Peter West Carey Photography

Category: Learning

How To Hold A Camera – Photography Basics
With all this talk about taking photos, let’s step back and discuss one way of holding your DSLR or mirrorless camera (drones need not apply). I figure you already know how to hold your phone and action cameras are usually bolted onto something or on a selfie stick.

How to hold your camera

First, let me say there’s no single right way to hold a camera. Hold it however it feels best for you.

What I want to give you in this post is one idea to hold a camera that helps fight fatigue and will hopefully make photography more enjoyable.

The grip

The right hand goes on the main grip. This part seems pretty obvious.

The left hand, I suggest, goes under the lens.

This allows for a few things:
1. Most of the weight of your camera is taken up by your bicep, which is the largest of your arm muscles. It’s built to lift things up.
2. Your fingers are typically well positioned to control zoom or focus rings.
3. If your camera has a depth of field preview (see the recent Photography Experiment on playing with depth of field), it’s easy to press with your fingers.
Some people like to hold the lens like this.

While not wrong, because there is no wrong way, I find this more tiring in the long run because you’re holding the camera up form the top. You are using your tricep, which is smaller than your bicep. More fatigue when shooting for more than a few minutes.

The arms

The further out your arms are, like this:

The less stable you will be. This is because the weight is resting all on muscle. Not bone.

Try bringing your arms and elbows in as much as you can.

This allows the weight to rest on your shoulders (try lowering the camera straight down from this position and you’ll feel it in your shoulders), rather than your muscles.

Work with your body’s mechanics, not against them.

One more piece

Your hands are on your camera. Your elbows are in. You’re feeling stable.

At this point, I feel the need to point out it’s helpful to hold the camera against your eye.

Call me old school if you like. What I know is using the viewfinder instead of the screen on the back of the camera, offers more stability. Your head is now a point of contact to keep the camera steady.

Many people with mirrorless cameras love using the back screen of their camera to compose. This is just fine. But after a full day of shooting, they will feel it in their arms more than someone who holds the camera close.

Now take your shot

But before you do, read this first.

Conclusion

I’ve been shooting weddings for over 25 years now and while there is no right or wrong way to hold a camera, I can tell you that, for longevity, this method will put less stress on your body.

Happy shooting!

Questions? Pop ’em like Pez in the comments section below. or email me at peter@peterwestcarey.com.

Photography Basics – A 43 Day Adventure, and its companion 40 Photography Experiments, are series written by professional photographer Peter West Carey. The series are designed to unravel the mysteries of photography, helping you can take better pictures. Subscribe here to receive all the updates and bonus material. Your comments are always welcome.

If you enjoy the series, consider learning photography first-hand on a professionally led international photo tour in Nepal or Bhutan. More information can be found at Far Horizon Photo Tours.
October 25, 2018
RAW vs. JPEG: Both Have A Place And Time – Photography Basics
JPEG vs. RAW: It need not be a war

Most every post you see on JPEG and RAW file formats pits them against each other; RAW vs. JPEG In A Cage Match To The Death!! You’ll also hear experts tell you you have to shoot in RAW or you suck.

The funny thing is, those experts don’t know how you shoot. They know how they shoot and what works for them. Bravo be to thee, but don’t make me fit into their world, please.

I’m hear to tell you you can shoot in either JPEG or RAW and life will, in fact, go on. Heck, you might even be happy. But first, lets me arm you with ample information to make your own decision.

Nuts and bolts of light and your sensor

Jargon time: RAW is as it sounds. It is raw information from your camera’s sensor. JPEG is an acronym you will never remember so don’t sweat the small stuff. It is a type of compression to take raw information and squish it down.

In the post How Your Camera Works I mentioned the use of a buffer because most cameras can shoot faster than they can write information to a memory card. JPEG helps alleviate that (and can do away with the wait altogether) by smooshing down that huge RAW file size from something like 30MB to maybe 6MB. Impressive, huh? It comes at a price, though.

Let’s look at this visually using the diagram of the image sensor inside your camera from the ISO post.

Each of those spots is a photo sensor set to detect only the amount of light hitting it of the appropriate color. This part is no exaggeration; that green dot only sees levels of green, the red only red and blue only blue. That’s it, just those three colors. (Note: hip new sensors will bend this rule around, but the idea is the same.)

RAW format is set to record the data from each and every pixel. To make the math easy I am going to exaggerate a bit: If a sensor has 20 megapixels (million pixels) and each pixel’s information is roughly one byte, that would be 20 megabytes of data (technically it is 1,048,576 bytes to a megabyte, but let’s round numbers to annoy geeks)=20MB. A decent sized file. I’ll illustrate this in a minute.

JPEG shrinks all things

What JPEG does to compress this 20MB of information is to group pixels together and write not individual pixel bytes, but the combined numbers which equal a color. The sensor pixels in most cameras are set to record 256, 4,096 or 16,384 different tones of just each color (red, green, blue, or RGB).

That is, in 8bit mode, there can be 256 different intensities of red recorded in each red pixel. 12bit sensors go up to 4,096 different intensities and 14bit is 16,384 different intensities. Sorry if I’m getting techy, but if you want to go further, Canon has some good info.

Let’s keep it simple and go with 8bit. RGB are the primary colors and they are combined in various ratios to represent all colors. So pick a trio of pixels above in each color. The true color of the light hitting the sensor, let’s say a nice purple, might be represented with intensities listed like this: Red: 99 Green: 21 Blue: 108. It’s just like mixing paint in an art class or at the home improvement store. Add in certain quantities of each primary color and voila! A new color. Yay!

The RAW file would have recorded each and every pixel just as its R or G or B value, individually (and then put in zeros for the other colors, such as R:99 G:0 B:0). Thus its bigness. JPEG will take those three pixels’ information and only record the final number that they all make up.

It’s diagram time

First let me show how the information for a RAW file will be recorded. I’m going to overlay some color that looks like this:

That purple, as expressed in RGB is R:131 G:53 B:163 and the orange is R:217 G:124 B:25. Does that make sense? Just remember: mixing different amounts of paint. Now I’ll make it slightly transparent and lay it over the sensor grid.

Next I will fill in the appropriate data each individual pixel will see. Remember, each pixel can only see its own color in varying degree of intensity. I am using close, actual numbers here in a R G B, top to bottom format.

Mesmerizing, isn’t it?

How to read the numbers

Do you see how I got each of those numbers? Purple is made up of 131 parts Red, 53 parts Green and 163 parts Blue. A green sensor can only record green values, so it puts a zero for the red and blue placeholders.

While they are zeros, they still take up space to record. In RAW recording mode, this information is passed on to the file just as it is seen here (how it is viewed on the computer afterward is another story).

JPEG is going to cheat a bit. Its information will look like this (don’t mind the difference in triangle colors, they are only different to make them easier to see):

I’m not going to fill in the entire grid for sanity’s sake. And this drawing is not 100% accurate in the way the compression actually gets done, for the tech geeks out there. It’s a representation of how the process works.

In essence, the amount of data, over all, has been reduced and algorithms in the camera will compress this a bit further. The real import of this information will becomes apparent when looking into White Balance (Hint: it’s way easier to adjust White Balance on a RAW photo than a JPEG one).

For now, just understand that JPEG gives up some of the original light information when it does its compression. In the example above, where two colors slightly cover the three sensors (the yellow triangle) what happens to the original information about the blue pixel in that group?

Look above, it was 0,0,25 but now, because it is being combined with a bit of the sensors where purple is striking, it gets adjusted in the end compromise to shrink. That true color, the amount of blue that hit that pixel, is lost when compressed. That’s why JPEG is known as a lossy (as compared to loss-less) format. Not all the original data is transferred.

Which file format to use?

Now that your brain and mine are fried by the math aspect, how does this apply to my original statement of “Use what you want”?

Simple; If you always want all the image data to have maximum ability to fiddle with it in the computer, go RAW.

JPEG, on the other hand, is valuable for certain situations:
- When you just don’t care
- Shooting for speed if you keep hitting a full buffer
- If you need to conserve space on a nearly full card while out in the tropics away from Amazon
- If you don’t want to fiddle with RAW files in a computer afterward and just want to post them to Facebook quickly
- You hate large files and the time it takes to transfer them to your computer
It comes down to…

RAW isn’t as easy to just shoot and then email to a friend. It has to be converted first to another format, sometimes JPEG, for emailing. Lucky for us, cameras now have the ability to shoot in both JPEG+RAW at the same time! I do this often when traveling and I know I want to quickly post sample images.

I will shoot in the smallest image size for the JPEG version and that makes a nice small file easy to post or email without the need to convert it. Then the RAW file will contain all the data and I can make adjustments in the computer at home more eloquently.

DANGER: I will warn you that White Balance is set and written into the JPEG file when it is created (as well as some other items). You can’t change this easily. But RAW does allow for easy White Balance changes. Super easy in the computer, as a matter of fact. Intrigued? Click the link above.

DOUBLE DANGER: Every time you save a JPEG file in a computer (or even rotate it) your computer will compress it again. Meaning it will degrade just a bit every time you play with it.

Compression options

Lastly, what about the different compression settings? These typically look like (Nikon)”Basic, Normal, Fine” or (Canon)”Normal, Fine, Super Fine” and still something different for Sony, Pentax, etc… Those levels represent how much compression happens to the file.

Staring from the top of both, Fine and Super Fine start with triangles that look like the diagram above; nice and small and the most detail obtained. As you move to Normal and Fine, respectively, the triangles will get bigger. Now instead taking three pixels and combining their data, the triangle will suck up six (and there will be a funky type of overlap) and the file size will get smaller still.

But guess what? Even more finite data is lost because the triangle will average the color inside of it and that will change the larger it becomes. Finally, in Basic and Normal, the triangle is larger still, the file smaller and the picture not as sharp.

Conclusion and compression suggestion

My suggestion: go with the highest compression you can when shooting JPEG(Fine and Super Fine, respectively) unless you are just about out of space on your card with no backup.

In closing, realize people typically migrate towards RAW from JPEG as they get more comfortable with post-processing (playing with the image in the computer afterward). I would never tell my Dad, for instance, to shoot in RAW. He really has no reason for the types of images he shoots and he doesn’t like having to mess with pictures in a computer afterward.

Many people start with JPEG because they know how to handle it. Then as they want more control over editing the image in their computer, they start to see the clear advantage RAW possesses. It presents all the original, unedited information when the shot was taken.

Smartphone Note: Your phone will almost certainly shoot in JPEG unless you set it to RAW (not all phones allow for RAW, though).

One last thing: If you want to take this a step further, check out Jim Goldstein’s post on the DNG file format (used in the computer after import) to expand your knowledge. He also has some more info on the JPEG and RAW conversation with a list of Pros and Cons. I suspect Jim is himself a con running from the law, posing as a mild mannered photographer.

Questions? Pop ’em like Pez in the comments section below. or email me at peter@peterwestcarey.com.

Photography Basics – A 43 Day Adventure, and its companion 40 Photography Experiments, are series written by professional photographer Peter West Carey. The series are designed to unravel the mysteries of photography, helping you can take better pictures. Subscribe here to receive all the updates and bonus material. Your comments are always welcome.

If you enjoy the series, consider learning photography first-hand on a professionally led international photo tour in Nepal or Bhutan. More information can be found at Far Horizon Photo Tours.
October 23, 2018
Blurry Photos: A Helpful Rule To End Your Pain – Photography Basics
Most blur happens because the shutter speed is too slow and you are moving, even just a little, when you shoot.

Short and to the point, to help stop blur because you are moving the camera too much, use this formula:

Don’t Shoot Slower Than 1/Focal Length

This simple formula comes into use when you are hand-holding a camera. Those using a tripod can throw this rule out the window.

In practice it looks like this:
- 18mm lens = No slower than 1/18th of a second
- 50mm lens = No slower than 1/50th of a second
- 300mm lens = No slower than 1/300th of a second
And so on.

This applies to full frame or ‘cropped’ sensor cameras. Smartphones, mirrorless cameras, action cameras, drones…all of them.

As you might guess, most cameras don’t come with a 1/18th second of a shutter speed. For the most part, round down to the next fastest shutter speed (=higher denominator(the 18 in 1/18)). So that 1/18th can be rounded to 1/20th, just to be safe.

The faster you go, the less blur you will cause just by the fact that you are a human and have blood coursing through your veins and a silly, constant need to breathe. Breathing and holding a camera properly are important and will tip the odds in your favor.

Questions? Pop ’em like Pez in the comments section below. or email me at peter@peterwestcarey.com.

Photography Basics – A 43 Day Adventure, and its companion 40 Photography Experiments, are series written by professional photographer Peter West Carey. The series are designed to unravel the mysteries of photography, helping you can take better pictures. Subscribe here to receive all the updates and bonus material. Your comments are always welcome.

If you enjoy the series, consider learning photography first-hand on a professionally led international photo tour in Nepal or Bhutan. More information can be found at Far Horizon Photo Tours.
October 22, 2018
Get Moody – Photography Basics – Weekend Experiment #3

This weekend’s experiment is to find and shoot some moody images. It’s the best time of year as the seasons change and the mood is tending toward gloomy (Northern Hemisphere) or sunny (Southern Hemisphere).

Weekly Recap

We started this week learning about White Balance and how important it can be if you’re only shooting in JPEG mode. From there I listed out some thoughts that might run through your head while you’re taking a shot.

Next was one of the most important features of any camera, large or small: Exposure Compensation. It helps you make all things right in the world when your camera wants to be average. Hand in hand with Exposure Compensation is reading your camera’s Histogram. It’s a bit funky, but useful.

The week ended with a note about the Rule of Thirds which has been one of the most popular posts yet in this series. Be expecting more of those types of posts in the future in the Creative Ideas section starting soon.

The Experiment

This weekend I want to see some moody photos. Good mood, bad mood, it doesn’t matter.

The important thing is to get out and get shooting! Look for how the light of a scene affects how you feel about it. It doesn’t need to be a fully sunny day, it can be a ray of light coming in through a window. Or a foggy morning with just a hint of activity.

This subject is meant to be open to interpretation so you have a wide swath from which to choose.

Inspiration

I’ve selected some of my own moody photos to help kickstart your creative process.

Just a pretty flower

Skógafoss, Iceland

Rome, Italy

Galiano Island, BC, Canada

Manzanar, California, USA

Washington Trail, USA

Portabelo, Panama

Algodones Dunes, California, USA

Strait of Georgia, BC, Canada

Santa Barbara, California, USA

Endicott Arm, Alaska, USA

Kilauea Point Lighthouse, Hawaii

Puget Sound, Washington, USA

St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City

Puget Sound, Washington, USA

San Blas Islands, Panama

California, USa

If you missed any of the Weekend Experiments, you can find them all here.

Questions? Pop ’em like Pez in the comments section below. or email me at peter@peterwestcarey.com.

Photography Basics – A 43 Day Adventure, and its companion 40 Photography Experiments, are series written by professional photographer Peter West Carey. The series are designed to unravel the mysteries of photography, helping you can take better pictures. Subscribe here to receive all the updates and bonus material. Your comments are always welcome.

If you enjoy the series, consider learning photography first-hand on a professionally led international photo tour in Nepal or Bhutan. More information can be found at Far Horizon Photo Tours.

October 21, 2018
The Rule Of Thirds – Photography Basics

The Rule of Thirds

“How to line things up better.”

“Framing a shot and knowing what to look for.”

“Composing.”

These are answers to a questionnaire I send before each workshop I teach. I ask what each student wants to learn during our time class. Proper composition comes up about a quarter of the time.

I always include a mention of the Rule Of Thirds in my classes because it is so basic and easy and helpful. Before I go further, it is by no means the only rule for composition and, as I mentioned in the start of this 43 day marathon, all rules are made to be broken. Yet, it’s a great tool to help an untrained eye start improving composition.

What is the Rule of Thirds?

The Rule Of Thirds is quite simple, actually. Divide your frame into three equal parts top to bottom and side to side. Place eyes, horizons, divisions in the image, or anything interesting on one of those newly drawn lines. Here’s what it looks like.

In this case, I considered the line between the dark lower clouds and the lighter, closer clouds a division. The thunderheads are a point of interest as well and I was able to fit them both into ‘crosshairs’ where the lines meet, which tends to be a pleasing spot.

Check to see if your camera has a mode where the lines can be drawn on the scene when viewed through the viewfinder. This will help you get used to the look. Many phones will do this as well as mirrorless cameras.

An Example

Take a scene as seen through your viewfinder, in this case a hurried shot of the sun setting behind an acacia tree on the Serengeti in Africa.

I managed to get the sun smack-dab in the middle of the shot. To me it looks mediocre, at best. Now how about framing things differently?

What’s the difference between the two? Let me add the overlay again.

Nothing interesting is going on at those lines or intersections. Heck, I didn’t even center the sun perfectly.

Now we’re getting somewhere.

Shoot for the Eyes

Another thing to look for are eyes. If your subject has eyes, put them on one of the meridians or at the intersections. The way we connect as humans is through our eyes. With animals too. It’s a no-brainer.

Lastly, if there is action, such as something moving through the frame, put it on one of the meridians and give it some place to go in the frame. Such as:

The Rule Of Thirds is a handy place to start when trying to figure out how to frame a scene. It’s also a great jumping off place for further experimentation. It take practice to get this rule down pat, so get out there and get shooting!

That’s all for this week! Check back on Monday for another 5 days of Photography Basics, starting with a rule to help you stop getting blurry photos.

Questions? Pop ’em like Pez in the comments section below. or email me at peter@peterwestcarey.com.

Photography Basics – A 43 Day Adventure, and its companion 40 Photography Experiments, are series written by professional photographer Peter West Carey. The series are designed to unravel the mysteries of photography, helping you can take better pictures. Subscribe here to receive all the updates and bonus material. Your comments are always welcome.

If you enjoy the series, consider learning photography first-hand on a professionally led international photo tour in Nepal or Bhutan. More information can be found at Far Horizon Photo Tours.

October 19, 2018
Exposure Compensation And Bias Are Your Friends – Photography Basics

I have some bad news.

Your camera is not perfect.

Don’t worry though, none of them are. The saving grace to this dilemma is the Exposure Compensation (sometimes called Exposure Bias) feature on DSLRs, smartphones, mirrorless cameras, drones and a lot of point and shoot cameras. It is a little button that looks like this.

Exposure Compensation

The exposure compensation button works by forcing the camera to over expose or under expose, according to its current settings, by a set number of stops. Hence the symbol for it is the + and – signs.

Typically the range is -3 to +3 stops but some cameras will have a -5 to +5 range. Cameras are pretty similar in how the setting actives; simply press or hold down the button and then turn one of the camera dials. On phones you will typically tap the screen to set exposure then drag up or down to change it.

Your user manual explains exactly how your exposure compensation feature works.

How Handy is Exposure Compensation?

Exposure Compensation can be helpful when you know your camera is going to mess up or is already messing up. As explained in the Metering Modes post, your camera is not perfect and can only meter a limited area of the view. Plus, your camera has to make decisions about what’s important in the frame and try to make everything come out all average. But it makes mistakes.

We’ll use an image of a tugboat on Puget Sound from Seattle as an example of a challenging shot where exposure compensation helps.

Program mode, ISO 100, f/11, 1/500 – The camera is doing all the exposure calculations here:

This is with the camera’s default setting using evaluative metering. I could switch to spot metering and point it at the tugboat. Instead, I use a camera dial to selectively over expose by one stop.

Over Exposing

Here’s the same shot over exposed by one stop.

Getting better. The tug is a little more visible.

Below are shots over exposed by two stops and then three stops.

As the exposure gets higher and higher, we can see the tugboat more and more, although we lose detail in the background.

I chose this image because these types of decisions come up all the time when shooting sunrise or sunset.

Now For Under Exposing

Swinging the other direction, we’ll under exposed by one, two and three stops.

We get more detail in the clouds lit by the setting sun, but we lose our main subject along the way.

As you can see, there is a big difference in exposures across a swath of seven stops of light (-3 to +3 stops). What is most pleasing to some, in this case, might not be pleasing to others.

How is it Useful?

The over/under exposure compensation is a quick way to correct your camera’s wrongheaded bias towards too harsh or too dull of light. In this example, the shot that was underexposed by one stop has a good chance of being salvaged and enhanced in a computer.

This quick setting can also help insure faces aren’t hidden in darkness by shadow when all around them is bright light. It’s better to blow out the details in the surroundings than leave a face too dark.

On Your Phone

To use exposure compensation on a phone, tap the screen and move your finger up or down to over or under exposure. It’s super easy.

Tomorrow we’ll cover Histograms!

Questions? Pop ’em like Pez in the comments section below. or email me at peter@peterwestcarey.com.

Photography Basics – A 43 Day Adventure, and its companion 40 Photography Experiments, are series written by professional photographer Peter West Carey. The series are designed to unravel the mysteries of photography, helping you can take better pictures. Subscribe here to receive all the updates and bonus material. Your comments are always welcome.

If you enjoy the series, consider learning photography first-hand on a professionally led international photo tour in Nepal or Bhutan. More information can be found at Far Horizon Photo Tours.

October 17, 2018
Steps To Taking A Photo – Photography Basics

Picking up speed after yesterday’s topic of White Balance it’s time to talk about…

Steps To Taking A Photo

Some of you have asked how I take a photo, what goes into my thought process? Much like opening Pandora’s Box, I’m not sure that is a safe question, but let’s take a trip down the lane of shooting just one picture and the voices I hear in my head.

For an example, let’s use the image below, from the Himalayas in Nepal, Asia (in another post I will explain how I edited it). This is a view of Cho Oyu, the 6th tallest mountain in the world, and the Ngozumpa Glacier, the longest in Nepal. On the other side of that distant ridge is Tibet.

Equipment Used: Canon 7D, Canon 28-300mm L lens, ISO 100, 28mm, f/8, 1/125 second, no flash.

Step 1 – Start Feeling

The first step is to get all Jedi on the process. “Feel the shot flow through you.” “With the blast shield down I can’t see a thing.” “Uh, we had a slight weapons malfunction, but uh… everything’s perfectly alright now. We’re fine. We’re all fine here now, thank you. How are you?” Really, I could go on all day with Star Wars quotes. But the important part is to get to a point where thinking about what you want to shoot takes a back seat to seeing it.

Will this happen overnight? Nope. It’ll take practice. I shot about a dozen weddings before I felt comfortable just knowing what I should be seeing, and seeing it in my mind before I shot it. That’s a lot of nerve wracking weddings before it started to come naturally. Some people have the gift to start out just ‘knowing’ and that’s awesome. For the rest of us, it takes work to get to a point of not thinking. Practice, you’ll get there.

At this point I’m thinking – “Hey, that looks cool” and right after that was “I love how small the people look and how grand Cho Oyu is.”

Step 2 – Think About What You Want To Convey

And what you want to convey is typically an emotion. Or a sense of place. Or just what your gut/heart/soul is experiencing in that moment.

I often tell people to put down their camera when they travel some place new and walk around for a day without it. I got lambasted by some commenters for suggesting such blasphemy. You can decide if that tactic is right for you.

I have found looking critically, without a camera, leads to better photos. It will give you a sense of place that becomes more readily obvious to shoot when the camera is unpacked. Mentally list adjectives of how you feel and what you see, if you’re the list type.

At this point I’m thinking – “The rich colors and the calm of the Himalayas as the sun is getting lower.” Calm and small are what I’m experiencing. And a little cold.

Step 3 – Now, How To Show That Emotion Or Feeling?

I wrote about capturing emotion, at least some tips, here. This is a fun area because if you ask 100 photographers about how to do it, you’ll get 98 different answers (there’s always two passive photographers in every crowd). Keep asking whenever you can and study other photos to see what pulls at you and how the photographer was able to capture that.

At this point I’m thinking – “Deep blues and bright whites. Underexpose if the first one doesn’t come out, because that snow and ice can be tricky depending on where it hits the light sensors.” Also, “Don’t let the unreal saturation in the blue sky blow out!”

Step 4 – Set It Up

Now it’s time to get the camera in place, be it on a tripod or handheld or on a jib. Look through the viewfinder and frame things up. If you’re stuck for a place to start, use the Rule Of Thirds (covered later), which is much easier than the Rule Of 65ths.

At this point I’m thinking – “I need to move to the side to see a little more glacier and balance the image” Then, after moving 10′ to the right, “Wait for those clouds (out of frame) to cast shadows for contrast.”

Step 5 – Check Settings

You might want to do this before setting up, but it’s ok to do it now as well. If you’re going for anything other than average, which is what you camera wants to achieve, check your settings. Are you going to meter off the whole scene, or just part of it? Do you want to blow out some highlights or deepen shadows? Will there be enough light for a lower ISO? What’s the white balance set at? Will there be blur at this shutter speed? Will I get enough depth of field with this aperture?

When starting out, these questions are okay. As you progress, they’ll enter your head less and less as it becomes more natural.

At this point I’m thinking – “ISO to 100. Check! I don’t want noise. Shutter speed just fast enough but, without a tripod, I’m going to have to be very steady.”

Step 6 – Breathe Slow

At this point I’m thinking – I’m not. I’m breathing and getting all Super Zen-like and stuff. At 15,600’/4,700m it takes longer to catch your breath.

Step 7 – shoot

Why is ‘shoot’ lower case? Because it’s not really that big of a deal. What’s happening in front of you is. Don’t forget, you are capturing a moment in time and experiencing it, right along with shooting it, is important.

In my mind, for something exciting, it should go “Wow! Something cool happened. Hey, cool, I got a shot of it too” instead of, “Wow! I got the shot, I got the shot!” If nothing else, there might be another shot AFTER the one you got and were so proud of. Keep your mind open. And keep breathing.

At this point I’m thinking – “Wow, what a beautiful place.”

Rinse and repeat!

Oh yeah, you can review the photo if need be. I often do, using a histogram to make sure my viewing eyes are seeing things right.

Tomorrow we talk about Exposure Compensation to help fix what your camera does wrong.

Questions? Pop ’em like Pez in the comments section below. or email me at peter@peterwestcarey.com.

Photography Basics – A 43 Day Adventure, and its companion 40 Photography Experiments, are series written by professional photographer Peter West Carey. The series are designed to unravel the mysteries of photography, helping you can take better pictures. Subscribe here to receive all the updates and bonus material. Your comments are always welcome.

If you enjoy the series, consider learning photography first-hand on a professionally led international photo tour in Nepal or Bhutan. More information can be found at Far Horizon Photo Tours.

October 16, 2018
White Balance – Photography Basics
Welcome back from the weekend! How did you do with Weekend Experiment #2?

White Balance

White Balance is your camera’s attempt to make white = white and thus, accuracy in all the other colors. That’s really all it is. The camera knows if it can make white show as white, all the other colors will be accurate.

White isn’t always white because not all light is created equal. For instance, a tungsten incandescent light bulb (the standard light bulb for the last 100 years, more or less) puts out light that is slightly more yellow/orange than the sun at noon. The measurement of this light is as a function of its temperature on a Kelvin scale, noted with a K.

Degrees of Kelvin and Discoloring

Too Blue! – Paris, France

Direct noon-day sunlight is the standard bearer of this scale for reference sake. It is pretty much at 5000K. Anything higher than this color temperature takes on a blue color and anything lower takes on an orange/yellow color.

Back in the days of film you bought a roll based on the light you anticipated using. Most film is daylight balanced, around 5000K-5500K. Do you remember using that film indoors with tungsten light bulbs? Things took on a yellow color cast.

And florescent lights? Greenish yick. This is also why flashes are set at 5500K, they are close to daylight, which is very handy when used as a Fill Flash (a post coming this month).

Light on a Scale

Digital cameras have the advantage of adjusting on the fly for light coming in. But it’s a tricky business trying to guess the light source properly. Therefore, most cameras have the ability to manually change the white balance if desired. Here is a graphic representation of the various settings you might find and their relative value and place on the Kelvin scale.

Why is this Important?

Shot at 2900K (left), adjusted to 2200K in computer (right) – London, England

When shooting JPEG files, the white balance is set when the file is compressed. No going back. If the camera picked the wrong white balance, the image is probably too blue or orange or green. And that sucks.

One way around this is shooting in RAW mode because the white balance is not hard set (we discuss RAW and JPEG a another post). When viewed on a computer the white balance information is re-read and applied, but if the white balance doesn’t match, you can simple tell the computer (either by a slider or by typing in the Kelvin temperature) what the white balance should be.

Experiment!

Try it yourself. Grab a white piece of paper and set your camera to daylight (5000K). Get the white piece of paper under an incandescent or fluorescent bulb and snap a photo. Even on the back panel LCD you will notice the color looks off. Off as in white is not white.

Take the piece of paper out into the daylight (if you have it) and perform the same test. Bingo, white is now white and all other colors are accurate.

If you don’t want to worry about White Balance, shoot in RAW and set the camera to Auto for the actual White Balance. Otherwise, if shooting in JPEG, be careful around harsh situations when the camera might get tripped up, such as:

Sand Dunes, California, USA
- Moving from direct sun to shade, especially with snow
- Going from indoors to outdoors
- Multiple light sources. In this case, you have to pick one and accept the others source(s) will show as exaggerated
- Large surface areas that are barely offwhite to start with
- High school gyms
- Underwater (but this is a slightly different reason and why a number of point and shoots have a separate setting)
And check to make sure your camera is metering correctly.

One More (Advanced) Thing

You can set a custom white balance if you know the light will be a certain temperature for a certain period of time. This usually involves pointing the camera at something white and using a custom function, so you’ll need to look up how to set it in your camera manual. I know, homework. But it will help if you must shoot in JPEG and have some tricky light.

If you are looking for more in-depth info or a chance to get totally lost, check out Color Temperature on Wikipedia. It was also suggested to me there is a great explanation in the book Understanding Exposure.

Next Up: How To Take A Shot

Questions? Pop ’em like Pez in the comments section below. or email me at peter@peterwestcarey.com.

Photography Basics – A 43 Day Adventure, and its companion 40 Photography Experiments, are series written by professional photographer Peter West Carey. The series are designed to unravel the mysteries of photography, helping you can take better pictures. Subscribe here to receive all the updates and bonus material. Your comments are always welcome.

If you enjoy the series, consider learning photography first-hand on a professionally led international photo tour in Nepal or Bhutan. More information can be found at Far Horizon Photo Tours.
October 15, 2018
Camera Modes Explained – Photography Basics
Building on yesterdays post regarding Metering Modes, Camera Modes control your whole camera and are very important.

Camera Modes

When I speak of camera modes I speak of those little letters and pictures typically atop a dial on the top of your camera. P, A, S, M, B and then a bunch of pictures.

Or, if you have a Canon, it gets goofy with AV and TV. No, you don’t have TV on your camera (yet). It stands for Time Value (Shutter Speed) and is silly Canon still uses it. Av is for Aperture Value. Those C’s are Custom Modes.

My Canon 7D Mark II also locks those other modes represented by pictures, but a lot of cameras have them.

Standing down from my soapbox, I will list out what the modes do and how they are best used. If you think I’ll be referencing back to previous posts and starting to tie more things together, you’re right.

Oh, and a slight rant; before you get too caught up in which mode to use, it doesn’t matter as long as you are getting the shots you want. Being proficient in modes other than your favorite will give you more latitude to experiment and try new things, though.

Auto Mode

Auto mode is the mode I use when I hand the camera to someone to take my picture. It’s the green box mode. It’s the mode I’m trying to get you out of by doing all these posts.

It handles practically all aspects of photo taking: shutter speed, aperture, ISO, flash use and in some cameras, it makes you coffee each morning. It’s that automatic. It’s handy, but not so useful for learning.

Use This Mode When You
- Hand a camera to someone who has never used your camera
- Are new to photography and don’t know what else to do
- Just don’t care (and also throw your hands in the air and wave them)
- Are too tired to think and your photo instincts are shot
- Don’t want to shoot in RAW
Program Mode

P Mode. Program Mode is like Auto but now you can change things. It is the mode I use second most often and people often gasp in horror when I tell them, at least those who are just getting into photography.

They tend to think Manual is the only way to go to have complete control over everything. I thought that too at one time, especially the time when my camera didn’t have a Program Mode and all I had was Manual.

Yet most modern DSLRs and mirrorless cameras have quality Program Modes which handle most functions but leave many to be adjusted. For instance, the camera will pick a shutter speed, ISO and aperture setting for you. But if you like, you can manually set the ISO.

Likewise, turning a dial will adjust the shutter speed and aperture settings while keeping the overall exposure the same based on your selected metering mode. You can also pick focus points and choose to over or under expose the scene by a set number of stops and change the white balance.

I use at times and typically I will use the front dial on my camera to make a quick change to the chosen settings to adjust to my liking. Such as adding in just a bit of depth of field with an increase in aperture or quickly underexposing by a stop when I know the camera will meter higher than I desire.

Use This Mode When You
- Want to start taking control of your camera
- Have a name that starts with P (that’s my secret reason for using it; ego)
- Are happy with the camera’s metering and know what to expect
A nice thing about Program Mode is it has a safety to typically not allow you to under or over exposure your shot. This can be handy.

Aperture Priority Mode

A Mode (or Av mode on Canon and Pentax because they like to annoy me). As you hopefully guessed, aperture mode allows you to control just the Aperture, not shutter speed. ISO can be set to manual or auto in this mode as well.

It also allows control over the items mentioned in Program Mode. Depending on how your camera is set up, the main dial, or rear dial, will always be used to select the aperture and that aperture will not change unless you want it to. Adjustments are made in 1/2 stop or 1/3 stop increments.

This mode is best used to control what aperture controls, which is? Depth Of Field.

Use This Mode When You
- Are shooting a landscape
- Want to control depth of field, like when shooting a landscape
- Are thinking of shooting a landscape
- Just got out of the car on your way to shoot a landscape
- Dream about shooting a landscape tonight
- Accidentally shoot a portrait or two between landscape shoots
It’s the mode I use the most, not because I shoot landscapes, but because I primarily want control over my Depth of Field. I keep an eye on my shutter speed and use my aperture setting to adjust that as needed (remember the Teeter Totters of Doom?).

Shutter Priority Mode

S Mode (or Tv on, again, Canon and Pentax because they are so advanced, it’s known as Time Value. I’m not sure why they departed from Shutter Speed Priority, but they are whacky.) As with Aperture Mode, Shutter Priority Mode controls the shutter speed.

No matter where you set it, there it is. The range is typically in 1/3 stop increments but can be switched to 1/2 stop. The range extends from 30 seconds to the fastest shutter speed your camera is capable of. Mine is 1/8000th of a second, for instance. It has all the same manual controls as Program Mode.

NOTE: In both Aperture and Shutter Speed Modes, it is possible to over or under expose when selecting your setting, unlike in Program Mode. If the shutter speed is too fast for the aperture, for instance, the aperture setting may blink or list “LO”, indicating the amount of light is too low for a proper exposure

Likewise, if you set the aperture to f/45 and there is still too much light for your highest shutter speed to be used, your camera will still use that highest shutter speed but will blink to tell you things are going to come out all wrong. This can happen with sunset shots.

Use This Mode When You
- Are shooting action shots, like sports
- Want to ensure no camera induced blur with a long lens
- Want to control blur in general
- Are taking night shots with flash and want more control
- Are taking a picture of a yeti
Manual Mode

M Mode. All you’re doing in this mode is combining the Shutter and Aperture modes and now you can adjust both of those values. Party! Your camera will still meter and list, via a scale, if you are under or over exposed, but life is up to you now, big fella.

This mode can be liberating and confusing for some and is best not used in fast moving situations where constant change is needed. It’s all about control.

Getting good at Manual Mode needs repetition and practice, that’s all. Just like anything, it can be made second nature if you work at it and have a desire.

ISO can be set manually or automatically in this mode as well, for true manual control.

Use This Mode When You
- Want to brag about using it
- Lust after total control
- Are feeling creative and want to play
- Shoot in a studio and know your lighting setup
- Shoot at night and know your camera’s metering is inaccurate
Creative Camera Modes

Not all cameras have these modes and some have many, many more. But I want to list some of the useful ones. They can be used like a crutch while learning, but don’t rely on them.

Portrait Mode

Portrait Mode will bring your aperture to a lower number (wider opening, less depth of field) to help isolate the model. It will also, if shooting in JPEG mode, add in a bit of warmth to skin tones and choose a decent ISO. It may also change in-camera sharpening, tone and contrast.

Action/Sports Mode

This is great for sports in a no-thinking way. Shutter speed and ISO are jacked up to stop motion, aperture be damned. Frame rate is also increased to its highest, typically. Usually defaults to JPEG mode as well. It can be great for getting shots of fast-moving kids when you don’t want to think about it.

Landscape Mode

Aperture be praised in this mode. Saturation might also get a bump, especially in the greens and blues. Some cameras will also pick a slightly ‘off’ focus point in order to maximize depth of field. Great mode for when you want as much in focus as your camera can handle.

Night Shot Mode

Night Shot Mode is a fun one. Your camera will meter for the entire scene and expose as such, but also fire the flash to light up foreground objects. And by objects I mean people. This mode is best used with a tripod as the metering for the scene, at night, means a longer shutter speed to expose faint city lights. Handholding is ok, but will leave some streak or blur in the overall scene, even though the object will be stopped with the flash.

Other

Some other modes of note:
- Child Mode – Not what you think. Does not deliver children, nor make them eat healthy snacks. But helps with taking pictures of the fast moving buggers.
- CA – This mode mystifies me. It uses sliders on the back of the camera to control things like Contrast while shooting. Might be useful to some, but kinda clunky in practice.
- B – Bulb Mode. In this mode the shutter will stay open for as long as you hold the shutter release. Great for long star exposures when using a remote trigger which has a lock for the shutter release, leaving both hands free for beer.
- C1, C2, C3 – Custom settings. Handy for certain set of situations, like maybe heading underwater or one set for studio use, etc… Records and uses any number of settings, like metering mode, white balance, etc…
- Close Up/Macro – Usually a faster shutter speed and wider aperture for flower pictures as well as small things you want to sell on Etsy.
- Pentax cameras also have some Hype modes and a Sensitivity mode. Plus a TAv which allows for more creative use.
- Snow, Sunset, Fireworks Pets….the list goes on and on and is ever-growing.
Do the modes make sense? I hope so. If not, please ask questions in the comments section below. We’ll be discussing camera modes further as we get into different shooting situations.

Up Next: White Balance

Questions? Pop ’em like Pez in the comments section below. or email me at peter@peterwestcarey.com.

Photography Basics – A 43 Day Adventure, and its companion 40 Photography Experiments, are series written by professional photographer Peter West Carey. The series are designed to unravel the mysteries of photography, helping you can take better pictures. Subscribe here to receive all the updates and bonus material. Your comments are always welcome.

If you enjoy the series, consider learning photography first-hand on a professionally led international photo tour in Nepal or Bhutan. More information can be found at Far Horizon Photo Tours.
October 12, 2018
Metering Modes: How Your Camera Sees Light – Photography Basics
Let’s jump right into the guts of your camera and how it makes exposure decisions.

Metering Modes

What are Metering Modes? Your eye and brain are fantastic at figuring out what is the correct exposure for any scene and adjusting to it. You squint without thinking and in dark situations your pupils dilate to bring in more light (they do that at the eye doctor as well but that’s just because of those wicked drops).

Your camera has to try to do the same thing: judge the amount of light in a situation and set the ISO, Shutter Speed and Aperture appropriately to make a proper exposure.

NOTE: Metering Modes come into play when you are shooting in any Camera Mode other than manual.

The problem is, a camera is not nearly half as cool or as complex as your brain and eyes. So the camera manufacturers have come up with some methods for metering light and trying to figure out the best settings.

Different Modes for Different Situations

For most DSLRs and mirrorless cameras there are three different metering modes in common: Matrix or Evaluative, Center Weighted and Spot. In all of these modes (and others, depending on manufacturer) the camera uses a special sensor to evaluate light hitting it, as if it were hitting the main sensor.

As mentioned before, light is measured in a camera in stops. From one stop to the next is either half as much light or twice as much light. The dynamic range of most cameras, that is, the range of stops captured in a single image, is maybe 8 stops. Cameras improve all the time and now top 13 stops.

The dynamic range of the human eye in a single instance is estimated at 14 stops, with an overall dynamic range of around 25 stops.

As the camera is limited in range (we’ll ignore HDR for now), it has to pick what gets favored for exposure. Maybe a scene has a dynamic range of about 15 stops and your camera is limited to 7 stops. What to do? Metering will pick what’s important and select an exposure based on that. Let’s look at the modes.

The Three Main Metering Modes

Matrix/Evaluative Mode is going to attempt to meter 80% of the scene, give or take a bit. This mode works well for a wide range of subjects especially if there is a lot going on and you aren’t sure where you want to meter. It has its limits as it doesn’t cover the corners (usually not a big deal) and may try to balance a scene with a wide range in a manner not to your liking. This mode is the king of compromise.

Center Weighted (sometimes shown without the spot in the very center) starts to narrow things down a bit. In a lot of cameras the light reading is taken from the center 13% of the frame. A number of cameras even have the ability to change this percent to three different values. Anything not in the general center area will be ignored as far a light metering is concerned.

Spot Metering is handy when you know exactly what you want exposed properly and it is relatively small. Spot metering is a circle of about 2-3% of the frame (cameras will often show an actual center spot in the viewfinder to aid in selecting the area to meter). This can be handy when scenes are back-lit or there is a lot of brightness, contrast and other action going on, but maybe only one element is important to the exposur

Metering Modes in Real Life

Now lets take a look at how these metering modes can affect your image. I have set up a likely scene on a chair using my daughter’s friends Lamoin and Hopster.

In all these scenes I set the ISO to 100 and the aperture to f/8 to hold them constant. Only the shutter speed will change and it will only change because the camera is sensing differences in the light.

It will sense differences in the light because it will use different modes and we’ll start at the top with Matrix or Evaluative.

ISO 100, f/8, 2 Seconds

The shutter was open for two seconds. The camera metered for the entire scene and faced with a tough choice (lots of lights and darks) it picked something it thought was middle ground. If it could think. It can’t. Ha ha ha ha. Only Hopster can think. Ok, enough nervous laughter, next is Center Weighted.

ISO 100, f/8, .6 seconds

That superimposed oval is about the area the sensor metered (and a good mathematician will tell me it’s far greater than 13%!). You will notice Hopster is much better exposed with only .6 seconds of a shutter speed, but we’re losing Lamoin’s hooves and the chair is getting dark. Still, I like this better than the first. Spot Metering time.

ISO 100, f/8, .3 Seconds

As the spot is only on Hopster’s white ‘fur’, the camera is attempting to exposure properly for it. The camera did a decent job, but you can notice what happened to the rest of the scene. Dark, dark, dark. What happens, though, if we move the spot to the darkest part of the scene, to the area just below Lamoin?

ISO 100, f/8, 10 Seconds

Zoiks! While that one patch of bison fur is exposed well, the 10 second shutter speed makes everything else overexposed. Can we mitigate this a bit?

ISO 100, f/8, 3.2 Seconds

That’s a bit better as far as Lamoin is concerned. Hopster is still blown out and not the least bit happy.

It is important to note DLSRs are often equipped to favor metering at times. Such as in Matrix Mode. Often the focus points that are locked on a subject will get a slight bump in their overall importance for light metering as the camera knows this is likely the main subject. Others take it a step forward and use face detection software to know where a face is and expose for that, instead of an overall evaluation of the scene.

What About My Phone?

Your phone uses Matrix or Evaluative metering most of the time. It looks at the whole scene and tries to balance the exposure.

Using an iPhone as an example (although most phones work the same), a large rectangle appears to show where the metering and focus are locked, when locked. In this example, the box is closer to center-weighted than true evaluative.

But that makes the leafs a little over exposed. All you have to do to change the area where your phone meters and focus is to tap that spot on the screen. In this case, I want the leafs better exposed, thus I tap them.

That’s better. What happens if I tap the ground to make it better exposed?

Whoa now! The ground is brighter but now the leafs are totally blown out and my Shutter Speed is so slow that things got blurry.

You might also notice how your phone will put a focus and exposure box around someone’s face when it finds one in the scene? That’s because the camera assumes you want the face exposed correctly and 99 times out of 100 that is true.

The point here is you can pick your exposure area in a phone just like you can in a DSLR or mirrorless camera. This “tap on the screen” method is also true for most drones.

The Right Mode for the Right Scene

So which mode is right for which situations? Without being by your side for every shoot you go on, I can make some generalizations:

Matrix/Evaluative Mode
- Good general walk around setting
- The beach
- Midday sun
- Cityscapes
- Lightning
- Bison
- Mountain ranges
- Grand vistas
Center Weighted
- Concert/Band
- Sunsets/Sunrise (to meter and then recompose)
- Group shots
- Waterfalls
- Portraits
- Birds
Spot
- The Moon
- Sports action from afar (where the subject is pretty much filling the center of the lens)
- Back-lit subjects
- Yeti
Wrapping Up Metering Modes

Play around with the modes and get to know them better. You will find times when the main subject is still too bright no mater how much you adjust the exposure compensation (more on that next week).

That is likely because your camera is in Matrix Mode and trying to balance everything. Switch to Center Weighted and chances are you will find things starting to come around. Get more precise with Spot and the control becomes even more finite.

To access the different metering modes, look for a dial or knob with the icons above on it. On some Canons it is a button press then a wheel turn. On Nikons it can be a rotatory dial on the side of the eyepiece.

Next Up: Camera Modes(and how to stop using the green rectangle!!)

Questions? Pop ’em like Pez in the comments section below. or email me at peter@peterwestcarey.com.

Photography Basics – A 43 Day Adventure, and its companion 40 Photography Experiments, are series written by professional photographer Peter West Carey. The series are designed to unravel the mysteries of photography, helping you can take better pictures. Subscribe here to receive all the updates and bonus material. Your comments are always welcome.

If you enjoy the series, consider learning photography first-hand on a professionally led international photo tour in Nepal or Bhutan. More information can be found at Far Horizon Photo Tours.
October 11, 2018