June 26th, 2008 Rob Sheppard
Recently, I have had a number of questions from students about exposure that made me realize that many photographers want “exposure” to do a bit more than it can. Exposure is obviously important to a photographer because we have to expose our sensors or film to light so that we get an image. We control shutter speed and f-stop (or the camera does) to allow the proper amount of light to hit the sensor or film. Too much and the scene is washed out, overexposed. Too little and the scene is dark and dim, underexposed.
What I am seeing is that many photographers want a good exposure for a scene where a “good” overall exposure is impossible. We can see detail in a large range of brightness, a range far greater than the capability of the sensor. When a scene has such a large range of brightness, no exposure can capture it properly. You cannot get a “good” exposure because there will always be important detail that cannot be captured.
At this point, you really have a great opportunity for an important choice in photography — don’t take the picture. It is true that digital photography has no cost for taking extra pictures, so you can photograph as much as you want. But if you try to force an image from a scene that is too challenging for your sensor, you won’t necessarily continue to look for a better photo. I would rather quit that scene, recognizing the limitations of my camera, and find a new photo that does work. The LCD will give you a good idea of difficult scenes like this, especially if you read the histogram and check the blinking highlight warning.
There is a new option for digital photographers, HDR or high dynamic range photography. I am really excited about its possibilities. With it, you take multiple exposures of a scene, varying the exposure from dark to light, then combine those images in special software that builds a photo that shows a much greater tonal range than the camera can handle with a single photo. You can actually create a photo closer to what you saw rather than be limited by the arbitrary limitations of camera technology. My preference is to use Photomatix software from HDRsoft.com.
Posted in Digital camera techniques, Equipment thoughts, Nature | Comments Off
June 19th, 2008 Rob Sheppard
Digital photography is still photography. So I often recommend to my workshop attendees a couple of authors from the past who wrote wonderful photography books that still apply to today’s photography.
First, Andreas Feininger. He was a photographer for LIFE magazine during the 1940s and 1950s and wrote a lot of photo books during the 1960s and 1980s. One of his best, and a very popular book at the time, was The Creative Photographer. This is not about some funky special effects, but is one of the best discussions about photography for the photographer that I have ever read. All of his books were very accessible and highly geared toward photographers who wanted more control over the medium. None are in print, though I have found them at abebooks.com.
Nearly every photographer has heard of Ansel Adams. I really believe that his books have a lot to offer the photographer who wants to get more from his or her images, especially when working in Photoshop and Lightroom 2. His books, The Negative, The Print and Examples — The Making of 40 Photographs, will teach you a lot about making better photographs and how you can work with an image in the computer. You can skip all the chemistry and such that is included in the first two books, but Adams’ commentary about what he did for specific photos is superb. I even included some of this in my book, The Outdoor Photographer Landscape and Nature Photography with Photoshop CS2. I think these books by Adams offer more for photographers than most Photoshop books (you still need the Photoshop books to understand the specific controls, but the Adams books give you more ideas on how to actually approach an image).
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June 19th, 2008 Rob Sheppard
Recently, my good friend Michael Guncheon and I were talking about exposure latitude with digital cameras. He felt that it was really subjective compared to dynamic range. Latitude is the ability of the camera to record a range of exposures and still give a good image. Dynamic range is the capability of a sensor to handle brightness values from black to white.
This gets difficult because technically, the real “latitude” (which is related to the dynamic range) of a camera comes from the sensor and its capabilities (along with internal processing such as preconditioning the signal before A/D conversion and A/D conversion). I think Michael is right about subjectivity since most cameras smartly process JPEG from the original RAW so the average photographer may find more detail in the JPEG than in a minimally processed RAW file.
On the other hand, a well-processed RAW file can add detail in the dark and light areas that are not available in the JPEG image — this is sort of like increasing latitude, because it does give more possibilities for an image’s tonalities. The dynamic range of a sensor is fixed, but the actual range of tones one gets is dependent on the processing (either internal to the camera for JPEG or in RAW development).
Posted in Digital Photo Techniques, Equipment thoughts | Comments Off
June 10th, 2008 Rob Sheppard
I recently got a question about moving files in Lightroom. If a photographer changes the location of a file or folder of image files, will all of the metadata and changes made in lightroom automatically remain with the images?
It helps to understand that no data is ever applied to an image in Lightroom until the image is exported unless you tell the program to sync metadata with the files (which can be done through the menus), but normally, you would not need to do that. All info is all held in the Lightroom database. That database holds previews and the data even if Lightroom can’t “see” the files because they have been moved. You just have to tell Lightroom where they are.
Lightroom will let you know that it can’t find the folder and images by showing it as red. You then right-click on the folder (or images) — by the way, I think everyone should have a right-click mouse — and tell Lightroom where to find the new location for the files and it will re-sync them to the folder(s).
The questioner also wondered if you could import images from an offline source such as a DVD or external drive, and have previews of the images available even when the actual media is offline? That should work because of the way Lightroom handles files as described above.
If you have not tried Lightroom v. 2 beta, give it a try. I am really excited about this new version and am using it a lot. I also just completed a book on it that will be out early this fall. I think this version is terrific and offers a huge potential for photographers. It will make the use of Photoshop much less common for most photographers.
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