For this round of Photoshop Before & After, I’ll talk through my process for Capitol Building with Storm Clouds.

Straight Out of the Camera

I shot the Capitol Building in Washington D.C. a few hours after a heavy rain storm. Standing at the bottom of the steps with my back to the sunset, I got a nice upward angle on the golden front-lit building against the dark storm clouds which were now moving into the east.

I used the EF 24mm f/1.4 L USM lens on my 5D. The original 24mm version I use is discontinued, but there’s an EF 24mm f/1.4L II USM out now.

Exposure was f/13 for 1/500 sec. at ISO 200. All of these adjustments were done in Lightroom 3.

Profile Selection and Dust Cleanup

The “Camera Landscape” profile is usually my first step for getting colors to pop in outdoor photos.

After that profile quick selection I spend a few minutes cleaning dust spots out of the sky with the Spot Removal tool.

Slight White Balance Adjustment

I almost always set the camera to Auto WB mode and deal with color temperature later. The 5D made a good guess at this scene with 4850. Here I gave it a slight bump up to 5000.

Brightness and Contrast

Up to this point the image has looked pretty flat. I move the Brightness slider up to +57 (from the default 50), push the Clarity slider to +49 for edge contrast and then move on to the Tone Curve to individually adjust things.

Starting with a Medium Contrast curve, I push the four sliders around until I like what I see.

• Highlights stay at 0.
• Boost the Lights all the way up to +32.
• Pull the Darks down to -11. A little is usually all that’s needed here.
• Pull the Shadows down to -9 to make the darkest areas look really heavy.

Colors and Clouds

In terms of bringing back the dramatic look of the sunset lighting against the dark storm clouds, these next two adjustments make a big difference:

• Paint over the clouds with the Adjustment Brush at +100 clarity.
• Vibrance slider boost to +40.

The extra clarity in the sky brings out more dust spots, so I go back to work with the Spot Removal clone tool.

Noise Reduction

I can easily see a lot of grain the sky, so I zoom in close and move the Luminance Noise Reduction Slider until things look smooth.

Sharpening

I want to be careful not to sharpen noise, so I hold the ALT key while moving the Masking slider. The white areas will be sharpened and the black will be left alone. I settle on 50, then zoom in on some small details and move the sharpening Amount slider until they look good.

Finished Photo

In the past I used Geotagger in conjunction with Google Earth, but that method writes the GPS data to JPG files. I wanted a way to geoencode the original RAW files in Lightroom. Jeffrey Friedl’s plugin makes this possible, since it can take GPS coordinates from a tracklog and store them in a Lightroom catalog.

Step 1: Record a Tracklog

The first step is to record a tracklog while you’re out shooting. If you don’t already have it, install Trails from the App Store.

Make sure your camera’s clock is set to the same time as your phone, then start a new track. Lock your phone and put it in your pocket. As you move around, Trails will track your movement.

If you have an iPhone 3Gs or iPhone 4 make sure you have the latest version of iOS. The multitasking allows Trails to run in the background and continually record your position.

On iPhones without multitasking, Trails will do its best to make a good tracklog by connecting good data points with a straight line. The following screenshots illustrate the difference between Trails tracklogs produced with and without multitasking.

The map on the left shows a trail recorded on an iPhone 3G without multitasking. The app was able to plot about a dozen data points and connected them with straight lines.

The map on the right shows a tracklog recorded on an iPhone 4 with multitasking. Trails was able to frequently get new GPS data points, and the resulting tracklog is pretty accurate.

Trails causes your battery to run down faster than usual. Make sure you remember to turn it off when you’re done shooting, and periodically check that you have enough battery life to make it to the next charging opportunity in case you need to make an emergency call.

Step 2: Download the Tracklog

One of the easiest ways to get a Tracklog out of trails is emailing it to yourself. Open the tracklog from the “My Tracks” area and touch the “Export” button in the bottom left corner of the screen. One of the export options will be “Email” — enter your address and you’ll get the tracklog as both GPX and KML files.

The KML file can be opened in Google Earth. The GPX file is what you’ll need for geotagging in Lightroom.

Step 3: Sync Photos to the Tracklog

If you don’t already have it, download and install Jeffrey Friedl’s “GPS-Support” Geoencoding Plugin for Lightroom. Jeffrey makes great Lightroom plugins so be sure to leave a donation.

In Lightroom, select all the photos you wish to geoencode and click File → Plugin Extras → Geoencode…

Go to the Tracklog tab and find the first field labeled Sync to tracklog(s). Click the “Browse…” button to open the GPX file you got from Trails.

Choose your timezone from the next drop down menu, then optionally adjust the “fuzziness” and time compensation fields.

Click the Geoencode Images button and Jeffrey’s plugin will record the map data for each photo in your Lightroom Catalog’s database. This process works by checking the timestamp on each photo and looking for the closest GPS data point in the tracklog.

Now when you export JPGs and upload to publishing services from Lightroom, you can include this “GPS Shadow Data” (you’ll see new options in the Export settings window). Programs and services such as iPhoto, Picasa, Flickr and SmugMug can read this data and plot your photos on a map.

Remember: this means anyone can see where you were when you took a photo. It might not be a good idea to do this with photos taken at home or work.

DSLRs use an autofocus sensor to analyze the light through the lens and figure out where the subject is located within the frame. You can help out the AF system by choosing a specific focus point and placing that point on the subject.

Different autofocus systems have varying degrees of accuracy. Some cameras are manufactured specifically for landscapes and portraits, and have mediocre autofocus systems.

These cameras might “hunt around” for focus in the dark and even fail to achieve focus in some extremely difficult lighting situations. Other cameras are engineered for sports and high speed shooting, and have autofocus systems that work very well even in difficult light. Also with mediocre AF systems, some AF points are less dependable on others. For example the center point may be very accurate but the outside points may have you hunting around for focus. This varies greatly between camera models and manufacturers.

An autofocus system needs a motor in order to adjust the physical elements of the lens. Sometimes this motor is built into the camera. Other times the motor is built into the lens.

All of Canon’s EF & EF-S lenses have a built-in focus motor. The cheaper lenses have less effective motors that focus slowly. Some high performance lenses have ultra-fast focus motors that lock on to the subject in a split second.

Some Nikon cameras have a built-in focus motor while others do not. Some Nikon lenses have a built-in focus motor and some do not. Due to this situation, Nikon photographers need to be aware of which lenses will autofocus on their cameras, and which lenses are safe to mount at all. Before choosing a lens for your Nikon you should consult the Nikon SLR Camera & Lens Compatibility Chart at Nikonians.org.

The various camera companies have different names for their high performance AF motors. Canon calls it USM for Ultrasonic Motor. Nikon calls it SWM for Silent Wave Motor. Sigma calls it HSM for Hyper Sonic Motor.

Autofocus Modes

DSLRs generally have three autofocus modes:

A one-shot or single-shot mode for stationary subjects. The system locks on focus once and keeps it there while you finish making the image.

A continuous or servo mode for moving subjects. The system will track a moving subject and continuously adjust focus so the it stays sharp. You can see this in action by holding the shutter button halfway down (or holding the AF-ON button), aiming your lens at something that moves and following it around while continuing to hold the button. You’ll probably hear the AF system buzzing and if your lens has a distance window, be able to see it continuously adjusting the distance.

An auto mode that attempts to choose between single shot and continuous/servo mode each time you shoot. This is often the default mode for a camera.

Letting the camera pick its AF mode is fine in some situations, but if you can anticipate your subjects it’s good to make that choice yourself. This reduces the chances of missing focus and getting a bad frame because the camera made a poor decision. For example if you’re standing on the sidelines of a ball game, you should probably be in continuous/servo mode.

AF Assist

In dark situations where it’s hard for an autofocus system to find the subject and lock on focus, cameras will often use an AF assist lamp. This is a small light the shines on the subject before the shutter triggers, which the AF system can “see” and use to lock on.

On compact point & shoots this is the little red or green light that lights up right before you take a picture.

A lot of Nikon DSLRs have an AF assist lamp built into the camera body. Some Canon DSLRs have this function built into the pop-up flash, while bodies without a flash like the 5D have no AF assist light.

Many flashes have their own infrared focus assist beam, which is why obtaining focus in dark environments with a flash on top of the camera a lot easier than without a flash. I know of a lot of photographers, particularly Canon users, who like to use a flash solely for the IR focus assist light.

D.I.Y. AF Assist

Many photographers who do nighttime landscapes or just nighttime long exposures in general have a DIY trick for getting focus: set up the camera and tripod where you want them, then shine a flashlight where you would like to focus and trigger the AF. Turn off the flashlight and trigger the shutter.

AF-on Button

I’ve mentioned the AF-On button a few times over the course of this article, so I’ll close by describing this very useful custom function. Many DSLRs have a custom function that allows you to remove autofocus from the shutter button and assign it to a separate button. This button is usually on the back of the camera near your thumb.

When this custom function is used, pressing or half-pressing the shutter button doesn’t trigger the AF system. The camera will simply meter the light and expose. If the subject isn’t in focus, it’ll turn out blurry. In order to get the subject in focus, you first press the AF-On button then hit the shutter.

This might sound complicated at first, but it’s one of those things that you’d never give up once you get used to it. I find it very intuitive to be able to focus and meter separately. It opens doors to many new techniques, such as dead simple focus & recompose, holding down the AF-on button to easily keep focus as you track a moving subject, and more. In fact the “D.I.Y AF Assist” I described in the previous section is much easier to do when this function is on because the AF system won’t be reactivated when you trip the shutter, so you don’t have to worry about holding a half-pressed button or anything.

Not all cameras have these types of custom functions, and the method for enabling them varies from camera to camera. Check your manual to find out how to do this with your DSLR.

Depending on their type, filters are mounted on the camera in different ways. The most common method of mounting a filter on a DSLR camera is to screw or clip it onto the front of the lens.

Some lenses have a rear slot for dropping in filters. Some ultra-wide angle lenses use this design because the bulbous, protruding front element makes it impossible to screw a filter onto the front. Other times the manufacturer will just state these types of lenses do not take filters. In some cases you can get a front attachment that extends out and holds a filter or gel in front of the lens.

Types of Filters

UV filters cut out ultraviolet light and are otherwise transparent. These are often sold to customers as an accessory for protecting the front lens element from damage. Some photographers use them, others do not. There are arguments both for and against using a UV filter as a protective measure.

Polarizing filters are used to filter reflections coming off surfaces such as water, and increase contrast. This polarizer test image by Philadelphia-area photographer Lee Shelly shows the effects of a polarizing filter on the sky.

A neutral density (ND) filter is like a tint for your lens. It reduces the amount of light permitted into the camera, which is useful for obtaining longer exposures in bright daylight.

A graduated neutral density filter filters out light in one area of the frame and gradually fades to transparent. This can be useful for shooting a scene with vastly different light levels, such as a landscape with a bright sky above a forest with lots of shade. The transparent part of the filter allows all the light from the shaded areas to be captured, while blocking some light from the bright sky so the highlights don’t get blown out.

Black & white contrast filters absorb one color of light while permitting others to pass through. This has the effect of darkening or lightening certain colors depending on which color filter you choose.

Warming and cooling filters allow you to correct for color and white balance issues. For example, a night photo under incandescent bulbs might come out looking very yellow, unless you where to add a cooling filter. These days using a warming or cooling filter isn’t very important on a digital camera because shooting RAW allows you to edit the white balance with software.

There are still some situations where warming and cooling filters still apply. For example when I learned to SCUBA dive, the instructor pointed out that as you go deeper the water filters out a lot of light and makes things look flat and blue. Getting good colors underwater requires the use of filters and/or lights.

Digital Filters

As digital photography software improves, many filter effects are available after you shoot a photo, even if you didn’t use the physical filter. Lightroom features a graduated filter that can control not just exposure, brightness, contrast, saturation, clarity, sharpness and color. It even has a full set of black & white presets for using the various color filters for contrast enhancement.

Software isn’t necessarily a substitute for in-camera techniques, but it’s definitely another powerful tool in your arsenal. For example I almost never use a graduated ND filter but frequently use the Lightroom graduated filter to drop the exposure on skies. The great deal of exposure latitude captured in a RAW file makes this possible, so why not take advantage of it?

Choosing the Right Size Filter

Lenses come in all different sizes, so when choosing a filter you need to know the correct size. Look inside the lens cap and you should see the size imprinted there. If not, look up the exact model on B&H. The “specifications” section the lens detail page will tell you the filter size.

Remember geometry class? Imagine a focal plane at your subject’s location, parallel to your camera’s sensor. The depth of this plane is the depth of field, and everything inside of it appears acceptably sharp and in-focus. Here’s a diagram I whipped up to illustrate the focal plane and depth of field:

In this diagram the person is photographing the flock of birds flying towards him. He focused on the middle bird, and you can see it’s in focus because it falls in between the near and far limits of the focal plane. The other birds are outside of the focal plane, so they appear out of focus and blurry.

Objects become blurrier as they move farther from the focal plane. Let’s add some more birds to the flock and see how that works.

In a shallow depth of field, the distance between the near and far limits of the focal plane is very small. This causes the subject to appear sharp and most other objects to be out of focus. Shallow depth of field is popular for portraits where subject is isolated and the background is very blurry.

Photo with a shallow depth of field. The subjects are isolated from the background.
Canon EOS 5D, 135mm f/2L USM @ f/2, ISO 200, 1/8000

In a deep depth of field, the distance between the near and far limits is very large. This causes a great deal of objects in the frame to appear sharp and in-focus. This is a popular look for landscape images where the photographer wants everything to appear sharp.

Photo with deep (actually infinite) depth of field. Everything is in focus.
Canon EOS 5D, 50mm f/1.4 USM @ f/11, ISO 100, 1/125 sec.

Factors Effecting Depth of Field

Depth of field is affected by a variety of factors:

1. Focal length of the lens.
2. Size of the imaging medium (digital sensor, film, etc…).
3. Distance to the subject.
4. Size of the aperture.

Short focal length lenses produce a deep depth of field while telephoto lenses produce a shallower depth of field.

Digital cameras with small sensors produce a deep depth of field, while large sensor cameras are capable of producing a shallower depth of field at the same settings. A portrait with subject isolation would have a blurrier background when shot with a full frame camera versus a cropped sensor. It’s often very difficult to achieve background blur with compact point & shoot cameras because many of their sensors are extremely small.

Closer subjects have a narrower depth of field than distant subjects. Due to this effect, a good technique for getting maximum background blur is to position the subject close to the lens with as much distance as possible between the subject and background.

The size of the aperture (the opening through which light passes into the camera) is related to the depth of field. Choosing a wide opening (small f-number) results is a narrower depth of field and more blur than a narrow opening (high f-number).

Infinite

Beyond the maximum focusing distance of many lenses is their hyperfocal distance. Look at the distance window on your lens and you’ll see an infinity symbol or “INF”. In the simplest terms, focusing at infinity renders everything past a certain distance in focus.

For a more technical description read “Hyperfocal Distance” on Wikipedia.

Other Resources

Read “How to Get the Most Background Blur Possible in Your Photos” if you’re interested in subject isolation.

The online depth of field calculator will give you the near and far limits for many lenses at any given focal length, f-stop and distance.

No piece of equipment is perfect. While modern cameras do a great job of measuring light and figuring out what the correct exposure is for a scene, they do make mistakes. Every photographer is bound to encounter difficult lighting environments that will fool his equipment. A classic example is a bride’s dress and a groom’s tuxedo:

• The bride is wearing a white dress. All this white material is reflecting a ton of light back at the camera, which is fooled into thinking that the scene is extremely bright. Based on that reading the camera suggests settings that result in a very dark, underexposed image.
• The groom is wearing a black tuxedo, black tie and black shoes. He’s standing in front of a black limo. The camera sees all this dark material and thinks there’s a lack of light, when in reality it’s noon on a clear day. To make up for this perceived darkness the camera tries to make the image entirely too bright.

Exposure Compensation is a technique for correcting these situations. If the camera is being fooled into thinking the scene is too bright (the bride example), you apply negative exposure compensation. If it’s incorrectly reading a scene as being too dark (the groom example), you apply positive exposure compensation.

Exposure Value

Most cameras have an exposure value (EV) meter similar to the one shown here.

In the middle is 0, the default setting with no compensation. To the left is two stops of underexposure and to the right is two stops of overexposure.

This meter might be shown on the top display, inside the viewfinder, on the LCD or buried underneath menus.

Like this example, most entry level, consumer and prosumer cameras have a four stop range. Pro cameras may have a wider range, for example Canon’s EOS 1 series have a six stop range from -3 to +3.

Automatic Exposure Compensation

You can dial in exposure compensation when using automatic and semi-automatic modes such as Auto, Program and Aperture Priority. The camera will automatically apply your setting each time you hit the shutter button.

If I were photographing the bride from our hypothetical situation in Program mode I might try adjusting the EV two notches to the left to -2/3. This tells the camera “underexpose the scene by two thirds of a stop” resulting in a slightly darker image than what the camera originally wanted to record.

Each camera has a slightly different way of dialing in exposure compensation. Some have a dedicated button. Others require a combination of button presses. Read your camera’s manual to find out how to adjust your EV meter.

And don’t forget to reset the EV to zero when you’re done and move to a different lighting environment, otherwise you might go home with an entire day’s photos wrongly exposed.

Manual Exposure Compensation

When shooting in manual mode, there is no need to adjust the EV meter. You apply exposure compensation simply by taking note of your camera/light meter’s suggested exposure and choosing settings that either under or overexpose that reading.

If I were photographing the groom from our hypothetical situation, I might do the following:

1. Choose the lowest ISO I think I can get away with given the available light.
2. Choose an aperture that gives my desired depth of field.
3. Frame up the shot and turn the shutter speed dial while watching the in-viewfinder EV meter, until it indicates +2/3.
4. Shoot the frame, then check the LCD/histogram/blinkies/whatever and decide whether the exposure is good, or I want to shoot again with more or less compensation.

Conclusion

Why did I pick +/- two thirds in each of these examples? It’s a small number. Neither example is an extreme lighting situation, so 2/3 is just a slight adjustment from zero… not too dark, not too bright. If we were talking about an extreme range of light such as a silhouetted person backlit by bright sunlight then we would need bigger numbers like +2.

How should you pick these numbers? Practice. Shoot thousands of photos and study the results, and you’ll be able to just look at the available light and imagine what a stop or two more or less would look like. At this point you’ll also know your equipment very well, to the point where you can anticipate when your camera will over or underexpose.

Here are a few shortcuts you can remember:

• In bright situations where the camera tries to make the image too dark, compensate to the right for a brighter exposure.
• In dark situations where the camera tries to make the image too bright, compensate to the left for a darker exposure.
• When the camera is tricked by bright materials/objects, compensate to the left for a darker exposure.
• When the camera is tricked by dark materials/objects, compensate to the right for a brighter exposure.
• The further you compensate to the left, the darker the image will be.
• The further you compensate to the right, the brighter the image will be.

Exposure Compensation is Just One Technique

This is an exposure compensation tutorial, but I want to mention it’s not the only way to get a good exposure. All of this assumes you’re using a metering mode that takes the whole (or a majority) of the frame into consideration.

A different method of handling these situations would be to take a light reading from a small portion of the frame which you know will have a good result. For example, you might switch your camera’s metering mode to “Spot” metering and take a reading off the subject’s face. In manual mode you can choose all your settings while reading that one spot. In a semi-auto mode you can press the exposure lock button to lock in that reading. Then you can recompose the frame and shoot the photo. Instead of compensating for the difficult factors (dark suit/bright dress), you’ve simply ignored them.

This piece is written for DSLR owners. It assumes your camera gives you control over individual exposure and color settings. Some advanced compact point & shoot cameras also offer these kind of controls. Other simpler/cheaper cameras offer some or none of them. As the last section of this article suggests, read your manual.

Know Your Exposure

Your camera is a lightproof box containing a photographic medium. These days the medium is typically an electronic sensor or if you’re hip, film. You make images by opening up the box and allowing light to hit the medium… this is exposure. You control the exposure by adjusting three variables:

1. Shutter Speed – The length of time the camera’s window is open and allowing light to enter.
2. Aperture – The size of the hole through which light passes into the camera. Also known as the “f number”.
3. ISO – The sensitivity of the medium to light. Also known as film speed.

In manual mode you are responsible for choosing all three of these settings. Your combination of choices determines how much light is permitted to enter the camera. If you make a poor choice of settings, your photo will either be too bright (overexposed) or too dark (underexposed).

How you arrive at your exposure settings depends entirely upon what type of image you want to make. Since this is a “crash course” and not a lesson on exposure, I will not make a weak attempt at explaining it in just a few sentences. Instead I recommend you read a great book called Understanding Exposure: How to Shoot Great Photographs with Any Camera by Bryan Peterson. It was an invaluable and eye-opening read when I bought my first DSLR.

In semi-automatic modes you choose some settings and leave others for the camera to decide. For example, in Aperture Priority mode you might choose f/5.6. When you hit the shutter button, the camera would meter the scene and choose a shutter speed which compliments your choice of f/5.6 in such a way that the image turns out properly exposed. Newer cameras with Auto ISO can choose that setting automatically as well. With older cameras, you have to choose the ISO manually.

In automatic mode the camera makes all the decisions while you just point and shoot.

In automatic and semi-automatic modes where the camera is choosing settings for you, the image doesn’t always turn out perfect. Many times the camera will make a mistake and under or overexpose. You can control this by adjusting Exposure Compensation.

If it looks like your photos are a little dark, you might compensate by +1 which tells the camera “overexpose by one stop”. Since the camera was underexposing, and now you told it to overexpose, it will choose settings that result in brighter images. Conversely if you’re getting too bright results you might choose a negative compensation setting which means “hey camera, please underexpose”.

Exposure Compensation is typically represented as a range of values. Here’s a screenshot of the EV scale from the LCD of a digital rebel, going from -2 to +2 in 1/3 increments. The little notch in the middle under 0 means the EV is set to zero (no compensation).

Know Your Light

Ambient light is whatever is present in your environment. Turn off the flash and you’re practicing “available light” photography.

When the ambient light doesn’t fit your vision, doesn’t give the look you want, is of poor quality or is just too dark you make your own light. This ranges from simple flash photography to complex lighting setups (ex. multiple flashes, studio lights, continuous lighting).

You may also combine the two, balancing available light with flash photography. For example, shoot someone standing in front of a sunset and they’ll probably come out as a silhouette. But turn on the flash and you can light the person up while still getting the colorful sunset background. To accomplish this you choose the camera’s exposure settings based on the available light, then set the flash to expose for the subject.

The temperature of available light greatly effects the colors in your photo. Some light is “warm” while other light is “cool”. This is the reason indoor photos without flash often turn out yellow. The white balance setting gives you control over the color temperature in your photos.

Most cameras are set to automatic white balance by default. This mode usually works fine for outdoor daylight shooting. You start seeing weird colors indoors:

• Fluorescent lights give your photos a green color cast.
• Incandescent bulbs give off a yellow “tungsten” light.

Most cameras have white balance presets for these situations plus cloudy, daylight and flash, as well as a fine-tuning adjustment that lets you directly choose the color temperature as degrees Kelvin. Choose lower numbers to balance warmer lights (e.g. 2850-3200K for indoor incandescent light) and higher numbers for cooler light (e.g. 5000K for midday sunlight).

When shooting JPEG try experimenting with these presets. When shooting RAW you have the advantage of adjusting color temperature with software such as Photoshop, so many photographers leave this setting on auto and worry about white balance after the fact.

Know Your Camera

Every camera’s features and controls are slightly different, so there’s really not much to say here besides making a general point: know how your camera works inside-out. Read the manual cover to cover and commit all its capabilities to memory. Shoot every chance you get so the controls go to muscle memory.

Not being familiar with all your cameras controls and features is a handicap. Instead of thinking about important things like light and where to stand, you waste time trying to figure out which button changes a setting.

• Longer shutter speed = more light = brighter photo.
• Shorter shutter speed = less light = darker photo.

Shutter speeds are measured in seconds or fractions of a second. Usually when you’re shooting hand-held the shutter speed is under one second, e.g. 1/125 or a one hundred twenty fifth of a second. To save space on the display for more important information most cameras don’t display the full fraction… 125 means 1/125. If the exposure is longer than a second, say 5 seconds, it’s usually displayed 5".

5^th grade math refresher: the larger the denominator, the faster the shutter speed. 1/5 is a bit slow and in “hard to hold steady with just your hands” territory. On the other hand 1/4000 is lighting fast and will freeze action like moving vehicles or running athletes.

Each time you double the shutter speed you also halve the amount of light allowed into the camera. Conversely if you halve the shutter speed, you double the amount of light. This is a stop. If you were to go from 1/500 sec. to 1/250 sec. you have decreased the exposure (made it darker) by one stop. If you go from 1/250 sec. to 1/1000 sec., you have increased the exposure by two stops.

Blur from Slow Shutter Speeds

When the shutter is open for a long time, the effects of movement on your photo is more evident. The camera will record any type of movement it picks up as motion blur. It doesn’t have to be major movement; anything from a speeding train to leaves gently blowing in the wind will turn out blurry.

When shooting hand-held “movement” also includes you and the camera. If your body or hands move, so does the camera. Imagine you’re photographing a landscape hand-held in low light. Your flash is off since you’re shooting a landscape… a little on-camera flash isn’t going to light up a mountain.

Since it’s kind of dark but not pitch black you pick 1/10 sec. as the shutter speed. At this kind of in-between shutter speed — not quite a long exposure but not fast enough to freeze motion — you slightly sway your body as the shutter clicks. This picture might look fine on the camera LCD and even acceptable as a small print, but if you were to blow it up large and look at the tiny details you will notice they’re blurry.

I’ve edited the following photo to simulate how it would look if it were shot with shaky hands at a slow shutter speed. The inset shows a close-up of the bridge’s brick details. It’s pretty obvious that just a little bit of movement ruined this photo.

Now here’s how the photo looks when shot with a tripod. The camera was kept steady, so even though there was a long exposure the details are nice and sharp.

Reducing Unintentional Blur at Slow Shutter Speeds

Some people have steady hands and can shoot at very slow speeds, but at some point everybody needs to think about stabilizing the camera.

The “one over your shutter speed” rule constantly floats around the photography world when considering the slowest possible speed an SLR can be hand-held at while still getting acceptable results. For example, if your lens is 100mm you can hand-hold a sharp photo at 1/100 sec. This isn’t an exact rule, but it seems close enough to the truth that photographers have been repeating it for many years.

If your settings are maxed out, boost some of the other camera variables. Choosing a wider aperture (lower f number) or a higher ISO will enable a slightly faster shutter speed.

Brace yourself. Leaning against buildings, street poles and other immovable objects can greatly reduce motion blur resulting from your natural body movement.

Use a tripod. Tripods and monopods do a better job of stabilizing a camera than the human body.

Look for natural tripods. Some people don’t like carrying around a tripod and I admit that I’m one of them. Look for immovable objects in your environment and set the camera atop them… a ledge, a step, a bench, anything that stays still and is strong enough to safely hold your gear. Heck, put your camera on the ground and prop the lens up with a rock.

Long Exposures

In long exposures, the photographer uses an extended shutter speed. Still objects will turn out sharp, and moving objects will introduce motion blur and form trails. A long exposure requires the camera to be stabilized on a tripod or some other immobile object. Nighttime photos are a classic example of long exposure photography. Skylines and nighttime landscapes are typical subject matter.

Light painting uses long exposures to get creative results. While the camera spends anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours exposing, the photographer can “paint” the scene with flashlights and colored lights. In some cases this is kind of like real-life dodging.

Of course long exposures aren’t limited to nighttime. A neutral density filter is a tinted filter that attaches in front of the lens and blocks out some light. This enables slower shutter speeds in bright daylight.

Other Creative Uses of Shutter Speed

Sports shooters typically use very fast shutter speeds in order to freeze motion. Up around 1/500 sec. and faster you can stop time and get sharp images of fast-moving subjects. The faster it’s moving, the quicker your shutter speed must be.

Not all motion blur is bad. The ability to control blur and use it to your advantage is a great tool for making dramatic images. Imagine standing at the top of the staircase in a busy train station, trying to figure out how to photograph all the people moving around below. You could snap it real fast so everyone turns out tack sharp… or you could set the camera on a tripod and slow things down to intentionally blur their movement. The end result could be an image that gives the impression of a hurried commute.

Panning is another way to use blur creatively. This involves pre-focusing on a moving subject, choosing a slow shutter speed and following the subject with your lens while the camera exposes. When done right, the subject turns out sharp while everything else is blurred. I’m terrible at panning but for the sake of an example, here’s my best attempt to date:

Here’s the first of a new series I’m thinking about: Photoshop before & after. I’ll pick a photo and show how it looked straight out of the camera vs. the finished product, then explain what was done.

This photo of the Golden Gate Bridge was made last February from the Marin Headlands. We were extremely fortunate to have clear skies and great weather on the night we headed across the bridge the see the bridge and skyline. The sun is to my right and very close to the horizon, putting a nice even lighting across the entire frame with subtle highlights on the span of the bridge.

As usual I shot this in aperture priority… most of the time I prefer to frame up, choose an aperture that gives whatever depth of field I want, adjust the exposure compensation to make sure nothing gets blown and let the camera do the rest of the work. I’m at f/10 with the EF 135mm f/2 L lens. It’s a particularly sharp lens, and the focal length does a nice job of compressing the scene.

Here’s a large version of the image straight out of camera:

Time to come up with a plan. I want to…

• bring out the colors in the sky.
• emphasize the glowing side light on the bridge.
• brighten the foreground and middle ground without affecting the background too much.

Default Settings

The base settings I use on almost every photo are applied on import to Lightroom:

• Adobe’s default treatment: +5 blacks, +50 brightness, +25 contrast.
• Some color and clarity: +20 clarity, +25 vibrance, +8 saturation.
• A slight curve to create medium shadows and slight midtones: +6 lights, -9 darks, -25 shadows.
• HSL and profile tweaks specifically for the EOS 5D.

Basic Processing

The vast majority of what I want to do can be accomplished with just the basic exposure, brightness, contrast and color sliders.

• White Balance: I like what the camera chose, so I’ll leave it “As Shot” at 6350 and -8 tint.
• Exposure: -1.05 since the image is looking very bright.
• Fill Light: +11 to slightly bring out shadow detail.
• Contrast: +43
• Clarity: +40
• Saturation: +44

The colors and contrast in the original are very flat and faded. I’m no meteorologist but I think that’s partly due to atmospheric conditions combined with the fact that I’m shooting from far away with a telephoto lens. Adding a lot of contrast and saturation pushed the colors and contrast to where I want them.

Clarity is a great tool for emphasizing edges and adding a little local contrast. Being heavy-handed with this slider can wreck havoc on portraits, but you can get away with it on a landscape.

I want heavier shadows, which can be done with a different tone curve than what I originally chose:

• Highlights: 0
• Lights: +8
• Darks: -10
• Shadows: -50

Fine Tuning

Most of the work is done, but there are still a few minor details that I want to adjust in the sky. I would like deeper and more saturated colors there, and more details in the clouds.

I can use the HSL sliders to adjust the colors in the sky without affecting the bridge, water or hills.

• Purple Saturation: +45
• Magenta Saturation: +45
• Purple Luminance: -24
• Magenta Luminance: -14

To make the bridge span glow a little brighter I’ll also slide the red luminance to +20.

For increased cloud definition I’ll use the Adjustment Brush to paint +100 clarity in the sky.

Final Image

Do some basic sharpening and slight noise reduction, and we have the end result:

Table of Contents

• Flash Exposure
• Light Fall-off
• On-Camera and Off-Camera Lighting
• Types of Lights
• Light Modifiers

Flash Exposure

When a photographer introduces his own light sources into a scene, exposure moves beyond the in-camera settings for ambient light. The strength of each light source can be individually adjusted, creating a separate exposure for each light.

Start off by considering the simplest scenario: a single light setup. In this situation there are two exposures that need to be configured:

1. The camera’s exposure, i.e. aperture, shutter speed and ISO.
2. The flash’s exposure, i.e. power level.

Being able to adjust each individual light source makes it possible to be extremely creative, for the photographer to design any lighting setup imaginable.

One of the easiest ways to begin picturing flash exposure in your mind is think of the classic “sunset photo”. You’re in a tropical location with a loved one and the sun hits the horizon, so you throw your arms around each other and ask someone to snap a photo. If there were no flash on the camera, the photo would turn out one of two ways:

1. The sunset would be properly exposed, but you would appear as a silhouette.
2. You would be properly exposed, but the background would be blown out and entirely too bright.

Using a flash solves this problem. The camera exposure is set for the ambient light in order to properly capture the sunset, which has the side-effect of turning you into a silhouette. But now the flash comes into play — the flash intensity is adjusted to light you up. Now you have a nice looking sunset as a backdrop (exposure A) and you, nicely lit up in the foreground by the flash (exposure B).

Light Fall-off

Flash exposure settings are calculated based on the distance to the subject because light falls off over distance. Quite simply the farther away your subject is, the more light you need to get a good exposure.

Imagine taking a photo of two people with a single light setup: your camera, and the flash stuck on top. One person is standing twice as far away from your as the other. You make your settings based on what your camera tells you is the right exposure for the person in front. In the resulting photo the person in front will be properly lit, but the person standing in the background will be underexposed because the light became less intense as it traveled over that distance. Conversely if you made your settings based on the meter reading for the person in the background, the foreground subject would be overexposed.

Light fall-off is calculated with the inverse square law.

On-Camera and Off-Camera Lighting

There are two places to put your lights: on-camera or off-camera. An on-camera light is physically attached to your camera… it’s the built-in flash, the pop-up flash, or the flash unit sitting in the hot shoe on top of your camera body.

On-camera lights sometimes get a bad rap because they are most often associated with flat, washed-out images. A tiny little flash pointed straight ahead and left on auto mode often lights up the subject, but doesn’t do anybody any favors. But if you can control your on-camera flash’s settings and power level, and especially if you can point the flash head in a direction other than straight ahead, there is a lot of room for creativity.

With off-camera lighting the photographer is free to place his or her light sources almost anywhere. By using multiple lights in different positions, with all sorts of different settings, configurations and modifications, the photographer can put together near limitless creative lighting schemes ranging from simple to extremely complex.

Off-camera lights need a way to be triggered when the photographer hits the shutter. A PC cord can be used to wire the lights to the camera, or one of many wireless methods can be used. This is often done optically, via infrared signal, or with with radio wave transmitters.

Types of Lights

We can put photographic lights into two categories: small lights and big lights.

Small lights are often referred to as strobes or speedlights (Speedlight and Speedlite are trade names used by Nikon and Canon). These flash units are lightweight and portable. They can put out enough power to light groups of people, illuminate reception halls and whatnot.

Two small flashes. Photo: Churl Han.

Big lights are what you often find in studios and on commercial shoots. These lights are much more powerful and have a larger light source. They’re powered via a battery pack or outlet.

Alien Bees 800 strobe with a shoot through umbrella. Photo: Andrew Iverson.

Light Modifiers

Photographers use all sorts of contraptions to modify the behavior of their lights and achieve all sorts of pleasing results.

The goal of many light modifiers is to make the light source larger which results in a “softer” light with more pleasing shadows. Direct light from a small source such as a built-in flash creates a harsh light with dark shadows and bright highlights, so a photographer will use tools like umbrellas and softboxes to increase the size of the light source to get a more pleasing effect.

In situations where something like a big umbrella is not practical, such as dashing around a wedding reception hall, similar effects can be achieved by bouncing light off walls and ceilings or using small on-flash modifiers like diffusers and bounce cards.

Aside from changing the size of the light source, modifiers can also be used to change the angle, shape and color of the light.

Gels are translucent sheets of colored material used to change the color of light. They can be used to balance the photographer’s light to match what’s present in the environment, or to compose creative lighting setups with more striking colors like blues, reds, greens, etc…

A flash with a green gel. Photo: Rafael Santos.

A snoot is a narrow tube which fits over the flash head. A bare flash emits a cone of light; a snoot constricts the shape of that light into a narrow beam.

A homemade cereal box snoot. Photo: Dustin Diaz.

A grid is similar to a snoot in that it also shapes the flash output into a narrower beam, but the resulting light is softer. It does this via its honeycomb-patterned construction.

A homemade grid. Photo: Thor-Erik Rødland.

A barn door is a flap or flag-looking accessory that attaches to the light source and is used to prevent light from spilling out in unintended directions.

In addition to purchasing professionally manufactured equipment, there is plenty of room for D.I.Y. light modifiers. This can be ideal for hobbyists who want to experiment without spending a lot of money. For example a grid can be made by gluing together black straws in a honeycomb pattern, and a snoot can be made from a cereal box.

The Very Basics

Understanding lighting is a challenging thing for many new photographers. Hopefully this article has helped you get down the basics needed to start thinking about using lights creatively. What it comes down to is that adding your own lights to the equation is a great way to overcome or even completely ignore poor or challenging lighting environments, and you can use all sorts of tools to diffuse, shape, color and otherwise control your light.