Sunday Selections #58: The lousy shots of birds edition

I’ve been trying to shoot birds lately. With my camera mind you, not with a shotgun. Anyway, difficult thing to do. I often hear them, but don’t see them. And just before I do see them, they see me and fly off. Occasionally I manage to get a decent photo and sometimes I post them in my ‘normal’ posts, but more often I get lousy shots that I find difficult to delete, because they are the only shots of that particular bird I have. Apart from the robin. I have loads of robin-photos. He follows me around the garden, trying to get into the picture.

The not so good shots are therefore pointlessly hanging around in my computer, until it’s Sunday. Yay! Sunday Selections time. Hosted by the lovely Kim from Frogpondsrock. If you, like I, have folders full of photos waiting to be seen, hop over to the rocking frog ponds, follow the almost non-existent rules and join in.

I can see two birds in this shot. A male ‘merel’ (in Dutch) or blackbird and a ‘koperwiek’ or redwing.

 

A ‘koolmees’ or great tit. Strange name.

 

The robin managed to get his photo taken. Again.

 

This is a ‘winterkoninkje’ or wren (I think. I’m sure it’s a winterkoninkje, but not sure of its English name). It is one of the smallest birds in Europe, about 10 centimetres long. His tail always points upwards. It’s a quick mover and builds its nests near the ground in hedges or shrubs. Somewhere dense enough to get some shelter and feel safe.

This is more of a close up, but he just wouldn’t sit still *sigh*. Still, I’m very happy that I did get a shot of him/her. I will persist and do my best to get a terrific photo of a ‘winterkoninkje’ one day. We’ll have cake that day.

Oh, and look who I’ve spotted in the garden, checking out trees to build a home in perhaps? Or more likely, looking for food. I suspect he’ll rather have a dead birch, there are plenty of them around, to make his nest in.

Yep, it is a ‘grote bonte specht’ or woodpecker. Perhaps it is the same one I photographed with his family last year? Who knows.

I tawt I taw a biwdy

 

When shooting this little birdy (probably the same one as in my previous post) I didn’t have to balance on one leg, while closing a gate at the same time as taking the photo. Life is much simpler when you just do one thing at a time. Really. I should try it more often.

 

Every time I bring a wheelbarrow full of horse manure to our muck heap, I see this little guy (or girl) sitting on top of the heap.

Our muck heap functions as a cheep cheap delicatessen shop, providing lots of yummy little insects and worms and it has a very diverse clientele. Robins aren’t as shy as a lot of the other customers, giving me a perfect opportunity to practice photography without having to do my famous, but very unsuccessful tree imitation to try and blend into the background.
The robin doesn’t care that I really don’t look like a tree and that one of my branches makes strange whirring and whizzing noises.

He, on the other hand, kept a sharp eye on me.

Photography course: ‘In the land of the blind…’, part 4

I’m the one-eyed Queen in the land of the blind that is called Photography.I’m sure there are many blind people in the Blogland of Photography too. (What can be worse than being a blind photographer?) People who own a fancy camera, but only use the automatic setting(s), because they don’t know about aperture and shutter speed. I used to be one of them. But not any more! I know a thing or two now and am willing to share my limited knowledge with you. We can all be one-eyed Kings and Queens together! World domination will be only a small step further.

The only thing is, I’m not quite sure about all the technical photography terms in English. But I’ll try to make sense anyway. And this course (ahum) is not meant for users of the digital point-and-shoot cameras, although they will probably get some useful information and tips out of this too, but for people who have a digital SLR camera.

If you decide to join us on our quest for world domination becoming a better photographer, please post your photos and notify me that you’ve done so (please include the link to that post). I’d be interested to see if what I’m trying to explain is clear enough. If you have any questions concerning the ‘lessons’ please ask them in the comments section of that ‘lesson’. I’ll answer them there too. You can of course also find lots of websites about photography, written by people who really know what they are talking about, but they will be less fun. Of course.

 

Part 4: Measuring light

(Lots of text, but please, don’t be downhearted. If you practice it on your camera, you’ll see that it isn’t difficult.)

In the previous parts of ‘In the land of the blind…’, I’ve explained about aperture and focus, manual focus and autofocus, and ISO. All important choices to make, when you want to take a photo. When you practice them every time you take a shot, you’ll be able to make snap-decisions about which setting you may have to adjust. I promise you.
But you have to keep using the creative setting, in which you have to make these choices yourself, otherwise you’ll soon be completely lost in the dark again.

And while we’re talking about ‘being lost in the dark’, you need enough light for a good photo. In photography terms it is called ‘exposure’. You can change the aperture (F-number), the ISO, and the shutter speed (I’ll come back to that in another part of ‘In the land of the blind…’), but you also have influence over the exposure by interfering with your camera’s light measuring system.

So, grab your camera and the instruction manual again and look for something called light metering mode (or something similar, because I’m not quite sure what your instruction manual calls it) and see what the differences are in the choices that are available.

What works for me is the Evaluative mode: the black dot with brackets above and under it. When you select that one, light metering is concentrated on the active AF point (if you’ve followed the other parts of this course, you’ll have chosen the middle point in your viewfinder as the active one) and the area around it. The metering system of your camera will do some clever calculations (way above my head) and comes up with a correct exposure.

Or I use the Spot mode (the single dot), which only measures light at the AF point.

Okay, so, your camera measures the light and calculates the correct exposure to get a well-lit photo. And in doing that, your camera assumes that you want everything to be in sort of greyish tones (I’m not explaining this in the correct, technical way, but it’s how I understand it best). If you want to take a photo of a black or very dark subject, your camera assumes that you don’t want it to be that dark and it will let more light into the camera to get your subject looking less dark, more grey. Result: overexposure. Your subject seems lighter on the photo than it is in real life.

Or, you want to take a photo of a white or very light subject, snow for instance, but your camera ‘thinks’: this is way too white! I will underexpose (let less light into the camera) so it will become more grey. Which is why snow often does look a bit dull and grey in your photos.

Now you know this, you’ll also know that as soon as you point your camera at your black cat, you’ll probably get an overexposed photo. If so, you can do a couple of things to get a better result. Apart from adjusting the aperture, shutter speed or ISO, you can do two things that I think are very useful to know about:

- exposure compensation: when you look through your viewfinder and press the shutter button half way down, you’ll see all kinds of information under the image. In my viewfinder I see, from left to right: shutter speed, aperture (the F-number), –2..1..▼..1..+2, ISO (nr), minimum (?) nr. of shots still available and a dot indicating if the camera is ready for you to press the shutter button.

Now, the -2..1..▼..1..+2 indicates the level of light. When the ▼ is in the middle, the light is optimal for a photo with that shutter speed, aperture and ISO. But you know that your camera will allow either too much (black subject) or not enough (white subject) light in for that photo. So you have to compensate, by adjusting the Exposure Compensation a couple of ‘stops’ in the right direction. Simply: adjust to the minus side (left) in case of a black subject (to manually underexpose) or adjust to the plus side (right) in case of a light subject.

If you know which wheel to turn to adjust this, you can do it while looking through your viewfinder and it will make life much easier.

Another solution is (I do this very often):

- AE lock (Auto Exposure Lock = AEL): you can measure light on another area, lock it in the camera, focus on your subject and take the shot. I use it often. On my camera the AE lock is under a button marked with * (the star). You will also see it in your viewfinder. In fact: if your camera is set on One-Shot AF (we haven’t talked about that setting yet) in combination with Evaluative light metering, the AEL will probably already work, even if you don’t push the ‘star’ button. But you will have to keep the shutter button pressed down halfway.

If you don’t keep the shutter button pressed down halfway, or if you’re using different settings, you’ll have to do the following. In fact, I will make it an assignment:

ASSIGNMENT 1:
Take a black (or very dark) object (most camera bags are black), put your camera in Av-mode, choose an F-number and take a photo of the dark object (be prepared for a slow shutter speed). Okay, so, you’ll see that that photo is much lighter than the object in reality is.

Below is a photo of a corner of our very dark wooden table (F5.6, ISO 100, shutter speed 10 seconds). Clearly overexposed and I couldn’t keep the camera still for such a long time, so not very sharp either.

Now don’t change the settings, point your camera on something lighter, preferably greyish (or grass in the sunshine works very well too, which seems weird, but is handy to know), press the shutter button halfway down, lock the exposure information in your camera with the * button (or whatever it is on your camera), release the shutter button, point your camera towards the dark object and take the same shot as you did before. You’ll see that it is remarkably darker now and your shutter speed will be faster too.

F5.6, ISO 100, shutter speed 2 seconds

Result! The table looks exactly like it does in real life. The colour is much better now.

Read more about this using AEL here. Very interesting article.

 

ASSIGNMENT 2:
As long as you are busy doing your homework (LOL): take a photo of a dark object (same as photo 1 in the assignment above). Now adjust the exposure compensation to the minus side and take the same shot. See the difference?

Good luck!

Photography course: Lesson 2 of ‘In the land of the blind…’

I’m the one-eyed Queen in the land of the blind that is called Photography.I’m sure there are many blind people in the Blogland of Photography too. (What can be worse than being a blind photographer?) People who own a fancy camera, but only use the automatic setting(s), because they don’t know about aperture and shutter speed. I used to be one of them. But not any more! I know a thing or two now and am willing to share my limited knowledge with you. We can all be one-eyed Kings and Queens together! World domination will be only a small step further.

The only thing is, I’m not quite sure about all the technical photography terms in English. But I’ll try to make sense anyway. And this course (ahum) is not meant for users of the digital point-and-shoot cameras, although they will probably get some useful information and tips out of this too, but for people who have a digital SLR camera.

If you decide to join us on our quest for world domination becoming a better photographer, please post your photos and notify me that you’ve done so (please include the link to that post). I’d be interested to see if what I’m trying to explain is clear enough. If you have any questions concerning the ‘lessons’ please ask them in the comments section of that ‘lesson’. I’ll answer them there too. You can of course also find lots of websites about photography, written by people who really know what they are talking about, but they will be less fun. Of course.

 

Lesson 2: autofocus and manual focus

So, I’ve asked you in lesson 1 to grab your camera and the instruction manual and to look up how you can set your camera so, that it will only focus on the centre point in your viewfinder.

Sometimes you will find however that your camera just can’t seem to get a grip on the subject you’re trying to focus on. However still you keep the camera, it just can’t seem to focus and it keeps changing and whirring and you’re beginning to get a bit desperate.

Never fear!

Perhaps you are just too close to your subject. If you are trying to take a shot of, for instance, a beautiful flower, as close-up as possible (Low F-number, Large lens opening, Less sharpness in the background), your lens probably can’t handle the short distance between camera and subject.
(All kinds of technical reasons for that, but I’m not going into that here. We’re keeping it simple and fun. Especially because I’m not good in technical reasoning.)

Or the surface of your subject is too even and your camera can’t find anything to hold on to and focus on. It happens. Your camera is only human, you know.

(Also, if you have chosen the lowest F-number possible, the area your camera focuses on is very small. You know, lots of blurriness around your subject. If either of you, your subject or you yourself, moves ever so slightly… floop, your subject is out of that focus area and the camera starts focussing again. You can try to ‘up’ the F-number to increase the focus area. But because you’re closing your lens opening then (that doesn’t seem to make sense, but it does), your shutter speed will get somewhat slower too. You may need a tripod. It seems that nothing is ever as simple as you’d like it to be.)

Okay, so, we are ignoring the above sub-section for now, and will be focussing on being too close to your subject or your subject is too even. One of the choices you can make in the settings of your camera is autofocus (AF) or manual focus (MF). It probably is a small switch on your lens. If you push that switch to manual focus (MF), you can twist one of the rings on the lens to focus. Don’t confuse that ring with the zoom-in/zoom-out ring on your lens though. If your subject seems to get closer or further away from you, you’re turning the wrong ring. Try another one.

(You do of course know that you keep the camera in your right hand and support the lens with the fingers of your left hand under it, thumb pointing away from you. That is the easiest way to keep the camera as steady as possible and you’ll be able to turn the rings.)

If you manually focus on your subject, you will be able to get a little bit closer to your subject than when using the autofocus.

MF will also work when trying to photograph something in water, like a reflection. Do try to focus manually if the autofocus doesn’t work, but always remember to set the button back to autofocus (AF). It will prevent the next photos you’ll be taking to be a blurry mess.

If AF (autofocus) doesn’t work, try the MF (manual focus) setting on your lens.

It sounds to simple, but you wouldn’t believe how many people don’t know about the AF/MF switch.

 

THE FUNNY THING IS…

I just recently discovered what the AF-ON button on the back of my camera is for. Never bothered to look that up before, haven’t even tested it out yet, but supposedly it is something you can’t do without. Shows how much I know. Not that much then.

I found an interesting article on the internet, here, that has lots more information about the ‘back-button AF’, and I copied the part below from there (hasten to add that the rest of this ‘In the land of the blind…’ photography course is completely written by me):

Easier to lock focus
If you are shooting something like a series of portraits of a person, and you want them composed off-centre, back-button AF makes it super-easy to take as many pictures as you want. Focus on your subject by pressing the rear button (more on which button later in this article). Once in-focus, take your thumb off the rear button. Re-compose the shot to move your subject off-centre. Shoot as many pictures as you like. With focus activation removed from the shutter button, you now can fire any time you like, and remove your index finger from the shutter button after a shot is taken. No matter what, the camera makes no effort to re-focus when you press the shutter button half-way down again.

I’m definitely going to try that!