All Mac Considered

A Beginner's Guide To Photography

Now that you have a new iMac, iPhoto and that new digital camera that you wanted, you have a problem to deal with: making pictures with it. Your new camera may boast auto focus, auto exposure, etc., but no matter how many fancy bells and whistles that your chosen digital wonder may boast, it's still just a dumb chunk of plastic, metal, glass and batteries. You still have to make the picture. Cameras do not make pictures. People make pictures... with cameras.

Most of us have used a simple camera sometime in our lives and have an idea of how to point and click to make a picture. Sounds as simple as using your computer, right? Umm... well... maybe not. Often those pictures come out blurry, too dark, sometimes too light, or they might be well exposed and sharp but are as interesting as cold mashed potatoes. The problem is that most people do not quite understand why one picture comes out well and another is a dud.

Never fear... help is at hand. With a few basic concepts and hints you can turn yourself from a mere snapshooter to a real photographer.

Read The Instructions!

The first thing you have to do is remove your new camera from its box and then do something most Americans, especially those of us of the male gender, are loath to do: Read the instructions. You may be a genius or remarkably psychic and unconsciously know everything there is to know about that camera you just took out of the box, but the odds are against it. So, to prevent disasters and frustration, follow the old advice...

"When all else fails, read the instructions."

Now that you have read how your particular camera works and have essentially understood the instructions, you might try to make a few pictures to get the feel of your camera. One thing you may have noticed when you were choosing your camera is the wide assortment of camera shapes and control layouts. I hope you considered how the camera fit in your hand when you chose it as well as the advertised feature set. Regardless of the shape of your camera it will have been designed to be held in the right hand and with the shutter release placed under the forefinger of your right hand. Some controls may be placed under the right thumb (depending on the control layout chosen by the maker of your particular camera) and general lens controls will be handled by the left hand on larger cameras. Smaller cameras may be greatly simplified in an effort by the designers to idiot-proof the camera.

Holding the Camera

Now we come to one of the first things that a snapshooter can do wrong. Although the higher end and professional level cameras are shaped to fit the hand in a natural and obvious manner, smaller cameras allow the user to hold them in various ways, mostly wrong ways.

Do not hold the camera with open fingers, that is, splayed out over the camera as if you were holding your computer mouse. The likely result will be a finger placed right over the lens. If the camera uses a simple viewfinder you will not discover that you have made this mistake until it is too late. A variant on this error is to hold the camera firmly with both hands but unconsciously point the left hand's index finger straight out, again covering the lens resulting in a wondrously out of focus portrait of your finger instead of a remembrance of your Aunt Gertrude.

On larger and/or more advanced cameras you may see a rather large lens sticking out in front of the camera body. While the right hand is comfortable holding the camera with the controls under or near the appropriate fingers, hold the lens either in the palm of your left hand (for larger lenses) or firmly between the thumb and forefinger of the left hand, depending on the size of the lens. This position may be modified depending on the particular size and layout of your camera. If you are in luck, your instruction manual may show illustrations of how they recommend holding the camera.

The idea is to hold the camera steadily with the controls comfortably under your fingers. Whatever you do, do not try to hold the camera by the fingers of both hands on the body of a larger camera that has a sizable lens poking out. It stresses the lens mount on cameras that use interchangeable lenses and results in an unsteady and shaky hold on the camera. You are also much more likely to drop and damage that expensive camera.

Shutter Speeds & F-Stops

Some cameras are fully automatic so you may not feel that you have to understand shutter speeds or F-stops. But, an understanding of shutter speeds and F-stops can make life much simpler especially if your camera allows you to choose them, so here is a simple guide:

Shutter Speeds
The shutter speed controls how long the medium inside the camera is exposed to light. The numbers on the shutter speed dial are in increments of two. Look at the numbers on the shutter speed setting. You will see numbers like 30, 60, 125, 500, 1000, etc. You may have noticed that they are approximately either double or half the previous number depending on which way you read them. These numbers represent the exposure time in fractions of a second, 1/60th of a second, 1/125th of a second, 1/250th of a second, etc. You may also see faster and slower shutter speeds depending on the design of your particular camera, but if you examine them you will see that they continue the pattern of halving or doubling shutter speeds.

The shutter speed controls more than the amount of light that the shutter allows to enter your camera. It also controls how wide a slice of time you are capturing with your camera. If you are taking a picture of a daffodil on a quiet day, low shutter speeds (i.e., 1/30th of a second as an example) are fine, but if you are trying to capture a shot of a fast and furious game of soccer that shutter speed of only 1/30th of a second will result in blurry pictures. For rapid action, choose shutter speeds of at least 1/250th of a second or faster.

There is also a limit on how slow a shutter speed can be and the photographer can make a clear picture without the unavoidable camera shake that comes from hand-holding a camera. That limit is generally regarded to be at 1/30th of a second. Blurry pictures are almost guaranteed by using lower speeds than this without using a tripod.

F-stops
The F-stop setting, like the shutter speed settings also controls the amount of light that enters the camera but instead of choosing how long the medium is exposed, it does it the same way a valve controls how much water runs through it, by constricting the size of the available opening.

On some cameras you can see the iris open and close as you manually move the setting. For most cameras, the F-stop setting will be on the lens. The numbers on the F-stop setting may read as follows: 1.4, 2, 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, etc. You may also see larger and/or smaller numbers depending on your particular camera. Again, as in the shutter speed settings numbers increase or decrease the light by factors of approximately double or half.

F-stop numbers represent a ratio of the focal length to the size of the iris opening. As an example: for a fixed focus of 50 mm ( the "standard" focal length on most 35 mm cameras and high end digital cameras), a setting of F2 means that the diameter of iris setting is one half (1/2) the focal length, or 25 mm for a 50 mm focal length lens. A setting of F4 mans that the physical opening of the iris is one fourth (1/4) of the focal length. View the F-stop number as a fraction with the F-stop as the denominator and a one as the numerator.

Note: The "F" used in these examples will not appear on the camera. You will see only the numbers, i.e., 1.4, 2, 2.8, 4, 5.6, etc.

This means that the larger the number you see, the smaller the opening of the iris. The smaller the opening of the iris, the less light will be admitted thought the opening.... just like closing down a valve. You might consider the F-stop settings to be light valve settings. Just remember that the smaller the number, the more light gets through and the larger the number, the less light gets through.

The F-stop also controls the Depth of Field. The Depth of Field means how close and how far away objects will appear to be in focus at the same time. On some more advanced cameras you may see F-stop numbers that appear on the lens bracketing the focus marker as well as on the F-stop setting. Sometimes the F-stop numbers are in colors. These are to help a more advanced photographer manually choose the depth of field by selecting the best F-stop for the desired effect.

For most photographers the rule is simple. The smaller the F-stop opening (or larger the F-stop number), the greater the depth of field. The larger the F-stop opening (or smaller the F-stop number), the shallower the depth of field. A problem arises when the camera must use a wider opening under low light conditions. That means as the light level drops, the wider open the lens must be relative to the desired shutter speed. A photographer then has to compromise by balancing how slow he/she can tolerate the shutter speed to be against how wide the F-stop must be. Eventually things break down when the light is too low and either the depth of field is too shallow, or the shutter speed is too slow, or both! That's when we are forced to resort to flash photography.

Although a more advanced photographer can use control of depth of field to get interesting effects, a beginner is best advised to think of using the smallest F-stop setting possible under the conditions to assure a focused shot.

Speaking of focus...

Focusing

Most modern cameras, whether they use film or a light sensitive electronic device for recording a photograph, have auto focus. Frankly, I am not a fan of auto focus. Auto focus almost always latches onto the wrong source for focus, or has trouble determining correct focus under some conditions, or is too slow to focus on a moving object. One way to demonstrate the limits is by trying to take a picture through a chain link fence of something some distance beyond. Most auto focus cameras will focus on the nearest object... and in this case that means the fence. The only way to get past the limitation is to turn off autofocus and use manual focus.

Add to that, auto focus can't anticipate the correct focus point in dance or sports photography. That's why pros turn off auto-focus when they have it and avoid cameras that don't allow manual focus control. That being said, the beginner will probably use it for most shots. However, once you advance enough to want some control over the situation auto focus will start seeming less like a boon and more like a burden.

Assuming you have a camera that allows you to turn off auto focus and use the manual setting, some things will help get you into focus. One is to have a good optical view screen. If you do not have an optical view screen then you have a problem. LCD screens simply do not have sufficient resolution to allow for accurate focus, especially if you have to shoot under low light conditions where the automatic exposure needs to open the lens up. Remember the sections on shutter speeds and depth of field?

Exposure

Although the camera you bought probably has auto exposure, don't depend on it getting things right all of the time. You will at some time or other have to override the automatic exposure and use some manual correction. Auto exposure makes life simple for the snapshooter but more advanced photographers will need to learn to use manual overrides and controls. When and how to use manual controls will be covered in a future article.

Making a Simple Outdoor Portrait

One of the most common pictures most snapshooters make is of a person, a simple portrait. Have you noticed that most of these pictures have people squinting? Or perhaps you can't tell if they are squinting or not because their face is a dark shadow. It seems to a beginner that they can't do a good outdoor shot of a person without squints or shadows. Actually, you can follow a few simple rules that can make a good shot.

Squinty Eyes
First, don't make the subject face directly into the sun. That may assure exposure, but it is also why they are squinting. They have the sun in their eyes! Next, don't try to cure the squint by making them stand with the sun to their backs. The camera will likely set the exposure for the general background leaving the subject to resemble a black cardboard cutout set against the scene. The simplest way to get a good outdoor portrait shot in sunlight will be to have the sunlight coming over your shoulder at an angle. Look for a small shadow of the subject's nose to appear slightly below and to the side of the nose. If you get the angle right, the subject will not be squinting, the exposure will be good and you have a little shade modeling of the face. This is a quick and simple way to imitate an old lighting setup that when used in studios is called Paramount Lighting. It tends to be flattering to most faces. Voila! You have now cured several problems all at once and even made your subject look good to boot!

Open Shade
The best way to make an outdoor portrait of someone is to not take the picture in open sunlight but in open shade instead. Modern cameras can handle the light levels under open shade easily making it an almost ideal choice for making outdoor portrait shots. The shadow of a building, under a tree, etc. has softer, more diffuse light that allows for very nice tonal shading and color contrasts. If you use open shade to make your portrait shots you almost can't lose. Even colors seem to be stronger and brighter. An alternative to open shade is to shoot under cloudy conditions. However, a very cloudy day may result in a noticeable blue shift in color.

Pinocchio's Nose
Sometimes you may have tried to make a close-up picture of someone only to discover that in the final picture the subject's face seems bulge and worse yet, to have grown Pinocchio's nose! The problem also arises when you use the "standard" focal length setting. This will be around 50-55 mm for 35 mm cameras and high end digital cameras built on advanced 35mm technology. If you have a zoom lens on your camera, and most digital cameras do come with a 3 to one zoom ratio or better, you can easily cure the bulging face and Pinocchio nose problem.

All you have to do use use a significantly longer focal length than the "standard" focal length. Generally this will be about twice the focal length of the '"standard" setting. As a example, a high end digital camera or a 35 mm camera may use about 50-55 mm "standard" focal length. The recommended portrait focal length of these cameras would then be from 90 to 105 mm. For a simple three to one zoom camera, use the maximum zoom setting and voila! Pinocchio's nose vanishes and the subject once again resembles a normal person.

"Getting it All In"

One more problem that afflicts most snapshooters is the urge to "get it all in". Unfortunately, what you usually get is a picture with no center, no central subject and that object or person you were trying to show disappears into a massive clutter. Usually, "getting it all in" results in getting nothing at all. A much better approach is to choose a central subject and include only what is absolutely necessary to frame or set off the main subject. One example is one you already know: a portrait. When you make a portrait you are interested in the subject and only enough of a background to set off the subject. The same goes for almost any picture you wish to take.

If you want to show a forest, choose an interesting tree, or a stump covered with moss, or a path framed by some trees. That is how you really see a forest and all the main elements are in plain view. It can also make for a nice picture.

That brings us to a more advanced concept, composition. However, since that is a whole new can of worms, I will save that for another column..

- Joe Carson

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