Enjoy the video series!

via petapixel

Chase Jarvis CURRENT: The Consequences of Creativity from Chase Jarvis on Vimeo.

So the aperture is measured in F-stop : f/1.8, f/2.8, f/10, etc. The smaller the f number (value), the larger is the diameter of the iris, and the  bigger the  f number (value) the smaller is the diameter of the iris. You might ask “Why it’s so twisted?”. Well because the F Number is represented by the formula F/D (F= focal length, D= diameter of the iris). So as you can see the diameter of the lens varies at different focal lengths.This is because a 300mm lens needs an larger “hole” to collect the same amount of light as a 50mm lens with with the same aperture. In fact that’s the reason why those 300mm, 400mm, 600mm, are so huge, because they need a hole large enough to catch enough light. Also that’s why there aren’t  super telephoto lens like 600mm with small f/number, for example f/1.8 (first of all will have a microscopic depth of field, and second of all will be an enormous).

Also when you buy a Zoom lens there are 2 values of  the aperture. Let’s say 28-135mm with f/3.5 – f/5.6. Well, these are the maximum apertures for the given focal lengths (remember smaller f values means more light coming in). So at 28 mm focal length you can have a maximum aperture of f/3.5 and as soon you change it to 135mm you’ll have the maximum of  f/5.6 without being able to go lower. Also remember that around 50-60mm you’ll have f/4 and around 90-100mm you’ll have f/5. So as you change  the focal length the maximum aperture changes as well. This doesn’t aplly for a lens like 70-200mm f/2.8, because you’ll have the same maximum aperture through all the focal range.

I hope i didn’t bored you to death with these technicalities. Now we get on to the practical part of the aperture:

Depth of Field (DOF)

Depth of field (DOF) is the distance where the object is in focus in front and beyond of it. Depth of field is mostly used to isolate you subject from the backgroound.

The depth of field it’s influenced by three factors: Aperture, Focal length and Distance from the subject. So we will have three images which will exemplify these facts. The region marked in Darker Blue is the region which is in Focus.

1.  Changing the Aperture – when you change the aperture you change the depth of field so when you are at the same distance from the object and the same focal lenght, the DOF will vary with the aperture from f/2.8 (where it will be a smaller DOF) to f/22 (were it will be a larger DOF). You can see this in the image below:

2. Changing the Focal lenght – so as you change the focal lenghts and keep the same distnace and aperture, you will have a very big DOF on wide lens and small DOF on the telephoto as seen in the image below:

3. Changing the distance from the subject – another factor the influences the DOF is the distance from the subject ( the focus distance ). So as we keep the same focal lenght and aperture and get farter from our subject the DOF get larger as seen in the mage below:

So as you can see from the examples above you can use the depth of field to your advantage in every situation having all the flexibility you need. Another important thing you should know is that the depth of field it’s stronger behind the subject  than in front if it ( so in front of the point where you focus is 1/3 of the distance of DOF and 2/3 of the distance behind the pint).

Bokeh

The word Bokeh derives from the Japanese word Boke which means “blur” or “fuzzy”, and that’s just what the term refers to in photography. The out of focus areas in the photograph look very different depending on the depth of field as well as the lens used, some lenses produces much better bokeh than other lenses. The shape of the aperture is one of the most important parts together with the quality of the optics when it comes to how the out of focus areas appear.

The photograph above is meant to illustrate what Bokeh is. The lens used was the Canon 50mm f/1.8 which isn’t considered to be a good bokeh lens due to it’s 5 aperture blades. But, it looks pretty good

Today I will talk about Shutter Speed. Here is a list o things you should know about this:

1. What is Shutter Speed?

As the name says, it’s the speed of the shutter is opening and closing. In fact it is measured in the time the shutter stays open (from 1/8000 of a second to 30 seconds and more in the bulb mode). So if you take your photo with 1/250th of a second the shutter stays open for 0,004  (1/250) seconds, or if you take it with 1/25 of a second the shutter stays open for quarter of a second.

1/500 speed to freeze the action

2. Use it to freeze the action.

Almost all the time you will use the shutter speed to freeze the action so the your subject is captured on you photo tack sharp. So keep in mind that high shutter speed are useful to freeze the photo when your subject moves, or your hands is that you won’t obtain a blurry photograph.

3. Use it to blur action.

Silk river (1/2 second shutter speed)

Although you might think that blur is a negative thing to photography, you are wrong. You can use it to obtain a lot of interesting photographs. For example you can use it when photographing a river  or wave splashing on rock to obtain  a silky look of the water. To do this you must have a low shutter speed from1 second to even10 or 15 seconds. In bright day light try lowering you ISO to 100 or even 50 and Aperture to at least f/22. If still its to much and your photographs come out over exposed, then you can use a ND filter (Neutral Density Filter). Because you are working with such low shutter speeds, don;t forget your tripod.

4. Use it to create light trails.

By using low shutter speed you can create abstract photos by moving around the camera

pointed to some light sources. You can even draw with light by using a flash light and drawing in the air with it while camera it’s exposing for 30 seconds or more . This is beautiful to capture the movement of the cars on a road. Don’t forget that this can only be used at very low light.

5. Use it for panning.

You can capture moving subjects without freezing them and their background but by freezing the subject and the background having a movement blur giving you photo a sense of movement. You can do this by ushing a shutter speed between1/30 and 1 sec and then as you subject is passing by press the button and pann with the subject.

First of all it’s very useful to use a software that helps keeping you organized and even helps you finding your images much faster. Since there are dozens of software packages for this kind of job it all comes down to personal preference and a few very important features that would help you a lot, like:

• Organize by Category, Calendar Date, Keyword, etc.
• Let’s you assign rating and tag
• Thumbnail view
• RAW support (in case you work a lot with RAW images)
• Helps you backing up your photos easily
• Easy E-mail sharing

I have compiled a list of software packages for your organizational need.

For professional users (has a lot of professional features) :

• Adobe Lightroom
• Adobe Bridge
• Apple Aperture (Mac users only)
• ACDSee Pro Photo Manager

For regular users (has all the feature you need for our every day family photos) :

• ACDSee Photo Manager
• Ulead Photo Explorer
• Corel Photo Album
• CompuPic
• Picasa (Free)

Although you have whatever software you need you still have to know some other things. To be more specific here is my work flow when I come from a shoot:

1. Soon after I pop in my memory card into the card reader I create a new folder named like this: ” Year-Month-Day-Specific Number A specific name” (The specific number refers to the case where i have a couple of different shoots). Here is an example, let’s say today I had two portrait sessions with John Doe and Jane Doe, I have two different folders named: “2008-12-20 (1) John Doe portrait session” and “2008-12-20 (2) Jane Doe portrait session”.
2. Copy the folder onto my external drive.
3. I review the photos and delete the worst of them (Blurry, test shots, etc).
4. I usually leave the default names of the photos.
5. I import the photos into Adobe Lightroom.
6. I tag and rate my photos (5* excellent, 4* good, 3*usable, and the rest receives 1*)
7. I back up the photos on a CD/DVD.
8. And after all of that I format my memory cards.

As you can see I am a little paranoid, having three different copies of the photos.

Bottom line is experiment, and use what is better for you and not time consuming. Happy organizing.

Photo by chadh

The worst nightmare of a photographer worst than get his equipment stolen, it’s to lose his photographs. Being in digitized era the risks of losing you photographs and even documents, it’s higher than in the film era. There are a bunch of risks, from accidental deletion to hardware failure, file corruption and the list goes on.
Losing a photograph it’s worst than loosing something you created, which can be recreated the only thing you’re going to lose it’s time. But a photograph, you cannot go back in time and nail the exact same shot (I also consider that a photograph is unique, there aren’t two photos that loo the same even if there where shot at the same time).
So I will try to give you some advices on how to protect your precious photographs.

1. Always backup your photos on a DVD.

Every time you copy you photograph from your camera to your hard drive the first this you have to remember to do is to back  up onto a DVD or CD. There are so cheap compared to how much trouble can get you out from.

2. Use online services to archive and back up your data.

There are a lot of services that cand provide you with space to back up your photos.

Some have a price tag on the services:

• Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)
• PhotoShelter – here you can also sell your prints
  
• Mozy Online Backup
• FlickR – the most useful and inexpensive. For 25$ a year you can store as many high resolution photographs as you want. (No Raw support though)

And other are completely free:

• Zapr – it oriented more on sharing, but putting the files to not be public it’s the way to go.
• And a lot of other web-sites that are oriented on file sharing but you can easily use it as a backup space.

3. Create your own Backup Server.

Building yourself a back up server it’s very easy an very inexpensive. A backup server doesn’t need a monitor, mouse, keyboard, it’ doesn’t need to have fast an expensive processor, it doesn’t need to have a graphic card or more than 256 RAM, but it only need a good motherboard. You can built it from scrap parts (we all have some PC parts lying around) or find cheap one around the net. With less than 200$ you have  your own server. But you have to invest in hard drives. You can put on your new mother board (there are motherboard that can sustain up to 8 SATA-II drives) up to 8 1TB hard drives. Each hard drive can cost you less than 100 dollars. Imagine yourself with 8000GB of space, almost 600 000 RAW photos of 15MB each and 2.7million 10megapixel JPEG photos. Impressive ha? But still hard drive can often fails so you can also (strongly recommended) set up a RAID system, which can mirror your files between you hard drives, meaning that every hard drive has twin which contains the exact files so if one fails you still have one (a lot of bad luck to fail both hard drives). Another cool thing is you can use it as storage as well, and you can install Linux on your system and set it up so you can access it over the Internet (FTP, web, etc).

4. Use spare hard drives.

You can use hard drives that lye around and back up photos on it, than store it somwhere safe and then never use it again. There are a lot of 100-200-300gb harddrives that are very inexpensive, somwhere near40-50$.

Notice: Something to consider is that keeping all the backed up data in the same place can be dangerous because a natural disaster of just a fire in your room can ruin all your data along with the backup. Always consider an online backup. My recomandation is FlickR.

Wrong focusing. The most common cause for blurry photos is not focusing right. Often happens to focus on the wrong part of the image, or using a very narrow depth of field, or taking the photo quick without checking if it is in focus, and all of this helps in throwing your subject out of focus and obtaining blurry photographs.

Low value of the shutter speed. This causes 2 sets pf problems: Camera shake and Subject movement. This two makes blurry photos because your shutter speed is too low to freeze the action.

Noise. Sometimes using high ISO values might get you results with lack of sharpness. Although since cameras evolve so quickly these days, higher ISO values might still get you very sharp images.

Here are 9 ways of improving your photographs sharpness:

1. Hold your camera still or be careful of your shutter speed.

A lot of blur in the photos is cause by camera movement and/or subject movement combined with low shutter speeds. So one solution it’s to use higher shutter speeds. The rule of thumbs is to use a shutter speed value higher then the focal length used, so if you use a 50mm focal length you shouldn’t use a shutter speed lower than 1/60 (the value on your camera is 60), or when using a focal length of 300mm you shouldn’t use a shutter speed lower than 1/320 (the value on your camera is 320). But there are times when you can’t use this high values due to poor light and in this case try holding your camera still, by using both hands, keeping the camera close to your body, supporting yourself with a wall, tree or some other solid object or the most important thing is using a tripod, but be careful that holding you camera still won’t  freeze a high speed moving subject.

2. Know how to use the aperture and depth of field.

The aperture size controls your depth of field (the distance where your subject is in focus). The size of the depth of field (DOF) is controlled by the aperture size, focal length and distance from the camera to the subject. The reason you should be careful of the depth of field size, is that you can have the size of the DOF of a few centimeters and a slight movement of your camera or subject might through your subject out of focus. So using a large aperture size of let’s say f/2.8 give you a small DOF but a small aperture size of let’s say f/20 give you a huge DOF.

3. ISO.

For getting pin sharp images use as low as possible ISO settings. Using high ISO values fills up you details with noise giving your image low sharpness. You can get away with ISO values of less then 400 or the value might be higher depending of your camera.

4. Focus right.

More than often the cause of the blurriness in the photographs is the fact that your subject is out of focus. There are times where you camera doesn’t focus right so the unique solution is to check your image is in focus after taking the shot. There isn’t a way of improving the automatic camera focus. But, you can focus manually and this is very helpful for macro photography since there is a very small depth of field, and getting your subject in focus it’s very challenging for you and almost impossible for the camera to do it right.

5. Image Stabilisation.

Nowadays a lot of lenses and cameras have different forms of Image Stabilisation. This counteracts the camera shake but be careful that it won’t eliminate it. This can enable you to use  slower shutter speed up to 2-3 stops (so for a 50mm in stead of using 1/60 you can use 1/25). Keep in mind that this only helps you with camera movement not with subject movement.

6. Invest in good lenses.

DSLR owners, if you have the budget for it invest in good quality lenses as they can have a major impact upon the sharpness of your images. For example I have a 28-135mm lens for everyday use. It is a good lens (and reasonably priced) but it isn’t as sharp as I expect to. I have borrowed a lot “L series” (the professional series of lenses from Canon) lens for different jobs and I was amazed by the difference in sharpness between the lenses. I have learned my lesson and now I am putting money in my piggy bank for some “L” lenses.

7. Clean your equipment.

Dust on you lenses or you image processor can impact you image sharpness. So remember to often check if your equipemnt is clean.

8. Lens Sweet spot.

Every lens has a “sweet spot” where has the maximum sharpness. This usually is 2-3 stops from the maximum aperture (the lowest value) of the lens. So if you have  maximum aperture of f/3.5, the maximum sharpness can be found somewhere between f/5.6 and f/9. Experiment with your lenses, take the same photograph from the lowest aperture value to the highest. A rule in photography is: “Know your equipment.”

9. Use Photoshop to increase your sharpness.

You can use Photoshop to increase the sharpness of your photographs, by using “Unsharp mask” or by using High Pass Filter (a better sharpening method) which I talked about it in a previous post.

So here are the steps for using the high pass filter:

1. After opening your photo create a copy of the layer by right clicking on the layer from the “Layer palette” and selecting “Duplicate layer”.
2. Then go to Filter -> Other -> High pass filter.
3. In the “Radius” box put a value between 3 and 5 pixels, depending on the effect desired. And click “OK”.
4. Then change you blending mode (by double clicking on the layer with the high pass filter) and select “Soft light” for a soft sharpening, “Overlay” for a more accentuated sharpening and “Hard light” for heavy sharpening. You can also modify the level of sharpening by decreasing your opacity of the layer.

This is a clean way of sharpening your photograph. You should give it a go and see how it works for you. You can even build an action in photoshop (as i did) so that you will do it faster.

Attention: Tweak the radius in the High Pass filter dialog when using it to sharpen photographs with resolutions lower the 7-8 megapixels. The values (of 3-5 pixels) are intended for photographs with 7+ megapixels. Using this values for smaller photos might give you an undesirable effect.

Examples (the difference might not be very clear, always try it yourself that’s the best way to trust the unaltered differences):

Original photograph:

Sharpened photograph:

1. Invest in cleaning tools. Investing in proper and good quality cleaning tools it’s the first step into be more careful with your camera. It is a relatively cheap investment compared to the price of your gear. You can get rid off with paying just 15 to 40$. Don’t risk ruining your gear by cleaning it with the wrong set of tools. There are 2 set of tools: one for you camera exterior interior and lenses and one for you image sensor.
2. Cover your lenses. Covering you lenses with an UV filter it’s another way o protecting it from scratches, dust, smudgy hands, and even dropping, since  you don’t damage your front element of the lens but you will damage your UV filter which it’s way less expensive than your lens. An UV filter it’s about 10 to 100$ depending on your lens diameter and of the quality of the UV filter. But be aware that buying  a cheap filter might change the way your photographs come out that being in a negative way
3. Always keep your lenses safe. When you are not using your lenses never let them without their front and rear caps. This way you protect them from accidental scratches or from that pesky dust.
4. Change lenses quick. When changing your lens lens, try to keep your image sensor exposed to outside condition for less than 30 seconds to avoid dust sticking to your sensor
5. Buy a bag. A lot of you take your camera with you in vacation, for a walk or even for a photo shoot. That’s why you must have a good and secure bag to carry your equipment. A good camera bag can be kind of pricey, but a good bag it’s important for 2 reasons: it’s designed so that it’s easier to access all of your equipment; the construction of the bag gives you maximum protection for your gear protecting it from bumps and drops.
6. Keep away from rain and run like hell from salt water. Everybody knows that water and electronics just don’t mix. So when it rains try to put your camera in your protective bag or take cover. But, salt water it’s your worst enemy, because it attacks the metal in your camera and the worst part is that it attacks your circuitry. If you happen to have salt water in, don’t wait not even a minute and go as soon as possible to a specialized camera shop to fix it.
7. Protect you gear from humidity. Water might get in in a vapor state and then condensates on to your circuitry inside your camera and provoke a short circuit that might ruin your camera. There are 2 situations where this might happen: when you store you camera or when you put your camera into a quick transition between cold and warm (for example in the winter when you come in your warm house from the cold weather). Here are the solutions to protect it: when you store your camera put some silica gel in the bag/box where you keep your camera; to protect the camera from quick transitions from cold to warm use a plastic bag to put your camera in before entering a warm environment and leave it in the bag for 10-15 minutes, then it’s safe to take it out of your bag.
8. Remove Batteries. Before storing your equipment for a long time, try to remove the batteries. Batteries can sometimes leak and you don’t want to find your camera ruined by a leaky battery.
9. Use a Point&Shoot digital camera. There are situations where taking your DSLR camera can be risky (harsh conditions). So take a point&shoot with you which is more expendable.
10. Protect your camera from heat. Avoid letting your camera sit in the direct sun light or in hot environments (like in your car where in the summer temperature reaches over 100 degrees). Extreme temperature can damage your equipment. If you have to leave your gear in the car try covering it with a white or reflective material.

Hope you have found this information helpful in keeping safe your beloved equipment . If you have any other tips i look forward to hear them.

So here are some advices to follow that will improve your skills in taking better photographs:

1. Always have a subject (or more). We often see photograph where are a bunch of cluttered things and we find hard to understand what’s the exact subject of the photo. So be careful to always have a subject so that our photograph to be able to express something.
2. Use depth of field. A great way of isolating a particular subject ( portrait, butterfly, dog, cat, horse, etc) it’s by using a small depth of field to throw your background out of focus. You can do this by moving in close, using a large aperture and zooming in close.
3. Fill the frame with your subject. This will make it clearer, more defined and easier to appreciate. If your subject is both a monument as well as a person, make sure that the height of the person is at least one third that of the viewfinder frame. This makes sure that people wont have to squint to figure out who it is that’s in the picture.
4. Try different viewpoints. Try to shoot down from up or up from down from the left from the right. By doing this you might get a better photo.
5. Frame your subject. Use doors, windows, branches, etc. so that you create a frame where to put you subject. This technique gives depth to you photograph.
6. Use rules of composition. For example the rule of thirds, golden section, usage of perspective and lines, forms, contrasts and texture among others, can greatly improve your photo and make it interesting rather than boring.
   
7. Examine you photograph before you shoot. Especially try to look at you background. Stay away from cluttered backgrounds, watch out of trees, wires, buildings, lights, etc (that might “pop out” from you subject head).
   
8. Take photos at sunrises and sunsets. The light before sunrise or sunsets is very beautiful and warm. Use that to bathe you subject in this wonderful light.
9. Don’t cut you subject. Avoid cropping you subject from elbows or knees. I often see this mistake and makes the image look weird.
10. Read you camera’s user manual. Learn what you camera can do. You always find new things that you camera can do. Learn you camera limitations and try to overcome them.
    
11. Shoot lots of pictures. Almost everyone has digital cameras, so it will cost you nothing to take hundreds of pictures. Use different settings, try different angles, zooms, positions, experiment, and don’t stop shooting. Try to make each photograph as distinct from the others as possible. This will keep you in touch with your camera and hone your compositional skills to a great degree. Take pictures every week. After all, you do need to practice if you want to keep taking good pictures.
12. Always try to do better. Even if you shoot good photos, always try different things so that you improve. Even if you have the perfect solution for a photo situation challenge yourself and try a different approach. The pro photographers are often doing this so that they will become even better.

I hope you enjoyed this, and remember in photography there are no limits, and there are just some guidelines, but aren’t limitations. You might need to brake some rules, just do it without thinking of it as long as the results will be mind blowing.