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Sunset at Cropston Reservoir

Sunset at Cropston Reservoir

This was the first sunset I ever really paid attention to - and the first one I witnessed with my camera. I hadn’t previously been aware of just how much the light changes before and after the sun goes down and being there was accidental - I had actually gone to take pictures of some boats I had noticed there earlier in the week.

I’d just taken delivery of some new filters - a light blue grad and a light tobacco grad, both Kood - and was keen to try them out. After getting the shots I wanted I started to wander back to the car when I noticed that the sun had finally disappeared from view and there was a slight ripple moving across the otherwise still reservoir.

I used both filters here - the tobacco one at the bottom and the blue one at the top. Technically I should have included some foreground but the colours in this were pleasing enough for me to not mind its exclusion.

Technical details:- 0.125 sec (1/8s), f/8.0, 21 mm

Posted in filters, landscape, sunsets. Tagged with , , , , , , .

By Andy
May 25, 2009

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Exposure Control - Stops

I found the idea of “stops” the most complicated part of getting to grips with photography - I can still remember now how my face glazed over when it was first explained to me.

Crudely put, a “stop” involves the doubling or halving of the amount of light hitting the sensor (or in the case of ISO, how that light is used). For instance, if we had our shutter speed set to 1 second, changing it to 1/2s would let half as much light in, changing it to 2s would let twice as much light in.

ISO stops works in the same straightforward, linear way as shutter speed - ISO200 is twice as sensitive as ISO100 but only half as much so as ISO400 - but the aperture scale seems to make less sense initially. Changing the aperture size also affects the amount of light hitting the sensor, however rather than changing in multiples or 2 they change in multiples of the square root of 2 (approximately 1.4) as follows f/1, f/1.4, f/2, f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/8, f/11, f/16, f/22, f/32 etc.

When the aperture is stopped down (changed to a smaller opening by increasing the f-stop) less light will enter the camera. In order to obtain the same exposure, the amount of light entering the camera will need to be balanced by slowing the shutter speed down (so that the shutter is open for longer), or the sensitivity of the sensor will need increasing (by increasing the ISO).

Obviously if you’re using one of the camera’s creative modes it will take care of some of this for you - for instance if you are in Aperture Priority mode and you change the aperture size the camera will automatically adjust the shutter speed in order to attempt to get what it thinks is the correct exposure.

Stops in action

Let’s say we’re taking a picture in the early evening which requires a short depth of field, such as portrait, and we’ve got our aperture set to f/2.8. Our camera, which is set to ISO100, has decided that a shutter speed of 1/100s is required for the correct exposure. Say we now want to take a picture that requires a greater depth of field, a landscape for instance - we might set the aperture to f/11 for this.

If we do this however we’ve restricted the amount of light available to the sensor by 4 stops - and because there is now going to be less light hitting the sensor the camera knows it needs to adjust the shutter speed to let 4 stops more of light in. If we follow the progression of stops in shutter speed from 1/100s, dividing by 2 each time, we can see that a shutter speed of 1/6s would be selected by the camera - 100/2=50, 50/2=25, 25/2=12.5 (although this will be rounded to 12), 12/2=6.

Unless we’re using a lens with image stabilizing (or a tripod) a shutter speed of 1/6s is going to result in a pretty blurred image - so we need to decide, do we really want f/11? - using a larger aperture, such as f/8 would give us a better shutter speed - or can we sacrifice some quality by changing the ISO to make the sensor more sensitive to the available light. Changing the ISO to 400 adjusts the whole equation by 2 stops again (100×2=200, 200×2=400) and means we’d now have a shutter speed of 1/25s. Still perhaps too slow for a hand held shot, but hopefully by now you get the idea :)

Other examples

The following settings would all produce shots with a the same exposure:-
a) 1/100s, f/11, ISO100
b) 1/200s, f/8, ISO100
c) 1/100s, f/22, ISO400
d) 1/50s, f/22, ISO200

Can you see why?

Posted in tutorials. Tagged with , , .

By Andy
May 19, 2009

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Winter Tree Redone

Winter Tree

Purchase print at RedBubble | imagekind

“Winter Tree” was my first real attempt at creative processing, rather than just using Photomatix to make a shot look extravagantly real (I was going to put “hyperreal” here but I couldn’t bring myself to do it). The initial version was an accident - one of those rare “I wonder what happens if I…” experiments that gives a pleasing result. Unfortunately though my inexperience at the time though led me to overlooking some serious flaws with the original image - the contrast was all wrong and the image was noisy.

The poor contrast in the original version was due to my monitor being poorly set up - it was far too dark - and whilst the noise level isn’t that obvious in the version elsewhere on this site (http://www.andystafford.co.uk/winter-tree/) it is painfully apparent on the large version available on Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/maxakropolis/3194854394/sizes/o/).

Why was the image noisy? Because my Microsmoothing setting in Photomatix was too low (0). It made the clouds look more dramatic but I didn’t see how badly it was affecting the quality of the image as I neglected to look at it at full size.

If I was ever going to make this image available as a print I knew I was going to have to go back to the original raw files and reprocess it. Details of this process can be found here http://www.andystafford.co.uk/winter-tree-and-photomatix/

A trial version of HDRsoft’s Photomatix is available at http://www.hdrsoft.com/download.html. Should you decide to buy a copy of Photomatix, feel free to use my discount code, “AndyStafford15″ which will give you 15% off.

Posted in hdr, trees. Tagged with , , , , , , , , , .

By Andy
May 9, 2009

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Tree, Bradgate Park

Tree, Bradgate Park

Purchase print at RedBubble | imagekind

Bradgate Park is a particularly rich environment for a photographer - although obviously for this reason it is also incredibly popular with local photographers.

This shot was taken on an overcast spring afternoon, and whilst I would have liked a nice blue sky with a few clouds in, sometimes a dull sky can look more dramatic. Often when I take a photograph I know exactly how, or if, I’m going to process the shot later - in this instance though I was just out taking a few shots because I had a bit of spare time and was getting some more experience in using the camera manually.

In the end I tried a few different compositions and processed them each differently and this one proved to be my favourite of the lot.

Posted in landscape, textures, trees. Tagged with , , , , , , , .

By Andy
May 6, 2009

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Spring Afternoon

Spring Afternoon

Purchase print at RedBubble | imagekind

Earlier in the year I set myself a challenge in order to improve my photography and broaden my horizons a bit - I’d seen this concept mentioned in some old magazines that were passed on to me. I find it can get terribly difficult to think of things to photograph so I decided to combine two of my favourite past times, cycling and photography.

The idea was that I would attempt to find something to take pictures of each time I went out - it didn’t matter what - just anything that took my fancy.

On this occasion I was taking a short cut across some fields. It was early spring and despite the sunshine the ground was a little too wet for cycling, let alone lying on, so I got pretty soaked getting this shot.

Spring Afternoon

Despite having the features I wanted, the shot didn’t capture my feelings at the time - the warmth of the first sunny day of the year, the freedom of being out doing what I wanted to do. It needed to be more fluffy and dreamlike and fortunately I knew exactly what I was going to do.

A friend on Flickr produces some fine textures for layering and I already had one in mind that would add the tone I was looking for to the picture.

Posted in textures. Tagged with , , , , , , , , , .

By Andy
May 2, 2009

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