February 22nd, 2010 by Brian Cooney

Crow Silhouette

Sometimes you get lucky.  This was definitely one of those weeks for me.  Lately,  when I drive,  I have been throwing my camera on the passenger side seat, with my 50mm lens. Usually, the camera is set up with something  in the 1/250th or faster shutter range, and as large a f-stop as that will allow.  The idea is simple: If I see a grab shot, I might get it.  I try not to pay too much attention to the camera,  and sure as heck am not messing with it if I am around other vehicles,  but with Live view and a quick framing, maybe Ill get lucky.  This week, I got two shots this way… one that my beautiful wife Jennifer and I love,  and one that I just think is neat.  The one we love was actually a terrible shot.  I was sitting at a redlight, and saw some low flying crows overhead.  I grabbed the camera and snapped the above frame.  The exposure was terrible, because the camera was not set up for shooting a backlit bird in the sky. I was way to far away.  When I looked at it on the computer however, I noticed that it was a perfect silhouette, and that it was fairly sharp.  I Cropped about 1/4th of the frame,  dropped the exposure,  played with the levels to make the sky a sexy deep blue,  and did a little sharpening and de-noising.  The result was a beautiful silhouette,  and in fact the only good silhouette shot I have ever taken.  Lucky accident, and even luckier I decided to take a look at the file on my computer. I should have just thrown the file away, but I am glad I didnt, because I love it. The second shot is the Kit Kat truck.  It isn’t well framed, and I didn’t put too much time or thought into it, because I was actually moving and really couldn’t be looking through the viewfinder.  The only thing I could really control was getting closer, to get the framing angle that looked good.  Its not a great picture,  the sky looks like crap,  but its neat because it is literally, a Tanker Truck full of awesome…. and I like it.  I always used to steal the Kit Kat bars and Resses Penut butter cups out of my brothers trick or treat bag, and replace them with Smarties for a reason. As far as editing this one,  I just played with settings to try and make the tuck look shiny, and make the pavement look black.  Nothing I did was having the effect I wanted on the sky,  so I just focused on my subject, the truck of happiness.

Necessary Disclaimer:  Be careful.  You are responsible for your actions, and I am not.  Especially if you read this article and then screw up.  If there were other cars around me besides what you see in the frame, I wouldn’t have been handling my camera.

February 14th, 2010 by Brian Cooney

Robin Couple 1/400 f11 400mm ISO800

I often leave home not expecting to get any pictures at all,  but with my 100-400mm lens attached to my camera, and my camera out of the bag hoping to see something.  Usually, this proves to be a waste of time.  Today,  I got a few images I liked out of it, and one that I love.  Birds are flirty little things.  You always see them being all pretty and showing off when you dont have your camera with you, but when you are packing a long lens they will be nowhere to be found.  There are two ways around this.  The first way is to go after them at known feeding locations.  Bird feeders in a park work well…. bird feeders in your back yard are perhaps even better.  The problem with is is that My lease prohibits feeding any animals, and I don’t have time to drive to the park every weekend.  Besides,  getting them when they are foraging for natural food sources usually makes for much more natural pictures. So, I just leave the house with a lens and a camera around my neck, and hope for the best.  Today, I lucked out.  Ironically enough, I had went to the bird store, to buy bird food for my love bird.  I had my car windows open on the way there,  but didn’t hear or see a thing.  When I got home,  I heard a Chickadee in the trees above our parking lot.  I couldn’t get very close, even with my 100-400mm lens,  but I steadied the camera on a SUV in the packing lot to get the best shots I could.  I wasn’t expecting much, as the bird was still tiny in my viewfinder,  and I would have to crop it hard to make him even visible.  If only I was dumb enough to climb trees with a camera…. but not in this lifetime.

Soon enough, I got boared with the Chickadee, figuring I probally wasnt getting anything good anyway.  I walked around to the front of the house, and Jackpot….. it was Birdy Lunchtime.  There was a large tree in front of the neighboring townhouse row, and under that tree was the most Robins I have seen togeather… possibly ever since paying attention to such things.  They were enjoying lunch together, courtesy of that same tree.  As usual with wildlife,  I started sneaking closer and closer to them….. taking a few pictures each time I got a little closer.  I wanted to expose well for the birds…. but I wasn’t sure of best way to deal with the snow when it was the Birds I care about.  The snow was just throwing way too much light at me, and making my camera all kinds of cranky. I tried a +1 and a +2ev,  both of which were of marginal quality when I saw the files.  Im not sure if Spot meeting was helping or hurting me here.  Close to the end of my shooting, I did the right thing, which yielded the beautiful results at the beginning of this post.  I set the camera to full manual, the metering mode still set on Spot meeting.  I Metered a correct exposure off the trunk of the Tree that they were under,  filling the frame with Tree bark and setting the aperture and shutter speeed to expose the tree trunk properly.  The birds were in the same light, and this took the snow out of the equation for proper metering, and in my opinion, worked wonderfully. The reason this works well is that the color of the Tree bark is MUCH closer to the color of the birds feathers than say… snow.  The thing to remember is this:  If you just cant nail down the right exposure on your subject…..  nail the correct exposure on something nearby that will react to light in a similar way, and is  in the same light…. lock it in as a manual setting, and then go back to your subject.  This is also very useful if your subject itself is bright or dark.  For example,  If you are shooting a picture of a big black ape,  and you want him to look like a big black ape, and not a big grey ape,  you might get your meter reading manually off of the green tree next to him, as a green tree is much closer to neutral than your Black furry critter.  The key is in remembering that you camera wants everything to be neutral. If you want to get really fancy, and have free time and subjects that don’t care,  you could even break out a Grey card, and use that to set both your exposure and white balance, but how often are the birds going to be that patient?

February 8th, 2010 by Brian Cooney

Briarcrest in Snow +1.3ev

This week I would like to talk about shooting in Snow.  People often have trouble with this, but its actually very easy.  Shooting at the Beach poses several of the same issues, and the same solutions.

The basic issue is simple.  Digital cameras expect every scene to be average.  An average scene, when you average all colors, ends up being 18% grey.  If you let your camera do all of the thinking, and it doesnt know its shooting snow,  it will try to make the entire scene average… which will make the snow average.  Average being 18% grey is just disgusting and dingy.

There are two ways to deal with this.  If you have a point and shoot camera,  look for a setting for “Snow” or “Beach” and set your camera there.  If you have a DSLR,  dial in a Positive exposure value.  If you don’t know how to do this, check your manual…. its always easy, and fundamentally useful.

If you are really serious about getting the best shots,  Bracket your exposures.  Some cameras can do this automatically, or you can do it manually by just setting different Exposure compensation values.  Again, check your manual, and look for Auto Exposure Bracket.  Either way, the point is this:  Get 3-6 images at different exposure levels.  Then, when you get back to your laptop, pick the best one.  Don’t trust your camera,  bracket, bracket, bracket.  Then when you get home, decide what you like best.

Snowboarding EV +1.3

If you shoot DSLR, shoot raw.  This will give you more power to adjust later as well.  If you Cant bracket,  say for example, because you are trying to shoot kids instead of landscapes,  try to find a positive exposure compensation value that you think will work, and you can massage the raw file a bit later…. but definably don’t just go full auto.  As a base line,  try +1ev.  This might not be right on, but it will be much better than having your camera set to neutral.

It may also be a good idea to shoot a little wide if your are trying to get a moving subject, especially if you have a descent Megapixel sensor.  Its better to crop the picture than to miss the shot because you couldn’t keep up with your subject.  For the snowboarding shot, I actually had the camera on a tripod with a shutter release, so I could watch the subject better, and shoot when i knew he would be in the frame.

Today the sky was a wonderful Blue.  I used a Circular Polarizer filter to really bring it to life… and loved the results.  The blue sky with white clouds,  and the white snow played great off of each other.

Shutter speed was not an issue today, as it was quite sunny, and I was using a tripod.  I think I had my camera at iso 100, on a tripod for most of the still shots, and I increased to ISO400 to get my shutter speed into the 500 range for the snowboarder, while keeping a deep Depth of field with a high F-stop number.

The other camera setting to watch is White Balance.  As it was a bright sunny day, so I shot all of these images on Daylight white balance.  If it were cloudy, I may have needed to adjust as such.  If you shoot raw, you can tweak this after the fact, but I didnt find that I needed to to get the affects I wanted on my images today.

Next time it snows,  keep these tips in mind.  Dial in a Positive exposure value,  Check your White balance,  set your ISO as low as you can while getting the shutter speeds you need, and go have a great time!

February 1st, 2010 by Brian Cooney

My brother Shaun with the ball

This Saturday I had the opportunity to shoot my first basketball game. My little brother Shaun and his friend Tyler were playing for their East Pennsboro team.  According to Mom, this is considered to be a JV team, so everybody gets to play. Next year they will have to try out.

Before going to the game, I did considerable reading on forums and  the Digital Photography Schools website to look for any extra tips that I hadn’t thought about…. hoping to have a good first outing.  Im not terribly happy with the results of these pictures, but the research and thought processes I went through are valuable, so I will share them along with my best images.   I knew from my research that my equipment would pose some limitations.  The main issue when you are shooting fast moving action in a middle school gym is lack of light.  Our eyes do a fine job adjusting, but to a camera, its just not a bright environment.  I took two cameras, and two lenses, because I didn’t know what I would be in for.  I ended up using my fastest zoom,  a 24-105mm f4L on my 50d body.  I set the camera to 1/250 Shutter priority, since I figured that would be the SLOWEST shutter speed that could provide acceptable results.  Anything slower would guarantee lousy results, and indeed I think 1/250 was probably too slow.  I set ISO on automatic, which is something I normally never do.  The camera got to pick ISO and Aperture.  The reason I choose these settings is because I knew the ISO would be painfully high… ranging from 1600 to 3200.  By letting the camera pick, I figured I would have at least some shots with a lower ISO… which I wanted.  The Aperture pretty much stuck at f/4 the entire time, which is what I expected.  I also could have probably set the camera to manual 1/250-f4, but I wanted to give it some flexibility in case changing the ISO wouldn’t give quite a correct exposure.

I expected noise to be my biggest problem…. and while it is noticible, its not as bad as I thought.  Next time I do this, I will go with a higher shutter speed, at the cost of more noise, and see which works better.  The good thing is that they will be playing in the same gym next weekend, so I may try to make that game.

Tyler takes a foul shot

If I had my choice of equipment, I would definitely have a full frame camera for better noise control. I would defiantly trade my 24-105 f4L for a 24-70 f2.8L.  Finally, if possible, I would be packing a 70-200 f2.8L.  In this type of scenario,  Image stabilization really doesn’t matter much, because your subject is moving fast.  Image Stabilizers are great for using slower shutter speeds, and I will always get them if I can, but in this situation a aperture that is one stop faster will beat three stops of stabilization every time, because it is the subject motion that is the issue, not your caffeine shaking hands.  If you are buying a lens because your kids play sports,  spend your money on F stops, NOT IS.  Period.  If you can have both, great, but the IS wont help you here.  I would also consider an even faster prime lens.  I will probably try my 50mm 1.8 at some point.  In fact, that is what was on my second body, but I really didn’t use it this time.  I tried going to f5.6 to see if my 100-400 f4.5-5.6L would be useful to bring next time.  No way,  that extra stop killed any chance I had at a sharp image.

My position was a big help.  I was able to hide on the floor down at the end, about 10 feet behind the basket, off to one side.  This allowed me a good camera angle to get faces on my brothers team as they moved twards their basket with the ball.  My favorite pictures would not have been possible from the stands.

I sharpened all of these images.  No choice… hopefully next time a higher shutter speed proves to be less evil than the higher noise that will come with it.

I would love to get flash involved, but I dont have pocket wizards to put the lights where I would want, and I dont know the coaches well enough yet to feel comfortable asking.  Ill let them get used to me first.  I think even a little fill flash would help a lot, but i’m just not sure about distracting the players.  I wasn’t sure if the coaches would have yelled at me for being too close to the court…  but they didn’t.  I don’t want to push my luck.

The color temp of this gym is horrible.  No setting on my camera other than Auto looked even remotely ok….. so if I did get flash involved, I would defiantly need to experiment with Gels to find a mix of different greens to make it match close enough.  Definitely a problem for another day.

Needless to say, I had empty memory cards to start, and my camera on its fastest Burst mode.  I actually didn’t burst as much as I expected, or use as much memory as expected,  but I also didn’t know they only play eight minute quarters.  I used a lower quality raw file… which I have never done before, because I didn’t want to run out of memory.  I think the second biggest raw file on my 50d is about the same quality as the raw files on my Rebel XT……  so I know they would be acceptable if everything else is ok.  That being said, I still would love to have more memory……  you can easily burn a lot of pixels shooting hoops.  My main memory card is 16gb….  I don’t think it would be enough if I shot a normal length games with full size raw files.

If I didn’t have the 50d,  I would have used the 50mm 1.8 with my digital Rebel XT.   I would have used ISO 1600, RAW, and TV of somewhere in the 300-500 range.  This could have given me some great shots, but probably only when the guys are fairly close in.  That being said, I think some of them would have been superior to what I got with my Zoom, but i’m lazy, and love my zoom.  My point is that if you have a Rebel, or some other camera that won’t go over 1600,  try that nifty fifty.  I might too.

Regardless of what camera you use, don’t forget to think about what focus mode you use.  Refresh your memory by reading the part of your cameras manual that talks about focus modes, and do what makes sense.  You probably want to set it to only use the middle AF points,  and set it to track your subject for you.  This might be called AI Focus or something similar. Again, a feature I have never used, and need practice with… but it could be a big help with running kids.  Setting to the middle focus point just gives you a predictable focal point.  There is just too much going on to let your camera decide for you.

Broady Cruise playing at Halftime

The mistake I made most often in composition was framing too tight.  Because I love my zoom, I want to see faces.  Many times,  this meant not seeing where the ball was going, like mabey… the basket.  Besides… composition is kinda hard with this game… its probably a good idea to be able to recompose with the crop tool later, which I found myself doing on nearly every shot in this case.

One suggestion that I liked, but forgot about… is if you get a good action shot… especially one that might matter  to the story of the game, shoot the scoreboard for an easy record of when it happened.

Keep shooting when the action stops.  One of my favorite pictures was of my brothers cousins playing during half time.  Or you might catch some good interaction between the players and coaches.  I didn’t catch anything I liked off the court with the teams, but thoes shots are sometimes more engaging and personal than the action stuff.

I know I am missing some Ideas… but hopefully some of the ones I touched on are helpful.  If you have experience with sports shooting indoors, please share.  Sadly,  point and shoots probably wont cut it for this stuff, but if you have a SLR, get out there and give it a go for a fun, challenging night of photography!   If your shopping for Lenses,  don’t settle for higher than f2.8 if this is the type of shooting you want to do.  If you are shopping for a camera body,  look for ones that do well at ISOs above 1600.  Its suboptimal to shoot like this with any camera, but you are probably going to need it. And finally,  don’t forget that if you have a SLR, but your lens wont cut it…. you can alway rent a lens to catch your kids big game this weekend.  Selection, availability, and prices of rentals are a great perk to those of us who shoot Canon or Nikon.  Just don’t loose track of how many times you need to rent something before its better to just buy it.  Throwing money away is low on my agenda, or I would have all of these wonderful lenses, and live in a cardboard box.  At any rate, even without the right gear, you can use what you have to get out there and learn something, and when you have better gear you will have one up on the folks who have money but no practice.  And who knows,  you might even make some good images along the way!