Review Digital Camera World 10-10-2013

Digital Camera World

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High contrast photography: how to expose a forest scene in strong light Oct 9th 2013, 23:01, by jmeyer Venturing into the woods to capture the first light streaming through the canopy is one of the special moments in photography. There’s a true feeling of satisfaction in shooting forest photography, particularly on bright autumn mornings, but it also presents its share of challenges – namely, how to get a good exposure. In this tutorial we explain how to set up your camera to shoot high-contrast photography, and then edit your bracketed exposures on the computer. To demonstrate the challenges of high-contrast photography, we visited Stockhill Woods in Somerset's Mendip hills for our shoot – you'll need to find a bit of forest where the canopy isn't too dense, so the sunlight can get through, and which has attractive ground cover. You'll need to check a few things before you head out for your shoot. First up you'll need to keep an eye on the weather: you'll want a mostly clear sky, although if there's a bit of early morning mist this will add some atmosphere to your image. Second, you need to check the sunrise time, as you want to be on location, set up and ready to shoot before the sun appears. And third, make sure that you know where the sun is going to rise, so you can work up your composition beforehand; we all know the sun rises in the east, but the exact position actually varies between northeast and southeast, depending on the time of year. Because our sunrise scene will inevitably have very high contrast it would be virtually impossible to capture the full range of tones, from highlights to shadows, in a single exposure, so we'll shoot three bracketed exposures, then combine the images in Elements. How to set up your camera to shoot high-contrast photography 01 Location and timing Find a piece of woodland where the trees are closely spaced, but the canopy isn't too dense – tall pine trees are ideal, as the tall, thin trunks allow plenty of sunlight to get through. Choose a morning when there are no clouds to diffuse the light, so that you get attractive rays of sunshine. Before our shoot we scouted the location, and made sure we knew where the sun was going to rise – a compass comes in handy here!   02 Tripod and remote You'll need a tripod because you'll be shooting relatively long exposures, and also because you'll be bracketing your exposures (see step 3), so you want your images to align perfectly when you combine them in Elements. When you're shooting long exposures you need to avoid touching the camera, as this can create vibrations that will cause blurred images. It's useful to have a remote shutter release to fire the shutter, but if you don't have one you can use the self-timer mode on your DSLR.   03 Exposure bracketing As our scene includes both direct sunlight and deep shadows the contrast range is vast, so we'll use exposure bracketing to capture three shots two stops apart to capture the full tonal range. To set this up go to the main menu and select the exposure compensation/AEB option. Move the markers two stops apart; this means that, for example, if the 'standard' exposure is 1/4 sec at f/16 and ISO100, the camera will take the subsequent exposures at 1/15 sec and 1 sec.   04 Aperture and ISO Set your camera to Aperture Priority (Av) mode, and set the aperture to f/16; in addition to ensuring front-to-back sharpness the narrow aperture will also create a starburst effect in the rays of sunlight, caused by light diffraction around the aperture blades in the lens. Keep the ISO at 100 for maximum image quality. In low light at these settings the camera is likely to select a shutter speed between 1/30 sec and 3 secs.   05 Focusing Focus the scene manually using Live View mode. Switch your lens to Manual focus, then on the rear LCD zoom in on the closest tree in the foreground of the scene. As we're shooting at f/16 and using a wide-angle lens we can be confident that if this area is sharp then our image is going to be sharp from front to back. Rotate the focusing ring until the zoomed-in area on the LCD screen is at its sharpest.   06 Make the most of the light Once the sun is up you'll have about an hour of good light, providing the sun stays out; as the sun gets higher the effect won't look as good, so you need to work as fast as you can. As we've set up our camera to bracket-expose the scene you'll either need to press the remote three times to take a set of  images, or select the Continuous drive mode and press and hold the shutter button to take the three shots. PAGE 1 – How to set up your camera to shoot high-contrast photography PAGE 2 – How to blend exposures to make a high-contrast photography composite: steps 1-5 PAGE 3 – How to blend exposures to make a high-contrast photography composite: steps 6-10 READ MORE 10 common exposure problems every photographer faces (and how to fix them) Creative spot metering: how professionals expose in high-contrast conditions Golden Hour Photography: tips for making magical landscapes at dawn Autumn photography: 24 tips for taking awesome pictures of Fall Live View Explained: what you need to know about your alternative viewfinder Oct 9th 2013, 10:42, by jmeyer Your camera’s Live View feature is an invaluable alternative to the viewfinder, especially when focusing manually or using strange camera angles. In this tutorial we explain what goes on within your camera to make Live View work, the benefits of using it – and when to use it maximise its advantages. Options and controls for using Live View. This is a Nikon D4, but the controls are similar on most cameras. Click to see the larger image. Digital SLRs are based on an optical system using mirrors and prisms that shows you the scene you're photographing in the viewfinder. But today's cameras can also give you a big-screen view on the LCD display using a live video feed straight from the sensor. It's a way of framing your pictures that compact camera and mobile phone users take for granted. For the DSLR user, the introduction of Live View was revolutionary. Much more than a gimmick, this feature is now found on every single body in most current DSLR ranges. For many subjects, using this alternative viewing system brings some significant advantages to your photography. In the cheat sheets below we’ve illustrated what goes on within your camera to power this important functionality. Click on the graphic to see the larger version, or drag and drop it to your desktop. The benefits of Live View The most obvious of these is concerned with framing the subject. The bigger image, and the fact that you can see it without having to put your eye up to the viewfinder, means that Live View can help you be more adventurous with camera angles. Live View makes it easier to frame pictures with the camera at ground level or above your head. It enables you to retain eye contact with your subjects (great for portraits). An unexpected advantage of Live View is that you see 100% of the image (most eye-level viewfinders crop off the edges of your shot). You can also place a grid over the image to ensure lines are parallel to your picture edges and to aid your photo composition. Your camera’s Live View feature also offers very precise focus adjustments. Instead of using the camera's main autofocus sensor, it switches to a 'contrast' autofocus system which uses the image captured by the sensor. It's slower than the camera's regular 'phase-detection' autofocus, but it's very precise and accurate. For a start, you're not restricted to the focus points of the camera's main autofocus system. Instead, you can use the multi-selector on the back of the camera to move the focus square to any part of the picture, right up to the edges. You can then zoom in on the Live View image using the magnifying glass button on the back of the camera to check that your subject is perfectly sharp in the picture. This makes Live View especially useful when you're using manual focus. Manual focusing is not usually easy with a DSLR, because the viewfinder doesn't have the detail needed for assessing focus visually. But in Live View mode, you can fine-tune the focus with certainty. See step-by-step how to fine-tune image sharpness using Live View DSLRs usually offer a number of different focus modes in Live View. Typically these will be a wide-area AF mode that uses a comparatively large focus square, which you can move to any point in the frame. A normal-area AF mode uses a smaller focus rectangle, which makes it easier to pinpoint a precise area to focus on. Some cameras have a face-priority mode that uses face-recognition technology. With this mode, the camera will automatically find your subject's face and highlight it with a focus rectangle. In subject-tracking AF mode, you first identify the subject you want to 'track', and the camera's autofocus will then follow it around the frame if it moves. Some DSLRs go further, with a horizon display that can show you if the camera isn't quite level as you compose the shot, while some pro DSLRs also have an exposure preview mode, which shows the effect of exposure adjustments on the image – you also get a histogram display that can help you avoid shadow or highlight clipping and match the exposure to the subject more effectively. Using Live View on articulated screens The LCD displays on most DSLRs are fixed, but some cameras like the Nikon D5100 or Canon EOS 700D have articulating displays that flip out and rotate to any angle. This is where Live View mode really proves its worth, because it makes it easy to compose pictures at ground level, above head height and in tight corners where it's impossible to get directly behind the camera yourself. READ MORE Live View: camera tips for Canon users What is Live View telling you: free photography cheat sheet Live View: how to use it on any camera 10 reasons why your photos aren’t sharp (and how to fix them)

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