Tag Archives: Technique

Equipment, Technique

My Backpacking Photography Article

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Since someone recently asked about the subject, I thought I’d post a link to my article on backpacking photography – equipment, how to carry it, some techniques, and so forth.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer 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.

Technique

Exposure Blending – A Quick Overview

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(This is a slightly modified version of something I wrote as part of a discussion on Google+)

The author of the post that I read before writing this mentions two alternatives for dealing with dynamic range issues in landscape scenes – the use of graduated neutral density (GND) filters or the use of a similarly-named post process technique in Lightroom. (Similar processes are available in other software including Photoshop/ACR.) Another alternative is to use HDR (High Dynamic Range) techniques that allow computer algorithms to combine source images in ways that are not the same as what I describe in this post. I almost always use a different approach, exposure blending, and I’d like to share a few ideas on this topic.

When the scene contains an extremely large dynamic range – a common situation in landscape photography – it is possible to end up with shadow areas that are nearly black and devoid of detail, along with bright areas that are blown out and also completely lack detail. (The latter is especially an issue with digital capture in which overexposed areas can simply become pure white. Film failed more gracefully in this situation.)

One traditional method for dealing with such scenes is to attach various types of graduated neutral density (GND) filters to the front of the lens. These filters include a clear area and an area darkened by a few stops. A typical use might be to position the dark portion over the sky and the clear section over a darker foreground, effectively reducing the dynamic range of the light reaching the sensor by reducing only the brightness of the sky. With film, especially positive transparency film, this was just about the only realistic way to handle the situation in many cases.

A second method is to make a single exposure and use features in Photoshop/ACR, Lightroom, or other software to simulate the effect of the GND, lightening (or darkening) a portion of the photograph. This can often help quite a bit when it comes to balancing out dark and light areas in the image, and the fact is that most savvy landscape photographers do this sort of thing and more in post. But it has its limits. For example, darkening a bright area cannot put detail back in blown out areas, and lightening underexposed shadows can lead to problems with noise and posterization. The bottom line is that this technique works well when the overall range 0f brightness in the scene does not exceed the dynamic range of the camera – here it may be used to adjust the relative levels of the areas – but it does not work well when the dynamic range is actually too great for a single normal exposure.

There is a third method, sometimes called exposure blending, that can often be used when making the exposure. The idea is to make more than one exposure, with each exposure optimized for different parts of the scene by varying shutter speed, and then selectively blend the two exposures during post-production.* Two exposures are sufficient in almost all cases, with one for the shadow detail and the other for highlight detail – though in very complex or wide dynamic range situations more exposures can be used. Continue reading Exposure Blending – A Quick Overview →

Commentary, Ideas, Photography and Music

Music and Photography: Technique and Interpretation

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(I accidentally published this draft post earlier today while doing some site maintenance. Shortly afterwards a friend contacted me to say that he had composed a response… only to find that the article had disappeared when he finished writing. My apology! Even though the article is not perhaps final – for example, the title is not quite right for the content – I have resurrected it. I intend this to be part of a longer series of posts.)

There have been and are quite a few photographers who also have backgrounds in music, and in quite a few cases these individuals could have had – or actually did! – have careers in both fields. The story of Ansel Adams supposedly making a choice between being a photographer or a pianist is well-known, and there are plenty of other examples. I don’t presume to put myself in the same category as Adams, but I’m also one of these people.

When I talk with other photographers who either share this dual background or who are aware of the number of other photographers who do, the conversation sometimes turns to the question of why this is the case. What points of contact are there between the practice of music and the practice of photography? The differences seem to me to be quite obvious. Clearly one medium deals primarily with sound and the other with visual images. In addition – and I think this is even more significant – music uses the element of time in a way that photography rarely can.  Photographers almost never tell you in what order you must view photographs – though they may suggest – nor do they insist that you move on to the next image after some specified interval of time. While the photographer may intend for you to follow a particular path through some images, there is no way to ensure that you do… and you probably don’t! But the musical composer relies completely on controlling the flow of events in time. It is emphatically not OK to switch sections of a piece and so forth.

So, what is similar?

I think that there are several points of contact between music and photography. I have no illusion that I can say everything there is to say about this in one post, so let me start with a single very basic idea having to do with the relationship between technique and interpretation or expression. Continue reading Music and Photography: Technique and Interpretation →

Commentary, Equipment, Technique, Tests

“My Photos Are Soft!”

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So, you have a camera or lens that you think is not as sharp as it should be. If you are already expert at these things, what follows is not for you – you already know how to analyze the problem, you can anticipate possible causes, and you know some of the pitfalls of looking at the issue in unrealistic ways. But if you aren’t certain about how to deal with the issue, perhaps the following might help… so feel free to read on.

Perhaps you just got a new lens or a new camera and you don’t think it is performing as you expected. Or perhaps you have long suspected a problem with your equipment. On the other hand, maybe some gear that you have used with confidence for a while seems to not work as well as you recall it working in the past. It can be tempting to blame the equipment – and in some cases you may be correct – but it is a very good idea to first try to analyze and understand the problem and look for other possible causes… and solutions.

It is critical that you try to control the variables that might give rise to the issue, and then to try to a) determine if the problem is real, and b) figure out specifically what might be the cause. The range of possible causes is larger than you might imagine: problems with the camera’s autofocus (AF) system, an out of adjustment or “weak” lens, less than optimal choice of lens settings, issues with camera stability, insufficient care with the use of AF, using the wrong AF settings, aperture choices, shutter speed choices, subject motion, and more. While a real equipment problem is a possibility, it is probably at least as likely that the problem lies elsewhere. Fortunately there are ways to wade through this minefield and develop some rational understanding of what is going on.

What follows is a sort of ad hoc description of how I might approach this. It is not meant to be the only way to deal with such issues, it leaves out some possibilities, and the sequence could be changed around in some ways. Continue reading “My Photos Are Soft!” →