Here we go…

• SHUTTER SPEED
• APERTURE
• ISO

Before going into these topic. Let us take a moment to understand how this impacts photography.

What is Exposure & Lighting?

Exposure of the photography defines the mood of the image.

You may probably think it is LIGHTING which sets the mood. Yes it is, but any kind of lighting can be adjusted in exposure.

I.e. A photographer can control the mood of the picture to his need.

Even if there is very low lighting, I can still push my exposure and get a flat looking picture. Vice versa if there is a bright sunny day I can still adjust my exposure to take a night effect or a different mood picture. It all depends on where you set the exposure on the frame.

Let’s see with some examples of the importance of the principle – Exposure in photography.

Examples:

1. If you notice, this picture was shot almost an hour before the twilight. I would say this is kind of the perfect exposure for this photo.

2. But this picture is exactly the same frame and underexposed 1.5 stop and you can see it looks like the twilight itself just before everything goes dark.

3. This picture is completely over exposed which give a mood of the dream.

The fact is, none of the above picture is shot to show the present scene/mood but all little altered.

As you see exposure plays a very big role in photography and if you know how to tweak it, you can set the mood that you prefer for the scene and composition.

What is exposure basically?

Exposure is basically the amount of light is gathered by the sensor in one single photograph.

Exposure is controlled by Shutter speed, Aperture and ISO. Whereas Shutter Speed and ISO directly affects the exposure
but Aperture has more to do with your creativity and depth of field.

If you leave your shutter open for long, you may end up capturing a washed out image.

Metering

Every cameras now a days has inbuilt light meter which can evaluate the exposure through any metering mode that you may have set in your camera.Let’s not get more detailed into metering since pretty much you won’t notice a obvious difference. If you look through your view finder there is a exposure meter displayed in the bottom.

Just put your camera in manual mode and move around your camera to any brightest spot and see if a small vertical dash under the exposure meter blinks. If it blinks continuously under +2 that mean you have too much light coming into the sensor which will wash out your image.

Just try to point the lens towards some darker area and you will see the dash blinking under -2. That means you will get an image which is going to be very dark. To get the right exposure the dash should be under the “0″.

Let’s say you are watching a street parade and its’ a bright sunny day. Just take a picture in the manual mode and keep an eye on that dash which is under
the exposure meter. To get the right picture you need to set your exposure meter under “0″. How would you do that?

There are three ways to achieve it. But you need to set your priority based on what you want from the picture that you are taking.

1. SHUTTER SPEED

2.  APERTURE

3.  ISO

Let us understand SHUTTER SPEED, APERTURE & ISO in a layman term with an analogy to help you understand how it can
control the light coming into the sensor.

Let’s say you have a 10 litre bucket that needs to be filled with water in 1 minute time which is EQUAL that you want to take a picture HANDHELD with the
right exposure.

Now problem is, it’s not necessarily that you will be able to fill the bucket in one minute exactly. You may be challenged with certain issues.

• What if the flow of the water from the tap is very slow?
• What if the given 1 minute time is not enough?
• What if the tap opening is not wide enough to fill the bucket?
• You can’t fill the bucket under one minute. So in this situation what would you do?

First choice: you would want to increase the time from 1 minute to 2 minute.

Second choice: you can increase the tap diameter to it’s widest so more water will come out.

Third choice: you can increase the pressure of the water flowing from slow/thin to high pressure

• SHUTTER SPEED – First Choice – Water being the light in the analogy
• APERTURE – Second Choice – Opening of the Tap being Wider or Thinner
• ISO – Third Choice – Pressure/Sensitivity of the water

O.K. Did I get your attention? Hang on, it is going to get even better.

First Option: Shutter Speed Control

As you see here, if we don’t have a tripod we are pretty much struck with the timing. We may not have the luxury to increase the time from one minute. Remember this! If you are taking a picture hand held where your shutter speed is lesser than 1/125th of a second, you are kidding yourself and probably wasting your time. You can still take a shot reasonably sharp at 1/60th of a second. But still it can’t be sharp enough. So make sure you don’t come lower than 1/125th of a second. Now, let’s say we have a low lighting situation where you can’t take a photograph (fill the bucket) in one minute. So if we compare 1 minute is equal to 1/125th of the second to take a picture handheld; pretty much we can’t increase the time from one min to two min. You will not get a sharp photo.

Second Option: Aperture Control

Let’s move onto second option: You can widen the tap opening so more water will flow. By widening your lens opening more light come in so you have chances to capture the photograph at 1/125th of the second. Lens opening is called Aperture which is measured by the F-Stop.

The lower the f stop number the higher the lens opening. The higher the f stop number the narrower/lower the lens opening. (Eg: F22 has a very narrow opening of the lens. F2.8 is wide open) This F stop controls the depth of field(DOF will be covered later)

Let’s assume that you have already opened your lens as max as you could as like f2.8. But still your exposure meter is blinking under the -2 or -1 which indicates you may get a under exposed photograph. (Equal to, after you open the tap more, still you are not able to fill the bucket in 1 minute)

Since you don’t have much room to adjust your aperture anymore we have to move onto the third option which is ISO.

Third Option: ISO

You always want to use more ISO at your last option since this highly impact your picture quality. The more the ISO the more grainier/color noice/artifacts your picture will get. ISO usually starts from number 50 to 104800(in a high end professional camera). To get the best result always use ISO 100. Now this is the only option to correct the exposure to get a right photo at 1/125th of the second. (Equal to, if you increase the pressure of the water coming out from the tap, you have the possibility to fill the bucket in one minute. But the more pressure water comes out and hit the bucket it scatters more.) That is what matched with color noise and grainier when the sensor pressure is more it scatters the colored pixel one top of another which cause this issue.

As explained these three factors affects and controls the exposure, without increasing the ISO you can try to create a mood by setting the exposure for the
brightest spot in the scene. To do that, just point your lens towards the brightest spot so that will measure the exposure reading, so you can adjust
your meter based on that and not increasing your iso too much and take a shot which will not wash out your picture, at the same time you can give more
priority to the object/subject that you want to capture for.

For Example: A guy who is standing in front of the candle. If you point your lens towards the candle you will probably see your exposure meter blinks on the +2 on the current settings you have. (may not be necessarily blink if your shutter speed & aperture is too high, and your iso is low). So you can just set the exposure for the candle and take a picture and you may get a very nice result of the guy who is standing in front of it

Try it out. Experiment it. That’s the best way to learn!!!

Interested to hear your comments and post some pictures for review and feedback as well! Cheers Everyone!

multiple exposure / HDR overdone sample photo

If you notice closely, this picture shows too much structured details, and sky is over processed, color tone is missing and look completely unrealistic. Atleast to me

How to shoot multiple exposure/HDR photos?
The photograph have to be shot with actual 3 different exposure or multi exposure photos which is actually very efficient to produce clean hdr image. There are two possible ways though. Shoot 3 or more exposure or Just shoot one exposure in RAW format and convert into 3 exposures. Below i explain about how to take multiple exposure.

There is a way that you can make your camera to do that for you. You cannot really do that manually and atleast it’s definitely a no-go for virtual tour since so many EXIF parameters should match for stitching. So the best approach is, keep your mode in “Aperture” and set atleast in f-8. The more greater depth of field is better for HDR though. For my taste and the output i expect is in the range between f-8 to f-16. One small tip is, the higher the f-stop number the lights will give you a star effect. Try it out. Once you set your camera in Aperture and f-8,  dial through your camera menu until you see a option called “AEB” – Auto Exposure Bracketing. This does all magic for you. Just set the +2 or +1 range. Depends upon the lighting condition. The 2 stop is better since it will have more details in the highlighted and shadow area. Here, one overlooked point is, people set the AEB and click the shutter but they just get only one picture instead of 3 exposure. The reason is, your camera drive might be set to “One Shot”. You have to change it to continous shooting mode, and very importantly the auto timer should be set. 2 sec should be fine. It does not work without auto timer. Atleast in Canon’s as far as i know. Now just click the Shutter button which will automatically take 3 shots for you.

Shoot 3 photos – Take 1 under exposed (-2 f-stops) & 1 over exposed (+2 f-stops) & 1 correct exposure (0 dead on)
Below picture is shot in a Casino Lobby at Las Vegas. The first three images are right from the camera. The fourth image is the HDR post processed image. You may notice, it has the right color tone, details everywhere, and exposure is right. I would not be able to achieve this without multiple exposure otherwise known as HDR technique.

Again, This is not the ideal situation that you would want to use HDR/Multiple exposure technique. It’s best described in my next example below. Keep reading…

Under Exposed -2 stop

Over Exposed 2 stop

Correct Exposure

Multiple Exposure Merged together

Shoot 1 photo – 1 correct exposure. Work it around using camera raw/photoshop. To achieve the best result the picture better be shot in “RAW” format which gives more dynamic range to the image.

Correct Exposure Photograph

Single Exposure converted into HDR/Multiple exposure

The Best situation to go for multiple exposure/HDR technique:

In the below example, I was asked to shoot a 360* virtual tour of a Helicopter. We were not able to do the location scout before the shoot. It was expected to be done by a single exposure. But, it wouldn’t be possible, hence, Helicopter had sunlight coming through the windows and cockpit. Since it was too much light in outdoor, If i expose the helicopter perfectly, i willvcompletely lose details outside – as you can see in the image 1 below. If i expose the outdoor perfectly, all you see is darkness inside. The right exposure in this case doesn’t look that much appealing and customer may not like the output. I proposed the multiple exposure/HDR 360 tour. I knew they wanted the best. So I shot 1 over exposed by 2 fstops, 1 under exposed by -2 fstops and 1 picture in the right exposure.

Helicopter Outdoor Overexposed

Helicopter Outdoor Underexposed

Helicopter Outdoor Properlyexposed

Helicopter Outdoor Multiple Exposure / HDR

Lower resolution digital cameras made better images than some higher megapixel cameras.

This gimmick is used by salespeople and manufacturers to make you feel as if your current camera is not enough to handle your needs But, you must be aware that the new cameras each year are only slightly better.

Imagine this, if you have a sharp focused and well exposed picture taken from a 3 megapixel camera that is more than enough to make a 30×40 inch print with a reasonable DPI “over” a crappy shot taken from a 12.1 megapixel camera. But tell me when have you printed one this size last time???

In a layman term, sensor size has to be a good match with number of megapixel. If you are buying a 10 megapixel camera that means it contains 10 million pixels grouped together. The more the number of pixels the more heat it produces to the camera, and every picture size gets larger, and you pay more for it, and your hard disk gets full. Does it worth? NO! Plus, when you take a shot in a low light it literally scatters the pixel one top of another which produces color noise, artifacts. Because that small size sensor in a point n shoot or even a slr camera(consumer level) are not enough to hold these many pixels.

Can you fill 5 liter of water in a 1 liter cane? It spills out. But in photography, when it force the sensor to accommodate that many pixels in a very low light environment it produces weird color noise, artifacts and so much of damage to the picture which goes unused forever unless you shoot with plenty of lights.

Having a more megapixel camera could be really useful under only one circumstance. That is “CROPPING”. You can crop the unwanted background nor correct your composition later which is being done by many photographers now days. I even know few professional does that. But it is ugly!

It’s better to get your composition right when are taking the photo. It may take few seconds to correct your angle, or take away any distractions that you may find when you take the pictures. Where as in the Photoshop that may take hours to correct.

Zack Arias from “One light workshop” mention in his video training. “When you are taking a picture, if you find any distraction or wrong composition and if you even think for one second that you can correct it in Photoshop because you were lazy; just put your camera down and slap yourself”. That was well said. I think I don’t have to say more than that.
Final conclusion: If you are a amateur photographer, I am sure, you would never go for printing your photograph more than 16×24 inches. For you 6 MP camera is plenty. Even if you intend to make any poster size prints.

Never just buy a camera only because it has a good megapixel rating. THAT IS A SALES PITCH!

Real Time Example:

Check out this camera from PHASE ONE which costs $31,990. It does NOT SHOOT Jpeg. It does not have on camera flash. It does not have so many important things that you are always advertised with. WHY? Whereas,
Check out this $280 camera from SONY which has touch screen, 10.2 megapixel, on camera panoramic stitching, editing and so many crazy features.

It’s all just a MYTH!!!
My Advise: Save some $$$ on consumer level slr cameras. There are point and shoot cameras which can produce better image than a consumer level slr cameras does. For example Kodak Z812 IS ) costs less and it’s by far an amazing point and shoot camera I have seen. You can see it has very nice limited features and produce beautiful images!

Put two photographers side by side. Give an SLR to one and Point & Shoot to other. Something happen suddenly and you will see the point & shoot photographer must have captured it right. Because he just have to point to the scene and CLICK. Job done! He does not have to worry about shutter speed, focal length, ISO or any damn thing infact. But for an SLR shooter he needs to decide which lens he should use, what settings he needs to change to capture the scene with the right exposure and focus. Unless he is a super professional he cannot achieve this shot. Even for a professional it takes seconds time to capture.

One thing I must tell you. If you are holding an SLR camera and keep it in the green square mode and never change the lens… TRUST ME. You have really bought yourself a status symbol over a nice camera. Plus you are not going to get ANYTHING different from what you get in point and shoot. And even in Green Square mode SLR & PnS cameras has focus issue and you may tend to miss the moments.

Anything which is AUTOMATIC is like a cat on the wall.

If you want to “capture the moment” and shoot snapshots, the Point n Shoot is a fine camera. (In fact, more Point n Shoot has features that make it more SLR-like, but without the changeable lens.)

If you want to take fine-art photographs, or shoot professionally, the SLR is the way to go.

As said, when it comes to camera… you get what you pay for. Why should you buy something that you will never use nor know HOW to use in MANUAL mode?

Now, let it be a snap shot of your kid, family or the nature scene that you really like and want that to be printed for your living room as a poster, the picture you have taken should appeal the viewer. Obviously nobody is going to tell straight to you, this is a horrible picture. But you can always find out if they mean it or not when they say this is a good or bad picture. Don’t you?

What do I mean by a good picture? How do you say by looking at a picture/photograph if it’s good or bad?

I can classify it in five parts
1. Composition
2. Exposure
3. Focus
4. Subject
5. Angle

Let’s cover just Composition first. I do have the reason to place composition in the first place. Because the recent digital cameras have extra intelligence in their Automatic mode and pretty much that will take care of the good exposure and focus without more extra effort. Plus you must be well exposed to Automatic mode already. As i said, let’s start with what you have already known.

COMPOSITION:

Composition helps the photograph to have a natural balance, drawing more attention to the essential parts of the scene, and also lead the viewer’s eye through the image.

I must warn you, once you are familiar with image composition you will be surprised at how common that most of the things that you see in media are. You can spot them very easily and everywhere. Later you will know why some photos are “good” while others are just simple snapshots.

There are few factors involved when it comes to composition. These words are mostly self explanatory but I will try to put the definition in one line.

Composition - Rule of Third sample photograph

Rule of third:
It’s a very important factor and common word in composition. Imagine your photograph is divided by 9 equal segments by 2 vertical and 2 horizontal lines. You will get 9 equal grids on the frame. The rule of third law is that you position the most important objects in your scene along these lines or at the points where they intersect. By doing this, you will have a very good balance in your photograph and also it will add more interest to it. Some newer digital cameras have these lines inbuilt on your LCD. You can turn it on and get a very live assistance to achieve the perfect rule of third composition.
Rule of third sample image:

Background:
Place your important subject (where subject could be the person, or interesting object, as a matter of fact anything which is important in your frame), off the center by following the rule of thirds. But it can leave you with lots of empty space if the background is supposed to be a plain wall. To balance the weight of the subject you can include another object which has less importance to fill that empty space. It could be anything. If you can’t find something, just change your angle and balance the weight.

Leading Line:
Whenever you take a picture, you need to decide what you want your viewer to see in the photo. It can be achieved by thinking about how you place the subject in the rule of third lines. You can make a big difference in the image pulling the viewer into the picture towards the subject and make a journey through the scene. This is called eye leading line in the picture. Those lines could be straight, diagonal, zigzag, or any sort. You need to decide which lines would suit better for your frame and the subject.

Viewpoint:
Taking many pictures may give you lots of real time experience ONLY if you take time to analyze the output. Mostly we don’t have time to look at all the pictures and spend time on the better part. So it’s better to spend time to think about which angle will have a good impact on the composition of our photo. Because the result will make the picture conveys what your vision is. Rather than just shooting from eye level photo, consider shooting from different angles and so on.

Background:
Human eyes are tending to distinguish the difference between the foreground and background. But cameras will flatten the image. Unfortunately as a result you may have wished to take that picture in a better background if the background got very busier in your picture. Moreover that will distract the viewers attention towards your subject and let them see what you may not want them to notice in your picture.
So it’s always better to look around and find a background where you can bring more attention to your subject and as well give good strength on the composition. You can really experiment it here and even break the symmetric. Nothing is wrong.

Depth:
As you know photos are two dimension based. We really have to chose the composition to portray the sense of depth that is actually present in the scene. You can also create a depth in the photo by including objects in the foreground, middle ground and background. Check out my panoramic section under stills. There is a shot where I have taken in Las Vegas Red Rock which has foreground(empty land) and two mountains front and back and the sky which brings a three dimensional effect. ]]> http://ihariharan.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=83 0