Controlling Depth of Field while Photographying !!!

There are three basic facts to Depth Of Field. Holding everything else equal:

1. DOF increases as a lens is stopped down (i.e., the f/number is increased)

2. DOF increases as focal length decreases

3. DOF increases with subject distance.

Experienced photographers

Some useful tips about Landscape Photography : Sunset

Some basic tips about Macro Photography

Here is a small video which talks about Macro Photography and what all should be main consideration while shotting macro objects.

As we know MCRO/micro photography is about shooting very small objects. With normal lenses its very difficult because the are restricted from shooting objects from shorter distances which is main requirement of MACROs. Photographer needs a Macro lens or Extension Tubes for this purpose. Extension tubes are cheaper options which helps us using our standard lenses for shooting macro objects.

Even when we have Macro lenses and Extension tubes, there is challenge of getting nice Depth of field so that complete object is clear in final photograph. For that we need to shoot at low aperture which effectively means HIGH F value. Many lenses support F45 types for Macro shots. Since light will be low at F45, we need to shoot with slow shutter speed and TRIPOD would be must in that case.

Use Timer to avoid camera shake due to Click... For more details, watch this video...

Natural Light Portraiture : By Karl Taylor

Here is another video by Karl Tayor where he explain about shooting People Portraits in Natural Light.

There are great tips in this video but I liked this one : "Its a complete Myth that Sun should be kept behind the Photographer so that Subject/Model is well Lit" : If you have the same myth in mind, watch out the video and you will be amazed by final results by Karl...

In this video, he is going to shoot a Model during Sunset behind her.


Karl has given 5 Tips about Natural Light Portraiture:

1. Communication with Model : Its always a good idea to regularly communicate with the Model to make her/him comfortable with overall setup of Photo-Shoot. This is very important for good finals...

2. Choice of Lens : Karl is using 85mm Lens on Full Frame Camera and describes this in detail... So watch the video below...

3. Choice of Aperture : Large Aperture is good for People Portraits. Karl is using 1.2 Lens but recommends Aperture between 1.8 to 2.8.

4. Lighting : First he started with the Photography Myth mentioned above and placed his Model in front of Sunset. Karl want to shoot into the SUN.This will give a nice backlit onto the Hair. Because light will be very less on face,  Fill in light with standard silver reflector will help in this case, but need to make sure that its not too harsh...

5. Environment...Location, soft background with shalow Depth of Field...

Watch out the video to know more from Karl about Natural Light Portraiture...

Tips for Getting Backgrounds Right

1. Check your Background Before Hitting the Shutter Release

Ok - this strategy isn’t rocket science, in fact you’d think it almost goes without saying - but unfortunately it doesn’t and many of the mistakes that I see in photographs could have been avoided simply by checking the background before taking the shot and taking some sort of evasive action.

Always scan the background of your shots before taking a shot. Look for colors that don’t fit with the rest of the image, bright patches that might distract the eye, lines that clash, people that don’t belong etc.


2. Move Your Subject

This is once again a fairly simple technique but is probably the first thing you should consider. Quite often asking a portrait subject to take a step to the left or right will fix things either by putting the distraction behind them or by putting it out of frame.

3. Change your Shooting Angle

If you have distracting elements in the background of a shot but can’t move your subject another strategy is to move yourself and shoot from a new angle. This might mean rotating around your subject but could also include getting down low to make the sky the background or even getting up high and shooting down onto your subject to make the background the ground.

4. Using Aperture to Blur Backgrounds

One of the most useful things to learn as a way to combat distractions in backgrounds (and foregrounds) is to use the power of your lens to throw the background out of focus using depth of field. What you’re trying to achieve with this technique is a nice blurred background where you can’t really make out what’s going on there.

The easiest way to do this is to use a wide aperture (the smaller the number the wider the aperture). The wider your aperture the more blurry your background should become.

The quickest way to see the impact of this strategy is to switch your camera into aperture priority mode and to take a number of shots at different apertures. Start with an aperture of f/20 and work your way down - one stop at a time. Once you get down to under f/4 you’ll start seeing the background in your shots getting blurrier and blurrier.

5. Using Focal Length to Blur Backgrounds

Another way to help get your backgrounds nice and blurry is to use a lens with a long focal length. Longer tele-photo do help a little to get narrower depth of field (although the amount is less than many think). In actual fact the impact is smaller than it seems and the main reason for the change is that with a longer focal length the subject actually takes up more space in the frame. Lots of arguements have been had over whether focal length impacts this - you can read more about it here and there - I’ll leave it to the experts to discuss the finer points but will say that using longer focal lengths does seem to have some impact and is worth experimenting with.

6. Place Subjects In front of Open Spaces

Placing your subject a long way in front of other objects will also help to make those objects more blurry. For example if you have the choice between shooting your subject standing right in front of a brick wall or standing in front of an open field - the open field shot will have a much more blurred background simply because the brick wall is just centimeters from your subject and inside the focal range whereas an open field stretches off into the distance where everything will be out of focus.

7. Fill your frame with your subject

One of the most effective ways of removing distractions from backgrounds is to remove the background altogether by totally filling the frame with your subject. Get up close and/or use your zoom lens to tightly frame the shot and you’ll not only remove distractions but could end up with a high impact shot as well.

8. Make your Own Background

Sometimes there just isn’t any suitable background and so you might want to consider making your own. This could range from buying a purpose built studio background or simply buying some cloth to do the job for you.

The other thing to keep in mind is that in many instances you can move things around in the background of your shots (especially if you’re shooting indoors).

9. Post Processing

I’m no expert in using photo editing software but there are numerous ways of editing a shot after you’ve taken it to get rid of distracting elements. These can include blurring techniques, actual removing of elements and replacing them and techniques such as selective coloring (ie making your subject stand out by making your background black and white (or at least sucking some of the color out of it).

Light Meter in SLR Cameras

Knowing how your digital camera meters light is critical for achieving consistent and accurate exposures. Metering is the brain behind how your camera determines the shutter speed and aperture, based on lighting conditions and ISO speed.

Understanding these can improve one's photographic intuition for how a camera measures light.

Light Meters:

- Reflected Light Meters
- Incident Light Meters
...

Normally you can see an Exposure Scale in your cameras. Most of the times when we start using new SLR cameras, it takes time to estimate the right exposure (Aperture + Shutter Speed) in different light conditions. Light Meter Scale is dem=noted by a line having zero value in middle & -ve values on right side. +ve values are on left side and denotes over-exposed. This does not mean that zero is the ideal Exposure. This needs to be estimted by photographer becuase every Ligt Meter has different algorithm to judge light coming to the lens. So it might be the case and -2 is ideal exposure in sunlight (It's just an example).

How to try:

- Go to manual mode of your camera
- Set some value of Aperture (Whtever you want)
- Check the value in Camera Light Meter
- Now click photograph at some Shutterspeed
- Check how it can be improved.
- Now try this again n again with different Shutter sppeds and also check Light Meter regularly.

You can also try the same thing with fixed Shutterspeed. Remember, always check Light meter when you change Aperture or Shutter-speed. Over the time it will give you an idea about Exposure values for different light conditions.

Night & LOw Light Photography

Yesterday I saw an exhibition of Anindo Ghosh at IHC, Delhi. I am really impressed by his work in the field of Night Photography. Check out his Pics

Night photography presents a special set of challenges because photography is based upon capturing light. In fact, the word photography comes from the Greek and literally means drawing with light. Whether you're dealing with film or digital, your camera needs light to create images so, the less light there is, the more difficult it is to create an image. But it's not impossible.

Night photography requires you to flex your photographic muscles and push the limits of your camera equipment. Although most cameras have a night mode that improves your chances of taking better pictures in low light conditions, it is an automatic setting that cannot account for all the variations that you may encounter while shooting at night. That's why you have to use your camera's advanced functions, such as aperture and shutter control, white balance adjustment, ISO adjustment, bulb mode, and even a remote control (if you've got one). You'll also want to use a tripod or find other creative ways to keep your camera steady.

Here are some things you can do to improve your nighttime and low-light photography:

Adjust your camera's ISO setting
The ISO setting determines your camera's sensitivity to light. The higher the ISO number, the more sensitive the camera is to light and therefore less light is required to take a picture. However, increasing your ISO setting does have its limitations: pictures taken at higher ISO settings have a grainy quality to them, that is the dots that make up the pictures are much more visible. Some photographers find this visually appealing while many do not. Other "noise" or "digital artifacts" that affect picture quality may also occur. Many cameras have a noise reduction feature that minimizes such artifacts, but it takes twice as long to save pictures when it is activated, so you have to wait even longer between shots.

Most compact cameras feature an ISO range from ISO 50 to ISO 400. Digital SLRs can go as high as ISO 1600.

Control your aperture and shutter settings
Your aperture and shutter settings determine how much light your camera sees and for how long.

The aperture is essentially the hole through which your camera sees the world. The wider it is, the more light gets through, but if too much light gets through, colour accuracy may suffer (resulting in colour shift), or excessive light can wash out everything.

Your aperture setting is called an F-stop and is designated as follows: F/2.8, F/4, F/5.6, (up to F/22 on some cameras). The higher the F-number, the smaller the aperture and the less the amount of light that can get through.

Your shutter is a door that opens and closes to let light in. The longer it stays open, the more light gets through, but your camera's ability to freeze motion is reduced.

The shutter speed is expressed as a fraction or number representing the number of seconds that the shutter is open. For example: 1/25, 1/500, 1, 1.5, 3, etc.

Your aperture setting also affects your camera's depth of field. Depth of field simply means how near and how far from your camera objects can be and still remain in focus. The narrower the aperture, the sharper objects in the background appear; but at the same time, objects in the foreground may appear blurry, because you have to keep your shutter open longer to capture enough light to take the picture.

As you can see, controlling your aperture width and shutter speed is very much a balancing act, but it is essential to good night photography. Professional photographers use all kinds of calculations to figure out the relationship between the aperture and shutter settings. As a rule of thumb, the wider the aperture, the shorter the time the shutter stays open. Experiment with these settings in low light conditions to discover a range of photographic effects you can achieve. You'll be surprised at the difference that even a slight adjustment can make.

Many cameras have a function called aperture/shutter priority that lets you control one of the two settings while the camera adjusts the other automatically. This can take a lot of guesswork out of the process and can ensure that your camera gets enough light to take a picture, but it can't guarantee a good shot.

Use exposure compensation
The combination of the shutter speed, aperture and ISO setting is called exposure and determines the total amount of light and that your camera can capture, as well as its ability to freeze motion.

Some cameras allow you to fine tune your exposure once you have found the best settings for your camera. This is called exposure compensation. It is used to adjust for further variations in light conditions once you have found the optimum settings for your camera in a given situation without having to change your overall aperture and shutter settings.

Adjust your white balance
Your camera's white balance setting is like a built-in filter that compensates for variations in colour that are created by the type of light around you. While an automatic setting is fine for daylight photography, you may want to adjust your white balance manually to better reflect your lighting conditions at night.

To set your white balance manually, point your camera toward a solid white object (such as a wall or piece of white cardboard) and press the white balance control. Some cameras allow you to further tune the white balance by adjusting the red and blue levels. Please consult your camera's manual for specific instructions.

Although the white balance setting is designed to help ensure colour accuracy, you may want to use it to do exactly the opposite. Try adjusting your white balance to create a pleasing eye-catching colours in your photographs, even if they don't correspond to the colours that you see.

If you do adjust your white balance manually, make sure to check/adjust it when you go from one subject/location to the next, as it may no longer be the correct setting for what you're photographing.

Manually focus your camera
Your camera's autofocus may not work properly in low-light conditions (especially if your camera lacks a focus-assist lamp). You may want to focus manually to ensure the clearest picture.

One benefit of manual focus is that, if you're taking several shots of a single subject, you don't have to wait for your camera to automatically focus before you take the next picture. This means you can take more shots in a shorter time.

Bracket your shots
Professional photographers use a technique called bracketing to improve their chances of getting the perfect shot. Bracketing means shooting a picture at the recommended exposure then taking the same shot at the next highest and next lowest exposure in the hopes that one of the three will work well. It's a technique that is especially useful when there is too little or too much light available.

Most digital cameras have a bracketing mode that automatically adjusts the exposure level so you can take 3 to 5 shots in row to bracket a picture.

To make the most of your night photography:

Compact Cameras
A camera with a manual shutter and ISO controls. (The longer the maximum shutter time and the higher the ISO number, the better.)

Digital SLRs
A shutter release cable or remote control to prevent camera shake caused by pressing the shutter release button.

Accessories
A tripod to keep your camera steady during prolonged exposures.

What is Aperture in Cameras?

In optics, an aperture is a hole or an opening through which light is admitted. More specifically, the aperture of an optical system is the opening that determines the cone angle of a bundle of rays that come to a focus in the image plane. The aperture determines how collimated the admitted rays are, which is of great importance for the appearance at the image plane.

F-STOPS:

* F-stop: Focal length/Diameter of the selected aperture.
* F-stop: Bigger the number smaller the aperture, smaller the number bigger the aperture.
* With every opening of aperture by one full f-stop, amount of light coming in the camera becomes twice of the previous stop.

The aperture stop of a photographic lens can be adjusted to control the amount of light reaching the film or image sensor. In combination with variation of shutter speed, the aperture size will regulate the film's degree of exposure to light. Typically, a fast shutter speed will require a larger aperture to ensure sufficient light exposure, and a slow shutter speed will require a smaller aperture to avoid excessive exposure.

* Reducing the aperture size increases the depth of field, which describes the extent to which subject matter lying closer than or farther from the actual plane of focus appears to be in focus.
* In general, the smaller the aperture (the larger the number), the greater the distance from the plane of focus the subject matter may be while still appearing in focus.

Aperture priority is a semi-automatic shooting mode used in cameras. It allows the photographer to choose an aperture setting and allow the camera to decide the shutter speed and sometimes ISO sensitivity for the correct exposure. This is sometimes referred to as Aperture Priority Auto Exposure, A mode, Av mode, or semi-auto mode.

Prime lenses have a fixed focal length (FFL) and large aperture and are favored by professionals, especially by photojournalists who often work in dim light, have no opportunity to introduce supplementary lighting, and need to capture fast breaking events.

Zoom lenses typically have a maximum aperture (minimum f-number) of f/2.8 to f/6.3 through their range. A very fast zoom lens will be constant f/2.8 or f/2, which means the relative aperture will stay the same throughout the zoom range. A more typical consumer zoom will have a variable relative aperture, since it is harder and more expensive to keep the effective aperture proportional to focal length at long focal lengths; f/3.5 to f/5.6 is an example of a common variable aperture range in a consumer zoom lens.

The amount of light captured by a lens is proportional to the area of the aperture, equal to:

Where f is focal length and N is the f-number.

The focal length value is not required when comparing two lenses of the same focal length; a value of 1 can be used instead, and the other factors can be dropped as well, leaving area proportion to the reciprocal square of the f-number N..

If two cameras of different format sizes and focal lengths have the same angle of view, and the same aperture area, they gather the same amount of light from the scene. The relative focal-plane illuminance, however, depends only on the f-number N, independent of the focal length, so is less in the camera with the larger format, longer focal length, and higher f-number.