Night Photography

As I missed the trip to the Christmas Markets I decided to try some night photography, this is something I have played with before starting the course but at that time didnt have any real understanding of ISO, Shutter, Aperture and how to make these work for me.

I was aware that without the flash I would need to keep the camera completely still and in the past have used a wall or a another object to rest my camera on, but as I said above I had no idea how to make the camera work for me and would simply hope for the best.

The images below are a couple I have taken prior to starting the course and were taken in Budapest last Christmas, these were taken using a really simple Samsung Digital camera (not a DSLR).

So, whilst in Egypt and educated on the Exposure Triangle and a much better camera than the one used for the images above I decided to have a walk round the hotel.  I didnt take my tripod with me so had to find walls, tables and anything else that would be suitable as a steady surface.

I managed to get some really good images and then some not so good so have put them below with comments on each to say why I think they are good/not good along with settings used.  I used Aperture Priority on all of them as I wanted to get a wider depth of field as the hotel really was stunning and wanted to capture as much as I could.

Images 1 & 2 were taken at the entrance to the hotel and the problem I had was that the only surface available to rest the camera on was a small  concrete sign at the very begining of the walk way.  Because of this I couldnt take any shots as I walked through the trees getting closer to the entrance doors which would have been nice.  The concrete surface was also very rough which resulted in slight camera shake and was very low.  I dont think these are great shots and wished I had taken my tripod which would have given me much more opportunity.

F/14, ISO 100, S 15sec

F/14, ISO 100, S 20 sec

With the next 4 image's I love the reflection in the water which was really clear due to the lighting the hotel have used around the pool.  I used the wall here to keep the camera steady and again was quite low.  I am really happy with these images as I wanted to capture the reflection in as much detail as possible and feel I have achieved this.

ISO 100, F/22, S 30 sec

ISO 100, F/13, S 10 sec

ISO 100, F/22, S 30 sec

ISO 100, F/18, S 20 sec

The next 3 images were taken at the reception and restaurant area's and are quite nice images, again resting the camera on sturdy surfaces and trying to keep it as still as possible.  They are quite dark and could be edited to add some light, I have done this with the first image and have shown the edited image underneath.

ISO 100, F/18, S 30 sec

(light added in Photoshop CS5)

ISO 100, F/18, S 30 sec

ISO 100, F/18, S 30 sec

The final images below are not my favourite, I dont think framing was great here which was down to available sturdy surfaces in order to keep the camera still.  I have edited one of them to show how we can correct this.

ISO 100, F/18, S 30 sec

ISO 100, F/18, S 30 sec

(Cropped and edited in CS5)

ISO 100, F/22, S 30 sec



Shutter (with plenty of Sun)

I was lucky enough to go to Egypt last week and whilst there I pretty much spent the whole of my time with my camera practising what I had been learning over the last few months.

One thing I was able to take advantage of was the SUN, not something we see here often and often means we have to compromise where light is concerned.  With this now available one of the areas I wanted to revisit was Shutter Speeds.

For my Nature theme I want to freeze movement in the birds and this was not so easy when in poor light conditions, having to increase the ISO which resulted in quite a lot of noise.  With the sun now on my side I was able to use a really fast shutter speed and keep my ISO set at 200.  The only challenge left was to find some birds and although there wasn't many the ones I manged to find were perfect.

There were approx three pairs of Kestrels on the resort, these are usually a very hard bird to get near to in the UK and mostly seen seen hovering over motorways or fields looking for voles.  However, they were simply hoping about looking for food in the grass and surprisingly didn't seem bothered by me following them.  With a great opportunity like this I was able to get some really good shots and also catch them in flight.

ISO 200F/9.0, S 1/200

ISO 200F/9.0, S 1/200

ISO 200F/5.6, S 1/640

ISO 200F/6.3, S 1/800

ISO 200F/6.3, S 1/800

ISO 100F/9.0, S 1/200

ISO 100F/5.6, S 1/200

ISO 100F/5.6, S 1/640

Whilst down by the beach I spotted another great bird of prey, the Osprey.  Although we do have these in the UK there are only approx 200 pairs which are found in Scotland, with the odd pair in Wales.  These birds migrate to Africa each year for the Winter and return to the UK in the summer and feed on a diet of fresh water fish from shallow unpolluted waters.

Camera at the ready as always I was really lucky to see this bird and to get these amazing shots, again using a fast shutter and making the most of the sun.  I was aware that this bird was flying up and down the sea edge so it really was just a matter of waiting for the bird to come my way.  I had a really good view point and also next to me was a lifeguard look out point so I was able to climb up this and when the Osprey did appear I was sometimes looking down on the bird as he would fly quite low getting ready to dive into the sea.

ISO 200S, 1/320



ISO 200S 1/320

ISO 200S 1/400

ISO 200S 1/400

ISO 100S 1/640

ISO 100S 1/640

ISO 100S 1/640

ISO 100S 1/640

This last picture was actually the first picture I managed to get of the Osprey, it just appeared whilst I was eating so I just grabbed the camera and took a picture quick, thinking I wouldn't get another chance.  Lucky for me I was able to get the images above the next morning when going down to the sea at 06:30 and was amazed when the bird appeared with a fish in its talons.

ISO 100S 1/80

Panoramic Views

Im not sure if I will use panoramic views in my final portfolio for theme 1 but after discovering photomerge in CS5 this is one of my favourite functions and is perfect for landscape photography.


I played with this a few weeks ago in my mam's back garden and quickly took the shots I needed, holding the camera oppose to using a tripod.  The final results were great to show my understanding of the function but were not great technically, so whilst at Old Moore I decided to use a tripod and a large F Stop to get a better final image.  I took approx 15 shots for each of the following images and then cropped them onced I had merged them in CS5.


The final images turned out really great capturing not only how amazing the reserve looked as the sun was setting but capturing a lot of detail from using a large F stop (F/16).

Shutter Problems!!!!!

During my first session at Old Moore nature reserve (theme 1) I realised that using a fast shutter was not as easy as I thought it would be.  This being down to the weather not being as bright as I had been told by the good old faithfull weatherman and the restriction on the natural light in the bird garden.

The bird hide in which I was shooting from was in the garden, this is at the back of the visitor centre which from indoors you can look out into the garden and see the hide.  Round the back of the hide is woodland where a large number of garden birds seem to spend the day, coming into the garden and feeding on the feeders.  As nice as this all is it certainly restricts the amount of light coming into the garden and as a result I found it quite a challenge to freeze the birds and get sharp, clear images. The images below are off the garden and hopefully from these you can see why the light is restricted.

View from inside the visitor centre looking out into the Bird Garden

View from  Garden Hide

View from Garden Hide (opposite side)

I had to use an ISO of 400 with the shutter set at 1/100 sec, I have added a few images below which show the result of this.  I am not to happy with the results as they are not as sharp as I would have liked and if you start to zom in on the images you can see that the movemeent has not been frozen with some blur appearing.  There is also a lot of noise in the images to from using a higher ISO.

You can see from the above images (once opened up) that they are not great, I did set the Shutter to a much faster setting, for example 1/400, 1/500 but these were simply to short with the images being very dark. 

My next visit to Old Moore will be later this week and the challenge here is to solve this problem and hopefully return home with much better images.  One thing I can do that doesnt involve the camera settings is to plan my day better at the reserve.  Instead of shooting from the bird garden early morning I will wait until the after noon when the natural light is better.  Hopefully taking advantage of this light I will be able to reduce the ISO back to approx 200 and increase the shutter to approx 1/500 in order to freeze the birds and get much sharper images.

There are 4-5 hides set out on the reserve that are out in the open and overlooking large areas of open water and the light really did make a difference.  It also left a brilliant glow on the reserve as the sun was setting which was amazing. 

I didnt get chance to go round all the hides so hopefully on my next visit I'll be more prepared, getting there earlier and being able to get round the whole reserve. 

The images below are some of the better ones which I wil consider using, as you can see the light is much better and the images are sharper.

 

Aperture Re-visted

I decided I would re-visit aperture, when we first looked at this Dave explained why we use Aperture, the effects this has and how you can use this to achieve specific result.  For example when shooting landscapes you would use a small Aperture (Large F Stop) this would give you a wide depth of field with less "out of focus" capturing much more detail across the Landscape. 

On the other hand if you didn't want to capture the detail and had a focal point you wanted to enhance you would use a large Aperture (Small F Stop) which would then give you a shallow depth of field and more "out of focus" area in the image.


When looking at this the first time round I was getting very confused with how you talk about Aperture, i.e. if you are talking about a small hole using a large F stop do you call this a Large Aperture or Small?  I decided for me I find it easier to refer to Aperture by using the term F stops.


Whilst working on the colours theme a few weeks back I decided that would be a good time to play with F stops as I was playing around with pencil crayons and though they would be ideal to show the effects of the F Stops being able to show only a small area in focus and then the whole area in focus using a large F Stop. I have added two images below which I think show the effects brilliantly.

F/ 5.6

F/29

As you can see there is much more detail in focus on the second image where a much larger F Stop has been used and vise versa

As I will be shooting on a nature reserve for theme 1, Aperture will be considered quite a lot as I will be using large F Stops for the landscape shots and then using smaller F Stops (with a fast shutter) when capturing the birds on the reserve.

I found with Aperture the more you read about it, experiment with it and see visible difference's in the images the more it all fits into place.  I found this below when researching Aperture, its just one of the many results listed in google that will explain Aperture and help you to understand it.

1) What is Aperture?

Simply put, aperture is a hole within a lens, through which light travels into the camera body. It is easier to understand the concept if you just think about our eyes. Every camera that we know of today is designed like human eyes. The cornea in our eyes is like the front element of a lens – it gathers all external light, then bends it and passes it to the iris. Depending on the amount of light, the iris can either expand or shrink, controlling the size of the pupil, which is a hole that lets the light pass further into the eye. The pupil is essentially what we refer to as aperture in photography. The amount of light that enters the retina (which works just like the camera sensor), is limited to the size of the pupil – the larger the pupil, the more light enters the retina.
So, the easiest way to remember aperture, is by associating it with your pupil. Large pupil size equals large aperture, while small pupil size equals small aperture.

2) Size of Aperture – Large vs Small Aperture

The iris of the lens that controls the size (diameter) of the aperture is called “diaphragm” in optics. The sole purpose of the diaphragm is to block or stop all light, with the exception of the light that goes through the aperture. In photography, aperture is expressed in f-numbers (for example f/5.6). These f-numbers that are known as “f-stops” are a way of describing the size of the aperture, or how open or closed the aperture is. A smaller f-stop means a larger aperture, while a larger f-stop means a smaller aperture. Most people find this awkward, since we are used to having larger numbers represent larger values, but not in this case. For example, f/1.4 is larger than f/2.0 and much larger than f/8.0.
Take a look at this chart (image courtesy of Wikipedia):

The size of the circle represents the size of the lens aperture – the larger the f-number, the smaller the aperture.

3) What is Depth of Field?

One important thing to remember here, the size of the aperture has a direct impact on the depth of field, which is the area of the image that appears sharp. A large f-number such as f/32, (which means a smaller aperture) will bring all foreground and background objects in focus, while a small f-number such as f/1.4 will isolate the foreground from the background by making the foreground objects sharp and the background blurry.

Change to Theme 1

I had decided a few weeks back that my first theme would be Nature and the idea behind this was that I was going to visit several parts of the peak district and capture some dramatic landscapes and produce a portfolio from this.




I didn't think at the time that this would be as big a challenge as it is, in respect of the time I would need to allocate to this each weekend whilst trying to fit in other responsibilities I had as well as working full time.  I did manage to visit a couple of places and take some shots but not enough to produce the kind of portfolio I had pictured in my mind.




So, with this being slightly over ambitious I have now decided to change this theme a little.  I have now decided that whilst visiting my partners parents over the Christmas period I will use this time to visit a nature reserve run by the RSPB called Old Moor (Dearne Valley).




Being a keen ornithologist I visit Old Moor quite a lot and it really is a nice place to spend the day, walking round the reserve and watching the birds come and go.  There are a number of hides in the reserve which give you a great opportunity to get up close to the birds and get some great shots.  The land around the reserve is made up of woodland, lakes and grassland all offering a great habitat for many different birds.




In winter the reserve is an important stopping off point for Ducks, Geese and Swans plus approximately 8000 Golden Plovers.



Old Moor was originally one of the 32 coal mines in the Yorkshire area in which a majority of these were closed in 1989 if not earlier.  This particular mine (Wath Main Colliery) was closed on the 25 March 1988.



Here are a couple of pictures I have taken over the summer this year before starting the course, as with all my images taken before the course these were taken in Automatic mode.

The images above have not been edited or cropped and looking back at these since starting this course it is evident that composition, rule of thirds and framing were not always considered when simply pointing and shooting.


My first visit to Old Moor to start on this theme will be tomorrow, the weather tomorrow will be as follows;

Date	Time	Temp	Wind	Speed	Gust	Visibility
Fri 16 Dec	0000	1 °C	SSE	1 mph		Very Poor
	0300	1 °C	N	3 mph		Moderate
	0600	1 °C	WNW	5 mph		Moderate
	0900	1 °C	W	8 mph		Moderate
	1200	2 °C	W	7 mph	19 mph	Good
	1500	2 °C	NNW	8 mph	18 mph	Moderate
	1800	2 °C	NNW	10 mph	23 mph	Good
	Night	0 °C	W	7 mph		Very Good

The weather looks set to be quite good with good visibility, dry with some cloud and strong winds. In respect of this weather and the area I will be vvisiting I will be wearing appropriate winter clothing for the outdoors including walking boots and a warm winter coat as I expect it will be quite a cold day.  In addition I will be taking a flask of hot tea and a packed lunch. 


Hopefully I should get plenty of good natural light throughout the day which I will need as I will be shooting using Shutter Priority when capturing the birds and other wildlife whilst also using a tripod and a 75-300mm Telep-macro lens .  When capturing images of the reserve and the visitor centre I will be using various F stops, using a tripod and a 18-55mm lens.