Green Automatic is the Easiest But …..

On Canon & Nikon digital cameras there is a dial setting that is depicted as a green rectangle/icon.  This setting is referred to as the “fully automatic” setting.  When you set your camera to shoot in this mode, the digital camera is literally making every decision for you.  In my last posting about exposure, I talked about Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO.  Under the “fully automatic” setting, your camera is making a qualitative guesstimate on what it thinks the exposure should be.  As the person pressing the shutter button, you’re only job is to make sure that your subject is framed properly and that your hand is steady and not shaking.  Use this setting when you first start using your digital camera and you want to get the shot without having to stop and think about anything.  One important note about this setting, the camera will also decide wether it thinks your subject and exposure could be improved by the usage of the internal flash.  I like to leave my camera on this setting if hand my camera to someone take a picture of me or my wife and I’m the least bit concerned about the ambient lighting.  One final note: unlike the other dial settings that I am about to discuss, ”fully automatic” is the only one that COMPLETELY restricts my ability to change Aperture, ISO & Shutter Speed.  The Camera is truly in TOTAL CONTROL.

Aperture Priority is for the Artist in All of Us …

On Canon digital cameras there is a dial setting that is labeled as “Av”. This setting is known as “Aperture Priority” and allows you to directly control one of our 3 exposure characteristics.  By setting the Aperture manually with this setting, your digital camera will guarantee that it adjusts the shutter speed and ISO to deliver a proper exposure.  Depending upon the camera that you are shooting with, adjusting the aperture value will be a lit bit different from model to model.  But why would we want to adjust our aperture settings?  Well, if we want to selectively assign focusing priority to something in the frame while de-emphasizing focus from something else – we could utilize a larger aperture (smaller number) to guarantee that a shallow depth of field is applied around our target subject.  Alternatively, we would also use aperture priority if we wanted to guarantee a very-large depth of field regardless of how deep into the frame our subject might happen to be.  In this situation we would want to select a smaller aperture value (larger f/stop number).  Using Av is best suited for situations where you are not concerned about your subject(s) moving and you want to generate a specific artistic effect with selective focusing or by rendering a large depth of field. (Nikon cameras use “A” in lieu of “Av”)

Shutter Priority is for the Brave, Steady or Tripods amongst Us …

On Canon digital cameras there is a dial setting that is labeled as “Tv”. This setting is known as “Shutter Priority” and allows you to directly control another of our 3 exposure characteristics.  By setting the Shutter Speed manually with this setting, your digital camera will guarantee that it adjusts the Aperture and ISO to deliver a proper exposure.  Depending upon the camera that you are shooting with, adjusting the shutter speed value will be a lit bit different from model to model.  But why would we want to adjust the shutter speed settings?  Well, if we want to selectively imply motion in our photograph, we would utilize a lower shutter speed like 15 (1/15 of a second) or 30 (1/30th of a second).  If the subject is moving with any velocity at all, these shutter speeds will give the rendered image the appearance of motion.  Alternatively, we could also use shutter priority if we wanted to guarantee that an overly dark environment does not prevent us from getting the shot that we desperately want to capture.  In this case, even slower shutter speeds like 8 (1/8 of a second), 6 (1/6 of a second), 5 (1/5 of a second) [or even slower] will allow the camera sensor to collect more light to make that poorly lit church look nicely well-lit.  Please be aware, when shooting with slower speeds like this – a tripod (or something guaranteeing the steadiness of the camera) becomes almost a requirement.  On the other hand, using very fast shutter speeds like 250, 500, 1000, etc. will enable the photographer to “freeze” motion to produce an image that we could not normally appreciate with the naked eye. (Nikon cameras use “S” in lieu of “Tv”)

Program Mode is the Best For Everyday, Spontaneous Snapshots …

On Canon & Nikon digital cameras there is a dial setting that is labeled as “P”.  This setting is known as the “fully programmatic” setting.  When you set your camera to shoot in this mode, the digital camera is still willing to make every decision for you. In this regard this dial setting is just like the “green automatic” setting discussed earlier – but with one KEY difference.  Shooting on “P” is differentiated by the fact that the built-in-flash will not automatically be fired.  If the goal of the photographer is to AVOID the harshness that automatic flash often delivers AND have the camera STILL make all the decisions, this dial setting is the best to use for everyday photographic opportunities.  This is the setting I use whenever I am in a “candid family photo” scenario.  If I take the shot and then discover that there was some motion blur due to a moving subject (like my 6 year old son), I will turn my flash on and retake the shot.  This is also the mode that I will place my camera in when I am walking around outdoors and want to be able to catch random subjects quickly.

Manual Mode is truly for Exposure Magicians …

On Canon & Nikon digital cameras there is a dial setting that is labeled as “M”.  This setting is referred to as the “fully manual” setting.  When you set your camera to shoot in this mode, the digital camera’s only response to you pressing the shutter half-way down is to indicate the quality of the exposure that has been metered based on your manual settings for ISO, aperture and shutter speed. Under this setting, you are responsible for EVERYTHING.  The camera makes no assertions and just does whatever you tell it to.  Aside from professional photographers, the only practical usage for this setting is when you might be shooting with lenses or flashes whose calibration is not automated with particular camera body that you are using.  For most of us, this scenario does not come into play very often and as a result should be avoided unless you have a need to generate an exposure which would be considered non-standard.  In the 15 months I have owned my 40D, I have shot on “fully manual” in a very limited number of situations.

Exposure: What is it exactly?

Put quite simply, exposure is an intrinsic characteristic of a digital photograph which quantifies and qualifies the quality of light that ultimately reached the digital camera’s digital sensor. In the olden days, photographers had to be concerned with a multitude of factors before arriving at the proper exposure for a given photograph. Fortunately, for us in the digital age – digital cameras are capable of “automatically” making very well informed “guesstimates” as to what it believes the exposure for a given photograph should be. In certain situations, the camera is very adept at performing this task and in other situations its’ calculations are less than ideal. Improving your photography in the digital-age requires us to understand exposure in one of 2 contexts: (a) how the camera formulates its exposure “guesstimates” and (b) how we can manually override the settings to create the perfect exposure.

Camera on Automatic: What’s happening under the hood?

When you shoot your digital camera on its pre-defined “automatic” settings, the camera is making all the decisions with the goal of establishing a properly balanced exposure. Depending upon the the type of camera you have, the camera will have more or less “smarts” built inside of it to make an educated guess for the proper exposure. On my Canon 40D, the camera actually has a mini-database of different types of photo scenarios with pre-established exposure settings. Of course the success of this strategy is limited to the camera’s ability to compare what it thinks it sees in your frame to what is actually in its exposure preset database. By the time you have pressed your shutter button half-way down, the camera has formulated what it thinks is the proper exposure for the foreground, subject and background that you have chosen.

Aperture … and Shutter Speed … and ISO – Oh my!

After your camera has calculated an exposure for your photograph, its characteristics can be quantified by three attributes. These attributes are crucial in understanding exposure and ultimately in making manual adjustments to improve upon what the camera has setup for you. The following three terms are therefore introduced for all the newbies in the audience:

• Aperture: The size of the opening on your camera’s lens through which light will be allowed to pass. A smaller assigned aperture value translates (albeit counter intuitively) into a larger opening for light to pass. Aperture therefore has a direct impact on the quantity of light that reaches the camera’s sensor in a given period of time.  Specified aperture values are expressed in numbers like: 2.0f, 2.8f, 4.0f, 5.6f, etc. This number is called the f-stop number.
• Shutter Speed: As described above, the camera will allow the sensor to be exposed to light for a given period of time. The longer the shutter speed, the more light hits the sensor. On the other hand, a shorter shutter speed restricts the amount of light that reaches the sensor – thereby affecting the quality of the exposure. Shutter speeds are typically expressed in fractions of a second (or longer).
• ISO Sensitivity: This means something slightly different than it did in the days of film photography, but fundamentally the ISO value assigned to an exposure indicates how the sensor chose to react to the light that hit its surface during the specified timer period. Typically rated with numbers in the 100 to 1600 range, ISO sensitivity for digital cameras is based upon a reference ISO value. When a digital camera employs a high ISO setting, it is making a decision to amplify the light that has reached the sensor. However if the camera utilizes a low ISO value (like 100 or 200), it is making a decision to process the light in a fairly standard (non-amplified) manner.

Aperture, Shutter Speed & ISO are ALWAYS inter-related

The above statement is pretty straight-forward, but deserves some additional discussion. When the camera calculates an exposure for a given photograph, it has determined values to use for the aforementioned three attributes. If any of these attributes are changed (by you or the camera), the exposure will be impacted in very specific and qualitative way. There are some practical scenarios where you might want to use a longer shutter speed than what the camera suggests or maybe you want to allow more light to enter then lens in a given period of time. In either of these two situations, you or the camera will have to adjust one or both of the other 2 attributes in order to maintain an equivalent exposure. Future DP Tipsarticles will get into more practical scenarios and utilize basic math to explain how exposure can be manipulated to suit a particular photographic need.

The Histogram: How Good is Your Exposure?

So – your camera was set to automatic and you trusted that the camera would properly evaluate the exposure for your beautiful outdoor garden shot. How do we know if the camera nailed the exposure or if a manual change to some of the settings might result in a better photo? All new digital cameras offer the ability to display a histogram representing the distribution of colors across a given photo. A well-exposed photograph, should have a clean distributions of colors between pure black and pure white. The histogram representation for a well defined photo typically looks like a mountain range (see image 1 below), whereas a poorly exposed photo has a histogram where all the data points are concentrated at one or both sides of the graph (see image 2 & 3 below).

Software – Use It Or Lose It:

Regardless of your skill level or experience, everyone needs to have an idea about the software that is available and what it can do for you. My recommendation for people starting to think seriously about digital photography for the first time would be to research and begin experimenting with some of the more prevalent and free software management tools out there.  For most of us, Google’s Picasa or Microsoft’s Live Photo Gallery will give us all the features that we would ever need to: import, coordinate, manage and edit our photo collections.  Many family and friends that I talk to (who have digital cameras) admit to taking pictures but then leaving the pictures pile up on the memory card until they are either forced to erase them or until they have saved up enough cash to buy a new card. This is a recipe for disaster.  Get those pictures off your camera and loaded into a photo management tool on your home computer.  Picasa and Live Photo Gallery provide basic photo management, photo backup, editing and tagging capabilities.  Regardless of which tool you may choose to use, take my advice and spend a few hours researching the basic functions and features that each tool offers.  This is the first step in understanding and establishing a digital workflow.

Digital Photography Workflows – No 2 Are The Same:

Once you have gained some familiarity with what a piece of software can do, you’ll want to start using some of its features by importing some or all of your photos into the application.  Workflow is defined as ” … the sequence of industrial, administrative, or other processes through which a piece of work passes from initiation to completion.”  In our case the piece of work is the importation, management, editing and output of your digital photographs.  A digital photography workflow could be as simple as the steps you take to get the pictures off your camera and then backing up those photos to an external hard drive.  It could  also be much more complicated – a documented series of steps to: crop, color-correct, tag, print and publish your photos to an online photo sharing service like Flickr or FaceBook.  The bottom line here is that the tool you use to manage your photos will go a long way in defining your digital workflow.  There are plenty of websites that attempt to recommend a specific workflow to follow.  Although I am always curious to see what others may be doing, I think it just as important to adopt a workflow and then stick to it for a while.  Workflows evolve and are made more efficient as you use them over a longer period of time.  I may tweak my workflow here or there a little bit, but for the most part – my current workflow is the same that it was almost 2 years ago!

Improving your Photography – One Deletion @ a Time:

After importing and possibly backing up your photographs, the most important step (IMHO) in a digital photography workflow is what I like to call “purge and burn”.  Let’s face it, the great advantage of digital photography is that you’re not paying for development and therefore you should not be hesitant to take hundreds of photos during the course of a given day.  However, after you’ve taken those 350+ photos at the baseball game who (other than yourself) is going to want to look at all of those photos? After the blurry photos, the dark photos, the repeats and the poorly composed photos you might just be left with 35% of what you took that you would actually be proud to show your family. Don’t save a photo unless you are really proud of it.  The more photos you take the more open you’ll be to “purge and burn”.  At the end of the day, everyone (including yourself) who looks at your photos will think you a much better photographer if they are looking at quality as compared to quantity.  For a frame of reference: at this point in my photographic “evolution”,  I am keeping only 20-25% of what I shoot on any given day.

Cropping Your Photos – The Easy Way to Fix A Keeper:

Sometimes, you recognize that a photo doesn’t work, but you are hesitant to “purge and burn” it.  The solution to this dilemma is to re-compose the photo by cropping it.  It seems so simple, but many casual photographers never think to take the 15-20 seconds in their software to make a mundane but treasured picture more interesting.  I normally like to crop a photo into a different orientation and size just to make it stand-out from the rest that are in the bunch.  Most of today’s digital cameras will allow you to crop as little as 35-50% of the original photo into a new version which loses little of its original clarity and sharpness.  If you’re ultimately printing to 4×6 or 5×7 paper – cropping your photos in this way will not take away much from the final printed result.

Online Photo Services – The “New” Printed Album:

Let’s face it, the days of printing your photos and putting them into physical albums are long gone.  Too are the days of keeping track of all the envelopes you get back from the photo processing lab.  No matter how simple or complicated your digital workflow is, your final step should always be to publish your photos online via one of the literally dozens of online photo sharing services.  I don’t want to get into a review of the features of the various services, but the bottom line is that it should offer an easy and intuitive way to get your photos “into the hands” of your friends and loved ones instantly. Some of the more popular services include: ShutterFly, SnapFish, Kodak, Mobile Me, & Flickr.  Adobe and Microsoft also offer online versions of their popular tools to help manage and distribute your digital photos regardless of where in the world you may be sitting.  Even the most popular social networking sites (FaceBook & MySpace) offers basic functionality for storing and sharing photos. Personally – my workflow includes using Flickr, Mobile Me and FaceBook to post and share photos.

Final Thoughts – What About Paid Software?

You may (or may not) have noticed that I had yet to mention any of the most popular paid software options.  Whether it be (Apple’s) iPhoto or the more advanced Aperture, (or Adobe’s) PhotoShop Elements, Lightroom or PhotoShop (the grand-daddy of them all), each of these products is a little different and is targeted to a slightly different type of digital workflow.  Over time, I’ll talk more about these as part of some advanced articles.  However, unless you have already purchased one of these products, I think much can be learned initially from using one of the free products that I mentioned earlier.  In the end, it really doesn’t matter what software you make part of your digital workflow.  What matters is that you realize the importance of adopting a workflow that allows you to get the most out of the photos that you and your digital camera have created. Embrace the reality that although the taking of the picture is the most creative aspect of this hobby, the “stuff” we do with the pictures once they get off our cameras is what will keep the photos alive and relevant for years to come. I’ll be writing additional articles down the road which will dive deeper into many of the steps that appear regularly in advanced workflows, but for now – go out and start learning a new piece of software.

Bare Essential # 0:  Use The Quick Help Guide:
Every digital camera comes with one and is usually a smaller, pocket version of the full product manual. Use it t familiarize yourself with your camera’s basic physical controls. Scan it to figure out how to interact with your camera’s on-screen menu.

Bare Essential # 1: Jack Up Picture Quality
I’ve seen and heard about too many people that fail to do the easiest and most fundamental of user tweaks. This article is not going to talk about shooting in camera RAW; instead we’re gong to assume that your camera defaults (as all digital cameras do) to standard JPEG format. Using the directions provided in the quick help guide, change your camera to shoot in the highest quality JPEG mode that is offered. Memory cards are so cheap these days that it makes little sense in trying to “save space”. Remember, the bigger the picture on the memory card, the more you can do with it later via software.

Bare Essential  # 2: Start shooting in “Automatic”
For instant gratification with your newest toy, set your camera to shoot it’s first batch of pictures in the “automatic” mode that all digital cameras provide. Under this setting, your camera will make all the decisions for you, and should under most normal situations provide you with an exposure that is near optimal. If you end being serious about your camera, you may not use the “automatic” setting long term, but it is an excellent way to get a feel for what the camera can and can not do. My recommendation is to shoot in automatic for at least a couple of days in both indoor and outdoor situations.

Bare Essential # 3: Familiarize yourself with your camera’s LCD
As soon as you start shooting, you’re going to want to see results on the screen immediately; Just be warned that the LCDs on the back of digital cameras are not always accurate.  Make no mistake about it, a picture that looks bad on the LCD will always be bad when it comes off the camera.  However, a picture that looks good on the LCD will not always look good when it comes off the camera.  Get into the habit of taking a shot, reviewing it on the LCD and taking another immediately if the opportunity presents itself.  Finally, learn how to toggle the picture’s meta-data on/off using the LCD’s display options.  Start to become familiar with how your camera displays the information surrounding a picture’s exposure.  The four tools necessary for understanding exposure is: (a) Histograms, (b) Aperture, (c) Shutter Speed & (d) ISO sensitivity.  Future postings will address all of these topics in more detail.  Learn how to identify this vital data in every picture you take.  Assuming that you shoot on “Automatic”, your camera will take care of everything, but note how different shooting conditions and subjects will produce different results for these 4 photographic exposure characteristics.

Bare Essential # 4: Don’t Get Frustrated with Blurry Photos (Yet)
Your new camera (when shooting in “automatic” mode) is programmed to handle a wide variety of photographic scenarios provided that it can “guess” what it is supposed to do at the moment your click the shutter button.  In order to make this happen quickly for a large percentage of “typical” scenarios, it makes certain assumptions.  Sometimes these assumptions may not take into account the motion of your subject or variable lighting conditions.  It is perfectly normal to be frustrated by blurry photos when shooting in “automatic” mode.  It might just mean that you aren’t holding the camera steady enough or that your subject is moving too quickly for the camera to record a clean image.  For now, just now that you’ll have tools at your disposal to correct for this when you start shooting in other more advanced modes.  A blurry shot in “automatic” mode does not automatically make the camera crappy!

Bare Essential # 5: May the Flash Be With You
Like my second Bare Essential tip, this piece of advice is only a short-term recommendation.  Until you get more comfortable with the more advanced features on your camera, resist the temptation to turn off or disable your built-in-flash (assuming you have one).  Pop-Up or built-in flashes are not very strong by most standards and typically only provide “fill flash”.  What this means is that the “automatic” settings of the camera will only fire the flash if it thinks the subject you are taking will benefit by it.  For beginning photographers, I believe that it is better for the flash to go off than for you to be left with photos that are dark or that have excessive shadows.  With that said, try not to include direct light sources in the frame of your shot.  Natural or artificial lighting is most effective if it is coming from the sides or at angle to your subject.  It is also worth mentioning that this is when the pop-up flash is most effective: when it is considered a secondary lighting source to whatever is the primary light source for the subject.  Finally, one of the added benefits of using flash is it helps to reduce blurriness in situations where your subject might be moving or your hand might be a little unsteady.

Bare Essential # 6: Get Your Photos Off The Camera
If you use your new digital camera regularly, take advantage of the digital format by getting your pictures off the camera as often as possible.  Many data storage experts will tell you that if you have only one copy of a digital asset you really don’t have a copy at all.  I’ll make it even more fundamental: until you get those pictures off your camera, you don’t have a digital asset in the first place.  The photo becomes a digital asset when it has been removed from the memory card and copied onto another medium (e.g. CD-ROM, DVD, hard disk, thumb drive, etc).  Personally, I get my pictures copied off my memory card as soon as I finish shooting for the day.  If you can’t do it immediately after your shoot (no access to your computer), do it at least on a per-weekly basis.  Almost everyone that has ever taken digital photographs for a long enough time has fallen prey to this pitfall.  Don’t let it cost you valuable pictures of your 10-month old son before you learn about protecting your digital assets.

In my next posting, I’ll talk about the role of software in today’s digital photography.

Stay Tuned ….

(posted from recent emails to family and friends):

What These Posts Are:

• My personal reflections on the immersion into a “relatively” new personal hobby.
• Personal advice on researching, buying, using and improving your digital photography.
• Thoughts on software, work flow, lenses, post-processing and flash photography.
• Pointers to great sites on the web for advanced tips and techniques for the amateur photographer.

What These Posts Will Not Be:

• Professional tips or strategies for anyone beyond an entry-level or “pro-sumer” proficiency.
• Shameless plugs for one specific product manufacturer or software vendor.  (I’ll endeavor to offer choices in all of my product or software discussions)
• An advertising vehicle for any type of photography business or money-making venture.

Who Am I & What is My Photographic Background:

I’ll let you take a look at my “About” Page for that first piece of information.  As for the second, my photographic background is comparatively limited in contrast to the wealth of more advanced knowledge and advice that can be harvested on the internet.  However as someone who has taken over 10,000 digital photographs in the last 6 years, I hope to offer some easy to digest “everyday” information for those of you who already know me and that have an interest in getting into digital photography for the first time.  Alternatively, if you have shot digital before but want more information to help you get more enjoyment out of this great hobby, then I hope my posts will provide some value.

As new posts go up, please don’t hesitate to provide comments, feedback or even questions on my Digital Photography Tips (DPTips).

Enjoy -