Enticing this horse closer with some feed in my left hand, I used my camera auto-everything with my other hand. Using a wide-angle zoom setting created this intriguingly distorted portrait. This image is my entry for the Alive for 365 project this week.
This was one of the first images I took with my then-new Pentax Z-1 / PZ-1 camera. I had dropped my beloved Pentax Super-A onto hard concrete from my camera bag and utterly destroyed it. What better way to console yourself by replacing a good camera with something spectacular. In fact, I’d still rate the Pentax Z-1 / PZ-1 as one of the best cameras I’ve ever used.
When I saw this dramatic sky with the approaching storm during our recent shoot at Coney Island, I knew I wanted to photograph our model against it. By the time I actually started taking photos, the raindrops were already spattering around us. So there was little time to work.
I knew I wanted a brooding sky. Now, depending on how I chose my exposure, I could’ve had a much the sky appear much brighter, or just a little bit brighter than shown here. There’s a whole range of possibilities in how I could’ve exposed for my background, and we can choose a wide range of settings. In this sense there really isn’t any “incorrect exposure” for this particular background. Of course, it doesn’t make sense to choose our settings such that we’d over-expose our model.
This is idea holds true while we consider the sky as our main background. The street areas, and the amusement park areas are indeed under-exposed. They do appear too dark if I had chosen that as my specific background. But the sky as such, isn’t under-exposed. This might seem a semantic difference, but it is an important distinction to make, in that quite often there is no specific under- or over-exposure, but just a way that YOU decide to expose for certain tones. I simple chose to expose for the sky as darker tones. And I could’ve placed them “anywhere”, even as near-black.
Since today is apparently Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day, I thought it would be good timing for this guest spot by Stephanie Zettl on the topic of digital pinhole photography.
(I know, it’s the first I’ve heard about it being worldwide pinhole photography day,
but let’s just run with the idea anyway.)
A digital pinhole camera: A little bit of art, a little bit of science and a whole lot of fun.
Confession: I spend a lot of time drooling over new equipment and lenses. I’m always looking for that super sharp lens that lets me see every eyelash of the person I’m photographing. I’d rather have gifts of good glass than jewelry and I believe that the equipment you have does affect your style of shooting.
So when someone sent me an invitation to participate in Worldwide Pinhole Photography day on April 25th, I jumped right on it. It would be both a challenge and educational to work with a primitive camera – a camera without a lens …
How does a pinhole camera work?
The simple definition of pinhole cameras is a light proof box that has a very small hole at one side of the box. Light from a scene passes through the hole, or the center of projection, and projects an inverted image on the other side of the box. That other side of the box is where the piece of film goes to record the image.
The smaller the hole the sharper the image will be. However, since there is no real focus, the image is characteristically soft and the “sharpness” is uniform throughout the image. There is no visible limitation of depth of field.
Since I didn’t want to be bothered with film or developer, I went ahead and converted my Nikon D700 digital camera to a pinhole camera …
You know how some days you have the feeling that the day is just filled with all kinds of possibilities? Today was one of those days. I got to meet and hang out with someone’s whose work I admire – Frank Doorhof. Frank is a fashion photographer from The Netherlands who is highly regarded for his lighting skills. He is currently visiting New York to present workshops on photography lighting. (In fact, there are still a few spots open for the Monday workshop.)
A mutual friend, Richard Verlaque, arranged for us to meet, with the intention of us also doing a photo shoot, and possibly exploring some of New York. The exploration of New York was mostly us just sitting in traffic though. But we did get to hang out and chat during the afternoon and over dinner. We also spent time photographing our model, Meagan, who met up with us in Coney Island. It was a great day, filled with interesting conversations about photography. Equally good was to watch Frank work and trying out new ideas. Thank you to Richard for arranging this, and to our patient model, Meagan.
An update to the site: There is now a page where all the camera and lens reviewsand equipment related posts will be linked from. An easy-to-find jump page. You can also find the link in the right-hand side blue column. More reviews to come!
And yes, that is the brand-new Canon 70-200mm f2.8 IS II there on the left hand side!
I’ll have a review up soon.
Readers of the Tangents site who own a Kindle might be interested to know that my book on on-camera flash photography techniques, is now available as a Kindle edition as well. Click on the image at the left to go to the Amazon page on the Kindle version of the book..
Even if you don’t have a Kindle, you can download Kindle for Mac, and read it on your computer. There’s also the Kindle application for iPhone and iPad, of course.
The first thing you might notice in this image is our super-cute model, Johannie.
Next you will probably notice either:
- the strange background pattern, (due to this lens’ bokeh),
- or the lighting on her, (a reflector),
- or the wafer-thin depth-of-field. (f1.4)
These are all inter-related in some way for this photo.
Canon E-TTL flash settings – Average vs Evaluative flash metering
With TTL flash, (or E-TTL, as Canon call their specific flavour), the camera and speedlight working together according to various algorithms to control the flash exposure. The E-TTL flash exposure will therefore depend on various factors – the tonality of the subject and scene; the brightness of the scene; and how the camera interprets the sections of the metering pattern. Other factors quite possibly also includes data from the lens. How these factors inter-relate, we can only make educated guesses; and many photographers have taken time and effort to do test shoots to see how the cameras and speedlights work.
To make things even more interesting, Canon offers two modes of E-TTL flash metering: Average and Evaluative. This is set on the camera body via the custom functions.
The way I understand this to work, is that with Evaluative flash metering, the Canon camera takes the ambient light into account when calculating the flash exposure. With Average flash metering, the flash metering would appear to be de-coupled from the ambient metering, and the camera is less biased by the available light. (I’m quite willing to be corrected on this.)
So which E-TTL flash exposure mode to use? Average or Evaluative?
In the end, I work in a fairly simplistic way …
I’m sure every photographer has this experience, where your shutter trips, and you just know you have the shot. Something that you see – whether anticipated or just lucky timing – and you capture it. This is how I felt when I captured this moment between Marie and Andrew at their wedding this weekend. I got it!
A bit of background to this image:
During a Catholic wedding service, there is a short time after the exchange of vows and rings, where the couple are seated again for the Mass. With everyone’s attention now on the priest and the rest of the proceedings, this is usually the moment where a couple have their first nearly-alone time. From experience, I know that invariably the couple will then steal glances at each other, or lean in to each other to talk. Or they might reach out with a momentary fingertip touch. Just a little something where they spontaneously show their connection with each other.
And this is how I was ready for this brief moment where Marie shaped an I-heart-you with her hands for Andrew.
In that sense this then is not a lucky shot. When you are photographing a wedding, or any other kind of event, whether news or sports or whatever it might be … the key to getting images that capture something essential about the event, is to be prepared, to observe, anticipate, and ‘read’ the event. It’s all about anticipation, awareness and timing. Those moments are there.
