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digital-photography-school.com just posted a great guide to taking pictures at all those parades that are so popular this time of year. My favorite tip is to shoot the crowd reactions. My best shots from these types of events are always of the spectators and not the activity itself.

The only thing missing is any mention of what to do for night parades. A lot of Christmas parades are at night with the only lighting coming from the holiday decorations. Here a fast lens (f/2.8 or better) is a must have. Also, shooting wider angle shots can help reduce motion blur at slower shutter speeds. It goes without saying that you will have to bump your ISO up to get hand-holdable shutter speeds. Finally, don’t be afraid to brace up against a light pole and get some long exposure motion blurred shots!

December 23rd, 2008 | Tags: digital-photography-school.com, night, parade | Category: Tips & Tricks | Comments Off

My father in-law asked me to take a picture of his Christmas table centerpiece arrangement so he could e-mail it to an out of town friend. My attempt at a quick snapshot didn’t meet my with my photographic standards so I spent the next hour playing with lighting to get the final shot above. This was a very challenging shot as I had to make do with what lighting I could find in the house. Here’s how I did it:

First of all, my in-laws’ house is DARK. Dark walls. Dark floors. Dark furniture. Dark lamps. You get the idea. Plus, it was night so the wall of windows to the left of the subject weren’t helping. Of course, I could have waited for morning but I always like a good challenge. Plus, I figured that if I got it right, a night shot would better capture the elegant and rich warmth of the table setting.

My first test shot was attampted with nothing but the incandescent  lamp light filtering in from the living room behind the camera. This required a 6 second exposure at f/8 and ISO 400 (a tripod was used so my K10D’s IS was OFF). I used f/8 to ensure that the entire arrangement was in sharp focus while the background was blurred a bit. I like the f/8 shot because there is enough background detail to clearly place this shot in my in-laws dining room while the subject focus was nicely isolated. The lighting in this first shot was too flat. I wanted more subject isolation so I grabbed a floor lamp and placed it to the left of the camera and tried again:

This set-up provided better subject isolation via lighting but the shadows seemed a bit harsh. I played around with a few combinations of settings and finally settled on 4 seconds at f/8 and ISO 100 but was still not happy with the results.

Recalling some studio shots that I did not long ago where I held a shaded lamp directly above my subjects, I decided to try holding the lamp above the centerpiece just out of the frame. I also turned off all the lights in the living room and opened the glass doors on the china cabinet behind the arrangement to eliminate the reflection of the lamp. Finally, I lit the candles to add another level of detail and ambiance to the shot.

This set-up is what I used for the final shot. (Note use of lens hood to quell flare). I sped up the ISO to 200 to get a 1.6 second exposure at f/8. This was mainly because the lamp was a bit heavy to be holding up like this for 6 seconds but also because a shorter exposure helped cut down on the ambient light bleeding in to the background. While the shutter was open I slowly arced the lamp from left to right to paint the entire arrangement and blur the shadows. The resulting image (top) ended up with shadows that were much softer at the subject with a nice gradual fall off of the light into the background. I couldn’t have done much better with an actual soft box in a studio ;-)

With a nice looking exposure I pulled the image into Lightroom to adjust the white balance (2625K) and apply my standard Sharpness (14), Detail (51), Clarity (30), and Vibrance (+25) settings. I also pushed the Recovery up to 73 to help correct some over exposure of the reds and knock back the highlights on the shiny green leaves a bit. A bit of final cropping (always leave room for cropping!) and off the image went to my father in-law.

December 22nd, 2008 | Tags: arrangement, booleansplit, candles, centerpiece, Christmas, dining room, flowers, greenery, k10d, lamp, lighting, Pentax, soft box, table, tripod | Category: Tips & Tricks | Comments (1)

There are few things more beautiful than a good sunset or sunrise photograph. However, if you’ve ever tried to do it you know it can be frustrating. How many times have you seen a beautiful sunset like the one above only to have your photo turn out something like this?

There are a couple of easy things you can do to get great sunset photos. First, turn off your flash. The only thing the flash is good for during a sunset is to add fill to illuminate a foreground subject. Unfortunately, getting the right mix of fill flash and background exposure can be very tricky:

Not a very inspiring photo (though after the number of rum punches I had I didn’t care). For now, let’s just turn the flash off and focus on capturing a brilliant sunset photo.

Next, set your white balance to auto. You can also try daylight but I have always found the auto setting gives the best mix of deep blues, pinks, reds and oranges.

I like to shoot sunsets with a wide angle lens to get as much of the sky in the picture as possible. This ensures a full mix of colors from the darkest indigo blues overhead to the brightest pinks and oranges at the horizon. Usually I leave only a strip of ground/foreground across the bottom to anchor the photo- letting the sky dominate the scene for maximum impact.

The main challenge with sunset photos is getting around the camera’s matrix metering’s natural tendency to balance exposure across the frame. The camera doesn’t know what’s going on and tries to balance the dark foreground with the bright background. The washed out example at the top is what you get when you just point-n-click. To get a decent sunset exposure you either need to dial in some negative exposure compensation (usually -2/3EV to -1EV). An easier method is to just aim the camera at an unobstructed portion of the sky, focus, lock exposure, recompose, and shoot. I typically use a little of both.

For the best sunset photos I typically like to wait for the sun to be fully below the horizon. That beautiful glowing orange ball of the sun absolutely wrecks exposure on a camera and typically results in pretty disappointing shots. Also, some cloud texture in the sky helps provide a good mix of colors. Be sure to look behind you as many times clouds away from the setting sun pick up some awesome colors. Finally, some good foreground silhouettes can help add additional visual interest (especially helpful if the sky itself is not as dramatic as it could be).

A medium aperture like f/8-f/10 is best to ensure the best detail and sharpness across the frame and eliminate vignetting typical at larger apertures when shooting at a wide zoom setting. Since I generally like to wait for the sun to drop fully, there’s typically not very much ambient light. This means I either need to be shooting on a tripod at a low ISO and slow shutter speed or bump the ISO up to prevent camera shake. These samples were all shot hand-held at ISO 200-400 and f/8 and f/10 at around 1/4 second. The combination of the K10D’s in-body IS and the wide focal length meant it only took a few tries to get sharp shots (wider zoom angles can be hand held at slower shutter speeds than longer ones).

Typically a properly shot sunset photo doesn’t require much post-processing. Since I shoot everything in RAW I have to tweak sharpness and saturation on all my photos in Lightroom. I can also play around with the white balance a bit to get the best pop from my images- though the as-shot (Auto) setting worked best for these images. Often I find the fluorescent WB preset works well for sunsets for some reason.

While a DSLR gives the most control over all of these settings, I have gotten wonderful sunset photos with a pocket camera by simply turning off the flash and using the focus, recompose and shoot method. Here is a collection of some of my other sunset photos on Flickr.

The most difficult part about getting good sunset shots is being at the right place at the right time with your camera. I hope this helps you get that great shot the next time that happens!

December 19th, 2008 | Tags: Alabama, booleansplit, DSLR, exposure, flash, Flickr Friends, Lightroom, overexposed, Pentax K10D, RAW, settings, sky, sunset, tips, trees, tricks, white balance | Category: Tips & Tricks | Comments (3)

dpreview.com has concluded their compact camera tests with a look at enthusiast cameras. The choice of the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3 as the overall winner is no real surprise to me. I picked up an LX2 back in February ‘07 in an attempt to replace my DSLR. I was incredibly impressed with the camera’s overall performance. My biggest complaint (and the thing that caused me to return it in exchange for a Canon G7) was the heavy handed noise reduction at all ISOs that ruined the 100% magnified detail of my shots. I’m a pixel peeper so this was a deal breaker for me. Also, the separate lens cap was a huge annoyance. Otherwise, it was one hell of a camera packed into a realistically pocket-able form factor (unlike the G series Canons).

Apparently, Panasonic has listened to the complaints of photographers like myself and made improvements to the image quality. Meanwhile, the solid build, wonderful wide angle Leica lenses, built-in IS, and user-centric controls continue to make the Lumix line one of my favorites. While I ultimately decided that an advanced compact camera was not a viable substitute for a DSLR, I did settle upon a Lumix for my pocket camera of choice.

December 19th, 2008 | Tags: booleansplit, Canon G7, compact cameras, dpreview.com, enthusiast, Lumix, LX2, LX3, Panasonic, review, test | Category: reviews | Comments (1)