Canon Tips Art Wolfe

www.usa.canon.com/dlc ©Canon USA1

“Which memory cards should I use” is a ques-tion that’s often asked by digital SLR users. While there’s no one single best choice for all applications, we’ll examine some of the possibilities in this tips ar-ticle. In his Travels to the Edge series, pro shooter Art Wolfe explains that he now carries eight separate 8GB memory cards when he’s packing for a trip. You may not need to invest as much in memory cards, but you don’t want to short-change yourself, either.

Keep in mind that we aren’t here to endorse any one particular brand of memory cards over others, so this is one area we won’t discuss. There are vari-ous on-line sources of specifi c brand-vs.-brand tests of memory cards if you’re concerned with details on things like write speeds; a search will direct you to this information.

Basic types of memory cards

This part is simple: use the type of memory cards your camera is designed for. Most of today’s digital SLRs are designed to use either CompactFlash (CF) cards, or the physically smaller SD-type memory cards. A few use other types of memory cards. Don’t try to use adapters to use a different type of card than your camera is designed for, unless the camera maker specifi cally endorses it.

Selecting and using memory cards

Card capacities

Today’s popular memory cards are available in sizes that seemed a dream only a few years ago. It’s en-tirely possible to buy memory cards in sizes up to 32 gigabytes. The question is, to you need to? Do you even want to?

Consider a few basics when thinking about what size memory cards to invest in. First of all, how much do you typically shoot when you’re on vacation or on a photo trip? Do you shoot mostly RAW image fi les, or are you primarily a JPEG shooter? Each RAW image you take with a modern, high-resolution digital SLR can be anywhere from 12 to 25MB of fi le size on the memory card — that’s for each click of the shutter. JPEG images are a lot more compact, and place less demand on memory card space (full-res JPEGs are typically around 3-6MB in fi le size on the card for each image).

High-volume professionals always carry enough cards to know they won’t run out of shooting space during the day. Even casual amateur shooters should be certain they have cards to meet their

potential needs.


Another consideration is how you store your images after you download them to your hard drive(s). If you use DVD disks as part of your storage strategy, these disks hold up to 4.7GB of data. Thus, a 4GB card can easily be copied in its entirety directly to a single disk. There’s no need to split the contents of a card up if you burn to DVDs; this can be awkward and a bit time-consuming if you routinely fi ll up an 8GB or 16GB memory card. On the other hand, if your short-term and long-term storage strategy revolves around multiple hard drives and not DVD disks, large cards may actually be more convenient.

Finally, consider a couple of real-life issues with digital photography: images you’ve taken on memory cards can become corrupted, and memory cards can be lost when they’re out of the camera. Do you feel more comfortable working with a few large-capacity cards (fewer cards to concern yourself with, but putting more eggs into one basket)? Or do you get a sense of security by splitting your day’s shooting up on sev-eral cards, just in case something happens to a card? No right or wrong answer here; each photographer has to work within his or her personal comfort zone.

A note on SD memory cards:

You may see the term “SDHC” when researching SD-type memory cards. It refers to a recent industry standard for higher-capacity cards, which basically insures compatibility between cameras and memory cards when their capacity is 2GB or higher. With any recent digital SLR that takes SD-type memory cards, look for “SDHC” cards if you’re shopping for cards 2GB or higher in size. SDHC-compliant cards will be available in sizes up to 32GB.

Memory card “speed”

You’ll hear this term mentioned frequently in discussions about one memory card vs. another. Here are a few quick points to consider:

• Memory card speed refers to the cards ability to quickly receive and write data, or its ability to rapidly transfer data to another device (as when copying fi les to your computer).

• Card speed infl uences how fast your camera can write a burst of consecutive images to the card — in other words, after you stop shooting, how long will the card-busy light remain on, and how quickly can you shoot another burst of images. It does NOT have any effect on how many frames-per-second your camera can shoot, nor (for the most part) how many shots you can take in a continuous burst.

• Predictably, high-speed, high-performance memory cards tend to cost more than more ordinary cards. It’s primarily the higher-quality memory and supporting electronics that make high-speed cards more costly.


• Some manufacturers list card speed as “33x” or “100x” or similar. These multipliers infer that the higher the x-number, the faster the card’s write speed. The only catch? You can’t really compare numbers from one card brand to another, since there’s little industry standardization of test methods. It’s entirely possible for one brand “64x” card to actually perform faster in a given camera than another maker’s “128x” card.

• Major memory card makers usually have two or more “series” of cards, with one being a more expensive, high-performance series.

• Memory card speed depends upon the card — and to some degree, the camera, too. High-end profes-sional cameras are usually designed for very fast throughput of internal data, and a high-speed card can provide a noticeable difference in write speeds. With a more basic entry-level digital SLR, performance differences sometimes are more minor from one card to another.

• The truly fastest-performing cards are often not the highest-capacity memory cards in a card maker’s line-up.

• With popular CompactFlash cards, you may see the term UDMA (Ultra Direct Media Access) in card or camera literature. This is a new industry standard that insures faster write speeds if both the camera and memory card are compliant. You’ll see this on some recent digital SLRs, such as Canon’s EOS 50D. When combined with a UDMA-compliant, high-speed memory card, the pair can defi nitely be expected to generate faster write speeds after a burst of images is taken.

Bottom line: if you frequently shoot bursts of con-tinuous images, especially at large fi le sizes (RAW images, for instance), high-speed memory cards will defi nitely allow you to be ready for the next burst of pictures more quickly, with less waiting for the card-busy light to stop blinking. This is especially so with many of today’s high-end camera models. For sports shooters, or a wildlife shooter who often shoots sequences of birds in fl ight or other action, high-speed memory cards are usually worth the ex-tra money. If you shoot more slowly and casually, having a high-speed card won’t hurt anything ex-cept your pocketbook, but you may be paying for performance you don’t really need.

Photographers who shoot continuous bursts of action shots will benefi t from so-called “fast” memory cards, especially if they’re

using newer high-performance digital SLR cameras.© Art Wolfe


Cameras using SD cards may offer the option of a “quick format” or a “low-level format”. Low-level format-ting is a very thorough type of formatting, which takes longer but is especially useful if a card has been generating errors. Normally, SD cards can be quick-formatted before re-using them, with an occasional low-level formatting done every few weeks as preventative maintenance.

2. Don’t make a habit of erasing lots of images in-camera. When reviewing your images on the camera’s LCD screen, erasing the occasional clunker is OK. But using the “erase” command to remove many im-ages from a card can create problems — especially if you don’t format your cards often. Before using a card, it’s far better to Format it than to use the Erase All command, if your camera has one.

Care of memory cards

Most memory cards are quite durable and will last years given normal treatment. There are a few things you can do along the way to insure smooth operation with your memory cards.

1. Format your cards regularly, using the camera’s Format command in the menu. But don’t do this until you’re 100% positive that any images already on the card are safely copied onto another hard drive, DVD, etc. Ideally, you should format in-camera before you re-use each card.

Summary:

There are a number of factors to consider when purchasing memory cards for your camera, but perhaps none more important than considering how you shoot now, and how you may shoot in the future. Allow enough space on your cards so you’re not always keeping an eye on your frames-remaining counter as you shoot, and have enough cards on-hand so that you’re not in a position of having to shoot at reduced resolution at the end of a day because you’re running short of card space.

Art Wolfe travels with eight 8GB memory cards, and he points out that even eight cards fi t compactly into a card wallet and are easy to transport. You may not need eight high-capacity memory cards, but don’t short-change yourself, either. For now, you may just be having fun on weekends with your camera, but who knows, in a year or two, you may be visiting an exotic locale like Art, and putting a lot more demands on your memory cards.

3. Try not to totally fi ll-up memory cards. It’s best to change cards when your camera indicates that you’re beginning to run low on remaining images, rather than wait for the camera to indicate “card full”. Occasion-ally, fi lling a card completely can produce errors when you access the card with your computer.


For pros or amateurs, one constant question is how do you safely store digital fi les when you’re away from home?

Portable Hard Drives to back-up digital imagesIt’s true that with today’s digital SLR cameras, you don’t have to concern yourself with packing dozens or even hundreds of rolls of fi lm when you go off to shoot pictures. But as the resolutions and fi le sizes of digital cameras gets higher and higher, you’re forced to ask a question: what do you do with the digital fi les you shoot?

For a pro like Art Wolfe, working for weeks at a time away from home, the situation is even more acute. There’s never any one perfect answer that’s the right one for every user and every situation, but Art makes a great case for portable hard drives to store digital images as he downloads them from his memory cards. Today’s portable hard drives are available in a variety of makes and models, and in capacities that can range from 100 gigabytes (GB) up to a terrabyte (that’s 1,000GB) or more. They can be quickly connected to most laptop comput-ers when you’re on the road, and fi les sent directly to the portable hard drive — saving space on the laptop’s own hard drive for other purposes.

Saving the fi les to two portable hard drives is the fi rst step in being certain that digital fi les are safely copied from the memory card at the end of each shooting day. It’s not necessarily the fi nal answer in long-term storage of digital images. That’s a separate topic; what Art discusses here is how he works during his long trips. Consider his advice the next time you’re planning a trip of your own.

First, a few disclaimers:

There are many different methods of storing digital image fi les when you’re on-location, and for that mat-ter back at home. None is perfect, none is 100% fail-proof, and you may prefer a different approach after some research of your own.

Most pros would agree that the important thing is redundancy: don’t have just one copy of your important original image fi les. Have them in two or more places, and consider using different types of media (such as a mix of hard drives and DVD disks for long-term storage of your images). For Art’s short-term storage as he’s shooting on a trip, this is why he speaks of using pairs of portable hard drives.


How do you use portable hard drives?

The process is this: you may go out at the start of a day and shoot anywhere from a few dozen images on a memory card to hundreds and hundreds by the time the day is done. A heavy shooter may fi ll up several memory cards in a single day’s shooting. Here are the basic steps involved in getting those fi les off your memory cards, and into the safety of not one but two separate portable hard drives:

1. Connect a card reader for the type of memory card your camera uses to your computer. FireWire read-ers will typically work faster at transferring data, but are more expensive, and some Windows computers are not compatible with FireWire devices.

2. Insert the fi rst memory card into the card reader (it should appear either in Windows’ “My Computer”, or as a drive on the Macintosh desktop, after a few seconds).

3. Create a new folder on your desktop, and give it some sort of descriptive name that’ll mean something months from now regarding these images. It could be an abbreviation of the main locations you visited today, the date itself, or something similar.

4. Either use a software program (such as Canon’s EOS Utility, or a similar third-party program) to copy the fi les into this newly-named folder — or double-click on the card icon in the computer, double-click on the “DCIM” folder inside the card, and drag and drop the numbered folder(s) from the memory card to your newly-created desktop folder.

5. Remove the card from the card reader — if you’re on a Mac, be certain to drag the desktop card icon to the Mac’s trash can icon to safely disengage the card before you take it out of the reader.

6. Plug-in your fi rst hard drive; it should appear either in “My Computer” or on the Mac desktop within a few seconds.

7. Drag the new desktop folder with the images you just copied onto this hard drive’s icon, to begin the copying procedure. You’re now duplicating these fi les onto the portable hard drive.

8. Carefully disconnect the portable hard drive once the copying is completed. Important: with a Macin-tosh computer, be certain to drag the Hard Drive icon to the Mac’s trash can on the desktop to “eject” it. This will remove the HD icon from the desktop. It’s now safe to unplug the drive.

9. Connect the 2nd portable hard drive, and repeat steps 7-8. You’ve now copied your images from one memory card onto two portable drives.


10. Activate your fi le browsing software, navigate to the connected hard drive, and check the contents of the hard drive (can you view the pictures normally? If you shot RAW images, can you process a randomly-selected one using your RAW processing software?) Be certain you can before you delete the desktop folder with the images, and before you re-format the memory card.

11. Repeat the process for any additional memory cards you may have shot, beginning with step #1 above. Be sure you create another new separate folder on your desktop, and that it’s named appropriately for the fi les from this particular memory card.

Types of portable Hard Drives

Art is using LaCie’s compact, portable hard drives, but many other brands and models would work sim-ilarly. Keep some things in mind:

a) Connection type: FireWire or high-performance FireWire 800-type connections will provide the fast-est potential copying speeds; USB type drives may copy data slower, but will work with virtually any computer (FireWire and especially FireWire 800 are not always universally available on all Windows computers, although they are on most recent Ma-cintosh models)

b) Drive size: Portable hard drives usually use a spinning hard disk that’s either 1.8 inches in diameter, or 2.5 inches in diameter (check the drive manufacturer’s specs for a given model to verify this). In some cases, 2.5-inch hard drives require their own separate power supply to be plugged into an AC outlet in a wall; virtually all 1.8-inch drives are powered via their connection to the computer and don’t need to be plugged into a wall outlet.

c) Capacity: Bigger sounds better, but remember it may entail a pair of hard drives that are signifi cantly more expensive, and may be larger as well. Furthermore, as in “b” directly above, you may fi nd high-ca-pacity drives need AC power to function.

Factor in your real-life needs, too. A shooter such as Art Wolfe may go out for 3 to 6 weeks at a time, and shoot large quantities of pictures every single day. Your biggest on-location event may be a week-long vacation, where you’re mixing photography with visiting friends or family. Multiple pairs of 500GB drives probably make perfect sense for Art; a more typical photo enthusiast may be fi ne with a pair of 100GB hard drives.

Portable hard drives


Think also about how much you shoot, and the size of the memory cards you typically use.

d) Other considerations: Portable hard drives are always susceptible to damage from vibration and espe-cially impact. While no drive can 100% guarantee freedom from these problems, some newer compact, portable hard drives are marketed as being extra-durable for use on location. These drives may well be worth considering, if you’re a frequent traveler.

Be sure the drives you’re considering are truly designed for portable use. Many of today’s hard drives are really intended to sit on a desk and not be moved constantly. This is especially true with high-capacity drives, 1 terrabyte or larger. These are excellent to consider for long-term image storage once you’re back home. The LaCie drives Art shows in his travel case are indeed designed for portable use and are excel-lent to take on-location.

Canon EOS users: shoot directly to a hard drive

Some of Canon’s newest mid-range and advanced digital SLRs offer an intriguing option: connect a por-table hard drive (via USB) directly to an optional Canon Wireless File Transmitter that’s attached to the camera, and as you shoot each image, it’s copied to both a memory card and to the much larger-capacity hard drive as well.

This is possible with the EOS 40D or 50D using the optional Canon Wireless File Transmitter WFT-E3A, with the new EOS 5D Mark II and its dedicated, optional WFT-E4A transmitter, or the EOS-1D Mark III/EOS-1Ds Mark III models when equipped with the optional WFT-E2A transmitter.

With either of the professional Mark III models, it’s also possible to simply connect a portable hard drive to an attached wireless transmitter, and copy fi les from the camera’s memory card to the hard drive. This means you don’t have to carry the hard drive with you all day as you shoot.

Backing-up images means peace of mind

Art’s approach to short-term storage of his images while he’s away from home is a great method to mini-mize the risk of losing image data. It’s a fairly simple and relatively quick procedure to do at the end of each day, and with many portable hard drives, it can be done even if you’re in a tent in the middle of a desert or jungle (with no need for AC power).


For many photographers, travel is the ultimate opportunity for great images. World-renowned pro Art Wolfe primarily relies on duplicate hard drives for storing and backing-up his images

when he’s on the road.© Art Wolfe

Art shows us that he also travels with two laptop com-puters, another sound back-up strategy for a working pro that might be more than the dedicated photo en-thusiast needs, but it clearly points to the benefi ts of duplicating your image fi les as you copy them off the memory cards.

Art’s strategy avoids two common problems: stor-ing growing numbers of original image fi les on the computer’s own hard drive, and most of all, he avoids the trap of simply storing his fi les on memory cards until he gets home.


Art Wolfe brings up a couple of interesting points in photographing the classic Japanese lanterns in early evening light. First off, he’s combining two separate light sources which usually have very different bright-ness levels — the tungsten light inside the lanterns, and the subdued daylight that remains at dusk. And beyond that, these are two separate types of light, with very different color characteristics. So in these situ-ations, there are two issues to confront: balancing the exposure between the two, and using white balance controls to properly balance the color of one type of light, and let the other roll off in a different direction.

Exposing artifi cial light at dawn or dusk

It’s a fact: nearly any artifi cial light source you care to name is going to be less bright than ordinary day-light. A perfect example is driving your car with the headlights on in the daytime. Even on an overcast day, your headlights do not cast a visible beam onto the road, as they would at night. The sunlight sim-ply overpowers the artifi cial light.

However, as ambient daylight begins to darken, there’s a point where its brightness begins to ap-proach that of an artifi cial light source. And as daylight continues to fade into night, artifi cial light sources begin to become brighter and become the dominant source of light. Think of city lights at night for one obvious example. So an artifi cial light source like the Japanese lanterns Art is photographing can either be less bright than the prevailing daylight, about the same brightness, or brighter than the sur-rounding ambient light — all depending upon the time of day and respective levels of daylight.

Pros sometimes refer to the brief time after sun-set where there’s still visible light in the sky as the “magic hour”, even though it’s often a lot shorter than an hour. But it’s during this time that you can do as Art does, and blend daylight with an artifi cial light such as the Japanese lanterns for a beautiful fi nished result.

Japanese lanterns in early evening light.© Art Wolfe

Mixed Lighting: Choose Your Color


Metering scenes with mixed light

The camera’s normal light metering system will often work fi ne for metering these types of scenes. But keep in mind that if either the surrounding ambient light or the artifi cial light source (the Japanese lanterns in this case) are bright and take up a signifi cant part of the frame, the metering system may under-expose them. Be ready to use the camera’s exposure compensation to render the scene as you want it; usually, this means intentionally over-exposing it.

This is a type of photography where you’ll want to take more than a few shots, and digital imaging makes it easy and economical to do this. The reason? As each minute passes, early evening daylight continues to drop, and the artifi cial light source will become comparatively brighter. Shots taken a few minutes apart will often be distinctly different, as the artifi cial light becomes more dominant. So if you spot a scene like this, shoot an image, and the artifi cial light seems dim and insignifi cant, don’t despair. Just shoot some more pictures every few minutes, and don’t hesitate to make adjustments with Exposure Compensation as you go along.

Different light sources = different colors of light

Art’s lantern shots are a classic example of a mixed light scene. There’s the cool, subdued early evening light, and the warm glow of the tungsten bulbs inside the lanterns. Any time photographers run into a scene like this, they’re immediately presented with a dilemma:

1. Color-balance for the bluish ambient light, canceling most or all of the blue tone (and render the lan-terns extremely amber-colored)

2. Balance for the warm tungsten light, so the lanterns appear close to a pure white (and let the prevail-ing ambient light go very blue)

There’s no one right answer! And unfortunately, in a single digital photograph, it’s nearly impossible to “properly” color balance both simultaneously in the same picture. Pros like Art Wolfe will look at a scene like this and usually come to a decision based on the effect color will have in the fi nished image. In Art’s case, the still images shown in his brief Tips video show that he’s chosen to let the lanterns go a bit amber-colored, and at the same time neutralize much (but not all) of the cool blue light hitting the snow.


The tool is white balance

White balance settings come into play here. First off, while the Auto White Balance in many cameras will work well in general daylight shooting, it’s usually a compromise in these types of mixed lighting scenes. Fine for a quick snapshot, but don’t expect the automatic system will read your mind and deliver the exact look you or Art Wolfe might intend.

It’s early evening and Art’s subject is primarily in shade — two factors that increase the level of blue tonal-ity in the overall ambient light. If you’re looking to to properly render the overall scene, and don’t mind the warm illumination of the lanterns going very amber-colored, consider using the Cloudy or Shade WB set-tings on your camera. These add an amber tint to the overall image, to counter the very blue look of the daylight (“Shade” on Canon EOS models is stronger, and counters the blue tones more aggressively).

On the other hand, sometimes a striking image can be taken that emphasizes the cool, blue tones of early evening or deep shade. Or, you may want to color-correct the glow of the lanterns. Either way, the Tung-sten WB setting may be an excellent choice. This does the opposite of Shade/Cloudy WB. It neutralizes the warm glow of the lanterns, and simultaneously increases the level of blue in areas lit by daylight.

The fi ne control of Kelvin White Balance

Yet another tool, which requires some experimentation, is the Kelvin WB setting that’s on some (not all) digital SLR cameras. Set the WB to the “K” icon, and then dial-in a specifi c color temperature rating (it’s a numbered scale, from 2500 or 2800 on Canon EOS models, up to about 10,000…the higher you set it, the more amber-toned your images will appear). The beauty of the Kelvin WB setting is that it gives the criti-cal pro a very fi ne scale to make minor shifts toward blue or amber correction. At 2500, you can expect to have the lanterns rendered close to a pure white, with an extremely blue effect in the surrounding light. Set it to something like 6000, and you’ll get an effect similar to Art’s images. Set it to a high setting, like 8500 or 9000, and the ambient light will look downright warm, along with nearly orange light from the lanterns.


RAW images: shoot now, set WB later

Always remember: if you shoot JPEG image fi les (any image quality setting other than RAW), the white balance setting on your camera at the moment you pressed the shutter button is the WB that’s used to process your image. But with a RAW fi le, you can completely re-establish the white balance setting — no matter where it was set when the shot was taken — when you process the image in your computer.

With RAW fi les, pros can experiment with different settings to not only see how they’d look, but can con-sider creative adjustments that might not have even occurred to them when the shot the original picture.

Furthermore, RAW images are a great way to learn about the effects of settings like the Kelvin WB, where you have not one but many possible options. Take any RAW fi le, open it in Canon’s Digital Photo Profes-sional software (or other RAW fi le processing software of your choosing), and simply modify the WB set-ting using the software’s tools. If you don’t like the results, simply revert to the “as shot” settings. Unlike a JPEG fi le that’s modifi ed in Photoshop, there’s no loss of digital information when you make these changes in processing a RAW fi le.

Don’t forget the subject and the scene

In the end, something made you stop, want to pick up the camera, and photograph this particular subject in this environment. Think for a moment about not only how much light there is and how you’ll expose it, but how you’ll record its color characteristics as well. This may not seem to matter much when shooting in mid-day sunlight. But at dawn or dusk, or if you’re adding a second light source to the mix, it becomes relevant. And it can be the difference between a truly beautiful shot and one that’s simply nice.

Especially late in the day, your choice of white balance can critically infl uence the fi nal look of your pictures.

© Art Wolfe

One last thing: go back to the video and listen to Art say near the beginning how he saw these lanterns and waited to come back until the light was right for the shot he wanted. Even with the lanterns on, he would hardly have gotten this shot in noontime sun!


For many of us, as we learned photography, we were reminded to be sure to avoid shoot-ing backlit pictures — that is, images where the light is coming from behind the subject and shining directly toward the camera. But as the saying goes, rules are made to be broken, and this is certainly one that can be ignored from time to time if you know how to handle it. Art Wolfe is a master at taking advantage of the beauty of natural light, and he brings up some important points about the beauty of working with backlighting.

If you’re just starting out in photogra-phy, you’re entitled to wonder what all the fuss is about backlighting. One of the early tasks in learning the craft of photography is seeing and becoming aware of what happens to objects as they’re hit by different types of light.

With backlighting, the majority of the subject that the camera sees tends to be in shadow, sometimes deep shadow. Think of a head-and-shoulders portrait of a person, for example. In a backlit situation, most of their face would be one even shadow tone, without the ex-pected detail carved out by light and shadow that we’re more accustomed to seeing. This doesn’t mean the face would be so dark that we couldn’t see it, but it does mean the light on most of the face would have a very fl at, even character to it.

Shooting with backlighting

Art shooting these sliver cycad plants.

What’s different about backlighting?

Front-lit shot in sunlight© Rhonda R. Dorsett

Backlit shotRim light on hair

© Rhonda R. Dorsett


Backlighting’s biggest problem: Exposure

One reason we’re often told to avoid backlighting is that it can easily “fool” a camera’s exposure meter, and result in underexposed pictures. The backlit portrait of a person is a classic example; particularly with earlier-generation cameras, it was easy to end up with a shot so dark you’d hardly recognize the person, although the bright background would usually be properly exposed (essentially, a silhouette).

Today’s much more sophisticated camera meter-ing systems do a far better job of automatically adding exposure when backlighting is detected. Canon’s Evaluative metering system on all EOS models is tuned to do exactly that, giving pho-tographers a good starting point in most backlit situations. Nearly all other brands of digital cam-eras have similar capability. In years past, with traditional center-weighted metering systems, the rule-of-thumb for backlit scenes was to take whatever your recommended exposure was, and open up two f-stops (in other words, if your camera’s meter said 1/1000th at f/8, you’d shoot at 1/250th at f/8, or equivalent). Again, nowadays, the multi-zone metering systems of most digital SLRs need far less over-riding by the photographer.

But there’s more to backlit scenes. With the sun or other light source behind a person, you’d get a “rim” of bright light outlining their head and shoul-ders, drawing vivid attention to the outline of the hair and outer edges of their face. It can be a striking effect, and you’ve no doubt seen shots before that take advantage of this characteristic of backlighting. This emphasizing of the shape and form of a subject gives it a different look, and that’s one of the keys to good backlit pictures — recognizing the light, and recognizing when light striking a subject actually enhances its form and appearance.

This is what Art Wolfe is after in his shots of the silver cycad plants in Australia. Especially in the morning hours, or later in the afternoon when the sun is lower in the sky, backlighting can take an ordinary subject and really enhance it visually. Take a more ex-otic subject, like these plants Art is shooting, and you can create truly memorable images.

With today’s modern metering systems, it’s usually not necessary to radically over-expose to get proper exposure in backlit scenes. With older center-weighted metering systems, under-exposure in

backlighting was one reason why photographers were often told to try to avoid it.


Shot of backlit silver cycad plants from Art’s Shoot.© Art Wolfe


Minus 1 stop compensation to highlight the rim lighting on the plant. Using deliberate under-exposure can further call attention to light

skimming the contours of the subject when it’s backlit.

Using exposure compensation (+/- control) creatively

Still, you need to ask yourself what you’re trying to emphasize in a picture. If it’s a portrait of a person and you want/need the face to be properly exposed, you’ll naturally want to at least use the camera’s basic exposure reading as a starting point, and perhaps intentionally lighten the scene a bit with the camera’s exposure compensation feature (again, this usually isn’t as important nowadays as it was on earlier SLR fi lm cameras.)

On the other hand, shooting a subject like Art’s plants, the “rim lighting” that emphasizes the outer edges of the subject is the key to the picture. Sometimes, you may want to further enhance it by deliberately darkening the scene, calling attention to the brilliant strip of lighting that runs around the contours of the subject. With digital SLRs, of course, you can try it different ways and see the results of each shot on your LCD monitor. Your camera’s exposure compensation (+/-) control can be an outstanding creative tool in situations like these.

Green backlit plant normal shot.

It starts with your eyes

If you’ve been shooting pictures with an SLR for a while, you’ve probably already begun to look beyond the obvious when you fi rst see a potential subject for your camera. Part of advancing from just taking snapshots to taking great photographs is that ability to look at even an everyday object, and be excited about how it looks because of the way light is hitting it at a given moment. It’s true that the silver cycad plants that Art is shooting aren’t an everyday subject for most of us, but it’s the light that excited him in the fi rst place.


Don’t hesitate to move around, and take a few moments to look at a subject from different points of view. Even if Art had approached these magnifi cent plants from the opposite side (initially seeing them with very plain front-lighting), the potential of how they’d look if he just walked around them and shot from the opposite side – backlit – couldn’t have been far from his mind. You don’t have to be a seasoned pro like Art Wolfe, however, to see the same possibilities. Whether it’s a shot of a child in your back yard, an animal at the zoo, or an exotic plant when you’re in a foreign coun-try, you don’t have to stop shooting once the fi rst picture is taken. And you certainly don’t have to stop with the fi rst lighting direction you saw. When it’s practical, take a little time and shoot different types of pictures of the same subject. It’s a great way to get a sense of what techniques work, and what types of lighting excite you in the pictures you take.


When Art composed this picture, the unusual red rock back-ground was as important in his mind as the palm tree itself.

© Art Wolfe

Maximizing the impact of backgroundsIt’s easy when we’re taking pictures to rivet our attention to the primary subject in the foreground, and not really pay much attention to the back-ground. This becomes even more true for many of us when we shoot pictures with telephoto lenses. After all, the tele lens tends to throw the background out of focus, and there’s a far smaller “slice” of the background visible as well. Whereas a wide-angle lens looks out over a broad vista and includes lots of background information, our telephoto lenses include only a limited view of all that’s in the back-ground.

Considering all this, many of us don’t really con-sciously think of how the background in a picture can add to the primary subject, and how sometimes, just a slight change in shooting position can signifi -cantly change the background as well.

Art Wolfe was as attracted to the rich red-rock back-ground in a northern Australia canyon as he was to the palm trees. He realized that what really made these palms special was that red rock background. Without it, the palms might as well have been pho-tographed by a tourist in Florida.

Understanding what backgrounds communicate:

In most pictures we take, there’s some sort of background information visible to the viewer in the fi nished picture. The character of that background can vary wildly, depending on the subject, the lens being used, the distance between subject and background, and a host of other factors. Sometimes the background is tack-sharp, takes up much of the frame, and immediately tells us about the scene. Other times it’s scarcely visible, and what we do see is out of focus and indistinct.


Regardless, whether the photographer con-sciously meant to or not, the many different backgrounds tell the viewer a lot about the environment a picture was taken in. And be-yond that, they tell us about the subject itself. A background can be a very subtle tool to add context to a picture, giving the viewer low-vol-ume information about what environment the picture was taken in. Or, it can be as important as the subject itself, commanding visual at-tention and speaking loudly about where this picture was taken. Finally, even a totally com-pressed, out-of-focus background in a super-telephoto lens shot can convey information – if the photographer has truly blurred-out all other background info, it forces 100% of the viewer’s attention to the subject itself.

It’s important for photographers at any level to think about the impact of backgrounds and composition, even when looking at pictures in a newspaper or magazine. The more openly aware you are of something, and the more you can verbalize what you see, the easier it becomes to make it a part of your photogra-phy. And the better your pictures will be.

A simple telephoto shot of a pot of fl owers, but the off-center compo-sition and still-recognizable tile roofs in the background suggest this is probably a travel picture. The background here is as important as

the subject itself.

The bright colors, illumination, and its dominance in the foreground all call attention to this Tokyo vending machine. However, the back-ground information is distinct enough for a viewer to place it in its

downtown Tokyo environment.


Look for different backgrounds

Sometimes you can photograph the same subject and end up with two completely different pictures, sim-ply by changing your position and thus changing what’s in the background. With a wide-angle lens, this can often mean a signifi cant change in shooting position, such as moving almost completely behind a subject you just photographed from the front. But with a telephoto lens – especially a longer focal length lens, such as 300mm or above – you can often change what’s in the background with a modest change in camera position.

Same subject, totally different backgrounds…just by moving a few feet to the right to take the second shot. Using a telephoto lens, it’s easy to make major changes to the background by moving slightly. Both backgrounds obviously place this statue in an old-world city, but sometimes the change can totally alter the meaning of your picture – for example, imagine how the picture would look if one of the

buildings was a shiny, new glass-and-steel structure.

Summary:

Whether a background is simple or complex, it adds something to almost every picture we take with our cameras. It’s always vital to see your primary subject, of course. But if you train yourself to think about and see the backgrounds, and learn how different lenses manipulate backgrounds, you’ll have powerful tools at your fi ngertips. Sometimes, it’s as simple as taking a few extra moments to look carefully in your viewfi nder as you compose your pictures.


Our eyes have an incredible ability to look at a broad scene, and to isolate one small part of it. Each of us has had occasion to spot one person among a vast crowd of people, to cite one obvious example. In photographing land-scapes, we can sometimes be well-served by using a telephoto lens to have our cameras do the same thing.

Art Wolfe speaks of being in a large canyon in northern Australia, and being presented with a photographic challenge: There’s a huge differ-ence in lighting between the deep shadow ar-eas within the canyon, and the bright sunlight hitting areas in the distance. It’s too great a difference to properly capture in one single digital exposure. Rather than worry about it, Art looks at the entire subject with a different point of view — put a 70-200mm telephoto zoom lens on the camera, and shoot pictures of small slices of the scene instead of trying to capture the whole thing in one ultra-wide image.

Looking for details within a broad scene

This isn’t always as easy as it sounds. Presented with a beautiful, broad landscape, most of us instinctively tend to reach for a wide-angle lens to take the entire view in. And there’s nothing wrong with this approach, in many cases. Wide-angle lenses bring their own special power to landscape shooting, especially when you can put something distinct in the foreground as a central point of interest.However, to repeat, our own eyes have the ability to pick out details in the distance that may be equally or even more compelling, and still communicate that it’s a landscape-type of image. Art found palm trees he could visually isolate with the spectacular red canyon rock walls behind them, taking a complex scene and instantly simplifying it. There are numerous examples where zeroing-in on one part of a scene can give you an image that speaks with perhaps even more power than a grand, wide vista would.

As great as the wide-angle lens is, keep this in mind: When subjects are distant, they are rendered very small. When the same parts of a landscape are shot with a telephoto lens, however, the viewer’s eyes are immediately drawn in to that part of the scene. Sometimes, this can speak as loudly to the viewer as a broad view of an entire landscape.

Telephoto lenses for landscapes


Telephoto lenses do more than isolate

A couple of characteristics of telephoto lenses can work for the photographer as well, at least in some cases. One is their relatively limited depth-of-fi eld (that is, how much is sharply focused behind and in front of the primary focused-upon subject). In a case like the palm tree Art is photographing in the Australian canyon, this works in his favor. He can autofocus sharply right on the tree, and allow focus to go slightly soft on the rock wall in the background. It’s a subtle way to further force the viewer’s eye to the primary subject, which is the tree.

The closer a subject is with telephoto lenses, the more the lens wants to throw the background out of focus. Conversely, if you’re shooting a truly distant scene and zooming in on part of it with a telepho-to lens, you may fi nd that it’s not necessary to use very small lens apertures to keep the whole scene in pretty sharp focus.

In a case like this, there’s nothing to stop Art from using even more telephoto power to get even clos-er to the palm tree — especially since in this case, it’s not a vastly distant subject that’s miles away. Using a 400mm or even longer lens (or a tele-ex-tender, which Art routinely carries), it would be easy to get even tighter shots of just parts of the palm tree, against increasingly blurred red-rock back-grounds. Playing with the different shapes of the palm branches, a shooter could spend quite a while shooting this and end up with numerous different images to choose from. These kind of opportunities are a great reason to consider carrying a 1.4x or 2x tele-extender with you (if your telephoto lenses are compatible with one.)

Art Wolfe shot of tree against red rock wall.© Art Wolfe

When a telephoto lens is used for a distant scenic picture, it’s pos-sible to get a lot of depth-of-fi eld if you’re not focused on a nearby

subject. The farther away the lens is focused, the more inherent sharpness you’ll have throughout a scene.


Telephoto compression

A skill that separates a lot of advanced photogra-phers from snapshooters is that the experienced photographer often looks to take an everyday sub-ject and somehow use the camera to make it look different. Getting viewers to stop, take notice of a familiar subject, but say to themselves, “I haven’t seen it look like that before” is one way to know you’ve got a noteworthy image. Landscape and scenic pictures with telephoto lenses can some-times fi t this bill with another optical characteristic — their tendency to “compress” distant objects.

When focused upon distant subjects that are vary-ing distances from the camera, telephoto lenses tend to render them appearing much closer to each other than they may be in real life. We’ve all seen this effect in pictures from time to time, but it can still make a viewer stop and take notice when he or she does encounter it. Distant landscapes are a classic example of where this can be used, making it appear as though a mountain is looming right behind that castle, or that the buildings on that hillside in San Francisco are so close together that they might as well be one giant structure.

You don’t need a super-telephoto lens to make this happen; a lens like Art’s 70-200mm zoom can certainly give you this effect in the right conditions.

The characteristic compression of distant objects with telephoto lenses can be a powerful tool when shooting scenics and

landscapes. This shot was taken at 200mm, from a considerable distance.

Summary:

One of the joys of SLR photography is that each of us has a slightly different way of seeing subjects and wanting to capture them. All of us at one point or another have been impressed with a spectacular land-scape, or even a view of a great city from a distance. Wide-angle shots will always be a staple of photos of these scenic views, but don’t hesitate to look carefully and see if a tighter view will give you another way of looking at the scene. Take advantage of what our eyes already have the ability to do — reach out into the distance and concentrate on smaller details. Sometimes, pulling out a telephoto lens and giving it a try is just what’s needed to give you a whole different way of photographing a subject.


Most of the time, photographers shooting outdoors hope for bright sunlight, blue skies, and nice weather. It makes for great travel pictures, but there’s plenty of picture-taking that can take place even in less-than-ideal conditions. In fact, overcast skies can bring their own special beauty to outdoor pictures. Art Wolfe hints at it in his video commentary called “Even Light”, where hazy conditions reduced the contrast and opened up different ways for him to work with the village structures he was photographing.

The form and texture that subjects take on in sunlight is inescapable, and it’s a strong motivator for many photographers. Especially in early morning or late afternoon light, even mundane, everyday subjects can take on an alluring look. It’s a lighting condition that has caused many photographers to reach for their cam-era bag and race out the door.

You have to re-adjust your photographic senses a little bit when skies are overcast (we’ll deal with rain and snow in a moment). You won’t get the dramatic play of light-and-shadow on cloudy days, so there’s little point in frustrating yourself trying to fi nd it as you look through your camera. Likewise, the brilliant colors of sun-lit objects, played off against dark vivid shadows, will be missing. Shooting in overcast conditions is simply different than on a sunny day. Whether you’re in an area like Hawaii where you expect sunny skies, or an area that’s noted for rainy weather, good photographers have to be willing to adjust their expectations to match the conditions they’re shooting in.

Overcast skies force photographers to look a little differently at subjects. Instead of the play of light hitting the subject, it’s often just the subject itself that we have to work with. Its contours, its textures, its colors become the stars of the show for each picture we take. This actually can be an advantage. An obvious ex-ample is taking pictures of people. In bright sunlight, we know how shadows can be a diffi cult issue to tackle in pictures; with overcast skies, it can suddenly become easy to pose, position, and photograph people. Similarly, a building, a tree, or a mountain can also be photographed from different angles, with fewer con-cerns about the angle of view and how it interacts with the direction of light.

No sun? Keep shooting!

Soft, even lighting can be a blessing for certain subjects, and you always have it on overcast days.

© Art Wolfe

Light and shadow — and learning to live without it


Benefi ts of overcast skies

The example of shooting a portrait, and how in some ways it’s easier on an overcast day, brings up another point. For many critical digital photographers, “dynamic range” is a term not far from their lips. It’s the range of brightness, from the darkest shadows to the brightest highlights, in which a camera or device can still capture or display detail. And while it’s a fact that today’s digital cameras can’t capture the entire range of brightness that our eyes can on a bright, sunny day, the situation changes when shooting on an overcast day. The reduction in contrast (sometimes called “fl at” lighting by photographers) suddenly makes it a lot easier for a digital camera to get detail throughout a scene.

Exposure is sometimes a challenge in bright sunlight. Does the experienced shooter try to expose for the bright areas, knowing that shadows may well be jet-black with little or no detail? Or does he or she intentionally lighten the overall picture by exposing for the shadow areas, which may burn-out the bright, sun-lit highlights? It’s not always a simple answer. On a cloudy day, with its far more even light, exposure can be a much simpler task. Sure, you’ll still occasionally have to intentionally over-expose for light-colored subjects to be rendered accurately, and vice-versa. But often, the challenges to simply get a well-exposed picture are fewer.

Bright sun can be an asset in some cases, but for shots of people, it can be a challenge. The soft, reduced contrast of an overcast or hazy sky makes it ideal for this type of picture-taking.

© Rudy Winston


Overcast skies give you an opportunity to experiment with slower shutter speeds. Here, a shot of a memorial gets the added element

of a blurred image of a car, captured at 1/15th of a second.This type of shot would be diffi cult to achieve on a bright sunny day.

© Rudy Winston

With the reduced light levels on cloudy days, slow-er shutter speeds are the norm. This doesn’t have to be a handicap. Use it as an opportunity to ex-periment with intentionally show shutter speeds in daylight, whether you’re shooting waterfalls or sim-ply people walking by. And when you need faster shutter speeds for sharp pictures, don’t be afraid to use your camera’s higher ISO settings (such as 800, 1600, or even higher in some cases). Modern digital SLRs have come a long way in re-ducing the grain-like “noise” that in years past lim-ited the image quality photographers could achieve in low light. (Be aware that with many Canon EOS models, this means moving your camera out of the full-auto shooting modes like the “green zone”, and turning to a Mode Dial setting such as the Program mode or Aperture-priority mode — otherwise, you may not be able to shoot at ISOs above 400.)

Rain and snow

Many photographers use inclement weather as an excuse to simply leave the camera at home, but it’s a potential shooting opportunity missed if you do. Again, subjects and objects simply take on a different ap-pearance when being impacted by rain or snow, and this different look means opportunities for images.

Snow can totally change how a subject appears in photographs, especially once snow has begun to stick to the ground, trees, and other objects in its path.

Protecting the camera from the elements is an obvious concern, and it’s a reason we often simply pass on opportunities to shoot in inclement weather. Even with top-of-the-line professional digital SLRs that are well-sealed against dust and moisture, it’s always a good idea to be sensible about how long a camera is exposed to constant rain or snow. Wiping the body (not the front of the lens!) with a towel or absorbent cloth every so often is always a good idea, as well as covering the camera with a plastic bag or keeping it inside a water-resistant jacket or coat when it’s not being used. Normally, you don’t have to go crazy worrying about shooting the rain, but use a little common sense. Not only will it help protect your camera and lenses, but it will also give you reasons to go out when the weather’s not ideal and continue to shoot great images.


Good color on cloudy days

Your digital camera’s Auto White Balance setting is a good starting point, and in the beginning, it’s probably best to simply use AWB and see how your results look, over time, when you view and print them. After a while, you’ll develop a sense of when it may be preferable to re-set the white balance for better color.

Under cloudy skies, many cameras tend to deliver a somewhat “cool” color, that may appear a little blue-tinted to some users. To counter this, most cameras have a separate “cloudy” setting, which intentionally adds a touch of amber to the scene to warm-up the overall color. An even stronger version of this is the “shade” setting you’ll fi nd on many digital cameras. On a cloudy day, you may fi nd the shade setting is too strong, but as its name implies, it works well in deep shade situations.

So don’t be annoyed if Auto White Balance isn’t giving perfect color when you shoot on cloudy days.Try the Cloudy WB setting, and see how you like its results (just don’t forget to switch your white balance once you’re no longer outdoors under overcast skies).

Another trick — consider adjusting your camera’s Color Saturation upwards a notch or two, when shooting in cloudy conditions. It can give you richer, brighter colors. Likewise, if you feel that much of the time, cloudy pictures seem excessively “fl at”, you can usually adjust your camera’s contrast upward a bit. (With Canon EOS digital SLRs, these adjustments are in the Picture Style menu; some older EOS models use a menu setting called Parameters instead.) Again: be sure to return both settings to normal after you’re done.

Auto White Balance on a digital camera is a good starting point, but still, it’s just a starting point. In overcast lighting, most cameras offer a “cloudy” white balance option, which is useful in warming-up colors on overcast days.

© Rudy Winston


Summary

It’s not often that photographers pass-up a shooting opportunity of a subject because clear, mid-day skies aren’t giving them the light they want. But top-notch pro Art Wolfe did exactly that when he encountered a beautiful village in Mali. A little haze in late afternoon gave a totally different look to his pictures than he would have achieved under mid-day sun. There’s a lesson here: cloudy days, even rainy/snowy days, can create their own opportunities for photographers. Much of it is simply attitude. If you approach each situa-tion as a true opportunity, rather than an obstacle, you’re bound to take better advantage of it, and return with better pictures.

You don’t need to wait for the next time you encounter a rainy day while on vacation to try this. The next time it’s rainy, foggy, or snowy, take your camera out and practice making ordinary things in your home town look a little different than you’re used to shooting them.


It’s not just Art Wolfe’s eye that makes him such an outstand-ing photographer, it’s his dedication to getting the best possible

shot. When he fi rst saw this village in Mali, he realized that it would look its best late in the day. Making the effort to return,

he was rewarded with superb pictures.

Recognizing and returning to a great subjectArt Wolfe’s video tip “Even Light”, from Mali, re-minds us how important it is to do two things when photographing on-location: be able to recognize a great potential subject, even if at the moment you fi rst spot it, the shooting conditions aren’t right. And secondly, he reminds all of us of the importance of being willing to return to a subject when shooting conditions are different.

Light and time of day

For experienced photographers, this is an easy one. In bright, mid-day sunlight, it’s diffi cult for most sub-jects to really appear at their best. The strong over-head light and excessive contrast make even the most beautiful of scenes less than ideal. For some of us, we’ll shoot a few pictures and hope for the best. But for the photographer who wants to go beyond or-dinary images, making the effort to return at another time pays huge dividends.

Obviously, in early morning or late afternoon sunlight, objects take on a different appearance than they usu-ally do in noon-time sun. If you’re just getting started in photography, train yourself to look at how the light hits objects at different times of day. Start with things you see every day when you’re at home — the way light hits the shingles and roof of your house or the house across the street; how light wraps around a statue near your home at different times of the day (even on overcast days), how a person looks stand-ing in front of your house in early morning hours, at noon, and in late afternoon sun.

Practice observing how different objects and people appear when hit by different types of light, at dif-

ferent times of day. Here, late afternoon sun wraps around a small part of this Prague statue. This effect

would be impossible to get at noontime.© Rudy Winston


Training yourself to look at and think about light — and how it’s interacting with your subject — is one of the most vital skills in becoming a strong photographer. What’s great is that it doesn’t require university schooling; all you have to do is start to be cognizant of light and what it does when it strikes subjects, and compare what you see at different times of the day and in different conditions. As we’ve pointed out before, when you can consciously think about something and verbalize it, you’re well on your way to be-ing in control of it.

Recognizing a great subject

As much as being able to predict how different types of light will make a subject appear, it’s a moot point if the subject itself doesn’t have something visual to offer. Sometimes, it’s easy: we see a famous land-mark like the Great Pyramids or the Kremlin or the Empire State Building when we’re traveling, and want to get pictures of it. But in a case like the tiny village Art Wolfe found in Mali, great subjects may not be as obvious.

Art has a terrifi c “eye”, and right away was able to see the visual potential in the patterns of this vil-lage and its buildings. The more you work with your camera, the more you’ll develop your own sense of powerful subjects, beyond obvious landmarks. It doesn’t have to be an entire building or the entire village. You can be grabbed by the potential and the beauty of small details, which you can isolate with a tele-photo lens. Every photographer shoots a little differently and is attracted to things that are different from the next shooter. Regardless, once you know for yourself you’ve spotted a great potential subject, you’re ready to take advantage of it.

So Art’s combining two acquired skills — predicting how another type of light would look when viewing a subject in totally different conditions, and being able to recognize the potential in a subject, even when it’s not being struck by stunning lighting that brings out the best in it when he fi rst observes it.

With practice, nearly any photographer can train themselves to recognize and be able to capture great images. Being able to

spot a subject you can enhance with your camera is a big part of this. For a pro like Art Wolfe, it’s an everyday part of their job.

© Art Wolfe


Making the commitment

It sounds like it should be the easiest part, but for many of us, it’s the hardest: we’ve gotten better and better at our photography, we’re developing a certain photographic style, we have a sense of how light is working with subjects, and know a great subject when we see it. The problem? Making the commitment to return to a subject later, if it seems appealing but the conditions just aren’t right.

It’s especially diffi cult for travelers who are accom-panied by family or close friends, or if you’re travel-ing as part of a large tour group. It’s always easy to simply grab a quick shot in less-than-ideal light, and be done with it. But if you’re good at your pho-tography, it’ll always bug you that you didn’t return.Much like jumping into an ice-cold lake, the hardest part about returning to a subject is simply doing it the fi rst time. It may mean missing dinner with your family for one evening on a particular trip, or hav-ing others wait for you. It may mean forcing your-self to wake up at dawn, to capture something in early-morning sun that you know will make it come alive visually.

But for most of us, once you force yourself to do it the fi rst time, it becomes easier to picture yourself doing it again in the future. When traveling, you still have to compromise from time to time and do what’s needed to be a team player. But don’t forget, along the way, to invest a little time in yourself.

Many photographers miss out on great opportunities because they won’t commit to return to a subject when the light and subject are at their best. Many visitors see this Maine lighthouse in the middle of the day; comparatively few see it at dawn, when it takes

on a special appearance.© Rudy Winston

You’re not simply avoiding mid-day sunlight!

Think about the incredible range of conditions you can shoot a picture in. Nearly any of them, occasionally, can be just right for one given subject or another. While Art Wolfe mentioned the initial harsh mid-day sun and how the softer the hazy, late afternoon sunlight worked much better, there are countless other situa-tions to think about returning to. Here are just a few of them:

• The so-called “magic hour”, right after the sun has set or immediately before it rises at dawn. The en-tire sky becomes a light source, giving a directional glow rather than hard directional light.Artifi cial light, whether light coming through windows or from other sources (even a fl ash!) can be balanced with the soft daylight for an unusual look.


• Night. Don’t laugh — some buildings and cityscapes that appear drab and ordinary can absolutely come alive when photographed at night. A great incentive to carry that tripod when you go out shooting!

• Morning or afternoon sunlight, but back-lit: some subjects can really be enhanced by effective use of back-lighting. Whether it’s the sunlight rimming the outer edges the subject as it hits them from behind,or the evenness of the shadowed light that’s the primary frontal illumination, back-lighting can occasionally be a powerful tool in a shooter’s arsenal.

• Overcast skies: sometimes, we can get stronger images with less contrast in lighting. Overcast or even rainy conditions can work for subjects ranging from portraits to landscape pictures.

Summary

As usual, Art Wolfe brings up a great point when speaking of the need to return to a great potential photographic subject later, when conditions are better suited to the type of images he wants to get. Developing your own awareness of different light, and how it interacts with different types of subjects, can go a long way toward making your photography stronger.


In the fi rst image, we know that the trees aren’t falling into the road, but converging lines makes it look like they’re about to. In the second image, the camera was hardly tilted at all, and the result is straight trees that look as you’d expect to see them in real life.

In Mali, Art Wolfe gives us an important compo-sitional reminder in his short Tips video where he’s photographing an elegant door. It’s a simple one, yet one we often forget: to keep all the lines in a wide-angle shot straight, keep the camera level.

Wide angle converging lines

Whether shooting hand-held or using a tripod, if you want an accu-rately-recorded wide-angle picture, keep the camera absolutely level.

What’s meant by “converging lines”?

We’ve all seen images with this characteristic. In fact, we see so many that we usually accept it without thinking about it. Converging lines are an easily-seen phenomenon, and are especially no-ticeable in shots taken with a wide-angle lens.

The most obvious example is shooting something like a building or house. If you stand nearby with a wide-angle lens, and tilt the camera upward to get the top of the building into the picture, the vertical lines — principally, the sides of the building — will bow inward toward the center as you look upward. They’ll no longer appear straight up-and-down. With ultra-wide lenses and a tall building, it may appear as though the top of the building comes to a sharp point. This inward slanting of lines that we know are straight, vertical lines is called “converging lines”.

© Rudy Winston © Brian Hist


Why do pros work to avoid converging lines?

For casual photographers taking pictures on va-cation or around their home, converging lines are usually not a major concern. As mentioned, they’re something we’ve all seen in photos we look at ev-ery day, whether in newspapers, books, magazines and so on. In fact, unless you regularly read an ar-chitectural magazine or certain other technical pub-lications, you’ll rarely see wide angle images with corrected vertical lines.

However, a fact of life for working professional pho-tographers is that their pictures have to face stricter scrutiny than those in the family album. Many mag-azine editors know how such lines should appear, and if they notice converging lines in a picture, it needs to appear as though the photographer inten-tionally used the effect to exaggerate something about the wide-angle perspective of the subject — whether it’s a building, redwood trees in a forest, or whatever. For a pro, a huge problem is to have a picture that looks just a little bit “off”. Rather than a creative decision by the photographer, a slight error in composition or converging lines usually appears to be a mistake.

So while it’s certainly true you’ll see professional shots with converging lines, in many cases, they’re ultra-wide shots taken with lenses like a 14mm or 16-35mm zoom. An exaggerated effect of converging lines often comes with these super-wide lenses if you simply aim them upward a bit. And photographers use this to visually call attention to their subject, or their way of photographing this subject.

Intentionally using converging lines is a powerful technique with ultra-wide angle lenses — as long as it looks like it was

done deliberately. Here, a 14mm ultra-wide lens was used on a full-frame camera, and tilted upward to exaggerate the

church’s structure. Of course, in reality, the church is not shaped like a pyramid!

© Rudy Winston

Shooting details of a subject

In this Tips video, Art is shooting only a small part of a building in Mali: an ornate wooden door. Especially in shots where something with distinct horizontal and vertical lines (like a doorway) is photographed,most users expect to see it accurately rendered. That means that straight lines in the subject should be straight in the fi nished image.


Even though Art is using his 16-35mm wide-angle zoom lens, it’s clear from his fi nished pictures that he’s not using the ultra-wide end of the zoom. With a full-frame digital camera, the 35mm setting on this lens gives a very slight wide-angle view. It’s still susceptible to converging line problems if you tilt the camera up or down, but it won’t be as im-mediately obvious.

And as we said before, for a pro, there’s the prob-lem — in their fi nal pictures, there can’t be “little problems”. If the lines in Art’s doorway are converg-ing in the fi nal pictures, he needs to make it look like he meant for them to be converging.

So Art Wolfe’s point is clear: the subject has obvi-ous horizontal and vertical lines, and to avoid the converging line problem with his verticals, he has to keep the camera as straight as possible. Even on a tripod, this isn’t always as easy as it sounds, but it’s important to take the time to get it right. You can do the same, whether you’re hand-holding or using a tripod yourself. Just take a little extra time to look carefully at the sides of your viewfi nder, and make sure that vertical lines on the subject aren’t tilting inward toward the top or bottom of your image.

Wide-angle lenses can be used to record details in a subject, but keep the camera level to maintain straight lines. If the camera is

tilted upward, you’ll defi nitely get converging lines, as in the 2nd photo.

© Rudy Winston


Some aids to help avoid converging lines

There are various tools photographers can call upon to avoid converging lines when it’s mission-critical to have images with totally clean, straight lines in the composition. Some are easy for amateur shoot-ers to use, others are tailored more toward special-ists. Here are a few:

• Live View modeMany of today’s cameras have a Live View feature (where you can view your subjects on the camera’s LCD monitor, before you shoot). Live View lets you see a larger view of your subject, and for many us-ers, it can be easier to tell if edges of the frame line-up, or if the subject is tilted. Live View is especially useful if you are working on a tripod.

• Live View’s Grid display modeIf your camera has the Live View feature, see if there’s a menu option to display straight lines on the screen. These grid lines are great to help compose pictures precisely. No, they won’t appear in your fi nished images!

• Use a tripodMost photographers don’t get excited about the prospect of carrying one around, but their eyes brighten up when you speak about tack-sharp pictures and precise compositions. A good tripod can accomplish both. As with most things in life, with tripods, you usually get what you pay for. Aiming high can buy you a lifetime photographic partner. Think about it — you rarely see Art Wolfe shooting without one.

• Use a grid-type focus screenNot all cameras allow you to change the focus screen (Canon’s EOS 40D, 50D, 5D, 5D Mark II, and all version of EOS-1D or EOS-1Ds do have this feature). If your camera does offer interchangeable focus screens, consider one of the so-called “grid screens”. These have fi ne, etched lines you’ll see in your viewfi nder to assist in composing images and keeping straight lines straight. The beauty of most is that the lines are faint enough that you can usually ignore them when they’re not needed, such as if you’re shooting some sports pictures. A worthwhile investment for all critical photographers.

• Tilt-shift lensesThis is specialty equipment, and priced to match. Pros or very dedicated photo enthusiasts can buy special lenses that have a “shift” function. This way, the camera can be mounted absolutely level, and the lens

Many high-end cameras offer interchangeable focus screens, and those that do usually have a “grid screen” you can install.

With it, you always have faint straight lines in the viewfi nder to assist with composing subjects. Fortunately, these lines

are typically easy to ignore when you don’t need them, and if the screens are user-interchangeable (Canon’s are), you can

always re-install your standard screen whenever you want.


shifted upward to include the upper part of the build-ing or other subject. Canon makes three for EOS cameras, called TS-E or Tilt-Shift lenses: 24mm f/3.5L, 45mm f/2.8, and 90mm f/2.8. In a situation like Art was in, the mid-range 45mm TS-E lens would be a great tool for the ultra-critical pro to have on-hand. They’re a bit much for the typical travel photogra-pher to include in his or her travel kit, unless they specialize in photographing buildings or products.

Tilt-shift lenses allow very precise shifting of the lens to avoid tilting the camera — thus minimizing or eliminating converging

lines. Canon makes three different professional Tilt-Shift lenses (24mm, 45mm, and 90mm focal lengths). They can be used on

any Canon EOS camera, fi lm or digital.

Summary

As with many things in photography, simply being aware of what converging lines are, and when they can be a problem, is a big part of taking the control that’s needed. You don’t always have to struggle to avoid them, but if you’re in a situation like Art was in Mali — shooting beautifully-decorated doorways — it’s probably worth the effort to simply line the camera up so it’s as level as you can position it be-fore you shoot the pictures. There are numerous methods and tools you can use to minimize issues with converging lines in your images. And always remember: rules are meant to be broken. From time to time, an ultra-wide angle lens shot with exaggerated perspective distortion and converging lines can be a great way to grab a viewer’s attention. Just make sure it looks like you did it on purpose!


One of the fi rst landmark concepts that marks a photographer moving from a casual amateur to a dedicated enthusiast is understanding the con-cept of depth of fi eld. Simply, it’s being in control of how much is in sharp focus in a picture’s fore-ground and background, aside from the subject actually focused upon. As photographers begin to learn about depth of fi eld, they quickly under-stand that the farther we close the lens aperture (use progressively higher f-numbers, such as f/11, f/16, and f/22), the sharper the background and foreground is likely to be. It’s a powerful way to control the look of a photograph.

But it’s important to be aware of something else: stopping your lens down to its smallest lens open-ing doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get the sharp-est possible picture. In fact, with most lenses, there’s an optical phenomenon called diffraction that be-comes an increasing factor at very small lens openings. Thus, even as depth of fi eld becomes greater and greater, the actual rendering of fi ne detail reaches a point with most lenses where it begins to diminish.

Our purpose here is certainly not to tell anyone that they shouldn’t use small lens apertures for maximum depth of fi eld. In the shots Art Wolfe takes in the Falkland Islands of nesting birds, it’s a key part of the images he produced which emphasize the incredible numbers of birds. But be aware that any lens’s char-acteristics change as you use different lens apertures. It’s not something to fear; in fact, any photographer can use it to his or her advantage once they understand the way most lenses work.

Depth of fi eld – it’s not the same as sharpness

Art Wolfe got lots of depth of fi eld in this shot by using a small f/22 lens aperture, making the background sharp and distinct. But as you’ll see, you don’t simply get sharper pictures by shooting every-

thing at your lens’s smallest aperture.

Common misconceptions about lenses

Many photographers understand that when a lens is used at its widest possible aperture (lowest f-number, such as f/5.6, f/4, f/2.8, etc.), it’s usually not rendering it’s absolutely sharpest possible image. We’re not speaking about throwing backgrounds out of focus. Instead, we’re speaking of how sharply a lens can ren-der fi ne detail if you were (for instance) shooting squarely into a detailed, fl at wall.

It’s a fact that with the majority of lenses, if you close the aperture down to a smaller opening, it’s optical performance usually begins to get even better. With most lenses, their best optical sharpness and contrast typically appears with the lens aperture set about 2, 3, or 4 stops closed-down from its widest opening.


With a compact f/5.6 zoom lens, this means it’ll generally be at its best, in terms of optical sharpness, at apertures somewhere around f/16 or so. With a faster f/2.8 lens, generally, you’d expect maximum perfor-mance around f/8, give or take.

What throws some photographers off is that they assume that the more you stop a lens down, the sharper it gets. After all, if a lens’s performance improves by stopping it down 3 or 4 stops, doesn’t it improve even more if you stop it down an ad-ditional 2 or 3 stops? Furthermore, if an image’s depth of fi eld — that is, its zone of sharpness — is greatest at the smallest possible aperture, doesn’t that mean the lens is sharpest there, too?

In actual fact, it isn’t. As mentioned above, most lenses produce their sharpest images at aper-tures somewhere in the middle of the range. As you continue to progressively stop down the ap-erture blades, diffraction actually begins to scatter more and more of what light is coming through the opening, and this reduces a lens’s ability to render a tack- sharp image.

When speaking of a lens’s sharpness and contrast, think about its ability to render fi ne details when shooting squarely into a fl at sub-ject, such as this Kazakh currency. This shot was taken at f/11, with

a 100mm f/2.8 macro lens.

Think about your needs for a particular picture

Again, no one is suggesting that it’s wrong to use small lens apertures to get maximum depth of fi eld. Whether you’re shooting a broad landscape picture and want all elements to be as sharp as possible, or taking a portrait where you want a sharp, recognizable background to lend a clear sense of place, images with broad depth of fi eld will always have an important place in most photographers’ portfolios. Likewise, there are times where you want a wide-open lens aperture to throw a background pleasingly out of focus, even if you know it’s technically not where the lens renders its sharpest possible image.


Wide apertures will always be useful in low light or for intentionally blurring distracting backgrounds, and small apertures produce the greatest depth of fi eld in your images. Both techniques are used by top photographers.

But there are other times where you’re not really after maximum depth of fi eld, but you do need as much detail as possible in the subject that is in-focus. In Art Wolfe’s shots of the nesting birds, his visual statement is largely about the compressed, repetitive cluster of birds that appear in his tele-photo shots. Using a small aperture gives him a background that’s recognizable and distinct, and emphasizes the number of birds.

On the other hand, there are pictures where you’ve got a subject with incredible detail that you want to reproduce as sharply as possible. It might be a close-up of something like a fl ower or coins, a shot of the texture of weathered paint on an old barn, or an image of a building like the church to the right with its incredible, ornate detail. Here, your priority is not getting lots of things from foreground to background relatively sharp — it’s getting fewer things extremely sharp.

In essence, photographers talk about and use two different types of sharpness. One is the classic use of tiny apertures, such as f/22 or f/32, to get lots of things in sharp focus (think of the picture of the fence at the beach above). But if you’re interested in getting the maximum amount of detail, you’ll usually do better with a lens aperture setting somewhere in the middle of your lens’s available aperture range.

An image like this calls more for maximizing detail than getting exten-sive depth of fi eld. A 70-200mm f/2.8 lens was used at f/8, at or near

its point of maximum performance.


The best photographers know their equipment

It’s easy to test those lenses you frequently use to see if you’re taking a hit in image quality when you stop it down to its smallest apertures for maximum depth of fi eld. Simply focus upon a detailed subject, and shoot a series of images at different apertures without changing focus or composition. If you’re not on a tripod, use a higher ISO to insure that at small f-stops, you’re not getting shutter speeds so slow that you generate some blurs from camera shake.

Take a full-resolution shot at each full aperture on your lens, such as f/5.6 – f/11 – f/16 – f/22 – f/32. JPEGs are fi ne for this purpose. Now, open each on your computer monitor, and view them at 100% on-screen. Look closely at an area of fi ne detail that you focused upon.

Does the level of crisp detail seem to improve at f/11, for example? Does sharpness and contrast seem to get softer at f/22 or f/32? If so, you’re seeing fi rst-hand the effect of diffraction. This is an ordinary character-istic of most lenses, and it’s nothing to worry about. If you see a distinct drop in sharpness at your smallest lens aperture, don’t panic — you may well be able to get a big boost in fi ne detail by simply opening up a stop. In other words, the next time you want to get lots of depth of fi eld, if your smallest aperture is f/22, try shooting at f/16 instead. You’ll get nearly the same depth of fi eld, and possibly a lot more contrast and detail. Finally, with some lenses, you may fi nd that there’s little noticeable loss of sharpness, even at the smallest possible aperture. If that’s the case, feel free to stop down whenever you need to.

Summary

The primary point here is to understand that more depth of fi eld does not automatically mean that you’ll get the sharpest possible images. Aperture control is an important tool in photography, and learning to work with its effects is one of the most important keys in a creative photographer’s development. Wide apertures will throw backgrounds pleasingly out of focus; the smallest apertures will get lots in focus from foreground to background, and somewhere in the middle is the lens’s sweet spot, where it’ll produce its sharpest, most fi nely-detailed images. There’s a time and a place for all of them. Maybe the most important suggestion is to occasionally take your camera out of its fully-automatic Program mode, and make some camera settings yourself.


Ask many photographers what’s the most impor-tant virtue their high-resolution digital camera and lenses can provide, and they’ll answer sharpness. In the vast majority of cases, unless we’re looking for intentional blur to suggest movement or some-thing similar, any shooter from the entry-level ama-teur to a pro wants good, sharp images.

Getting the best possible sharpness from today’s digital cameras means understanding a few things you can do to optimize the camera for the situation you’re in, and remembering some camera funda-mentals that come into play as well. We’ll discuss some of those in this article. One thing we won’t try to do is push you toward an even higher-resolution digital camera. We’ve seen great, sharp images from 3 and 4 million pixel digital cameras of yesterday; and while it’s certainly attractive to have 10, 15, or even 20+ million pixels in your camera, simply having a high-resolution sensor won’t assure you of sharp images every time if you ignore other important aspects of using your digital camera to its fullest.

Art demonstrates point one about getting sharp pictures: use proper technique, including a tripod when and where possible.

Getting maximum sharpness in digital pictures

The basics: hold the camera steady, and use fast shutter speeds

In nearly all his Tips videos, Art Wolfe is shown in a shooting situation using a tripod, insuring maximum steadiness — and sharpness in his pictures. Understandably, it’s not always practical or desirable to carry a large professional tripod in every situation. But if you hand-hold your camera, do it right (even in sunlight, when you’re usually at fast shutter speeds). Press it into your face for steadiness, and be sure your left hand is underneath, supporting the lens/camera combination. Your right hand should gently hold the cam-era, without squeezing it. Finally, don’t take the shutter button for granted. Gently squeeze it from its half-way point to its fully-depressed position, to minimize any shaking of the camera as you capture your image. Whatever you do, don’t just suddenly “jab” at it. You’ll surely put the entire camera in motion if you do.


A common cause of unsharp pictures is camera shake. Holding the camera properly, and pressing the shutter button smoothly, are two important keys to getting the sharpest possible results from your camera.

Especially when hand-holding, be aware of your shutter speeds and lens apertures. There’s nothing wrong with using automatic exposure and letting the camera calculate your speed/aperture settings, but always be aware of your viewfi nder’s read-outs, and be ready to step-in and override things if you see speeds are too slow for safe hand-holding.If you think the speed indicated is too slow to insure a sharp picture, it probably is.

Awareness is an important key to consistent sharpness in your pictures. Learn to read and understand the information in

your camera’s viewfi nder, and be ready to change settings when you need to.


Image Stabilization

Camera technology has stepped in to show us the way to sharper pictures. Image Stabilization for SLR cameras was pioneered by Canon back in 1995, with the launch of the then-revolutionary EF 75-300mm Image Stabilized (IS) lens. Canon and some other camera companies now offer various lenses with optical stabilization built-in, and they most assuredly can bring you sharper images, when hand-holding at slower shutter speeds. Typically, depending on the lens and your abilities to hand-hold steadily, you can expect IS lenses to let you shoot at shutter speeds two to four stops slower than otherwise possible.

Some companies have offered a different type of stabilization, building it into the camera body in-stead. Either way, you can get sharper pictures when you hand-hold the camera.

But in either case, remember a couple of things:

1. Image Stabilization can only counter camera or lens movement. In other words, if fast shutter speeds are needed to freeze a moving subject such as an athlete, you’ll still need the same fast speeds with those subjects, even with Image Stabilization.

2. Good as it is, Image Stabilization has its limits. When using a long telephoto lens with IS, don’t ex-pect miracles, and don’t use IS as an excuse not to properly hold the camera. IS rewards good tech-nique and proper operation; it can’t deliver sharp pictures in every lighting condition.

Lenses like Canon’s 70-200mm f/4L IS (a favorite of Art Wolfe’s) have built-in optical image stabilization, which can detect and compensate for camera shake. Shutter speeds up to 4 stops

slower than you could safely hand-hold without IS are possible when it’s active, as long as your subjects aren’t moving.


Understand what you’ll need to truly freeze subject movement

This isn’t just for sports photographers. There are many times we’re photographing moving subjects, whether it’s a landscape with the wind blowing grass and leaves in trees, shots of people who may be moving, or shooting fast-moving objects. Regard-less, moving subjects are one of the major causes of blurs in pictures.

First, for sharp shots of fast-moving subjects such as traditional sports pictures, fast-moving cars or other vehicles, and so on: you’ll really need speeds of 1/500th of a second or faster — preferably, faster whenever the light allows. If you’re outdoors in bright sunlight shooting sports pictures, if you can crank up shutter speeds to 1/2000th or even 1/4000th of a second, you’ll be rewarded with very sharp images of frozen athletes. You may need to raise your ISOs a bit to do this, but don’t hesitate. Indoors without fl ash, try to get at least 1/500th of a second. Anything slower and you will get blurs in some pictures.

Children in motion sometimes are almost as chal-lenging as athletes. If you’re in the park or back yard photographing kids, again try for at least 1/500th of a second if the light permits it, even if it means cranking-up your ISO settings to something like 400 or above. For candids of adults in more passive sit-uations (chatting at outdoor parties or wedding re-ceptions, for example), you can usually get by with around 1/250th if they’re not too animated. In low light, you may be forced to rely on slower shutter speeds to get adequate exposure, but always try for the fastest speed you reasonably can get.

Easy way to get fast shutter speeds: put the cam-era in its shutter-priority mode (the Tv setting on Canon EOS SLRs), and set the speed you want. If the aperture display in the viewfi nder blinks on and off like a car’s turn indicator, it means your exposure isn’t going to be correct at the speed you’ve chosen. Either raise/lower the ISO setting and try again, or set a slower shutter speed (such as moving from 1000 to 500).

For any moving subject, from athletes to waterfalls and fountains, if you want to freeze the movement, you’ll need a shutter speed of at least 1/500th or faster. Here, 1/2000th was used to freeze the

water from the fountain.

Even scenes like this can have moving subjects you have to think about freezing for the best sharpness. Wind-blown grass, fl owers

and leaves on trees are a prime cause of soft images. Faster shutter speeds will freeze their movement on windy days.


Alternate method sometimes used by pros: set the camera in Aperture-priority mode (Av on Canon EOS models), and set the widest possible lens aperture (lowest aperture number, such as 5.6, 4, 2.8, etc). Why? The camera will always use the fastest available shutter speed, and you’ll see it in the viewfi nder. If it’s still too low to freeze moving subjects, raise your ISO and try again.

Don’t forget about things like wind-blown plants. If you see any motion at all, and you’re trying for a sharp picture, you’ll likely need to use faster speeds, like 1/250th or 1/500th. This may mean that you can’t stop your lens aperture down for lots of depth of fi eld, but a sharp foreground is probably better than a picture where the prominent subject is blurred by too slow a shutter speed.

Lens aperture

Exposure is always a three-way balancing act be-tween your shutter speeds, your lens apertures, and your ISO settings. Even the fi nest photogra-phers know that they often have to compromise a little here, giving up on one to give the specifi c re-sults they’re looking for.

We’ll examine using small apertures for maximum depth of fi eld (that is, the zone of sharpness both in front of and behind our primary subject) in a sepa-rate document. Here, we want to talk about a dif-ferent aspect of sharpness, and how lens aperture affects it. Simply stated, your lens is not as sharp at some aperture settings as it is at others.

It’s a fact: if you’re photographing a fl at object (for example, shooting straight into a wall), your lens is likely to deliver its sharpest pictures at apertures somewhere in the middle of its aperture range. The widest aperture settings (low f-numbers, like f/4 or f/2.8) rarely give you ultimate lens sharpness, and like-wise, the smallest openings (high f-numbers, like f/22 or f/32) don’t either.

Don’t confuse this last point with depth of fi eld, which again we’ll cover separately. We’re speaking strictly of how sharp an image the lens provides, at the subject it’s focused upon. Because of a phenomenon known as “diffraction” all lenses tend to lose sharpness as you get to their smallest apertures. Since these also provide the maximum depth of fi eld (again, this means most things in focus, foreground to background), many users confuse this with total lens sharpness. It isn’t.

All lenses have an aperture at which they’ll deliver their absolutely sharpest image. Typically, it’s about three stops closed-down from its widest possible aperture. But critical users should test their lens-

es at all apertures, to learn where each lens performs at its best.


There’s no one lens aperture where every lens is always sharpest, but in general, if you start at your widest lens opening (lowest f-number) and from there stop down about three stops, you’ll usual-ly be near this sweet spot. Does this mean you should only take pictures at middle apertures? Of course not. You’ll always need to control apertures with an eye toward the total photo situation you’re in. Just be aware that for utmost sharpness in a picture (which is what we’re discussing here), your lenses will tend to deliver their sharpest images at middle apertures.

Even if you know your lens performs at its sharpest with the ap-erture stopped-down somewhat, don’t hesitate to use appropriate apertures when needed. Here, the the 135mm f/2.0 lens was used indoors at its widest f/2.0 opening. In low light, it would be foolish to stop it down to a mid-range aperture, even if technically it’s a

little sharper there.

Digital settings in your camera

Digital settings in your cameraThere are a number of in-camera settings that can also contribute to the impression of crisp sharpness in your pictures, if they’re set properly. Here are a few to think about:

• Resolution settingCertainly, if you’re trying to make large prints from your digital fi les, you’ll get maximum detail and digi-tal clarity if you use all the camera’s pixels. If you’re a JPEG shooter, that means using the “Large” resolution setting (some cameras may use differ-ent terminology). RAW fi les generally use full pixel resolution at all times, except for some of Canon’s newest models with the “small” (reduced) resolu-tion options for RAW images. Use plain old “RAW” for utmost quality.

• SharpeningOne of the most misunderstood digital camera commands. The short story: don’t crank this up to its highest setting, assuming that more sharpening must be better and result in a sharper picture. With current Canon EOS digital models, you usually will get by quite nicely with sharpness settings of 3 or 4 (out of 7 or 10, de-pending upon camera). At high ISO settings, you’re not only sharpening the image details, but also any noise that may be present in the fi le. Therefore, you probably should experiment with reducing in-camera sharpen-ing when shooting at high ISOs such as 1600, 3200, or higher (if your camera has these high ISO settings).


In many cases, a small amount of in-camera sharpening, followed by careful sharpening with an image-editing program in your computer, can truly bring out the best that your camera and lens are capable of. This is especially so if you’re intending to make large prints from your favorite images.

• ContrastEspecially in hazy or overcast conditions, raising your camera’s contrast a notch or two can give an image more “snap” and the impression of greater sharpness. In sunny conditions, this is rarely needed — in fact, you may get images that are easier to print when shooting in sunlight, or contrasty indoor conditions, by actually lowering your camera’s contrast one or two steps.

• High ISO Noise ReductionMany digital cameras have a menu setting to control whether, and how much, digital control of noise is performed as images are processed in-camera. You should try shooting some high ISO fi les (such as ISO 1600 or 3200) of the same subject, using different High ISO Noise Reduction options, to see (a) how it affects noise in darker areas of these pictures, and (b) whether it impacts sharpness and how fi ne details are rendered. Please note that on many cameras, using the highest setting here will distinctly blur fi ne picture detail in its quest to reduce visible noise from the fi le. If you’re looking for the sharpest possible images, and your camera performs like this, be sure to avoid it in these conditions.

Canon’s in-camera image settings are in the Picture Style menu for most EOS models (some previous cameras have these in the “Parameters” menu). For models with Picture Style menu settings, press the appropriate button for “Detail set.” to be able to change sharpening or contrast individually.

Finally, for any camera user, consider shooting RAW images to be able to experiment freely with some of these settings. Using your camera maker’s raw processing software, you can experiment with many of these values, see how a given RAW image changes on-screen, and get a good handle on what settings tend to work best when you’re out shooting.

In-camera digital sharpening needs to be carefully applied, but used properly, it can defi nitely enhance the initial sharpness of your pictures. It’s especially important if you shoot JPEG images.

Sharpening at 0 Sharpening at 4


Summary

Getting the best and sharpest images from your digital camera isn’t a one-step process. As good as today’s digital cameras and lenses are, the fact is that they can be handled and controlled to deliver truly optimum images in different conditions by the user. Knowing what settings to consider making, and experimenting with some of the camera’s controls, can go a long way toward really getting the sharpest and most detailed fi les possible out of your camera.


Most photographers aren’t fortunate to see thousands of nesting birds as Art Wolfe is in his vid-eo tip, “Tack Sharp”. But any time we’re presented with multiple subjects in one area, whether they’re fl owers, trees, people, or nesting black-browed Al-batross, we’re presented with a photographic deci-sion: do we try to get everything into sharp focus, or do we try to compose and focus so that one individ-ual stands out from the crowd? Like so many other tasks in photography, there’s no one right answer to this. Given time, some pros will cover their bases and shoot the subject both ways. Sometimes, you only have a few moments to shoot, and have to go with your fi rst instinct.

We’ll explore these fundamental compositional choices in this article.

Bringing many similar subjects into one picture, and making them sharp and distinct highlights their vast numbers, and sometimes

can even tease the viewer’s eye with patterns that can appear in a fi nal still picture.

© Art Wolfe

Sharp subjects, or isolate it

Why include many subjects into one picture?

Anyone seeing a scene such as Art Wolfe discovered in the Falkland Islands, with thousands of nesting Al-batross on the coast, has to be impressed fi rst of all with their vast numbers. A strong impression like this is a powerful thing to try to capture in a still picture.

Most people at one time or other in their lives have been similarly impressed by the size and scope of something, even if they’ve never been to the Falk-land Islands. It could be the row after row of buildings in a great city, the vast numbers of cars or people at rush hour in a big city, the vastness of open fi elds or woods out in the country, or a huge area of fl owers that seems to take on a life of its own.

Sometimes, when presented with such a scene, no one subject jumps out at the photographer visually. But their vast numbers may be a stunning visual, and one that he or she may want to spend time capturing with a camera.

It’s a simple shot of a row of trophies at a car show, but combin-ing a telephoto lens’s “compression” with a small aperture (f22), it

gives the visual impression of many, many of these items in one place. It’s exactly the same technique and feeling Art Wolfe was

after in his shots of the nesting birds.


Getting it all into one picture

Art Wolfe brings up an important point in this video: even though the scene is a vast one, spreading out to either side, he doesn’t instinctively reach for his wide-angle lens. His 70-200mm telephoto zoom can con-vey the same message of vast numbers of birds, in one image, and possibly do it more powerfully than an wide-angle lens might.

You’re entitled to wonder why. Remember, the wide-angle lens tends to emphasize those things close to the camera, but visually diminish the importance of small subjects as they’re progressively further from the lens. This vast scene, with birds almost as far as the eye can see, would be rendered as lots of small white and black objects spread out on the beach if simply photographed from an adult’s standing height with a wide-angle lens.

A telephoto lens, while it won’t capture the entire scene in one picture, grabs an impressive slice of the scene and its “compression” brings the distant subjects visually closer to the lens, making them appear closer to those birds in the front than they really are. This further emphasizes their vast numbers. Most of us have seen still pictures or videos taken on city streets of pedestrians on sidewalks or cars in streets, taken with powerful telephoto lenses, that trick us into thinking the same thing — it looks like the subjects are right on top of one another, when in actual fact, they’re probably separated by a reasonable amount of space.

Art explains that after positioning his camera and composing the shot, he stops the lens aperture down nearly all the way (to about f/22), which gives greater sharpness from foreground to background.

What to focus upon in a shot like this? With a standard lens or a wide-angle, you’ll often want to place your plane of sharpest focus about 1/3 of the way into the picture, letting the depth of fi eld take care of rendering foreground and background subjects sharp. With a telephoto lens, you can try this same technique (espe-cially if you’re using wider zoom settings on the lens, such as 70 or 100mm on a lens like Art’s 70-200mm zoom). If you’ve zoomed to a longer telephoto length, you may be better served by selecting one area that you want to highlight with greatest sharpness, and let sharpness fall off as the viewer’s eye moves away. With long tele lenses, it’s very hard to get full sharpness foreground to background, even at f/22 or f/32, un-less you’ve focused on something that’s a considerable distance away.

The opposite approach: isolate one subject among many

This still usually calls for a telephoto lens — sometimes, a long one. But instead of composing so that no one individual bird or subject stands out, if you can get close to one subject that draws your eye for some reason, photography makes it possible to rivet your viewer’s attention to it and swiftly blur out the rest of the scene. Properly done, you still sense immediately that it’s one subject among many. But your attention is grabbed by only one individual (or perhaps a few).


By taking this approach to a picture, you’re making a different statement. You’re telling your viewer that for some reason or other, this one individual among many stood out for some reason. If it’s a fl ower, it might be its color is different from those surrounding it. If it’s a person amongst a crowd, it might be their expression, what they’re wearing, or what they’re doing with their hands and arms. With the birds Art shot, it might be the positioning of one individual relative to others surrounding it, or perhaps an action like opening its beak to call out while others do not.

It’s one leaf among thousands on this tree, but its contrasting red color gives it reason to stand out. And, it gives a photographer a reason to isolate it with a telephoto lens, along with a wide aper-

ture to throw the background out of focus.

A subject may stand out among many for no reason other than it’s proximity to the camera. Simply focusing upon it, again with a wide aperture, gives a sharp image of the subject with rapid fall-off of the background. But the viewer still knows that there are a lot more

of these fl owers a few inches behind the sharp one.

Summary

Even though there are an infi nite number of ways to photograph most subjects, all of us can learn from watching and listening to a pro like Art Wolfe. It goes beyond simple nuts-and-bolts camera settings; we can learn from the scenes he’s in and the way he chooses to photograph them.

Learning what Art does doesn’t necessarily mean we all need to shoot subjects this way. The beauty of photography with an SLR camera is the variety of options it gives you. Presented with a vast scene of birds, fl owers, or people, among your choices are rendering many of them sharply, or moving in tight and isolat-ing one among the many. Both are very valid techniques. Try working with both the next time you’re faced with this type of subject, even if it’s a lot closer to home than the Falkland Islands.


The giant white storks that Art Wolfe photographs in his brief video tip “Light and Texture” present a common problem to all digital photographers: white subjects in sunlight can lose detail very easily if they’re even slightly over-exposed. And unlike dark shadows, that can be lightened to reveal unseen detail in an image-editing program like Adobe’s Photoshop™, once a bright highlight area has been over-exposed, there’s no getting any of that missing detail back. It’s gone.

Until recently, digital photographers were given one option to be sure that white subjects had some detail, from the plumage on the storks Art is shooting to a bride’s white wedding dress. That was to set exposure with the utmost care, checking histograms to be sure the important bright areas weren’t pushed off-scale, and checking blinking highlight warnings on a camera’s LCD monitor. When in doubt, critical photographers have developed the habit of intentionally under-exposing slightly in these conditions, darkening the entire picture a little bit to insure that the brightest parts are not too light.

Some of Canon’s most recent EOS digital SLR cameras have an innovative new technology that can help here. It’s called Highlight Tone Priority, and it’s a setting that can be activated on the following models(as of November, 2008):

White subjects in the sun? Try Highlight Tone Priority!

EOS 40D EOS-1D Mark III EOS -1Ds Mark III

EOS 50D EOS 5D Mark II Rebel XSi


Highlight Tone Priority takes advantage of the expanded tonal range of these new models, and shifts it a bit to emphasize detail in the bright areas. With HTP active, critical photographers can get up to one stop more detail in bright highlight areas — with absolutely no change in overall exposure, or darkening of other parts of the scene.

Benefi ts of Highlight Tone Priority

This new technology is a big asset any time a user is taking pictures in bright sunlight. Even if your subject is not a pure white color, any bright sun-lit areas will tend to hold more texture and detail with Highlight Tone Priority active. Skin tones of a per-son in sunlight, the shiny highlights on plants and leaves of trees, clouds in the sky, and even snow are all candidates for a bit more detail with Highlight Tone Priority active.

Once again, this feature does not simply darken the entire scene to bring detail to the brightest areas. In fact, about the only potential downside to the most critical of users is that mid-tone and shadow areas may pick up a little additional digital noise, espe-cially if you’re using a higher ISO setting. Also, for technical reasons, you are not able to shoot at your camera’s lowest ISO setting with Highlight Tone Pri-ority active. For example, with the EOS 40D and 50D, the camera’s lowest ISO is normally 100. If Highlight Tone Priority is active, the lowest available ISO is 200 (no exceptions — if you want or need ISO 100, you have to turn Highlight Tone Priority off in the camera’s Custom Function menu). The highest ISO settings are sometimes not available, either, depend-ing upon which camera model is in question. For these reasons, Highlight Tone Priority is an option that the photographer must turn on with the appropriate Custom Function. It’s not active when you fi rst take your camera out of the box.

A shot like this is a perfect candidate for Highlight Tone Priority. Taken on a clear sunny day, the bright areas are over-exposed

and have no real detail. If HTP had been active, up to a full stop of additional detail would be restored in these bright areas,

without darkening shadows.© Rudy Winston


This scene is over-exposed, but both exposures are exactly the same (Manual mode, 1/60th at f/8, ISO 200). Look at the difference with Highlight Tone Priority on vs. off, in the blue sky, and other bright areas of the scene

© Rudy Winston

Using Highlight Tone Priority

The beauty of Canon’s Highlight Tone Priority tech-nology is that other than turning it on, there’s little that the photographer needs to do to reap its ben-efi ts. Exposure continues to be handled in whatever method the photographer normally does. In fact, the only difference is that those pros who habitually have intentionally underexposed 1/3 or 2/3 of a stop “just to be safe” will probably fi nd that there’s little need for this, and by returning exposure to normal, they’ll pull a little more detail out of their dark shadows!

ISOs can be freely set as the photographer desires, although as mentioned before, the available ISO range is curtailed somewhat at the lowest and high-est ISOs when Highlight Tone Priority is active.

And, like any Custom Function, the camera must be in a “creative zone” exposure mode for HTP to be functional. You can’t access any Custom Functions unless you’re in the P, Tv, Av, or M exposure modes, and even if you’ve set Highlight Tone Priority there, if you then switch to the full-auto “green zone”, the Portrait mode, or any other full-auto mode, all previously-set Custom Functions are ignored.

Highlight Tone Priority is a Custom Function on recent, select Canon EOS camera models. It’s not active in the

factory-default settings, and must be turned on in the Custom Function menu by the user.

Highlight Tone Priority ONHighlight Tone Priority OFF


In overcast conditions, fog, or in some studio lighting conditions where there’s little contrast and soft overall lighting, Highlight Tone Priority’s benefi ts may not be apparent. But even here, unless you need access to an extremely low or high ISO setting, it can be benefi cial to hold a bit of detail in that occasional bright area in a scene or subject. In other words, some users will fi nd Highlight Tone Priority something that they can turn on and pretty much leave on most of the time for their picture-taking.

If you shoot JPEG images in-camera (Large/Fine, etc.), Highlight Tone Priority will deliver its benefi ts each time you shoot, if there are bright areas bordering on being too-bright in a picture. For RAW shooters, if you process your images in Canon’s supplied Digital Photo Professional software, the information is applied in processing. However, for those users who prefer a different third-party processing software for their RAW fi les, be aware that like many in-camera commands, Highlight Tone Priority is usually ignored, and any processing adjustments have to be carried out using the software’s commands.

One thing to be aware of : Highlight Tone Priority is a valuable additional option on those recent Canon EOS models having the feature. But there is a limit to how much detail it can preserve in bright areas if a scene is extremely over-exposed, and it can’t perform miracles. It’s an impressive asset to image quality, but it’s not an excuse for careless exposure control or poor photographic technique. Again, most users fi nd it adds anywhere from ½ stop to 1 stop of detail in highlight areas, upon critical examination.

Summary

Digital cameras have advanced to a point where improvements show up as small, incremental ben-efi ts to image quality, not night-and-day changes as perhaps was the case fi ve or ten years ago. Highlight Tone Priority is a technology from Canon that raises the bar for image quality in an important way to critical shooters.

Limited “dynamic range” and problems with bright areas losing detail are something critical shooters have complained about with digital SLRs for years. Highlight Tone Priority is a direct and powerful an-swer to the requests of these photographers, but its beauty is that even the most casual newcomer can reap their benefi ts. If you’re an EOS digital SLR owner with a Rebel XSi, EOS 40D or 50D, or any of the other models with this feature, we strongly sug-gest you give it a try if you haven’t already. It can add an important fi nishing touch to your camera’s image quality, especially in tough lighting conditions.

First seen in Canon’s professional EOS-1D Mark III camera when it was launched in early 2007, Highlight Tone Priority is now

available on a wide variety of models, from the affordable EOS Rebel XSi through the top-of-the-line pro SLRs.


One of the most annoying things a photographer can encounter is coming across a beautiful scene, composing a picture you think will really be nice, and realizing after you’ve taken it that it’s tilted slightly. Any time there are noticeable horizon lines, or verti-cal subject lines (such as in a building), even small errors in keeping the camera straight will be imme-diately apparent when you look at the image later.

Art Wolfe’s brief video tip “Composition and sym-metry” is a classic example of a scene where this can happen if you’re not careful, showing Art pho-tographing refl ections in water with a distinct line where the water and land meet. In shots like these, even a slight camera tilt can ruin an image. Fortu-nately, there are a number of methods users can apply to get precise, accurate compositions.

Careful viewing, composition and camera handling led to Art Wolfe’s clean image with a perfectly straight mirror

image of this scene in Brazil.© Art Wolfe

Keep straight lines straight!

For starters: learn to really look at your viewfi nder

This is maybe the easiest to apply, but it’s also easy to get careless and miss great picture opportunities. Simply stated, it means really looking at the entire picture area in your eye-level viewfi nder, especially how the subject relates to the outer edges of the fi nder. In many cases, you can use the horizontal and vertical borders of your fi nder as a guide and see how lines in your subject relate to the fi nder’s edges.

Understand that most photographers’ eyes are easily lulled into concentrating on what’s in the central area of the viewfi nder, and that it can take some practice to get into the habit of actually using the outer-most edges of the fi nder. But it has many benefi ts, and they start with being able to quickly tell if straight lines are straight. Beyond that, by carefully using the whole viewfi nder, you become much more aware of back-ground details and possible distractions, or subjects at the far outer edges of your frame that may be major distractions in a still image, but that you hardly notice when quickly peering in the fi nder.


Composing pictures with straight-line subjects

There are an infi nite variety of subjects with pro-nounced straight lines, ranging from landscapes with a clear horizon line to product photos of high-tech items. How you initially position yourself and the camera, and what you feel is the most important part of the scene to emphasize and render correct-ly, goes a long way toward how the fi nished picture will look.

If you shoot straight into a subject such as a build-ing, and don’t tilt the camera up or down, horizontal and vertical lines are relatively easy to keep straight if you pay attention in your fi nder and make sure you don’t tilt the camera. However, if you stand off at an angle, you will not be able to get both horizontal and vertical lines to be straight with conventional lenses. In cases like this, take a moment and try moving the camera slightly to see which gives a more impressive fi nal result. With things like buildings, usually our eyes are happier if the vertical lines are straight, when shooting from an angle.

How you hold the camera has a lot to do with this. Watch a professional shooter closely: their shoot-ing eye is normally right up to the camera, with little or no air space between the fi nder’s eyepiece and their eye. If he or she is hand-holding the camera, you’ll see that the camera often is literally pressed into their face, which provides an added measure of steadiness as well as pushes the fi nder right to their eye. With the fi nder literally as close as you can comfortably hold it to your eye, it’s much easier to see the entire picture area, as well as the digital shooting information displayed by your camera.

By not carefully examining the subject through the viewfi nder, and using its outer edges as a guide, it’s easy to get images where

the whole scene is just slightly tilted, as in this shot of a fountain.© Rudy Winston


In Art Wolfe’s case, shooting the caiman against the still water of the Brazilian river, he was shoot-ing pretty much straight into his subject, and only had a horizon line to concern himself with. In a case like this, even if he was further down the river and shooting at an angle, the fi rst choice for most shoot-ers is to continue to hold the camera so that the wa-ter line remains perfectly horizontal. But it’s easy to make a mistake, if you don’t concentrate on what’s in your fi nder!

When shooting a subject at an angle, you’ll never get the horizon-tal lines to all be straight. But if there are noticeable vertical lines,

a little care can reward you with an interesting composition.© Rudy Winston

Interchangeable focusing screens

Sometimes, even a careful photographer can have a tough time keeping lines perfectly straight in the fi nder. Actually, Art Wolfe’s caiman pictures are a good example: you hear him in the video speaking of trying to keep the horizon line in these images as close to the center as possible for a balanced composition. This is great, but it means the line is at its farthest point from the top and bottom edges of your fi nder, which in most cases is the nearest reference line you have to assure you’re not tilting the camera.

With some mid-range and most high-end digital SLRs, an interchangeable focus screen is an answer that can be surprisingly useful. The focus screen in a camera is the actual plastic surface your eye is looking at and focusing upon when you look in the viewfi nder. Some camera models from Canon and other brands allow the user to physically change

If your camera accepts interchangeable focus screens, a so-called grid screen with etched lines can really help with precise

compositions in your pictures. In addition, the lines are subtle enough that when they’re not needed, many shooters fi nd them

very non-distracting.


Live View to help with critical composition

A new feature on many recent digital SLRs is “Live View”. This feature lets the user view and compose their pictures on the camera’s rear LCD monitor, in-stead of the eye-level viewfi nder. With Live View, there’s a large, bright view of your subject, and for some users, it’s a lot easier to visually check the outer edges of a picture on the LCD screen than it is looking through a viewfi nder. You especially may fi nd this the case if you wear eyeglasses.

Furthermore, Canon’s digital SLRs that offer Live View give an additional option: a menu setting to display a grid display on the Live View screen. Straight horizontal and vertical reference lines ap-pear on the LCD monitor, making it even easier to be sure you’re not tilting the camera. (These lines do not appear on your fi nal images — they’re only visible before the shot is taken.)

Live View is especially useful if you’re using a tripod, but even when shooting hand-held, it can be a solu-tion to the problem of tilted lines in your pictures. But when hand-holding the camera with Live View, you don’t get the benefi t of steadiness that comes with pressing the camera into your face — so pay extra at-tention to steadiness, and don’t be shy about using faster shutter speeds and possibly higher ISO settings to be sure you don’t encounter camera shake.

Combining the Live View feature with the “display grid lines” option, if your camera offers it, gives you a built-in assistant to keep straight lines straight in your pictures.


the factory-supplied, plain screen for one with etched horizontal and vertical lines. These so-called Grid Screens are often used by architectural and product photographers, because they make it so easy to check how subjects align with the lines you’d see in the viewfi nder. But they’re no less useful for general picture-taking, because whenever you need reference lines, they’re right in your fi nder.

With Canon’s EOS cameras, the following models offer an optional, accessory grid-type focus screen: EOS 40D and 50D (focus screen Ef-D), all versions of EOS-1D and EOS-1Ds (focus screen Ec-D), EOS 5D (focus screen Ee-D), and EOS 5D Mark II (focus screen Eg-D).

One of the beauties of a grid-type focus screen is that even when you’re shooting subjects where no reference lines are needed, the lines are thin enough to be non-distracting to most photographers. As mentioned, other brands of high-end and a few mid-range digital SLRs may also offer interchange-able focusing screens — check with your camera maker or dealer. While a few may require changing by a service technician, most are easily done by the photographer, and changing screens usually only takes a minute or so.


Consider doing like Art Wolfe — use a tripod

We’ve said it before: very few photographers enjoy carrying a tripod for the sake of carrying one as they shoot pictures. But along with keeping your images free of nearly all camera shake, using a tripod forc-es photographers to slow down a bit, and pay more attention to their camera placement, and subject compositions. And once you carefully line-up your horizontal or vertical lines in a scene, if you’re on a tripod, they’ll usually stay put regardless of whether you take one shot or dozens. Among the many reasons that pros often use a tripod is that they

force the photographer to adopt a slower, more careful style of shooting. And this makes it easier to maintain perfectly straight

lines in your compositions.

Summary

For many of us, all it takes to avoid most problems with tilted horizon lines or vertical subject lines is to take the extra effort to pay attention to what’s in our viewfi nders. But especially if you take lots of pictures, or you’re going on that once-in-a-lifetime trip to an exotic location, there are additional accessories like inter-changeable grid-type focus screens that can really help in keeping compositions correct, and they extract few penalties in the way of compromising general picture-taking. Even if your camera doesn’t offer the option of interchangeable focus screens, many recent SLRs do offer Live View, and this can be helpful as well.

While it’s true that digital fi les can be cropped slightly and then tilted in image-editing programs like Adobe Photoshop™, it’s a lot better to get your compositions correct in the camera, rather than relying on software after the fact. Try to put a few of these ideas into practice as you shoot pictures, even if they’re simply shots you’re taking of a family outing or a nearby attraction. The more you practice taking good care in how you hold the camera and compose your pictures, the more ready you’ll be when you are taking that trip and you’re presented with rare photographic opportunities.


With a little care, and perhaps an accessory or two, you can avoid disappointments that come from not keeping straight lines in a scene straight in your pictures.

© Rudy Winston

Straight HorizonTilted Horizon


Art Wolfe is a master of seeing the light and po-sitioning his camera to bring out the most in his subjects. Photographing the giant white storks in late afternoon sun in Brazil, he points out the impor-tance of not just the amount of light, but its direction, and how this can bring out details in the surface of a subject like these giant birds.

Learning to see and react to how light hits a par-ticular subject is another of those key points in the development of any photographer. Sometimes, the most beautiful of subjects can take on a very ordi-nary appearance when lit by fl at, frontal light (such as a direct fl ash on-camera, for example). And likewise, we’ve all seen very generic subjects like weathered paint on a picket fence or a barn become its own subject when struck by directional light that emphasizes its texture.

When using natural light like the sun, we obviously can’t move it from one place to another. But photogra-phers can train themselves to look for opportunities when the lighting brings out the most in a subject, and (as discussed elsewhere in these shooting tips) to recognize a potentially great subject and come back to it at a different time. Finally, even though a photographer can’t move the sun, he or she can often move the camera, and this can change the effective direction of light striking a subject.

Even with a totally white body, the texture of these birds’ feathers becomes evident when struck by side-lighting

from late afternoon sun.© Art Wolfe

Use side-light to emphasize texture

Look at subjects and understand surface texture

As photographers, it’s often easy for our eyes to be “grabbed” by extremely bright, colorful subjects. And it’s likewise easy for us to be instantly attracted to things everyone knows — landmarks like the Eiffel Tower or the Taj Mahal, or majestic subjects like an eagle in fl ight. But in many cases, there’s more to a great image than just a magnifi cent subject.

When we get a tack-sharp image where the lighting brushes against the subject from one side, we some-times can almost feel the surface of the subject as we look at it. It can be the brick facing of a building, the weathered skin of an older person’s face in a portrait, or the fi ne details in a bird’s feathers. It’s texture, and capturing it in a picture is a remarkable capability of the camera that we sometimes have to learn to take advantage of.


Part of the message to photographers is once again simply learning to see not only what’s in front of you, but how the light impacts it. Beauty is often in what lighting brings out in a subject or its background. And one of these elements is the surface texture that’s a part of many subjects. Light can only do this if it strikes the surface from an angle — from the side, top, or below. If the sun is directly behind the camera, shining straight into the subject, little or no surface texture will be readily apparent in a fi nished picture. Likewise, if a subject is back-lit (that is, the sun or light source is behind the subject, shining to-ward the camera lens), the surface of the subject is largely or entirely in shadow, and again it’s hard to discern texture in a fi nished picture.

Finally, the so-called “quality” of light impacts this as well. One reason traditional portrait photographers are so fond of hazy or overcast days outdoors is that the soft light produces gentle shadows that don’t em-phasize blemishes or wrinkles in a person’s skin. That weathered barn door with texture that looks spectacu-lar in late-afternoon sunlight may seem very ordinary on a cloudy day, with its much softer light. Crisp, hard light tends to emphasize surface texture much more than soft light.

So hard light, striking the surface of a subject from the side is the primary thing you’re looking for to enhance texture in a subject. Early morning or late afternoon sun is a natural for this type of shooting, and it’s yet another reason pros like Art Wolfe love these times of day.

© Rudy Winston

The old, weathered basketball backboard and its texture becomes the primary subject in this image, taken in bright

early morning sunlight.© Rudy Winston

Camera settings can help, too

Once you learn to recognize opportunities to use side-lighting to emphasize the texture in a subject, you’ll want to take best advantage of it. How your camera is set can make a difference here. It’s another example of how you can sometimes get good results in the fully-automatic green zone setting on your camera, but if you take the time to learn your camera’s features, you can often get even better results that are truly tai-lored to the situation at hand.

First and foremost, when you have a textured subject that’s beautifully side-lit, you want to emphasize it with sharpness. That means putting your focus right on that surface — or, one part of that surface that you most want to call attention to. Rather than leaving your autofocus system in a totally auto setting that selects a focus point for you, here’s a time to manually select one AF point, and use it to nail the focus right where you want it. It can be the center AF point, or one of the outer points, if that’s better suited to the composition in the scene. Either way, by putting the sharpest plane of focus right where the surface texture is, rather than perhaps slightly in front of it or behind it, you’re sure to maximize its impact.


Furthermore, your choice of lens aperture can make a big difference here, too. There’s never any one “best” setting for all conditions, but if you’re shooting a sunlit subject that’s side-lit, and trying to maximize the fi ne details and texture in it, you’re often going to get your best results by stopping-down the aperture at least a stop or two, and possibly more if you’re try-ing to get extensive depth-of-fi eld. All lenses tend to get sharper when the aperture is closed down a few stops from the widest opening, and this can really make that peeling paint on an old wall seem abso-lutely tack-sharp. In other words, instead of shoot-ing a picture of a textured subject at a wide aper-ture like f/4, try something like f/8 or f11. (Obviously, you have to weigh and assess each situation, and balance the benefi ts of a smaller aperture against any possible problems of resulting slower shutter speeds. Photography is often an art of fi nding the best compromise!)

Finally, there are settings like ISO and White Balance to consider. Even with the superb performance of late-model digital SLRs at higher ISO settings, you’ll still tend to get the fi nest detail at lower settings, so use them when the light’s bright enough to permit it. Usually, in late afternoon or early morning sunlight, using ISO 100 or 200 isn’t a problem with non-moving subjects. And don’t get carried away with your in-camera sharpening settings: even though we’re talking about getting the sharpest possible texture detail here, set-ting electronic sharpening too high usually results in unusual artifacts and sometimes even “halos” around light or dark parts of a subject. Each user should experiment with his or her system to see the impact of in-camera sharpening, but our general warning here is not to assume that maximum electronic sharpening always means the best picture quality.

Aperture choice can enhance a shot where you’re trying to emphasize a subject’s texture. Here, f/22 was used with a wide-

angle lens close to the subject, to maximize depth-of-fi eld.© Rudy Winston


Summary

Once again, there’s no more important tool in the photographer’s bag than awareness. Being aware of what light can bring out in a subject, and being ready to shoot pictures when you see the oppor-tunity, is Job One for the photographer looking to improve his or her skills. Not every photograph and every scene presents the chance to capture a sub-ject’s texture, and some subjects don’t even really have a discernable texture. But when the subject does, and the lighting is right, there’s a potential-ly great picture waiting to be taken. See it, set the camera, and shoot it! Sometimes, side-lighting can make a surface’s texture so visible

in a picture that you almost want to reach out and touch it. Late afternoon sunlight did the trick here.

© Rudy Winston


For many of us, photographs of people represent the majority of the images we take in the course of a year. Whether you’re traveling to exotic locales or simply photographing friends, family and events, getting effective pictures of people is a frequent task. And feeling that your pictures are transitioning from snapshots to real portraits is a big part of the development of any photographer.

There’s no one “best” lens for shooting great pictures of people, but there certainly are many choices. We’ll examine some of them here, and discuss which ones might give you an edge the next time you’re looking for strong pictures of human subjects.

Lenses for portraits

Whether you shoot in exotic locations, or simply photograph friends and family, great portraits are something nearly all pho-

tographers want to shoot consistently. A wide variety of lenses for SLRs open many new visual possibilities in portraits.

© Art Wolfe

The basics: traditional portrait-length telephoto lenses

For years, professional photographers have relied upon lenses that are slightly longer than a stan-dard lens for classic portrait shooting. With 35mm SLRs and full-frame digital SLR cameras, this typi-cally has meant lenses like an 85mm, or perhaps 100mm lens.

With the apparent lens conversion factor on many of today’s digital SLRs, you’d get the equivalent lens coverage at focal lengths such as 55mm or 65mm.

Of course, this isn’t to say that these are the only lens focal lengths that are appropriate to portrait shooting (as we’ll see in a few moments). But when someone speaks of traditional portrait lenses, this is usually what he or she has in mind.

In his Tips video, you see Art Wolfe photographing a woman and using a 24-70mm zoom lens. On Art’s full-frame EOS-1Ds Mark III camera, this gives a range from wide-angle to very short telephoto, but when working close to his subject, its 50mm through 70mm settings can be a very appropriate choice that has the benefi t of giving a natural perspective to the backgrounds without exaggerating the subject itself.

Especially if you like to interact with portrait subjects, a standard or short telephoto lens can be ideal. Here, Art Wolfe uses

a 24-70mm lens with a full-frame camera.


Start with the lenses you own now

If you’re looking to expand your portrait shooting, you can probably start with the lenses you now own. A typical standard zoom lens, like the popular 18-55mm, 17-85mm or similar zooms for most of today’s digital cameras, gives you the kind of mild telephoto power at its maximum zoom setting that works well for classic head-and-shoulders portrai-ture. And if you own a lightweight telephoto zoom lens, like a 50-200mm or 70-300mm, you’ve got a lens that will work effectively in many outdoor con-ditions. Their added telephoto power makes them great for candid type shooting, and also for back-grounds with a compressed and/or strongly blurred telephoto effect.

Practice with lenses like these, and get a sense not only of the lens’s capabilities, but about your own preferences when it comes to portrait shooting. Photographers who like to interact with their sub-ject, as we see Art Wolfe doing in the Tips video, may well gravitate toward lenses with very mild telephoto settings — after all, they don’t force the camera to be far from the subject. If you prefer to portray your subjects in a natural, candid sort of style, on the other hand, you may be attracted to a longer lens’s abilitiy to get a tight shot while the camera is backed-off from the subject.

It’s a simple and unassuming standard zoom, but lenses like this 18-55mm lens for digital SLRs have wide-angle to short telephoto

capability in a lightweight package. Most SLR owners start with lenses like these, and they’re a great way to begin expanding the

boundaries in your portrait photography.

Wide-angle lenses for portraits

Classic portrait shooters often avoid wide-angle lenses for head-and-shoulders pictures of people, partly because at close distances, they tend to dis-tort facial features. But back off a little bit, and a wide-angle lens suddenly becomes a powerful tool that places a subject in his or her environment. Re-member: wide-angle lenses tend to include more of the background in a scene, and tend to emphasize subjects that are closer to the camera. Magazines such as National Geographic have for years used the power of wide-angle lenses in portraits of peo-ple on location, and there’s a lot to be learned from this style of shooting.

Wide-angle lenses add a new dimension to portraits, by allowing the subject’s environment to be seen and contribute to the overall picture. Here, a 16-35mm ultra-wide zoom was used on Canon’s

EOS-1D Mark III camera© Rudy Winston


Additional lenses to consider for portraits

Even if you own a nice standard zoom lens and perhaps a telephoto zoom as well, there are additional lenses that sometimes can be the icing on the cake for portraits and candid photos of people. These can be potential great additions to your system, whether you’re a travel shooter, a wedding photographer, or simply a camera enthusiast.

Keep in mind that lenses such as those below don’t replace the popular lenses most people start out with. Instead, they add to what you can do with your camera. Many different camera manufacturers offer lenses in their line-up similar to these, so check your camera maker’s web site to see what’s available.

Fast telephoto lenses:The following are examples of lenses that let a tremendous amount of light into the camera, making them ideal for low-light shooting. Additionally, when used at their wide apertures, they usually do a beautiful job of throwing backgrounds artfully out of focus.

• 85mm f/1.8, 100mm f/2.0 (or similar)With a full-frame camera, these are classic, mild telephoto lenses that let noticeably more light into the camera than zoom lenses. They’re typically very sharp, and also relatively light and compact — a great addition to a zoom lens for low light scenes as well as portraits. When used on cameras with smaller APS-C size sensors (that is, most digital SLRs on the market today), the typical lens conversion factor means that they now act like a more powerful mid-range telephoto lens. A compact and affordable 85mm f/1.8 lens behaves like a 135mm f/1.8 lens when mounted on an EOS Rebel or EOS 40D/50D camera, making it great for available-light candids and outdoor portraits.

• 135mm f/2.0A longer and typically superb lens optically. Great choice for available-light candid shooting of weddings or other indoor events, and beautiful for outdoor portraits with its ability to throw backgrounds out of focus. Much more light gathering than typical zooms; a full stop faster than professional f/2.8 zoom lenses. With APS-C sensor cameras, they’re probably too powerful for the type of portraits you see Art Wolfe shooting in his video (you’d be way back from the subject), but excellent for candid shooting indoors or outdoors, and even for indoor sports like basketball or gymnastics.

Again, a standard zoom lens such as those mentioned above, or Art’s 24-70mm (on a full-frame digital camera) can be an excellent starting point for this type of work.


• Macro lenses: 60mm f/2.8, 100mm f/2.8Macro lenses aren’t just for extreme close-ups. One of the most versatile tools in the photogra-pher’s arsenal, a 60mm lens (on an APS-C sen-sor digital camera, such as an EOS 40D/50D) or a 100mm macro lens (on a full-frame digital SLR) gives classic portrait focal length, with very good f/2.8 maximum aperture (usually) that makes it practical in available-light shots as well as out-doors. Very sharp, and of course, you can also use them for superb macro shots of small objects. Since they focus to infi nity, they can be used for many things besides coins or insects!

• Longer telephoto lensesOne of the beauties of fi xed focal length telephoto lenses (that is, lenses that don’t zoom) is that they tend to (a) let a lot of light into the camera, and (b) tend to be razor-sharp. Especially if you like to shoot outdoor portraits with blurred-out back-grounds, consider a lens like a 180mm or 200mm f/2.8, a 300mm f/4, or sometimes even longer lenses.

High-speed standard lenses:We’re speaking of the traditional 50mm “standard” lens here. They’re invariably compact, yet with very wide apertures that make them super if you need to shoot in low light. Most camera makers offer at least one such lens. Canon offers three: a 50mm f/1.8; 50mm f/1.4; and professional L-series 50mm f/1.2L lens. With full-frame cameras, they provide a very realistic, natural perspective (not a telephoto “look”); if the same lens is used on a small-sensor camera such as an EOS digital Rebel or EOS 50D, the lens acts like a short telephoto of roughly 80mm or so. With these cameras, standard lenses make a great fi rst portrait lens. Canon’s EF 50mm f/1.8, in particular, is noteworthy for its incredibly affordable price, as well as compact and lightweight design.

Wide-aperture telephotos like the 135mm f/2.0L (used in this im-age) are brilliant choices for available-light portraits. With APS-C

sensor cameras, the 85mm lens actually gives a fi eld of view similar to what a 135mm delivers on a full-frame camera.

© Rudy Winston

The traditional 50mm standard lens offers outstanding wide ap-ertures for low-light shooting, and with small-sensor digital SLRs,

acts like an 80mm short telephoto lens. Especially with these cameras, they’re ideal for portraits.


Wide-angle lenses:Put a wide-angle lens on your camera, place a portrait subject a bit off-center with an interesting back-ground, and you’ve suddenly entered a whole new realm of portrait photography. The wider a lens is (that is, the lower its focal-length millimeter numbers), the more of the environment it tends to include.

• 35mm f/2 or f/1.4With full-frame digital cameras such as Art Wolfe’s EOS-1Ds Mark III, these give very modest wide-angle views, but let a lot of light into the camera and usually are very sharp as well. Their wide apertures once again set them apart from zoom lenses. With more common digital SLRs, for example a Canon EOS digital Rebel or mid-range EOS 50D, the apparent increase in focal length means they act very much like a traditional standard lens — sometimes just what’s needed for a classic indoor portrait, especially in available light.

• 24mm wide-angle lensesWith a full-frame camera such as Art’s Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III, or an EOS 5D-series model, a 24mm toes the line between manageable wide-angle yet retaining a super-strong wide-angle appearance in images. It’s terrifi c for environmental portraits. Canon has just introduced a revised version of its profes-sional 24mm f/1.4L lens, which offers not only great quality but an unmatched wide lens aperture for avail-able-light shooting. Keep in mind that with most digital cameras using smaller imaging sensors, a 24mm lens gives a fi eld of view that’s much less wide (about 35-38mm equivalent).

• Ultra-wide zoomArt Wolfe’s full-frame camera has a 24-70mm lens mounted on it, and 24mm gives broad wide-angle coverage. But it’s nothing compared to the versatility of a true ultra-wide angle zoom lens. For full-frame cameras, a lens like a 17-40mm f/4 or 16-35mm f/2.8 (or similar) covers nearly any wide-angle application, and allows the occasional portrait with extreme wide-angle coverage of the background. Less-expensive digital SLRs with smaller imaging sensors can get equivalent cover-age with a dedicated wide zoom like a 10-22mm, or 12-24mm (or similar) lens. Even if it’s not a fast f/2.8 lens, these can be outstanding lenses for travel, and their ability to take a great environmen-tal portrait only adds to their abilities.

Whether through a fi xed-focal length wide lens, or an ultra-wide zoom, don’t ignore the possibilities for portraits that exist when

you compose a person slightly off-center and include a lot of background information.

© Rudy Winston


Pro-grade telephoto zooms:Many photo enthusiasts own compact and lightweight zoom lenses, such as the afore-mentioned 55-200mm or 70-300mm tele zooms. They’re affordable, lightweight and relatively compact, and very versatile for outdoor applications. But you may feel like you want the same characteristics in a more professional package. Enter today’s top-of-the-line zooms, so frequently used by pros. Here are a few examples that are great for portraits:

• 70-200mm f/2.8Perhaps the most popular of the high-end zoom lenses, covering a very useful range of focal lengths with a constant f/2.8 maximum aperture. They’re equally at home in low light without fl ash as outdoors. As pro-grade lenses, they’re very sharp and dura-bly constructed (and thus, tend to be rather heavy). Great for many, many portrait applications.

• 70-200mm f/4Same type of zoom range, but we’ll mention it sep-arately since it’s so much lighter and more com-pact than the f/2.8 pro versions. Canon has two models for EOS cameras: with and without Image Stabilization in the lens. They’re a stop slower (in other words, they let in less light) than the popular f/2.8 zooms, but are outstanding for outdoor por-traits. Again, as pro-grade lenses, they’re super-sharp, and have all-metal barrel construction.

The professional-grade 70-200mm lens has long been a versatile favorite of pros for portrait shooting. The 70-200mm f/2.8 was

used here at f/4, and slightly zoomed out to include a children’s climbing structure as a background element.

© Rudy Winston

Summary

There are many, many options in a modern digital SLR when it comes to lenses well-suited to portraits of peo-ple. It’s certainly not necessary to invest thousands of dollars into many different lenses for this purpose. As we noted at the beginning, the standard zoom lenses most enthusiasts own are an excellent starting point.

But by venturing out into something compact, lightweight, sharp and with a wide aperture (such as an 85mm f/1.8, or a 50mm f/1.8 lens), you open the door to a new shooting experience: very selective focus options, beautifully blurred backgrounds, and a lens that can be used without fear and without fl ash even in dimly-lit areas.

Finally, always remember that many lenses, including some not traditionally considered as portrait optics, can make beautiful portrait shots. Macro lenses and wide-angle lenses are only two examples. Owning an SLR camera means freedom of choice, and most current digital cameras offer an abundance of that when it comes to lenses.


There are few stronger examples of the infi nite variety of picture possibilities than we see in portraits of people. Strictly in terms of the different ways a subject can be framed, illuminated and photographed, there’s almost no limit to the types of images we can come up with using our cameras.

In Art Wolfe’s brief video tip about shooting portraits in West Africa, we get a quick insight into this. Art shoots a variety of shots of his subject — some tighter composition, some including more background, and so on. In fact, even though we don’t see it in the video, he later moved behind the lady and photographed her through the back of the building she’s standing against, photographing her in silhouette.

When you shoot pictures of people, whether it’s shots of your own family or pictures you’re taking when you travel, variety is an important goal. We’ll examine some of the possibilities in this article.

Variety is the spice of life

For starters, take more than one picture!

Many times, when a photographer asks someone to hold still for a picture, the tendency is to take a single picture, drop the camera and thank them. One of the fi rst things a good photographer does is multiply his or her odds of a great expression or a great image by taking more than a single picture. Remember: most people we photograph never think we’re going to take the second picture. By doing so, you’ll often get a different and sometimes more natural expression than the stiffl y-posed fi rst shot often provides.

This applies when taking candid pictures as well. It’s often preferable to get pictures of people engaged in a task, appearing natural and not openly staring into the camera. But take more than one picture. Shoot-ing several (or more) pictures also gives you insurance in case a person blinks their eyes, or if a person is talking and your fi rst shot captures an odd expression as they’re speaking. Get a variety of shots, whether it’s your child at play or a worker at an assembly line. The more pictures you take, the more chances you have of a real “keeper”.

People never think you’re going to take a second or third picture. When you do, you often end up with a different expression than you had for the fi rst shot!

© Rudy Winston


Remember the hands!

Three things grab our attention in photographs of people: the eyes, the mouth, and the hands. If you’ve backed the camera off a bit and include a person’s arms and hands in a picture, become aware of what the hands are doing. In posed pic-tures, move them occasionally to provide some vi-sual variety. And if you’re shooting candid-style pic-tures, watch how a person uses his or her hands. Whether it’s a speaker at a podium, a person talking to a friend, or your child playing with a toy, the hands say a lot to the viewer of your pictures. When you try for a variety of facial expressions, backgrounds and so on, remember that what a person does with his or her hands can provide visual variety, too.

In portraits, the hands can say as much about the person as a subject’s eyes can. Learn to watch a person’s hands and be

ready when an opportunity presents itself.© Rudy Winston

Think about the lighting

You can use lighting to get a variety of different types of portraits of people in many cases. Even if you’re relying on natural light, you can move a portrait subject so that for some pictures, he or she is being front-lit, and then move to the other side of them, have them turn around, and shoot them back-lit for a very different type of image. If you’re shooting indoors, you can shoot a subject near a window and have them lit primar-ily by window light, and then ask them to step away from the window, raise your camera’s ISO setting, and take a totally different type of shot using strictly room lighting. Or, you might use bounce-fl ash for one picture, and then turn the fl ash off and rely on natural ambient light or window light for a second picture.

By changing lighting, you can quickly create numerous different images of portrait subjects, and often in a short period of time. You give yourself more choices of a good picture to work with, and increase the odds that you’ll get that ideal combination of a great expression, great background, and great lighting. Sure, sometimes you may need to shoot head-shots where it’s preferable for a consistent composition in each one. But in many instances (photographing a wedding is one possible example), by going for variety in your portraits of people, you increase the chances of impressing your viewers and yourself as well.


Work with different backgrounds

Sometimes, a modest change in camera position and asking a subject to turn slightly can totally change the background from one picture to the next. For example, with a telephoto lens outdoors, one moment you may have a blurred building in a background, and with a slight camera move, the next shot may now have trees or an open fi eld in the background. If you have several minutes to work with a portrait subject, don’t hesitate to photograph them in several different locations to vary the background. The environment that’s visible behind the subject can sometimes say as much about the person as the subject’s face does.

Changing lenses, or zooming from telephoto to wide (or vice-versa) with a zoom lens, can totally change what’s happening with backgrounds as well. One moment you can have a portrait that’s got a wide expanse of environment visible, and the next moment, we’ve got a tightly-composed portrait with a blurred-out back-ground that rivets the viewer’s attention on the subject.

Don’t compose all your pictures the same!

You can start in the quest for variety in your pictures of people by making a conscious effort to vary your compositions. Portraits don’t always have to have a centered head, and the same head-and-shoulders or waist-up composition. Try zooming in for a tight head shot when the lighting, camera angle, and subject’s expression come together. Try backing off a little and moving a person slightly off-center to in-clude more of their surroundings for a great environ-mental portrait. Learn to think about different ways to take that picture, instead of trying to be locked-in to one way of doing it.

One starting point is basic horizontal or vertical cam-era composition. In many cases, since we usually photograph people when they’re standing upright, it’s more effective use of the frame to shoot vertical portraits. There’s nothing wrong with turning the cam-era 90 degrees — in fact, the popular battery grip accessories for many cameras provide a vertical shutter button to facilitate vertical photography. Whether your camera has a second shutter button for verticals or not, learn to compose portraits vertically as well as horizontally.

Even when you’re looking at pictures in a magazine, stop and ask yourself if you were taking these pic-tures, what other ways could the person in the photo have been photographed? By training yourself to think about the possibilities, it becomes a lot easier to apply them when you are taking pictures.

Portraits don’t all have to be standard head-and-shoulders com-position. Here, a 135mm f/2L lens was used near the subject, for a tight composition that forces the viewer’s attention to the

subject’s eyes and expression.© Rudy Winston


Summary

We’ve only scratched the surface here, but the visual variety that’s possible when taking portraits of people is almost infi nite. The important thing for photographers is to fi nd a comfort zone between developing your own photographic “style” while at the same time not having all your people pictures appear the same. It’s more than just a quick change from a serious expression to a smile. We’ve touched on some variables that are usually easy for photographers to apply, and no doubt you’ll think of your own. Nearly all the things we’re speaking of are easy to apply: moving slightly, using different ranges of your zoom lens, asking sub-jects to move from one type of lighting to another, or even just turning the camera from horizontal to vertical. Learn to explore the possibilities, and you’ll be ready when a great subject like Art’s portrait of the lady in West Africa is in front of your camera.

There are many ways for photographers to incorporate visual variety in photographs of people. Keep your eyes and your mind open to the possibilities, and don’t be afraid to ask a person to

continue to pose as you incorporate different things to change the look of your shots.© Art Wolfe


Occasionally when traveling, we’re presented with opportunities similar to that Art Wolfe encountered when shooting a horse tournament in West Africa. What makes this type of shooting different than typi-cal travel photography is that it involves shooting moving subjects. Today’s autofocus SLR cameras are equipped to handle these situations, but a few points will help insure that you get the most out of these action sequences when the opportunity arises.

Using AI Servo AF for moving subjects

Set the camera to the right focus mode

It’s fundamental, but understanding your camera’s different AF modes, and the times when it’s best to use one or the other, is a critical point in getting the most out of your photography. Virtually all AF systems to date in interchangeable-lens SLR cameras offer at least two choices. With a Canon EOS digital SLR such as Art Wolfe is using, they are:

One-Shot AF mode — camera expects a stationary, non-moving subject, and locks focus upon subject if you keep the button depressed.

AI Servo AF mode — camera expects to continually focus-track a moving subject; AF will continually up-date as long as button is depressed. This is what Art Wolfe refers to in his Tips video as “follow focus”.

Clearly, to get the best results in a situation with moving subjects, you have to have your camera in AI Servo AF mode. (Please note that other brands of SLR cameras have similar settings, but may have names like “single” and “continuous” AF, or similar.) You absolutely cannot have the camera in the One-Shot AF mode, and take a sequence of pictures of moving subjects like these horses and expect the sequence to be sharp. The camera would lock fo-cus in one setting — if you were lucky, one of your shots would be sharp!

You’ll also see a mode on some Canon models called “AI Focus AF”. Basically, this automatically chooses between One-Shot AF and AI Servo AF mode for you. Each time you take a shot, the sys-tem asks itself whether the subject is moving or stationary. But this takes a little time, and in challenging situations, this delay can be a problem. Our suggestion: if you know your subject is moving, just set it to AI Servo AF or your camera model’s equivalent. You’ll get best responsiveness and speed there.

With challenging, fast-moving subjects, you’ll always get best per-formance by setting your camera appropriately. It starts with using

the right AF mode: AI Servo AF with Canon EOS models.© Art Wolfe


One important note: Art Wolfe refers specifi cally to setting his camera so that AF is activated by a rear but-ton. This is a totally optional setting sometimes called “Back Button AF”, and is not discussed in this article.

Drive mode vs. AF mode — they’re not the same!

Virtually all of today’s digital SLR cameras let you shoot continuous pictures, one right after the other, as long as you keep the shutter button fully depressed. An affordable, entry-level camera like a Canon EOS Rebel model might let you shoot up to 3 frames per second when set to continuous advance; some top-of-the-line pro models can shoot as fast as ten frames per second.

Regardless, the frames-per-second speed is totally separate from how your AF system is set. For a sce-nario like the horse event that Art Wolfe is shooting, it makes perfect sense to combine AI Servo AF (con-tinuous autofocus) with Continuous advance (sequential shooting). But just be aware that you can use continuous advance with non-moving subjects in One-Shot AF mode; likewise, it’s possible to take single shots of moving subjects (camera in AI Servo AF mode, and single-frame advance).

With Canon EOS cameras, don’t confuse the term “One-Shot AF” mode to mean that you can only take one picture. It’s strictly referring to the AF system locking onto a stationary subject, like a tree, building, mountain, or a person standing perfectly still. The camera’s drive settings, which are totally independent of focus, dictate whether we shoot a single picture, or take a sequence of continuous shots.

It’s the combination of AI Servo AF mode and Continuous drive mode that allows sharp sequences of action subjects like these horses. Each is set independently, and it’s important to know where the settings are on your camera.

© Art Wolfe


Drive mode vs. AF mode — they’re not the same!

Many digital SLRs have a position on the mode dial called an Action or Sports mode, usually indicated by an icon that looks something like a little athlete in motion. With Canon EOS models, this is a totally automatic setting that pre-sets the camera for shoot-ing moving scenes — like the horses Art Wolfe is shooting in his Tips video.

For entry-level users, especially in non-demanding conditions (small children running around, etc.), the Sports mode is a simple and direct way of getting a combination of settings that put you in position to get good sequences of shots. However, it has some limitations and compromises. For faster-moving subjects, and for best possible performance, you’ll get better results by taking the camera out of the full-auto exposure modes and making the settings for AF, Drive speed, Exposure mode and AF Point selection yourself.

Many cameras offer a fully-automatic Sports or Action mode. While it’s a useful starting point for beginners, you’ll usually get

best performance with action subjects by making important settings yourself.

AF points and moving subjects

If you look into your camera’s viewfi nder, you’ll see numerous small black-lined “boxes” etched onto the focus screen. These are the camera’s AF points, and it’s at these locations (and only here) that the camera can read your subject and assess focus.

Since today’s cameras have multiple AF points, it’s important to have a basic understanding of how to best set them for moving subjects. Most cameras, including all Canon EOS models, can be set in one of two ways:

Automatic AF point selection: all the AF points on the screen are active, and the camera automati-cally selects the AF point(s) to be used in each pic-ture you take.

A critical aspect of controlling your camera is being in control of which AF point(s) your camera uses, and when. The camera can

either automatically pick the active AF point for you, or you can manually choose it yourself.


Manual AF point selection: the photographer chooses ONE AF point, and keeps that aimed at the subject, even if the subject is moving rapidly.

Automatic AF point selection sounds like it would be the hot ticket here, but the plain fact is that you’ll get faster focus tracking in AI Servo AF if you pre-set ONE focus point and keep that solidly upon your subject. Many pros start out manually selecting the center-most AF point, but you can actually pick any one. It can be especially useful to pick an AF point that will be upon a detailed part of your subject, such as over its face instead of a plain, non-detailed part of that moving subject.

With Canon EOS digital SLRs, you select AF points by fi rst being sure you’re in a “Creative Zone” ex-posure mode (P, Tv, Av, or Manual). Then, press the small rear button on the top right of the camera back, and turn either the top Main Dial or rear Quick Control Dial (Rebel models use the rear 4-way con-trol keys instead of a rear dial).

Look in the viewfi nder as you move the points around. Any time you see ONE point illuminated, you’re manually selecting that particular AF point.If all the AF points light up at once, or if you see a ring of points light-up at once with an EOS-1D or EOS-1Ds model, you’re now in Automatic AF point selection mode. Simply stop and tap the shutter but-ton half-way when the point(s) you want are lit-up.

With other camera brands, the choices and selec-tion procedure are essentially similar.

To change your active AF point, press the AF point select button on the back of your camera, and then turn the appropriate dial (or

press the four rear control keys on EOS Rebel models).

With Canon EOS models, if you press the AF point select button and turn the appropriate dial, you’ll navigate from one point lit at a

time (manual AF point select mode) to all points illuminated (automatic AF point select mode).


Basic suggestions for action shooting:

This is not a list of hard-and-fast requirements, but suggestions to get maximum performance when you shoot fast-moving subjects with a digital SLR. Obviously, users are free to experiment with other settings. And if you’ve experienced success previ-ously, keep doing what you’ve done before. But con-sider some of the points in this article.

• Exposure mode: Tv (pre-set a fast speed, such as 1/1000th second or faster if possible), Av (set a wide aperture, and camera will automatically set faster shutter speeds), or Manual (pre-set fast speeds and usually fairly wide lens apertures)

• ISO: Don’t be shy here. With today’s digital SLRs, outstanding quality is possible even at high ISO settings. Use an ISO high enough to insure fast shutter speeds. Even in bright sun like Art Wolfe is shoot-ing the horses in, ISO 200 or 400 would certainly be appropriate.

• AF mode: AI Servo AF (or similar “continuous” AF with other camera brands).

• AF point select mode: We suggest manually choosing one AF point — preferably, one that can easily be kept on a detailed part of your subject.

• Drive mode: Continuous, or High Speed Continuous if your camera offers this.

• Metering mode: With Canon EOS models, generally Evaluative metering mode will work fi ne. Use other settings if you have a preference/reason for them.

If you set your camera appropriately, you increase your odds signifi cantly for getting sequences of good, sharp action pictures.

By practicing now, you’ll be ready when opportunity knocks.


Under cloudy skies, color pictures tend to take on a slightly bluish-gray tint that’s often not pleasing to the human eye. This is no doubt a contributing reason that many photographers, from casual amateurs to professionals, prefer to shoot in sunny conditions. Not only does the overall color have a cool blue tone, but objects photographed under overcast skies sometimes lack a bit of the “punch” that we might otherwise expect. Even bright-colored fl owers, cars, and other saturated subjects can appear a touch plain when photographed on a cloudy day.

But one of the beauties of today’s digital cameras is the built-in fl exibility they offer in fi ne-tuning color and appearance of your images. Even if you prefer to shoot JPEGs in-camera, you still have a lot of control at your fi ngertips. A willingness to leave the comfort of your camera’s fully-automatic “green zone” exposure settings and experiment a bit can pay huge dividends the next time you fi nd yourself on vacation and it’s overcast for days on end.

Controlling color in overcast light

At your camera’s standard settings, you may get somewhat fl at and uninspired results in overcast lighting. But with a few quick changes, your camera can deliver much more lively results.

© Rudy Winston

Overall color starts with White Balance

Don’t let the term “white balance” scare you. It’s the camera’s way of adjusting its color response to give you a neutral, non-tinted overall color in the scenes you photograph. Digital SLR cameras today have an Automatic White Balance (AWB) setting, which reads the dominant light in each picture and tries to adjust color to give a neutral result. They also have a number of “pre-set” white balance settings that lock-in a particular correction, and are tuned for a particular type of light (sunlight, overcast, shade, fl uorescent, and so on). Finally, many, but not all, cameras also offer a so-called Custom White Balance setting. This lets you register a specifi c white balance for the exact lighting in a particular scene.


Automatic White Balance is a good starting point for many photographers, especially if you’re just getting used to a new digital camera. But if you’ve reached the point where occasionally you don’t feel the overall color is right, it’s time to look at your other options. That sort of pale blue look you sometimes see on cloudy days outdoors is one example of where you can defi nitely do better with a little understanding of what op-tions are available to you.

The pre-set White Balance settings

For pictures on overcast days, the easiest thing to consider is simply switching your white balance from Auto to “Cloudy”. Usually, this is indicated by a little icon that looks like a cluster of clouds on your camera. What happens is the camera now adds more amber-colored tone to your pictures, warming them up and canceling the pale blue that often dominates pictures taken on an overcast day.

Different camera models will respond differently to changes in White Balance, so you need to try this for yourself and see what differences you observe. An easy test is simply to photograph various subjects, including people, on a cloudy day outdoors. You can shoot JPEG image fi les, and simply take a couple of pictures of the same scene with the White Balance changed from Auto to Cloudy for each one. Examine the pictures on your computer (don’t rely on the camera’s LCD monitor for critical evaluations of color or sharpness!), or even better, print them out using the software and printer you normally use. Pictures taken with the Cloudy White Balance setting should look noticeably warmer in overall color, and this is usually pleasing to viewer’s eyes.

Most cameras also have a “Shade” White Balance setting. This is an even stronger way to warm-up color. It’s obviously useful in deep shade on sunny days. But if you fi nd that the Cloudy WB setting doesn’t warm things up enough for your tastes, try the Shade setting as an alternative.

Needless to say, remember after you’re done shooting on an overcast day to return your camera’s White Balance settings back to Auto or whatever setting you typically use for everyday shooting. Shots taken in sunlight will have a distinctly yellow-orange tint if your camera is set for Cloudy and even more so if it’s set to the Shade WB setting.

The fundamental control you have over color in a digital camera is White Balance. Here’s a cloudy-day street scene, showing the difference between the cool colors of the Auto WB setting and how the Cloudy WB and Shade WB progressively “warm-up” the colors.

© Rudy Winston

Shade WBCloudy WBAuto WB


More control: White Balance Shift

Most recent Canon EOS digital cameras have an ad-ditional control to further fi ne-tune the overall color in your images. It’s called White Balance Shift, and it’s a command that’s in the camera’s shooting menu. Some other brands and models of digital SLRs have a similar menu command, although it’ll usually be named differently.

White Balance Shift lets you take any existing White Balance setting and further shift its color in any of four ways: you can make the overall color more amber, more blue, more magenta (pink/red color) or more green. You can even mix two tones, such as adding a touch more amber along with a bit of magenta to really warm-up the color in certain light-ing conditions. Canon’s White Balance Shift lets you dial-in up to nine levels of additional color, in very fi ne increments. So in the beginning, you may want to experiment with larger amounts of shifted color to see the impact it’ll have in your pictures.

In a scene like the deep forest that Art Wolfe encountered in New Zealand, for instance, White Balance Shift could be moved in the green direction to actually enhance the colors of the trees and moss in the scene he’s shooting. Or, it could be shifted a bit in the amber and magenta direction to give a more neutral or even warm look to the cool lighting.

To use this control, fi rst pick the general White Balance setting you want to use (Auto WB, Cloudy, and so on). Then, you can go to the menu to call up the White Balance Shift function. On the graph that comes up, use the camera’s rear controls to dial-in the fi ne-tuning of color that you want. Remember: once you set this, it remains in effect even if you later change the overall White Balance setting. So if you only want this fi ne-tuning of color for cloudy days, remember to set it back to dead-center (“zero”) when you’re done.

Once you make a White Balance setting, most digital SLRcameras allow you to further fi ne-tune it. With Canon cameras,

this is done with the White Balance Shift command (above).© Rudy Winston


What if you shoot RAW images?

All the in-camera settings we’ve discussed so far assume you’re shooting JPEG images in-camera. With JPEG images (such as “Large/Fine” and so on), the image is entirely processed within the camera, and a fi nished fi le is written to your memory card. Camera settings like White Balance are taken into account as color is mapped-out.

If you shoot RAW fi les, you still make settings in the camera for things like White Balance and Canon’s Pic-ture Style commands. But RAW fi les are not ready to view as full-resolution images when they’re written to the camera’s memory card. Instead, they must be processed into a fi nished image in your computer, using RAW fi le processing software.

The key thing with RAW images is that you can totally revise settings like White Balance and even overall exposure once you’ve got an image on-screen in your RAW processing software. RAW images defi nitely do require more work, and they’re usually much larger fi les on the memory card. But on the fl ip side, they can be a great learning tool. You can see on-screen at a glance how different WB settings would look, using the same image. And any changes you make to a RAW fi le do not cause it to either lose quality or to lose the original settings.

Other camera controls for overcast lighting

The fl at character of light on a cloudy day sometimes means you get pictures that just don’t seem to have a lot of visual “snap”. Again, digital cameras have a couple of controls you can use to alter this as well.

Contrast isn’t really a color control, but the softer lighting on a cloudy day sometimes can be enlivened a bit by adding a little contrast to the scene. With a Canon digital SLR, this is set within the camera’s Picture Style menu (virtually all other brands and models of digital SLRs have contrast controls as well, usually located within the shooting menu). You usually don’t want to be excessive here, but adding a step or two of contrast will often give more of an appearance of sharpness and detail to cloudy-day pictures.

Another one is Color Saturation. On overcast days, subject colors tend to be a little more fl at and muted. Sometimes, this is desirable. Skin tones in portraits, for example, are often better-rendered on a cloudy day than they might be in bright sunlight. But if you’re photographing a red fi re engine or a bright blue car, and your camera’s colors tend to be a little understated on cloudy days, consider going to your color saturation command and moving it a notch or two in the “plus” direction.

Boosting color saturation doesn’t change the color itself, but makes it deeper and richer. You usually don’t want this with skin tones, but in other cases, it can make subjects appear snappier and brighter.


Once again, with Canon most digital SLRs, the color saturation is part of the Picture Style menu (dial into the menu’s “Detail Settings” to individually adjust contrast, color saturation, sharpening, or color tone). Some cameras place this command under “parameters” or a similar image menu command. With RAW images, you can still make these settings in-camera, but if you use your camera maker’s RAW processing software, you can over-ride these settings pretty much at will once you get to your computer.

On cloudy days, boosting your camera’s color saturation can sometimes add noticeable richness to colors like the green grassand trees here. Usually, however, it’s not best for smooth skin tones, regardless of the lighting conditions.

© Rudy Winston

Summary

It’s well within the capability of even a basic entry-level digital SLR to give you the color you want in overcast light. But don’t be stunned if you need to make a few adjustments to really tailor it to your tastes. White Balance is the primary way to change the overall color of your scenes, and remember that many cameras have a further method to fi ne-tune color — sort of like putting a little more salt on your french fries. With Canon’s cameras, this is done with the White Balance Shift menu command.

Even when white balance is perfect, you may still get images on cloudy days that look a little fl at. By boosting contrast and color saturation a notch or two, you can add back some of the visual “snap” that the cloudy skies tend to diminish. Don’t go over-board here, but remember that it’s an option you can always turn to.

There are many picture-taking opportunities on cloudy days. Understanding the characteristics of overcast light, and the con-trols on your camera, can open the doors to great pictures even

when the sun isn’t shining.© Rudy Winston


Maybe the most important advice is simply to experiment. As you learn the controls in your camera and what they can do, you’ll be well on your way to getting the results you want, whether it’s clear and sunny outside, or skies are dark and threatening.


Direct sunlight has a certain charm in pictures. One of its attributes is something we spoke of in an earlier Tips article: the way it can enhance the texture of a subject and produce strong detail in images.

Sometimes, it’s easy to assume that in overcast con-ditions, it’s not possible to capture these details, since they’re not always as immediately apparent to our naked eye. But as Art Wolfe points out, this isn’t so. In fact, shooting within a deeply wooded area, he’s able to capture incredible details in several scenes. Actually, there’s more information in the bright and dark areas of most subjects when you shoot on an overcast day, because there’s a lot less contrast — dark shadows are less dark, and bright highlights are less bright. It’s easier for the camera to accurately capture the range of tones in the scene.

Detail without strong contrast

With far fewer exposure problems from blown-out highlights or black shadows, Art Wolfe is able to capture magnifi cent detail in

subjects like these tree branches in southern New Zealand.© Art Wolfe

Overcast light still has direction, and still casts shadows

Don’t forget: on cloudy days, the light is still sun-light. It’s merely being fi ltered by a layer of clouds that take up some or all of the visible sky. The sun behind it still rises in the east, and sets in the west, and light from overcast skies still preserves some hint of direction. Depending upon conditions, light from a cloudy sky can still have a directional char-acter to it. Be ready to use this when it’s apparent.

Whenever light has a direction, it will cast shadows in the same direction. Of course, these shadows are very evident on a sunny day. But look careful-ly at the scenes Art is photographing in these two New Zealand Tips videos. There’s beautiful lighting that wraps around the subjects and still preserves a sense of an overhead direction. There’s moss that looks almost like a blanket, but again it’s got tre-mendous detail from the soft overcast lighting.

Learn to look at the subtle aspects of a subject’s detail and texture, and you’ll begin to appreciate the beauty of working in soft overcast lighting.

Light on cloudy days remains directional, and this is the key to getting detail in subjects. Whether it’s the branches and moss that

Art Wolfe is shooting in a forest, or carvings on an old wooden door, the directional character of overcast light makes it possible

to photograph detail.© Rudy Winston


“Wrap-around” lighting

When a pro photographer works in soft lighting, you’ll sometimes hear them speak of how light “wraps around” a subject. Soft lighting can come from large studio lights, or it can come from the sky on a hazy or overcast day.

What’s meant by this is that where direct light on a subject ends, and a shadow begins to be cast, the break between highlight and shadow is a smooth, gentle transition from light to dark. On a clear sunny day, you’d get a very hard-edged shadow, and a very sudden transition from light to dark.

In overcast conditions, light from the bright parts of a subject continues to have a visible impact, even in areas where we expect shadows to start. Example: in Art’s shots of the tree branches in New Zealand, the shadow areas below the branches don’t suddenly go black. Instead, the soft lighting means we can see detail as our eyes move toward the bottom of each branch. The light from overhead “wraps around” the round branches, giving a greater suggestion of the detail on their undersides.

Hand-in-hand with overcast light is what pros sometimes call “wrap-around lighting”. It means light seems to roll around the

contour of a subject, beginning to illuminate the shadowed sides and give more visual information there. In sunlight, you’d have a

hard break where light ends and a dark shadow begins.© Art Wolfe

Seeing the subject and the light is the secret

Being able to articulate the things we’re speaking about in this article is one key to being able to work with different types of light. But the most important skill any photographer can develop is simply to be-come more and more aware of what they’re seeing, both in terms of the subjects they’re looking at, and how light is impacting those subjects. This is what photography is really all about.

As mentioned before, this is something you can work on every day, even when you don’t have a camera with you. Whether you’re traveling to or from work, looking at pictures in a magazine, or reviewing your own images, each of these is an opportunity to look more deeply at different subjects, and develop an awareness of the effects of light and lighting. Overcast skies are an easy condition for photographers to take for granted, but once again, they offer tremendous possibilities of their own.

Top-notch photography begins with an awareness of what you’re seeing, and being able to exploit the photographic possibilities when a subject is lit a certain way. Good photographic vision is

an acquired skill, and the more you put it into practice, the more picture opportunities you’ll see in the world around you.


Summary

Of course, texture in objects is more instantly visible when they’re being hit by sunlight on a clear day. But with this come some compromises, and an overcast day is a great alternative for many sorts of images. Whether you shoot landscapes, close-ups or portraits, the soft light of a cloudy sky still casts shadows, and it still can etch out texture in the surfaces of subjects you shoot. But it’s a much more subtle type of shadowing, and it gives a lot more detail in bright and dark parts of a scene.

As we said in our Tips article about the freedom and fl exibility of overcast light, a cloudy day can sometimes be a reason to go out and shoot — not an excuse to leave the camera packed away and avoid photography.


Many photographers would be a bit upset if they traveled to a foreign location, only to fi nd that skies were overcast for part or all of their trip. But to a pro like Art Wolfe, cloudy skies aren’t a problem, they’re an opportunity. He touches on some of the reasons why in the two video tips accompanying this article, but we’ll take the liberty of expanding on them a bit. The main take-away point is simple: don’t leave the camera at home or in the hotel room just because it’s not sunny outdoors. Cloudy skies and the light they produce can have a beauty all their own.

Overcast light: freedom and fl exibility

Cloudy skies present opportunities of their own to get great im-ages, as Art Wolfe describes in the accompanying Tips video.

Contrast — the number one problem of sunny days

A term you may hear digital photographers speak about is “dynamic range”. It refers to how much of a dif-ference in brightness exists between the brightest part of a scene and the darkest part of the same scene. No digital camera can see the range of brightness that the human eye can, and this can become a limita-tion on bright, perfectly clear sunny days. You can properly expose a scene so that bright areas are not washed-out, and discover that important areas in shadow are too dark to get any useful detail out of. What you’re seeing is excessive contrast.

With cloudy skies, this problem usually vanishes. The softer light tones-down the bright areas of a scene, shadows are much softer and more diffused, and there’s far more visible detail in those shadows, too. Think of a scene in the woods, on a bright sunny day. You’d see spots of bright sunlight streaming through the trees, mixed with very dark shadows. It’s almost impossible in one picture to properly expose both extremes. Now, look at the scenes in Art Wolfe’s two Tips videos: the scene is delicately lit, the shadows aren’t too dark, and the overhead light that’s fi ltering through the trees is smooth and not too bright.


In bright sun, it can be hard to capture detail in the bright highlight areas of a scene and at the same time have good detail in the dark

shadow areas. In this example, the two buildings in the sun-lit scene do retain detail — barely.

© Rudy Winston

Same type of scene, but on an overcast day. There’s detail in the bright areas of the sky, in the white building on the right, and even

in the shadows on the faces of both buildings. Overcast light makes many scenes simpler and easier to photograph and expose properly.

© Rudy Winston

Overcast skies mean smooth, soft shadows

We get much of our visual information in a picture from the mix of light and shadow in an image. Obvi-ously, shadows on an overcast day have a different appearance: their edges are soft, almost feathered and gradually transition from the dark part of the shadow area to the brighter part that’s directly lit. This smoothness comes from the diffused, cloudy light. One small light source (the sun) casts sharp shadows on a clear day; on an overcast day, the entire sky becomes your light source, and the shadows produced have much smoother edges.

For years, photographers who shoot portraits outdoors have preferred hazy or overcast skies to bright sunny conditions, and this is part of the reason why. We’re certainly not saying you cannot shoot nice pic-tures in sunlight. But the softer light of an overcast day minimizes many of the hurdles photographers have to jump through in getting great pictures of people, products, or scenes.


Same person, but a huge difference in overall look of the picture when one is shot in bright sunlight and another on an overcast day. The soft shadows of overcast skies make it much easier to get good portraits of people, and there’s more freedom in moving the

subject and/or camera.© Rudy Winston

Fewer blown-out bright highlights

Along with kinder, gentler shadows, overcast skies work similar magic to bright highlight areas of a scene. First, let’s be clear: we mean areas struck by direct light from the sky above, which are either light in color to begin with, or appear light from the direct light hitting them.

With digital cameras, it’s vital that these bright areas not be over-exposed and washed out in the fi nished picture. Whether you’re shooting in sunlight or any other condition, if bright areas are over-exposed, there’s nothing that you can do in a program such as Adobe Photoshop™ to bring back detail in them later on. Photographers have been forced to pay rigorous attention to exposure levels, and check after shots are taken that bright areas are not too bright to hold detail. This is the reason most digital cameras have an option to show blinking, over-ex-posed highlight areas on the camera’s LCD monitor when you’re playing-back images.

Highlights are the bright areas of a scene that are directly lit by the main light source. On a clear sunny day, it’s absolutely man-

datory that these areas not be allowed to be over-exposed. The softer light of an overcast sky makes this type of picture

much easier to shoot with less risk of blown-out highlights.© Rudy Winston


On a hazy or cloudy day, these areas are much less harshly-lit, and much easier for the camera’s exposure system to record without washing-out and losing detail. A wedding photographer can’t control the weather, of course, but many pros shooting an outdoor wedding will smile inside when they see skies are overcast compared to perfectly clear. Why? It’s a lot easier to get good shots of a bride’s white wedding dress, hold-ing in all the fi ne detail, on a cloudy day than it is in bright sunlight. Faces in portraits and group photos tend to be lit much more smoothly as well!

Freedom in where you aim the camera

On a clear, sunny day, the direction in which you aim your lens can make a great difference in the appear-ance of your subjects. The hard shadows of a sunny day mean you absolutely have to be aware of the impact of sunlight on your subject, and if you move around your subject, you’ll fi nd the look changes — and in many cases, your exposure will need to change as well. Perfect example: a simple shot of a person on a sunny day. There’s a huge difference in a front-lit subject (sun striking the subject directly, from behind the camera) vs. a back-lit subject (sun shining toward camera, from behind the subject).

On a cloudy day, these differences are minimized or in some cases totally eliminated. The much softer shadows are a lot closer in brightness to the areas hit by light from the sky, and moving around a subject has much less impact on the look of your scene. You’ll get similar results in many cases whether you shoot your house from the front yard or from the back yard. On a sunny day, you’d end up with two totally different pictures, assuming you shot both at the same time of day.

This can make a huge difference to a travel photographer. We’re not always at liberty to simply return to a subject at sunset or sunrise, when sunlight might be at its best for a given scene. If it’s overcast, time of day has less impact on light and shadow, and you can shoot pictures with less concern about lighting.

In sunlight, where the camera is aimed makes a huge difference because of changes in how light and shadow hit the subject. Here are three images – front-lit, side-lit, and back-lit. On an overcast day, the differences would be far less

© Rudy Winston


Summary

It’s certainly true that under overcast skies, bright colors may look a little less brilliant, and that tropical beach scene may not look like it did on the web site or post cards. But it brings with it its own attractions, and in many ways makes it easier to get good pictures with less need to bracket exposures or take careful spot-meter readings before shooting. Even under heavy overcast skies, the light usually retains a direction-al look, but with a far softer edge than you’d see in sunlight. Soft shadows are much more portrait-friendly, and furthermore it’s much easier to move the subject or camera position without fear that you’ll now have a subject that’s totally in shadows or looking directly into harsh sun.

We said it before, and we’ll say it again: don’t let overcast skies cause you to take fewer pictures, or even worse leave the camera in the hotel room or at home. You’ll be missing out on some great opportunities.

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Once a rare feature, Image Stabilization is now something that most digital SLR users can take advantage of in one form or another. Whether your camera puts the stabilizing devices in the lens, as Art Wolfe’s Canon EOS system does, or within the camera body, the fact is that this technology can de-liver consistently better pictures in many conditions. As Art emphatically says at the end of his brief Tips video on Image Stabilization, “…it further enhances my chances of getting a sharp shot — and that’s what I’m all about.”

In this article, we’ll briefly explore some of the real-life situations where Image Stabilization can be a direct benefit.

The many benefits of image stabilization

Brief review: what is image stabilization?

Image stabilization is a camera technology that allows the camera/lens combination to recognize any shake or camera movement, and instantly apply a compensation to cancel the effect of that movement. The net result is that even if a camera and lens are not being held steadily, sharp pictures will still be pos-sible in many conditions, and often, at shutter speeds that are slower than would otherwise be possible.

Image stabilization may be called different names by various camera makers, but regardless, the general concept is the same.

One important thing to remember: image stabilization reads and reacts to camera movement. It cannot do anything to change how subject movement is rendered. In other words, it’s well-known that fast shutter speeds are needed for sharp pictures of fast-moving subjects, like race cars or athletes in motion. With or without image stabilization, for sharp action pictures, you’ll still need those same fast shutter speeds.

Subjects in deep shade aren’t the only scenes that can ben-efit from image stabilization, as we’ll explore in this article. But

with stabilization turned on, Art is able to work at slower shutter speeds, and doesn’t need to raise his ISO setting as much as he

otherwise might.


Low-light shooting, without flash or tripod

This is the obvious benefit of image stabilization. With IS active, you’ll be much more likely to shoot sharp pictures, hand-held, in low-light conditions where you’d otherwise be very challenged to get good sharpness. Whether it’s low-light candid shooting indoors, outdoor shots at dusk or dawn, or even at night, image stabilization is an asset you want on your side. And it requires nothing beyond simply turning it on!

The chief benefit: slower shutter speeds, without losing sharpness

This is the promise of image stabilization. With stabilization active, you’ll be able to shoot sharp pictures at slower shutter speeds than would otherwise be possible. You’ll sometimes see in bro-chures or on-line references that a lens gives “up to four stops correction” or similar claims. What’s meant is this: traditionally, photographers have had a general rule-of-thumb that with a given fo-cal-length lens, you can usually get reliably sharp hand-held pictures at shutter speeds of 1-over the lens’s focal length. In other words, with a 50mm lens, traditionally you could expect fairly consistent sharp pictures at a shutter speed of 1/50th of a sec-ond or faster (1/125th, 1/250th, and so on).

A four-stop correction means that a user can shoot at shutter speeds up to four stops slower than this traditional rule-of-thumb, and still expect pretty con-sistently sharp pictures of stationary subjects. Using the same example, if 1/60th (closest traditional full-step shutter speed to the 1/50th rule-of-thumb speed) is the slowest speed we could shoot without stabilization, a four stop improvement means we could shoot at speeds as slow as 1/4 second, and still expect sharp results. (One stop slower than 1/60th would be 1/30th, 2 stops 1/15th, 3 stops 1/8th, and 4 stops difference would be 1/4th.)

Image Stabilization makes it easy to intentionally use slow shutter speeds and still get pictures free from overall blur from camera

shake. In this shot, a slow speed of 1/15th of a second was used to intentionally blur the umbrella, which was being rotated.

© Rudy Winston

Even at wide-angle focal lengths, image stabilization can be a big help in getting sharp hand-held pictures. Here, a 24-105mm

IS lens was used indoors at 1/8th of a second — hand-held, and with no flash.

© Rudy Winston


Shooting at lower ISO settings

This is what Art Wolfe specifically addresses in the Tips video about image stabilization. Since IS allows slower shutter speeds, he doesn’t need to raise his ISO anywhere near as much as he might to photograph the tiger in deep shade. Without stabilization, he may have been forced to switch from ISO 100 to an ISO as high as 800 or 1600 — definitely possible on today’s digital SLRs, but he knows he’ll get less inherent digital noise and a cleaner file if he can shoot at ISO 400 instead. Even though at ISO 400 his shutter speeds will be a relatively slow 1/100th of a second, the stabilization built into his 70-200mm zoom lens makes sharp pictures possible. And look carefully at the video: you can see the movement from the elephant that Art’s rid-ing on. Image stabilization is not just dealing with Art’s hand-held movement, but the very unstable platform he’s upon as well!

More depth of field, when it’s needed

Any time you stop the lens down to a smaller aper-ture for greater depth of field, the instant trade-off is that your shutter speeds will be correspondingly slower as well. Example: if you’re outside on a sunny day with a telephoto zoom lens and at a wide-open f/4 your shutter speed is 1/1000th of a second, stop-ping the lens down to f/22 would result in a shut-ter speed of 1/30th of a second. Little problem for a tripod-user like Art, but hand-held, with a telephoto lens, it’s simply too slow to expect reliable results when hand-held. But turn on image stabilization, and you buy yourself significant breathing room. That hand-held f/22 shot is far more likely to be sharp. The real benefit is knowing in the back of your mind that if you want the effect of a lot of depth of field in a picture (and we spoke of that in another Tips article in this same Travels to the Edge episode!), you can simply stop the lens down and take the picture, with-out fear or worry.

Especially with telephoto lenses, you’ll sometimes want to take a hand-held shot with a small lens aperture, for extensive

depth of field. In this shot, a 70-300mm IS lens was used at 300mm, with an aperture of f/16, and a relatively slow shutter

speed of 1/100th second.© Rudy Winston


Flash-fill in low light conditions

One advance in modern SLR cameras is the smart TTL flash systems we use today. Whether you’re outdoors in sunlight, or indoors in a low-light situ-ation, it’s pretty easy to have the camera automati-cally expose your background and combine it with properly-exposed flash. This means you’ll get a very natural-looking flash picture, rather than a typical flash snapshot where you’ve got a flash-lit subject in the foreground and a near-black background.

Particularly in low-light or indoor conditions, image stabilization makes it easy to get sharp pictures with the resulting slow shutter speeds that are used to mix flash and low levels of ambient light. Once again, it’s a real confidence-booster to know in the back of your mind that good, sharp and natural-looking pic-tures can be obtained with the aid of your silent as-sistant, image stabilization.

Don’t hesitate to try this, even in your living room at home. With a Canon EOS digital SLR, simply activate your flash, switch your camera to the Av (aperture-priority) exposure mode at around f/5.6 or f/8, or the “night scene” icon mode, and try some shots with an image stabilized lens. You’ll be surprised at what’s possible!

Indoors or in low light conditions, image stabilization makes it easy to blend slow shutter speeds with flash, for natural-looking results.

This can be easily done on most modern SLR cameras.© Rudy Winston

Sharper autofocus with challenging subjects

Even pros often aren’t aware of this one. If you’re shooting very challenging moving subjects, such as a football player running at full speed, a race car, or similar fast-moving subjects, you’ll usually be at fast shut-ter speeds to freeze the action. Conventional wisdom is that at 1/1000th or 1/2000th of a second, image stabilization has no real benefit, so why not just turn it off?

Actually, if your camera has optical image stabilization (that is, stabilization in the camera lens, and not within the camera body), there are two very valid reasons to leave the stabilization turned on. First of all, you’ll get a steadier view in your camera’s viewfinder, making it smoother and easier to compose the scene with a rapidly-moving subject. This is especially true if you’re using a large telephoto lens, and shooting from a monopod as many pros do.

But most important is this: your camera’s autofocus system will likewise get a steadier, clearer view of the subject in-between each shot. Remember: with today’s fastest pro cameras, the AF system has less than 1/10th of a second between each shot to analyze focus and assess subject movement. With stabilization ac-


tive, there’s less inherent shake, and the camera gets a clearer view during this brief instant as it re-focuses on that athlete, bird in flight, or other fast-moving subject.

Since in-camera image stabilization systems don’t perform any stabilization until the light hits the actual imaging sensor, the AF system doesn’t benefit from getting a steady view if IS is active in these cameras. This is why this benefit applies only in those stabilization systems were the stabilization is in the actual camera lens.

Summary

Image stabilization technology is clearly a benefit in many shooting situations, and for all intents and pur-poses, the only downside to it is about a 20% increase in battery consumption (with Canon EOS camera models; other brands may vary). Certainly, if your camera uses image stabilized lenses, it’s worth considering the benefits of stabilization technology when weighing the pros and cons of a lens with and a lens without this capability.

If you have this technology, our advice is to use it most of the time. In fact, the only time in general that you really should shut it off is in those circumstances where you’re shooting from a large, rock-solid tripod where you know there’s absolutely no movement at all. Otherwise, it’s a win-win situation for photographers, and furthermore, it’s clearly an example of modern technology giving users better pictures, with almost no negative side effects.


Art Wolfe makes a quick decision when presented with a dilemma: when shooting multiple deer out in the open, do you try for tight composition and sharp focus on just one individual, or do you back-off and try to get more depth of field for a sharper overall picture? Art decided on the spot to use smaller lens apertures as well as moderate telephoto zoom set-tings on his 70-200mm lens to give images that show clusters of multiple animals in the same shot.

But all photographers are presented with this deci-sion from time to time, whether we’re shooting some-thing as simple as a child’s birthday party or shoot-ing wild animals on a safari. Part of the answer is being in control of your camera’s settings — so that the camera delivers the type of image you want. But equally important is deciding for yourself the type of image you want.

Focus with multiple subjects

Whenever you’re presented with more than one subject in a scene, you have to ask yourself whether you want to try to con-

centrate upon one subject, or back-off and get more subjects and some background in the picture. Here, Art Wolfe decided

on the latter.

The message: what are you trying to say in a picture?

Don’t jump to immediate conclusions about the type of picture you want without looking carefully at the subject, the scene, and ideally looking through the camera as well. Our eyes and brain can very easily concentrate upon a small part of a scene, and sometimes fool us into thinking that the right picture to take is a telephoto shot that zooms-in to one tiny part of the scene. (For example, think about how your eyes can zero-in on friend or relative who’s in a crowd of people when you’re looking for that person.)

In fact, you can sometimes communicate a lot more about your subject by including its surroundings and background information. Keep your mind open to this option, no matter how powerful a telephoto lens you may be carrying with you. It doesn’t mean that every shot needs to be taken with an ultra-wide angle lens, of course. But a vital part of many great pictures is a “sense of place”, communicating to the viewer not only what you’re photographing, but where it is and how it relates to its surroundings.

Think about a picture of a person: you can zoom-in for a tight head-and-shoulders shot, and the result can be a beautiful, sharp portrait with a blurred background that forces the viewer’s attention on the subject’s face. But you may have absolutely no concept of WHERE that person is. They could be in their front yard or in front of Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral, and you’d never be able to tell. Now consider the other al-ternative: with a wider lens, the photographer still focuses upon the person, but moves them somewhat off-center and using camera controls produces a sharper, more distinct background. You now have a very different result: a shot that puts the person in their environment. It might be a fisherman at a dock in front


of his boat, a minister in front of his or her church, or a street performer in front of a crowd of on-lookers. Regardless, the environment you see in the background contributes to the message in the picture.

Let’s be clear: we’re not saying that photographers should avoid the visual impact of tightly-composed telephoto shots! They can be a powerful way to communicate, too. But think about all the alternatives, and if time permits, try shooting the same subject in different ways.

The mechanics: depth of field control

It’s a simple law of optics. As our lens apertures get progressively smaller (that is, as the f-numbers get higher), more things tend to be in focus in our pic-tures.

In his Tips video, Art specifically speaks of choos-ing a medium lens aperture of f/10 (that’s 1/3 of a stop wider than the traditional f/11 value), knowing that the wider his lens focal length is, the more will tend to be in focus in front of and behind the primary deer he focus upon. Another basic fundamental of depth of field: with any lens, the farther away you are from the subject you’re focusing upon, the more things will tend to appear in sharp focus (and vice-versa).

It’s important for any shooter to have a sense of what the effects will tend to be in pictures when using dif-ferent apertures; Art obviously has years of experience and can intuitively make such choices. But for any of us, once we decide on the type of picture we’d like, choosing an appropriate lens aperture goes a long way toward making it happen.

Using good depth of field control, it’s easy for Art Wolfe to photo-graph a group of spotted deer, and include enough background

information to lend a sense of place.© Art Wolfe


The opposite approach — narrow focus on one subject only

In some cases, a photographer facing a scene like the deer that Art Wolfe encountered might make the decision to concentrate focus on just one animal, and shoot tight shots with blurred backgrounds. There’s nothing wrong with this approach at all; it’s simply another way of taking the picture. Longer telephoto lenses help here, with their inherent shal-low depth of field. Wide apertures are the way to go to blur-out backgrounds and force the viewer’s attention to your subject. And, with any lens, the closer you can get to the primary subject, the more likely you are to get soft backgrounds.

This type of shot works best when something about the subject itself is what grabs your attention as a photographer. In the case of photographing animals, you’d almost think of such shots as portraits of indi-viduals. If you were photographing in a zoo, where perhaps the background is unattractive, this would be a useful technique to work with. Obviously, Art Wolfe’s approach here was different: he wanted to get the viewer to see the environment and multiple deer in each picture. Using a 70-200mm zoom lens at a wider zoom setting, and stopping his lens down accomplished that.

Using a longer telephoto lens with a wide aperture lets you focus on one narrow point, especially if you’re working relatively

close to the subject© Rudy Winston


Summary

The bottom line here is that any photograph can reveal what the photographer is feeling, and what he or she wants to emphasize, simply by using the right tools in the camera. Great photography doesn’t just happen because a pro like Art Wolfe points his or her camera in one direction and snaps a picture. The reason their results are so good is that they take a moment to truly see what’s in a scene, they allow themselves to react to what’s in the scene, and then they envision a type of picture that they want to create.

From there, deciding upon things like camera settings to get a blurred or sharp background becomes a fairly quick and easy task. Much of Art’s conscious thought, no doubt, was on his viewfinder and his composition.

One last thing: even though most cameras today have fully automatic modes like a Portrait mode that’s sup-posed to give you wide apertures, and a Landscape mode that’s supposed to do the opposite, you’re usually better off switching your camera to a mode where you can directly make these settings. Aperture priority mode (Av mode on Canon EOS cameras) is ideal, since it lets you directly input the aperture you want.

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One of the first things you notice in Art Wolfe’s Tips video from Asia, “Depth of field”, is that he speaks in a quiet voice as he shoots near the spotted deer. Whenever you’re close to wild animals, anything you can do to generate less noise will be helpful. Digi-tal SLRs by their nature make a certain amount of mechanical noise whenever you take a picture, but there may be options you’re not aware of to minimize this. By taking steps to reduce operational noise, you won’t alarm birds or animals, and you’re much more likely to get the natural-looking shots you’re after.

And it’s not only wildlife photography that can benefit from quiet shooting techniques. Taking pictures dur-ing a church service or wedding ceremony, or a news photographer working in a courtroom, are obvious ex-amples where quiet operation can get you better pictures without disturbing others. Sometimes, you may just want to take some candid photos of your family or friends, and not want a loud click to announce your presence. We’ll explore a few options for digital SLR users to enable quieter shooting operation in this article.

Quiet shooting with SLR cameras

Wildlife photography is one of many instances where a quiet camera can be a true asset. As we’ll explain, some digital SLR

cameras have ways to reduce the level of noise during shooting.

What are some of the in-camera options for quieter operation?

We obviously can’t explore each and every camera model, but there are some things we can point out. First of all, simply switching from continuous advance in your camera’s Drive settings to single-frame shooting can reduce the operational noise somewhat. Furthermore, some cameras may have an option where you can press the shutter button down fully to take a single picture, and if you hold the button fully down, the camera won’t make the motor-driven advance noise until you lift your finger from the button. This lets you delay a major source of noise, giving you time to put the camera inside a coat or jacket, or wait for a better moment where noise is less noticeable to your subjects or those around you. Check your camera’s menu and/or instruction books to see if this is possible for you.

On many recent digital SLR models, there’s a Live View option, which allows you to view and compose your pictures using the camera’s LCD monitor instead of the traditional eye-level viewfinder. One seldom-men-tioned benefit of this is that it raises the camera’s mirror, and thus eliminates one major source of mechani-cal noise in picture-taking. If your camera has a Live View option, try shooting a couple of pictures using the standard eye-level finder, and then try the same with the Live View active. You’ll probably notice a drop in

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the audible noise produced by the camera. It won’t be totally silent, of course, but any reduction in noise can be helpful the next time you’re shooting during that quiet moment in the middle of a wedding.

Traditionally, many mid-range and upper-end SLR cameras have offered a Mirror Lock-Up feature. Whether or not your camera has Live View, a Mirror Lock-Up moves the mirror up and out of the way, os-tensibly to reduce any subtle vibrations during slow shutter speeds. But it can also reduce the noise level a bit as well, especially if your camera has an option to keep the mirror up for more than one shot at a time. Of course, without Live View, locking the mir-ror up does black-out your viewfinder, making this impractical unless you’re on a tripod. But keep it in mind if you realize you need to shoot more quietly than standard operation allows.

Simply activating the Live View mode (if your camera has this fea-ture) can reduce noise, since the camera’s mirror is always raised

during Live View operation.© Rhonda R. Dorsett

Canon’s “silent mode” in Live View

A few recent Canon EOS models, such as the EOS 40D, 50D, and 5D Mark II, have a further option to reduce noise in Live View. This is the cameras’ so-called “silent mode”. It’s a menu setting within the Live View menu options. Using this option, Live View operation becomes even quieter. If you own one of these cameras, you’ll see two options in the menu. Here’s briefly what they offer:

Mode 1: Quieter shooting in Live View, with the option to shoot continuously at the camera’s fastest shooting speed if desired. Shutter is re-cocked immediately after each picture, which does produce some audible noise. Mode 2: Virtually silent shooting — but for single-frame operation only. If you keep the shutter button fully depressed after shooting a picture, all post-shooting operations are delayed, giving you nearly silent operation. Disable: Ordinary shutter operation within Live View, allowing standard single-frame or continuous shooting up to camera’s fastest FPS shooting speed. Camera immediately advances after shot is taken in single-frame advance.

Again, these are limited to the Canon EOS models mentioned above (as of November, 2008), and to the best of our knowledge, this feature isn’t available with other digital SLRs as of this time. But if you do own one of these cameras, we urge you to try these Live View options and see for yourself how noise can be reduced when it’s necessary.


Certain Canon EOS digital SLRs have special options to greatly reduce operational noise during Live View shooting. Not all cameras of-fer these, but if your model does, you should familiarize yourself with them and know how to activate them if the need arises.

Silent shooting with Canon’s professional models

With Canon’s EOS-1D and EOS-1Ds models (regardless of version), there’s another way to re-duce noise during shooting. Again, it’s called “silent mode”, but in this case, it doesn’t require Live View (although with the latest Mark III models, it can be combined with Live View). This is a nice option for pros like Art Wolfe, who use these high-end cam-eras because of their strength, durability, weather-resistance, and extremely high image quality.

With the current EOS-1D Mark III and EOS-1Ds Mark III models, the silent mode is activated by sim-ply pressing the camera’s “drive” button and turn-ing the rear Quick Control Dial until the letter “S” appears on the top LCD panel. (Please note – “S” means silent mode; conventional single-frame op-eration with the Mark III models is indicated by a little icon that’s shaped like a single rectangle.) No Custom Functions or menu settings are necessary.

With the previous-generation EOS-1D and EOS-1Ds models*, the silent mode option was in the camera’s “Personal Functions”. You’d have to upload Personal Function #21 into your camera (via a FireWire connection and using Canon’s supplied software), and then you can turn Personal Function 21 on or off as you would with a conventional Custom Function.

Some professional digital SLRs have a special setting to reduce camera operational noise, even during standard eye-level shooting.


Either way, silent mode doesn’t eliminate all noise, but it does significantly lower the “advance” noise af-ter a shot is taken by slowing the motor-driven operation. Most importantly, if silent mode is active, the user can delay any post-shooting “advance” until his or her finger is removed from the shutter button. Silent mode on an EOS-1D or EOS-1Ds model doesn’t alter the audible click of the shutter, and it’s single-frame only (no continuous shooting with silent mode active), but it can still be a great asset when working in situations where silence is golden.

* EOS-1D, EOS-1Ds; EOS-1D Mark II, EOS-1D Mark II N, and EOS-1Ds Mark II

Other methods of reducing sound

Unfortunately, if your camera doesn’t offer built-in methods to reduce operational noise when shoot-ing, you may need to consider using other accesso-ries. Chief among these is a so-called sound blimp. This is a separate accessory that your entire SLR camera fits into, which muffles sound and still allows camera operations to be performed. These devices can be expensive (over $1,000 in some cases), but they can be rented from some professional cam-era dealers for short-term use. They’re very popular among Hollywood still shooters on TV and movie sets, as well as for pros working in sensitive condi-tions. An on-line search under “sound blimps” will give you some insight into what’s available and how they work.

A much less expensive option may be to consider a compact digital camera, without interchangeable lenses. Aside from their much smaller size, one ad-vantage of these cameras is their inherently quiet operation. They’re so quiet, in fact, that the “click” you hear when firing them is usually produced by a sound synthesizer, to confirm to the user that a picture was just taken. Often (but not always, so be sure to check!), there’s a menu setting that allows you to in-crease or reduce the level of this sound, turn it off entirely, or sometimes even substitute a different sound for the traditional click. Obviously, if the camera allows you to simply disable the sound, you’ve effectively got a truly silent camera for wildlife and other shooting conditions.

Another option for quiet shooting may be to consider a compact digital camera. You won’t be able to change lenses, but some

models have a menu setting to eliminate virtually all audible noise when shooting. Models like this one, with a 20x zoom lens, may

work well for wildlife shooting in good lighting conditions.


Summary

While the audible noise produced by today’s digital SLRs is usually not a problem in most conditions, there certainly can be times where a nature or wildlife enthusiast may benefit from quieter operation. It’s unfortu-nate that many digital SLRs really have few options here, but some models (like the Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III cameras that Art Wolfe uses) do have in-camera settings to further reduce noise when it’s necessary. Even less-expensive amateur models with a Live View mode can noticeably reduce operational noise if the Live View is active, and if you’re trying to shoot without being heard, this can be a big help.

Knowing your camera and its capabilities clearly is important here. You may not need to have a truly quiet camera in most instances, but if and when the time does arise, it’s sure nice to have the confidence to know where and how to change your camera settings to make it work as you want. Much of this can be achieved by simple practice at home. Don’t wait until you’re out in a field in Asia to try to figure out whether there’s a method to make your camera quieter, so you don’t alarm the wildlife you’re trying to photograph.


In Art Wolfe’s video tip about Time Lapse, he uses an accessory intervalometer sold by Canon for time lapse shooting. However, he does it in a very unusual way: instead of taking a handful of images, he’s tak-ing about 1,000 images in quick sequence. Then, he’s bringing them into Apple Computer’s QuickTime™ software, to turn the JPEG originals into a movie fi le.

Traditionally, time lapse shooting refers to unmanned photography, where more than one image is taken of the same scene, with each image being taken a spe-cifi c time after the previous one. We’ve all no doubt seen images like the setting sun over the Manhattan skyline, where each picture is taken perhaps 10 or 15 minutes apart, and the sky progresses from sunset to dusk to night.

If you own any of the following Canon EOS models, take note — there’s a very cool accessory called the Timer Remote Control TC-80N3. It’s the same one used by Art to take his star movie. Compatible EOS cameras (as of early 2009) are any version of the EOS-1D or EOS-1Ds, any version of the EOS 5D, and the EOS 50D, 40D, 30D, 20D, and 10D models (unfortunately, the TC-80N3 won’t work with the popular EOS Digital Rebel models).

Some other brands and models of digital SLRs and sometimes even compact digital cameras have some intervalometer functionality built-in, as a menu setting. Their range of functions is typically limited, but they still can be very useful for those sunset sequences over the Manhattan skyline.

Intervalometers: it’s more than time lapse!

The Canon Timer Remote Control TC-80N3

This optional device can open up a world of possibilities for the creative photographer. The key to its outstanding versatility is that it does more than simply tell the camera to take a few pictures over a short increment of time.

For starters, it functions beautifully as a conventional electronic cable release. There’s a large button that acts just like the camera’s shutter button. A half-press wakes up the camera and activates AF; a full press fi res the shutter. Like most electronic “cable releasese”, it has a sliding switch to lock the button for long Bulb exposures, so you don’t have to hold it down with your thumb. Without activating any of its built-in timer capabilities, it is a great accessory for shake-free shooting when working from a tripod.

There are many uses for an accessory intervalometer, and we’ll explore a few that are possible with Canon’s Timer Remote

Control TC-80N3.


Mirror-up shooting with an electronic remote switch

Shooting with a remote control unit and the camera’s mirror locked-up is defi nitely possible. The following discusses what’s possible with nearly all Canon EOS digital SLRs, but many other brands/models have similar capabilities.

For critical shooters who want the maximum possible sharpness, it’s long been known that locking the camera’s mirror up before taking a high-magnifi cation picture can signifi cantly reduce subtle vibrations and thus result in sharper pictures. This is especially so at shutter speeds in the range of 1/125th sec-ond down to about ¼ or ½ second, which seem most susceptible to blurs from mirror vibration when you’re tripod-mounted.

The TC-80N3 plugs into the 3-pin remote control socket on the EOS models mentioned directly above, and has a 2.6 foot (80cm) long cable. Canon sells an accessory extension cable that’s 33 feet (about 10m) long, so if you need to be positioned away from the camera for wired remote control, this is possible.

Even though we’ll discuss what’s possible using the TC-80N3’s timer functions, for photographers who simply want an electronic “cable release”, and don’t feel they need the timer functionality, Canon also sells a less-expensive remote control called the Remote Switch RS-80N3. And for EOS Digital Rebel shoot-ers, there’s a similar electronic device called the Re-mote Switch RS-60E3.

Canon Timer Remote Control TC-80N3This compact and affordable accessory has an amazing range of

possibilities within its timer functions. And of course, it can also be used as a conventional cable release as well.


With most Canon EOS digital SLRs, there’s a Custom Function to allow shooting with the mirror locked-up. Once this is activated on the camera’s menu, a full press of the shutter button — or the remote control’s button — will raise the mirror fully (this does black-out the viewfi nder). Now, the shoot-er has up to 30 seconds to fully press the button a second time, which will actually fi re the shutter and take the picture. The mirror will drop down to view-ing position after the picture is taken. The Canon electronic remote control switches are all capable of working with mirror lock-up activated, as just de-scribed.

Canon’s top-of-the-line EOS-1D Mark III and EOS-1Ds Mark III have an added option for mirror lock-up: with these cameras, there’s an additional set-ting called “Enable: Down with SET”. This allows a photographer to lock-up the mirror with one press of either the camera’s or remote controller’s shutter button, and keep the mirror locked-up for more than one picture. The mirror will return to its down posi-tion when the photographer presses the SET button on the back of the camera body.

Mirror lock-up is easy to combine with an electronic remote switch. Here, it was used for a 30 second exposure. This is a conven-

tional, manned shot, where the photographer pressed the remote control’s button once to lock-up the mirror, and a second time to

take the photo.© Rudy Winston


The TC-80N3’s timer functions

This accessory has four separate variables that can be input by the photographer, either one at a time, or in combination.

• Self-timer:The TC-80N3 can count-down a pre-set amount of time, and begin shooting after this time has elapsed. Any value from 1 second to 99 hours 59 minutes and 59 seconds can be dialed-in. Example: if you set a camera up at 1:00pm, and want it to begin shooting sunset scenes at 5:00pm, you could set the self-timer to 4 hours and 00 minutes. This would tell it to begin shooting in four hours.

• Interval:Dial-in the length of time between two or more pictures, from 1 second to 99 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds.Example: in Art Wolfe’s shots of stars, he set the interval timer to take a new picture every 40 seconds.

• Long exposure time:EOS cameras can take timed exposures down to 30 full seconds. With the TC-80N3, if the camera is set to Bulb mode, you can dial-in the length of a long exposure. Again, range is 1 second to 99 hours, 59 minutes, 59 seconds.Example: A long, single exposure of star trails could be set for one hour.

• Frames:Dial-in the number of frames you want the TC-80N3 to manage, anywhere from 1 to 99. If you set this to “00”, the remote controller will shoot an unlimited number of frames (or at least, it’ll shoot until you run out of memory card space!)Example: Art Wolfe took about 1,000 low-resolution JPEG images to make his moving stars movie with QuickTime™ software. Setting the frame counter to 00 allowed him to let the camera shoot continually.

Conventional intervalometer operation allowed these three shots of a sunrise to be taken out of a hotel window, 10 minutes apart.© Rudy Winston


The versatility of this remarkable device is that these features can be combined, allowing many types of un-manned photography. Possibilities range from a sequence of sunrise shots to a progression of pictures of a construction site, taken at the same time every day.

In a sequence like the sunrise above, the TC-80N3 could be set up the night before to begin shooting a cer-tain length of time after you initially activate it. You could then dial in the number of shots you wanted, and the time interval between each one. You wouldn’t even need to be in the room for it to take the pictures you need.

Summary

An intervalometer made Art Wolfe’s impressive video of star trails easy to photograph. Otherwise, he would have needed to sit by

the camera and manually fi re the camera about 1,000 times, every 40 seconds.

© Art Wolfe

Any type of intervalometer can be fun to experiment with, and can certainly extend the range of possible pictures you can shoot with a digital camera. But the Canon Timer Remote Control TC-80N3 goes beyond ordinary timer control. Art Wolfe refers to it as “a fancy cable release”, but in fact, it’s a bit more than that. Combining two or more of its timer func-tions makes a host of remote operations possible, and the creative possibilities are nearly endless. One look at Art Wolfe’s QuickTime™ video of mov-ing stars is a great example of this. Interval shooting is something anyone who uses a tripod should con-sider experimenting with, and the relative affordabil-ity of the Canon TC-80N3 makes it very attractive for users of compatible Canon EOS cameras.


Art Wolfe is a master at coming up with new and different images, often of scenes we’ve all viewed hundreds of times before. Every one of us has seen beautiful daytime shots of cactus plants in the des-ert, but how many of us have seen a quick-time movie, taken over the course of 11 hours, showing the moving stars, with the cactus plants dominating the foreground? One important difference between the professional and the amateur photographer is that the pro knows he or she has to keep their eyes and options open, and deliver not just excellent im-ages, but unexpectedly excellent images.

There’s another point here, too: Art demonstrates that there are numerous ways to take images at night. We’ll briefl y discuss long exposures for star trails here, but it could apply to other night images as well.

Night photography options

Traditional long exposures of star trails

This is an easy technique for any photographer to try, as long as you have a camera with a “bulb” shutter speed setting, a tripod, and a locking cable release or electronic remote switch with a locking device to hold the shutter open.

By setting a low ISO (around 100-200), a mid-range aperture (such as f/5.6, f.8, or f/11), and leaving the camera’s shutter open in bulb mode for anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours, you can capture the stars as moving trails from the earth’s movement. Of course, a clear night out in the country is preferable to shooting with the hazey skies over a city, but even here, nice results are possible.

One excellent technique is to put some sort of object in the foreground, and have it silhouetted against the background of sky and moving stars. Trees or darkened buildings can be effectively used here. Just be sure that any man-made lights aren’t visible (lights in windows, street lights, etc) — they’ll appear grossly over-exposed in a 30-minute or one-hour long exposure.

There are different ways to photograph stars at night. Art Wolfe took the unusual step of shooting over 1,000 separate images,

and combining them into a QuickTime™ movie.© Art Wolfe


Digital cameras have both pros and cons for these types of long exposures. On the plus side, they don’t have the problem most fi lms did called “reciprocity failure”. This means that there’s no longer any need to add additional exposure time once your shutter speeds exceed 1 second, 10 seconds, or similar “long” exposure times.

However, digital cameras can build up digital noise as exposure times lengthen. This is different from the traditional noise increase we see when shooting or-dinary pictures at high ISOs. Even at ISO 100, a long exposure of 30 minutes or 60 minutes can build-up a substantial amount of additional noise. Many cam-eras have a menu setting or Custom Function for “Long Exposure Noise Reduction” (the key is “long exposure”); be sure to use this when shooting single long exposures of star trails.

Finally, there’s a limit with most digital cameras as to how long an exposure you can take, and that’s because of battery power. Digital cameras have to continuously supply power during long exposures, so even if you start with a freshly-charged battery, you’ll typically be limited to 1.5 to 2.5 hours of bulb exposure time before the battery is depleted and the exposure will end. (Keep in mind: Long Exposure Noise Reduction works by doubling the exposure time, and this has to be factored in when considering how long your battery will last. If you want to take a one-hour time exposure of star trails, with Long Exposure Noise Reduction, your camera will need two hours of battery power, without interruption).

Adding an optional battery grip that accepts two batteries, if your camera accepts one, is one way to lengthen the amount of bulb exposure time available for long-exposure shots. If you’re near a source of AC power, an optional AC adapter is also available for most digital SLRs. By plugging the camera into an AC outlet, you’ve essentially got an unlimited supply of power for long exposures.

Most modern digital SLRs have a separate menu setting to activate a special noise reduction function for long exposures.

It’s useful to turn this on, especially for time exposures that run several minutes or longer.


An alternate method: many short exposures merged into one

To counter problems of digital noise build-up, what some photographers will do is shoot a series of shorter exposures (anywhere from 30 seconds long to perhaps a few minutes) of stars, and then merge these to-gether in the computer, using an image-editing program. The result is one fi nished, high-resolution still pho-tograph. The stars appear to be moving in the same type of circular trails that you’d expect in a traditional long, single exposure. If you’re careful to shoot each successive picture with very little time in-between, the streaks will appear smooth and steady.


There are some advantages to this: shorter exposures mean much less of an issue with digital noise. You can still shoot at reasonable ISO settings (no need for high ISOs), as long as lens apertures aren’t too small. The wider the lens aperture, the brighter the stars will appear.

It’s beyond the scope of this article to discuss the software techniques used to merge dozens or hundreds of images together into one, but an on-line search should give you access to several different methods which can accomplish this.

You’ll still need a tripod and ideally a cable release to accomplish this. An intervalometer, which can fi re the camera repeatedly at set intervals, can make this a set-up which you can walk away from once you’ve gotten it started (see our Tip article about Intervalometers for some additional insight).

Camera battery life for long exposures is a cumulative thing, so if your camera specs claim 2 hours of long-exposure battery life, it’ll be about the same whether you take a single two hour exposure, or 240 thirty-sec-ond-long exposures.

Combining still exposures to make a movie

Art Wolfe’s EOS-1Ds Mark III isn’t a video camera. In fact, it has no video capability at all. But by shooting over 1,000 separate still images at low resolution and combining them in Apple’s QuickTime™ Pro software, it’s possible to take the series of still JPEG images and turn them into a movie fi le.

There are no doubt other software programs from various companies that are capable of the same thing, so anyone interested in this is well-advised to do a little on-line research to see what options are available. Also, while we’re certainly not endorsing any particular software program, it’s worth mentioning that the Quick-Time™ Pro software that Art Wolfe used is available for both Windows and Macintosh computers.

One important thing here is that for a movie fi le, you don’t need high-resolution images. In fact, since most movies run at 24 or 30 frames per second, to try this with full-resolution fi les from your digital SLR would result in absolutely gargantuan movie fi les that would be hard to view on all but the most powerful of comput-ers — let alone be something that could be viewed on-line or sent via e-mail. So here’s where your camera’s “small” resolution setting is probably a good starting point.

Art took individual still pictures that were each 30 seconds long. You’ll need to use high enough ISOs and suffi ciently wide apertures that the stars will appear, and you’ll also note that cactus plants in the foreground are visible. This can only be done if each 30-second exposure allows these to appear. So experiment be-forehand with your exposures, and then use the same exposure for each image once you start shooting. It’s probably best to use Manual exposure control here, rather than risk exposures shifting as you go along from an automatic exposure mode.


Summary

Even after the sun has set, there are a multitude of choices for great and memorable images. It’s important to keep your eyes open to opportunities, and to understand how the controls and settings in your camera can occasionally be used in unusual ways. But most important, perhaps, is simply approaching everything you see with an open mind and an open attitude. This can make great images a reality, even if you’re shooting in your own back yard.

As we noted in the Tips article about Intervalometers, this is a perfect time to use one. With exposures 30 seconds long, Art Wolfe set his intervalometer to take one shot every 40 seconds. By taking about 1,000 shots, this means his camera was at work for over 11 hours, recording movement throughout the night. The intervalometer allowed him to start the re-cording, and then return to the camera before dawn to shut it off.

One note: if you set the camera up in daylight, as Art did, and then return to it at night, it’s probably a good idea to cover it with a light-colored sheet to avoid any unnecessary heat build-up from the sun. Also, it should go without saying: if you set the camera up ahead of time like this, be sure it’s in a secure envi-ronment, so it’ll be there when you return!

Canon Timer Remote Control TC-80N3Combining many still images into a movie fi le is a perfect

time to consider an intervalometer, if one is available for your camera. Once set, it will automate the shooting of many suc-

cessive images, without the photographer having to press the shutter button for each shot.


This is an effect we’ve all seen in pictures at one time or another, and probably wondered what sort of fi lter was used to generate the effect. The fact is, as Art Wolfe explains in his short video tip, the sun can often be rendered with a star-like effect with no fi lter at all. It’s easy to do, and it is yet another way to take advantage of a wide or ultra-wide angle lens in outdoor photography.

Star effects without a fi lter

Dramatic shots of the sun can be easily obtained, simply by com-bining a wide-angle lens with a small lens aperture.

© Art Wolfe

It’s simple: use small lens apertures

Creating this effect is yet another reason to get your camera out of the fully-automatic exposure settings, and take a little control yourself. Basically, all that’s needed for this effect is a wide-angle shot with the sun in the frame, taken at or near the lens’s smallest possible aperture, such as f/22. This is a perfect time to set your camera to Aperture-priority automatic exposure mode (this is the “Av” setting on the mode dial of Canon EOS cameras; some other brands indicate it by an “A”). Once set to aperture-priority, you simply dial in your aperture of choice. The higher the aperture number, the more likely you are to get this result.

It’s probably worth experimenting with your lens’s smallest aperture, and then taking additional shots with the aperture opened up one and two stops. In other words, if your smallest aperture (highest f-number) is f/22, you might want to take additional shots at f/16 and f/11, to see if there’s any noticeable change in the star-like appearance of the sun.


Metering back-lit shots with the sun in the frame

It’s easy to over-think this, and turn it into a struggle. Generally, if you focus upon any fore-ground object (like the cactus plants in Art’s pic-tures), using your camera’s standard Evaluative me-tering will generally give you a good starting point. A quick check on your camera’s LCD monitor will let you know if the exposure is similar to what you want. The aperture-priority exposure mode usually works well when combined with Evaluative or Cen-ter-weighted metering.

Another technique that works well for silhouette type shots is to use your camera’s Spot or Partial light metering, and take a careful meter reading off of the sky slightly to the side of the sun (be sure not to look directly into the sun!). Either lock this reading with your camera’s AE Lock control, or alternatively switch to Manual exposure, dial-in a small lens ap-erture, and adjust shutter speed so that the meter indication in your camera’s fi nder tells you that your exposure for the sky is right-on — this is a good starting point.

Regardless, for these types of shots, your initial meter reading is just a starting point. Be ready to use your camera’s +/- Exposure Compensation, if you’re in Aperture-priority mode, or to manually change shutter speeds or apertures if you’re using Manual exposure mode.

No matter what method you use to determine exposure, consider it a starting point. Here, applying one stop of deliberate under-expo-sure created both a more dramatic silhouette, as well as highlight-ing the sun. Shot at f/22, using a 16-35mm ultra-wide zoom lens.

© Rudy Winston

Auto Exposure Bracketing can help!

Another feature that can be very useful is Auto Exposure Bracketing, which lets you take 3 or more succes-sive shots of the same subject, with exposure changed for each one. Nearly all digital SLR cameras have this capability, and this is an ideal time to use it.

Two more things about using the Auto Exposure Bracketing (AEB) feature in scenes like this: One great advantage is that since the camera is automatically varying exposure between each shot, you don’t have to stop and turn any dials or manipulate any controls. If you’re hand-holding the camera, AEB makes it a lot easier to maintain consistent composition from one shot to the next.


(From top: Auto Bracketing Plus 1, Normal, and Minus 1)(Auto Exposure Bracketing can be a valuable tool to give you vari-ety in these types of shots. Here, bracketing was set to take three

images, each with exposure one stop apart.arises.© Rudy Winston

Secondly, with most cameras, you can combine Auto Bracketing of 3 or more shots with exposure compensation. Usually, AEB tries to take a shot at what the camera feels is correct exposure, one shot over-exposed, and one shot under-exposed (you dial-in the amount of over/under exposure when setting up AEB). However, to generate impressive silhouettes and a dramatic sunburst, you generally want to under-expose, or darken, your shots. So what you can do is combine AEB with your camera’s Exposure Compensation. Set the compensation in the minus direction (for example, minus one stop). Then, access your AEB and set the amount of dif-ference between each shot — let’s say, one full stop here, too (although it could be any amount you like). Now, what would happen is the camera would take three shots: One right-on, one 1 stop under, and one two stops under. In other words, you’d by-pass the over-exposed AEB shot by applying minus expo-sure compensation.

With Canon EOS digital SLRs, such as the EOS-1Ds Mark III that Art Wolfe is using, Auto Exposure Bracketing can also be used in Manual exposure mode as well as an auto exposure mode like P, Tv, or Av. By default, it varies the shutter speed to adjust exposure when you’re in M mode, which is ideal for this type of shooting.


Partially hide the sun, or have it fully visible?

Art Wolfe makes the point that in this type of shoot-ing, you can get great results by positioning some-thing like a tree limb, leaves, or a cactus plant so that it partially blocks the sun, and just a bit of it is peeking out. This can signifi cantly reduce lens fl are, improving the quality of these strongly back-lit pic-tures. It also produces an different look of the sun than most viewers are accustomed to seeing, and sometimes can result in a more memorable picture.

However, the star-burst effect is absolutely possible if the sun is up in the sky by itself. Sometimes, you may not have the option of partially hiding the sun, if it’s high in the mid-day sky. If so, you can still put on that wide-angle lens and get these types of shots, so if you see a scene where it’ll work, go for it!

Partially shielding the sun with a foreground object, as seen here, can cut lens fl are and still allow a star-burst effect to show. This

shot was taken at f/22, again with a wide-angle zoom lens.© Rudy Winston

Sensor problems with the sun in the picture

Some digital SLRs use an imaging sensor called a “CCD” sensor. These sensors certainly can produce good images, but one characteristic they sometimes have is that when a super-bright, small object is in the frame (like the sun!), they can produce an effect called “blooming”. This means there can be a big white streak run-ning up and down much of the image, going directly through the sun. There are technical reasons for this that don’t bear going into here. The main point is just be aware that with certain digital SLRs, and nearly all com-pact point-and-shoot digital cameras, this can occur when you have the sun in the picture. So if you use this type of camera and you see this effect, in all likelihood, there’s nothing wrong with your camera or lens.

Canon EOS digital SLRs, and numerous other brands as well, use a different type of sensor called a “CMOS” sensor. These sensors are not prone to the blooming problem when there’s a super-bright light source in the frame.


Summary

Taking the sun and using it as a dramatic visual ele-ment in the frame is relatively easy to do, and as Art describes, it doesn’t even require exotic equipment to get started. Even the standard 18-55mm or similar zoom lenses used by many amateur and advanced amateur shooters will suffi ce, when used at their wide-angle settings. If you own an ultra-wide lens, such as a 10-22mm for digital cameras, a 16-35mm, or even a fi sheye lens, you’re even better positioned to take advantage of this technique. Just stop the lens down to a small aperture, and get creative!

For more dramatic star effects, consider a fi lter!

The star effect that Art Wolfe speaks of is defi nitely possible on a clear day with a wide-angle or ultra wide-angle lens, simply by stopping it down to near its smallest aperture. But more radical star-burst effects can certainly be obtained with different fi lters, designed for this purpose. There are far too many options to go into here, but some on-line searching will defi nitely give you an idea of some of the choices available. Star type fi lters come in both screw-in varieties, as well as units that are designed to be placed in a fi lter holder (which in turn is attached to the front of your lens). Just be sure that any fi lters or fi lter holders you attach will be compatible with the widest-angle lenses you own, and won’t darken the corners of your images.

The star-burst effect by using small lens apertures is most visible with wide-angle lenses. Here, a 15mm fi sheye lens was used with

a full-frame camera for an unusual effect.© Rudy Winston


Something made us lift up the camera to take that picture. Some subject or some scene inspired us to take a photograph. Usually, we take one or two pic-tures, put the camera down, and move on. Occasion-ally, our fi rst attempt works out well, and we get a picture that we’re happy with. Once in a while, it might even be an outstanding picture. Whatever triggered us to photograph this particular scene worked.

But in Art Wolfe’s video tip “Depth”, from Bhutan, he clearly points out that there’s usually more work to be done when you’re going after a great photograph. Coming upon a mountain monastery in the Himala-yas, Art realizes that the fi rst shots taken are only a starting point. For a great image, he needs to do something different. All photographers, regardless of their level of expertise, can benefi t from putting this into practice. Taking a variety of pictures of any subject is usually a good move. But taking steps to make each successive picture more interesting, more compelling, is often what makes a pro’s images different from those taken by an enthusiast.

Don’t stop shooting after the fi rst picture

Where to look for variety

Some of the things we can do to move beyond the fi rst picture are fairly obvious yet important steps. Changes in composition and lens focal length can quickly give you not just multiple pictures of a subject, but pictures that may say very different things. For instance, a telephoto shot of the mountain monastery might give the sense of a large, imposing structure. Switching to a wide-angle lens, and putting the monas-tery well off-center, might give the sense of a tiny, isolated man-made structure in the midst of the vast Hi-malayan mountains. Same subject, but two hypothetical pictures that have two very different messages.

The camera can help here, too. A shift in exposure can change the whole meaning of a picture, perhaps by changing from an average overall shot to a dramatic under-exposed one that turns the shadows black, and emphasizes only those forms being struck by direct sunlight. Sometimes, changing the white balance from a normal rendition to one that’s deliberately altered (for instance, getting a very blue result by switching to Tungsten WB on a cloudy day) can change a picture from a literal look at a subject to an interpretive one.

Art Wolfe didn’t stop with the fi rst shot he took of this monas-tery. By incorporating another visual element, he gives us a

very different look at this already spectacular scene.© Art Wolfe


In Art’s case, he took the fi rst shot he saw, of the distant monastery. His next step was to add something to the foreground of this subject, giving the viewer two complementary things to look at, adding strength to the image itself, and the message he’s trying to convey. There’s nothing wrong with providing different messages when photographing a scene. For instance, you may be on vacation and be photographing a beautiful building or monument. The subject itself may be stunning, but you may be surrounded by dozens or even hundreds of tourists, and that may be creating its own impression on you as well. Use this to your advantage — take those shots of the monument, but take a moment to shoot some additional pictures that put the monument into today’s context. The result can be a series of images that show what you saw, and perhaps also what you felt.

A dark, cloudy morning in Prague looks ordinary in the fi rst shot, but by underexposing slightly and switching to Tungsten white balance, a totally different picture results. It’s not what the photographer saw in the viewfi nder, but it may better convey

what he or she felt at the time.© Rudy Winston


Same building, but two totally different approaches to what the photographer saw at the time. The second shot may not be as pretty a picture, but it may say more about what the photographer encountered than the fi rst shot does.

© Rudy Winston

Another time to take more than one picture: shots of people

Art’s shots of the monastery didn’t involve people, but let’s face it: for many photographers, people are the subject they’ll most frequently take pictures of. Whether it’s shots of friends and family, or shots of people in exotic locations, it’s no exaggeration to say that people can bring life to the pictures we take.


People almost never think you’re going to take the second shot. When you do, you’ll often get a different expression than you did in the fi rst one.

© Rudy Winston

When photographing people, one of the main reasons to take more than one picture is that your subjects almost always think you’re not going to take the second picture. If you have people posing for you, you’ll often get very different expressions in the second and successive pictures than you did for the fi rst one — the one picture they were expecting. Without changing lenses, composition, exposure or even focus, this is a built-in way to get variety in your photographs.

Beyond that, any time you’re photographing a subject who is posing for you, there are opportunities to make changes and take additional photos that can have a different meaning than the fi rst one you took. Just like the monastery in the Himalayas, moving from a head-and-shoulders telephoto portrait to a wide-angle lens that puts a person in their environment, you’ve created two pictures that quite possibly say two differ-ent things. We can only scratch the surface of the variety of different things possible when photographing people, but the point is clear: don’t stop after you take the fi rst picture. Keep your mind open to the pos-sibilities around you, and listen to your subjects, too. They may have ideas for something that will result in a picture you hadn’t even considered!

If you’re shooting candid pictures of a person, where the subject is not under your direct control, you still will benefi t from continuing to shoot after the fi rst picture is taken. You never know what sort of expressions you’ll get from one moment to the next. By keeping the camera at your eye, and your fi nger on the shutter button, you’re always ready for opportunities that present themselves here. You’ll get more good pictures, and the odds increase for that really great shot every time you continue to shoot the same subject. (We’re obviously not speaking about simply fi ring away at six frames per second here; we’re stressing taking one picture at a time, with the photographer determining when each picture is taken.)


Summary

Art Wolfe’s point is clear: a good photographer becomes an excellent photographer by keeping their eyes and mind open, and by taking extra time and extra steps when an interesting subject is in their viewfi nder. It’s important to be aware that something made you want to take that picture in the fi rst place. But don’t stop there. Look beyond the fi rst impulse you had, take a little time, and see how many different yet complemen-tary images you can create after you’ve fi rst pressed the shutter button. As the saying goes, variety is the spice of life!


Telephoto lenses do a couple of important things, above and beyond simply bringing distant subjects closer. With their narrow angle of view, they include much less of the background into a scene. And if you focus on a foreground subject, it’s usually easy to throw the background slightly or completely out of focus.

There’s a time and a place for everything in photog-raphy, and on some occasions, it’s benefi cial to turn the background into a simple design element. Tele-photo lenses are ideally suited to this, and if you can get relatively close to whatever is in the foreground, you may not need a powerful super-telephoto lens to get this effect.

In Art Wolfe’s video tip “Muted Contrast”, he shows how a simplifi ed background actually adds to the design of his picture of the white prayer fl ags. It’s a case of less actually being more.

Simplify backgrounds with telephoto lenses

Train yourself to think of the backgrounds

The more you work with your different lenses, the more you’ll be able to predict what they’re likely to do if you use one for a particular subject or scene. And, the more familiar you are with a lens’s charac-teristics, the easier it becomes to see what happens as you initially compose and frame a scene.

With telephoto lenses, it’s easy to get lulled into thinking that if a background is out of focus, that you can essentially ignore it. In fact, Art Wolfe speaks openly about how it’s an important element that at-tracted him to the scene with the white prayer fl ags. Learning to really see what’s happening all around your viewfi nder when you fi rst size-up a subject is a vital skill for all photographers.

Much of this is just taking the time to look all around your camera’s viewfi nder and really observe how all

Telephoto lenses work great at turning backgrounds into a simple design element, as we’ll discuss in this article.

© Art Wolfe

Looking through the fi nder, you might ignore this out of focus back-ground. But the plain background forces attention on the subjects, and further has the benefi t of giving a look that we don’t really see

with our naked eyes.© Rudy Winston


parts of a scene come together. Beyond that, when you look at pictures in magazines, books, and even on-line, it’s a great skill to begin to see how all elements of a picture relate to one another. What works for you, what doesn’t work for you. The more confi dent you are about your ability to see the entire picture and work with everything that’s there, the better your pictures are likely to become.

The beauty of washed-out telephoto backgrounds

When a powerful telephoto lens is used, it’s common to see the background rendered so far out of focus that it becomes, in a way, its own design element. This is not the way human vision sees things, and by show-ing the viewer something he or she doesn’t see with their naked eye, you often show them a compelling photograph.

But it doesn’t require a 600mm lens to do this. Art Wolfe got relatively close to the prayer fl ags in the tips video, and using his 70-200mm f/4 lens, is able to throw the distant background totally out of focus, simply by focusing on the fl ags. Furthermore, Art has the foresight to realize that the muted, hazy blue mountain in the background will become its own design when it’s thrown out of focus. Beyond that, since a telephoto lens restricts how wide a view we’ll have of the background, it’s possible the shape of the mountain may not even be visible in the picture — his lens will in effect be zooming in on the middle of the actual mountain, with its sloped edges not visible.

Not all of us have the luxury of being able to photograph in the Himalayas. But even a city street can be rendered into a beautiful, non-distinct background if you shoot at a wide aperture and focus close with a telephoto lens.

The key is to simplify!

All this leads up to one thing: making backgrounds their own part of the composition, but simplifying them with the optical characteristics of today’s tele-photo lenses. We repeat — you don’t necessar-ily need to invest in an expensive 400mm f/2.8 or 600mm f/4 lens to get the effect Art speaks of. Sim-ply move in as close as you reasonably can to the primary subject, focus on it, and let the background quickly fall off.

But beyond simply letting the background go out of focus, it’s important to have a sense of what part of

If you’re close enough to your subject, even an 85mm lens can throw a background delightfully out of focus. Canon’s 85mm f/1.8 lens was used here, at its widest aperture, with a full-frame digital

SLR camera.© Rudy Winston


Summary

Just because a background is out of focus doesn’t mean it loses importance. It can actually embellish a scene, and contribute to forcing a viewer’s attention onto the subject you’ve focused upon in the fore-ground (such as Art Wolfe’s prayer fl ags). Don’t let yourself fall into the trap of just letting things happen in your pictures. Use the entire viewfi nder, look at your scene each time you take a picture, and appre-ciate what different lenses can do in different condi-tions. Armed with an awareness of your lenses and what they do to your backgrounds, you’ll be armed with another tool to take great pictures.

the background you should try to target in pictures. In Art’s case, it was pretty simple. He was going to use the cool blue mountain behind the prayer fl ag. On the other hand, you may be shooting a portrait on a busy street. Do you include numerous elements like out of focus lights? Or do you change your angle slightly, so your lens is now on a plain, solid background element? Again, the key is being aware of what the possibilities are, and how they’ll infl uence your pictures. When in doubt, try shooting it different ways!

The background of a scene can sometimes be almost as impor-tant as the main subject. Knowing the possibilities, Art Wolfe was able to take advantage of the conditions and his equipment to get

a powerful photograph.


We often think of composing pictures with a primary subject of some sort in the foreground, and usually let the background recede to some-thing of less visual importance Many times, this is an effective way to shoot: the camera easily concentrates on our foreground subject, and it can produce strong photographs of anything from fl owers to people.

But sometimes, we have no choice but to shoot something in the distance. It may be a major but distant attraction, or perhaps just something that caught the photographer’s eye. In Art’s case, he clearly wanted to photograph the monastery in Bhutan, but knew he needed something more.

In cases like these, with a little thought and effort it’s usually possible to use the foreground as a design element or to enhance in some way, yet still direct the viewer’s attention to the primary subject, which is in the background. For Art Wolfe, the solution was to use the prayer fl ags already strung in the foreground as a part of his photograph of the monastery. Rather than view them as an obstacle, he took advantage of them to produce a photograph that was better than the monastery alone would have been.

Use foreground information in a scene

Even though he’s photographing a distant subject, Art Wolfe regarded the prayer fl ags in the foreground as an opportunity,

not an obstacle.

Out-of-focus areas can dress up a picture

Especially with a telephoto lens, when you focus on a distant subject, any foreground objects will tend to fall out of focus. Having large areas out of focus can actually direct your viewer’s eye toward the primary subject in your scene: remember, a viewer’s eye is naturally attracted to things in a picture that are sharp. The following example of a stop sign is an obvious example.

Also, in the same way that an out-of-focus background can still provide visual information in a photograph, the same can be true of foreground areas that are out of focus. In the shot of the stop sign, it’s clear that this was taken in an area with fall foliage, and that that’s as much a part of the picture as the subject itself. In Art’s


Even though the subject here takes up only a small part of the scene, in the lower-right corner, the rest of the foreground areas

provide strong information to the viewer, and guide their eye toward the actual subject.

© Rudy Winston

A telephoto landscape shot with out-of-focus fl owers in the fore-ground intentionally placed in the scene.

© Rudy Winston

An ordinary scene of two boats on a man-made lake is enhanced by an out-of-focus iron fence a few feet from the camera. Rather

than making an effort to shoot around the fence, the photographer shot through the fence and used it to produce a different image.

© Rudy Winston

Telephoto lenses are particularly useful for throwing foreground elements out of focus. In fact, it’s usu-ally very diffi cult or impossible for a telephoto lens to have suffi cient depth-of-fi eld to give you a sharp-ly focused background subject along with sharp foreground objects. Instead of banging your head against a wall trying to get a telephoto lens to do something it optically cannot, use the lens’s charac-teristics to your advantage. A distant shot of a land-scape or scenic picture can often be effective when taken with a telephoto lens. By including something in the foreground, that’s radically out of focus, you can introduce a playful element into a scene.

shot of the monastery with the prayer fl ags, there’s obviously a strong visual and actual link between the fl ags and the monastery. Sometimes, there’s not an obvious link, but you can still put an element into the frame that turns an ordinary picture into something vi-sually different.


Foregrounds with wide-angle lenses

A wide-angle lens’s tendency to keep lots of things in sharp focus, and to emphasize foreground elements by making them larger, usually leads photographers to put primary subjects in the foreground. After all, it’s an effective way to leverage a wide-angle lens’s properties. But especially if your actual subject is a large, expansive one, it’s possible to use the wide-angle lens to bring in foreground elements — even though they may not be the primary subject in the scene.

Another technique is to bring the wide-angle lens close to foreground subjects, and have the cam-era appear to be “looking through” whatever is in the foreground toward the primary subject that’s farther away. Usually, a wide-angle lens will tend to render everything fairly sharp, but if you place the lens close to a foreground object, focus into the distance, and use a wide aperture, you can blur-out the foreground elements to some degree.

Even if the primary subject is in the distance, a wide-angle lens can bring foreground elements into a picture that strengthen it.

Here, the subject was the tower in the background, but adding the foreground information gives us a powerful photograph.

© Rudy Winston


Summary

Art Wolfe knew his shot of the monastery “needed more”. Changing his shooting position slightly, and in-corporating items in the foreground did the trick for him. You won’t always have conveniently-placed fl ags in the foreground of every scene you shoot, but anything from tall grass and tree leaves to another building can sometimes be incorporated into your foregrounds. Shots of distant subjects often need something to make them a strong, memorable photograph. Putting something in the foreground can be an effective step in getting powerful photographs.


With the explosive growth of the internet, viewers now expect to see more than just a few still images. Multimedia is the buzzword of the day, and whether people are looking at a company’s web site or simply viewing a friend’s images, video content is progres-sively becoming the expected norm.

For years, serious photographers have wanted that camera that can handle both stills and video cover-age and deliver professional-quality results in both. Certainly, there have been compact still digital cam-eras with video capability, but there are compromises with image quality in both stills and video for critical users. Many of today’s digital camcorders will let us-ers either pull a still image from moving video footage (a so-called “frame grab”), or even sometimes snap a separate picture while video is being recorded. How-ever, the quality of these still images is only so-so, especially if they need to be used for any printed ap-plication.

Canon’s new EOS 5D Mark II, introduced in late 2008, changes the game completely. For the fi rst time, professional photographers and serious, dedicated amateurs can have both stunning still image quality, along with video quality that not just matches, but in some areas exceeds, what most professional video camcorders can deliver. It’s a 21-million pixel, full-frame digital SLR with true 1920x1080 progressive HD video capability. As more and more photographers fi nd new uses for video content, the EOS 5D Mark II arrives and allows them to do it, without compromising still photographic quality.

Video revolution: Canon EOS 5D Mark II

It looks like a traditional digital SLR, but the new EOS 5D Mark II has ground-breaking video capabilities. Of course, it’s a superb

still camera, too!

Video basics:

The EOS 5D Mark II allows users to record either full 1920x1080 HD video, or web-ready 640x480 video, onto the camera’s CF card. Video is recorded at 30 fps. Sound can either be recorded by a basic built-in microphone (it’s actually located directly under the “5D” logo on the front of the camera), or photographers can use available external microphones that plug into the standard-size 3.5mm diameter connector on the side of the camera.


Up to 12 minutes of continuous, uninterrupted high-defi nition video can be recorded at a time, before the camera requires users to pause for a second or two (video recording can begin almost imme-diately, by simply pressing the camera’s rear SET button). Twelve minutes of HD video takes up about 4GB of space on the CF card. Multiple “clips” can be recorded on a card, up to the card’s total capacity.

Any Canon EF, TS-E, or MP-E lens can be used for video recording with the EOS 5D Mark II, and zoom lenses can be zoomed manually by the photographer during recording. Thus, photographers can record video using the same lenses they now use for every-day still shooting. Video recording is possible with any Canon EF, TS-E, or MP-E

lens when used on the EOS 5D Mark II.

Video operation

To begin video recording, photographers must fi rst “enable” both Live View and video recording in the camera’s set-up menu. Once this has been done, the camera must be put in Live View mode (so that view-ing with the LCD monitor is active) — this is easily done by pressing the rear Live View button to the left of the viewfi nder. Then, a press on the rear SET but-ton activates video recording in less than ½ second; a red icon appears in the upper-right corner of the LCD monitor to alert the photographer that video is being recorded. Pressing the SET button again stops video recording.

Priority is always placed upon high-quality still shoot-ing with the EOS 5D Mark II. Even during video re-cording, a still image can be taken by fully pressing the camera’s shutter button. While a still image is taken, there will be brief pause in the video, with the last-recorded video frame frozen for approximately ½

Video operation is simple with the EOS 5D Mark II. After enabling Live View and video recording in the set-up menu, press the Live

View button and then the rear SET button to start video recording.

Set ButtonLive View Button


Focusing during video recording

Manual focus can always be used with any Canon EF, TS-E, or MP-E lens during video recording with the EOS 5D Mark II. In fact, during actual video recording, Canon recommends manual focus in most situations.

Autofocus during video recording is possible, using either the Live Mode AF or the Face Detect Live Mode AF. However, there are some important limitations when either type of Live Mode AF is employed during live video recording, including audible noise which can be picked-up by the camera, and the system’s need to focus on a well-lit, contrasty subject. With the EOS 5D Mark II’s outstanding 3-inch, high-resolution LCD monitor, many experienced users will fi nd that Manual focus is often the quickest and most effective way to change focus during video recording. The full-time manual focus feature on most mid-range and high-end Canon lenses is a real benefi t here, allowing AF if the shooter wants by pressing the rear AF-ON button, and still allowing totally free manual focusing by simply turning the lens’s focus ring — even if it’s still in the AF mode.

second; video recording immediately resumes after that. Still images will be taken at the image quality set-tings currently in effect when the shutter button is pressed.

The EOS 5D Mark II aims for maximum ease of operation, along with simply superb image quality, during video recording. Exposure control for video shooting is always fully automatic, with the camera adjusting ISO, video shutter speed, and lens aperture based on the prevailing ambient light conditions. Unlike many upper-end camcorders, these settings cannot be overridden for video recording on the EOS 5D Mark II. The camera does allow using Exposure Compensation (to deliberately lighten or darken the video, up to +/- two stops), and AE Lock is also possible with the camera’s rear AE Lock button.

Video image quality

The EOS 5D Mark II uses an imaging sensor that’s far larger than nearly any professional digital cam-corder, regardless of price. Because of this, it has two characteristics that separate it from virtually all other camcorders: it makes limited depth-of-fi eld easy to achieve with many Canon lenses, and it has light sen-sitivity in dim conditions that’s essentially unmatched by any other video recording device.

ISOs are automatically set for video recording, ranging from 100 thru 6400, depending upon lighting conditions. (ISO can be expanded with a custom function to range up to 12,800.) Even at ISOs such as 3200 or 6400, the low levels of digital noise and the richness of color are breathtaking. Video shooters ac-


Video image quality is outstanding with the EOS 5D Mark II, especially its low-light capability. A full-frame sensor — signifi cantly

larger than the sensors used on most camcorders — is the chief reason why.

customed to taking large quantities of lighting gear and even portable generators with them on-location will fi nd that many of these tasks can be recorded with the EOS 5D Mark II using nothing more than a fast Canon EF lens and available light.

Even in bright sunlight, the EOS 5D Mark II astounds with its broad tonal range and outstanding ability to record highlight details.

Video is recorded in the industry-standard H.264 compression method (MPEG-4 AVC equivalent). The digital video fi les can be edited using the basic soft-ware supplied with the camera, and can also be ed-ited by most popular high-end video editing software programs. Video is not compatible with the so-called “AVCHD” format used by some video camcorders.

Summary

While Canon’s new EOS 5D Mark II makes no effort to replace the traditional high-end camcorder (such as those used to record the “Travels to the Edge” series), the fact is that this camera completely changes the game for many professional photographers. They now have a still camera in a compact form-factor which can easily record video of simply outstanding quality — exceeding, in some ways, the quality of professional camcorders. But at the same time, it’s got still image quality that is arguably the best in the industry, with a full-frame CMOS sensor, 21 million pixels, and outstanding high-ISO image quality.

Whether you’re an amateur enthusiast who loves photography and the excitement of digital imaging, or a full-time professional, the video capabilities of the EOS 5D Mark II expand what a photographer can achieve in a given situation. For pros, the potential is there every day to be more valuable to their clients. And for the enthusiast, it offers a way to take advantage of the fast-growing multi-media opportunities on the inter-net and elsewhere. It’s not often that a photographic product can be hailed as “revolutionary”, but it’s not a stretch with the EOS 5D Mark II.


The video tips for this episode are interesting, because they give us insight into how this beautiful PBS series was fi lmed. Often, when we watch TV, we’re drawn into what we’re watching, and lose sight of what’s required to bring the outstanding moving images onto our TVs at home.

The video cameras used by the fi lm crew in this series may look large and imposing, but in fact, they’re re-markably light and compact for camcorders of this type. In the tips video, you can hear professional videog-raphers speaking of how these compact high-defi nition video cameras made globe-trotting with Art Wolfe a pleasure.

Traditionally, photographers have gravitated to either still images or moving images, and devoted their atten-tions there. But in today’s world, the internet has changed the playing fi eld. Whether it’s your aunt and uncle who want to see your children growing up, or a professional photographer working with his or her clients, us-ers expect to be able to see both still and moving images on-screen. The internet is becoming more and more of a fact of life in sharing of images for all photographers. Even the most dyed-in-the-wool still photographer really needs to think how adding occasional video content to his or her imagery will expand their appeal to their audience.

Today’s HDV camcorders

The professional Canon XL-H1 camcorder may seem large, but to the pros shooting Travels to the Edge, its extreme light weight and compact size made it a pleasure to use. For consumers, far smaller units are available, such as Canon’s VIXIA HG20.

Canon XL-H1 camcorder Canon VIXIA HG20


Types of camcorders available

We’ll speak very quickly and generally about what’s available, and priced within range of most photographers. Clearly, the heavyweight professional camcorders typically used by videographers (which can cost over $30,000) are not likely to be on the shopping list of most still photographers who are thinking about adding some video capability.

Video camcorders can record moving fi les onto small tapes, onto removable memory cards (much like a still digital camera), onto removable DVDs, or into built-in memory in the camera itself. Typically, they have a permanently-attached zoom lens, although some high-end models like the Canon XL-H1 series used to fi lm “Travels to the Edge” have fully interchangeable lenses. Zoom lenses for camcorders often have very broad ranges, compared to what still photographers are accustomed to.

At moderate price points, most camcorders record standard-defi nition or high-defi nition fi les, using a single (and physically small) imaging sensor. As you go higher in price, you can encounter “3-chip” cameras, which have three separate sensors — one each for red, green and blue information. These can be expected to deliver higher image quality, but of course at a higher price.

Please note that in nearly all cases, the large cameras you see news photographers and TV professionals working with are far more expensive cameras, with larger imaging sensors for superior image quality. These are the camcorders that sell for well into fi ve-fi gure prices. In the Tips video, you may recall a speaker saying how pleasantly surprised he and the crew were at the image quality from the Canon XL-se-ries camcorders they used, which are small-sensor cameras. They benefi t from being far smaller over-all, as well as lighter, but are entirely capable of pro-ducing outstanding HDTV-quality video.

Features on camcorders

Like compact digital cameras, consumer-lev-el camcorders try to keep things simple for the video shooter. They frequently have few adjust-able features, and emphasize easy and automatic operation. Frankly, for still photographers venturing into video for the fi rst time, this is often just fi ne.

Certainly, as you begin to explore more advanced

As with digital SLRs, higher-end digital video camcorders have more user-control available. First-time video shooters may get by

perfectly well with simpler, fully automatic video cameras.


Summary

For many of us with years of experience shooting still pictures, video was always something other people dealt with. But in today’s world, it’s not just amateurs at Disney World and professionals follow-ing Art Wolfe around the world for TV who are work-ing with video. Many photographers who previously shot only stills are beginning to realize that video presents an opportunity to add to their imaging, and there’s increasing demand to have multi-media con-tent when people view images.

A compact camcorder may be just the ticket for tell-ing visual stories in a different way. Think about tak-ing a look at what’s available the next time you walk into a camera dealer. And think about what goes into fi lming a spectacular TV series like “Travels to the Edge”. Art Wolfe isn’t the only master at work!

Video for the web

As appealing as true high-defi nition video sounds, it comes at a price: large fi le sizes. This is little problem for users who want to simply connect their camcorder to a large HDTV and play back their video. But if you’re thinking about video for the reason so many still photographers are — making your fi les available on-line — size becomes a major problem. Large, high-defi nition video fi les can play back poorly when viewed on-line, even with a high-speed connection. In almost all cases, you or your clients will want to edit video, and then reduce both its pixel size and further compress it, to make the video fi les smaller and much easier to play back on ordinary internet connections. Consider this if you’re thinking about a video camera.

Lightweight, professional camcorders were a key to the fi lming of Travel to the Edge. And in spite of their smaller sensors and

far lower cost, they produced outstanding quality footage for the PBS series.

HD camcorders, you get more available features and controls — much as you’d expect on mid-range and upper-end digital SLRs compared to simple, entry-level models. Some of the variables you begin to see are adjustable frame rates (30 fps, 24 fps, etc.), different manual exposure adjustments and overrides, and many more.

True HDTV resolution in today’s marketplace is 1920x1080 pixels. Some affordable camcorders, like Can-on’s compact and robust VIXIA HF11, are capable of recording in true 1920x1080 resolution. Many others record at a lower fi gure, such as 1440x1080 pixels — but these can still provide stunning detail and color when viewed on a top-notch HDTV.


The video recording team has a chance to speak about the fi lming of the series “Travels to the Edge” in two Tips videos for Episode 11. Along with lots of insight into how this marvelous PBS series was fi lmed, they make an interesting observation about how working with Art Wolfe, they actually picked up some insights into shooting wildlife.

One of the main diffi culties in shooting effective shots of wildlife is simply getting close enough to it when you’re out in the wild. Many birds and animals simply won’t let humans approach them, and even if you’re equipped with a 600mm or 800mm telephoto lens, it can severely hamper your ability to get good photos.

Positioning in wildlife photography

It looks traditional on the outside, but the EOS 5D Mark II has video-recording capability that’s unmatched by many camcorders,

along with its ability to shoot 21-million pixel still images.

Moving closer, without being observed

It’s beyond the scope of this article to go into all the techniques skilled nature photographers use to ap-proach timid wildlife. But even in the brief Tips video, it’s clear that the video team learned a lot by following a master like Art Wolfe.

Art made a very interesting point by asking the video crew to walk alongside a fence, so that their silhou-ettes wouldn’t be apparent against the horizon to the black neck cranes that they were attempting to photograph. It’s one thing to walk quietly, but entirely another to be thinking about how you’ll appear from the animal’s perspective. But it’s a great example of how the best photographers don’t just take great pic-tures, they think about all aspects of what’s needed to make great pictures happen.

Art Wolfe had the foresight to use a fence so that the video team’s silhouettes wouldn’t be visible to nearby birds. Years of

experience allow Art to understand how various animals see, think and react.


Using surroundings, and shooting from above

Two more great points were made by the video team about how Art shoots wildlife. One was to try to posi-tion the camera above the wildlife, to minimize the chances of them being alarmed by the camera. By itself, this is something many of us probably wouldn’t think of when trying to photograph elusive wildlife.

Another excellent point was Art positioning himself within white prayer fl ags in Bhutan. As we saw in an earlier Tips video, these prayer fl ags were an actual subject he spent time photographing. But he had the insight to use them as a place to stand within, to reduce his visibility to birds in fl ight as he photo-graphed them. Very few of us would probably have the foresight to use a subject like these prayer fl ags in two totally different ways, but Art did — another example of his ability to think on his feet, and a great lesson for all prospective nature shooters.

Art Wolfe very cleverly used his surroundings to conceal himself and his camera from birds he’s photographing. In this case, he

stood among the same prayer fl ags on a mountaintop in Bhutan that he’d photographed earlier.

Summary

As mentioned a moment ago, there’s an entire book that could be written about the techniques and under-standing that top nature shooters have to make themselves invisible to the subjects they’re photographing. But Art Wolfe’s techniques obviously impressed the “Travels to the Edge” video crew, and they learned a lot working with him.

Aspiring photographers should always keep their eyes and ears open, to learn techniques that they can use when photographing in different conditions. Even if you’re not an avid bird or animal photographer, it’s entirely possible that things you learn watching this great PBS series, or seeing the Tips videos and the written Tips articles on the Can-on Digital Learning Center site, can be put to use by you at some point in the future.

One of the most important, yet diffi cult, aspects of great nature photography is being able to get close enough to wildlife for great

shots — without alarming or endangering them, or yourself.


For years, photographers have known about the so-called “rule of thirds”, which basically says that pictures are more compelling when a central sub-ject is placed off-center, about one-third of the way from an edge. This applies to actual subjects like people’s faces, as well as horizon lines. Compared to dead-centered compositions, this rule of thumb has a lot going for it, and many advanced amateurs practice it on a regular basis.

In fact, learning to move subjects off-center is one of the fundamental steps in a photographer’s develop-ment from a snap-shooter to a true photo enthusi-ast. An understanding of the so-called rule of thirds is easy to acquire, and easy to put into practice in many circumstances.

But sometimes, you can be even more radical. Art Wolfe demonstrates this vividly in his video tip “Ho-rizon Composition”, which might be better named “extreme composition”. His point is clear: something made the photographer stop, look at a scene, and want to photograph it. Why not have that element dominate the frame?

Awareness of the entire frame

Using the entire frame like this calls for an aware-ness of what’s happening over the entire picture area. Sounds basic, but many shooters lose this by not holding the camera properly, and by not using the viewfinder correctly.

It’s vital to see the whole picture area, and with the eye-level viewfinder, that means pushing the camera into your face and having the eyepiece as close to your eye as possible. Watch amateur shooters hold their SLRs, and you’ll often see that that camera is held an inch or more from their eye. With modern SLRs, it’s impossible to see out to the edges of the frame when holding the camera this way. By pressing the rear

Off-center composition

The shot of the boats at dawn illustrates the Rule of Thirds, which has long been a part of photography. Art’s composition

puts the horizon line far more off-center, for a much more dramatic effect.

© Art Wolfe

© Rudy Winston


of the camera into the photographer’s nose, the eyepiece naturally comes right to the user’s eye — and it suddenly becomes easy to see the edges of the frame, as well as the shooting information display, with only slight side-to-side (or up-and-down) movement of the photographer’s eye.

Another great tool with modern digital SLRs is Live View. In fact, any time the camera is on a tripod, Live View gives a great way to see the whole picture area with little stress. It’s 100% accurate, corner to corner, with all EOS digital SLRs (as of January, 2009). In other words, what you see out to the corners is what you’ll get in the actual digital file.

Something in the scene needs to be boss

How elements in a picture are arranged in the frame speaks volumes about what the photographer was thinking, and what his or her visual priorities were. In Art’s example, he openly says that the vast, flat steppes of the Mongolian landscape needed more to make a dramatic picture. The brooding sky with a developing storm provided just that. And by mini-mizing the role of the flat grassland — but not totally eliminating it — he make it very clear in the picture what he’s trying to photograph. If he’d put the hori-zon line half-way through the picture, the viewer is much more confused: is Art trying to show us some-thing in the flat grassy landscape, or something in the sky? Which is more important? Which captured his eye, and made him want to take the picture?

In any picture, something has to be boss. The more clearly the photographer gets that across, the stron-ger a picture he or she likely has produced. There are numerous ways to make some element of the scene dominate a picture, but simply composing so that it takes up a lot of the frame is one very strong way to make a visual statement.

The effect is similar to Art’s photograph, even though here, the photographer included a vast area of foreground rather than

sky to make a strong visual statement. Just as in Art’s shot, it’s obvious that the sky is his main subject; here, it’s clear that the

boardwalk is the primary element in the frame.© Rudy Winston


Off-center subjects don’t always have to be large

Art moved his camera well off-center, so that the sky takes up nearly the entire frame. But some-times, you may be shooting something smaller than an entire sky. It’s still possible to move a subject far off-center and make an effective statement about your subject and its surroundings. Once again, an awareness of the frame and how your subject relates to its surroundings is a key, but it’s something that photographers can develop. Part of it is making a commitment to start placing subjects off-center, and from time to time to ex-periment with moving subjects far off-center. The “rule of thirds” works well in many situations, but as the saying goes, rules are sometimes made to be broken.

Summary:

Composition is always a subjective thing, and there’s no one single “right” way to take a picture. But open your eyes and your mind to the possibili-ties. A great way to start down this path is to see what experts like Art Wolfe are able to do when pre-sented with challenging yet beautiful subject mat-ter. Take different pictures of the same scene, and experiment with moving things around the frame. Become aware of how you’re using the eye-level viewfinder, and make a conscious effort to be more in charge of seeing the entire frame at all times. Look at pictures in magazines and books that show excellent photography, and start to analyze the scene and how the photographer dealt with it for that particular image.

The possibilities are endless, but it starts with a willingness to push the envelope, start moving things off-center, and once you’re comfortable with the “rule of thirds”, to start pushing the envelope again and see how things look when they’re well off-center.

It doesn’t take up the frame the way Art Wolfe’s dominating sky from Mongolia does, but there’s little question that the

stature that’s far off-center is still the primary subject in this picture. Don’t be afraid to experiment with moving a primary

subject far off-center!© Rudy Winston

Top photographers like Art Wolfe always are looking for ways to exploit their subjects. Sometimes, simply moving the camera to

change to an unexpected composition is enough to produce a memorable image.


Art’s video tip for this episode on painting with light revives an old-school technique that photographers have used for years. But even in today’s age of digi-tal SLRs with remarkable high-ISO capabilities, it’s sometimes rewarding to come up with an unusual image by slowing down, using lower ISOs, long shut-ter speeds and a tripod, and adding your own light to a scene.

Painting with light

Painting with Light is a technique that’s been around for a long time, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be used in digital im-aging. Art Wolfe combined a long shutter speed, tripod, and light from a flashlight to create an image that wouldn’t have

been possible otherwise.© Art Wolfe

How is it done?

As Art demonstrates in his Tips video, it’s a pretty easy process, once you’ve got a subject selected and the camera positioned on a tripod. Exposure control will require some experimentation. While most digital SLRs today are capable of automatically providing excellent exposures long after the sun has set, you must remember that exposure is calculated based on the ambient light before the picture is taken. When you paint with light, as Art does with the Mongolian monuments, the main source of light isn’t going to be visible to the camera until after the exposure starts.

Provide yourself a sufficiently long shutter speed to allow time to move your light source around your sub-ject, so it’s fully covered. You’ll note that Art didn’t just turn the light on for a moment or two and then turn it off. Instead, he moved it evenly around the surface of the monument, to illuminate it evenly, during a ten-second long exposure. Furthermore, he stood off to the side, so that the light would enhance the texture of the monument — if he’d stood right behind the camera and simply shined the light straight into the stone, the texture and detail would be lost by the flat lighting.

For most situations, it’s best to switch to either Manual exposure mode and pick a slow shutter speed such as 8, 15, or 30 seconds, or alternatively use the Bulb setting for longer exposures. Aperture should be stopped-down at least a stop or two for better image quality. And ISOs won’t usually need to be very high, unless you’re trying to build-up background lighting to avoid a black sky shortly after sunset (late at night, it’s almost impossible to avoid skies looking near-black unless you pick up the glow of city lights).


The light source:

Almost any portable light that can be aimed and moved around so that the subject is evenly lit can be used, and it doesn’t necessarily need to be super-powerful, either (unless you’re trying to illuminate a huge subject like a building). Art used a flashlight.

Since the camera won’t “see” this light source until the picture is taken (that is, until the shutter is al-ready open), the Auto White Balance setting won’t factor-in the hand-held light. In Art’s case, the tung-sten light of the flashlight was rendered in a beauti-ful golden color, since the camera was set to properly balance the daylight in the scene. If you’re using a conventional flashlight or similar tungsten light source, and you want the “painted” light to look white, at the very least you’ll need to switch your camera’s WB setting to Tungsten. Upper-end cameras that allow you to dial-in Kelvin WB settings allow even more control; to avoid the yellowish look, you may need to use the Kelvin WB setting and dial-in a reading lower than 3000K. The lower you set it, the whiter this type of light source will appear.

Keep in mind that this applies to a conventional battery-powered bulb only. If you’re using a hand-held light with a different type of bulb (fluorescent, LED, etc), you’ll need to experiment to see which white balance settings work for you.

You’ll need to experiment with exposure settings, though. There’s no one setting that will always work best. Digital cameras are a huge advantage here, since you can see the results of your work after each shot is taken, and make the appropriate changes as needed. For example, if Art had found that his first shot was too light, it’s easy to either switch to a smaller lens aperture, and/or change to a lower ISO setting — either will darken the next picture.

The painting with light technique is best done with the camera in Manual mode, rather than using automatic exposure. The

reason? The light you’re adding, like Art’s flashlight, is not seen or metered by your camera once exposure starts.


Painting with light, using flash

Yes, it’s possible to do this with an off-camera flash unit that’s hand-held as well. We’re not talking about conventional wireless TTL flash, like the wireless E-TTL system offered by Canon EOS digital SLRs. Instead, we mean taking any portable flash unit, and popping it multiple times with its Test button to even-ly light up a subject.

With many TTL-type flash units, if you simply pull it off the camera and press the Test button, it’ll fire at full manual power. Full flash power is usually too bright, if you’re close to your subject like Art was. If there’s a Manual flash mode (on the flash unit; we’re not talking about Manual mode on the camera), and you can manually dial-down the power, this is the time to do it. Repeated flash pops at 1/4, 1/8, or lower power levels will be far more controllable with small subjects like the Mongolian monument. You’ll need to move the flash so that each pop lights up different areas of the subject, to avoid hot-spots.

Exposure, again, is going to require some experi-menting. Aside from reverting to wireless TTL (which is designed to use ONE burst of flash, albeit from an off-camera speedlite), if you’re painting with light us-ing flash, you’ll be firing repeating pops of low-pow-er flash, building up light similar to how Art did with the monument in Mongolia. The only difference is you’re not using a continuous light source. Exposure is going to need to be Manual on the camera, and to change it, adjust aperture or ISO (shutter speed has no impact on flash exposure, although it will affect how ambient light in the background is recorded).

Painting with light can also be done with a hand-held flash unit. With most flashes, it’s best to switch to Manual flash exposure mode on the speedlite, and dial-down the power to a reduced level. The Canon Speedite 580EX II, for instance, allows the

user to lower its power from full to 1/128th.


If you try this with flash, be aware of the flash unit’s angle of flash coverage, too. Since you can’t see the light continuously in the same way Art could see how the flashlight illumination was lighting up the monu-ment, be careful that you’re not spreading flash over too wide an area, and lighting up the ground in front of the subject as well as the subject itself. The zoom flash head on many mid-range and high-end flashes can be very helpful here. Setting it to a higher zoom setting (such as 50mm, 70mm or 105mm of cover-age, instead of 35mm or 28mm) narrows its beam, and lets you be more selective about where each pop of light is going.

One final hint: for help in precisely aiming a flash any time you’re hand-holding it, try placing your index finger on top of the flash head and point it in the same direction the flash is aimed. Since the time when we were babies, we learn instinctively how to point accurately, and this can actually help in getting good results in off-camera flash situations.

Summary

Art’s revival of an old photographic technique allowed him to make a memorable image in a scene that had virtually no

natural light.

Art’s video tip is a nice reminder of how we can sometimes make our own photo opportunities. Sure, it’s great to stumble across a building or monument that’s spectacularly lit, and to make great pictures of it. But even in the middle of a totally darkened area at night, there are opportunities to not only take pic-tures, but to make compelling pictures. This is easy to try out for yourself, so don’t wait until your next international trip to give it a whirl. With a little experi-ence, many of the uncertainties of exposure and so on can be squared away, and you can spend less time experimenting and more time shooting!


As great as our autofocus systems in today’s digital SLRs are, there are times where the subjects we’re photographing can be hard for them to capture. For technical reasons, scenes where the subject doesn’t have a lot of detail are particularly hard for modern AF systems to latch onto, even if there’s a lot of light.

The spectacular landscape image of the incoming storm that Art Wolfe photographed in his “Horizontal Composition” tips video is a classic example. Even though there are distinct clouds dominating his pic-ture, there’s a real good chance that the AF system in most cameras would have a tough time focusing upon this sort of subject. How would you know? The camera would tend to “hunt” back and forth, driving the lens repeatedly from nearest to farthest focus distance, but having difficulty zeroing-in on the dis-tant sky.

Even if you got the camera to latch-on for one picture, if you removed your finger from the shutter button and re-composed the camera for the next shot, there’s a good chance you’d go through another time-consuming cycle of trying to get the AF to lock-on to another part of the clouds. Autofocus is supposed to simplify our pic-ture-taking and speed things up so we can get more done in less time, and in most circumstances, it indeed works as advertised. But if the sky is actually our main subject, it can actually do the opposite. And in some conditions, like trying to focus on a totally clear blue sky or on a night sky, AF can be outright impossible.

Situations like these call for simply turning AF off, and focusing manually. Since the sky is about the most distant subject we can photograph, the lens needs to be parked at infinity. It’s one of those things that sounds simple, and it is — up to a point. But if you know a few things, you can eliminate a lot of guesswork, and be assured of 100% sharp pictures in these sort of scenes.

Pre-setting infinity focus

If you try to Autofocus on a subject like these clouds, you may find AF is hesitant to lock-on, or it may fail entirely. Don’t give up the photo opportunity if your subject doesn’t have a lot of detail

— simply switch to manual focus!© Art Wolfe

Turning off Autofocus

We’ll discuss how this is done with Canon’s EOS digital SLRs and lenses, but the principles apply to nearly all other brands as well (for details, consult your instruction manuals, company web sites, or their technical support staff).


Canon EOS digital SLRs place the primary control for autofocus on the lens, not the camera body. Each lens has a switch labeled “AF / MF” (or simi-lar). Switching it to “MF” or “Manual” disables all au-tofocus operations, and requires you to now manu-ally turn the lens’s focus ring to focus.

There’s another method of accomplishing this as well, if you’re using a Canon lens with a ring-type Ultrasonic motor. The so-called “back-button AF” Custom Function allows the photographer to re-move AF activation from the shutter button, and in-stead activate AF by pressing a button on the rear of the camera with his or her right thumb. Along with this, more than half of Canon’s EF and EF-S lenses have a feature called “full-time Manual Fo-cus”. This allows the photographer to manually ad-just focus even if the lens’s AF/MF switch is still in the AF position. Thus, there’s no need to switch the lens to the Manual Focus position.

For more information on the back-button AF feature, see the Tips article in Canon’s Digital Learning Center (http://www.usa.canon.com/dlc/controller?act=GetArticleAct&articleID=2286).

Caution: before you try to manually focus with the lens still in AF mode, verify that your lens is

(a) a Canon “USM” lens with an Ultrasonic Motor, and

(b) that there’s a distance scale on the lens barrel.

USM lenses with the distance scale allow you to perform the full-time manual focus when the lens is still in the AF mode. If the lens does not have a distance scale of any type on its barrel, you MUST move the switch on the lens to “MF” to safely manually focus the lens. In any case, if you try to turn the manual focus ring and it seems to resist, STOP and move the switch to MF and try again. If it’s now much smoother to turn the manual focus ring, the lens does not have the full-time manual focus feature, and it requires flip-ping the switch to safely focus it manually.

Please be aware that third-party lenses from other manufacturers used on a Canon EOS camera often do not offer this feature. If you use such a lens, consult the lens maker’s instructions or their technical staff or information.

(EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM)Canon’s full-time Manual Focus is available on any Canon EF or

EF-S lens with both an Ultrasonic Motor and a distance scale (like that pictured here) on the lens barrel. This means you can manu-

ally focus the lens, even if it’s still in its AF mode. It’s especially handy when combined with back-button AF, since you won’t en-gage AF every time you press the shutter button half-way down!


Turning the lens to infinity focus

Lenses with a distance scale will indicate infinity focus with an infinity symbol, which looks like a number “8” turned on its side. You’d expect that setting infinity focus would be nothing more than turning the lens’s focus ring to the end of its travel at the infinity side. However, there’s a catch: many lenses are actually designed to focus beyond infinity.

What this means is that simply turning the focus ring all the way toward infinity will result in a blurry pic-ture of distant subjects… landscapes, sky, the moon and stars, and so on. You actually have to place fo-cus a bit before the end of the lens’s travel.

The reason some lenses focus past infinity is to al-low for possible internal optical changes that can oc-cur if the lens is used in bright sunlight and becomes hot internally.

Regardless, there are two methods the shooter can use to get proper results manually focusing a Canon lens (with a distance scale) to infinity: either view through the camera’s viewfinder (or evaluate focus using Live View — the 5x or 10x magnified views in

Live View can be very helpful for seeing precise focus here, if your subject has some detail), or alternatively turn the ring so that the index mark in the distance scale lines-up with the line leading up to the infinity icon (see example above).

Many lenses are designed to actually focus PAST infinity, to ac-commodate optical changes from temperature within the lens. With these lenses, you need to precisely focus manually at a

distant subject. At normal temperatures, you can set the lens to this index mark if the lens has a distance scale.

Lenses without a distance scale

Some of Canon’s lightweight and affordable lenses, like the EF-S 18-55mm zoom lens that’s standard with many EOS digital cameras and the popular EF 70-300mm zoom lenses, use a simpler construction and don’t have a distance scale on the barrel at all. Lenses like these can still easily be manually focused to infinity, for shots like Art Wolfe’s stunning clouds landscape.

First, these lenses MUST be physically switched into Manual Focus mode, using the AF/MF switch on the side of the lens. You can damage these lenses if you try to force the manual focus ring to turn while they’re still in the AF mode.


Summary

Composition is always a subjective thing, and there’s no one single “right” way to take a picture. But open your eyes and your mind to the possibilities. A great way to start down this path is to see what experts like Art Wolfe are able to do when presented with challenging yet beautiful subject matter. Take differ-ent pictures of the same scene, and experiment with moving things around the frame. Become aware of how you’re using the eye-level viewfinder, and make a conscious effort to be more in charge of seeing the entire frame at all times. Look at pictures in maga-zines and books that show excellent photography, and start to analyze the scene and how the photog-rapher dealt with it for that particular image.

The possibilities are endless, but it starts with a will-ingness to push the envelope, start moving things

off-center, and once you’re comfortable with the “rule of thirds”, to start pushing the envelope again and see how things look when they’re well off-center.

The focus ring is usually at the front of the lens. There are two ways to tell if you’re focusing to-ward infinity:

1. Looking at the front of the camera (holding it as if you were going to take your own picture), turn the ring clockwise until it stops. You’re now set to infinity focus.

2. Looking at the top of the lens, you’ll notice as you turn the focus ring that the lens’s over-all length shortens if you turn the ring so its top moves to the left. With the lens at its shortest total length, you’ve set infinity focus. (This has nothing to do with zoom focal length, it refers strictly to the physical length of the lens.)

(EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS lens)Many compact and lightweight lenses don’t have a distance scale. You can still manually focus them to infinity for shots like the clouds Art Wolfe photographed in Mongolia — see

steps 1 and 2 above.

Any time your main subject doesn’t have a lot of detail, be ready to take charge of your AF system to get best results.

Sometimes, that means taking over completely, switching to Manual focus, and leaving it there as you explore your subject.

© Art Wolfe


Photographing flying birds with his 400mm DO lens in Iceland, Art Wolfe is up against the limits of tech-nology. As good as the continuous focus-tracking is on many of today’s digital SLRs, there are some fast-moving subjects that will challenge even the finest of autofocus systems. Rather than stress-out and try to force the camera to do something it simply may not be able to, Art falls back on another old-time technique: pre-focus the lens, and wait for a subject to come to the camera. His goal, after all, is great pictures.

Pre-focusing the lens for action pictures

Realizing that he’s got a very tough moving subject, Art Wolfe moved away from autofocus, pre-focused his lens, and shot con-tinuous bursts of puffins in flight as they neared his camera. The

result? Some superbly sharp, tightly-composed shots, that would have been very hard for the AF system to deliver.

Why might AF not be the best choice?

The flying puffins in Iceland pose two major challenges to any camera’s continuous AF system. One is that even the fastest-moving subjects can be fairly readily tracked when they’re a sufficient distance away. But as they get closer, their apparent speed increases. You can see this for yourself: step out of a car that’s parked in the breakdown lane of a highway with fast-moving traffic, and look at approaching cars in the distance. Even if you know they’re traveling 60mph, 70mph, or faster, when viewed in the distance, they seem to be moving quite slowly. Now look at cars moving the same speed, but which are only a few yards away. You suddenly realize that 60 or 70mph is a lot faster than it feels when you’re inside your car.

The principle when trying to photograph subjects like birds in flight is the same. It’s pretty easy to capture them with AF when they’re hundreds of yards away, but even the longest of telephoto lenses will render them as tiny dots against the sky at those distances. For tighter shots, they need to be much closer to the camera. And what happens when they are? Their apparent speed and changes in direction can be difficult for any AF system to keep up with.

The other challenge is keeping this small, fast-moving subject completely covered by at least one AF point in your camera’s viewfinder. The AF system can only respond to what it “sees”, and its eyes, so to speak,


are the little boxes you see in your camera’s view-finder. For best performance with moving subjects, it’s recommended to manually choose ONE AF point, rather than having all of them active. But this benefit is a double-edge sword, because now, the photogra-pher has the challenge of keeping the lens and cam-era solidly upon that flying bird.

When the subject is a runner or a race car moving in a fairly predictable path straight toward the cam-era, most modern AF systems are more than up to the challenge of tracking movement. But make the subject a physically small one that’s moving fast and possibly very erratically, and the AF system’s success rate will drop exponentially.

Shooting continuously, you’ll only get a few sharp shots when pre-focusing the lens — but if you’ve set a close distance, those

few shots should be winners.© Art Wolfe

The answer: pre-focus the camera lens

The solution is simple: either switch off the AF entirely, or remove it from activation via the shutter button with “back-button AF” (a Custom Function on many digi-tal SLRs, including nearly all Canon EOS models). Either way, you now can fire the camera without AF trying to kick-in and change the lens focus distance to something other than your pre-set position.

Watch the subject(s), and calculate their likely path of movement, and how close they’ll come to you. Ask how close they’ll need to be for effectively tight pho-tographs. Now, manually move the lens’s focus ring to about that distance.

With high-end lenses, this is often easy, for two rea-sons: the lens has a distance scale on it, allowing you to focus it to an approximate pre-determined dis-tance; also, many Canon lenses have a cool feature called “full-time manual focus”, which allows you to

(EF 85mm f/1.2L II USM)With most high-end lenses, a distance scale like this helps when

you’re pre-focusing the lens. If your lens doesn’t have one, gauge focus distance by focusing on another object a similar distance away, or with the lens set to MF (Manual Focus), turn the focus ring as a subject approaches the camera and get a sense of an

appropriate distance to pre-set.


Shooting after pre-focusing the lens

Once you’ve committed to shooting some pre-fo-cused pictures, follow through! Don’t be afraid to try working the technique for a while. Since the subjects are moving and the lens’s focus is not (it’s pre-set and fixed at one distance), your’re not going to get every shot sharp. Especially with a 300mm or longer lens, there’s a very thin plane of sharp focus you’re waiting for your subjects to pass through, and hope the camera fires when they’re in it.

Set your continuous advance to a high-speed setting, and fire multiple shots in a burst as you follow the subject, moving the camera and lens if necessary to keep it in the frame. You’re looking for the occasional shot where everything comes together. Don’t worry about out-of-focus pictures, since you’re bound to shoot many of them. The good news is that unlike when we shot film, with a digital SLR, it’s not costing you money every time you press the shutter button; you can delete the out-of-focus shots later when you return to the computer.

On that note, remember that frequent erasing of images in-camera, while you’re playing them back on the LCD monitor, can actually generate problems with your memory cards. Erasing a shot or two is OK, but don’t spend lots of time erasing 50% or more of your images during playback. Either wait until you’re ready to copy them to your computer and only copy the good ones, or copy them all and then review/delete them from the computer using your browser software.

turn the focus ring and manually focus the lens even if it’s still in the AF mode.

If you’re using a compact lens that doesn’t have a distance scale, all is not lost. Switch the lens out of the AF mode (move the lens’s switch to “MF”), and turn the focus ring while looking through the finder at either the moving subjects, or something nearby that you calculate is about the same distance away as you’d like the birds or moving subject to be (a tree limb, etc).

Once the lens is pre-focused, you may need to fire off dozens of pictures to get a few sharp ones of fast-moving birds in flight.

Fortunately, with digital SLRs, it basically costs you nothing to take many pictures in one situation — unlike when most enthusiasts

shot with film!© Rudy Winston


Other situations where pre-focus works well

For sports and other action situations, there are certainly times where what you want is a nice, continuous sequence of a player moving right toward the camera, hopefully with each frame tack-sharp as he or she gets larger and larger in the viewfinder. As mentioned before, for sports and other such subjects, today’s high-end cameras can do a very good to superb job at that sort of shooting.

But sometimes, you know you need ONE image of a key moment, and you CAN predict where it’s going to occur. Example: you’re shooting a 100 meter dash, and you’re positioned behind the finish line, with your camera and telephoto lens aimed right at the line and the tape that the winner will break as he or she crosses the line. You know for this scene, your shot is the winner at the instant they make contact with the tape. You could use continuous AI Servo AF, track the runner, and in all likelihood get a nice sequence of shots with most of them sharp. But what if he or she is wearing a uniform with almost no writing or other detail? What if the AF simply misses at the instant they break the tape?

You can avoid problems by pre-focusing the camera on the tape, waiting for the runner to hit it, and pressing the shutter button at that instant — or possibly a split-second sooner. The benefit? There’s no chance that the AF could get thrown off by that fashionable, solid black track jersey with no detail. There’s no chance that someone’s arm or hand could come up and momentarily throw off the AF sensor. And for what it’s worth, there are no wasted frames. You get the shot you needed.

There are countless other examples, from the baseball pitcher at the instant he releases the ball to the Indy race car coming out of Turn 3. Pick a spot, focus upon it, wait for the action to come there, and then press the button. Even the most challenging of moving subjects can sometimes be successfully captured using this technique.

Pre-focus for close-ups

They’re not action pictures, but any time you’re shooting an extreme close-up shot of a small object, you’ll often get more consistent shooting and better results by pre-focusing your lens. Move the entire camera back and forth, until you see the critical part of your subject snap into sharp focus in your viewfinder. When it does, take the picture.

As appealing as autofocus sounds for the challenge of extreme close-ups, it can sometimes tend to get fidg-ety, and hunt back and forth if it momentarily is asked to focus on a plain area of your subject that doesn’t have a lot of detail. While AF normally speeds things up for SLR photographers, the fact is that in macro shooting, it can sometimes actually slow things down.


If you’re working with a true macro lens (like Canon’s EF-S 60mm f/2.8 macro, or the popular EF 100mm f/2.8 macro), you can pre-set your close-up magnifi-cation. It’s printed on the focus distance scale, along with distances in meters and feet). This makes it easy to pre-set the magnification you want, based on the size of the subject, and then simply move in and out until you see the shot you need in the viewfinder.

Summary:

We’re certainly not saying that AF isn’t extremely useful to most action photographers. While success with autofocus definitely is an acquired skill that takes more than just turning the camera on and pointing it at something, the fact is for years pros have learned that AF can work beautifully to photograph challeng-ing moving subjects that all but the finest of sports or wildlife shooters would have a tough time duplicating.

But good as it is, there will be times where the main goal is one (or a few) good, sharp pictures, and where truly difficult conditions make AF a gamble. Moving away from AF, intelligently pre-focusing the lens, and shooting either a continuous burst, or (when the subject is moving predictably toward a known spot) shoot-ing a single shot at the instant the subject arrives, can sometimes deliver the sharp pictures you’re looking for. Don’t hesitate to give this a try, become familiar with the technique, and apply it in those few instances where it’s needed.

Extreme close-up shooting is another situation where pre-focusing your lens, and simply moving back and forth until you see sharp

focus in the finder, can often be faster and more efficient than trying to use autofocus.

© Rudy Winston


In this episode’s accompanying “Long Exposures” tips video, Art Wolfe points out how moving water is often best photographed at very slow shutter speeds — his favorite speeds are typically around ½ second to 1 full second long. He specifically speaks of the challenge of making these intentional long exposures during day-light. But photographers are presented with another challenge whenever they try to produce these types of pictures: getting shots where only the water is moving, and the rest of the scene is tack-sharp.

Sharper pictures with slow shutter speeds

Slow shutter speeds work beautifully to capture the movement of flowing water. But with them come additional requirements to

keep the rest of the scene tack-sharp.

Step One: use the best tripod you can get your hands on

In the entire Travels to the Edge series, you see Art with his tripod almost as often as you see him with a camera. This isn’t an accident. As we’ve said before, no one carries a tripod with them when shooting pictures because they enjoy transporting it and the time it takes to set it up. But in so many situations, it simply provides sharper, better and (for the pro) more saleable pictures than relying on hand-holding the camera.

Like most products, tripods come in many different categories and types. They may seem to be pretty much the same at first glance, but there are hundreds of different tripods and furthermore hundreds of choices in tripod heads for today’s photographers. It’s certainly beyond the scope of this article to make specific recommendations, and personal preferences will strongly influence what works best for you. But the message is clear: tripods = sharper pictures. End of story.

At first, many photo enthusiasts are tempted to work with the lightest and most portable tripod that they can put their hands on. Unfortunately, when they really carefully look at the results they obtain after using affordable compact tripods, they usually have a first-hand understanding of why pros like Art use the high-est-grade, full-size tripods available. The fact is that most compact tripods simply aren’t effective at stop-ping all forms of camera movement and particularly vibrations from mirror and shutter movement. There’s a saying that some photographers repeat when it comes to recommendations for small, lightweight tripods: “small, sturdy, cheap — pick any two.”


A tripod that may seem perfectly fine in a store when you mount your camera with a standard lens on it may suddenly seem totally inadequate when you put a 70-200mm or 100-400mm telephoto lens on the camera. Even though many large, professional lens-es have their own tripod mount, you need a strong yet smooth-working tripod head to use telephoto lenses effectively.

Great tripods are an investment, and a top-of-the-line pro tripod with a pro-grade head can easily cost $1,000 or more. But like a great lens or camera, it’s an investment in a photographer’s craft.

Finally, remember that even the best tripod is compro-mised if you forget your remote release and have to press the shutter button by hand to fire the camera.

Mirror lock-up

Listen to any “old pros” or long-time photo enthusiasts, and you’ll eventually hear them speak of the benefits of mirror lock-up. It’s a feature missing on many of today’s popular digital SLRs, although nearly all pro mod-els and many mid-range cameras preserve this capability.

It’s an unfortunate fact of life that when you take a picture with an SLR, as its mirror pops upward, it does so with considerable speed and force. Camera engineers take numerous steps to cushion its stop when it reaches the top of the mirror box (fully exposing the shutter and imaging sensor), but the laws of physics pretty much dictate that some of this collision force will be transmitted to the camera. And it is, in the form of movement and vibration.

In ordinary, everyday outdoor shooting at fast shutter speeds (such as 1/250th or 1/500th of a second), this is essentially a non-factor, and most photographers are scarcely aware of its presence. However, as speeds get slower, this movement begins to have the potential to impact the sharpness of images. Just as a shak-ing hand can completely blur a picture at slower shutter speeds, it’s entirely possible for a tripod-mounted camera to produce enough vibration to blur a picture. Conditions will vary, but most users agree that shut-ter speeds between about 1/60th thru 1/2 second are most at risk of blurs from camera vibrations and mirror movement.

A top-notch professional tripod may not be fun to carry around on location, but there’s a reason you see a pro like Art Wolfe carry it

with him almost everywhere he goes.


Live View means sharper long exposures

The Live View feature on most recent digital SLRs is something that some advanced users and pros sneer at, regarding it as a totally amateurish feature. However, they should take a second look, because Live View can produce sharper pictures in two very important ways.

First off, it’s a form of mirror lock-up. Since by definition, the mirror must be fully raised and the sensor exposed to allow Live View to operate in the first place, shooting these types of tripod-mounted images in Live View means no mirror movement. Furthermore, most EOS digial cameras (as outlined above) require the photographer to raise the mirror separately for EACH shot taken, when the Custom Function for mir-ror lock-up is activated. With Live View, this is no longer necessary. The mirror remains up (at least, with Canon digital SLRs) and doesn’t move for any pictures taken during Live View shooting. (Exception: the

With all this in mind, for years, camera enthusiasts have turned to the mirror lock-up feature. With it, when a button is pressed or a lever is turned, the camera’s mirror rises completely, before a shot is taken. Now, the photographer can press the shutter button to take the shot, and since the mirror is already up and out of the way, it generates no “slap” or vibration. Sharper tripod-mounted pictures are the result.

Again, not all cameras have this feature. Canon’s digital SLRs, including low-price models like the EOS Digital Rebel XT, XTi, and current XS and XSi models, actually do have mirror lock-up available as a Custom Function. It requires the user to be in a “creative zone” shooting mode, such as P (Program), Av (aperture-priority), Tv (shutter-priority), or Manual — Custom Functions cannot be accessed if the camera is set to a fully auto setting like the Green Zone, Landscape Mode, and so on. Once set, the user presses the shutter button fully to raise the mirror, and then has up to 30 seconds to press the button again to take the actual photo. When the picture is taken (or after 30 seconds has elapsed, if no picture is taken), the mirror will return down. Pressing the shutter button fully again will repeat the process.

For other brands of digital SLR, check your camera’s instruction book, the manufacturer’s web site, or their tech support staff for information on mirror lock-up shooting.

The challenge of smoothly flowing movement, yet sharpness throughout the rest of the picture, can be met with the right

photo techniques. Mirror lock-up is one that pros have used for years to get sharper pictures at slow shutter speeds, and many

digital SLRs have it available.© Art Wolfe


mirror will return “down” if you either activate the Quick Mode autofocus, or if you shoot a flash picture with the built-in flash or an EX-series EOS speedlite.)

And, there’s another benefit you don’t get with ordinary mirror lock-up: with some Canon models that offer a so-called “silent mode” during Live View shooting, the shutter is opened fully before exposure takes place. Therefore, there’s even less potential vibration and camera movement. This isn’t possible during ordinary mirror-up operation. Cameras with this feature (as of January, 2009) include the EOS 50D, EOS 40D, and EOS 5D Mark II.

One additional benefit: any small mistakes in focus can be quickly and easily seen and corrected, using Live View’s 5x or 10x magnified viewing with compatible Canon EOS digital SLRs. This ability to check and fine-tune focus for utmost sharpness comes into its own when working on a tripod, and even at ordinary shutter speeds in daylight it can mean the difference between shots that look “pretty good” vs. shots that jump off the screen with sharpness and detail.

(With the new EOS 50D and EOS 5D Mark II cam-eras, if Live View autofocus is set to Face Detect AF mode, the 5x and 10x magnification feature is disabled.)

The bottom line: Live View eliminates one or some-times even two forms of in-camera vibration, and thus can mimic or even surpass traditional mirror lock-up for steadiness during slow-speed shooting. Oh, and one last thing: unlike mirror lock-up, where the view-finder is blacked-out and you no longer can view your subject through the lens, Live View gives you full, 100% accurate viewing the entire time, before and after you shoot each picture.

The Live View feature on many recent digital SLRs actually has direct benefits to photographers shooting long exposure im-

ages, particularly when working from a tripod.© Rhonda R. Dorsett

Summary:

Good equipment and good photographic technique work hand-in-hand in generating sharp images. Simply putting a camera on a tripod is a big step forward in getting sharper images at the slow shutter speeds needed for beautifully blurred water that Art is photographing in Iceland. But you can’t take the tripod for granted, and any additional steps you can take to reduce in-camera vibrations or movement will pay off in more sharp pictures. Fortunately, with many of today’s digital SLR cameras, the tools to get these results are built-in. Spend some time getting to really know your camera’s features, and practice using them from time to time. That way, when a truly great opportunity presents itself, you’ll know what to do and exactly how to get there.


It’s not directly discussed in Art Wolfe’s video Tips from his superb series, “Travels to the Edge”. But a feature that’s been a part of Canon’s high-end telephoto lenses for years deserves a quick mention, and it’s especially relevant as an alternative to the manual pre-setting of focus that Art discusses when shooting Puffins on the coast of Iceland.

The feature we’re speaking of is called “focus pre-set”. It lets a shooter focus on a particular distance or sub-ject (AF or manual focus can be used to lock-on to this distance), and then the distance can be memorized by the lens. Once in memory, it can be instantly recalled and the lens driven to it in a fraction of a second by turning a ring just above the focus ring on the lens.

Canon’s AF pre-set feature

Lenses with Canon’s focus pre-set feature

If you’re a Canon EOS user and aren’t aware of this feature, don’t worry. One reason you may not be aware of it is that it’s exclusive to a handful of top-of-the-line super-tele lenses in the Canon system.

As of January 2009, Canon EF lenses with this fea-ture are the following:

EF 200mm f/2.0L IS EF 300mm f/2.8L IS EF 400mm f/4 DO IS EF 400mm f/2.8L IS EF 500mm f/4L IS EF 600mm f/4L IS EF 800mm f/5.6L IS

Older Canon EF super-teles which pre-date Image Stabilization also have this feature. These lenses have been discontinued for a number of years, but some readers may either own them or be in a position to purchase one on the used equipment market. Previous lenses with the feature are the EF 200mm f/1.8L, 300mm f/2.8L, 400mm f/2.8L, 400mm f/2.8L II, 500mm f/4.5L, and 600mm f/4L.

No other Canon lenses have this feature, as of January, 2009.

(EF 300mm f/2.8L IS USM)The Canon focus pre-set feature is limited to select super-tele-

photo, L-series lenses.


Situations where focus pre-set is useful

The focus pre-set on these high-end super-tele lenses can be tremendously useful in some situations. One example often cited is a sports photographer who’s shooting a baseball game. With focus pre-set, it’s easy to pre-focus on a spot like 2nd base or home plate, and then use AF to follow action around the field. If something critical happens at 2nd base (for instance), all that’s needed is for the photographer to turn the “playback ring” on the lens a few degrees in either direction. The lens will instantly jump back to the memorized distance.

Wildlife shooters could easily pre-focus on a spot like the leading edge of a birds nest, the edge of a water hole, or another spot where a bird or animal might re-turn. If it does, the lens can instantly be driven back to the proper focus distance, even if you’re now shooting in near-darkness.

An event photographer working with a 200mm f/2.0L or 300mm f/2.8L lens could pre-focus on an on-stage area where something is expected to happen, and be able to instantly have the camera ready for it — even if the subjects would be difficult for AF to quickly lock on to.

For birds in flight or general sports action, another use of focus pre-set is to lock-in a normal focus distance so that if the AF system ever were to get fooled and start to “hunt” back and forth, or perhaps inadvertently focus on a distant background, you can almost instantly return it to a good starting point to re-acquire focus.

When you need to instantly point the camera and shoot, the focus pre-set can save you time and produce good, sharp results.

© Rudy Winston

Setting the focus pre-set

The procedure to set and use Canon’s focus pre-set is simple. First, be sure it’s active by sliding the switch on the side of the lens for Focus Preset to either the “I” or beep icon setting. Using AF or manual focus (whichever the shooter prefers), focus sharply on a subject or distance you want to lock into memory. Once you’re confident it’s sharp, press the Set button on the lens’s control panel. The lens will now memorize this distance.


You can now resume shooting, using either AF or manual focus. If and when you need to jump back to the pre-set focus position, simply turn the metal ser-rated “playback” ring, adjacent to the manual focus ring, in either direction by a few degrees. It’s spring-loaded, so it’ll return to its normal centered position when you let it go.

As soon as you turn the playback ring a few degrees, the lens’s Ultrasonic AF motor will instantly drive the lens to the spot you’ve memorized.

If you move or simply decide to lock-in another focus spot, all you have to do is focus on this new target and again press the SET button on the lens. The new distance is memorized, and the last distance you set is cleared from memory. Only one distance can be memorized at a time for focus pre-set.

The focus pre-set is entirely within the lens, so if you move a lens from one body to another, any distance you have memorized stays in effect. And the feature works on any Canon EOS camera body, so there are no restrictions on which cameras a compatible lens can be attached to.

Pressing the round SET button (at bottom of the lens switch panel) is about all that’s needed to memorize a distance once you’ve fo-cused on it. To instantly return to that distance, just turn the white

serrated playback ring, which is just ahead of the rubber focus ring, a few degrees in either direction.

Instantly change exposure when it’s needed:

One other interesting twist: for those using Canon’s top-of-the-line EOS-1D Mark III or EOS-1Ds Mark III cameras, there’s a totally separate Custom Function that lets the photographer change exposure settings or even exposure modes by simply pressing the rear AE Lock button. Custom Function I-14 on these cam-eras lets you set the camera for a particular type of exposure (you can pre-set an exposure mode, shutter speed and/or aperture, and metering pattern), and lock it in. Now, if a subject suddenly moves from sun into shade, or you suddenly need to jump from manual exposure with Spot metering to Aperture priority with Evaluative metering, just pressing the rear AE Lock button will do it. As soon as you remove your thumb from the rear AE Lock button, the camera reverts back to whatever settings you had it set to.


Combining this with the ability to instantly re-set a super-telephoto lens’s focus distance is a remark-able pair of features for the serious photographer. No doubt photographers will discover new ways to utilize this capability once they’ve worked with it in real-life conditions.

This particular capabilitiy (Custom Function I-14’s ability to instantly change exposure settings) is only possible on the EOS-1D Mark III and EOS-1Ds Mark III cameras, as of January, 2009. And just to clarify, it’s totally separate from and independent of the focus pre-set feature we’ve been discussing in this article.

A very compelling option on Canon’s professional EOS-1D Mark III and EOS-1Ds Mark III is a custom function that allows users to jump

to totally different exposure modes and settings, when the rear AE Lock button is pressed. It’s activated with C.Fn I-14.

Summary:

If you’re thinking about some day stepping up to one of Canon’s prestigious super-telephoto lenses, or certainly if you own one already, the focus pre-set feature is yet another benefit that these lenses offer. It is useful in a number of different situations, and it’s quietly out of the way when not needed. Especially when combined with the ability to instantly shift exposure modes and settings with the professional “Mark III” models, it’s a powerful feature that can let the EOS photographer react to fast-moving subjects and situa-tions, and come up with pictures that users of other equipment may not be able to capture.

Canon Tips Art Wolfe

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