Recently, we were at the pediatrician for our child's appointment. At the waiting room, I was observing the many family pictures that patients had sent in. Out of the dozens of photos, there were a handful that stood out to me. What made them eye-catching in my view (no pun intended) was the lighting. The vast majority of the photos I saw were taken outdoors in daylight or sunset, and with fill flash. The decision to use flash seemed appropriate in many of those cases. For example, strong backlighting would have made faces too dark if flash had not been used. The problem for me was that the photos looked artificial because of the flash direction and to a lesser extent, flash intensity. The flash was often casting on-axis shadows that were very different from the shadows one expects from the apparent position of the sun. In other words, the flash came from either the pop-up flash or an on-camera flash, while the sunlight was coming from a direction other than from behind the camera. The flash was also often a bit too strong and would have looked more natural if it were reduced slightly in intensity. In some cases, the effect of the flash was so jarring that I speculate the photos may have looked better if they had been based on a proper exposure for the subject's faces using ambient light only (no flash) and allowing the background to blow out. By contrast (no pun intended), the outstanding outdoor photos had lighting that seemed natural. The photographers either chose ambient light conditions that didn't require a flash, or they used a flash consistently with direction of the ambient light. To my recollection all were off-camera lights, and many used short lighting. The takeaway here is that if you want family photos that are noticeably better than most in this age of digital cameras, proper lighting is key (ok pun intended). If you're new to lighting, please check out the TTL FAQ in this blog to get you started. |
Showing posts with label outdoor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label outdoor. Show all posts
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Family Photos that Stand Out
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Holiday Pictures Outdoors at Night
Google still hasn't resolved the spam issue but I noticed that without this blog, I wasn't taking pictures or improving my photography skills, so I'm back.
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Lighting is absolutely essential for holiday photos. Specifically, there are at least three lighting aspects that are important for holiday photos: sufficient ambient light, moderate key light, and key light color temperature. In an outdoor holiday shot, the holiday lights are easily visible but aren't bright enough by themselves to illuminate the subject without using a flash. For our purposes, that makes things easier. Here's a step-by-step process I used for the photo above.
1. Sufficient ambient light.
a. I switched to manual exposure mode for greater control.
b. I chose an ISO that is as high as I'm comfortable with. In dim lighting conditions like this, the higher the ISO, the more exposure options you have available for your aperture and shutter generally speaking. However, if your ISO is too high, you run into two issues - noise and having too much flash exposure (when ISO is too high, even the minimum flash output may still be too bright). Here I chose 1000.
c. I chose the widest acceptable aperture. Because this was a group shot, I wanted to make sure enough of the subjects were sufficiently in focus, so I chose f/4.0. If this was a solo shot, I would have chosen f/2.8 (that's the widest aperture I have on my lens).
d. I took a test shot of the background lights with no flash and used my shutter speed to set the amount of ambient that I felt looked good (usually at a slight underexposure to keep the subjects more prominent than the background). In this case, I adjusted my shutter until I was satisfied with a shutter of 1/25.
2. Moderate key light.
With the exposure set for the ambient, I could now ask my subjects to get in the picture and pose. Again, in these conditions, the holiday lights wouldn't be enough to illuminate the subjects. Thus, we'll need to use a flash for the subjects.
a. If possible, use off-camera flash. On-axis flash (such as a popup flash) looks unnatural because there's no reasonable explanation for the direction of light. In the shot above, I used Nikon CLS to trigger my flash off-camera.
b. Whether you use off-camera flash or on-camera flash, it's crucial to avoid excess flash exposure. In TTL mode, decrease flash exposure compensation if the flash is too bright in the photo. Here, I did not feel the need to decrease the flash exposure compensation.
3. Key light color temperature.
Most holiday lights are yellowish in color. Flash is normally slightly blue. Without adjusting the flash's color temperature, the flash will look very different from the background lights and will look unnatural. The solution is simply to use a gel (here, I used a 1/4 CTO gel from the Rosco sampler pack taped onto the front of my flash. If you don't have a gel with you, you can instead make the color temperature warmer in postprocessing. The holiday lights will look more reddish, but at least the flash color won't be unnatural.
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Lighting is absolutely essential for holiday photos. Specifically, there are at least three lighting aspects that are important for holiday photos: sufficient ambient light, moderate key light, and key light color temperature. In an outdoor holiday shot, the holiday lights are easily visible but aren't bright enough by themselves to illuminate the subject without using a flash. For our purposes, that makes things easier. Here's a step-by-step process I used for the photo above.
1. Sufficient ambient light.
a. I switched to manual exposure mode for greater control.
b. I chose an ISO that is as high as I'm comfortable with. In dim lighting conditions like this, the higher the ISO, the more exposure options you have available for your aperture and shutter generally speaking. However, if your ISO is too high, you run into two issues - noise and having too much flash exposure (when ISO is too high, even the minimum flash output may still be too bright). Here I chose 1000.
c. I chose the widest acceptable aperture. Because this was a group shot, I wanted to make sure enough of the subjects were sufficiently in focus, so I chose f/4.0. If this was a solo shot, I would have chosen f/2.8 (that's the widest aperture I have on my lens).
d. I took a test shot of the background lights with no flash and used my shutter speed to set the amount of ambient that I felt looked good (usually at a slight underexposure to keep the subjects more prominent than the background). In this case, I adjusted my shutter until I was satisfied with a shutter of 1/25.
2. Moderate key light.
With the exposure set for the ambient, I could now ask my subjects to get in the picture and pose. Again, in these conditions, the holiday lights wouldn't be enough to illuminate the subjects. Thus, we'll need to use a flash for the subjects.
a. If possible, use off-camera flash. On-axis flash (such as a popup flash) looks unnatural because there's no reasonable explanation for the direction of light. In the shot above, I used Nikon CLS to trigger my flash off-camera.
b. Whether you use off-camera flash or on-camera flash, it's crucial to avoid excess flash exposure. In TTL mode, decrease flash exposure compensation if the flash is too bright in the photo. Here, I did not feel the need to decrease the flash exposure compensation.
3. Key light color temperature.
Most holiday lights are yellowish in color. Flash is normally slightly blue. Without adjusting the flash's color temperature, the flash will look very different from the background lights and will look unnatural. The solution is simply to use a gel (here, I used a 1/4 CTO gel from the Rosco sampler pack taped onto the front of my flash. If you don't have a gel with you, you can instead make the color temperature warmer in postprocessing. The holiday lights will look more reddish, but at least the flash color won't be unnatural.
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