photo credit: fdecomite

“Let the scales fall from your eyes.”

If you’re new to photography, welcome to a world of crazy scales – where up is down, and less is more. There is of course a logic to the madness and rhyme that goes with every reason, but until it’s explained to you, it can seem rather hit and miss – and lots of miss. If you’re not too hot with your high-school arithmetic, some of this may feel too technical – but bear with it, and don’t be surprised if you can’t wrap your brain cells around the idea. Just bookmark this article and return next time you’re feeling bright and bushy-tailed.

OK; here goes:

(And don’t forget, there’s a big dictionary of photography on this site – the biggest on-line – so you can look up any words.)

f / number

This is probably the single most confusing measurement scale ever invented in the history of humankind. It seems to be everyone’s favorite – there are hundreds of web pages explaining it! Indeed, there’s already an article explaining aperture on our very own site.

A quick reminder of the main points: f/number is a measure of effective lens aperture compared to focal length, and is more or less synonymous with the terms f/stop or lens stop.

The reason we compare aperture to focal length – that’s what dividing does – is to make the f/number scale so that the same f/number results in the same exposure, irrespective of focal length. In the early days of photography, when lens coating was limited, there was significant light-loss which made f/numbers a little inaccurate (in cinematography they use still use T-numbers: see below) but in practice exposures are near enough the same in modern photography.

The reason we write it “f” with a forward slash is that it’s a number that invites a divisor – the number which divides into it. We are dividing the effective diameter of the aperture (strictly the effective diameter of the hole as seen from the front of the lens) into a constant number, the focal length. Now, if you divide into a fixed number with a big number, the result is smaller: that is why f/numbers like f/22 indicate a smaller aperture and less light coming through the lens, while a f/number like f/4 indicates a larger aperture with more light coming through. It is not correct to write “f-number” or “f-stop”.

You go to top of class if you’re wondering what happens with zoom lenses. Yes, as the focal length changes, so does the aperture for the same f/number. This is done either mechanically using a cam or roller in a slot to change the aperture as the zoom control is changed, or it’s done electronically, with the camera making adjustments when the lens tells it that you’ve zoomed i.e. changed the focal length.

And the reason I refer to “effective” diameter is that the majority of apertures are not circular, but pentagonal or hexagonal or some other weird shape. But it’s the area of the aperture that we’re interested in, so we look at a circular hole with an equivalent area and work from its diameter.

Anyway, another reminder: the scale starts at about f/1.4 as the largest commonly used aperture – a new Leica lens claims f/0.95 (theoretically it can be no larger than f/0.5), then it runs in steps which double every other step. it’s crucial to know that camera exposure doubles with each step: so from f/1.4 to f/2 is a doubling in exposure – and a halving in the opposite direction. Then f/2 to f/2.8 is another doubling. (Those comfortable with maths will realize that the sequence is due to the area of the aperture being proportional to square of the effective diameter, so each step must be a factor of square-root of 2, with rounding.)

T-number

This is an aside, because photographers will seldom come across the T-number scale. It is used in cinematography and technical photography, where it is usual for exposure metering to be done with a separate hand-held meter. It is the f/number adjusted to accurately reflect the amount of light which actually passes through the lens. Because all lenses absorb and reflect a portion of the light passing through the system, there is some loss of light, and complicated cine lenses commonly made of over a dozen groups of elements absorb a lot.

Exposure time

This is another favorite, which is why we already have an article about it.

As we explained there, we don’t talk about “shutter speed” and don’t even care too much for “shutter setting” as so many modern cameras, particularly those on cell/mobile phones, do not have a physical shutter. But we’re all interested in the duration of exposure or the length of exposure.

This scale has essentially no theoretical limits. It can be as long as days and be fractions of a millionth of a second. For really long exposures we simply hold the shutter open. For extremely brief exposures – shorter than can be given by shutters – we have to rely on brief flashes of light from flash-units: even in small cameras, the exposure time can be as short as 1/10,000 sec or shorter. In normal photography we generally work between about 1/30sec and 1/2000sec.

Ah! it’s that pesky forward slash again: here we’re dividing our shutter setting into 1: which is why photography professors call this measure “reciprocal seconds”. One second is 1/1 – one divided by one equals one, giving us a pretty long exposure. 1/10 is one second divided by ten parts, so each is a tenth of a second long. 1/1000 is one second divided into a thousand parts, so each is a very brief one-thousandth of a second slice of time. Of course in stills photography, we only take one slice at a time. And our cameras display just the lower (divisor) number, such as 1000, or 250.

It is natural, then, to talk of a “setting of 1000″. This means we set 1000 on our camera but we should know that it’s short-hand for 1/1000th of a second. Confusingly some people will talk about 1000-speed, but they’re talking about the ISO setting, not the shutter setting. (Another reason to give up talking about shutter speed.)

The shutter setting sequence is typically a doubling one, say from 1/2000 sec to 1/1000 sec exposure is doubled, then again from 1/1000 sec to 1/500 sec, doubling again from 1/500 sec to 1/250 sec, and so on. Each doubling step is one stop. I know it looks like it’s going the other way, but if you divide something into fewer parts, each part is actually larger than if you divided into lots of bits.

Notice something that is very, very important: the doubling step from 1/1000 sec to 1/500 sec is much, much smaller than the doubling step from, say, ½ sec to 1 sec. This reflects a fundamental feature of the nature of the way we, and systems such as photography, respond to light (it applies to sound and other forces too) and is a phenomenon of perception graced by a grand name: the Weber-Fechner Law.

Focal length

In the good old days, focal length presented no confusions. That’s because film formats were fairly fixed things. But first, what exactly is the focal length of a lens?

Let’s start by imagining your lens is a projector – in fact it is exactly that: it projects an image of the scene onto your camera’s sensor. It bundles the light from the scene into the lens, then sends it to the sensor: there is a point in the path of light where the image appears to come from – like the light fanning out of a film or transparency projector. This point goes by various technical names such as rear vertex or rear principal point, but the key thing is that we measure focal length from that point.

Now, we set up the lens to focus on a very distant subject (said to be “at infinity” because the light rays are for all purposes parallel to each other) and measure from the point from which the image appears to be projected in a straight line to the plane in which the sharp image lies – typically, that’s a shade below the physical surface of the sensor.

The point from which the image is projected can lie within the lens – we’d expect that. But this definition reveals the odd thing that the point from which the image is projected can also lie behind the lens and even in front. Look at a typical modern telephoto lens: its marked focal length is 300mm, but its physical length could be as short as 120mm or less. Similarly, you’re sure to have noticed that a wide-angle lens or focal length setting of 24mm is way longer than 24mm. Even the space between the rear of the lens to the sensor is greater than 24mm.

In short, focal length in photography has almost nothing to do with the actual physical length of the lens.

It’s always been the case that, in order to make full sense of the focal length of a lens, you needed another piece of information: the size of the format being used. So it’s always been that, in the film days, if you said “I’ve just bought a 75mm lens,” your photographer friends would ask you “For which format?” And on your reply would depend the feature of the lens we most want to know about: its field of view – how much of the scene it takes in.

A 75mm lens on the 35mm format is a moderate telephoto – ideal for intimate portraits. But on a roll-film 6×6 cam format, a suitable 75mm lens is a standard lens. Placed in front of a 5x4” film, however, a 75mm lens designed for the format gives an extremely wide angle view.

Equally so on digital cameras: if we have a tiny sensor measuring ½” across its diagonal, a 75mm lens produces a huge telephoto effect. The convention these days is to relate the actual, measured focal length of a lens to a focal length giving a field of view equivalent to that for the 35mm format. I’ve tried to introduce the qualifier term “35EFL” meaning “35mm equivalent focal length” so we say, for example, the actual focal length of the lens is 30mm so it is 35EFL: 45mm ” but it has not caught on (yet).

In case you haven’t yet done so, you might also want to check out the revamped photography dictionary – we’re working on expanding some of the thousands of definitions you can find there. If you find a term that you think can be explained more clearly – we’re open to your contributions in helping to build the most comprehensive photo dictionary online.

Thank you for visiting and reading idigitalphoto. We appreciate all our readers.

One of our subscribers has asked for tips on making high-key images in the camera, rather than in post-processing – which is what most people do. Thank you, Elliétte, for the question. She went on to remark that she prefers to obtain an effect in-camera rather than in post, as it gives her more time to photograph. Grease to your elbow, Elliétte! I couldn’t agree more. In my perfect world, every image we capture would not need an ounce of post-processing: they come straight out the camera ready-to-eat, no cooking or preparation required.

As it happens, high-key is actually best obtained in-camera, rather than done in post-processing. The results are more convincing and tones more natural. In this post, we’ll learn why. But first, of course, what is high-key?

The highs and lows

Everything you need to know about High-key photography is actually locked up in the name. It means that the image’s key tone is high. Right; that’s it. Lesson over. Let’s go lie on the beach until sun-down.

But before we go, let’s unpick that in more detail. Key tones are usually the mid-tones, so by placing them high, meaning high on the exposure scale, we are making them lighter/brighter. This has two crucial side-effects. If mid-tones are bright, then the high-tones – those which are usually nearly white – will be even whiter. Well, tones can’t be whiter than white in digital photography (though they can in video) so these super-white tones are clipped down to keep them to white. At the other extreme, areas that normally register with dark tones are dragged up the brightness scale so that they become much brighter. The key to high-key photography is actually in the control of these dark tones: essentially we don’t want them.

Not only over-exposure

Now, you may start to suspect that high key images are not just about over-exposure, and you’d be right. Is this image high-key?

No; it’s not: while what were the key tones are indeed high, there is still a lot of mid-tone detail around the hair and in the hair-piece. What we have done is to raise what were once the shadow tones to mid-tones, making them the new key tones. So the key tones in this image are not high, although the former key tones are lighter.

Compare these two: as shot and with an attempt at post-processed high-key in which we increase exposure and at the same time brighten the shadows. Personally, I don’t find this convincing at all: I call this kind of image ‘over-levelled’.

This shows that high-key is about lighting as well as exposure. It also shows why it’s best (and easiest) to obtain high-key results in-camera than by image manipulation: if you light well, the shadow tones won’t give you a problem.

And not only high-contrast, either

Some people think that high-contrast images, in which mid-tones are mapped to white, are high-key.

I beg to differ: that is simply a high-contrast image: it’s the result of an average image changed by Levels with the black and the white sliders brought towards the centre to increase contrast, and the middle slider dragged far to the left to increase exposure.

One flat white, please

The key to successful high-key work is working with flat and generous lighting while avoiding the use of dark clothes, trimmings or props. This all helps you avoid deep shadows and dark tones. At the same time, the lighting forces you to work in a way to suit the light (there’s a lesson there): with flat lighting you work with overall shapes and large forms, rather than fiddle about with texture and fine detail. The way you photograph should adapts to the lighting you use.

Now, this is what I call flat lighting. I was setting the stage for a simple fashion shoot, taking over the friend’s bathroom. There are untidy details here, but they don’t bother us; as we’ll see, the model will block them. The key is that I used one flash to reflect off a white door covered in glittery material: this turns the door into one huge and soft light-source, but the glitter puts a bit of life into the light. At the same time, I also gave front-on illumination from a small ring-flash (a special flash whose flash-tube is arranged in a dough-nut shape, with the lens poking through the hole).

EXCLUSIVE!

By the way, if you are thinking of getting a ring-flash you’ll find they’re either large and really expensive studio units or small units designed for macrophotography (and still expensive). Solution? Look out for the soon-to-come Orbis: a handy ring-flash that you clip onto your existing flash-unit and turns it instantly into an efficient ring-flash. I’ve been shown the prototype and it’s sure to be a winner; it goes on sale in September. Check out http://www.haloringflash.com/ (which goes live in July) or google the ‘Orbis’ from September.

Real high key

Another effect of increasing exposure and the flat lighting is that saturation is decreased: colours go pale as exposure is increased. All this means that you need take care with exposure for best results. Experiment to match your taste, but you’ll need to over-expose by at least one stop, more like two and even three stops: exposure control is the key, so give yourself lots to choose from when shooting. You can try bracketing with +1, +2 and +3 stops. This way, you don’t need to open the image in image manipulation software and struggle with Levels, Curves, Hue/Saturation or what not. Just shoot and smack your lips in enjoyment! This shot is the favourite of everyone on the shoot: designer, stylist, model, and assistant!

Afterword

High-key work is a rather modern development in photography. I can’t find mention of it in my ‘Encyclopaedia of Photography’ published around 60 years ago but in another reference book, of 1969, there is a full entry. It could be seen as a reaction against the pictorialist ideal that demanded a full range of tones – from black to white and all grays in between – in all prints. I think high-key photography first made regular appearances in the 1960′s. Fashion photographers making regular use of white backgrounds discovered that soft or glamour light combined with over-exposure was a splendid way to smooth out skin tones, make models look skinny and, of course, draw a bright line between their modern way of photography and the dark, dusty ways of the past.

When the photography world first came across the idea of candid portaiture – making informal shots of people who were not aware of being photographed or at least not posing for the camera – it was a Big Thing. This was because up to then, portraiture called for large studio cameras wound up with cranks, fancy studios with painted backgrounds and – you can guess – big bucks for the privilege.

With small cameras like the Kodak Box Brownie loaded with (for then) fast film plus a generous helping of sunlight, anyone could point their camera at a person and, ker-click!, another candid portrait was snapped.

We’ve come a long way since then, but the same concerns as those which arose at the time are still with us. We worry about invading privacy or fear of upsetting someone while at the same time wishing to catch them in a natural pose or natural expression. What are some of the tactics and techniques we could use?

A portrait is a record of a relationship

I always try to remember my own adage, and never tire of repeating it in every workshop I run, that a portrait is a record of my relationship with the person in the subject.

If the relationship is warm and trusting, it shows in the picture. If it’s been grabbed on the run, like this shot of a pillion passenger on the chaotic bridge in central Agra, India, it looks grabbed on the run. And if you sneak up on someone, the picture will carry a slight voyeuristic quality. The best candids are those which combine the seeming contradictory qualities of the person being aware of you but at the same time ignoring you.

1. Wait and blend

One way to be seen yet ignored is to take the time to blend into the background. Imagine walking into a market in Kashgar in far western China: as a tourist, everyone notices you, especially if you arrive with a group. You represent new custom, a chance to sell their goods. But if you only want to grab some shots then run to the next sight, the anticipation turns to disappointment. Little wonder if some stall-holders are not too friendly.

What I do is find somewhere out of everyone’s way and stand or sit for a few minutes. It doesn’t take long before I become part of the scene. People say ‘Hello’, I say ‘Hello’ back. In ten minutes they start to ignore you, and you can start to photograph. People are less bothered by you because you have taken the trouble to spend some time with them, proven that you’re harmless. That’s how I obtained this portrait of an old patriach who at first wary but after 5 minutes was all smiles. And yes, he was in Kashgar Market.

2. Smaller the Camera, Smaller the Presence

For candids, compact and cell-phone cameras score over the big shooters by being unaggressive, non-threatening and almost friendly. If you haven’t experienced it, have a friend point a big SLR camera with a big lens (complete with cavernous lenshood) at you: it’s not a hugely cuddly experience. No doubt about it, small cameras are best for candid photography: that’s why the Leica still does so well at photojournalism over all the bigger, better, faster cameras available. This, one of my favourite shots, was made with a Leica M6 in Western China.

3. Shoot from The Hip

The tell-tale sign that you’re lining someone up to photograph them is putting the camera up to your eye. So if you don’t want them to think that, leave the camera low. With their LCD screens, compact cameras are great for this. And some of the new SLRs now have live-view, which means you can view the image on the LCD screen on the back of the camera and not have to look through the viewfinder. It means you can carry on a conversation and even maintain eye-contact with your subject only minimally aware you’re photographing them.

Hold the camera level (front/back and side-to-side). Use a wide-angle setting so you do not need to aim very precisely. Careful, though: this tends to produce a low point of view, so try pointing the camera upwards or else you will be looking up people’s noses.

4. Looking away Distracts Attention

If you have ever felt that someone is watching you – and it’s an uncomfortable feeling – you will understand that someone may pick up the sense that you’re watching them intently, waiting for a photographic moment. If you’re interested in this phenomenon, read this fascinating book by Rupert Sheldrake. Sheldrake’s theory is that when we watch something we send out an attention wave of energy.

Anyway, where were we? Staring at someone with camera in hand is a dead give-away of what you’re up to (attention waves or not). So you can practice a little deception: face away from your subject, but watch them from the corner of your eye. Mostly, however, I prefer to be open and honest when photographing. (Remember, the other meaning of ‘candid’ is about honesty and truthfulness.)

5. Wait Until They are Busy

Less of a deception but relying on a shift of attention away from you is simply to wait till your subject’s attention is distracted by something else. Here it’s handy to have a friend engage your subject in conversation. Keep sensitive, however, to your subject’s feelings: if your presence with camera is making them nervous, then move away or wait until you can establish a trusting rapport. I have seen photographers exploit the fact that a stall-holder is busy having to serve customers and take snaps before they can be shooed away: but that really is to exploit the situation unfairly.

6. Share The Photos

Surely one of the biggest beauties of digital cameras is that you can share the picture with someone immediately you’ve shot it. So why not share it with your candid subject: if you’ve grabbed a shot and been noticed, immediately offer to show the person the shot. When they see you’re not trying to hide anything, they are more than likely to cooperate for more shots. Of course, you lose that candid element. But that’s only for a few minutes: if you encourage them to ignore you, they usually do so pretty quickly.

There’s always a risk they will ask you to erase the image if they don’t like it. If that happens, I never question or argue about it but erase it immediately. For me, it’s important that my subjects are happy with how they feel: I owe it to them as a photographer.

7. The Picture is in their Hands

Sometimes people who are shy of having their face photographed may not mind if you photograph their hands. I love photographing hands myself, and often they tell you more about the person and what they do than the face does. You may have to work fast, though as people move their hands quickly, especially if they are at all nervous. Use the long end or middle of your zoom and shoot from 3ft (1 metre) or so to avoid projecting misshapen hands from a wide-angle view.

Enjoy! And let’s hear your about your tactics and suggestions.

One day, on a shoot for ‘How to Photograph Absolutely Everything’ I was messing about at the Mirror Pool in the New York Botanical Gardens (which, if you’ve not been to, is well worth a visit at any time, in any weather).

First I investigate the way the reflection changes its shape as I change my position – both from side to side and up and down. Here, I’m looking for a strong shape to emerge. These simply show the scene visible by looking up, but with rippled distortions.

The shape and implied movements in any reflected element appears strengthened – it is, effectively, doubled – by its reflection if you include the subject being reflected. This is looking more promising, but lacks strength in the composition – besides not being exactly level.

For settings, the best is the widest-angle you can get on your camera, aperture-priority with the smallest aperture e.g. f/11 and of course best quality/highest resolution. I found the best reflection to be right down at water level, because it is along the water line that you can get an almost perfectly symmetrical view. Try turning your camera upside down to bring the lens closer to the water. Take lots of care not to drop it, though!

This was one of the rare occasions I review the shot as I’m working. Those who have been on my workshops know that one of my first exercises is not to review the images during shooting. Anyway, because I couldn’t see exactly how well the image was framed, I did review. The subject stayed put anyway, so I could reframe and refine the composition. Here I’ve cropped it to a HDTV format, or near, and centered the crop so the lovely symmetry is obvious.

Then I discovered something rather interesting because it was unexpected: the shot is easier to get with a small point-and-shoot than with a big shooter: the little Kodak camera I was using (as seen in the book) was so compact, I could bring the lens down almost to touch the water. With a bigger camera, the lens axis is still some way above the water when the bottom of the body touches the water.

Here’s the view using my big camera, with a 12mm focal lens setting. It shows that you can take in too much and a narrower view is not quite right either. So, for this shot, a camera one twentieth the cost of my best camera is actually the better!

One of the great thrills for any photographer is to see your pictures published in a fine book or leading magazine. But winning a prize with your image easily tops that.

Your image has caught the eyes of the expert (and pretty hard-to-please) judges. That’s rewarding in itself. But you know too that your picture has been singled out of thousands of other entries: this is nectar to the ego, if nothing else.

I was one of the judges of the Sony World Photography Awards which was celebrated last month in Cannes, France and trawled through thousands of images for that (though not all the 70,000). Alongside the Awards, I was also a judge for the University Shoot-out in which ten of the leading photography schools of Europe competed for over Euro €45,000 of Sony Alpha A700 cameras and lenses. I’ve judged a couple of other competitions since then: in one case, reviewing several thousand images a day.

Primarily, of course, prize-winning images are fabulous shots. But you’ve probably looked at some winners and wondered why they won. It’s because being a fabulous shot is not enough.

There’s more to it, and that’s what I want to share with you here.

Go Somewhere Different

The world is getting smaller, we are all travelling more and to more adventurous places. Yet the same old locations or types of locations turn up again and again. Monasteries in Bhutan. Taj Mahal. Canyon de Chelly. Ngorongoro Crater National Park. Of course that’s because those locations are fabulously wonderful for photography. They are, dare I say it, almost too easy to photograph.

The beauty of photograph is its ability to open your eyes. And when you open your eyes to beauties and loveliness near you, another miracle happens: you open other people’s eyes too. The best example of that I know is Bruce Davidson’s work on Central Park, New York – not many people’s first choice for a photography expedition. Take a look at what Mr Davidson can do: some of these images, like the birds in the snow, the couple nestling together, are the closest to music that I know:

www.art-dept.com/artists/davidson/

For more from the book, look up Bruce Davidson’s ‘Central Park’ at www.magnumphotos.com (it’s not in the main list of books but hidden under ‘Books’).

Anyway, all too often, what happens is that competitions receive numerous images from the same place. This makes judges a little bored, they get a little testy; they like surprises. So, if you do find yourself in one of these wonderful, but popular places …

Shoot Something Different

Try being different: look at how others photograph the famous sights and see if you can do something out of the ordinary. That’s one way to surprise judges. A slant on the subject that’s unusual, a funny angle, or touch of humor can work wonders to a hackneyed or clichéd scene.

We have so many wonderful pictures of well-known subjects, we are at the point that the less-obvious is preferable. We know what elephants look like now – roaming the plains, charging at each other, charging at the cameraman, feeding on trees. So now quite an abstract shot of an elephant makes it to the top. Indeed, that may now be the only kind of elephant shot that will not be passed over by judges. See the winner of last year’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year. While you’re at the Wildlife Photographer of the Year site, take at look at the Creative Visions of Nature section. I like the Lion’s Tail.

Avoid Imitating Last Year’s Winners

It’s useful to learn from what wins but that’s not the same as sending in a very similar shot for next year’s competition. The reason is that, even if your shot is better than last year’s, judges will remember. And no-one wants two similar-looking shots to win the top slots. You can imagine that photography magazines and websites, whose editors have similarly long memories, will think when they receive a picture that looks the same as a previous winner. It will not seem like new material (it’s not).

For competitions that have been running a few years, it’s worth looking at the past winners so you can work out what not to submit. I guess it’s advice similar to previous point, but in bucket loads.

Take a look at the winners galleries in Travel Photographer of the Year, for example.

Remember The Competition

You’d be amazed at how little attention people pay to the competition rules. It’s obvious really, but I have to say it, having judged competitions where literally thousands of entries have been rejected simply because they did not comply with rules in one way or another:

Read the rules, follow the instructions to the letter!
Let me say it again: Read the rules, follow the instructions to the letter!

In one recent competition, only one of the set of finalists actually followed the rules to the letter. Strictly, we could have simply disqualified all the others but fortunately, the finalist who followed the rules also submitted the best photos – maybe there’s a lesson in that.

Technical Quality Tops

It also goes without saying that the technical quality of what you send in should be tops. By that I don’t mean that you have to use the big shooters from Sony, Nikon, Canon, Pentax to make the shot as even top competitions will accept images from 6-megapixel cameras. And I don’t mean they have to be perfectly sharp.

But they have to look as if you’re in complete control of the image: if it’s meant to be blurred, it should be blurred by just the right amount. If the horizon is on a slant, it should convincingly so, enough to make it look deliberate. If anything is not focussed perfectly, it should be for a reason that enhances the visual message.

And finally, do not over-sharpen or over-saturate your images. With modern cameras it should not be necessary to add much, if any, sharpening. And it should not be necessary to pump up colours by much, if any.

Send in Good Time

Being human, we tend to leave things to the last minute. In the days of snail mail, that did not cause too much of a problem: the poor competition office simply got flooded with sacks of mail in the last few days to the deadline. These days, there’s a real problem: when everyone tries to download images to the competition in the remaining day or two, the server is drowned, its band-width – think of a canal carrying water – cannot cope with the amount being sent in, and it crashes like a canal flooding with rainwater. Files get lost, corrupted, you have to send again: it’s chaos you can do without, so enter in good time.

Read the Sub-Text

I find it’s best to print the rules out and carry them around with you for a while. No-one quite gets every nuance of what they are looking for into their rules. You may have to read the sub-text or between the lines. Look at what kind of company is the main sponsor, that may affect the choice of one of the winners.

For example if the competition is about animals, ensure that you do no stress your animal in making the photograph or use any cruel method – like tying them to one position or use live bait – to obtain your results. This may not be specifically forbidden but you can be sure the judges will be expert at spotting tell-tale signs.

However, if one of the main camera manufacturers is involved, don’t worry that they’ll be prejudiced against shots made on other cameras (unless the rules forbid it, of course). In my experience, camera manufacturers are very broad-minded about who uses which make of camera.

GOOD LUCK!

And here’s the final ingredient: it helps to have a bit of luck, but the more you enter, the more luck you’ll have.

By the way, when you search for competitions to enter, don’t forget to try ‘call for entries’ in addition to the obvious strings like ‘photo competition’. Online magazines are good sources, as is: www.photocompetitions.com (scroll down past the ads).

The best of luck to you!
Tom

Now, you’d think that was a lesson was well learnt. Until, that is, you visit online auctions like eBay, WeBidz, BidAlot or uBid!

What are some people thinking when they load up fuzzy, distorted, over-exposed, heavily tinted images of their items for sale? Of course they know that if they could post sharp, beautifully lit images they’d stand a much better chance of selling and are more likely to get better prices.

Okay, so not everyone has the skills to make great product shots. Well, this is where we come in. Here are some simple techniques that aren’t difficult and plenty of hints of how to improve your photography for online auctions so you get more interest and push up those final bids.

Great backgrounds foreground your items

Let’s suppose my wife decides to thin down her collection of shoes. The lazy way to do it does have the advantage of taking no time or effort: place them on the bed (they’ve never been worn).

Not great, is it? The background’s distracting and doesn’t help show off the shoes.

It takes hardly enough effort to locate a sheet of board. Or use paper if resting on a hard surface. The result…

is much cleaner and clearer. Suddenly you can see the shape, the tone of the leather lining. (Hmm, we can see what it was bought in the first place …)

but why not show the shoe bag as well? It is part of the offering and has the advantage of bringing a bright patch of colour into shot. Trouble is, the arrangement of the shoes now looks a bit boring.

Tell and sell

Think about the arrangement which tells and sells at the same time. Show what you need to show so you don’t have too many questions to answer, but make the image instantly appealing.

so let’s put the shoes at a snazzier angle to each other. This helps, but this shot is lacking in depth of field: the bag is sharp but not the shoes. Does it matter? It will if you post a large picture – which is always inviting for the bidder: if someone is interested enough to view your item close-up, you want to reward them with luscious detail – – not reveal unsharpness.

Light well, sell well

You could photograph everything using just window light or go under a porch or onto your balcony and shoot there. But bring another, separate source of light to supplement and you immediately separate yourself from a thousand other sellers. Needless to say, do not use the on-camera flash – unless you want to rejoin the crowd, of course.

at the same time, maybe we could spice up the lighting a little. So far, the shoes had been shot from window light alone. A little extra light also allows us the opportunity to use a smaller aperture for greater depth of field.

and here’s the lighting set-up for the shot. Taken out of shot is a white board which reflected some fill light from the table lamp back to the shoes. Not exactly a fully-equipped studio. But you notice the deliberate mistake? Yes, I wasn’t using a tripod. And I shot on a bed (reason being that an amazing number of eBay shots seem to be made on the bed). Even if you only propped yourself on a pile of books, it’s preferable to free-style hand-holding shown here.

Bouncy ideas

For the majority of products, direct lighting causes two problems: hard shadows and hard reflections. For these golden shoes, direct lighting of the short that worked for the black textile shoes is too harsh.

The hard shadows distract and disrupt the outline of the black shoe bag. At the same time, the reflections on the shoes are way too hard and unpleasant: a case of lighting that conceals detail rather than revealing it.

That’s not a bad piece of lighting: it’s directional enough to mould the shapes of the shoe but has enough gloss to make the gold surfaces shine and look really attractive. Makes you want to reach for your wallet!

and this is the high-tech lighting set-up I used. That, plus the window light. The lamp is turned up so that a bit of light spills directly onto the shoes but most goes to the white board and reflects off. The result is a warm light that suits the shoes, but not too warm because the window light is cool daylight – the combination gives some nice bluish tints in the highlights – you can just see inside the upper shoe.

Card magic

As you can see, piece of white card – the whiter the better – is your best auction photography friend. Here are three shots of a ‘coin’ (memorabilium from my days tramping around Uzbekistan visiting government officials).

There are different styles of lighting here: what you use depends on personal preferences and those of market – whether pen, coin collectors etc. The point is that it’s all in waving the card.

This was my set-up (using tripod at last!). The three shots were obtained simply by holding the white card in different positions. 1: the card was close to the lens, above the coin, then, 2: about 45º to the coin, finally the third shot comes from holding the card as shown here, reflecting little light to the coin.

Some other examples

Here are a couple of other points.

This is a stunning burst of colour but what IS it? Hint: don’t get too arty or clever; eBay etc. are not photo-sharing sites.

This is just as attractive but tells you a whole lot more!

This is a lovely shot, but what are we selling – the chenille or the bracelet and earrings? So: don’t overdo the background.

People like to know the size of what they’re buying and the easiest way to indicate that is to include a rule in shot.

Tips and Settings

• clean and dust your items before photography
• use the longer focal length (equivalent to 100mm or so) and avoid using the widest zoom setting
• use smallest aperture for greatest depth of field (unless you are using an interchangeable lens, in that case avoid the very smallest aperture)
• use a tripod so you can use a small aperture
• if you know how, set custom white balance: use the white card as a reference to save work later
• for highly reflective objects it’s worth building a little light-tent. You can try draping a white sheet over a chair or tripod. Place the object in the tent and shine light onto the ‘tent’. Stick the camera in the gap between the sheets and away you go
• photograph at the highest resolution available, then resize as needed for best quality

The accolade you want is for bidders to write to you asking for a photo of the ACTUAL item for sale, thinking you’ve used a product shot. You can pat yourself on the back then, and watch the bidders work themselves into a frenzy when you tell them it’s the real thing.

Happy selling!

Inspirational sites

Want inspiration? Some of the finest small-scale product photography is being done by fountain pen collectors and top of the tree must be Bill Riepl’s work. Check out
http://www.stylophilesonline.com/

One of my all-time favourite food photographers (I know, eBay is not the place you go to purchase sushi, but you can learn about lighting the same) is Reinhart Wolf. Check out
http://www.reinhartwolfphotoprints.com/fotos.htm
and bear in mind that his “Japan’s Food” series was shot almost entirely with one handheld flash in his hotel room.

Busy gear

If you have a lot of items to sell you may one to equip yourself with a little set-up to give you more professional results. There are many manufacturers, one being Sharpics at http://www.stylophilesonline.com

This tabletop studio with vinyl background, two lamps with daylight fluorescent tubes and a table monopod suitable for small objects retails for around $240.

We had met this charming canine earlier while photographing something else – on location at an animal rescue centre in Guadalest, Spain. She had come up to say “hi” and to nose around what we were doing. She was probably prospecting for attention, too. But by the time we realized she should be our next model, she was too dozy to care one way or the other. The temptation then was to wake her and ask her to pose. But I decided to take her as she wanted to be: very, very relaxed.

Select Settings

Before you work with children or animals, set up first. Set the camera to macro or close-up mode if you’re going to be very close, and use a wide angle – I had an idea of the shot I wanted – from low down. I turned off the flash. I flipped out the LCD screen so I could see the image while the camera was at ground level. I set it to aperture priority with a small aperture for maximum depth of field. I thought if I am going to be resting the camera on the ground, and the pooch lies still, I can get by with a long exposure time.

Safety warning: If you do not know the animal, check with its owners that it is friendly and will not react badly, especially if it has been woken up from sleep.

Use the Right Lighting

To make sure the delicate and subtle textures of fur register in your image, you must work in subdued lighting. Fortunately, our mutt had chosen open shade under a bush. Her ideal spot was also our ideal spot. I moved slowly, smoothly and quietly to avoid startling or disturbing her. Nonetheless, she did wake and enquire what we were doing, so I snapped a normal portrait, and quietly said she could take it easy; I was just some pesky photographer who’d go away soon.

Get in Close

Once she settled down again, we could get to work. I found the camera was complaining about focusing, and realised that it was pointing straight at her paw – which was too close. I wanted her face sharp anyway, not the paws. So I pointed the camera at the area I wanted to keep sharp, pressed the shutter halfway to obtain and lock focus, then reframed for the shot. It doesn’t matter – indeed, it might be better – if not all of the animal is in focus.

Oops; framed too low and snapped just has she looked up to check on a noise.

Better framing, but she doesn’t look too comfortable.

She’s looking much more relaxed – it’s hard to be more relaxed than this – but the framing is not quite right. There’s too much foreground, and the body shape is not very flattering.

This is better: we’re closer, so there’s less foreground but the head shape isn’t too good – the composition is not well balanced.

A change of position brings us a different background and shape for our dozy subject, but this still feels too far away.

Better still – we’re getting closer and concentrating on the face, where the character and charm of our canine resides, and also make more of her lovely chubby paws. The background too is better because it’s cleaner, and the red flower is not a bad thing.

This is it – we can see her face clear, the big frown, cute paws. The background is clean and the other paw is just visible, which helps a lot to balance the shape. I like the red flowers, but that’s maybe just me. The focus is at her ears, so the depth of field extends to most of her face and back to much of the body. This gives us a good sense of her fur.

She’s waking up, so it’s time to take our leave. Thank you, sweetheart, for being so patient!

Must See

If you don’t know the work of Elliott Erwitt, his work with dogs is peerless and extremely funny. Look in his site for dog pictures: www.elliotterwitt.com

Or go to the Magnum Photos site www.magnumphotos.com look for Elliott Erwitt under “Photographers” then link to his books. Then check out the Dogs slideshow.

1. Learn the buttons and dials

Learn where the dials, buttons and switches are located on your camera. No, I mean really know. Can you find them with your eyes shut, by touch alone? Can you make important adjustments – e.g. exposure override, auto-focus mode – by touch alone?

Remember when you first learned to bat a ball? You hit and hit again until you were sore, but eventually you got the hang of it, hitting without thinking. Get the hang of your camera by practicing with it until it all becomes second-nature.

2. Learn the twist

If you have a digital SLR, learn which way to twist to zoom out, to zoom in. Which way to twist the focusing ring for closer subjects, which way for far away objects. Same with controls like the aperture ring and shutter dial – which way for bigger aperture, which way for shorter exposure time.

Every fraction of a second you spend thinking about which way to turn a control is time spent with your eye off the ball. If you have to think about your controls, you can’t think about timing, composition.

3. Learn to love your camera’s quirks

You probably have some friends with quick-fire responses, some who take a little longer to answer or get the joke. But you love them all the same. Your camera may be a little slow to start, a little sluggish to respond to the zoom control. If you allow for your camera’s quirks, you learn how to get the best out of them.

If your camera takes a long time to start when you turn it on, then keep it on – most cameras wake from sleep more quickly than from ‘off’. If shutter lag is a problem, learn to press the button just before the action completes. If the zoom control usually overshoots the setting you want, learn to release it just before you reach the setting you want.

4. Speed up all processes

Turn off every automatic function you don’t need. The more thinking you do for the camera, the faster it can work. If you’re set to a wide-angle on a point-and-shoot camera or dSLR with small sensor, you have a huge amount of depth of field to work in. In good light, there’s hardly any need to focus. Try turning auto-focus off and be amazed at how much more responsive the camera is. Turn off the flash, of course, (but if you have to use it, charge up your battery till it’s bulging!).

You’re getting the idea: the core of camera technique is reducing the gap between you and your subject, so that it all flows effortlessly, and you can concentrate on the picture-making rather than the camera-using.

5. Keep the camera on, keep you mind on

Actually, it’s a good idea to keep any camera on all the time you’re working – and maybe even if not. Knowing the camera is on helps keep your mind in a ready state too. And it really helps to keep the lens-cap off too. Sure, it exposes the glass – but that’s what a lenshood and UV filter are for – protect your glass so that you can take pictures.

The second it takes for you to decide whether to turn the camera on or not could be a second too late. It uses up time that could have been better spent getting into position, selecting the camera angle.

6. Cradle your camera

Remember those leather cases which your Dad or Grandfather used to keep their cameras – they were called “ever-ready cases”, but professionals sneered at them, calling them “never-ready cases.” The fact is, any protection for a camera is a barrier to use. You want to sell your camera on eBay in pristine shape? Then buy another and use that instead. Keep your camera not only out of its pouch or bag, not only over your shoulder but IN YOUR HAND!

I’ve shared drinks with great photographers whose camera was so present, it was almost in the same hand as their beer. You might not want to be so obsessive, but tell me who gets the pictures everyone else misses? I walk around with my camera cradled in my arms – people have said it’s like I’m cradling a baby.

7. Look there, not here

When you drive, if you only watched the road immediately in front of the car, you’d soon crash into something. Safe drivers read the road as far ahead as they can see or at least the distance they can stop in. Well, you’d be surprised how many photographers look no further than their personal space and time. You can tell a pro at work because she or he is often oddly present and not present: they are aware of what is going on around them, but they are constantly asking themselves ‘What’s going on over THERE? What’s gonna happen next?’

With camera in hand, lenscap off and power on (even if the camera is quietly dozing away) your mind can be alert to all around you. What you see now is the foundation for the picture to come. In the time it takes you to get to a scene, you can plot your tactics. But if you let something surprise you, the time to think has already been forfeited.

8. Adjusting on the run

This is when you will appreciate having mastered your camera. When you’ve spotted a scene with potential – and it could be a street scene, an animal in the wild, or a landscape – you never know how much time you’ll have. This is when you set the exposure mode, or sensitivity, or zoom to the focal length that gives you the magnification you want. And you do that with your eye constantly on the scene, constantly evaluating the best position – for the picture you want.

When you raise the camera to your eye, you want to be able to expose with minimal adjustments. That’s the ideal. Even landscapes and scenics can call for this state of readiness: hey! A bird is reflected in mirror-like water. In the next second a breeze could break the reflection. Few things are more painful than missing a shot because you were too slow on the draw – Jacques Henri Lartigue writes about being “inconsolable” when that happened.

9. Imagine that amazing shot

Have the courage of your convictions and go for the shot you’re after. It really helps to imagine that it will be amazing! Let an image which inspires you to float through your mind if that helps. Yeah! I want a great shot like THAT! Frame it up, chase it, imagine it, wait for the moment and squeeze that magic button that sucks in the scene for you.

This is about you “seeing” the shot you want – in your heart, in your mind – before you get into position. The light’s great, the elements are kind of moving the right way but it doesn’t sing yet, so wait a second, lean to the left, wait a moment, walk forward – and suddenly imagination and reality are one. What a magic moment that is! And it will come to you, I promise.

10. Take nothing for granted

This was advice that Ansel Adams hammered time and time again. David Bailey tells how he and some photographer friends wrote down the things that could go wrong on a shoot, and were astounded by the length of the list. At very least, make sure your battery is charged up before you leave base. Make sure you have ample space in your memory card. Is your sensor clean? Your lenses pristine? If you don’t expect some great opportunity to come round the corner, it’ll bite you in the rear instead.

These, after all, are very simple precautions. All designed to stop you from kicking yourself sometime in the future. Make a list if that helps. It’s what all professionals have do to stay in the business. Gary Knight tells of five weeks of tedium in the Iraqi desert looking for action before it suddenly erupts on them, with no warning – and, oh yes, he got his pictures.

Conclusion

I guess, if you want to sum it up, it’s all about being ready. Ready on the long haul, ready in the medium-term, and constantly ready for the ultra-short-term too. As I promised, you now know how to make a huge improvement in your photography without spending any money at all!

If you were to devise a system that was intended to be confusing, you’d have a hard time coming up with anything more confusing than photographic aperture. I’ve so often seen people glaze over within five seconds of the start of an explanation, their minds a whole galaxy away – anywhere, so long as it’s not here listening to f/stops, depth of field and so forth. But when you split it up, it’s pretty easy.

So, what is aperture?

The basic idea is that light reaches your camera’s sensor (or film) through a hole.

With pinhole cameras, it’s literally that: a hole in a light-tight box projects an image on the inside. With cameras, we put some glass around the hole to make the image sharper. But essentially, it’s still a hole. History would have been different if photographers talked about ‘hole numbers’ or adjusting the size of their ‘lens hole’ but somehow that did not sound cool – even in the 1870s.

So photographic aperture is the hole in the camera lens which lets light in.

Why size matters

As you know from general experience, the bigger a hole, the more can go through it. Think about turning on a tap (water faucet): open it a little and the flow is only a trickle, open it up and more water flows through.

It’s the same with lens aperture: the larger the aperture, the more light gets through to the sensor. Obviously this affects the exposure of your image.

Now, giving the film or sensor the proper exposure is like filling a cup of water: if the water flow is slow (from a small aperture), it takes longer to fill (the exposure time is longer).

And obviously, if the flow is faster (we turn the tap on to make the aperture larger), it takes less time to fill the cup (exposure time is shorter).

What do the numbers mean?

Now, it’s easy to measure exposure time – directly in seconds or fractions of a second. With the aperture, it was realised early on that simply measuring the size of the hole was not enough. That’s because holes of the same size in different lenses of different designs or focal length will look different to the film or sensor.

A good way to see this is to pick up a pair of binoculars or SLR lens if you have one handy). Look down one end, and turn over and look down the other: the hole will look different sizes – but it’s the same hole. What has changed is the effective focal length. This shot shows a 24mm lens: the aperture is much larger on the sensor side than from the subject side.

Basically we need a measure that relates the size of the hole to the focal length. At the same time the measure needs to show that as the size of the hole becomes smaller, less light flows through (and vice versa: bigger aperture lets in more light).

The answer is the f/number: we divide the focal length by the effective diameter of the hole.

Why are they like that?

Suppose we have a 50mm focal length lens. If we have a big size hole – a big aperture, it might measure 25mm. So 50 divided by 25 gives us 2: the f/number is 2, which we write as f/2.

If the aperture is smaller, say, 3mm in diameter, 50 divided by 3 gives us about 16: the f/number reads f/16. As the hole is smaller, less light gets through. So f/16 is said to be a small aperture or small f/number.

That’s why you could get confused if you read about an aperture of 16 being smaller than 2: that does not make sense and is, in fact, wrong. A photographic aperture is written as ‘f/number’: it means the focal length divided by the aperture diameter. So f/16 is indeed smaller than f/2. (Microscopists talk about numerical aperture, but that’s a different thing.)

f/number sequence

The basic f/number sequence is 1.4, 2, 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8 – it’s a doubling every other step – then it falters a bit: 11, 16, 22, 32, 45 but is essentially still a doubling every other step.

Each step to a lower f/number represents a doubling in the area of the aperture, which means a doubling in the amount of light passing i.e. a one-stop increase in exposure. Conversely, each step to a higher f/number means a halving in the area of the aperture, which means reducing exposure by one stop.

Don’t worry about why this is (or ask a friendly mathematician if you really want to know): just remember that the sequence means that if you change aperture setting from, say, f/4 to f/8, then the exposure time needs to increase by two stops, and vice versa.

What are stops?

Here’s another source of confusion. The word ‘stops’ is used in two senses. One goes back to the days when lens aperture was changed by dropping in a metal plate with a hole cut in it. You changed aperture by taking out one plate and dropping in another one with a different sized hole. These were called stops (actually Waterhouse stops, after the inventor). From that we get the term ‘stopping down’.

Now, these stops were arranged so that each smaller hole halved the exposure (and conversely, each larger hold doubled exposure). From that we get the term ‘f/stops’. From this you still hear photographers talk about ‘one stop’ meaning a halving or doubling of exposure. Goes all the way back to late nineteenth century!

Carting sets of metal plates with holes in them is a bore, not to mention really slow to use and before long the aperture diaphragm was invented. This was a set of leaves which were pivoted on the rim so that they fanned across the gap – the more they overlapped, the smaller the central hole. And that’s what we still use now.

Aperture and depth of field

So much for aperture and exposure. What complicates the whole subject further is that aperture affects two quite different things independently. Just as shutter setting contributes to exposure but also influences motion blur, aperture setting contributes to exposure but also influences something else altogether.

Aperture is one of the factors controlling depth of field. In fact aperture is the single most powerful and easiest way to control depth of field.

What you need to know

Use a small aperture like f/16 if you want as much as possible of the image to look sharp. Use a large aperture like f/2.8 to make just your main subject sharp against a blurred background i.e. for minimum depth of field. In between, an aperture like f/5.6 is good for general uses as it produces an average depth of field. It’s real simple.

f/16	f/2.8
f/5.6

Here’s another example: at f/3 the nearest pink flowers are blurred while the next set of flowers are sharp but beyond that the trees are very blurred. At f/14, the near pink flowers are sharper and the trees beyond are more detailed. However, there is still blur, which shows that when objects are widely separated, aperture alone may not be enough to make everything sharp.

f/3	f/14

In fact, aperture also affects another complex of interactions – very subtle, but vital for advanced photography: aberration correction.

Aperture and corrections

The image quality of lenses change, usually quite subtly but substantially, with different apertures – the details are really technical, but the up-shot is cleaner, clearer and sharper images. The usual pattern is that there’s an improvement as you choose apertures smaller than maximum (photographers talking about ‘stopping down’), there’s a peak and then quality drops as you stop down to the minimum aperture.

Full and minimum aperture

That’s why I left explaining what full and minimum aperture are until now. Full or maximum aperture is the largest hole in the lens that lets the light through. It is calculated from the size of the front element, not from the size of the actual hole. So if the front element is 25mm in diameter and the focal length is 50mm, the full aperture f/number is taken as: 50 divided by 25 equals f/2. In all but rare instances, at maximum aperture, the iris diaphragm does not cut into the hole.

The minimum aperture is, naturally, the smallest hole. But it’s not the smallest hole possible, only the smallest hole the manufacturers allow you to set. That’s why minimum aperture can vary from f/8 all the way to f/45. The reason for this is made up of equal parts mechanics and image quality. We’ve learnt that image quality drops with small apertures – in fact, at really small apertures it can be disastrous. To prevent this, manufacturers limit minimum aperture according to the lens design.

Even so, you’d be advised to avoid the smallest apertures on your lenses: back off by one stop e.g. if the minimum is f/22, use no smaller than f/16. On a typical SLR lens you can see that even at minimum aperture, one could make the hole smaller.

Aperture shape and bokeh

Bokeh is the word for the quality of the out-of-focus blur. There are several discussions about this on the Web, which affect mainly SLR users with fast lenses.

http://www.vanwalree.com/optics/bokeh.html
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/bokeh.htm
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/columns/sm-04-04-04.shtml

The first is quite technical, the second is more chatty, the third is well illustrated.

The debate is about the quality of the blur image – if you think about it, the majority of any image is actually out-of-focus. And if you work a lot with blur – in portraiture, weddings, wild-life – its quality matters a lot.

Depth of feeling

It was the great humanist and photographer Eugene Smith who asked “What use is having a great depth of field, if there is not an adequate depth of feeling?”

He has a point: some photographs are so perfectly sharp from corner to corner and beautifully lit, yet rather easily forgotten. For such a great photographer who taught us just about every trick in the photojournalist’s book, Smith is disappointingly represented on the Web.

But check out:
http://www.photo-seminars.com/Fame/eugesmith.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Eugene_Smith
www.magnumphotos.com

Search for Eugene Smith on the Magnum website which has high-quality images.