Author: Chris Poindexter

The Sunny 16 Rule

Outdoor photo
This photo was taken of a dark subject on a partly sunny day - If you guessed roughly -2 stops off Sunny 16, you are correct. F11, iso 400, 1/250th of sec

If you know about the Sunny 16 Rule, also called the Sunny f/16 rule then you’ve either been in photography a long time or are a student of the craft.

Sunny 16 is older than most of you reading this and reaches back to a time when the light meter was hanging around your neck instead of being inside the camera. It is one of those old standards slowly being consigned to history by the introduction of multi-point intelligent metering systems, though it will still be relevant to people serious about learning manual photography.

For those of you determined to learn manual shooting, and I salute and encourage that desire, Sunny 16 is how you get your settings in the ballpark for shooting outside. The rule says for outside in full daylight start with f/16 and set the shutter speed to the inverse of your ISO.

So outside in the sun, start with f/16 and if you’re using ISO 200, set your shutter speed to 1/200th of a second. If your ISO is 400, then use 1/400th of a second and so on.

It’s one of those guidelines that every old photographer knows and is fairly accurate for outdoor exposures. You can even use it as a starting point for partly cloudy and overcast days. For a partly cloudy day you might keep the ISO/shutter speed the same and open the aperture to f/11. For a cloudy day go with f/8 or, if you’re worried about depth of field, leave the aperture at f/11 or f/16 and cut the shutter speed in half. So for a partly cloudy day you might leave the aperture at f/16 and the ISO at 200, but use 1/100th of a second shutter speed instead of 1/200th for a sunny day.

Also keep in mind your shutter speed selection can also depend on your lens. If you have a 300mm lens, you don’t want to use a shutter speed less than 1/300th of a second to avoid motion artifacts. For a 500mm lens your lowest shutter speed would be 1/500th of a second. Make adjustments to the other variables accordingly.

Set your camera on “M” or manual mode and give it a try, I think you’ll find it’s kind of fun. You might even catch yourself leaving the camera set to “M” for progressively longer periods of time.

DSLR cameras today are marvels of sophistication and yet, for so many photos the “perfect” exposure is not always the most technically accurate one. So far no camera manufacturer has figured out how to duplicate your creative genius and I don’t think they ever will.

Nikon Flexes Video Muscle With New D4

d4 photo
The Nikon D4 boasts improved video specs and a high capacity battery

It looks like Nikon is finally fully on board with video with the introduction of the new powerhouse Nikon D4. For many video shooters it was a mystery why Nikon ceded the video market to Canon for so long, but they have been steadily improving their video offerings and finally brought it all together in the new D4.  The D4 replaces the Nikon D3s and Nikon D3, see our comparison of the Nikon D4 vs D3s.

Built around a 16-megapixel full frame sensor Nikon really pushed the low light performance with an extended ISO range out to a nearly unbelievable ISO 204,800. The D4 delivers 1080 video at 24 or 30p, and 720 HD at 60p, with 20-level audio meters. Though the D4 delivers uncompressed video via HDMI, the output is limited to 720p.  there is some question whether it’s full 1080p or limited to 720p.

Nikon also included a low pass video filter which should help prevent moire and aliasing, a constant problem for DSLR video shooters. How they did it without impacting the quality of still images remains a mystery, details that I’m sure will emerge when the D4 hits the streets.

Other than the video features the differences between the D4 and D3 are incremental rather than generational. The D4 can pop through 10 frames a second with AF and AE and 11 fps with focus and exposure locked.

Nikon managed to squeeze in a 91,000 pixel sensor for metering white balance, flash exposure, and face detection, which also functions through the viewfinder.

d4 sensor image
The 16-megapixel full frame sensor. Thankfully they didn't choose the Sony sensor for this model

The ergonomics of the Nikon D4 have also been improved for portrait orientation, a feature Canon included on the 1DX. Nikon added an additional rubberized lump and an additional function button next to the vertical shutter release.

With the new high cap battery Nikon is claiming you can get up to 2,600 images on a single charge, so no worries about your battery dying in the middle of a shoot.

The Nikon D4 includes a new carbon fiber shutter that’s rated for an eye-popping 400,000 snaps, so you can look forward to getting a lot of years out of your D4, which will help ease the sting of the $6,000 price tag. The D4 is already sold out on Amazon, but I am sure more will be available soon.

Check out some of these Comparisons:

Five Things I Wish I’d Known About Photography

pro photographer
Don't expect to luck into jobs like this - by Starscream

A lot of people dream about being professional golfers. Imagine getting paid millions and traveling around the country doing nothing but play golf! Here’s all you have to do to make that dream come true. Start when you’re 5, so go tell your daddy or mommy that you want to be a pro golfer. Then spend the next 10 years with a parent driving you relentlessly and whenever you’re not doing anything else, be outside hitting balls. Then spend the next 8 years with a series of coaches honing every facet of your golf game, driving you relentlessly and then you stand less than a 50-50 chance of making the cut in the junior tournaments.

Professional golf isn’t something people pick up on a weekend, it’s a lifestyle they started when they were young and it’s a job they work every day towards. Photography is not that different.

To be a professional, photography has to be more than a hobby, more than something you do on the weekend. It’s a competitive business that is a demanding, fast-moving professional field that is getting more and more competition from people walking around with smartphones and low-end digital cameras.

Here are five things I wish someone had told me about the business years ago.

You Have To Know How To Run a Business

Take classes in how to run a small business. You have to understand taxes, billing, cash flow, insurance and contracts. You can’t be a successful photographer without knowing how to be a successful business person.

It Will Take a Long Time To Make Any Money

Wedding photographers can sometimes build up a steady income in a couple years but don’t count on it. Mainly figure on starving the first few years until you have a deep portfolio and build up a client base.

I’ve known a few people who managed to claw their way to a living shooting commercial stock photography, but it took them a few years to build up that kind success. The advantage to specializing in stock photography is that once you build up your income, it’s recurring revenue.

Once you have a base of income, you can use that to branch out and experiment.

There Is New Competition Every Year

Just when you claw and starve your way to some kind of a living, you’ll find one day that clients start telling you about someone offering the services you’ve been providing for less than half of what you’re charging. While that happens in almost any business, in photography it tends to be particularly devastating.

You have to spend a lot of time monitoring your market, checking on your competition and staying one step ahead.

You Trade Regular Hours For Working All The Time

Being a photographer means trading the security of a regular paycheck for being an independent businessperson. In other words, you trade regular hours for working all the time. And some assignments take the concept of working hours to new and bizarre extremes.

I don’t know any professional photographer who doesn’t work all the time, nights and weekends included.

You Will Need a Emergency Fund

At some point it’s going to happen: You will get sick, hurt, sued or, in the case of PJ, arrested. When that happens you’ll need an emergency fund to get through it. Even if you prevail in court, you can still end up being out of business.

If you’re injured and can’t work, you have to have enough cash in the bank to keep the doors open and pay the bills.

Photography as a business is a job and you have to approach it that way. If it’s not a job you eat, sleep and breath, you’re going to have  a hard time makeing it.

Organize Your Photos In 2012

get organized
Get your images organized with a backup drive and a copy of Lightroom

It’s the beginning of a new year and while you’re promising to lose weight or stop smoking, add another item to your agenda: Organize your photos and update your backups!

While flooding in Thailand has driven up the price of hard drives, they’re still incredibly cheap by historical standards. So don’t use drive prices as an excuse not to keep your backups up to date.

You can still get storage like this Buffalo 1 TB USB storage device for less than $150. For that price you can get two of them and keep one off site somewhere. You don’t even have to plug these into the wall, they draw their power from the USB port. It doesn’t get much easier or less technical than that.

A terabyte is a huge amount of storage. The Fantom Drives G-Force MegaDisk has multiple interface options that include USB and firewire for $129.00.

Online storage is also a possibility but I wouldn’t trust the cloud as my only solution. I use Photobucket albums for my proof size customer images, but never for production images.

While online storage is a better deal than it used to be, there are still too many potential pitfalls in end user agreements. TwitPics users are sometimes surprised to discover that their images can be sold to media companies and used in ways they may have never imagined.

The legal question of image ownership if one of the big photo sharing sites ends up in bankruptcy court also has yet to be determined. If you’re a professional, that’s worth thinking about.

The online storage I am more comfortable using are the ones that allow you to store your own encrypted containers. That way if the ownership of my files comes into question during bankruptcy or government seizure, it’s no problem as long as I have local backups.

For organizing the local copies of your images it’s hard to beat Lightroom. If you’re lucky enough to be a savvy tech user you can get a huge amount of functionality in Digikam. Unlike commercial software, which seems to feel compelled to change direction periodically, Digikam just gets better and better over time.

The only guaranteed way of insuring your photos will still be around 100 years from now is to print them out on either metal plates or paper embedded with metallic inks. But with good backup discipline and regular maintenance, you can at least expect your digital image library to last through your lifetime.

Take Better Pictures Today

holiday photo
Take better holiday photos this year straight out of the box - By Nina from Australia

Many of you will be receiving or have asked for digital cameras for Christmas. Or maybe you got your new camera before the holidays so you could take pictures on the way.

This year I want to help you get better pictures right out of the box. No more blundering around with shots containing massive foreground and family photos that look more like suspect line up from an episode of CSI. This year things are going to be different. Follow these tips for getting great shots from day one with your new camera.

Read The Manual

I realize some of you think manuals are totally retro. This little paper book written by people determined to make you as miserable as they apparently are in their little, unhappy cubicles by making the manual as dry, boring and devoid of joy as humanly possible.

Really, when you break it down, you can read through most camera manuals in about an hour. You don’t have to memorize it, just know where to find things if you want to look something up.

Most digital cameras today have an amazing array of built-in functionality that never gets utilized because owners don’t realize it’s in there.

Get In Close

The biggest rookie mistake with a new camera is inevitably focusing on the subject in the center of the picture and leaving way too much foreground and background.

Get in close and, when you think you’re plenty close enough, take another step in. Get in so close all of your subject can’t fit in the frame.

Warm It Up

Most digital cameras have an automatic white balance setting called “cloudy”. That’s for use on overcast days when lighting is heavy on the blue side. But, as it turns out, even on sunny days your pictures can look a little on the blue side, so don’t be afraid to try the “cloudy” setting, even in bright sun. You may the like warmer colors you get as a result.

Gorilla Pod or UltraPod

On thing you’ll regret later in life as the photographer is not having more pictures of you doing things. Being the family scribe is a great thing, but use one of these clever supports and the self-timer to get in the shots yourself.

Get High On Resolution

Crank your cameras picture resolution up as high as it will go. You’ll thank me later. Photos may seem huge by today’s standards but, in a few years, they may seem laughably tiny. Shoot the biggest photos your camera will take.

There are more tips to come, but these should get you over the most common mistakes people make. Just remember to read that manual!