Translator: Lisa Rodriguez
Reviewer: Peter van de Ven Three years ago, I started
The Rescued Film Project. What we do is look all over the world for rolls of films that have been shot
but never processed. I then develop this film to try to rescue
any images they might still contain. Now, this makes me the very first person
who has ever seen any of these pictures, and I spend countless hours
and thousands of dollars acquiring, processing
and scanning film, and today we have rescued
over 25,000 pictures.
The images in the archive
range from the 1940s all the way up until the late 2000s. Every picture we are going to be
looking at today is actually from
The Rescued Film Project archive. And many of them, until today,
have never been seen by anybody except myself. So when I process this film,
scanning in the images, seeing them for the very first time, the same questions always go
through my head, over and over, no matter what the picture is of: Why was this never processed? What happened to the photographer? Where are they now? Unfortunately, for most of these pictures, those questions
will probably go unanswered.
But many of you may be looking
at some of these photos and thinking: So what? These are just some random pictures of random people I don't know
and I don't care about. But take a second
and change your prospective, and look at this picture right now
as if you're looking at it in 50 years. I don't do this because I'm trying to find
some history-altering images, I do this because I know
that whether we realize it or not, every picture we take documents
our collective history as human beings. You see, we take photos for ourselves,
of moments that are important to us, but in doing so, we also create a snapshot
of what it is like to be alive right now.
What clothes are in style ... What excites us -
birthdays, apparently ... Where we go ... And what we find important.
But as you're looking
at these photos right now, realize you were never meant to see them. I was never meant to see them. Because all of these photos
were shot on film, and you would never see them unless you had a real, personal
connection with the photographer. If you were in their homes, looking through their photo albums
or seeing them hung on walls.
But today, we take photos
knowing and even hoping that people we have no personal
connection with will see them, like them, share them. Strangers. Back when these photos were taken, the thought of a complete stranger
seeing them would be completely odd. (Laughter) But today it just seems commonplace.
When I started The Rescued Film Project, my initial goal was to reconnect
these images with the photographers. These days, because - These days, because of this,
we take photos at an enormous rate. Because of this, the Internet and social media
has changed why we take pictures. We can curate exactly how we want
our lives to appear to others.
We take 15 photos and post one -
the perfect one - and discard the rest. This photo, by today's standards, is not perfect. Almost no one is looking at the camera
or even paying attention. (Laughter) Today, this would probably be one of those
15 photos that got discarded.
But this photo is honest, is genuine,
is a true and accurate representation of this exact moment
in these people's lives. Back when this was shot on film,
this would not have been discarded. That is why I do what I do. So, why don't we throw away photographs? Physical photographs, negative slides.
Why do we have those same two roles
of film that we shot forever ago that we pass on from one junk drawer
to the next, and the next, over the course of years,
why don't we throw them away? Why are we all looking at this image
right now, of this person, trying to tell his story, this stranger? Why do we care?
Why do you care? Why do I care? Because we all inherently know
that photos are history. Photos are one of our
only defenses against time. These photos might be the only evidence
that these people ever existed. In a time when we discard images
without a second thought, to me, it's an absolute tragedy that the only people who truly know
how important these images are might never see them.
When I started The Rescued Film Project, my initial goal was to reconnect these
images with the people they belonged to, the photographers. Unfortunately, 3.5 Years
and 25,000 images later, that's only happened once. But what I have noticed
is that because, again, these photos document
our collective history as human beings, we can all relate in even small ways
to so many of the photos. So many of these experiences
that these people are having.
So we step in as surrogates and adopt them
and give these photos meaning again and enjoy them for those
who aren't unable to. My generation is one of the last that will
span the gap between film and digital. Film is still around but it's primarily being used only
by professional or niche photographers. We almost never use it anymore to capture
the everyday moments in our lives.
Birthdays ... Christmas ... Halloween ... Vacations ...
And of course... Cats.
(Laughter) Lots and lots of cats. (Laughter) Dogs too.
These are still the same
moments we're taking pictures of today, but now we are just taking
a lot more of them. While with digital the quality
of our photos has improved, because we are taking so many, the content of each photo
somehow seems less significant. If you could only take six pictures, how would that change
what you take a picture of? In losing the tangible connection of film, we really have started to lose
the tangible connection to our past. Our lives now live in digital photo
libraries on phones and computers.
We are constantly looking back
and never looking forward; it's all about snap, post, move on. Without those physical objects,
those photos, those negatives, the slides, those albums, we almost never look
at the images we create anymore. We find ourselves creating moments
that will make for a great photo, instead of actually just having a moment
and then using a photo to document it. Not being so caught up
in trying to capture the moment.
When you think about it,
it does make sense, right? (Laughter) Remember, your photos might be
the only evidence that you ever existed. So of course, we want the photos we leave behind
to portray a life well lived, but is portraying a life and curating
some glamorous collection of images more important than
actually living your life and creating a genuine
collection of images that truly and accurately represents
what your life is like? So, next time you take out
your phone to snap a photo, just have a moment of pause
and consider what you are shooting. Realize that there really are
no small moments, there are no insignificant moments, and realize that your photos aren't yours. Your photos will be used
and are being used to tell a greater story of who we are.
And so my hope is we begin to apply
a little bit of this film approach, a film mentality,
to our digital photography. And there's two very easy ways
to start doing this. Number one: just limit yourself
to taking six photos a day ... Max.
Number two: if any one of those photos
isn't 'perfect', don't discard it; post it, share it, save it. By doing this, we will begin to start finding
the meaning behind our photos again, and we'll begin to create a personal and
collective history that is truly genuine. Now, before I get off the stage, to me, this seems like a very appropriate time
to actually take a photo. (Laughter) Selfie mode here ...
Alright, everybody, say 'Cheese'! (Audience) Cheese! Thank you. (Applause).
Saturday, January 19, 2019
Friday, January 11, 2019
What's a wide angle lens - a digital photography beginner's guide to your wide angle lens
Hi Photographers! Welcome to Easy Camera Lessons. We've designed
these tips to help you with your everyday photography with the things that you love
to photograph. Today we're talking about wide-angle lenses.
We've covered most of the technical stuff over at EasyCameraLessons.Com in a blog and
you can check it out there in plain and simple language. But let's talk about what we would
use them for in our everyday photography.
This sports camera, and this mobile phone,
and this DSLR all have wide-angle lenses and they're pretty much the same. We're really
used to using wide-angle lenses on our phones that's why we can get big group shots and
be really close to the them because we've got a super wide angle of view. Having a wide-angle
lens means you can photograph so much more in your frame, you can get everything in. The technical definition of a wide-angle lens
is a lens with a focal length of less than 35 millimetres.
Now that's a swanky term so remember that and
just pop over to the blog and have a read through of what focal length means. But basically
if you just remember that it's 35 millimetre or less, that's a wide-angle lens. The numbers that help you see if you have
a wide-angle lens on your camera are on the front here. You can check them out, they should
be around the lens, or on the zoom like here.
This is a zoom lens with a 24mm wide
angle. Another thing that wide angles are great for
is photographing really big things. So if you've got a really big building, or monument,
or a massive mountain range, then you need a wide angle lens. We'd love to see your successes with your
wide-angle lenses so share them on Instagram by tagging #ECLwideangle and everybody else
can see what your shooting and we can share those things together.
Or you can share them
straight to our facebook page and we can give you some feedback if you like. But over on the blog is a blog post about wide-angle lenses and that's at EasyCameraLessons.Com..
these tips to help you with your everyday photography with the things that you love
to photograph. Today we're talking about wide-angle lenses.
We've covered most of the technical stuff over at EasyCameraLessons.Com in a blog and
you can check it out there in plain and simple language. But let's talk about what we would
use them for in our everyday photography.
This sports camera, and this mobile phone,
and this DSLR all have wide-angle lenses and they're pretty much the same. We're really
used to using wide-angle lenses on our phones that's why we can get big group shots and
be really close to the them because we've got a super wide angle of view. Having a wide-angle
lens means you can photograph so much more in your frame, you can get everything in. The technical definition of a wide-angle lens
is a lens with a focal length of less than 35 millimetres.
Now that's a swanky term so remember that and
just pop over to the blog and have a read through of what focal length means. But basically
if you just remember that it's 35 millimetre or less, that's a wide-angle lens. The numbers that help you see if you have
a wide-angle lens on your camera are on the front here. You can check them out, they should
be around the lens, or on the zoom like here.
This is a zoom lens with a 24mm wide
angle. Another thing that wide angles are great for
is photographing really big things. So if you've got a really big building, or monument,
or a massive mountain range, then you need a wide angle lens. We'd love to see your successes with your
wide-angle lenses so share them on Instagram by tagging #ECLwideangle and everybody else
can see what your shooting and we can share those things together.
Or you can share them
straight to our facebook page and we can give you some feedback if you like. But over on the blog is a blog post about wide-angle lenses and that's at EasyCameraLessons.Com..
Thursday, January 3, 2019
Wacom Create MorePhotography and Digital Manipulation Adrian Sommeling Interview
My name is Adrian Sommeling. Im a digital artist and a photographer. Im living near Amsterdam. My style is "hyper-realistic", like some people call it.
I call it actually "American advertising style". I would call it "Sommeling style", but that would not be applicable to everybody. Four years ago I bought a digital camera and I started photography again. In the beginning, I was just taking photos of flowers and buildings, but it really got boring for me.
I wanted to tell a story. I always work with a wide-angle lens. You can come close to the lens and it feels really like theres movement. With a wide-angle lens theres dynamics, if you take pictures of buildings.
So I always have the wide-angle lens, and I always have the light. The light always has to come a little bit from the back. I like that light. These are the things I always do.
These are the main elements in every one of my pictures. I chose this photo of the boat, because I want to show the people how light reflects. Its not only the light coming from the sun, its doing more. Light bounces everywhere.
I think this photo was good for this purpose. For this one I chose this particular background, because I had an idea in my mind: I wanted to show a combination of the old traditional way of painting and the modern way with a tablet. You see somebody in the background doing graffiti the old-fashioned way, but he is using actually cans with Photoshop icons. So we really combine the new digital world with the old painting world.
That was my idea behind it. What motivates me to make my pictures? Everything! I dont need motivation actually. If Im not creating something, it starts itching inside. Maybe I can stop designing or creating something for a week, but after a week I really have to.
It is something inside here that really needs to create. I dont need motivation to create things. But I get motivated by many things around me to create things..
I call it actually "American advertising style". I would call it "Sommeling style", but that would not be applicable to everybody. Four years ago I bought a digital camera and I started photography again. In the beginning, I was just taking photos of flowers and buildings, but it really got boring for me.
I wanted to tell a story. I always work with a wide-angle lens. You can come close to the lens and it feels really like theres movement. With a wide-angle lens theres dynamics, if you take pictures of buildings.
So I always have the wide-angle lens, and I always have the light. The light always has to come a little bit from the back. I like that light. These are the things I always do.
These are the main elements in every one of my pictures. I chose this photo of the boat, because I want to show the people how light reflects. Its not only the light coming from the sun, its doing more. Light bounces everywhere.
I think this photo was good for this purpose. For this one I chose this particular background, because I had an idea in my mind: I wanted to show a combination of the old traditional way of painting and the modern way with a tablet. You see somebody in the background doing graffiti the old-fashioned way, but he is using actually cans with Photoshop icons. So we really combine the new digital world with the old painting world.
That was my idea behind it. What motivates me to make my pictures? Everything! I dont need motivation actually. If Im not creating something, it starts itching inside. Maybe I can stop designing or creating something for a week, but after a week I really have to.
It is something inside here that really needs to create. I dont need motivation to create things. But I get motivated by many things around me to create things..
Wednesday, December 26, 2018
Using Zones for Black and White Photography Exploring Photography with Mark Wallace AdoramaTV
Done this episode I'll be showing you my
abbreviated version of the zone system for shooting black and white photos.
Adorama TV presents Exploring Photography with Mark Wallace.
Hi everybody welcome to another episode of Exploring Photography right here on Adorama TV. I'm Mark Wallace in the city of Puno Peru
and my altimeter says that I'm just shy of 13,000 feet and so Im having
a tough time breathing on this very busy street. Well I was out shooting today with my 5D
Mark III, my 24-70 millimeter lens and there is not a cloud in the sky
there is just a lot of shadows and contrast and that means it's a perfect
setup for shooting black and white photos and
that's what were gonna be talking about in this episode. Shooting black and white photos using
the zone system that was originally created by Ansel Adams.
I'm going to be showing you my
abbreviated version, my interpretation of his own system, specifically on how to do
post-production and get really contrasty, dark, moody images. But before we do that I wanna
talk to you about the contests that Adoramas hosting right now. They have
awesome contests and you can win some great prizes. So click the link can you might win
today.
Now when we're shooting black and white
photos were not actually just shooting black-and-white, were shooting black a bunch of shades of grey, all the way to light grey to white. Now back in the past we only shot film,
there was a system called the zone system that Ansel Adams created and system was used for seeing light for
processing negatives and going into the dark room to process
your prints so you'd get these really high contrast, beautiful prints. We don't talk much about this zone system
these days because well film and digital photography are a little
bit different. But in this episode i wanna talk to you about my abbreviated version
of the zone system.
Instead of using 12 stops of light like
Ansel Adams did, were gonna use 5 zones. Now don't send me an email saying this isnt the zone system. I. Know it's not the zone system, but it's rooted in the zone system.
Well lets talk about those five zones of light. Those zones are black, shadows, mid tones, highlights and whites. Now to understand all of this
stuff better we really need to dive into Lightroom
and take a closer look. So let's do that right now.
To get started let's take a look at
those zones again we have black, our shadows, mid toness, highlights and whites. Now they are not distributed like this in this top bar. If we looked at in evenly distributed from
black all the way to white. A gradient.
The blacks really take up just a
small portion or the very darkest the greys. Our shadows take up a lot
larger portion. The mid tones are right in the middle.Our highlights take up another large portion, and our whites really are the
very very edge, the absolute whites. Now we can
actually see these in our develop module on the histogram.
So take a look here you can see it says blacks, shadows, exposure, now that's mid tones and well explain that later why thats called exposure in the
histogram, and then we have our highlights and our whites. We can see on the histogram we actually have spikes here that shows us that this lines up to what our zones are. We have two spikes over here in the
highlights because we have a highlight here and then I made this little background its a little bit lighter and so that shows up as the second spike. We can also see that these show up here.
We've got exposure or our mid tones. Weve got highlights, shadows, whites and
blacks. We're gonna be using need to adjust our images. Now what we want to do, we
have a goal, and our goal is to create high contrast
black and white images using these zones to manipulate
the total values in our images.
We want blacks that are
absolutely black, and we what whites that are absolutely
white and we want to adjust everything else according to our
artistic vision. The process works like this. First we adjust our mid tones. Then we set our black and white points.
Next we adjust the
shadows and highlights according to our artistic vision. Then we make color
conversion adjustments if we need to and then last, we do some fine-tuning. Well
now that we know the basic steps to our process let's put those steps into action by editing 3 images. The first
image we're going to edit is this color image.
We're going to learn how to identify
where the different zones are and then convert this to a high contrast
black and white image. This will give us the basics of our editing process. The second image is this image of this lock. Were going to do
something I like to call zone shifting, where we set our black and
whites and our mids.
Then were gonna shift some of those shadows and highlights zones into other
zones to create a really high contrast sharp image. Then
lastly we're going to take a look at this image,
where we shift some the color conversions to see how color impacts our black and white conversions. Its really important. Let's get started by editing this
wall.
So I will go over into the developed module. Now before we get started on this I wanna
show you a little trick that Lightroom has for us. So Im gonna open up our chart that we
started with. We need a visual cue to show us where the absolute whites and the absolute blacks are when we begin to edit our images.
Now to
do that what we can do is there are these little triangles up here in the histogram and
this will show us our clipping. So highlight clipping and our shadow
clippings just click on that. Anything that absolutely white will show
up as red. Anything that's is absolutely black will show up as blue.
I can turn it on and off by hitting
the J key. Or by clicking these little triangles in
histogram. I prefer the J key and so that will really
help us out. Alright so let's get started on this
wall here.
The very first thing I want to do is
set my mid tones, and do that, actually very that first
thing I want to do is convert this from a color treatment to a
black-and-white treatment. So let's do that right now. Now the first thing I want to do is to
set my mid tones. Now I do that by using the exposures
slider.
What I can do is if I slide this to the
right my mid tone values will increase and if I slide this to
the left they will decrease. In other words in luminosity they'll get brighter or
darker. That way I can say, you know what do I want this to be my mid tone or this to be my mid tone? If I want this to be my mid tone well, I need
to sort of slide that to the right. If I want this to be by mid tone I need to
slide that to the left to bring that into my mid tone values.
That's the very first thing you want to do
is, say where your midterms are and you get to choose. This is something Ansel
Adams was a big about saying you choose where the middle gray
is and then work your way out from there. So
I want my middle grey to sort of be this bottom area and this door, this
bottom door. I don't wanna lose a lot of details in the blacks up here where the shadows are in the door.
So I'm gonna bring that back pretty close to
where it was because I thought we had a pretty good starting point. So right back to 0. This image we have a
good starting point. Right next let's set the black-and-white
points.
To do that I'm going to press 'J' on my keyboard so I can start bringing
the blacks down to see where that is showing up.
See Im getting a lot of blacks here. Im gonna bring this down so I start seeing
blacks not bleeding into the details in the
shadow areas, because I wanna still see that. So Ill bring that down. Think that's about as much as I want to
do there because its starting to impact the door.
I wanna see those details. Next I'm gonna bring my whites up. You can see on the histogram we don't have any whites. So I will bring those over to the right.
Keep going, keep going, keep going.
Now we start to see some white showing
up in our image and that is really giving us a lot more contrast then we
started with. Right now that I have my black and white point set, I will turn off
those warning labels. Now Im gonna start working with my shadows. Up here in this
corner we don't really see much in the door and so what I'll do here is Im going to take the shadows and shift them to the
right to bring the more into the mid tone area.
Now we're seeing some of those values show up here. We can actually see the details in the door and up here on the wall and then I'm
going to play with the highlights just a bit. Bring those down just a hair, maybe a
bit more. So Im gonna see a little bit more of the
detail in this wall.
That looks pretty good. Now im I need to
do some fine-tuning here. One of the things you can do as you can do is you can just go into the contrast slider and just slide that back and forth or do some sharpening and
some things like that. I think this is a pretty good basic
conversion from our color to our black and white image.
Right now
that we have some of the basics down let's get an image that is more
appealing to us. When I was shooting this wall I notice that there is this lock on
the door that had some really interesting light and so
that's where we're going to go next. So here is our lock. Now this lock were
really gonna get into the nitty-gritty of converting to black and
white.
Notice that we can see details across the board here. So we've
got shadows here we can see detail in the upper right-hand side. I want
this to be a super contrasty image. So the very first thing I'll do is
convert this again of the treatment to black and
white.
Alright this is sorta contrasty it but is not where I
want it to be. The mid tones are exactly where I want
them to be I like where the mid tone values are. So Im not gonna
change the exposure slider at all it. Its in a good place.
But I really want this to be
more contrasty, so I'm gonna turn on my clipping warnings here. I'm gonna
start by taking my blacks way down. So were gonna go all the way down into the eighties maybe about right there. So 88, 89 in that area.
So you can see that I've really taken the blacks down. So we've
got a much more contrasty image but you can see we don't have any
whites in this image really. So let's do that next. So Im gonna take my
whites and I will keep those going higher and higher and
higher.
Until I'm about well, about right there. I'm judging
this based on these red clipping highlights showing up. These little
the warnings. So I want this to be really contrasty and you can see immediately that we have a high contrast image.
But we lost a lotta detail up here. Our shadows have gone away. Our detail on our lock is gone away and
so we need to bring that in. So now let's play with the shadows and the highlights.
So the shadows what I
want to do to bring some detail back in So Im gonna say you know what, shift those to the right
about like that so we're in the forties the upper forties. So you can see that we are just now are starting to get a little bit more detail up here that was completely black. So
we've shifted the shadows from black back into the shadow area. So
we've shifted that zone back.
The next thing I do is play with
the highlights here. Now the highlights what I want to do is I want to take them and i wanna go the
opposite way. So I checked the highlights from the highlight area and shift them
down into the mid tone area. So Im gonna go left and shift those
down.
Down, down, down. So were gonna take those down into the 50s. About like that, and that is affecting this area right
here making it much, much more contrasty. I really like this.
Now one of the issues though I'm having
is I really wanted to see the detail on that lock. Well guess what we can go
up here and we can use an adjustment brush in
Lightroom. I'm gonna tell it to take my shadows all the way up to almost 100
and then I'm going to paint on top of this lock here and that's
shifting those really dark shadows up into almost
the mid tone range. Not quite but we're getting
some of that detail back.
So Ill close that. You can see we
have a really dramatic image. So we went from
something that wasn't very contrasty to do something that's
extremely contrasty. Take a look at that.
Lets see if we can look, I saved a little a snapshot here and you can see where we
went from the color image back to where we were. There. That is a huge, huge difference. Okay last but not least we've gotta
figure out how color impacts our black and white images.
So what we're gonna do is we're gonna go
into this portrait that I made of this gentlemen here in Puno. A really
great guy. Now one of the things that happens
when you go in and you create a black-and-white image from a
color image, is the colors are converted to different luminosities and by default Lightroom determines what
those color mixes are. You can see this down
here in the black and white mix.
So theres sort of this auto setting that
happens automatically. Now we can't go into great detail into
that in this episode but I didn't an episode on it. Its digital photography 1 on 1 : episode 232 :
how color influences black and white photography. I
really suggest that you watch that.
Let's take a look here. If we go over
here there's this little dot. I can click on that. When I do I get the
special icon and then I can click on area in an image and I
can make it darker or brighter.
What I'm doing is I'm
adjusting the luminosity of the orange in my conversion and by doing that I am making this guy's
face darker or brighter. So maybe sometimes I'll
go in here and I'll click this auto conversion. You can see that this is
sort of a dull image, but I can click on his face I can
bring that up. I can click on the background I can
bring that down.
Uou can do all kinds of things, you can make his coat a little bit darker. I can get a much
much better conversion by playing with this mis of colours in my black and white mix. Again make sure you look at Episode 232: how color influences black and white
photography for more information on this but don't forget that that is available
cuz you can really make a big difference to your black and white images. Right
there you go all the different steps for converting images from color to black and white
using the zone, the abbreviated zone system and some color conversion.
Well I hope this
will you help you with your post processing a black-and-white images. I just want to mention that this
video doesn't include everything that we could possibly talk about about black
and white photography but I have some more videos at the Adorama
Learning Center that will help you with this topic. Specifically fifty shades of
black about processing the different mid tones and shadows and
blacks in an image. Understanding stops if that's new to you
and a bunch of other videos so make sure you check out the Adorama Learning Center for more
information and don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss a single episode of Exploring Photography or any
Adorama TV video.
Thanks again for joining me and I'll see you again next
time. Do you want great-looking prints at low-cost? Be sure
to visit our easy to use online printing service. Adorama pixs has professionals who treat your images
with the utmost care that you can count on. For a quick turnaround on photos., Cards or
albums use adoramapix.Com.
abbreviated version of the zone system for shooting black and white photos.
Adorama TV presents Exploring Photography with Mark Wallace.
Hi everybody welcome to another episode of Exploring Photography right here on Adorama TV. I'm Mark Wallace in the city of Puno Peru
and my altimeter says that I'm just shy of 13,000 feet and so Im having
a tough time breathing on this very busy street. Well I was out shooting today with my 5D
Mark III, my 24-70 millimeter lens and there is not a cloud in the sky
there is just a lot of shadows and contrast and that means it's a perfect
setup for shooting black and white photos and
that's what were gonna be talking about in this episode. Shooting black and white photos using
the zone system that was originally created by Ansel Adams.
I'm going to be showing you my
abbreviated version, my interpretation of his own system, specifically on how to do
post-production and get really contrasty, dark, moody images. But before we do that I wanna
talk to you about the contests that Adoramas hosting right now. They have
awesome contests and you can win some great prizes. So click the link can you might win
today.
Now when we're shooting black and white
photos were not actually just shooting black-and-white, were shooting black a bunch of shades of grey, all the way to light grey to white. Now back in the past we only shot film,
there was a system called the zone system that Ansel Adams created and system was used for seeing light for
processing negatives and going into the dark room to process
your prints so you'd get these really high contrast, beautiful prints. We don't talk much about this zone system
these days because well film and digital photography are a little
bit different. But in this episode i wanna talk to you about my abbreviated version
of the zone system.
Instead of using 12 stops of light like
Ansel Adams did, were gonna use 5 zones. Now don't send me an email saying this isnt the zone system. I. Know it's not the zone system, but it's rooted in the zone system.
Well lets talk about those five zones of light. Those zones are black, shadows, mid tones, highlights and whites. Now to understand all of this
stuff better we really need to dive into Lightroom
and take a closer look. So let's do that right now.
To get started let's take a look at
those zones again we have black, our shadows, mid toness, highlights and whites. Now they are not distributed like this in this top bar. If we looked at in evenly distributed from
black all the way to white. A gradient.
The blacks really take up just a
small portion or the very darkest the greys. Our shadows take up a lot
larger portion. The mid tones are right in the middle.Our highlights take up another large portion, and our whites really are the
very very edge, the absolute whites. Now we can
actually see these in our develop module on the histogram.
So take a look here you can see it says blacks, shadows, exposure, now that's mid tones and well explain that later why thats called exposure in the
histogram, and then we have our highlights and our whites. We can see on the histogram we actually have spikes here that shows us that this lines up to what our zones are. We have two spikes over here in the
highlights because we have a highlight here and then I made this little background its a little bit lighter and so that shows up as the second spike. We can also see that these show up here.
We've got exposure or our mid tones. Weve got highlights, shadows, whites and
blacks. We're gonna be using need to adjust our images. Now what we want to do, we
have a goal, and our goal is to create high contrast
black and white images using these zones to manipulate
the total values in our images.
We want blacks that are
absolutely black, and we what whites that are absolutely
white and we want to adjust everything else according to our
artistic vision. The process works like this. First we adjust our mid tones. Then we set our black and white points.
Next we adjust the
shadows and highlights according to our artistic vision. Then we make color
conversion adjustments if we need to and then last, we do some fine-tuning. Well
now that we know the basic steps to our process let's put those steps into action by editing 3 images. The first
image we're going to edit is this color image.
We're going to learn how to identify
where the different zones are and then convert this to a high contrast
black and white image. This will give us the basics of our editing process. The second image is this image of this lock. Were going to do
something I like to call zone shifting, where we set our black and
whites and our mids.
Then were gonna shift some of those shadows and highlights zones into other
zones to create a really high contrast sharp image. Then
lastly we're going to take a look at this image,
where we shift some the color conversions to see how color impacts our black and white conversions. Its really important. Let's get started by editing this
wall.
So I will go over into the developed module. Now before we get started on this I wanna
show you a little trick that Lightroom has for us. So Im gonna open up our chart that we
started with. We need a visual cue to show us where the absolute whites and the absolute blacks are when we begin to edit our images.
Now to
do that what we can do is there are these little triangles up here in the histogram and
this will show us our clipping. So highlight clipping and our shadow
clippings just click on that. Anything that absolutely white will show
up as red. Anything that's is absolutely black will show up as blue.
I can turn it on and off by hitting
the J key. Or by clicking these little triangles in
histogram. I prefer the J key and so that will really
help us out. Alright so let's get started on this
wall here.
The very first thing I want to do is
set my mid tones, and do that, actually very that first
thing I want to do is convert this from a color treatment to a
black-and-white treatment. So let's do that right now. Now the first thing I want to do is to
set my mid tones. Now I do that by using the exposures
slider.
What I can do is if I slide this to the
right my mid tone values will increase and if I slide this to
the left they will decrease. In other words in luminosity they'll get brighter or
darker. That way I can say, you know what do I want this to be my mid tone or this to be my mid tone? If I want this to be my mid tone well, I need
to sort of slide that to the right. If I want this to be by mid tone I need to
slide that to the left to bring that into my mid tone values.
That's the very first thing you want to do
is, say where your midterms are and you get to choose. This is something Ansel
Adams was a big about saying you choose where the middle gray
is and then work your way out from there. So
I want my middle grey to sort of be this bottom area and this door, this
bottom door. I don't wanna lose a lot of details in the blacks up here where the shadows are in the door.
So I'm gonna bring that back pretty close to
where it was because I thought we had a pretty good starting point. So right back to 0. This image we have a
good starting point. Right next let's set the black-and-white
points.
To do that I'm going to press 'J' on my keyboard so I can start bringing
the blacks down to see where that is showing up.
See Im getting a lot of blacks here. Im gonna bring this down so I start seeing
blacks not bleeding into the details in the
shadow areas, because I wanna still see that. So Ill bring that down. Think that's about as much as I want to
do there because its starting to impact the door.
I wanna see those details. Next I'm gonna bring my whites up. You can see on the histogram we don't have any whites. So I will bring those over to the right.
Keep going, keep going, keep going.
Now we start to see some white showing
up in our image and that is really giving us a lot more contrast then we
started with. Right now that I have my black and white point set, I will turn off
those warning labels. Now Im gonna start working with my shadows. Up here in this
corner we don't really see much in the door and so what I'll do here is Im going to take the shadows and shift them to the
right to bring the more into the mid tone area.
Now we're seeing some of those values show up here. We can actually see the details in the door and up here on the wall and then I'm
going to play with the highlights just a bit. Bring those down just a hair, maybe a
bit more. So Im gonna see a little bit more of the
detail in this wall.
That looks pretty good. Now im I need to
do some fine-tuning here. One of the things you can do as you can do is you can just go into the contrast slider and just slide that back and forth or do some sharpening and
some things like that. I think this is a pretty good basic
conversion from our color to our black and white image.
Right now
that we have some of the basics down let's get an image that is more
appealing to us. When I was shooting this wall I notice that there is this lock on
the door that had some really interesting light and so
that's where we're going to go next. So here is our lock. Now this lock were
really gonna get into the nitty-gritty of converting to black and
white.
Notice that we can see details across the board here. So we've
got shadows here we can see detail in the upper right-hand side. I want
this to be a super contrasty image. So the very first thing I'll do is
convert this again of the treatment to black and
white.
Alright this is sorta contrasty it but is not where I
want it to be. The mid tones are exactly where I want
them to be I like where the mid tone values are. So Im not gonna
change the exposure slider at all it. Its in a good place.
But I really want this to be
more contrasty, so I'm gonna turn on my clipping warnings here. I'm gonna
start by taking my blacks way down. So were gonna go all the way down into the eighties maybe about right there. So 88, 89 in that area.
So you can see that I've really taken the blacks down. So we've
got a much more contrasty image but you can see we don't have any
whites in this image really. So let's do that next. So Im gonna take my
whites and I will keep those going higher and higher and
higher.
Until I'm about well, about right there. I'm judging
this based on these red clipping highlights showing up. These little
the warnings. So I want this to be really contrasty and you can see immediately that we have a high contrast image.
But we lost a lotta detail up here. Our shadows have gone away. Our detail on our lock is gone away and
so we need to bring that in. So now let's play with the shadows and the highlights.
So the shadows what I
want to do to bring some detail back in So Im gonna say you know what, shift those to the right
about like that so we're in the forties the upper forties. So you can see that we are just now are starting to get a little bit more detail up here that was completely black. So
we've shifted the shadows from black back into the shadow area. So
we've shifted that zone back.
The next thing I do is play with
the highlights here. Now the highlights what I want to do is I want to take them and i wanna go the
opposite way. So I checked the highlights from the highlight area and shift them
down into the mid tone area. So Im gonna go left and shift those
down.
Down, down, down. So were gonna take those down into the 50s. About like that, and that is affecting this area right
here making it much, much more contrasty. I really like this.
Now one of the issues though I'm having
is I really wanted to see the detail on that lock. Well guess what we can go
up here and we can use an adjustment brush in
Lightroom. I'm gonna tell it to take my shadows all the way up to almost 100
and then I'm going to paint on top of this lock here and that's
shifting those really dark shadows up into almost
the mid tone range. Not quite but we're getting
some of that detail back.
So Ill close that. You can see we
have a really dramatic image. So we went from
something that wasn't very contrasty to do something that's
extremely contrasty. Take a look at that.
Lets see if we can look, I saved a little a snapshot here and you can see where we
went from the color image back to where we were. There. That is a huge, huge difference. Okay last but not least we've gotta
figure out how color impacts our black and white images.
So what we're gonna do is we're gonna go
into this portrait that I made of this gentlemen here in Puno. A really
great guy. Now one of the things that happens
when you go in and you create a black-and-white image from a
color image, is the colors are converted to different luminosities and by default Lightroom determines what
those color mixes are. You can see this down
here in the black and white mix.
So theres sort of this auto setting that
happens automatically. Now we can't go into great detail into
that in this episode but I didn't an episode on it. Its digital photography 1 on 1 : episode 232 :
how color influences black and white photography. I
really suggest that you watch that.
Let's take a look here. If we go over
here there's this little dot. I can click on that. When I do I get the
special icon and then I can click on area in an image and I
can make it darker or brighter.
What I'm doing is I'm
adjusting the luminosity of the orange in my conversion and by doing that I am making this guy's
face darker or brighter. So maybe sometimes I'll
go in here and I'll click this auto conversion. You can see that this is
sort of a dull image, but I can click on his face I can
bring that up. I can click on the background I can
bring that down.
Uou can do all kinds of things, you can make his coat a little bit darker. I can get a much
much better conversion by playing with this mis of colours in my black and white mix. Again make sure you look at Episode 232: how color influences black and white
photography for more information on this but don't forget that that is available
cuz you can really make a big difference to your black and white images. Right
there you go all the different steps for converting images from color to black and white
using the zone, the abbreviated zone system and some color conversion.
Well I hope this
will you help you with your post processing a black-and-white images. I just want to mention that this
video doesn't include everything that we could possibly talk about about black
and white photography but I have some more videos at the Adorama
Learning Center that will help you with this topic. Specifically fifty shades of
black about processing the different mid tones and shadows and
blacks in an image. Understanding stops if that's new to you
and a bunch of other videos so make sure you check out the Adorama Learning Center for more
information and don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss a single episode of Exploring Photography or any
Adorama TV video.
Thanks again for joining me and I'll see you again next
time. Do you want great-looking prints at low-cost? Be sure
to visit our easy to use online printing service. Adorama pixs has professionals who treat your images
with the utmost care that you can count on. For a quick turnaround on photos., Cards or
albums use adoramapix.Com.
Tuesday, December 18, 2018
Using the Histogram for Better Exposure Exploring Photography with Mark Wallace
Hi everybody welcome to another episode of Exploring Photography right here on AdoramaTV, brought to you by Adorama. It's the camera store that has everything for photographers like you and me. In this episode I want to talk to you about the histogram and how you can use it, to make sure you're getting the correct exposure and to avoid dynamic range issues. In other words, how does the histogram help us in real life shooting from day to day? Well first, let's talk about what the histogram is.
When we take a picture our camera is capturing not only color but tonal values. In other words, absolute black, to middle gray, to absolute white and everything in between. What the histogram does is, it plots all those values on a scale so we can see how many black pixels or dots do we have in our picture, how many gray pixels, how many white pixels? We can use that, to see if our exposure is correct, or if we have issues with things either too bright or too dark. In other words, "dynamic range".
Now, to help understand this let's think about a classroom. So we've got a bunch of students sitting in desks. Some of the students are pretty smart. They're going to get A grades.
Some of them are going to get B's, some C's and then we're going to have some kids that aren't so disciplined. They're going to get D's and some will fail the class, they're going to get F's. We can take those grades, those values, and we can plot them on a scale and show the distribution of those values. So the A's will go here, the B's will go here, C's, D's and our F's.
The important thing to understand is, it doesn't really matter where those students are sitting in the classroom. Doesn't matter if the A students are on the left and the F students are on the right, it doesn't work that way. It's just showing the distribution of our values. The A's go on the left column the B's next to it, all the way over to the F.
In the same way when we take a picture, it's not showing us what the different values from left to right in our scene, it's just showing us on the left-hand side of that histogram that's how many black pixels we have in our camera and how many middle grays and how many whites. To illustrate this point, I found this wall here. There's a black portion and a white portion but watch what happens if I take a picture of just this white door. Watch what happens.
So I'll take a picture here and now I'm going to take a picture of this black section right here. I'll do that. Okay Now if we look at these two images side by side, you'll see that they are both gray. Now the reason for that is the camera's through the lens metering, is trying to average all these tones out to get middle gray but if it's white? It's going to do something that's wrong, it's going to make it gray and if it's totally black it's also going to be wrong, it's going to overexpose and make it gray instead of black.
Watch what happens if I take these pictures together. So I'll put the black door and the white wall together and now you can see that we have both black and white. So how do we know in a real-life situation if our camera was getting something wrong? Well, that's where the histogram comes in. So if I take a look at my histogram for the black wall, you can see clearly that it's right in the center.
So my histogram is telling me this is overexposed. If I look at the white wall you can see again that my histogram is showing me all the values are right in the center saying, hey this is underexposed. So using that histogram I can see if my camera is getting my exposure correct. Now, we're not going to ever be shooting, I hope, just a black wall or a white door.
We need to look and see how this is going to work in a real life situation. So let's do that next. Here are some tiles that have caught my attention here on this busy street and what I want to do is take a picture of this. I also want to get some of this pipe here because it's got some texture and I really like that.
Now because these are almost white, I think my exposure might be off, just like that white door. So I'm going to frame this up just a little bit here, make sure I'm all in focus. I'm using Aperture Priority mode, and I'm shooting and when I look at my histogram here I can see that it is underexposed. This on the histogram should show up in the highlight area but it's showing up right in the middle as middle gray, so just like that white door, this is underexposed.
So what I'm going to do is, I'm going to use Exposure Compensation. I'm going to adjust my exposure by about a stop and then I'm going to shoot again. This is going to slow down my shutter speed. Now take a look.
Now that is showing up in the correct area of my histogram, right in the highlight area toward the right side of the histogram and that is the correct exposure. So the histogram is going to let me know if this is correct or not without having to go into post-production to make adjustments. Our histogram can help us understand if we have any exposure issues, specifically dynamic range issues. Now, dynamic range is our camera's ability to capture the darkest of darks, to the brightest of brights and how much of that we can capture is our cameras dynamic range.
If you have something that's a little bit too bright or a little bit too dark it will fall out of the exposure. In other words, it's going to have no detail in the brights or no detail in the darks. We don't want that and so our histogram can tell us if we have an issue. So behind me I have sort of a bland scene but it's perfect for illustrating this.
I'm going to turn around here, I've got this little patch of sky up there. So I'm going to take a picture of this little grove of trees here. When I do that I can look at my histogram and my histogram is telling me that I have an issue over on the right-hand side of my histogram, there's a spike. We have our whites that are climbing the wall.
In other words, there's a spike to the right and that's an indication that something is overexposed. So if I zoom in, I can see that clearly the sky is way overexposed. My histogram is telling me I've got an issue with that part of the sky so I can either shoot a HDR image or shoot at a different time of day, which is probably the best solution, or just shoot from a different angle, or shoot something else. Right now my histogram is saying if you shoot that, right now, I've got an issue.
Our histogram can also make sure that we have a proper exposure and tell us if we have any issues. Now check this out, so Salim here who's been doing some B-roll and camera operating, so he's been running the video camera for me, he has volunteered to be the model today. So I'm going to take a picture of him. Behind us we have sort of, a dark background we have some overcast light right here, really nice soft light so I.
Want to see if this is going to give us a proper exposure. So I'm shooting at f/1.4, ISO 200 at 1/750th sec. Salim, look right into the lens here. Take one more shot, and then what I'm looking at, on the histogram, is to see if I have any issues.
But my histogram shows me that I have room to the left and room to the right and all the values in between are falling in the middle of that histogram and that means, that I have nothing in this scene that's absolute black, nothing that's absolute white. That means in post-production if I want to tweak this to make it a little bit more contrasted, I've got room to grow. This is a good exposure. Nothing's climbing the wall to the right or the left.
I can just look and see that everything is good. There you have it, the histogram can help you when you're out shooting to make sure you get a proper exposure and to make sure you avoid dynamic range issues. If you want to know more about the histogram specifically for post-production check out the Adorama Learning Center, there's all kinds of things, in fact, one of my favorites is my video about using the zone system for black and white photography, make sure you check that out. There's something else I need to tell you, I'm starting to write articles every other week for the Adorama Learning Center so check them out.
It's absolutely free and also don't forget to subscribe to AdoramaTV, that way you don't miss a single thing. Thank you so much for joining me and I will see you again next time..
When we take a picture our camera is capturing not only color but tonal values. In other words, absolute black, to middle gray, to absolute white and everything in between. What the histogram does is, it plots all those values on a scale so we can see how many black pixels or dots do we have in our picture, how many gray pixels, how many white pixels? We can use that, to see if our exposure is correct, or if we have issues with things either too bright or too dark. In other words, "dynamic range".
Now, to help understand this let's think about a classroom. So we've got a bunch of students sitting in desks. Some of the students are pretty smart. They're going to get A grades.
Some of them are going to get B's, some C's and then we're going to have some kids that aren't so disciplined. They're going to get D's and some will fail the class, they're going to get F's. We can take those grades, those values, and we can plot them on a scale and show the distribution of those values. So the A's will go here, the B's will go here, C's, D's and our F's.
The important thing to understand is, it doesn't really matter where those students are sitting in the classroom. Doesn't matter if the A students are on the left and the F students are on the right, it doesn't work that way. It's just showing the distribution of our values. The A's go on the left column the B's next to it, all the way over to the F.
In the same way when we take a picture, it's not showing us what the different values from left to right in our scene, it's just showing us on the left-hand side of that histogram that's how many black pixels we have in our camera and how many middle grays and how many whites. To illustrate this point, I found this wall here. There's a black portion and a white portion but watch what happens if I take a picture of just this white door. Watch what happens.
So I'll take a picture here and now I'm going to take a picture of this black section right here. I'll do that. Okay Now if we look at these two images side by side, you'll see that they are both gray. Now the reason for that is the camera's through the lens metering, is trying to average all these tones out to get middle gray but if it's white? It's going to do something that's wrong, it's going to make it gray and if it's totally black it's also going to be wrong, it's going to overexpose and make it gray instead of black.
Watch what happens if I take these pictures together. So I'll put the black door and the white wall together and now you can see that we have both black and white. So how do we know in a real-life situation if our camera was getting something wrong? Well, that's where the histogram comes in. So if I take a look at my histogram for the black wall, you can see clearly that it's right in the center.
So my histogram is telling me this is overexposed. If I look at the white wall you can see again that my histogram is showing me all the values are right in the center saying, hey this is underexposed. So using that histogram I can see if my camera is getting my exposure correct. Now, we're not going to ever be shooting, I hope, just a black wall or a white door.
We need to look and see how this is going to work in a real life situation. So let's do that next. Here are some tiles that have caught my attention here on this busy street and what I want to do is take a picture of this. I also want to get some of this pipe here because it's got some texture and I really like that.
Now because these are almost white, I think my exposure might be off, just like that white door. So I'm going to frame this up just a little bit here, make sure I'm all in focus. I'm using Aperture Priority mode, and I'm shooting and when I look at my histogram here I can see that it is underexposed. This on the histogram should show up in the highlight area but it's showing up right in the middle as middle gray, so just like that white door, this is underexposed.
So what I'm going to do is, I'm going to use Exposure Compensation. I'm going to adjust my exposure by about a stop and then I'm going to shoot again. This is going to slow down my shutter speed. Now take a look.
Now that is showing up in the correct area of my histogram, right in the highlight area toward the right side of the histogram and that is the correct exposure. So the histogram is going to let me know if this is correct or not without having to go into post-production to make adjustments. Our histogram can help us understand if we have any exposure issues, specifically dynamic range issues. Now, dynamic range is our camera's ability to capture the darkest of darks, to the brightest of brights and how much of that we can capture is our cameras dynamic range.
If you have something that's a little bit too bright or a little bit too dark it will fall out of the exposure. In other words, it's going to have no detail in the brights or no detail in the darks. We don't want that and so our histogram can tell us if we have an issue. So behind me I have sort of a bland scene but it's perfect for illustrating this.
I'm going to turn around here, I've got this little patch of sky up there. So I'm going to take a picture of this little grove of trees here. When I do that I can look at my histogram and my histogram is telling me that I have an issue over on the right-hand side of my histogram, there's a spike. We have our whites that are climbing the wall.
In other words, there's a spike to the right and that's an indication that something is overexposed. So if I zoom in, I can see that clearly the sky is way overexposed. My histogram is telling me I've got an issue with that part of the sky so I can either shoot a HDR image or shoot at a different time of day, which is probably the best solution, or just shoot from a different angle, or shoot something else. Right now my histogram is saying if you shoot that, right now, I've got an issue.
Our histogram can also make sure that we have a proper exposure and tell us if we have any issues. Now check this out, so Salim here who's been doing some B-roll and camera operating, so he's been running the video camera for me, he has volunteered to be the model today. So I'm going to take a picture of him. Behind us we have sort of, a dark background we have some overcast light right here, really nice soft light so I.
Want to see if this is going to give us a proper exposure. So I'm shooting at f/1.4, ISO 200 at 1/750th sec. Salim, look right into the lens here. Take one more shot, and then what I'm looking at, on the histogram, is to see if I have any issues.
But my histogram shows me that I have room to the left and room to the right and all the values in between are falling in the middle of that histogram and that means, that I have nothing in this scene that's absolute black, nothing that's absolute white. That means in post-production if I want to tweak this to make it a little bit more contrasted, I've got room to grow. This is a good exposure. Nothing's climbing the wall to the right or the left.
I can just look and see that everything is good. There you have it, the histogram can help you when you're out shooting to make sure you get a proper exposure and to make sure you avoid dynamic range issues. If you want to know more about the histogram specifically for post-production check out the Adorama Learning Center, there's all kinds of things, in fact, one of my favorites is my video about using the zone system for black and white photography, make sure you check that out. There's something else I need to tell you, I'm starting to write articles every other week for the Adorama Learning Center so check them out.
It's absolutely free and also don't forget to subscribe to AdoramaTV, that way you don't miss a single thing. Thank you so much for joining me and I will see you again next time..
Monday, December 10, 2018
Understanding Exposure The Exposure Triangle with Mark Wallace
Hi everybody I'm Mark Wallace, in this
episode I'm going to explain the exposure triangle, which is the foundation for everything in photography. AdoramaTV presents, Exploring Photography with Mark Wallace. Hi everybody, welcome to this episode of Exploring Photography right here on AdoramaTV, brought to you by Adorama its the absolute best camera store in the world, in fact anything you see in our videos
you can buy them at Adorama, check them out at Adorama.Com. Well in this episode we're going to be talking to you about the exposure triangle, it's
really the foundation for everything about photography, once
you understand how the exposure triangle works you're going to be able to make sure you get a great
exposure but you're also going to learn how to take control of all the buttons and dials on your camera and what they do and why
they're there, but you will also get creative control of your photographs, so you can tell a better
story and so that's what the exposure triangle is all about.
In fact we're going to be spending a
few episodes on the exposure triangle, we're going to break it
down piece by piece so you can really get a handle on all
the stuff that it does. Well when we think about exposure a lot of the times
we think about images being too bright or too dark but
there's more to it than that, we can have images that are noisy or images that are
blurry are really nice and crisp, or images they have lots of stuff
in focus or just the one thing that and focus or maybe its totally out of focus altogether
and the exposure triangle helps us understand how all of that works together and the exposure triangle is made of three things and these three things never change
so once you have these down you're going to be good to go forever so don't fret it's very, very simple. In the
exposure triangle we have the aperture, the shutter, and ISO. And the three things work together
to give us a perfect exposure.
I want to start to explain this
by looking at the aperture, now the aperture is inside your camera
lens, in fact if I take this lens off my camera and we can look at
this really close, I can move this in and out and you can see clearly that
the aperture is just this thing that let's light, more light in or less light in, its
growing and shrinking. So our aperture is in our lands and I can make it really big or
really small by just changing aperture value. Now our aperture values have
numbers like f/22, f/16, f/11, f/8 and the smaller the number
the larger the opening, and the larger the number the
smaller the opening, I know that seems backwards but that's how it is, f/16
is really small f/1.4 Is really big now it's not
important that you know what those numbers mean right now, we're going to explain that in a future episode right now it's important to understand
that a big number means a small opening and a small number means a big
opening, I guarantee we're going to make that make sense free in a future
episode, but just remember a big opening means lots of light is
coming through and the small opening means not
very much light is coming through so we've got a big number not very much light because its a small hole, a small number means a lot to light is coming through
because it's a big opening. Our aperture controls the quantity of light
coming into our camera so that little thing in
our lens it can be open or closed, its letting a different quantity of
light come into our camera.
Well there's another thing in
our camera, everyone already I'm sure knows about this, it's called the shutter. Now the shutter can go at a
really fast speed, in fact we'll look at this there's the shutter, BAM, when I turn on my camera it
goes wham really, really fast or I can
slow that down that was at about 4,000th of a second, I can
do all way down to 500th of a second even down to a 30th of a second, and I can get a
lot slower, half a second, one second all the way down to 30 seconds, even a few minutes, so
just like the aperture where it allows lots of light and not very
much light, the shutter does sort of the same thing, with the really fast
shutter, not very much light is coming into our camera, a really slow shutter, lots of light is coming into our camera. So we've got
these two things the aperture that can let in lots of light or not very much
light, and the shutter that can let in lots of light or not very much light and those two
things have to be balanced on sort of like a scale, so if this on is letting in a lot of light well then this one needs to restrict so we don't get too
much light, or of this one is letting in not very much light we need open this one up
so we get more light, so there's always a play in those two
things trying to figure out how much light to come in and we're
want to talk about how our camera figures that out in a little bit. The third thing in our
exposure triangle is called ISO, an ISO controls the sensitivity of our camera to light.
Now there's more to
it than that and a lot of those really geeky guys that know lots of science are always going to post a comment and say no
it's about gain and all this stuff, but it's really easy to remember our ISO controls how sensitive our
camera is to light much like our eyes in a dark theater, when
we go into a dark theater at first we can't really see, but as our
eyes adjust to the darkness then we can see just fine we can, but we can't see as
well as we can in bright daylight. The same thing is true of ISO, when
you have a low ISO number like 100 or 200 our camera isn't very sensitive to light
and so we have to either open up our aperture really wide or make
a slow shutter speed or have to be a really bright area, a really
bright day and as we increase our ISO our camera becomes more
and more sensitive to light the problem is we also get noise in our
images so there is a penalty for having a high
ISO. So we have those three things, the aperture more
and less light, the shutter more and less light, and the ISO more and less sensitive to light which is sort of the same thing as more or
less light. Getting those three things in balance we have something that's built into
almost every modern camera and that's called a meter.
Now think about
the meter sort of as a judge, the meter is looking at the
settings of our cameras and saying hey if you set the aperture to this wide I've got to figure out how fast the shutter
speed should be, or if you set the shutter speed in this fast I've got to
figure out how big or small the aperture should be, so
the meter is judging things for us and something
thats very important to note just because two settings work, or three
settings work in one situation doesn't mean it'll work in a different
situation because light is constantly changing and that's why we need a meter in our
camera. Alright lets put all of this stuff
together, now that we know about the three things ISO aperture and
shutter and the judge or the meter that's built into our
camera, how does all on this work? Well it's pretty simple, normally on the exposure triangle you set two
things and our camera figures out the third
using its meter so you'll set either the ISO and
the aperture and the camera will figure out the
correct shutter speed or you'll set the ISO and shutter speed and
the camera will figure out the correct aperture value and it does that using
the built-in light meter. Now the question you're asking
me is, well which one do I start with, do I set the
aperture or should I set the shutter? Well it really depends on the kind of
photographer that you are, traditionally scenic photographers and
portrait photographers are more concerned with the aperture
than they are with the shutter and the reason for that is the aperture helps us
control how much of an image is in focus and scenic photographers want
everything in focus, from the front to the very end so they want a small
aperture value and the shutter can do whatever it wants to do because the
camera is on a tripod, and portrait photographers want sort of the
opposite of that. They want a nice clear image if somebody's face but they want the background to fall out
of focus and the aperture helps us do that so scenic photographers and portrait photographers care about the aperture, while the people that deal with motion,
specifically sports photographers they care about the shutter because the
shutter controls motion it either freezes motion or shows motion
because the shutter controls the the duration of time, how long light
comes into a camera, so if you want to shoot somebody dunking a
basketball or a race car or a bicycle going by you care about your shutter speed and the
aperture can do whatever it wants to do and you're probably still going to be happy.
Thats the beginning point we're going to
delve into both of those things in future episodes in fact we're going to delve into all of
this over a series of episodes, the next episode we're going to talk about depth of
field in the aperture and all the things that it does and how the aperture
affects your lens choices so you'll learn how to buy the proper lens
for your needs, then we're going to talk about the shutter speeds, we're going to understand stops, how everything works together we're going to
understand metering, we're going to talk about how the camera meters light and sometimes it gets it
wrong, and we're going to tell you how to get it right every single time. I'm going to tell you how to shoot in manual
mode using the exposure triangle and a lot more so stick with us, we have a lot to come in Exploring
Photography over the few episodes. Well thanks for joining me for
this episode of Exploring Photography and don't forget everything that I'm talking
about today you can read more about that at the Adorama Learning Center, its absolutely free so
check that out and AdoramaTV is absolutely free so click
the subscribe button because I know you don't want to miss a
single episode. Thanks for joining me this week and I'll see you again next time! Do you want great-looking prints at low-cost? Be sure to visit our easy to
use, online printing service.
Adoramapix has professionals who treat
your images with the utmost care that you can count
on. For a quick turnaround on photos, cards or albums use Adoramapix.Com.
episode I'm going to explain the exposure triangle, which is the foundation for everything in photography. AdoramaTV presents, Exploring Photography with Mark Wallace. Hi everybody, welcome to this episode of Exploring Photography right here on AdoramaTV, brought to you by Adorama its the absolute best camera store in the world, in fact anything you see in our videos
you can buy them at Adorama, check them out at Adorama.Com. Well in this episode we're going to be talking to you about the exposure triangle, it's
really the foundation for everything about photography, once
you understand how the exposure triangle works you're going to be able to make sure you get a great
exposure but you're also going to learn how to take control of all the buttons and dials on your camera and what they do and why
they're there, but you will also get creative control of your photographs, so you can tell a better
story and so that's what the exposure triangle is all about.
In fact we're going to be spending a
few episodes on the exposure triangle, we're going to break it
down piece by piece so you can really get a handle on all
the stuff that it does. Well when we think about exposure a lot of the times
we think about images being too bright or too dark but
there's more to it than that, we can have images that are noisy or images that are
blurry are really nice and crisp, or images they have lots of stuff
in focus or just the one thing that and focus or maybe its totally out of focus altogether
and the exposure triangle helps us understand how all of that works together and the exposure triangle is made of three things and these three things never change
so once you have these down you're going to be good to go forever so don't fret it's very, very simple. In the
exposure triangle we have the aperture, the shutter, and ISO. And the three things work together
to give us a perfect exposure.
I want to start to explain this
by looking at the aperture, now the aperture is inside your camera
lens, in fact if I take this lens off my camera and we can look at
this really close, I can move this in and out and you can see clearly that
the aperture is just this thing that let's light, more light in or less light in, its
growing and shrinking. So our aperture is in our lands and I can make it really big or
really small by just changing aperture value. Now our aperture values have
numbers like f/22, f/16, f/11, f/8 and the smaller the number
the larger the opening, and the larger the number the
smaller the opening, I know that seems backwards but that's how it is, f/16
is really small f/1.4 Is really big now it's not
important that you know what those numbers mean right now, we're going to explain that in a future episode right now it's important to understand
that a big number means a small opening and a small number means a big
opening, I guarantee we're going to make that make sense free in a future
episode, but just remember a big opening means lots of light is
coming through and the small opening means not
very much light is coming through so we've got a big number not very much light because its a small hole, a small number means a lot to light is coming through
because it's a big opening. Our aperture controls the quantity of light
coming into our camera so that little thing in
our lens it can be open or closed, its letting a different quantity of
light come into our camera.
Well there's another thing in
our camera, everyone already I'm sure knows about this, it's called the shutter. Now the shutter can go at a
really fast speed, in fact we'll look at this there's the shutter, BAM, when I turn on my camera it
goes wham really, really fast or I can
slow that down that was at about 4,000th of a second, I can
do all way down to 500th of a second even down to a 30th of a second, and I can get a
lot slower, half a second, one second all the way down to 30 seconds, even a few minutes, so
just like the aperture where it allows lots of light and not very
much light, the shutter does sort of the same thing, with the really fast
shutter, not very much light is coming into our camera, a really slow shutter, lots of light is coming into our camera. So we've got
these two things the aperture that can let in lots of light or not very much
light, and the shutter that can let in lots of light or not very much light and those two
things have to be balanced on sort of like a scale, so if this on is letting in a lot of light well then this one needs to restrict so we don't get too
much light, or of this one is letting in not very much light we need open this one up
so we get more light, so there's always a play in those two
things trying to figure out how much light to come in and we're
want to talk about how our camera figures that out in a little bit. The third thing in our
exposure triangle is called ISO, an ISO controls the sensitivity of our camera to light.
Now there's more to
it than that and a lot of those really geeky guys that know lots of science are always going to post a comment and say no
it's about gain and all this stuff, but it's really easy to remember our ISO controls how sensitive our
camera is to light much like our eyes in a dark theater, when
we go into a dark theater at first we can't really see, but as our
eyes adjust to the darkness then we can see just fine we can, but we can't see as
well as we can in bright daylight. The same thing is true of ISO, when
you have a low ISO number like 100 or 200 our camera isn't very sensitive to light
and so we have to either open up our aperture really wide or make
a slow shutter speed or have to be a really bright area, a really
bright day and as we increase our ISO our camera becomes more
and more sensitive to light the problem is we also get noise in our
images so there is a penalty for having a high
ISO. So we have those three things, the aperture more
and less light, the shutter more and less light, and the ISO more and less sensitive to light which is sort of the same thing as more or
less light. Getting those three things in balance we have something that's built into
almost every modern camera and that's called a meter.
Now think about
the meter sort of as a judge, the meter is looking at the
settings of our cameras and saying hey if you set the aperture to this wide I've got to figure out how fast the shutter
speed should be, or if you set the shutter speed in this fast I've got to
figure out how big or small the aperture should be, so
the meter is judging things for us and something
thats very important to note just because two settings work, or three
settings work in one situation doesn't mean it'll work in a different
situation because light is constantly changing and that's why we need a meter in our
camera. Alright lets put all of this stuff
together, now that we know about the three things ISO aperture and
shutter and the judge or the meter that's built into our
camera, how does all on this work? Well it's pretty simple, normally on the exposure triangle you set two
things and our camera figures out the third
using its meter so you'll set either the ISO and
the aperture and the camera will figure out the
correct shutter speed or you'll set the ISO and shutter speed and
the camera will figure out the correct aperture value and it does that using
the built-in light meter. Now the question you're asking
me is, well which one do I start with, do I set the
aperture or should I set the shutter? Well it really depends on the kind of
photographer that you are, traditionally scenic photographers and
portrait photographers are more concerned with the aperture
than they are with the shutter and the reason for that is the aperture helps us
control how much of an image is in focus and scenic photographers want
everything in focus, from the front to the very end so they want a small
aperture value and the shutter can do whatever it wants to do because the
camera is on a tripod, and portrait photographers want sort of the
opposite of that. They want a nice clear image if somebody's face but they want the background to fall out
of focus and the aperture helps us do that so scenic photographers and portrait photographers care about the aperture, while the people that deal with motion,
specifically sports photographers they care about the shutter because the
shutter controls motion it either freezes motion or shows motion
because the shutter controls the the duration of time, how long light
comes into a camera, so if you want to shoot somebody dunking a
basketball or a race car or a bicycle going by you care about your shutter speed and the
aperture can do whatever it wants to do and you're probably still going to be happy.
Thats the beginning point we're going to
delve into both of those things in future episodes in fact we're going to delve into all of
this over a series of episodes, the next episode we're going to talk about depth of
field in the aperture and all the things that it does and how the aperture
affects your lens choices so you'll learn how to buy the proper lens
for your needs, then we're going to talk about the shutter speeds, we're going to understand stops, how everything works together we're going to
understand metering, we're going to talk about how the camera meters light and sometimes it gets it
wrong, and we're going to tell you how to get it right every single time. I'm going to tell you how to shoot in manual
mode using the exposure triangle and a lot more so stick with us, we have a lot to come in Exploring
Photography over the few episodes. Well thanks for joining me for
this episode of Exploring Photography and don't forget everything that I'm talking
about today you can read more about that at the Adorama Learning Center, its absolutely free so
check that out and AdoramaTV is absolutely free so click
the subscribe button because I know you don't want to miss a
single episode. Thanks for joining me this week and I'll see you again next time! Do you want great-looking prints at low-cost? Be sure to visit our easy to
use, online printing service.
Adoramapix has professionals who treat
your images with the utmost care that you can count
on. For a quick turnaround on photos, cards or albums use Adoramapix.Com.
Sunday, December 2, 2018
Tripod Features for Digital PhotographyQuick Release for Tripods
It's got some features that I like. One of
those is the ability to remove the camera mount and this will screw right in after you've
removed it to the bottom of your camera. Just like this. So, that if you need to take a
picture that's not on the tripod, you don't have to unscrew it every time.
You can just
have this quick mount setup that will lock in and hold it motionless like that. And, it will quickly release like
that. So, in my opinion that's important. And, some tripods you can get more heads and
some you can buy them with extra heads already in the box.
And, this is a good feature. I
recommend it highly..
those is the ability to remove the camera mount and this will screw right in after you've
removed it to the bottom of your camera. Just like this. So, that if you need to take a
picture that's not on the tripod, you don't have to unscrew it every time.
You can just
have this quick mount setup that will lock in and hold it motionless like that. And, it will quickly release like
that. So, in my opinion that's important. And, some tripods you can get more heads and
some you can buy them with extra heads already in the box.
And, this is a good feature. I
recommend it highly..
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)