Innehållsförteckning för Issue 6 från Outdoor Photography The Complete Manual

Cameras come in so many shapes and sizes, packed with gadgets and technology that can be confusing to the average enthusiast. Add to that the fact that there are many types of camera system too, and you would be forgiven for wondering if it’s easier to take up fishing instead. Don’t worry, if you just want to snap pictures of your friends on holiday or shoot with the latest medium format camera in the wilds of Borneo, we’ve got a list of camera types that help sort it out for you. Standard compact Most compact cameras fall into this category. They tend to be fairly small and light, measuring about 100 x 50 x 25mm and weighing around 120-130g. Modern standard compacts are normally fully automatic, although some may offer…

Filters have been an essential part of photography since its very beginnings. Used creatively they can improve a hardto-capture scene, add an extra artistic element to an image or just provide a bit of fun. Modern digital photo editing has provided an, almost too easy, method to add filter effects to an image after it has been captured; some effects are better when applied by actual physical filters fitted to the camera when the photo is taken and this is particularly true with black and white photography. Let’s take a look at some of the different types of filter and how they can help to improve your photos. “ Let’s take a look at some of the different types of filter and how they can help to improve your photos.”…

“ Here’s an overview of the two formats. Take a look and see what is right for you.” Should you use Jpeg or Raw for your photography? This is a question that has been going back and forth for some time between photographers. Many champion the use of Jpeg, whilst others will extoll the virtues of the Raw format; so, should you shoot in Raw or Jpeg? Is the processing of Raw photos an overly complicated process? Can Jpegs give you all you need for a great final photograph? Here’s an overview of the two formats. Take a look and see what is right for you. Jpeg Let’s start with the Jpeg format as it is probably the most commonly encountered image type. Jpeg is certainly the most popular image…

AF-A AUTO-SERVO AF The camera decides which focusing mode to use and can work to best effect if your camera has a larger number of AF points. It will assess the scene based on its content and use all the AF points to focus the shot. AF-S SINGLE-SERVO AF You can lock the focus by half-pressing the shutter release button. This allows you to select a focus point and recompose the shot. It is good for simple static subjects where you can focus once and know your subject is not going to move. AF-C CONTINUOUS-SERVO AF This time, when you press the shutter button halfway, it starts to track and continually focus on the subject beneath the selected AF point. This mode is good for tracking a moving subject such…

Whether it’s the smallest flower filling the frame of your viewfinder, or the sweeping vistas of the high moors and dales, these images would not be possible to capture without the aid of different focal lengths, giving you very narrow or very wide angles of view. A zoom lens allows you to choose a wide angle of view, or zoom in and use a narrower angle of view, magnifying the image. Focal length is one of your primary tools for adjusting composition. Selecting the right focal length for the scene allows the photographer to control perspective, angle of view and magnification, and can radically alter the mood and style of the photo. Some focal lengths are more suited to particular types of photo, and the properties of wide-angle and telephoto…

For many, stepping out from behind their cameraphone and shooting with a DSLR, can be a big deal. Make no mistake, cameraphones are amazing, for what they are, but for us, there is nothing to match working with a DSLR and getting immersed in the process of attaining the best exposure of your subject. If you love to shoot landscapes, but often find that the exposures never seem to give the results you expect, don’t worry. Landscapes can be a bit tricky to meter correctly and you will often fall prey to the behaviour of the camera’s metering system in different lighting conditions. It is very likely that the scene you are photographing will have more tonal range than your camera can capture and therefore fall outside an average metered…

If you look at a white snow-covered scene, your brain takes over and manipulates what you see, so that it matches your expectation of what white should look like. So, what you see, even under differing lighting conditions, is white. If you put a camera in the same scene, it does not make any such adjustments and adapt to a certain expectation. The camera will simply record the colours that are present in the scene. ‘White’ light visible to humans can actually vary in colour from reddish orange to greenishblue. This variation is usually described as a temperature range, with warm being the red end and cold at the blue end, and is usually measured in degrees Kelvin using a colour meter. Confusingly, the higher the colour temperature, the cooler…

For many people, new to the world of photography, one of the easiest and most accessible areas first explored with a new camera is the great outdoors, and why not? You don’t need a studio or masses of expensive equipment. There is plenty of available light, unless you’re feeling adventurous and want to try night photography, and beautiful seaside or countryside scenes are usually not too far away by car or a brisk walk. So you have a new camera or you are itching to get one and get out there and start snapping away, filling memory card after memory card, right? Before you do, why not take a quick look at our essential hints and tips. Then, over the following pages we have assembled a useful quick reference guide…

“ There is a certain something that lures us to the sea. It is both benign and unpredictable, powerful and awe inspiring.” Coastal and seaside landscapes have always been an extremely popular subject for both artists and photographers. There is a certain something that lures us to the sea. It is both benign and unpredictable, powerful and awe inspiring. Coastal areas have a wealth of interesting features, from large flat expanses of sand, rocky pools and coves, as well as soaring cliffs and sand dunes. There are also the manmade influences, ports and towns that spring up around key coastal areas. The photographic potential is vast. The coast and the sea have some of the best image capture potential that you could ever hope for. A unique environment If you…

The blue hour is a period of time, within civil twilight, where the sun is below the horizon. This period is a prime time for the landscape photographer; neither day or night but something quite ethereal in between the two. The environment is bathed in a soft light and there can be a pinkish orange glow along the horizon, fading into to a deep blue sky. The world is full of promise as the new day begins, or conversely it is about to shut its eyes to drift off to sleep and it is this magical feeling that photographers endeavour to capture. The time of year will dictate how long this period lasts, so it’s a good idea to get to your destination in plenty of time to get yourself…

If you have ever shot landscapes to any great degree, you have no doubt encountered the particular exposure challenges that go with them. Scenes with your beautiful foreground interest and far off mountains and dramatic skies are perfect landscape subjects. When you take your shots, however, you realise that certain factors come into play. The main one being that your camera, no matter how new and expensive, cannot see all the subtle tones and variations in light and dark that the human eye can. A typical daytime landscape of foreground and bright sky has such a large dynamic range from the brightest highlights to the deepest shadows and is far beyond the scope of your camera. You can expose your shot for the sky and have your foreground very underexposed…

As your photography evolves, you will no doubt be trying out various types of subject matter and getting involved in photo shoots with people, animals, children and the like. You may also be working at larger events, functions, or even weddings, where you are herding people around and generally having to be in charge to get the shots required by your client. Having been in the thick of it, you can be forgiven for occasionally wanting something a little less wearisome. We can’t speak for all photographers, but now and again, we believe it is quite therapeutic to grab your gear, head out and photograph something for yourself, just for the sheer pleasure of it. No moving targets, no groups shots, no shouting to make yourself heard at a function,…

If you’ve ever taken a photo where most of the background was white snow, or bright white sand on a sunny beach, you’ve probably been disappointed by the results. That crisp, white snow comes out looking grey and murky, while your subjects come out looking very dark and under-exposed. There is a very good reason for this, and fortunately, it is very easy to correct. The problem lies with your camera’s light meter. It is designed to measure the light and set the exposure for an average scene and, under average conditions, it will normally do a very good job. This is because an average scene has an unusual property; it reflects approximately 18 per cent of the light falling on it, equivalent to a mid-tone grey. It doesn’t matter…

A camera can stand or fall depending on how a good a lens you have attached to it, and also if it is right for the job in hand. Imagine setting up by a beautiful lake that stretches off as far as the eye can see in each direction. You would need a wide angle lens with a very short focal length that is capable of capturing all that grandeur and spectacle, but all you have is a telephoto lens. That is going to limit the kind of shot you could take there. You could also find yourself in a field of bluebells, wanting to get an extreme close-up of the dew on those gorgeous flowers. All you have in your bag is a standard lens with a minimum focusing…

As camera technology develops and the megapixel count increases with every new camera that is released, the file sizes that these cameras create when shooting in Raw format can be substantial. As an example, if you were to shoot a highly detailed landscape image with lots of tree, grass, clouds and mountains, an uncompressed 12-bit Raw file from something like a Nikon D810 could be as much as 55MB. Now imagine shooting an action scene of ponies running across the moorlands in burst mode and capturing twenty shots in just one sequence, you can imagine how quickly you would start filling up any digital storage. There’s more to it than just the amount of storage you have. A memory card of 64GB will let you store a lot of images,…

Sometimes it’s great to set your camera on a particular shot mode setting knowing it will take care of business for you in your particular shooting environment. This means that you can get on with just enjoying taking the shots you want. Most new compact cameras, mid range compact system cameras and DSLRs offer a range of modes or creative options that you can choose. There is a mode for action and sports that means your images of the important football match are shake free and the action is frozen. There is also a landscape mode that boosts saturation and contrast for vibrant green and blues, as well as using narrower apertures to give you as much depth of field image sharpness as possible. Here are some of the most…

From birds frozen in flight, to water looking more like fog. Those shots are created by using your camera’s shutter speeds in different ways to create a range of visual effects in your photos. The shutter of your camera is simply a mechanical barrier that prevents light from entering the camera until it is needed, controlling when and for how long light is allowed in to expose the sensor. The latest digital cameras have highspeed electro-mechanical shutters capable of timing exposures with an accuracy measured in fractions of a millisecond. Along with the aperture setting and the sensitivity control, shutter speed is one of the three ways that photographic exposure is adjusted. When a picture is taken, the shutter is opened for a precisely measured amount of time allowing light…

A part from the role that aperture plays in controlling the exposure in your image, it is also the key ingredient in defining how much of your image is sharp and how much is out of focus. If you want your landscape shots to be as sharp as possible from front to back, or you want a close-up of a butterfly to be the only thing that is sharp in the scene, then it’s aperture that will do that for you. The aperture is literally a hole through which light passes after it enters the lens. The diameter of this hole can be altered, allowing a greater or smaller amount of light to pass through on its way to the sensor. In the early days of photography, aperture was adjusted…

While almost all digital cameras have some sort of flashgun built in, these are usually relatively weak with a useful range of only a few metres. The more advanced cameras, including all DSLRs, most CSCs and several advanced compacts and super-zooms, have the ability to use an external accessory flashgun to provide more illumination over a much greater distance. These cameras have a bracket known as a ‘hot shoe’ (see image right, page 47), into which the flashgun slots and includes electrical connections that allow the camera to trigger the flash. Most camera manufacturers make flashguns designed for use with their own cameras, which have more connections to allow the camera’s light metering system to control the output of the flash. These systems are known as ‘dedicated’ flash. Flashguns While…

Landscape photography is one of those genres where sharpness is everything. Wide angle shots of amazing vistas usually require front to back sharpness in your scene to maintain all the detail that was present. The viewer of the final photograph will appreciate the image more if their eye is able to take in all that detail. It will make the photograph ‘live’ for them. Nothing ruins a shot more than the image being fuzzy and blurry when you need it to be tack sharp. The problem however, is that in many cases in landscape photography you have a foreground element as well as a distant object that you want to be in as sharp focus as possible at the same time. Shooting with a wide angle lens and setting a…

Now you’re familiar with how your camera works and how to use its many features, you’re ready to start learning the creative techniques that professional photographers use to achieve great results time after time. By learning and using a few simple techniques you can turn your photographs from well-taken snapshots into works of art of which you can be proud. Professional photographers use some very simple tricks and rules-of-thumb that have been developed over many years, including rules of composition that are inspired by classical art. Combined with technical skill and a thorough understanding of the principles of photography that we laid out in the previous section, these artistic methods produce well-balanced, attractive photographs that will really stand out. Explore your creative side as we show you some basic principles…

Trying to pin down what an urban landscape actually is, might depend on who you ask. There are those that don’t actually count the urban environment as valid landscape material in the first place, opting for landscapes that are untouched by people and the modern world. Fair enough, it’s not for everyone but there are many who find the city full of photographic potential. From dark alleys to towering city skylines, the city has much to offer. It isn’t necessarily a thing of beauty, it isn’t always that clean but it can’t be denied that it has character by the bucket load. It’s this character that many photographers try to capture. Humans are incidental in urban landscapes, the city is the star. What lenses? Budget is always a factor but…

Light painting is a photographic technique in which exposures are made by moving a hand-held light source. The term light painting also encompasses images lit from outside the frame with hand-held light sources. The latter is what we are looking at in this example. You don’t necessarily need huge, complicated, flash setups to produce some amazingly lit images. With a subject to photograph, your camera on a tripod, one torch with a couple of coloured gels [1], you can light paint to your hearts content. This is an example of one type of light painting technique that uses, ‘a big brush’, shall we say, to colour a scene in large swathes of light. In our example we have a car parked with a nice evening sky behind it. The camera…

“ It can occasionally be the case that you swamp yourself with technicalities and overlook some of the more basic creative aspects of photography.” Extreme point of view photography (POV) is the deceptively simple idea of taking your normal viewing angle when shooting an image and placing the camera in such as way as to create a wholly different, dynamic and exciting shot. As people develop their skills as photographers, it can sometimes be very easy to always concentrate on the technical aspects of photography to make sure that the exposure, focus and technique are yielding good results. It can occasionally be the case that you swamp yourself with technicalities and overlook some of the more basic creative aspects of photography. Choosing a point of view for your camera that…

First things first. What is macro photography? If you’ve never encountered it before, macro photography is the capture of tiny objects and organisms on your camera sensor at life-size or greater using a specialist lens or other equipment. In the case of shooting with a full-frame DSLR, a macro image of 1:1 means that if you had an old 35mm negative measuring 36 x 24mm, at its closest focusing distance, you would be able to fill your camera’s viewfinder with that negative and photograph it. For a DSLR owner, the most obvious route into macro photography is to buy a macro lens. If budget is no consideration, then full-frame macro lenses with image stabilisation are a great choice. There are more pocket friendly lenses for 100mm full-frame and 60mm crop-sensor…

It may sound counterintuitive. Why would you want long exposures during the day? Daytime shooting means you have no shortage of light, shutter speeds are high and there is little chance of either motion blur or camera shake. Why would you deliberately want to choose slow shutter speeds? It is, for want of a better phrase, an artistic choice. We are very used to seeing images taken in the daytime that are sharp, free from camera shake or motion blur where everything is static and frozen in place. That’s fine if it’s what you are after but consider how the world changes when you shoot at night (apart from it being dark of course). Things are a little more surreal at night when shutter speeds drop to seconds or even…

In this first section, we want to outline some of the essentials you’ll need to consider if you are looking to purchase your first camera, or upgrade what you currently have. Shooting outdoors, particularly if you are wanting to shoot landscapes, can be done with the cheapest of compact cameras, all shot hand held. That is absolutely fine up to a point. Beyond that, to take your outdoors photography up a notch, getting informed about lens types and investing in a good tripod, are key things to bear in mind. Over the next few pages we’ll look at a few of the many different types of camera that are available. We show you a few good tripod choices, lens types, and also look at some of the accessories that are…

There can be no worse feeling, for a photographer of any skill level, than finding yourself in a location where the combination of setting sun, clouds, land and water conspires to create the perfect landscape image and what you actually capture is blurry due to too slow a shutter speed and the fact you shot it hand held. In situations like this, the tripod becomes your saviour. All the best cameras and lenses in the world cannot save you from the need to shoot long exposures in low light conditions. Even the most modern DSLRs with very high ISO capability will still produce a noisy image if you bump the sensitivity too high. If you want the sharpest, highest quality images for shooting in low light situations outdoors, then you…

By learning more about how your camera works and how to use its many features you can expand the scope of your photography and get good results every time, even in difficult conditions. For owners of more advanced cameras there are options such as aperture and shutter speed control, sensitivity and white balance, as well as creative light metering modes and manual focusing, all of which can be used creatively to make your photos really stand out. It’s just a case of getting to grips with the basics of photography and your camera gear. Photography is a rewarding and potentially profitable hobby, and the more you learn about it the more you’ll get out of it. In the next section we’ll look at common camera features and how to use…

When shooting hand-held and wishing to avoid camera shake, as a rule of thumb you can safely use a shutter speed roughly equivalent to the reciprocal of the focal length you are using. For example if you’re using a 100mm focal length then you can take a sharp handheld shot at a shutter speed of 1/100th of a second or faster. If you’re using a 35mm focal length then 1/35th of a second is safe, and so on. Many modern cameras include technology which can reduce the effects of camera shake at low shutter speeds. Many compact cameras use electronic processing to counteract movement, which does work but produces relatively poor image quality. Among digital SLR and CSC manufacturers there are two types of image stabilisation in common use. Canon,…

Understanding exposure and how it affects your photographs is probably the single most important technical skill you can learn in photography. It’s certainly the one that most people get wrong, and apart from camera shake, bad exposure probably ruins more photos than any other single cause. The main problem is over reliance on automatic metering. Most modern cameras, even relatively cheap compacts, have sophisticated built-in TTL multi-zone evaluative exposure meters that measure light levels at dozens, in some cases hundreds, of points within the frame, instantly comparing the results with a built-in library of exposure situations and automatically adjusting the shutter speed and aperture to deal with problems such as back-lighting, close-ups or moving subjects. In most cases these automatic exposure systems are very good, and can reliably cope with…

If you have a flash in your camera setup, you have no doubt been enjoying the benefits of having an available light source when conditions demand it. You may discover there are times when you want a little more creative control over the end result. At the moment, your flash sits atop your camera providing one light source, perhaps with the option of bouncing it off a nearby wall or ceiling if you happen to be indoors so you can modify the light to soften the shadows. Anything is better than the direct flash rabbit-in-the-headlights look right? This is great, bounce flash can create some lovely images. If you were outdoors though, trying to do a portrait, where would you bounce the flash? Options become limited, and you may have…

The main difference between a well taken snapshot and a truly artistic photograph is simply a matter of composition. By changing the focal length, the angle and the position of the camera, the photographer can change the relative positions and sizes of objects in the frame to produce a more visually pleasing effect. Learning to do this is mostly a matter of practice and experimentation, but there are a number of simple tips and rules-of-thumb that can help you to take better pictures. The first and most important thing to remember is to take your time. Look at the scene in the viewfinder or on your monitor and try to see it not as simply a view but instead to imagine it as a finished print. Ask yourself if there’s…

There is often a misconception among budding photographers that landscape photography is something of an easy option when deciding on a subject to capture. Sometimes it only takes a twenty minute drive to transport you from your local town and put you among the marvels and beauty of the natural world. While it is certainly true that the natural world is very accessible, it can be another thing altogether to create memorable landscape images. It isn’t just a case of arriving at a destination, firing up your DSLR and snapping away like a mad thing. The skills you may have that enable you to operate your camera are quite distinct from those that allow you to envision a beautifully composed image within the landscape you currently find yourself. Both are…

You are out and about happily taking photographs, with gorgeous sunshine to brighten the experience. It’s your last day before venturing off home and you happen upon a scene that you want to capture. The sun is directly in your eyes but the sun’s position is creating a dramatic lighting effect. What can you do to get the most from the opportunity? The problem is that the dynamic range of the scene before you is very extreme because the sun itself is part of the shot. You have options of course. If you had the time you could wait until the next day when the sun is in a different part of the sky but then you wouldn’t have the drama of the sun low to the horizon. You could…

As the sun arcs across the sky in daytime, the light is harsh and creates hard, deep shadows, which is why landscape photographers tend not to shoot during the main part of the day. When the sun starts to approach the horizon however, that is a different matter. The closer the sun is to the horizon, the more atmosphere it has to shine through. This has a softening effect on the quality of the light and reduces overall contrast in the scene. Shadows are long but softer and colours are enriched. The light of a sunrise has quite a cool bluish colour temperature, whilst the light of a sunset, particularly if there is a lot of dust in the atmosphere, can be very warm orange and reds. Sounds like a…

In normal practice our eyes see the world around us and we accept it for what it is. The sky is blue, grass is green, and so on. This is because our eyes can only see certain wavelengths of light. We are only sensitive to the so called ‘visible spectrum’. Every time you see a rainbow, you are witnessing this spectrum, broken down into the range of colours we are familiar with, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Red sits at the 700 nanometer (nm) wavelength, whilst violet is at the 390nm wavelength. We are going to show you how to capture the invisible world of the near-infrared, which can be found at the 720nm wavelength. The diagram opposite goes into a little more detail about the visible,…

The word panorama means ‘an unbroken view of the whole region surrounding an observer’. In more simple terms, it means a photograph containing a wide view. A vertorama is simply a panorama that is shot in a vertical orientation. It all came about in the 1700s when artists would paint a horizontal image that encircled an entire room. These wide, expansive views are much prized by landscape photographers who strive to capture entire vistas to give the viewer of the final image a sense of the scale of the scene that was visible to them whilst they were there. Conveying all this ‘bigness’ would normally require the use of wide angle lenses. These lenses have short focal lengths of around 14mm to 24mm and can capture an angle of view…

Shooting the night sky is not just the reserve of astronomers and large telescopes. Although you are not going to be imaging deep-sky nebulae and planets in extreme close-up, there is still plenty of scope for any photographer to create memorable and creative images of the night sky. It is a fascinating subject and with care, you can produce some stunning images of the heavens with just a digital camera, a tripod, and perhaps a useful app on your phone. Your options include twilight images, and photos of the sky long after the sun has set. Not only that, you also have some options to capture the stars in creative ways too. Have you ever wondered how you can capture the movement of the stars and turn the night sky…

Finding a new way to capture a landscape or any scene in general is always exciting and quite invigorating. It can be helpful in getting you out of a creative rut and sparking new ideas and thoughts on how to see the world in a fresh way. One such way is crystal ball photography. In case you were wondering, it’s nothing to do with fortune telling, but rather the use of a crystal ball as an additional lens in your shots. How you use it in those shots dictates its effect on the final image. Using it very close to the camera so it fills the frame means it almost acts like a fisheye lens, whilst having it further away, it becomes a small globe containing the landscape it is…

AMOLED Stands for active-matrix organic light-emitting diode. A new type of display technology used in mobile devices and televisions, used in the monitors of some digital cameras. Has several advantages over LCD, including using less power. Aperture Behind the lens of your camera is a movable circular iris which opens and closes to control the amount of light falling on the sensor. This is usually controlled by the light meter, although some cameras have a manual aperture control. Altering the aperture also changes the depth of field. Aperture Priority This is one of the semi-manual exposure options found on some cameras. The user sets the aperture according to the depth of field they require, and the metering system sets the shutter speed to obtain the correct exposure. Artefacts When an…