Tutorials
As promised here are a few tutorials as written by myself.
If you wish to use this tutorial anywhere then please contact me via my contact page as they are subject to copyright.
The first installment shooting in RAW is below... More to follow
Shooting in Raw for DSLR users
Why shoot in Raw?
Well for one the quality of the image is unmistakably better!
If at anytime you wish to sell your images which i presume you all do as you are here! you will need to keep that image looking as good as the day you first took it! jpegs degrade in time the more compressions added the worse the image gets!
When shooting for magazines, advertising and most professional organizations they will ask for a TIFF file (i will explain more in a moment)!
A Raw file is a file that has not been processed by your camera so rather than the camera saying ohh this is what i saw and then processing it to its own specs, You will be processing it to your own... really not as complicated as it sounds!
Right you have now changed your camera to shoot RAW & Jpeg and you have gone out and taken your photos what ever they may be off and downloaded them in the normal way onto your computer.
Double click on your RAW file and it will open in your editing program ( i use photoshop CS3 ) but paintshop and other adobe programs work in the same way, You file has now opened in your editing program in your RAW CONVERTER.
This is your basic untouched photo! in the top right hand corner of this box should be "white balance" now if you click on this box and pick different white balances you should be able to see your image change (when shooting in JPEG your camera decides these settings for you , which is not always the best option)
I Use the following white balance settings for:
sunsets "shade or cloudy" this will boost the colours of your sunsets/ sunrises
Night shots " tungsten " this will turn your orange lights to a nicer shade of yellow and turn your dark sky to a more suitable blue colour.
all the white balance settings are worth trying on each image... you never know quite will work best at the beginning but playing is good! and if you do not like it you have both the " as shot option " and the " default option to put it back to the way it first came out of the camera!
In photoshops Raw image converter you have the "auto" options where the program decides what the image should look like based on your cameras settings... this is perfectly ok but there is nothing quite like your own eye for deciding what you wanted from that image.
moving on you have exposure ... use this slider sparingly as large changes in exposure will cause noise/ grain on your image!
the rest of the sliders ie.. saturation and contrast are great to adjust as suitable to your own eye ( you are your own best critique )
you cannot go wrong because you have the all important "as shot" and "default" settings in your white balance and just below the white balance box to fall back on!
i will give more details on using raw such as adjusting vignetting at a later date as i think too much at once could be daunting ( i prefer the little and often approach to teaching )
happy with your image? click open in the bottom right hand corner of your box!
this will open your image in your editing program..
this is where i prefer to straighten my horizons and add those few finishing touches!
Now presuming you have finished editing your image for now or you are completely happy you can save as "TIFF" or "JPEG" i prefer to save as "tiff" to keep for future use and to send out to clients and then save as "JPEG" for the web.
Why TiFF? when saving as TIFF it gives you the option of saving as a uncompressed image (too much compression as with JPEGS can ruin the quality of your image)
This will take up more space on your hard drive there is no doubt about that so i save all my RAW files and TIFF files to disc ( i actually have three copies of every image i take as a back up.. as i lost a complete collection of a few years images a while back, it was heart breaking!)
Shooting landscapes
i am sure that everyone has their own way of working so i will just talk you through the way i work as requested.
First things first... take a peek out of the window, is the sky looking interesting? if not then i don't tend to bother going out ... i am looking for any of the following, foreboding clouds, blue skies, sunsets, sunrises, mists, and rain,
So presuming i am doing the usual sunrise shot i set off with my tripod, shutter switch, camera and lenses, and filters
i already before i set off have a idea of the shot i want more often than not! this comes from knowing your subject or the area you are shooting, this is not always possible but knowing what makes a good/great images helps!
so i want a photo of the castle on the hill for instance, where is the sun? i dont want the sun in my image as sunspots and glare ruin a perfectly good image, so i have one of two choices i can move my carcass and find a angle where the sun will not be in shot or wait for the sun to move out of my frame...
now im looking for a lead in line to draw my eye to the castle on the hill... a fence or maybe a line of trees.. a hedge row, a path,.. your lead in line does not have to be straight! it can be interesting too have zig zags or a windy path.
i have now found my line.. im using a fence so i set up my tripod so that the fence is just off to my right a little and the castle is centre frame and i have set my , my camera is now on the tripod and the shutter switch attached. I set my camera to bulb but you can equally use AV, my ISO is set to 50 but 100 will do just fine, my polarizer and my ND filter (neutral density ) are in my filter holder or in most peoples case screwed on the front of the lens i have chosen a ND 4 filter ( different ND filters for long exposures the darker the filter the longer the exposure) i have set my camera to f11. zooming in and out until i have what i want in the frame and making sure that dog bins etc are not in the image! i press my shutter switch.
That is a typical me day shooting landscapes not at all spontaneous but gets some good images.
a few quick notes here.. i do not always stick to the rule of thirds .. but more often than not a better image will result in using it!
the rule of thirds is not as complicated as it first seems imagine 3 lines across your view finder... your sky is in the top then you have the castle and then lower you have your foreground interest.. well thats as basic as im going to manage to put it!
i appreciate some of this will sound like another language to some people just starting out and i cannot state enough that no matter how boring a manual is life is so much easier when read and tested!
if anyone is stuck shout!
can i just mention which i seem to have forgotten when using your camera on a low ISO and tripod mounted you will not get the strange squiggly lights and blurred images in low light, when taking a photo on a long exposure your hand does not stay still long enough so the shutters still open capturing the detail so movement = blur
hence when tripod mounted this is not an issue
If you wish to use this tutorial anywhere then please contact me via my contact page as they are subject to copyright.
The first installment shooting in RAW is below... More to follow
Shooting in Raw for DSLR users
Why shoot in Raw?
Well for one the quality of the image is unmistakably better!
If at anytime you wish to sell your images which i presume you all do as you are here! you will need to keep that image looking as good as the day you first took it! jpegs degrade in time the more compressions added the worse the image gets!
When shooting for magazines, advertising and most professional organizations they will ask for a TIFF file (i will explain more in a moment)!
A Raw file is a file that has not been processed by your camera so rather than the camera saying ohh this is what i saw and then processing it to its own specs, You will be processing it to your own... really not as complicated as it sounds!
Right you have now changed your camera to shoot RAW & Jpeg and you have gone out and taken your photos what ever they may be off and downloaded them in the normal way onto your computer.
Double click on your RAW file and it will open in your editing program ( i use photoshop CS3 ) but paintshop and other adobe programs work in the same way, You file has now opened in your editing program in your RAW CONVERTER.
This is your basic untouched photo! in the top right hand corner of this box should be "white balance" now if you click on this box and pick different white balances you should be able to see your image change (when shooting in JPEG your camera decides these settings for you , which is not always the best option)
I Use the following white balance settings for:
sunsets "shade or cloudy" this will boost the colours of your sunsets/ sunrises
Night shots " tungsten " this will turn your orange lights to a nicer shade of yellow and turn your dark sky to a more suitable blue colour.
all the white balance settings are worth trying on each image... you never know quite will work best at the beginning but playing is good! and if you do not like it you have both the " as shot option " and the " default option to put it back to the way it first came out of the camera!
In photoshops Raw image converter you have the "auto" options where the program decides what the image should look like based on your cameras settings... this is perfectly ok but there is nothing quite like your own eye for deciding what you wanted from that image.
moving on you have exposure ... use this slider sparingly as large changes in exposure will cause noise/ grain on your image!
the rest of the sliders ie.. saturation and contrast are great to adjust as suitable to your own eye ( you are your own best critique )
you cannot go wrong because you have the all important "as shot" and "default" settings in your white balance and just below the white balance box to fall back on!
i will give more details on using raw such as adjusting vignetting at a later date as i think too much at once could be daunting ( i prefer the little and often approach to teaching )
happy with your image? click open in the bottom right hand corner of your box!
this will open your image in your editing program..
this is where i prefer to straighten my horizons and add those few finishing touches!
Now presuming you have finished editing your image for now or you are completely happy you can save as "TIFF" or "JPEG" i prefer to save as "tiff" to keep for future use and to send out to clients and then save as "JPEG" for the web.
Why TiFF? when saving as TIFF it gives you the option of saving as a uncompressed image (too much compression as with JPEGS can ruin the quality of your image)
This will take up more space on your hard drive there is no doubt about that so i save all my RAW files and TIFF files to disc ( i actually have three copies of every image i take as a back up.. as i lost a complete collection of a few years images a while back, it was heart breaking!)
Shooting landscapes
i am sure that everyone has their own way of working so i will just talk you through the way i work as requested.
First things first... take a peek out of the window, is the sky looking interesting? if not then i don't tend to bother going out ... i am looking for any of the following, foreboding clouds, blue skies, sunsets, sunrises, mists, and rain,
So presuming i am doing the usual sunrise shot i set off with my tripod, shutter switch, camera and lenses, and filters
i already before i set off have a idea of the shot i want more often than not! this comes from knowing your subject or the area you are shooting, this is not always possible but knowing what makes a good/great images helps!
so i want a photo of the castle on the hill for instance, where is the sun? i dont want the sun in my image as sunspots and glare ruin a perfectly good image, so i have one of two choices i can move my carcass and find a angle where the sun will not be in shot or wait for the sun to move out of my frame...
now im looking for a lead in line to draw my eye to the castle on the hill... a fence or maybe a line of trees.. a hedge row, a path,.. your lead in line does not have to be straight! it can be interesting too have zig zags or a windy path.
i have now found my line.. im using a fence so i set up my tripod so that the fence is just off to my right a little and the castle is centre frame and i have set my , my camera is now on the tripod and the shutter switch attached. I set my camera to bulb but you can equally use AV, my ISO is set to 50 but 100 will do just fine, my polarizer and my ND filter (neutral density ) are in my filter holder or in most peoples case screwed on the front of the lens i have chosen a ND 4 filter ( different ND filters for long exposures the darker the filter the longer the exposure) i have set my camera to f11. zooming in and out until i have what i want in the frame and making sure that dog bins etc are not in the image! i press my shutter switch.
That is a typical me day shooting landscapes not at all spontaneous but gets some good images.
a few quick notes here.. i do not always stick to the rule of thirds .. but more often than not a better image will result in using it!
the rule of thirds is not as complicated as it first seems imagine 3 lines across your view finder... your sky is in the top then you have the castle and then lower you have your foreground interest.. well thats as basic as im going to manage to put it!
i appreciate some of this will sound like another language to some people just starting out and i cannot state enough that no matter how boring a manual is life is so much easier when read and tested!
if anyone is stuck shout!
can i just mention which i seem to have forgotten when using your camera on a low ISO and tripod mounted you will not get the strange squiggly lights and blurred images in low light, when taking a photo on a long exposure your hand does not stay still long enough so the shutters still open capturing the detail so movement = blur
hence when tripod mounted this is not an issue
