Compact cameras - how to take control

Gordon Stockley, who bought my DVD some while ago, emailed me the other day…
“I have been meaning to write for some time to say thank you for sharing your skills and knowledge via the blog. I have been reading it avidly since you drew my attention to it in an email and I have learned an awful lot from it (as I also did from your DVD). Thanks once again.”

Gordon went on to say he thought it might be useful if I gave some tips on using compact cameras like the Ixus 960IS. I think this is a good idea and will post one or two ideas over the coming weeks.

The biggest problem with compacts – no matter how many megapixels they boasts, or how good their lens – is the limitations of exposure control. However, while you cannot choose your exact shutter speed or the precise aperture you want, there are ways of manipulating things to get somewhere near the results you want to achieve.

Frankly, the first thing I do with any of these compacts is to disable most of the unnecessary automatic function such as Face Recognition, and Auto ISO. Above all disable the AiAF and set the focus area to Centre. Then you will always know exactly where to focus by half-pressing the shutter. If someone could explain to me why I would want a camera to focus on what it wants to focus on and not what I want it to focus on, I will try to understand. I also set the exposure area to Centre Weighted.

The M (Manual) setting on the Ixus is not really manual at all, but is does give you a greater degree of control than the fully Auto or the Scene settings. In M you can, for instance use the AEL (Auto Exposure Lock) function. In other words, you can select an area of the scene from which to take your light reading – lock the exposure setting, then reframe and apply that exposure setting to your chosen composition. On the Ixus this is simple – just half-press the shutter and at the same time press the top of the multi-function ring on the back of the camera. AEL appears on the right hand side of the screen. The exposure is locked. To return to normal, just press the top of the multi-function ring again. AEL disappears.

The picture above is a good example of taking control of exposure and focus with a tricky subject.

The flower heads are in bright sunlight. The camera was set on M at ISO80. The background is very dark and a long way away. I first locked the exposure on a bright patch of light on the ground in front of the flowers. I then pointed the camera at an area at the base of the stems, half-pressed the shutter button and held it down to lock the focusing. I now had the exposure set and the focus locked.

Had I not done this, the camera’s auto focusing may have locked onto the distant background and the flower heads would have been out of focus. If I had not locked the exposure on a bright area, the camera’s auto exposure would have taken a light reading that included a lot of dark background – the flower heads would have been over exposed.

Photography student's success

Photograph by Margaret Laurie

It’s always a huge pleasure for me when I hear that I have been able to inspire someone and set them on the right track.

Margaret came to one of my weekend workshops here in Kirkcudbright in SW Scotland earlier this year. The other day she emailed me hardly able to contain here excitement because one of her photographs had been accepted for publication in the Scotland on Sunday newspaper. This is what Margaret said:

“You helped a lot to inspire me to take more photos, and give me some confidence to send my photos into the paper.

“This photo was taken a couple of Fridays ago at the beginning of May. We live in Ferryhill, Aberdeen and I'd woken early with the sun streaming in through the window, and out of the window saw this fantastic sunrise. I went across the road and that was the view from our street at 5.30am! I took loads of photos while my husband, and daughters were tucked up snugly in bed. The view looks over the rooftops towards the River Dee as it flows under Victoria Road bridge to the harbour then out to sea. The smoke on the right is from an offshore supply vessel. The cranes are all at the docks and the tiny dots are notorious Aberdeen seagulls! I loved the way the cranes and the aerials were leaning towards each other.

“My camera is a Nikon D80, exposure set on manual at 1/1600sec, f7.1, ISO 200, WB set on ‘Cloudy’. The focal length was 112mm.

“The weekend workshop in Kirkcudbright with yourself gave me the oomph to do something with my photos. As you can see I now use my camera in manual, and that's pretty much 99% of the time, and experiment with the white balance, and still take B & W.”

Very well done, Margaret. You have every right to be very proud of yourself. I can still remember the buzz I got from my first publication – and that’s a very long time ago.

Might I have done things differently? Well, perhaps I might have used a slightly different exposure setting, but Margaret has achieved such a beautiful result that any alterations would only amount to fine tweaking.

By using the ‘Cloudy’ White Balance (WB) setting, Margaret has added to the yellow/orange glow from the early morning sun. Great idea. With so much light available, I might have used a ISO 100 for maximum image quality, stopped the aperture down for extra depth of field (this part depends on what Margaret was wanting to capture; maybe she wanted limited depth of field), and used a slower shutter speed. This would have given an exposure of roughly 1/500sec at f11. 1/500sec should be quite fast enough to eliminate camera shake when using a lens with a focal length of 112mm – which on the Nikon D80 is equivalent to about 180mm.

Keep ‘em coming, Margaret. Very well done!

Menorca Photography Holiday

Our photography group has just had a walk to a small fishing village along the coast where they spotted a great photo opportunity when a local artist arrived and set up his easel under the trees at the back of the beach.

My group was on him like a rash.

He was delightfully helpful and welcomed the attention. Quite a surprise for photographers more used to the attitudes that attitudes that prevail in UK at the moment. One thing for sure here in Menorca is that photographers are made welcome by people who are pleased to be photographed.

The biggest problem with this shot was where the artist had positioned himself under the trees in the shade - careful exposure was needed in order not to 'burn-out' the highlight. I always prefer to under expose a little then bring up the shadows in Photoshop's levels and with the 'dodge' tool.

Anyway here's a snap of some of the group - some of whom seem to be more laid-back than others - and a picture of Pedro, the artist himself.

How to photograph moving water - part 1

I had a great day yesterday with Yvonne and Phil who came all the way up from London for a day’s tuition here in Scotland. We spent most of the morning going through some basics on their cameras – with Yvonne keen to understand more about white balance and how to use the manual exposure mode on her Nikon D40.

The weather was good and after lunch we had the choice of either photographing one of the many coves just along the coast, or another of my favourite locations – a beautiful and delicately intricate waterfall that drops out of the Galloway hills not far from my base here in Kirkcudbright.

As Yvonne was keen to try out her skills with moving water – we donned our wellie boots and headed to the waterfall.

You can hear the roar of the waterfall well before I can see it. It’s very well hidden – a real fairy dell. The water drops about 40 feet down a sheer face, it’s stream splitting into several channels which tumble over blackened, mossy rocks. The fall was once used for industrial purposes, and some cast iron pipes still mar the pristine quality of the scene. These can be used as subjects in their own right, or, with careful framing be cut out altogether.

I suggested a simple shooting plan to give the shoot a sense of purpose. We did not rush in to get shots of the water right away, but stood well back and took a good look at the whole scene before me. There is no need to rush in these situations. Waterfalls do not run away, nothing is going to change except the light, and on an overcast day that is unlikely to change much, so take your time and consider each shot. I prefer an overcast day because it helps reduces contrast between the white water and black rock, and if the sun does shine through the trees it can soon create over-exposed hot spots.

We started by taking pictures that included lots of foreground. The green mosses made a startling foreground, so too did the branches of the dead trees.

A good solid tripod is essential if, like me, you prefer to create that mystical, fairy-like, movement in the falling water. You need very slow shutter speeds to do that, about 1sec for maximum effect with a small waterfall, and here overcast weather helps again. The less daylight there is, the slower the shutter speed you will be able to use.

In my DVd on Light and Composition (available from my website), I showed you how to look at the world in rectangles, and introduced you to an imaginary ‘Rectangle Monkey’ who always helps you think and see in rectangles – that’s the way the camera sees. Photographing a waterfall like this is a good time to adopt that way of thinking, because the actually face of the waterfall as it drops down the cliff is really quite two-dimensional, and it is a simple matter to divide the waterfall up into interesting rectangles – starting with the overall view and then framing different interesting areas in both horizontal and vertical rectangles.

CORRECT EXPOSURE
To find the exposure using Manual (M) exposure mode is simple. Knowing I need a slow shutter speed, I just set a very small aperture, f22 and point the camera at the subject (I prefer centre-weighted metering for this type of subject). Then I slow the shutter speed down until the exposure scale in the viewfinder tells me I have the correct exposure. At ISO 100 this gave me a shutter speed of around 1sec; perfect for the moving water effect I was looking for. You do not need fast ISO settings when the camera is on a tripod and you want to use a slow shutter speed… keep it low for best results and better quality.

The pictures here were taken by me on a previous visit to the waterfall – yesterday, I was far too busy helping Yvonne and Phil to get their photographs.

Lower photograph of the waterfall

I started with a simple wide angle shot of the scene, taking in lots of that wonderful green moss in the foreground with the waterfall away in the distance. One of the less appealing aspects of this view can be seen – the end of an old water pipe, just off centre in the picture. There was no way of avoiding this from this angle. A couple of clicks with the cloning tool in Photoshop will soon sort it.

Top photograph

I used the rushing water in the stream beneath the fall to make a lively, moving foreground that injected a real feeling of depth – the third dimension – to the composition. With the wide-angle lens I was able to stand right in the middle of the stream. Here’s when those wellie boots really come in handy

Also pictured above are Yvonne and Phil, my students for the day - they came up from London for their photography tuition

In part 2 I'll explain more about composition - and white balance

Aperture Value

Carl posted a comment yesterday about Ken Terry's beautiful wildlife pictures.

Ken said that he used ISO 1000 and an aperture of f5.0 in AV mode as the light was changing so quickly. Sometimes the shutter speed was 1/500 and sometimes 1/4000.

Carl commented:
...really enjoyed this. But trying to work out what AV is, in relation to rapidly changing light?

'AV' - Aperture Value - is an automatic exposure mode in which you set the aperture you want and the camera decides on the correct shutter speed to match it. This can be very useful in rapidly changing light conditions like those Ken experienced when he was photographing the red kites and the red squirrels. In these conditions it can be difficult, if not impossible, to constantly adjust the exposure manually. In other words, you just cannot keep up with the fast changing light levels by correcting the exposure yourself in the Manual ('M') mode. When shooting a fast-moving subject like a bird in flight, operating the camera quickly is vitally important, so setting the exposure mode to an automatic setting can be a boon and one less thing to bother about.

So in Ken's case, he set f5.0 in 'AV' mode. When the sun went behind cloud and the light level dropped, the camera chose a shutter speed 1/500sec. When the sun came out and light level went up, the camera chose a shutter speed of 1/4000sec.

Some time ago I posted a photograph of Freddie Mercury. Click the link below. I used 'AV' exposure mode for this because the stage lights in the studio where the photograph was taken were constantly going on and off, with light levels going up and down. It would have been impossible to keep up with the exposure manually in 'M' mode, so I set something like f2.8 in 'AV' mode and let the camera sort out the shutter speed.

Just one tip here... Aperture Value (AV) used to me known as Aperture Priority (AP), far more sensible and descriptive. Until some fool decided to change it.
http://philipdunn.blogspot.com/search?q=mercury

Question about manual exposure

Another former student of mine, John Hamshaw, emailed me with the following question about my article on using Manual Mode exposure settings...

May I ask a question about your M is magic blog article no 1? You give the example of the two basket pics, where you say that you manually set the aperture to 5.6 and manually set the speed to 1/30th sec. This gives a reading on the exposure scale that the pic will be underexposed (obviously by the camera's built in meter), and you therefore correct it manually to 1/8th sec to set the scale reading to '0'. Isn't this the same as setting the camera to Aperture priority, set at 5.6, and when half pressing the shutter release, the same camera reading/meter will set the camera automatically to 1/8th sec?

(No doubt you will think this is a dumb question and what on earth has JH learnt from me in two courses??...but if it isn't and you want to use this question on the blog please do so)

Best wishes, John

Thanks John,
No, those courses were not wasted - I know what beautiful photographs you take.
The only dumb question is the one that is never asked.
Yes, in effect, what you say is correct. BUT... when you are using an automatic exposure mode such as Aperture Priority, unless you use the Auto Exposure Lock (AEL) function, every time you make an adjustment to the your framing of your composition the chances are that the exposure will change as the metrering system reads from a different area of the subject.

This is precisely why I cannot be bothered with auto settings.

I want to take my reading from the area of the subject I choose and for that exposure not to change when I re-frame the picture. Yes, I can do that by locking the exposure - but that seems to defeat the object for me.