Quick Tip #9: Turn off 'Shoot w/o card'

Note there are no images with this entry. There is a reason for that.

Before I go into why, do me one favor. Go to your camera (if you have a Canon) and turn off the menu option called Shoot w/o card. There may be something similar on Nikon.

Just do it, don't ask why...

Ok, so you want to know why anyway, right? Well, that option lets the camera operate normally even if it doesn't have a compact flash card. Instead, it takes the photos and dumps the data silently. At first, I thought that was a great idea, since it let me try out the camera without writing any files.

Until I tried to take some pictures today of my children with a few other neighborhood kids. And only realized after I was done that the twenty some shots I took were gone. Hence, the no pictures on this post.

So just turn it off. Today, the pictures weren't irreplaceable. But if it was for a paying client, it could have been disastrous. So just turn it off and let the camera get angry at you if you don't have a CF card in. It is much better than losing moments forever.

Quick Tip #8: Check Your Background!

Last night I completed another TFCD shoot, and it went very well (the family dressed in traditional indian cloths, very beautiful and interesting). Except the first series of shots.

I've gotten a routine down for the TFCD shoots where I arrive at a location early to set up the lights and get everything dialed in on the camera. Actually, for the last two shoots (and tonight's) I've been using the same garden (as seen at the top of this post). It works great, except last night I made a rookie mistake: when I was shooting, I didn't check the background:


Can you see the problem?

For the record, my friends were concerned about their images showing up on the internet so they wanted approval before I posted anything. For the purposes of this post, I removed them since it is the background I wanted to show.

The good news is that the flower can be easily removed by cloning, especially with an out of focus folliage background.


I also have a shot or two with no people in it, so I could easily clone the flower in to the right or left in an appropriate place. So nothing is really lost from the client's perspective, since the images I will show them will be fixed. But from my point of view, I cost myself an hour or so of cloning and editing proofs to remove the flower 'tiara' from her head in about ten images. And all of it could have been avoided, if I'd just looked through the viewfinder and took into consideration the background.

The moral:

Check the background before beginning a series of shots.

From now on, I need to get in the habit of checking the whole picture (not just the smiles and exposure) before shooting. It will save me time (and money) in post processing.


Bonus Tip:

In this same series, I tried to keep the ISO at 200 for less image noise, so a reasonable aperture (f/7.1) gave me a shutter speed of 1/40 sec. I thought the tripod would prevent camera shake and stop motion, but I didn't consider the motion of my subjects. Well, I balanced the ambient correctly, but many of the images have significant blur from subject movement. Moral:

It is better to use a higher ISO and deal with noise than to risk image blur at a long shutter speed.

Quick Tip #7: Save Underexposure With RAW

On Saturday night I shot my second set of free portraits on location at Stanford University.

Sounds fancy, doesn't it? I like saying "on location", even thought I only traveled about a mile to do it. But I digress...

One more digression: the business plan post is still in the works, but I wanted to get this post hammered out while it was fresh.

Anyway... The shoot went pretty well, if you consider me running from place to place like a headless chicken "pretty well". We were rapidly losing light and rapidly losing the patience of the young lady. I proved my inexperience a number of times, starting by shooting the first series using my Tamron 17-50mm at 30mm (not horrible, but not as flattering to noses as it can be). The real mistake was when moving from the first location lit directly by the setting sun to the second location in one of the many semi-shaded walkways -- I forgot to switch from manual (for the flash) to aperture priority. I also never chimped during the sequence (because I could tell they were coming out well). The result was an underexposure of 3+ stops and while I let my clients know and reshot at that location later, the expressions on their faces the first time were better than the second.

The sad part is this stuff happens, even to experienced photographers (although I'm sure pros have it happen very rarely compared to someone new like... uh... me). Thank goodness RAW is there to save the day. I was able to save this image (the split before/after image is at the top of this entry, click to see larger) and will include it in what I show the clients.

The beauty of a RAW file is that it holds more information than a JPEG (which I discussed earlier) allowing you to compensate for underexposure, and in some cases, overexposure. I'm still trying to figure out exactly how much overexposure is needed to blow out a RAW file. In my case, I had a Canon .CR2 file, but I'm sure you could do all this with the Nikon equivalent.

Technically, there should be no difference in image quality between RAW and JPEG if you have your lighting and exposure right. But mistakes happen...

I try to shoot RAW any time the photos are more than snapshots and it'd be difficult to replicate them. Sometimes, if I am doing people pictures in a controlled environment, I'll use JPEG even though quality is something important (like a contest). For everything else, I use either RAW or the RAW+JPEG combination. The RAW+JPEG is nice, but I find it slows me down in post processing so I tried pure RAW on Friday and I didn't miss the JPEGs at all.

Let me take you through the process of saving this portrait:


1. Here's a 200% crop of D.'s hand approximately how it would look if I had been shooting JPEG. Obviously, it is way underexposed.


2. The first step is to increase the exposure in RawShooter Essentials (RSE). In this case, I went up a full three stops (the max) and added some fill light, along with a little saturation and white balance. Much better, but we amplified the noise when we fixed the exposure!


3. So, my first attempt to reduce the noise is to use RSE. I pushed the Noise Suppression slider up about half way (Color Noise Suppression seemed to have no result on this image). I use a little noise suppression in almost all the images I convert in RSE. I find RSE doesn't do as good of a job as other software, but it also never hurts the detail in the image.


4. The result still wasn't good enough, so I took the RSE result (without noise suppression, #2) and ran it through Neat Image (NI). Neat Image is a great piece of software which can even integrate directly (plug-in) with PhotoShop and Paint Shop Pro Photo XI. Of course, I'm a cheap guy, so I've only used the free version which lets you save high quality JPEGs. I rarely use any of the sliders and options since the auto-profiler does a great job on my images. At right you can see a Neat Image in action -- if you've never seen it before, click to see the full size screen capture and prepare to be amazed!

PSP XI also includes pretty decent noise reduction ("Digital Camera Noise Removal") but I generally prefer Neat Image if image quality really matters and/or the noise is severe.


So, that's it. The end result is that shooting RAW let me save an image that would have been destined for deletion, and I'll show the (processed) version to the client with the rest of the images at the viewing. After all, they did a great job (and helped me out by posing) and I'd hate to have good poses lost from my own incompetence!

Along with that, I think I'll start shooting RAW only for my portrait sessions. The ability to save myself from exposure mistakes is well worth the increase in file size.

Quick Tip #6: Add RAW To Your Trick Bag

If you know what RAW is and understand how to use it, you can probably skip this tip. If you don't (which seems to be a lot of photographers, including some professionals), you might want to give it a read.

RAW is an image format, just like JPG or PNG. The difference is, a RAW file contains all the data from the camera sensor instead of a processed version. Essentially, a RAW file is a digital camera negative. Each camera maker (and sometimes each camera model) uses their own RAW file format, but most popular software can process the files from most popular cameras (Canon, Nikon, Sony, etc).

WHY use RAW? To get the most data from your images. Humans can only distinguish about 8 bits (256 shades) of light intensity per RGB component. Monitors only show about 6-8 bits. But digital cameras collect 12-14 bits per pixel. The result is a file that contains more data which you can't see (and is 3-4 times larger). Why is that useful? That invisible data lets you bring own shadow or highlight details. It also lets you recover information if you make an exposure mistake.

HOW to use RAW? While Photoshop, Picasa 2, and Paint Shop Pro XI (among others) have RAW support built in, you are often better off using a stand-alone utility. There are many utilities out there, and many cost a pretty penny. But, RawShooter Essentials 2006 is completely free, very powerful, and very fast and easy to use once you get used to it.

Although Pixmantec was acquired by Corel (and RSE is no longer supported), RSE can still be found on the web at places like download.com. It will bug you when you start it about trying to reach a server, but it works fine once you click through the initial window.

WHAT does RAW let you do? Well, take the backlit flower at the start of this article. To set this up, I placed my trusty desk lamp behind the flower and shot into it, but because I didn't want to blow the highlights the center ended up being too dark. So, since I took the shots in RAW, I exported from RSE to a 16-bit TIFF, loaded it in PSP XI, and used Curves to bring out the details in the center (PSP XI allows you to use Curves in 16-bit depth). At right you can see the Curves screen, and see just how much I adjusted the exposure and boosted the shadows.

Before and after results from the flower center are below. I don't usually bother with RAW unless I'm shooting for a contest or for future printing; in other words, only when I'm going beyond a simple snapshot and I might need to do some heavy adjustment later.

RAW is just one more tool you should know how to use.

Quick Tip #5: White Balance

[It has been a while since I've added to my Quick Tip series because I've been waiting for a decent image or two to illustrate the tips. Well, I finally got some images, so I have another Quick Tip waiting in the wings for posting in the next few days.]

[Oh, and if anyone knows the type of flower I've pictured in this entry, leave a comment. I haven't been able to figure it out (I haven't tried that hard either).]

Key Idea: Taking a minute or two to consider white balance before you start shooting may save you hours of post processing.

If you agree with that and know how to manage white balance in camera, you can safely ignore this post. Well, unless you want to hear more about the image above. I'll wait a second or two for the know-it-alls to leave...

. . .

Still with me? Let's start at the beginning.

White balance (a.k.a. color balance) refers to the representation of white in an image. Wait, you're thinking, isn't white just equal amounts of red, blue, and green? Well, yes and no. In a perfect world, all white would always look the same. In our world, our eyes compensate for the color of the light so that white objects still look white, EVEN if they aren't truly white. If you've ever looked at paper under a colored light (I was cursed with a green nightlight during my early teens), once your eyes adjust it will still look white even though logically you know it isn't. For our eyes, white is relative to the ambient light. For a camera, white is absolute based on the sensor chip.

As an example, during the rainy season (October through May) we have a light green tarp over half of our back patio. As a result, our living room is bathed in green light through the sliding glass door, while our dining room gets normal skylight. The greenish cast in the living room is generally unnoticeable unless I am either: A) taking pictures or B) editing pictures on the living room computer. Then, if the camera detects the wrong white balance, everyone looks sickly green. When using the computer, I have to put a black blanket over the window so the green ambient doesn't add a magenta cast to the monitor image.

The solution is to set the white balance on your digital camera, which modifies which ratio of red, green, and blue corresponds to white. On my camera (Canon Digital Rebel XT/350D) I can set it either in the menu under White Balance or directly by pushing the WB button (down on the directional). Most cameras provide sunlight, florescent, tungsten (incandescent), cloudy, and flash white balance. Often cameras do automatic white balance and extract the most likely white balance from the image. And auto white balance (AWB) works fine... most of the time.

Case in point -- the above flower shot with a daylight white balance looks like crap. When I shot it, I used a florescent desk lamp (the cheapest lighting solution EVER) which doesn't get hot enough to wilt a flower like an incandescent. The down-side is the lamp has a really strange color balance that doesn't correspond to any Rebel XT setting.

In the interest of full disclosure, after an hour of shooting the flower must have taken some heat. In the morning it had lost three petals, and by the next evening it was totally naked!

When will auto-white balance not work? Lets say you take a picture of an orange flower. If there is no white in the image, there is no way for the camera to tell what the white balance really is and no way to get the orange color perfect. Even worse is florescent lighting -- the spectral emissions from florescent lights vary wildly and the florescent setting on the camera will not fit your lighting. So, what can you do?

Well, you can always set it in software. At left is the Paint Shop Pro XI color balance control. WB is represented by two values, usually color temperature (red-blue mix) and tint (green-magenta mix). Sadly, these controls are not very intuitive and it is hard to adjust color balance manually especially if your monitor is not calibrated to your ambient. Luckily, most software lets you select something that should be white in the image and figures out the right WB for you (called Smart Select in PSPXI).

The thing is, fixing WB in software is an extra step in your post processing -- if you've got 100 images to process, you don't want to be doing it for each image. Also, many times you can't get it right in software because your image lacks a pure white that isn't blown out. That usually won't matter for snapshots, but if you want to submit your photo to a contest or print portraits for a paying customer, you really want to get WB right.

The solution is simple if you have custom color balance. The short version is: shoot a white object, set the custom color balance based on that image, and as long as you don't vary the lighting, all your later pictures will be spot on. Do you need to get a $50 ExpoDisc? No, any white or gray paper will do as long as it doesn't have a color tint. Here's the process on the 350D:

1. Hold a piece of paper, gray card, or whatever in the position of your subject and take a picture of it. White balance does not matter at this point.
   
2. In the menu, select Custom WB, scroll through to select your target image, and press Set. The custom white balance will be set automatically from the image.
3. In the white balance screen, select Custom. It should be in the lower right.
4. You are good to go until your light source changes!
   

It literally takes 30 seconds from start to finish, but it does wonders to your images. In the case of my flower above, I set it with a piece of printer paper. Checking later in my raw converter, daylight would have been: 5700K, Tint 4. The custom white balance was: 2850K, Tint 39. IMO, those are pretty extreme values -- my Ikea desk lamp has pretty strange color balance :)

I'll leave you with one more unrelated thought. The picture that started this section was taken with my Canon 50mm f/1.8 II with only resizing and sharpening. If you are used to Canon cameras, the saturation should surprise you. So, yes, the flower really was that brilliant and the color and sharpness of the lens is astonishing for something under $80. To back that up, a 100% crop without any sharpening or processing is below.


Note: Copier paper may not be the best thing to set white balance outside because the UV light seems to cause the paper to appear more blue than it should (making your images appear too orangish). Investing in a gray card (or finding something more consistent) might be worth it if you shoot a lot outdoors.

Quick Tip #4: Take Control of Focus

I'll admit it...

I like to be in control.

Other than generally frustrating my wife (and causing some awkward moments with the TV remote), wanting to be in control means I tend to choose the manual option instead of the automatic option. I didn't get a car with an automatic transmission until we needed a mini-van. It took me five years to sign up for payroll deduction of my rent instead of sending in checks. The first few times I did my taxes I did them on paper instead of using a web site. (did I mention I was stubborn too?)

I want to be the boss when I take pictures. Then if they turn out bad, I only have myself to blame.

Modern cameras have auto film winding, auto exposure, auto white balance, auto focus, etc. I started out letting the camera auto-everything, but as time goes on, I'm taking control back bit by bit. The first bit of control I've taken back is focus -- I find my 350D does a great job of focusing on an object, but leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to choosing which object to focus on.

Think about it: given an object to focus on, it is an engineering problem to make the lens focus (Wikipedia has a good page about autofocus technology). Those camera companies are great at engineering. But, choosing what to focus on given a crowded scene, that is a hard artistic problem. Sometimes your kid will be in the front of the crowd, sometimes in the middle, sometimes at the back. The camera doesn't know which kid is yours (although, given time, I'm sure they'll engineer that in too -- Nikon already does face recognition).

Most DSLRs use a group of focus detectors built into the viewfinder to determine if and when focus has been reached. These detectors will focus optically using the scene in front of them (not to be confused by infrared focusing in point and shoot cameras). Cheaper cameras typically have three to five sensors (or sometimes just one) while more expensive models have nine or more. Either way, the camera will focus using the sensor which detects the closest object. There's also a distinction between the type of lines the focus sensor will work with (cheap sensors detect vertical lines, expensive cameras can detect both horizontal and vertical lines with the same sensor).

So, what if you are taking a close-up of someone's face? Instead of focusing on the eyes (where humans usually look first) the camera could focus on the nose or hat. Or, worse, if you try to take a picture through a fence or a dirty window, the camera might focus on the fence, or worse, get confused and keep switching back and forth, hunting for what it should focus on. Or, in the case of the picture that opened this entry, what if you are trying to shoot a small lizard in a deep crevice between rocks?

Luckily, modern DSLRs let you select which focus points to use (or you can choose all of them). So I keep my camera set to only the center sensor most of the time. That lets me do the old pre-focus and pan trick: point the focus center at what you want to be in focus, hold the shutter release half-way to make the camera autofocus on it, then reframe the scene how you want it and press the shutter. With practice, all of that can happen in a second or two. If you are shooting through a fence, you can either thread the needle through the fence or focus on something away from the fence (but at the same distance as your subject) and then point back to your subject to get the shot.

This is basic, basic stuff which most people probably already know. But since I've been practicing it (and I usually use the focus and pan method 90% of the time) I've had a lot less images that aren't in focus. Like 5%. So now, I can concentrate on getting the right look on someone's face or getting an interesting point of view.

What about that other 10% of the time when I use the group of sensors? That's usually when action is fast and I won't have time to get focus and reframe (such as sports, large groups of people, or kids on a playground). Actually, for fast action like sports, there are extra modes on my 350D which focus constantly (instead of once). I have yet to master those, though, but maybe I'll talk about them at a later date.

Oh, and the lizard pictured in this page? I found him at the cactus garden. At first, he was doing little lizard push-ups (I can't figure out if that was to intimidate me or to use parallax to figure out if I was still there). Either way, I got tons of pictures of him and got pretty close before I finally got too close trying to take macro shots. After that, he (and his mate) kept eyeballing me from between two large rocks. So I plunked my Sunpak 383 down at 1/16th power and took a few shots with the flash illuminating the inside of the rocks.

And yes, to get the photo I pre-focused on his eyes and then reframed the shot.

Quick Tip #3: Learn To Hold Your Camera

The image above probably doesn't look very remarkable, but it is. Let me explain...

On Wednesday I chaperoned my son on a field trip to Coyote Point Museum in San Mateo. In addition to touring the museum and zoo, we were treated to a Birds of Prey class by Carl M. Oosterman, Director of Education. After hearing about the traits of birds of prey, such as their sharp claws and beaks designed for tearing, Carl went behind a curtain to get one of their injured birds to show the class.

Five minutes went by as we heard Carl coaxing the bird out of its cage. Of course, at this point, the children's eyes were as big as saucers, expecting to see a large bird with dangerous claws. Instead, Carl came out behind the curtain with a tiny little owl about four inches high!

I usually use field trips as excuses to take lots of pictures and practice with the camera (in addition to documenting what my son and his friends see and do). So, of course, I wanted to get a picture of this little owl, but it would have been rude to stand in front of the children to get close enough to get a good picture. So I decided to switch to my long lens (Tamron 70-300mm f/4-5.6) and see if I could get a shot from where I sat, 10 feet away. And the best of my shutter releases resulted in the image at the start of this entry.

Why is a boring, slightly fuzzy picture of a tiny owl remarkable? Let me list the EXIF stats (if you don't know what they mean, see the Glossary):

• Camera: Canon Digital Rebel XT (350D)
• Lens: Tamron AF 70-300mm F/4-5.6 Di LD 1:2 Macro
• Focal Length: 271mm (equivalent to 440mm on 35mm)
• ISO: 1600 (film speed equivalent)
• Shutter Speed: 1/25s
• Aperture: f/5.6

Really, I was banging into the limits of the camera and lens. I was at the highest (noisiest) ISO, almost the maximum focal length, and the widest aperture. There was nothing else I could do to get more light to the sensor, I had to use a 1/25 second shutter speed, and I didn't have a tripod.

The general rule of thumb for getting clear images when hand-holding your camera is to use a shutter speed that is the reciprocal of the 35mm equivalent focal length -- in this case, I should have had a shutter speed of 1/400s or better. Note this doesn't guarantee a sharp image, but a decent photographer can get a good image most of the time. Human hands just shake too much to have a decent chance at getting good images at a slower speed.

There was nothing I could do, so I made my own tripod: right hand on the camera grip, left hand braced under the lens palm up, both elbows resting on my knees as I sat on the floor. I fired off 4-5 shots and hoped I got a decent one. Remember, taking pictures at slow shutter speed is a matter of probability. After I took the shots, I realized that Carl's arm was wobbling as he held the owl, so I didn't expect much. Later, when I reviewed the images, I was pleasantly surprised by the above shotwhich accurately depicts what my son saw and is worthy of passing on to his teacher.

The point is, learn how to steady your camera when you hold it. There will be times when you need to get a shot quickly, without the use of a tripod, and good camera-hold mechanics are critical. The best way to do it is with practice, just like any sport. The more you hold your camera, the more it becomes a part of you and the better your pictures will come out, on average.

There's an easy exercise to get a steadier shooting hand: pick a small object, long lens, and slow shutter speed, and practice different techniques of holding the camera and releasing the shutter. Just like target shooting, much of the technique is based on squeezing the shutter release instead of pushing it. I guarantee that you'll improve a lot with only 15 minutes of practice!

Good luck, may all your shots be steady!

Quick Tip #2: Saturate your images!

When I first started shooting, my photos did not seem to have that 'punch' I was looking for and I couldn't figure out why my DPChallenge entries just didn't look as good as many other photos, even though the subject and composition seemed similar. It was a great revelation to me when I realized that I need to apply more saturation.

What is saturation? Saturation is the purity of the color. White, black, and gray are unsaturated, while a pure red (or any pure color) is fully saturated. Higher saturation means purer color.

The picture below was taken for a DPChallenge landscape challenge but I decided against submitting it because it didn't have the best composition (mostly because it lacks a subject to draw your eye). The only processing I did on this image was resizing and adjusting contrast/brightness.


A pretty nice image, with ok color, but it is kind of dingy. This is pretty much what you get straight from the camera (Digital Rebel XT/350D) although I did use a polarizing filter to clarify the sky a bit.

Watch what happens when I increase the saturation:

It has a lot more color now and is much more eye-catching! Almost all photo-editing software will allow you to modify the saturation (usually a tool called Hue-Saturation-Value). Increasing the contrast distinguishes subjects from each other and draws the eye in. There is a reason flowers are bright and colorful -- to attract attention!

Digital photos, especially for the web, need to be adjusted from the camera capture to bring out the color. This is especially true of the default settings of Canon cameras. My theory is that it is a difference between the non-linear sensors in the human eye and the linear sensors in a digital camera.

What about film cameras, though? Well, it is all in the film, and if you want a lot of saturation, you use a film like Fujichrome Velvia.

As a digital photographer though, all this means is you should make sure try increasing the saturation when you are editing pictures. For some pictures, you may want to do the opposite, and reduce saturation or even fully desaturate the image to gray-scale.

Quick Tip #1: Cameras Don't Take Pictures, People Do

[I'm starting a Quick Tip series. These are brief posts about fundamental photography concepts I've learned (or am trying to learn). Most will have pictures to demonstrate the idea (but not this one).]

I'm sure you've heard of the old saying: Guns don't kill people, people do.

(or, if you are in Texas, the bumper sticker reads: Guns don't kill people, I do)

Well, the same goes for photography. The photographer defines the picture, not the camera.

Give your $1,000 dSLR to your 2 year-old son (or a trained monkey, pretty much interchangeable) and see if he takes any good pictures. If you are lucky, he might have some in focus. If you are unlucky, you'll be in the ER that night getting optical glass picked out of his feet.

Photography at its root is not about the camera, lighting, focus, sharpness, lenses, or extension tubes. It is about capturing an image that someone (most likely the photographer) cares about. Yes, absolutely, you need a camera and some necessary equipment to get good pictures. But you can make some good pictures with a cheap plastic point and shoot.

Show of hands, how many have had these thoughts:

• "If only I had a 5D (or D200, or large-format) I could have made that shot work."
• "I really need that second strobe to get decent portraits."
• "I really need a 70-200mm f/2.8 IS. I can't get lacross pictures without it."
• "I want to try out macro photography, but I don't have the money for a macro lens!"
  

This site is all about making due with a minimum of cheap equipment. Heck, even purchasing inexpensive equipment can be difficult for those of us on tight budgets. If you think about it, a camera is just a light-proof box with a photo-sensor (film or microchip) on one side, a hole on the other (lens), and a bunch of ways to control how the light hits the photo-sensor (shutter, aperture, etc).

Do you need a top-of-the-line camera to make emotional and engaging pictures? No. You just need an imagination to figure out what to point the camera at and how to control the light. If you want to try macro photography with a dSLR, just take your lens off, turn it around, and hold it in front of the lens mount. It blew my mind the first time I did it and actually took interesting macro pictures. Cost? Free!

I have had to keep reminding myself just to get out and shoot with what I have. I have plenty of equipment to make good pictures, all I need to do is figure out how to do the hard stuff. Like get the light to hit my model just right to bring her out from the background. Get the right expression on my son's face. Get to a scenic overlook at the right time of day. Get a rodeo clown to try ballet.

It is tempting to put off pictures until you have the right equipment, but the good photographers are the ones who make them now with what they have on hand.

[Oops. Maybe that wasn't so quick.]