March 2009

How To: Capture Magnificent Night Photographs

by Victor Augusteo on March 31, 2009

Night photography is very interesting and unique. A building could appear normal and boring at day, yet look majestic during the night. Cityscape usually look best captured at night with all the lights from the building subtly brighten the sky above. Funnily, the first time i tried night photography was with MPC last year as a member. This year, its my turn to teach the workshop, my turn to return the favor. All right, lets get started.

What equipments?

There are couple of things that you will need for night photography. Those are the only two items you need to get a basic night shoot:

  • Tools to hold your camera steady: Sturdy tripods, portable tripods, bean bags, gorilla pod. Without those, it is impossible to get a long exposure needed for night photographs
This is an example of gorilla pod on my d80. If you find a place to place them, gorillapod can be as good as tripod, but not as versatile. Photo courtesy of Candice Li.

This is an example of gorilla pod on my Nikon D80. If you find a place to wrap them around, gorilla pod can be as good as tripod, but not as versatile. Photo by Candice Li.

  • Camera with manual exposure setting – or at least have a night shoot setting. Because you would want to set your shutter speed to very long exposure, if your camera doesn’t allow that, get a new/better one. The good rule of thumb to check if you camera is capable of manual setting is to look for the letters “M, A, S, P” or “M, Av, Tv, P” on your camera mode dial.

What exposure settings?

The basic theory behind night photography is that we need the shutter to open longer because there are not enough light around to light the scene like day. Therefore we will be needing slow shutter speed, which in turn makes us more prone to blurring. That’s where the tripod come to rescue. Simple huh!

The principles of longer shutter works the same as opening the water tap longer if the water isn’t flowing fast enough to fill the glass

Slow shutter speed can be employed to capture shots like this one. Just go out and try! 1/2s f3.5 ISO 100

Slow shutter speed can be employed to capture shots like this one. Just go out and try! 1/2s f3.5 ISO 100

Somehow this street lamp reminds me of Batman movies. 30s f25 ISO 100

Somehow this street lamp reminds me of Batman movies. 30s f25 ISO 100

As you can see, the exposure triangle (shutter, aperture, ISO) works in all situation. The first image open the shutter faster, but wider aperture. The second image opens the shutter very slow, but with very narrow aperture to en compensate.

Check out the cloud movement as the shutter is reduced. 30s f10 ISO 100

Check out the cloud movement as the shutter is reduced. 30s f10 ISO 100

My first reaction seeing this image is: "WOW! this looks like a 3D CGI" but indeed long shutter can create such effect. 30s f10 ISO 100

My first reaction seeing this image is: "WOW! this looks like a 3D CGI" but indeed long shutter can create such effect. 30s f10 ISO 100

Enduring cold winter night waiting for the shutter to close can be very rewarding. 30s f20 ISO 100

Enduring cold winter night waiting for the shutter to close can be very rewarding. 30s f20 ISO 100

In order to get that starry effect of street lamps (or any circular light source) we just need to open the aperture as narrow as possible, maybe f18 upwards. I’m not sure how this effect is made technically, but it works!

A very generic opera house shot! but still captivating nevertheless. 13s f8 ISO100

A very generic opera house shot! but still captivating nevertheless. 13s f8 ISO100

This is my first visit to sydney during the World Youth Day 2008, notice the difference of this one and the image following. This image is captured without using tripod. I used the steel bar to brace my camera. 1/2s f3.8

This is my first visit to sydney during the World Youth Day 2008, notice the difference of this one and the image following. This image is captured without using tripod. I used the steel bar to brace my camera. 1/2s f3.8

My fourth visit to sydney, now using my friend's tripod. The very same shot, the very same spot. 15s f10 ISO100

My fourth visit to Sydney, now using my friend's tripod. The very same shot, the very same spot. Notice the slower shutter speed blurs the water into dreamy colored form. 15s f10 ISO100

The second shot was processed with lightroom preset “300″. Awesome huh! I sense another tutorial coming…

Hey, night photography doesnt have to be cityscapes! This is during the new year festival in my hometown. I climb up the stage to take this awesome shot (of course you need permit from the promoter). Notice the high iso contributes to grainy appearance. 1/30s f3.8 ISO800

Hey, night photography doesnt have to be cityscapes! This is during the new year festival in my hometown. I climb up the stage to take this awesome shot (of course you need permit from the promoter). Notice the high iso contributes to grainy appearance. 1/30s f3.8 ISO800

I liked how the composition of the place, so i borrowed a tripod and shot another long exposure. Again, a simple scenenery like this can also be taken with long exposure. 30s f7.1 ISO200

I liked how the composition of the place, so i borrowed a tripod and shot another long exposure. Again, a simple scenenery like this can also be taken with long exposure. 30s f7.1 ISO200

Conclusion

  • If you didn’t bring a tripod when you see a nice night scene, look for something to brace your camera into. A desk, chair, your bag, or even lamp post can help to keep your camera steady.
  • Open the shutter as long as possible with narrowest possible aperture to create an interesting effect. You probably will be surprised by your own shot.
  • Keep compositions in mind. No shot can be good with just exposure. You have to compose the shot just like you shot a normal landscape.
  • Keep trying, keep practicing, keep experimenting
  • Good luck!

7 Reason to Use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2

by Victor Augusteo on March 30, 2009

Some of you might wonder what Lightroom is? The short answer is “another image processing software from Adobe beside Photoshop and Elements”. The long answer would be “a freaking awesome software to help you process hundreds of photos in short amount of time by maximizing your work flow while utilizing presets and databases.” It might sounds scary at first, but I’ll tell you why I love this pretty piece of software.

Link to Lightroom homepage: Click here

Default Lightroom interface. Click to enlarge.

Default Lightroom interface. Click to enlarge.

1. Sleek Folder System

The folder system makes it really easy to find the photos you wanted without long searching. I have more than 40.000 Images in my database right now, from 2003 to 2009, but i never had any problem looking for the event I shot 2 years ago.

2. Easy Metadata Searching

For example, in one event you shot an event with Nikon d80 and d300, while your friend shoot with Canon 40d. After the event, you download all the photos from the three camera to the same folder. You want to put watermark on your pictures, but not on your friend’s, so what can you do? You can enable Lightroom to only display the images from specific camera type or specific lens type.

3. Flagging System

After you download that 346 photos from your memory card, you scan it quickly, and you find several images you like, and several you don’t like. With traditional folder system, you will have to pick them up and putting the ones you like in another folder or deleting the ones you don’t like so u do not clutter the folder. In Lightroom, you can simply tag the picture as “flagged” which means you like it, or tag the picture by color (Lightroom provides 7 color tag you can use), and you can tag a picture as “Rejected”. Note that whatever tag you use, it doesn’t affect the picture in any way. You then can choose to display only pictures that has “red” tag, maybe its the pictures that has cats on it (for example), or chose the flagged photos for export to web later. You can always change the flag anytime.

4. Keyword Tagging

OK, lets say you shoot lots of koalas in many different occasions and you want to display all the picture with koalas from your database. If you use the tagging system, this is as easy as one click of a mouse. You can tag a picture with whatever keyword you wanted. You can even tag the picture with more than one keyword, just like blog posts.

Lightroom develop screen. Arsenal of weapon for you to exploit. Click to enlarge.

Lightroom develop screen. Arsenal of weapon for you to exploit. Click to enlarge.

5. Awesome Array of Development Tools

No editing software is complete without editing, right? Of course! Lightroom has one of the most powerful and versatile development tools I’ve ever seen for photo editing software. Well, except Photoshop and Elements. Lightroom provides those tools you can use:

  • Histogram Checker/Slider
  • Red eye removal
  • Dust removal (clone/heal)
  • Cropping
  • Graduate Filters
  • Brush (exposure, saturation, contrast, clarity, sharpness, exposure)
  • Basic Adobe Camera Raw sliders (White balance, exposure, blacks, saturation, etc)
  • Tone Curve
  • Grayscale Sliders
  • Split Toning
  • Detail (sharpening, noise, chromatic aberration, etc)
  • Vignettes
  • Camera Calibration (colors sliders)

Wow… That’s quite a lot of tools eh! All the photos you see on my blog is processed with ONLY Lightroom tools. I haven’t used Photoshop layers yet. I’m sure Photoshop can do more, but i’m happy with Lightroom because of its simplicity.

6. Develop Presets

With that many develop tools, chances are you will be using some similar setting for most of your pictures. So instead of repeating to slide the bars to the same place, why don’t we make a preset? Basically a preset is a saved setting of your developments. You can set it up by yourself, download it from the internet, or use the ones Lightroom provided for you.
I think you have seen the two post processing tutorial i wrote before. Both of them utilizes the 300 preset i got from mikelao’s website. Now know that the 300 preset is just one the many i use in regular basis. I’ll be writing more post processing tuts later on.

Lightroom printing screen. Enough control for you to customize your prints. Click to enlarge.

Lightroom printing screen. Enough control for you to customize your prints. Click to enlarge.

7. Printing Interface

Chances are, if you are serious in photography, you will want to print your masterpiece and hang it on the wall. Now Lightroom comes with a really good printing interface. It uses templates you can choose. Again, the template work the same as presets, so you can download the templates from the internet to use.

There are two more feature in Lightroom that i never use, which is Slideshow generator and Web Gallery generator. If you are interested in making a slideshow or gallery, this will be a plus for you.

This article by no means try to convince you to use Lightroom. And no, Adobe didn’t pay me to do this review. All of the points above is written according to my personal experience with Lightroom.

I hope you enjoy the article, and drop me a comment if you like it.

How To: Basics of Photography in 15 Minutes

by Victor Augusteo on March 29, 2009

Last week i hosted a photography workshop for my club (Monash Photography Club). It was intended for the beginner as around 60% of our club member regard themselves as beginner in photography. The workshop was attended by around 50 students, which exceeds all our expectation. We even run out of pizza!

I received lots of positive comment from the beginner members. They said that the presentation was easy to understand yet very informative. If you are wondering whats the teaching that day, lets get started!

These are the main points of my presentation.

  • Introduction to Photography
  • Exposure
  • Composition
  • Assignments

Introduction To Photography

  • Photography is a system of “Human”, “Lenses” and “Sensor/Film”
  • They works on principal of “whole is greater than sum of parts”
  • All three elements interacting together to produce photograph
  • You don’t need big long lenses and $10,000 camera to produce good photograph

Exposure and Composition

  • A photograph is always a combination of exposure and composition.
  • Exposure dictates the amount of light (basically a combination of shutter, aperture, and ISO sensitivity)
  • Composition dictates how the elements in the photograph interact with each others (includes light, framing, depth of field, patterns, contrast etc.)

Shutter Speed

  • Its the duration of letting the sensor exposed to light
  • The longer = The brighter
  • The shorter = The darker
  • Long = prone to blurring – why tripod
  • Short = freeze motions – big aperture
In order to capture a fast moving subjust like this, fast shutter speed is needed.

In order to capture a fast moving subjust like this, fast shutter speed is needed.

To capture a night scene like this, slow shutter is best. Notice that it also captures the cloud movements which is not possible to be captured with fast shutter.

To capture a night scene like this, slow shutter is best. Notice that it also captures the cloud movements which is not possible to be captured with fast shutter.

If you don't happen to bring a tripod for that one shot, try to use half a second shutter speed. Which is slow enough to capture night scene, but also very prone to blurness.

If you don't happen to bring a tripod for that one shot, try to use half a second shutter speed. Which is slow enough to capture night scene, but also very prone to blur-ness unless you have steady hands.

Aperture

  • How wide does the lens opens to let lights in
  • Wider = more light, less depth of field
  • Shallower = less light, more depth of field
Example of wide aperture shot to capture the bokeh (the term for blur background with sharp object).

Example of wide aperture shot to capture the bokeh (the term for blur background with sharp object).

ISO Sensitivity

  • The sensitivity of the film/camera sensor
  • Higher ISO = more sensitive to light, need less shutter speed, more grain
  • Lower ISO = less sensitive to light, need more shutter speed, less grain
  • Grains appear more on dark/shadowy area than highlighted area.

Basic Composition

  • Rule of third – I’ll write more in-depth article next time
Basically, rule of third means placing the object off centre. For best result, place it in intersection of thirds.

Basically, rule of third means placing the object off centre. For best result, place it in intersection of thirds.

  • Framing – It could evokes sense of intimacy and secrecy
Anything can be frame for your object. Trees, peoples, gates, clouds, mountains, etc. Use your imagination.

Anything can be frame for your object. Trees, peoples, gates, clouds, mountains, etc. Use your imagination.

  • Spaces – Instead of fully filling the frame with your object, putting them on the side while giving a space to breath could produce captivating results
Experiment with spaces, sometimes you will find it really interesting

Experiment with spaces, sometimes you will find it really interesting

  • Colour/Contrast – Makes the object stand out from the background.
The shadowy running watter provides striking contrast with the baby's skin color and tone

The shadowy running watter provides striking contrast with the baby's skin color and tone

  • Perspective – Be unique!
Instead of taking shots with the normal angles, try to go low or high to create a bizzare and unique shots.

Instead of taking shots with the normal angles, try to go low or high to create a bizzare and unique shots.

  • Pattern – Human brain is somewhat hardwired to find pattern in daily life, thus creating pattern can create a sense of familiarity.
Find the pattern!

Find the pattern!

  • Lines – Use of leading lines to direct the viewer’s eyes to the place where you want them to see.
Notice that even though the square is place on the border of the frame, your eyes is still directed to it because of the lines. Exploit the line!

Notice that even though the square is place on the border of the frame, your eyes is still directed to it because of the lines. Exploit the line!

  • Depth of field – Blur and sharp!
Depth of field is very limited in this photo as i only use f2 aperture (which is very wide). Thus throwing the other chess piece off focus, directing your eyes to the ones in focus.

Depth of field is very limited in this photo as i only use f2 aperture (which is very wide). Thus throwing the other chess piece off focus, directing your eyes to the ones in focus.

  • Sense of movement
Photographs are still objects, but we can still invoke illusion of movement by using slow shutter speed to capture moving objects. Make sure your hands are steady or be ready to get some blur :p

Photographs are still objects, but we can still invoke illusion of movement by using slow shutter speed to capture moving objects. Make sure your hands are steady or be ready to expect blurs.

Assignments

After learning all the basics, get your camera and try to capture your everyday objects while utilizing your new gained knowledge. You may show them to your friends to see what they think of it, or you might even show it to me! I’ll make sure i critics the hell out of your image, haha.

The essence of photography is learning the rules and learn how to break them.

Let your imagination run wild, experiment with the extremes, try that shot you always wanted. You will be suprised how cool the experiment will look like.

Let your imagination run wild, experiment with the extremes, try that shot you always wanted. You will be surprised how cool the experiment will look like.

Anyway, i’ll show you some image taken by the workshop students. Most of them took me by surprise :p

I do not took these pictures, and their copyright belong to their respective creator.

First experiment with the rules of third. I'd say its not bad eh!

First experiment with the rules of third. I'd say its not bad eh!

Leading line experiment, though i'd say placing the arrow on the left side of the image would work much better.

Leading line experiment, though i'd say placing the arrow on the left side of the image would work much better.

I'm not sure what he tries to capture, but the pattern on the floor and building plus constrasty sky make this a really good photo

I'm not sure what he tries to capture, but the pattern on the floor and building plus constrasty sky make this a really good photo

Rules of third and frame experiment. worked nicely.

Rules of third and frame experiment. worked nicely.

Depth of field experiement

Depth of field experiement

Leading lines and perspective.

Leading lines and perspective.

A Really good change of perspective, and also rule of thirds

A really good change of perspective, and also rule of thirds

I really like this picture. Mainly because of the contrast between chair and the bricks, the person is also placed off centre to give more power to the photo.

I really like this picture. Mainly because of the contrast between chair and the bricks, the person is also placed off centre to give more power to the photo.

A very good experiment with panning.

A very good experiment with panning.

Zooming like this can be achieved by using a rather slow shutter speed and zoom the lens while pressing shutter button.

Zooming like this can be achieved by using a rather slow shutter speed and zoom the lens while pressing shutter button.

I hope you enjoy this lesson, and be sure to drop me a comment or two.

Sovereign Hill, Ballarat Photo Trip

Here are some pics i took from sovereign hill trip yesterday. Just let me know if you want to know how i post process them. I took 600-ish pictures from that day trip, only got around 98 of the ones i like. So lesson of the day, shoot as many as you can, pick out [...]

Read the full article →

How To: Fantastic Mysterious Effect Using Lightroom “300″ Preset

Thumbnail image for How To: Fantastic Mysterious Effect Using Lightroom “300″ Preset

By far, this is my favorite preset since i begin to use lightroom, it gives such impressive and emotional effect that everybody who have seen my pics like it. Here is some example of the result: (Click on each picture to enlarge) You can get the preset from mikelao’s website here For those of u [...]

Read the full article →