Camera's in the shop

Currently, A1 Camera Repair in downtown Louisville has my camera in order to do a full-on cleaning of the lens, mirror, and sensor. $45 and 3-5 day turnaround. I'm sure that's fairly typical for someone to do it right (after my previous attempts at cleaning it myself, I discovered that was not what I was doing), but it seems a little steep after Peace Camera in Raleigh offered to do it for free.

Still, "free" and "have to drive 10 hours to get there" put together actually is not free in the strictest of senses.

I meant to actually show you an image of the dust and particles all over the corner of a photograph, in order to illustrate just how bad things were getting. However, since I was fighting with the lens and taking some rather particular shots in order to avoid getting any residuals, I managed not to capture any that clearly showed the problem. I confess, I was not thinking about the blog when I was taking the shots, or I would have taken a photo of some blank white wall or something. As it was, I succeeded in avoiding having dust obviously speckling the photographs I took, and failed in acquiring any examples for you.

"This was a triumph."

At any rate, some of my current experiments with the automated features of PhotoshopCS4 involve panoramas. Rather than take a really large photograph, I am able to take multiple shots of a scene and then stitch them together in post. I am learning what to do and what not to do, in order to get the results I like. Things to remember: turn off auto focus, don't use a wide-angle lens, definitely do not zoom in and out. These things together will cause the stitching to mis-match and make it very obvious that there were multiple images.

Hopefully the formatting of this post will make sense. I apologize to two groups of people for this: the ones that have me on their RSS feed readers and can't see the image, and the people on dial-up. Because I think it's a rather large image (or was when I uploaded it. I'm still not entirely sure what Blogger/Google/Picassa do to images when I upload them) and will take a while for you to load it.

Click the image to see the photograph bigger and clearer. The dusky lines crossing it at different points are the result of an artistic shutter speed in light that was getting too dark for it. It makes for an appealing vignette in individual images. When stitched together, you get this.

Addendum:
Speaking of RSS Feeds, keep up with me on Twitter for a slightly more up-to-date update on what I'm doing around town. I will sometimes announce trips to various places, and if you'd like a moment in the spotlight you may wind up as the subject of an impromptu photoshoot. I'll also be announcing next month's sale for my website. Just go to Twitter and look up tlamkinjr .

End of Summer

It's been another few months of radio silence, but a lot has changed in the meantime. While one of our party is now gainfully employed, the other has taken a career change and even moved. Though looking for new work, and limited to a laptop after burning up the work-horse desktop computer, I haven't slowed down my graphical pursuits at all. The paint on this palette hasn't dried yet. Speaking of which...

I haven't forgotten about the camera cleaning experiment. In fact, I've come back to you with some results!

Blowing on the lens yourself is always a bad idea, but I have found that many shops will suggest you try gently hitting the lens surface with a shot from the canned air they sell in many shops like Staples and even Wal-Mart. Stores specifically catering to the tech-savvy demographic will have more variety for you to choose from, and probably higher quality compressed air. Something to keep mindful of, no matter which brand you choose, is the law of thermodynamics. No, I'm not going to quote them, but just realize that this is compressed air that is suddenly being un-compressed as it comes out of the can. The can will get cold as you continue holding down the release, and there is the potential that the air will remain liquid if you spray for too long or at an odd angle. Now you may have gotten rid of the dust, but there is spots of chemical spray on your lens.

Those same shops will offer you a chamois ("shammy" for the uninitiated) cloth to brush off the larger dust particles. Be very careful to keep this cloth clean, because any dust or grit on the cloth could mean scratches on your lens the next time you brush it. Better to use a long-bristled (very SOFT) brush. This is still a potential hazard, as anything could be between the bristles just waiting to alight on the lens.

The kits - I confess, I never did trust the kits enough to try them on my camera or lenses.

This should amuse, though, to make up for it. After trying out these different methods to remove a couple of dust spots, I am now going to go with the final, fool-proof solution. I am going to look for a camera repair shop, tomorrow, that offers professional cleaning to both the mirrors and the lens.

How do you think I know the negative sides of those other methods? Yeah, woops. Learn from my mistakes!

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In other news, the photography bug has really grabbed me and I hope to make a career of it. If I cannot, I will do what I can to assist another photographer while I soak up all the knowledge and experience I can possibly garner. This new city is gorgeous and lends itself to countless possibilities for me to experiment and practice various techniques.

Feel free to see some of the pieces I've finished recently on my new gallery.

Long time no see!

No, the government hasn't bought us out in the middle of this economic crisis. Being a free service and a purely academic blog, we don't have anything that our new administration would want. No bailout money for this Palette of Pixels!

The other half of the staff has been wrapped up in new employment responsibilities, keeping her from making her debut post, so my attempt to entice her into saying something to you by going silent for months has failed miserably.

The weather has turned wonderful, and if the thunderstorms would stop bypassing my ridge, I would love to share some of the beautiful images of clouds that are possible. First, though, I'll need to explore how to properly clean a dSLR camera when pine, oak, and maple pollen finally work their way onto one of the lenses. It may be on the mirror, too, which would be even more annoying.

Unlike a regular mirror, I can't just take Windex to it. I'll need to investigate just how dangerous that Canned Air stuff might be to the delicate lenses. The propellent may be fine for cleaning the insides of electronic equipment, but that chemical may leave a residue on my lenses which would be worse than a spot of dust. I can photoshop that single blot out - but a big smear across the screen would be catastrophic. There are lens cleaning kits, too, but I'm dubious. The advertising for them always comes across as though it were written by the same people currently trying to sell you bucketloads of the new acai berries to make you lose weight like magic. Plus, the kits look really cheap like someone just repackaged a makeup kit. I will have to see, and I will let you know.

Since this is the first post in a while, I'll open the floor to any readers that may browse through the area. Do you guys have any questions, or have you discovered anything new from your respective palettes?

Pictures of Food (pt1)

Photographing food is difficult.

It isn't that the food won't hold still, or that you suddenly contract palsy, or that it doesn't smile when you tell it to - though I suppose those would also cause food to be difficult to photograph, I won't be covering those situations. You're on your own.

Food is difficult to capture on (digital) film mostly because everyone knows what it should look like. Thanks to modern advertising, many times this preconceived ideal isn't even physically possible. The images of cereal with milk splashing perfectly around the flakes are often created using various types of glue. Hamburgers in photographs are front-loaded with plastic and other artificial additives that would make it the most disgusting fast food meal you've ever experienced, and likely toxic. Even fruit, something you would think would be difficult to fake, is splashed with varnish and then spritzed with alcohol in order to make sure it has that perfect sheen and crisp, fresh look we all want.

Until you are prepared to go through the effort of making these sorts of 'larger than life' adjustments, and ruining a lot of food, I'll point out some ways to share with friends and family how good your food really looks.

In this part, being part one, we'll mention the zombie-effect that flash can have on anything. You know the photographs of people, where the flash went off a bit stronger than necessary, and right in their face. This is where you see the expression 'the camera adds five pounds' come true. It's because the flash has caused artificial shadows, and obliterated the shadows we're accustomed to seeing. The sudden shift in color, too, gives skin a pallid and washed out appearance. You've effectively turned your subject into an overweight cadaver. You can also abuse food in this way, using a strong flash that often comes on a digital camera.

Here is the camera I used to demonstrate the effect. You may recall it from previous comparisons with the d60.


The handy-dandy CW330 digicam from Kodak. Please note where the flash is. It's right above the lens.

Originally, I had intended to set a digicam on a small stand, place a blind or block of some sort over the flash, and take a picture of a bowl of apples. By blocking the flash, I can reduce the glare and washout effect caused by all that sudden, direct light. Seeing the dilemma, I decided to take the shot with the full flash and just see what the result would be. After all, digicams are very smart, these days, and I had all the lights on in the kitchen. Maybe the CW330 would register that there was enough available light and wouldn't overcompensate with -

Zombie fruit.

Hm. Thankfully, the dark table and attractive decorations mean that the picture is not a complete wash. It is feasable that this is a satisfactory image for what you're wanting to do. Just a bowl of apples, a digicam, and the kitchen table.

But if you look closely, you may notice some things that you don't like in the image. The shadows cast by the apples are now directly behind them. There is no visible shadow actually inside the bowl, which makes it look flat, and gives the illusion that the apples are floating above it. The reflective glare on the apples is on the forefront, as it is on the jar in the back, making it obvious that you're flashing your fruit. Not to mention, the warm colors of the antique table, the soft cool blue of the placemats, and the hand-painted house holding the napkins are all lost to the artificial fluorescent look of a bright, direct, beam of light.

The logical next step is to block the flash. Turning off the flash altogether isn't an option, because the camera would try to compensate for the lack of bright light and may keep the shutter open longer. That would cause blur, because I was standing without support and would inevitably move slightly during that time. So, I took my index finger and placed it over the flash, above the extended lens, and took another shot from the same position. Remember, all the lights in the kitchen are on, so it shouldn't be -


Don't cover your flash. Your kitchen lights are designed to give you a nice, homey atmosphere and plenty of light to see. They do not give you the clinically bright lights of a hospital, or a photography studio, unless you do your cooking with a live studio audience and a couple oversized television cameras. Your kitchen is dark. Chalk this up to another example of how amazing your eyes are. They adjust quickly and easily to 'comfortably dim' lighting. Your digicam does not. If you are wondering why the image has a red hue, I will give you a hint - cover the bulb of a flashlight with your palm. That is effectively what I did, but with a much brighter flashlight.

So what could be the solution? The flash is too bright, and too direct, but covering it entirely means the photograph is too dark. You can't go out and purchase a professional photographer's softbox flash, or one of those giant umbrella diffusers. However, we need to accomplish the same thing. I needed to soften, and redirect my flash. Preferrably, I wanted the light to come from above so that the shadows were where they should be, and the reflections were more to the top of the apples and the jar.


Much better. The reflection is still a bit in the wrong place, and the shadows in the bowl are weak, but the colors come through more strongly in the set pieces and the whole image seems softer and more like a kitchen should feel. Progress! And not too bad for folding a napkin and holding it above my lens.

The napkin was still too thin to truly keep most of the flash from going through, so I probably should have used an envelope or thin book (a music book from the organ, perhaps) to keep the flash from shining through. However the ridged surface, slight though it is, helped diffuse the light to a more ambient direction. Being white, it was able to reflect a bit in the direction I wanted - up. Now, were we outside, this would have done nothing but shoot my flash uselessly into space. However, I have a white ceiling in my kitchen. Bouncing the flash like this recreates the effect of the umbrella diffuser in a professional studio, and can be used on any surface to give you an indirect off-light. I have seen creative photographers have a friend in a light-colored shirt stand to the side, then they tilted their camera and redirected their flash towards their friend. The flash is bright enough, and the angles were right, that it allowed a nice side-glow to their subject, aided by direct light from overhead.

When photographing food, the last thing you want is something like zombie brownies. Redirecting your flash using common household elements and a bit of forethought in terms of where you're bouncing your protons, will give you some softer, but effective, alternative lighting options.

Long Exposure Photography

Long exposure photography can lend itself to a lot of fun effects. Images of traffic zooming by, leaving neon trails from headlights and brakelights, as well as those neat images of people drawing on the wall with a laser pointer, are all made possible by forcing the camera to keep its shutter open for an extended period.

As with any style, long exposure photography requires you to know what you're doing, and have an image in your mind of what kind of photograph you are looking to create. Photography rarely allows for the free-form style of artwork that sketching or doodling can create. The medium has a tendency to be unforgiving. In the days of film, you can imagine that experimentation was difficult and expensive. Using today's technology, being the digital camera and the computer, not only do you have unlimited 'film', but you can immediately preview your work. If your computer is nearby, you can even see the full image, and then get back to shooting, in very little time. With such quick turnaround, many photographers find they are able to see what they like or dislike about a shoot, and still have time to get another shot or two of the subject before the shot is lost: either the subject has moved, left, or the sun has set.

Images like this are possible with experimenting through long exposure photography. At first glance, it may not seem interesting, and the size constraints of this page may make the details hard to see. Using a 5-second shutter speed, this sunset shot of a forest makes the day seem brighter and the light more ambient than it truly was. Another effect is that, while the tree trunks and the groundcover remain crisp and sharp, many of the leaves visible, especially those in the foreground, are blurred because of motion. The wind was blowing the leaves, moving them slightly, but obviously not affecting the trees themselves. This gives the picture a sense of motion, with a few solid, vertical lines.

By taking advantage of the long exposure, I was able to get this very dramatic shot. All I did was zoom in as the shutter was open. Woosh!

And this is what happens when you are standing on the same plank of wood that the tripod is standing on, and decide to move during a 10second shot.

While the shutter is open, it is absorbing more and more light. The evening was dim, but not dim enough for a 10-second shot of some clouds passing over. What you can see are the shadowy portions of the trees. Everything else is blown out by overexposure.

This is one of my favorites. It is subtle, but I like the effect. The focus is on the two trees in the distance, through the leaves of the tree in the foreground. I wanted the trees in the back to really stand out, and to make the foreground fade a bit, so I put the exposure to 10 seconds. Not only do I get a soft-focus effect from the foreground being simply out of focus range, but the movement of the smaller limbs and leaves makes the focal point stand out all the more for being so clear. You can almost imagine someone peeking out from behind that – wait, did you see that?

Exposure done Wrong

It's often easy to talk about different styles of photography, or methods of taking a picture, when you're using the one-out-of-a-dozen images that turned out exactly the way you wanted.

To really show what is happening when you snap that shot, I wanted to share a couple images that did not quite 'work'.



This is from the same series of photographs as the waterfall image from last time. Like I said then, a long exposure shot requires low level light in order to keep from washing out the image. This is what happens when the sun comes out from between the clouds just as you take the photograph. The shutter stayed open for nearly a full second, soaking up sunshine and causing this blowout glare. Those places that are pure white are lost - there is nothing you can do in post production to rescue those parts of the image unless you want to start redrawing pixels and trying to create texture where there no longer is any. At that point, you may as well have started drawing the image from scratch. Much better to simply wait for more clouds, or closer to sundown.


The bee may have been holding still, but this butterfly was not. Unfortunately, rather than just take the shot and wind up with an image of a butterfly blurring away from the flower, I wound up trying to move the camera with the butterfly. I wasn't able to keep up, and my shutter speed wasn't fast enough to freeze things, so the whole image smeared into a worthless 'zoom' picture. It's a problem of having not quite decided what image I wanted before setting up the shot, and not being prepared to adjust to a suddenly moody subject. Butterflies are primadonnas. Now you know.


Another problem with choosing your subjects and lighting is that ever demonized 'red-eye' effect. It happens in people because you're literally flashing light off the back of the eyeball just as you snap the shot. Due to the red blood vessels surrounding the inside of the eye, you get that horrific crimson glare. In things that lack red blood, you get this crazy white-eye effect. It happens with frogs, fish, and certain politicians. If I could have trusted my hand to be steady enough, and the frog to hold still, I would have taken a slightly longer exposure to get a natural-light shot. As it was, it was getting dark and I had no convenient rocks on which to steady the camera.

Now, though, I've acquired a new tripod and a remote, by which I can take shots and never disturb the camera. That should allow some very interesting photos!


Of course, equipment does not guarantee that you'll get the shot you're looking for, if you haven't done your homework...

The Long and the Short of It

Preparations continue for the National Novel Writing Month. If you’re curious to watch my progress or learn more about the event, here is the link to my NaNoWriMo page.

http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/404901

For this novel project (that was a pun), I plan on using photographs I’ll be taking through the month of October as inspiration and illustrations for different sections. I’ll probably do quite a bit of photomanipulation to them, adding increasingly less subtle adjustments to them in order to express the ‘fantasy’ side of the genre I’ve picked for the novel. I still have no outline, no plans, and barely a setting. That means that I will be discovering this story as I write it.

In the meantime, let me show you some neat effects that can be done with a camera before you need to take the photograph to post-production. As a segue, here is the image I’ve chosen to use as the cover to this upcoming novel.

Obviously there have been some touchups, like the text and the blur around it, and there is even a soft blur and glow to the whole image. We’ll cover how to do that at some other time. The original photograph has its own magical appeal, however, and isn’t something that can easily be done with a typical point-and-shoot camera.

Long-exposure photography is something I would like to get into more, in the future, and so I have invested in a digital remote for my d60. This will allow me to release the shutter without touching the camera, further minimizing the amount of shake that may blur or smear the image. For this waterfall, however, I was lucky enough that a steady rock and holding my breath were sufficient to keep the stones and grasses crisp and clear while the water blurred into a silk sheet.

This style of photography is used a lot for scenic waterfalls, or shots of old houses (to let the moving clouds in the background blur into obscurity), but it takes a lot of work. You have to know the spot, you have to know the time of day, and you have to be able to hold still for multiple seconds while the shutter is open. The reason that the time of day is important is because, while your shutter is open, it is absorbing more and more light. If it is a nice, sunny day, and you leave your shutter open for up to a second, then you will see nothing but glare. The image will be almost entirely white. The best times for images like this are early morning, late evening, or just before/after/during a rain shower. Obviously the rain can be dangerous to your equipment, and potentially uncomfortable, so the gloaming times of the day are perfect for photographers looking to get the long exposure image like this.

On the other hand, a dark day is very poor if you are trying to take a photograph of something in movement. To freeze the image, and reduce the amount of smearing (the opposite of what we wanted with the waterfall), you need to have a fast shutter speed. The faster the shutter speed, the less movement you will see. The best examples of this are hummingbirds and bumblebees in flight – but frozen. It looks as though they simply stopped moving in midair. For this image, I believe I may have gotten lucky and the bee actually stopped for the millisecond my shutter was open. Perhaps it was posing for me? Or just too busy eating.

A dark day would have given me a dim, greyed out image. With the shutter only open for a split part of a second, there isn’t much time for light to hit the sensor. If the day is bright, and the sun is direct, then the image will be perfectly fine, and the color will be vibrant and the details sharp. A cloud overhead will destroy the effect. A setting sun will force you to consider taking the image to post production and lightening it up, but you can never fully recover an image that is soaked in shadows.

Next week, I’ll show you some examples of how badly things can go with both a long exposure and a very short exposure. It always seems easy until you see that only one out of two dozen photographs were acceptable.

Thank goodness for an 8gb memory card.

Make them Smile

Last week we skipped the pictures to talk about a different part of the palette. Prior to that, I promised we would go over smiles.

Smiles are very important in an image. They're not always necessary, but always important. Maybe I should say that people's expressions are always important. The presence, or absence, of a smile can tell a lot about a situation. Sometimes a smile would seem horribly out of place - or even horrific. Other times, the absence of a smile makes the image look bland, or dull, just as you would feel if you were in that situation with the subjects and no smiles were to be found.

Photographers, in order to get the right smile from their subject, often have to resort to tactics used by other professions that thrive on smiles. A photographer can suddenly morph into a clown, or a comedian, or a suave politician trying to talk someone into reluctantly smiling despite themselves. Sometimes, though, this transformation is not an option. In candid images, for example, you don't want the people's attention on you. Also, in crowds, it may simply not be possible to get everyone in the frame to smile.

Nevertheless, if you're showing a portrait of people at an event, you'd like to capture a moment where they are having fun.


Here is an example of some people watching a parade. You have a few different expressions, here. The man in the foreground seems to be smiling almost reluctantly. He's having fun, almost like something has unexpectedly amused him despite the frown lines and wrinkles that may belie a somewhat dour attitude. The woman beside him has the tight-lipped smile of someone uncomfortable with the expression. Maybe she's self-conscious about her teeth, or maybe she just really hates the photographer. Behind them are more grins of people watching the parade, and even the fellow walking by seems to be chuckling to himself. The picture is full of life, and of different stories, but the sum of the parts is that people are having fun. This is a place you would want to be, and it is an even that can make anyone grin.

This is the portrait you would like to hand the event organizer, or someone possibly interested in hosting a similar event. The image could be what convinces them that a parade is just the thing they need to bring some life to their town. It is good advertising,and it tells a good story.

Like most advertising, this image is a lie. I used the same techniques we've been talking about: blur, smudge clone-stamp, and even some copy-pasting. I took more time, about 20 minutes, and worked in closer detail. It is my hope that you cannot immediately tell what artwork I did to the image. Comparing a before-and-after, though, would show what things required my attention.



Here is the original photograph of these people as they watch the parade.


A photographer, a comedian, and even a politician can convince people to smile.

Me? I can make them smile.

D60 vs C330 Sensors

I’ve threatened a few times that there was more to tell about the differences between a dSLR and a digicam. There is a lot of information out there, with a lot of websites doing their reviews and trying to help the most people make the most informed decision when preparing to buy a new camera. Those websites get incredibly vague, mostly because there are so many dSLRs, so many digicams, and so many differences among them.

We’re going to focus on two cameras.

Our dSLR is the Nikon D60. The digicam is the Kodak Easyshare C330.

To use a bit of a photography metaphor, we’re going to zoom in a bit closer and focus on the sensors used in these two machines. This is the element that truly differentiates the end product.

The D60 uses a sensor that has, effectively, 10.2 million pixels. That’s what you see on the side of the camera as “10.2 MP” or megapixels. This is the number that most people look at when buying a camera, and is the number most advertisers push as hard as they can. This is the resolution, or how large your images can be printed. You may have seen digicams sporting pretty high number megapixels, too.

Our digicam, the C330, only has 4 megapixels. But you saw the images on the previous post – they are not poor images at all. On a website, or in a newspaper, or even printed up to a 5x7 size, you may be hard-pressed to see the difference in most digicams and dSLRs.

10.2 million pixels, and 4 million pixels – there’s a big difference there. The gap is even wider than these numbers show, however. You see, the D60 has a sensor that is 23.6 by 15.8 mm. That doesn’t mean much until you realize that the C330 has a sensor that is 5.76 x 4.29 mm.

I’m not great at math, so I understand if you’re looking at these numbers and wondering what my point is. Let’s reduce the number of numbers. The C330 has 24.7 mm. The D60 has 372.88. That’s a big difference in size. Here is an image comparison of different sensors from wikipedia so you can get a visual. Compare the 370 mm2 to the 25mm2, both on the right side of the image.

It may seem logical that the larger sensor would mean that the D60 can fit more pixels on the surface, but remember that many digicams are moving upwards of 8mp or higher as well. They are still using the 25mm2 sensor. The D60 not only fits more pixels onto the sensor, but the pixels are able to be larger, which allows them to accept more light, thereby getting a clearer picture with less noise even in darker situations. This higher level of detail means that many things are possible with the D60 that the C330 cannot do, due to risking far worse signal-to-noise ratios that would make the picture worthless. The higher megapixel counts in the digicams actually exacerbate this problem by walking that fine line of signal-to-noise, which means the flash and other light-adjusting parameters must be automatically adjusted to give as much light to those pixels as possible. In daylight, or with bright indoor lights, these 8+ megapixel digicams perform exceptionally well. Beyond that, the results are grainy and can look very soft-focus.

Further Reading:
CBS News
Wikipedia
Luminous Landscape
NY Institute of Photography

Next week - more about editing your images.

Post Production

Being a Palette of Pixels, the art form goes far beyond the initial capture. I like to think of that original snapshot, portrait, photograph, as being a raw, frozen instant. It is the real world, caught and framed in such a way as to give your viewers a narrow and focused image or thought. On some level, it is telling a story.

That's why I love the art form.

"A picture is worth a thousand words," they say. But sometimes there's a lot of extraneous words involved that don't contribute to your story. Just like with a written tale, you could leave it as the raw original, but it is often better to look back over what you've captured and start trimming down the excess. Get rid of any distracting elements that don't add to what you're trying to say. You have to know what is important, and what is telling some side story that isn't vital. Also, perfect your language. Make it fit exactly what you're trying to do. Word choice, sentence structure, even punctuation is of utmost importance. After you're done, no one will see how much work you put into making your story succinct, fluid, and streamlined. That's the idea, though. Your brush strokes can be invisible, so long as the story is what you want to tell.

I suppose it counts as a metaphor when I move back and forth between the imagery of a novel and a photograph. Nevertheless, the end result is the same. A good photograph does not have to be a finished product.



Ah, summer break on the beach. Friends hanging out with the other tourists, a bright blue sky and a big golden sun directly overhead. Thoughts of school are far away, and you hop out of the water for a second so your friend can snap a photo before you go in for lunch at the hotel. A perfect shot to remember the moment!

The photograph is 'complete'. Everything's in frame. You've got Scooter, there, and Jessica, names I made up JUST NOW, and they look happy and content. They're looking out of a portrait at their future selves. Their future selves are looking at the portrait going "Aw, we were so young." Or something. And then they send it off to mom, and mom goes "Aw, they're so cute!" And they send it off to their friends in Canada, and they go "Aw, it looks so warm!" And they set the photograph in a cute little frame on their coffee table, and the neighbors come over and see it. And their neighbors go "Aw, who are those people back there?"

Imagine the sound of a record player scratching and the cozy music abruptly ending.

"What? What people? Oh. Um. Other tourists, I guess."

"And how come the ocean looks tilted?"

"Well, we were on the sand, so I guess the camera wasn't straight."

"And why's your hair in your face?"

"Well I just got out of the water."

"Scooter was sucking it in a bit, wasn't he? Look at the -"

"IT IS JUST A PICTURE, STOP IT."

Why should it be just a picture? Trim down your story so only the elements you intend to share are carried across. Don't distract with excess details. Those tourists have their own story. The awesome waves and the way the water felt, you can tell that story without this portrait. Scooter really needed to relax, but he was nervous and you guys had just met. He wanted to look good!

Brush up the sand, smooth out the hair, tilt the image, lose some of those shadows, and offer Scooter the tummy tuck he was trying to do himself...




Now your story is coming through a bit clearer.

Digicam vs dSLR (The Rose and Bowl)

The last post was a lot of technical talk about mirrors, lenses, and the differences between how you build the two types of cameras. Sorry if it got to be a bit much, but there's a reason I don't build these contraptions. That stuff is complicated even to me, and I've seen mechanical diagrams.

Today's comparison won't have much of anything to do with the lenses or mirrors involved in the cameras, nor where the viewfinder is located on the body of the camera. The subject is a small cluster if pink roses, taken from about 3 or 4 feet away, using all the default "Auto" settings on both a Kodak Easyshare 4.1 Megapixel digicam, and a Nikon D60 10.2 Megapixel dSLR. We're going to ignore the technical stuff like lens size, exposure rating, flash speed, and all that. Maybe next week we'll revisit these images and poke at all the numbers!

First off, let's introduce our contenders.

This image was taken with the digicam. It's got nice, warm colors, good clarity, and a broad depth of field.

It required me to just turn the camera on, let the motor whir and the lens extend from the body, and I shot the image while looking at the LCD view screen on the back. No squinting and peering through a tiny peep hole, and no settings to worry about. Point, shoot, and you can tell exactly what I'm looking at. The roses are pink, the leaves are green, and even the bird bath is looking kind of spiffy (if a bit dry...)


This next image has been reduced down to the exact same pixel width. It's not as tall, though, because the dimensions of the sensors are different. I'll talk about sensors another time. Think of this camera as "wide screen" like movies at the theater, different from the ones on television. I was standing in exactly the same spot as for the previous image, and of the same rose cluster.

This image is slightly cooler (that means it has more blue to it), but it's still pleasing to the eye. The roses are still pink, and the leaves are still green. Even the birdbath still looks rustic and quaint, and the makers would be pleased to know that the soft plastic looks very much like a copper basin. But if you look at that empty bird bath, you may notice a key difference between the two images. It's a difference that makes the roses in the second image 'pop' out of the background and become more noticeable.



Look at this mess! What a horribly blurry image! You can barely tell what this is, and you probably only guessed that it's the top of the bird bath because you've been looking at the above pictures. This is ridiculous, and would never pass as a standalone picture. The gaps in the side are smeared together in a single, smooth blur, and you can forget telling any detail about the tree in the background. You can't even tell if there is water in the bird bath, or if that's just a smeared reflection of the surface itself. It is so out of focus, you have to wonder what the photographer was looking at.


Well that's a little better. After all, now we can see the holes along the side of the basin, you can be relatively sure that the bowl is empty, and there's even evidence of texture and variations in color in those places where the sunlight hasn't blown out all detail. You could believe that the photographer was pretty interested in this part of the image, and he wanted you to pay some attention to it.

Except that's all wrong. This is supposed to be the background. You want this sort of detail faded out and unimportant, so it doesn't distract from your main subject. If you have too much detail in the background, then you start losing that direction, and it starts to become confusing for your viewers when they try and find what it is they are supposed to be focusing on.

Let's zoom in on the aspect that we do want to focus on.


This is from the dSLR. This is sized to 100%, meaning that the rest of the image would be huge if it tried to fit on your screen. Go ahead and look at that image up there at the top of the page and imagine those little pink roses in the center were this large, and you have it.

Look at the way the detail is sharp and crisp on the roses - and then notice the fact that everything in the background is just gone. There's no chance you can tell what's back there, only that it is mottled green. That's good! That means your viewers are only seeing those flowers and going "Wow, that drought is tough on them!" Well, hopefully they're saying "Wow!" about the pretty pink flowers, too. But they do look kind of rough...


And here we have the image from the digicam, also 100%, so you can go ahead and compare the full image from way above and see how large this image would be. It would also make for a pretty huge picture if you blew it up full-size. Not quite as large as the SLR, but it's not a bad camera at all. But see how you can see the background? You can tell there's a fence, there's some leaves, probably that there's some grassless dirt further on. It's a very busy background.

You'll also notice there's some 'noise' in this image at this size. There are places where the fact that the image was digital becomes very noticeable. Looking close, you'll see places where colors seem to blend into square patches. These are called 'artifacts' and they are the bane of any person who has to work with digital imagery. It's similar, in ways, to the graininess of old film photography, but as you can see, it doesn't have the classic appeal of a grainy .35 mm shot. The places where the digicam become 'blurry' tend more towards the 'smeared' look a lot more than the way the SLR creates a consistent 'soft focus' effect.

The digicam proves once again why and how it is excellent for family shots, quick photos with the kids, and a snapshot of the family garden to email to family far away. But if you want something more than that, with a bit more personality and a lot more potential for art, well...

You'll have to break through that brick wall.

digicam vs dSLR

The dSLR actually debuted in 1986, in the form of a prototype analog electronic still SLR camera from Nikon. Kodak took the concept a step further, and in 1991, released the first commercially viable dSRL built from a modified Nikon body, rebuilt drive unit, and a storage unit that was connected by a cable to the rest of the body. It had 1.3 megapixels and cost …$30,000.

Since then, the race has been on for companies and design teams to both streamline and bulk up these ‘next generation cameras’. For people that are less familiar with photography, this concept of a $30,000 camera seems a little ridiculous. Time to look at the guts of these things and show the difference between a digital point-and-shoot camera (digicam) and a full-sized digital Single Lens Reflex camera (dSLR).

For a digicam, the viewfinder is just this extra lens on top of the camera. It’s good for framing or composing an image, but it can be as much as an inch away from the lens – and the lens is what will be taking the picture. The best way to make absolutely sure that you are seeing what picture will be taken, is to use the LCD screen on the back of the digicam. This screen takes its reading directly from the lens itself, so there is no offset. When you snap the picture, you can be looking at either the screen, or through the viewfinder, and the camera will take the shot, exposing the ‘film’ (actually a sensor, in the case of digital cameras), and storing the image all without interrupting your sight.

For a SLR, well. It’s a long process for the light to get to that sensor.

The light passes through the lens assembly, is reflected into the pentaprism by the reflex mirror (which must be at an exact 45 degree angle), and is projected on the matte focusing screen. A condensing lens, and internal reflections in the roof pentaprism, projects the image through the eyepiece to the photographer's eye. When an image is photographed, the mirror swings upwards (suddenly making the viewfinder useless for a split second), the focal-plane shutter opens, and the image is projected and captured on the sensor, after which actions, the shutter closes, the mirror returns to a critical 45 degree angle (making the viewfinder functional again), and the diaphragm reopens and the built-in drive mechanism retensions the shutter for the next exposure.

Whew.

Did you catch the key differences? Through a series of mirrors and lenses, you are looking into the viewfinder, but out the lens. When you press the button, mirrors and lenses realign for a split second to allow the sensor to see what you were looking at, and then switch back again.

This key difference is how photographers make certain they have the right view of their subjects’ eyes. A tiny variation, where the person may be looking too high, or past the photographer, may not seem a big deal – but the human eye would recognize it in the resulting image, and can make for some amusing looking people with crossed eyes. The SLR format also allows for extremely close-up imagery, called macro photography, that would be much more difficult with a camera that required you to use a viewfinder a full inch away from the lens. You’re going to miss that ladybug by a mile if you think you’re looking right at it, but the lens is pointing beside it at the leaf.

A bit of a joke, there.

The camera shoots, leaves, and you missed it.

…Okay, that was a stretch. Promise I’ll work on it.

Steadying your Point-and-Shoot

The D60 came in and it is looking quite pretty. Functionality is good, and the results have been … satisfactory. More on that when I run out of other things.

Last time, I talked about how to trick a point-and-shoot camera into focusing on the right element in view. This time I’m going to give you a few pointers on how to get the best clarity from that shot.

When a picture is not well focused, there are a few reasons why this might be the case. It could be that the camera itself was focused on the wrong thing; ie: that leaf in the foreground as opposed to your real subject further on. It could also be that the subject was in motion, smearing the image across a clear background. It may even be that the image was too dark, and the camera kept the shutter open too long in an attempt to get enough light. Finally, YOU might have moved.

We’ve already covered a few ways you can trick a camera out of doing the first hiccup. The second is not something that is easily controlled. If we are talking about a car going by, then the solution is to somehow move your camera with the vehicle so that it is the background that blurs but the car stays crisp. But if you’re taking pictures of a group of children and they are not, as children never seem to, holding completely still, then you will get smear-blur. There’s no single element for you to move your camera with in order to clarify it, and you’d never be able to keep up with the randomness anyway.

The second, third, and fourth hiccup are actually the same problem. The shutter is open for a set length of time, letting the sensor ‘see’ the image, and then the shutter closes again when enough light has passed through. Sometimes there is plenty of light, but the shutter is simply too slow to completely avoid smear-blur. From the time it opens to the time it closes, your subject has moved, even when the shutter is moving as fast as it can. In dark settings, the automatic camera will keep the shutter open longer in order to keep you from having a flat, black image, maybe with a spot of light from a street lamp or something. You are more likely to get a blur during dark times than any other, because the camera is attempting to adjust for this no matter what is moving. When the camera itself moves during the time where the shutter is open, EVERYTHING will smear. Unless you are moving the camera WITH your subject, I mean. But that technique is difficult and it takes a lot of practice to freeze a moving element by moving your camera exactly as it does.

There is not much you can do about your point-and-shoot camera’s shutter speed. You could slow it down, for artsy trick shots (or things in the dark that you know will suddenly get bright, like fireworks). The best you can do is select the automated settings designed for specific situations, like the fireworks setting, sports (for the fastest shutter speed), and various portrait or landscape options.

Since you can’t do very much with the shutter, and you can’t control the movement of your subject, the last thing you can do is reduce the amount of moving that your camera does.

The obvious solution is a tripod. Tripods can be expensive and, really, a point-and-shoot camera looks silly on a 4+ foot set of legs. Many of them have the attachment placement, or a bracket to put the tripod’s grips, but it still looks ridiculous. Smaller tripods are available, around the six inch height, but these are almost always designed specifically for the self-portrait types of shots. If you had a brace that was convenient to set the camera on, you wouldn’t need a tripod.

Which brings us to the next solution: a brace. A park bench, a tree, a wall, a lamp post. Anything that will not move can become a steadying support. Place the side or bottom of the camera directly against the object and then frame your picture. Don’t make the mistake of setting a corner of the camera against the object, or taking up an awkward and uncomfortable pose when using it, or you’ll be back to the same problem. You’ll be wobbling and tottering, even just a little, while thinking you were braced. What you want to do is reduce the amount that your muscles are supporting the camera – muscles are designed as a compensation mechanism. If you were to stand up straight, completely still, you could feel your muscles at the front and back of your ankles working to keep you steady, alternating pulls to compensate for slight motion and winds gravity and whatever else is trying to get you into a prone position. Your bones do not have this problem, so if there is nothing else available for a brace, use your own skeleton. That is to say, if worst comes to worst, sit on your butt and set the camera on your bent knee. Your foot and your butt are working as two legs of a tripod, and your musculature isn’t involved in any way (except to keep your skeleton together, I guess). Instant tripod – sort of. Bi-pod? There IS such a thing as a monopod…

Let’s create a monopod for those people uninterested in sitting on cold, wet grass. Or gravel. Or in the middle of a forest, or at a sporting event. There are plenty of reasons you may not want to put your skeleton to use. Rather than go out and purchase a 4 foot monopod, we’ll instead make use of that screw-hole for another item. A screw. Attach a long thread, maybe of yarn or some other string that will not stretch, to the neck of a screw that will fit into that aperture. Make sure the string is long enough to tie, and then have enough length left over to have about half a foot on the ground. Then screw it into the tripod receptacle and let the string hang from your camera to the ground. Now step on the dangling end of the string. Remember how we mentioned your musculature was a compensation mechanism? Well we are going to force it to compensate for a force that will not move, hopefully keeping your muscles as still as possible. Pull upwards on the camera until there is no slack in the string (keep your foot solid), and now compose your picture with a steady camera, held aloft by your arms which are fighting a consistent pressure of a string pulling down. Instant poor-man’s portable monopod!

As always, do your best to make sure there is plenty of light so the camera is not having to compensate with a slower shutter speed. Don’t rely entirely on the flash, as even at it’s best, flash imagery can look garish. There is no better way to add 5 pounds to a person, while still making them look like a cadaver, than to have a straight-on flash be your only light source.

But at least that picture won’t have any motion blur.

Photography Tricks

There is a wall, when it comes to photography. It’s when your equipment can not perform what you’re trying to ask of it.

Some will say, even with a non-pro soccer ball, Beckham would beat out the average player on the field. However, even Beckham may admit he’s not having much fun on the field if the ball is flat. A child could make do, maybe have some fun, but no one can really accomplish much with it.

So my first step into dSLR is the Nikon D60 and a couple of lenses that came in a kit – hopefully that will get me over the wall, and I can start to expand my knowledge of the craft.

In the meantime, remember that other soccer ball? Can’t do much with it, but it can be a little fun. You have to learn some tricks, too, to get it to do what you want. You have to get creative.

Point-and-shoot cameras have evolved to take a lot of the effort out of photography. They have been given auto focus, light sensors, internal image compression, automatic flash, and more. These tools make it easy for anyone to pick up a camera, point it at the subject, and capture the moment with ease. The picture comes out clear enough and bright enough to email back home to mom.

But sometimes the autofocus will latch onto something you aren’t interested in. Sometimes the light sensor gets confused by shadows. Sometimes the flash is a bit too much. And sometimes that image compression winds up just crushing your image. That’s when you have to start learning some tricks.

Until the new camera comes in, I’ll share some of the tricks I’ve learned from using a 4.1mp Kodak Easyshare digital camera.


First of all, defeating the autofocus.

I’ve enjoyed taking shots of various forested areas nearby. It allows me to discover and share the treasures that are hidden out amongst the trees. In an old town that saw a boom and bust over 50 years ago, there are a lot of treasures tucked down in the shadows. Point-and-shoot cameras, though, were designed for a clear shot of the family or house, and will automatically try to focus on the most obvious element in view. Often, this means your camera is struggling to focus on the tree branch or twig that is dangling down in front of you. You may not even see it, because your attention is on the decrepit house in the woods. But when you get home, load all your images, and inspect your hard day’s work, you’re definitely going to see that twig. In high relief. Maybe there’s a blur in the background that was a house – maybe not even that.

To combat this autofocus feature, you have to know what it’s doing and play along. Depressing the shutter release button half way causes the camera to focus and take a light reading. If you’re lucky enough to be on a shaded road, you can turn to the side and point your camera down the lane to approximately the distance between yourself and the subject you’re actually going to shoot. Let’s say the house is 20 yards into the woods. Let the camera focus on the road about 20 yards away. Keeping the shutter release halfway down, turn back to the house and snap the picture. Voila, the camera should ignore the limb, twig, leaf, or anything else that may be in the way. After all, it’s already focused in and set to take the picture.

Pro-tip. Remember that, while autofocusing, it is also taking a light reading. If your road is well-lit, and the house in the woods is shaded, your camera will be trying to adjust for the bright road and you will lose the house in darkness. You may try shielding the light sensor on your camera with your hand to reduce the amount of light hitting it, but suddenly you’re changing this trick from “Not an exact science” to “A shot in the dark.”

And those pictures rarely come out right.