Should You Shoot RAW?

You've probably heard about RAW and its supposed benefits, but should you be shooting RAW? If you are a beginner, any seasoned photographer will tell you that the best way to improve and get acquainted with your camera is to snap, snap, snap...take as many photographs as you can. By doing this, you get to know the limits of your camera and its best settings under different shooting conditions. JPEG takes less memory card space than RAW, so in this aspect I would suggest you begin by taking JPEG pictures until you are better at judging the optimum settings for any scene you encounter.

Secondly, RAW can turn you into a lazy photographer. Don't believe me? Take a look at these two photographs I took while I was experimenting with RAW.

Canon 500D (Rebel T1i) EF-S 55-250mm IS @ 60mm 1/100s F/8 ISO 400

Canon 500D (Rebel T1i) EF-S 55-250mm IS @ 79mm 1/100s F/4.5 ISO 800

Both of these represent the extremes of the histogram (I will talk about the histogram in a future post). One is completely white, while the other is completely black. In the first, the speed was too slow for the condition, and the speed was too fast for the second one. 

If this had been JPEG, I wouldn't have bothered to fix them as it takes too long to fix something like this and the final image would have punished the quality so much that it wouldn't have been worth the hassle. 

Keep in mind that I did this on purpose to see what I could get away with in RAW, but it's not unusual to take such pictures while you are still getting used to playing around with the settings, so don't feel bad if some of your shots turn out this way. 

Here's what came out once I finished retouching them in Camera Raw.

For this one, I simply reduced exposure by a few stops, darkened the highlights, and made a few other adjustments to bring out this image.

This one was more unforgiving as the noise was simply too much. I cranked up the exposure, then used the Adjustment Brush in Camera Raw to pump it up again, put saturation at 0, pumped up contrast and clarity both to 100, and did a few other things to try to bring out the image. I still like the effect of the enlarged pixels, so I cropped it to try to highlight them more.

Kind of like a mosaic, right? 

Well, these images are extremes, but they show how one can take an image without putting too much stock in using the right exposure settings by shooting RAW. 

I, personally, shoot RAW, but I still put as much effort into using the right exposure as if I was shooting JPEG. RAW can be your best friend, but it can also be a hindrance into you becoming a good photographer if you are not careful. I strongly suggest you shoot JPEG until you are familiar with all the aspects of exposure, then you can focus on RAW and learning the software needed to fully get the most out of it. You will appreciate the extra leverage give by RAW that way, too.

Another thing is that as a beginner or intermediate photographer, your focus should be on learning about taking a good picture and not manipulating them. If you haven't done so, take a look at my previous post on taking a great photograph. After that, you will find you don't have to manipulate a picture as much, and you will be well on your way to being the great photographer we all know you can be.

Great snapping, folks.

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White Balance

There are a few automatic things I trust in when it comes to my camera, and White Balance isn't one of them. Each camera has a setting to help determine how it reads colors and most, if not all, have several to choose from such as Sunny, Cloud, Tungsten, flash, etc. Some cameras, such as my Powershot A590IS go as far as to feature snow, beach, fireworks, and several other settings that make it easier for a beginner to select the right white balance setting.
I prefer to do a custom reading and tell my camera what it should interpret as "white." The way to do this is easy: Find a completely white spot, focus on it so that it fills the whole picture, then through the right selections (in camera) and set that as the white balance reference. For the Canon 500D (Rebel T1i), you press the MENU button and go under the second RED pull-down menu and the third option down should be "Custom WB." Select it, and the last picture taken will be on the screen. If that's the one you want to use, you click the SET button (in the middle of the cross keys) and select OK when asked if you want to use the WB data from that image.
On the Powershot A590IS, you select the option for custom white balance, then you press and hold the FUNC. SET button until the image reappears on the screen. The screen will go black for a moment while the camera is calculating.
For some, the use of gray cards and color cards is essential, but I found out that I can use any surface that I deem to be white and the results are usually good. Gray cards and color cards are fairly inexpensive and can come in handy if you are out in the wild or any other place where completely white surfaces might not be present.
Here's an example of what I have used in the past.

Canon 500D (Rebel T1i) EF-S 18-55mm IS @ 55mm 1/60s F/7.1 ISO 400

Now, here's the one after:

This is a crop of the same door after I used it to set the White Balance. I have also used snow, styrofoam, and walls.

Give it a try and see how you pics turn out.

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Taking a Great Photograph

One of the first things to learn in photography is shot composition. It's really easy to understand as you compose shots in your mind thousands of times a day, so it's just a matter of transmitting that to the camera and making it capture what you want it to.
Shot composition is simple; It's taking a picture you want with everything you want to show included in it. It is one of the vital things you need to pay attention to when you are taking a picture. The others include exposure, framing, and communication. So, basically, when you take a picture you have to know what you want the image to project to your audience (communication), use the correct camera settings to best project that message (exposure), include the right amount of information in your image (composition), and build the best set for your subject in its environment (framing). These things go together to build a memorable, impressive image. If you look at all the famous photographers and their work, you will see that they take careful attention to each of these components of taking great shots, and it's what makes their work stand out.
So, today we will focus on composing the shot that you want. To show you an example, I will use the picture that I currently have set up as my page header (the one with two benches overlooking a frozen lake with the setting sun illuminating the city in the distance). Here's what the view looked like.

 Canon 500D (Rebel T1i) EF-S 55-250mm IS @ 96mm 1/50s F/22 ISO 400

Now, the picture is hazy and the white balance is off because on this particular day I was experimenting taking pictures in RAW without bothering to set the white balance either customized or any of the other settings. Here's what it looked like after I touched it up a little in Camera Raw.

As you can see, I was really fascinated by the sun beaming off the city in the distance and I wanted to capture that scene. I did use the Targeted Adjustment Tool to darken the black areas (such as the benches and trees in the foreground) but other than that I didn't do too much to alter the image.
The scene itself is beautiful, and there I didn't cram much into the picture besides what I want to project- two benches looking off into the distance at the city partially illuminated by the setting sun.
However, there is a lot of ground at the bottom and sky at the top that add nothing to the image...if anything, they dilute its effectiveness. So, the next step for me was to crop it and show just that which I wanted to.

 

The result was a simple image above. In this final image, you can see how I used the four components of taking a great shot I previously listed. I wanted to project an image of two benches in a dimming light looking off at the last rays of the setting sun bathe the distant city. There is a feeling of two retirees out of the chaos pace of everyday life and watching the day go by in solemn calm. They are anonymous, in the shadows, and their focus is on something greater than them. This is the communication part.

The second thing is exposure. As I previously stated, I took the image when I was experimenting with RAW, so the original image lacks the precise settings I would have otherwise used had I been shooting just JPEG. In that light, I would have left the ISO at 400, reduced the shutter to 1/30s, left the aperture at f/22, and used a stead tripod with a self-time. Then I would have adjusted as needed based on what the image turned out like. 

The third thing is composition. The main things I wanted in the image was the benches, the frozen lake, and the city and hills in the distance. I didn't want too much of the ground or sky in there as they were not essential to the message I wanted to project. This is why I cropped them out.

The last this is framing, and this is where the tree on the left comes in. You can see it telling you that your eye is to stay to the subjects on its right. The right side is where the light of the sun is coming from, so it's left bare. The left is dark, the right is light, so the purpose of the tree is to guide your eye to the subjects I, as the photographer, want you to focus on. This is how framing can help enhance your image. 

I hope I helped with your understanding of the four components of a great photo and please share your tips in this area if you can. Remember: Communication, Composition, Exposure, and Framing are what's needed to take a CCEF (sounds like "Safe") picture.

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Taking Pictures on a Gray Snow Day

Hello, folks, we're starting with something of a taboo in photography: taking pictures on a gray, snowy day. I, personally, love the view outside when there is a lazy snowstorm raging and the earth is covered in the white stuff. I long to capture that beauty through my lens to share with the world, or just to remember during the hot summer months.
Most photographers, however, will tell you to just shelf your equipment and enjoy a cup of hot cocoa as you stare at sizzling logs and doze off dreaming of days when the sun will bring its saving light, and you basking and snapping away, grateful for its return. It is true that overcast skies are not good for photography, but I believe we can still take some decent pictures without use of the expensive gear.
So, here's what I will be sharing with you. I will list the lens I used and the camera settings for each picture. For the benefit of encouraging you folks who can, I will be taking all the photographs in RAW, though I will only be doing minor touch-up on them. Many good photographs have told me to focus on using the camera to capture the shot correctly rather than focusing on post editing...I agree with them. This lets you really focus on getting to know your camera and settings and your gear's limitations.
Without further ado, here we go.

As I exited my front door, here's what greeted me. A scene out of a midwinter's snow scene.

 

 Canon 500D (Rebel T1i) EF-S 18-55mm IS @ 55mm 1/100s F/20 ISO 200

I loved the scene - the snow was falling lightly and sticking to branches and twigs giving the woods an inviting white haze. If you enlarge it, you will see that it's hazy and not as charming as my eyes perceived it. This is what turns away many photographers from work on such dreary days. This, however, is why I love working with RAW. 

When I shoot RAW, I upload through the Canon Utility software and edit in Adobe Camera Raw through Photoshop CS4. 

Now, what I did with the picture is increase the exposure to +0.95 to brighten the dark areas, pushed the recovery all the way to 100, contrast to 59, and clarity to 38. Then I selected the Adjustment Brush and left everything as is except for sharpening which I turned to 100. 

The end result was something closer to what I wanted to share with the world.

You can see the halo of whiteness around the trees that makes the picture more charming. Could more be done? Yes, but I don't want to do too much editing and it's still good enough for now.

As far as camera settings, there's really no magic setting where whatever you shoot will come out right. Most of the time when I shoot landscape, I always want a small aperture (at least 20...most of the time 22). Aperture is the F-number and it is how much light your lens let in. A larger aperture is the number closer to zero and a small aperture is a higher number. If you want to blur out the background (background is out of focus), set the aperture to a very low number. If you want the background to be in focus, set the number higher. In this instance, I wanted to capture the objects further away as well as the closer ones, so I use a low aperture.
Because of the reflected brightness, I also used a faster shutter speed. This also aided and blanking out the snow flakes that were falling, although these were few and small.
Well, go out there, set your settings according to the scene before you, and capture the world through your viewfinder.

P.S. Low light situations are great for black and white photography...try it.

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New Camera, New Zeal

Okay, so this is officially the beginning of this blog and I would love to take you with me on a journey from beginning (or somewhere close to there) to knowledgeable. I am not an expert and I will not pretend to be an expert, however, I will do my best to show you what I have learned and maybe even learn a thing or two from your interactions.
In my previous post, I had stated that I was going to be using a Powershot A590IS, but I have since upgraded to a Canon 500D (Rebel T1i) and I'm using the stock 18-55mm IS lens and an additional 55-250mm IS lens. Both of these are UF-S lenses and are considered good beginner lenses and perfect to learn on. As we go on and our knowledge increases, I will get some L-lenses to compare the quality of the photos we will be taking.
I will look to post at least 5 times a week and I will start tomorrow, which is my birthday, with some pictures of the woods and the snow. The main important thing I will be pointing out is understanding all the factors that go into choosing the right exposure for the picture in any type of situation.
If all else fails, I will also show you how to take RAW pictures and give them the right exposure through software.
Till tomorrow, this is me shooting out...

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