Entries from May 2007 ↓

The actual answer depends on what mood you are trying to set in the picture you are taking.

When a photographer uses the term ‘hard’ to describe the light they are usually referring to light from a single small source. Bright sunlight at midday is hard for example, as is light from a single spot light or flash.Hard light generally makes for very dark or black shadows, a high contrast, and intense colours in any scene.

Soft light on the other hand is light which is more diffused. There is less contrast, and the reduction in areas of intense dark shadow allows more detail to appear.

Putting some tissue or tracing paper between a hard light source and the subject will result in diffusing/softening of the light. Equally good is bouncing light from surfaces, such as reflectors or walls. This is fine indoors with spot lights or flash; but outdoors it’s a little trickier. Depending on the subject, sometimes the only option available is to wait for some cloud.

Getting yourself familiar with the differences between hard and soft light and the way it effects the mood of the subject is a good idea, since it can have a radical effect on the final image.

I’ve just started a new group on flickr called 37fotos. Here the idea; Sometime in the late eighties Paul Horowitz, one of the pioneers of SETI, declared that they had received 37 signals indicating signs of possible intelligence. 37fotos is our answer back, put in picture form, rather than a spike in the static of deep space.

So, this is the theme; what sums us, and the planet we all share, up?

Do we simply just show our beauty and that of the world? Our laughter, our diversity of culture, our simple kindness to one another, the beauty of the natural world?
Do we also show the ugly side? Our wars, famines, and poverty?

How do we paint an image of ourselves to someone who has never met us?

How do you choose your 37 fotos ?

P5180019.JPG
Originally uploaded by mildendo

Gear

A Camera.
Pretty much an essential item. Many digital compacts have a macro feature. Similarly many SLR standard zoom lenses also have a macro facility. So, using this is fine. In fact, I recommend giving it a go without buying any extra equipment if you can.

However, if you feel that you can’t get quite close enough with your current set-up, there are a number of options open to you.

Reversing rings; which allow you to mount a lens the wrong way around, so it will focus that much closer.

Extension tubes; tubes which extend the distance between the lens and the film or camera sensor. This is actually a pretty good option, and if you’re interested in doing it on the cheap, then check out this link on photocritic.org.

Supplementary close-up lens; a lens which fits on the front of your existing lens in much the same way as a filter would. One thing to remember with these is that the image quality will suffer a bit, since you’ve now got an extra bit of glass between the film/camera sensor and generally the optical quality of these lenses is not particularly high.

If you’re really serious about your macro photography, it might be worth considering the various specific macro lenses that are available, unfortunately these can be rather pricey.

A light source of some kind.
It’s always handy to carry a small pen torch if you’re out about and on the hunt for some good macro pictures. The ones where you can focus the beam of light by twisting the torch head are good. If you’re indoors you could probably organise a desk-lamp. You might find that sunlight is illuminating your chosen subject just fine, and if that’s the case go with it.

A Tripod.
A tripod is always handy. Though unless it’s very heavy, you’ll probably have to use some kind of timing feature on the camera, a shutter release cable, or remote shooting if available.
If you don’t have one, make sure you’re throwing plenty of light on the subject, so you can use reasonably fast shutter speeds and avoid camera shake.
Another tip is to hold the camera in such a way that it’s stable in your hands, hold elbows into chest or lean against the ground or a good solid object. It’s best if you can place the camera on something solid. It’s a good habit to get into with most photography anyway, but especially so with macro shots since you’re magnifying a subject, any shake is similarly amplified resulting in a blurred image.

Some card to use as reflector.
A small A5 piece of card is good. It’s worth considering some tinfoil also. (Tinfoil can throw quite harsh light, which can give some interesting effects)

Coloured tissue and some elastic bands.
These are useful to stick over the head of the torch, since they can be used to diffuse the light coming from it. Different colours can be good depending on the subject.

Choose your subject

The joy of macro photography is that you begin to consider the small rarely noticed aspects of objects in the environment around you. Once you take a few macro shots and get some decent results, it’s a area of photography that you always return to.

So, what sort of subjects can you shoot?

Flowers and plants; nothing wrong with a few pictures of flowers. Plenty of colour, and interesting shapes.

Insects; the simultaneously amusing and annoying thing about many species of insect is that they don’t tend to stay still for very long. They do, however, make for very interesting subjects.

Anything (obvious limitations and interestingness considered); the world just looks different when you see it up close.

I recently bought a new compact camera, a Canon Powershot A710 IS, and I must say; I’m really impressed with the results. There’s an in-depth review of the model available on The Digital Camera Resource Page where it gets a solid recommendation.

I like the versatility of compacts; prior to this one, I owned an Olympus C765. I like the range of pictures that can be taken, everything from wide angle to zoom and right down to decent macro shots. In fact, the close up image shown in a previous post was taken using the new camera.

The Canon represents a bit of a shift up; with it’s 7.1 megapixels compared to the older compact with only 4. I guess this is becoming the norm, as the technology advances. It’s not really a fair comparison since the Olympus was released a few years ago, it still wins hands down with the zoom (a x10 compared to a x6 on the Canon), but I can live with that.

One of the main advantages for me in particular, over the old camera, is the size. The new camera can fit neatly in my pocket, something which really wasn’t that easy with the Olympus since the lens enclosure projected out quiet a bit.

I’m going to play with it some more, but In the mean time; Here’s another example image from a recent flickr upload. It’s another macro shot, the Canon just seems so good at them.

Searching around the web for interesting photography related sites, I’ve discovered the excellent strobist blog. It’s a great resource for lighting techniques, in particular using inexpensive shoe mounted flash units for lighting.

The guy there is running a Lighting Boot Camp shortly (June 4th); It looks like a pretty cool thing to do, so if you’re keen to find out more check out this link : Lighting 102

Looks like it could be fun.

Just lately I’ve become a little obsessed with the macro feature of my new compact digital.

We know from experience that the colour of light is not always the same; Daylight varies depending on the time of the day or the year. Artificial sources also vary in the light they produce.

It is this variation in hue (or pure colour) which is referred to as the colour temperature of the light. A low colour temperature makes for a warmer red or yellow light while a high colour temperature implies a colder blue light.

The colour temperature of light is expressed using the Kelvin scale; where zero is the coldest you can get or absolute zero. (Actually about -273 degrees Celsius.) The table below outlines the colour temperature under various lighting conditions; from extreme bright to candlelight.

If a true representation of colour is required filters can be used to dampen the effects of colour cast. For very warm temperatures orange filters can be used moving to blue filters for colder temperatures. In around the middle ranges (approximately 5500-5000 K) filtering is not required to achieve accurate colour.

In a film camera different types of film can also be used depending on whether the shooting conditions are to be under tungsten filament lighting or in natural light.
These techniques all have the effect of shifting the colour temperature of the light entering the camera.

When using a digital camera, we can achieve the same result by using the white balance function to achieve this shift of colour temperature.

What is White Balance ?

We now know that the light our eyes perceive to be ‘white’ is rarely actually white. It has a colour cast associated with it based on it’s temperature.
Usually modern digital cameras have pre-set settings for bright daylight, cloud, tungsten and fluorescent lighting. These settings act to shift the colour cast based on the expected temperature of the surrounding light.

Compare the two images below; Both were taken under tungsten filament light. The first one was taken using a normal daylight white balance (WB) setting on the camera. We can clearly see the yellow/red light in the image, which completely muddies the blue ball. In the second image, the WB was set to tungsten; here, the blue colour of the ball is accurately reproduced.

1. Daylight White Balance: Image appears with a red/yellow cast.	2. Tungsten White Balance: Accurate colour reproduction in the resulting image. Notice in particular the accurate blue of the ball.

Many cameras also have the ability to custom set the white balance, this is normally done by pointing the camera at a white object and giving the camera the information that we expect this to be white. The camera then performs a calculation based on the sensor cast colour it receives for the white object, and shifts the white balance accordingly. Cards with exact white and grey scales printed on them are available, and can be used for this purpose.

So, why should a photographer know this stuff?

Have you ever taken a photograph taken indoors under artificial light, and seen it produce a red/orange cast? Well, at least now, we know the reason why this happens.

If you require the accurate reproduction of a subjects colour, it is important to be aware of how light is behaving, and also the steps that can be taken to eliminate any undesired effects. It is also useful to know, since many image applications, such as Photoshop and iPhoto, use the terminology.

There is, however, one thing to bare in mind though; these varying colour casts may actually greatly improve the quality of your final image.

The low Kelvin temperatures can lend amazing warmth and atmosphere to shots. (I know, low temperature warmth sounds a little odd, but that’s the scale!). The warm red light of a sunset, particularly in Autumn or Winter, or the yellow/orange cast of tungsten or candlelight can greatly enhance many images. Similarly, the cool blues of high temperature colour can also be used to dramatic effect.

There is always a second oppourtunity to perfect the image you have taken with the camera. In the days of film, the development process was when the image was finally revealed. Pushing during development, dodging, burning and cropping amongst other tricks were all available to the photographer at that stage. In fact most of these terms have been transposed to the digital era.

I guess the reason I write this is because I find myself in a desperate bid to get together a set of images.

I’m sorting and cropping, dodging, changing colours and levels, sharpening and blurring, making mediocre shots look just that bit more appealing, maybe even something that bit special. This manipulation of the original image goes far beyond anything which could be done with negatives and an enlarger.

This provokes a thought; What does it make my images? They’re not what I had in mind when I took the picture, they have only been realised now, after the event of shutter release.

It seems faintly acceptable to me to alter and apply retrospective thought to the original to make it something other then what it was. At least, sometimes I believe this to be true, but I know that for the people I admire most in photography this idea would not be entertained.

In the words of Henri Cartier-Bresson;

The creative act lasts but a brief moment, a lightning instant of give-and-take, just long enough for you to level the camera and to trap the fleeting prey in your little box.

He found beauty in “things as they are”. I doubt somehow if he would be pleased.

Mildendomedia is somewhere to show some of my photography, and to ramble on about it a little bit….