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How I shoot
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How I shoot found when I first got into photography that a lot of explanations try to
be all encompassing and by doing so end up providing a lot more
information than I actually wanted and needed. The first camera book I
read was 500 pages or so of very detailed technical information. I wasn’t
much better off when I finished reading it than when I started. I was actually
a little more confused.
It explained a lot of ‘what’ but very little ‘why’. The tendency of authors to fill
pages upon pages with very detailed technical information often frustrates
readers who have no points of reference for all of the facts they are hearing.
Often this causes people to lose interest before they have learned what they
started out to learn in the first place. It did for me at first when starting out in
photography. Mostly people just want to understand enough to get started
and begin taking images. Here I will try to explain what settings I use and
why I use them.
File Formats The first thing you have to decide is what format do you want to shoot. Most
cameras offer different sizes of JPEG and several sizes of RAW files. I shoot
RAW files without exception. There are a lot of benefits of shooting RAW that
significantly outweigh any downsides. RAW files capture the most amount of
information available from your camera’s sensor allowing you a tremendous
amount of options in post processing.
To process a RAW file, and ultimately convert it to JPEG for broader
consumption you will need to use an application that can process RAW files
such as Adobe’s Lightroom (which I use), Apple’s Aperture or your camera’s
raw processing software. You can change white balance, brightness,
contrast, and a whole host of other things non-destructively meaning that
you can make the change and then change your mind and change it
again. This is especially helpful if weeks, months or even years later you
I
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repurpose a photograph and need to make changes. The changes never
impact your original file as all ‘settings’ are written to a side file.
I typically do very little, if any, post processing of my photos. If I need to
tweak white balance, exposure or remove dust I want to be working with the
highest quality file. Here is an example of the controls in Adobe’s Lightroom.
There are a couple of trade-offs you need to make when shooting RAW. First
the files are huge. Mine are about 35MB per photograph. This means you
need to buy extra memory cards and have plenty of storage, both of which
are getting cheaper all the time. When shooting my Leica I typically carry
four or five 8GB 30MB/sec memory cards with me. I used to use larger but I
find the Leica performs better on smaller memory cards. For storage at
home I have five 2TB Western Digital My Book Drives. I also have four 500GB
portable Western Digital drives I carry with me when I am travelling as I
backup daily to ensure I never lose data. Storage is very cheap these days
so file size should not prevent you from shooting RAW.
One other trade off with RAW is your previews can tend to look flat on your
camera’s LCD screen as there is no processing happening in the camera. I
tend to not use my camera’s LCD to evaluate my pictures other than ensure
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my framing was correct. I’m finding relying on my camera’s display can
mislead me and it is best to view your images on your PC or Mac.
White Balance One topic that can be a little confusing is white balance. What you need to
know is there are color casts at different times of the day or with different
sources of light that can cause the colors in your photos to look un-natural
such as too blue, green or yellow. Typically you can see this in the tone of
the skin of whomever you are photographing. Here is an example of some
shots where the White Balance is not correct.
The goal of white balance is to make sure that colors are rendered correctly
like in the last picture in the frame. I typically leave my camera on Auto
White Balance as my Leica does a very good job of handling and balancing
White Balance. This works for about 99% of my shots. There are times when
the lighting is a little more difficult such as having mixed lighting sources –
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house lights, light coming through a window and a flash for example. In this
case I might use my X-Rite Color Checker passport to help me correct my
White Balance and ensure colors are rendering properly. Basically you take a
photograph of this in your scene then can set a camera profile in Lightroom. I
use this each year when we shoot our family photos at Christmas.
For me those are the two big decisions you need to make in terms of settings
in the camera, everything else is made while shooting. Now let’s review the
principles of exposure together. We have a couple of variables to control
our exposure and how light hits our camera’s sensor: ISO, Shutter Speed
and Aperture.
ISO – In film photography this determines how sensitive your film was to light.
In the digital world it is how sensitive your camera’s sensor is to light. The
higher the ISO the more sensitive your camera will be to light, but this comes
at the cost of adding digital noise into your pictures and often at the cost of
image quality.
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Shutter Speed – This is how long you leave your shutter open thus how long
you allow light to hit your camera’s sensor. You can use this to freeze or
imply motion depending on the photograph you are trying to create.
Aperture – How much light you let pass through your lens and onto the
sensor. This also controls depth of field or how much of the photograph is in
focus.
With time and practice these settings and the outcomes become second
nature to you. It simply takes time and practice to learn how to combine
them together to get the effect you are looking for. Understanding this isn’t
the end all of photography but rather the beginning. These are simply tools
to help you achieve the outcome you are looking for.
ISO ISO or film speed was it is known in Film Photography determines how
sensitive your film (in the digital world your sensor) is to light. When shooting
at night you might need to increase your ISO so you have a proper exposure
but this comes at the expensive of image quality. Below are some examples
of the impact of increasing your ISO on image quality. You can see as your
increase your ISO you are also increasing the digital noise in your
photograph.
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I want the highest quality images possible so I keep my ISO on my Leica at
160 most of the time. Different cameras have different abilities of dealing
with high ISO. My Nikon D3s is extremely good at creating high quality
images at high ISO. Some cameras can shoot at incredibly high ISO with
very little noise. I suggest you do a similar test with your camera to
determine what is the level of acceptable noise for you. My basic rule of
thumb is I only raise my ISO as a last resort. There are also creative uses for
ISO as sometimes you want to add grain into a photo such as shooting a
city at night in Black and White.
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Shutter Speed The next part of exposure to understand is Shutter Speed. This is simply how
long you allow light to hit your sensor. The simple question you need to
answer is do you want to freeze motion or imply motion? Maybe a taxi is
driving by such as in the picture below and you want to stop it and freeze it
razor sharp. You would need a very quick shutter speed such as 1/1000 or
1/750 of a second to stop the taxi. Perhaps you want to show that a scene
you are looking at is very busy and you want to imply motion by capturing
the blur of the taxi as it races by so 1/10 of a second might be a better
choice. You can see in this example at 1/750th of a second we could freeze
the taxi keeping it sharp and as we slow our shutter speed down to .7 of a
second the taxi is all but a blur.
There is no right or wrong with shutter speed but simply what is the effect you
want to create.
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One consideration you need to think about with Shutter Speed is camera
shake. At a certain point either the movement of your hands or the pressing
of the shutter will cause a slight shake that can be visible within the picture.
There are all sorts of rules of thumb out there but basically if you are
shooting at a shutter speed of less than 1/50 of a second, you should be
considering using a tripod to avoid camera shake. As you practice and get
better you can hand hold to even slower speeds.
Other things you can do to avoid or reduce camera shake is using a soft
release button or a timed release so the camera has time to stabilize after
you press the shutter and before taking the picture or simply rest it on a table
versus holding it in your hands.
Aperture The last part of exposure and the one I leverage the most is Aperture.
Aperture refers to the size of the diameter of the lens. The larger the f-stop
the smaller the opening. This is counter-intuitive and can be confusing.
Typically the smaller the f-stop the brighter the lens. This is often also
considered a better lens as well due to the versatility and creative potential
of the lens.
Lenses with large f-stops such as 1.4, 1.2, 1 and .95 are called ‘fast lenses’. I
tend to buy fast lenses when possible.
Aside from the creative potential they are great for night shooting.
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The creative part of Aperture is controlling what is called Depth of Field, or
how much of your photograph is in focus. Look at the pictures below:
• at f/2.8 only the figure is in focus, you can’t really even make out the disk
drives behind him.
• at f/8 the figures behind him are beginning to become sharp
• at f/32 everything is sharp and you can clearly read the labels on each
drive.
At f/2.8 the figure is clearly the stand out in the picture where at f/32 he does
not stand out nearly as much as he gets a bit lost with all of the busy
background.
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I tend to favor selective focus so I typically shoot with a big aperture. The
creative options here are really endless.
Lastly focusing…
I always focus manually as you simply get much better images, especially if
you are shooting at a big aperture like I like to. The opportunity for the
camera selecting the wrong focus point is too great.
OK so how do we put this all together?
• File Format – Raw
• White Balance – Auto (most of the time)
• ISO – Leave it on the lowest possible
• Focus – Manual
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This leaves us with a few questions we need to answer: Are we trying to
imply or freeze motion? Do we want to selectively focus on a certain subject
or capture a lot of detail from front to back? I typically let the answer to
these be the primary driver of the setting I use.
For example: if I am looking to isolate a subject I will choose a big aperture
such as f/1.4 or f/2. I have my ISO locked on ISO 160 so all I need to do is
adjust my Shutter Speed for a proper exposure, or even better put my
camera in Aperture Priority and let the camera set the corresponding Shutter
Speed. If I am trying to capture the trail lights of a car for example, I might
set my shutter speed to 2 or 4 seconds and then adjust my aperture for a
proper exposure.
I am shooting in Aperture Priority most of the time. If you are getting started I
suggest shooting in Manual Mode for a while as it is a great way to learn
how the settings impact your image. If you are struggling with shooting in
Manual Mode try using Aperture Priority or Time (shutter speed) Priority. In
these modes, you set the priority, Shutter Speed or Aperture and the camera
will set the other settings accordingly for a proper exposure.
Once you have the shot you want with Aperture Priority or Time Priority, you
can switch to Manual mode and you can tweak from here. Just remember
that each setting f/1.4 at 1/90, f/2.8 at 1/60, f/5.6 at 1/15 and f/11 at 4
seconds are all proper exposures but all will give you very different looking
photos depending on the creative outcome you are looking for. Find a
subject and practice on the various settings to see how different of a result
you can get.
I hope you found this helpful. As you start to learn the fundamentals you
can apply them through some of the lessons in 10 lessons I learned from
daily shooting.
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About the Author Hi, I'm Dave.
I am a father, husband, businessman and photographer based in Tokyo,
Japan. I have a love for photography that I channel around my blog
ShootTokyo. I am passionate in everything I do and I think you will see that if
you spend a bit of time with me. I am lucky enough to have a job that
allows me to travel around Asia and many parts of the world. I always have
a camera in hand or close by to capture the world around me.
Photography is a great outlet to allow me to decompress and balance the
pressures of work, family and life providing me with a creative outlet to
express myself.
I believe knowledge is meant to be shared so please feel free to share this
eBook with your family and friends.
I hope to see you around ShootTokyo.
Dave Powell
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