[Tripleman]

Following on from the other photography thread it was suggested that new one be started re a day's guidance on camera use, so here it is.

First up it's probably best to keep the groups small, 3 or 4 at a time. The reason being that the studio ain't that big and with a few hefty lads in here we'll be getting a touch over familiar with each other. It also allows time to go through each others work.

I'm quite happy to do a few days so if you want to give it a go then there should be the chance.

Basically I'd be thinking of looking at how a camera works and what the major parameters are in setting it for a photo. Nothing auto will be allowed!! (to begin with anyway) By doing this we should get an idea of what all those features are trying to do for you. Having worked out how the camera works we we'll take a look at the importance of light and composition, which will take up the better part of a month or two . 

The new year, either a Saturday or Sunday is fine by me, Maybe  the 16th and then 30th of Jan. We are just outside Tipperary Town and about 2 hours traveling from Dublin (Red Cow). PM if interested.

[Tripleman]

Tripleman, on 05 January 2011 - 10:50 PM, said:

Been out at a meeting tonight so I'll try and get organised tomorrow evening.

I have four names down for each day at the moment -

16th Nigel, Peter , Alan, Blondie

6th, Zanussi, Proinassis, Hatcho, Sligooooo

I have a horrible feeling that I have left someone out but not too sure who (crap at admin) so if you feel that I have left you out then please get on to me and we will sort something out.

Justin.

[Shinwacker]

Hey Justin, how could you have missed me? Can I go on the trip, can I? Can I? On the 6th of Feb would suit perfectly and jeez I have some mad questions for you, real hard ones so be ready

I love the write up and explanation of the basic's of photography. I still do get a bit confused with my dSLR and feck if I can find the F. stop, must read the manual again I don't really bother trying to fix or change any snap I take on the computer and what I see through the lens is what you get, sort of thing. I would be very interested in this end of it as well as trying to figure out how the camera actually works, it was much easier with my Zenith manual camera, F. Stop, shutter speed and little light meter built in. My dSLR camera has so much information in the viewfinder its quite confusing and mostly I just ignore it and hope for the best.

I do hope I'm not to late for this.

Shins

[Tripleman]

Shinwacker, on 07 January 2011 - 07:19 AM, said:

Hey Justin, how could you have missed me? Can I go on the trip, can I? Can I? On the 6th of Feb would suit perfectly and jeez I have some mad questions for you, real hard ones so be ready

I love the write up and explanation of the basic's of photography. I still do get a bit confused with my dSLR and feck if I can find the F. stop, must read the manual again I don't really bother trying to fix or change any snap I take on the computer and what I see through the lens is what you get, sort of thing. I would be very interested in this end of it as well as trying to figure out how the camera actually works, it was much easier with my Zenith manual camera, F. Stop, shutter speed and little light meter built in. My dSLR camera has so much information in the viewfinder its quite confusing and mostly I just ignore it and hope for the best.

I do hope I'm not to late for this.

Shins

Oh feck!!

My humble apologies for this but all is not lost if you can make the 6th of Feb. As I said my admin skills are pretty well non existent so it is an oversight rather than any slight. I know there are others who can't make either date so I will probably lay on another day end of Feb or March.

Justin.

[Zanussi]

Some of you might find this BBC documentary of interest.It is a 6 part series and each episode is broken down into 4 parts.I am not sure if all epsodes are available on you tube so you may have to go digging? Some of the content is a little pretentious imho, but very interesting none the less.I hope you like it?

[b4turbo]

Tripleman, on 07 January 2011 - 01:07 PM, said:

Oh feck!!

My humble apologies for this but all is not lost if you can make the 6th of Feb. As I said my admin skills are pretty well non existent so it is an oversight rather than any slight. I know there are others who can't make either date so I will probably lay on another day end of Feb or March.

Justin.

Tripleman, I might give you a call around these days just to say hello and meet another few IBF'rs ... Sure you're no more than 3 miles up the road from me

Will we paint the road in a yellow brick fashion for the guests ?

B4T

[Tripleman]

Measuring light and 'f' Stops.

Shins mentions some confusion over 'f' stops and yes it is easy to get a little bewildered so I thought I'd make a few notes on how we measure light and set cameras.

For film or sensors to record an image at the correct brightness we need to let a precise amount of light into the sealed box, too much and the resulting image is all white (over exposed), too little and it is all black (under exposed). What we need is just enough and this is usually taken care for us by the various auto exposure modes on the camera.

But what is the camera doing on our behalf? I want to talk about film capture here as it avoids some complications but the principles are the same. When the first chemical emulsions were produced for plate glass cameras the sensitivity was quite low, that is they took a long time to react to the light and so exposure times were long. All those fixed faces of the 19th century were due to the fact that the subjects had to stand absolutely still for a minute or even longer and various devices were used to hold people in place. Whether exposure times were a matter of trial and error or calculation I'm not too sure but preparing the plates and then processing them was quite a finicky business. As the chemistry improved sensitivity increased and with the advent of 'film' the taking of pictures became an everyday occurrence. The revolution in photography bought about by Kodak and his Box Brownie is often compared to the digital revolution of the last few years, but that is a subject for another time and I digress.

Coming back to the film camera of just a few years ago we had the choice of various films that could be used with it. There was obviously colour or B&W but also the choice of sensitivity with slow films of iso 50 being available along with fast films of iso 3,200. The former produced much less contrasty tones and an overall smoothness whilst the latter tended to produce contrasty images with an obvious grain, especially if enlarged, so naturally we would select the film most suitable for the task in hand. The film speeds available were generally iso 25, 50, 100, 200, 400, (800, 1600 Available but not very common) and 3200. The pattern there is obvious with a doubling of speed between each film type. That is to say an iso 100 film need twice the amount of light to produce the same image as an iso 200 film and so on.

In photographic terms a doubling or halving of the amount of light is known as a 'STOP' To stop up 1 means to allow twice as much light in and to stop down 1 is to halve the amount of light entering the camera. The aperture sizes of a camera-lens combination is a complicated thing with various factors needing to be taken into account when calculating it, thankfully we don't need to do the sums as the sizes are printed on the lens as f5.6 for instance, and again you will notice that the 'f' numbers sort of double or halve in size as you read them. I have a lens here on the desk that goes 'f' 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22, 32. The smaller the number the larger the aperture and vice versa. The 'quicker' the lens the smaller the f number it can be set at.

An average for a middle of the road all purpose zoom lens is around f3.5 at wide angle, but note how this falls off as you increase the zoom which is why the maximum and minimum figures are given in the lens description.

Film is in fact quite forgiving in that you could under or overexpose quite dramatically and with a little skullduggery in the processing and printing still achieve a reasonable result. Digital on the other hand has to be a lot more accurate although again modern software and sensors can redeem bad exposure, but still not to the extent that film could be manipulated.

Having selected a film of iso 50 for instance we now need to set the camera to allow just the right amount of light in through the lens to form an image that is of the correct brightness and to do this light meters were used. Without going into details the meter would measure the light being reflected off the subject and by the use of a scale would indicate how big the aperture and how long the exposure would need to be. For example it might say that an exposure of 1 second (shutter speed) at an aperture size of f8 would be correct (f8 in the world of 35mm film was a pretty safe average). But you will get a similar result by halving the exposure time and doubling the aperture size, ie 1/2 second at f4.

Here is a major source of confusion for by enlarging the aperture you have stopped up, but the number you have set on the lens is smaller. Caught me out at first.

If you used a faster or slower film then the numbers would be correspondingly different. If I had used a film of iso 100 instead of 50 then I could set an exposure of 1/2 second at f8 to get the same result. I hope that this is making sense.

Fast forwarding to the digital age we can set the iso on the camera as we can the Aperture and Shutter speed although we tend to let the camera do all this for us with a built in light meter. However, all dSLR's and many of the more expensive compacts will let us select either aperture or shutter speed priority. In other words we manually select what aperture we want to use and the camera will work out the shutter speed, or we can select the shutter speed and the camera will work out what aperture to use. Along with AF I find these the only auto controls I use.

So in a nutshell what you need to remember that in poor light you will need

-a high iso setting
-slow shutter speed
-wide open aperture

But in good light all the above are reversed and you get much clearer and brighter pictures, which is why photographers love sunnier climes than that of Ireland!

[Tripleman]

b4turbo, on 07 January 2011 - 07:19 PM, said:

Tripleman, I might give you a call around these days just to say hello and meet another few IBF'rs ... Sure you're no more than 3 miles up the road from me

Will we paint the road in a yellow brick fashion for the guests ?

B4T

Hi Mr B!


Sounds a good idea to me although I'll let you choose who is to be the lion and who the scarecrow, tin man and Dorothy.

I was planning to call in about another matter altogether but Steve mentioned you are not around until the evening, and I'm still full of the lurgy anyway.

[Tripleman]

Holy ****!!

Just spent an hour doing some more notes, hit the wrong button and threw it all away!!!!

I'll find an alternative method.

[Tripleman]

Some more notes, let me know if I am getting boring! Anyway they will be available as a PDF from my own site sometime in the near future.


Lenses and formats.


For reasons that will hopefully become clear it is worth considering these two items together.


The format of a camera refers to the size of the film used or the dimensions of the sensor. Going back once again to film there were various sizes with the standard being the 135 film that we are probably all aware of. This now 'standard' format was derived from pre war cinema stock and was adapted to stills cameras, it found great favour amongst news and documentary photographers in the post war years because of the convenience and ease of use in the field. The chemistry of the film coatings was improving all the time and greater resolution was being obtained at higher film speeds so objections to the quality of prints derived from it became less relevant. This film size gave rise to the popularity of the 35mm film system which was the immediate forerunner of digital. The alternative was to use a film size known as 120 or Medium Format. This was a much larger film producing a much larger negative meaning that the print quality would be better with greater resolution and tonal values but obviously a bigger film demanded a bigger camera and a lot more processing etc. However it is still very popular amongst film aficionados today and was always the format of choice where large prints or high quality images were required. It was MF that went to the moon and any self respecting wedding snapper would use nothing else.


There were other formats around such as Large format which was usually 5 X 4 (inches) or 10 X 8 if you were really serious. These two sizes are still used commercially and the chances are that any studio shots of cars or other high value items will have been taken on it. At the other end of the scale there were several smaller films for compacts the latest being known as APS which had roughly half the area of 135mm and so in theory could only be enlarged to half the size before losing resolution, it never really caught on and was soon swamped by digital but it's importance is that the majority digital SLR's use a sensor of APS size, that is half the 135 film area that photographers were used to.


So how is this relevant to digital capture? Well as mentioned above most digital cameras use a sensor of a size that was considered inferior in the world of film and I for one believe that the capabilities of early digital cameras were grossly oversold with clever marketing never mentioning sensor size only the number of pixels upon it which is why the manufacturers got into this arms race of cramming as many pixels on as possible with little regard to other factors such as tonal values and dynamic range although they are now catching up in this area as well. Sensors are now also available in both 135mm size MF with corresponding price tags, what are referred as full frame digital SLR's are in fact cameras with a sensor roughly the same size as the 135mm film system. Adding to the complexity of the mix is the arrival of what is known as four thirds which is a smaller sensor again but it is a system designed for digital from the ground up rather than an adaptation from the 135 systems, this muddies the waters so I'll ignore it for the time being although the exact same principles and physics of photography still apply.


Moving on to lenses the first thing we note is that they are identified by their focal length, so what is meant by that? The focal length of a lens can best be thought of as the distance between the centre of the lens and the point at which it brings collimated light (nearly parallel rays) into a focal point. However, we soon disappear into a world of physics and formulae if we pursue that line of thought so to simplify matters we'll just look at what is meant by the various terms applied to lenses.


Referring back to a cameras format there is what we call a 'standard' lens for each film or sensor size. This size corresponds approximately to the diagonal measurement of the format so for 135 film the diagonal is 43mm and the standard lens for 135 film cameras is considered to be 45 or more commonly 50mm. So for a 135 camera the usual lens to start off with was a 50mm (or thereabouts, depending on manufacturer) prime (or fixed) lens. A prime lens being a simple one that is fixed at one focal length. Prime lenses may seem old hat but they do tend to be a lot faster than zooms, offer a more consistent resolution and less distortion over the frame, are considerably easier and hence cheaper to make and dictate that you think a lot more carefully about the picture you are taking for there is no zooming in or out. I used to do all my wedding work with just three prime lenses, a standard lens, a wide angle and a telephoto. Many people I knew just used a standard and very occasionally a wide angle for groups, was there work worse for it? Not at all, it was all a question of style.

As I mentioned above most digital SLR's are an adaptation of film SLR's so what happens when we put a standard 50mm film lens on a digital camera with a smaller sensor than the old film frame? We get the digital zoom effect turning a standard lens into a small telephoto. The reason for this is because a lens will project an image onto the back of the camera body that is circular and all the film or sensor does is record a rectangular sample from the middle of it. The sample recorded by a standard film frame will be larger than that of an APS sized sensor so when we enlarge the digital file to match the full frame we will see that a lot of the outside of the image is missing but what is left is bigger, making it look as if the subject has been zoomed in on slightly. This is precisely how digital zoom works on compact cameras, they just sample a smaller area of the projected image with the downside being considerable loss of resolution and print quality as fewer pixels are used to produce the image.


In dSLR's the ratio between what a 35mm film frame would record and what an APS sized sensor actually does record is known as the crop factor, commonly it is around the 1.6 mark which in practical terms means that a 50mm lens on a film camera becomes an 80mm lens on a digital, all other factors being equal. A 'standard' lens on a normal dSLR is about 30-35mm.

This post has been edited by Tripleman: 08 January 2011 - 12:03 PM

[Tripleman]

Some further notes. Itinerary to follow

Composition and 'seeing' a photograph




When awake and with our eyes open we are seeing things all the time, but a lot of what we see is just information that we need to function, the door is over there, my beloved looks like this, A lion is is on that knoll so I'll go the other way etc. So what is it that makes an everyday scene suddenly arrest the attention or cause emotions to be felt that are not directly necessary for immediate survival? In other words what qualities should a photograph posses that makes it a picture rather than just a snapshot of what we are seeing?That is a big question and one that can never be truthfully and wholly answered for the variables are infinite. It is what visual art is all about although photography does not have to be just about the production of artistic works.




I like to think of science and art as opposite ends of a continuum, pure science may be regarded as a cold sterile

nailing down of cause and effect whilst pure art is the interpretation of emotion and the expression of the soul. Thankfully neither state exists in its undiluted form, instead we may draw a line between the two poles and attempt to place a piece of work somewhere along it. The building of the Large Hadron Collider may owe its very purpose and design to science but isn't there something awe inspiringly beautiful about the vastness and complexity of it? Concorde was all about aerodynamic principles but what a looker, and so on. At the other end of our line great paintings depend as much upon the blending of pigments and choice of base as they do the draughtsmanship and 'interpretation' whilst music is the audible realisation of mathematics. Where do we place the Mona Lisa or Mandelbrot sets upon this scale?




So it is with photography. It is unrealistic to presume that we will produce a great work of art with each shot but what we can do is bring artistic endeavour to what we attempt. In the previous sets of notes I have concentrated on the science of photography but this is far from being the whole story as we all know. So are there any basic rules or guidelines which will steer us towards producing images that have an interest beyond the basic subject matter? Yes and no is the answer, there are certain arrangements that will please the eye more than the others of which the most quoted is 'The Rule of Thirds' which in turn is itself based on The Golden Ratio which is a subject in its own right. The rule of thirds suggest that rather than have the subject in the centre of a picture we put it a third of the way across (from either end, up or down) allowing more space for the context in which it is set, a good start when moving up from snapshots but as you can imagine there are a myriad number of qualifications attached to such a simple notion.

Tempting though it is to spout such guides to 'good' photography we need to step back and and try to understand what it is that moves us to want to take one particular picture rather than another. Here are some factors that I personally have motivated me in the past (I use the word quality here to mean attributes rather than how good or bad) -

The quality of light

The fall of light

Colour and the combination of colour and light

The character and quality of the subject

Personal interest in subject matter

The challenge of a difficult subject to capture.

Shapes and patterns

Artistic ambition

Arrangements and perspectives

A desire to record a particular subject

Financial reward

And probably many more such as just seeing something or somebody I like which is as valid a reason as any.




The reason why we wish to photograph a particular scene will influence how we go about doing so. Cameras generally have not been able to record the dynamic range of the human eye, that is they cannot see into the shadows as well as we can so we must decide which part of the scene we wish to have illuminated correctly, ie what we are going to expose for. The very same goes for focus, throwing the background out of focus to emphasise a foreground subject is the oldest trick in the book but modern half frame dSLRS tend to have a good depth of field so this becomes more difficult with newer equipment. The relationship between elements within the frame should also be considered and importantly we must always consider the direction and relative strength of the light sources for unless you are using studio flash or have a window in an otherwise dark attic the light will be coming from all over the place and will certainly effect how a photograph looks.

Another consideration is the size of the subject or expanse of the scene within the frame, do we zoom in on a persons head or step back and take in a whole of a vista? The standard 50mm lens of the 135 film system was roughly equivalent to what you see out of one eye, open both eyes and you angle of view widened to that of a 35 mm lens approx. The shorter the lens the greater the angle of view but distant objects retreat further. Wide angled lenses tend to distort more than telephotos but you cannot always get back far enough to fit the whole of a scene in so again we are faced with having to make a compromise.

Asking these sort of questions and making decisions based on what you intend to achieve is what differentiates a photographer from a snap shooter, it is all about attitude towards the job in hand. If looking for inspiration and advice on how to raise your game then look to the great painters and other artists who are not constrained as we are by the physics of light and getting all those photons in to a box at the right intensity and position. To learn composition and light there is little to match the Dutch Masters of the past and to get a feel of how art developed with the appreciation of light and perspective then works from the Renaissance are an excellent guide, especially Caravaggio, it's worth looking up his 'Taking of Christ' on the web just to see what importance he placed on the direction and strength of light. For further insight into the approach that artists make to their work I heartily recommend the quarterly magazine Irish Arts Review for it always carries in depth interviews with current artists that are often very enlightening whatever you think of the finished pieces.

[Alan]

Looking forward to this now

[Tripleman]

Should have mentioned this before.

The Wave – Particle Duality of Light.

What exactly is light? Well we all know the answer to that, it's the stuff that comes from the sun and other sources by which we are able to see things but how do we describe, quantify and model its behaviour in a logical manner? It's not straightforward for light displays the properties of both waves and particles so we are faced with the problem of duality, that is we must think of it as both a wave and a stream of particles and by doing so we can begin to understand and manipulate it.


When producing lenses and camera bodies the designers are interested in arranging things so that rays of light fall upon the back of the camera so as to produce a clear image and since light rays are bent or reflected by passing through transparent objects or bouncing off opaque ones it is sensible to describe them as a wave. However, a sensor or film measures the energy content of the light and this is independent of what happens when it passes through glass so we need to consider it as having a mass which is why we need to think of it as being based on particles. We therefore divide an amount of light into neat little parcels that we call photons. Each photon has the same energy so the more photons the more 'light' and the higher the density of photons arriving at a pixel the brighter the light. Photons do not affect colour, that is a function of the wavelength.

This post has been edited by Tripleman: 14 January 2011 - 06:07 PM

[Tripleman]

The plan!

Here's what I have in mind for Sunday.

9:45 Meet up in Lidls car park which is at the Waterford/Dublin end of the main street Tipp town.

10:00 Commence proceedings at our place. Basically we'll look at how an image is formed in the camera and the factors affecting it's formation and the parameters we can adjust to ensure it's what we want, reference will be made to the history of the camera. We'll also take a brief look and composistion and lighting effects.

1:00 Head into Tipp Town for a bite to eat and a photo taking exercise based on the mornings talk.

3:00 Download images and discuss results.

You'll need the camera, fresh batteries, clean card and if anyone has a laptop with card reader that we can pop some of the pictures on to it would be appreciated.

Hope this sounds OK. My home number 062 55862 for any questions inquiries etc. Look forward to seeing you all.

Justin.

[proinnsias]

Justin - that's a shedload of information you've put up today !

I won't make it down to tomorrow's session - hopefully (if the planets / stars align correctly) I'll be let out for the next one ... good luck and enjoy the day !

P

[Tripleman]

proinnsias, on 14 January 2011 - 10:33 PM, said:

Justin - that's a shedload of information you've put up today !

I won't make it down to tomorrow's session - hopefully (if the planets / stars align correctly) I'll be let out for the next one ... good luck and enjoy the day !

P

Sorry to hear that, let's hope the universe does turn in our direction and you can make it another time.

BTW. The notes I have put up here may appear a little heavy but it should all make sense on the day. The intention is to layout the basics which will hopefully lead to an appreciation of what the camera is doing and help the operator use it to its best advantage. It's a bottom up approach which should allow the camera to be used manually with the various auto features being understood and brought to play as and when required. A lot of courses I have looked at seem to be more top down, assuming prior knowledge of what, why and how a camera works which I feel may lead to frustration if a participant has only just come into the craft or not got round to studying the principles. Photography can be very simple or it can be seen as a vast subject waiting to be explored, We can only ever hope to grasp a fraction of what there is to know about it but we should all know the starting points and we can take it from there in whichever direction we choose. Wave/particle duality for instance is a subject of many a thesis and university programme going to the very core of advanced physics research but all we really need to know is that when looking at lenses we think waves and in considering sensors/film we think photons.

Justin.

[The Greek AKA The cat]

Justin,
Can I suggest that we meet at 10:45 and not 9:45. I would have To leave here at 7:30 to be sure of making it by 9:45.
Other than that it sounds good. Probably allowing two hours for taking pics could be shortened.

I can bring the laptop with a card reader and usb leads for those with funny cards - eh me

Pete

[Tripleman]

The Greek, on 15 January 2011 - 04:39 PM, said:

Justin,
Can I suggest that we meet at 10:45 and not 9:45. I would have To leave here at 7:30 to be sure of making it by 9:45.
Other than that it sounds good. Probably allowing two hours for taking pics could be shortened.

I can bring the laptop with a card reader and usb leads for those with funny cards - eh me

Pete

If that's OK with everyone else, not a problem this end.

Justin.

[The Greek AKA The cat]

Tripleman, on 15 January 2011 - 05:17 PM, said:

If that's OK with everyone else, not a problem this end.

Justin.

I know Nab is cool with it as we just arranged over the phone to meet at 9 at the Applegreen service station on the Naas road.

Edit: just spoke to A1an and he is cool with the later time too!

Just Blondie now!! Come on Pauline!

Woah that sounds like a sound title!

[blondie]

See ye all in the Lydl car park at 9.30, really looking forward to this
@ Greek dont you Pauline me

This post has been edited by blondie: 15 January 2011 - 09:11 PM

[Alan]

blondie, on 15 January 2011 - 09:09 PM, said:

See ye all in the Lydl car park at 9.30, really looking forward to this
@ Greek dont you Pauline me

Just spoke to Blondie, 10:30/10:45 is now confirmed