The Key to Sharp Images

All of the following points will help you get the super sharp images that you often see in glossy magazines. Some of the terminology used might not be clear at the moment, but as sharp images are something that we all want to achieve as soon as possible, we decided to put this near the top of the list of articles. If possible, use the sharpest aperture for your lens. This is usually about 2 stops down from the maximum aperture. So if you have an f/2.8 lens, optimum sharpness will be around f/5.6. The lens itself can have an effect on image sharpness. Most kit lenses that come with DSLRs are not going to be particularly sharp (especially at maximum and minimum apertures). Investing in better quality lenses (read that as expensive) can make a significant difference. Use the lowest ISO possible. High ISO means more noise, which generally means the camera uses a greater level of noise reduction. This can impinge on the sharpness of the image. Use a tripod - preferably a sturdy one. Professional photographers will often use a tripod even in daylight and with a fast shutter speed as it really can improve overall image sharpness. Pressing the shutter button can cause the camera to move (even when it's on a tripod) so use a remote form of release. Use a cable shutter release or wireless shutter release if your camera supports this. If you are using a tripod but don't have a remote release, use the timer (set to two or five seconds if this is an option). Press the button then lift your hand clear of the camera. Another source of vibration is the mirror moving up to reveal the shutter and sensor. Many cameras feature a mirror lockup capability which moves the mirror on the first press of the button and takes the picture on a second press. Many lenses now come with Image Stabilisation (Canon IS lenses and Nikon VR lenses for example). This is great if you want to hand-hold the camera, but if there is little chance of there being any camera shake (ie. on a tripod), then turn the image stabilisation OFF. Post processing can be used to increase the apparent sharpness of an image after it has been transferred to the PC. Most image software features something called the 'unsharp mask' which despite the name, actually makes the image appear sharper. With a DSLR, use live-view if available. Not many people know this, but even though when you look through the optical viewfinder you are looking through the lens, you do not see exactly what the sensor will eventually see when the shutter opens. Specifically it shows an image with a greater depth of field. So if you are using manual focus (common for macro photography), it is best to use live view, and use the zoom feature to check accuracy of the focusing.

Camera Modes (part 1)

Most cameras have a range of different modes that are usually selected by a dial on the top of the camera. The one shown on the right is from the Canon EOS 350D / Digital Rebel XT. A different make of SLR may use different symbols and letters but the basic modes will be the same. The mode selected governs the way the camera calculates the exposure and the settings the photographer has control over. The modes usually fall into one of four categories: Fully automatic modes - the camera operates like a point-and-shoot. On the dial above, these are shown by the green rectangle and the 'P' (programmed AE) mode. Scene modes - fully automatic modes where the camera sets the various parameters to optimise it for a specific type of photograph (e.g. portrait, landscape, sports, etc.). These are usually represented by pictorial icons on the mode dial. Semi automatic modes - the photographer usually has control over one parameter and the camera controls the others to create a correctly exposed photograph. The most common are Aperture Priority (usually indicated by 'A' or 'Av' on the mode dial) and Shutter Priority (indicated by 'S' or 'Tv' on the dial). Fully manual mode - you have full control over all the exposure parameters. The camera's built in light meter will still take a reading and advise you whether it thinks the settings you have selected are either correct, over or under exposed but it doesn't change them. Indicated by 'M' on the mode dial. The semi-auto and manual modes will be covered in detail later and, as you progress and learn more, you will probably want to use these by default, but the fully automatic and scene modes do have their place. After all, Canon still include them on their semi-professional EOS 40D (a camera costing nearly 1000 with a decent lens). So when are the auto modes useful? At the start of the learning curve, there are many things to try to remember while taking pictures. We believe that it is better to concentrate on picture composition than to worry about which mode you use to take it. Therefore don't be embarrassed to use the auto mode while trying to learn all the different rules and guidelines of composition. If you return the camera to the fully auto mode, you will be ready to take a picture immediately should a fleeting opportunity arise.

Scene Modes
The most common scene modes are shown below. How these are implemented varies from one camera to the next so consult your user guide for more detailed information. Portrait mode - sets up the camera to create a shallow depth-offield. Use this mode if you want the subject to stand out against an out-of-focus background. The blurred background also has the effect of increasing the perceived sharpness of the subject. Modern cameras may automatically activate features such as face recognition. Landscape mode - sets up the camera to create a large depth-offield, meaning the objects in the foreground as well as the distant scenery are all in sharp focus. Some models of camera may also change other parameters such as increasing the colour saturation. Sports / Action mode - sets the camera to the fastest shutter speed possible so as to freeze the action. If the camera supports tracking (predictive) focusing, the camera will turn that on as well. Night time - sets the camera to underexpose the shot so as to retain the dark night time look in the final picture. If the camera does not have a 'night portrait' mode it may also enable the flash so as to light any foreground subject. Night Portrait will set the camera to use a slow sync flash enabling the people to be lit by flash while still retaining some of the background details by holding the shutter open after the flash has fired. Slow sync flash can often be enabled manually in many of the other camera modes. Snow overexposes the photograph slightly so that the snow comes out white rather than a mid-grey. Macro mode - this is sometimes found on a separate button rather than on the main mode dial. It optimises the camera for close-up focusing. Note that on a DSLR camera, you will not have a macro capability unless you attach a macro lens (or zoom lens with a macro feature). Black and White / Sepia modes - this is sometimes hidden within the menu system. After the picture is taken all the colour information is discarded prior to storing on the memory card, thereby creating a black and white (monochrome) image. No matter how much you like black and white photographs, we would advise you never to use the black and white mode on the camera unless your camera can shoot RAW and JPEG at the same time. There are many different ways to create black and white images out of colour ones so it is best left to powerful software on the PC. And, of course, if you take a colour image, you have the choice between colour and black and white later. Movie mode - is used for recording movies and is not covered in this book. Just as mobiles don't make good cameras, cameras generally don't make good video cameras. Shallow depth of field created using portrait mode.

Exposure (part 1)
The term 'exposure' refers to the total amount of light allowed to fall on the image sensor of the camera. There are three controls on a camera that enable the photographer to control the exposure: the shutter the lens aperture the sensor sensitivity - ISO. Every modern camera has a light meter that measures how much light is entering the lens and, combined with the electronics in the camera, will compute how much light is needed to make a correct exposure (ie. a photograph with a good balance of shadows, mid-tones and highlights).

The Shutter
The shutter is simply a curtain that blocks light from hitting the sensor. When the photographer hits the shutter release button the shutter opens, lets the required amount of light in, and closes again. The camera will allow you to control how long the shutter is open for: the longer it is open the more light gets in. This control is termed shutter speed and the value can vary from fractions of a second to whole seconds. Fast shutter speeds are those in which the shutter is open for a short period of time; slower shutter speeds are, unsurprisingly, when the shutter is open for longer periods of time. Check your camera. You will see that your shutter speeds are labelled in terms such as 1/60, 1/1000 and so on. These measurements are fractions of a second. A shutter speed of 1/1000, for example, is where the shutter is open for one thousandth of a second. A shutter speed of 1/1000 is a faster shutter speed than 1/60 which, in turn, is faster than 1/8. Note that sometimes a camera will show the shutter speed on the display or in the viewfinder by just showing the lower number. For example 1/500th second might be shown as 500. Very slow shutter speeds (i.e. from 1s to 30s or more) are identifiable in books by not having the '1/' fractional part preceeding the number and usually having 'seconds' or 's' following it. You probably won't be surprised to learn that 30 seconds is a slower shutter speed than one second. In the viewfinder slow shutter speeds might be shown using a double dash to represent a decimal point. For example, half a second might be shown as 0''5 and 2 seconds as 2''0. When hand-holding a camera, the slower the shutter speed the more likely you are to have visible camera shake in your image - it is much harder to handhold a camera perfectly steady for 1/2 second (near impossible in fact) than it is to do so for 1/1000 second. You may also see a shutter speed indicated by a 'B'. This stands for bulb and means that the shutter will stay open for as long as your finger is on the shutter release button. This facility is useful when you need a shutter speed longer than the maximum shutter speed available on your camera (often around 30 seconds).

The Lens Aperture

Your camera lens has a controllable opening at the back. This opening is called the aperture. The lens aperture is in front of the shutter (at the rear of the lens) and controls the amount of light entering the camera at any moment in time. By making the hole larger you can let more light in; make it smaller and the amount of light is reduced. Apertures are measured in terms of the diameter of the hole as a fraction of the focal length of the lens. You will see them referred to as f/2, f/5.6 or f/16 and so on. Initially this labelling may seem very confusing especially after we tell you that the bigger the number the smaller the aperture. However, bear with us and we'll explain why this is. The letter 'f' when referring to aperture sizes represents the focal length of the lens. For example, on a lens with a focal length of 50mm, an aperture of f/2 means 50/2, i.e. 25mm. On the same lens, an aperture of f/16 means 50/16, ie. around 3mm. A hole with a diameter of 25mm is bigger than one with a diameter of 3mm therefore f/2 is a wider aperture and will let more light in than an aperture of f/16. Bear in mind that you do NOT need to know the diameters of lens apertures. It is mentioned in this book just to show you why f/2 lets more light in than f/16. All you need to remember is that lower aperture numbers like f/2 let in more light than higher aperture numbers such as f/16. Despite the fact that an aperture of f/4 on a 50mm lens is half the diameter of f/4 on a 100mm lens, they both let in the same amount of light. This is explained below but, to take photographs, all you need to know is that if your exposure requires f/4 on one lens it will be the same on any other lens. This is why photographers like using the f-number system rather than actual diameters. f/4 = f/4 regardless of the lens (ignoring the fact that some lenses transmit light a little better than others).

The ISO Setting

ISO is the International Standards Organisation. Back in the days before digital, when film was the primary choice of all photographers, a standard mechanism was devised for measuring how sensitive any particular film is to light. It started off as an American standard, using the term ASA (American Standards Association) before being adopted as an international standard. When purchasing a roll of film, a photographer would have a choice of film sensitivities. These sensitivities would be labelled with ISO followed by a number, eg. ISO 100, ISO 200, ISO 400, etc. The higher the ISO the more sensitive the film. By sensitive we mean the amount of light that has to hit the film to create an image of a certain lightness. For example, to create a particular shade of grey on a film of ISO 400 you would only need half the amount of light to create the same shade of grey as you would on film with ISO 200 sensitivity. Higher ISO films will have more noise/grain in the image than a low ISO film. Therefore there is a trade-off: if you need to shoot in low light without flash you could use a higher ISO film. This is convenient as you don't need as much light to hit the film to make an image so you can use a faster shutter speed if you wish. The down side is that the image will be of a lower quality than that taken with a low ISO film. You may now be wondering what this has to do with digital photography. In the digital world we have the same concept of ISO ratings except now we have the luxury of choosing a different ISO rating for each picture if we wish, rather than being stuck with a whole roll of film with the same ISO. The trade-off is the same though: the higher the ISO you choose, the greater the noise in the image and the lower the quality.

Exposure (Part 2)
Stops / Exposure Value (EV)
You may have already heard people say things like "Open the aperture up one stop" or "the image is one stop underexposed" (see below). If you haven't heard these phrases, trust us you will, so we shall explain what they mean. First of all here are a couple of lists: Apertures - f/1.4, f/2, f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/8, f/11, f/16, f/22, f/32 Shutter speeds - 1s, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/15, 1/30, 1/60, 1/125, 1/250, 1/500, 1/1000 These don't represent all possible aperture and shutter speed settings - they are just a set of them. The ones available to you will depend on your camera and lens. The lists above are progressions of stops. If you open the aperture by one stop, e.g. from f/5.6 to f/4, then you double the area of the 'hole' and therefore the amount of light coming through it. If you increase the shutter speed (make it slower) by one stop, you double the time the shutter is open and therefore the amount of light that hits the sensor. With shutter speeds this is fairly easy to understand. A shutter speed of 1/250 second leaves the shutter open for twice as long as a shutter speed of 1/500 second; a shutter speed of one second leaves the shutter open for half as long as a shutter speed of two seconds. If you leave the shutter open for twice as long, you double the amount of light that gets through. With apertures it is less obvious but suffice to say (see maths right) that an aperture of f/5.6 results in a circle with half the area of a circle with an aperture of f/4 therefore half the light gets through. Each stop in the aperture list above results in a circle with half the area to the one on its left. Stops are often now called exposure values. For example changing the aperture from f/8 to f/5.6 will increase the exposure by +1 EV. Changing from f/8 to f/16 will change the exposure by -2 EV (ie. reduce the exposure as it is negative). On your camera you are likely to be able to adjust shutter speeds and apertures in 1/2 or 1/3 stop increments. Finally we have ISO numbers - 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600. Each of these ISO numbers is one stop more sensitive (twice as sensitive) than the one on its left which means it needs half the amount of light to make an image of equivalent brightness.

Controlling Exposure
Despite the fact that there only three controls to think about, this may all seem quite complex. We have heard the phrase "I only want to take a $%##! picture!" a few times and we can understand that it seems there are too many things to think about. However once you have got the hang of this, and it won't take that long, you will be able to combine these three controls to give you an incredible variety of creative possibilities. Of course all modern cameras have a wide range of modes that govern what you are allowed to set, and what the camera will set automatically for you based on its built in light meter. Mode Description 'Auto' or 'P' (Programmed The camera will set the aperture and the shutter speed for you to get a

correctly exposed image. Sometimes called a semi-automatic mode. You set the aperture and the camera will select a shutter speed that will give a correct exposure for that aperture. Shutter Priority Another semi-automatic mode. You set the shutter speed and the camera (S or Tv) will select an appropriate aperture. Manual (M) Full manual exposure mode. You can select the aperture and the shutter speed. Usually the camera will show you by some sort of scale whether the values you have selected will give an over or underexposed image. The shutter speed, aperture and ISO all work together to give you the required exposure and hopefully an image that is neither to bright nor too dark. The aim is to use these controls to get the right amount of light to hit the sensor. To try and make it clearer, here's an analogy to explain how these controls link together. Imagine that your camera sensor is a bath and in order to get a correctly exposed image you need to fill the bath with water (which represents light in our analogy). If you don't put enough water in the bath the picture is too dark (underexposed) if you put too much in and the bath overflows then the picture is too bright (overexposed). To fill this virtual bath with water you have a tap (bath tap or kitchen sink tap it doesn't matter... it could even be a gold-plated mixer tap with attachments - it's just an analogy). The more you turn on the tap, the more water you allow through; this is the aperture. The longer you leave the tap on, the more water gets into the bath; this is the shutter speed. The shallower the bath, the less water you need to fill it; this is the ISO number. An ISO 1600 bath is shallower than an ISO 800 bath and needs half as much water to fill it up. If we take a standard ISO 100 bath and want to fill it with water to make our image, we can choose to either have the tap (aperture) quite wide open and have the tap on for a short time (a fast shutter speed) or we can narrow the tap opening (aperture) and leave the tap running for much longer (a longer shutter speed).

AE) Aperture Priority (A or Av)

Equivalent Exposures
Here's something which may not be obvious to you yet but hopefully should be in a moment. The following exposures are all equivalent in that they let the same amount of light (assuming the same amount of light is available) and you don't change the ISO value (the depth of the bath): 1. 1/1000 at f/4 2. 1/500 at f/5.6 3. 1/250 at f/8 4. 1/125 at f/11 5. 1/60 at f/16 6. 1/30 at f/22 7. 1/15 at f/32 They all have the same exposure value. This is because f/4 lets in twice as much light as f/5.6, but in our example above the shutter is open for half as long ie. 1/1000 sec vs 1/500 sec. To go with our bath-time analogy above, in exposure 1 we have opened that tap wider than in exposure 2 but left it on for a shorter time. Both result in the bath getting full but in different ways. You may now be wondering why anyone would want to chose exposures 2, 3 and 4 if exposure 1 does the business just fine. The next section on exposure will introduce you to the creative possibilities provided by these controls.

Exposure (Part 3)
Creative use of exposure
The shutter speed and aperture controls can be used to change the look of an image in more ways than just making the image lighter or darker. Whilst this will be covered more in later sections, here's a brief introduction, taking two equivalent exposures: 1/1000 at f/4 1/30 at f/22 Lets call this exposure X And this exposure Y

We have already discussed in the previous sections that both these exposures let the same amount of light onto the sensor (ie. have the same exposure value). Let's assume that your camera meter is telling you both of these exposures are correct. Why would you pick one over the other?

Fast shutter speeds freeze motion; slow shutter speeds show motion.
If you wish to show motion in your image, you select a slow shutter speed that will make a moving subject blur (exposure Y). If you wish to freeze a brief moment in time, you use a faster shutter speed (exposure X).

Wide apertures lead to a lower depth-of-field than narrow apertures.

The primary creative reason for selecting a specific aperture is to control the depth-of-field in the image. Depth-of-field is the range of distances in front of the camera lens that is in focus. An image with large depth-of-field will have sharp focus of near and far objects in the image; an image with low or shallow depth-of-field will have only a narrow range of distances in focus. This is a creative choice the photographer makes by adjusting the aperture size. For example a wide aperture can be used to isolate your subject against a blurred background, an effect often used in portraits. This will be covered in more detail in the section on depth-of-field, however for now the image below should illustrate the point.

Striking a balance
The choice of exposure therefore depends on your priorities for the image. If you need the image to be sharp from the nearest objects to the furthest ones (eg. in a landscape), you'd choose a narrow aperture such as in exposure Y and accept that a slower shutter speed will result. If you wish to freeze motion then you need a faster shutter speed such as in exposure X. These two exposures are for illustration only though, bear in mind the actual combination of shutter speed, aperture and ISO you need will depend upon the amount of light available. A dark scene indoors is going to require a different shutter speed / aperture combination that a sunny day at the beach, however, there will still be a range of these combinations so you will still have creative control. This is very important and deserves to be reiterated. You cannot just go to a sports event and say "aha! I want to freeze these guys running around so I'll use 1/1000 at f/4". The specific exposure will depend on how much light is available. If it is dark then you may not be able to get a shutter speed of 1/1000 without your picture being too dark as not enough light is hitting the sensor. You can compensate for a lack of available light by using a higher ISO so the sensor doesn't need so much light but you may reach a point where you are using your highest ISO with your widest aperture and

your exposure meter is still telling you the picture will be underexposed at your selected shutter speed.

Aperture and image sharpness

Each lens has an optimum aperture for image sharpness which is usually around two stops smaller than its maximum aperture. For example, on a lens with a maximum aperture of f/2.8, the optimum is probably around f/5.6. Smaller apertures create a slightly softer image due to narrow slit diffraction (high school physics anyone?). More will be said about image sharpness in the section on lenses.

Does the camera ever get it wrong?

In the auto and semi-auto modes (covered in the next section entitled 'Camera Modes (Part 2)', the camera uses its built in light meter to try to work out what shutter speed and/or aperture should be used to get a correctly exposed image. Does it ever get this wrong and produce an image that it over or under exposed? That depends on what you define as wrong. If you show 10 photographers the same picture taken with a variety of different exposures (some brighter or darker than others) and ask them to pick the correct one, you will get different answers. What is correct to you might be over or underexposed to someone else. The camera doesnt have the human understanding of what it is taking a picture of. The built in light meter will look at the tonal range entering the camera and make a decision on the exposure such that the average luminance (brightness) corresponds to a mid-grey level. For most pictures this will give a reasonably exposed image but a classic example of where a camera often gets it wrong is when taking pictures at night. The average brightness in the scene will be much closer to black than normal, and if you want the picture to reflect reality, you need the picture to be fairly black too. The problem here is the camera will try and gather as much light as possible so that the average is around the mid-grey tone, leading to a flat image which will probably be marred by camera shake due to a very slow shutter speed. Our advice here is twofold: 1. Learn how to effectively use the camera's metering modes (covered in the relevant section later on). 2. Use your eyes. Digital camera users have one huge advantage over film photographers - they have a colour LCD screen on the camera on which to review the picture just taken. Look at it and decide if you think the picture is under or over exposed. If youre not sure, take another one using exposure compensation (see the next section). Just one word of warning here: the brightness of the LCD screen can make a difference so use other tools available to you on your camera such as the image histogram. Take some test shots with a new camera to see if the screen accurately represents the brightness of the image. Trust your eyes! If the exposure looks right to you, then it is right!

Exposure (Part 4)
Exposure values (EV)
We've already touched upon EV in a previous section as it is often used as a way of comparing one exposure with another (for example if your picture is too dark you could try increasing the exposure by +1EV or +1.5EV).

However EV is sometimes used as an absolute measurement and, in this case, a particular exposure must be defined as the zero point. The convention for this is that exposure value 0 (EV 0) corresponds to an shutter speed of one second at f/1.0. Whether EV is used as an absolute value or a relative value, a change of +1EV always corresponds to a doubling of the amount of light, and -1EV to halving the amount of light reaching the sensor. Here's a table of exposure values showing aperture across the top and shutter speed down the side. This is useful for seeing at a glance equivalent exposures. 1.0 8s 4s 2s 1s 2 4 8 15 30 60 125 250 500 1000 2000 4000 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1.4 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 2.0 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 2.8 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 4.0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 5.6 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 8.0 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 11 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 16 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 22 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 32 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 45 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Before the days of modern cameras with built in exposure meters, it was always handy to have a rough idea of what sort of EV value corresponded to typical conditions. Here's a table showing some common lighting situations. The values are given for an ISO setting of 100. Lighting conditions EV (ISO 100)

Bright Sunlight - light sand or snow 16 Bright Sunlight (strong shadows) - general scene 15 Bright Sunlight (soft shadows) - general scene 14 Daylight, Cloudy (no shadows) 13 Daylight, heavy overcast 12 Daylight, areas in the shade 12 Sunset - just before sunset 12 to 14 Sunset - at sunset 12 Just after sunset 9-11 Moon (Full moon) 15 First / Third quarter moon phase 13 Crescent Moon 12 Moonlit scene (no artificial lights) -6 to -3 Night - bright street scene 7 to 8 Night - vehicle traffic 4 to 6 Floodlit monuments, fountains / Christmas tree lights 3 to 5 Indoor: Sports events and stage shows 8 to 9 Indoor: Offices and work areas 7 to 8 Indoor: home interiors 5 to 7 Note that for each stop you increase the ISO you would add one to the value above before looking up the aperture/shutter speed pair in the first table.

Exposure compensation
This is one of the most important exposure tools you will have on your camera (it may not be available on the most basic point-and-shoot models). This allows you to take the camera's recommended exposure and either increase or decrease it by a specified amount. This is not the same as using a camera in manual exposure mode where you are setting the exposure. Here you are just shifting the cameras exposure. For example, if you are taking a lot of shots in the snow, you may wish to set the exposure compensation to +1 EV. As you point the camera at different parts of the scene, the exposure will continually change, however the camera will always set it at +1 EV over what it thinks is the correct exposure. You are effectively telling the camera that you want the average tonal value in the scene to be lighter than mid-grey (which for a snow scene is most likely the case).

Auto Exposure Bracketing (AEB)

This is an extension of exposure compensation and is available on some compacts and nearly all DSLRs (the notable exception here being the Nikon D40 and D40x - what were they thinking?). Bracketing is the technique of taking more than one photograph of the same scene using different settings - the most common approach being to take three photos, the first with the 'correct' settings (as deemed by the camera or photographer), and two more with the settings either side of the first shot. This allows you the flexibility to pick your favourite image later. Common types of bracketing include exposure bracketing, focus bracketing, white balance bracketing and flash bracketing. Exposure bracketing is the most common form and dates back to early film photography. Three

pictures (or occasionally five) are taken with the cameras recommended exposure and then two more a fixed exposure value either side ( 1EV or 2EV being common). Although this was traditionally done manually by the photographer, modern digital cameras often have auto exposure bracketing in which the camera takes the three pictures for you, adjusting the exposure by the required amount for each one, and often triggered by a single press of the shutter button (Canon DSLRs require you to press the shutter button 3 times unless you have continuous shooting mode enabled).

Overexposure
For any given exposure, there is a maximum brightness that the image sensor in the camera can record. If any parts of the image exceed that brightness, they will be recorded as regions of pure white. These are referred to as burnt highlights. These are generally considered very undesirable, especially if they occur in large patches. Because of this, many cameras have an option to show areas of burnt highlights when previewing the image on the LCD screen. They are often represented as flashing black and white regions and are commonly known as blinkies. If your camera has this capability, it is worth using it. If you have been using the raw mode, you can often recover some areas of burnt highlight in the conversion process. Adobe Camera Raw (the Raw conversion utility that comes with all versions of Photoshop) has a slider called recovery which will attempt to reduce areas of burnt highlights. Over exposure also destroys colour saturation. This is why colours often appear much richer in images that are a little darker.

Summary of exposure (Parts 1-4)

Exposure of an image is dependant upon the amount of light available, the selected ISO, aperture and shutter speed. ISO is the sensitivity of the light sensitive medium (camera film or digital image sensor). The aperture is an adjustable opening at the rear of the lens. Wide apertures (eg. f/2) result in a shallow depth of field, narrow apertures (eg. f/22) result in a large depth of field. Shutter speed is the measurement of the amount of time the camera's shutter is open. Slow shutter speeds are where the shutter is open for a relatively long time: fast shutter speeds are where the shutter is open for a short time. Fast shutter speeds freeze motion while slow ones show motion. For any given ISO, the shutter speed and aperture need to be balanced to allow the right amount of light onto the sensor. If the camera's light meter gets it wrong, use exposure compensation or the exposure bracketing and try again.

Camera Modes (part 2) - The Creative Zone

We touched on scene modes in an earlier section however now that you have a fuller understanding of exposure, apertures, shutter speeds etc. we can look at some of the more creative modes your camera has to offer. Bear in mind the way some of these modes work on various cameras may differ slightly.

Full Auto Mode and Programmed AE (P)

If you have a point-and-shoot camera this is probably the only mode it has (except for some scene modes). The camera makes ALL the decisions regarding the exposure (ie. it will set the aperture, shutter speed and sometimes the ISO as well, although on certain cameras, ISO is set to auto or manual using a separate menu option). Some cameras will have an auto mode AND a programmed AE (P) mode - the differences between them vary between different cameras. Usually the P mode will enable extra options that arent available in the full auto mode (such as exposure compensation, manual ISO, etc.) to give the photographer a little more control while guaranteeing a reasonably accurate exposure. Another feature that some cameras have in P mode is the ability to select different combinations of aperture and shutter speed while retaining the correct exposure level, usually by rotating the command dial - a feature called program shift. This gives you some flexibility to control the depth-of-field from within the P mode without having to switch to Aperture Priority mode.

Aperture Priority (A or Av)

Available on some of the better compact cameras and all DSLRs, this is considered a semi-automatic mode. The photographer selects the aperture required (usually to control the depth-of-field) and the camera will select an appropriate shutter speed to ensure the correct exposure. As most cameras have a large possible range of shutter speeds (30s to 1/4000th on many DSLRs covers 17 EV) the camera is usually able to pick an appropriate speed however, under certain circumstances, it may not be possible (for example if you select a large aperture on a very sunny day or a small aperture in low light). If this is the case, the camera will indicate possible over or under exposure by having the shutter speed indicator flashing in the viewfinder or on the screen. If this is the case either select a different aperture or change the ISO setting. If exposure compensation is used, the camera will adjust the shutter speed - a positive exposure compensation will give a slower shutter speed and a negative compensation will give a faster shutter speed.

Shutter Priority (S or Tv)

Like the aperture priority mode this is available on the more advanced point-and-shoot cameras and all DSLRs. It works in a similar way to the aperture priority mode except that the photographer sets the shutter speed and the camera selects the aperture. As the range of possible apertures the camera has to select from is usually a lot less than the range of shutter speeds (especially on compact cameras), there is a greater chance of the photographer picking a shutter speed for which the camera is unable to select an aperture. Therefore it is not a mode that we would normally use. The argument in favour of shutter priority mode is that, when shooting sports photography you can select a high speed shutter to freeze the action. We would argue that this is even easier in aperture priority mode as you just open up the aperture to its widest (lowest f number) and the camera will select the highest shutter speed it can to ensure correct exposure. Exposure compensation can also be used - a positive EC value will give wider aperture (lower f

number) and a negative EC will give a smaller aperture.

Manual (M)
I am sure you can probably guess what this mode is for. The photographer is able to select both the aperture and the shutter speed, thereby having complete control over the exposure. The camera does not set anything that affects the exposure, therefore exposure compensation has no effect in manual mode. Of course if you want to increase the exposure by one stop, you just select a slower shutter speed or a bigger aperture. Unlike the other modes mentioned in this section, the camera wont compensate for a change made by the photographer by altering something else. A useful feature of nearly all cameras is that the exposure meter still functions in an advisory capacity. It will usually represent as a pointer on a bar in the viewfinder or on screen whether the shutter speed/aperture that you have selected will over or under expose the image when compared to its own readings, and by how much. In the illustration on the right (from a Fuji S9600 camera) the exposure bar is showing the image to be very slightly overexposed (based on the camera's guess of what the ideal exposure is) as the white dot is slightly nearer the + sign. Changing the aperture from f/4 to f/4.5 or f/5 would probably bring this back to centre. Although it is tempting to always use one of the auto or semi automatic modes, it is worthwhile spending some time shooting in manual mode and getting a feel for apertures and shutter speeds. It really doesn't take that long for it all to become second nature.

Metering
We talked in some detail about exposure in three earlier sections so by now you'll understand how shutter speeds, apertures and ISO all combine to affect the brightness of an image. Naturally, different conditions will lead to differing amounts of light being available and therefore a decision must be made regarding which shutter speed and aperture combination to use - for this an exposure meter is used. This device, be it a dedicated device or one built into your camera, simply measures the amount of light available which is then converted into aperture and shutter speed.

Different Types of Light Meter

Light meters may be in-camera light meters or handheld light meters. All modern cameras have built in light meters but there can be advantages to using handheld light meters on occasion. We'll cover incamera light meters and their various options in a moment but first we'll touch upon the different types of handheld light meters. Handheld light meters typically fulfil one or more of the following functions: reflected light metering incident light metering

 flash metering

Reflected Light Metering

The meter that is performing a reflected light reading is measuring the light reflected off your subject. You point the light meter at your subject and it tells you what the exposure would need to be in order to render that subject at a mid grey (typically referred to as 18% grey). This type of meter will give you different exposure results for a black subject or a white subject as it only tries to make an exposure to make things grey. It has no way of knowing if your subject is black, white or somewhere in between so it just measures the light coming off the subject and assumes the elements of the image will average out to be grey. At its most basic level this is how an in-camera meter operates. A special type of reflective light metering device is called a spot meter. This measures the light reflecting off a very small area of your subject, a small 'spot' if you will. To use a spot meter you aim it at a part of your subject that you wish to appear to be mid-grey and set your exposure as it tells you. Alternatively you can point it at a darker or lighter portion of your scene and adjust the exposure accordingly (more on this later).

Incident Light Metering

With an incident light meter you measure the strength of the light source. To do this you would hold the meter in front of your subject and point the meter at the source of light to take a measurement. This type of metering avoids the complication caused by your subject being of a reflective nature other than mid-grey as it is measuring the light totally independent of the shade or colour your subject is.

Flash Metering
A flash meter is a special type of incident light meter. A flash meter works in just the same way as described above except that it will automatically trigger your studio flash, take a reading while the flash is illuminated and tell you what aperture is needed for your currently selected ISO (shutter speed does not matter as it will be described in the 'Flash Photography' section of this book).

In-Camera Light Metering

As mentioned, an in-camera light meter is taking reflective light readings through the lens from the scene the camera is pointed at. If your camera is in an automatic mode the light meter will enable your camera to automatically select the exposure based on the scene it is measuring. If it is in manual mode the light meter will tell you if it thinks the picture will be under-exposed or over-exposed. Modern cameras come with at least one of the following metering modes (not to be confused with exposure modes - metering modes usually reside somewhere in the menu system): centre weighted average metering intelligent metering (somtimes called evaluative, matrix or multi metering) partial metering spot metering

Your camera may come with all of these modes. This is what they do. Centre weighted average metering measures the light across the whole scene but pays more attention to the brightness of the scene in the centre. This was the most common type of metering on

film SLR cameras and many people continue to use it as it is easy to understand and predict when it may be fooled into providing an incorrect meter reading. Intelligent metering is called something different by different manufacturers. Canon call it evaluative, Nikon call it matrix. It works by evaluating the whole scene and using an algorithm to try to identify what the scene is and therefore what the exposure should be. Whilst this mode is generally quite successful, some users choose to avoid it as the manufacturers don't publish how it makes its decisions and therefore it can be a little harder to predict. With Canon's implementation they bias the exposure reading to the currently selected focus point as they assume that the focus point will be placed over the main subject of the scene. Partial metering measures a smaller part of the scene than the previous two but a greater part of the scene than spot metering. Partial metering takes its reading from a circle covering approx the centre 9% of the frame. Partial metering can be useful where there is a wide dynamic range in your scene and you want to ensure a certain part is exposed correctly, for example a spot lit actor on a dark stage. Spot Metering measures a small part of the scene typically 1% to 5% and is useful for being precise about where exactly in the scene you want your light meter reading to come from. This is always taken from the centre of the frame except on some professional level cameras when there may be an option to have it taken from the selected focus point.

How to read your in-camera light meter.

Whilst most of the following discussion will apply to evaluative/matrix type metering there may be times where that type of metering may behave differently than other metering modes. As mentioned above, this is because this type of light metering uses unpublished and probably fairly complex algorithms to decide on a correct exposure. For the most part the following information will be fine for that type of metering mode but if your camera meters in a way that isn't explained here while in that type of mode it's simply because it is trying to be clever! Most, if not all, of the time you will be using your camera's in-built light meter. As we have mentioned this type of light meter is carrying out reflected light metering and is trying to render the scene so that it averages out to a mid-grey tone. It is surprising how often this works out just fine but this can mean scenes containing very bright or very dark elements can fool a camera meter into under or over exposing. If the scene you are photographing contains very bright elements it may cause your camera to think it needs less exposure than it really needs for example: a snow scene a sunny day on a beach a bride in a white wedding dress a back-lit subject (i.e. where the light is behind the subject)

In these examples the camera will be trying to render your subject grey whereas they really need to be white or close to white. This will cause your meter to suggest the wrong exposure and if you listen to it you will end up with an underexposed picture. To rectify this you will need to tell your camera to overexpose by one or two stops. In manual mode to simply select an exposure where your camera meter is telling you it will be overexposed by one or two stops (depending on how much whiter than mid-grey your subject is), in an automatic mode you will need to use exposure compensation (see exposure part 4).

If the scene contains very dark elements your camera may over expose as it thinks there is less light than there is. Remember, it is trying to make your subject grey. If your subject is darker than that it will turn out too bright in your photograph as the camera tries to compensate. For example: a close-up of a person wearing dark clothes a person against a dark background such as a person lit by spotlights on stage. In these circumstances you can adjust for your light meter's misreading of the situation in the same way as above. The only difference is this time you need to tell the camera to underexpose.

Grey Cards
Because light meters can be fooled by dark or light subjects, photographers sometimes use grey cards. These are, like the name suggests, cards that are grey. To be more specific they are cards that are designed to be the shade of grey that your light meter is looking for. Therefore if you take a light meter reading by pointing your camera at the grey card you should get the correct exposure. To make this work, the grey card needs to be in the same lighting conditions as the subject so you may ask your model (if you are taking a portrait) to hold the grey card close to his or her face while you take a spot meter reading from it to set your exposure. If you don't want to carry your grey card around with you, you can use your hand. Take a reading off your grey card outside your home then take a reading of your hand. Your hand and grey card are likely to give different exposure results but as long as you know this then you can compensate in the field. For example, a white person may find that their hand and their grey card give a one stop different exposure with the hand apparently requiring one stop less exposure. This means that in the field someone like this can take a meter reading off their hand and adjust the exposure so the camera appears to overexpose by one stop.

Some metering tips

White skin is often one stop above mid grey. You can therefore take a spot meter reading off a white person's face and then overexpose by one stop to get a good exposure. Snow is whiter than caucasian skin by about one stop. You can therefore take a spot meter reading off snow and over expose by approximately two stops to get a good overall exposure. A blue sky at midday is often just about perfect mid-grey (not in colour but at least in luminosity) and so you can take a spot meter reading off the sky to get a decent exposure. A wedding dress will often be one or two stops above mid grey. A black suit (tuxedo, for example) will be one or two stops below mid grey. Do some experiments. Take a photograph of a white piece of paper filling the frame (in even lighting, outdoors in the shade for example) using a semi-automatic mode like aperture priority, or using manual and exposing so the meter tells you the exposure is correct. Notice how it turns out grey in the end result. Do the same with a grey card and a black card and notice how they look the same as the white paper because the camera will choose different exposures.

White paper

Grey card

Black material

The above images are genuine photographs taken in aperture priority mode: they are out of focus to hide texture differences. They were taken with spot metering mode selected so that slight differences in lighting from centre to the edges did not affect the exposure. They were also desaturated so that slight hue differences do not distract from the main point being illustrated.

You could also try photographing white paper at one and two stops under and over exposed to see how it affects the brightness of the resulting images. Compare those shots to a grey card and this will give you a visual indication of what a 'stop' increase or decrease in exposure will look like.

Depth of Field (part 1)

In photography, something is 'in focus' if all the light rays entering the lens and originating from a point converge at a point on the image sensor. If the rays do not converge at a point but instead form a circle (called a blur circle or circle of confusion), then the image of that point in the scene will be 'out of focus'. In reality, the rays may not perfectly converge but still be perceived as in focus as long as the blur circle is small enough. The image above clearly shows some of the text in focus, and other text getting progressively more out of focus as it gets nearer or further from the camera. Depth of field (DoF) is an optical property of lenses which means that only objects within a certain range of distances from the camera will be in focus (as clearly shown in the photograph above). For images such as landscapes, a large depth of field is usually desirable, however for portraits, photographers often prefer a very shallow depth of field to make the subject stand out against an outof-focus background. Cameras that have landscape and portrait modes on them will often adjust the camera's setting to try and achieve this effect.

The depth of field can be controlled by changing various things such as: the aperture of the lens the focal length of the lens (actual, not 35mm equivalent) distance from camera to main subject The actual quality of the out-of-focus area (known as the bokeh of the image) also varies from lens to lens and is an important factor in the quality of the final image.

Controlling Depth of Field

The simplest way to control the depth of field in your image is to change the aperture of the lens. A large aperture (low f-number) will give a shallower DoF than a small aperture. On DSLRs with a fast prime lens, the DoF can be so shallow that the accuracy of focussing becomes critical in getting a sharp picture (for example, in a portrait where the head is slightly turned, one eye could be in focus and the other might not. Another way to change the depth of field is to use a longer focal length. As you increase the focal length of the lens, the DoF decreases. This is why focusing is so critical on long lenses - for example, a 300mm lens set to f/2.8 and focused on a subject four metres away will have a depth of field of less than two centimetres. The Relationship Between Focal Length and Depth of Field An interesting observation is that if you increase the focal length of the lens (zoom in on your subject) the DoF will decrease, however, if you then move away from your subject so they are the same size again in the viewfinder, the depth of field returns to almost exactly the same as it was before. Example: You have a DSLR with an APS-C sized sensor (and Canon, Nikon, Sony or Pentax consumer or enthusiast level camera) You set your lens to 30mm lens at f/2.8 and take a picture of your subject who is standing 3m away: DoF = 1.18m (Focus range: 2.52m to 3.70m) You zoom in on your subject by setting lens to 150mm, changing nothing else: DoF = 0.04m (Focus range: 2.98m to 3.02m) You now walk back so you are 15m from your subject (they are now the same size in the frame as the first picture). DoF = 1.15m (Focus range: 14.45m to 15.60m) This highlights that both the focal length, and the distance from camera to subject affects the amount of depth of field you will get in the image. Therefore if you increase the focal length in order to reduce DoF, but then move back to reframe your image as it was prior to zooming in, you lose the shallow depth of field you wanted by zooming in the first place. Below is a table showing distance to subject along the top and lens focal length down the side computed for an aperture of f/4, and on a camera with an APS-C crop factor (the calculations were actually made for a Canon DSLR with a 1.6 crop factor, although the difference with a 1.5 Nikon, Sony or Pentax will be small. For a camera using the four-thirds system, the depth of field will be greater). It shows three values: the closest point in focus, the furthest point in focus, and the percentage of the depth of field that lies behind the subject - an indication of the near:far ratio where 50% means the same amount must be in front of the focus point as behind it. This will never be less than 50% as there can never be more in focus in front of the focus point than behind it. We have selected a fairly large aperture as, if you are interesting in the precise amount of DoF available, there is a good chance you are looking to blur a part of the images, and will therefore be using a large aperture.

If you look at the numbers in this table, you will see some patterns emerging. For a given distance between camera and subject, as focal length increases the split between near and far approaches 50% (i.e. distant objects in the scene go out of focus very quickly as you zoom in). As camera-subject distance increases, the area in focus stretches out more quickly behind the subject than in front of it. Wide angle lenses can have a huge depth of field (for example the common 18-55mm kit lens at 18mm can have a focus range of 2m to infinity (even with a pretty large f/4 aperture) This last point raises an interesting question. An 18mm f/4 lens can focus from 1.99m to infinity as long as you set focus to a distance of four metres. If you focus on infinity, then an object two metres away will be quite blurred (the depth of field would be from 3.93m to infinity). So to maximise your depth of field, you need to focus at some distance from the camera but well short of infinity and which is dependent on the focal length. We saw from the table that for 18mm lens at f/4, focusing at four metres will keep everything further than this distance in focus. At 30mm f/4, its actually somewhere between 10 and 20 metres. At 300mm, the table does not go far enough - in fact you would need to focus at 1093 metres from the camera for the far focus point to be at infinity. This minimum distance at which you can focus and still retain everything back to infinity in focus is called the hyperfocal distance. The near point of acceptable focus just happens to be half the hyperfocal distance. Now usually we like to keep maths and equations to the blue 'nerd' boxes, but Im afraid one has escaped here: H = (f / (N.c) ) + f where H is the hyperfocal distance, f is the focal length, N is the f-number (the aperture) and c is the circle of confusion limit (often taken as 0.03mm). Therefore for a 50mm lens with an aperture of f/16, the hyperfocal distance is H = (50 / (16 * 0.03) ) + 50 = 5258mm Therefore if we focus the lens to about 5.3 metres, everything from 2.65 metres to infinity will be in acceptable focus.

Depth of Field (part 2)

Bokeh
Bokeh, from the Japanese word for 'blur' (pronounced as two discrete syllables: bo and ke as in kettle), refers to the area of an image that is intentionally thrown out of focus by the use of a large aperture. As strange as it may sound, the quality of the bokeh can be important to the overall quality of the image. Every lens produces its own characteristic bokeh, and one of the factors that influences this is the shape of the aperture in the lens. In an ideal world, the aperture would be perfectly circular, however, this would be very expensive to manufacture. Therefore, lens companies approximate a circular aperture by using curved diaphragm blades - the more blades, the closer the approximation to a true circle. On inexpensive lenses, five blades are quite common (the lens in the picture below has six blades). Higher quality lenses will often have eight or more to give a visually more pleasing effect. The reason the shape of the aperture is important is that the circle of confusion created by objects out of focus takes on the shape of the aperture in the image. Most of the time this will not be noticeable as all the circles of confusion overlap to create a smooth blur. However if you have bright out-of-focus points of light against a black background, the aperture shape will become clearly visible. The picture shown on the right clearly demonstrates this. You can see this was taken with a lens with a five blade aperture diaphragm as the point light sources show up resembling a pentagon (albeit one with curved sides). Picture courtesy of Canon and taken with a Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens. Circle of Confusion In photography, a circle of confusion is a spot formed on the image sensor caused by the incoming rays from an object not being correctly focused. Consider a tiny bright spot five metres in front of the camera. If your camera focuses on this spot, it will create a small spot on the sensor. Another bright spot nearer to, or further away from the lens may not be in focus - this will form a blurred circle on the image sensor.

Depth of Field on Compact Cameras

Control over the depth of field on a compact camera works in the same way as on a DSLR, however, it is not possible to get the really shallow depth of field images that are so easy on the DSLR. This is because the depth of field is dependent on the actual focal length of the lens and not the 35mm

equivalent focal length, and for most compact cameras, the focal length is very small. Typically a compact camera with a 3x zoom may have a focal length range of six to 18mm which is not conducive to getting those classic shallow DoF portrait shots. To create a very shallow depth of field, use the telephoto end of the zoom range and get as close to your subject as possible, while trying to maximise the distance between them and the background. Sometimes it is worth trying the macro mode and being a little more creative. The picture above was taken with a Fuji compact camera in macro mode. I stood no more than about four feet from the subject.

White Balance
You will often see definitions of white balance such as "making sure that things that are white appear white in your photograph". This is a rather over simple view as if the white balance is set wrongly, it affects every colour in your picture. It would probably be better to have called it 'colour balance' however white balance has stuck since the calibration of this setting (either in camera or in post processing) usually involves a white piece of paper or identifying an object that is white in the scene, and then the camera can apply the appropriate correction and all colours should then appear correct. For photographers switching over from film to digital, the white balance setting on the camera will be something new, although if you shot slide (transparency) film, the concept should be familiar. When you chose which film you wanted to use, you could pick between 'daylight balanced' film or 'tungsten balanced' film. This referred to the white balance of the film.

So What Is It?
All objects in your picture will have a particular colour - however how they are seen by the human eye as well as the camera will depend on the properties of the light illuminating them. The human eye/brain is very good at compensating for these differences so that you don't really notice huge colour shifts when you move from inside the house (lit with an incandescent/tungsten bulb) and outside into the daylight. You brain is processing the signal from your eye and create something that looks natural. The image data from the sensor in your camera also needs to be processed to get the colour balance correct. If you are shooting JPEG files, then this will be done by the camera and the colour correction will be applied before the JPEG file is created. If you shoot in RAW format, the camera only stores what it thinks the correction should be - it does not actually apply it. When you process the RAW files on your PC, you can choose to use this setting, or select you own. Lets consider an example. In the evening, the light is usually more orange than around midday. The camera must compensate for this by adjusting the bias on the seperate red, green and blue channels to give a more balanced colour. In the evening light the camera will correct the image by increasing the amount of the blue channel and reducing the red (since the natural light already has plenty of red). In the midday light, it is the blue channel that will be boosted. <pictures to illustrate> The white balance within the camera (or in the RAW processing sioftware) is usually controlled by 2

different settings: colour temperature (measured in Kelvin) tint Colour Temperature The colour temperature of a light source is determined by comparing its chromaticity (it's quality of colour without taking account of the brightness) with that of an ideal black body radiator (an object that absorbs all light that falls on it). When a black body radiator is heated up to high temperatures, it starts to give off light - the colour of which is dependent on the temperature. Temperature in Kelvin = Temperature in Celcius (Centigrade) + 273 The temperature at which the heated black body matches the colour of the light source is called the colour temperature of that light source. At temperatures of 1000-3000K the body glows red - but as the temperature increases, the becomes white, and then at very high temperatures it glows blue.

A major source of confusion is that lower colour temperatures are red, higher temperatures are blue. However photographers still often talk about warm light as having a red cast and cooler shades being more blue. So when someone talks about the warm light, make sure you know which they mean.

Some Approximate Values

Source Candle Flame Incandescent (Tungsten) Light Bulb Studio lighting Daylight - at sunrise Daylight - early morning / later afternoon Daylight - mid-day Overcast sky Electronic Flash In the shade Approximate Temperature 1850K 2600 - 3300K 3400K 2000 - 2500K 3500K 5500K 6000 - 7000K 5500 - 5800K 7000 - 9000K

Getting the White Balance Right

Getting this right is one of the most important factors in getting high quality digital images from your camera. There are four options available to you: Use the cameras 'Auto White Balance' setting (icon is usually 'AWB'). Use a preset white balance setting. Set the colour temperature manually (if supported). Use the custom white balance calibration facility on your camera (if supported). Shoot in RAW format and select your white balance on the computer in post processing (if supported).

The last of these can be used in conjunction with the first three, so we'll look at this first.

Shoot in RAW
There are many advantages to shooting in RAW format rather than in JPEG (assuming your camera has a RAW mode), but probably the most compelling reason is that the camera does not apply any colour correction to the image data - you do this when you process the RAW images on your PC. The white balance setting on your camera are stored in the RAW file as metadata (information only) so that when you bring up the file on your PC, you can see what white balance correction the camera would have applied had you been shooting in JPEG. However you are free to change this, or have your RAW processing software analyse the image and suggest it's own white balance colour temerature. Something that most DSLR photographers have done at one time is to change the white balance setting for a particular photo, and then forget to change it back. You can end up with a whole string of images with either a red or blue cast on them which can be very hard to fix if you use JPEG. Shoot in RAW however, and you can just move the colour temperature slider in your software and voila! (how's my French?) Image right shows the basic parameters in Adobe Camera Raw.

Auto White Balance

This is the mode that most photographers tend to use, and even if you don't, it's always a good one to return it to after shooting just in case you need to grab the camera in a hurry. If shooting in RAW mode, you can just leave it in this mode most of the time.

How Does Auto White Balance Work?

Every camera is most likely going to have its own set of algorithms to work it out from the image data. There is a lot of debate on this on the internet, so we are not going to add to it here. There are some sites that talk about the cameras white balance sensor. Most cameras do not have a dedicated white balance sensor, but derive the settings from the image data from the main sensor after the picture is taken. The best thing to do is just accept the most of the time, the AWB setting gets reasonably close, but occasionally it can be fooled (another reason to use RAW mode!).

Preset White Balance Settings

Personally I don't use these very often, although there are two circumstances when they are useful. Under lighting conditions at the extreme end of the temperature scale, the auto white balance often plays it a little safe (e.g. in low power tungsten light when the colour temperature might be around 2650K, the camera will select 3300K). Likewise with heavy shade where the actual colour temperature can be as high as 9000K. Panoramic pictures. If you plan on stitching together multiple shots to create a single picture, you must select a preset white balance otherwise you will find that the colour balance changes from one picture to the next and the end result won't look convincing.

Setting the Colour Temperature Manually

If you have a dedicated meter for this, then this may be something you will want to try - but for most people, one of the other options is generally more suitable. The only time we can think when this might be useful is if you are shooting at the extreme ends of the colour temperature scale and the preset values seem a little conservative. For example, some Canon DSLR cameras use a setting of around 7000K for shade. It can be much higher than this under heavy shade conditions. In general, we would advise use the custom white balance function, and shoot in RAW.

Custom White Balance

This may work in slightly different ways depending on your camera, however the basic idea is that you take a photograph of a piece of white paper or a grey card, and you tell the camera to calculate the correct white balance settings based on this image. By doing this, you are tuning the camera to the exact lighting conditions present. Although neither of the authors use this very often (as we both shoot in RAW mode), it can be useful for photographers that use JPEG or are shooting in slightly unusual lighting conditions.

White Balance Bracketing

Some cameras may give you the option of bracketing your shot. This means it will take three pictures instead of one - with the second and third pictures using a white balance setting either side of the first shot. This may be something you will want to use if shooting in JPEG mode but is not needed if you use RAW.

One Last Point

Don't rely too much on the cameras LCD screen when checking to see if the white balance looks good. The quality of the colour rendition on these screens is variable.

Actually one more last point ...

If you like using filters (the glass ones that go in front of the lens, not the big list of effects in Photoshop) you may think it's a good idea to use one of the 81-series filters for warming up an image. These were traditionally used to correct for different lighting conditions on film cameras where the white balance was fixed, but on a digital camera you can do this in the menu, so these filters become pretty pointless. If you must use them though - remember to turn OFF the Auto White Balance and set it to the

Daylight preset. If you don't, the filter will warm the image, and the auto white balance will 'correct' it back the what it thinks is neutral.

Styles: High Dynamic Range (HDR) Photography

If you look at any of the photo gallery websites such as Flickr, you will see that HDR photography is quite popular at the moment. Unlike the other styles of photography covered in this styles section of this website, HDR photography is a technique that requires you to carry out some image processing on your computer. Therefore this section could just as easily belong in the Digital Darkroom section of the site. But for now, I'll leave it here as it also requires some specific actions at the 'taking the picture' stage. So first lets define what is meant by dynamic range.

Dynamic Range
Dynamic Range refers to the difference between the lightest part of a scene or image and the darkest part. For example a picture of some grey buildings on an overcast day might have a very small dynamic range - whereas a picture taken in woodland with the sun visible through the trees might have a very wide dynamic range. It is not uncommon for the brightest part of an image to be 100,000 times brighter than the darkest part. The image sensor in a camera has a limited dynamic range (it's usually around 7 'stops' - you'll have an idea what that means if you've read the section on exposure). However the difference between the sky on a bright sunny day and shadow detail in the foreground of the same scene can be considerably greater than this (12 to 14 stops maybe). What this means is that when you take a picture of this scene, you must decide which bit of that 12-14 stops you want to expose for as you are only going to be able to capture about 7 stops worth in a single exposure. You could 'expose for the highlights', which means you will get a nice sky, but your foreground detail will be all black. Or you could 'expose for the shadows' in which case you'll get some foreground shadow detail but your sky will just burn out to complete white. So if your camera's sensor can't cope with the bright sky and the dark foreground, what can you do? The answer lies in the art of High Dynamic Range photography. A source of confusion Many people confuse dynamic range with colour depth (i.e. the number of bits used to represent the colours in each pixel). If you take a standard JPEG image from a camera (which by definition must be 8-bit), load it into photoshop and then save it as a 16-bit TIFF file, it has no more dynamic range than the original 8-bit image. All you have done is used more bits to represent the same information. In a similar way, a lot of modern DSLR cameras support 14-bit RAW files compared to older models that support 12-bit RAW files. The 14-bit files have the potential to store a greater dynamic range, but in reality it won't as the dynamic range is a factor of the imaging sensor. In most cases, the 14-bit RAW will just store the same dynamic range as the 12-bit but do it more accurately.

Of course it is resonable to expect that a modern camera will have a better image sensor and therefore a higher dynamic range than an older model, but it would not be as much as the step from 12-bit to 14-bit might suggest.

HDR Images and Tone Mapped Images

To truely represent the high dynamic range of a scene in a photograph, you should be able to store every bit of information captured (even if that capture process involves taking many different images at different exposures - see below). An 8-bit image (like JPEG) can only store 256 different levels - a 16-bit image can store 65,536 levels. However a HDR scene can often contain even more than this. So therefore you really need to use a 32-bit image file format. There are dedicated formats for this such as Radiance RGBE (.HDR) but these are not common, and you certainly can't take these files to your local Tesco/Wal-Mart to be printed. So when you are browsing photo sites such as Flickr, and you see images described as HDR images, are they really HDR images? Well the answer is yes and no, depending on your definition. Yes in that these images do contain the wider dynamic range of the original captured scene contained within a single image, but no in that it has been saved as an 8-bit image which is only capable of showing 256 levels per colour channel, and therefore does not contain all the original information that was captured. A lot of information has been thrown away to accommodate that wide dynamic range into the limits of an 8-bit format. Effectively the tonal range has been compressed. What you are looking at is a tone-mapped image.

Image used courtesy of Richard Cooper.

When is HDR not HDR? The image above is very good example of a HDR image. However this image is an 8-bit JPEG file (a low dynamic range format). You are probably viewing it on an LCD screen (which is a low dynamic range device) or a printout (which has an even lower dynamic range). Think about it for a second ... we've all experienced the vast dynamic range that occurs in nature. You are sitting in the shade of a tree with your head in a book and you suddenly look up to the bright sky. For a few seconds, your eyes can't deal with the brightness until the iris (the eye's aperture) has closed down. When viewing a tone mapped (HDR) image on screen, you don't squint your eyes when you look at the sky - that's because the screen can't create anywhere near the same dynamic range as mother nature. The image contains elements of the wide dynamic range that was captured in the multiple photographs that went into making the HDR image, however it has been compressed into a much smaller dynamic range suitable for storing in a JPEG file and viewing on an LCD screen. Seeing such a high dynamic range compressed and viewed on a low dynamic range device like your screen without your eye's having to adjust is what makes HDR images look so distinct and unnatural.

Tone Mapping
Tone mapping is the name given to the process of tonal compression described above. It takes the original HDR data (32-bits per channel, with potentially a near unlimited number of light levels) and compresses these down to 256 levels (8-bit per channel, suitable for saving to a JPEG file). Defining the term in just once sentence: Tone Mapping is a way of reproducing the high dynamic range of a scene onto a low dynamic range device. If you use the RAW format on your camera rather than JPEG, you have already been carrying out tone mapping without realising it. RAW files are usually 12 or 14 bit images, and therefore when you convert them to JPEG files, you are compressing the tonal range down. This compression is relatively simple and is generally applied as a global operation - i.e. the same tone mapping curve is applied to the whole image. However when converting from a true 32-bit HDR image more sophisticated algorithms are required that consider a pixel in relation to it's surrounding pixels. For example a pixel of a certain brightness will be mapped differently depending on whether it is in a bright part of the image or a dark part of the image.

Basic Steps of HDR Photography

1. Instead of just taking one picture and having to choose whether to expose for highlights or shadows, take more than one picture of the scene - 3 or 5 pictures are quite common - each at a different exposure. Most cameras have a feature called 'auto exposure bracketing' to help you achieve this. 2. Combine these images on the computer to create a new single image taking the shadow detail from one image, the midtone detail from a second image, and the highlight detail from the third image. This can be done manually, using the HDR merge feature of your software, or for the best results, using dedicated HDR software such as photomatix. Here's a picture showing how three initial images (the 3 small ones on the left) have been merges to create a single HDR image.

This image was taken from the Photomatix website. We're sure they won't mind as we've linked back to the site where you can see it for yourself and if people like the look of the image, they may even go out and buy the software.

Step 1: Taking the Pictures

The key points to taking the initial pictures for HDR photography are: Ensuring that the camera has captured the exact same scene (i.e. has not moved between taking the different exposures). Ensuring that the number of pictures you take cover the complete dynamic range of the scene. To make sure you get the best result when merging the images together, the only thing that should differ between each photograph is the exposure. Therefore you should use a sturdy tripod when taking the images. It is possible to take the pictures without one as long as you camera has auto exposure bracketing which will take the 3 pictures in rapid succession with a single press of the shutter button. You should try and rest the camera on something and hold it as steady as possible while all 3 pictures are being taken. For most pictures you will want to cover the complete dynamic range of the scene. For a typical landscape photography, this means getting a picture of the bright sky without any of the highlights burned out, and getting a picture of the foreground shadow detail without it being lost in the blackness. Although you can take your initial shots by trial and error by leaving the camera to take a light reading and then just setting the AEB to the maximum, you can also follow these steps. 1. Put your camera into aperture priority mode and select some aperture (not really important at this stage). 2. Point the camera at the sky (make the sky fill the frame - zoom in if you have to)and take a light

reading by half pressing the shutter button - make a note of the shutter speed (for example let's say it is 1/500th second) 3. Now point the camera so the darkest part of the scene fills the frame (make sure no bright sky is visible), and take a light reading again by half pressing the button. Make a note of this shutter speed (let's say it was 1/30th second) 4. Work out how many stops there is between the two values (see the page in the book: "Exposure (part 2)" ). In the example given above, the difference between 1/30th second and 1/500th second is 4 stops. Therefore you need to capture three images where the difference between the brightest and darkest is 4 stops. 5. Put your camera in manual exposure mode, and select an exposure mid-way between the brightest and darkest readings - in this case 1/125th second shutter speed with the same aperture setting, and set your auto exposure bracketing to plus/minus 2 stops. You will end up with three images: f/5.6 1/125s f/5.6 1/30s f/5.6 1/500s Most cameras let you set the auto exposure bracketing up to +/- 2 stops (i.e. covering a 4 stop dynamic range), however it is possible that when you take your light readings of the brightest and darkest parts of the scene, you exceed this dynamic range. For example a sky of 1/1000s and a foreground of 1/15s is 6 stops apart. In this case it might be easiest to just use the manual mode without the auto exposure bracketing and set the values yourself starting with the darkest and moving up in steps of 1, 1.5 or 2 stops (don't jump more than 2 stops between exposures). f/5.6 f/5.6 f/5.6 f/5.6 1/15 1/60 1/250 1/1000

If you can't be bothered with all that messing about but still want to have a go, just put the camera in auto mode and set the auto exposure bracketing to +/- 2 stops and take your three pictures. This will covered the dynamic range of the scene in most cases. However also read the next box ... A Word of Warning... Never use shutter priority when taking images for HDR processing. The reason is that in this mode, the camera will need to adjust the aperture to create the three different exposures, and doing this will alter the depth of field in each of the 3 images. This will lead to a poorer result (less sharp) when the images are combined.

Step 2: Combining the Images

Once you have your 2 or more images, you need to combine them into a single image. By far the easiest way to achieve this is to use dedicated HDR software such as Photomatix Pro. This is a very popular piece of software and can be used to create quite subtle effects, or the outrageous vivid coloured images often associated with HDR photography. Photomatix is available as a free download so you can try it out before you buy it. Some of the features put a watermark across your image so I would recommend you having a play first, and then parting with a little of your hard earned cash if you think it will give you the results you are after. HDR software usually supports different methods of combining images together - the two most

common being tone mapping (mentioned above) and exposure blending. Whereas tone mapping takes a merged 32-bit true-HDR image, exposure blending works in a much simpler way (but can still produce spectacular results). It works by simply taking the highlights from the underexposed image, the midtones, from the middle image, and the shadows from the overexposed image. If anyone has ever attempted to do HDR images manually in a program like Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro, you will have probably tried a technique very similar to exposure blending. We will come back to manual HDR creation later on (probably in section 9 or 10 after we have covered working with layers in Photoshop).

Fundamental Concepts: Histograms

Just before we get onto histograms, let's look at a few other terms related to a concept called tonal range.

Tonal Range, Shadows, Midtones and Highlights

Tonal range is a term used to describe the range of brightness levels in an image from the darkest to the lightest. For many pictures (but not all) you want this to cover the full range possible from jet black to brilliant white. If it does not, then the image can look flat. Look at these two black and white images - the one on the right has the greater tonal range as it has blacker blacks and whiter whites.

Photographers use the terms shadows, midtones and highlights when talking about different parts of the tonal range. The darker parts of the image are referred to as the shadows, the lighter colours as highlights, and the ones somewhere in the middle (mid-greys) are the midtones. Some of the tools you will come across in Photoshop allow you to apply the effect / brushstroke to just one of these three regions of the tonal range. For example to create a more dramatic black and white landscape, you may want to selectively darken just the shadows.

Histograms
A histogram is a visual way of representing the tonal range of an image. It can be used to show you whether the image is under or overexposed and whether you are exploiting the full tonal range thats possible in the image. What it cant do is tell you whether the image looks good as sometimes an image needs to be over or under exposed to create the desired effect. So use histograms as a guide to help you and not to govern all the decisions you make. A histogram is a graph that shows you the full tonal range along the horizontal axis and an indication of the number of pixels at that point in the range by the height of the graph. When you have an image loaded in Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro, you can view the histogram by turning on the Histogram Palette. Here are some examples to get you used to looking at them:

This histogram shows a reasonably good tonal range. There is a gap at the top (shown in red) indicating that there are no bright whites in the image but this can easily be corrected with the levels tool covered later on.

This histogram shows a gap at the dark end of the tonal range indicating a lack of deep blacks in the image. It also shows a peak at the right edge - a sign that some of the highlights have turned completely white (burnt out) and therefore lost all detail. This is a typical of an image which has been over exposed.

This one shows a gap at both ends of the histogram meaning that the scene was probably quite low in contrast to start with. Although this might accurately show what was taken, you can stretch out the histogram to cover the whole tonal range to give a more vibrant image (as shown in the boat pictures on the previous page).

The histograms on the previous page show the range of luminance values in the image. Although this is great for checking the general exposure of an image, it is sometimes useful to be able to look at the histograms for individual colour channels. All good imaging software should enable you to do this. The image on the right shows the separate RGB histogram from Adobe Camera RAW (part of Photoshop). As all three are shown on one graph, the combined colour is shown where two overlap, and white where all three overlap. The image below it shows the same RGB histograms as they are displayed in Paint Shop Pro which has the added flexibility of being able to display histograms for hue, saturation, lightness and greyscale (another name for luminance). Regions where an individual colour channel have become clipped lose all texture in that colour. However if the other 2 channels have not been clipped, some luminance texture may remain.