Wedding Photoshoot!

Been busy these few weeks. Got myself Canon EFS 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 IS lens (yes, IS! the kit lens for the new 40d!) and a brand new Speedlight 580EX (yes, the first version, cheaper by two hundred bucks). Those are part of my preparation for a wedding photo shoot for my friend.

Wait for my updates!

Silhouette Shootings

Silhouette is one classic method to get an artistic touch to your pictures. You may use it for book cover, or simply framed it big and hang it on your living room. I went for a short trip in Kuala Perlis, Kedah with my model (my younger brother) and there was a nice coastal line facing the sun set. We were there just in time.

Getting nice silhouette shots is easy. Just drop your exposure low enough to get the nice contrasting background, the sun reflection on the surface of the sea and put your subject in between you and the sun. Walla!



Sometimes, the sky does not have the tone that you really like to have. It could be very dull. For example, this shot below...




What you can do is adjust the color level using your photo editor program. Some program may have auto level option. Simply click it and the photo will be much better.



And here is the result...



If you like, you can add more gradient on the sky to make the image looks deeper and more natural. First, add another layer to your photo...



Then select a gradient option with transparency mode. Choose gradient type depending on your photo. Adjust the opacity as you wish. For this one, I used linear type...



Put up the gradient on top of your photo, adjust it accordingly. You can even move it up and down by pressing Ctrl button while clicking and dragging it up and down with you mouse.

And finally...


One more photo from me below.

How to Shoot on a Hot Sunny Day?

Walking around and taking pictures in bright day light is not an easy task for a beginner like me. You may get too much exposure or you may end up getting too little exposure. Went to Masjid Zahir in the city of Alor Setar in Malaysia for a short shoot out. Had about as much as half an hour as I have other businesses in this city.

At the side of the majestic mosque, under the shadow...


Here's the histogram...


As you can see, the sky is too bright and the building is too dark under the shadow, and this is tally with the histogram. For those who do not know, histogram is the graphical interpretation of an image on how much data you have with respect to the brightness level. Left is darker, and right is brighter. Most of the time, a digital camera works best if the information lies between the two extremes.

What to do in this situation? I tried using the built in flash. It didn't work.

Well, some old rule says that the sun must be on your shoulder, that is, the sun must alway be behind the camera. I tested it out. See below...



Nicely exposed, with no extreme dark or extreme bright. Here's the histogram...



Below are few more shots using the rules...


From the other side...


This one I shot later from the window of a tall building where I went after that. A lot of adjustment since I shot through tinted window glass. Got two shots and I quickly kept my camera. Lucky I didn't get kicked out by the security, hehehe. Automatic setting (panoramic) of course. A nice view of Masjid Zahir from above...




On the first picture, by the time I put up this entry, I already know the answer. I need an external flash to get a correctly exposed photo under that kind of condition. A Canon Speedlite 580EX maybe? Why external? I'll discuss about it next time.

F number, Aperture, Compact Digital versus SLR Camera

I have had a Canon A540. A compact digital camera with widest aperture at F2.6. That was the reason I bought it anyway. During the 10 months period of using it, I tried and tried and tried taking close up picture (so called macro on the camera setting) at the widest aperture but I just couldn't get nice blurry background. I thought I need wider than that to get it there. But after a lot of close up shots with my SLR plus my 50mm lens set at F3.5, I realized that I can get much better blurred background than at F2.8 with my compact.

In fact, at F2.8, the depth of field is so shallow that I got too much blurred area!

F2.8 with my SLR....
.

F2.6 with my compact....

On top is F2.8 with my SLR while below is at F2.6 with my A540. See the difference?

While the aperture rating is almost the same, the depth of field is entirely different. Why? Back to the basic, the lens size on a compact is very small, the size of a peanut, while the lens size of an SLR, are much bigger. Hence the amount of light entering the sensor is more in SLR than a compact. Reason is, the sensor size is much much smaller on a compact hence the lens size.

The conclusion is, the aperture rating between an SLR and a Compact by any mean is not the same. So one should not expect to get equivalent result at the same F number to an SLR by using a compact.

It doesn't matter whether you have the top notch compact digital camera which may be more expensive than an entry level SLR. As long as you lens is small, your sensor is small, you just can't get the same result.

Hope this'll help!

More from my Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 lens + 4x Hoya filter

More pictures from my Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 lens plus my lovely 4x magnifying Hoya filter. All these shots were taken in my lovely garden. Enjoy!

white... purity?


hibiscus... close look

another shot... further out

purple.. about 20mm in diameter

purple flower...

filament?

alone...

Canon 50mm F/1.8 EF prime lense

Bought myself a prime lens. Cheap. Dirt cheap. Suitable for me of course! With widest aperture set at 1.8, you can easily get a nice bokeh effect. You might ask me: "What the heck is bokeh?" Well, a picture tells a thousand stories. See above, a picture of my cute little model with bokeh effect.

Simply put, bokeh is a method of highlighting your subject to the viewers attention by blurring everything else. With wide aperture of a prime lens, this is kinda easy!

Below is another shot of bokeh effect. This time, it is a close up. I like close up. The red hibiscus is sharply in focus while the green background is heavily blurred. Nice.....

Here's another shot with dark background. Not so much of a bokeh, but more towards highlighting via dark background, which is another method to get your subject to viewers' attention. Surreal isn't it?

Above two flowery images are somehow taken with a little bit tweak. I used a close up +4 magnification Hoya filter on my 50mm lens. Recommended by my dealer. Bought is very cheap. In another word, I have myself a macro lens by just adding up a cheap filter. Nice huh?

Another close up for you below:

I love the above shot. A blend of white and green makes it soothing to look at.

So, if you like close up and you don't have budget for more expensive lens, go for a cheap 50mm lens with a magnifying filter. You get it cheap, and you won't go wrong.

Me, My Camera, My Life. A Beginner's Journey.

I love photography! My first camera was a 3.2MP Canon Powershot A400 and I took lots of nice picture with it and most of them... outdoors. I bought it just before my trip to Taiwan on October 2004 for a conference and I sold it for less than half the price on October last year, that is 2006. All the outdoors pictures are very nice, the colors saturates naturally and enough clarity that my holiday trips becomes very nice in frames. But the indoors were horrible! I can't get enough light to have nice images. Turn on the flash, the pictures becomes very bright on the subjects and very dark on the background.

I replaced it with a Nikon Coolpix L6 after a short visit to a local dealer. Compared it head to head with a Sony DSC S500 and I chose the Nikon as it gives me a more natural colors. Got it back home and was amazed on what this little thing can do versus the old A400. It got all the 'scene style' setting required for my indoor shootings and its movie mode captures nice clip of my kids. However, I'm still not satisfied. I want to be able to control the setting my way! With this camera, I can't set the shutter speed, the aperture as I like. And even though my problem with A400 flash range resolved, I still get blurry pictures indoors!

And I forked myself some more money and bought a Canon A540, a compact with a lot of manual controls in less than a month after the Nikon! This thing can do aperture priority mode, shutter priority mode and manual setting mode!

At the same time, a friend of mine Johann sent me a link to his webpage, showing off the output of his new hobby. From there a lot more links to his friends website sharing the same hobby opens up a new direction to me, Digital SLR! All the picture they posted are very nice and very tempting. This is very very interesting! Bouquet, layering, composition, and all of the new jargon suddenly fills up my brain. I said to myself.... I gonna love this!

I went out with Johann and his photog friends for few outings with my A540. Took a lot of nice pics and hell, even though my composition is nice, I have lots of limitation. Imagine, a bunch of guys with SLR and one of them is using a silver compact.

My F number can go widest at 2.8 and smallest at 8. I can't get nice bokeh and I can't make it small enough to get the waterfalls silky effect. And my pics have a lot of noise on the sky, clouds and very much lacking in depth and details as compared to their SLRs output. Of course... their cameras are few folds more expensive than mine. And I feel damn stupid to buy the second compact as I can get an SLR with the money I just paid for the two cameras.

To the height of my frustrations, I went to a seaside holiday with my family, took sunrise shots while my wife and kids still in bed and it turned out to be 'not so nice'....

And here I am, nearly a year later, a proud owner of a Canon 350D, one generation older than the current 400D. Got it new at two third the price of the 400D. Good bargain I believe! Of course, my equipment is not on par with 400D or the mid range, just released 40D with a lot of flexible and configurable settings, but in terms of picture clarity and ease of use, for a limited budget newbie like me, its more than enough!

Join me exploring the world of digital SLR photography, as a beginner! With budget in mind!