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CrazyBusy
Feb. 20, 2008
Wordless Wednesday: Photo 9,749 Of My Son Sucking His Thumb (AND PT&T- Exposure, Grain, ISO, etc.)
Okay, make that photos 9,750, 9,751 and 9,752 also because later on that evening he fell asleep in the van and daddy put him on the couch when we got home and he just laid there forever looking so cute with his thumb in his mouth and I just had to get my camera out again. How's that for a run-on sentence?
I can't help it. He'll go from thinking he's so big and independent back to behaviors he's had since an infant. It just melts my heart. What can I say?
Just a few different angles of my sleeping child.
Camera Settings, High ISO's, Exposure and Grain. Oh my.
And I'm going to squeeze another word in here on this Not-So-Wordless Wednesday for you photography buffs out there. I am SO impressed with my Canon 40D's ability to handle high ISO's! If I had taken these same photos with my 300D, well for one thing, I couldn't have (without using a flash) because they would've turned out blurry. I could only push that camera so far. Whenever I'd shoot anything at 800 or 1600 ISO (the max the 300D will go), they'd turn out so grainy they looked terrible and usually ended up in the recycle bin.
The 40D does a great job with high ISO's and keeps the grain to a minimum. Plus, you can turn on a custom function that will filter the grain automatically when you use high ISO's. I do have that setting turned on. But another key in getting minimal grain when you are shooting with high ISO's is nailing the exposure. If you underexpose even a little bit & lighten it back up later, that grain is going to show up.
With these photos, I had my ISO turned up to 3200 (the max the 40D will go). I used my 85mm lens and had my aperture open to 2.0 (except for the B&W- I had that one set at 2.2). My 85mm can open up to 1.8, and that would've given me more light, but as you can see, even using 2.0 or 2.2, the depth of field (area of the photo that is in focus) is very shallow. My shutter speeds on these three were between 1/50 & 1/60, which is too slow for comfort. Normally, I like to keep my shutter speeds at 1/100 or higher. However, my subject was not moving so that helped.
My favorite shooting mode, since my usual subjects are my children, is aperture priority mode. Some photographers will argue that if you don't shoot in full manual, you aren't a real photographer. But I'm shooting for myself, no one else and don't care what they say. :) Plus, I know HOW to shoot in manual, but just find myself not being able to keep up and miss too much.
In aperture priority mode, I choose the aperture and let the camera choose the shutter speed. However, just because the camera chooses the shutter speed does NOT mean I ignore the shutter speed. On the contrary- I keep a close eye on it. And if I think the shutter speed is too slow, I can help increase the shutter speed by bumping up the ISO or opening up my aperture more.
If it's too fast, well, I don't normally worry about it being too fast unless one of two things is also happening: 1. the shutter speed is maxed out (like if it's at 1/8000 a second and I'm overexposing) or 2. my ISO is set too high or higher than it needs to be. Then I need to make ISO and/or aperture changes.
Now, take these pictures I took of Josiah. It was pitch dark outside and the only light I had came from a lamp across the room from him. I did a custom white balance because no matter what auto white balance setting I used, the color was funky. (BTW, when I went to find & add the link to the tutorial I did on CWB, I noticed that the category link wasn't working! Doh! I've got that fixed now) I knew I'd have to be super careful with the exposure or they'd be too grainy to keep. So after doing a CWB, bumping my ISO up as high as it would go and opening up my aperture as much as I wanted it to be, I took a test shot and checked the histogram. The histogram is a graph of your photo's exposure. Maybe I'll explain the histogram in detail sometime (in the meantime, google it if you're curious- there are tons of great tutorials out there), but basically, when the lightest tones in the picture are say, Josiah's hair and skin, I have a good idea where the right side of the histogram should fall to ensure proper exposure.
On my test shot, the right side of the histogram fell in the 4th (out of 5) bar of the histogram. That is TOO dark for my pale-skinned son. It needs to be at least halfway into the 5th bar to get proper skin exposure (on my children and camera- everyone's will vary).
Keeping the camera in Aperture-priority mode, I adjusted the exposure compensation** in 1/3 increments until I noticed the histogram shifting to where it should be for proper exposure of his face. At +1 of exp. comp., I finally got proper exposure. The photo above was what his skin tones looked like "straight out of camera", or SOOC. Adjusting the exposure compensation pretty much overrides the camera's light meter, whose job is to keep the scene an average of 18% gray.
As a side note to help you understand that "18% gray" thing... I've found when shooting in the snow, I have to overexpose by at least a full stop to get that snow looking white. When the snow is filling most of your frame and you let the light meter pick your settings and don't compensate for them, the snow will look more gray than white. The camera is saying, "Oh! Too much white! Make it gray! Quick, 18% gray!" Okay, maybe it's not actually saying that; my camera doesn't really talk to me. Hee-hee. But that is the job of the light meter and is another time you'd want to override it. You are the human with the brain after all and you get the final say.
I did not at all plan to do a post on Photography Tip & Tricks tonight, it kind of just turned into this. I didn't save any shots to show as an example of what the light meter thinks of as proper exposure so that you could compare it with the properly exposed shot. Oops! But you can play around with this and see for yourself if you want.
All this to say, with proper exposure (adjusting your ISO, shutter speed and aperture appropriately and watching/knowing your histogram) you can decrease the grainy effects when using higher ISO's.
And on with Photos 9,751 and 9,752 of Josiah sucking his thumb.
Looking at these makes me sleepy. I need to go to bed.
**(You'll have to check your camera's manual on how to adjust exposure compensation on your camera. It's even done differently with my 2 Canons, so I'm not even going to attempt to tell you how to adjust that. But I believe all DSLR's, and even some high end P&S's, will allow you to adjust the exposure compensation.) |
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Sara in Maine 
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Feb. 19, 2008 - Hi !
Kysha
http://humblemama.blogspot.com