Lava Light Lessons #8…Focus

We like to shoot with center focus. You may wish to expand it a bit. However, don’t just let your camera choose a focus over a large number of points as you will end up with an average focus vs a spectacularly clear focus. You want it sharp as can be.

We also use the continuous or Servo focus setting. This will focus on a subject, like a flying bird, and hold the focus on that subject as it moves across the scene. Try it…you will like it.

Some things you just have to focus manually. Night shots come to mind. We like to light up something maybe ten feet away and get that in focus, knowing that everything behind that is likely to be in focus on a long exposure. We might light up that element…perhaps a tree…auto focus on it to get it just right and then pull the focus switch into Manual to lock in that focus until we change the framing.

Many of the fancy cameras have something called Peaking color. Try that setting if you have it in your camera. When you then focus in Manual, it will highlight the part of the image that will be in focus…highlighting it in red or white or some other contrasting color. I completely love that feature…my old eyes might otherwise be just a bit off…and the Peaking color never lies.

Two important things on focus…

When photographing people, land animals, birds or even large fish…if you do not have the eyes in perfect focus you really don’t have much of a shot. Nail the eye focus. Some cameras have a setting to help you with that on both humans and animals…worth trying.

Second, I have had nights of shooting ruined because I did not look frequently nor carefully enough at the images I was getting. Learn to look frequently at the images you are getting in the view finder or back of the camera…blow them up as you review them to make sure they are in great focus…and repeat. Nothing worse than coming home from an all night shoot with a card full of images you think are great…only to find out they are all “soft focus”…close enough they look ok in the back of the camera after a quick glimpse…but not sharp on final inspection.

Those who say “I like my focus off just a bit” need to get into abstract painting. It is ok to blur the parts of the photo you want to blur…but if you have a main subject in the photo…for goodness sake…get that sucker in focus.

Aloha.

Lava Light Lessons #7..How a Camera Captures Light…and How You Control that Capture…part 3: Controlling the sensitivity of your camera (ISO)

The third part of taking control is the ISO part. In the old days you could buy film at ASA or ISO sensitivities of 64, 100, 200, 400, 800 and the like. 100 was the standard film. 800 was for low light photography. The difference was how much light the film gathered given the exposure of the same amount of light. In other words, shoot a shot at 1/100th of a second at an aperture of f/2.8 with film having an ISO rating of 100 and you might get a fairly dark image captured at sunset. Take that exact same shot on ISO 800 film and the image captured would be much brighter. The ISO film was much more sensitive to light…and captured more of it…than the ISO 100 film.

Todays digital cameras work the same way. Although they all have a huge range of ISO settings to choose from, we generally use ISO 100 to 400 for most photos. We use ISO settings of up to 2500 for long exposure Milky Way shots…but do our best to shoot lower than ISO 2500. I will get into why in a moment.

So…you know how to control the time or T….you know how to control the aperture or A…and the third control is ISO and now you know how to control it…just pick an ISO of from 100 to 400 for most shots other than Milky Way type shots. Yes, yes there are ways to let the camera choose ISO within a range you set…but forget that for the next couple of years. Learn how the different ISO settings effect your images.

By the way…shooting in Manual or M is nothing more than you manually selecting the T, the A and the ISO setting yourself rather than letting the camera figure out any of those settings. So when the time comes to start shooting in Manual…and I hope that is soon…that is all there is to it. You try different combinations until you find the combination that works for the situation you are in…and then you will be getting the absolute best shots your camera can produce.

ISO effects how your photo looks. If a photo looks grainy, the ISO was probably fairly high…like 800 or above. We call that grain…noise. You can deal with it with software, but learn to deal with it in your camera. Shoot 100 ISO when you can and slowly creep up. Suspect your photos will look pretty horrible once you get to 800 and above. The bigger you try to blow up a photo for your walls at home or to sell…the more that grain and noise will show up. Lower is mo betta, as we say in Hawaii.

Try this…go out at sunset and set your camera at 1/250th of a second and your aperture at f/16 and do this in that M or Manual setting. Take a photo…if it is too bright by a lot or two dark, adjust the speed up or down to get a decent shot…then leave it right there for your next ten shots. Next, do that same shot at ISO 100, the 200, then 400, then 800, then 1600. By now it may be too bright…probably is so slow the shutter speed down until you are getting a normal exposure again…then continue to shoot at ISO, 2500, 3200, 5000 and higher. Put those images into your computer later and look at them carefully…especially in the sky. You will see the grainy/noisy effect that higher ISO causes. Good to know.

That is really about all there is to it…learn to control the speed, the amount of light gathered by the lens or aperture and the sensitivity of the sensor or ISO…it is the combination of those three that create your image. You are really ready to shoot in Manual at this point…but master either T or A before you go full manual. I still shoot in T a lot…because I shoot birds in flight and moving waves across changing backgrounds. Good luck.

I am going to take a break now, but the next article will be on setting focus. Aloha.

Lava Light Lessons #6…How a Camera Captures Light…and How You Control that Capture…part two: Aperture

Aperture is the second way you control the light coming into the camera. It is how much light you let in through your lens. The size of the opening on your lens is shown in f/stops…like f/2.8 or f/22. F/2.8 creates a really big opening in the iris of your lens…lets in a lot of light. f/22 creates a really small opening in your lens and lets in a very small amount of light.

Remember…it is the combination of how much light you are letting in….for how long…and how sensitive the sensor or film is to that light…that all add up to the image you capture. Too little of any of those components and you are under-exposed and the image is too dark to use….too much of any of them and the image is over exposed…too bright to be used.

Aperture is also a key component to depth of field (DOF) that we will get to in another article. It basically means how much of the photo is in sharp focus…anywhere from just a tiny spot with everything else blurred…like the shot of the eye of spider taken by a specialty macro lens….or a shot of the Grand Canyon where everything from three feet in front of the camera to the horizon is all in focus. That is depth of field. As a general rule…the higher the aperture…like f/16, f/18 or f/22…the more of the photo will be in focus. That is enough on DOF for now.

There is an old saying…F/8 and wait. That basically means that f/8 is a pretty good middle ground for most photos. So, set your ISO at anywhere from 100 to 400. Set the little dial on the top of your camera to A for Aperture and then set the aperture setting to f/8. Now go outside in the daylight and take a few photos. The camera will be choosing the speed of those photos for you…so try landscape shots and portraits rather than swooping birds or race cars. Congratulations…you have controlled quite a bit and you should get some nice shots…and again, you are really just one step away from shooting in full Manual…your eventual goal.

You now know how to control for speed and for how much light you are gathering…one more control in the next article. Aloha.

Lava Light Lessons #5…How A Camera Captures Light…and How You Control That Capture…part one: Time

Sounds complex and is if I were to try to give you a technical explanation…but this will be the simple explanation.

The fancy camera makes an image based on how much light it gathers, for how long it gathers that light and based on how sensitive the film or sensor is to that light (That is called ISO).

So…most cameras have a setting on the little top dial that says T or S…for Time or Speed. Same thing. You can tell your camera to let light into the camera for as long as you want…from just 1/8000th of a second (if perhaps you are shooting in absolute bright sunlight) all the way down to hours of exposure using the B for Bulb setting on the camera which allows you to keep the lens and camera gathering light until you manually stop it from gathering light (for perhaps an ultra long exposure of the deep sky to gather enough light to reveal something like the rings of Saturn). If you shoot anything slower than 1/80th of a second, you must use a tripod or you will get a shaky image. Many people will tell you that you can shoot at 1/60th of second hand held, but 1/80th is safer. In fact, CJ, Linda and I use tripods for the majority of our shots no matter the speed…steadier platform for shooting and more comfortable for the photographer.

If you want to get a stop action shot of a flying bird…you need to be shooting at 1/1000th of a second or faster…which means you probably need a lot of sunlight. If you are shooting any kind of action…like sports action or a moving car or running animal…, try for 1/1000th or faster.

A landscape or portrait during daytime…1/500th might be a good setting, but you can go all the way down to 1/80th of a second without a tripod.

A sunset or sunrise photo of water moving…to capture enough light for the sky and foreground and to make the water look like it has some movement…about one third of a second with your camera on a tripod.

The Milky Way at night…ten to 30 seconds on a tripod. Anything more than 30 seconds and the stars will start to have trails and not be pin points. Shoot for ten minutes in the that B or Bulb setting and you will start to have some interesting looking star trails.

So…the first lesson of controlling something is to control it with speed or time. Set your ISO at 100 or no higher than 400. Turn the little dial on the top of your camera to T or S and then follow those basic guidelines above to get your shot. You will have controlled the speed of the shot and the ISO the camera will use…and the camera will choose the right aperture or opening of the lens to make all that work. That is taking control…and almost as good as shooting in M or Manual…but we will get to that eventually. Aloha.

Lava Light Lessons #4…Here is Why You Bought the Camera…so you can NEVER shoot in Auto…and use the camera to its’ full potential

High end professional cameras are all about options and control. The camera gives you options and you take control. Over time, the choices you learn to make translate into your award winning photos.

CJ teaches everyone this one basic lesson…Always Control Something. That means never ever ever ever shooting your expensive camera in Auto. Here is how I learned that lesson…

CJ and Nick took me out on the active lava field in the middle of the night for a photo shoot. I was new to high end photography…brand new. I had no idea what I was doing. They had given me the basics but the pressure of the situation was such that I waited until they turned their backs and I turned the camera on to the Auto setting…because I really could not figure it all out on my own. Guess what…I got a really nice shot…nice enough that they got very excited about it when I showed it to them in the back of the camera. To hell with learning the camera…this Auto setting rocks. Hey…it was a double cheat, because they insisted that I use a tripod and I fooled them on that as well…shot it hand held…because I have such a steady hand.

Fast forward to later that same day. CJ called me and asked me to send him that shot…he wanted to print it for the gallery even though I really was not part of the gallery at that point…a major break through for me. By then I had edited it on my computer. I could not understand why it did not look like the image did on that one inch screen on the back of my camera. It was so grainy that it almost looked like an abstract painting…and not a very good abstract painting. What the heck happened? I checked the speed that Auto chose…looked pretty good at 1/40th of a second (actually way too slow for exploding lava while shooting hand held, but I did not know that then), the lens was wide open at f/2.8 and that made sense to me (but I did not realize that would put only a small part of the image in clear focus)…so what could be wrong? I eventually found the ISO setting that Auto had chosen. I asked CJ if ISO 25,600 was a good choice on my old Canon 20D camera. Yeah…turns out that is not a good setting for ISO…not even remotely a good setting. It left the already blurry image filled with sensor noise and grainy as heck. Lesson learned. When CJ learned the facts he told me that he could not print that image any bigger than 3 inches by 2 inches and that there was very little call for that size in their gallery…so much for my false start as a professional photographer.

In the next article I will give you some basics on what you can control with your terrific new camera and why you want to want to take control of something…or everything. Aloha.

And…ps…when I get a chance I will try to find that image I took way back when at 25,600 ISO to show you what a hot mess looks like…may get to that later today and will update this blog if I find it.

Lava Light Lessons #3…Taking the Camera Out of the Box and Preparing it

Fully charge the battery and put it in the camera.

Put the memory card you bought into the camera and we will format it (get it ready for use in that camera) in a bit.

Look at the instruction manual and go through the set up process as they suggest…setting the date and the like.

Over the course of these articles, I will take you through some more sophisticated choices that might interest you, but for now, just focus on the following…

Make a few simple choices that will serve you well…the right choice to make out of several options available:

Press the Menu button and bring up the Menu

Find the area where Quality/Image Size can be found and scroll to the Quality setting. Choose RAW. Just RAW…not RAW and jpeg…just RAW. It gives you the most flexibility later on when you edit the image. Don’t fight me on this one…RAW is the one and only answer.

If you then scroll further down the menu and find a choice of Compressed or Uncompressed…choose Uncompressed. It will give you the best image data to work with when you edit.

I shoot in an Aspect ratio of 3:2. That means my images (which I can later crop to any aspect I want) are shot in a way that would allow me to print that image in any configuration of 3:2…like three feet wide by two feet tall or 18 inches wide by 12 inches.

If you scroll some more you will find Color Space…choose AdobeRGB. All you need to know is that gives you more color options when you edit.

Probably on another page called Color/WB find White Balance and set it to Auto. I will do a whole article on this sometime, but for now Auto is the answer no matter what anyone else tells you. Go with Auto. One of my best friends, Dan, insisted on setting his own White Balance on his new camera when I took him to Augusta National. We have always enjoyed the photos he took that day because the green color of our skin matched nicely to the green sky and green greens of Augusta. Choose Auto.

Another choice in that area might say Creative Style and choose Landscape if that is what you will mostly shoot…or Portrait if you are going to be doing a lot of people shots. You can experiment with all the choices but Landscape is a pretty good choice for now.

The last thing to find is the Format area usually under a Menu choice in Setup. Go to Format…put your brand new memory card in the correct slot in the camera and push the button to Format that card. It will basically totally erase the card (SO DO NOT FORMAT IT IF THERE ARE PHOTOS ON IT YOU WANT TO DOWNLOAD TO YOUR COMPUTER…ONCE THE CARD IS FORMATTED, THOSE IMAGES MAY BE GONE FOR GOOD…OR YOU WILL AT LEAST HAVE TO LEARN A NEW SKILL CALLED RECOVERING DELETED IMAGES…NEVER ANY FUN). Your camera will erase the data on the card and organize that card so it is ready for the new images you are about to shoot. I will do a whole article on Formatting…but the above is the very basic info you need to know.

Enough for now. Don’t let all the choices confuse you. Set the basics and you will learn the others down the road…they are not mission critical right now. Aloha.

Lava Light Lessons #2…Know Before You Go…there is more to high end photography than just the camera

Photography on a phone is simple…and quite good these days. You take the photo. It may not need editing at all. You hit a button or two to either “edit” it in an app or to just post it on Instagram or wherever…and you are done. The photo stays in your phone or goes up to your cloud storage…and, if you are really organized, maybe you catalog it somehow so you can find it again and show it to people when you want to do so. What we often see is that those photos stay unorganized and it takes people quite a long time to find them so they can show us the photo. The downside of all this, other than the organization issue, is that phone photography is limited as to the quality of the image and the lenses available to use. All of that is changing rapidly and increasingly, phone photography is a great option for most photographers.

But phone photography sometimes leads people down the path of “I really want to become a more professional photographer” and so they buy a fancy camera and a lens or two. I love that…but it is a slippery path and I want to warn you a bit about the journey you might be starting.

I can make a case that all you really need is a good digital camera body, a 16-35 mm lens for landscape, a 24-70mm zoom for portraits and a small zoom lens like a 70-200 mm lens to get a bit of a telephoto capability, as well as a tripod…and you are good to go. Those are the basic items you need to get started..almost…and I will come to the “almost” in just a moment. I would highly suggest that you also get at least two memory cards for the camera of at least 64GB each (I like the 128GB cards…and I do not buy the cheap ones) and a second backup fully-charged-at-all-times battery (and not a cheap knockoff battery…get the factory one). Nothing worse than hiking ten miles with your camera gear to find out your memory card is full with images you do not want to delete or your battery is dead. Be prepared…extra card and extra battery.

Brand…lots of good choices. If it were me, I would stick with Canon, Sony and Nikon and throw in Sigma lenses as an option. And don’t be afraid to buy them as Refurbished from the factory…they will probably be brand new and you buy them at a discount WITH a warranty.

Scary story…we were recently in Africa…best trip of our life, but remote as heck and very expensive to get to and for the safari. One of the other guests wanted to make absolute sure she would have great equipment, so she bought (actually rented) two cheap digital cameras…not Canon, not Sony, not Nikon. They started off bad and got worse. They took bad images and then they both broke. All the rest of us shoot high end gear and we all had a hard time helping her with her substandard equipment. She ended up shooting the trip on her phone. Buy good equipment or stick with he phone…things are cheap for a reason.

The “Almost” is the thing people either forget or do not know about…you must EDIT your digital images that you take with your new fancy camera. If you do not plan to edit those photos because you don’t know how and are unwilling to learn….or you feel “I am a purist and will only show the image as it comes out of the camera”…you have made a horrible mistake in buying the camera. Take it back and get your money back and work on your phone photography skills…and you will still get some really nice shots.

I will get into RAW vs JPG in another blog…but professionals ALL shoot in RAW. Jpg or Jpeg (they are the same) is another type of image your camera can take and it will “edit” the photo a bit based on how the camera feels it should look…and leave you with what I call an average looking image that is also left much less robust for further editing. The point here is you MUST edit your digital photos from these fancy cameras or you are completely wasting your time.

Which brings me to the warning I mentioned earlier…not only must you learn to use the camera (I am going to talk you out of ever-ever-ever shooting in Auto in a later post) but you MUST learn to use Lightroom and Photoshop. That means a monthly subscription to those programs. That means a good computer and an outside hard drive to both edit and store your images. It also means you have to learn how to use them. They are super simple to use…with a little bit of instruction…but so amazingly complex that few (certainly including me) will ever fully master them.

Conclusion…there is more to high end photography than just a good camera. You have to learn how to use the cameras’ fantastic capabilities. You must also edit the images you take. Both of those take time and repetition to bring to a high level. This is also why I did not become a professional photographer until I had retired from my real job…I did not have the time for it. And…it is addictive…you will end up loving the process and the time spent…but it will eventually turn you into a pack horse carrying all the equipment all around the world and a bit of a computer nerd. There…you are fully warned. Now…if you want to proceed, I will begin to work on the next article.

Lava Light Lessons #1…The Beginning of a Series of Photo Tips and Our First Tip…The Diopter

Our gallery is in a busy upscale retail area where we get a lot of visitors from all over the world. As you can imagine, they are thrilled to be in Hawaii and come see us to purchase a memory of their visit…a beautiful shot of a waterfall, dolphin, turtle, wave, mountain, Milky Way or any of the volcanic activity that takes place here. Occasionally, they are intent on getting a high quality shot of their own to take home, so they do a Costco run and buy a fairly high end digital professional type camera. Next stop, back at our gallery with the unopened box in hand asking us for some help in getting started with the new equipment.

If CJ or Don happen to be in the gallery, we are happy to help…IF we have the time to do so. We get a lot of traffic in the gallery and try to greet and engage everyone who is so kind as to stop in. If the new photographer is patient and we do get the time, we can at least get them started. However, I have often thought that it might be good to get them started and then point them to our blogs for some further tips…tips that might be good for anyone wanting to improve their photographic game.

So…I am going to give this a try. CJ is our master photographer and has taught Linda and I and many others a great deal about photography. Linda’s secondary talent, after her photography, is that of an artist and interior designer. My secondary talent is that I am a writer and story teller. So, I will engage CJ and Linda and then distill their thoughts into some ONE SUBJECT…SHORT…lessons for those fairly new to digital photography using fancy cameras and lenses rather than just phones for their photos. I will do a bunch of them over the next month or so and see if you like them. If you do, I will continue on a regular basis and build up a “library” of simple tips that may be of help to those who could use that assist. So here goes with an example of what you will see in this series….

Did you know your new camera has a diopter built in? Heck, I didn’t even know what a diopter is. It is a little dial, usually found close to the part of the camera you stick your eye up to…the view finder. You can move that small dial one way or the other AND CORRECT THE VISION OF THE IMAGE YOU ARE SEEING. It acts like glasses…and makes it possible for you to shoot your camera without wearing your glasses…in fact, that is the way you should be shooting your camera. It does NOT change the image you are shooting…it changes the image you are seeing.

I’m an old guy and my vision is not what it use to be. However, when I dial in the diopter…it is perfect. If I then hand that camera to my grand kid with his or her perfect vision, it will appear out of focus to them…so they can twist that dial and get it perfect for their needs. It is simple to use and adjust. It will help you make sure that the photos you are taking are in perfect focus.

Find the diopter on your camera right now and twist the dial a bit to see what it can do for you. When the view finder turns to perfect vision…give it a smile and you are ready to get the perfect images you have always wanted. Aloha.

My One and Only Wedding Photo

We are landscape photographers. CJ has the skills and ability to do a wedding photo shoot…but very rarely does so, and then, only for a close friend. Linda and Don…we are not responsible enough to pull it off…so we do not even try. HOWEVER…I…Don…did get one great wedding shot recently…and I am pretty proud of it.\

Linda and I went on a photo mission to Europe in July 2019. We drove thousands of miles exploring France, Spain, Portugal and Andorra. Got some wonderful shots. We were also impressed at how rural Spain and Portugal are, once you get out of the big cities. Loved the trip from the start in Paris to the finish in Paris.

Along the way we drove to the wedding of our dear friends, Pim and Renaud. The wedding was in a 14th century walled city in Guerande, France in the beautiful Church Saint Aubin. The whole area is beautiful…we stayed in La Baule and attended a party there on the beach and at a chateau in La Turbaille…all near the Bay of Biscay.

I snuck my good camera into the wedding…my Sony a7R4 with a 16 to 35 lens…compact enough to hide in my suit coat (second time I have had on a suit in the last dozen years). I sat on the aisle. I had to crank up the ISO to 800 to get enough light so I could shot hand held…and at the right moment I fired off just one mirrorless quiet shot. Below you will see the result…and I am stoked.

So…I am quitting wedding photography while I am ahead…one and done. Thank you Pim and Renaud.

And the rest of our European photo safari…pure magic. Linda and I loved Bilbao…Andorra…the sunflower fields of Spain and Portugal and Paris…we always love Paris. Oh…and Biarittz, France was as beautiful as ever. We love Europe.

Here is a sampling of our shots…starting with my one and done wedding shot and ending with a pretty impressive storm at the airport in Paris. Aloha.

CJ, Linda and Don On a Photo Mission to Kauai

Got a call from CJ…surfs up in Kauai and we need to go shoot that spot out at the end of the road past Hanalei. I quickly agreed and we headed off to Kauai. Along for the trip, our good friend, Bill McDowell..and excellent photographer and great travel partner.

The weather on Kauai…on and off rain. Pretty cloudy toward sunset, but that can be good or bad. So…off we went to hike out to the iconic spot where the surf hits the backwash along the Na PaliCoast.

I had forgotten that the hike out involved a major league rock scramble along a wet cliffside. Easy for CJ. Not so easy for Linda and I and our friend, Bill. But, we made it out and we were just blown away by the size of the surf that afternoon. It was epic. We all got good shots and some unreal color toward sunset. I am only posted a few of my shots with this blog but we will be adding more in the days ahead from CJ and Linda.

Next day, major league glare and tough shooting. We also shot a couple of sunrise locations and a rain storm crossing Hanalei Bay. Fun in Kauai.

I managed to get my leg cut up on the rocks. Linda managed to get her arm cut up from her luggage falling. CJ managed to get food poisoning. Bill managed to stay out of harms way…and got some great shots. Heck, we all got some great shots…and a few good enough for the gallery…which was the point of the whole mission.

We were blessed with good friends on Kauai who helped us find great locations and got us around relatively safely. Big thanks to Paul Grace and Jon Cornforth and all the other terrific photographers we saw along the way.

We will be back. Aloha.