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Know Your Camera Q&A

The big thing I want you to take away is if the light isn't changing, your exposure isn't changing so like you're in a portrait situation or you're shooting an event where the lights just not changing you know it could be an outdoor wedding ceremony is you know, it's in the shade and the light just isn't changing for half an hour your exposure shit changing you dial it in for whatever you need that exposure to be and you just stay there for consistency, consistency, consistency, consistency so that's what we were talking about before the lunch break we took some questions I felt a little rushed on the question part um so let's take some more questions from the internet. Okay, question from road l when shooting portrait ce what do you think about using the incident internet meter, the incident meter like portrait's events, whatever, it's it's just a different way of meeting. All right, so your camera is a reflective meter. Um, using something like a handheld meter like this with the lit...

tle white dome is an incident so one is reading the light. Reflecting off of the subject into your camera. One is reading the light falling on your subject, right? So the incident is reading the light falling on your subject reflective is reading the light reflecting off your subject back into your linds reflective is trying to make everything eighteen percent grave this little white dome does magic because there's a there's a little magic fairy that lives in there and figures out something else different I don't know I don't I'm a technical kind of photographer like I really want to understand the technical and why things happened, but there comes a point where I like I just don't care to go too deep with the technicals like I don't like the math of photography too much stuff anyways so so incident reading for portraiture what whatever, whatever you're just taking a meter reading right? You're just taking whether it's reflective and you're dealing with you know you know, taking eighteen percent gray and maybe plus two thirds of a stop or whatever from that or if you're walking up to your subject and taking an incident reading whichever way you're taking your meter reading here trying to get to two point eight at x shutter speed, whatever that is for whatever light your it right? So if I come over here to this window, I'm taking a portrait of someone here on the window and I met I saw one hundred and I want to shoot this at two point eight boom ba doop doo I need to be shooting ah thirtieth of a second right here, all right and I saw one hundred so I say ok my light is two point eight at thirtieth of a second over there if I have a subject facing the window to eight thirtieth then I put that into my head saying, well, I'm shooting with one hundred millimeter lens so I need to be closer to one twenty fifth of a second so I can hand hold one over focal length handholding camera so I mean one hundred millimeter let's call that one twenty fifth I'm in too aided thirtieth I want to stay it to eight for the shallow depth of field but I have to go sixtieth one twenty fifth I need two more stops of light so I can go from thirtieth to sixtieth toe one twenty fifth so I'm going from I s a one hundred to two hundred to four hundred and that way I can shoot right over there at four hundred s o four hundred two point eight one twenty fifth of a second right and I could have come to the same realization using my reflective meter in my camera I could have figured that same situation out not having this all right next question awesome thank you question from red baron was zach what about when we're talking about shutter speeds? What are your thoughts on image stabilization technologies and their potential with regard to the certain lenses so you still if it has image stabilization I still use that same calculation. You just talked image that's a great question. Image stabilization, it's it's cool technology, right? So you've got you've got a gyro, something going on inside of your lin's, right and it's picking up on whatever hand movements you're making it's counter acting that right, and that usually lets you shoot at a much slower shutter speed. Um, my thought on that is I s r v r nightgowns, rvr lenses, vibration reduction. I think it is and cannons r I s image stabilization. Um, I think they're cool. I think they're great and I also know for a fact they're more expensive, like you're paying more money for those iceland's is and so typically when I'm put money and lenses if if it's going to shave four hundred bucks off the price, the linens and I go non I s again, it goes back to what am I shooting? What kind of situations in my in all the time? Um, I don't particularly need I asked lenses I'm not there every day or weekly that I'm needing image stabilization image they oh, my gosh image david like stabilization. I'm usually not in those areas, so when I purchase a lin's, I'm usually not going to spend the extra on it. Because a big linds purchase you know you're talking two thousand fifteen hundred dollars on a lens I mean that's a like ok, I'm going to buy this limbs and that's my limbs for the year and if I could pick up a deal like that my eighteen, two hundred I got a deal on uh non I s so I went with that and save the money and that money goes toe rent and everything else in life you have bias lenses go for it, but I would say they're also kind of a new skill set when I do shoot with an I asked lens when one does happen on my camera body like it's kind of weird it's like a whole day, her feeling I feel that thing kind of moving around I hear the noise and like and I'm seeing my image and my viewfinder kind of floating every now and then it's a little like if I bought one I would have to get used to that wins it always turn it off you can always turn it off by what I do all right. Other questions question from mccray is the inverse rule true for both crop in full frame sensors or does one need to adjust for the crop factor the inverse square law? I'm sorry did I say the inverse? Yeah then the inverse square law whatever crop whatever you know, start a crop full frame it's the light falling on the subject, it's not so much the light falling from the subject to the lynns, so to speak. I mean, technically, you think that would happen, but if I'm shooting susan photographing you from here to here, I'm not changing exposure for that and whether it's cropper, full sensor it doesn't matter that doesn't really come into play the only place where that comes into place if I start adding extension tube's and bellows and I'm taking that linds physically further away from the camera body and the light is having to travel further than it normally has to travel from back element to the sensor. Then you have a bellows factor equation thing you might have to open up x number of stops for bella's factors got into that with large format photography a lot large format cameras, you'd extend those bellows way out, you have to make an adjustment for for exposure, but crop full friend, you have a question from jake tapper and I know we've talked about this, but maybe you could just clarify again. How do you choose between center waited and spot me during what situations were best for each? Um if if I physically I'm taking a portrait of you and I physically can't get closer to you I've been from here and I need to know the light on your face I might go to spot if we're working in this kind of distance and I just want to read your face what's going on there and go center and reality doesn't matter a lot of times I'll just go spot and read a cheek or forehead or something like that um but spot really matters to me if I'm further away from the subject that I still need is close on your faces as I possibly can center waited it just goes back and forth I know some people theyjust said on center waited and figure it out from there and some people just do spot it's all they do they just spot meter and that's it um and I find myself sort of fluidly kind of bouncing between the two m j dodd well had asked if I wanted to test the lens across the f stops what would be ideal to shoot to see the quality of the different the different f stops um yeah that's a good one um okay, you need something that's got some depth to it, right? You don't want to just one subject with a background three feet away from that you'd want to um you want something like a row of trees that were maybe three feet apart from each other or or take six chairs and line them out two or three feet space from each other and focus in on the second chair into the line so you see how depth of field is growing depth of field typically grows you focus somewhere in depth field typically grows one third in front of that focus point in two thirds behind the focus point right? So if you want to see what each aperture is doing find something that has a depth from foreground background with multiple objects that you can see what that depth of field this kind of thing and we're gonna get more into depth field coming up do you want to take a couple more questions more than I would get into lenses. Ok, cool. Um it was a question from me is that okay? Uh, no. So we were way we're talking about I guess maybe it's just the same thing when you were talking about getting close with the one point two um and it's not gonna help you out so much back here. Sorry, this was when you're with the twenty four millimeter at one point and you're saying, oh, it's really a three point five because you have to use it it just not based, so how do you determine then, like with your fifty one point two if that's my dream lens or whatever, how how do you determine how far you have to be or how far you can be to get that one point? Two sharp it's just it's all about testing your equipment um you know if if the fifty one two is your dream lin's renate from borrowings is you know, get it for three days, right? And go take pictures of it and started really close on someone and then get three feet away and then get five feet away and then get six feet away ten feet away. You know, photograph someone twenty feet out at one point two has pretty much going to be focused nearly to infinity at that point and pull it up. Is it sharp that far away or not or what? At what point does it maybe start to lose its sharpness? Um it's all a matter of just testing that's the beauty of digital is you just you just you picture and you know, look at it and you'll see right away back in the days of film we were having this conversation at lunch and the days of film like if you okay, I wanna test my cameras so I'm gonna shoot film that I pay x dollars for then I will send it to the lab and pay for process assessing and pay for prince and it's suddenly a costly money right out of your pocket situation to go this is the speed of my my film this is how I'm going toe rate my meter when I'm shooting this film. Um this is where my lenses are sharp, whether or not sharp on and on and on and on the other conversation we're having lunch about all this technical crap. It was back in the days of film when you shot film and you screwed it all up. You might have blown three hundred dollars a film and process you go shoot a bunch of pictures, you send it off to the lab, you get it back, you've paid all this money and it sucks and how quickly do you think you start learning? I'm not doing that again. You go out and you shoot fourteen million gigabytes of crappy photos you haven't really learned the lesson until it hits your pocketbook right when you take three hundred dollars out of your pocket and throw it down and just might as well like a match to it and burn it because that's how good your film is, like three hundred dollars film and processing down the drain you don't think about it's two o'clock in the morning here in photo shop trying to fix stuff it's the personal investment isn't quite the same, right? You don't want to be there at three o'clock in the morning from a photo shop anymore I get that. But when three hundred bucks is down the drain, you learn and it's all testing, testing, testing, testing, test your stuff. No, you're all right. Question from me, cal j how do use, uh, flash and still get a very shallow depth of field. My sb six hundred doesn't seem to be able to cope. Well, get in that tomorrow. I'm not trying to deflect, but we'll get in the light tomorrow. Okay, yeah, I got it. I believe you. All right? Looking at questions that have to deal with lenses, which is, if you know where we're going, I can ask you a question from christie land. Can you explain why some of my pictures don't look properly exposed during a shoot, especially outdoors, even though my settings and my lighting has not changed and that's the examples. Ok, so you're outdoors and you're lighting, and your settings are the same, but the exposure change changes or it's just not right. They're saying when they're outdoors, their settings and the lighting hasn't changed, but the pictures don't look properly exposed. Sometimes you may just not be probably exposed to start with that. Maybe that hold the meter is reading this situation and trying to make it something that it's not it's trying to take light colored things and make it great is trying to take dark colored things and make it great and it's time and you might find yourself in a situation where all the tonal values air so far from bray but your meter is offer reading the wrong thing and you're shooting and shooting and shooting and it's all wrong exposure then you need to break off of that meter and say I need an extra stop alike and your meters sitting there flashing that you know you're over exposed you're over exposed shut out me or your stupid like I'm looking at the picture it's fine and your meter sanguine and and and and no, no, this is wrong I have pictures shut up the meter the way I look at a meter is like a cab like I think of it is like a block of apartments and the cab drops me off on the right block my meter gets me under the block I need to be and then I've got to find which door to get to follow him saying so it gets me in the neighborhood, it gets me onto the street and it gets me on the block I need to be then I got to figure out like, well, I'm actually needed to go to that door down there I need to go to that door over there but it got me in the neighborhood like that. Yeah, it's. Helpful it's. Not the most precise thing in the world. This the incident usually gets you between one or two of the doors. That gets that's, like almost door service. The incident reflective through the lens and gets you on the block.