Hello everyone!  Beckie here again, bringing you a little bit o’ photography goodness today :)  I figure it’s time we tackle that photography topic that makes even seasoned photographers shake in their boots…er, I mean high heels…ISO!

A long, long time ago on the blog I did a very basic primer on photography and understanding how ISO, Shutter Speed, and aperture (that f number) work together to capture light to expose an image.  The basic idea is that you want to set those three variables in such a way that your camera meter reads “0″, or it’s perfectly centered between positive (too much light), and negative (not enough light).

ISO is something that many beginning photographers don’t like to utilize in high ranges because either a) they’ve tried a high ISO photo and it didn’t turn out well (lots of noise), or b) they’ve heard from people not to use higher ISOs because their photo will be noisy!  Well, let’s demystify and debunk some of that today!

What I’ve learned about ISO:

1.  It is true that as you increase ISO, you begin to add “noise” to a photo.  How much noise is added and when the noise is introduced (at what ISO range) is somewhat camera dependent.  However, there are things you can do to mitigate noise!

2.  Not all noise is bad.  Seriously.  It’s far better to CAPTURE the moment at a high ISO than to not capture the moment for fear of an imperfect image.  Heck, all the photos from my childhood are either orange, polariods, or glued down into an album that has a plastic cover stuck to it.  So really, put it into perspective – is a tiny bit of noise in an image going to ruin it for future generations?  um…nope.

3.  There are steps you can take to make the noise as minimal as possible.  Let’s look at some of them next!

But first…what is noise?

That, my friends, is noise.  This is a section of a really crappy photo, one shot at a pretty high ISO (ISO3200) that I under-exposed on purpose to exaggerate the noise. I also picked the worst part of the entire image to show you because you can see both types of noise…regular old noise (grainy chunky pixels that shouldn’t be there) and color noise  (colors that don’t belong there – the flecks of pinks, greens, reds, etc that you see around this sample).

Typically you’ll get regular old noise in whiter, lighter portions of an image with the addition of color noise in the darker, shadowed areas.  In this particular example, because it’s that bad, there’s also color noise over the white portion as well.

So…what can you do to prevent un-necessary noise??

NO MATTER WHAT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, SHOULD YOU UNDER-EXPOSE THE PHOTO.

That’s pretty much it :)

In fact, I’d go so far as to say that you actually should learn that you often have to over expose an image to capture it correctly. Slight over exposure is very easy to fix in editing software with simple sliders in  ACR, Lightroom, even Photoshop (here’s a post that covers basic adjustments in ACR).  And over exposing minimizes noise.

Another key reason why you need to over expose in many cases is that, well, the camera meter can be wrong. Well, it’s basically a computer so it’s never really wrong, but it can definitely tell you that something is “right” when it really isn’t.  There are two main reasons this happens:

1. Your metering mode.  I always shoot in spot meter mode because it takes a small, very specific portion of the image into consideration when it determines whether or not there is sufficient light.  Canon cameras use the area just around the center focal point and evaluate the light to give you a meter reading.   An alternative mode, called evaluative, considers a much larger area of the photo around that center focal point and gives you an “average” value for the entire area considered.  I typically photograph people – my kids – and I want their sweet little faces to be properly exposed.  Because of this, I want the camera to disregard everything around them and make sure the photo is exposed properly for their faces.  So I put the center focal point on their faces, adjust the ISO, aperture, and shutter speed until my meter says “0″, and then I shoot.

In evaluative mode, the area around that sweet little face is considered as well.  So if you have strong backlighting your meter will actually consider some of that brightness and determine that your average light value is higher than what it would get as spot metering on the face alone.  As a result the face will come out darker.  You can find many resources on-line to further (better?!) explain these modes, including your camera manual, but for now stick to spot or partial metering (partial metering is kind of in-between spot and evaluative).

2.  The color of your subject.  This one is really, really important so I’m illustrating it below.  Your camera is designed to give you a meter reading as if you are taking a photograph of middle gray (18% gray).  White reflects nearly 100% of light, black reflects nearly 0% of light, and middle gray is – you guessed it – in the middle.  But the world, fortunately, is not shades of gray.  Here’s a very common example/problem…WHITE.

In the series of photos below, I used spot metering and metered off the large white flower hanging down to your left.

In the far left image, my camera meter said I had the perfect amount of light to capture my image – assuming I was taking a photo of something 18% gray!  But I wasn’t…i was taking a photo of red and white flowers.

So – to prove my point – I changed my shutter speed, kept everything else the same, and took another photo when my meter was to the first dot past “0″.  This is called over exposing by 1/3 stop.  That image is brighter overall, and looks better than the one on the left.  I continued this, reducing my shutter speed to add 1/3 of a stop each time, until by the fourth photo I was one full stop over-exposed (according to my meter!).

The FOURTH shot is the best!  Want to know why?

This screen shot says it all.  My histogram shows that very little data in the image is blown (hitting up against the right wall of the histogram), and the portion that is blown is highlighted in bright red in the image itself.  It’s all stuff I don’t care about!  the back lighting in the window, the bright parts of the reflection on the floor…I’m far more satisfied having the flowers nice and bright even though some of the other portions of the image are blown.

Even if this post wasn’t about shooting at high ISO, it’s really important to know that a good SOOC (straight out of camera) image looks more like the photo on the right than the one on the left.  I could scrap this photo as-is without having to do a single thing to it!  Heck, if I really loved it (which I don’t, LOL), I could print it for my wall and hang it up.  Learning to master white balance and exposure in camera, without relying on editing, is the single most important thing for a photographer to accomplish :)

ok – so now we’re ready to tie this back in to ISO…

Here’s a close-up of the noise from the first and fourth images from the exposure sample above:

The general brightness is just much better in the image on the right, but if you look more closely you can see a few other differences.  The image on the left has color  noise on the bottom portion of the white flower while the image on the right doesn’t.  Also, the noise is much heavier, almost “bigger” looking in the neutral space behind the flowers in the image on the left.  The +1 stop photo has much finer, smaller noise.  And keep in mind – ALL of these images were shot with ISO3200, a relatively high ISO setting!

So – wrapping this up (you’re quite a trooper if you’re still with me, LOL!)…

1. PROPERLY expose your photos.  That sometimes means “overexposing”.

2.  Do not sharpen images with noise – it makes it SIGNIFICANTLY worse. I usually fix noise and then do some sharpening if it’s necessary, but they two kind of counter-act each other to watch closely as you make adjustments.

3.  Learn to use noise reduction in your editing software.  ACR has it, as does LR.  I regularly use the noise sliders in LR to reduce noise.  It’s so powerful, in fact, that it can virtually eliminate the noise altogether.   Here’s a before and after with noise reduction applied:

{After settings in the LightRoom noise reduction panel:  Color +18, Luminance +28).

4.  and final…do your own ISO test so that you know how high  you can go with your ISO with confidence.  Do a test just like I did here!

That’s all I have for you today!  Please don’t hesitate to ask questions or to share your own experiences in the comments section!

Join SP tomorrow for the launch of Project SCRAP 2012! Yay!

BeckiePhotography, Uncategorized 8 Comments

Hello and Happy New Year!  Beckie here :)  I know, I’m a bit late with my greeting – but this is my very first post of the year and I just couldn’t begin today’s post without saying that first!  I had a wonderful holiday break – I got to spend lots of time with the family and I even had time to read and play with my camera quite a bit!  One of the joys of the kids getting older, I suppose – a little time for ME every now and then, since the kids entertain themselves a bit more!  Anyhow, I’m happy to be back and eager to bring this week’s little slice of inspiration…the Layout of the Week!  You won’t be disappointed by this one – it’s a totally gorgeous layout created by whites19 called “Kairos“.

There were so many WONDERFUL layouts in the gallery this week and, as usual, I had a very hard time making my selection!  But after I read the text I knew this was the layout for me :)  My scrapbook is filled with pages of bright, happy, smiling faces…but our lives are so much more than that.  I have been thinking that this year I want to journal more and document REAL life (something I’ll cover soon in an Inspiration post!) – and this layout by whites19 perfectly nails the theme of what I hope to create for myself this year.  A lot of the good-amazing-incredible moments and maybe even a few of the bad ones…but a whole lot of the reality that is our lives <3  Read the text to see what I mean (there’s a link in her layout credits!).  Whether you’re a parent or not, there’s an interesting perspective there to be gained.

And, of course, in true whites19 fashion…the layout itself is a stunner :)  All that delicious text…and the cute little hearts thrown in there to break it up.  The stitching around the edges and the perfectly delicate flowers and elements around the border.  And the title in the center with the photos in the letters – perfection.

Congratulations whites19!  Check your e-mail for your $10 Shabby Shoppe gift card!

I’ll see you back on Wednesday, but be sure to stop by tomorrow when Kim brings you a little New Year’s organization inspiration! 

BeckieLayout of the Week, Uncategorized 9 Comments

Hello everyone!  Happy December!  Beckie here.

I just LOVE this time of year.  I love the cool (almost COLD!) weather, the scent of burning candles, and the glow of festive holiday lights :)

Last year, almost a year ago to the date in fact, I shared tips for taking photographs around the holidays.  It’s a great “getting started” overview with ideas on how to make your photos from this time of year even more special.  This year I decided to do something a bit different, and to try out a technique I’d seen a few times before but never actually tried…creating shaped bokeh!

We’ve probably mentioned it in the past, but bokeh is “the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light“.  It’s the blurry part of an image :)   Turns out, by putting a template over the front of the lens and shaping the light that hits your sensor, you can create some really cool effects with your bokeh.  Ready?  It’s super simple, I promise!

What you need:

• portrait lens (you need something f2.0 or wider (a lower number) for this.  When looking at a lens, you’ll see “50mm 1:1.8, or 30mm 1:1.4″ – we’re talking about the “1.8″ and the “1.4″ part.  If you have those numbers, you’re good.  If your lens has bigger numbers, this technique most likely won’t work very well :(
• black cardstock
• craft knife

Place your lens face-down on the black cardstock and trace around the inner most ring of your lens.  It might take a small bit of “fiddling”, but you simply cut the circle down a bit until it fits within the ring of the lens.  As you can see, I kind of pressed it in there snugly to make sure it stayed in place.  Once you get one ring sized properly, just trace it out a few other times in case you get the fever and want to create a few different shapes.

Once you have your black circles, you need to use the craft knife to cut shapes from the center.  I had a holiday stencil on-hand from years of holiday craft projects, and I used it to trace and cut out a starburst, a star, and a tree.  You could also use a punch if you have one!

Unfortunately I got home every night this week after it was already dark, so please excuse these photos – they aren’t my best!  But what I do love about them is that you can very clearly see how COOL and how amazing it is to actually change the shape of the light (the bokeh) in your photos:

shot at 1/50, f1.4 with my Sigma 30mm f1.4 lens (which rocks, btw!)

Here are a few tips:

• You want your lens to be as “wide open” as possible (the lowest f-stop number your lens supports).
• blurry is better!  In other photos not shown here, I focused on the tree – and the photos had no shaped bokeh because well, there was no bokeh!  The idea is to create blurry light to allow the little lens cover thingy do its work :)  So just manually adjust the focus  and watch the beautiful bokeh emerge :)
• The more blur, the bigger the bokeh.  So play around to find out what looks best!
• Use a tripod.  Or, if you do what I did – which is to temporarily misplace that little thing that screws into the bottom of the camera to allow your camera to snap into the tripod, you can pile up books on the coffee table and very carefully press the shutter button.  LOL!  (I need to find that thing!  hubby will not be happy if I tell him I need another tripod, LOL.  But the pile of books worked OK)

I was SUPER curious to see how the left image  would come out, which was created with the starburst cut-out.  I love the effect it created – but it also created a bit “messier” image.  I think it’s pretty cool!  I know my daughter would love it if I created one with her initials in the bokeh – something I might try over vacation :)

I have better examples of holiday bokeh (and tips on how to create it) in the post from last year, so be sure to check that out also!  And remember that you can just use the bokeh as a background element.  Believe it or not, you can still focus on a person (or a gift, an ornament, etc) in the foreground of your image and it will look perfectly normal – and still have that cool bokeh in the background.

Well, that wraps it up for me today!  I hope you enjoyed this simple little experiment.  And for even more inspiration – check out the shaped bokeh images on flickr!  And stop by the Blog tomorrow for some more festive food fun with Casharina. SP and Kylie will also be stopping by with all the latest on projectSCRAP!

Happy holidays to you all, and best wishes for a healthy and happy new year :)

BeckiePhotography, Uncategorized 4 Comments

Hello again everyone!  It’s Beckie here today :)  I’m super excited with today’s topic, as it’s the first thing in a long time that has made a truly dramatic improvement in the quality of my photos!  And I know it can help you, too :)  So….let’s get started!

Let’s start with a very basic discussion of white balance.  White balance is the adjustment applied to remove color casts from your photos.  Every different lighting situation we face presents a different lighting color.  Candle light and light bulbs are warm (yellow-ish), cloud coverage and shade are cool (blue-ish).  Our own eyes have a fantastic ability to see beyond the color casts present in light; that is, we don’t usually perceive the color differences from one light situation to another.  Your camera, however, needs a little help!  Your photos will look their best when your camera is set to compensate for the color cast of the lighting situation.  We do this with the white balance setting on the camera.

Nearly all cameras, including basic point-and-shoot cameras, have several white balance settings to choose from.  These typically include “Auto”, “Cloudy”, “Daylight”, “Fluorescent”, and “Tungsten”.  Chances are, your camera is set to “Auto” (sometimes written as “AWB” for Auto White Balance).  This is a setting that effectively puts the responsibility for detecting and removing color cast to your camera.  The camera does an OK job, but typically only gets white balance accurate in relatively “neutral” lighting – flash and daylight.  But in all other conditions, your camera most likely doesn’t do a great job – leaving a color cast to your images.

One other drawback to using AWB on your camera is this:  your camera will re-evaluate the lighting with every shot taken.  This means it will potentially apply diffferent corrective adjustments to every photo you take.  Consider this:  the presence of white/gray/neutral content in your photo increases the chance of your camera making an accurate assessment in AWB mode.  So what if one shot is of a neighbor in a white shirt in the shade, but the very next shot is of a small child wearing purple (also in the shade)?  It’s likely that your camera will assess the two situations differently.  Neither shot is likely to be really great, but the image of the person in the white shirt will likely have truer color than that of the child in purple.  Later, when you upload the images to your computer and you want to edit your photos, each image will need it’s own custom color adjustments!  The same adjustment that warmed up the purple shirt photo and made it “just right” is likely to be too warm for the white shirt, which likely had a warmer value to start with.  In essence, using AWB makes batch editing photos nearly impossible.  I recommend using the RIGHT white balance modes for each situation for two reasons:

• more accurate representation of color for all situations if  set properly
• bulk editing photos (through PS, Adobe Camera Raw, Lightroom, etc) is possible – dramatically reducing  your photo editing time

Now…for those of you who have dSLRs – you have even MORE options.  At least one more, to be specific – and it’s called Kelvin.

I’m going to be straight up here and say that I don’t understand the details, nor do I care, about the physics and science behind Kelvin, but it’s basically a scale that measures the warmth of light.  The good news?  You’ll get CRAZY good photos if you take advantage of what your camera has to offer here.  Here’s a reference of how common lighting situations translate to their corresponding Kelvin values:

So – all you have to do is set your white balance to “K” for Kelvin (see your user’s manual for instructions on how to do this).  Once you do this, you’ll see a number pop up.  The default value is typically in the daylight range above (5000-6500) and varies by manufacturer.  The default value doesn’t really matter anyway, as you should set it to the value that is correct for the current conditions in which you’re shooting.  5800 is a great place to start for normal daylight, just to get a starting point.  Some photographers prefer “warmer” images and shoot at around 6200 in normal lighting conditions.  Think of the number as the amount of light you’re adding to the photo - that’s the easiest way for me to remember that low Kelvin numbers are already warm and don’t need much warmth added (like candle light).  Shade, on the other hand, is cooler and needs more warmth added – so the number will be bigger.

I took my camera out one evening and practiced setting/changing values.  It just takes a few clicks on my Canon 7d to change the K value – it’s super easy!  I set the value, then take a test shot, and view it through the screen.  If it looks “true to life” to me, I leave it, otherwise I adjust up or down accordingly (remember, making the number bigger adds more warmth to the image).  After just one evening of shooting with Kelvin, I’ll never use any other white balance mode again.  Seriously.  My white balance modes have always been consistently cooler than what is “true to life”, something I’ve heard photographers with Nikon cameras say as well.  By using Kelvin, you spend a few extra seconds setting the value to exactly what you need for true to life images.  Just remember that as lighting changes, you’ll want to adjust your Kelvin values accordingly.  I typically increase the K value by a few clicks at a time throughout the evening, just as reference :)

I find that now I rarely adjust the white balance of my photos, and if I do have to make edits, it’s a VERY minor adjustment.  Refer to this post for tips on how to edit white balance and exposure :)  If you shoot RAW, you can either use the color sliders in ACR or LR, or you can change to a different WB mode (like daylight, cloudy, etc) after the fact.  If you use JPG, you will have to use the yellow/blue color slider to adjust WB accordingly in your editing program.

This photo is nothing special…except that it was one of the very first images I shot using Kelvin white balance.  It is completely SOOC (straight out of camera) except for a small amount of cropping.  I immediately noticed a HUGE improvement in the color!!  I had it set to around 9000 as it was late in the afternoon and the whole front yard was in shade.  Don’t be afraid to increase the value!  Skin should be warm, not cool and “pasty”!

Getting the white balance right “in camera” (as the photo is taken) produces more accurate representations of color than anything I achieve using other WB modes.  I’m just not an expert at photo processing/editing – nor do I want to be.  So I am so thrilled I spent an evening learning to shoot Kelvin to produce better, more accurate colors than what I’ve had before.  :)

I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s detour into White Balance!  I’d love to hear about your experiences below in the comments section :)  I also feel the need to remind everyone that I’m NOT a pro, just a mom with a camera…on a mission to capture great photos :)

Thanks for stopping by the blog today! We’ll be back tomorrow with some COLOR inspiration!

BeckiePhotography, Uncategorized 16 Comments

We hope you had a wonderful time scrapping along with us in our second ever Fast and Fabulous event!  We absolutely loved seeing all of your layouts in the gallery. We are so happy to announce the winners of our random prize drawings!  Each of our THREE lucky winners will receive a $10 Shabby Shoppe gift card via email (be sure to check your spam folders if you don’t see it)!

lil_goldie’s layout Apple Picking

Pilgrim222 Homecoming Dance

purplerara’s layout Monkey Bridge

THANK YOU for joining us – we hope you had as much fun as we did!  See you all back here on Monday for another LOTW!!!

P.S. – If you didn’t join us LIVE for our Fast and Fabulous speed scrap, you can still play along yourself (in your own time)!  We’d love to see your layouts in the gallery, too!

BeckieSpeed Scrap, Uncategorized 21 Comments