one of our favorite DSLRs of the past several years, but its excellent resolution and unrivaled dynamic range at ISO 64 came at the expense of relatively slow continuous shooting, and (somewhat mysteriously) poor low-light autofocus performance compared to the flagship D5.

The D850’s wide dynamic range at its low ISO sensitivity settings enables shots like these (taken at ISO 125) which contain detail and true color everywhere from the deepest shadows to the highlight areas. Shot from a moving vehicle (hence the slightly softness at very close examination), this image is a great illustration of the D850’s versatility.

Photo by Carey Rose

On paper, the D850 offers the best of both worlds, and in practice, it generally lives up to its potential. A pixel count of 47MP almost matches the Canon EOS 5DS/R for resolution, while a maximum frame-rate of 9fps with an accessory grip and D5 battery means that in terms of speed, it’s not far off Canon and Nikon’s flagship pro-grade DSLRs (albeit for an additional premium of $ 1000). The D850’s 153-point AF system is lifted from the D5, and while the D5 has the edge when it comes to tracking (possibly thanks to its greater on-board data processing power) the D850 generally performs well, and definitely outperforms its nearest competition. In low light, the contrast between the D850’s autofocus performance and that of its predecessor is pretty stark.

The D850’s large, bright finder is a beautiful thing

I’ve been shooting with a Nikon D810 for several years as my primary camera, and there isn’t a single area of its feature set which Nikon has not upgraded in the D850. Even the viewfinder experience has been improved; the D850’s large, bright finder is a beautiful thing. So why haven’t I spent more time with it?

Can you see this too? OK, good.

Photo by Carey Rose

The short, boring answer is that I’ve been kept busy with other projects (and other cameras) and unsurprisingly given its performance, the D850 is also in pretty high demand among our writers when it comes to weekend photography trips and events. But there’s another reason.

I’ve called the D810 and 24-120mm F4 combination ‘boringly capable’ in articles on DPReview in the past and I really meant it. While obviously there are things that a constant-aperture F4 zoom can’t do, that lens, attached to the D810, lets me do pretty much everything I need to – from quick grab shots on the street to architectural and landscape studies. When the 24-120mm can’t cut it (distortion can be an issue in some situations, for example, and it’s a bit limiting in poor light) I switch for my 35mm and 50mm primes.

I know that if I grab the D850 for a weekend I will probably end up wanting one

While the D850 is clearly greatly improved over the D810, I’ve never had a reason to curse its predecessor, or wish for much in the way of improvement. If I still shot live music regularly I might feel compelled to spend the extra money just for backlit controls and improved low-light AF, but I don’t, so I won’t.

At least for now, my D810 is as ‘boringly capable’ as it always was. In all honestly, I know that if I grab the D850 for a weekend and shoot a few hundred frames with it I will probably end up really wanting one – and not having $ 3000 burning a hole in my pocket, or a third kidney, I can’t afford to do that right now.

I don’t know who these people are, but they’ve spent more time in close proximity to the D850 than me.

Photo by Carey Rose

So I don’t own one (even though I’d like to), and I’ve barely used it. I didn’t take any of the pictures in this article, or in the gallery linked below. Then why on earth is the D850 one of my two picks for the best gear of 2017? Well, just look at it, for heaven’s sake. It’s such a good camera. I mean seriously, it’s hard to imagine how much more advanced a DSLR could be. For all of the improvements that have been made in mirrorless cameras over the past few years, the D850 still offers a combination of power, image quality, and luxurious handling (including that gorgeous viewfinder) which is hard to argue with.

I say ‘hard to argue with’ rather than impossible, because I’m sure that some people will still argue about it (feel free to jump to the comments), but this is my article and I can write what I want. In my opinion, for all of the doom and gloom spoken about the company in the past couple of years, the D850 proves one essential fact: Nikon knows how to make great cameras.

Nikon D850 Sample Gallery

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How to Blur the Background of a Portrait Using the Magnetic Lasso Tool in Photoshop

25 Nov

Have you ever taken a portrait and wished that the background were just a little bit more blurry? You can address background blur in-camera by changing either your aperture or the distance of your subject from the background. However, there’s also a relatively quick way to make slight adjustments to background blur in post-processing. In this article, we’ll be walking through how to use the Magnetic Lasso tool in Photoshop to slightly blur the background of your portraits and people photography.

Getting started

First, open your desired image in Photoshop, and duplicate your background layer (Layer > Duplicate Layer). Next, select the Magnetic Lasso tool. If you’ve not used this tool recently, you may need to right-click on the original lasso tool and then click on the magnetic lasso tool from the fly-out menu.

How to Blur the Background of a Portrait Using the Magnetic Lasso Tool in Photoshop

Selecting the subject

Using the Magnetic Lasso tool, begin by clicking at any point right next to your subject. You’ll notice that the magnetic lasso tool begins to “stick” to what it thinks is the outline of your subject. Continue to click your mouse to create anchor points periodically all around your subject.

If the magnetic lasso tool jumps somewhere you don’t want it to go, press the delete button on your keyboard to return to your last anchor point.

How to Blur the Background of a Portrait Using the Magnetic Lasso Tool in Photoshop

Definitely be aware that once you’ve started using the Magnetic Lasso tool, you’re pretty committed! You won’t be able to do much else with Photoshop until you’ve either completed the lasso loop by connecting your endpoint to your starting anchor point or until you hit “Esc” on your keyboard to delete all your anchor points.

Once you’ve closed your lasso loop, navigate to Select > Modify > Feather (or Shift + F6) and feather your selection by 5-10 pixels.

How to Blur the Background of a Portrait Using the Magnetic Lasso Tool in Photoshop

Feather your new selection 5-10 pixels.

Invert to select the background

Next, you’ll want to invert your selection so that you’ll be blurring the background rather than your subject. To do that, navigate to Select > Inverse (or Ctrl + Shift + I). If you see a dashed outline appear around the border of your image, then you’ve correctly inverted your selection.

Notice where the marching ants are – if they appear like this around the outside of the image you’ve correctly inverted the selection.

Adding the blur effect

After you’ve inverted your selection, it’s time to blur the background of your image. Click on Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Next, play with the radius slider a bit.

Please keep in mind that this technique isn’t designed to take a tack sharp background and transform it to the creamy bokeh of an 85mm lens. Rather, it’s designed to slightly enhance the bokeh that you’ve already got going on in your image. As such, I usually select a radius of 5-10 pixels for the blur filter.

Don’t be afraid to play around with this a bit. Utilize the preview check box, and see what your image looks like when using different amounts for the radius!

Gaussian blur added.

Finishing up

Once you’ve run the Gaussian Blur filter, press Ctrl + D to deselect your image, and you’re about finished! If there are any parts of your image that are blurry and shouldn’t be, go ahead and add a layer mask to your top layer, and mask off any of those blurry areas, and then you’re finished!

Original image on top; image blurred with magnetic lasso tool on the bottom.

As you can see, this technique is subtle, and helps to soften (but not eliminate) slightly distracting elements from the background of your image. I most often find myself using this technique on one or two person portraits, including newborns. It’s a really simple trick to have in your tool bag!

Have you ever utilized the magnetic lasso tool for people photography? What’s your favorite way to use it? Chime in below and tell us in the comments section.

The post How to Blur the Background of a Portrait Using the Magnetic Lasso Tool in Photoshop by Meredith Clark appeared first on Digital Photography School.

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Shooting K?lauea Volcano, Part 1: How to melt a drone

25 Nov

In October this year, I spent 2 weeks shooting in Hawaii. My first stop was Big Island, where a friend and I shot the lava flows of Pu?u ????—a volcanic cone in the eastern rift zone of K?lauea, a currently active shield volcano in the Hawaiian Islands, and the most active of the five volcanoes that together form the island of Hawaii (commonly known as Big Island).

The Pu?u ???? crater has been erupting continuously since January 3, 1983.

I had booked my flights (about 22 net hours per direction!) to Hawaii before I knew of the lava situation, but a friend told me that there were good inland flows so I kept my hopes up. Still, I went there knowing I could fly all this way and get lousy conditions. Volcanoes are unpredictable, and K?lauea is no different. For example, as I’m writing this, the Ocean Entry is devoid of any flowing lava. The surface flows come and go. Some say Pele (the Hawaiian goddess of fire) does as she pleases.

I did not get lousy conditions. Instead, I got the most incredible lucky streak I could’ve imagined, which helped me produce a set of images I’m very happy with, and encouraged me to write this mini-series I hope you enjoy. I’ll start it with an article about shooting the lava with a drone.

Before I continue, here’s a very important statement. All of these drone shots were captured outside the Hawaii-Volcanoes National Park No-Flight Zone and within FAA drone regulations (line of sight, 400ft, not operated near manned aircraft), without exception.

Flying drones in national parks is strictly prohibited and can get you in very serious trouble (rangers roam the park and its boundaries and some of them arrived when we were shooting). Moreover, responsible flight is mandatory since there are helicopters flying nearby. Naturally, I didn’t fly my drone anywhere near the height the helis fly at. Don’t even think about doing that if you care about other people’s lives and your own.

I highly recommend hiring a good local guide, who can assist you with determining if you are on park grounds.

The drone log from one of the flights. I’m including this since I’ve gotten a ton of hate-mail from people who were sure I was lying and actually flew inside the national park. One even wrote “I’ve been there, these flows are inside the park!”. Seriously?
I’m not that stupid guys. Fly responsibly.

The day after landing in Hilo Airport in Big Island, Hawaii, we met our guide at 14:00 in the afternoon, and started the hike. It wasn’t an easy walk—we had to traverse about 7-8 kilometers on uneven, hardened lava to reach the surface flow area. Luckily, it was cloudy but not rainy; if the sun had been shining right on us the experience wouldn’t be as nice, and rain would have been very annoying as well.

The hike took about 2 hours, give or take, and I carried all of my DSLR equipment, my drone with several spare batteries, and 2 liters of water on my back (after drinking 1.5 liters right before heading out). I’d take 3 liters if I were to do this hike again, as I ran out of water at some point in the late evening.

We reached the lava at about 16:00, and apart from one other person, we had the place to ourselves for the next 2 hours before the tour groups came. I began to scout around and test how close I could get to the lava, and at the same time, started flying and shooting with my Phantom 4 Pro.

A two headed dragon?

The lava had been flowing beautifully since before we arrived, but about an hour into our visit, I started hearing people shouting, and my friend screamed at me to look to the right.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing: one of the lava rivers quadrupled in force, simply bursting a huge mass of lava straight out of the mountain side, and flowed, diverging and converging, down the slopes, right in front of our eyes.


Before the river erupted	A similar angle after the flow increased.

I continued shooting with the drone and with my DSLR. Here are 2 more shots:

At some point I was noticing the right side of the drone images was getting darker. I continued shooting but when I went back to the apartment, I was surprised to see the plastic inside the drone camera had melted!

It appears that I was so enthusiastic that I kept getting closer and closer to the lava to reach the compositions I wanted—that was the source of the dark patch. If you watch the video I attached above carefully enough, you’ll be able to see the right side growing continuously darker.


See the blur on the bottom right?	My poor drone after the incident. It is now fixed!

Shooting lava with a drone was an exhilarating experience, even though I managed to melt it. There aren’t many technical considerations I can give you apart from watching the histogram, since global contrast can be harsh when it’s dark. The sun goes down fast in Hawaii, so make sure you use your time wisely—the really good light is short-lived.

If you’re reluctant to get your drone molten, be careful getting too close to the lava. For me, getting the right compositions was very much worth it. It was also a really captivating story, and my lava shots were all over the internet these last few weeks. There’s good to find in everything, I guess. DJI charged me about $ 450 to fix it, and while I don’t have the numbers yet, I’m pretty sure the licensing deals I’ve gotten since will cover that.

Next time, I’ll talk about shooting the lava from the ground.

Erez Marom is a professional nature photographer, photography guide and traveler based in Israel. You can follow Erez’s work on Instagram and Facebook, and subscribe to his mailing list for updates.

If you’d like to experience and shoot some of the most fascinating landscapes on earth with Erez as your guide, you’re welcome to take a look at his unique photography workshops around the world:

Winter Paradise – Northern Iceland
Northern Spirits – The Lofoten Islands
Giants of the Andes and Fitz Roy Hiking Annex – Patagonia
Tales of Arctic Nights and Uummannaq Annex – Greenland
Saga of the Seas and The Far Reaches Annex – The Faroe Islands
Desert Storm – Namibia

Selected Articles by Erez Marom:

Parallelism in Landscape Photography
Winds of Change: Shooting changing landscapes
Behind the Shot: Dark Matter
On the Importance of Naming Images
On Causality in Landscape Photography
Mountain Magic: Shooting in the Lofoten Islands
Behind the Shot: Nautilus
Behind the Shot: Lost in Space
Behind the Shot: Spot the Shark
Quick Look: The Art of the Unforeground
Whatever it Doesn’t Take

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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AI-powered ‘Google Lens’ is being integrated into Assistant on Pixel phones

25 Nov

With the Pixel 2 smartphone, Google introduced an exciting new software feature called Google Lens. Google Lens uses Artificial Intelligence to power its visual recognition algorithms and provides information about whatever your smartphone’s camera is pointed at—for example, what type of flower you are looking at or reviews and other information about a restaurant. You can also identify landmarks, look up movies, books or works of art and scan barcodes/QR codes and business cards.

Unfortunately, in its first implementation the feature wasn’t terribly easy or straightforward to use. You had to take a picture, then go to Google Photos and tap the Lens icon which would trigger the Google Lens scan. That’s too many steps to make the feature as useful as it could potentially be.

Thankfully, Lens will be integrated into Google Assistant soon. When you open the latter, there’ll now be a Lens icon near the bottom right of the display. Tapping this opens up a Google Lens camera. You can tap on any object of interest in the preview window and the app will provide any available information.

As usual, the new feature will be rolled out gradually. English-language Pixel phones that are using Assistant in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, India, and Singapore will be served first over the coming weeks, but we’d expect the new feature to make it other regions soon after.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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