Photography/Digital Photography Fundamentals
With Prem Mukherjee
Arising Images, Inc. – www.ArisingImages.com
Updated 8/14/2008 v2.0
The class will be Thursdays from 7-9 pm from Oct 9 - Oct 30 at the Kensington Community Church building room 115 (1825 E. Square Lake Road, Troy, Michigan 48085). There will be a field trip on Sunday Oct 26th at the Detroit Zoo where we will have an opportunity to shoot photos together and practice the new techniques and skills shooting both indoors and outdoors.
The cost is $125 and you will receive a printed class manual. The field trip to the Detroit Zoo (parking and entry) is not included in the cost.
Please email me if you are interested in registering info@arisingimages.com
No advanced classes are currently scheduled. Until then, please consider doing private lessons and make sure to add your name to our mailing list to be notified of the next classes: http://www.arisingimages.com/information/contact_us/mailing_list/signup.htm
PRIVATE LESSONS AVAILABLE:
Basic Lesson - $95 per hour for 1 person, $40 per hour per additional person (typical lessons last two hours)
Advanced Lessons - $165 per hour for 1 person, $75 per hour per additional person (typical lessons last two hours)
Additional $50 for lessons that fall outside of our normal business hours which can be found here: http://www.arisingimages.com/information/contact_us
Michigan Wedding Photography
Detroit Portrait Photographer
Michigan Photographer
Photography/Digital
Photography Fundamentals
Prem Mukherjee –
Arising Images, Inc.
ArisingImages.com
Table of Contents
1) INTRO
1.1) Who Am I
1.2) Goals of the class
2.6) Image Backup and archiving
3) FUNDAMENTALS OF PHOTOGRAPHY
3.1) Intro
3.2) Aperture
3.3) Depth of Field
3.6) Shooting Modes and Exposure
Compensation
4)
SHOOTING TECHNIQUES AND COMPOSITION
4.1) Bracing the camera
4.2) Composition Intro
4.3) Rule of thirds
4.4) Triangles
4.5) Leading Lines
4.6) Repeating shapes
4.8) Juxtapositions
4.9) Complimentary Colors
4.10) Get in Close
4.11) Framing
4.12) Looking for a better shot
4.13) Light and time of day
4.14) Bad Weather
4.15) Flash – bounce, fill
4.16) Histogram
5) PROCESSING
5.1) Saturation and Contrast
5.2) Black and White – Contrast and Glow
5.3) Skin softening
5.4) Color toning
5.5) Color gradients
6) FIELD TRIP and CRITIQUE
7) PRESENTATION
7.2) Image Sizing and Sharing
7.3) Creating DVD Slideshows
8) Photoshop Elements 3.0 Basic Tips
8.3) Exposure
8.4) Color and Saturation
Words written in bold letters in the main text of this document have a definition for that word in the glossary.
Lines highlighted in red represent where we’ll do in-class demonstrations if time permits.
My name is Prem Mukherjee. I was born and raised in Warren, MI. I have an analytical left-brain, which I got from my Dad and an artistic right-brain which I got from my mom. My mom died when I was young so it was the analytical/mathematical side that received the most attention. Being good at math and science and living in the Detroit area, it made the most sense to become an engineer so I went to the University of Michigan for a mechanical engineering degree. I co-oped with General Motors starting out of high school and worked every summer when I was not in school. My junior year I went and studied in Australia and for the first time felt like I was able to think uninhibitedly about my life. I realized there that my artistic ambitions were starting to overpower my interests. I finished my engineering degree and went to work fulltime at GM. I spent a lot of time painting but found it too time consuming and I didn’t like the smell of the paint and hated cleaning up after myself. The idea of photography was always intriguing to me because it was much faster to take a good picture than to make a good painting. I took a couple night classes at Oakland Community College and learned the basics of how to use a camera and develop film in the darkroom. I found the darkroom to be totally archaic. Even though it was a great experience I couldn’t believe that in this day and age we were still developing film like that. Just a few years later, digital photography evolved and I knew that it was for me. I was already comfortable on computers and I was beginning to get comfortable with a camera. I spent a lot of time taking short vacations and began to love travel photography. Travel photography became my passion but I realized it wasn’t paying the bills and I wanted to get more equipment and better software so once I got a good digital camera, Cheridy (my wife) talked me into starting to shoot people. So in 2003 we started shooting weddings and portraits which have since turned into a business that’s growing too fast to keep up with.
This class is designed to teach the fundamentals of photography along with the basics of digital photography. We’ll cover all the equipment (computer, camera, memory cards, etc.) and software needed to be successful with basic digital photography then discuss the basics of how a camera works and what it’s doing when you click the shutter. These basics will lead us into a discussion of photography fundamentals (aperture, shutter speed, composition, etc.) Then we’ll cover what to do with the pictures once you have them (how to download, save, and rename the pictures along with how to resize the pictures for emailing and internet, etc.) The best way to learn anything is hands on, so we’ll have a field trip assignment where we’ll go and take pictures somewhere, then I’ll have you email them to me and we’ll spend some time critiquing YOUR pictures. I’ll explain what you did right and what you did wrong and give techniques on how the images can be improved using either a better composition or better settings on your camera. I will also demonstrate some quick photo editing techniques that can be used to make your pictures pop.
The main goal is for YOU to learn. If topics in-class are being covered too
quickly, then give me that feedback. If
you have questions, then PLEASE ask them.
It’s more important that you understand the fundamentals than it is to
get through all the material in this booklet.
1.3) Disclaimer and copyright
This class is meant as a 6-week seminar that will cover a LOT of topics very quickly. It is to help you understand the terms/definitions used in the camera world and to get a basic idea of what is involved in photography without necessarily having enough time to teach/learn each topic. The first step of learning is to know what the right questions are to ask. This 6-week seminar will give you enough information to know what questions need to be asked along with giving you just enough of everything to get you down the path of taking better photos. To become an expert in ANY of the topics that we will discuss will take a tremendous amount of interest, time, learning, and especially practice.
Much of the information regarding equipment/software needs is applicable to digital photography beginners. Anyone that wants to become more serious about photography may require higher end camera/computer equipment and software.
Also, I fully believe that the best way to learn and grow is through honest critiques. I’m not known for sugar coating so take my tough comments to heart and know that they are only meant to help you grow.
© 2008 This document and all its contents, including but not limited to, all
text, graphics, and images are copyrighted by Arising Images, Inc. No
duplication or reproduction is allowed without written permission.
Digital SLR – Digital Single Lens Reflex camera. Essentially this is a type of camera where when you look through the viewfinder you’re actually looking through the barrel of the lens. These are interchangeable lens cameras and geared toward the serious hobbyist to the professional. They range in cost from about $900-$8000.
Aperture - The lens opening formed by the iris diaphragm inside the lens.
Archive - Permanent long-term storage of your data usually made as a backup to the original data.
Burst Mode - The ability of a camera to take one picture after another as long as you hold down the shutter release button.
Card Reader - An accessory that attaches to your computer by cable. You insert a memory card into the reader to transfer files.
Cropping - Enlargement of an image with sections removed to improve its composition. This process removes pixels from an image making the given image a lower resolution than what it was before cropping.
CRT monitor – Cathode Ray Tube monitor. Much bigger and heavier than the newer LCD monitor technology.
Depth of Field - The distance between the nearest and farthest points that appear in acceptably sharp focus in a photograph. Depth of field varies with lens aperture, focal length, and camera-to-subject distance.
Digital Noise - Pixels on the image sensor that misread the light.
Digital Zoom – A camera that allows cropping in-camera to give the appearance of a larger zoom, however, this process gives lower resolution images than what the camera is capable of.
Dynamic Range – The range of lights to darks that your camera can record.
Exposure Compensation - The ability to adjust exposure by one or two stops to lighten or darken the image.
Focal Length - The distance from the optical center of the lens to the image sensor when the lens is focused on infinity. The focal length is usually expressed in millimeters (mm) and determines the angle of view (how much of the scene can be included in the picture) and the size of objects in the image. The longer the focal length, the narrower the angle of view and the more that objects are magnified.
Formatting – The process of making a memory card or hard drive appear to be empty to allow re-writing over any data that was previously there. Formatting does NOT erase the data, it just creates a new directory structure that makes the card appear empty. A formatted memory card or hard drive can still have its data recovered with specialized software as long as it has not been completely over-written.
F-stop - A numerical designation (f/2, f 2.8, etc.) indicating the size of the aperture (lens opening).
Gigabyte – 1,000 Megabytes
Hard Drive – Storage unit inside your computer that holds your data.
Image Management – The process of viewing, sorting, and organizing your digital images. Usually performed with a specialized software program.
Image Stabilization (Vibration Reduction) – Method of reducing shakiness when hand holding a camera. Usually done with gyroscopes built into the lens.
ISO - A number rating indicating the relative sensitivity to light of an image sensor or photographic film. Faster film (higher ISO) is more sensitive to light and requires less exposure than does slower film.
JPEG (.jpg) - A very popular digital camera file format that uses lossy compression to reduce file sizes. Developed by the Joint Photographic Experts Group.
LCD monitor – Flat panel monitor which are much smaller and lighter than the older CRT style monitors.
Lenses - Wide angle, 50mm, telephoto lenses:
|
6mm -15mm |
Fisheye |
Huge field of view
with lots of curvature and distortion.
Good for specific uses and styles. |
|
16mm - 23mm |
Ultra Wide Angle |
Large field of
view with just a bit of distortion, great for landscape images and images in
small areas |
|
24mm - 49mm |
Wide angle |
Average field of
view with negligible distortion. Good
for all-purpose images. |
|
50 mm |
Normal |
Should be the same
as what your eyes see. Good for all-purpose images. |
|
51mm-100mm |
Telephoto |
Narrower field of
view, brings objects closer to camera, great for portraits, no distortion |
Lens Speed - Refers to the maximum aperture of a lens. One with a wide aperture is called "fast". e.g. a f/1.4 lens, transmitting more light than a "slow" lens, e.g. a f/5.6 lens.
Light Meter - A light sensitive device used for evaluating the amount of light in a scene for exposure.
Megabytes (MB) - A measurement of data storage equal to 1024 kilobytes (KB).
Megapixels (MP) - An image or image sensor with over one million pixels.
Memory Cards – A re-writeable memory device inserted into your camera capable of holding data after the camera is turned off.
Metering – usage of a light meter.
Optical Zoom - The use of lenses to change the focal length of a camera.
Overexposure - Exposing the image sensor to more light than is needed to render the scene as the eye sees it. Results in a too light photograph.
Pixels - The small picture elements that make up a digital photograph.
PSD (.psd) - A Photoshop document that is a lossless file that saves the image along with other Photoshop specific information such as layers and layer masks.
RAM - Temporary computer memory, used to store data and software while in use.
Raw – The raw image format is the data as it comes directly off the cameras sensor, with no in-camera processing performed.
Red eye - An effect that causes peoples eyes to look red in flash exposures caused by light reflecting off the blood vessels inside of a person’s iris and having that red light reflect back to the camera.
Resolution - An indication of the sharpness of images
on a printout or the display screen. It is based on the number and density of
the pixels used. The more pixels used in an image, the more detail can be seen
and the higher the image's resolution.
Saturation – The intensity of color in an image. A 100% desaturated image would be black and
white.
Sharpening - A picture enhancement making the image have more distinct
borders, areas, lines or tones.
Shooting modes – Camera presets that allow you to control the camera settings using different methods. In a digital camera, the creative modes allow the most control while the automatic modes have everything preset for certain situations.
Shutter - The device in the camera that opens and closes to let light from the scene strike the image sensor and expose the image.
Shutter speed - The length of time the shutter is open and light strikes the image sensor.
Stop - 1. An aperture setting that indicates the size of the lens opening. 2. A change in exposure by a factor of two. Changing the aperture from one setting to the next doubles or halves the amount of light reaching the image sensor. Changing the shutter speed from one setting to the next does the same thing. Either changes the exposure one stop.
TIFF (.tif) - A lossless image format used in digital photography.
Underexposure - Exposing the film to less light than is needed to render the scene as the eye sees it. Results in a too dark photograph.
White balance/color temperature (K) - An automatic or manual control that adjusts the brightest part of the scene so it looks white.
Zoom lens - A lens that lets you change focal lengths on the fly.
2.0) Digital Photography Basics
Resolution is one of the most critical aspects of a digital camera. The resolution of an image taken by a digital camera represents the size that the image is. Imagine a piece of 35 mm film which is 1.5” x 1” in size. When you make a print from the image, the more you blow it up, the worse the image quality gets. The same goes for a digital camera image. The image quality is dictated by the resolution of the sensor in your camera. The sensor is replacing film and is the element in the camera that is receiving light to record the image.
Cameras are usually labeled by their resolution, which is reported in megapixels (MP). Pixels are the dots that make up the image and can be calculated by multiplying the number of pixels wide by the number of pixels tall. For example, a 6 MP camera might have an image that is 3,000 pixels wide by 2,000 pixels tall so the image is (3,000x2,000 which is 6,000,000 or 6 megapixels). The higher the megapixels, the more resolution the camera/image has. In very simplified terms, the more pixels in the image, the bigger the image can be blown up to get high quality prints. (This rule of thumb does not apply in a comparison between consumer vs. professional digital cameras).
If you are planning on using a digital camera for basic needs such as pictures of family and such, then a 3 or 4 MP camera will be sufficient. You can usually get a high quality print up to about 8”x10” from a 3 MP camera. However, a 4 MP camera might be a better idea because it allows room for cropping. Cropping is when you cut out part of the image for the purpose of zooming such as the images below. When you crop an image, you are essentially removing pixels, so if you do this a lot, it might be better to buy a camera with 4 MP or maybe even 5 MP to give yourself room to crop. In the image below, the woman on the bench is too small. Before making a print of the image, I wanted to crop in on her and remove the unnecessary space around her. If the image on the left was taken with a 3-megapixel camera, then the cropped image on the right is probably only about 1 MP, which is not enough for a high-quality print. Nowadays, most cameras have between 8-12 MP which is complete overkill but the camera manufacturers have put lots of marketing money behind it to make people think that more megapixels equals better pictures.
|
Figure 1 |
Figure 2 |
Another important element to consider when purchasing a camera is the zoom. Having a good zoom can help prevent the need for cropping because when your subject is far away, you can zoom the camera to help fill the frame and avoid the need for any cropping later.
There are two types of zooms in most digital cameras: optical zoom and digital zoom. Optical is the zoom that matters. Optical zoom is the amount of zoom a camera can use by magnifying the image using the glass in the lens. In most cases when you zoom in, the lens extends separating the glass elements inside the lens, which helps magnify the image. Digital zoom is nothing but cropping. All it does is cut out pixels from the edges of the image to make the subject fill the frame. Many digital camera manufacturers try to deceive buyers by saying that their cameras have a large zoom (i.e. 12X zoom), but most of that is digital which should not count (i.e. 3X optical and 9X digital), so when buying a camera you need to know what the optical zoom is and NOT the digital zoom.
Most of the pocket sized consumer cameras have a 3X zoom where the number represents a ratio of the farthest zoomed in over the farthest zoomed out. This will be discussed later. Slightly larger consumer cameras may have a zoom ranging from about 7X-12X of optical zoom.
Buying a camera can be an overwhelming decision because of all the different options available and places to buy. The easiest way to make a decision is to trust the unbiased experts. Look on the website http://reviews.cnet.com and find their digital camera section. I would recommend any of the cameras that are ranked high on their list, and some of them may even have an editor’s choice symbol by them, which is a good sign. For each camera there will be a link for a more detailed review, and they usually show prices ranges that they collect from various online vendors.
Once you have your choice limited to a couple of different models, then you need to decide where to buy: local or online. The easiest is buying local so that you can go to the store and hold the camera and make sure it feels good in your hands and is the right size. The problem with buying local is that the specific models that you want might not be available to look at, and it will be more expensive because you are paying extra for the overhead of the store. Buying at a place like Best Buy the prices will be ok, but the sales people MIGHT not be knowledgeable about the quality and features of their various cameras. It would be better to go to a local professional camera store, but then you will pay even more.
By far the cheapest is the online retailers, but beware because not all are legitimate. I buy all my equipment online because of the lower prices. I first start with a website called Pricegrabber (www.pricegrabber.com). With Pricegrabber you can search for a specific camera model and it will tell you the price at lots of different online stores. The beauty of it is that Pricegrabber keeps reviews of all the merchants so it is wise to only buy from reputable stores, which means to first look for stores that have at least 2000+ reviews and at least 4 out of 5 stars. For more confidence in the stores you can search for them on Reseller Ratings (www.resellerratings.com). To be on the safe side, the most reputable online dealers are B & H Photo (www.bhphoto.com) and Adorama (www.adorama.com). Buying from them is always a safe bet.
When buying a digital camera, you can expect to pay around $200-$300 for a decent 8 MP point and shoot camera, or $500-$700 for a basic digital SLR camera (not including the lens).
One thing to watch out for is that some of the retailers try to bundle the camera with miscellaneous accessories such as a tripod, memory card, cleaning kit etc. Stay away from these because even though it looks like convenient one-stop shopping, the accessories that most of them bundle are complete junk and they charge you the same amount that you could buy higher quality items for.
If you are interested in doing any type of selective editing on your images, then having a computer up to the task is very important. Luckily almost all standard computer packages can handle the needs of basic digital photography. Thing to consider is amount of memory (RAM), amount of storage space (hard drive), method to archive images for the future (CD/DVD burner), size of viewable area on the monitor while working, and of course…Price.
RAM (random access memory) is a critical part of the computer. Without going into too much detail, the more RAM you have, the faster your computer can operate. If you run out of RAM, while working, your computer will start moving really slowly. Everything you do on the computer takes some amount of RAM, so if you have Internet/Email running, music playing, a word document open, a few pictures open, etc. you could easily run out of RAM. Make sure to buy at least 1 Gigabyte (GB) of RAM (which is standard), but preferably 2 gigabytes (GB) of memory. RAM is cheap to upgrade at roughly $0.20 per megabyte, and it is one of the easiest computer upgrades that can be done.
The hard drive is the part of your computer that acts as storage. When you own a digital camera, you will find that you take a lot more pictures than you ever used to with a film camera and you will need enough space on your hard drive to store these pictures. Most computers nowadays come standard with a minimum of 80 GB of hard drive space. If you are using your camera to shoot in the standard image type, which is a jpeg mode (discussed later), an 8-megapixel camera might make an image file that is 2 megabytes in size. Since a gigabyte (gig) is 1000 megabytes (meg), you could fit approximately 40,000 pictures in 80 gigs of space. This is obviously more than enough space.
The problem with a hard drive is that you never know when it might fail on you. It’s rare, but it could happen. In that event you would not want to have years worth of photos stored on a single hard drive that could potentially break causing you to lose everything. Backing up your pictures is extremely important. There are a couple different ways to do that, one of them is to get a second external hard drive and backup your pictures on that, or more commonly, people have a CD/DVD Burner. A CD can hold about 350 pictures using the rough image sizes discussed above, and a DVD can hold about 2000 pictures using the same numbers. These numbers are very rough approximations and will depend on the image format and file size, which we will discuss later.
When viewing and editing your pictures, the larger the
monitor the better. When using an image
editing program, the menus and tools can take almost 25-40 % of your screen so
having more screen real estate will give you more space to actually see the
photos.
The bigger the screen, the easier it will be to look at your image while
editing. My personal suggestion is for
a monitor of at least 19”, but if you don’t think you will be doing much editing,
then you could get by with the standard 17” screen.
The price that you should expect to pay for a NEW computer
system that would be adequate for basic digital photography would be around
$1000 for a computer with monitor or about $700 for a computer without a
monitor. A few places to look for a
computer would be at your local stores.
Wait for a good sale at places such as Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA,
Office Max, or go through some of the mainstream online retailers such as Dell
(www.dell.com), or Hewlett Packard (www.hp.com).
There are a few other considerations that can be made when purchasing a digital camera setup. First off is the type of batteries that the camera uses. For the most part, the two categories are AA batteries or specialized battery packs designed for specific cameras. The two main types of AA batteries are Alkaline, which are standard, or NiMh (Nickel Metal Hydride), which are the significantly more powerful rechargeable alternative. The specialized battery packs are usually Lithium Ion, which in many cases are even longer lasting than NiMh batteries. The advantages of buying a camera that uses AA batteries is that if you have the rechargeable kind and your batteries die and you don’t have your charger, you can always go to the local drugstore and buy the shorter lasting alkaline AA batteries which could get you through until you can charge your main batteries. The bad part is that most cameras take 4 of them so each time you need to change batteries, you are actually changing four batteries which can be difficult when in a hurry or in a dark environment. The Lithium Ion batteries are great because they can hold a long charge and it is usually one compact battery that is easy to change in and out. The bad part of a Lithium Ion battery is that if it dies and you don’t have a charger handy, you are out of luck because you can’t buy a temporary replacement in any convenience store.
To be able to take photos with a digital camera, the camera needs a place to store the pictures. This happens on a memory card. Memory cards come in many different shapes and small sizes. Some of the common names are Compact Flash, Secure Digital or SD, Memory Sticks, XD Picture cards, etc. I personally will only buy a camera that uses compact flash style cards because compact flash cards give you the best bang for your buck, come in larger sizes than the others, and tend to lead the pack in technological advancements. Compact flash is also the most commonly used format and the most widely accepted over many different electronic devices, however, SD cards are gaining fast. On the other hand, Memory Sticks are a Sony product and can only be used with Sony electronics. XD picture cards are also proprietary to specific brands.
You will need to decide on the amount of memory cards that you need. Compact flash cards range in sizes from 8 megabytes (MB) to 16 gigabytes (GB) (2000 times larger), and if we use the same size images we spoke of earlier, that would allow you to take anywhere from 4 pictures on one card to about 8000 pictures on the largest card. You will need to buy enough memory to suit your own usage. Some people have the opportunity to download the pictures onto their computers everyday, while others want to bring their cameras on a two-week vacation. My personal suggestion is to buy two cards that are 2 GB each that way if one card ever fails on you, you have a second one available. That gives you 4 GB total that could store around 2000 photos total between the two cards. (These numbers are averages only when shooting jpeg file format). If you are taking a long vacation and you don’t bring enough memory cards, then you will need to download your images to a computer, which you can do if you have a laptop and then always burn the images on CD. But just to make things easier, it’s best to have enough memory, which is fairly inexpensive nowadays.
When you take digital photos you need to eventually download
them to your computer. There are mainly
two ways to do this, the first is to hook the camera directly up to your
computer and copy the pictures off of it.
The problem with this method is that while you’re downloading the
pictures, you can’t use your camera and you also drain the batteries at the
same time. A better method is to buy a card
reader, which is a small device that attaches to your computer. To use it,
you remove the memory card from the camera and insert it into the card reader. It then acts as another drive on your
computer that allows you to copy and paste the pictures onto your
computer. The benefit of this method is
that it does not drain the batteries in the camera, and it also allows you to
insert a blank card into your camera and keep using it.
2.4) Software
Once you have the photos on your computer, you will need to
figure out how to organize, edit, and print.
When you first buy a camera, it is easy to take lots of photos and
organize them into folders by date or whatever. This works fine when you only have a few hundred images, but when
you have a few thousand it can get a bit crazy. I took over 50,000 images just in this past year and it makes it
extremely difficult to find one specific photo when I need to. To aid in that area I use an image
management program. These programs
keep very small size thumbnail images, and you can organize your photos by
date, category (family, vacation, etc.), or keyword. Embedding keywords and captions into images can make it very easy
to search for them later as long as you use keywords that you can remember such
as (dad, up north, summer 2004, cottage, etc.)
Searching for any one of those words will bring up the image.
Just like everything else, there are MANY different options
to consider when choosing an image management program. Three of those include Adobe Photoshop (PS)
Elements Organizer, Thumbsplus, and ACDSee.
The fun part about digital photography is being able to edit
and fix your photos. Editing
software also comes in many different forms, but for basic digital
photography, there is nothing better than Adobe Photoshop Elements 6
($80). Just about everybody has heard
of Photoshop and it is so popular that it is now even being used as a verb
(i.e. he photoshopped that picture).
Photoshop’s full version costs about $600. Photoshop Elements 6 is a toned down version of Photoshop that
has some added tools that are very user-friendly to help fix red eye and
such. The best part is that the image
organizer is included to help organize your photos which gives you everything
you need in one inexpensive package.
JPEG (.jpg), TIFF (.tif), PSD (.psd) and Raw are four of the most commonly used image file formats. It’s good to understand the difference and understand when to use each one. An image file can be recorded by the camera in different formats, and it can be edited and saved on the computer in different formats so it’s good to understand what some of the options are.
JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) is the most used format and most cameras shoot jpeg by default. Jpeg’s are COMPRESSED image files. They have small file sizes. When an image is saved as a jpeg, the user has to determine the quality level. The higher the quality, the less compression, the lower the quality, the more compression. When an image is saved as a jpeg, the software finds areas of similar color and lumps them together which is how it is compressed. When it is loaded, the software uncompresses the grouped areas and displays the image. The problem with jpegs is that every time you save them, you recompress them. Every time they’re compressed, they suffer minor loss of detail. If you save them over and over and over again, each time you are losing more and more detail.
I save my images as jpegs at the highest quality setting and rarely edit/save them more than twice.
TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) is a file type that is uncompressed which means the file sizes are very large. Tiff is a good format to use if you plan on loading, editing, and saving an image a number of times, but otherwise they just create large file sizes that are unnecessary. If you plan on doing a lot of editing to a file, do it as a TIFF, but when you’re done, then save it as a high-quality JPEG and delete the TIFF file.
PSD (Photoshop Document) is the file format used by adobe Photoshop. PSD is also an uncompressed file format. I always use PSD instead of TIFF because PSD files can have other data in them that a TIFF file cannot save which we’ll discuss later.
Raw is a format used by higher end digital cameras. It is a file that uses what’s called lossless compression to store the original data that the camera’s sensor records. When you shoot an image in jpeg, the camera uses the white balance setting, sharpness setting, etc. that you have set and then it creates a jpeg file. When you shoot a raw file, the camera records the settings you use and then provides you with all the data that the sensor recorded allowing you to change some of your decisions later, which can be very helpful. It’s more work later, but it can be worth it. I record every image I take as a raw file. When raw files are downloaded, they need to be processed. In other words, I need to go in and make/confirm all the decisions regarding white balance, exposure, and sharpness and then whatever program I’m using to convert the raw file will then give me a jpeg or tiff or whatever I desire. Raw files are usually much larger than JPEGs however they contain much more information and detail. Part of that information is a larger dynamic range. Dynamic range is the visible range from light to dark that the camera can record. The dynamic range of the human eye is much higher than that of a camera. For example, your eyes can see a wide range from light to dark with many shades of gray in between. The camera has a narrower dynamic range. However, a raw file typically contains a wider dynamic range than a jpeg file. See the demo below.
The images above are by no means an exact representation but they are meant to just prove a point. If the top image is the range of dark to light that the human eye can see, the middle image is the range that a raw file can record, and the bottom would be more similar to what a jpeg can record. In other words, if you were looking at a scene that had some dark darks and some light lights, it would look one way to the human eye, but when capturing it with a camera, some of the areas that you can see detail with your eyes might get recorded in the camera with dark areas that get completely black and light areas that get blown out.
Because raw files are slightly compressed (lossless), they also contain much more information than a TIFF file, but are still smaller than a TIFF. At least for me, TIFF files are totally useless.
2.6) Image Backup and archiving
Out of the millions of people that have digital
cameras, I would care to bet that MANY do not backup their images because they
either don’t know why, don’t know how, or are too lazy, or just haven’t thought
about it.
Image backups for me are crucial! The
last thing I want is to go out and spend time taking great pictures just to
have my hard drive crash and lose everything.
Unfortunately I learned the hard way.
When I first got into digital photography I had a whole lot of pictures
on a hard drive that crashed and I lost it all. It was just personal work at the time, but it was still very
frustrating. Now that we shoot weddings
and portraits, it’s even more critical to keep everything backed up. There are two main ways to backup
things. The most common is to backup on
CD or DVD. Most people have a CD burner
in their computer. A CD can hold around
700 MB of data and a DVD can hold 4.4 GB of data, which is a ton of digital
photos. The other method to backup is
hard drives. If you have a second hard
drive, just make a copy of your images.
Hard drives are extremely cheap now and it’s easy to have a second one
to backup to. Now that I run a
photography business, when we need to back up everything, I backup onto two
hard drives, then burn a DVD that gets stored in a safety deposit box
offsite. If my house ever burns down, I
won’t lose MY once in a lifetime travel photos, and I won’t lose my clients
once in a lifetime wedding photos.
Since I do so much backing up, I use a program called Syncback, which
helps me to automate the process. Every
night before going to bed, I run the program and it scans my main hard drive,
scans my backup hard drive, and then any files that are new or changed it backs
up automatically. It’s very simple and
a HUGE time saver for me. However, for
the average user, backing up onto CD or DVD is usually good enough.
To keep a log of what I archived on each disk, I use a
program called CD catalog expert.
Buying
1.
Pricegrabber
(www.pricegrabber.com) - look for camera companies
with good reviews only
2. EBay (www.ebay.com) is always a good place to buy things but there is much higher risk involved so be careful.
Digital Camera Info
2.
Cnet
(www.cnet.com) – Professional camera
comparisons
3.
Dpreview
(www.dpreview.com) – In depth reviews and
latest news
Printing
4. Adorama (www.adoramapix.com)
5. Shutterfly (www.shutterfly.com)
Digital Picture Frames
6. Ceiva (www.ceiva.com)
General Help and Information
7.
Online
forums such as yahoo (www.groups.yahoo.com)
3) FUNDAMENTALS OF PHOTOGRAPHY
3.1) Intro
This lesson will focus on the camera basics.
The two most important aspects of photography to understand are aperture
and shutter speed. The aperture
is the opening in the lens that lets light through. The shutter is the curtain in front of your camera that
opens and closes really fast to allow light through. The shutter is in front of your camera lens and stays shut until
you take a photo where it will then open and close really fast according the
shutter speed that is set on your camera.
The size of the aperture and the speed of the shutter are what control
the exposure. If the picture is too
bright it means it’s overexposed (exposed with too much light), if it’s
too dark, it’s underexposed (exposed to too little light.) The beauty of digital cameras is that you
can see your exposure on your LCD screen and change some settings and retake
the image to fix it, which is a HUGE advantage over film. The key is to understand the relationship
between aperture and shutter speed so that you CAN fix it if the need arises.
To fully appreciate and understand what these things are doing, it’s very helpful to have a camera that allows you to have some kind of manual control so you can change those settings and see for yourself what it’s doing. Many point and shoot cameras allow you this control.
In photography, light is discussed in terms of stops. Each stop represents a doubling of something. If you are discussing shutter speed, one stop is either a doubling or halving of your current shutter speed. If you are discussing aperture, one stop is either doubling or halving the size of the aperture. In discussing ISO speed (which we’ll get to later), one stop requires either a doubling or a halving of light required for proper exposure.
Lets first go into more detail about aperture. Aperture does two things, it controls the amount of light that is let into the camera, and it controls the amount of the picture that is in focus, which is called the depth of field. Aperture is discussed in terms of f-stops.
Your camera's lens will have "f-stops" that look
like this:
F/1.4, f/2, f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/8, f/11, f/16, f/22, f/32.
|
Figure 3 |
The figure above visually shows what different f-stops (f2.8, f4, etc.) mean to
the size of the opening. As the
aperture gets smaller, the f# gets larger.
This may not seem to make sense, but it actually does.
When you look at it in terms of a lens. If you take the distance between the sensor
of your camera and the end of the lens when focused to infinity, and then
divide that by the size of the aperture opening it will give you your f-stop
rating (see diagram on next page). In other words, a 200 mm lens with an
aperture opening of 50 mm would give you an f-stop rating of 200/50 = f4. If the aperture only opened 25 mm, then the
f-stop would be 200/25 = f8. In the
photo below…the lens is 85mm long and the aperture opening is 21 mm, which
gives you an f-stop of f4.
|
Figure 4 |
So now that you know the theory behind that, you can really
forget about it as long as you know how the f-stop affects an image. Every time you go to a smaller f-stop
(larger f#) (“stop it down”) it means that you’re cutting out half of the
light. See the image below. As the f-stop gets stopped down (aperture
opening made smaller), the amount of light is decreasing making the picture
darker with each stop down. Relate
Figure 5 below with Figure 3 above.
|
Figure 5 |
3.3) Depth of Field
The next thing to know about aperture is that it controls
the amount of the photo that will be in focus, which is called the depth of
field. The simplified explanation is
that a wide open aperture like f2 has a very limited or shallow depth of field
which means that the part of the image that was focused on will be in focus and
anything forward or behind that plane will be out of focus. This phenomenon gets more exaggerated the
longer your zoom is. For example, if
you have a wide-open aperture and are zoomed in on your subject, that’s the
best you can do to get your background to drop out of focus.
This is very important to know for portraits because with most portraits you
want the subject in focus and background to be blurry to avoid unnecessary
distractions.
|
Figure 6 |
Figure 7 |
On the other hand, you may be shooting a landscape shot
where it is imperative to shoot everything in sharp focus from the rock that’s
2 ft. in front to the mountain that’s far in the distance. In those cases, it’s better to shoot at a
wider angle with a tighter aperture.
Usually for those I shoot at f11.
In the images below, everything from the immediate foreground,
mid-ground, and background are in focus.
|
Figure 8 |
Figure 9 |
Later we’ll discuss what using a tighter aperture means for the shutter speed.
3.4) Shutter Speed
So lets talk about shutter speed, what it means and how changing it can affect a photo. The shutter speed is the amount of time that the shutter is open allowing light into the camera to expose an image.
Typical shutter speeds will look like this:
1/1000 second
1/500 second
1/125 second
1/60 second
1/30 second
1/15 second
1/8 second
1/4 second
1/2 second
1 seconds
2 seconds
4 seconds
Etc
Just like the aperture, shutter speeds can be discussed in “stops”. You can allow one less stop of light (“stop it down 1”) by cutting the amount of light allowed in the camera in half. In other words, if you went from 1/15th of a second to 1/30th of a second, you are cutting out half the light that gets to the sensor.
To create a good exposure, you need to control both the aperture and the shutter speed to get enough light into your camera to expose the image. Your camera has a built in light meter. The light meter gauges the amount of light in a scene and tries to set your camera to create an evenly exposed image – it can be fooled which is why you need to know how to manually change these settings. We’ll discuss that more later.
In the ideal world, the light meter will get a perfect reading and with your camera on auto, it will pick an aperture and shutter speed that will give you a correct exposure (or at least what it thinks will be a correct exposure.) There are many different combinations of aperture and shutter speed that will provide the same amount of light to expose the image. Let’s say that a perfect exposure for a specific image will be f4 at 1/125th of a second – that will let the perfect amount of light to expose the picture. The chart below shows all the different combinations that will give you the exact same amount of light:
|
Aperture
(F-Stop) |
|||||||
|
Versus
Shutter Speed in Seconds |
|||||||
|
|
Scenario 1 |
Scenario 2 |
Scenario 3 |
Scenario 4 |
Scenario 5 |
Scenario 6 |
|
|
Less
Light |
f/11 |
f/8 |
f/5.6 |
f/4 |
f/2.8 |
f/2 |
More Light |
|
More
Light |
1/15 |
1/30 |
1/60 |
1/125 |
1/250 |
1/500 |
Less Light |
This may seem confusing at first, but it makes perfect sense. We learned that every time you change the aperture by one full stop, you change the amount of light be a factor of 2. Either you half it, or double it. So if you went from f4 to f5.6, half as much light would enter the camera. You can easily balance that though because as discussed earlier, when you change the shutter speed by one full stop, you also change the amount of light by a factor of 2. So if you cut the light by half by changing the aperture, then you double the amount of light by doubling the shutter speed and providing twice as much time for the image to get exposed. It all balances out. So looking at the above chart again…if you have scenario 4 with f4 at 1/125th, you could achieve the same amount of light with many other combinations.
To figure out which scenario you want to use all depends on what the goal of the photo is. Lets talk more about shutter speed and how it affects the image and then we’ll get back to the different scenarios.
While the shutter is open, it is recording visible light. In many cases, it will open and close so fast that your eye can’t even see it. But as you start slowing the shutter down and doing one or two second exposures, it’s very obvious when it opens and closes. I’m sure many of you have experienced camera shake and blurry pictures especially in low light when your flash doesn’t go off. What’s happening is that there isn’t enough light to expose the image. To get more light, your camera leaves the shutter open longer. There’s a point where you can’t physically hold a camera perfectly still while the shutter is open (and recording visible light), so if the camera moves even slightly, your image will start to look blurry.
When shutter speeds get too long, you need to have some way to stabilize your camera so it doesn’t shake. That’s why many photographers shoot with a tripod.
Here are some different examples of what different shutter
speeds can do to a photo:
|
Figure 10 |
Figure 11 |
The photo above left was taken at a very fast shutter speed (1/500th) of a second to where it completely froze the action. The photo above right was taken with a slower shutter speed (1/15th) of a second, which allows for some motion blur. This can be a very powerful tool to know how to control the shutter speed to achieve different styles to a photo. When you’re trying to convey motion, freezing the action with a fast shutter speed isn’t always a good tactic. I’m sure many of you have marveled over beautiful pictures of waterfalls where the water is silky smooth. I used to do the same thing, but when I took pictures of them, they never looked that way. The reason for that is because most point and shoot cameras are used by people who hand hold them. When you hand hold a camera, you need a fast enough shutter speed so there is no motion blur. But, when your shutter speed is fast and you take a picture of a waterfall, you freeze the action as opposed to getting that nice silky blurred effect.
The images below are examples of what shutter speed can
do. In the figures below, the image on
left was shot on a tripod at about 1/8th of a second. The photo on the right was hand held and
shot at 1/125th of a second.
|
Figure 12 |
Figure 13 |
Below is another example. In figures 14 and 15 below, the photo on the left was shot at 1/250th of a second to freeze the action of the wave breaking while the photo on the right was shot at 1/4th of a second on a tripod to convey motion during the break.
|
Figure 14 |
Figure 15 |
Again, once the shutter speed gets too slow, you can’t hand hold the camera
without getting camera shake and a blurry image so you must mount your camera
on a tripod. The rule of thumb to
decide when you should be using a tripod is to take 1 divided by the focal
length. So, if you’re shooting a long
zoom lens like 200 mm, then your shutter speed should be no slower than 1/200th
of a second or you should shoot on a tripod.
This is a very rough rule of thumb and it can change in different
situations and with different lenses, and it also depends on the shakiness of
your hands.
So now is a good time to talk about a tripod and how to shoot with it. Again, when the shutter speed is too slow, you MUST use a tripod to take pictures to capture motion. I’m not going to get into any detail about different types of tripods because that’s not critical to the points I want to make.
When mounting the camera on a tripod and shooting with a longer shutter speed, a big concern is that when you push the shutter release button on your camera, you’ll shake the camera and get a blurry picture anyway. In these situations, the two options are to either use a cable release or to set the timer on your camera and let the timer trigger the shutter that way your hands and fingers are nowhere near the camera when the shutter opens.
These same principles apply with a point and shoot camera as they do with a professional digital SLR camera.
So what you need to know now is what settings does the camera use when you take a picture and how do you control the image based on the aperture and shutter. To understand this, we need to introduce a couple of new terms. The first is metering. When you take a picture, there is an internal light meter in your camera that gauges how much light the scene has and it then decides what settings it needs based on the mode you’re using (auto, portrait, landscape, etc.) The usual default setting for a camera’s light meter is called Evaluative. What the camera tries to do is it tries to figure out how much light will make the scene well balanced where the darks aren’t too dark and the lights aren’t too light. On this setting, the camera tries to make the scene what’s called “18% gray” this is a term that came from Kodak engineers which refers to 18% reflectance of visible light which provides a neutral gray color.
If you have your camera set to automatic, it will look at the whole scene and then set an aperture and shutter speed to take the picture to achieve an 18% gray image. If there’s not enough light, then it will make the flash burst to introduce more light to the scene. This is what most people do. HOWEVER, this usually doesn’t work well. Imagine the scene at the opening games of the Olympics when the torch lighting happened…you could see thousands and thousands of camera flashes. This is because they all had their cameras on automatic, it was too dark, and so the camera burst the flash. The problem is that the flash will only light up things approx. 15 feet (depending on the flash) in front of the camera. So the light from the camera flash in the Olympic stadium didn’t do anything and the pictures will ALL be underexposed. This is why you need to understand what your camera is doing because automatic mode just doesn’t cut it!!
There are other metering modes in many cameras, but I’m not going to discuss those here.
So lets talk a little bit more about the camera trying to make the whole scene neutral and when that can cause a problem and fool the internal light meter.
If you take a photo of a snow scene, the whole scene is white. Since your camera wants to make the scene balanced, it will think that the scene is really bright and underexpose the image to make it more balanced or 18% gray. When this happens, your beautiful white snow scene now turned muddy and gray.
The picture below in figure 16 is what it would look like if
shot on auto mode while the picture on the right in figure 17 is what the scene
actually looked like which was captured by adding +1.5 stops to the exposure
compensation (discussed below) which essentially adds 1.5 stops more light
into the scene compared to what the light meter thought I needed. It would do that by either making the
aperture wider open, or by making the shutter speed longer. |
|
Figure 16 |
