T4i - is this a better camera than a point and shoot?

[MarshallG]

thanks so much.
And my T4i can do this?
of course I don't have the flash.

With the correct Canon Speedlight flash, yes, your camera can do this.

Correction: YOU can do this.

 

[crotonmark]

Ha. Well maybe not me.

 

[MarshallG]

Ha. Well maybe not me.

Why not? You know how to use exposure compensation, don't you? Do you know how to look at the histogram display?

I like that Napoleon Tomb picture. All you needed to do was cut the exposure way down, so that the window was exposed correctly, and then you point a flash at the casket and fire.

I've been using the wireless slave feature of my Speedlight flash a lot. Once you figure out how to turn it on, you can then set to to TTL or Manual mode. Ok... it's a lot of learn and remember, but it's not THAT hard, it just takes some practice.

So in that Napoleon picture, I'd first use Av mode, and I'd underexpose by 2 or 3 stops, until the window looks tasty. Just ignore everything else, except maybe the dapple of sunlight that hits the ground in front of the tomb, because that looks nice. Once you have that, you might want to switch those settings over to full manual. Make sure that the ISO is also fixed and not set to AutoISO. Now your exposure of the window will be perfect.

Then, you set your flash on Manual, and dial its output to maybe 1/8 to start. Point it at the casket and fire. Check exposure, and correct the flash output until the casket is exposed properly. In my photo, I used the wireless slave feature (which your camera has as well), and I got my wife to hold and point the flash for me. This lets you put the light and shadow exactly where you want, and you can still control the amount of flash power from the back of the camera.

The EOS cameras have a Custom Menu feature, and I assign the Flash Control features to that menu, because I like to use them a lot. The only thing you need to understand is that the world is full of lighting that has more range than a camera can capture.

Another thing: Never shoot in JPEG. Buy Adobe Lightroom and a big external drive, and capture everything in RAW. When you shoot JPEG, you're throwing away 80 percent of your photograph.

 

[crotonmark]

Could I make this work with the flash on the camera?

Can't I use RAW with iPhoto ?

 

[MarshallG]

Could I make this work with the flash on the camera?

Can't I use RAW with iPhoto ?

An on-camera flash makes people look like a cop is shining a flashlight straight in their face. There are no shadows and the image has no depth. Professional photographers never shine a light straight into someone's face, except as "fill flash" when shooting outdoors. And, when using fill flash, the external Speedlight is still better, because you can use it at high shutter speeds. The Built-in flash will only go up to 1/250, which limits its effectiveness as a fill flash.

Take a look at my "Before and After" photos. Imagine if the flash was on the camera. It would light up a whole lot of junk -- the weeds, the orange cone, the footpath... it *might* be a good photo, but I doubt it. And it wouldn't have the power to reach the palm tree.

The flash I use is the Canon Speedlight 480 EX II. That is the cheapest flash you should consider, especially because your camera has a wireless slave feature built-in (which is cool!!!). With your camera, you can pop up the flash and use it not as a camera flash but as a trigger that will control an off-camera Speedlight. It won't just sync the Speedlight, but you can set its flash output and flash exposure compensation separately from the exposure compensation, all from your camera. As my wife was holding the flash, I was adjusting its output, and she didn't even know it!

You don't have to buy a new flash, because flash isn't the solution to every photography problem.

Now, as for your second question: RAW and Lightroom. Remember what I said: JPEG throws away about 80% of your image. That 80% is hidden in shadows. Areas that seem too bright or dark contain LOADS of detail that you can get from a RAW file, but it's already thrown away by the time it's a JPEG. With Lightroom, you can see all your photos as RAW and make non-destructive adjustments to them, before you create the JPEG which you will put on the web or print. Over time, you'll learn how to make contrast and brightness adjustments in Lightroom that bring out all sorts of detail in your photos.

It's not like you need to learn everything all at once, but in the old days, we used film, and the developer had tons of control over how our final images looked. With digital, the photographer has that control. You just need to shoot in RAW and use Lightroom. It's not difficult software to use, it's mostly a thumbnail-type of program like iPhoto, but it has better image editing, especially for RAQ images. You can get a 30 day free trial from Adobe. A lot of photographers use only Lightroom and never use Photoshop.

 

[crotonmark]

Is it hard to move from iPhoto to Lightroom ?

 

[MarshallG]

Is it hard to move from iPhoto to Lightroom ?

I don't think so... As I said, you can start one step at a time, just download the free Lightroom trial, take some RAW shots and point Lightroom to them. Just test the water.

Another thing I started doing to improve my photography is I found a photography club on MeetUp.com. For me, it's like a constant journey. That photo I showed you of the sunset... you won't believe how many times I tried to do that and it came out wrong. And I still can't light portraits well... it takes trial and error.

I went on a business trip to Japan two years ago, and spent the weekend in Kyoto. All of my pictures came out bad. I hate them all. Biggest problem was taking them in the mid-afternoon sun.

 

[crotonmark]

Maybe I'll try the 30 day demo.
Im intrigued about everything you said. I don't understand how the flash would work. But I'm intrigued.
There is stuff about iPhoto I love. The ability to sync between devices, the simplicity.

It is a quandary.

Any opinions on my camera?

 

[MarshallG]

Any opinions on my camera?

Your camera? It rocks! My opinion? Take more pictures. Take pictures at sunset every day!



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 2

 

[crotonmark]

Ah - if only I didnt have to work!

 

[crotonmark]

Focus is not the issue here. The issue is how to grab the tomb and not lose the colors of the windows.

There are two ways that you could have photographed Naoleon's tomb:
1) Take two separate photos and combine them together, or
2) Set your exposure for the window (by substantially under-exposing) and use a flash to illuminate the tomb

Let me give you a specific example. Please take a moment to walk through the next three photos with me. I took them over the course of about ten minutes. I was at dinner with my wife, and noticed that the sky was turning gold with sunset. With her permission, I grabbed my camera gear out of the car and photographed the sunset from the balcony of the restaurant we were at.

Here is the photograph as taken using the camera's meter. As you can see, it's awful. It's like the pictures you took; it has no "pop." I've taken hundreds of photos like this one:

View attachment 50667

Click on it and take a look. You see kids running around, a bunch of correctly-exposed weeds growing, a bunch of ugly buildings... this is a throw-away shot, isn't it?

Next, I underexposed by about three stops (I tried a few different settings). And at -3 stops, the sky is correctly exposed:

View attachment 50668

Nothing complicated here, right? See how the sky now looks great? And this is what you could have done with the stained glass... just underexpose until the stained glass looks great.

But, as with your Napoleon picture, I wanted the palm tree in the foreground to look better. At first, I pointed my flash at the palm, but it was difficult to hand-hold. So my wife came to help me, and I used my camera's wireless slave feature and manual flash exposure, which I can set from my camera's rear panel. I showed her how to point the flash at the tree and my camera, and I tried 1/4 and 1/2 strength manual flash exposure, along with the exposure I already had for the background. The result is below:

View attachment 50669

This is not difficult! However... you cannot do this with a point and shoot camera. You need a camera that can dial down exposure by three stops and which offers control of a flash with tilt and swivel or, ideally, wireless remote slave functionality. I don't think you can get a photo like this the first time you try (I'll be PISSED if you can, let me tell you!)... but it's not terribly hard, either. This took me about fifteen minutes and thirty-five shots... but that's not counting the many times I've gone out without getting a shot like this.

As you can see, the photo is much better than what I started with, and that's what you should be able to do, too.

As others mentioned, you cannot get great results in the afternoon sun, unless you find a shadowy place to shoot. This can be a big challenge, because you go to an exotic place to photograph a specific thing, and the sun makes it impossible. In situations like these, seek out the shadiest spot you can find, and try to find something interest to photograph there.

MarshallG - one more question
would this work if you just focused on the sky ?
why do you need to under expose?
Did you do this in evaluative metering or spot metering?

thanks

 

[MarshallG]

MarshallG - one more question
would this work if you just focused on the sky ?
why do you need to under expose?
Did you do this in evaluative metering or spot metering?

I used to shoot film, and the exposure mattered a lot. Now that I shoot digital, I review the image on the LCD. I first check for the "blinkies," which are the blinking spots warning me of overexposed areas. Then I look at the histogram, and the image itself. In the sunset photo, I look to get the most amount of color out of the sky, and that is the correct exposure. Exposure is important with digital, but it's not important to pre-calculate it the way I used to with film. Now, I can just take a few pictures and look at them.

Once I have the sunset exposed right, I hold onto that exposure and then I set up the flash to light what I want in the foreground. If the flash over-exposes, I can close down the aperture and correspondingly open up the shutter. This will reduce the flash exposure without affecting the ambient exposure of the sunset, because the flash exposure only cares about the aperture; the shutter speed does not effect the flash exposure. The other way to change the flash exposure is to use the camera to adjust flash output; either using Flash Exposure Compensation in TTL flash mode, or by cutting the output in Manual flash mode. For shots like these, Manual flash mode is much better for me.

The metering mode (Evaluative vs Center vs Spot) doesn't matter to me. In my general photography, I use evaluative metering. I tried a few times to use center-weighted metering, but in my tests, I always got the same exposure that I did with evaluative. Maybe I'll try some more. I avoid spot metering because I'm never sure if I hit the right spot.