Innehållsförteckning för Issue 8 från Outdoor Photography The Complete Manual

You might be forgiven for thinking that outdoor photography is another name for landscape photography but there is so much more to it than that. As the name suggests, landscape photography is the capture of the environment around us, whether coastal, rural or even urban. Well, we want to show you that there is more to being outdoors with your camera than shooting pure landscape images. Think of this book as a guide to some of the kinds of photography that is possible outside the four walls of your own home. Potentially, there is so much to explore and capture when you venture outside with the desire to create some fun and interesting images. Over this series you will find an essential list of outdoor photography hints and tips, as…

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 closeup 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 high-speed 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…

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…

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…

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…

“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 format…

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 multizone 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 backlighting, close-ups or moving subjects. In most cases these automatic exposure systems are very good, and can reliably cope with…

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…

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 53), 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…

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…

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 hard-to-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. FILTER TYPES Circular screw on filters are the most common type that fits directly on your lens filter thread. They come in different…

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…

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…

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 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…

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 man-made 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. “There is a certain something that lures us to the sea. It is both benign and unpredictable, powerful and awe inspiring.” A unique environment If you are…

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