2010 - Week 21, In Camera Editing

School Courtyard
May 27, 2010 7:53 am
Nikon D90, 50mm 1.8 - shot in RAW
Manual, No Flash, ISO 200, SS 1/500, f/2.8
AF-S, Spot Metering

Someday, it may be immediately after purchasing your first DSLR, or maybe it will be years later (perhaps after you purchase your second DSLR) you may decide you want to take your photographer further.

When you may that decision, you'll soon find yourself caught up in the exposure triangle, photo editing software and the choice to change from capturing images as JPEGs to capturing them in RAW.

So what the heck is RAW and why should you choose to capture images in this format?

I'll get to that in a minute. For me, the benefits of RAW aren't as easy to understand if you don't know about dynamic range and color space.

First, there is visible dynamic range, the whole range (gamut) of the color space that our eyes can detect.



And you know how after you take a picture of a landscape and have it printed, you may find yourself thinking "it just looked so much better in real life". Well, part of that may be due to the fact that devices able display or print the entire visible color space are, as of yet, an unrealized engineering feat.

So your eye sees a miraculous ranges of hues, your camera is only capable of capturing a portion (pretty big, but not all encompassing) range of hues and then the output device (website or print) is capable of displaying an even smaller portion of that color range. Websites actually display the smallest range of color, which are the hues represented within the white triangle of the above graphic (sRGB).

People have written books about color space, and it can terribly confusing to learn about 16-bit vs 8-bit, ProPhoto vs. RGB vs. sRGB. Suffice it to say, you need to understand the limitations of where your photos will be outputted (displayed or printed) so that they look their best.

So what does all that have to do with making the decision to capture an image in RAW vs. JPEG?

When you capture an image in RAW your camera simply captures the scene and records a file. But what you see on the camera LCD is a JPEG version, not the RAW version, so don't be shocked when you open a RAW file in the beginning and it doesn't look like it did on the LCD.

When you capture an image in JPEG your camera is limited by the the camera's dynamic range ability, is applies any in-camera settings (perhaps you have selected a picture control setting), then the image is further reduced to a reproducible dynamic range (RGB or sRGB), and the photo quality is compressed based on your settings (Fine, Large, Med, etc), and finally it records a file (all in the blink of an eye).

This JPEG format makes things pretty easy because all the images that come off your card are ready to use (if you use sRGB) on the web or send to be printed, but because you've compressed data and truncated the highlights and shadows to get to the reproducible dynamic range, you've lost a bit of the photo and your ability to edit your photos is limited.

That's where the beauty of RAW occurs, you have the full camera dynamic range to work with - you get to choose what data (if any) gets truncated, and a whole smorgasbord of other editing choices depending on your RAW converter of choice (Picassa, Photoshop Elements, Photoshop, Lightroom, etc). RAW files are about twice the size of JPEG files so there really is more data to work with.

But, in a pinch and without access to a computer that has any sort of editing software available your DSLR can convert your RAW files, and allow you to do some edits along the way. This allows you to still retain the advantage of RAW files for edits later on, but also allows you to quickly share a file if needed (You could shoot RAW + JPEG, and get both at the same time, but it fills up your memory card just that much faster and you probably don't need a JPEG of every file, plus the retouch menu allows you to fix some stuff that you wouldn't get on an instant conversion to JPEG, (but that you could apply to JPEGs you've already taken)).

For RAW conversion you have the ability to set the picture quality & size, white balance and exposure compensation, and apply a picture control (standard, neutral, vivid, portrait or landscape).




post-processing

SOOC	Custom WB (my preference)	In Camera WB edit	WB dropper

As this was my first trip through this process and a bit of an experiment, I simply selected the quality & size I needed and then flipped through the WB menu, selecting Shade as the best match for the location we were in. I could have fiddled further with a custom Kelvin setting, but Shade looked good on the back of my LCD, so I went with it and was able to send the photo right away. After loading the image into ACR to prepare for this post, I found that I preferred a slightly cooler setting. Using the white balance dropper, ACR selected an even warmer WB which was much too warm for my taste.

My Nikon D90 has additional retouching features, that I may have to try out when I'm away from home this summer.

• D-Lighting for brightening up shadows
• Red Eye Correction
• Trim (in camera cropping)
• Monochrome (convert to BW or sepia)
• Filter Effects (warm up, cool down, intensify blues, greens, reds)
• Color Balance (adjust amounts of blue, amber, green & magenta)
• Small Picture (save for TV, web, e-mail)
• Image Overlay (combines two RAW files)
• Straighten (good for beach shots, so that your horizon isn't tilted)
  
• Distortion Control
  
• Fisheye (make your photo look like you had a fisheye lens)
  

2010 - Week 20, Minimum Focusing Distance

Living Room Couch - light source south facing windows
Mary 24, 2010 5:36 pm
Nikon D90, 50mm 1.8 - shot in RAW
Manual, No Flash, ISO 640, SS 1/50, f/3.2
AF-S, Pattern Metering, WB set to A6 (warm)

Minimum Focusing Distance is probably pretty straight forward for most photographers, but for the amateurs like myself its good practice to know what the minimum focusing distance is for all your lenses.

My 35mm f/1.8 can focus as close as 12", my 50mm f/1.8 can focus as close as 18" and my 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6 VR also focuses at close as 18".

Looking at those values one might assume that to get the best closeup I should use the 35mm because I can move 6" closer to my subject, but since it is also 15mm wider, I really don't gain anything because I "see" more of the subject with the wider lens. At 18" and 105mm I could be really close, but I would also be at f/5.6 which may not give me the shallow Depth of Field (DOF) that I would like to see on such a close up shot.

There is a really neat calculator called the DOF Master (link over on the right) and its good to plug in a few different focal lengths, distances and f-stops to see how much DOF you really have to play with.

For these shots, since I was going to be SO close, I knew I could not shoot wide open (f/1.8) or their eye might be in focus, but not their nose or maybe only one eye. I wanted most of their face to be in focus, and you can see how quickly the focus falls off by the time it gets to their ears.

My next consideration was shutter speed. The rule of thumb for children is to never go less that 1/125th, but since they were sleeping I didn't to worry about movement, so I was safe to go as low as the reciprocal rule or 1/focal length - in this case 1/50 of a second.

So what I had to tweak to get proper exposure was the ISO - which had to get bumped all the way up to 640, which sometimes gives me noise, but with a proper exposure I don't see any in these photos.

How did I get my subjects to "pose"? Well, they didn't get a nap at school because of swimming lessons and then they each worked extra hard during lessons trying to master the roll to your back to take a breath technique since one of them gave me quite the "almost" drowning scare before lessons even started. So we all laid down together on the couch to watch the Disney Planning DVD and it was so exciting we all fell asleep.

I set my focus point to the top set of eyelashes - the girls have amazing thick, dark eyelashes, not so long or curly, but dark and thick. I limited my post processing to fixing only a slight color cast in their hair, because I wasn't going for a perfectly posed portrait, I just wanted to capture them exactly as they looked there on the couch, which is why I manually adjusted the white balance on camera instead of tweaking in Adobe Camera Raw.





post-processing
In Adobe Camera Raw under the HSL/Grayscale tab, slide the Green Hue slider almost all the way to the left to remove a greenish hue they get in their hair swimming in salt water pools. It was the first time I had attempted this type of adjustment, so it was a pleasant surprise when it actually worked! No further adjustments were made in Photoshop - I'm sure I could have massaged a few of the shadows/highlights on their faces, but it didn't feel right in this instance.

2010 - Week 19, Back Button Focus

Our Street
May 16, 2010 11:28 am
Nikon D90, 50mm 1.8 - shot in RAW
Manual, No Flash, ISO 100, SS 1/2500, f/2.8
Pattern Metering, AF-C, back-button-focusing

I admit, I was last-minute-Lucy this week and didn't think of anything to photograph until today and this is technically pushing the limit for qualifying to part of week 19.

Almost all DSLRs offer the capability to program another button to act as the focus button instead of pressing the shutter half-way. As this button is on the back of the camera (on lower end Nikons you program the AE-L/AF-L button - the higher end ones have a dedicated button already), it is called back button focus or BBF.

When I first starting shooting in manual I used this method a lot, especially in AF-C (continuous focus) mode. I could keep the focus point on one eye and then wait for the smile to press the shutter. This mode is great for on the move toddlers as long as you can pan your camera with them you keep them in focus and then wait for the right moment to actually capture an image.

For a little while I was using aperture priority mode - which is quite fabulous, but then I actually needed my AE-L button to lock exposure for me so I could use spot metering, expose for skin and then recompose the whole photo without the camera changing the overall exposure.

Since the girls were going to be practicing balancing on their glider bikes this was a good time to try AF-C and back button focus again. So I could grab focus on them as they were coming down the hill, but wait to close the shutter until they filled the frame. If I had tried AF-S (one shot) chances are the lens could not have focused fast enough for me to push the shutter without them being too far away or already out of the frame, and it might have been blurry or the camera would not have been able to find focus at all because of the movement. The full sun wasn't ideal, but the results aren't too bad.

If the girls hadn't been so ready to quit because they were sweaty it would have been interesting to try to increase the f/stop enough to push the shutter speed slow enough to try and capture some movement. Without streamers or anything on the bikes, it's hard to tell that the bikes are in motion, except for the few pieces of hair.






post-processing
It's very hard for me to chimp (look at the LCD) in full sun, and even though the overall exposure was pretty good, I did some minor tweaks to exposure in ACR (overexposing the sky a bit more to lighten the subject), and then selectivly masked and brightened/lightened parts of the faces and body.

2010 - Week 18, Fluorescent Lights + Color Cast + Flash

Dance Studio - recital picture day for If all the Raindrops were Lemon drops & Gumdrops
May 8, 2010 10:38 am
Nikon D90, 35mm 1.8 - shot in RAW
Manual, Built In Flash, ISO 500, SS 1/50, f/4.5, Flash Bias -2.3
WB set to Fluorescent, Spot Metering, AF-S

This photo is an example of all the bad things that can conspire against a mom with a camera trying to take a great picture.
* No Natural Light/Fluorescent Lights
* Color Cast from bright turquoise accents & yellow reflective fabric
* Facial Shadows from hat

Compositionally, it isn't anything to get excited about either...look at all that head space...bleh.

It was soft, and got even softer after I ran Noiseware because it was noisy as all get-out even at ISO 500.

I dialed the flash way down to just give the face some light from under that hat.

Now that it's over here on the blog, I'm seeing yellow casts everywhere on the skin, I "fixed" their turquoise legs, and now it looks like they are wearing neutral tights again, but I am trying to imagine what the professional photographer who was taking pictures today was thinking as she was looking at all the bright reflective material. She was shooting in one of the other studios, under fluorescent lights too, but I'm sure she had some pro lights as well. We moms didn't get to come watch.

So, in the end, this for me, falls into the category of cute kids, bad photography.

I wonder if I can get them to pose again for me in some natural light, where I could use a reflector to shine some light on their faces. Seems like a lot of work doesn't it?



post-processing
Cloned out the ballet barre from behind the girl's head
Ran Noiseware
Fixed turquoise color casts (missed the yellow ones)

I feel like I'm headed backwards with my photography...everything seems hard again, and I'm not at all happy with the photos I've taken recently.