White balance is an often-overlooked aspect of photography. Many, many of us are guilty of simply adopting a "set it and forget it" approach to white balance, relying on auto white balance and our camera's ability to interpret a scene and choose an appropriate white balance. For many situations, your camera's auto white balance will do a decent job. But if you really want full creative control over your photograph, it is important to understand white balance and how to use it to truly capture the photograph that you are after. What is White Balance? We tend to think of light as white, even though we have all seen the science demonstration of a prism and how white light is actually the full rainbow of colors. Our eyes look at a white piece of paper, and we see it as white, whether we are standing outside in full sun, in dappled shade, or indoors under fluorescent tube lights. Our cameras, however, are less flexible. If you take a photograph of a white piece of paper, you may find that it looks white in daylight, blue in the shade, and yellow indoors. This difference is referred to the 'color temperature' of the light, and it is measured in K or Kelvins. If you want the whites in your photograph to look white, then you need to shoot with a white balance that matches the situation of the photograph. Canon has several different white balance options, other than Auto: Daylight (5200K), Cloudy (6000K), Shade (7000K), Tungsten (3200K), Fluorecent (4000K), Flash, and Custom. The photograph above demonstrates what each of these different white balance options look like for a single photograph. (Quick aside: if you shoot in JPEG, white balance is an unchangeable part of the final image file. If you shoot in RAW, however, the RAW file contains information that allows you to use software, like Photoshop, to change the white balance in post-processing, while still maintaining all the original information recorded for the photograph. The sunset photograph above is a composite of all the white balance options from a single RAW file.) Cloudy white balance works well for sunset shots. The cloudy and shade white balance settings are considered "warmer" than daylight or tungsten, which means that they tend to bring out more orange and yellow tones in a photograph. Cloudy and shade settings can work extremely well during the 'Golden Hour,' the approximately hour-long period before-and-after sunrise and sunset, when the sun rays lend a much more golden tone to the morning or evening light. The cloudy setting is also popular with landscape photographs, as it can add a golden tone to non-golden hour photographs. Read a few landscape photography books, and you will find that many well-known landscape photographers use cloudy as their default white balance setting. Indoor White Balance White balance can also make a huge difference with your indoor photographs. Common sources of indoor lighting (halogens, compact fluorescents, etc.) do not contain the full spectrum of white light, like sunlight, and often impart an awkward yellow tone to indoor photographs. Knowing the type of lighting you are using allows you to choose an appropriate white balance setting, like fluorescent, to compensate for this issue. Get the how to on this shot: Fizzy Photography Think about the lighting for the particular scene you are photographing, and consider changing your white balance to match the scene at hand. Shooting indoors? Consider fluorescent. Using your on-camera flash? Consider flash. Shooting a sunrise, sunset, or other scene with golden tones? Consider cloudy or shade. Better yet? Consider shooting in RAW and adjusting your white balance to your preference. Want to get your white balance exact? You can use a gray card to set the white balance manually. If there is enough interest, you can expect a future post on the topic of custom white balances. Want more great ideas? Follow Boost Your Photography on Pinterest: Boost Your Photography Boost Your Photography: Learn Your DSLR is now available from Amazon. Get the most out of your camera with practical advice about the technical and creative aspects of DSLR photography that will have you taking beautiful pictures right away.
Photography Settings Cheat Sheet manual photography cheat sheet expert photography cheat sheet ultimate photography cheat sheet landscape photography cheat sheet laminated photography cheat sheets photography lens cheat sheet night photography cheat sheet wedding photography cheat sheet Exploring Your Camera’s Manual Settings Set the camera to the manual mode and the ISO to automatic. Often, modern
I always get asked to explain this stuff and I think this chart is pretty cool. Thanks to Miguel Yatco. It must have taken a while to make. You can order prints of this here.
Depth of field refers to the area of your photograph that is in focus. Depth of field can vary from having a very thin sliver of your subject in-focus to a very expansive focus that covers everything in your entire photograph. Many photographers understand that aperture affects the depth of field in your image, but there are other important considerations as well. Join in! Depth of field is this week's topic for the Boost Your Photography: 52 Weeks Challenge. Depth of Field and Aperture Yes, changing the aperture of your lens will have an immediate and observable impact on the depth of field of your photograph. The wider your aperture, the narrower your depth of field. So, shooting with wide aperture values, in the range of f/1.8 to f/3.5 will result in an image with a narrow section of your subject in focus and much of the background out of focus. (Read more about What an Aperture of F/1.8 Can Do for You.) Conversely, the narrower your aperture, the wider your depth of field. So, shooting with narrow aperture values, in the range of f/18 to f/22 will result in an image with all of your subject and much (or most) of the background in focus. (Read more about What an Aperture of F/22 Can Do for You.) The four photographs in the series above were all taken from the exact location, with the camera on a tripod. You can clearly see how the background trees change from being blurry greenness with the wide aperture to nearly in-focus trees at the narrow aperture. This relationship between depth of field and aperture holds true, provided that you and your subject remain in the same place. If either you or your subject moves position, then there are two additional factors that affect depth of field. Depth of Field, Distance, and Focal Length Depth of field also varies depending on the distance between the photographer and the subject, and it will also vary depending on the focal length of lens used. The closer you are physically to your subject, the narrower the depth of field will be. (This is why, for example, you can shoot a far-away landscape or cityscape and have everything in the distant scene appear in focus even when using a mid-range aperture like f/11.) This comparison demonstrates the relationship between depth of field and both focal length and distance. Each photograph was composed identically in an effort to keep the scarecrow model in the same place relative to the rest of the composition. Starting right up close to the scarecrow for the 18 mm shot, I had to back up a few steps for each subsequent focal length in order to keep the composition the same. (You can see other examples of this in the article on Photographing Architecture: watch your lines and Zooming vs. Cropping: perspective in photography.) Each of these photographs was taken with a constant aperture (f/6.3), but you can see that the effective depth of field changes dramatically. The longer the zoom used, the narrower the depth of field, and the more the trees in the distance become simply blur and color. The field of view also narrows dramatically: the background of the 270 mm shot is reduced to only one of the trees, compared to three entire trees in the 35 mm shot or a veritable forest in the 18 mm shot. This simplifies the background tremendously, drawing the eye toward our subject instead of being distracted by the background. Depth of Field and Background Distance This off-center photograph shows the setup used for the series above. The scarecrow is about five feet away from the green tree, while the other trees are at a significant distance. This illustrates a final point about depth of field: if you want a blurred background, you can give yourself a hand by positioning your subject farther away from the background. Look again at the series of photographs, and pay attention to the green tree. You will notice that the depth of field is still wide enough to encompass the green tree that is just behind the scarecrow, even at the longest focal length. Only an extreme amount of aperture or focal length is going to be able to turn a nearby background into bokeh or blur. Make it easy on yourself. If you want a blurred background, then keep your subject farther away from it. Apply It: Depth of Field Give it a try. Pick a subject and shoot a comparative series of shots, like the ones above, and see how much your depth of field changes as you use a longer focal length and get farther away from your subject. Or, shoot a series of shots at the same focal length and aperture, but move yourself and your subject farther and farther away from the background. See what distance gives you a look that you like. Looking to shoot a bokehlicious portrait with a blurry out-of-focus background? If you do not have a prime lens with a wide aperture (like the 50 mm f/1.8, read more here), use your zoom lens. Try the shot with a longer focal length, keep the background away from your subject, and see what you can do. Want a final reminder? Check out this chart on depth of field by Digital Camera World. Click on the pin to see the original post and chart. How do you use depth of field? Share a link or a photograph in the comments below, or consider joining the BYP 52 Weeks Google+ Community to share your weekly photograph and see what others are capturing. Boost Your Photography: Learn Your DSLR is now available from Amazon. Get the most out of your camera with practical advice about the technical and creative aspects of DSLR photography that will have you taking beautiful pictures right away.
I have a photographer friend who invited me out one winter's evening to do some steel wool spinning. I'd never done it before, and had wanted to for some time, and so I jumped at the chance to give it a try. If you haven't heard of this, it is a long exposure photographic techniq
Our cheat sheets let you easily appreciate the relationship between focal length and angle of view
We love cheatsheets as one can refer to them and make quick amendments to better our skills. Since many loved our last compilation of cheatsheet for
We've got all the need-to-know (yet easy to forget) picture takin' info you need right here, with this handy photography cheat sheet.
It's commonly said that a camera adds 10 pounds, making you look heavier than you actually are. Here's a striking animated GIF that shows how much the
Whether you're taking pictures of something you want to sell online, or you just want to practice your photography, proper lighting is key to getting the perfect shot. You could go out and invest in an expensive lighting set up or try and...
Protected: our Free Lightroom Presets and Photography Blueprints
A cheat sheet for learning all about aperture and f-stops, how it works in the camera with lenses and shooting in manual. #learnphotography #veronicajunephotography #hipgrandmawithacamera
Lighting Modifiers Cheat Sheet Card
Skin Color RGB Mastering skin tones in photography is no easy feat, but there are some simple steps you can take to help you on your way. From accurate white balance to editing by numbers, here are some ways I go about maintaining accurate skin tones no matter the
Shutter Speed Chart as a Photographer's Cheat Sheet
Taken with Canon 7D and Tamron 28-75 2.8 lens Settings: Aperture f/3.2 Shutter Speed 1/1600 ISO 100 First, let’s talk about Shutter Speed. What is Shutter Speed? Shutter speed is one of the most important
Jodee Ball wants to share some tips with you on how to be more photogenic.
With the help of Lightroom Presets and a few hand edits, you can easily fix washed out photos and turn them into something spectacular!
Bonnie Rodríguez Krzywicki is trying to show people that being photogenic is not something you are; it's something you become. And she's doing one hell of a job. Bonnie has been sharing easy tips, explaining how to feel and look more comfortable in front of the camera on her Instagram for quite some time now, and they have already earned her over 621,000 followers.
For the month of June the Boost Your Photography: 52 Weeks Challenge will be looking at different composition techniques. (Join the Google+ Community to share your weekly photographs and receive feedback.) The "Rule of Thirds" is one of the most commonly cited of the rules of photography composition, so it makes sense to begin here. What is the Rule of Thirds? This image of Castle Geyser is also available for purchase. The Rule of Thirds is a simple piece of composition advice: take your scene and divide it into thirds, both horizontally and vertically. Now you have nine boxes and four points of intersection between your divisions. Use these points as guidelines for where to locate your subject within your photograph. With the photograph of Castle Geyser, above, you can see that the bottom third of the image contains the foreground and reflection of the geyser, the middle third contains the background and the geyser itself, and the upper third contains more of the sky. The peak of the spray is located near the upper-right intersection point, while the base of the geyser is located at the lower-right point. The graphic above offers a comparison of two different compositions of the same sunset, shot within a few moments of each other. The top composition has the sun centered vertically in the image, while the bottom composition has aligned the sun and the silhouette of the Capitol building at the lower two points, according to the Rule of Thirds. This version provides a more balanced composition, placing the two main focal points equally within the frame. You can also think about the Rule of Thirds simply as either a horizontal guide or a vertical one. This photograph from the Badlands in South Dakota shows a rule of the horizontal Rule of Thirds: the bottom third contains mainly the gray rock, the middle third contains the formations, and the top third contains the sky. Locating the variations in the formations near the intersection points also helps add to the composition. You can also think about the Rule of Thirds after the fact. The original image was shot using the maximum zoom available to me at the time, and I knew that I would want to crop the image later to better emphasize the lone camel at sunrise. Using the Rule of Thirds, I chose the composition shown below, which brings much more focus and attention to the camel and also provides a good horizontal division between the foreground sand in the bottom third and the background formations and sky. This image is also available for purchase. As with any advice, the Rule of Thirds are meant to be "more like guidelines" than a strict answer for what you must do every time. With the sunrise silhouette image above, I placed the horizon firmly in the middle to balance the sky and the reflections in the clouds. While the Capitol and the crew team are near-ish to the intersection points, it is not exact, nor should it be every time. Don't miss an opportunity to bend the rules ... or even break them! Boost Your Photography: Learn Your DSLR is now available from Amazon. Get the most out of your camera with practical advice about the technical and creative aspects of DSLR photography that will have you taking beautiful pictures right away.
If you are tired of being frustrated after shopping choose your best clothing colors and create personal clothing palette. Below you can read how to build properly a great color palette for your closet.
ISO is all about measuring light. The brighter it is where you’re taking your photos, the lower your ISO number needs to be. Therefore if it’s dark and/ or there’s not a lot of …
Mastering the basics of photography and building up a foundation of knowledge will change the way you take your photos. In this #backtobasics series I want to establish the fundamental principles and then build on this base level knowledge so we all can take better pictures. If you missed What is
Not too long ago I finally got around to picking up a decent manual flash for exploring lighting and speedlight techniques. I picked up a Yongnuo YN-560
