Chez Spud

Happy Birthday lovely Anna…just turned 3! Look at her curls, look at the red, red hair…just perfect. AND she has the prettiest face, perfect creamy skin with freckles and chocolate coloured eyes. Gah, not fair….unfair distribution of pretties!

Thanks to you all for your lovely comments on Aswirly’s post on making the most of your point & shoot. What a great post! She inspired me to get my old P&S out and snap and, ta da, even get the manual out. Look at me…I’m taking my own advice. Yay.

Two quick things…lots of you are making me a contact on Flickr which is fabulous. Please do, and I will make you a contact too…that means I get a ‘feed’ of your most recent updates i.e. I can quickly view your most recent photos. If you’d like to make me a contact, please join Flickr follow this link and click ‘mark as contact’ on the top right. Once you’ve done that I will reciprocate. And then we’ll be Best Friends Forever, arrrrr xx

Secondly, you can now share photos with me and everyone else here on Chez Spud. Huzzah! Some of you have emailed me photos with questions, which is cool and I’m happy to help you. But, ideally, let’s share the photos/questions here so we can all learn. When you go to the ‘comments’ box on a post, scroll down…down below the google Friend Connect box….down there is a ‘You can add images to your comment by clicking here’ box. So, click there, and then add the URL of the image you need help with or just want to share because it’s fabulous! You’ll need to add a URL that has JPEG at the end of it! So, for Flickr users: upload photo, click on the photo. click on ‘all sizes’, click ‘medium’ in the available sizes, scroll down until you get to the ‘grab the photo’s URL’, copy it. Come back to Chez Spud and paste it. I know that sounds like SUCH a faff, but it’s the same routine I follow for uploading every photo I put here…it’s no big deal after the first time!

Enough..on with the questions

1. Jelica…this is brilliant! can we have a session at blog camp 2.0?

Thank you! Assuming you mean a photography session then, yes, absolutely. I would suggest you corner me before the wine/tequila comes out however. And that you frisk me for hidden axes…or Canons.

2. Joanna… I have a D50 with a Nikon 18-55mm lens and a Tamron 70-300mm. I’m recently ‘re-learning’ stuff I’ve forgotten from LBC (life before children).  At the moment I’m enjoying working on the ‘A’ setting and doing still life stuff at a very short depth of field, but at best I’m getting F5 as my smallest aperture. Is that as good as it’s going to get with my lens? What do I need to improve this? I’m very jealous on the short depth of field you’re achieving (for example the ‘Charlie and Lola’ presents wrapped up)

Ah, LBC…let’s take a moment to savour that memory. Hmmm, arrrh….eeeeesh. OK I’m over that now. Right, that Charlie & Lola (ahem actually Clarice Bean for the pedants!) was shot with my 50mm at f2.8. So, a reasonably shallow depth of field, but in fact it’s a crop of a MUCH larger image. I do that a lot if my original image is crap…I crop out the crap. ta da!

You need to tell me a bit more about the lenses, what is their f stop range? Which lenses are you using which mean the largest aperture is f5? I’m guessing the 70-300? If you have it at its max zoom then your maximum available aperture will be at the smaller end of its ‘advertised’ range. That sounds confusing; in brief, your maximum aperture with a zoom lens will be smaller of the range of apertures written on the lens. It’s nothing you’re doing wrong, it’s just a limitation of the lens! But tell me more about the lenses, tell me the aperture ranges.

Second question – I’ve (just about) grasped the relationship between shutter speed/ aperture but now marvel at how over exposure and ISO fit in? If I want a deep depth of field and but light is poor, what’s stopping me over exposing the image by +1.0 or so? I think ISO is also meant to help with exposure but no idea how?

Argh I know! So complex. I don’t properly understand this but I’m going to get Eliza_Claire (Crantock) to tackle this in a guest blog, she was talking a lot of sense about exposure compensation when I saw her last week. But, in brief, let’s think of exposure compensation as ‘fine tuning’ compared with changing the ISO and put it on one side for now.

Given the scenario you describe…you want a deep depth of field (ie. lots in focus, so you’re using a small aperture ie. with a big number like 11 or 16 or so) and the light is poor (but you don’t want to use flash)…then your first line of defense against blurry, under exposed pictures is to up the ISO. Remember film cameras? Remember when you bought 35mm film in different ‘speeds’? 100/200 for every day outside/well lit photos, 400 for shady/less well lit photos, 800 for poorly lit situations etc etc. It’s the same on your digital camera! Keep to 100/200 as much as you can…but when the light drops and you don’t want to use flash or open up your aperture (with its resultant reduction of depth of field i.e less will be in focus), then you increase your ISO. Most fancy cameras allow you to up it in increments. I do it old style and stick to 200/400/800 etc because I’m just boring like that.

3. Robin…wow!!! lots of info, lots of great ideas, answers and questions! are you going to invite me to be your star guest blogger? oh…. no?? dang. well i guess i will have to bow more deeply to ChairSpud and be a better bitch then eh?

Hey bitch! [cracks whip]…oh look! I just saw you offer to guest blog. Yay, will be in touch ;-)

4. Ali,,,OK….explain to me what exactly are macros? and how do I do it with the 18-55 VR… or am I pissing in the wind? Also macros, better to get closer to the subject or better to stand back and zoom – I have problems with focus and clarity.

OK macro is the art of taking photos of something ‘at least’ life size or, more usually, larger. So, most classically, it means those amazing shots of bugs and the like which seem dinosaur sized, but anything is fair game for macro photography (apart from my spots and wrinkles which are strictly off limits).  It’s SUCH a skill and involves buckets of patience, expensive lenses, tripods, thermos flasks of Nescafe and manual focusing skills extraordinaire. Which is why I’m crap at it…

More seriously, you can use any zoom lens as a macro lens because, um,  a zoon allows you to zoom in on a subject. Your 18-55 is a zoom, albeit not VERY zoomy. But it’s worth a go. But you’re going to need a tripod as any kind of camera shake (ie you wobbling about holding it, pressing the shutter etc) will make for a blurry image. I have lots of other tips for reducing camera shake…any takers? It’s quite a boring teccie subject but the best tip is to use a tripod. Also, you will need excellent light (but not in direct light as that will either make for an overexposed shot, or ugly shadows…sigh…why is this so HARD!). Um, and sometimes a tight crop of a well exposed, SHARP (focused) shot makes for an good, fake macro. Like this…a hard crop of a shot taken at f7.0, 150mm and 200 ISO:

That’s it for the questions for now. But keep them coming! Our next guest blog will be up in the next day or so. To finish up…

Quick Tip! Really, really basic one here but – erm – it’s taken me an embarrassingly long time to ‘get’ this one. Don’t take photos in the middle of the day. The light is harsh, it bleaches the colour out of everything, it casts unflattering shadows everywhere and it makes people screw their eyes up. No one’s a winner in the midday sun!  The light is ‘best’ just after and just before the sun comes up and goes down but life doesn’t work like that.  So, in every day terms, avoid the midday sun and use the softer light of early morning/late afternoon and evening where possible. For portraits, put people in the shade but watch out for shadows across their face.

Also, look out for secret ‘special’ light places. Hard to describe but, after 6 months of my Photo A Day Project (which has forced me to hunt around every day for interesting subjects/light)…I found a ‘gift’ of a place for late afternoon light in the spring/summer, at the back of our garden. I’d love to be able to describe what make it special but I can’t. Trial and error…trial and error…keep your eyes open…that’s my best advice!

If you liked that, you might like this ...

• Camera Club: Backing Up
• Camera Club: Special Edition…what I learnt this week
• Camera Club…roll up for a Photo-A-Day project in 2010
• Camera Club…RAW v JPEG
• Camera Club: Uncle Bob Blues or How to be the Perfect Wedding Guest