Lessons

Lesson Info

Long Exposure Selects & Discussion

Because I want to start off with this one I think it's pretty pretty interesting when you're out there doing nine photography in which mode do you shoot and when do you know your exposure is right as the meter will kind of show it under exposed so that's a very good question I initially will start in this sort of situation in a non automatic mode such as aperture priority because the sun's coming down very quickly and instead of constantly like ratchet in the meter I'm gonna let that the camera do the calculations for me but I'm also very in tune with was understanding where the light is coming from or where the camera sees the light coming from so for instance when eric all of a sudden was high on the horizon and he's just a little person and there's a big white sky all of a sudden like okay well the camera sees all of this light behind him it's now going to be tricked do an exposure bias or go plus one point seven to make the camera expose it for longer so that I'm compensating for t...

hat once we get to uh when it's dark it's a new moon or ah full moon the light is pretty consistent we could go on a manual mode uh you know say I s o five thousand for fifteen seconds and we're going to get a pretty pretty good exposure it's you know it's not going to change it's the same thing is the sunny sixteen rule which sonny sixteen is your s o and f sixteen is the shutter speed closest I s so so if you were at s o one hundred sixteen you beat one twenty fifth of a second or a hundredth of a second so same thing a night basically that that is not changing esso I use a mix of automatic modes when the light is changing very quickly and then when the light doesn't change we goto manual mode just because uh you know nothing is changing for a long period time again we're trying tio take to take any sort of uh uh any sort of glitches out and you know, be focused on our framing and all the things in the frame as opposed to worry about uh, exposure and all those sorts of things cool on dh folks we're asking about your lighting choices when you're out when you're working at this time of night strobe lights whoever you strobe lights or really is flashlight your go to that's a really good question we will actually be showing you a litte strobe demo in the session to where we will actually be using available and adding one and two strobes to that s o that we will basically used the available light as well as overpowered on dh make things a little more complex this was basically just to light up eric so that I could see him for focusing and that's a good tip if you want to focus after the sun has gone down get a get a flashlight it doesn't have to be the most expensive flashlight to something with some high lumens you know, four hundred lumens air above so that you khun, be able t o you know, see what you're what you're doing essentially on if you have an assistant we just had a little handheld. Ah, you know, headlamp that works just justice. Fine, but make sure you always carry that headlamp in your bag because, uh, if you want to shoot this type of photography uh, having headlamps is imperative. We had a question here in the back. Yeah, I saw I think at the beginning when you were using the nd filter that you were adjusting the ship the shutter speed, I believe as well to try to get the right motion on the ocean. Eso so the nd the variable andy filter basically what it is it's too polarizer is working against each other and you turn it one way and it gets darker. You turn it the other way, it gets lighter that the to believe that the most light setting it's you're losing one stop of light so basically as that lie was going down very quickly, there was a point where I don't want to be higher than f eleven, so the sweet spot in your lens so what? You're given len's typically this is something that not a lot of people talk about the sweet spot in your given land say you have a twenty four millimeter, two point eight pretty standard linds it's going to be about two stops above the maximum aperture. So adds five, six or f ate that's going to be the sharpest that lens will possibly be after you get past safe. Eleven sixteen twenty two it's actually diminishing returns, you're actually not getting sharper, even though you think well, I'm getting more depth of field, but after eleven, you're actually going against yourself, so I try to stick around that f a f eleven mark uh, to get the sharpest possible images, because again, I'm always thinking, where can these go? Can they be blown up on the side of a building? You know, I'm always trying to get the best possible quality that's one go with a heigh megapixel camera, so you know, that is why I don't go to f eleven or higher than f eleven, so I was changing the shutter speed, not the shutter speed of change, the amateur. To get that shutter speed sort of in that sweet spot where it wasn't too long for eric to be ableto hold still, there wasn't twenty seconds is more like in the fifth ten to fifteen second range, which is what I found most people can hold still a song as they have something to brace themselves on and that's a good that's a good tip if you want your athlete to hold still, first of all, give them an object to look at give him a very specific point the top of a peak because think about it when you're when you get up in the middle of night it's dark and you don't have anything to focus on how you feel like you don't really have your balance having something to focus on gives you a point of reference to balance keeps you gives you an equilibrium also give them a proper whether that's a bicycle uh sir for something to hold onto to place on the ground almost make a tripod in a sense uh, so the longer if you do those couple things they can't hold still much longer but again that sweet sought the bound fifteen seconds ten to fifteen seconds is what I found uh especially, you know athletes can hold still because they're very in tune with their bodies and such, so you know, I was using the aperture and letting the camera basically adjust the shutter speed for me. Uh, and it was just one of things that I'm like, okay, I'm in f ate it's a thirteen seconds or fifteen seconds, okay, we're in the right spot. All right, eric, hold still, as I'm yelling at him, I don't recommend this for spouses, you know, this is could cause some problems, you know, if you went out and you're yelling his hold still, you know, but eric and I get along very well, so we're not spouses over there. So one of the photo bug in the chat room wanted to know about shooting at really, really long angles. Is that something? How do you determine what type of angle you're going to shoot at? So I guess to clarify, are we talking about a high high angle? Or either either way, either high or shooting down low so typically is really a matter of what you're trying to show in an image, right? If you are at a low angle and your subject is up here, it is a very dominating photo. If you were the high angle looking down at somebody it's a angle showing them being submissive. So if it's, you know, it just depends on what you want to show is faras what's the mood you're trying to evoke? So feared a low angle on derek's towering over you all of a sudden, you know, he seems very powerful, but if you're up on a cliff looking down at him, he's much more meek, so it depends on what you're trying to convey or if he's, you know, small in a big landscape. It's very, you know, sort of approachable where, if he's, you're right there and it's in your face, it seems a little bit more, you know, in your face in the literal sense and one last coming from photo bug. How do you how do you get a shot in time when the sun is setting and you're it's? A lot of patients, a lot of luck on a lot of perseverance doing that she was honest, and I'm not going to win an emmy for that, obviously, but doing all those things it wants talking about what you're doing, focusing, trying to figure out your backgrounds, it's very hard. So the more you're in tune with the way your camera work, the more you're in tune with your the person that you're working with, all of these things will help minimize the time you're wasting and hopefully spend more time making those those perfect shot. So knowing your gear, knowing the person you're working with and putting yourself in that best situation to succeed will hopefully help you overcome those hurdles. Great let's, take a look at the selects, so we've got some selects and these air again, these air just pretty much a one passover. Uh, and this is where I haven't mentioned this yet in the course, but I'm pretty selective about my camera profiles on what I mean by camera profiles are in the nikon system, there's landscape, there's portrait, there's, vivid there's, all these cameras, all the camera, max route camera manufacturers have these profiles when I am going out nine times out of ten when I'm shooting available, like I like to be in what I would say landscape are vivid cause very rich, very sort of poppy, but when it goes to this time of day, I like to go to one that's called flat, which is actually originally developed for cinema. It's very flat there's no color, no contrast. It starts a very simple baseline. This allows me in post processing to be ableto have the upmost latitude, so ah, the only thing I've done to this is basically dropped an nd filter in light room just on the top two just sort of knocked down that background because even though you don't see it on that raw file it looks just flat literally flat there is data there as long as you've not overexposed everything on so I've just dropped an nd down there on may be brought up the vibrancy just a little bit to bring those colors back in added just to touch a contrast and this is where we're at so you know, I think this worked out pretty well this image was one I was talking about it in the the video where there was something behind in that kind of bothered me these rock but when I when I took it into black and white all of a sudden rocks warren is noticeable to me so just because there's something in color on the takeaway is here just because there's something color that sort of annoying you know maybe give a chance to black and white and see what you get because you'll be surprised that you know once she was when she toss out all the color sort of what the direction you have going todo it's again changing those angles a subtle nuances you saw me going lo getting high and trying to find something very simple on dh what I was battling was essentially these rocks right here and having him lineup and not having his head be over something as well as is keeping him still I think we probably took a total of maybe fifteen frames the whole time that were out there so it's not a lot of frames but with the coordination eric being very good holding still and you know, a little bit of luck we we walked away with, you know, some pretty nice images uh we moved in a little bit closer brought him to be a little more, uh, you know, mme or a little larger in the frame and this is where it really depends on the mood and I'm gonna go back to this, you know what I say is selling the dream I'm trying to evoke that sense of I want to be eric on the beach I want to be just coming in from surfing and this is this is something that is strategic for me this may be like, oh, it's a pretty picture, but this is strategic because these air images that I know that my clients have responded too well in the past, pictures that have running magazines picture that have been purchased for ad campaigns so there's a certain feeling, a certain nuance that I'm looking for out of these images, so even though it feels like it's kind of like, I'm just sort of doing this and doing that there's a certain quality I'm looking for this kind of strategic