Where to start with Photography

This post is not so much a guide, 10 way list or some other no substance quick list that can be found post all over the internet these days.  I want it to be a bit more and have to meat to it.  

As the title may suggest this is some advice and words on how to get started with photography and the fundamentals/basics,  it won't suit everyone (its not meant to) but hopefully it will help some of you along.
 
We had some comments and emails recently asking how to go about learning the technical, where to start and what order to learn things in so here goes my version.

We have said this before and will no doubt say it again and again, you have to get to know your camera/gear just have to.  If it's currently an obstacle you tackle every time you shoot then you need to make some time to get to know it.  This starts with reading your manual or buying a third party book, may be a DVD or watching a tutorial series online for your camera..however you want to go about it get it done and go shoot.

Your camera, lens,lights are tools and appliance that’s it and once you can see them as just that you can crack on with learning all the other stuff,. How many shots have you missed or portrait sitters have lost confidence in you because you have been turning dials and scratching your head? (we have all been there).
 
Once you know your camera, layout, menus it frees you up to concentrate on the shot and other aspects of photography.  Now don’t get me wrong just knowing your camera wont make you a photographer it's not going to make all your exposures perfect (nothing will) but all that technical stuff can be learnt over time and applied to your work using your gear once you have the basics on how your gear works down.

Ok moving on so you know your camera what next?  “All I can see is a huge list of technical aspects on websites and blogs and I don’t know where to start.  “
 
The thing to do is to write down what you know (Depth of Field, Focal Length, Exposure Triangle) what ever you know, get it on paper (not your laptop or ipad .. Paper!) now take that list and take a good honest solid look at it and yourself and cross out stuff you don’t really know and make a new list, from that list pick one item and go research it and learn it., you have to start by really looking at what you know and your weak areas to move forward.

When starting out it can be sometimes overwhelming and also tempting to go at it like a bull in a china shop.. gotta learn everything now now now, slow down and take your time.  You can’t learn all the technical overnight and even once you have you will be constantly learning about light, and developing your eye and how to put that technical knowledge in to use to make photographs.


This next part is going to be a list of things I think you should start with and have down after you know your camera/have read the manual.

• Exposure – Start here, get the camera off auto and Into manual and start to lookup and learn the exposure variables (exposure triangle) and Stops.

 Shutter Speed – Amount of time the sensor is exposed to light. Faster speeds = less light         Slower/longer = More Light

  Aperture – The opening or window in your lens.

  F22 = Small Window

  F2.8 = Large Window

  ISO – The Sensitivity of your cameras sensor to any given light source.

You see photography is all about light and our cameras work in stops along with the above variables, learning these and putting it together with knowing your camera will get you off auto fairly quickly.  Now there is more to exposure than just those listed above but it’s a great starting point.

• Depth Of field. – Determines how much of your photograph is in focus from front to back. Learning about DOF will kick start your learning about your lens, the reason for this is focal length plays a part in DOF. The part of DOF are..

Aperture – (refer back to exposure on this one also) the smaller the aperture F11, F16 etc the     greater the DOF.  The wider the aperture F4 F2.8 the shallower the DOF.

Focal Length – The wider your focal length the greater depth of field you will have at any given aperture.  The longer your focal length the shallower DOF you will have at any given aperture.  To clarify you will have more DOF at 24mm F2.8 then you will at 100mm F2.8.

Camera to Subject Distance – The closer your working distance the shallower your DOF will be at any given aperture,  The further away your working distance the greater your DOF will be.

As you can imagine it’s all a balancing act along with exposure (aperture are I both lists above), sometimes you will have to make a compromise due to one other variable.  Starting with the three things I have listed above is a good place to start.. what only 3!?  Yup there are 100’s of things to learn but all in good time.

Remember get to know your camera, make that list and be brutally honest then pick a few items or work on or the ones listed above,  like I said this is not for everyone no way it could be everyone is starting at different points but some of this post will be relevant for many.

We are working on more tutorials to help you, they take time to write, produce/record.  But know we have your back, if you have any questions whilst your starting out give us a shout as we would love to help.

We would love to hear your feedback on this post and of course others.

You can email us, comment below or find us on Facebook, Twitter or Google +.

Thank You

Rick

NTP

White Balance

Whats is white balance? White balance is a setting that we can set or have the camera take control of, its job (and ours) is to set the appropriate white balance which will render white as white in our images meaning all other colour will appear correct-ish.  I say correct ish as it can be subjective and we have other variables to consider when judging colour but more on that later.

White balance controls colour in our images, we can set or change white balance to correct for a colour cast.  A prime example of this would be that everyone is tantastic orange colour when making photographs inside using tungsten/incandescent light (typically found in homes).  In the images below you can see the orange colour cast on the first image and then once a good white balance setting/preset was chosen the colour improves,  both images were lit by a typical 40w desk lamp (tungsten light source).

This post has all the info you need to get started with white balance but will add a video to this post soon, I am waiting for access to a studio space to record some. :)

You can see the first one has a warm orange colour cast to, this was shot using AWB (Auto White Balance) on a Canon camera which by the way suck at tungsten light on AWB.

No the bear is not mine. :)

For the next image I switched to tungsten white balance which has removed the colour cast and cooled the image down a little showing more realistic colours, white looks white now.

By looking at the difference in the 2 images you can see the control that white balance give you over colour and the look of your final image.

Now a few things to note about white balance.  

1. You will get different results with your camera.  They are not all the same.
2. Not all lights of the same designation (i.e tungsten) are going to be the same colour temperature.

Do cameras have other white balance modes?  Yes they do and we will run through those now, please note the names for the present may differ across some brands of camera.

Most cameras have presets for white balance which include the following:

• AWB - Auto white balance - AKA let the camera figure it out by looking at tones and colour information.  Clever stuff and can get great results in many cases but it will shift shot to shot so is not the most consistent of options.  I have used it in the past in situation where I could not figure out what the colour temperature of the light was, usually in a mixed crapstorm of different lights.
  
• Daylight (Approx. 5200k) - Set this one for daylight/sunny situations where the light is constant and not changing (going behind clouds for example)
  
• Shade (Approx 7000k) - Set this preset for shaded areas, provided by building or trees.
  
• Cloudy (Approx. 6000k) - Set this for cloudy conditions, so for us folks in the UK we might as well leave our camera on this one :)
  
• Tungsten / Incandescent (Approx 3200k) - Set this white balance for tungsten light sources such as lights in homes or candle light, watch out for energy saving bulbs that are daylight balanced they will probably look best on Daylight.
  
• White Fluorescent (Approx. 4000k) - For white fluorescent light fittings that you might find in offices or schools.  Fluorescent lights are not ll the same though and can be the worst offenders for colour casts some have a green cast to them.
  
• Flash (Approx. 5500k)- Set when using flash be that studio or speedlites.
  

You may be wondering what the number values are (5500k) colour temperature is measured in kelvin so each white balance preset will have a kelvin value, this value will change across cameras depending on how they are configured and the values shown above and on most cameras are approximate values.  Some cameras will allow you to dial in a white balance kelvin value ranging between 2500k and 10,000k so you can fine tune it but don’t worry if your camera does not allow this, you can still set a custom white balance by using a white piece of paper and shooting an image of it under the same lighting conditions then setting your camera to base custom white balance off that image (refer to your manuals for this).

To close out this post lets take a look at a series of images I took at various white balance settings.  This experiment is something you can do yourself by using any light source (lamp,daylight,flash) and switching through the white balance settings to see what effect they have.  Its all about learning by doing.

All images still lit using the 40w tungsten desk lamp.

First up is Daylight White Balance - Makes the image appear allot warmer in colour temperature.
 

Next up is Cloudy White Balance - Warmer still






Next is Shade White Balance - Again Warmer





Next is Fluorescent White Balance - not as warm but has a magenta (pink ish) colour cast






Last we have Flash White Balance  (i skipped tungsten as its posted earlier in the post)





We can see the colour looks the most realistic in the tungsten white balance image (top of the post) and the others dont seem quite right,  but we can use these so call wrong white balance settings to change the look at feel of an image may be warm it up a little.  Look out for a future post on creative white balance use.

White balance is recorded along with other image information but depending on what file format you shoot with you may or may not have options to change it later in post production.

RAW - If you shoot raw all the information is kept and white balance can be shifted later along with green and magenta allowing us to fine tune colour, skin tones etc in post production.

JPEG - The white balance info is baked in but the RAW data is thrown away so we can not change white balance information in post production.  Now you can change colour, levels etc to change an image but you're not changing the white balance values.  Shooting JPEG is not bad but it may require more care at camera to set the appropriate white balance or may be a custom one.

Next time you are about to shoot stop and think white balance and what the lighting conditions are that you are shooting in, if you are unsure take a few test shots using the various presets to see which looks the best to you.

If you have any questions about white balance then ask away in the comments below or email/tweet us.

Rick
NTP

Flash Exposure Part 5 - Shutter Speed and its relationship with flash images.

In part 5 we are going to talk about shutter speed and whilst it does not directly effect flash exposure it does have an important relationship with flash and also the overall image which is why we have listed it in this series.  From previous blog posts and podcasts we have talked about the basic exposure triangle (shutter speed, aperture and ISO) and noted that all three of these effect exposure, add flash and we have some other things to think about.

Flash exposure is controlled by Aperture, Flash Power, ISO and Distance – Wait what no shutter speed?  Yup you see the shutter speed has no say on the actual  flash exposure its just happens to fast.

Now shutter speed does have a limiting factor when it comes to shooting with flash and that limit is Sync Speed (click the link to read that post) – the sync speed or fastest shutter speed you can use with flash will depend on your camera, lights and triggers you use but the most important one to worry about is your cameras sync speed which will range from 1/125th – 1/250thsec depending on the camera. If you go above the sync speed you risk getting a black bar across your frame.

One other thing the shutter speed will do is primarily control the ambient light (house lights,daylight, whatever), now this is where people can trip up. 

In these images below I have a speedlite set up at 1/4 power (i think), its a certain distance away from Mark the camera was set at ISO200 F4 throughout and I only changed the shutter speed in the subsequent images. The first image below was taken at 1/160th sec  - F4 ISO200 little to no ambient light (video lights) is being recorded. 

I have a good flash exposure so I don’t need to change the aperture, flash power, ISO or distance  I’m good.  The shutter speed of 1/160th sec is below my sync speed (1/200thsec) I have a primarily flash lit image so all is well.

But lets say I want to bring in some ambient light may be due to the environment i am shooting in or things I want to show in the background.  Now that I have a good flash exposure at F4, ISO200,1/4 Power at Some distance away (can you tell i have forgot how far away yet? ) I can leave that all where it is and start to bring in some ambient light be slowing down my shutter speed to increase the ambient exposure that is coming from the video lights.  The next image was taken using a shutter speed of 1/60th sec (a stop and a third more ambient) and we can see the ambient light start to come in as the image will become brighter and the colour will shift a little (flash and video lights are a different colour temperature).

So we can see above that changing the shutter speed will primarily control your ambient light once you have your flash exposure dialled in.  But if you start at your sync speed limit you will have to rethink if you want to reduce ambient light exposure and start stopping down your aperture.  More on this in a later video to bring all this together.

Lets take this ambient light exposure a little further and drag that shutter some more.  The next image was taken using a shutter speed on 1/30th sec bringing in  another stop of ambient light.

We can now see a huge difference in the brightness and colour/look of the image. It’s actually now over exposed for my tastes.  But lets take it one further and bring in some more ambient light.

Now we have brought in another 2/3rd of a stop of ambient light by shooting at 1/20th sec its a horrible looking image far too much ambient light.  To deal with that I don't need to change my flash exposure (aperture, flash exposure, iso or distance) as I'm at 1/20th sec tons of head room to increase my shutter speed to back off or even kill the ambient light. Going back up to 1/160th sec like in the first frame will do just that.

Recap

When shooting with flash your flash exposure is controlled by: (click links to read post on each variable)

Aperture

Flash Power

Distance

ISO

Your shutter speed has a limit when dealing with flash and that limit is called Sync Speed.

Once you have a good flash exposure dialled in you can change the ambient light exposure by changing your shutter speed but don't forget your sync speed limit.

As you look to make a photograph using flash you have to be thinking of all these variables and limitations before you start shooting.  Still have too much ambient light at your sync speed then you have to stop down your lens, but that also controls flash exposure.. we understand it can be confusing so in upcoming tutorials we are going to shoot with flash and just ambient light to bring all this together.

As usual any questions hit us on twitter or email us.

Thanks

Rick

NTP

Listener interaction - Get involved and Google Plus Hangouts

So myself and Rick have been talking about how we can get you guy directly involved, get you interacting with us, LIVE, so to speak.

Up until now there's been 2 options, using a service like Ustream or Google Plus Hangouts. Ustream was top of the list because you can record the feed, people can join without an account. However, today Google has announced that everyone can start to broadcast Hangouts LIVE on G+ and on Youtube.

Which means you don't need a G+ account, just a Youtube one. You can post questions directly into the YT comments, they appear live. You can also join in the conversation via an invite, so we could get you guy on air and we can talk to you.

I believe this has massive potential, we could even record the podcast this way, still having the audio download but spreading it to Youtube.

Anyway we'd love to hear what you guys think, we really want your direct involvement.

Flash Exposure Part 4–ISO

In this post we are going to look at another variable of flash exposure ISO.  As we all know by now our normal exposure triangle (not including flash) is made up of shutter speed, aperture and ISO if your not sure on that go check out NTP Podcast Episode 4. 

Ok when we introduce flash yes we bring in other exposure variables but those variable in the exposure triangle have a baring on exposure and the overall image when dealing with flash.  You can see the effects of changing the ISO has on flash exposure in the video below as well as the still images in this post.

So ISO controls the sensitivity of your cameras sensor to light (any given light) as you increase it your image will get brighter and as you decrease it your image will get darker.

We start with a good exposure at ISO 200 (ignoring the other variables).

For the next frame we increased the ISo from 200 to 400 (1 Stop) which increases exposure resulting in an over exposed image.

Now if we go the other way and drop down to ISO 100 decreasing exposure (by 2 stops) from the current ISO400 shot above we will see a dramatic different now we have decreased the cameras sensitivity to light.

We can see from the above video and images how ISO effect our flash exposure, but remember its part of the exposure triangle and ISO will also affect ambient light.

We will have blog posts and videos bringing all these thing together and problem solve (after all that's what we do as photographers) as we shoot.

Any questions can be emailed or tweeted, and you can comment below.  Love to hear back from your guys.

NTP