Chris Poindexter, Author at Snapsort

Hack Your Camera’s Presets

The Canon Neutral picture style menu - by Canon

One of the more amazingly powerful and least understood features of modern DSLRs are the camera image style presets. I’m speaking specifically about image presets, also called picture styles, not preset shooting modes like aperture priority or shutter priority.

This topic can get a little confusing because of the sometimes fluid nature of photography terms and because some manufactures implement presets that change both the shooting modes and picture style under one setting heading and they all use different terms to describe the same basic processes. That’s why owner’s manuals are your friend. I’ve never been to a professional photography studio where a dog-eared camera manual wasn’t either on the desk or a convenient shelf.

Today I’m focused specifically on image presets. In the Canon line they have names like Standard, Portrait, Faithful, and Landscape. Nikon implements them slightly differently with names like Standard, Vivid and Neutral.

This is another one of those topics where DSLR video and still photography collide and maybe the video guys have a little bit of a lead. In the old days you’d make this selection by choosing a different film type based on the shooting you were doing that day. Today it’s the Picture Styles menu in Canon and Manage Picture Control in Nikon.

If you’re not using styles, you’re missing out on a huge amount of functionality. In Canon you can switch between Standard and Landscape when shooting outdoors which produces more vivid colors in the green and blue range. Switch to the Portrait style when shooting people and your camera shifts the color and saturation settings to those more favorable to skin tones.

You can also create your own custom picture styles by selecting a unique combination of sharpness, contrast, saturation, and color tone and then save them in one of your custom preset menu options.

You can also modify the camera preset by tweaking the settings in the menu options. I don’t really recommend doing that until you have a lot of experience. Better to copy the settings into a custom preset and play around with them there.

The best place to learn the particulars of your camera’s picture styles is the owner’s manual. Read it, understand it, and do some experiments in controlled shooting situations that help you understand what’s happening when you change the image style settings.

Understanding picture styles and presets can make a huge difference in the quality of your photographs. It’s not fun, it’s not sexy, but it’s imperative to becoming a better shooter.

Studio Lighting Series – Lighting Styles

This is another installment of a long series of articles shot and composed with the help of professional photographer Karl Leopold at ImagesForever.net in Melbourne Beach, Florida. Karl is one of the top photographers in the area and president of the Atlantic Professional Photographers Association and graciously opened his studio up to us for this series.

Alongside basic three point lighting and understanding light ratios in studio lighting, it’s also good to have a basic understanding of lighting styles. This subject can be a bit confusing as there are sometimes more than one term that applies to a particular style and the application of the terms are not always consistent. That’s understandable as photography is as much art as science the terminology is a little fluid. That’s really okay, it’s not worth fighting over.

There are a couple terms that it’s good to know. Lighting of the side of the face facing the camera is called the “broad” side. The part of the face not showing as much turned away from the camera, is called the “narrow” side.

The most common type of lighting, particularly for women, is called Rembrandt Lighting, named after the old painting master. Its signature quality is a triangle of light on the narrow side of the face. The effect is achieved by placing the key to the broad side of the subject and slightly elevated, the basic setup for our three point lighting demonstration.

Another common lighting technique for women is called Butterfly Lighting, sometimes also called Paramount Lighting, though it should be noted that a few consider those to be separate lighting styles.

Butterfly Lighting is achieved by moving the key closer to the camera and elevating the height, thereby producing a slightly butterfly shaped shadow under the nose.

My personal opinion is that Butterfly Lighting works for men better than women, but it’s really just personal preference. I think men’s features are enhanced by shadows but it detracts from women. Again, personal preference.

After that come the variations. Move the key further to the side and drop the fill for Split Lighting.

Bring the key light toward the camera, move the fill slightly farther away for Loop Lighting, which gets its name from the loop-shaped shadows around the nose. Employed for oval faces to bring out more detail in the narrow side of the face.

Short Lighting is lighting from the narrow side of the face with the shadows to the broad side.

I could have moved the key higher in this example of butterfly lighting

Most of you probably noticed these lighting styles before, but may not have known they have a name. Now you can assign the proper name to the lighting style.

RAW vs JPEG Revisited

raw histogram — For shots like this there's little reason these days to start with RAW

It’s good to revisit subjects in photography from time to time because this is one business that does not lend it’s well to dogma. When habits become entrenched, there’s sometimes a tendency to forget why we started doing something a certain way in the first place.

That’s my beef with photography instructors who think they have start off teaching black and white, because that’s how they learned photography. Most likely when they started, there weren’t a lot of options. Today black and white is a choice you can make at any time in the process of managing a photograph. There are even specialized filters that let you pick which type of black and white film you want to emulate in post.

So it’s good to remember why we do things, like shooting in RAW versus JPEG. Many old school photographers today are stuck on RAW because a few years ago JPEG compressions were not that good. They still insist RAW is better, even though the difference is sometimes hard to see.

A low JPEG compression ratio, like 2:1, is almost indistinguishable from the original RAW file. And camera firmware gets better all the time at doing post-processing image compression. The bulk of the image data that a JPEG conversion is throwing out, and really is data you don’t need, probably will never need.

Most of the work I deliver today started with a JPEG and, in spite of what I just said, I keep RAW copies of every image I’ve ever taken.

The reason is simple. The RAW file is exactly what the sensor reads, plus the header information. Every year image processing gets better and more sophisticated. I keep thinking the day will come that new ways of viewing image data will emerge that may utilize some or all of that discarded image data in ways we can’t even imagine right now.

Occasionally I start with the RAW image, but doing all of my post-processing in RAW, even for commercial work, would add time to my work flow without delivering a significant increase in quality.

Most of my shots are for journalism assignments, so ultra-fine color detail is not required. If you’re shooting fine commercial work, then starting with RAW might be necessary for many shots, but commercial clients are paying for that time.

Which ever way you decide to go, if you can, I’d still keep a RAW copy in the archives. Because those clever engineers are just liable to come up with something that will make you glad you did some day.

Studio Lighting Series – Light Ratios

Three point lighting — Today we focus on the distance difference between d1 and d2

Light ratios is one of those subjects that makes people’s eyes glaze over because it’s technical and there’s math involved. That’s why I started with the more fun Three Point Lighting instead. But to really understand studio lighting, we have get into light ratios.

In order to give a portrait depth and character, we control amount of light and the shadows. To keep a face from looking flat, we change the ratio between the amount of light coming from the main light, the key, and the secondary light, called the fill.

When applying light ratios to the subject of three point lighting, most often it will be applied to the ratio between the key light and fill, but not always as we’ll find out in later articles. Each f-stop difference equates to roughly half as much light reaching the subject. So the key and fill being perfectly matched would be a 1:1 lighting ratio.

Knock one stop off the fill either by cutting the flash power or moving it farther from the subject and that gives you a 2:1 ratio. Take 2 stops off the fill and you’ll have a 4:1 ratio.

As discussed above, you don’t usually want the key and fill perfectly balanced on a 1:1 ratio. The most common ratios used in portrait photography are a 3:1 and 4:1 ratio. So if someone told you to set up a three point lighting set with a full power 3:1 key/fill ratio at f/11 and -2 stops on the hair light, you’d know what to do. You’d set your key power to give you a metered f/11 at the subject and the fill -1.5 stops, which would be between f/5.6 and f/8, technically f/6.7 on the half-stop scale. The hair light would be two full stops less at f/5.6.

Because you need a 3:1 ratio at full power, you’d know that you’ll have to move the fill farther from the subject and use the light meter to gauge the distance. Since he’s been shooting portraits in the same location for years, Karl has marks on the floor where the fill goes for a 3:1 ratio and a string from the key to the subject for the proper distance for f/11. Once you get in the ballpark, most photographers are going to eyeball the subtle changes anyway.

The old full stop calculations are starting to give way to modern cameras that are graduated in ⅓ stop increments (1/3 EV), which yields a slightly different f-stop series, but since we’re fixing the camera at f/11, it doesn’t matter.

Let’s go back to our three light setup graphic. Notice the fill is much farther from the subject than the key? That spot corresponds to a 3:1 metered ratio with two identical floor flash units set to full power. Why would you want a full power 3:1 ratio instead of just knocking back the fill power? Maybe you want bracket the photos by raising the ratio to 5:1 and 7:1 and the easiest way to do that is just to cut the fill power instead of moving it and shooting a meter reading.

ratio series — We switched to dark clothing on a light background to make it easier to focus on the facial lighting.

You can see in the photo the differences are subtle but noticeable. We went with a white background and darker clothing so you can focus on the lighting changes to the face. As you can see, by the time we get to 7:1, it’s looking a little dark on fill side. Not a flattering look for women.

Travel Photography Tips

busy airport photo — Picture yourself trudging down this concourse loaded with camera gear - by Brian Robert Marshall

Tis the season when families consider making the trek through wild weather and brave crowded airports to spend the holidays with family and friends. Travel photography presents its own set of challenges and a shortened equipment list. Here are my tips to get great pictures while not losing the feel of being on vacation.

Pack Light

Hauling a full-size DSLR on vacation travel is a non-starter for many people, even some photographers. These days you don’t have to with cameras like the Nikon J1 and the Sony NEX-5 (compare).

With these new compact, mirrorless cameras sporting large sensors in a small frame camera, there’s little reason to drag your full size DSLR along on vacation or family get togethers, unless you’re really a glutton for neck strain.

Modern Zoom Lenses Mean Fewer To Pack

The zoom range of some modern lenses means fewer you need to carry. With lenses like Tamron’s new 18-270mm zoom lens you don’t need to bring the bag. That is a crazy long zoom range. Criticized for having a slightly louder focus motor than the Canon lenses, I’ll put up with a little noise if it means I don’t have to carry a lens bag through a gate change in Atlanta.

Speaking of Bags, Get a Good One

A well-constructed padded bag is a necessity for your camera gear. Look for names like Lowepro, Canon, Think Tank and Domke. Don’t forget about the new sling-style bags that look like bike messenger bags. Those are super easy on your neck and leave both hands free for carrying your other luggage.

Take a Spare Data Card

Nothing can spoil the holiday mood like a data card going bad. I’ve had two SanDisk cards fail on me, one in the middle of a once-in-a-lifetime event. Now I always have an emergency spare data card taped to my camera strap, besides the spare card. If it’s in a bag, it can get lost. If it’s in a pocket it can fall out. Taped to my camera strap is the only place I know it will be with me where ever I happen to be shooting.

Spare Batteries

I carry a pack of AA batteries with me all the time and always have a spare camera battery charged and ready. There’s an unwritten rule in nature that camera batteries must always run out at the most inconvenient moment. I pretty much use the same rule for my camera battery as I do for the gas tank in the car: Never below one quarter. Newer batteries don’t develop charge memory like the old NiCads, so there’s less incentive to push it. When my camera battery gets below half, I swap it out and put the other one on the charger.

Plan ahead and make a minimal investment in some decent gear and you’ll have much easier travel experience and enjoyable holiday.