Shot of the day
…of yesterday, that is:
I used my 1D MarkIV, and light was two direct speedlights with Pocketwizards on the left and right (full power), and one behind me for fill (also direct, but on half flash power).
How this is done is something I will explain more on the weekend lighting workshop I am holding, with Joseph Marranca, at my country retreat in early April. Details to follow!
A rose by any other name
I took this “grab-shot” at the Kodiak Gallery the other day with a Canon 7D and 50mm f/1.4 lens:
Canon 7D, 50mm f/1.4 at f/1.4, 1/250th sec, 800 ISO
This shows that with the right lens, you do not need flash. You also do not need a macro lens every time. You can use what you have, if you keep your eyes open.
Also note:
- The secondary subject blurred in the background
- I used exposure compensation (+) to ensure the white background showed as white, not gray
- I am not afraid to go to 800 ISO or beyond to get the right fast shutter speed.
- I am using off-centre composition, rather than Uncle Fred’s “subject in the middle”
Simple. Just keep your eyes open.
C? F? No, K.
K for Kelvin, that is.
If you find that your white balance setting still leaves your pictures yellow when taking pictures in tungsten light even when you set the white balance to Tungsten, try a Kelvin value if your camera supports that. I find, for instance, that in my bedroom 2700K is about right.
If your camera does not support that, use a Custom white balance setting after you shoot a white sheet of paper. Your camera’s manual will help in this.
Of course if you shoot RAW [corrected] this makes no difference, but I still recommend doing this: it reduces your post-production work, plus your back-of-the-camera previews look better.
Snow snaps
In preparation for an upcoming two-day Country Photography Workshop I am organizing with a colleague on 3+4 April (ask me about it!), I took a few snaps in the snow yesterday with the 1D Mark IV. Interestingly, it meters more accurately than the 1D Mark III: I needed less exposure compensation since even evaluative metering was biased more towards the selected focus point. (This is odd since focus-point tied spot metering works less often).
Can you tell I like wide angles?
Snow tips:
- Set exposure carefully for most images, emphasizing background saturation. Use a grey card or spot meter off treees, or off the sky, and adjust starting from that.
- Bring a spare battery.
- Careful bringing the camera into the house afterward: use a plastic bag.
- Meter carefully and use the “highlights” view and the histogram to ensure you are not blowing out the snow – but you are getting close.
- Use flash to light up close objects (see how I did it?)
- High-speed flash is needed if the time exceeds 1/250th – it can be left on since the camera will only use it when needed – but it will cut effective flash power by at least 50%.
- It is very hard to see your images: bring a Hoodman Hood Loupe and let your eyes acclimatise.
One more snap and it’s back to the order of the day:
Again, flash and careful exposure gives it that nice saturated look.
One light
You do not always need many lights. Sometimes, one light is enough:
f/8, 1/125th, 100 ISO
That is just one studio light, fired through a pocketwizard (but I could have used a cable) – and a reflector on the other side. This leads to this:
Yes, of course a background light, hairlight,and so on, would give me more control.
But we should all be aware that this amount of lighting is sometimes neither possible nor practical. And one light plus a reflector can give you nice light.
Travel Tip
When you travel with a suitcase, bring two camera bags. A small one and a large one.
The trick: one of these bags goes into your suitcase, filled with underwear, socks and other things you were going to bring anyway. That way it takes up no space.
So now when you get to your destination, you have a choice of camera bags every day: the large one, or the small one.
Dull day
On a dull day, with dreary light grey skies, you can consider doing a few things to add interest.
Off the Apache Trail, East of Phoenix, AZ
Technique:
- Make the background darker by using -1 to -2 stops of exposure compensation
- Get close to a subject that can add interest
- If possible, make that a colourful subject
- Use your flash!
- Set flash compensation appropriately as needed
You will see that even on a dull day you can make interesting images.
Architecture tip
When you shoot architecture and you want a straight photo, with no distortion, like this:
…then you need to do the following:
- Step back. Way back.
- Use a long telephoto lens.
- Do not aim up or down: keep the lens parallel to the ground.
- Consider using a tripod if the lens length is long.
You will now get an “undistorted” picture where the background is enlarged and drawn in to the subject.
High Key
Here’s an assignment for you all: Take a high-key portrait.
“High Key” means that the entire photo is bright. That means light background, good lighting and light clothing. This makes the subject’s face stand out beautifully as the obvious focus of attention, and it also gives the portrait a bright, cheerful look, as in this portrait of a few days ago:
Do you need two umbrellas on light stands, fired via E-TTL, as I was using here? And a backdrop? Or perhaps a few studio strobes? A background light?
Well – you could use all of the above. But you can also just use a small room with white walls, with an on-camera flash fired in a backward direction – i.e. behind you. That makes the entire room into a giant light box. Ask your subject to dress in light colours and put them in front of a white wall.
If you want to do it well, make sure your subject has a catch light in his or her eyes. The wall behind you, lit up by the flash, should take care of that, or else use a little flash bounce card to direct some light back into the eyes.
Do keep in mind that if you are using automatic metering (eTTL/iTTL), then you either need to spot meter your flash light off a grey card (or something similar), or you need to use Flash Exposure Compensation (FEC) to increase your flash power. You may need +1 to +2 stops extra flash light.
Have fun!
Expose to the right
What is this “expose to the right” thing we keep hearing about? And do I expose to the right?
A sensor can distinguish varying light levels. Say, for the sake of argument, 100 (the actual number does not matter. A JPG has 255 levels per red-green-blue colour, for example. A sensor can pick up more. But for this discussion, let’s just assume 100).
A picture will be a mix of dark and light (unless it is all one shade).
So let’s assume I am taking a picture of some normal scene that goes from dark to bright.
Ideally, I will want this scene’s sensor data to contain everything from “0″ pixels (black) all the way up to “100″ pixels (bright white). If I grossly underexpose it, it will be mainly black pixels (level 0), with some lighter pixels (say, between 0 and 10). If I overexpose it, I’ll get maybe pixels between level 90 and 100.
So for a normal scene, it’s clear, I will want between 0 and 100. The histogram will stretch from left to right.
Now assume a dark scene, e.g. a nightscape. The actual scene may only contain dark stuff – from black to mid grey, say. So exposing it “realistically” would give me pixels from 0 to 50. And when I analyse it, there would be 50 levels. Or let’s assume I have a cave, where it’s so dark it only contains black to very dark. Real levels maybe 0 to 5.
So if I expose to give me a realistic histogram, it would only have five levels of black in the picture. Not much detail in five levels of black. Posterisation (that blocky stuff in areas that change brightness gradually) could easily occur. Also, low-level electronic noise would be hard to distinguish from signal (“The signal to noise ratio is low”, we say).
But if I expose that more (e.g. by opening the aperture or increasing shutter opening time), I would get, say, 0 to 80 levels of signal. Yes, the picture would look wrong – all bright – but if I do it that way I get 80 levels of black. I.e. I would preserve a lot more detail. I would of course need to reduce the levels again later in Lightroom or Photoshop, but I could do that in a way that allows me to choose which detail level to show.
And importantly, reducing the exposure also reduces the noise in that exposure (“the signal to noise ratio is higher”).
But too far, and we lose detail in the highlights (we hit the right side of the histogram).
So by “exposing to the right” and then reducing the exposure in post-production we:
- Reduce any posterisation
- Increase the signal-to-noise ratio
- Create a little more work for ourselves later
- Run the risk of exposing too far to the right – blowing out highlights.
So do I do this?
Well, I am not religious about it. Yes, I will often expose to the right. Willems’s Dictum says “Bright Pixels Are Sharp Pixels”. So as long as I can be sure I do not overexpose, I will go slightly brighter. I will check on my RGB histogram.
But not religious, because
- Our cameras will often do a bit of this themselves, try to fill the available bit space.
- I want to avoid too much extra work.
- I might blow out highlights.
- I feel bad about my skills if I look at “too bright” images.
So I do this in moderation.
Above all, though, I avoid exposing to the left, or underexposing. So you might summarise my workflow as “I always try to expose sufficiently to the right”.
Late day and sunset reminder
A quick reminder for those who shoot sunset or late-afternoon pictures, shot during that wonderful “Golden Hour”.
This is a picture I shot in Sedona, AZ, last December.
For late-day pictures, this:
- Set your exposure right. This may well mean exposure compensation of minus one stop.
- If you shoot JPG, ensure your white balance is not set to “Auto”; use “Daylight” (the sun symbol) instead.
- Ensure that all is sharp: us a small aperture (a large “F-number”)
- If a setting sun is in the picture, then use a long telephoto lens to make the sun seem large.
- Use a tripod.
Have fun!
Backgrounds
Another recent user question:
How do you determine the background you use for portraits?
That’s a tough one, because there is no one answer. What’s better? Look at these three “Autumn” and “Hollywood” series Honl gels:
Or this?
Or this?
Of course as usual, the answer is “it depends”.
- For business, white is good, as is a very light blue.
- For women, more elegant colours can be used (the purple above, for instance, is not usually considered a male colour).
- Black is possible for dramatic low-key portraits.
- Colours depend on hair colour, skin colour and suit colour.
- You may, for instance, want to contrast with the suit.
- You certainly want to contrast with the hair – avoid blending your subject into the background. (Or you use a hair light).
- And sometimes, you may want to match the background to, say, a bright red suit, again in order to make the face stand out.
In general, the most important concerns I have are:
- It has to match the mood (conservative is blue, etc)
- Ideally, it go with the person’s clothing. That means either complementary colours (yellow and blue, say) or identical colours (A suit with purple in it? Then I can use purple in the background).
- Above all, I try to make the face stand out and avoid blending it into the background.
The basic rule: have fun, and keep it simple if you can. Try different colours but avoid very bright colours except for special effect. Have some very subtle blues and yellows and greens available just in case you want to add a splash of tint.
Tint is a good thing. Colour is more difficult!
I hope this gives those of you who use colour gels some ideas to try.
Yesterday snap
Just one image from a portrait shoot of a very nice realtor, yesterday:
Lit with a Bowens key light in a softbox, an Opus fill light into an umbrella, an Opus hair/kick light with snoot, and for the background, a 430EX speedlite with Honl gel (fired through a Pocketwizard).
I like tilting realtors a little, for that contemporary dynamic look.
Reader Question
Reader Craig asks:
Is it possible to get auto ISO to play nice with external flash (I’m using Nikon equipment)? I haven’t played with it in a while, but I specifically stopped using auto ISO because I was finding it would give me ISO 800 based on the camera metering when the flash had plenty of power to push it to say ISO 200. It seems odd to me that since there’s a preflash, that that information wouldn’t be shared with the camera to set the proper ISO automatically. Just curious if that’s your experience as well or if there’s a way around it. There are a a few scenarios where I’d be happy to use a (functional) auto ISO limited to ISO 800 and just deal with the noise reduction in post.
Good question. And as always… the answer is “it depends”.
First: if you take my “Advanced Flash for Pros” workshop, I go into all the nitty gritty details of both Nikon CLS/iTTL and Canon E-TTL. That will answer some.
But let me give a simple answer here. Typically when I am using flash, I will not use auto ISO. I prefer to keep things simple. Setting it myself means simple.
You expose the background using Aperture and ISO and Shutter Speed. You make it look as dark as you like – say, two stops below ambient as a great starting point. Auto ISO means the camera will likely overrule your brightness/darkness settings. Manual exposure settings become a sort of “exposure priority” setting instead.
So while auto ISO can work well when using flash (just set expsoure two stops below ambient in S/Tv mode), it is not necessarily ideal when using flash:
- In M mode, you cannot set exposure compensation
- In S/Tv mode, you may get funny apertures
- In Av mode, you may get slow exposures.
In fact on a modern Canon DSLR like my new 1D Mark IV, when using flash, ISO will automatically go off auto and will set itself to 400 when the flash is detected.
The preflash helps the camera set the flash power level for the foreground, lit-by-the-flash subject. The aperture, shutter speed and ISO settings set the background brightness. And again, typically I will be in manual exposure, and will set that to -2 stops, metered average (two stops below ambient). Auto ISO negates that!
So while it depends, it does not depend that much. When using flash, I will usually set ISO to a manual. Yes, you can set limits to auto ISO (Nikon is much better than Canon at that!), but it is still better to do your own, and to keep control.
The above applies to indoors flash shots where the light is consistent enough for you to use manual exposure settings. Outdoors it would be different – except there is so much light you do not need auto ISO.
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