Instruction Manuals

Good evening,

I am a week off. I was ill and now one of the children is ill and someone was ill before that I lost track. I realized that it is a pain to talk in the "we" and "our" terminology and I have decided to not do it as much. I learned something new today though that I feel I should share. It goes along with the comparison from the last blog. We all know or should all know that the effective focal length changes with the crop factor, well the effective aperture changes as well. So the f1.8 on an LG G6 is closer to an f13 because the crop factor is 7.37 which explains why so much is in focus with the camera. Also the 4mm is closer to a 30mm. This was explained in greater detail at photographylife.com. 

So instruction manuals, the boring part of getting a camera. Most of the time the cameras are roughly self explanatory especially if you have experience with that kind of camera before. The other day I bought a Nikon off of an acquaintance with the idea of selling it for more money. She got more that she was asking and I should get more than what I bought it for. I have never used a Nikon DSLR before and realized how different it is from Sony, Minolta, and Canon cameras. Thankfully the manual came with it and I could figure it out. Before picking it up though I spent 30 or so frustrated minutes trying to change the ISO off of auto and changing the focus points on the camera. After looking through the manual for a few minutes I figured it out and I recalled a decade or so ago I found some interesting things from the manuals. Like how to take multiple exposures on a single frame of film, add picture styles to the editing program, use the AE-L button effectively, and other things that I can't remember having learned from the manuals. So my advice is look through your manual the thing that you might not know your camera can do might be the thing that will make some great shots. Again I would love to see some pictures in the comments. So get your camera's manual, peruse it, see if there is anything new, grab your camera, then go out and shoot.

~Scott

I had to change the setting to take this photo so I could see how well the camera worked before trying to sell it.

Constant Lighting Situation

Good evening,

Tonight we are going to talk about indoor lighting or constant light. Quite a few people this holiday season are going to be in a situation where the light is constant, however this can trick our sensors. Let's say we are indoors at a dinner with the family and decide to take some candid shots. The lighting at the table is relatively constant. Now our cousin is wearing a dark red sweater and our uncle is wearing a light salmon colored shirt. If we focus on our cousin the exposure is too bright and if we focus on our uncle the exposure is too dark. So what is a photographer to do in this situation. Turn it to manual mode then set the shutter and aperture to were it exposes everyone one the way we want.

In this example we have my Wife's Christmas Village. The metering spot was changed by a few inches for each image which resulted in 1 stop of exposure difference. The difference between an uncle and a cousin would probably be greater and so would the small light changes. These were shot in Av mode the first was metering from the snow 1/160s, second was on the reindeer 1/125s, and third was on the pine trees 1/80s. In this example the difference could be made up easily in post. With holiday photos most people want them sooner rather than later so the less editing that needs to be done the better. If possible adjust the settings before hand, if not use your preferred setting to get an idea of where you want to be then lock those settings in using manual. Those split second moments don't wait for a cameras metering system. So switch it to manual this holiday season and go out and shoot.

~Scott