Of the primary foundations of great photography, only one of them—the ability to capture a compelling image with a pleasing composition—takes a lifetime (or longer) to master. The art of making a photograph, rather than just taking a photograph, requires an aesthetic eye that sees the right angle for the shot, as well as a sense of what should be included or excluded in the frame; a knowledge of what has been done in the medium before (and where photography can be taken in the future); and a willingness to explore new areas. The more you pursue photography, the more you will learn about visualization and composition. When all is said and done, this is what photography is all about.
The other basics of photography—equally essential—involve more technical aspects: the ability to use your camera’s features to produce an image with good tonal and color values; to achieve sharpness (where required) or unsharpness (when you’re using selective focus); and to master appropriate white/color balance. It’s practical to learn these technical skills in a time frame that’s much less than a lifetime, although most of us find there is always room for improvement. You’ll find the basic information you need to become proficient in each of these technical areas in this book.
You’ve probably already spent a lot of time learning your a6000’s basic features, and setting it up to take decent pictures automatically, with little input from you. It probably felt great to gain the confidence to snap off picture after picture, knowing that a large percentage of them were going to be well exposed, in sharp focus, and rich with color. This Sony camera is designed to produce good, basic images right out of the box.
But after you were comfortable with your camera, you began looking for ways to add your own creativity to your shots. You explored ways of tweaking the exposure, using selective focus, and, perhaps, depending on what lens your camera has, experimenting with the different looks that various lens zoom settings (focal lengths) could offer.
The final and most rewarding stage comes when you begin exploring advanced techniques that enable you to get stunning shots that will have your family, friends, and colleagues asking you, “How did you do that?” These more advanced techniques deserve an entire book of their own, but there is plenty of room in this chapter to introduce you to some clever things you can do with your a6000.
Fast shutter speeds (such as 1/1,000th second) can stop action because they capture only a tiny slice of time: a high-jumper frozen in mid-air, perhaps. The Sony a6000 has a top shutter speed of 1/4,000th second for ambient light exposures. Electronic flash can also freeze motion by virtue of its extremely short duration—as brief as 1/50,000th second or less. When you’re using flash, the short duration of the actual burst of light can freeze a moving subject; that can also give you an ultra-quick glimpse of a moving subject when the scene is illuminated only by flash.
The a6000 is fully capable of immobilizing all but the very fastest movement if you use a shutter speed of 1/4,000th second (without flash). Some cameras have speeds up to 1/8,000th second, but those are generally overkill when it comes to stopping action; I can rarely find a situation where even 1/4,000th second is required to freeze high-speed motion. For example, the image shown in Figure 7.1 required a shutter speed of just 1/2,000th second to freeze the jumper as she cleared the hurdle.
Figure 7.1 A shutter speed of 1/2,000th second will freeze most action.
Virtually all sports action can be frozen at 1/2,000th second or a slower shutter speed, and for many sports a slower shutter speed is actually preferable—for example, to allow the wheels of a racing automobile or motorcycle, or the propeller on a classic aircraft, to blur realistically.
There may be a few situations where a shutter speed faster than 1/4,000th second is required. If you wanted to use an aperture of f/1.8 at ISO 100 outdoors in bright sunlight, say to throw a background out of focus with the shallow depth-of-field available at f/1.8, a shutter speed of 1/4,000th second would more than do the job. You’d need a faster shutter speed only if you set a higher ISO, and you probably wouldn’t do that if your goal were to use the widest aperture possible. Under less than full sunlight, I doubt you’d even need to use a shutter speed of 1/4,000th second in any situations you’re likely to encounter.
Electronic flash works well for freezing the motion of a nearby subject when flash is the only source of illumination. Since the subject is illuminated for only a split second, you get the effect that would be provided by a very fast shutter speed and also the high level of light needed for an exposure. This feature can be useful for stopping the motion of a nearby subject.
Of course, as you’ll see in Chapter 10, the tiny slices of time extracted by the millisecond duration of an electronic flash exact a penalty. To use flash the a6000 employs a shutter speed no faster than 1/160th second, which is the fastest shutter speed—called sync speed—in flash photography with your a6000.
You can have a lot of fun exploring the kinds of pictures you can take using very brief exposure times, whether you decide to take advantage of the action-stopping shutter speeds (between 1/1,000th and 1/4,000th second) or the brief burst of light from flash that can freeze the motion of a nearby subject. Here are a few ideas to get you started:
Figure 7.2 Freezing a helicopter’s rotors with a fast shutter speed makes for an image that doesn’t look natural (top); a little blur helps convey a feeling of motion (bottom).
Figure 7.3 A large amount of artificial illumination and an ISO 1600 setting made it possible to capture this shot at 1/2,000th second without use of electronic flash.
Longer exposures are a doorway into another world, showing us how even familiar scenes can look much different when photographed over periods measured in seconds. At night, long exposures produce streaks of light from moving, illuminated subjects like automobiles or amusement park rides. Or, you can move the camera or zoom the lens to get interesting streaks from non-moving light sources, such as the holiday lights shown in Figure 7.4. Extra-long exposures of seemingly pitch-dark subjects can reveal interesting views using light levels barely bright enough to see by. At any time of day, including daytime (in which case you’ll often need the help of neutral-density filters to make the long exposure practical), long exposures can cause moving objects to vanish entirely, because they don’t remain stationary long enough to register in a photograph.
Figure 7.4 Zooming during a long exposure can produce interesting streaks of light.
There are actually three common types of lengthy exposures: timed exposures, bulb exposures, and time exposures. The Sony a6000 offers only the first two. Because of the length of the exposure, both of the following techniques should be used with a tripod to hold the camera steady.
To make a bulb exposure with the a6000, set the camera on Manual mode and use the control wheel to set the shutter speed immediately after 30 seconds. BULB will be displayed on the LCD. (BULB is not available in Shutter Priority.) Then, press the shutter release button to start the exposure; keep it depressed and then release it to close the shutter.
Tip
The camera’s light meter is disengaged when you use the BULB setting so you’ll need to use an external light meter to calculate the aperture and exposure time that will provide a good exposure of the scene you plan to photograph. If you don’t have an accessory light meter, you can rely on the tips published in books or magazine articles about long exposure image making. Otherwise, you’ll simply need to guess, as I do when shooting fireworks with the BULB setting, as discussed in a later section.
Because the a6000 produces such good images at longer timed exposures, and there are so many creative things you can do with long-exposure techniques, you’ll want to do some experimenting. Get yourself a tripod or another firm support and take some test shots with long exposure noise reduction both enabled and disabled in the Setup menu (to see whether you prefer low noise or high detail) and get started.
Figure 7.5 The shutter opened as the dancers began their movement from a standing position, and finished when they had bent over and paused.
Neutral-density filters are gray (non-colored) filters that reduce the amount of light passing through the lens, without adding any color or effect of their own.
Figure 7.6 I caught the fireworks after a baseball game from a half-mile away, using a four-second exposure to capture several bursts in one shot.
Figure 7.7 A fast shutter speed (top) freezes the droplets of moving water, while a long exposure (bottom) can produce an impression of motion in a still photo that most viewers prefer.
Figure 7.8 A long exposure transformed this night scene into a picture apparently taken at dusk.
Sometimes it’s desirable to have a delay of some sort before a picture is actually taken. Perhaps you’d like to get in the picture yourself, and would appreciate it if the camera waited 10 seconds after you press the shutter release to actually take the picture. Maybe you want to give a tripod-mounted camera time to settle down and damp any residual vibration after the release is pressed to improve sharpness for an exposure with a relatively slow shutter speed.
The a6000 has a built-in self-timer with 10-second and 2-second delays. Activate the timer by pressing the drive button (left direction button) and navigating with the up/down direction buttons or the control wheel to choose the self-timer icon. Then, press the left/right button to toggle between 2-second and 10-second delays. Press the center button to lock in your choice.
Compose the scene and press the shutter release button halfway to lock focus on your subjects (if you’re taking a self-portrait, focus on an object at a similar distance and use focus lock). Depress the shutter release the rest of the way and the countdown will start (the focus will not change after this so you can walk away from the camera). The lamp on the front of the a6000 will blink slowly for eight seconds (when using the 10-second timer) and the beeper will chirp (if you haven’t disabled it). During the final two seconds, the beeper sounds more rapidly and the lamp remains on until the picture is taken. (With the 2-second timer, you get a burst of rapid chirping accompanied by the lamp, which goes out just before the shutter is triggered.)
If you want to have the camera take multiple shots after the self-timer counts down, set a different option in the Drive menu: the icon that has C3 after it. The C indicates that Continuous shooting will be in effect; the number indicates the number of shots that will be taken. Press the directional buttons and you can switch to using C5. If you set C3, the camera will fire three shots in a burst after the self-timer has finished counting down, while C5 will fire five shots instead. This is a handy way to get at least one family photo that’s not spoiled by a blinker or yawner in the line-up.
Finally, although this feature may not have been intended for such use, the Smile Shutter feature of the a6000 camera acts as a self-timer of sorts. Set up the shot the way you want it using a tripod, then you and/or your subjects can stand in front of the camera and trigger it with your built-in remote controller: a smile. The operation of the Smile Shutter feature is discussed in Chapter 3.
The a6000’s Continuous shooting modes remind me how far digital photography has brought us. The first accessory I purchased when I worked as a sports photographer some years ago was a motor drive for my film SLR. It enabled me to snap off a series of shots at a three frames-per-second rate, which came in very handy when a fullback broke through the line and headed for the end zone. Even a seasoned action photographer can miss the decisive instant when a crucial block is made, or a baseball superstar’s bat shatters and pieces of cork fly out. Continuous shooting simplifies taking a series of pictures, either to ensure that one has more or less the exact moment you want to capture or to capture a sequence that is interesting as a collection of successive images.
The a6000’s “motor drive” capabilities are, in many ways, much superior to what you get with a film camera. For one thing, a motor-driven film camera can eat up film at an incredible pace, which is why many of them are used with cassettes that hold hundreds of feet of film stock. At three frames per second (typical of film cameras), a short burst of a few seconds can burn up as much as half of an ordinary 36 exposure roll of film. And as we’ll see, the a6000 can fire at a blazing 11 frames per second that 35mm cameras could not match; that was just as well back when you’d expect to pay up to $10 for a roll of film with processing. Of course, digital cameras like the a6000, have reusable “film,” so if you waste a few dozen shots on non-decisive moments, you can erase them and shoot more.
The increased capacity of digital film cards gives you a prodigious number of frames to work with. At an air show I covered earlier this year, I took more than 1,000 images in a couple of hours. I was able to cram hundreds of Large/Fine JPEGs on a single memory card. That’s a lot of shooting. Given an average burst of about eight frames per sequence (nobody really takes 15-20 shots or more of one pass, even with a slow-moving biplane as shown in Figure 7.9), I was able to capture more than 100 different sequences like the one shown before I needed to swap cards.
I took nearly a thousand shots at a cycle race recently, capturing the non-stop action as cyclists approached my position, made sharp turns in a curve, and so on. Figure 7.10 shows a six shot burst taken during the event. For some types of action (such as football), even longer bursts come in handy, because running and passing plays often last 5 to 10 seconds; there’s also a change in character as the action switches from the quarterback dropping back to pass or hand off the ball, then to the receiver or running back trying to gain as much yardage as possible.
To use the a6000’s continuous advance mode, press the drive button (left direction button) or go to the Drive Mode entry in the Camera Settings 2 menu. Then navigate down the list with the up/down direction buttons until the Cont. Shooting option is selected. Press the left/right buttons to select Hi, Mid, or Low, which yields 11, 6, and 2.5 frames per second, respectively.
Figure 7.9 Air shows make a perfect subject for continuous bursts.
Figure 7.10 Continuous shooting allows you to capture an entire sequence of moments as they unfold.
If you set the AF mode (in the Function submenu) to AF-C, Continuous autofocus (with phase detection AF) will be available in all continuous drive modes, but only as long as the subject is covered by the active focus detection point(s). This feature is useful when a moving subject is approaching the camera (as in Figure 7.10), or moving away from it; the a6000 will continuously adjust focus, tracking the subject as the distance changes, so the entire set of photos should be sharply focused.
Once you have decided on a continuous shooting mode and speed, press the center button to confirm your choice. Then, while you hold down the shutter button, the a6000 will fire continuously until it reaches the limit of its capacity to store images, given the image size and quality you have selected and other factors, such as the speed of your memory card and the environment you are shooting in. For example, if the lighting is so dim as to require an exposure of about one second, the camera clearly cannot fire the shutter at a rate of about 3 frames per second. (Sony suggests turning the Lens Comp.: Distortion feature Off in the Custom Settings 4 menu to ensure the full framing speed.) And to be able to shoot at 11 fps, you definitely need to be using a fast shutter speed. Another factor that will affect your continuous shooting is the use of flash, which needs time to recycle after each exposure before it can fire again. Note that at the top frame rate, the a6000 doesn’t show a live view of what you’re capturing; the image on the LCD or viewfinder seems to lag a frame or two behind (although it’s difficult to tell the difference when shooting at such a high speed).
There are no exact figures available for how many images you can shoot continuously, partly because there are so many variables that affect that number. I’ve found that the a6000, when I use it with my 600X 64GB Lexar memory card, can capture as many as 50 JPEG Fine images at 11 fps. Generally, you can maximize the number of continuous shots by using only JPEG capture (not RAW or RAW & JPEG) and by setting a lower JPEG quality and/or size. The reason the camera cannot let you shoot hundreds of photos in a single burst is that continuous images are first shuttled into the a6000’s internal memory buffer, then doled out to the memory card as quickly as the card can write the data. Technically, the a6000 takes the RAW data received from the digital image processor and converts it to the output format you’ve selected—either JPEG or RAW—and deposits it in the buffer ready to store on the card.
The internal “smart” buffer can suck up photos much more quickly than the memory card and, indeed, some memory cards are significantly faster or slower than others. When the buffer begins to fill, the framing speed slows significantly; eventually the buffer fills and then you can’t take any more continuous shots until the a6000 has dumped some of them to the card, making more room in the buffer. (If you often need to shoot long bursts, be sure to use a fast memory card, rated at least as Class 10 or 30 to 95MB/s since it can write images more quickly than a slower card, freeing up buffer space faster; this allows for shooting a longer series of photos.)
So, if you’re in a situation in which continuous shooting is an issue, you may need to make some quick judgments. If you’re taking photos at a breaking news event where it’s crucial to keep the camera firing no matter what and quality of the images is not a huge issue, your best bet may be to set the image size to Small and the quality to Standard. On the other hand, if you’re taking candid shots at a family gathering and want to capture a variety of fleeting expressions on people’s faces, you may opt for taking Large size shots at the Fine quality setting, knowing that the drive speed may slow occasionally; if using a fast card however, I doubt you’ll find that to be a problem unless you want to shoot several dozen photos in a burst (unlikely). A good point to bear in mind at all times is that the speeds given for the three Continuous shooting options are maximums that can be reached; you may find the speed slower when the camera has difficulty maintaining focus on an erratically moving subject (in AF-C mode) and it will definitely be slower when you’re not using a fast shutter speed. However, in most cases, I find the a6000 is able to lock on and focus even at 11 fps.
You can use camera features before shooting to fine-tune the images that you’ll take in several different ways. For example, if you don’t want to choose a predefined white balance such as Tungsten or Cloudy, you can set a custom white balance based on the illumination of the site where you’ll be taking photos; you can also set a white balance based on color temperature. With the Creative Style options, you can select one that’s most likely to produce the desired effect, such as Portrait or Landscape, and then set a custom level for saturation, contrast, and sharpness to meet your exact preferences. This section shows you how to use the available image parameters.
As you might expect, if the camera is set to one of the Auto or SCN modes, most of the customizing features will not be available; the camera will automatically make default settings, such as Automatic White Balance and the Standard Creative Style. While Chapter 3 described the method for setting the various camera features, I’ll recap the procedure for making adjustments to the relevant features on the following pages.
Back when we were shooting with 35mm cameras, color films were standardized, or balanced, for a particular “color” of light. Most were balanced for daylight but you could also buy “tungsten” balanced film for shooting under incandescent lamps that produced light of an amber color. This type of film had a bluish color balance, intended to moderate the effect produced by light that was amber. Nothing of this type is necessary with digital cameras like the Sony a6000 because you can set any white balance option that will be suitable considering the color of the light.
This is important because various light sources produce illumination of different “colors,” although sometimes we are not aware of the difference. Indoor illumination tends to be somewhat amber when using light bulbs that are not daylight balanced, while noonday light outdoors is close to white, and the light early and late in the day is somewhat red/yellow.
White balance is measured using a scale called color temperature. Color temperatures were assigned by heating a theoretical “black body radiator” and recording the spectrum of light it emitted at a given temperature in degrees Kelvin. So, daylight at noon has a color temperature in the 5,500K to 6,000K degree range. Indoor illumination is around 3,400K degrees. Hotter temperatures produce bluer images (think blue-white hot) while cooler temperatures produce redder images (think of a dull-red glowing ember). Because of human nature, though, bluer images are actually called “cool” (think wintry day) and redder images are called “warm” (think ruddy sunset), even though their color temperatures are reversed.
Take a photo indoors under warm illumination with a digital camera sensor balanced for cooler daylight and the image will appear much too red/yellow. An image exposed outdoors with the white balance set for incandescent (tungsten) illumination will seem much too blue. These color casts may be too strong to remove in an image editor from JPEG files. Of course, if you shoot RAW photos, you can later change the WB setting to the desired value in RAW converter software; this is a completely “non destructive” process so full image quality will be maintained.
Mismatched white balance settings are easier to achieve accidentally than you might think, even for experienced photographers. I’d just arrived at a concert after shooting some photos indoors with electronic flash and had manually set WB for Flash. Then, as the concert began, I resumed shooting using the incandescent stage lighting—which looked white to the eye—and ended up with a few shots like Figure 7.11. Eventually, I caught the error during picture review, and changed my white balance. Another time, I was shooting outdoors, but had the camera white balance still set for incandescent illumination. The excessively blue image shown in Figure 7.12 resulted. (I suppose I should salvage my reputation as a photo guru by admitting that both these images were taken “incorrectly” deliberately, as illustrations for this book; in real life, I’m excessively attentive to how my white balance is set. You do believe me, don’t you?)
Figure 7.11 An image exposed indoors with the WB set for daylight or electronic flash will appear too reddish.
Figure 7.12 An image exposed in daylight with the WB set for incandescent (tungsten) illumination will appear too blue.
The Auto White Balance (AWB) setting, available from the White Balance item of the Camera Settings 3 menu, examines your scene and chooses an appropriate value based on its perception of the color of the illumination and even the colors in the scene. However, the process is not foolproof (with any camera). Under bright lighting conditions, it may evaluate the colors in the image and still assume the light source is daylight and balance the picture accordingly, even though, in fact, you may be shooting under extremely bright incandescent illumination. In dimmer light, the camera’s electronics may assume that the illumination is tungsten, and if there are lots of reddish colors present, set color balance for that type of lighting. With mercury vapor or sodium lamps, correct white balance may be virtually impossible to achieve with any of the so-called presets. In those cases, you should use flash instead, or Custom WB with JPEGs; or shoot in RAW format and make your corrections after importing the file into your image editor with a RAW converter.
The a6000 provides many WB options, often called presets by photographers, each intended for use in specific lighting conditions. You can choose from Daylight, Shade, Cloudy, Incandescent (often called Tungsten by photographers), four types of Fluorescent (Warm White, Cool White, Day White, and Daylight), Flash, and Underwater Auto. One of these presets is often useful, as it was in the photo shown in Figure 7.12. However, the a6000 also offers a method for setting a desired color temperature/filter as well as a custom WB feature.
The Daylight preset provides WB at 5,200K, while the Shade preset uses 7,000K to give you a warming effect that’s useful in the bluish light of a deeply shaded area. The chief difference between direct sun and an area in shade, or even incandescent light sources, is nothing more than the proportions of red and blue light. The spectrum of colors used by the a6000 is continuous, but it is biased toward one end or the other.
However, some types of fluorescent lights produce illumination that has a severe deficit in certain colors, such as only particular shades of red. If you looked at the spectrum or rainbow of colors encompassed by such a light source, it would have black bands in it, representing particular wavelengths of light that are absent. You can’t compensate for this deficiency by adding all tones of red. That’s why the fluorescent setting of your Sony may provide less than satisfactory results with some kinds of fluorescent bulbs. If you take many photographs under a particular kind of non-compatible fluorescent light, you might want to investigate specialized filters intended for use under various types of fluorescent light, available from camera stores, or develop skills in white balance adjustment using an image editor or RAW converter software program. However, you do get four presets for fluorescent WB with the a6000 and one of these should provide close to accurate white balance with the common types of lights.
It’s when you find that AWB and the various presets simply cannot produce pleasing white balance in a certain lighting conditions that you’ll need the other options (discussed shortly): use the white balance adjustment feature, set a specific color temperature, or calibrate the WB system to set a custom white balance.
After you scroll to any of the WB options (AWB, Daylight, Shade, etc.), pressing the right directional button reveals the White Balance Adjustment screen, with a grid, shown in Figure 7.13. This feature enables you to fine-tune the white balance by biasing it toward certain colors. Use any of the four directional keys to move the orange dot (cursor) from the center of the grid: upward to bias the WB toward green (G), downward toward magenta (M), right toward amber (A), or left toward blue (B). You can move the cursor 7 increments (although Sony doesn’t reveal exactly what those increments are) in any of the four directions.
Figure 7.13 Use this feature when you want to fine-tune white balance when using AWB or any of the presets.
Naturally, you can also move the orange dot to any point within the grid: toward amber/magenta for example. While biasing the WB, examine the scene in the LCD or viewfinder preview display; stop making adjustments when the white balance looks fine. The camera will visually change to match your new setting if you’ve set Live View Display in the Custom Settings 2 menu to Setting Effect On. Tap the shutter release to escape from the WB settings adjustments. Let’s look at the options in more detail:
If you want to set a specific white balance based on color temperature, choose C. Temp/Filter in the White Balance menu and press the right button. You’ll see an adjustment screen similar to the one shown in Figure 7.13, but with a scrolling list of color temperatures displayed along the right edge of the screen. Here’s how to use this feature.
This feature corresponds to the use of CC (Color Compensation) filters that were used to compensate for various types of lighting when shooting film. When you use C. Temp/Filter, the color filter value you set takes effect in conjunction with the color temperature you set. In other words, both of these settings work together to give you very precise control over the degree of color correction you are using.
If you often shoot in locations that are illuminated by artificial light of unusual colors, the best bet is to set a custom white balance. This calls for teaching (calibrating) the WB system to render white as white under a specific type of illumination. When white is accurately rendered, other colors will look accurate as well. You can use this feature under more common types of lighting too; it’s very useful under tungsten lamps for example, when the Incandescent WB option does not adequately correct for the amber color of the light. Custom WB is the most accurate way of getting the right color balance, short of having a special meter that gives you a precise reading of color temperature. It’s easy to do with the a6000. Just follow these steps:
The a6000 will retain the custom setting you just captured until you repeat the process to replace the setting with a new one. At any time in future, you can activate this custom WB setting; that would make sense anytime you’ll be shooting in the same type of lighting that was present when you calibrated the system. To do so, scroll to the Custom (not Custom Setup) option in the White Balance menu and press the center button to confirm your choice.
As I outlined in Chapter 3, the Sony camera offers several ways of customizing the rendition of your images. You can use the Dynamic Range Optimizer (aka D-Range Optimizer and DRO), or specify certain changes to contrast, saturation, and sharpness in the Creative Style menu. Both of these items are available in the Camera Settings 4 menu.
This innovative DRO tool helps adjust the relative brightness range of your JPEG images as they are taken. The DRO has no effect on RAW images. (To apply dynamic range effects to RAW files, use the downloadable Image Data Converter SR or another RAW converter.) As you’d guess, DRO processing is available only when you are shooting in the Program, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, or Manual exposure mode. The DRO feature cannot be activated when one of the Picture Effects is used. In Auto and SCN modes, the camera decides whether DRO will be activated, providing you with no control over this feature.
The DRO feature has been around for a while on Sony models and the a6000 offers a broad range of options when you access it. You get three basic options: Off, DRO, and HDR Auto; several sub-settings are available for the last two. You’ll get the most dramatic enhancement with Auto HDR—much lighter shadow areas, and slightly darker highlight areas. This feature is entirely different than Dynamic Range Optimizer, as discussed in a moment, but is accessed from the DRO menu item.
Once you have selected either DRO or Auto HDR, you can select further options by pressing the right directional button on the control wheel and then choosing level or EV increment (respectively). Figure 7.14 shows how DRO settings affect your image processing at four of its settings: Off, Auto, Level 3, and Level 6.
Note
The primary method for DRO processing is lightening the dark tones and mid tones of an image. The higher the level of DRO you set, the more significantly the processor will lighten those areas; that causes digital noise to be more and more noticeable, especially in photos made at ISO 800 and at higher ISO levels. This is one reason why you would not always want to set Level 4 or 5 for DRO, particularly when using a high ISO setting. The other reason is that very high DRO produces a somewhat unnatural looking effect with all shadow areas lighter than “normal.” The Auto and Levels 1 to 3 retain the most natural-looking effect.
Figure 7.14 This scene was shot with DRO Off (upper left), DRO Auto (upper right), DRO Level 3 (lower left), and DRO Level 5 (lower right).
Here is how the DRO and Auto HDR features work:
If you do not want to set a specific level, simply scroll to DRO: Auto and allow the camera to decide on the amount of increased dynamic range. With the Auto setting, the camera dives into your image, looking at various small areas to examine the contrast of highlights and shadows, making modifications to each section to produce the best combination of brightness and tones with detail. In my experience, Auto provides a mid level of DRO that’s worth leaving on at all times. (See Figure 7.14 for some examples as to the effects you might expect.)
After scrolling to HDR Auto, press the left/right buttons and set an HDR Level, from 1.0 EV to 6.0 EV. (One EV equals one stop of exposure). The higher the level you set the greater the exposure difference will be among the three photos the camera will shoot to produce one with high dynamic range. There’s no “best” setting; it depends on your personal preference. At a very high EV level, the effect will be dramatic, but the photo may not appear to be “natural” looking.
When using the in-camera HDR Auto feature, whether you use the options or not, be sure to mount the camera on a tripod or other solid support to ensure that the three photos (views of the scene) that are taken are identical. For the same reason, your subject should be static; it should not be moving even slightly. If the a6000 detects obvious camera shake, it will provide an HDR! indicator in the LCD or EVF display. Until you set the camera on some firm support, you will not be able to proceed.
The HDR Auto feature, like DRO processing, is not available when shooting RAW or RAW & JPEG images. You’ll find that in flash photography, the in-camera HDR feature does not produce much of a benefit even if used at a high level. Note too that in scenes with low contrast (flat lighting, without dark shadows and bright highlights) the camera will not take the shots to create an HDR image. As with camera shake, the a6000 will provide an HDR! indicator in the LCD or EVF display and you will not be able to proceed. Unless the light changes soon, you might as well disable this feature.
While my goal in this book is to show you how to take great photos in the camera rather than how to fix your errors in Photoshop, Adobe does provide some really useful tools for making HDR images: the Merge to HDR Pro feature in Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop Elements provides an HDR feature too, but it’s not as effective. (Other incredibly versatile HDR software is available too, including Photomatix Pro and Nik’s HDR Efex Pro, but I’ll discuss the process using Photoshop.) With Merge to HDR you get more versatility than with the a6000’s in-camera HDR Auto feature since there are many useful tools for fine-tuning the image. Expect to get an HDR photo with a full, rich dynamic range that includes a level of detail in the highlights and shadows that can be difficult to match with the HDR Auto feature.
When might you want to try the HDR technique? Suppose you wanted to photograph a dimly lit room that had a bright window showing an outdoors scene. Proper exposure for the room might be on the order of 1/60th second at f/2.8 at ISO 200, while the outdoors scene probably would require f/11 at 1/400th second. That’s almost a 7 EV step difference (approximately 7 f/stops) and well beyond the dynamic range of any digital camera, including the a6000, even when used with DRO at Level 5.
When you’re planning to use Merge to HDR Pro in Photoshop, you’d take three pictures, one for the shadows, one for the highlights, and one for the midtones. (Serious photographers might take as many as eight shots, varying the exposure by one stop for each, but for this example, I’m going to assume you’re working with just three.) The photos should be identical, except for the exposure, so use a tripod and a remote release accessory; also make sure there is no subject movement. Then, you’ll use the Merge to HDR Pro command to combine all of the images into one HDR image that integrates the well-exposed sections of each version.
The a6000 allows you to take only three bracketed images, and with no more than 3.0 EV difference between them. But if you like, you can take the photos manually, setting a different level of exposure compensation for each; if you prefer, you can modify the exposure from one shot to the next by changing the shutter speed in Manual (M) mode, but that’s not as intuitive. You can also shoot RAW when creating do-it-yourself HDR images. Here are the steps you’ll use:
The next steps show you how to combine the separate exposures into one merged high dynamic range image. The sample images in Figure 7.15 show the results you can get from a three-shot bracketed sequence.
Figure 7.15 Your three bracketed photos should look like this.
If you’ve done everything correctly, you’ll end up with a photo like the one shown in Figure 7.16, which took advantage of the shadow detail and the highlight detail captured in the series of three photos. In this example, I got full detail in the dark areas while retaining texture in the clouds which were much lighter than the land.
Figure 7.16 You’ll end up with an HDR photo (with extended dynamic range) like this one.
What if you don’t have the opportunity, inclination, or skills to create several images at different exposures, as described? No problem. If you have a photo that you made in RAW format in the past, you can use Merge to HDR, working with a single original image file. What you do is import the image into Photoshop several times, using Adobe Camera Raw (or another RAW converter) to create multiple copies of the file at different exposure levels.
For example, you’d use the RAW converter to create an extremely dark photo, an extremely light photo, a moderately dark photo, and a moderately light photo. Two of the photos will have plenty of detail in shadow areas while the other two will have detail in highlight areas. Then, you can use Merge to HDR exactly as discussed in the previous section. Combine the four and end up with a finished HDR image that has the extended dynamic range you’re looking for. (This concludes the image-editing portion of the chapter. We now return you to our alternate sponsor: photography.)
This feature, also found in the Camera Settings 4 menu, gives you 13 different preset looks, with different levels of contrast, saturation, and sharpness; these parameters are applied automatically based on the Style you have selected. You can opt for Standard, Vivid, Neutral, Clear, Deep, Light, Portrait, Landscape, Sunset, Night Scene, Autumn Leaves, B/W (black-and-white), and Sepia. Those are useful enough that you should make them a part of your everyday toolkit. You can apply Creative Styles only when you are not using one of the Alpha’s Auto or SCN modes. (That is, you’re shooting in Program, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, Manual, Anti Motion Blur, or one of the Panorama modes.) But wait, there’s more. When working with Creative Styles, you can adjust the parameters within each preset option to fine-tune the rendition. If Live View Display is turned on, the display will visually change to correspond to your setting. First, look at the “stock” creative styles:
To adjust the level of Contrast, Saturation, and/or Sharpness for any Creative Style, scroll to a style you want to use (in the Camera Settings 4 menu) and use the left/right keys to navigate a line at the bottom of the screen showing the available adjustments of the three parameters for Contrast, Saturation, and Sharpness. Use the left/right direction buttons to scroll among them. With the parameter you want to modify highlighted, press the up/down direction buttons to change the values in a range of –3 to +3. Press the center button to confirm. Here is a summary of how changing the parameters in a Creative Style will affect your images:
Don’t confuse the Picture Effects feature with the Creative Styles. The Picture Effects are intended to provide special effects in-camera, such as Pop Color, Posterization, and Soft Focus. Since I have discussed them in detail in Chapter 3, I won’t do so here. And you may remember that the a6000 can use apps, including some that can modify the look of your photos.
