Digital Camera World » long exposure

How to choose the best tripod: 10 things photographers should look for

jmeyer — Mon, 13 May 2013 23:01:17 +0000

If you thought all tripods were essentially the same, then think again! What looks like a small difference in design can have a big impact on usability.

So how do you choose the best tripod? If you want your tripod to be a trusty lifelong companion and not just an overpriced, overweight millstone, you need to read our top 10 tips for choosing the right one!

How to choose the best tripod: 1. Balls of fire

Tripod heads come in two types: ball heads and three-way heads. Ball heads have a single locking screw – when you loosen it you can move the camera in any direction.

Ball heads are (usually) cheaper, lighter and more compact. This makes them perfect for travel and most other types of photography, but they’re less effective for precise framing and small adjustments.

How to choose the best tripod: 2. Three way precision

Three-way heads have separate pan, tilt and swivel movements.

They take a little longer to set up, but they allow you to make small accurate adjustments, and to move the camera along one axis without disturbing the others.

They’re ideal for studio work or more demanding landscape photography.

But they’re bigger and heavier than ball heads, and the handles stick out so they’re less convenient to carry around.

PAGE 1: How to choose the best tripod 1-2
PAGE 2: How to choose the best tripod 3-4
PAGE 3: How to choose the best tripod 5-6
PAGE 4: How to choose the best tripod 7-8
PAGE 5: How to choose the best tripod 9-10

9 creative photo ideas to try in May 2013

jmeyer — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 23:01:19 +0000

As part of our ongoing series to help you get more creative with your digital camera, each month we publish some fun, seasonal, creative photo ideas to help inspire your imagination. Along with some amazing images, we’ve also provided some quick photography tips by both amateur and professional photographers who are experts in these fields.

This month our list covers fun projects like shooting long exposures, puddles, stormy seas and painterly plant portraits, among many other fun and creative photography projects.

On each page you’ll find a stunning image and an explanation from the photographer on how it was made.

If you attempt any of these photo ideas, don’t forget to share them on our Facebook wall!

01 Shoot creative spring light painting effects

Light painting photography doesn’t have to be restricted to the longer nights of winter. As spring arrives, why not make the most of the milder evenings with this clever twist on a familiar technique?

Simon Berger created his ‘Pouring Rain Noir’ shot after seeing a tutorial on steel wool light painting and experimenting with the technique. It was taken using nothing more than a tripod-mounted Canon EOS 5D Mark III, a willing model (Martin) and some burning steel wool.

“We used ordinary ‘0000’ steel wool for this shot,” says Simon. “To control the direction of the sparks, I rotated the  steel wool towards the camera and Martin, and the sparks bounced from the ceiling onto the umbrella.”

The technique is pretty simple. By placing steel wool in a metal whisk suspended at the end of a chain, igniting the steel wool with  a 9V battery and then spinning the chain, you can create impressive arcs of sparks using a long exposure. Of course there are risks, and it needs to be carried out well away from anything flammable.

“The umbrella we used was a really cheap one,” Simon says. “We had some bottles of water, but the shooting took place in a tunnel so there was no real danger of anything catching fire. I knew I wanted the sparks to look like rain, but I had no idea how to do it until I found this location. Then it just clicked.”

Get started today…
* Safety warning! Spinning molten steel wool at the end of a chain carries a high risk of injury. Don’t attempt it alone and make sure you wear goggles, gloves and suitable protective clothing. Protect the front element of your lens with a clear UV filter.
* Experiment with exposure times. Simon used an aperture of f/8 and shutter speed of 20 seconds at ISO200.
* Consider converting the original colour shot to black and white for added intrigue.

PAGE 1: Shoot creative spring light painting effects
PAGE 2: Shoot painterly plant portraits
PAGE 3: Shoot the beach during a spring storm
PAGE 4: Shoot zoo animals with environmental context
PAGE 5: Shoot reflections in puddles
PAGE 6: Shoot plane trails
PAGE 7: Shoot portraits with reflections
PAGE 8: Shoot water birds at your local pond
PAGE 9: Shoot images with motion blur

Fine art landscape photography: pro camera skills for stunning scenic pictures

jmeyer — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 01:00:48 +0000

In our latest Professional Photographer to the Rescue post our pro shows us how to slow down the image-making process and learn the subtleties of making beautiful fine art landscape photography.

Meet our professional photographer

Jonathan Chritchley started his own photo business just six years ago and is now one of the world’s most sought-after fine art photographers. Specialising in seascapes and shots of sailboats, his masterpieces are invariably shot in moody monochrome. In this short time, he has also founded his own photo holiday business. We joined him near his home just north of Biarritz, France, to learn some of the tricks of his trade.

Meet our apprentice

Maria Robinson works as a swimming instructor, but at heart is a traveller on constant lookout for her next adventure. She got her DSLR last year, and it has already seen more countries and photo locations than most see in a lifetime. Maria is keen to improve her camera skills, and learn new techniques to take on her travels. We took her to France to learn how to take super-slow-shutter-speed seascapes from top black-and-white photographer Jonathan Chritchley.

Technique assessment

Jonathan has lived in Les Landes on the French Atlantic coast for 14 years, so knew plenty of great spots… but with so many lakes and miles of sandy beaches, good sites for photography didn’t look too hard to find.

Our first stop was a lake that looked like it was used for pedalos during the day – and Jonathan explained that the first challenge was to avoid getting swan-shaped boats in your shots!

Now you see it…
Jonathan showed Maria one of the virtually-opaque ND filters he uses for his photographs. This slot-in Lee Filters Big Stopper cuts light reaching the sensor by a full ten stops.

Tripod required
With such long exposures a tripod is essential, but in addition to its stability it allows you to fine-tune the composition in successive shots until you are completely happy.

Composing
Composition is also critical when you’re taking a monochrome landscape shot, and Maria got advice from Jonathan on positioning her DSLR so the water and jetty would look their best when shot in black and white.

PAGE 1: Meet our professional photographer & apprentice
PAGE 2: During the shoot
PAGE 3: Final tips from our professional photographer
PAGE 4: Our professional photographer’s recommended gear

Water photography: blur movement like a pro for a classic effect

crutter — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 02:00:26 +0000

The latest post in our Shoot Like A Pro series on water photography explains how to blur movement in water using a long exposure for classic effects.

Light (or rather the lack of it) is the main reason that you see many pictures of water taken using long shutter speeds.

Many landscape photographers choose to shoot at dawn or dusk to make the most of the quality of the light, while lots of waterfalls are situated in shady, wooded landscapes.

All of this means that using a low ISO setting for the best quality and a small aperture for maximum depth of field means that using long shutter speeds is the only answer.

So, the blurring effect on the water is simply a by-product of the lighting conditions. This necessity for long shutter speeds has produced a whole photographic style though, with many photographers now using Neutral Density filters to achieve extremely long shutter speeds in bright light.

The amount of blur you will get depends on three main factors – how fast the water is moving, how much  of the frame the water takes up and the shutter speed that you choose.

The speed of the water is out of  your control, so you need to discover how your choice of viewpoint or lens and shutter speed will affect the appearance of the water in your image.

Controlling blur
The faster the movement of the water, the shorter the shutter speed you will need to produce a super-smooth surface. For a calm sea you’ll need to use a shutter speed of several seconds for a similar effect.

The smaller the water is in the frame, the less obvious the movement will be, so you’ll need longer shutter speeds to achieve the same amount of blur than if it takes up more space in the frame.

To completely blur the whole surface of the sea you’ll need to use shutter speeds of 20 seconds or more, which can be difficult to achieve in most lighting conditions. The answer is to use a strong 10-stop Neutral Density filter, such as the Lee Big Stopper.

PAGE 1: Controlling blur
PAGE 2: How to blur movement in camera

Low-light photography fixes: how to reduce noise but preserve image quality

jmeyer — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 12:08:30 +0000

Short days and long nights make winter a perfect time for experimenting with low-light photography, but the high ISOs required will often produce noisy, gritty pictures. By using a tripod you can reduce the ISO setting, which will help with some noise issues, but in areas of even tone and shadow the noise may still sneak in. When it comes to enhancing the image with Photoshop effects – altering levels, increasing saturation and adding sharpness – that noise will become even more prevalent.

There are two basic types of noise you need to tackle in your low-light photography. The first is Chrominance noise, which introduces itself with higher ISO shots and can be recognised by its coloured speckling in shadowed or even-toned areas.

The second is Luminance noise, which is trickier to remove and can be seen in the form of random variations of brightness between pixels. Reducing this can result in a loss of overall image detail, so in this tutorial we’re going to look at techniques to reduce both types of noise while preserving quality.

01 Initial enhancement
Open a raw format low-light photo of your own in Adobe Camera Raw. Before you start to reduce the image noise, make some initial adjustments by setting Exposure to +1.25, Recovery to 25, Fill Light to 10, Blacks to 0, Brightness to 50 and Contrast to 0. You’ll see the amount of noise within the image increase.

02 Preparing for noise reduction
With the basic raw enhancements complete, you now need to look at noise. To do this, click on the Details tab. Make sure that all the sharpening and noise sliders are set to 0 and that the Preview window is at 100%. Initially you should see a fair amount of colour noise appearing in the shadow and sky areas.

03 Tackling chrominance noise
The first area of noise to tackle is the chrominance variety. You can see this in the shadows along the tree line – it looks like speckled colour. Increase the Colour slider to 16 and you’ll see the colour noise disappear. Use the Hand tool (H) to move around the image and check that the noise has been reduced in both the sky and shadow areas.

04 Reduce luminance noise
The second noise type comes from random variation of brightness between pixels and is trickier to remove. If you move the setting to high, you’ll have an image that looks painted rather than photographed. Increase the Luminance slider to 20 to start reducing noise; further reduction will need to be done later using Photoshop’s noise filters.

05 The Reduce Noise filter
Now click OK to edit the image in Photoshop. Go to Filter>Noise>ReduceNoise. Set all values to 0 and make sure Preview is set to 100%. Before adjusting the strength, try the Colour Noise slider. This should have no effect as we tackled this at the RAW stage. If it does, just increase it slightly to remove any last remnants of colour noise.

06 Reducing luminance noise further
Even with the colour noise removed, you’ll see that noise is still present. This is luminance noise and is trickier to remove. Increase the Strength slider to a maximum of 10; you’ll see the noise reduce, but details within the image will be smoothed. Reduce the slider to 7, which will reduce the noise but still preserve the main detail.

07 Preserve image detail
Although we have reduced the strength of the noise reduction, there is still a major problem: the detail within the image has been smoothed and finer detail has been lost. Regain this detail by increasing the Preserve Detail slider setting to 25%. Once you have a good balance between noise and detail, click OK.

08 Sharpen up
As with any enhancement, sharpening should come after you have made your noise reduction. Go to Enhance>AdjustSharpness. With an image that has contained a lot of noise, the amount of sharpening that can be applied will be considerably less than a low-noise image, so apply sharpening in moderation to avoid reintroducing noise.

Expert tip: Photoshop Noise filter
Noise reduction in Photoshop gives you much more control than Elements because of its ability to tackle noise in the separate colour channels.

Once in the Noise dialog box you can use the sliders in the Basic window to affect the image in much the same way as in Elements, but with the added feature of being able to sharpen detail as you apply the filter.

However, many images are affected by noise of different degrees in different colour channels. In other words, much of the noise can often appear in just one of the red, green or blue colour channels.

Click on the Advanced tab and you can adjust the influence of the filter per channel, rather than over the whole image.

By using this technique you can dramatically improve the actual noise reduction, as it’s closer tuned to the affected areas, resulting in better detail and less smoothing in the final picture.

Black and white landscape photography: how to make moody minimalist effects

jmeyer — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 11:45:44 +0000

Square cropped, black-and-white, long-exposure pictures of the sea are all the rage these days. To master this black and white landscape photography effect, you’ll need to learn a few core techniques, but they’re pretty easy to get to grips with.

Naturally, you’ll need some water with moving waves to get the mist-like effect during a long exposure. You’ll need a graphic focal point too – a semi-submerged rock, pier or distant static ship will work a treat.

Long exposures are vital for blurring moving water, but not everyone wants to hang around until dusk when there’s little light, so in this walkthrough we’ll show you how to use a Neutral Density (ND) filter to reduce the amount of light passing through the lens.

This means that even on a bright sunny day you’ll still be able to shoot long exposures of several seconds or more. For the best results, you’ll also need to use a sturdy tripod and take steps to reduce camera shake during the exposure.

We’ll show you how to convert your shot in the digital darkroom, removing the colour using a non-destructive and re-editable Black and White Adjustment Layer, and use the Crop tool to make the image square. Both of these treatments help enhance the tranquil Zen-like quality. Read on to see how it’s done…

How to make a minimalist black and white landscape

01 Keep it steady
To slow down your exposure and capture the motion of the waves, use a Neutral Density (ND) filter to block out some of the bright light. Avoid camera movement by using a tripod, cable release and your SLR’s Mirror Lock-up feature. Focus and compose your scene before attaching the ND filter.

02 Pre-visualise your shot
To get a better idea of how the final image will look while shooting, try setting your camera to display the preview image in monochrome – by setting the Picture Style to Black and White. If you shoot in raw the colour data will still be available once you’ve downloaded your image.

03 Convert to mono
There are several ways to convert your images to black and white using Photoshop CS or Elements. Here, we’ve used a Black and White Adjustment Layer. This gives you control over how your conversion looks, and allows you to re-edit the effect later. To finish, use the Crop tool to make a square crop.

Low-light photography: tips for winter seascape pictures

jmeyer — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 03:00:45 +0000

With the nights drawing in, photographers can make the most of the low light conditions by getting out with your camera to capture glowing sunsets, inky blue moonlit skies and atmospheric stormy scenes. Below we’ve offered our best low-light photography tips for capturing beautiful winter seascapes.

1. Winter can be great for night photography: often the atmosphere is crisp and clear, resulting in clean night skies. Using moonlight helps fill what can otherwise be a deep, dark sky – but expose too long and your shot may look like daylight. At night you need as much light on your EOS sensor as possible; combine slow shutter speeds with wide apertures and high ISO settings.

2. The essential skill for sunset photography is to ‘read’ the sky – thin clouds above a clear horizon will usually produce great colour. The best time is around 30 minutes after sunset, so make sure you’re in position.

The Auto White Balance setting on your DSLR should give good results, but you can warm up the colours by setting the White Balance to Cloudy or setting it manually to around 6500k to 7000k.

If shooting in raw format you can adjust the colour temperature in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) or using other Raw processing software. You can also intensify the colours using the Vibrancy and Saturation sliders found in ACR.

3. Knowing where the sun will appear in your scene can be very useful when planning a shoot. Tools such as Flight Logistics’ Photographer’s Sun Compass (£21, www.flight-logistics.com) show where the sun will set in a given location at any time of the year.

4. ND grad filters balance bright skies and darker landscapes in one shot. They come in degrees of density and transition – a soft edge for use with irregular horizons and a hard edge for straight lines. You can stack filters to get a stronger effect.

5. Capturing a sense of movement from water can really help to bring your landscape photos to life. Look for rivers, streams and waterfalls, and shoot after the sun has set, to benefit from the low light levels.

This will enable you to use a long exposure time to record movement in seas, rivers and waterfalls too – without fear of exposing your shots. Experiment to find the best exposure time to suit the speed of the water. Try 1/8 sec for fast flowing water and up to 30 seconds for slow moving water. If you require even longer exposures to get a particular effect you can use a straight ND filter.

6. It’s sometimes the case that there is only one ideal composition for a particular scene. However, it’s always worth experimenting to see what else could work. Try to incorporate interesting foreground elements, switch between horizontal and vertical formats – or even try creating a panorama by stitching several frames together.

You’ll often find that the panoramic format will work in situations where other formats fail due to lack of foreground interest or a boring sky. Careful setup is essential, and remember to overlap each image by at least 25% to enable the stitching software (such as Photomerge in Photoshop) to blend the sequence of images seamlessly.

A different type of light painting tutorial: use handheld flash during long exposures

jmeyer — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 11:00:43 +0000

One of the easiest ways to boost your lighting repertoire is to take the flashgun off your DSLR and walk around the subject with it in your hand, lighting the scene in different ways. In our latest light painting tutorial, we’ll show how by doing so, you’ll be able to illuminate your subject from different angles and at multiple locations during long exposures.

It’s a great skill to master, and one that’s a little like light painting – but instead of using a high-powered torch you’re just using a regular flashgun. Twilight is a great time to try this different type of light painting tutorial, so we headed to the standing stones at Avebury, Wiltshire. This ancient monument was an ideal subject to experiment with, although most photo locations with good foreground interest will do.

The technique in our light painting tutorial is about using the flashgun to light the stones during a long exposure by flashing it manually from different angles. This makes the rocks stand out against the deep blue sky…

A different type of light painting tutorial: step-by-step

01 Keep your camera still
To ensure there’s no camera movement during the long exposure (30 seconds), use a tripod. Lock the mirror in the up position to avoid vibration when the shutter is released, and a use a cable release or self-timer.

02 Take control in manual
Switch to manual and establish a good exposure for the sky using the histogram. Also, set your flashgun to manual and select half or quarter power. This will give a faster recycle time, enabling you to fire more shots.

03 Move while you flash
Release the shutter and fire the flash at your subject from a distance of about 3ft. Keep moving so that you don’t get recorded. Don’t point the flash directly at the camera or accidentally capture yourself.

And the final result!
By following the simple steps in this light painting tutorial using a handheld flash instead of a torch, you can easily achieve the same effects. And the great thing is you can try this anywhere!

Bulb Mode: hot to get pro-quality shots in low light

jmeyer — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 15:30:54 +0000

The longest automatic shutter speed setting on digital cameras is 30 seconds, which is fine for most subjects. However, there are some situations when you need to make much longer exposures – after dark, for example. This is where your camera’s Bulb mode – (B) exposure setting – comes in. This handy setting allows you to hold the shutter open for as long as required, enabling exposures of minutes (or hours) to be made.

It’s best to use Bulb mode when shooting star trails, night scenes illuminated by the moon, vehicle light trails, firework displays, lightning and when using long exposures created by a strong Neutral Density filter.

It’s very effective for recording a succession of fireworks over a period of time on a single image. You can shield the front of the lens with your hand or a piece of card between fireworks to stop light reaching the sensor.

Bulb mode is accessed on most cameras either by a designated exposure mode setting often displayed as ‘B’ on the top dial or via Manual exposure mode – by scrolling one click below 30 seconds until BULB appears in the display.

In Bulb mode, the shutter will remain open for as long as the shutter-release button is depressed, allowing you to make exposures of any length of time. It’s possible to do this with your finger, but it’s not very practical. Instead, you can use a remote shutter release to open and close the shutter.

How to set up and use Bulb mode

01 Avoid camera shake
Use a tripod or solid support to ensure there is no camera movement during a long exposure. Make sure the tripod is secure and won’t be subject to any vibrations from the wind, keeping it low if necessary. Turn off any anti-shake features on the lens and camera.

02 Use a remote release
A remote shutter release with a lock facility allows you to keep the shutter open for as long as necessary. The shutter is then closed by releasing the lock, which ends the exposure. Some remotes have an integrated timer to set the exposure length.

03 Expose manually
Bulb is a manual mode, so you need to determine aperture and exposure settings before you shoot. Set an aperture of f/8 and experiment with exposure times. If your shot is too dark, extend the time; if it’s too light, shorten it. Use a low ISO to eliminate noise.

Night photography settings your camera wants you to use

jmeyer — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 16:14:58 +0000

Nothing spoils your night photos like soft subjects and odd colour casts. Below and on the following pages we’ll introduce some of the key night photography settings you should use in order to get pictures with real impact. We’ll not only show you how to set up your camera for night photography, but offer night photography tips for controlling your colours, planning yours shoots and more.

Stepping out into the night and shooting the darkening sky can be one of the most exhilarating ways of expanding your photographic repertoire.

You can reveal a whole new world by shooting night photography, and end up with some much more satisfying images than the usual rather predictable stuff taken at sunrise or sunset.

The really good news is that it’s not all about high-end camera kit. Modern DSLRs are highly capable, even at the beginner end of the market. Nor does your set-up have to include an array of exotic prime lenses, since any lens and digital camera can have you reaching for the starry heavens far more easily than before.

Night photography isn’t all about shooting into a black viewfinder and guessing at compositions. For a simpler start, use the full moon to illuminate the landscape.

Use moonlight to illuminate your scene

Moonlight is a neutral, white light that almost looks like a massive flashgun has lit up the land. Start by picking a favourite and well-known location that’s within easy reach of the car.

Put the camera on a tripod, choose the manual mode to give you more control over your night photography settings, and then select a wide aperture (f/4, for instance).

You’ll also want to include a high ISO value (such as ISO 800) and a shutter speed of about 30secs among your night photography settings (find out how to reduce noise at high ISO settings). Fire off the shutter using a cable release and marvel at just how much unseen detail your camera has recorded.

Use a high ISO to accentuate a starry sky

If you’re looking for a truly cosmic photo, capture the dark night sky instead. The light levels will be a lot lower than moonlight, but you can compensate for this by using a higher ISO setting.

Choose ISO 3200. This will record thousands of stars, but don’t expect the camera to pick up any details in the landscape, such as a moonlit hilltop.

Night photography is all about letting go of image conventions. The light is so greatly reduced that the pictures will consist of photographic taboos, such as featureless shadows, but don’t let this inhibit you.

When you begin processing your night photos on a computer, don’t be afraid of using noise-reduction software. Most raw converters, such as Adobe Camera Raw, do an admirable job of bringing down noise levels. The Luminance slider provides the best control of noise reduction without decreasing detail.

Try applying the noise reduction in two stages: once in raw and then again using Photoshop CS’s Noise Reduction tool, which enables you to tackle the issue in separate colour channels using the advanced options. You’ll often find that one colour channel  in particular will contain most of the noise.

If your noise-reduction efforts in Photoshop prove to be unsuccessful, try taking a ‘dark frame’ during your next shoot and subtracting it from the subsequent pictures.

Open your dark-frame image and the night photo you want to process in Photoshop. Copy and paste the dark frame into a new layer on top of the image and select the Difference blending mode (learn more about blending modes and the 10 best blends for photographers).

Your first shoots may not be successful, but once you gain some knowledge of how and where to shoot, night photography becomes an extremely enriching experience. With good camera technique and careful processing skills, your images can be breathtaking.

PAGE 1: Options for night photography settings
PAGE 2: 3 key night photography settings every photographer should use
PAGE 3: Control your colours
PAGE 4: Final tips for your night photography shoot