Photography Tips

High Contrast Red Filter turns blue sky to night in Silver Efex Pro

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Signature Place in downtown St. Petersburg Florida - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/11 ISO 200 1/320th with high contrast red filter in Silver Efex Pro appliedWhen teaching photography at night I often tell my DSLR photography lessons students that with long exposures you can turn night into day.  Well, with a high contrast red filter, you can do the harder reverse of that, which would be turning day into night!  It is actually not hard if you have the awesome Silver Efex Pro plugin, which I have been raving about for years.  

The Nik Silver Efex Pro interface with high contrast red filter applied to the imageFirst I went through my normal digital photo editing workflow on this architecture shot of Signature St. Petersburg.  I made a duplicate and sent it into Silver Efex Pro.  From there all that needed to be done to change the color image to black & white and the blue sky into a night one was to click on the high contrast red filter preset.  No mess, no fuss.

Photography Tip - Which Aperture with which lens?

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When I put a lens on my DSLR, I already have an idea of which aperture I want to use because I know which aperture is usually best for that particular lens.  I may of course fine tune that aperture, or I may be shooting an unusual subject matter for that lens, but in general I start at these apertures for these lenses.

RECOMMENDED STARTING APERTURES FOR LENSES

  • 18-50mm lens --> f/11
  • 70-200mm lens --> f/5.6
  • 50mm lens --> f/2.8

So if you are looking for a good default aperture to start shooting with when using a particular lens, the apertures above are what I recommend.  

Default Indoor DSLR Camera Settings with external flash f/5.6 ISO 800 1/60th

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Continuing my default DSLR camera settings series, in the above shot you can see the settings that I set my Nikon to as soon as I step indoors anywhere.  I am often asked by people, what settings should I use for such and such a situation, and it is always hard to tell them because slight variations in light, subject, etc. can have a big effect.  However, in my experience I pretty much always use these settings along with my external flash on my DSLR in any indoor shooting environment:

aperture:  f/5.6

shutter speed:  1/60th

ISO:  800

For the settings on your hotshoe mounted external flash, most of the time I find a manual power setting of 1/4th is good for lighting the intended subject and allowing the speedlight to recycle fast enough for successive shots.

As you can see the first shot was in a dark ballroom, and this shot is in a fairly well lit office, yet I used the same settings.  These default indoor settings with an external flash will not light up a large room, but will still expose the subject well (the dancers) and if the room does have good lighting and is not too large, the default indoor settings can light up both the subjects and the background.

So the next time you are shooting indoors, give these settings a try and you should be very happy with the results!

Photography Tip - Rick Sammon's Digital Photography Secrets book

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I had a chance earlier this year to attend a Rick Sammon photography lecture in person, and even meet him for a few minutes.  As he was speaking, I realized just how much of his photography philosophy I had adopted myself and put into practice.  One great way to begin to establish a photography philosophy of your own is by reading Rick's book, DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY SECRETS.  I got my own copy autographed by him at the lecture (see here)!  

Each page has one of his photographs and a very useful and practical photography tip.  Rick travels the world with his camera so the variety of photographs is outstanding.  I highly recommend reading his book in addition to going out and shooting on your own.  In fact, read one of his tips, then go out and try it yourself!

Default Sunny Day DSLR Camera Settings f/11 1/320th lowest ISO

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My DSLR photography students often ask me what settings should I use?  Well, that is a very hard question to answer as there are any number of factors that would determine how one would set the five settings necessary to produce a well exposed and sharp shot.  So for this photography tip I offer my default sunny day settings.  If it is a sunny day, before I leave the house I would set my DSLR to the following in general:

aperture:  f/11

shutter speed:  1/320th

ISO:  (lowest for your camera)

Of course there are factors like what lens you are using, what type of subject, etc., etc., but if you are looking to make a shot like the one above on a nice sunny, Florida day, try starting with the default settings above.

1/60th sec minimum shutter speed for handholding still shots - photography tip

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Handholding 1/60th of a second is the minimum I feel safe with and only when using a focal length 50mm or shorter -photo made with an iPhone 5When a shot comes out blurry, the usual culprit is shutter speed.  Therefore, it is critical to make sure you are using a minimum shutter speed that you can handhold reliably.  For me, that is 1/60th of a second.  There are many conditions that apply to this, but basically if you are using an 18-50mm lens, photographing a still subject, not using a tripod and not using a flash, then the minimum shutter speed you should set on your DSLR is 1/60th of a second.  This is also why shooting in manual mode is a great help as you will purposefully set your shutter speed to what you know is the minimum (1/60th).  If you shoot in aperture priority mode, the camera may set a shutter speed below that resulting in a blurry shot.

  • 1/60th of a second minimum for any still subject shot

Some people may be able to reliably handhold a slower shutter speed, and yes sometimes I do attempt it myself, but I know that for sure 1/60th with a focal length 50mm or under and a still subject will produce a sharp image.  So if your still subject photographs are coming out blurry, set your shutter speed to 1/60th minimum, use good shooting technique and you will be able to produce a sharp photograph.  

Focus Mode AF-S or AF-C photography tip

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One of the five things you need to know how to set correctly to make a well exposed and sharp shot in any given shooting conditions is focus mode.  Fortunately, focus mode is by far the easiest of those five settings to set as there are only two choices (disregarding manual focus mode):

  • AF-S (One Shot - Canon) for still subjects
  • AF-C (Ai Servo - Canon) for moving subjects

That is all there is to choosing which focus mode to use.  Is the subject moving or not?  In the above example the chainlocked bike certainly is not moving so I used AF-S to shoot it.  In the other example the triathlon cyclist was definitely moving, and fast, so I used AF-C.  

Most DSLRs offer a third, and useless, kind of auto auto-focus setting that you should just pretend does not even exist!

So there is no reason to ever make a focus mode mistake if you can just remember AF-S (think "S" for still subjects") and AF-C (think "C" for continuous, moving subjects).  No matter what you make a photograph of, moving or still, now you know which focus mode to use!