Tag Archives: histogram

Commentary

Why I like DSLR Live View Shooting

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(Notes: Article slightly updated in February 2015. Original article title was “Canon EOS 5D Mark II: Why I like ‘live view’.” These days the Canon 5DII is no longer my primary camera, but the points remain much the same.)

It took me a while, but I eventually came to rely on live view a lot in my photography.

Back when I acquired a Canon EOS 5D Mark II I assumed that the main improvement over my previous camera would come from the 21 megapixel sensor — the previous camera had only 12 MP. Other features of the updated version of the Canon 5D series seemed like they would either be minor improvements or perhaps not be of any use to me at all. I lumped the “live view” feature of the camera into the latter category. I understood that it would permit me to view the scene “live” on the rear screen, but I failed to see any big advantage over looking through the viewfinder, and much of what I had heard suggested that there would be serious downsides to the feature.

Consequently, it wasn’t until after I had the camera for some time that I actually thought to try out live view, which locks up the mirror and shows a video version of the live image on the rear display. At first the feature seemed very counterintuitive, since I was completely used to looking at the traditional kind of “live” view – the one seen through the viewfinder. On top of this, with live view enabled the normal autofocus system is turned off – or, more correctly, works in a very different way. However, once I did start to use live view I realized that it is one of the most significant and useful features of the Canon 5D Mark II for certain types of photography. How is it useful? Here is a list:

  1. Live histogram – You can display a live histogram on the rear screen in live view. This histogram display updates instantaneously as the scene changes or as you make exposure adjustments. Rather than making an exposure, checking the histogram, making adjustments, and then shooting again – you can simply get it right the first time.
  2. Manual focus – In many cases live view provides the very best method for achieving accurate manual focus. While you can manually focus on the ground glass of the normal viewfinder, really critical manual focus is very difficult using that approach. However, with live view you can zoom in to 5X or 10X or higher magnification and focus precisely on any point in the frame by moving the portion of the image shown in the magnified view. This is like having a 10x loupe built into the camera. There are more advantages related to manual focusing, but I’ll break them out separately below.
  3. Accurate Depth of Field – Determining what will and will not be sharp enough at a given aperture has always involved a bit of guesswork on a DSLR. You can press the Depth of Field (DOF) Preview button and try to check this visually, but this is even more difficult than trying to achieve accurate manual focus via the viewfinder. When you press the DOF Preview button the optical viewfinder becomes dark, making it difficult or impossible to accurately assess DOF. However, live view automatically adjusts the display brightness when you press the DOF preview button – so you can see the image as well at f/16 as you can at f/1.4. Not only that, but you can again use the 5X or 10X or higher magnification on any part of the scene to check focus of any area of the composition with great accuracy.
  4. Night photography – It was while doing night photography that I first gave live view a serious try. I was shooting some industrial subjects under full moon and artificial light and trying to focus on the side of a dimly lit building without much luck. AF could not acquire focus, and in the darkness I couldn’t see enough detail to focus manually through the viewfinder. However, with live view — keeping in mind that the camera adjusts the image brightness on the screen — my very dark subject was light enough that I could manage to focus manually and get a sharp image.
  5. Neutral density filters – I sometimes use a 9-stop neutral density (ND) filter in order to make rather long daytime exposures. The 9-stop ND is so dark that you cannot really even see your scene through it and composing and focusing are impossible. My previous method of operation was to compose the scene and focus first, switch off the AF feature, attach the ND, and then shoot “blind.” However, if I needed to change the composition or adjust focus I would need to remove the ND filter again and repeat the laborious process. I quickly discovered that the live view can display a useful image even with this filter attached, permitting changes in composition, manual focus, and even depth of field checks while the filter remains in place.
  6. Optional display grid – Several different electronic grids may optionally be superimposed on the live view display. I often switch on the  3 x 3 (three horizontal and three vertical lines) grid to check that the horizon is level or that vertical lines are actually vertical.
  7. Awkward camera positions – As long as you can still see the LCD, you can place your camera in positions that would not work if you had to compose through the viewfinder and would otherwise have to “shoot blind” or miss the shot. I’ve found it useful for some wildflower shots where the camera had to be down low among the plants. In addition, I can shoot with the camera on the tripod raised well above eye height with live view – this has allowed me to, for example, shoot over the tops of tall fences or simply get a higher perspective.
  8. Tilt/Shift lenses – Although I’m not a tilt/shift lens user, several photographers (see below for the link to the first of them) pointed out that live view greatly improves the usability of T/S lenses and makes it easier to achieve critical focus.
  9. Shooting in windy conditions – Here’s a new and unexpected use of live view that I discovered in January 2011 when shooting with a 400mm lens in windy conditions. In such conditions I’ll often wait until  the wind have briefly calms enough to get a sharp image, but it can still be a bit of a guess. However, if I activate live view and use the 10x magnification I can directly see the effect of the wind on the image and then simply hit the remote release button when I see the vibration stop in the display.
  10. Elimination of mirror and shutter vibration – Because today we push small original images from cropped sensor or full frame sensor DSLRs to greater and greater print sizes, all factors that affect potential image sharpness become more critical. When it comes to minimizing mechanical vibration within the camera, live view is the current best solution. Because the mirror is already raised so that the image from the sensor is visible while focusing and composing, “mirror slap” vibration is completely eliminated. In addition, by selected an electronic first curtain option, the shot can be initiated without motion from the shutter curtain. According to tests I’ve seen and judging by my own experiments, when you are doing critical work from the tripod this can materially help when it comes to eliminating blur from camera motion.
  11. Camera Sound – In some situations the sound of a DSLR is objectionably loud, both from the slap of the mirror rising and falling and from the physical motion of the shutter curtain. On at least some cameras with live view, there is a first and second electronic curtain setting – called mode 2 on my Canon DSLR – that starts and ends the exposure electronically rather than flapping the shutter curtain across the sensor. It also leaves the camera in live view mode at the end of the exposure, rather than flipping the mirror back down. This significantly reduced – though doesn’t eliminate – the volume of sound from the camera, so it can be useful in certain situations where the shutter/mirror sound might otherwise be too loud.

This list could be even longer, but I’ll stop here for now. Are there any downsides to using live view? In some situations there are, so live view is not called for in every photograph.

  1. Battery life – The use of live view significantly reduces the number of frames you can expose before your battery runs out of power. I have made 400-500+ photographs on one battery with the 5D II without live view and not run the battery down to the point that I would think about switching. However, with heavy live view use on a few occasions I got only a few more than 200 shots. I limit my use of live view in situations where battery life is an issue, such as when I go on long backpacking trips. (Hint: Rather than leaving the camera in this battery-draining mode, sometimes it pays to focus and compose in live view, then switch back to the “normal” mode with mirror lock-up enabled to wait for the right moment to make the exposure.)
  2. Active subjects – While live view is great for relatively static subjects (such as architecture and landscapes, for example) it is far less suited to shooting active subjects. For those I’ll stick to using the through-the-lens viewfinder.
  3. Portraits – While you certainly could shoot portraits in live view, I think that it is sometimes better to either peer through the pentaprism viewfinder at the almost-real view seen there or, better yet in some cases, step back from the viewfinder/camera and just look right at your subjects. (Update: Someone with far more portrait experience than I have recently made a very good a point about getting away from the viewfinder and communicating directly with your subject – though you could do that independent of Live View.)
  4. Autofocus – Autofocus is possible in live view, but either of the options for AF are a bit clunky. (They are improving as of this most recent update.) I virtually never use live view with AF, but almost always use it with manual focus.

When I first wrote this article, soon after beginning to use live view, I wrote, “In the end, although I shoot more often without live view than with it, for certain types of photography I now find it indispensable , including much urban and natural landscape work, night photography, and when working with neutral density filters.” Much of that sentence still stands, but the truth is that in my photography I now use live view most of the time.

UPDATES:

Todd Klassy points out that live view is very powerful for those who shoot with tilt/shift lenses.

Regarding my point about portraits, someone with far more portrait experience than I have recently made a very good a point about getting away from the viewfinder and communicating directly with your subject – though you could do that independent of Live View.

A “thank you” to 1001 Noisy Cameras 5DMKII blog for the link.

(If this post has helped you make a purchase decision, please consider making your purchase by clicking an affiliate link on this web site – it helps support the blog, and does so at no cost to you. Thanks!)

© Copyright 2015 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Commentary, Technique

Some Thoughts on Black and White Conversion in Photoshop

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Every so often you run across an article that offers some unfortunate advice on an important subject – perhaps it offers outdated advice or suggests a less effective technique. I saw such an article today on methods for converting color digital images to black and white in Photoshop. Sometimes seeing such an article encourages me to write something about the same topic as a counterpoint – and that is what led to this post.

I cannot claim to be the master of this conversion process, and I recognize that there are several ways to do it that are both effective and different that what I’ll describe. In addition, this will be more or less an overview rather than a detailed tuturial. IN any case, I want to offer some ideas that might be a bit more contemporary, flexible, and powerful than those I read about in that article. Continue reading Some Thoughts on Black and White Conversion in Photoshop →

Technique

Hints for Night Photography

19 Comments

(Revisions: April 21, 2017; March 8, 2018; December 18, 2018 July; July 2019.)

Building with Green Windows, Moonlight
Building with Green Windows, Moonlight

A reader  wrote and asked how I determine exposure times for night photography, and I decided my answer so that others can see it. Once I started writing, I decided to go ahead and share more basic techniques that can be very useful for night photography, too — including things like focus, etc. This isn’t a comprehensive coverage of the subject, but it does touch on a few key ideas.

First, for information about the techniques of nocturnal photography (and for some great examples of the photographic results and for workshop opportunities) I recommend a visit to the web site of The Nocturnes, the San Francisco Bay Area night photography group more or less run by Tim Baskerville. I’ve joined them on many night photography shoots, and the resources at their web site provide a ton of basic information that will save you many frustrating nights of trial and error. (I’m a member of a related group, Studio Nocturne SF, a collective of photographers who do night photography and exhibit as a group.)

Since so much of the basic information is available there, I’ll just add a few techniques and ideas that I find useful, especially for shooting with DSLRs. Here they are, in no particular order.

Consider using your camera’s long exposure noise reduction system — On my Canon DSLRs this setting causes the camera to make a second “dark frame” exposure following your “real” exposure. You might be tempted to forego this option since it doubles the time required for each exposure – your 60 second exposure will be followed by a 60 second dark frame exposure, while you stand there and twiddle your thumbs. (Or, do what I do – start composing your next shot.) DSLRs are subject to increased noise and “hot pixels” with very long exposures, but the dark frame provides the camera’s software with a reference that contains only the noise and hot pixels, and it can use this to map out (or subtract) the noise, etc from the image.

Support Columns, Purple and Green Wall
Support Columns, Purple and Green Wall

(Experiment with your own camera to discover the exposure lengths that benefit from the use of this setting. Modern digital cameras are less susceptible to noise issues than these cameras used to be. Some of the most recent digital cameras will not really need to use this feature much, if at all.)

Rely on your histogram to check exposure — do not rely on how the shot looks in the display. If the shot looks like what you see at night, in most cases it will be way underexposed — and, as a result, you’ll have a very noisy image and you may end up with artifacts like noise and banding. Instead, use an exposure that produces a balanced histogram curve — or, “expose to the right,” as many of us like to say. Your exposure may look brighter than the scene looks in person, but you can darken things in post and thus reduce visible noise even further. With many subjects, a well-exposed night photograph will look just as bright as one made in daylight.

Shoot wide open at high ISO to calculate basic exposure – If you have a f/1.4 lens and can set your camera to ISO 3200 or higher, do so. Let your camera make an automatic exposure and use that as a starting point. For example, if you get a decent (though noisy and otherwise awful looking) exposure at ISO3200, f/1.4, and 1 second you can work backwards from there to get a better exposure. Switching back to ISO 100 means that you need 5 stops more light, so your exposure time will go from 1 second to 32 seconds. (Count 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32.) Changing your aperture back to a more reasonable f/8 means another 5 stops or about a 17 minute (!) exposure – if my quick calculations are correct. (Update: I understand that if you can do this at ISO 6400 you can do a straight conversion from seconds to minutes – e.g. if the exposure at some aperture is 1 second at ISO 6400 the claim is that it will be 1 minute at ISO 100 at that same aperture.)

Man in White, Mosco Street
Man in White, Mosco Street

Apertures and ISOs that work in the daytime are good starting points for long exposure night photography — If f/8 at ISO 100 is your preference for daytime landscapes, then there is a good chance that these will be about right for night time landscapes as well. It just takes longer — sometimes a lot longer. If you are shooting a subject that would use larger apertures and smaller DOF in the daytime, you can probably use similar apertures at night. (This advice is mostly intended for those shooting from the tripod. When shooting handheld in very low light you may have no choice but to use a large aperture and a higher ISO. Fortunately today’s cameras are very good performer at higher ISO values, and some post-processing noise-reduction will usually produce a good image.)

Find something to focus on — Getting good focus stymies many night photographers. There are several approaches that you can try, and the right choice will vary depending on the shot.

  • If there is a relatively bright spot in your composition – perhaps a light bulb, a reflection, the moon, etc. — place an autofocus point right on top of it and see if it will acquire focus. Then switch AF off and recompose the shot if necessary.
  • Sometimes there is nothing in the scene that will provide enough light/contrast for autofocus to work. Look around for something outside of your composition that is about the same distance away — focus on that, switch AF off, and recompose.
  • Temporarily place a light in the scene — a bright flashlight or your smartphone will work  — and focus on it.
  • You may be able to create a usable focus point by shining a laser pointer beam into the scene and focusing on it. Sometimes a bright enough handheld light or flashlight will be enough.
  • If you have one “must work” shot to make and plenty of time, you could set up the shot and determine focus during the daylight and leave the camera in position for your night exposure. (A potential focus shift due to temperature changes is real but likely inconsequential.)
  • Manual focus may be a possibility – either by trying to get a point light source such as a bright star (or your laser pointer, or a light placed in the scene, etc.) to focus manually through the viewfinder or by relying on the distance scale on the lens barrel.
  • Since perfect focus may be more elusive at night you have another reason to consider smaller apertures with their greater depth of field — they are a bit more forgiving of less-than-absolutely-perfect focus.
  • If your camera has a “live view” feature, you may be able to manually focus in light light levels at which neither AF nor traditional manual focusing will work – highly recommend for night photography work! See the exposure simulation feature on your camera.

With very long exposures, precise exposure time is less critical than you think — When shooting in the daytime very small changes in absolute exposure time make a bit difference. If you shoot at 1/100 second, increasing the exposure time to 1/50 second doubles the exposure. But at night things are a bit looser. If you are making a 6 minute exposure, you’d have to be off by six minutes to double the exposure or by three minutes to cut it in half. With that in mind, a few seconds hardly matter at all. I don’t bother with automated timers. I just count seconds (or chimpanzees, or hippopotamuses, or whatever…) or use my watch. That said, if you do have a timer you can probably let your mind wander a bit more while you enjoy your nighttime surroundings during the long exposure.

Daytime exposure tricks often work just as well at night — When photographing high dynamic range scenes during the day I may make two exposures — one for shadows and one for highlights — and use masks to combine them in post. The same situation often arises at night, especially if you have a shot that includes dark areas and bright artificial light sources. You may need to make one exposure that gets some detail from the shadows and a second that avoids blowing out the bright light sources.

Lens hoods are extra important with night photography — That may seem completely counter-intuitive, but when shooting at night you often have light coming from many more directions than when you shoot in sunlight, and the potential for flare increases. (You also may be a bit more likely to bump your lens into something, and the hood offers some physical protection.)

Asian Styles
People in front of a San Francisco storefront at night

Try shooting handheld — While most night photography is going to require a tripod, modern digital cameras often work effectively enough at high ISOs that you can shoot many subjects without a tripod. For example, I now do almost all of my urban night photography handheld, shooting with relatively large aperture prime lens at ISO1600-6400 or even higher.

Try a small mirrorless camera — For some kinds of night photography, such as my night street photography, a small digital camera can be ideal. For one thing, the small cameras are often unobtrusive and less likely to draw attention to you. Many of them work very well at high ISO settings, and all ow you to shoot handheld in typical urban environments. Their electronic displays can often give you a usable view of your scene even in extremely low light.

That’s a quick list. Hope you find it useful! Have a question or something to add? Leave a comment below!

(By the way some of my night photography is found here and other posts related to night photography are on this web site.)

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.