Lens hoods and UV filters save lives.

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Well, they don’t save lives – but they save tears and your bank balance. Today I was packing my bag ready to go home for the Easter holiday, went to grab something and my camera and 24-105mm F4 IS USM fell out and landed on the floor. The concrete floor.

FILTERS AND HOODSLuckily it had a UV filter attached, and the lens hood was reversed. This meant that the lens hood flexed a little, cushioning the lens as it hit the ground.

The the lens hit, and the UV filter smashed, as can be seen in this photograph.

I can only guess what would have happened if I didn’t have the filter or lens hood on, but my guess is that it would have been expensive.

So learn from my mistake – pack your camera bag in the middle of a bed, or on the floor. Don’t let there be any chance of stuff dropping.

Use UV filters and lens hoods, they might just save your lens.

Get stuff insured! I have about £1900 worth of gear, and the insurance for it is about £50 a year with no excess, and a new-for-old policy – it also comes with £1,000,000 public liability insurance for when I start clobbering tourists with my tripod when they walk into shot.

When it’s been done to death..

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Picture the scene. You’re at a landmark, and you want to take a photograph of it – but everyone and their dog has taken a photo of it, how do you make it different?

Don’t set up your tripod
What are the odds that you just happened to walk right up to the perfect spot to take your photo? Slim to none. That’s why so many people end up with the same shot – they just walk up to it, and press the shutter button. Don’t fall into this trap. Think about what you’re shooting, take a look around – after a minute or two, you will find a much more interesting place to shoot from. Test the angle out using your viewfinder. Once you’re happy, set up your tripod.

Tourist Landmarks
There will be hundreds of postcards available in some kind of gift shop with different photographs of tourist landmarks. So how do you do better? How can you be different?
Try different angles – whilst it’ll be difficult to find an angle that hasn’t been shot for really popular landmarks (Eiffel Tower, Houses of Parliament, Big Ben etc) you can, and should still try.

Weather is your friend
Shoot landmarks in weather they’re not usually shot in. The landmark doesn’t change in any photo taken of it, but its surroundings do. Remeber that your photograph is capturing the light available at that moment, and you need to choose the right moment to capture. Shoot it in a storm, when it’s pouring it down – times that ‘normal’ (non-photographers) people wouldn’t shoot at.

Avoid People
People love to take photographs of things – and when I say people, I mean non-photograpers. So go where the people aren’t – go somewhere really difficult to get to. These viewpoints will give a different perspective on whatever you’re shooting and you’ll be there alone so you’ll keep those pesky tourists out of shot.

Flowers

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I don’t have a macro lens
I dont have a ‘true’ macro lens. I do however have a nice telephoto lens. Shooting flowers doesn’t mean you have to buy a lens specifically for that purpose – you can zoom in tight enough to have the flower nearly fill the frame.

Make it all about the flower
Think about it, you’re shooting a flower, not the background, not anything else. So use aperture priority mode. Turn the aperture down as much as you can (if you have a f/2.8 lens, use f/2.8). Then try and get one flower on its own, or a small ‘clump’ (it’s a technical term, I promise) and focus on just that flower. This will put the background out of focus, and makes it pretty. The term photographers use for making the background really blurry is ‘bokeh‘. Bokeh is a fun word to say, and it makes photos of individual things really stand out.

Get wet
Shoot just after it has rained, or if it’s overcast. It makes shadows softer, and the colours wont appear washed out by strong sunlight. After it has rained is probably the best time to shoot flowers – especially if there are raindrops still on them. It makes the shot look a little more spontaneous, and less like you’re shooting in perfect studio conditions – but if it’s not raining, just fake it! Take a water bottle, and spray them with a little water .

Getting really sharp photographs

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This post will be a bit of a long one, so I’ll try to keep the more interesting things at the top!

Three Legs
It all starts with a tripod. Even if it is the middle of a well-lit day, use a tripod. It’s a little more effort, and it weighs your bag down, but a tripod has one job, and does it well. It holds your camera still and steady. This is more evident in more expensive tripods – which is why you don’t really want to skimp on quality. Cheap tripods don’t do that good a job of keeping your camera still and steady – that’s why they’re cheap!

Go Remote
So you’re shooting with your tripod, and your photos are already looking sharper – but there’s still room for improvement (there always is!). Get a cable release, or a remote shutter. It’s basically a button on a bit of wire that plugs into your camera, but it stops you from causing that little bit of motion that occurs when you press the shutter button. Regardless of how gentle you are with it. I have this one and I love it! They’re pretty inexpensive too!
If you forgot your shutter release, or don’t really want to buy one just yet, use a Self-Timer. People normally think this is so you can take a photo and be in it at the same time, but it pretty much does the same job as a remote shutter release – you just have to wait a few seconds.

Keep it low
If you’re shooting on a tripod, try to avoid increasing the ISO wherever possible, even if it is dark. By increasing the ISO, you’ll start adding noise to your photos – which is a bad thing. If you’re hand holding, and it’s dark, you’ll have no choice but to increase the ISO. But when you’re on a tripod – keep it as low as possible!

Turn off that expensive feature you paid lots of money for
Lenses with Image Stabilisation (IS [Canon]. Vibration Reduction [Nikon]) are great when you’re hand holding. They look for any kind of vibration, and then tries to counter-act it by subtly moving some of the lens ‘innards’ in the opposite direction.
You want to turn it off because your camera is going to be still. If it is still, there will be no vibration – and if there is no vibration, the IS will *look* for some kind of vibration – which is silly right? So if it’s looking for some vibration, and there isn’t any, it causes some vibration. So if you’re shooting without a tripod/monopod, turn IS/VR on. Otherwise, turn it off.

 

Aperture Priority Mode

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I’ve seen a lot of people with some quite expensive DSLRs shooting in Auto – whilst there is nothing wrong with this, there is a lot more you can get from your camera!

I do a lot of photography outdoors, and so my favourite mode is Aperture Priority. Fundamentally, it lets you set the aperture your lens is at, and adjusts the shutter speed accordingly.

Nikon Aperture Priority Mode

Nikon Aperture Priority Mode*

Canon Aperture Priority Mode

Canon Aperture Priority Mode*

Lets go through some examples of different aperture settings then.

If you are taking a photograph of a footballer, and you want the footballer in focus, and the background really blurry, set the aperture to the smallest you have available (f/1.8, f/2.8, f/4 etc) and then focus on the footballer. The footballer will be really clear, and separated from the background.

Now lets go completly the other way. You’re shooting a landscape, and you want everything to be really sharp. What do you do? Choose the highest number your lens will allow (f/22, f/36 etc).

For anything in the middle, choose something between f/1.8 and f/36! Simple!

Aperture Priority is a great mode, and you can be really creative with it. Remember, you can always turn your dial back to Auto if you want to (but after playing with the other settings, I doubt you will!).

 

*Images sourced from http://flylib.com/books/en/1.465.1.66/1/

When to shoot landscapes

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As a landscape photographer, there are only really two times of day you can shoot.

  1. Dawn – from about 15-30 minutes before sunrise, and up to an hour after, depending on the light intensity.
  2. Dusk – from about 15-30 minutes before sunset, and up to 30 minutes afterwards, depending on how much light is left.

Why?
At these two times of day, you get the best light. It’s soft, it’s warm, and they give soft shadows which give the kind of quality lighting you need for really great landscapes.

But I could shoot any time, right?
Yes, you could shoot whenever you want – but the light quality wont be as good as it could be. Taking a shot at midday might be a great idea – but with the light directly overhead it’ll probably be too harsh, and the shadows might look a bit weird.

But if it’s dark, my pictures will be blurry
This takes us to the second golden rule – always shoot landscapes with a tripod. If you want to take a landscape photograph you can be really proud of, use a tripod. It allows you to expose for longer, resulting in a sharper image. It also helps if you use some kind of shutter trigger – that way you will eliminate any chance of accidentally moving your camera.

Why you don’t need Flickr Pro

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When I first started using Flickr, I saw lots of people with next to their username. Initially, I thought: “Wow, they must be really good to be considered a pro”. However, anyone can have a ‘pro’ account.

The Benefits
The benefits from the $24.95 upgrade are as follows:

  • “Unlimited Uploads and Storage”
  • “Unlimited Collections/Sets”
  • Access to Original Files
  • Flickr Stats

The two that really stand out for me are the “Unlimited Uploads and Storage” and “Unlimited Collections/Sets”, as I don’t really care about the other two, and I’ll explain why later.

Why limits are a good thing

  • They really make you think about what you’re doing.
    I had a “pro” account for a while, and I uploaded that much rubbish to Flickr, when I look back on it, it is a little embarrasing. So I’ve found myself deleting the rubbish (but keeping offline versions so I can still learn from it).
    By limiting what you upload, you are only choosing the “Creme de la creme” of your photos – and that is really what you should be sharing. You want a high Signal-To-Noise Ratio. So lots of good stuff, with less rubbish/mediocre stuff.
  • They stop you from uploading the original version.
    I never upload the original version of my photos any more. It take much longer than a small version, and hardly anyone will actually look at it.
    If you also consider that a “scaled” version will be about 500KB, and the original version will be around 3MB (for a 10 MegaPixel image) it will take longer for you to reach the limit (but obviously, sticking to the previous point).
    If you are taking photography seriously, you will back everything up, just in case. Preferably with an external hard disk solution – so why upload it?
    If someone really wants the original version of a photo, and it’s licensed under Creative Commons, they will have to ask you for it – so you get to see how people are using your work too!

Do you really need stats?
Flickr stats bug me.. I don’t really see the point of them, considering that for free, you can see how many views a photo has had, how many comments, and how many favourites. I get (roughly) 40 views per photo, which is pretty low, but what I consider the “average” for hobbyists such as myself. I don’t need a breakdown by country. I don’t need a breakdown by the hour/minute/second.

I just want to put some of my photos on the Internet, because I’m proud of them, and I want to know that I’ve done well. I don’t want to analyse who is looking at them.

Buy yourself a beer!
So it’s $24.95 a year, which isn’t very much money at all. I’m a student, and so I think of everything in terms of beer. It’s about 5 beers a year (based on UK prices).

But it’s 5 beers you wouldn’t have had if you had a Pro account instead. So think about Flickr, think about if you really need a pro account – and then get yourself a beer, on me.