Exploiting the Drama of Daylight & Shadows

You wouldn't think that a kitty sitting in a pool of light on a sunny porch could result in such a dramatic bit of lighting, but it's all in how you compose and expose the shot. I took this photo while sitting with my cats on a screened porch and though she was surrounded by shadows, they weren't really as dark as they look here. But by taking my exposure reading exclusively from her (and excluding most of the shadow areas during metering), the camera underexposed the shadows. (I also used -.3 stops of exposure compensation, just to tone things down a tad further). The real drama came from two other things: for one I was using my Olympus SP80 that has a 36x optical zoom and so I zoomed to the 35mm equivalent of a 210mm lens--and that was from just a few feet away.  By zooming in so tightly on her, I cropped away anything (including several white chairs nearby) that might have broken that nice dark area surrounding the cat--so the composition consists of just two things: the cat and the shadows.

I also adjusted the exposure a bit in Photoshop, using the curves tool. I pulled the heel of the curve down a bit so that the shadows went from dark gray to black and then I raised up the toe (top) of the curve a bit to lighten the what areas of fur. I also did a tiny bit of dodging with the dodge tool to bring up some highlights in the golden areas of her fur and to lighten up that front paw (not the one she's washing, the other one). The image was sharpened a tiny bit using the unsharp masking tool. I shot this image with jpeg (normally I shoot in RAW) because the Olympus doesn't have a RAW mode.

I really was just playing with the cats and hoping to get a few snapshots--but that's usually when the most dramatic photos happen. I've learned from a lot of experience that if you're sitting around with pets, it pays to have the camera nearby.

My new book: My newest book Digital Photography FAQs (Wiley Publishing) is due out in July and I hope you'll buy it. In the book I answer more than 365 questions about digital photography--a lot of them that came to me from questions post as comments on this blog. And by the way, the cover has been changed, so the one you're seeing on Amazon is not the cover that will be on the book--thankfully the publisher is adding photos!

Nikon Introduces New 18-300mm Zoom Lens

If you're into dSLR photography but don't want to carry around a bag full of lenses, Nikon has introduced a new lens just for you: an 18-300mm f/3.5-5/6 G ED VR DX lens. This is the longest focal length range in the Nikon lens system and gets you the 35mm-equivalent focal-length range of 27 to 450mm.  That means from moderately wide angle to super telephoto in one lens. And if you need something wider than 27mm (which would be nice), just add a super-wide zoom to your kit and you'd pretty much have all you needed in two lenses. I've yet to try any of Nikon's all-in-one zooms, but this one is pretty tempting. The lens has a variable aperture of f/3.5 to f/5.6. The lens will be available at the end of June and the price (I think this is suggested retail) is $995.

By the way, as of this year, Nikon says that is has now manufactured 70,000,000 lenses. I think if you stretched them out end-to-end they'd probably circle the Earth quite a few times! Shall we try?

All about lens apertures: If you'd like to learn more about lens apertures, lens speed and why some lenses are faster than one another, have a look at the multi-page Lens Aperture Primer on my main site. It's probably the most extensive aperture tutorial online and it's free, of course.

Exposing for Silhouettes

Silhouettes are a lot of fun to create because they simplify scenes by stripping away most textures, colors and surface details and leaving mainly shapes behind. Creating silhouettes is very simple: just position an opaque subject (one that light doesn't pass through) in front of a bright background and then expose for the background. The simplest way to set the exposure is to aim it at the brightest part of the background (in the shot here I used the sky, but the water would have worked as well) and then use your exposure-lock feature to hold that exposure setting. Then simply recompose the scene and shoot.

On most cameras (all cameras--whether compacts or DSLRs) holding the shutter release halfway down will lock the exposure reading. So, if you point the camera at the sky or water and hold the shutter button halfway down to trigger the exposure system, as long as you don't let up on the button the exposure remains locked (and I know that most of you know this already!). The only problem is that when you lock the exposure you also lock focus. If the bright background and your primary subject are at different distances from the camera, you'll have to work around it. One way (with a MILC or dSLR camera) is to switch to manual focus and then you can still lock the meter reading, but you can focus manually--and this is what I do 90% of the time. Another solution (again with a more advanced camera) is to shoot in both manual exposure but keep the autofocus working--so you set the exposure for the sky manually, but the camera does the focusing. Many dSLR cameras also have a separate override that enables you to lock focus and/or exposure separately (see your camera manual for more info).

What about compact cameras? Since most point-and-shoot type cameras have very extensive depth of field (near-to-far focus), focus isn't that huge an issue as long as you're not right on top of your subject. So just leave the camera in the full auto mode (the green mode) and lock your meter reading on the bright background and let the focus do it's thing. If you need more depth of field (DOF) try switching to the Landscape exposure mode. In this mode the camera will automatically select the smallest possible aperture for the given lighting and ISO combination and this will increase the DOF.

One problem you often run into with silhouette photos are "merges" where a part of the foreground is lost in a dark shape in the background. In the shot here you can see that part of the sailboat's mast is lost in the shape of the island. There's not much you can do to solve this problem other than to change your position a bit and try to avoid the convergence. 

Read more about exposure and silhouettes on my main site. 

Check out my exposure book! If you'd like to learn more (a lot more!) about exposure, be sure to look for my latest book: Exposure Photo Workshop, 2nd edition. It's a comprehensive look at the entire world of exposure and Shutterbug magazine called it "...possibly the best book ever written on the subject."

Tens of Thousands of Elephants Slaughtered

This morning I read a very tragic story on MSNBC.com: Tens of thousands of elephants were slaughtered in 2011. This is the saddest animal/nature story I've read in years. Please take a few minutes out of your day to read the story and repost it to Facebook, Twitter, etc. It is just so tragic that nature must always pay the price for human greed. Something must be done on a global level to stop all poaching once and forever. So much has been tried: paying the poachers not to kill, training them to work as guards in the parks, etc. But greed just rears its ugly head time and time again and nature always pays the price. May the poachers rot in hell. (Photo by Mike Hutchings.)

Quick Tips for Better Close-up Shots

Spring is (photographically, at least) probably my favorite time of year because there is just so much life happening outdoors. And after a winter spent hiding at my computer writing, being outside is such a nice change. In particular, I love wandering around the garden with a macro lens and just looking for interesting things to shoot. But getting really outstanding close-up photos is not always as easy as it looks and what starts out as an innocent pursuit of  pretty pictures usually turns into me cursing the breeze for moving my subjects around (cover the kids' ears if you're near me) or wrestling with my tripod while trying to avoid smashing the plants I'm shooting. Eventually though I calm down, go back to basics and get the photos that I'm after.

Among my favorite close-up subjects are bleeding heart flowers because the buds are just so fascinating in their shape and I've shot hundreds of photos of them (I had a huge plant growing in my side yard but a neighbor weed whacked it into oblivion--I just hate lawn people). I particularly like this pretty backlit shot and in studying it I came up with a quick list of five tips that I think make the photo work:

• I chose an attractive segment and was careful that all of the blossoms were in good shape (i.e., not fading or misshapen in any way). Again, these bleeding hearts are very different in shape from most flowers and that pinkish-red color is just beautiful.
• I used strong back lighting from a late-afternoon sun. Most flowers are somewhat translucent and when the sun comes through them from behind they seem to glow. You'll have to experiment with adding some exposure using the exposure-compensation feature to prevent underexposure--particularly if the background is very bright. I used +1 stop here.
• I used a dedicated 105mm Nikkor macro lens and close-up extension tubes. Prime (one focal length lenses, as opposed to zoom lenses with a macro setting) are sharper that most zoom lenses. Extension tubes have no glass in them so they don't degrade the image in any way.
• I used a wide aperture to toss the background out of focus and create an attractive "bokeh." Bokeh is a Japanese word that refers to the "smooth" quality of the out-of-focus area.
• I shot in RAW and that allowed me to adjust the white balance and exposure after the fact. The exposure I used was pretty accurate, but I did warm up the white balance a bit during the RAW conversion process. 

One other thing that I strongly suggest is using a tripod for close-photos whenever possible. It's a bit awkward to find a placement for the tripod at times, so at times I'll use a rolled up sweater or towel instead, but a tripod is definitely worthwhile in most situations. With all of the magnification that is going on in most close-up photos it's very hard to compose accurately without a tripod.

Good graduation gift! If you're looking for a good digital photo book for a graduation gift (to go with a new camera perhaps?) my book The NEW Joy of Digital Photography has sold nearly 100,000 copies and is a great introduction to photography and digital cameras. By the way, I'm looking for new ideas for my next photo book--so if you have any suggestions just email me or leave a comment!

The Ikea Cardboard Camera (no kidding!)

I have a love-hate relationship with Ikea, I love about half the stuff in the store (especially the cheapo stuff in what I call the flea-market area), and the other half (ugly modern furniture) just leaves me cold. I'm not sure which category to put this in: at a recent trade show Ikea was handing out Ikea-branded re-usable cardboard digital cameras in their press kits.

The camera is apparently a fully-functioning digicam wthat will shoot up to 40 exposures. You can then transfer the images to your computer via a flip-out USB plug. The camera runs on a pair of AA batteries, and the internal memory is emptied (after downloading, of course) by inserting a paper clip into the trash-hole. It uses two AA batteries (something I like since you can replace them anywhere if they run down). I don't know the specs for camera resolution.

With everyone snapping away with their iPhones these days I'm not sure how big the market is for an almost-disposable digital camera, but what the heck, if Ikea sells them for just a few bucks (as they probably will), I'm sure there will be lots of them placed on tables at wedding receptions or stuffed into Christmas stockings.

Please visit my main site: I hope you'll take a look at the many free tutorials on my main site.  There is also a camera-buying guide there that I'm currently updating.

Nikon D3200 24mp DSLR Announced: $699

In the never-ending quest to be king of the megapixel pile, Nikon today announced a somewhat amazing (and amazingly priced) consumer-level DSLR that features a 24.2MP APS-C CMOS sensor (this is quite a leap from the 14MP Nikon D3100 camera that it is replacing).  The camera supports a high-speed shooting rate of 4fps (frames per second) and has an ISO range of 100-6400 (with 12,800 available in extended range).

The camera features a 3-inch LCD and has a Live View mode that lets you view your scenes live on the LCD as well as both 1080p30 and 1080p24 video recording modes with full-time autofocus.  There is also a built-in microphone jack.

The D3200 will be sold as a kit with Nikon's AF-S DX Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G VR kit lens and is set to hit stores in late April. The suggested price is $699.95--so I imagine it will be even less when it hits the street. Nikon is also introducing a Wi-Fi add-on accessory (the WU-1a Wireless Mobile Adapter) that will sell for $59.95, and clips into the side of the camera to add wireless file transfer and shutter control. This feature lets you transfer files directly from the camera to your smart phone, and also lets you control the camera using your phone from up to 50 feet away. 

Sound sweet? It does to me. It continues to amaze me that consumers these days can shoot with cameras that pros would have killed for just a few short years ago. And my guess is that cameras like the D3200 will find a place in pro bags as a backup body.

My Exposure book on Kindle. My book Exposure Photo Workshop is available as a  Kindle book and you can view it in full color using your iPad, iPhone, etc. with a free app. It's the most comprehensive book published on the subject of exposure and Shutterbug Magazine called it, "...the best book ever published on the subject."