Some Basic Photography Instructions

When I am shooting pictures, I will often get asked by aspiring photographers about what settings they should be using. While there are some basic rules in photography, it is as much an art as a science and as such, you should set up your camera to achieve the results you want. Photography is all about trade-offs.

Good photographs are all well-exposed, focused accurately and framed well.

First, some definitions. It helps when we start with a common understanding.

Aperture: The size of the hole in your lens that determines, in part, how much light is going to hit your sensor or film (is anyone still using it?). While apertures are commonly referred to as a number like 2.8 or 5.6, it is really a fraction and really are 1/2.8 or 1/5.6. I think of it this way. 1/2.8 is a bigger number than 1/5.6 (roughly speaking 1/2 of a pizza is bigger than 1/5 of the pizza.) A 2.8 lens is said to be faster than a 5.6 lens as it can let in more light and can get you a faster shutter speed than the same camera with a 5.6 lens on it. Aperture (in conjunction with lens length) will determine your Depth of Field of Focus. The larger the aperture (2.8 is larger than 5.6), the smaller the amount of the image that will be in focus. See Depth of Field of Focus below.

ISO: How sensitive the sensor or film is to light. An ISO of 200 is less sensitive to light than an ISO of 1600. The trade off here is the higher the ISO, the more grain or digital noise the image will contain. Most good DSLRs have a usable ISO range of about 100 to 6400. Beyone 6400 gets a bit dicey...too much grain/noise for most folks.

Shutter speed: Fairly self-explanatory. This is how fast the shutter opens and closes, allowing light to hit the sensor while it is open. The faster the shutter speed, the less light hits the sensor. Slower shutter speeds let in more light. Fast shutters speed can stop or “freeze” the action. Slow shutter speeds may result in blurry images, either from camera shake or movement in the subject. Generally, to avoid camera shake blurriness, your shutter speed should be at least as fast as 1/focal length. Thus, if you are shooting with a 300mm lens on a Canon 50d, your shutter speed should be at least about 1/500 or so. Although you are only using a 300mm lens, the smaller APS-C sensor on the 50d adds a magnification factor to the lens of about 1.6, so that the 300mm lens has the effective reach of about 480mm. Therefore, your shutter speed should be about 1/500 to compensate for camera movement. Unless of course, it is on a tripod.

To avoid blurriness caused by subject movement, you need to set a shutter speed fast enough to freeze the subject. Generally, this will depend on how fast the subject is moving. A professional soccer player usually runs a lot faster than a elementary school level soccer player, and therefore requires a faster shutter speed. Some times photographers will purposely shoot with slow shutter speeds to get an artistic motion blur. This can be overdone. First, learn how to freeze the action, then you can learn how to get artistic with motion blur.

How to get the proper exposure

The first goal in photography is to get a properly exposed image or at a minimum, to properly expose the part of the image that you want. An over-exposed image can be as bad as an under-exposed image as both result in the loss of data. Underexposed images loose data in the shadows and over-exposed images lose detail in the highlights. The bad thing about losing data is that it can not be recovered if it is lost. If you over-exposed your image by just a little bit, but did "blow" the highlights, then you can most likely recover them in your digital darkroom. If you have "blown" your highlights, then the data is gone and there is nothing to recover.

To get the exposure correct, you can adjust three variables; ISO, Shutter Speed (SS) and Aperture (AV). These 3 variables work in concert. If you increase your shutter speed, you will need to either adjust your ISO, your AV or both your ISO and AV to compensate. If you close down your aperture from 2.8 to 5.6, you are letting less light hit the sensor, so you must make adjustments to your ISO or SS, or some combination of both ISO and SS, to let more light hit the sensor. So, you could decrease your shutter speed or increase your ISO.

Let's take, for example, shooting your child's soccer game, out doors, on a sunny day. We'll start with some nice conditions that will make your life easier. Remember, we have 3 settings to adjust. First, let's start with ISO. Since it is a nice sunny day, we can start with a fairly low ISO, of say 400.

Next, we want to freeze the action. We do this by choosing an appropriately fast shutter speed. I recommend at least 1/500 of second or faster to stop fast action movement in sports. Generally, I'd like to be even faster, say 1/1000 or so. As the athletes get bigger, stronger and faster, you will generally need a faster shutter speed to "freeze" the action. A little league pitcher's fast ball might be "frozen" at 1/1000 of a second, but a high school pitcher might require a shutter speed of 1/2500 or faster to freeze the ball in mid-flight.

Lastly, we can adjust the aperture. The aperture controls two things. One, it controls how much light can pass through the lens and secondly, it determines Depth of Field of Focus (DOF). Actually, the aperture, in conjunction with the length of the lens and the distance to the subject, will determine how much of the image is in focus (I will use the DOF abbreviation).

For example, let's say we have a really nice Canon 300 f4 lens on our 50d camera. Using a DOF calculator, easily found online, (like this one: http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html), one can calculate the DOF for any given distance. So, if I am shooting my daughter playing soccer with my Canon 50d and 300 f4 lens and I know she is about 50 feet away, I can use the calculator and find that the DOF is about 1.25 feet. That is to say that if I focus directly on her, approximately .6 feet in front of her and .6 feet behind her will be in focus and everything beyond that in both directions will get progressivley less sharp or more out of focus.

This is a fairly narrow DOF in that if your focus is not spot on, your child may not be in focus. So, you can close down your aperture a bit, to say 5.6 and now your DOF goes from 1.2 to about 1.8 feet, thus a little more margin for error. The closer you get to your subject, the smaller the DOF will get and conversely, the farther you get, the bigger the DOF you will get.

Many photographers will use DOF to their advantage. When taking a picture of your child playing soccer, you really only want them and the ball in focus. You probably don't want the Porta-Potty and parking lot in the background in focus too. So, in this case, the DOF is helping you blur out all of the bad stuff.

Now, let's move on to a more challenging situation. Shooting your son's basketball game in a poorly lit elementary school gym. In this example, we will use the Canon 50d and an 85 1.8 lens. Now, since I know I want to freeze the action, I select a shutter speed of 1/500. Now, I only have to set the ISO and Aperture to get the correct exposure. This is really pretty simple. In a poorly lit gym, I will generally set the ISO to 3200 or in some cases 6400, and then using the camera’s meter, determine what aperture I can use. Sometimes it is so dark, I’ll be at ISO 6400, 1/500 and an aperture of 1.8. Since I’ve maxed out my ISO and my lenses aperture, the only variable I can change is the shutter speed. I can continue to lower that until I get a properly exposed image. So, I may have to drop the SS from 1/500 to 1/400. I’d rather have a bit of motion blur than an underexposed image. This is even more important at high ISOs like 6400 because an underexposed image at ISO 6400 looks really bad but a properly exposed image at 6400 can still look really nice.

In the above example, I am shooting at an aperture of 1.8. At close distances, my 85 1.8 on my 50d will yield a really small DOF. Maybe just a few inches. This means that if I focused on the basketball player’s waist, his face is more than likely going to be out of focus. So, in this example, I may want to lower the shutter speed from 1/500 to 1/400 and close the aperture from 1.8 to 2.2 or something like that to get more of the player in focus.

This is what I was talking about when I said photography is all about trade-offs. In the above example, I could decrease the shutter speed and risk some motion blur, or keep the aperture wide open at 1.8 but have less of the player in focus.

So, take your camera off the green, automatic setting, and put it in Manual (M) mode and learn how to adjust your Shutter Speeds, ISOs and Apertures on the fly to get properly exposed images. Once you get the handle on this, you can really advance your skills and produce fine images.

Too Busy to Blog

I have been so busy lately, the last thing I wanted to do was spend more time on the computer, but if I am going to blog, then I need to post somewhat frequently. Otherwise, I might was well delete the whole thing. I don't want to delete it.

With the basketball season coming to an end, I am starting to crank out some products for some of my best customers. A few years ago, I started producing custom posters for each player at a local middle school. The kids got the posters in lieu of (another boring, lame) a trophy and really seemed to like them. So much so that the school has asked me to come back each year since and do it again. It is getting tough to keep generating new posters. Here is what I came up with this year.

First, the big team picture:

Now, a sample of what each of the players get:

In my next post, I'll cover a bit of what goes into making these things.

My Strobe Setup

A quick diagram of how I have been setting up my strobes. As the budget allows, I hope to be able to add a couple of more in a effort to cover the whole court.

Freezing Action at 1/300 of a Second (or even 1/250).

This photo was taken at ISO 320, Shutter speed of 1/250 and with an f-stop of 3.5. How did I freeze the action with a slow shutter of 1/250?

One word.  Strobes.  Or in the case of this image, 2 Alienbee 800s and 1 Canon 580exII on camera.  

I shoot with a Canon 1dmkIII and it has a maximum shutter synch speed of 1/300. This is the fastest shutter speed I can use with a flash. Faster shutter speeds will result in a progressively larger and larger black band on the edge of the image. This is the portion of the image that did not get exposed by the flash. It's a bit complicated and not necessary in this discussion.

So, how can I freeze action at 1/300 if this is the maximum shutter speed I can use. Well, you have to think of it like this. The shutter speed won't be your true shutter speed, but rather, your flash duration becomes the shutter speed.

Here's how I do it. I set up my camera to the f-stop I want to use. Say I am using my 70-200 2.8 IS lens. Sure, I could shoot at 2.8, but then it leaves me a very small depth of field of focus and thus, little room for focusing errors. If I can stop my f-stop down to f 4 or so, I can get more of the player in focus and a bit more leeway in the event my focus is not exact. So, now I have my shutter speed of 1/300 and my f stop of 4, that leaves only ISO to set.

In this example, I will start with ISO 640. So, what I do is take a picture of the players warming up and see what I get with ISO 640, 1/300 and f 4. If I can see players or the court, I dial down the ISO until all I can see is a very, very faint image or completely black image. Oh, I should say that this is all done with the flash turned off, or your trigger turned off.

Once I get a black or nearly black frame, I'll turn my flash (or trigger on) and fire a few images. My goal here is to get a properly exposed image by adjusting the power of the flash. I can do this by turning the flash power up or by going direct instead of bouncing flash.

Since we know that without the flash, I am getting a completely underexposed image, we can be assured that the only light hitting the sensor is from the flash. The neat thing about this is that the flash only fires for a very brief moment. For example, with my AlienBee 800 Strobe, it has a flash duration of about 1/1100 of a second at full power. This is plenty fast enough to stop most action. So, by using my AB800 at full power, the light source flashing on and off at 1/1100 of a second becomes the shutter speed because during the rest of the time the shutter is open, no light is effectively hitting it.

In the next article, I will go into some more detail on my flash/strobe setup.  

Why Strobe?

Most high school gyms and nearly all middle school gyms have terrible lighting. Why? A couple of reasons immediately come to mind.

1. Most gyms don't have an adequate amount of lighting for photographing high speed sports. They are dim. Sometimes you can't even get ISO 6400 and 1/500 @ 2.0. This is not good.

2. Most gyms use lights that cycle through slightly different colors and in addition, may cycle in intensity. Now, say your gym has 30 lights. Each of them are doing their own thing. This is not good for photographers. We prefer lights of constant color and output.

The above shot is typical for a high school gym. I was able to get is0 3200, at f2 and 1/500. I think anything slower than 1/500 is just to slow for high school basketball. Slower, and you start getting lots of motion blur. This is unacceptable.

You can see that my f-stop was already very big at f2 and my ISO was at 3200. You can see that these settings are at the limits or nearly at the limits of my equipment, the Canon 135 2.0 and MK3. Sure, I could go to ISO 6400, but that's about it. I could go to the 85 1.8 lens, but these additional settings won't get me much more headroom. So, my choices are: a. be happy with above image or b. bring my own light and strive for better. I chose "b."

Strobes increase the amount of light and are of constant temperature. If you have enough strobe power, they are capable of completely overpowering the ambient lighting in a gym. This is good for several reasons. Overpowering the house lighting helps eliminate your problems with white balance. This power is also going to be the key in allowing you to freeze the action with a shutter speed of 1/300 or even 1/250. Amazing but true. Tune in next time for more about freezing action at 1/300 of a second.

Some Basketball Strobe Work

I have been experimenting with Alienbee Strobes at basketball games lately. Over the next few posts, I'll share what I have been doing, including my setups, and share my results.

First the results.

I think these look pretty good.

SEC Football--Learning the ropes

I recently got to shoot a Division I college football game between two Southeastern Conference (SEC) teams. For those of you not familiar with SEC football, I will only say that it is as close to NFL football as you can get without actually paying the players. The SEC has some of the best teams in the country (currently 3 of the top 10 in the BCS rankings are SEC teams) and more than a few of these young men will go on to play on Sundays.

I was fortunate enough to get a media pass to shoot the game between Mississippi State University Bulldogs and the University of Tennessee Volunteers at Neyland Stadium. I've covered some "big" high school football games, but this is clearly several levels up from that. So, here are some tips I gleaned from the shooting the game.

First, you need access. In my case, I was given a red media pass attached to some elastic string and hung that around my neck. You get the pass from the media company you are representing. Next, you find the media entrance at the stadium. In this case, I had a friend who had done it before guide me to the right gate. After going through the gate, we walked to the media room. When I went into the media room, I was given a giant red sticker to wrap around my leg in exchange for the paper and elastic tag hanging from my neck. I did not know where to wear the sticker at first, but then in big black letters, the sticker was printed with instructions stating the sticker should be wrapped around your lower leg. How about that. Simple instructions. I peeled the backing and wrapped.

The media room is where all of the photographers and reporters hang out. Want to know why they hang out there? They serve free food. No, it's not 4-star cuisine, but it was tasty and filling. I had hamburger steak, baked potato, salad and carrot cake. Next, they have several large screen Hi-Def TVs on the walls so you can check out the other games going on around the country. Lastly, they have lots of high-speed internet connections so the news guys can kill some time browsing the 'net while the more serious types start uploading some stories. Me, I just ate and watched everyone else, trying to blend.

After finishing up dinner, we proceeded to the field to catch some pre-game warmups. Most of the serious photogs stayed behind to browse the 'net some more or get seconds, but for rookies like me, it was straight to the field. Here, I grabbed a few shots of the players goofing around and stretching out, even before they put their pads on. Some were having a good time and others had their ipods turned up loud and were starting to focus on the work ahead. After getting a few frames, I realized I was just enjoying being there and there really was not a lot of stuff going on that was worth shooting. So, I just walked around and took the atmosphere in so that I would not soon forget it.

As game time approached, the old photo and media guys starting coming out and getting their pre-game images. The nice thing about this time is a lot of the guys have their helmets off for awhile and you can get their mugs without the helmet bars hiding them.

Just like in high school football, the entire field is surrounded by a dotted line. All media should stay behind this line or risk punishment from one of the numerous security folks, or more embarrisingly, from another photog whose sight lines you just blocked. Being my first time and all, I obeyed the dotted line as if it were the Berlin Wall and did not attempt any illegal crossings. Other than that though, you pretty much have free access all over the field and can stake out your bit of pitch to shoot from. I moved around all night long, following the action. Wear comfortable shoes and clothes if you are going this route.

Apparently the dotted line does not have the same limitations to the TV media, especially the sound guys with the parabolic mikes, who are probably the same ones who cut in line in the grocery store or steal your parking space. I wished I had a small dart gun to move those guys a bit.

Normally, I shoot with a 300 2.8 and put it on a monopod. I left the pod at home for this game figuring it would help me move faster and I think I was a bit more agile without it and able to move through some of the sideline crowds faster. Being my first game, I had enough adrenaline flowing that I did not need the pod's assistance.

Soon enough it was half-time and since I knew someone on the UT Pride of the Southland Marching Band, I stayed out to shoot a bit of their performance. After getting a few images of my buddie's daughter, I headed to the media room again. Guess what? More food (chicken fingers and hotdogs and more carrot cake) and drinks and goofing off with a very few serious reporters and photogs uploading stories and photos. I saw one guy from US Presswire uploading some images after tweaking them in Aperture. Not that I was spying or anything, but just checking out how the working pros did it.

After downing a few fingers, it was back to the field to catch the players coming back out and warming-up again. Unfortunately, before I knew it, the game was over and I was heading back out of the stadium. I decided not to stick around for the post-game press conference, but had I stayed for it, it would have been held in the media room, which also had a small theater for these conferences.

The stadium lighting was of course very good. I probably should learn how to do a cusotm white balance, but until then, I'll just fix my images in post. This game started before sun down and I was initially shooting in AV (Aperture Priority) mode, shooting at 2.8 with an ISO to get my shutter speed up to about 1/1000 or so. After the sun went down, I probably could have switched to manual mode as the lighting was pretty even throughout the stadium and sometimes the visitor white uniforms through off my exposure. By the end of the first quarter, I was at ISO 2500 and getting 1/800 to about 1/1000 pretty consistantly.

Most of the serious shooters have at least 2 bodies going at once, one with a 300 2. 8 or a 400 2.8 and the other with a wider angle lens, maybe a 70-200 or some with even a 16-40 or so. I did not have a good second body, so just swapped out my 300 for my 70-200. I don't think I missed much by having only one body, but I can see that if your job depended on it, I'd have the second body by knee and ready to bring up for action (I spent most of the game shooting from my kees) instead.

All in all, I think I did pretty well image wise and kinda thought that all of those HS games made me a better shooter and the nice lighting at this level could really spoil you.