Binging on Photography. Some questions.

[AMOMENT]

1. (DOF) How does one quickly, REALLY QUICKLY, interpret and predict the correct DOF for a given photo when constantly changing positions? (for those of you who shoot kids, weddings, events, where a missed moment could mean a huge loss) I'm by no means up to doing this efficiently, but I was just curious. Sometimes you have the photo you want in your mind, but making it happen, aka art of photography, obviousely takes practice. I am starting to understand more but am having trouble programming everything quick enough to capture a shot that I possibly want. I am going to start practicing on some still life. (not a fan) but will do for practice purposes. Any suggestions on how to start/set up? I have a 18-55mm and a 50mm f/1.8 lens for for Nikon D3100.


2. (Exposure) Sometimes, even if I bump up my ISO and my exposure compensation, I do not have enough light to fill the shadows in so I end up using my pop up flash. (I have watched and read some tutorials about doing this.) I have PSE but don't know how to edit my fill light within it. Is it done by lightening the shadows under drop down, enhance, and then adjust lighting? I usually shoot in RAW and upload to my View NX program (the editing program my camera came with) and then convert to a jpeg so that my PSE will open it. I do some basic editing in View NX such as white balance but then once I am in PSE I can't do any of that type of editing. I tend to not like to raise my ISO above 800. With my 50mm, I usually don't like to close the aperture any smaller than a 5.6 for portraits or photos taken of people taken 7 feet or under away. Sometimes, for example, if my aperture in around a 3 or 4 (rounding) and I need my ISO to be up to 600-800 because of shadows, even if I increase my exposure compensation and slow my shutter, I still have unwanted shadows or end up "blowing out" certain portions of the person/photo. I could be wrong by doing it this way. I'm purchasing the book "Understanding Exposure" to help me with all of this. I have been trying a piece of tp in front ofmy flash but I have to tape it there if I ant to be able to hold my camera still enough to make adjustments and or keep everything in focus.

3. (Metering) If I am photographing a person in daylight with minimal shade but some shadowing (say, from some nearby trees) and the sun is positioned behind them, can someone give me a good example of how I should position myself/settings on my camera? I know this is hard to do, but perhaps you cang ive me an idea. In this situation, would spot metering be a good choice? If so, what would you meter off of to get the right exposure? (prob the person's skin right?) That is, unless the background is very bright?


4. (focusing) I have 11 auto select points. I usually use single point or dynamic area mode and either AF-S OR AF-C. I generally try and have my selected auto focus point on one of my subject's eyes but sometimes (prob because my DOF is off) not enough of the photo is properly focused. I try to keep my shutter as fast as possible because I have shaky hands.

Bare with me.......

PS: I know I'm trying to learn everything at once and can't but I sure would like to try.

 

[MTVision]

1. (DOF) How does one quickly, REALLY QUICKLY, interpret and predict the correct DOF for a given photo when constantly changing positions? (for those of you who shoot kids, weddings, events, where a missed moment could mean a huge loss) I'm by no means up to doing this efficiently, but I was just curious. Sometimes you have the photo you want in your mind, but making it happen, aka art of photography, obviousely takes practice. I am starting to understand more but am having trouble programming everything quick enough to capture a shot that I possibly want. I am going to start practicing on some still life. (not a fan) but will do for practice purposes. Any suggestions on how to start/set up? I have a 18-55mm and a 50mm f/1.8 lens for for Nikon D3100.

2. (Exposure) Sometimes, even if I bump up my ISO and my exposure compensation, I do not have enough light to fill the shadows in so I end up using my pop up flash. (I have watched and read some tutorials about doing this.) I have PSE but don't know how to edit my fill light within it. Is it done by lightening the shadows under drop down, enhance, and then adjust lighting? I usually shoot in RAW and upload to my View NX program (the editing program my camera came with) and then convert to a jpeg so that my PSE will open it. I do some basic editing in View NX such as white balance but then once I am in PSE I can't do any of that type of editing. I tend to not like to raise my ISO above 800. With my 50mm, I usually don't like to close the aperture any smaller than a 5.6 for portraits or photos taken of people taken 7 feet or under away. Sometimes, for example, if my aperture in around a 3 or 4 (rounding) and I need my ISO to be up to 600-800 because of shadows, even if I increase my exposure compensation and slow my shutter, I still have unwanted shadows or end up "blowing out" certain portions of the person/photo. I could be wrong by doing it this way. I'm purchasing the book "Understanding Exposure" to help me with all of this. I have been trying a piece of tp in front ofmy flash but I have to tape it there if I ant to be able to hold my camera still enough to make adjustments and or keep everything in focus.

3. (Metering) If I am photographing a person in daylight with minimal shade but some shadowing (say, from some nearby trees) and the sun is positioned behind them, can someone give me a good example of how I should position myself/settings on my camera? I know this is hard to do, but perhaps you cang ive me an idea. In this situation, would spot metering be a good choice? If so, what would you meter off of to get the right exposure? (prob the person's skin right?) That is, unless the background is very bright?

4. (focusing) I have 11 auto select points. I usually use single point or dynamic area mode and either AF-S OR AF-C. I generally try and have my selected auto focus point on one of my subject's eyes but sometimes (prob because my DOF is off) not enough of the photo is properly focused. I try to keep my shutter as fast as possible because I have shaky hands.

Bare with me.......

PS: I know I'm trying to learn everything at once and can't but I sure would like to try.

1. Comes with practice. Still life will help with this too. It's easier to shoot kids in aperture priority. You don't need your ISO raised in the daylight outside. The raising the ISO thing was for low light. Derrel gave great advice on another thread - keep your ISO at 400. it won't do anything to your pictures except maybe add noise but I doubt it unless you are really underexposing

2. Go to adobes website an download the DNG converter. It will convert your RAW files to DNG (adobe raw basically) then you can work in camera raw which is part of pse. You might be able to just update your camera raw - not sure what version of elements you have. Go to help and there should be an option that says update. Camera raw is where you will find fill light but the software that came with camera has it too

3. I was told to meter of the highlights on the skin with spot metering

4. If you focus on the eyes and the face is still a little soft it means you need to close your aperture down since the DOF is so shallow.

 

[MLeeK]

1. QUICKLY comes with experience. For a beginner make sure your f/ is equal to or greater than the number of subjects in your shot. If you are unsure, use a smaller aperture. You can live with too much in focus, but you can't live with blurry.

2. What version of PSE do you have? PSE opens raw images. Open the bridge browser... browse your images. The ACR editor is better than the software that comes with the camera. Now Nikon's Capture NX (whatever version it's on) is better than anything out there for raw images on nikon. It's made to work with all of the neat little programming in the nikon cameras. If your version of PSE is outdated then download the DNG converter and convert to a standard raw format. If you are shooting in raw but just converting to jpeg you might as well be shooting in jpeg. You are throwing all of that extra information away when you convert. You should be adjusting your curves as well as setting your black point, basic raw sharpening, etc while it's still raw. Otherwise? you aren't really benefiting at all from using the raw format.
Your camera can go far beyond ISO 800. USE IT! yes, it's nice to keep the ISO as low as you can, but that doesn't mean you can't use higher ISO's. Expose properly for it and you can max the ISO capability out. ACR (the raw editor in PS) has amazing noise removal for when you get to that point. ISO 1600 is damn clear these days even on the most bottom line DSLR. To avoid blowing out turn on the highlight warnings in your camera. They will produce a flashing spot on your screen over what is blowing out at least one color channel. Set your exposure to the point JUST before that happens on something you cannot have blown out.

3. Spot meter. The grass is pretty accurate to meter off of. It is darker than your subjects skin tone, so it's pretty good for that middle tone. Meter the grass, set your exposure either in full manual or by using the exposure lock. I believe that tip came from a piece in Understanding Exposure. If the subject is DIRECTLY back lit-as in the sun is RIGHT behind them, you have to use flash. No way around it or they are going to be overpowered by the backlight.

4. in some post this week Derrel says shoot at ISO 400... BUMP your ISO! He's right. Even in the best light starting out shoot at a higher ISO to prevent mistakes from a slow shutter.

Here are some guidelines:
ISO-use the lowest you can to get GOOD to SLIGHT overexposure. Don't EVER underexpose with the expectation of fixing in post to avoid noise. you will have more noise if you do that.

Aperture equal to or greater than the # of subjects in the image. NO scientific bearing whatsoever, but it works. If you are really close to the subject either by wan of zoom or literally really close then use an even higher f/#.

Shutter speed must be equal to or greater than the reciprocal length of the lens. If you are shooting at 200mm your shutter must be greater than 1/200. Some teachers teach that it should be DOUBLE the length or 1/400 or faster for a 200mm lens. This is to avoid camera shake. You can push it with a VR/IS/OS/VC lens, but it's a good habit not to get into it.
Other than that rule...
If it's still life no slower than 1/80 hand held (if you are fairly steady)
If it's alive no slower than 1/125 if it sits still
If it is alive and moves no slower than 1/250 (toddlers that are playing)
If it is alive and moves like the wind no slower than 1/500 in the best conditions. 1/640 for most (football)

 

[clanthar]

I'll just take one of these:

3. (Metering) If I am photographing a person in daylight with minimal shade but some shadowing (say, from some nearby trees) and the sun is positioned behind them, can someone give me a good example of how I should position myself/settings on my camera? I know this is hard to do, but perhaps you cang ive me an idea. In this situation, would spot metering be a good choice? If so, what would you meter off of to get the right exposure? (prob the person's skin right?) That is, unless the background is very bright?

If you have your subject outside and "the sun is positioned behind them" then the scene is backlit. You must therefore add flash into your exposure calculation. If you're not using flash you must at least have someone else there to hold a reflector very near the subject. No flash and/or no reflector and the photo MUST be a disaster. There is no metering solution that will prevent a complete disaster. Without fill light for the subject, a correct exposure for the subject must blow out the background highlights far beyond any possibility of correction. Without fill light for the subject a correct exposure for the background must massively underexpose the subject far beyond any possibility of correction.

With a reflector you can spot meter the subject's face and either consider that good enough or if they are light-skinned you can exposure comp add a stop more exposure. With just a reflector odds are you'll still blow out the background highlights.

With flash you have a double exposure condition. You must then determine the correct exposure for the subject with flash. Correct flash exposure = flash GN + subject/flash distance + f/stop. Note that shutter speed is not a factor in that calculation. Once the f/stop for correct flash exposure is known you can then meter for the background at that f/stop to determine the correct shutter speed for the background exposure.

Joe

 

[MTVision]

MLeek - there is no Bridge in PSE. If her camera raw isn't updated it wont open her raw files. Also, depending on the version of Elements - sometimes you ca't update to the newest version.

 

[marmots]

for the shadows, i recommend a cheap reflector
even a homemade reflector would help

adobe photoshop Lightroom is good for bringing up the shadows, if you can't afford full photoshop


edit:
oh i guess i took too long to post this...
when i started this post i was second in line, but i got distracted

 

[Derrel]

Bare with me.......

You want us to bare with you? Like, as in "get naked" with you???

"Bare with me" is one of my pet peeves in terms of improper word usage, along with "per say" (it is per se, not "per say").

Depth of field...it's one of those things that practice can help with. Fill light...another thing that can be mastered by practice. Baby steps, AMOMENT, baby steps. Editing of images is a deep,deep subject. You will get there!!!

 

[MLeeK]

MLeek - there is no Bridge in PSE. If her camera raw isn't updated it wont open her raw files. Also, depending on the version of Elements - sometimes you ca't update to the newest version.

I apologize, evidently they changed Bridge to Organizer in version 9.

2. What version of PSE do you have? PSE opens raw images. Open the bridge browser... browse your images. The ACR editor is better than the software that comes with the camera. Now Nikon's Capture NX (whatever version it's on) is better than anything out there for raw images on nikon. It's made to work with all of the neat little programming in the nikon cameras. If your version of PSE is outdated then download the DNG converter and convert to a standard raw format. If you are shooting in raw but just converting to jpeg you might as well be shooting in jpeg. You are throwing all of that extra information away when you convert. You should be adjusting your curves as well as setting your black point, basic raw sharpening, etc while it's still raw. Otherwise? you aren't really benefiting at all from using the raw format.

 

[MTVision]

MLeek - there is no Bridge in PSE. If her camera raw isn't updated it wont open her raw files. Also, depending on the version of Elements - sometimes you ca't update to the newest version.

I apologize, evidently they changed Bridge to Organizer in version 9.

2. What version of PSE do you have? PSE opens raw images. Open the bridge browser... browse your images. The ACR editor is better than the software that comes with the camera. Now Nikon's Capture NX (whatever version it's on) is better than anything out there for raw images on nikon. It's made to work with all of the neat little programming in the nikon cameras. If your version of PSE is outdated then download the DNG converter and convert to a standard raw format. If you are shooting in raw but just converting to jpeg you might as well be shooting in jpeg. You are throwing all of that extra information away when you convert. You should be adjusting your curves as well as setting your black point, basic raw sharpening, etc while it's still raw. Otherwise? you aren't really benefiting at all from using the raw format.

Oh - I didn't realize that any versions of elements came with Bridge. Sorry MLeek! *dammit - I'm always wrong*

 

[MLeeK]

Hey, I didn't know the new versions had changed! We were both wrong there!