Capturing Epic Sunrises and Sunsets

Epic sunrise or sunset shots -- the kind where the sky is ablaze with hues of red, yellow and lavender -- don't happen purely by luck.  We can't control the weather but we can pay attention to the kinds of conditions that are conducive to producing glorious sunrises and sunsets.  Here are some techniques I learned for capturing sunrises and sunsets.

How to Bend SpaceTime (Tokina 10-17 Fisheye Review and Usage Guide)

The lighthouse bends as the distant building looms overhead, like a scene from Inception

In this post, we discuss fisheyes in general and we review the Tokina 10-17 fisheye lens. First, I'll show comparisons between rectilinear ultrawide images and fisheye images. Second, we'll talk about fisheyes.  Third, I'll provide some samples of how fisheyes can be used (aside from 'funny' shots).  Finally, I'll discuss the Tokina 10-17.

Upgrade your software before your hardware

I used to upgrade my point-and-shoot camera frequently.  I thought that the nifty features of newer cameras would improve my photos.  Sure, equipment (camera, lens, accessories) can make a big difference in results.  However, equipment without technique will not improve shots, and as a beginner, the limiting factor in the quality of my pictures was my technique (or lack thereof).  To illustrate the difference that technique makes, take a look at the shots below:

Shot 1:

Shot 2:

The shot at the top is with a Nikon D300, a Tamron 17-50 2.8 VC lens, and a Nikon SB-800 flash.  The camera, lens and flash are all prosumer quality and have a total cost of easily more than $2500.  The shot at the bottom is with an average 3-year old point-and-shoot camera (the Casio Exilim EX-V7) and the SB-800 flash.  The difference between the two shots is purely due to technique (specifically, lighting).

In summary, if you're new to photography and want to improve the quality of your pictures, the biggest improvement will come from improving your technique first.  If you want to know where to start learning techniques, check out these resources:


Roadmap for Family Photographers
Beginner's Simplified Guide to Exposure
Introduction to Lighting for Family Photographers
TTL FAQ

Have fun!

Taking Halloween Pictures - Part 2

Part 1 here.

For Halloween, we took our toddler to California Adventure.  We had a great time.  We plan to go back next year.
The pictures weren't perfect but I was satisfied with some of the portrait shots, and overall, the pictures were noticeably better than those from last year's Halloween, thanks largely to better understanding of TTL flash.

What went right / suggestions for nighttime shots:

1. Handheld umbrella.

I used a handheld umbrella to take some posed shots. I used the umbrella as key and I got the light I wanted for the subject.

For this shot, I took the exposure in manual mode.  I set aperture at its widest at 2.8 because I wanted a shallow depth of field.  I started out with max sync speed to minimize the ambient on the subject, so the subject was lit only by the soft directional light from the umbrella, then would increase ambient from there as necessary (by using a higher ISO or slower shutter) but I liked how the shot looked so I left it there.

2. Using ambient backlight.

There were spotlights throughout the park.  I took advantage of these spotlights to use them as rim lights for drama (to the extent the subjects cooperated).  To do so, I just positioned the subjects where the spotlights were behind and above them.

In one area, there was a cool-looking spotlight shining through a "fog."  I positioned my wife to block the spotlight itself, allowing just the corona of light to shine around my wife and our toddler.

3. Off-camera flash.

Inside the park, Disneyland's security objected to my use of the handheld umbrella, at first claiming that it was professional equipment, then next arguing that it was a sharp object.  Not wanting to ruin the fun of the evening, I decided to put the handheld umbrella away and just used the bare SB-800 handheld, in wireless mode.  Using the flash off-camera helped avoid the flat lighting from using an on-axis flash as key light.

There were also some shots where I lucked out on chimping the exposure and got a soft-looking light, I believe because ambient was just at the right level (probably 1 or 2 stops underexposed) to act as an extension of the key light. I plan to investigate this further to do it more consistently.

4. CTO gel.

Especially when there is mostly yellowish ambient light, the bluish light from the flash is a dead giveaway that artificial light was used.  The 1/4 CTO gel that I taped to my flash helped the flash look much more natural.

5. Manual mode.

I've been using program, aperture priority and shutter priority but I tried out manual exposure based on Neil van Niekerk's suggestions. It wasn't as difficult as I expected, even with often-changing light conditions. I didn't do it the right way though. I chose exposure settings purely by guesstimating, looking at the picture taken, and adjusting accordingly.  For such an unscientific way of taking manual exposure shots, the shots weren't as far off as one might expect.  The benefit of using manual exposure was more consistent exposures.  I plan to practice using manual mode in the hope of being more aware of (and in control of) my exposure.

What could be better:

1. Chimping.

As discussed above, I chimped the exposure just using the LCD screen.  I was aware that there were better ways of setting exposure, such as spot metering the white portion of our kid's costume and setting that to +1 or +2 exposure comp, or using the blinking highlights screen, or using the histogram.  But I caved under time pressure and just adjusted exposure based on instinct and a quick review of the shots.  Next time, I have to discipline myself to use one of the more reliable methods (probably the histogram method).

2. Flash blur from excess ambient light:

I set the exposure for ambient light at levels that I guessed were appropriate.  What I neglected to take into account sufficiently was to underexpose the background.  I was too concerned with having the background lights show up to avoid the black hole look.  The truth is, with digital SLRs, I find it far easier to use postprocessing to correct background underexposure than overexposure. Next time, I will err on the side of underexposing the background instead of risking overexposure.

3. Flash exposure.

The TTL-based flash exposure wasn't as smart as I thought. It tended to underexpose white areas.  This wasn't very obvious just reviewing the shot on the LCD screen but could have been easily observed from reviewing the histogram.  Something to force myself to do next time.

Comments on first family's photo

Yahoo news reported that the first family's first official photo was released. Here's the photo, taken by Annie Leibovitz. Of course the photo looks good and I like the expressions on their beautiful faces, but from a purely technical point of view, I'm a bit surprised that the lighting looks so simple and frankly underwhelming to me.  Maybe it's "deceptively simple" and too subtle for me. It seems possible to duplicate the lighting by simply bouncing the flash behind and camera right. Or by a large umbrella or softbox. From the catchlight on the original size photo, I'm guessing Annie used a softbox. I can't tell whether a fill light was used.  Doesn't seem like it. I'm wondering whether Annie used a hair light, because the first lady's hair has a shine, but the shine could have come from the key.

From the background it looks like ambient was killed (intentionally I assume).  Looking at the exif, I'm kinda puzzled too. It says:

• Canon 1Ds MkIII
• f/8, 1/125, ISO 400, 0 EV.

If I wanted to take this same shot, I would have instead gone to max sync speed (1/250 for the 1Ds MkIII)  and used a lower ISO.  Because there's no ambient anyway, the faster shutter and lower ISO wouldn't change the lighting of the shot.  The lower ISO would have less noise (though I concede that the 1Ds probably has negligible noise even at ISO 400) and the fast shutter would minimize blur from subject movement (though I am guessing that with virtually no ambient, the light was all flash, thus shutter speed was effectively the duration of the flash, i.e. 1/1000 or faster).  On the other hand, if Annie bounced the flash and didn't use a softbox, I can understand the use of ISO 400.  I doubt she did though, because bouncing can be more unpredictable for white balance, and there may be unintended reflections.

If I were to take my own version of this shot, I would have allowed more ambient light, because I think the darkness in the rooms in the background seems unnatural and to me off-putting. Or with Annie's unlimited resources, I would have placed another flash in the rooms at the back to light them up. The light from the flash also looks a bit cold. Perhaps it needs a gel. I might have also placed a gold reflector in front of them and bounced a bit of flash into it to add even more sparkle and warmth to their eyes.  In terms of composition, I think I would tried a very slightly lower height to decrease the negative space on top. I also think I would have picked a room with a less somber color (given the current economy).  In terms of choice of equipment, I believe the leader of the free world and his family deserve a shot from a medium format camera (digital or otherwise) for posterity.

Scan the Frame

Summary: I improved the composition of my shots by taking a moment to scan the frame.

The Issue:
Old habits die hard.  When composing a shot, I usually frame the shot, move the focus point to the point of interest where I want to focus (usually the eyes), half-press the shutter then take the shot.  Although I do think about the background and the rest of the picture, I tend to do so only while thinking of the shot, before I look through the viewfinder.  The problem with that process is that I'm too focused on the point of interest and not sufficiently mindful about the rest of the picture when taking the shot.  The result is that sometimes I inadvertently leave out important elements of the picture.

For example, this shot would have looked better with our toddler's hands visible in the frame.

Sometimes, I can crop to disguise the error. Other times, I can't, or I would have to crop very tightly.

The Solution:
Awareness of the problems created by my old habits led me to take a second to scan the frame just before taking the shot.  It's not easy to resist the temptation to simply take the shot when our toddler is running around and suddenly has a great expression on his face.  But taking a moment to scan the frame improved the composition of my shots and helped me to ensure that all important elements are there.

I'm also considering getting a wider-angle zoom like the Tamron 17-50 VC if I can find a way to fit it into our budget. :)

Evolution of a family photographer

Although my photography skills still need a lot of improvement, I find it nice to look back once in a while to see some progress and chuckle at my naivete.  As I look back, I also see how our baby has grown into a toddler in just a couple of very short years. I'm sure in the blink of an eye he'll be married and have his own kids.

I started out taking snapshots just like everyone else, without any knowledge of photography:

Like most people, I figured out that the deer-in-the-headlights look is not very flattering. So I turned off the flash:

 

Sometimes, though, the shots came out blurry:

 

I thought, there must be a better way to take photos. So I learned about exposure and about how I could get sharper shots in low light without a flash by getting a camera equipped with a wide aperture lens.  After doing some research on cameras, I chose a Pentax K100D because of the shake reduction and excellent high ISO performance, and paired it with a Pentax 50 f/1.4. I got shots like this:

Then one day, my bro (who had more experience in photography) asked me to buy a flash for him. First thing I thought was wow these flashes are really expensive for something so simple! Second thing I thought was, what's so useful about a flash?  So my bro told me about how you can bounce the flash to the ceiling and get more natural looking light. I researched this some more and found Neil van Niekerk's planetneil.com blog. That convinced me to get an external flash with bounce and swivel, the Pentax AF540FGZ.  By bouncing the light from walls (not just ceilings) I got shots like this:

I noticed though that sometimes, the colors in the shot looked kind of strange and figured out that the flash was picking up the color of the surface it was bouncing from:

I learned about color temperature, and tried to use that to fix the white balance issues in my shots with Picasa (back then I didn't know about the neutral picker, or magenta-green tint or RAW).  Playing around with Picasa, I also learned about improving contrast, which helped me get improvements like this:

I plateaued there for a while, not seeking any development of my photo skills.  My shots seemed better than the previous month's not because I became a better photographer but primarily because each month our baby became a little cuter:

and a little cuter still

Armed with the planetneil techniques and just minimal photo skills, I managed to get some decent holiday shots:

Without adequate knowledge of flash exposure though, I got inconsistent results like this flash underexposure:

Playing around with the flash one day, I tried using the flash off-camera for fun:

So I got a cactus trigger and used it to trigger the flash wirelessly, often rather ham-handedly:

I turned to Strobist.com to try to get a better understanding of lighting. I read Light: Science and Magic and learned about reflections (or avoiding them).

I also bought a lightstand and umbrella, and learned from Strobist.com how to do portraits with black backgrounds:

However, I felt that running back and forth between the camera and the manual flash, plus the K100D's slow (albeit usually accurate) focus were too limiting for our baby who has getting more mobile.  So I sold my Pentax gear and got a Nikon D80 (with a Tamron 28-75 f/2.8) and an SB800.

I made all sorts of excuses to take off-camera flash shots with CLS, like this shot at a friend's party:

For a while I experimented with snoots and shaping light:

But eventually, the novelty of using a snoot wore off and I reached another plateau. Sadly, for several months, I took only a few photos of our quickly-growing toddler.

Then one of our friends had a birthday party for their daughter. Some of the shots were ok but some needed improvement.  I was reminded of the limits of my photography skills. I also saw the need to do selective postprocessing adjustments, which I learned by playing around picnik.com.

To help keep me on my toes, I then created this blog and hence the roadmap.  And that's where I've been ever since.

A Road Map for Family Photographers

Last updated: Sept. 26, 2009.

To help family photographers, to help keep posts organized, and for me to keep track of areas where I need improvement, I put together a possible roadmap of skills for a family photographer.  The roadmap is not scientific – it’s based only on how I am gradually building upon my meager skills, and as I learn more, I'll continue to add to it.

Because of how it’s constructed, I’m hoping this roadmap is a more natural progression and helps filter what is most relevant to you based on your current development.  For example, if you’re still learning about exposure (Technique 1), explaining why smooth highlight roll-offs are important (Lighting 9) would be unhelpful and just potentially confusing.

For each skill, I categorized the skill as related to composition, lighting, postprocessing, or general technique.  I described the issue that usually leads to discovery of the missing skill.  I listed some resources for learning that skill.  Finally, I indicated what I think are the keys to improving that skill and tools that may help.   

I hope that if you reach a plateau in your development, you can use this roadmap to break through your rut by identifying areas where you may need improvement, finding the resources to improve, and putting what you learned into practice until it becomes a skill. And if you're aware of a skill, resource, tool, or key concept, pls. email or leave a comment so I can add it to this roadmap.

Category               Issue

Lighting 1               Unskilled use of popup flash results in deer-in-headlights look.

Composition 1        Boring pictures of subject.

Composition 2        Wanting portraits with “blurry backgrounds.”

Technique 1            Exposure - basics.

Lighting 2               Harsh and unflattering shadows on subjects.

Technique 2            Turning snapshots into photos.

Lighting 3               Direction of light - basics.

Postprocessing 1    Underexposed or overexposed photos, unnatural color casts, no opportunity to retake the shot.

Composition 3        Backgrounds.

Lighting 4               Desire to improve the lighting of subjects.

Lighting 5             Light quality, direction, color.

Technique 4            Sharpness

Lighting 6               Ratio of ambient and flash, controlling flash exposure.

Postprocessing 2    Polished, “professional-looking” photos

Lighting 7               Increase understanding and control of light on the subject.

Lighting 8               Search for photos with amazing natural-looking light.  Ambient light revisited.

Composition 4        Controlling color.

Lighting 9               Tonality, tonal range, dynamic range.

Technique 3            Capturing the moment.

Technique 4            Borrowing from other photographic genres (e.g., landscape)

Lighting 1

Issue: Unskilled use of popup flash results in deer-in-headlights look.

Keys: Turning off flash. Awareness of noise. Signal / noise ratio.

Composition 1

Issue: Boring pictures of subject.

Keys: Rule of thirds. Filling the frame. Perspective. Patterns. Leading lines. Appropriate use of focal length.

Composition 2

Issue: Wanting portraits with “blurry backgrounds.”

Resources: cambridgeincolour depth of field tutorial.

Key: Understanding factors in controlling depth of field (aperture, focal length, distance of camera to subject, sensor size)

Tools: Camera with controllable aperture, Lens with normal to tele focal length.

Technique 1

Exposure - basics.

Resources: Bryan Peterson’s Understanding Exposure. planetneil exposure metering tutorial;  Bahman Farzad’s simplified zone system.  Ken Rockwell’s zone system article. SimCam

Keys: Aperture x shutter speed x ISO = exposure. 18% grey. Exposure compensation. PASM. Understanding metering.

Tools: Search for a DSLR or camera with PASM.

Lighting 2

Issue: Harsh and unflattering shadows on subjects.

Resources: planetneil.com flash tutorial; Neil van Niekerk's On-Camera Flash

Keys: Understanding quality of light (hard vs. soft) is determined by apparent size of light vs. size of subject; bouncing flash.

Tools: External flash with bounce and swivel; light modifiers.

Technique 2

Issue: Turning snapshots into photos.

Resources: Ken Rockwell article on Artistic Synthesis

Keys: Previsualization. Taking a picture (passive) vs. making a photo (active).

Lighting 3

Direction of light - basics.

Resources: planetneil.com flash tutorial; Neil van Niekerk's On-Camera Flash

Keys: Awareness of and control of light direction (e.g. by correctly positioning subject and camera; bouncing flash from intended direction of light)

Tools: on-camera external flash with bounce and swivel.

Postprocessing 1

Issues: Underexposed or overexposed photos, unnatural color casts, no opportunity to retake the shot.

Keys: Adjust white balance, exposure, fill light, contrast, saturation, color temperature

Tools: postprocessing software such as Photoshop, Picnik.com, Picasa, Paintshop Pro

Composition 3

Backgrounds.

Key: Background and foreground elements (e.g., natural frames), eliminating distracting elements (e.g. removing trash or moving the subject to an area without trash).

Lighting 4

Issue: Desire to improve the lighting of subjects.

Resources: Allison Earnest’s Sculpting with Light

Keys: Roles of light in portraiture (key, fill, background, rim, hair); Portrait lighting styles (broad, short, Rembrandt, loop, butterfly)

Lighting 5

Light quality, direction, color.

Resources: Fil Hunter’s Light: Science and Magic.  Strobist.com Lighting 101, Lighting 102.

Keys: Shadows, chiaroscuro, family of angles.

Tools: Using flash off-camera, gobos, snoots, grids.  Studio equipment (lightstand, umbrellas, softboxes).

Technique 3

Sharpness

Resources: ?

Keys: appropriate shutter speeds, appropriate aperture, awareness of front and back focus

Tools: sharper lenses (see photozone.de lens reviews), lenses with VR, remote shutter, tripod, flash.

Lighting 6

Ratio of ambient and flash, controlling flash exposure.

Resources: Strobist.com Lighting 101, Lighting 102;  planetneil.com; CLS practical guide; Flash photography with Canon EOS Cameras; TTL FAQ

Keys: Understanding how TTL and manual mode differ, how to control each.

Tools: external flash.

Postprocessing 2

Polished, “professional-looking” photos

Resources: ?

Keys: selective adjustment (e.g. with layers), retouching techniques? adjusting tone curve?

Tools: ?

Lighting 7

Increase understanding and control of light on the subject.

Resources: Dean Collins’ theory of 3d contrast.

Keys: Awareness of specular, specular-to-diffuse transfer, diffuse, diffuse-to-shadow transfer, shadow, and how each is controlled.

Lighting 8

Search for photos with amazing natural-looking light.  Ambient light revisited.

Resources: Bob Krist’s Secrets of lighting on location. James Beltz's video on seeing the light.

Keys: Noticing ambient light characteristics, supplementing or amplifying or simulating ambient light. Light motivation for flashes.

Composition 4

Controlling color.

Resources: ?

Keys: Postprocessing, proactive use of white balance, lens filters, flash gels, choice of film and film processing.  Use of color in composition.

Lighting 9

Tonality, tonal range, dynamic range.

Resources: ?

Keys: seeing in black and white? Dodging and burning.  Using a medium with smoother highlight roll-off.

Technique 4

Capturing the moment.

Resources: ?

Keys: Building rapport with, anticipating subjects?

Technique 5

Borrowing from other photographic genres (e.g., landscape)

Resources: ?

Keys: ?