Month: February 2016

The task we had this week is Chapter 10 of “The Visual Toolbox”, namely, Wide-Angle Inclusion.  We are to use a wide-angle lens, but not wider than 14mm nor fish-eye and give examples of the types of composition you get at various distances.

My go-to lens for the past year has been the 35mm prime.  I use it for almost everything.  All my shelter photographs are shot with that lens, pretty much all events are shot with that lens, and most of my client shoots are with that lens.  Why?  It’s sharp, it’s clean, and I get a lot of exercise by physically using my legs to zoom in and out with that lens.  While the exercise is a residual effect, your legs are the zoom feature of a prime lens.  For this assignment, I also used my 24-70mm lens, but stayed at 24mm.

The first set of photos below are of my Chloe using the 24mm lens.  For the first shot, I’m about 6-7 feet away from her.  For the second shot, I’m about 3-4 feet away from her.  For the last shot, I’m about 2 feet.  My only crop was the left and right, not the top and bottom so that you could still see the result from the particular distance.  You can see that there’s still plenty of unnecessary background with them, even the 3rd one.  I probably could have lowered my aperture and went a little closer to get close for a blurred background I would have preferred.

For the next set of photos, I used my go-to 35mm lens, at the same distances.

For my purposes, based solely on these photos, I prefer the 35mm as it spotlights Chloe better.  Of course, everything depends on what I would want to include in the photograph.    If there had been a fabulous background and want to spotlight her in that background, then I might have gone back farther and not be so close.  Also, by not zooming, there isn’t that much compression.  However, for both lenses kept at 24mm and 35mm respectively, I had to use my legs to zoom in and out.

Now click over to Pets We Love, Toronto & Collingwood Ontario Pet Photographer, Cynthia Wood for her take on this week’s assignment.

This week, Project 52 is tackling the photographic triangle – aperture, speed, and ISO.  I recall when I started shooting in Manual, it took me a long time to get even a hint of a decent exposure.  Not sure I still get it, but I’m glad we have this challenge this week so that I can refresh and remind myself how the triangle works.

Using a garden “dog”, I started with a 400 ISO, 1/1000 shutter speed, and 1.4 aperture.  With each photo, I kept the same ISO, but slowed the shutter speed a notch and tightened the aperture each time.  The exposure was pretty much the same, with the histogram somewhat in the middle.  But when my speed got to under 1/100, there was a definite unsteady blur beginning.  Too much caffeine!

Interesting challenge, something I need to continue to work on.  Now go over to Future Framed Photography, South Dakota to see how she handled the triangle.

This week’s challenge in the Project 52 group is Exposure: Optimize Your Raw Exposures, from the next chapter we’re covering in the book, “The Visual Toolbox”.   We’re told to start using our camera’s histogram to determine proper exposure, not how it looks on our LCD screen on the back.  That picture is actually a jpg and since all of us are shooting in raw (or least we should be), that is not a true indication that things are going well.  Last year I mentored with an outstanding pet photographer.  Before we started to shoot, she told me to fix my settings (aperture, speed, ISO) at what I felt they should be, set my LCD viewer to highlight warnings (blinkies) and take a picture (“doesn’t have to be in focus”, she said).  If there are intense blinkies, especially in the dog, adjust and take another picture.  She said that if the blinkies have diminished where you don’t want them – even if they show in other places – it’s OK.  I was always one to make sure my “ruler” in the viewfinder was on “0” to determine a good exposure.  She said that was a start, but the steps she told me to go thru, even if they appear to be above the “0” was probably the proper exposure.  I’ll have to admit, I try to do those steps, but I still tend to graviate towards that “0” on the ruler.  Checking the blinkies and the histogram is really a hard habit to start.

Below is a photo I took of Chloe at 1/125, F1.4, ISO 160.   As you can probably guess, the histogram was way to the right and on the LCD of the camera, almost all of Chloe was blinking.  Of course, the notches on the viewfinder “ruler” were well above “0”.

This next photo is taken at a speed of 1/320, the rest of the settings the same. There are no longer any “blinkies”.  The histogram is now primarily in the center of the chart, even though the notches are still above “0” in the viewfinder.

This next photo is taken at a speed of 1/500.  Even though the notches are still above the “0” in the viewfinder, the histogram is now primarily toward the left of center of the chart.  You can see it’s starting  to look a little underexposed.  Had to start using my white watermark as the black one hardly showed up.

This is taken at 1/640 speed.  The histogram is now further toward the left, but there are no longer any notches in the viewfinder as it’s right on the “0”.  This is what I probably would have used as a “good” exposure.

This was a terrific exercise for me as it indicates that being at the “0” in the viewfinder isn’t necessarily the best place to be and that I should start practicing the pointers that I learned at my mentoring session and start looking at the histogram more.

From here, you can move on to Little White Dog Photography – Sioux Falls, SD who will show her examples of exposure.