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photos, tips, tricks, and thoughts from an avid amateur photographer

 
 
 
 

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Twilight

twilight

Dusk is my favorite time of day. I love the rich blues of the sky and the contrast of dark trees and such in the foreground. Normally, these shots require long exposures and a tripod to capture and a bit a tweaking post-process to get the lighting and color right.

This shot required a 30 second exposure at f/9 and ISO 100 with +1EV exposure compensation. I chose f/9 for two reasons. First, f/9 was the smallest aperture I could use and still keep the exposure under 30 seconds in Aperture Priority mode (maximum shutter time without switching to Bulb mode) at ISO 100. I wanted to keep the shot at ISO 100 to ensure tack sharp details, rich saturation and no noise. Second, I have found that my kit lens is its sharpest between f/8 and f/11, so f/9 was a logical place to start.

This photo was processed in Adobe Lightroom to look as close to what my eyes saw as possible. Here’s the original RAW shot straight out of the camera (SOOC) with nothing but my default import processing:

original SOOC unprocessed shot

Since I was shooting in RAW I left the white balance at Auto and simply used the histogram display on the LCD to verify a good mix of highlight and shadow detail. After downloading I started off by cropping and straightening the shot a bit. Next I tweaked the white balance to 3700K to get the blue to pop (the sky was too purple at the Daylight/5500 setting and too blue at Tungsten/2850). I then pushed the exposure up another +1EV and dropped the Black slider to 3. Nudging the Fill Light slider to 21 pulled even more shadow detail out. I set Clarity to 11, Vibrance to +25 and Saturation to +21. Finally, I added a touch of Sharpening and Detail (50 & 50) and Defringed all edges.

The Clarity, Vibrance, Sharpening, Detail, and Defringe settings are pretty standard for most of my shots with the Pentax K10D. I find the SOOC RAW files are a little flat color-wise and softer than I like. Also, the kit lens leaves a bit of color fringing on hard edges that Defringing seems to fix well.

The final result turned out very true to what I recall seeing that night in Birmingham. It was a bit windy so the tops of the tree branches are motion blured. The tiny star trails were an unexpected surprise.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas tree

Just a quick note to say Merry Christmas and thank you for your support. I started this blog less than 3 weeks ago and I have already had over 1,100 views! I hope everyone is enjoying this site and getting something out of it. I’ve got some new topics I’m working on that I’ll be posting over the next few days as time permits. Meanwhile, have a very merry Christmas, safe travels and take lots of pictures!

Christmas tree photo tutorial

Christmas ornament detail

With Christmas just a couple of days away there is no doubt that many of you have been enjoying taking artistic photos of your Christmas tree and other Holiday decor. All those colorful and tiny lights make perfect bokeh fodder. And highly processed detail shots like this are also fun.

Problem is, many of us (present company included) forget to take good documentary photos of our holiday decor that we can pull out and reminisce over with the grand kids 30 years from now. While all those artsy detail shots are nice, none of them capture the full majesty of your 2008 Holiday decor. Going through my photos a few days ago I ran across this image I took of my mom’s Christmas tree back in 2005:

IMG_0096_2

This is one of my favorite Christmas photos of all time. Even in black and white (shot in B&W mode so there is no color version) I can totally feel the warmth of the twinkle lights and even smell the fresh pine fragrance of the Frasier fir tree. With this in mind I decided to figure out what makes good Christmas tree photos and do a bit of a tutorial aimed at DSLR users while I was at it.

Step 1: Turn off your flash!

flash tree

Out of the box in Program Auto mode just about all DSLRs are going to pop the flash in an attempt to achieve “proper” exposure. While this may accurately capture the image, I doubt that anyone will find the results very warm and inviting.

Switch your camera into Program mode and turn off the flash. With the flash off you’re likely to get something like this:

no flash, default settings

This is a 1/8 second hand-held exposure at f/3.5 and ISO 400. I actually had to dial in +1EV of exposure compensation because my Pentax K10D’s matrix metering was underexposing the image considerably trying to compensate for the brightness of the tree lights and lamp to the right just off frame. While the image more accurately captures the look and feel of the decorated tree, it isn’t very dynamic and compelling.

Steps 2 & 3: Get out the tripod and close down the aperture.

small aperture, long exposure

This shot is essentially identical to the previous shot except it is a 15 second exposure at f/16 and ISO 100 (shot in Aperture Priority mode). The small aperture does three things here. First it creates all those dreamy starbursts. Second, and more notably, it forces a long exposure. This long exposure time pulls in more ambient light, giving the entire scene more apparent dynamic range. Finally, it sharpens up the details. Zooming into this image you will find much crisper detail than the rather soft previous f/3.5 shot. As a bonus, using a lower ISO means richer colors, better detail, smoother gradients, and less noise.

Step 4: Attend to the details.

improved details

While the previous shot had come a long way from the Program Automatic blown-out flash shot, I felt there was still room for improvement. I didn’t like the reflections in the windows behind the tree coming from the upstairs lights and the lamp to the right was a bit harsh. Also, there were a few unsightly items cluttering up the foreground of the earlier shots and I wanted to add a better sense of grandeur to the shot.

For this final shot I turned off all the lights in the house except for a single 60 watt desk lamp behind the camera to add just a tad of ambient fill to the high ceilings. I moved the dog kennel and Where’s Waldo book. I then repositioned the tripod closer to the tree and lower before zooming out wider to exaggerate the scale of the tree and height of the room. This ended up being a 10 second exposure at f/16 and ISO 200- I bumped the ISO to 200 because the rest of the family was complaining about sitting in the dark during all my 20+ second shots ;-)

RAW file post processing in Lightroom was limited to setting the white balance (tungsten) and dialing in a bit of Sharpness, Clarity and Vibrance. You may want to tweak the Recovery slider a tad to compensate for any blown-out Christmas lights from the long exposure.

While I recommend shooting your Christmas tree photos at night, depending upon the situation, decent results can be achieved during the day. The wall of windows behind the tree here made daytime shots pretty much impossible. However, waiting until dusk I got this shot which was pretty nice:

Christmas tree at dusk

Step 5: Share!

my Christmas tree

This is a picture of my Christmas tree I took last week using the small aperture/long exposure technique described above. The photos for this tutorial were shot at my in-laws house. When you travel to visit friends and family this Christmas be sure to pack your camera and tripod. Take pictures of your non-photographer friends’ trees and send them a copy as a Holiday treat! Tis the season of giving, right?

Merry Christmas!!

Christmas table centerpiece photo

Christmas centerpiece arrangement

My father in-law asked me to take a picture of his Christmas table centerpiece arrangement so he could e-mail it to an out of town friend. My attempt at a quick snapshot didn’t meet my with my photographic standards so I spent the next hour playing with lighting to get the final shot above. This was a very challenging shot as I had to make do with what lighting I could find in the house. Here’s how I did it:

first shot with ambient light only

First of all, my in-laws’ house is DARK. Dark walls. Dark floors. Dark furniture. Dark lamps. You get the idea. Plus, it was night so the wall of windows to the left of the subject weren’t helping. Of course, I could have waited for morning but I always like a good challenge. Plus, I figured that if I got it right, a night shot would better capture the elegant and rich warmth of the table setting.

My first test shot was attampted with nothing but the incandescent  lamp light filtering in from the living room behind the camera. This required a 6 second exposure at f/8 and ISO 400 (a tripod was used so my K10D’s IS was OFF). I used f/8 to ensure that the entire arrangement was in sharp focus while the background was blurred a bit. I like the f/8 shot because there is enough background detail to clearly place this shot in my in-laws dining room while the subject focus was nicely isolated. The lighting in this first shot was too flat. I wanted more subject isolation so I grabbed a floor lamp and placed it to the left of the camera and tried again:

second shot w/ floor lamp at eye level

set-up for second shot

This set-up provided better subject isolation via lighting but the shadows seemed a bit harsh. I played around with a few combinations of settings and finally settled on 4 seconds at f/8 and ISO 100 but was still not happy with the results.

Recalling some studio shots that I did not long ago where I held a shaded lamp directly above my subjects, I decided to try holding the lamp above the centerpiece just out of the frame. I also turned off all the lights in the living room and opened the glass doors on the china cabinet behind the arrangement to eliminate the reflection of the lamp. Finally, I lit the candles to add another level of detail and ambiance to the shot.

set-up for final shot

This set-up is what I used for the final shot. (Note use of lens hood to quell flare). I sped up the ISO to 200 to get a 1.6 second exposure at f/8. This was mainly because the lamp was a bit heavy to be holding up like this for 6 seconds but also because a shorter exposure helped cut down on the ambient light bleeding in to the background. While the shutter was open I slowly arced the lamp from left to right to paint the entire arrangement and blur the shadows. The resulting image (top) ended up with shadows that were much softer at the subject with a nice gradual fall off of the light into the background. I couldn’t have done much better with an actual soft box in a studio ;-)

With a nice looking exposure I pulled the image into Lightroom to adjust the white balance (2625K) and apply my standard Sharpness (14), Detail (51), Clarity (30), and Vibrance (+25) settings. I also pushed the Recovery up to 73 to help correct some over exposure of the reds and knock back the highlights on the shiny green leaves a bit. A bit of final cropping (always leave room for cropping!) and off the image went to my father in-law.

Take better sunset pictures

Alabama sunset

There are few things more beautiful than a good sunset or sunrise photograph. However, if you’ve ever tried to do it you know it can be frustrating. How many times have you seen a beautiful sunset like the one above only to have your photo turn out something like this?

overexposed sunset

There are a couple of easy things you can do to get great sunset photos. First, turn off your flash. The only thing the flash is good for during a sunset is to add fill to illuminate a foreground subject. Unfortunately, getting the right mix of fill flash and background exposure can be very tricky:

Nevis sunset flash

Not a very inspiring photo (though after the number of rum punches I had I didn’t care). For now, let’s just turn the flash off and focus on capturing a brilliant sunset photo.

Next, set your white balance to auto. You can also try daylight but I have always found the auto setting gives the best mix of deep blues, pinks, reds and oranges.

I like to shoot sunsets with a wide angle lens to get as much of the sky in the picture as possible. This ensures a full mix of colors from the darkest indigo blues overhead to the brightest pinks and oranges at the horizon. Usually I leave only a strip of ground/foreground across the bottom to anchor the photo- letting the sky dominate the scene for maximum impact.

The main challenge with sunset photos is getting around the camera’s matrix metering’s natural tendency to balance exposure across the frame. The camera doesn’t know what’s going on and tries to balance the dark foreground with the bright background. The washed out example at the top is what you get when you just point-n-click. To get a decent sunset exposure you either need to dial in some negative exposure compensation (usually -2/3EV to -1EV). An easier method is to just aim the camera at an unobstructed portion of the sky, focus, lock exposure, recompose, and shoot. I typically use a little of both.

For the best sunset photos I typically like to wait for the sun to be fully below the horizon. That beautiful glowing orange ball of the sun absolutely wrecks exposure on a camera and typically results in pretty disappointing shots. Also, some cloud texture in the sky helps provide a good mix of colors. Be sure to look behind you as many times clouds away from the setting sun pick up some awesome colors. Finally, some good foreground silhouettes can help add additional visual interest (especially helpful if the sky itself is not as dramatic as it could be).

foreground texture sunset

A medium aperture like f/8-f/10 is best to ensure the best detail and sharpness across the frame and eliminate vignetting typical at larger apertures when shooting at a wide zoom setting. Since I generally like to wait for the sun to drop fully, there’s typically not very much ambient light. This means I either need to be shooting on a tripod at a low ISO and slow shutter speed or bump the ISO up to prevent camera shake. These samples were all shot hand-held at ISO 200-400 and f/8 and f/10 at around 1/4 second. The combination of the K10D’s in-body IS and the wide focal length meant it only took a few tries to get sharp shots (wider zoom angles can be hand held at slower shutter speeds than longer ones).

Typically a properly shot sunset photo doesn’t require much post-processing. Since I shoot everything in RAW I have to tweak sharpness and saturation on all my photos in Lightroom. I can also play around with the white balance a bit to get the best pop from my images- though the as-shot (Auto) setting worked best for these images. Often I find the fluorescent WB preset works well for sunsets for some reason.

While a DSLR gives the most control over all of these settings, I have gotten wonderful sunset photos with a pocket camera by simply turning off the flash and using the focus, recompose and shoot method. Here is a collection of some of my other sunset photos on Flickr.

The most difficult part about getting good sunset shots is being at the right place at the right time with your camera. I hope this helps you get that great shot the next time that happens!

About

I'm an industrial designer and an avid hobbyist photographer. People are always asking me "how'd you do that?" So, I decided to create this site as a place to share my experiences and insights about photography, the gear and what it all means to me. I'm not sure if this site will make anyone besides myself a better photographer but I figure it's worth a try. Take a look around and let me know what you think. Thanks for stopping by!

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