Tag: digital photography

Manual Exposure Mode – Explained

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Manual Exposure Mode

In the manual exposure mode the whole camera settings are under your control. Manual mode gives you freedom to customise every single setting at the time of shooting – shutter speed, Aperture, ISO, White balance, Colour Temperature(Tint), Exposure bracketing, In-built Flash-light compensation, External Flash-light compensation, Image Size & Formats, Metering modes, Focus points – Single, Multiple or particular area on screen/viewfinder and many more.

If you want to become a pro or a serious hobbyist or just want to learn the creative photography techniques, you are to master all these above settings in order to get the desired photograph. So you need to shoot on Manual Exposure Mode Only.

There are some modules specially designed for you in order to practice and master the manual mode. Hope this will definitely work and give you wonderful results as you practice more…

Module 1 – Mastering Shutter Speed

Set your dial on Shutter Priority Mode (Tv/S). Stand at your favourite place at your home, most probably the window is the best place to experiment where you see people, vehicles moving around and kids playing in the street. Now you switch on your camera and start shooting with a shutter speed of 1/1000 then with 1/500 and so on…(1/250 – 1/125 – 1/50 – 1/25 – 1/8 – 1/4 – 1/2 – 1sec – 2 sec) upto shutter speed of 4 seconds. You can decrease no. of shots as you can take 5 shots only with the same shutter speed range (from 1/1000 to 4 seconds). In the Shutter priority mode only Shutter Speed of the Camera will remain under your control, rest all other settings will be on auto mode. So After capturing you will get an idea that “Why & Where to use faster shutter speeds(e.g 1/200 or as less as 1/8000 of a second) and Slower shutter speeds(e.g more than 1 second).

You will find Slower the shutter speed will result in less static subjects in photo as you can see the things which are static, and could not see the things in motion(blurry lines).

Second practical you can do with water streams.

You can shoot water stream, outside if possible or just start with a water tap at your home.

While shooting at faster shutter speeds you will see the crystal clear image of the even water droplets coming out of tap. And while shooting at slower shutter speed you will see some milky white shades of water and all other subjects very much clear in the photograph.

Module 2 – Mastering Aperture

For Understanding the work of aperture in a photograph you need to know whether you want Shallow Depth of Field(blur background) or Narrow Depth of Field(sharp background).

Or in simple words we can say the depth of the area in sharp focus is depth of field.

Example – Take the lens with the widest available aperture either it’s a kit lens with 3.5 or a 50mm with 1.8. Take one photo with the widest available aperture and compare the same frame with an aperture of atleast 22 or 16. In the photo with higher f-stop no. you will observe more area in sharp focus, and in the photo with the lower f-stop no. you will observe more blurred or defocused area.

You can practice these photos at any place whether it’s crowded or at table with different set of cups or at garden with flowers or landscapes. You can clearly see the difference in sharp focused area with changing the aperture value.

You can also use the aperture to control the amount of light coming into the camera.

For any questions please comment.

Controlling Light and Exposing Right

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In the last post we came to know about What is right exposure and the factors affecting the exposure of a picture. To register a perfect tone image on your digital camera sensor, one must allow the correct amount of light to reach the digital sensor. The three factors that control the path of light are sensor sensitivity (ISO), shutter speed(SS), and aperture(f-stop).

When the film photography was dominant, exposure was an really important subject. The digital era has brought us light-years forward because we can now see the result instantly. Just as with film cameras, the DSLR takes into account the brightness of the frame, the contrast, the color of the picture and the area in focused. When automatic exposure is set, the camera calculates all the settings accordingly and much more instantly.

You can now review your pictures immediately after exposing, on the LCD screen on the back of your digital camera. If you are a beginner to photography, there are many other different aspects that have to be considered before you take each picture. How do I compose the picture? Is it in focus or not? What should be the background? Until all these elements start to become second nature, it’s good to keep your camera on auto-exposure. This will give you one less thing to worry about while you concentrate on all the others parameters. Then gradually, as you become more technically strong and have learned to hold the camera the right way, you’ll start to adjusting the small adjustments that are possible on your camera to get a perfect exposure as per your learning and experience.

On most of the DSLRs and high-end compact digital cameras, you have the option of setting the exposure manually(M-mode). This is time where we begin to play with the camera’s settings to get perfect exposure. Moreover we now start overexposing and underexposing the photograph as per our need.

  1. Camera Sensor Sensitivity(ISO)

In Film photography you need to change films if you want to change the ISO. Eg. If you are shooting at ISO100 film and suddenly the weather changed now you need ISO400 to get your desired image, So you need to change the other film of ISO400.

On the other hand in Digital photography, DSLR allows you to shoot a group of pictures, or even a single picture, at one ISO setting, then change the ISO setting on the same memory card and keep shooting. You can change the ISO as many times as you need.

  • Shutter speeds(SS)

Here are some basics about shutter speeds to begin with:

• If the light is really bad, try not to go below 1/60 second. If you must, hold your camera very still and don’t expect to freeze any action.

• For everyday pictures such as portraits and views, use speeds of 1/60 second to 1/250 second.

• To stop a racing car, or someone riding a bicycle, start with 1/1000 second.

NOTE: To avoid the camera shake, your shutter speed should not be less than the focal length of the lens you are shooting with.

  • Aperture (f-stop)

Here are some basics about Aperture/f-stops to begin with:

• As a general rule, f/5.6 gives a little bit of depth of field, provided the lens focal length isn’t too long, and is still wide enough to enable high shutter speeds.

• If it gets really dark, don’t be afraid to open your aperture to its maximum available aperture, for example, f/1.2 or f/1.8.

• If you need loads of depth of field, or you want a slow shutter speed, stop down to f/11 (when using a short lens) or f/16.

If your picture looks a little bit lighter or darker than it should, take another parameter to adjust the exposure. You can make your image lighter by increasing your exposure, or darker by decreasing the same. NOTE: f/8 can be used as a universal aperture perfect for any genre of photography.

Note: Your most of the lens usually gives the best sharpness at one stop down to the widest aperture available at your lens. eg. Lens with f/1.8 will give its best sharpness at f/2.8 not at f/1.8. anyone can experiment this and visualize the difference.

Digital Photography Workflow

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Digital Photography Workflow

  1. Capturing
  2. Storing and Organizing
  3. Editing
  4. Sharing/Showcasing/Portfolio
  5. Deleting & Backing Up

Capturing photograph is the first step of digital workflow which includes checking your camera body, lens, battery, memory card status and make it ready to shoot your project. All settings should also be checked before capturing images. In digital era this step is very easy and convenient to people as one can see the result immediately after capturing the photo and can take more and more shots without worrying about the card capacity as compared to analogue era which limits a roll film to 36 shots at max.

Storing and organizing comes second which ensures the transfer of the images to a permanent storage or your computer. You should organize your photos in a better way so that you can easily find them when needed. So one can simply copy the images in a single folder and later those folders can be numbered with name so that the sequence will remain the same and you will probably known to the events you captured and when. This type of organizing photos is the simplest you can do easily without making much efforts. Its just copying your photos to the PC in a organized way. This is the way for professionals or non-professionals too.

Editing comes after storing your photographs you need to have a look on your work so that you can edit or prepare your digital photographs to share or showcase as per need. whether to give it for print or to share it on digital platforms.

So, in this context you need to first choose a software which is convenient for you and which is meets your expectations too. You are to make search for this, but the best is Adobe Photoshop & Adobe Lightroom. Canon users can go with Canon’s Digital Photo Professional for camera control and RAW image support. Same for Nikon user can go with NX2 and many more as per their respective brands.

Sharing/Showcasing/Portfolio So after editing your images you need to share your images on an appropriate platform as per your convenience. That could be your Social Media account or your professional media account or it could be your own website or any other professional group where you can showcase your work in your desired manner. There are many platforms can be used by you. Some are given below.

  • Facebook/Instagram/tumblr/tiktok/snapchat – for Social Media
  • LinkedIn/Fiverr/your website – For your professional work showcase
  • 500px/dreamstime/adobe stock/viewbug – for stock photos

This is just an example you can hunt for more as per your needs.

Delete & Backup the last and the most important part of photography, i.e. you need to delete the accidental or the unnecessary images and backup the good one which you a require in future. As in the digital era as there are more chances of losing data, so, you should backup on at-least 2 devices if possible.

Not all photos are good or to use. So keeping this in mind and to have space for our new projects we should keep on deleting the unwanted or accidental photos first and then we should backup the best photos to make make it ready for Stock.

The Analogue Camera

The analogue camera have a win point over digital era as the negatives have a very long life and the positives can be reproduced at any time from even a 100 year old negative as there are proofs of capability of very old negatives to produce a positive with good amount of details in photos.

Digital Photography

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The last century proved to be the revolution of photography and has changed the whole concept of recording an image onto a medium. As a matter of fact, this change is not an isolated change but it was a part of a great breakthrough that is, converting of the conventional analogue information into digital information which is represented by the binary system of ones and zeros or what is known as bits. This fundamental shift in technology has completely redefined and improved the quality and usability of the visual information. A conventional camera records the image on a film and depends entirely on chemical and mechanical processes, a digital camera records images electronically with the help of light sensors CMOS/CCD. The process of photography which was process and combination of optics and chemistry has now become a combination of optics and mathematics. Digital images can be viewed stored and manipulated on computer. This opens a vast spectrum of possibilities in all area, from media and entertainment to pure scientific research, from military uses to weather forecasting, from fashion to advertising, so much so that the proliferation of the digital cameras into mobile phones has given the ordinary street-walker the power of photography.

CMOS/CCD – These both type of sensors captures the light and convert it to digital data which is then recorded by camera. Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) is a technology for constructing low power integrated circuits along with high speed which is very much useful in digital camera sensors. CMOS technology is used in various digital logic circuits. Charged Coupled Devices(CCD) are the sensors used in digital cameras to record photo and videos. The basic difference is their mechanism. Performance and speed of both the technologies is remarkable but CMOS are preferred for Camera and CCD are preferred for all the imaging devices eg. copier, scanners etc.

CMOS, costs are lowered because CMOS image sensors can have the processing circuits on the same chips, while the CCD’s have their processing circuits on separate chips.

Image Sensors. It may surprise you but the image sensors capture only the brightness, not the colour. These record the greyscale – range of colour shades between pure white to pure black. It is the camera processor which creates a colour image shown to you by additive colour method, as every pixel have RGB filters on the photosites in pattern.

Digital Image Formats

JPEG – This is named after its developer, the Joint Photographic Experts Group. This is basically compressed image file format of RAW data file.

RAW – This is the data file which contains each and every captured detail in it. “RAW” is the “negative” of the previous era as we can make some corrections without the loss of data will result in better output than a JPEG.

DNG – Digital Negative. As the growing digital era there are over 170 raw file formats now which every camera company is making for every new camera. So, Adobe tried to gave a solution to the problem, a new format the Digital Negative(DNG). So if your RAW files are not opening in a software then you can convert them to DNG and then they can be opened in Photoshop or Lightroom.

TIFF – Tagged Image File Format. There file are larger than JPEG or Raw file formats as these files can carry more data as can handle 8bit or ever 16 bit Colour data profiles. These can be open in any application as simple as Paint.

Storage Devices

We will explain only three type of devices which are in trend now.

  1. SD Cards – These are the most preferred and the most used devices in most of the electronic cameras now a days. These available with different names and for different devices. eg. Micro SD, SDHC, SDXC etc. These are water proof & X-ray proof.
CF Card(Left) & SD Card(Right)

2. CF Cards – Compact Flash Cards are delivering a very high speed data transfer and have good life also. These are found in some professional grade cameras only.

SSD & 2.5″ HDD

HDD – Hard Disk Drive. These are devices most commonly used to store our data. These available as internal HDDs and External Portable HDDs. One more advanced form of Hard drives is also available now i.e. SSD – Solid State Drives, these are water proof, shock proof, X-ray proof unlike SD cards but are more durable and solid than SD cards. These are now priced high but as the technology develops these will also be available with an affordable price tag.

Digital Workflow

  1. Capturing
  2. Storing and Organizing
  3. Editing
  4. Sharing/Showcasing/Portfolio
  5. Deleting & Backing Up

Capturing photograph is the first step of digital workflow which includes checking your camera body, lens, battery, memory card status and make it ready to shoot your project. All settings should also be checked before capturing images.

Storing and organizing comes second which ensures the transfer of the images to a permanent storage or your computer. You should organize your photos in a better way so that you can easily find them when needed.

Editing comes after storing your photographs you need to have a look on your work so that you can edit or prepare your digital photographs to share or showcase as per need. whether to give it for print or to share it on digital platforms.

Sharing/Showcasing/Portfolio So after editing your images you need to share your images on an appropriate platform as per your convenience. That could be your Social Media account or your professional media account or it could be your own website or any other professional group where you can showcase your work in your desired manner.

Delete & Backup the last and the most important part of photography, i.e. you need to delete the accidental or the unnecessary images and backup the good one which you a require in future. As in the digital era as there are more chances of losing data, so, you should backup on at-least 2 devices if possible.

The Analogue Camera have a win point over digital era as the negatives have a very long life and the positives can be reproduced at any time from even a 100 year old negative as there are proofs of capability of very old negatives to produce a positive with good amount of details in that.

Thanks

Do you need more about Digital Workflow or any other topic, kindly comment.