Tag Archives: bill ferris photography

M, Is for Manual

This single exposure was shot at sunset from a vantage point below Desert View Watchtower on Grand Canyon's South Rim. Angels Gate, an iconic formation in the canyon, stands in silhouette toward the upper right corner. One of the reasons I like scenes such as this is they remind me of childhood school projects...cutting random shapes from different colored sheets of paper and layering them into some interesting pattern. (Bill Ferris)

This single exposure was shot at sunset from a vantage point below Desert View Watchtower on Grand Canyon’s South Rim. Angels Gate, an iconic formation in the canyon, stands in silhouette toward the upper right corner. (Bill Ferris)

If you’re up for having some fun with your new camera, rotate the program dial to the M setting. M, stands for Manual. In this setting, you get to choose the ISO, the aperture and the length of the exposure. I realize the thought of taking responsibility for these critical settings can be intimidating. But don’t let that stop you. Sometimes, it’s fun to be a little afraid or intimidated. And you know what, it’s actually pretty easy to take good photos in manual.

We’ll start by keeping the camera in Auto, framing a shot and taking an exposure. Next, review the image and note the three critical settings: ISO, aperture and length of exposure. Write down the numbers. As we’ve discussed, ISO is the sensitivity of the camera sensor to light. ISO settings typically range from a low end of 200 to a high end of 3200 or more. Pro camera bodies often have the ability to select an ISO as low as 100 and go to 25,000 or higher. Generally speaking, the lower the ISO, the more pleasing the final image will be. As ISO sensitivity increases, noise becomes more evident in the image. At very high ISO settings, the amount of noise or grain visible in the image is substantial.

Aperture is the diameter of the lens opening allowing light into the camera body and onto the sensor. In aperture mode, rather than selecting the size of this opening, you actually select the ratio of the focal length of the lens to the aperture. This is referred to as the focal ratio or f/ratio. If you are shooting with a 50 mm lens or with a zoom lens set to 50 mm, and if the aperture is set to f/9, you know the lens focal length is nine-times the diameter of the lens opening or aperture. If you do the math, the aperture should be about 5.6 mm. Suppose you select an aperture setting of f/4.5, the lens focal length would be four-and-a-half times the aperture. That works out to roughly 11 mm. So, as the focal ratio gets smaller, the aperture or lens opening gets larger.

Finally, the length of the exposure is the amount of time the shutter is left open allowing light to hit the exposed sensor. This is also referred to as shutter speed. If your goal is to freeze a moment in time, you’ll want a short exposure or fast shutter speed. With a fast shutter speed, moving people or objects will appear stationary–frozen in time–but as the shutter speed slows, moving objects and people look more blurry. Keep in mind that there are situations where you will want to use a long exposure to capture blurred movement. Flowing water is one such situation. We’ll talk more about that a little later.

Now that you’ve taken an exposure in Auto and noted the settings, turn the mode dial to manual (M). Use the camera controls to set ISO, aperture (f/stop) and shutter speed to the settings you noted. Frame the same shot you just took and take another exposure. Then, compare this with the first frame. They should look very similar, if not identical. If you’re shooting outside in natural sunlight, any differences between the two images will most likely be attributed to a change in lighting conditions.

Let’s talk about the adjustments you might make to improve the overall look of the shot. If the shot you’ve been taking is a general wide shot of the room you’re in, you probably want to capture a good depth of field. In other words, you’ll want the lamp in the foreground and the chair next to that far wall both to be in focus. For good depth of field, you’ll want to select an f/stop in the f/8 to f/10 or f/11 range. The relatively small aperture will ensure objects both near and far will be in focus.

Suppose you really like that lamp in the foreground and you’d like to isolate it in a portrait. One way to isolate a subject in a portrait is to use a fast f/stop to create a shallow depth of field. Rather than shooting at f/9, you’re going to rotate the command dial to select an f/stop as small (fast) as your lens is capable of producing. Hopefully, you can dial in at least an f/4.5 or f/4 setting. If you can go as fast as f/2.8 or smaller, do it.

So, in which direction did you rotate the command dial and how many clicks did it take to settle on your desired f/stop? If you increased the f/stop (closed the aperture) then you’ll need to compensate by adjusting either the ISO or shutter speed. Increasing ISO will compensate for a large (slow)  f/stop by making the sensor more sensitive. A slower shutter speed will lengthen the exposure, allowing more light to pass through the restricted aperture to hit the sensor. if you adjust one or both of these settings in the proper direction by the same total number of clicks, you should be very close to compensating for the aperture change and creating a photograph that matches your expectations.

Which adjustment should you make? If you’re holding the camera by hand, you’ll want to use a shutter speed short enough to prevent any unsteadiness from creeping into the exposure. You can apply the reciprocal rule, in this scenario. The shutter speed should be no shorter than the reciprocal of the lens focal length. If you’re using a 100 mm focal length, you’ll want to shoot with a 1/100-second or faster shutter speed. The shorter the lens focal length, the longer your exposure can be when shooting handheld and still produce a sharp image.

The balance of the compensation can be made through changes to the ISO setting. Be aware that a significant increase in ISO to a setting of 1600 or higher stands a good chance of introducing unwanted noise or pixelation into the image. Of course, this is a situation where a tripod can be a godsend. If you’re able to mount the camera on a stable tripod, you can use shutter speed, alone, to compensate for a larger f/stop (smaller aperture) and still get very sharp images.

A silky water flow over Taliesin Dam at the Frank Lloyd Wright home in Taliesin, Wisconsin. (Bill Ferris)

A silky water flow over Taliesin Dam at the Frank Lloyd Wright home in Taliesin, Wisconsin. (Bill Ferris)

As mentioned, there are times when you’ll want to give priority to the shutter speed over the aperture. For example, a slow shutter speed (long exposure time) can enhance a photograph of a waterfall by giving the water a silky smooth texture. In this scenario, you’ll want an exposure of several seconds or longer. You can compensate for this by selecting a slow f/stop (aperture setting) of f/9 or f/11. Also, choose the lowest ISO setting available on your camera. And you’ll definitely need a tripod to produce a steady, sharp image with such a long exposure. If the resulting image still looks overexposed, try adding a polarizing filter to the front of the lens to further cut down the amount of light entering the camera. If the image is still overexposed, come back during that golden hour just before sunset to capture the scene at a time when the light level is reduced.

These are just a couple of ways you can begin to experiment with shooting in manual to give yourself more complete control over the photographs you make. It may not be something that immediately produces great results for you. But with time, patience and experimentation, you’ll gain a better understanding of how changes to the primary camera settings affect the final image. Ultimately, this is a path to having more creative freedom with your camera, taking better pictures and having more fun.

So, get out and shoot!

Bill Ferris | August 2013

S, Is for Shutter Priority

A late summer afternoon glow fills Grand Canyon as seen from Yaki Point on the South Rim. Cedar Ridge and O'Neill Butte bask in the light in the foreground. (Bill Ferris)

A late summer afternoon glow fills Grand Canyon as seen from Yaki Point on the South Rim. Cedar Ridge and O’Neill Butte bask in the light in the foreground. (Bill Ferris)

When shooting landscapes, I will typically set my Nikon D90 to either Aperture priority or Manual. Aperture priority allows you to control the depth of field by selecting the aperture. The camera will choose an appropriate shutter speed to compliment the aperture setting. A setting of from f/8 to f/11 will typically produce an image with everything in focus, including the foreground, middle ground and background. It’s not a hard & fast rule but, as a general guideline, landscape images with crisp focus throughout can be very pleasing.

Manual mode also gives you, the photographer, control over the aperture setting, as well as control of ISO and shutter speed. When taking advantage of the dramatic, moody lighting at the end of the day, shooting in manual and experimenting with different setting combinations can produce a balance between the intensity of highlights (clouds & sky), and detail in the shadows (land) that pleases you. After all, if you don’t like the image, there’s no reason to expect anybody else will. But if you love the image, there’s a good chance others will enjoy it, too.

There are situations when you’ll want to force the shutter speed to either be very fast or very slow. At these times, shooting in Shutter Priority can lead to amazing results. One such situation is when photographing a landscape featuring flowing water. Water is an element with multiple personalities. On the one hand, a waterfall or churning river rapid can seem violent and dangerous. At the same time, watery landscapes have a beauty and a delicacy that is undeniable. Let’s talk about how to use shutter priority to capture the softer side of water.

At the bottom of Grand Canyon, the Colorado River flows past Tanner delta during evening twilight. Vishnu Temple's distinctive profile is centered along the far horizon with Apollo Temple and Ochoa Point featured more prominently in the foreground on the right. (Bill Ferris)

At the bottom of Grand Canyon, the Colorado River flows past Tanner delta during evening twilight. (Bill Ferris)

This image of the Colorado River flowing through Grand Canyon National Park is a twilight scene that was captured about a half-hour after sunset. The Colorado has a well-earned reputation as a violent, dangerous river. Numerous rapids within Grand Canyon are so far beyond the most violent rapids you’ll find in other waterways that river runners have established a classification system just for the Colorado and other Western rivers.

In seeming contrast to that reputation, the Colorado River flows slow and quiet through much of Grand Canyon. The bend the river makes at Tanner delta illustrates the softer side of this great Western river. Photographing this scene, I wanted to capture this aspect of the Colorado River’s personality. To do that, I shot in shutter priority and selected an exposure time of 30-seconds. This allowed me to select a small aperture (f/9) to capture sharp focus throughout the image and to use an ISO of 200 to eliminate graininess from this twilight scene. That combination of long exposure and small aperture resulted in an image where the silky flowing river stands in stark contrast to the crisply focused inner canyon landscape.

It’s a ghostly, almost other worldly scene, and one that illustrates when to use shutter priority to capture a specific image. Give it try. Get out and Shoot!

Bill Ferris | August 2013

 

A, Is for Aperture Priority

I don’t recall exactly how long it took before I was able to look at the letters on the menu dial of my camera and see anything other than alphabet soup. It certainly wasn’t overnight after first getting the camera, weeks at a minimum but probably closer to months.

In part this was due to the ability of the modern DSLR camera to auto select settings that produce good photos. Another factor was the menu of scene modes on my Nikon D70. When taking pictures of people, I used the Portrait setting. I also used the Landscape, Sports and Night settings. The names said everything I needed to know about their function and made it easy to explore settings other than Auto. Yes, I was getting all radical with my camera and trying different menu dial positions just weeks after getting it.

But the real experimentation started when I took the leap of faith required to dive into the alphabet soup settings on the menu dial: A, M, P and S. In addition to being an anagram for, spam, those four letters tease and temp a new photographer with hints of the unknown and mysterious. What happens when you choose, A? Will the camera even function?

The Command Dial on most DSLR cameras allows you to choose between a variety of scene and other settings, including Aperture Priority (A)

The Command Dial on most DSLR cameras allows you to choose between a variety of scene and other settings, including Aperture Priority (A) (Graphic used courtesy Creative Commons)

A, is for Aperture Priority, a setting where you manually select the aperture and the camera fill in the other settings. An aperture is an opening that allows light to pass through the lens and fall on your camera’s sensor. If you’re framing a shot at high noon on a sunny day, there’s a lot of light hitting your subject. This abundance of ambient light means your camera’s aperture can be small and still allow enough light to hit the sensor to capture a beautiful image with a short exposure. This brings us to the concept of f-stop or f/ratio. These terms mean the same thing, the ratio of the focal length of your camera lens to the diameter of the lens opening (aperture) allowing light to fall on the camera sensor.

Suppose your shooting with the kit zoom lens that came with your camera and the focal length (zoom) is set to 50 mm (millimeters). Put the camera in auto and take a picture of something. Then, play the photo and look at the information about that exposure. In particular look for the f-number. The number next the f tells you the ratio of the aperture to lens focal length. A picture taken with a 50 mm lens at f/10 had a 5 mm (1/5-inch) aperture. A picture taken with a 50 mm lens at f/4 had a 12.5 mm (1/2-inch) aperture or opening.

So, the smaller the focal ratio or f-number, the larger the aperture. In short, when you shoot with a small f-number, you’re letting more light into the camera to fall on the sensor. Or at least, your camera is trying to let in more light. When we started this discussion, we began by imagining a scenario of taking a picture at high noon on a sunny day. Let’s change the time from high noon to the golden hour, that first hour after sunrise or last hour before sunset when natural light is soft, warm and dramatic. The light quality is better but there’s not as much of it. So, in order for your camera to allow the same quantity of light on its sensor as a shot taken at noon, the aperture needs to be larger.

The begs the question, so what? Why should you care that the aperture needs to be bigger during the golden hour than at high noon? Well, aperture determines the depth of field in a photo. Depth of field is the range of distance within which objects or people will be in focus in a photograph. When shooting portraits, it’s often more pleasing to have a shallow depth of field. In other words, the person who’s the subject of the photo is in focus but anything in the foreground or background will be out of focus. This quality of an out of focus foreground or background is called, bokeh. Bokeh is a Japanese term describing the portion of a photograph that is obviously out of focus. When shooting a portrait, obvious bokeh in the background is typically very pleasing to the eye. The way to create bokeh in your shot is to shoot using a small focal ratio or f-number, the smaller the better.

Northern Arizona's summer monsoon calls forth brilliant yellow wildflowers near Flagstaff, Arizona. (Bill Ferris)

Northern Arizona’s summer monsoon calls forth brilliant yellow wildflowers near Flagstaff, Arizona. (Bill Ferris)

Above, is an example of bokeh. The subject is in focus in the foreground and the background is obviously out of focus. This transforms the background flowers into a pleasingly abstract tapestry of hues and textures complimenting the subject of the photo.

Suppose you’re shooting a landscape at sunset. A wonderful, warm light is painting the temples and buttes of Grand Canyon. For this shot, you’ll probably want everything in your frame to be in focus. You’re not trying to capture just one temple or butte. Everything in your frame needs to be in focus. In this scenario, a shallow depth of field will put much of the frame out of focus. To put everything from the most distant butte to the blooming foreground wildflower in focus, you need to shoot using a large focal ratio. Typically, I shoot at f/9 when doing landscape photography.

(Bill Ferris)

The last light of day paints Desert View Watchtower on the South Rim of Grand Canyon a deep rusty red. Desert View overlooks the Palisades of the Desert and the Colorado River in eastern Grand Canyon National Park. (Bill Ferris)

This photo of Desert View Watchtower on the South Rim of Grand Canyon was taken at sunset. My Nikon D90 was mounted on a tripod. The camera was in aperture priority at f/9, ISO 500, a lens focal length of 19 mm and an exposure of 1/30-second.

This brings us to the final question of this blog entry. What impact, other than depth of field, will shooting at f/9 have on your photo? As we’ve discussed, the larger the f-number the smaller the aperture or lens opening. If shooting at sunset to capture a landscape illuminated by that gorgeous, soft light, you can compensate for the small aperture by boosting the ISO setting. The same scene that can be captured with an ISO of 200 at high noon, may require an ISO setting of 800 during that dusky time around sunset.

But there is a price to pay for taking this approach. Boosting the ISO to make your camera more sensitive to light adds digital noise to your photo. With higher end digital cameras, images shot at ISO 800 often look very good. But if you’re shooting with an entry-level camera or an older DSLR, an image shot at ISO 800 will often looking grainy and rough. Rest assured, however, there is another solution.

Use a tripod. For landscape photography or any photography where you want to capture sharp, detailed images with good depth-of-field, a tripod is essential gear. Mounting your camera on a tripod allows you to precisely frame the shot. It also allows you to shoot at low ISO’s of 400 or less during the golden hour and still capture great detail. The scene that was perfectly captured with a 1/500-second expose in bright sunlight may require a 1/10-second exposure at a time of day when the quality of the light is warmer, softer and more dramatic.

Now, 1/10-second may not seem slow but trust me, it is slow in photography. As a general rule when shooting handheld, you want exposure times to be no slower than the reciprocal of the lens focal length. OK, in English. Let’s say you’re shooting with a 50 mm lens. If you’re holding the camera in hand for the shot, the slowest shutter speed you’ll want to use is 1/50-second. Faster would be better. Any slower speed will allow the camera to capture the vibration or unsteadiness of your handhold. That vibration will soften details and produce an image that looks out of focus. If the camera is mounted on a tripod, that rock solid platform will allow you to take longer exposures producing crisp, focused photographs.

OK, I’ve rambled long enough. The next time you’re out with your camera, experiment with using the A or aperture priority setting. Shoot the same subject using different apertures. Compare the ISO settings and exposure times for the resulting photos. Most important, compare how the photos look. Which one looks best to you? Write down or make a mental note of those settings and spend the rest of the day shooting with them. You’ll learn a little more about your camera and you’ll get some great shots.

Get out and shoot!

Bill Ferris | August 2013

Psychedelic

Bryce Point in Bryce Canyon National Park basks in the warm glow of sunrise on a mid-summer morning. It is amazing to me that places such as this, with its deeply rich natural hues, can be found on this earth. (Bill Ferris)

Bryce Point in Bryce Canyon National Park basks in the warm glow of sunrise on a mid-summer morning. It is amazing to me that places such as this, with its deeply rich natural hues, can be found on this earth. (Bill Ferris)

Too loud. Garish. Unnatural.

These are words some critics use in lamenting the presentation of bright, bold colors in high dynamic range (HDR) photography. Personally, I like richly saturated hues in my photos. That said, I acknowledge and respect your right to enjoy and celebrate the photographic styles that touch you. After all, photography is deeply personal. There should be room for a wide variety of perspectives and a multitude of forms of expression within the medium.

If asked to describe my HDR photographic style, I suppose the phrase I would choose is, deeply natural. It’s a simple phrase, just two words, but conveys far more about my taste in photography than meets the eye. I’ll begin with the second word, natural. I like my photos to have a natural appearance to them. A natural-looking image is inviting. It’s a whisper saying, step a little closer and have a good look. Natural is something you want to touch, to linger over and sit with. Natural welcomes a long visit.

To preserve that natural quality, I tend to back off on the depth of the processing…just a touch. I mean, let’s not kid around, my HDR is clearly HDR. It’s got that look but it also retains enough of the subject’s inherent beauty to have a natural look. It’s not landscape porn. It’s the landscape next door.

Which brings us back to the first word, deeply. As mentioned at the outset, I like deep rich hues in my photos. These aren’t colors as they appear to my eye. Rather, they’re the colors seen by my soul. When a scene touches and inspires me to pull out the camera and tripod, it comes alive in a way that goes well beyond what can be seen with the eye. It reaches deep inside. The details get a little sharper, the sky a little bluer, the colors brighter and richer.

Bryce Point at sunrise in Bryce Canyon National Park
Bryce Point in Bryce Canyon National Park basks in the warm glow of sunrise on a mid-summer morning.

Bryce Canyon National Park is truly an American gem. What makes this place so magical are the amazing colors in the stone. They are both totally real and completely unnatural at the same time. For an HDR photographer, the unique quality of the color makes Bryce Canyon heaven on earth.

Occasionally, nature does the work for me. The gorgeous, slightly more intense than life quality comes baked into the scene. That above photograph is a perfect example. Those electric day glow colors are totally natural. Catching the early morning light, this is how Bryce Canyon looks. It’s more than the color of reflected light. It is as though the stone hoodoos and rock layers are powered by an inner rainbow glow.

Is it loud? Garish? Unnatural? Maybe so. But that is Bryce Canyon, one of the most unnatural looking wonders on the planet. Bryce Canyon is a place that has to be seen to be believed. It’s like candy to an HDR baby.

So, where is your naturally amazing wonder? Where do you go to find inspiration? Keep that thought in mind. Grab the car keys, and get out and shoot!

Bill Ferris | July 2013