Chez Spud

Such a boring topic, such a boring task…such a LIFE SAVER when your ‘puter collapses one day taking with it all your photos…gone forever in the blink of the blue screen of death. Unless you’ve cleverly been systematically backing up your hard drive in which case, TA DA, with the flick of a switch, your photos and your sanity are restored.

Lovely Charlotte asked me to do a Camera Club post about backing up. I would link to her blog, or her Flickr page but [deep intake of breath] she doesn’t have either. How puzzling. How can she even be real if she doesn’t have an extensive online persona? Anyway, waves cheerily at Charlotte who is probably reading this post at work in which case she should read this post about clearing up your digital dirt…

Back to backing up. I’m sure there are ‘approved ways’ of backing up but I only know the way I do it and it goes like this:

I use Lightroom to catalogue all my photos. I used to use iPhoto but it drove me totally insane, I hated it. Lightroom is my friend and saviour now. What I love about Lightroom is that it keeps a thumbnail of all your images as part of its catalogue so, even if you have removed the photos from your working harddrive on to your backup drive, you can still SEE a thumbnail of your entire catalogue. This makes finding individual ‘old’ photos and restoring them if you suddenly need them a doddle.

Thus, the Lightroom catalogue (like an index of all the photos you have) is CRITICALLY important, not far off being as important as the actual files themselves. So I back up the catalogue every time I open Lightroom, which is a couple of times a day usually. I’m only backing it up on to my working hardrive (ie the one on my laptop) but it’s worth doing as the catalogue ‘can’ become corrupt so it’s good to have a recent backup available.

Then, I back up my entire hard drive on to an external drive once a week and immediately after I’ve imported vital photos from my camera to Lightroom (such shoots for paying clients, or irreplaceable shots like birthdays etc). I only delete such photos from my camera once I’ve imported them to Lightroom, and backed up my entire hard drive (which is creating a backup of the catalogue AND the actual files).

Every now and again, MrSpud creates a second backup on our Big Server. I don’t know much about the Big Server. I don’t think I need to. The point is, I have TWO back ups of my hard drive.

Flickr and my blog serve as an additional backup I suppose since, should I lose my laptop, my external hard drive AND the Big Server then I could recover my favourite and my best from the web. But, and here’s the rub, I don’t think we can assume that the internet will be anything like it is now in the future. Even in 10 years I bet the technology of today will be obsolete. Presumably we’d get some notice that our current files were about to become unusable but who knows. Who knows how long jpegs will remain as the ‘standard’?

Which brings me to my final point. Hard copies. Yes, Old Skool hard copies are the ultimate backup. They’ll never be overwritten, or become obsolete. And the charm of flicking through an album will surely never go out of date. I’ve been meaning to have Blurb books made for each of the boys for the past few months. Luckily I got an email today from Blurb declaring July to be ‘Digital Photo Liberation’ month with a very attractive 20% (worldwide) code. I’m not sure if I am allowed to repost the code here, but there is an option to ‘email this to a friend’. So if you’re wanting to join me in frantically making Blurb books this month, leave me a comment and I’ll forward the email with the discount to you.

And that brings the dull but necessary topic of backing up to a close. Be kind to your mental health. Get an external hard drive and back up once a week. I thank you.

xx

PS This is my external hard drive. I call it the Black Box. I don’t know what the Big Server is. It’s Big and it’s a Server. I think that’s all we need to know.

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

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• Camera Club: Uncle Bob Blues or How to be the Perfect Wedding Guest
• CCC: Guest post…Amber on ‘Shooting Stars’

Ooooh Camera Club, haven’t done this for a while…have the biscuits gone stale in our absence? Should we get the club going again? Anyone need any help with anything, got a question…if so please leave a comment and I’ll wrap them up in subsequent Camera Club post. I’ve had a few email questions recently too, perhaps I’ll bundle those discussions in to the post too.

So, what did I learn this week? I’ve been doing a photoshoot this week for Gallery Thea, a lovely local ceramics shop and below are just a few of the shots. Thea needed a portfolio of images for promotional purposes: general shots of the gallery, product shots of specific items and some portraits of her. I did two separate shoots; one in the gallery (general shots and portraits) and another at home in my make very shift ‘studio’ (product shots).

The shoot in the gallery was reasonably straightforward, although the light towards the back of the shop is a bit challenging…a little dark and a little ‘yellow’ too. Ideally I’d have turned the lights off for the shot above, but the light was too gloomy back there to take it without an additional light source. Hmm, an additional light source that isn’t overhead spots that can be moved around and controlled…where could I get such a thing?

Conversely, the light at the front of the shop (where there is a lovely big bay window) was very bright, a little harsh in fact although it suits Thea’s white/brights ceramics quite well.  I think something up at the window to diffuse the light would have helped. I know that clear shower curtains are often suggested, and I’d considered taking one along but I couldn’t think how I’d fix it up easily and quickly. Later I discovered that bubble wrap would have been perfect, and one thing a ceramics shop isn’t short of is rolls and rolls of bubble wrap!

We tried some portraits of Thea seated in the window. The light is a bit hard on the side of her face, but we used a gold reflector which has dealt with the worst of the harsh light and also given Thea a nice warm ‘glowy’ look. She’s a bit camera shy, actually she’s very camera shy. I think the portrait shoot was like a kind of living nightmare for her, poor thing! Me: “OK, look up, slightly to the left, lift your chin…ok, try not to look suicidal….” She really didn’t want a traditional head and shoulders looking at the camera and cheesy smile shot, so we went for a more relaxed/candid style. There are lots more portraits but I’ll spare her blushes (by the way, I do have her permission to write this post!).

Lesson I wish I had learnt: how to fold up that damn reflector. It’s a huge circle, it’s supposed to collapse in to a much smaller circle to make it easier to carry around. The only person who knows how to do it is my 4 year old….

Another one taken in the window, with the decorations in the background diffusing the light. By now I was realising that, as I’d feared, ceramics are pretty hard to shoot. They are have a high gloss finish which means they are very reflective, and achieving perfect focus and dealing with the reflections and shadows was a challenge.

Fast forward to later that day, at home, and I start to set up my ‘studio’ to do some product shots (nursery sets and name pictures).  We’d decided that Thea would create some hand-drawn wallpaper to use as a backdrop for the product shots. But we hadn’t really discussed how I should do the set up, or exactly what kind of props I might use. It’s quickly became apparent that I was going to have to experiment with a couple of set ups, take some test shots and get some feedback before doing the shoot ‘for real’. I also spent some time chasing some good light around the house before, finally, settling on the floor of a bedroom. Very professional!

One of the issues the test shots raised was the wallpaper. It wasn’t wide enough, really, to cope with the set up we wanted….and it wasn’t ‘busy’ enough in terms of motifs. It didn’t matter how I tried to rearrange the ceramics on the paper, I would end up with big white gaps. The solution was for me to get busy with a scalpel and cut out some of the motifs and stick them in the gaps. If you look, you can pretty easily spot which ones are ‘stuck’ on. But at the size these images will be used (small) it shouldn’t be obvious. Lesson: probably it would be easier to shoot these kind of ‘set up’ shots with the client present, so they can get busy with a bit of colouring in as necessary.

The other issue was, again, the lack of controllable, even light. The lighting isn’t bad for natural light, diffused with bubble wrap at the windows, but it’s not even, the shadows aren’t really where I’d want them to be and I was at the mercy of the big shiny thing in the sky playing ball and shining. Ponders again…how can I ensure even, controllable light which doesn’t push off for months at a time?

The other problem was that I’d had to push the ISO up to deal with the relative lack of light. That’s made for some pretty chunky jpeg files to deal with. On the plus side, the lovely full-format D700 handles high ISO so well that noise hasn’t become an issue.

Finally, I moved on to the name pictures. Again, the test shots showed the wallpaper had some issues…same thing again, not really wide enough and not busy enough. That, plus slightly creamy coloured tiles and a pure white frame made these pictures especially challenging. I’d thought the reflections might be easier to handle on a ‘flat’ item like this, but in fact it was worse. The set up for these pictures took absolutely ages, I just couldn’t find a way of showcasing the product in a way that wasn’t totally flat and boring, whilst working around the wallpaper issue. After a lot of fiddling around and swearing, I finally settled on the angled approach shown above.

Other things I learned: product shots involve a LOT of blue tack. Blue tack to hold background paper in place, to hold products in place, to hold eggs in egg cups to stop them disappering. It also involves random items from around the house studio….a jar of mustard to prop the plate up…a block from the boys’ toy box to rest the name picture on to angle it up…slippers and bottles of perfume to stop the paper rolling up in to shot. It was all very high tech!

But what I really learned is that, much as I adore natural light, I’m going to have to use flash in the future for these kinds of shoots. I need to be able to have a reliable, controllable, portable source of light.

With thanks to Thea for being a super client. Looking forward to the next shoot. With flash (a-aah he’ll save every one of us).

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I’m just two photos away from completing my first Photo-A-Day 365 project WHOOPEEE and, despite vowing not to do it again, it seems I’m hooked on the damn thing. So, Photo-A-Day 2010 here I come! Julochka has started a new Flickr group for us bleeps here so if you’d like to play along and join the Blog Camp 365 group, please click on the link to ‘join this group’ and we’ll let you in. We’re quite keen to limit membership to ‘known’ bloggy pals at first so if you could mention who you are, how you found us and/or your blog URL that would be helpful.

Very few rules for the group…in short (a) take a photo every day and (b) post it to the group when you feel like it. From experience, I would suggest you upload them as regularly as you can. It’s SUCH a chore doing it in large batches! It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the task if you need to sort/upload more than a couple at a time. Also, it’s fun to write a little commentary for each photo…it helps bring the photo alive for the viewer, and it means you’ll quickly build up a photojournal of your year. Plus, it’s great material for your blog.  Think about how you’d like to catalogue your photos in advance. I’ve done mine by month (so I have sets for PAD January 2009, PAD February 2009 etc etc) but you might want to create one set called ‘Photo-A-Day 365 2010′. Finally, tag your photos! It takes about 30 seconds but will save you all kinds of bother later on when you are searching for a photo you want to look at, or use on your blog, but can’t remember when you took it. You just need to add a few words to describe the photo.

I have mostly enjoyed the Photo-A-Day project in 2009, but there have been times when it’s felt like a total slog and I’ve wanted to give up. It’s HARD to take a really interesting, creative photo every day. It’s good to have a few ideas up your sleeve for shots you can set up when inspiration is low, or use Flickr as a source of inspiration.

But I really recommend it. Nothing has improved my photos more than regular practice, and the discipline of the 365 project forces you to practice and try different things. And it doesn’t mean you need a fancy big girl camera either, that’s not an excuse!

Enough preaching. Here is the first photo of my 365 project….um, not very good is it?

And here is a picture of the same top, taken a few weeks ago…phew, it’s an improvement! So strap your camera to your face, join the Blog Camp 365 group and get clicking.

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Haven’t done one of these for a while, and I thought it was time. In the last Camera Club meeting I mentioned shooting in RAW in passing and then thought it might be worth more than a casual nod in its general direction.

I suspect this is one of ‘those’ topics where everyone is going to have their personal views on what is ‘best’. So I’m going to dive in immediately and say there is no ‘best’, only what works for you.  I started off with my Big Girl’s Camera by shooting in JPEG +FINE (i.e getting the camera to record the image, process it as a JPEG at its highest quality and saving it as such). When I started to use Lightroom/Photoshop to process my images, I switched to shooting exclusively in RAW (as this means I can manipulate the image with as much flexibility as possible without losing data, see below). That said, I often wonder if I’m being overly precious by shooting in RAW all the time as there are downsides (see below), and I think I could get over myself and shoot in JPEG + FINE on many an occasion. The trouble is, I’m addicted to RAW. Because nothing on the planet allows you to rescue a ‘ruined’ shot as much as RAW. It’s hard to walk away from that.

I considered writing a whole big blurb on this topic but decided to let Eliza Claire do the talking as she explained it very clearly on a discussion on Flickr. In her own words:

You always have to process RAW files. They’re basically the image exactly as the camera sees it. JPEGS are compressed and edited in camera.

RAW files are, by their nature, flat and lacking contrast. You have to process to get the contrast back.

The advantage of RAW is that you’re using the full file, every single piece of information that the camera records.

When you shoot in RAW  and, assuming your camera records 12 bits of data, your camera records 4096 shades of red, 4096 shades of blue and 4096 shades of green. If it’s 100% red, 100% blue and 100% green, it’s white. If it’s 0% of all it’s black. If you have a fancier camera which records 14 bits of data, then it will record 16,384 shades of each colour.

When you shoot in JPEG, your camera processes to give 256 shades of each colour. The camera is deciding what shades are most important to you (based on the light in Japan, funnily enough, as the processors are Japanese)

So… if you are shooting in RAW and want to adjust the colour, or the white balance, or pull the exposure up or down, you have far more shades available to play with – so you end up with much less noisy images. When you edit, you’re asking the computer to guess, based on what’s there, what you want the image to look like. With more information there, it makes a better guess.

It’s easy to do a basic edit of a raw file. I edit all my files in RAW then PSD (psd is lossless compression, so keeping all those 16,384 tones of each colour). When fully edited, I then convert to JPEG. At this point, it does take the quality away, but the human eye wouldn’t detect this, at this final stage, because I’ve got the result I want and I’m not going to be tweaking any further.

(more…)

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• CCC: Guest post…Amber on ‘Shooting Stars’

Introducing Eliza Claire aka Liz…wedding, portrait, boudoir and trash the dress photographer extraordinaire. That’s her in the photo above, suffering for her art. That little hand in the top right is her daughter’s; she was sitting on mummy’s back using her camera strap as reins and doing ‘gee up horsey’…waaaah! I asked Liz to write a guest post for us about how get get good shots at weddings, although her excellent advice would work well at any type of formal event.

Head on over to Liz’s website Eliza Claire Photography for a nose at her portfolio of wonderful, wonderful shots. Don’t know what trash the dress is? Well then definitely check out this part of her site, it’s a lot of fun…don’t know what to do with that wedding/prom dress sitting in your cupboard? Well Liz can help you out with that…not sure what to buy the man who has everything? Well, um, look here for a gift with a personal touch, although you might want to limit such gifts to your other half rather than your Uncle Bob…speaking of which…over to Liz:

Uncle Bob

Dictionary: un·cle bob ?ng‘k?l b?b (f – Aunt Sue)

n. (American Colloquialism) The guy (or woman) usually found at a wedding, with a camera which is sometimes better than the hired professional’s, sometimes the oldest point and shoot camera there.  What distinguishes the Uncle Bob from the majority of guests, is his attitude.  Uncle Bob will typically believe that he is superior in knowledge and skill to the hired photographer, and will interfere with, obstruct, direct and make difficult the hired professional’s job.

Most wedding photographers have come across one or two ‘Uncle Bob’s’.  Let me tell you my ‘Uncle Bob’ story.  My story involves a bride, a groom a primary photographer and two second shooters. Oh, and the overzealous guest.  We knew she might be trouble when we saw her.  Or, more correctly, when we saw her two semi-pro Nikon cameras – one slung over each shoulder.  She meant business:

And, sure enough, it wasn’t long before she joined us and the bride, and started to direct her own shoot (including one pose that involved both her and the bride lying on the grass)  I imagine that she took some great photos, but her impromptu photo-shoot did mean that dinner was considerably delayed for the other guests.

But how can you avoid being thus-labelled while still taking photos at your friends’ wedding? Because, let’s face it, we all love taking photos and a wedding, with all of your friends and family dressed up and in the best of moods, is the perfect time to do so.  We all want to record their big day in our own way.  I know I do and, even when I’m not working, my camera is never far from my side.

Well, it’s really quite simple – remember that the day is about the bride and groom.  This is just as true a reminder for some wedding professionals who believe that their photos are, not just important, but an integral part of the day! So don’t hold up the proceedings, be considerate and courteous to everyone (including the photographer who’s been paid to capture the bride and groom’s day)

The ideal guest captures the moments that I miss.  Generally, I work alone and, naturally, I cannot be in all places at once.  So, when I’m taking photos of the happy couple with their families, look out for the shot of the bridesmaids hugging, or gran wiping tears away while proudly watching her grandson and his new wife.  Those are the shots that your friends will cherish.

When taking candid photos, a shallow depth of field helps to isolate the subject from the background, but remember that if you’re taking a photo of a small group of people, an aperture of f2.8 may mean that people further away from the focus point won’t be in focus – I would recommend using the Depth of Field Preview button in these situations, just to be sure.  An aperture of f8 is always safe!

Getting the right settings is always going to be about balancing shutter speed and aperture, never more so than in a dark church.  So put your ISO up high and shoot with as small an aperture as you need to keep the shutter speed over (about)  1/100^th of a second.

Avoid using flash during key moments, because your flash could blow out the official photos, as well as those of other guests.  Many religious ministers and some civil officiates actually ban flash these days, as it’s so distracting to them.  When cutting the cake I always ask the DJ to announce that I will take my shot first, then invite guests to take theirs – again, not to annoy you, but to ensure that your flash doesn’t blow out my photo.  When we’re all trying to capture the same moment, it’s easy for this to happen.

Look for different angles, for shapes and symmetry.  Try shooting from above or below the normal line of sight – it makes for far more interesting photos.

We’ve all heard stories of guests whose photos have captured the wedding far better than the professional, but your if friends have hired me to do a job for them, then I will be working hard to do so.  Please give me the space to do so to the very best of my ability – don’t stand in the aisle during the ceremony (as many guests do), try not to stand directly behind the bride and groom when they’re having portraits taken, certainly don’t, as one photographer I know experienced, join the bride and groom at the altar.   Stay seated during the ceremony, otherwise you risk distracting the bride and groom, the other guests, and cutting across the hired photographer’s photos.

Finally, have fun! Come out from behind the camera occasionally and see life, not through a lens, but up close and personal.  Record the memories, but be a part of those memories too.

Finally, a couple of photos that I love, that wouldn’t have been possible to capture if it wasn’t for the guests keen on photography.  So don’t stop taking your photos, just don’t turn into Uncle Bob!

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Apologies, this question has been lurking for a while. Amanda asked a while back about how we can protect our images online, to prevent others using them.

In short, there is no truly effective way of preventing someone who is very skilled and determined helping themselves to your images. So the basic rule is ‘if in doubt, leave it out’. If you’re anxious about your images being taken, for whatever reason, then don’t post them online.

Some basic precautions are to make use of any security options available to you. For example, on Flickr, you can change your account settings so that no one can download your images, no one can blog your images, only small sizes of your images are available for view. You can change the copyright options so that your images are protected under copyright law, rather than the Flickr ‘creative commons’ license option which allows anyone to use your images as long as they are appropriately credited. You can even prevent people blogging your images (gasp!).

If you’re very whizzy and hosting your own site you could fiddle with the javascript to prevent ‘right clicking’ on your images so they can’t be downloaded. But then there are ways around that too apparently. I won’t pretend to understand it! Perhaps you can do this on non self-hosted sites? Who knows? It’s worth bearing in mind that you can’t stop people doing a screen grab of any image, and then ‘cutting it out’ and manipulating it using Photoshop or other such package.

You could also add a watermark to your images, something which clearly identifies the image as belonging to you and which, in theory, deters others from circumventing your efforts to make your images downloadable. But a very evil robber may attempt to work around a watermark in Photoshop or some such. It’s not foolproof alas.

Finally you could upload low resolution versions of your photos so that they don’t print well, should anyone manage to download the image. Personally this doesn’t work for me as I print my photos via Flickr and thus like them to be high resolution for printing purposes.

I guess the question to ask yourself is ‘Why am I concerned about my images being stolen?’ and that will help you decide whether to post your images online at all, or which ones you are happy to put up. If you make money from your photos then the risk of your images being stolen is a serious commercial issue. Otherwise, whilst very irritating to have your work snitched, I guess you have to decide whether you can live with it. If you’re worried about images of your children being available to the masses, then my advice would be not to put them on the internet in the first place. The last issue is a difficult one and I’ve been back and forth about making photos of the Megaboys publicly available. I can’t really offer any thoughts though as I think it’s a very personal choice.

What have I missed? What other ways can we protect our photos? In the end I guess it’s finding a middle ground that you’re comfortable with…we want to share our photos with friends and family, bring our blogs to life with lovely images, but there is always the risk of skulduggery lurking in the shadows.

QuickTip!

When you’re taking a picture of someone, get in close…closer…yes, closer…get in SO close that their face fills in the frame. Sometimes it’s great to have a portrait with ‘space’ around it, to put the person in context. But sometimes that can be rather distracting, especially if the background is pretty busy. So get in close and then snap!

Also, when you’re shooting from the side as in the above portrait…focus on the eye nearest you. Your eye is naturally drawn to the part of the face that is nearer, you, the viewer…so that’s the bit you want in focus.

Question – I need your feedback people!

Lots of you have asked for tips on photographing children, and I’m delighted to say I’ve got the lovely Nadia Swindell to guest blog on this topic in a couple of weeks. She’s planning a first post on general tips for getting good portraits of children, but wants to know if a follow up post on basic Photoshop tips for processing portraits would be helpful? What do you think? I would LOVE to read her tips, but I don’t want to ask her to do two posts unless there is a real enthusiasm for basic Photoshop help? Let me know.

In the meantime please do take a look at her site, her portrait work is absolutely stunning. I’m SO thrilled she’s agreed to guest blog!

Part 6 of CCC was posted yesterday, a mahoooooooosive post about reducing camera shake and blurry photos. Catch up here if you missed it. And don’t do it again, OK? xx

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Quiet please at the back…I declare this meeting of the CCC open for business. Be a love and stick the kettle on and pass the biscuits around would you?

I’ve got a couple of questions lurking from previous meetings but I’m going to tackle just one today, and then throw in some random quick tips for good measure. Usual health warning: I’m not a professional, I’m still very much a learner, quite possibly some things that I say are not technically brilliant…I’m just sharing what works for me. But I would love to be corrected if I post a howler…please do jump in and point and stare and laugh when I get it really wrong. I would hate to be sharing utter twaddle with you and I need to learn too.

So the topic for today is, ‘How to avoid camera shake and the resultant blurry photos”.

Avoiding camera shake

Do you get loads of blurry pictures like the one above? Yeah, me too. Oddly I quite like that photo but that’s not the issue here. Blurry…baaaaaaad….nice and sharp and in focus….goooooooood. But why do we get so many blurry photos? Even just ‘slightly’ blurred is so disappointing and dispiriting. Two reasons (1) because WE cause it by holding the camera badly while shooting and (2) because the CAMERA causes it by not being able to produce a sharp image because of the settings we are using and/or the available light that we are asking it to work in. Damn, I tried so hard to blame at least 50% of the problem on the camera. Seems like it’s all our fault. I hate that.

Let’s start with making sure we’re holding the camera in a way to minimise the wobbles. Ideally, we’d all be using a tripod for every, single shot that we take, engaging the mirror lock up facility and using a shutter release cable or remote instead actually, screams, touching the shutter release button. Professionals do. But then who has the energy, mental head space or bag space for that? But using a tripod is the single best thing you can do to reduce the wobbles. Sorry about that.

So assuming we are all normal human beings who don’t float about with a tripod about our person 24/7, we need to do everything that we can to become HUMAN tripods when we’re snapping away because, in short, we need to move less when we press the shutter. We need to root ourselves wherever we are shooting to give our cameras a solid support, if you have a spare leg you might want to use it but the rest of us will have to make the best of the two that we have.

Here’s the Wife using her knee (not the pig!) for support, and using her other arm to counter-balance:

Practical things we can do to become tripod like:

• If you’re standing up, lean on something…a wall, a doorway, a post, a postbox, a passing hottie…
• Plant your feet firmly on the ground a couple of feet apart, tuck your arms and elbows in close…no flapping wings
• Ideally, don’t stand up…standing is the least stable position for human tripods, lots of moving/bending/swaying opportunities. Try sitting, squatting (ouch hurty legs), kneeling and lying down. All of these reduce the risk of the wobbles as well as, often, giving a more interesting perspective anyway.
• Whenever you can, rest your camera on something…a fence, a car bonnet, a wall. Or rest your arms on something..anything you can do which involves leaning your weight and your limbs on to something solid will help you keep your camera still.

Next tip, hold your breath when you press the shutter. Sounds mad doesn’t it? But when you’re working in challenging ‘oh no I mustn’t wobble’ conditions then every little thing you can do helps. So, you plant yourself, tuck in your elbows, lean in to your passing hottie, take a deep breath and hold it…and only then do you take the photo.

This one is obvious but, in addition to all the above, you need to press the shutter s…l…o…w…l…y.  Also, think about pressing the shutter half way down first (which fixes the focus) and only then push it all the way down. This is good practice anyway, it ensures the camera has fixed focus (assuming you have it on auto focus and haven’t gone off-piste and are manually focusing) and stops us ‘jabbing’ at the shutter thus causing wobbles.

Another obvious point…if there isn’t much light around, make some! Turn some lamps on, use an anglepoise lamp to direct light where you want it, use a torch…just don’t use your camera flash (more on this later).

I could go on and on. But I think I’ve covered the basics. Try reading here for some more advanced techniques and also for admiring that VAST lens! I particularly like the point about lying on the floor, and how to get your lens off the ground (for DSLR users). I took this one with the camera resting on the beach, and used pebbles to build up a ‘stand’ for the lens:

Moving on…the second wobbly problem is that we ask our cameras to produce well exposed, sharp as a pin photos in difficult lighting conditions (by which I mean, low light). It’s relatively easy to get wobble free, sharp images in good light but when the light drops this is a HUGE ask for our cameras, no matter how fancy.

The explanation is going to get technical I’m afraid; when the light is low the camera needs to let as much light as possible in to produce a well exposed image. To do that, it wants to have the aperture wide open and the shutter speed fairly slow. Having a wide aperture (i.e. a big opening in the lens to let lots of light in) dictates how much light is allowed to hit the camera sensor, having a slow shutter speed (ie. how long the shutter is left open for) dictates how long the light is allowed to hit the camera sensor.

Still with me? In simple terms; if it’s quite dark, the camera still wants to produce a nice photo for you but is screaming for light to be able to do that and wants it by allowing a lot of light in for a a long time. So far so good BUT there is a downside…wide aperture + slow shutter speed = high risk of blurry photos. Curses!

Solutions? If you have a P&S stick on the ‘night shooting’ mode and you’re done. Ta da. Got a big fancy camera? Then you’re going to have to have a big fancy solution.

1. Adjust your ISO. The general rule is to keep your ISO as low as possible (generally 100 or 200) as this keeps your images nice and ‘clean’. But low light means you need to make your camera sensor more sensitive to light, so you increase the ISO. It’s trial and error in terms of what number to raise it too. Personally I start at 400 and work up from there. It’s tempting just to stick it on the highest ISO your camera offers but the goal is get a well exposed, not blurry photo at the lowest possible ISO you can get away with. The reasoning being that high ISOs produce ‘noisy’ (grainy) images, and the higher the ISO the worse the ‘noise’ will be.

This is taken at ISO 400

At ISO 1000 (early on Christmas morning, opening stockings by lamp light), it’s a bit noisy:

And this at ISO 1600, lit by firelight only, very noisy!

2. Use the ‘fastest’ lens you’ve got (i.e a lens with a big maximum aperture, one that enables you to let as much light in as possible). I’m straying in to our next guest blog, but big apertures have small numbers (like 1.4, 1.8, 2.8) and small apertures have big numbers (like 16, 22 etc). Confusing huh? This was taken at f1.4:

3. Start by putting your camera on aperture priority and open the lens up wide, as wide as it will go if necessary. Ideally you’d want it a couple of stops lower than its maximum aperture as this the lenses ‘sharpest’ place to be. Having bumped up the ISO will mean your camera will select a faster shutter speed than you might expect, but that’s ok. We WANT a faster shutter speed to stop the wobbles!

This was taken in aperture priority at f1.8:

4. Check your LCD display. Still looking a bit wobbly? Deploy the exposure compensation button, stop it down a little (0.3, or 0.7) and this will increase the shutter speed again. Downside could be that you end up with an underexposed (too dark) image.

This was taken at f2.8, ISO 800…it’s still a bit blurred though:

5. If you’re SUPER fancy, shoot in RAW so that you can fiddle easily with the exposure/noise issues later on.

6. Finally, it’s worth shooting in ‘burst mode’. That means that when you press the shutter down the camera will take multiple shots until you take your finger off the button. This just means you have more chances of getting one that’s in focus! NB…if you are shooting in RAW your camera will stop after a couple of shots to ‘process’ what it’s taken before shooting some more.

But wait! There’s something missing…what about flash? All of the above are tactics to use to get sharp, well exposed images without using flash. Flash is not our friend really. It will nearly always result in sharp images, but ugly and ‘flat’ looking ones with horrible shadows (unless you are SUPER SUPER fancy and have off-camera flash, strobes etc etc). The flash on your camera, no matter how fancy, makes ugly photos. Fact.

However, there are times when capturing the moment is more important than fiddling around trying to get the camera settings right, and missing the moment altogether. I chuck this in as a general piece of advice…we’re not professionals, we’re not making our living from photography, we’re just learning and trying to improve our snaps. But it’s more important, in my view, to capture those milestones and moments of life any way you can. So if it’s speed you need….stick your camera on auto and just snap away. When you’re old and looking through your photos you’ll be glad that you did.

QuickTips!

If you’re shooting a landscape scene, don’t put the horizon in the middle of the shot. It just cuts the image in half, literally. Decide which bit of what you’re looking at is more interesting, the foreground or the sky…then let the more interesting bit dominate the composition.

On a related point, don’t always put your subject in the middle of your image. If you feel like it, read up on the rule of thirds. Or just experiment and see what you like.

A note on camera . Buy a spare one, it’s really worth it so that you are never stuck with a dead battery and the shot of a lifetime staring you in the face. They’re not expensive, get them on Ebay. Then get in to a routine of immediately charging the dead one as you take it out of the camera. This is more important in the Winter…cold weather drains batteries faster!

Phew that’s all folks. More soon. Keep snapping xx

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

Random photo choice for this post, I just like it…Diggy with Bertie’s new chainsaw, he LOVES it. It’s surprisingly authentic in terms of the noise and motion of it. Which make it all the more alarming when he trots up to you and says, “I’m going to cut you small…[cuts nearest limb]….THERE Y’ARE!”.

Right, next edition of CCC is coming later today. I have a few questions lurking from previous posts, so I’ll tackle those, chuck in a few QuickTips and I also have a few more online photography resources to share.

Coming later in the week…a guest post on the Holy Trinity or, as I grandly like to call it, the Veritable Triumvirate of exposure…(1) aperture, (2) shutter speed and (3) ISO. I gave an impromptu tutorial on these Three Graces during Blog Camp 2.0 but I’ve decided to bring out the big guns for a blog post on this meaty topic. I’m delighted that Robin of Bird Tweets didn’t mind me getting her in a headlock and forcing her to agree to guest blog for us, hoorah. While we wait for her post, get over to her blog and salivate at her gorgeous shots.

So, last chance, any more questions? Shout now and I’ll answer them later today.

Over and out snappers! x

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

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

• CCC: Guest post…Amber on ‘Shooting Stars’
• CCC Part 3: Guest Blogger Aswirly on Point & Shoots
• Gone blogging
• Camera Club: Backing Up
• Guest blogging