How I shoot

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How I shoot

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How I shoot found when I first got into photography that a lot of explanations try to

be all encompassing and by doing so end up providing a lot more

information than I actually wanted and needed. The first camera book I

read was 500 pages or so of very detailed technical information. I wasn’t

much better off when I finished reading it than when I started. I was actually

a little more confused.

It explained a lot of ‘what’ but very little ‘why’. The tendency of authors to fill

pages upon pages with very detailed technical information often frustrates

readers who have no points of reference for all of the facts they are hearing.

Often this causes people to lose interest before they have learned what they

started out to learn in the first place. It did for me at first when starting out in

photography. Mostly people just want to understand enough to get started

and begin taking images. Here I will try to explain what settings I use and

why I use them.

File Formats The first thing you have to decide is what format do you want to shoot. Most

cameras offer different sizes of JPEG and several sizes of RAW files. I shoot

RAW files without exception. There are a lot of benefits of shooting RAW that

significantly outweigh any downsides. RAW files capture the most amount of

information available from your camera’s sensor allowing you a tremendous

amount of options in post processing.

To process a RAW file, and ultimately convert it to JPEG for broader

consumption you will need to use an application that can process RAW files

such as Adobe’s Lightroom (which I use), Apple’s Aperture or your camera’s

raw processing software. You can change white balance, brightness,

contrast, and a whole host of other things non-destructively meaning that

you can make the change and then change your mind and change it

again. This is especially helpful if weeks, months or even years later you

I

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repurpose a photograph and need to make changes. The changes never

impact your original file as all ‘settings’ are written to a side file.

I typically do very little, if any, post processing of my photos. If I need to

tweak white balance, exposure or remove dust I want to be working with the

highest quality file. Here is an example of the controls in Adobe’s Lightroom.

There are a couple of trade-offs you need to make when shooting RAW. First

the files are huge. Mine are about 35MB per photograph. This means you

need to buy extra memory cards and have plenty of storage, both of which

are getting cheaper all the time. When shooting my Leica I typically carry

four or five 8GB 30MB/sec memory cards with me. I used to use larger but I

find the Leica performs better on smaller memory cards. For storage at

home I have five 2TB Western Digital My Book Drives. I also have four 500GB

portable Western Digital drives I carry with me when I am travelling as I

backup daily to ensure I never lose data. Storage is very cheap these days

so file size should not prevent you from shooting RAW.

One other trade off with RAW is your previews can tend to look flat on your

camera’s LCD screen as there is no processing happening in the camera. I

tend to not use my camera’s LCD to evaluate my pictures other than ensure

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my framing was correct. I’m finding relying on my camera’s display can

mislead me and it is best to view your images on your PC or Mac.

White Balance One topic that can be a little confusing is white balance. What you need to

know is there are color casts at different times of the day or with different

sources of light that can cause the colors in your photos to look un-natural

such as too blue, green or yellow. Typically you can see this in the tone of

the skin of whomever you are photographing. Here is an example of some

shots where the White Balance is not correct.

The goal of white balance is to make sure that colors are rendered correctly

like in the last picture in the frame. I typically leave my camera on Auto

White Balance as my Leica does a very good job of handling and balancing

White Balance. This works for about 99% of my shots. There are times when

the lighting is a little more difficult such as having mixed lighting sources –

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house lights, light coming through a window and a flash for example. In this

case I might use my X-Rite Color Checker passport to help me correct my

White Balance and ensure colors are rendering properly. Basically you take a

photograph of this in your scene then can set a camera profile in Lightroom. I

use this each year when we shoot our family photos at Christmas.

For me those are the two big decisions you need to make in terms of settings

in the camera, everything else is made while shooting. Now let’s review the

principles of exposure together. We have a couple of variables to control

our exposure and how light hits our camera’s sensor: ISO, Shutter Speed

and Aperture.

ISO – In film photography this determines how sensitive your film was to light.

In the digital world it is how sensitive your camera’s sensor is to light. The

higher the ISO the more sensitive your camera will be to light, but this comes

at the cost of adding digital noise into your pictures and often at the cost of

image quality.

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Shutter Speed – This is how long you leave your shutter open thus how long

you allow light to hit your camera’s sensor. You can use this to freeze or

imply motion depending on the photograph you are trying to create.

Aperture – How much light you let pass through your lens and onto the

sensor. This also controls depth of field or how much of the photograph is in

focus.

With time and practice these settings and the outcomes become second

nature to you. It simply takes time and practice to learn how to combine

them together to get the effect you are looking for. Understanding this isn’t

the end all of photography but rather the beginning. These are simply tools

to help you achieve the outcome you are looking for.

ISO ISO or film speed was it is known in Film Photography determines how

sensitive your film (in the digital world your sensor) is to light. When shooting

at night you might need to increase your ISO so you have a proper exposure

but this comes at the expensive of image quality. Below are some examples

of the impact of increasing your ISO on image quality. You can see as your

increase your ISO you are also increasing the digital noise in your

photograph.

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I want the highest quality images possible so I keep my ISO on my Leica at

160 most of the time. Different cameras have different abilities of dealing

with high ISO. My Nikon D3s is extremely good at creating high quality

images at high ISO. Some cameras can shoot at incredibly high ISO with

very little noise. I suggest you do a similar test with your camera to

determine what is the level of acceptable noise for you. My basic rule of

thumb is I only raise my ISO as a last resort. There are also creative uses for

ISO as sometimes you want to add grain into a photo such as shooting a

city at night in Black and White.

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Shutter Speed The next part of exposure to understand is Shutter Speed. This is simply how

long you allow light to hit your sensor. The simple question you need to

answer is do you want to freeze motion or imply motion? Maybe a taxi is

driving by such as in the picture below and you want to stop it and freeze it

razor sharp. You would need a very quick shutter speed such as 1/1000 or

1/750 of a second to stop the taxi. Perhaps you want to show that a scene

you are looking at is very busy and you want to imply motion by capturing

the blur of the taxi as it races by so 1/10 of a second might be a better

choice. You can see in this example at 1/750th of a second we could freeze

the taxi keeping it sharp and as we slow our shutter speed down to .7 of a

second the taxi is all but a blur.

There is no right or wrong with shutter speed but simply what is the effect you

want to create.

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One consideration you need to think about with Shutter Speed is camera

shake. At a certain point either the movement of your hands or the pressing

of the shutter will cause a slight shake that can be visible within the picture.

There are all sorts of rules of thumb out there but basically if you are

shooting at a shutter speed of less than 1/50 of a second, you should be

considering using a tripod to avoid camera shake. As you practice and get

better you can hand hold to even slower speeds.

Other things you can do to avoid or reduce camera shake is using a soft

release button or a timed release so the camera has time to stabilize after

you press the shutter and before taking the picture or simply rest it on a table

versus holding it in your hands.

Aperture The last part of exposure and the one I leverage the most is Aperture.

Aperture refers to the size of the diameter of the lens. The larger the f-stop

the smaller the opening. This is counter-intuitive and can be confusing.

Typically the smaller the f-stop the brighter the lens. This is often also

considered a better lens as well due to the versatility and creative potential

of the lens.

Lenses with large f-stops such as 1.4, 1.2, 1 and .95 are called ‘fast lenses’. I

tend to buy fast lenses when possible.

Aside from the creative potential they are great for night shooting.

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The creative part of Aperture is controlling what is called Depth of Field, or

how much of your photograph is in focus. Look at the pictures below:

• at f/2.8 only the figure is in focus, you can’t really even make out the disk

drives behind him.

• at f/8 the figures behind him are beginning to become sharp

• at f/32 everything is sharp and you can clearly read the labels on each

drive.

At f/2.8 the figure is clearly the stand out in the picture where at f/32 he does

not stand out nearly as much as he gets a bit lost with all of the busy

background.

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I tend to favor selective focus so I typically shoot with a big aperture. The

creative options here are really endless.

Lastly focusing…

I always focus manually as you simply get much better images, especially if

you are shooting at a big aperture like I like to. The opportunity for the

camera selecting the wrong focus point is too great.

OK so how do we put this all together?

• File Format – Raw

• White Balance – Auto (most of the time)

• ISO – Leave it on the lowest possible

• Focus – Manual

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This leaves us with a few questions we need to answer: Are we trying to

imply or freeze motion? Do we want to selectively focus on a certain subject

or capture a lot of detail from front to back? I typically let the answer to

these be the primary driver of the setting I use.

For example: if I am looking to isolate a subject I will choose a big aperture

such as f/1.4 or f/2. I have my ISO locked on ISO 160 so all I need to do is

adjust my Shutter Speed for a proper exposure, or even better put my

camera in Aperture Priority and let the camera set the corresponding Shutter

Speed. If I am trying to capture the trail lights of a car for example, I might

set my shutter speed to 2 or 4 seconds and then adjust my aperture for a

proper exposure.

I am shooting in Aperture Priority most of the time. If you are getting started I

suggest shooting in Manual Mode for a while as it is a great way to learn

how the settings impact your image. If you are struggling with shooting in

Manual Mode try using Aperture Priority or Time (shutter speed) Priority. In

these modes, you set the priority, Shutter Speed or Aperture and the camera

will set the other settings accordingly for a proper exposure.

Once you have the shot you want with Aperture Priority or Time Priority, you

can switch to Manual mode and you can tweak from here. Just remember

that each setting f/1.4 at 1/90, f/2.8 at 1/60, f/5.6 at 1/15 and f/11 at 4

seconds are all proper exposures but all will give you very different looking

photos depending on the creative outcome you are looking for. Find a

subject and practice on the various settings to see how different of a result

you can get.

I hope you found this helpful. As you start to learn the fundamentals you

can apply them through some of the lessons in 10 lessons I learned from

daily shooting.

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About the Author Hi, I'm Dave.

I am a father, husband, businessman and photographer based in Tokyo,

Japan. I have a love for photography that I channel around my blog

ShootTokyo. I am passionate in everything I do and I think you will see that if

you spend a bit of time with me. I am lucky enough to have a job that

allows me to travel around Asia and many parts of the world. I always have

a camera in hand or close by to capture the world around me.

Photography is a great outlet to allow me to decompress and balance the

pressures of work, family and life providing me with a creative outlet to

express myself.

I believe knowledge is meant to be shared so please feel free to share this

eBook with your family and friends.

I hope to see you around ShootTokyo.

Dave Powell

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