basics

Basic Settings and Helps — Part 1

***note – i hate most things technical. it’s not my forte and i’m going to be honest, it’s not in the forefront of my mind when i’m shooting. SO, I’m attempting to do this next couple of posts on technical basics for you. But it’s a sheer labor of love. If I don’t know something I’ll link you to it or ask Nichole Van, who is a master of all things technical. Bear with me.

SO you’re shooting digital?? I’m assuming you are.

You need to know a few basic things.

PIXELS- stands for “picture element”. A pixel is the smallest single element of a digital image. A digital picture is made of millions of pixels – a megapixel is 1 million pixels.

A sensor is the heart of the camera. It’s the place where the image passes through the lens and is digitally recorded in your camera.

The bigger the sensor size, the better the quality of photos you can take in low light.

You can read more about sensors here

Here are a few questions that I get asked about a lot…

WHITE BALANCE

What is it?? White Balance is how your camera sees true white.

“Definition of “white balance”

White balance is a camera setting that adjusts for lighting in order to make white objects appear white in photos. This is more difficult than it might seem due to the fact that light cast from different sources is different in color (technically called temperature). That is to say, light is rarely truly white in nature. The light from an incandescent or halogen bulb, for example, is red/orange in color, while that from the sun is relatively blue. A proper white balance setting in a camera will prevent, for example, a white bed sheet in a photo from appearing orange in color when it is being illuminated by a candle.”
Definition above found here.

Light has color. Ever think about it? The room you’re in looks totally different with the glow of candle versus when a bright fluorescent bulb is turned on. Think about the difference you see when you walk into a K-Mart versus when you enter a candlelight dinner.

Fluorescent is a COOL (blueish or greenish) light

Candle light casts a WARM (orange, red, yellow) light.

It’s tricky to get a proper white, no matter how experienced you are as a photographer.

ISO or Film Speed

Back in the day when film was really grains of light sensitive silver crystals on a gelatin surface, the lower the ISO (which stands for International Standards Organization) was, the smaller and finer the grains of silver were that moved to form the image portrayed through the lens onto the film. The lower the ISO, the finer the quality of the final image, however, the tradeoff was that you needed lots more light available to help these grains of silver find their way.

If it was a dark situation, you’d use a high ISO or fast film speed. The faster the film speed is, the larger the crystals that are. These larger grains can result in a loss of detail (especially when you’re enlarging an image) but they capture light more quickly. (They also lend a delicious texture to your photos if you ask me).

Remember it like this — Film speed is more a function of the SIZE of the light sensitive crystals. Larger grains of these light sensitive crystals can grab more light more quickly than smaller ones can. The smaller ones, however give you a finer picture with more details and subtlety

Good standard –
·    ISO 100 – good for outdoor photography in bright sunlight
·    ISO 200 – good for outdoor photography or brightly lit indoor photography
·    ISO 400 – good for indoor photography
·    ISO 1000 or 1600 – good for indoor photography where you want to avoid using a flash

In a digital situation, we’re trading light sensitive crystals with digital pixels, but the tradeoff is still pretty much the same. Instead of “grain” you get digital “noise”.

examples - i shot these on the Canon 5D Mark II which handles high noise beautifully – if I’d been shooting on the XT you’d see a HUGE difference…

low ISO w/ low noise

high ISO w/ more noise

Read more about ISO here

Assignment

Ready for your assignment?

I want you to explore different settings on your camera and take at least three photo (helpful if it’s the SAME stationary thing) in each one of the following different areas –

ISO

White Balance

I’m changing things around a bit – the forum and all are still active, but please feel free to post links to your blog posts involving this assignment in the comments section of this post so we can all easily see and find them.