Looking down Lightroom’s Develop module toolbar, there are a lot of things you can alter in an image. Some of these, like the various brightening tools, seemingly cover the same problem areas but do so in different ways. A while ago, I wrote up a guide to the difference between exposure, brightness, and fill light.

Today, let’s look at two other similar but distinct tools: Vibrance and Saturation. They both effect the color of a photo, but you’ve probably been asking yourself… “What’s the difference?”

Keep reading…

You’re camera has a setting called “exposure compensation,” usually labeled or represented by “EV” and a + or a -. What is exposure compensation, and why would you want to use it?

When you leave the camera in an automatic or semi-automatic mode (i.e. Automatic, Aperture Priority, Shutter Speed Priority), you let the camera pick some or all of the settings that determine an image’s exposure. The camera has a built in light-meter, and it makes an educated guess as to how bright or dark the image should be.

Sometimes… the camera doesn’t know what you want, and it makes the wrong guess. Exposure compensation helps you adjust that guess without going to a full manual mode. If you set it to +1, you’re telling the camera, “Take your best guess, and then make everything a little brighter.” If you set it to -1, you’re telling the camera, “Take your best guess, and then make everything a little darker.”

Keep reading…

In the first part of this series on shooting in sunlight, we looked at how to position yourself properly and utilize the sun as a light. In this second part, let’s think about what is the best camera setting or mode to use when working outside in bright sunlight? Keep reading…

Aside from the exposure settings (aperture, shutter speed, ISO), there are a number of other important things to think about when using your camera. A lot of the time, you may not need to worry about them. But, when I go out to take photos at a sporting event, there are a series of settings that I routinely think about changing.

Here’s a quick rundown, so you can think about them next time too…

Autofocus Mode. On my Canon t1i, I can choose between One Shot Focus, AI Servo, or AI Focus (a hybrid of the two). Whenever I get ready to shoot sports, I immediately flip the autofocus mode to AI Servo. This tells the camera to continuously focus on the focus point until I take a picture, and the camera will continually refocus if the subject moves.

Why is this important? Well, in sports… people move. You also need to anticipate the action to get those good shots. So I spend a lot of time watching the game through the viewfinder with my finger halfway down on the shutter release button. This gets the camera to pre-focus on the moving subject, and when it’s action time I press the button down the rest of the way.

Autofocus Point Selection. On my Canon t1i, there are 9 focusing points. If you don’t change anything, the camera automatically selects which point it thinks it should focus on. Sometimes this works out, sometimes this doesn’t. If I’m shooting a group of people standing still, this isn’t a big deal. I can let go of the shutter release button, and let the camera choose a new focus point.

If, on the other hand, I’m in the middle of a football game… I don’t have time for second chances. When there are a lot of bodies around, I want to choose where the camera focuses. As a result, I generally manually choose a point, and it’s usually the center point. This way, the camera will focus on whatever I’m pointing the camera at.

In some sports (like wrestling), you don’t have to worry about the extra bodies and the camera will be able to do a much better job of picking out what it should focus on. As a result I’ve experimented with using the automatic point selection, because that frees me up from pointing the center of the lens directly at my subject.

This is potentially one of the biggest problems with not adjusting your settings for sports, though. If your camera is constantly guessing at the wrong focus point, try manual selection and see if that helps.

Continuous Shot. Continuous shot mode was made for sports. It’s hard to guess precisely when the best moment of action will be, and using continuous mode you can take two or three frames and hope that one of them comes out great.

Be careful how long you hold the shutter down, though. On the one hand, its a great way to fill up your memory cards too quickly. However, it can also fill up the internal memory (the buffer) on your camera and cause it to shut down for a few seconds until it finishes writing all the image data.

I found this out the hard way during a 55-meter shuttle hurdle race. In the race, a team of four sprinters take turns racing down a 55 meter stretch of track. The result is that in a matter of 20 to 25 seconds, four guys have zoomed by my camera and I’m trying to take pictures of all of them. I accidentally clipped off too many shots during the first leg of the relay, and the camera was struggling to empty the buffer and keep up for the rest of the (very brief) race.

Finally, Exposure. To me, the three settings above constitute “sports mode.” It gets my camera all set up to focus on action and take continuous shots. Once that’s done, I can worry about nailing down an acceptable exposure (or letting the camera do it in aperture-priority mode).

A very important setting, and one that my students often forget about, is the auto focus mode. In Canon, you’ve got three choices – One Shot, AI Focus (which we’re going to ignore for now) and AI Servo.

What’s the difference, and which should you use when?

Keep reading…

I was searching through the Google Analytics data for the site, and I found the following question come up as a search query…

What is the correct setting to eliminate motion blur with your digital camera?

Short answer: Fiddle with the shutter speed. Keep reading…

Yesterday, I wrote a quick post to define the term “raw image.” In that post, I suggested that the raw image file (the unprocessed image data) is two to three times as large as a jpeg file (a processed image file type). This is a rather basic description, though, so a little clarification is in order…

Raw images can be saved in one of two ways. They can be saved in proprietary file formats (formats specific to the camera manufacturer) or in a standardized file format. For example, my Canon t1i saves raw images as .CR2 files. These file types are specific to Canon cameras. However, I can also convert these files to .DNG files (Digital Negatives). The DNG format is a standardized format developed by Adobe. Keep reading…

On most cameras, you’ve got a handful of automatic of semi-automatic modes. One of those is usually Shutter Priority Mode. It’s usually identified with the Tv label on the settings dial. It might also be labeled simply with a “T” or an “S”.

In shutter priority mode, you select a shutter speed. The camera then automatically chooses an aperture value that gives you the proper exposure. This might be a good option if you want to control the amount of motion blur in the picture – choose a slow shutter (i.e. 1/30th of a second) and you can force the camera to capture a little blur. Choose a quick shutter (i.e. 1/250th of a second), and you’ll eliminate most of that blur. Keep reading…

When you look at the dial on top of your camera, there’s probably an option labeled ‘A’ or ‘Av.’ This is “aperture priority mode.”

So what is aperture priority mode?

It’s a semi-automatic mode for your camera. You pick one setting (the aperture), and the camera automatically adjusts the other settings to get the exposure right. This gives you a certain amount of control without forcing you to constantly adjust the settings to maintain exposure (as you would in manual). The camera will automatically choose an appropriate shutter speed (and an ISO level if you leave that on auto).

So When Should I Use It?

Well, that depends. Some people use it almost exclusively, while some people prefer the control of manual. Here are some reasons you might want to consider aperture priority mode…

The Light Keeps Changing. If the lighting level around you is constantly changing, the proper exposure for the camera is changing too. If you’re in manual mode, you’ll need to constantly change the settings yourself to stay within a decent exposure range. If the light changes often, this can be a real pain… and it can also be disastrous if you don’t have the time to make those adjustments.

For example, I was recently at my sister in laws wedding. I was sitting in the crowd, snapping a few pictures of the ceremony. It was outside, and it was mostly sunny – but a little cloudy. When the ceremony started, there was a cloud blocking the sun, which limited the amount of light in the scene. Just as she started to walk down the aisle, the sun came out… increasing the amount of light. With the camera in aperture priority mode, it automatically adjusted the shutter speed. If I had it in manual (which I often do), I would have either a) shot the picture and overexposed it or b) taken the time to adjust the settings and missed the moment. Hmm… neither of those outcomes is very good.

Control the Depth of Field. The aperture controls the depth of field in a picture. There are other semi-automatic modes on your camera (Programmable Auto and Shutter Priority Mode), but Aperture Priority is the proper choice if you want to maintain a certain depth of field. If you want a shallow depth of field, open up the aperture and let the camera pick a shutter speed. If you want a big depth of field, do the opposite. This gives you some creative control without taxing your brain thinking about all the camera settings at once.