Hey folks,

I've got a question. In the picture below, I decided to focus on the outstretched flowers rather than Kate's face. I'm not sure if I like it and I wonder if it would have been better to have her sharply in focus, rather than the flowers. Any opinions? Is there a "golden rule" on focal points for a portrait like this? Thanks for any help or opinions.

Cheers,
Will

I am not a camera expert and I don't think I have the "eye" for picture but...I would love to see Kate's eyes even if she were slightly out of foucs to make the flowers the focal point. Beautiful picture anyway Will!!!!!!

Try using different "depth of field" settings on your camera if it has them. Different settings allow varied depth of focus in an image.
I think the photo is fine, other than maybe cropping some of the background.

Also keep in mind that "odds" are better than "evens" in almost any composition...That being said, I have more of problem with two flowers instead of perhaps, a bunch. So do you spoil a spontanious moment with your child and shove more flowers in her hand in order to get a better picture? Not necessarily. It's just another little rule to think about while you're snapping away. She' s a beauty, by the way!

If you set your F-Stop a few steps higher(tighter aperture) even the green field in the background would have been in more focus, but remember if you go up a few steps then you need to come down a few steps with
your shutter - it's a cool little numbers game.

SS,

Thank you. Having a great subject helps quite a bit.

Cheers,
Will

MM,

I was shooting with the apeture wide open, so the depth of field was very narrow. With close-ups, I prefer to have the background blurred to keep attention on the subect. Maybe I should play around with it. I agree there is too much background. Thanks much for your input.

Cheers,
Will

Salvo,

I've never heard that one before. Thanks for the tip. This is exactly what I'd hoped for when I created this forum.

Cheers,
Will

TS,

Yes indeed. I've started shooting in manual mode only for the last six weeks. I read a great book by Bryan Peterson and he does a good job of explaining the different dynamic elements of taking a photograph. He makes several compelling arguments for not using the point-and-shoot settings. It is still pretty confusing to me, but I'm starting to get the hang of it.

Thanks,
Will

Will,

What's the name of the book?

Mary Ann

Mary Ann,

I believe the title is Understanding Exposure. Check Amazon.com. It's a good book for a beginner trying to learn how to use your digital SLR in manual mode.

Cheers,
Will

Will, I'm not much of a people photographer but I have done a few kid pics for publications. Heres what works for me, I like to focus and spot meter right under the eye of the darkest cheek. That will properly expose the face and skin tones. I feel that the picture is about the person not background or clothing. If other elements are O/U exposed you can fix that in PS if you feel the need. I usually do people 1 stop down from wide open. That blurrs the background but gives me enough DOF to grab whatever they are holding in reasonable focus. Since spot meter is pretty tough with a moving kid I set my camera on manual mode then pre meter,set my shutter and forget it,that leaves me free to think about focus and composition. If you cant get a good meter on the child use the back of your hand in the same light. Turn ALL the auto settings in your camera off use it in manual or ap. priority. Most people are intimidated by all the bells and whistles that are built into the new digital cameras.............Don't use them treat it like an old manual film camera and it will act like one. What are you shooting with ?

Will, are you shooting in RAW yet?

Scott,

Thanks for the great tips on portrait photography.

I use a Canon D20 in manual mode, so it does record everything in the RAW format. The camera came with software that allows me to work with the RAW images. I had to get the 4Gb memory card when I started using the RAW files because the pictures are huge.

Is there a good program for working with RAW images? What software do you use?

Thanks,
Will

Will

Photoshop CS3 is the absoloute best RAW converter you can use. If you have any version of photoshop I think you can upgrade fairly inexpensively. Even if you have to buy the full version for the first time it's well worth the money and the quality of your work is certainly worth the investment. It would be better to do that sooner than later before you develop bad habits in the Canon software. When shooting RAW I recommend going into the camera menu and turning off all forms of compensation, sharpening and or compression. I use Nikon so I'm not real familiar with the Canon settings. When shooting outdoors I set my white balance on cloudy and forget it. Cloudy is a nice average setting that gives me a nice starting point at editing time. Don't use auto white balance. Have you worked with the histogram yet?

Scott,

I've been using PhotoShop since version 3 and just ordered the CS3 upgrade on your reccomendation. I curently have CS and it doesn't handle RAW formats. I need to read up on the camera to see if there are any auto settings that remain enabled when its in full manual mode. I'll try it with everything off, if it isn't already. To be honest, I'm not even sure what the histogram is. Is this similar to Curves in PhotoShop?

Cheers,
Will

Will

The histogram is more or less a graph maping the values in an image. It allows you to see how many pixels there are in each of the 255 luminance values available. 0 being black and 255 is white. All others in between are a tone of gray. When I say grey I don't mean color but value. A properly exposed digital file will have a large portion of the pixels to the right of mid grey (127) Yes, the histogram of an image is the same in curves and levels and any other tool where it appears. Learning how to read the histo. is essential to proper exposure.

Scott.
Very Interesting about the Histogram, a tool I never used but seems essential.
Pic #1 is the histogram of what I believe is a pretty good exposure, #2 Probably not so hot of an exposure.
Are you saying to read it correctly that the greatest amount of pixel usage should be in the middle or more to the right of middle for a proper exposure? Where Pic #2 is kind of all over the place.

Picture 1 is a bit under exposed,maybe by 1/2 stop. You still have a little room to go to the right before the whites slam against the wall and become lost or what the tech guys call clipped. A little bit of clipping can be fixed but too much leads to a lot of PS work. Image 2 is a tough one because the values are all over the board. I would say that is the best exposure you could hope for on image 2. There is clipping on the whites but that's better than loosing the pixels to black.

Think of it like this,in simplified laymans terms ( I'm not a tech guy). Pixels are little boxes that hold information and that information is light. The more light the box holds the more information you have to work with as far as saturation, detail,sharpness and editability. So the trick is to fill as many pixels with as much light as you can by exposing to the right side of the histogram as far as you can without clipping. When pixels are clipped that means they have hit 255 in value and then contain no information. When a pixel is clipped on the dark end the same thing happens, the information is 0. I look at the histogram like I would a gas gauge in a car, to the right of half tank good..... to the left bad.

I know that was a pretty crude explanation, hopefully it was helpful.

I have this book as well Will and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to understand how taking a picture works. Excellent reading. Fun to play around with different areas as you read as well.

Coming into this sorta late...

IMHO, picture taking is like painting... *perfection* is in the eye of the beholder. Given the subjective nature of the topic, different situations can be bettered (or worsened) with different setups. I have experimented with analog and digital cameras, macro shots, close ups, different lenses, black and white, manual modes, point-and-shoot, etc. and have learned (I admit as a definite amateur) that the same scenario can be brilliant in one set up and... well... not so good in another, but I have gotten some of what I consider my best shots by shooting from the hip (sometimes literally), yet understanding that experimentation is worth every slide/pixel.

Scott , Will, and MM,

Thank all of you for your indulgence.

All of this (photography info) is definitely over my head and I am not sure I want to try and figure all this out myself. I am enjoying following along the conversations. Scott have you ever considered teaching a class, maybe COA would provide computers at the new high school? Was it your artwork (watercolors?) that used to be for sale in the Orange Blossom? I really enjoyed them and was thinking how I would have loved to see them as studies for large oil paintings and large paintings worked from them.

Being a teacher I really appreciated your last analogy and answer to tasteysandwich. I used histograms to show collected data to my students. We were weighing and measuring shrimp. When the data is collected you can visually see all kinds of statistical information that would have been outside the math abilities of elementary students. Averages can be so misleading when looking at data. An average could be a value that was totally un-representative of the sample. A histogram immediately makes that apparent. I noticed that my very simple Iphoto program displays a histogram every time I adjust the pictures.

I am going to think about this some more the next time I am in the Iphoto controls. I do consider the controls of the Iphoto to be more like a medium when manipulating the photo. This has changed my concept of “taking pictures”. I know when I am taking picture that I see things before I start shooting that sometimes show up on the computer and sometimes don’t. My strategy is to just take a bunch of photos from different angles and change my zoom and then use my judgment and memory when I see them downloaded on the computer.

Will it is very nice to comment on a forum that is so helpful and friendly. Thanks a lot.

So I am on my favorite beach (no ORVs). I like to look off in the distance, the big picture. The ocean is rough and the wind is on shore. There is sea foam being pushed into the beach. There is a lone fisherman down the beach. I think he is looking for solitude as much as for fish, In any case I would be. I see clouds reflecting off of the wash and the lighthouse as a monument. The Lighthouse even though it has been marketed into some kind of nightmare of Hatteras Island, has deep emotional meaning to me. I kick off my shoes and socks and run with my cameras into the wash and down the beach.

Lighthouse

Redfin...that is a truly beautiful shot! Also beautiful is your journey to get the shot! An uderstanding of the subject matter...and in this case, a true passion and love for it... works to your advantage. Do the clouds mimic the foam or vice versa? I too, love the subject matter....I have painted that light house many times...And as tall and powerful as that mighty Lighthouse is, she is ultimately at the mercy of the sea and the skies! That's is what I am getting from this photo. I like it very much! If not for the landscape surrounding the lighthouse, it almost looks like it is floating in the clouds...very surreal.