I asked my youngest daughter the other day a perhaps silly question, but I was curious what her answer might be. “If you had a doll named Pixel, would she be smaller or bigger than other dolls?”
She thought about it only for a few seconds and replied, “Definitely smaller than the other dolls, but who would name a doll Pixel anyway?”
“No one has, as of yet,” I replied, “but that’s the name of those remarkably itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny sensors inside my digital camera, and they’re responsible for making the many pictures I’ve taken of you this past year.”
“Yeah, whatever,” she replied as she went off to her bedroom to watch a DVD.
Of course she had no idea that the movie she was about to watch was also made possible because of pixels. In what has quickly become the digital age, anything digital—from cameras to iPods to DVDs to CDs—relies on pixels. Pixels are like this huge “family” that, photographically speaking, is at the core of every recorded image. In effect, the pixels are information gatherers, and they are responsible for every digital image ever made. (The word pixel is derived from the words picture and element.)
Pixels “live” in a house called the image sensor. And the moment you press the shutter release on your camera, light streams through the lens and the Pixel family goes to work gathering information from that light. In a mere fraction of a second an image is recorded. And just a second or two later, the Pixel family has sent this information to your memory card (storage device), making it available for your viewing pleasure on your camera’s LCD monitor.
Every digital camera has a family of pixels working for it, but not all families are the same size. In some cameras the Pixel family is three million strong, in others it’s five million, while in still others it’s six, seven, eight, and, as of this writing, twelve and sixteen million strong. When it comes to pixels, size does matter, and you’ll understand why in a minute, but suffice it to say, the more pixels the merrier.
Each and every pixel is a microscopic square or hexagon, depending on the camera manufacturer, and each has a preassigned “seat” within the confines of its home (again, the image sensor). Each one of these squares responds to that very minute portion of light that strikes it, and like one big happy family, all of the pixels—at the same time—perform a very complex mathematical calculation of these light waves, which are then converted into an image by the on-board image processor. On a strictly individual level, each pixel cannot record an image of anything that you or I would recognize as the photograph we just took. Quite the contrary, the Pixel family relies on each and every family member to do the one job it has been assigned, and then collectively the family delivers the finished goods to the image processor.
(This sounds a bit like socialism, doesn’t it? If Stalin or Mao Tse-tung were alive today, perhaps we would see their ideals turned into digital cameras instead of tragic and failed attempts at making “digital people.”)
And one more thought about pixels: If I had a net with half-inch openings in the weave and you had a net with three-inch openings in the weave, and we both cast our nets into the ocean, who would catch more fish, both big and small? Obviously, I would. In photographic terms, the “fish” we’re all hoping to catch translate into color, contrast, and sharpness, so it only stands to reason that the bigger one’s Pixel family, the larger the “catch.” Eight million pixels are capable of gathering up far more sharpness, contrast, and color than four million—regardless of whether you shoot in JPEG, TIFF, or raw mode.
Two images but, wow, what a difference in over all color and quality. One was taken with a 3.2-megapixel camera (top); the other with an 8-megapixel camera (bottom). Note the difference in color, sharpness, and contrast. Clearly, the more pixels you have, the more detail you will capture.
Both photos: 50mm focal length, ISO 100, f/16 for 1/125 sec.
Digital imaging offers you the choice of processing your image into one of three formats, or types of electronic files. The format you choose will affect not only the immediate outcome of an image’s detail, clarity, contrast, and color, but also its long-term stability.
These formats are referred to as follows: JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group), TIFF (Tagged Image File Format), and raw (which isn’t an acronym—it literally means raw as in “raw meat”). It’s important to understand that all three formats are assigned a specific file size, meaning that the processed image is made of X number of megabytes—for example, 1.4 megabytes or 5.7 megabytes or 17 megabytes.
So, after you take a digital image, say, of your son that’s made up of six million pixels, that picture information is sent to the camera’s image processor. It is then processed as a JPEG or TIFF file, or if you’ve chosen the raw format, it won’t be processed at all, but rather stored in a buffer for processing later. (As of this writing, many camera brands offered the three file fomat choices mentioned above. Canon, however, recently announced that they were dropping the TIFF option since they found that most users of their DSLR (digital single-lens reflex) cameras shot in either JPEG or raw mode. So don’t be surprised if you discover that the likes of Nikon, Minolta, and Pentax will soon follow suit.)
It’s also important to understand that all three of these formats generate a unique file size that’s determined by the format. JPEG is a small file, raw is a medium file, and TIFF is a large file.
The number of files you can store on a memory card will vary depending on which camera you own, but on average, you can store about three to four times as many JPEGs versus raw files and five to six times as many versus TIFFs. For example, with a 1-gigabyte card in a 6-megapixel camera, you can expect to shoot about 424 images in JPEG FINE mode, 124 in raw mode, and 59 in TIFF mode.
As I mention in the box to the right, due to smaller file sizes, many photographers love to shoot in JPEG FINE, but what many shooters don’t realize is this: JPEG files are what are referred to as lossy files, or what I like to call lousy files. As I’ve already witnessed firsthand, calling a JPEG a lousy file has stirred up more than one hornet’s nest, but hear me out and then you can decide for yourself if JPEG is indeed a lousy or a good choice for you.
The scientific term “lossy” is derived from the word loss, as in to lose, and it refers to a JPEG file’s inability to hold and maintain the original data (the actual image) over time. Every time you open and close a JPEG file on your computer, the file degrades due to data being lost; and eventually, with repeated openings and closings, the file would be rendered useless. In effect, the JPEG can’t remember who it is, where it’s at, how it got there, or where it’s going.
For this reason, every camera manual, digital photography book, and digital photography magazine recommends the same thing that I’m about to recommend: If you insist on shooting in JPEG format, and if you care at all about the “life expectancy” of your images, then after you have carefully chosen which JPEGs are truly keepers you must save each and every one of them as TIFF files using your photo software program. (More about TIFFs in a minute.)
Despite this solution of converting JPEGs to TIFFs, there is still some more bad news to consider when shooting in the JPEG format. In a nutshell, due to what is called compression, a JPEG image is akin to listening to your favorite rock, rap, or country music on AM radio. Rather than capturing every tiny detail of color and contrast in a scene, the JPEG format takes a shortcut and averages out the “like” colors and the “like” contrast, and then it squeezes the data like a sponge—or compresses it—so that it becomes a tiny file. Just as you lose a lot of the high-end treble and low-end bass on AM radio, you lose a lot of the subtleties in the color spectrum with JPEGs.
Even after you save a JPEG as a TIFF, you’re making a permanent save of a file that is still missing some of the “treble” and some of the “bass.” Granted, now that it’s a TIFF, you will be able to “hear” it in stereo, but it will “sound” like it’s being played through some bad speakers.
As far as I’m concerned, the only time .jpg should be your image file extension is when you’re planning to share the photos with family and friends via the Internet.
A NOTE ABOUT JPEGS
Only the JPEG format offers three types of “profiles”: JPEG FINE, JPEG NORMAL, and JPEG BASIC. By default, most digital cameras are set up to shoot JPEG FINE, since this is the highest-quality JPEG possible. And since JPEG produces the smallest image file, it remains a popular choice with many photographers—since each image takes up less space in the memory card (see this page). Less space per image on the memory card translates into more images per memory card, and for many shooters, that’s reason enough to shoot in JPEG FINE mode.
Although the TIFF is an acronym for Tagged Image File Format, I think of TIFF as This Is Final Forever! TIFF is the permanent seal of protection! Once a TIFF, always a TIFF—no matter how many times you open the file, no matter how many copies you make of the file, no matter how many alterations you make to the file in Photoshop, it will always remain, at its core, a TIFF. And unlike the JPEG, with its lossy format, TIFF will pick up every last detail and color in your scene, and it has the memory of an elephant: It will never degrade or lose data.
Not surprisingly, just like an elephant, TIFFs generate the biggest file size. Camera type determines just how big the files are, but the size can range anywhere from 17 megabytes to over 60 megabytes. Yikes! With file sizes like that you will burn through a 512 MB memory card in nothing flat.
But it’s not the file size that should concern you or cause you to steer clear of choosing the TIFF format for your shooting; there’s a better reason: permanence. Remember, my TIFF acronym is This Is Final Forever, with the emphasis on forever. Once you shoot an image in TIFF format, you cannot alter its exposure at its core without spending some extensive time in Photoshop—and that’s assuming that the “bad” exposure you’re trying to alter is just a minimally bad exposure, i.e. your highlights are a bit blown out or your shadows are a bit too dark.
Furthermore, all digital images are exposed using the principle of white balance (see this page), and in TIFF format, just like in JPEG, you can’t change the white balance once the image is recorded without once again spending needless time in Photoshop making the necessary color corrections.
So, what’s the solution if you want to shoot images that have a relatively small file size and capture all the details with no loss of data? In addition, is there also a solution that will correct your “bad” exposure or your white balance at the press of a button before the image is processed? Yes. The answer is the raw format.
Imagine for a moment that the year is 1990, and you are at the park with your family using a film camera. You’ve just finished shooting a brand new type of 36-exposure color slide film. This new slide film allows you to take the film out of the camera, remove it from its cassette, and unfurl it in broad daylight so that you can actually see the results before taking the film to the lab for permanent processing. With careful inspection, you notice that eleven of the thirty-six shots you took are off in their exposure by a stop or two. Then there are those other three shots that you now know, as a result of your review, would look better in black and white.
No problem. You simply take out the special marker that came with the film, put an X on each of the bad exposures, mark the other three images as black and white, and reload the film into its cassette. The next day, you drop the film lab, tell them your markings, and sure enough, when you return after work to pick up the film, every shot is just the way you wanted. If you believe this story, then as the saying goes, I have a bridge to sell you, too. Of course, it’s not true and never will be if you’re a film shooter; but if you’re shooting digitally and if you’re using the raw format, then this story is true!
As I said before on this page, the word raw is not an acronym for anything. But since I obviously cannot live in a world without creating my own acronyms, I came up with one: Really Amazing Work. If you want the best possible exposure, the best possible color, and the best possible contrast in your photos, then raw is for you.
PROCESS YOUR RAW FILES IN 16-BIT MODE
Most of us do make corrections—minor as they may be—to our digital raw files in post-processing. When processing your raw files, you should do so in 16-bit mode. In 8-bit mode, you have 256 levels (or what are called shades) per channel (red, green, and blue). In 16-bit mode, you have over 65,000 levels (shades) in each channel! And, with Photoshop CS, you can make corrections in 16-bit mode while using Layers. Accessing the Filter menu, however, is a different story. You must convert to 8-bit mode before the Filter palette becomes available. Converting to 8-bit mode is a snap: Just go to the Image pulldown menu, choose Mode, and select 8 Bits/Channel.
Along the same lines of getting the biggest color bang for your buck, it makes no sense to do all your raw processing if the color space of your monitor is set to sRGB. The folks at Photoshop continue to make sRGB the default color space. sRGB is a color space designed for “Web colors,” which is another way of saying “color is not that important.” But color is important, especially when processing raw files. So, if you haven’t already done so, press Shift + Command + K (for Macs) or Shift + Control + K (for PCs) to call up the Color Settings dialog box. Click on Working Spaces and choose Adobe RGB 1998. Don’t change this setting unless you hear of a new color space that’s even better (which, in all likelihood, will happen one day).
With raw, you can change your exposure up to two stops in either direction—darker or lighter. With raw, you can change the white balance, color temperature, or with some software editing programs, you can even convert the image from color to black and white or sepia, all while the image remains in its raw state. After you’re done making minor (or major) adjustments to the image, you can then choose Save As, select TIFF as your file type, and permanently save those changes. And, since you used the Save As command, the original raw files remains the same.
So, to recap and since I feel that most of you are resigned already to shooting in either JPEG or raw, think of the differences between the two this way: JPEG is prepared meat loaf; it has the basic ingredients that will allow you to simply go home, put it in the oven, and have a decent but uneventful meal forty-five minutes later. Raw, on the other hand, is raw meat with all of the necessary ingredients and spices at your disposal. How you prepare the raw meat, and what you add or don’t add, is completely up to you. You are the chef, and even with limited cooking knowledge, you can learn the skills and soon place a meal to remember in front of your family and friends.
DIGITAL “FILM”: THE MEMORY CARD
Imagine walking into a casino in Las Vegas and purchasing a prepaid gambling card for one hundred dollars. You are then free to walk up to any dollar slot machine, put the card in, and play that machine a minimum of 125 times. I say minimum because this is a magic card that lets you “erase” every spin that doesn’t have a payoff and credit your card with another turn. But wait, it gets even better. After you’ve used up all 125 spins from this card, the casino’s computer downloads your winnings and, presto, just like that the card is returned to you with another 125 spins free of charge! Welcome to the world of digital “film.”
Film, as we knew it, is no longer an issue. The constant lament of film being too expensive or of waiting for the film to be developed is now in the past. The digital photographer has to buy but one “roll of film,” and that’s it! And what is this one “roll of film”? A memory card. Memory cards are the digital media to which your exposures are saved as you make them.
Using a 1 megabyte (MB) memory card and a 6 megapixel camera as an example, that one “roll of film” can result in 428 exposures if you shoot in JPEG FINE, or 130 exposures if you shoot in raw, or 54 exposures if you shoot in TIFF. And, just like the prepaid slot machine card, a memory card can be renewed (i.e., reused) over and over and over. But wait, there’s still more good news! That same card will record images at any number of ISOs, and depending on the camera, you can shoot some images at ISO 125, others at ISO 200 or 400, and still others at ISO 1000. Try that with a roll of 35mm film.
MEMORY CARDS & WRITE SPEED
When deciding which brand of memory card is best, consider the write speed. The faster/higher the write speed, the less time your camera’s image processor will spend processing an exposure (writing the data) and the faster it will send it to the LCD screen for viewing.
Most memory cards use the same formula for data transfer rates as the CD-Rom industry—a data transfer rate of 1X equals 150 kilobytes (KB) per second. So, a memory card that offers an 80X write speed is faster than one that offers a 40X write speed—and, of course, you pay a bit more for speed. And note: All things being equal, your camera’s processor speed is of equal importance; your processor must be able to write at the speed listed on the memory card; if it can’t write at as fast a speed as listed on a card, it doesn’t make sense to buy that faster card.
As friends, colleagues, and all of my students will attest, I despise the on-camera flash. Not only do I hate the artificial look of the light, but even more so, I don’t have a clue how to use one with any degree of consistency. I can light up a factory with huge studio strobes or light a model for a fashion shoot, but I’d rather have toothpicks shoved under my fingernails than suffer the pain and anxiety of trying to get results with an on-camera flash.
Several months ago when my daughter Sophie’s class had an art show, I showed up with my D2X and fired off a few proud frames without a flash. If there ever were a reason to embrace digital, it’s for its ability to let you change to a higher ISO at the turn of a wheel, and also to switch the white balance in post-processing. The first image (opposite, top) is my normal Cloudy +3 white balance setting, which, when combined with the room’s tungsten light, accounts for the unusually “warm” look and the excessive red/yellow cast. Not a problem, since once I loaded the image into Photoshop, I simply changed the white balance to Incandescent/Tungsten and the image was corrected (opposite, bottom).
Both photos: 17–55mm lens
What exactly do I mean by ISO? In pure technical speak, ISO stands for International Organization for Standardization, more commonly referred to as International Standards Organization (good to know since someday you may be on Jeopardy). In film photography, the ISO rating indicates a film’s sensitivity to light. In digital photography, it indicates the digital sensor’s sensitivity to light. But most importantly, the ISO lets your digital camera’s light meter know exactly what combinations of aperture and shutter speed it can use to record an exposure.
In the early days of photography, there was never a built-in light meter, and as a result, there was never a setting on the camera for ISO. A handheld light meter was required for all picture-taking efforts, and it was on this handheld light meter that one would set the ISO, selecting the ISO number that corresponded with the ISO of the film in the camera. It wasn’t until the late 1960s—when light meters were first installed inside camera bodies—that ISO became part of the camera controls.
By default, most digital cameras today come right out of the box with the ISO set to the lowest number—100, 125, or 200 depending on the camera. So, does this mean that you never have to worry about setting the ISO? Not necessarily. Let me explain. Without light—and I mean no light whatsoever—your digital camera would never make an exposure. That goes for all cameras—not just digital cameras. It has been true since the invention of photography. Every photographic image that was ever made and will ever be made needs light. Only the format of the medium changes. Up until now, the medium used for capturing light has been film; but for many of us today, that medium is now a digital sensor.
As I said earlier, the pixels are the “image makers” that record an image, but pixels cannot even begin to record an image unless you indicate the ISO with which they should be working. When you select an ISO, your camera records every picture at that ISO until you tell it otherwise. Once you change that setting from, say, ISO 400 to ISO 125, your camera will record every subsequent image at that ISO until you it otherwise.
Why would you want to change the ISO? Because the ISO has a direct effect on the speed at which the pixels gather up data and record an image. As far as pixels are concerned, the ISO is like caffeine. Imagine that ISO 125 represents 125mg of caffeine. And, let’s say that this is the “normal” dose of caffeine under which the pixels operate. Now imagine how much quicker the pixels could record an image if they were given a stronger dose of caffeine such as 400mg—in other words, ISO 400. The higher the ISO number, the faster the ISO and the more sensitive it is to light. A faster, more light-sensitive ISO is better at capturing a fast-moving or a dimly lit subject.
Of course, you don’t always want a fast ISO. Feeding pixels too much caffeine does have its drawbacks. It can rob them of “sleep,” and before you know it their “eyes” are “bloodshot.” Those bloodshot eyes show up in your pictures as noise, a grainy texture. The higher the ISO, the noisier the picture will be. This is the same grain you may have experienced if you shot high-speed film, such as ISO 400 or 800.
Does this mean that you should use a faster ISO because you’re in a hurry? Of course not. But again, if your subject is in a hurry—like that fast-moving kayaker shooting down the rapids—and you want to freeze the action in sharply focused detail, then using the fast ISO may be a good idea.
Due to high ISOs’ light sensitivity, you can also—although I’m not one who espouses fast ISOs for this purpose—use them when photographing cityscapes in low light at dusk without a tripod, but I’ll explain my opposition to this approach in the section on shutter speed (see this page). But since tripod use is not allowed in many interior locations—like cathedrals and art museums—I would recommend shooting at high ISOs, such as 400 or 640.
Digital technology affords digital photographers some liberties of which film photographers could only dream, the biggest one being the ease with which you can switch from one ISO setting to another. Once you’ve taken that close-up of the flower in the park at ISO 125, you simply switch to ISO 400 to freeze the action of your daughter jumping rope nearby. In effect, it’s like changing from one roll of film to another but without the hassle of rewinding and reloading film cassettes. How easy is it to switch the ISO? You simply push a button and/or rotate a dial on your camera—it takes all of two seconds.
Using a high ISO for any sports-related subject is often a good idea, if you want to render the image in crisp, sharp detail. To get this shot, I crouched down low and, with ISO 640, handheld my camera as the skateboarder came flying out of the “bowl” behind him and up and over this garbage can. With my shutter speed set to a 1/500 second, I adjusted my aperture until f/13 indicated a correct exposure.
12–24mm lens, 1/500 sec. at f/13
Imagine you’re on vacation in Europe and you just shot a number of images of the flowering cherry trees outside the famous Nôtre Dame Cathedral in Paris. You’ve been using ISO 125 all morning and your wife suggests that you now go inside the cathedral for a look. Once inside, you realize it’s far too dark to take a handheld shot of the interior, but by simply switching your ISO from 125 to 640, you discover that you can now take the exposure at a shutter speed that’s safe to handhold. And yes, there’s that downside to a high ISO: noise. But most of us can live with the noise, especially if our only other choice is not to take the shot altogether.
Noise is not the issue it once was either, as there are now more than four or five software programs on the market that reduce noise when processing your images in the computer. In addition, camera manufacturers have also made recent strides in reducing noise at the moment the image is recorded via a noise reduction feature found on many of the new DSLRs.
The ease of shifting from one ISO to another also has a potential downside, which is that you may forget to return to a lower, more commonly used ISO setting (say 100, 125, or 200) after you’re done shooting the ISO 640 low-light shots. Perhaps you get caught in a conversation inside the cathedral, and once you return outside, you continue your walk until another photo opportunity catches your attention. It may not be until day’s end that you realize that the additional forty-seven pictures you took after leaving the church were also shot on ISO 640. This is one time when digital cannot save you. Once you record any image at a particular ISO, that image is forever “stuck” with that ISO—even if you’re shooting in raw format.
There are many interior locations where tripods are either not practical or, perhaps, not even allowed. I was able to take this shot inside a cathedral handheld, thanks to the ease of changing my ISO, which I set to 800. The downside of using a high ISO, however, can be noise (that fine graininess that permeates this entire composition). At the present time, just as with graininess in film, noise appears to be here to stay—but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it. With the rapid pace of digital technology, we will one day soon see less and less noise with even the highest ISO numbers.
Noise and its related anomalies are also a common occurrence when using exposure times that are longer than 8 seconds. There was a time when there was no quick fix for these problems, but with noise reduction software programs (like Kodak Digital Gem Noise Reduction, a plug-in I added to my Photoshop software), these effects can be quickly vanquished.
12–24mm lens, f/4 for 1/60 sec.
Are you confused about white balance? It’s my opinion that, next to the histogram, the white balance setting is one of the most overrated controls on the digital camera. I have actually seen forums on the Internet discussing white balance, and there are some very strong feelings about the importance of white balance in your image-making. But, until someone can really show me otherwise, I will continue setting my white balance only once and leaving it alone.
Before I get to what, exactly, white balance is and to my one chosen setting, I want to briefly discuss the colors red, green, and blue, and color temperature. Every color picture ever made has some degree of each of these colors in it, but how much will depend on the color temperature of the light. Yes, that’s right. Light, just like the human body, has a temperature. Unlike the human body, though, the temperature of light is measured by its color. And this is where it gets kind of funny. Blue light has a higher temperature than red light in photography. If you were red in the face, you’d probably also have sweat coming out of your pores, and anyone who looked at you would say, “You’re burning up!”
Not so, with the temperature of light. Color temperature is measured by what is called the Kelvin scale, which is nothing more than an extension of the Celsius scale. On any given day, the color temperature of the light that falls on our world is measured in degrees Kelvin (K), from roughly 2,000 K to 11,000 K. A color temperature of between 7,000 and 11,000 K is considered “cool” (bluer shades would fall in this range), a color temperature of between 2,000 and 4,000 K is considered “warm” (reds would fall in this range), and a color temperature of between 4,000 and 7,000 K is considered “daylight” (or the combination of red, green, and blue).
Cool light is found on cloudy, rainy, foggy, or snowy days, or in areas of open shade on sunny days (the north side of your house, for example). Warm light is found on sunny days, beginning a bit before dawn and lasting for about two hours tops, and then beginning again about two hours before sunset and lasting for another twenty or thirty minutes after the sun has set. The light generated by the 60-watt lamp bulbs inside your house on a winter’s morning or a summer’s eve is also warm light. (That’s why, when you used daylight film indoors without flash everyone looked like they paid a visit to a bad tanning salon.)
Today’s digital cameras would have you believe that, with every lighting situation, you should turn your white balance control to that specific color temperature before you shoot. But how are you to know the exact color temperature unless you have a color temperature meter? And, a good one will cost you about eight hundred dollars, as of this writing. Well, fortunately, you don’t need a meter, since the simplest way to get the “right” white balance is to put an 8 × 10-inch bright white card out in the front of the lens every time you move from one lighting condition to the next. This way, your camera will know exactly where it needs to set the white balance, and, by golly, this way you’re assured of getting “perfect” color.
This is the train of thought shared by many, but it’s one train I won’t be riding, and here’s why: I love color! As a once-die-hard film shooter, I shot 90 percent of all my images with the most saturated films available at any given time. During my last six years of using film, I made 90 percent of my images with Kodak’s E100VS, a highly saturated color slide film. One of the problems I had with digital photography in the beginning was its inability to produce in the raw file these same highly saturated colors—until I stumbled upon the Cloudy white balance setting, that is.
Over the years, I found myself out shooting film in overcast, rainy, snowy, foggy, or open-shade/sunny-day conditions. To eliminate much of the blue light present at those times, I would use my 81-A or 81-B warming filters. These would add red to a scene, in effect knocking down, if not out, the blue light. I prefer my images warm.
And that brings me to my one white balance (WB) setting. As was the case with my Nikon D1X digital camera, and now with my Nikon D2X, I leave the white balance set to Cloudy +3. If you own a Nikon D-70 and D-100, you can also set the WB to Cloudy and add +3 via the fine-tuning button.
On Canon cameras, you’re given a choice of color temperatures, and when setting the WB to Cloudy, you can fine-tune it by also setting the color temperature to 6300 K. If your camera doesn’t offer any additional fine-tuning beyond the Cloudy setting, no worries. But at the least, set it to Cloudy and leave it there. If—and this is a big if—you feel that the Cloudy WB setting is a bit too much, you can always change it to Auto or Daylight or Shade or Tungsten or Fluorescent or Flash in the post-processing phase, assuming, of course, that you’re shooting in raw mode. (This is yet another good reason to shoot raw files.)
Perhaps you are shocked by my WB choice, but hear me out. I seldom, if ever, shoot interiors, whether they are lit by available daylight, tungsten, fluorescent, sodium, or mercury vapor. I’m a natural light photographer, as are probably most of you reading this book. The only exceptions to this are when I use my mini-studio setup at home to photograph objects on white backgrounds, and when I’m doing commercial work for which I’m using a number of strobes to light a given interior. In both of these situations, I usually end up using the Flash setting for white balance. I’m also a very specific-time-of-day photographer. On sunny days, I shoot in the early morning or from late afternoon to dusk. Midday light, between 11:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m., is what I call poolside light, and if there’s a pool nearby, that’s where you’ll find me: sitting by the pool, with sun block, of course.
So, since I add even more warmth with my white balance set to Cloudy +3, it’s like shooting with Kodak E100VS. And my white balance never changes, whether I shoot on sunny, cloudy, rainy, foggy, or snowy days. And, in case you’re convinced that I’m truly an idiot, don’t forget that if I determine, on those rarest of occasions—and I want to stress rare—that I may have been better off with a different WB setting, I can always change any white balance setting in post-processing after downloading my raw images into the computer.
If more photographers would follow my advice, especially those who are not morning or late-afternoon-to-dusk shooters, they would be amazed at the warmth in the pictures that they take while I’m poolside. Midday photography is the norm for many, and the added warmth that you’ll see in your pictures (that’s normally associated with early or late times of day) will surely get your attention. You can fool your friends into thinking you’ve become a morning person, or that you were out shooting in late afternoon light, but be careful for the discerning eye. Morning and late afternoon light reveal lots of long shadows, while midday light is “shadowless.” And if you’re thinking of taking on the intricate task of adding shadows later in Photoshop, you might consider volunteering for the Peace Corps instead if you have that much time on your hands.
The image on the left is a classic example of midday light, made with the camera set to the Auto white balance setting, which not surprisingly did a “great” job of recording accurate color; and since midday light is blue, it looks blue overall. Now compare this to the other image (right), which I made with the white balance set to Cloudy +3. Obviously, this image is warmer. The choice is, of course, a personal one, but if you have not considered shooting with your white balance set to Cloudy, it might be worth a look.
Both photos: 17–55mm lens at 24mm, f/16 for 1/125 sec.
Just when you thought digital couldn’t get any better, it does! There’s a good chance your digital camera can also shoot infrared “film” (i.e., in Infrared mode), too. If you’re not sure, then put it to this simple test: Place your camera on one end of the kitchen table, set the metering mode to Aperture Priority, and the aperture to f/22. Go get the TV remote, and, assuming that like most remotes, it works on an infrared beam, place it at the other end of the table. Now, go back to your camera and with the lens set to around 50–70mm, focus on the remote. Set the camera’s self-timer, run down to the other end of the table, push the button on the remote and keep it pushed while your camera takes an exposure. Look at your LCD screen. If it shows either a faint or a vivid dot from the remote, then your camera will shoot infrared images.
As far as shooting infrared images, it is not the same world as color or black-and-white photography. Since infrared light is invisible to the human eye (without special eyewear), you will quickly discover two necessities when shooting infrared images: (1) an infrared filter, and (2) a real understanding of which subjects are best-suited to the infrared mode.
Due to the differences between how each brand of digital camera sees infrared, I can’t recommend which one infrared filter will work best for you. Talk with the people at your local professional camera store, or jump on the Internet and do a simple Web search; a search under “infrared photography” will certainly yield a wealth of information. Having said that, it’s a safe bet that most, if not all, of you could head out the door tomorrow and get satisfactory, if not great, photographic results with the use of the Hoya R72 filter. According to my many students, this one filter has opened the door to some amazing discoveries in infrared image-making.
So, out the door you go with your digital infrared camera, but hold on a minute. Infrared light waves are invisible to the human eye, so if you can’t see them, how do you know where to focus? Once again, more good news: With the filter in place, the camera can now “see” infrared light waves, and the autofocus mechanism of your camera/lens does a great job of this for you.
And what about setting the exposure? First of all, I prefer to work with ISO 100 to ISO 200, even when shooting infrared images. As you’ll discover, the infrared filter is almost black, so light levels are drastically reduced and, as such, exposure times may be long—depending, of course, on your aperture. But more importantly, get accustomed to using your tripod, because most infrared work (unless you’re working at midday and with wide open apertures) will require exposure times of 1/15 sec. and slower—again depending on aperture and time of day. It’s all about experimentation and a lot of trial and error. That’s why you should bracket every shot, at least on the plus side, one or two stops, until you get used to the many nuances of shooting with infrared.
Also, a common question I get in my courses is whether or not to leave the camera set for color or black and white when shooting infrared images. It’s my suggestion that you leave it at color—you can always do the conversion to black and white when you download the raw file to the computer. And although the camera’s LCD screen cannot show you a truly clear picture of your images, it is easier to see the results of your exposure in color than in black and white.
And finally, does any subject make a good infrared image? Again, trial and error is the rule, but since infrared light waves are the strongest with green subjects, don’t be surprised if you migrate toward trees, grass, and springtime wheat fields.
Some examples of bracketing would be: You’re shooting in manual exposure mode, and after you define what your exposure will be, say f/8 for 1/15 sec., you take another image for 1/8 sec. and another for 1/4 sec.—both the while leaving the camera at f/8. Or, you can shoot in autoexposure mode, but after the first shot, adjust your autoexposure override to +1 and take another shot and then adjust it to +2 and take one more. Here again, your camera’s LCD screen can come into play by giving you an idea of which exposure looks best.
Unlike traditional daylight-appropriate films, your image sensor is quite sensitive to infrared light waves. And that’s why most, if not all, sensors leave the factory with a blocking filter designed to block infrared light. However, most blocking filters will still allow enough infrared light to pass through and onto the sensor so that you can, in fact, record infrared images.
An unassuming street scene in France takes on a surreal quality when photographed with an infrared filter. The normal daylight color exposure was, quite honestly, nothing to write home about (top). But, when I shot this same color image using the infrared filter, an electric red color resulted (center). The exposure time was f/16 for 1 second. This is a color infrared image, and although it’s definitely different than daylight color, it’s still not the truly surreal look for which infrared is noted. Only after converting the image to black and white in Photoshop do you see the truly compelling infrared version (bottom). It’s an entirely different and more positive response. As my wife was quick to remark once I had processed the image, “Wow, it looks like snow!”
Top: 18–55mm lens, f/16 for 1/60 sec.
Center: 18–55mm lens, f/16 for 1 second
