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Photography

Happy Accidents Photography Workshop: Lesson 4…Shooting in Manual (and some more great phone photography tips).

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One of my favorite iPhone photos

Mobile Photography Tips

In this lesson we are diving into manual photography. Did you know you can adjust the exposure triangle settings on the camera on your mobile phone as well? We touched on this a little in Lesson 3 but I’m going to share a great article written by iPhone Photography School on how to expand your use of the manual features of your phone HERE. (Because it really is a great article and I couldn’t have said it any better or added anything.

I also wanted to share THIS article from 500px which is a photography website that I love and is home to some incredible photography by amazing artists. If you love taking photos with your phone I HIGHLY recommend checking this article out but it also has some great general photography tips for everyone!

Manual Mode on your Camera

It’s time to try being TOTALLY in control of your camera settings! Turn that dial to the “M” setting (on BOTH Nikon and Canon). You have learned how to adjust your aperture in Lesson 2. You learned Shutter Speed in Lesson 3. You learned how to adjust your ISO to compensate for the brightness of your photos when altering these settings. Now you just have to put all of these tools together and make your own choices and you can start experiencing creative freedom with your camera.

In previous lessons I introduced you to the Exposure Pyramid (or triangle).

It will be good to review this again and refer back to it as needed to remind yourself how your adjustments to Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO will affect the amount of light that is let into your camera (and how bright or dark your images will be).

It’s time to make another new friend, who will be your BEST friend when shooting manually; the metering scale.

The metering scale is the green bar across the bottom of your image when you look through the viewfinder on your camera. It tells you when your image is at ideal exposure. That fat pointer in the center of the meter is where your sweet spot is for ideal exposure. The line underneath is where your exposure is sitting at the moment with your current lighting situation and settings. If your line is to the left of the center mark- you are underexposed, to the right- overexposed. As you can see in the image above I was a little underexposed. (Also, it’s a dumb image that I just quickly snapped to get a photo of the meter). Another thing to note is the broken line circle you see on the fruit bowl. That is where your meter is taking the reading from so you should place that on the subject that you want to be correctly exposed when looking at your meter (apparently I was very interested in the bottom of the bowl here).

Now let’s look at the numbers we see across the meter. The 60 to the left is the shutter speed. I would actually almost never shoot at this speed while hand-holding the camera. Any slight movement while shooting from either the photographer or the the subject would cause blur. I try to keep shutter speed around at least 100 when shooting non-moving subjects (obviously higher if the subject is moving). The 4.0 is our f-stop or Aperture. The 2000 is ISO. The 12 is the number of images I have left on my card. Without even seeing the image you can tell that I am shooting in low light by looking at the meter. I know this because the line at the bottom shows that I am almost correctly exposed with a low shutter speed (which allows more light in) and high ISO (which means the sensor is more sensitive to light). In very bright and sunny conditions my ISO would have to be at 100 (the minimum) and in order to get my image properly exposed (the meter line in the center of the meter) my shutter speed would be much higher. That is how the exposure triangle works and how each setting affects another. In a nutshell, shooting in manual is just deciding what is most important to you for each specific image and then adjusting the other settings to get the correct exposure (or get that little line in the middle of your meter).

Exposure

Now we need to talk a little bit about exposure. Shooting manually sounds pretty easy if you just worry about getting that little line right in the middle of the meter. Sometimes it’s not that easy though. Since my daughter is a gymnast, I used that as an example in Lesson 3 when we were discussing action photography and it is a good example here as well. Gymnastics is obviously a high action sport. It also is typically in low light conditions and flashes are not allowed. This means you will need a high shutter speed (which means less light in your camera/darker image) to capture the action, a fairly mid-range aperture makes it easiest to hit your focus (but also lets in less light than a smaller, more wide open aperture) and then to compensate for all of these low light conditions you will need to bump up your ISO pretty darn high. Unfortunately the higher the ISO, the grainier the image. So what’s the solution? Well for me the best solution was to upgrade to a camera that can handle higher ISO better without all the grain. But if that’s not in the budget you might do the best you can, underexpose a little and then brighten your image up with a little basic editing in software like Lightroom or Photoshop. Brightening an image too much in software will affect the quality and can add grain as well, but you can control how much to usually find a happy medium.

Overexposing an image, like missed focus, can be something that you cannot fully correct even in editing software. If the image is too overexposed it will not capture some of the details in the photo at all so even lowering the exposure in software will not bring them out because they were never captured in the first place.

Homework

  • Practice, practice, practice. Seriously, just switch your camera over to Manual mode. Choose a subject (best to start with a still subject- a plant, flower, statue, or a model who will hold still for you). Choose and aperture. Think about how you want the image to look for this step- do you want the whole image fully in focus or just the subject with a blurred background? Try setting your ISO at 100 and see what your Shutter Speed Needs to be set at to achieve a good exposure using the meter. If it is above 100, you should be ready to shoot! Play around adjusting the aperture and in slightly different lighting scenarios and pay attention to what you have to adjust to get the exposure right and how your image turned out. POST some examples in the facebook group (or join if you haven’t yet) and ask questions there.
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Photography

Happy Accidents Photography Workshop…Lesson 2: Focus & Aperture

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In Lesson 1 we talked about composition, or what you will be photographing and how it will be placed in your image. Obviously that is one of the most important elements of a good photo, however FOCUS is just as important, if not more. It doesn’t really matter what you are photographing if it’s blurry or if your focus falls on something in the photo other than what you want to be the center of attention. Focus is something that cannot be fixed in editing.

“Phone”tography

iPhone photo of my daughter’s eye
iPhone photo of Beaver Lake, Arkansas.

Even if you have a big fancy camera, truthfully most of us take the majority of our photos with our phones so I thought I would quickly touch on the focus feature on your phone has that you might not be taking advantage of.

I have an iPhone so the above image shows what it looks like when I take a photo. I’m in portrait mode here which mimics the blurred background you can achieve with your camera. You can click on the little “f” in the upper right corner to change your aperture or “f-stop” (read about aperture below- even if you only use your phone for photography). The yellow box on the screen shows where the focus in this image is landing. You can tap anywhere on the screen to adjust what you want to be in focus. On an iPhone you can also hold this box down to lock the image in focus. It will then display AE/AF lock on the screen. This means that you can now move your phone around to change your composition and your camera will remember what item to keep in focus. The AE stands for Auto Exposure which is sets the aperture and shutter speed for your image and will also be locked. Although it’s not related to focus, another handy feature you might not be using is the little sunshine you see to the right of the focus box. This is the exposure adjustment. Sliding this up or down with your finger brightens or darkens your image. Androids vary in how to use these features but a quick google search will result in instructions for your specific phone.

Focus in Auto Mode

Auto Mode focus sensors

Now it’s time to pull out your camera. We are going to start in full Auto Mode. On a Nikon, this says “Auto” in green with a picture of a camera on your dial. On Canon it is an “A+” in a box in green (I have found Canon enjoys naming thing with not-so-obvious names). This mode let’s your camera do all of the thinking and decision making including the object(s) in focus. When you look through your viewfinder and press your shutter button halfway down, your camera will find the objects to focus on. As you move your camera around a scene and press the shutter halfway down again it will find new objects to focus on. You can tell what the camera is focusing on by a box (or boxes-depending on your camera) that appears in the viewfinder on the object(s) you are focusing on (see photo above). This can come in handy when it is obvious what your subject is and you don’t need to make any adjustments to add artistic elements or adjust settings for action, etc. however it can be limiting if you are trying to focus on an object in a scene other than what the camera finds to be the most obvious subject or if you are wanting to change your depth of field to blur the background more or make your subject stand out.

Aperture Priority Mode (AP/AV)

We are going to take our first baby step out of full Auto Mode and dip our toes into choosing some of our own settings and setting focus on our own in Aperture Priority Mode. In Aperture Priority Mode (AP on Nikon dial and AV on Canon because again, they like to be different) you will choose the aperture setting and ISO. What are those? Well, now seems like the perfect time for you to meet my friend, the exposure triangle:

Aperture

Aperture affects the Depth of Field of an image by restricting light. When you adjust your aperture you are adjusting the amount of light you let into the camera lens. An F-stop is the size of the opening in the camera lens. A smaller number means a larger opening and more light coming in. This will result in your subject being in focus but the background being blurry. That blur is also known as “bokeh“. A larger number means less light being let in and more of your image being in focus. Smaller f-stops (or more open) can be used for a single person or object or for shooting a large scene but wanting to single out one object. A larger f-stop (or narrow opening) is best for landscapes or large groups of people where you want to make sure everything is in focus.

This ring image was shot with fairly wide open aperture (small f-stop) and the focus was set on the bride’s ring. You can see the same depth of field as the ring across the entire image is in focus. The both the background behind her ring and the groom’s ring and area in front of it are not in focus and you see that lovely bokeh.
Blurring lights in the background is my favorite use of bokeh.

To adjust the aperture on your Nikon press the +/- button and then turn the dial to adjust. On Canon it is and asterisk button and then turn the dial. Your f-stop choices will depend on your lens, not your camera so you will notice your options will change as you change lenses. This will be something to consider when you are deciding which lens to use for a particular shot.

Aperture setting button on a Canon 5DMkIII

ISO

ISO is how sensitive the image sensor is to light. Higher ISO = more sensitive to light (brighter image). What does this have to do with focus and aperture? Well, nothing directly. But remember how we discussed that a smaller f-stop or aperture resulted in letting more light in and a larger f-stop resulted in less light? What if you want to take a photo of a large crowd (so you need a higher f-stop number) but you are in a low light area (and you don’t want to use a flash)? You can simply adjust your ISO to make your sensor more sensitive to light. In good light your ISO can typically be set at 100 but you are going to have to pay attention to your shutter speed on this as well. Your shutter speed will show in the lower left corner when you look through your viewfinder. While in AP/AV mode your camera will choose this setting for you depending on what ISO and aperture you select. While we won’t go into shutter speed a lot until the next lesson, for now it’s important to know that if this number goes below 100 your image might not be sharp due to motion blur (either your subject or any slight movement of the camera). If you notice this, increase your ISO and/or lower your f-stop (aperture). Remember that exposure triangle above? ISO, Aperture, and Shutter Speed all affect each other. Another thing to note is that a higher ISO will make your image grainier or add “noise” to the photo. The highest ISO setting you have will depend on your camera as will how well your camera handles high ISOs before the image is too grainy or noisy. On both Canon and Nikon models the ISO button is labeled “ISO”.

Focus

Once you leave full auto mode, you will now be able to choose your own focal points. When you look through the viewfinder your camera will no longer search for and decide which object to focus on. Instead you will see a pattern of tiny squares or focal points. You can choose which focal point you would like to use instead of the camera choosing for you. Although this is good news because now you can try your hand at some more creative shots, you will also quickly realize it is your responsibility to make sure that focal point is exactly where you want it before you press that shutter all the way down. The wider your aperture (or the lower the f-stop) the smaller the area in focus will be which means you will have to be very precise when placing your focal point. Again, how many focal points you have will depend on your camera. My first DSLR, a Canon Rebel XT had a whopping 9. My next camera, the Canon 7D which I now use as my back-up camera has 19. My 5D MKIII has 61! Guess what, they all worked fine. Having more focal points just gives you a few more options in the way you set up your composition as you can place your subject at any one of the points in your frame.

To select your focal points on a Nikon I believe you press the arrows in the circle around the “ok” button (Nikon people…correct me if I’m wrong). On a Canon, you press the button marked with this square and then either turn the dial on top or toggle to select your focal point. Interestingly, I realized I use the dial to move right and left and the toggle to move up and down.

AF point selection button
Dial
Toggle

Homework

(These exercises will be best for learning purposes in decent daylight hours)

  • Choose a subject and with your camera in full auto mode take a few shots while paying attention to the focal points and making sure your image is in focus.
  • Move your camera mode to AP/AV (Aperture Priority Mode). Practice setting your focal point on your subject. Take several shots using different focal points. Try some using the “Rule of Thirds” and also centering your subject. Write down your settings (or note that you can see them by pressing the “info” button on your camera).
  • Change your aperture. Take a few shots with a wide aperture (low f-stop number) and some with a higher f-stop.
  • Share your images, ask questions, and mark your “unit” as completed on the facebook group. (If you aren’t a member yet, click the button and join!).

Don’t be shy about sharing photos on the Facebook group…that’s the best place to learn and we can ALL learn from each other! Share your best photos but also the ones that didn’t turn out the way you planned or that you don’t know why they turned out the way they did. Also share your settings with the photos!

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