Photo Blog

4 Posts tagged with the exposure tag
Calista Chandler
0

If you’ve ever tried to take pictures after a snowstorm or on a ski trip, you probably noticed that your photos don’t come out quite right. Cameras on auto often underexpose snowy photos, turning your white snow a dull gray. This happens because your camera’s light meter thinks every photo you take should have the perfect balance of light and dark areas, to average out to a middle gray tone. When you shoot snow, there is a lot more white than black in your photo (or light colors than dark colors) so your light meter darkens the entire picture so the final photo will still average out to a medium gray.

 

Fixing Exposure

 

Some point-and-shoot cameras have ‘snow’ or ‘winter’ settings that will automatically adjust for these conditions, but even if your camera doesn’t, it’s easy to compensate for them with a couple of settings on your camera.

 

  • If you are shooting under a cloudy sky you’ll want to adjust the exposure compensation (EV) on your camera to +0.7 or          +1.0 stops.

  • Under sunny skies you’ll probably need to adjust the EV by up to +2.0 stops. Most digital cameras have an easy way to         do this, but if yours doesn’t, you can switch it into manual mode and adjust your shutter speed or aperture. Luckily, with         digital cameras, it’s easy to use trial and error to find the correct exposure.

 

Custom White Balance Settings

 

Snow can also confuse your camera when it comes to white balance. If you’re shooting snowy scenes under a sunny blue sky, your photos are likely to have a cool blue cast to them. The most reliable way to fix this is to make a custom white balance setting. Most cameras take a meter reading of a scene, and then use that reading when you take subsequent pictures.

 

  • When you’re creating a custom white balance setting for shooting snowy scenes, be sure to fill the frame with a clean,          well-lit patch of snow.

  • Avoid shadowy areas because they’ll bring that blue cast back into your shots.

 

Once you have your custom setting you should be able to shoot all day and get perfectly balanced images.

 

Custom settings on digital cameras can seem daunting but becoming familiar with them can really take your photography to a new level. Here are a few examples of great winter photography.

 

bryce by F.S.M., Birds in the wintertime by Stig Nygaard, Matanuska Glacier by jswieringa on Flickr.

0 Comments Permalink Tags: snow, photography, exposure, f-stop, shutter_speed, aperture, white_balance, photographing_snow
Calista Chandler
0

Have you ever taken a picture with your point-and-shoot camera just to have the shutter speed be too slow and your image blurry? If you’re camera is left to figure out its exposure settings on its own, it will slow down your shutter in low-light conditions, which can sabotage your attempt to get a clear photo. You can use a show shutter speed to make great photographs though, with a little bit of planning.

 

Below are tips on how to take a few kinds of slow shutter pictures. These tips require your camera to stay very still, so handholding is not recommended. Pick up a basic tripod or something like the Gorillapod, reviewed earlier on this blog.

 

Light Trails

 

Everyone has seen those otherworldly pictures of ribbons of lights created by moving cars. These shots are eye catching and very easy to achieve. Make sure your camera is stable on your tripod, and use your manual or shutter priority setting to set your shutter speed to one second or more. Set your ISO as low as you can, so you’ll have less noise in your image. Depending on where you’re shooting, you might want to use manual focus, because the autofocus on most cameras struggles in low light. Beyond that, just experiment with different shutter speeds and angles until you get an image you like!

 

Life in the Fast Lane, by Chris Gin on Flickr

 

Painting with Light

 

Most people are used to shooting in whatever light happens to be falling on their subject, but if you take control of the light you can get some fantastic results. Painting with light is just what it sounds like. You set your camera to a long shutter speed, often several seconds, and you move light sources around your subject to put light where you want it in your image. Put your camera on a tripod and experiment with any light source you can find. Candles, flashlights or Christmas lights work great. You can even move through the picture without showing up in the final image if you make sure the light doesn’t illuminate you too much, and you wear dark clothes.

 

Rocco plays light cello, by fPat on Flickr

 

Bright Nights

 

On nights that are well lit by the moon you can take long shutter speed pictures that look like they were taken during the day. This is a fun way to capture movement that you wouldn’t be able to capture with long, daytime shutter speeds.

 

Moonlight, by Vimages on Flickr

0 Comments Permalink Tags: long, exposure, shutter, speed
Calista Chandler
0

HDR Photography

Posted by Calista Chandler Aug 15, 2008

If you're a frequent visitor to the TravelMuse site, you may have noticed the unique look of some of our cover images. The covers for Washington, D.C., Beijing and this week's Yellowstone issue are all HDR photographs. HDR stands for High Dynamic Range, and describes the balanced exposure the pictures display, with detail in the deepest shadows and brightest highlights.

 

The technique is meant to replicate the range of tones our eyes are capable of seeing, which is much wider than the range our cameras capture (or our monitors display). Often, digital photographs don't resemble what our eye sees. Have you ever taken a picture of a sunset scene to later discover that the sky was way too bright, or the landscape way too dark? With HDR photography, you take multiple pictures of the same scene, at different exposures, and blend them with specialized software to create an image that’s closer to how the scene looked to you in person.

 

Here are a few tips for creating HDR photographs:

 

- Use a tripod, because if your images don't line up, the software has a harder time blending them.

- Set your camera to aperture priority or manual, so your aperture doesn't change and cause the depth of field to vary between exposures.

- Take a minimum of three exposures, with a half to full stop difference between them—but the more exposures you take, the better your final image will look.

- Experiment with the difference between your exposures. You want one image that exposes the brightest parts of your images perfectly and another image that exposes the shadows, with at least one image somewhere in between.

- Photo editing software, like Adobe Photoshop, is required to merge the images. If you don't have Photoshop, you can download Photomatix and use the free trial it offers.

 

Here are a few examples of the kinds of effects you can get with HDR photography:

 

Lifestyle 3 (in HDR) by kennymati on Flickr

 

 

 

garden HDR by Lampeduza on Flickr

 

 

 

berliner dom by extranoise on Flickr

0 Comments 0 References Permalink Tags: hdr, high_dynamic_range, exposure, photomatix, photoshop
Calista Chandler
0

Some of the first images that come to mind when I think of summer photography are of Fourth of July fireworks. Dramatic and colorful, fireworks displays are a great summer tradition that many people want to capture. Surprisingly, it is easy to get great fireworks photos when you plan ahead. Here are some tips to help you best capture this fun symbol of summer.

 

1. Keep the direction of the wind, if there is any, in mind when choosing a location to shoot from, and make sure you’re ready to shoot when the fireworks start. By the end of the show there can be a lot of smoke, making for hazy photos.

 

2. Consider ahead of time how you want to frame your shots. Do you want a wide-angle view of the whole scene, or close-ups of the fireworks filling the frame? Remember that it can be difficult to take close-ups because you don’t always know exactly where in the sky the fireworks will be.

 

3. Use a tripod! You will need to use long shutter speeds to get the streaks of light that make fireworks photos so beautiful. If you don’t have a tripod, or won’t be watching the show from a location that allows for one, look for something sturdy, like a ledge or tree trunk to rest your camera on.

 

4. Turn off your flash! The fireworks are going to be far away, so your flash will have no effect on that part of your image. The most it will do is illuminate the smoke in the air, distracting from the main point of the shot.

 

5. Consider using a cable release, or self-timer mode to avoid shaking the camera when you hit the shutter button.

 

6. Use the lowest ISO your camera has. You’re going to want to do long exposures and using a low ISO will allow you to do that without overexposing your shots.

 

7. Use manual mode if your camera has it. As a starting point for figuring out exposure, set your camera to f/11 and try a shutter speed of 2 seconds. If your images are too dark, open up the aperture (set it to a lower number), and if the images are too light, close it down. If your camera doesn’t have a wide range of aperture settings, you can control the exposure with the shutter speed, but keep in mind that the faster the shutter speed the shorter the streaks of light in your images will be. You can also use BULB mode if your camera offers it. In BULB mode the shutter will stay open as long as you hold down the shutter button, allowing you to sync your exposures with the show.

 

8. Chances are you’ll be far enough away from the fireworks to get them in sharp focus with your camera set at infinity. If not, you may want to move farther back! Take a test shot and make sure your focus is correct, and then switch your camera into manual focus mode. This will save you the frustration of missing shots because your camera was busy trying to focus.

 

9. Set your white balance to ‘daylight.’ If you leave it on Auto the white balance is likely to change from shot to shot as it tries to correct for the color of the fireworks.

 

10. Take a lot of pictures! You’re much more likely to get the perfect shot if you take as many pictures as you can. And with digital, why not?

 

Union Station Fireworks by kcphotos on Flickr

0 Comments 0 References Permalink Tags: fireworks, shutter_speed, aperture, white_balance, tripod, exposure

Popular Blog Posts