It was another busy, winter-filled week at Photofocus! This week, Bob Coates taught us how to expose to the right using the Histogram, while Bryan Esler looked into whether shutter count matters on mirrorless cameras. Andrew Ford talked about finding your niche when it comes to video, and Levi Sim walked us through sculpting a portrait. Finally, James Maher gave us some great tips for event photography.
Expose to the right with the Histogram - The image above was shot at ISO 3200 and over exposed by two stops. I showed the results of an exposure test and resulting noise here. This post is a follow-up going into more detail about using the Histogram. The Histogram is the ‘picture of light and shadow’ in chart form. Let’s take a look at using it. The Histogram This is the Photoshop Histogram showing all of the color channels in the black to white image. When a histogram piles information up against either, or both, walls it is showing that the areas are lacking detail. The higher the piles the more detail is lost. The right hand side is revealing the highlights and the left is the shadows. Note that even though the image is black and white all color channels are recording information. Histogram before pressing your shutter button Many cameras now give you the ability to view the Histogram live on your viewfinder. A histogram is a marvelous tool that helps make decisions on the correct exposure. I keep my histogram active at all times to help decide my final exposure. Let’s do a quick review on what a histogram is showing. Histogram after the shutter press If you do not have the ability to see the histogram before exposing, you have the opportunity after, for review. In other words, you can still check on the exposure values using the ‘picture of the light.’ Above you can see the view from the back of the camera from three separate exposures. If you don’t see a view such as this when reviewing your photos look for a button that reads ‘DISPLAY’ or ‘DSP’ when in Play Mode. When viewing images you can change the display mode on your camera for a view similar to above. The left image is two stops under exposed according to the meter as evidenced by the -2 and the information piled to the left of the histogram. The middle image is showing proper exposure in which information is well within the histogram. The right image is showing a +2 and you can see the red and blue channels are showing over exposure. In spite of the fact the middle histogram is showing a ‘proper’ exposure (see below) the one that was two stops over exposed was used to make a file with the least amount of noise. See the article and files here. NOTE: It is important to be aware, especially when trying to push the limits of ETTR, that the histogram you see is of the jpeg camera processed image. If you are capturing JPEG files what you see is what you get. If you are making RAW files you have more room than is shown. My recommendation is to push the envelope with your camera in different situations. Test. And, test some more. Then you’ll know your gear and its limitations. This will keep you from leaving information in the noisy area of your file or throwing highlight info away. As always, I suggest that you not believe anything anyone has to say as far as technique goes until you have tried and proved it for yourself. Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
Portrait Tips: Sculpt a portrait - Making portraits for clients is like competing in the decathlon. You have to be able to shoot movement and groups and individuals and kids and products and available light and controlled light and no light and you have to be able to do it all over and over again. Make time to be an artist, to plan a picture for yourself. You should sculpt a portrait. Sculpting is reductive Sculpting with clay is a reductive process, and it should probably be the same for you as a portraitist. You’ve usually got grassy fields and playgrounds and boardrooms and coordinating outfits. When you sculpt a portrait, you need to narrow it down to the essentials. Carve away at your vision until only the essence remains. Get rid of the backgrounds and outfits. Sculpt a picture by reducing it to its most basic pieces. Adding more stuff is unlikely to make it better. Artists have always worked with nudes for this reason. There’s nothing left to distract from the composition. There are only the form and the light. (Note: I don’t work with nudes, and I doubt you should either. I suspect there’s a lot more you need to improve before you can say, “The only thing wrong with this picture is the clothing.”) Cooperate on vision I doubt Michelangelo mined his own marble, and I think you should work with others, too. My niece, Xuan, was visiting from Taiwan, and she wanted to join me for a shoot with my photo club. I had set this up as a time to practice. We had a couple of models and a stylist arranged and Xuan wanted to model, too. The stylist saw her long, thick hair and had some ideas right away, while I saw where she was going with it and started making plans, too. The focus of the photo is Xuan’s awesome hair, and my lighting and composition all point to it. But I also worked to keep Xuan as the subject of the photo and we worked on a mood together, practicing several shots and poses. We made several good pictures, and this is a favorite. Vision is easy You don’t need an art degree to have vision, and it doesn’t have to take a long time to come up with it. My vision for this portrait happened while we were making it. As her hair came up, and my lights came into focus, so did my vision. It doesn’t need to be hard. Be flexible, be doing I’ve had fun shoots when I’ve had a vision and a specific plan and I’ve tried to make it happen. It usually works out, but the best pictures always get made along the way. The vision happens while doing the other shots. When you’re doing photography, you’ll get inspiration for more photography. Just remember to be flexible and let your vision evolve. Don’t get mad because the specifics aren’t happening exactly as you thought. You may have noticed that I always say “make” a picture. Once you set out to sculpt a portrait, I think you’ll start saying it, too. Portrait Tips come out each week, and you can see them all right here.
Finding your niche in video - I work in medical video production. Whenever I tell someone that, the response I receive most often is, “Cool, I didn’t even know that was a thing.” To be honest, I didn’t either. Working in the video production industry, I knew about the excitement of being on a TV show set, the adrenaline rush of being an on-field cameraman at a football game and the strict deadlines of being a news editor. Sure, I had seen a medical show on The Discovery Channel, but I assumed that was just a regular crew on a special assignment. How I found my niche I was growing tired of my corporate video gig and my mother told me in passing that her hair stylist’s daughter found a job on Craigslist, so she suggested I look on there too. If you’ve never searched for video job opportunities posted on Craigslist in the mid-2000s, suffice it to say they were mostly seedy one-night opportunities at strangers’ houses. But one job stood out because it had a real job description, offered benefits and was from a company you could Google. Just like that, I accepted a medical video production job. My first day of work consisted of meeting an associate at the airport and heading to Arkansas to video a hip surgery. My co-worker said, “Hi! I hope you don’t get queasy seeing this bloody surgery up close.” Luckily, I didn’t. I actually found it fascinating to see how surgeons repair the body. Medical video production is very technical and demanding, but also rewarding and exciting. You could be traveling to an operating room across the country, creating commercials or working at international trade shows. Since I loved this career, I had the drive to constantly improve. This included learning anatomy and talking with surgeons. Soon, I was asked to produce over 100 videos annually. How to find your niche Almost anything you like probably has a video production niche. Most people gravitate toward wedding videos, but that niche is so large it should be considered a mass market. If you love cars, try to work at a sports network. If you’re spiritual, most megachurches have videographers. Even if your niche seems a little crowded, like the travel show category, you can put a different spin on it to differentiate yourself. Maybe your niche will just come to you as it did for me, so don’t stress out or rush the process. If you need help, a great guide to finding your niche is Dorie Clark’s book titled “Stand Out.” The benefits of being in a niche I’ve found there are three main benefits to a niche video producer. It increases your value, it makes it easier to attract customers that need your services and it makes work become more fun. Value I’m a jack-of-all-trades video producer, a one-man band that has developed competent skills in all areas of production. Therefore, I’m not a specialist in singular areas and won’t be winning an Oscar for Best Special Effects for a film. However, after producing over 1,200 medical videos and recording over 400 surgeries around the globe, I’ve become one of the leading medical video producers. This expertise provides huge value and efficiency to clients that need this service and acts as a barrier against the competition without this specialized knowledge. If I did a wedding video with thousands more competitors, would I stand out as much? The video below shows a typical surgical technique that I produced. This is an All-Inside ACL Reconstruction by Dr. David Flanigan. Attraction Today, customers have lots of choices on who to hire, but less time to choose due to busy lifestyles. If a Google search result presents a generic video producer and a specialized video producer for your need, which one will be chosen? Most potential clients will pay for your niche expertise. The naysayer may think that being in a niche limits potential business, but video production is more popular than ever. In my industry, doctors know the best way to increase their business is by promoting themselves on social media, showing their surgical skills on educational websites and/or presenting research and video evidence in front of their peers. All of it requires video, and there are a lot of doctors out there. The same applies to any niche. Fun Finally, being in a niche you enjoy makes work more like a fun hobby. Whether you like nature or fancy houses or music, there’s an environmental nonprofit, a real estate agent or a local band out there looking for you to make a video. Working with people that have shared interests results in knowledge share, a good time and repeat business. Niche video production is needed. Many surgeons come to me with frustrating stories of spending hours learning how to edit something on their own or trying over and over to make a high-quality .MP4, all to have me fix their video for them rather simply. That’s why I edit videos and they operate on people. When it comes to video, many people don’t love doing it and they’re not trained in it, but they know they need it to become more successful. Sounds like a good niche to me!
What are the most important event photography tips to know? - Whether you are growing an event photography business or just enjoy capturing family functions, there are some important tips that can help you to get the most out of the day. Event photography is not easy at first. The venues change, the lighting can be gorgeous one minute and dark and unflattering the next, people can be outgoing, drunk and having the best time, or they can be stiff and on guard at a business event. But it’s your job to work around these restraints to the best of your ability, and I promise you, it gets MUCH easier over time. So here we go. Smile, interact and be (or at least look) comfortable while walking around Before we get to the technical stuff, I want to stress how important it is to present yourself in the right way. Nerves can get the best of all of us, myself included, but you should try to hide those nerves. Make sure to have a smile and an interactive look on your face. You do not want it to seem like you are sneaking around your subjects as that will make people notice you much more, and can make them feel uncomfortable around you. Often being sneaky is good because you want to capture your subjects in candid moments, but make sure to smile and say a quick “hi” whenever the situation warrants itself, especially early on in the event to set a precedent. You are both a fly on the wall and a member of the event, so you have to play both rolls delicately. Making people comfortable is one of the skills of the trade. High ISOs and fast lenses While you can do great event photography with most cameras if the light is great, it’s those dark situations where you need a camera that can handle high ISOs well as well as a fast lens. If you don’t have a large budget, you can always get an affordable 50mm f/1.8 lens, but my go-to event lens is a Canon 24-70mm f/2.8 lens with a 50mm f/1.8 when I really need a super shallow depth of field or in a very dark situation. Otherwise, f/2.8 works most of the time. For indoor events, I rarely if ever go below ISO 1600 and I’m often at ISO 3200. The noise on modern cameras these days barely shows and the photos will capture the light in the room so much better and the shots will be so much sharper. Do not be afraid to raise your ISO — in fact, you should be afraid of keeping it too low. Bounce fill flash for many situations The goal of lighting an event is to capture the ambience of the room and the natural light in it, while also lighting the people in the photograph and having them stand out. Sometimes there will be gorgeous window light, or you will be outdoors, where the natural light will be all that you need. But more often than not, the ambient light will not be enough, and this is where you need to use a flash. First, you want to expose the camera settings to get the background light correct. Then you want to add in the flash unit. I tend to use the TTL (through the lens) setting, which is an automatic mode, allowing the camera to read the light on your subject to figure out how much light it should give off. In fast-moving events where the lighting changes depending on where you are, this allows me to focus my attention on the event. If the flash tends to be giving off too much light on the subjects, I will sometimes darken the metering on the flash up to -1 stop, so the light is not too harsh or bright on the subjects. You want to balance the light in the background with the light on the main subjects. But most importantly, I will aim the flash unit up and ever so slightly tilted backward when there is a ceiling above me that will bounce the light back on the subjects. This adds a gorgeous fill flash look. Pointing the flash unit directly at a subject has a much more unflattering look. Sometimes if the ceiling is too high to bounce, you will have to just have the flash unit pointed straight up or even directly at the subject. It will look fine enough and you will have no choice, but obviously, it’s not ideal. I also use a diffuser cap on my flash unit to soften the quality of the light. Don’t always use the lowest possible aperture This is a quick tip, but sometimes I prefer to shoot at f/4 versus f/2.8 if the lighting permits. If you are capturing even a medium-sized group of people, an f/2 or f/2.8 shot will often have the middle subjects sharp but edge subjects blurry, so it’s important to account for this. Stand and wait for the moment to happen Anticipating a moment and waiting is the most important tip in the book. Great event photography captures reactions and emotions. If you’re constantly walking around looking for them, it can be tough to find them. Instead, find an area where people are enjoying themselves with a good vantage point and wait there. Make it look like you’re looking around the room, but at the same time, pay attention to your subjects. At some point, someone will make a joke or they’ll get engrossed in something and you will be in the perfect position to create magic. While these are the main tips that will take your event photography to the next level, a few further quick tips to consider are: Always dress well, arrive early, have a contract in place for larger or more involved events, and don’t undercharge (this can be a hard and stressful job), pack a backup camera, lens, extra camera batteries, flash batteries and extra memory cards. And just always
Does shutter count matter on mirrorless cameras? - Mirrorless cameras are all the rage these days. While it started with Sony, Olympus, Panasonic and Fuji, Canon and Nikon finally joined the game in late 2018. But with its popularity, there is still some confusion about the bones of a mirrorless camera. Namely, whether or not things like shutter count actually matter on mirrorless cameras. Electronic vs. mechanical shutters There’s a common misconception that mirrorless cameras only have an electronic shutter. After all, a lot of the benefits to mirrorless cameras include things like silent mode, and an ultrafast frame rate. And while mirrorless cameras do have an electronic shutter, they also have the more traditional mechanical shutter. Why? Well, while electronic shutters are great, they can only do so much. Traditionally you’re limited in terms of using things like strobes and speedlights. You also can experience things like banding in your images due to the light source in the room. With mechanical shutters, these problems disappear, but of course, you don’t get some of the benefits that electronic shutters have. That’s why mirrorless cameras have the option of both. What about shutter count? If you’ve ever sold a camera, you’ve undoubtedly been asked how many actuations the shutter has on it. In layman’s terms, this is how many clicks you’ve made on your camera. This matters because mechanical shutters are rated for a certain number (usually around the 200,000 to 400,000 mark) before they start to fail. Having a high shutter count could, in turn, lower the value of your camera — unless you replace the shutter. Notice how I said mechanical shutter. When you use the electronic shutter, it doesn’t impact this number. But the other thing to keep in mind is because there’s no mirror to flip up and down, shutter count does not matter as much on mirrorless cameras. You’ll essentially find a longer life span. That said, shutter count does still matter somewhat. And, just to be sure, I asked Olympus for confirmation of this. “A mechanical shutter count life span does matter with mirrorless cameras as well,” said Mr. Masami Takase, Director, Imaging Product Development for Olympus. “A life span of the camera could [also] be affected by other devices apart from a shutter, for example, the parts that require mechanical movement, such as a release button.” The fact of the matter is, even though I have a mirrorless camera, I probably use my mechanical shutter 98% of the time. The only time I use the electronic shutter function is when I know I have to be quiet, for instance, during a piano performance. So should you pay attention to your shutter count? Yes and no. If you ever sell your camera to a private party, you’ll probably be asked for it. Most mirrorless cameras do not count the electronic shutter actuations in the number presented, so you can rest assured that the shutter count you receive is truly just from the mechanical shutter. Depending on your camera, it might be easy or rather difficult to check your shutter count. Each camera is different; consult your camera’s user guide or YouTube to see which method is right for your camera.
