Photography At Night

Undertaking photography at night brings its own set of challenges and rewards. Night hours lack the one thing that is so crucial in photography and that is light, however this lack of light has the ability to produce the most amazing results, if you have the patience and knowledge of your equipment. With night photography you can perform, light trails of cars on roads, star trails and even astro-photography. Each bring with it challenges and equipment specifications. All require you to have a tripod and a lens that has a really wide aperture, at least an f 2.0 I would say. Some like the light trails you can do from bridges or cross walks, or even on the shoulder of the road way (safely of course). The star trails is better done in areas away from the bright lights of cities as well as their light pollution, this also applies to the astro photography. It would be helpful if you had a telescope for the astro-photography also. Some key things to remember with photography at night:

You usually need a tripod.

An overly high ISO setting is going to cause problems and make you image look grainy.

A lens with a wide aperture is always a good thing to have. I tried night photos at an event with a lens that had a small aperture and no speedlite, was a disaster.

A speedlite may be necessary depending on what you are shooting.

What are some examples of night photography you like?

Patience & Knowledge

I have lost count as to the number of times I missed a photo opportunity due to lack of patience. having patience is so crucial in photography, especially in wildlife photography. You sometimes have to wait for hours, just for one picture. Many wildlife photographers would wait for days, weeks even months to get that one photo. Sometimes I got lucky and managed to press the shutter button just as my subject was about to move off and it produced the image that I wanted, other times the result was just horrid. Working hand in hand with patience is knowing your equipment, as well as the final photographic effect you want to achieve. it is of little use to have all the patience before the shot and after you take it and check back you realize your shutter speed was off or your ISO was too high and your photo looks like it has more gains in it than there are grains of sand on a beach (the result of having your ISO value to high) I think that both these attributes are key to being successful in photography along with of course that all important element of practice, practice, practice!!!!

Weddings & Such Things

Caterers, location, the music an open bar, THE DRESS oh and the guy that take the photos. Wedding photography is huge, huge business, locally as well as internationally. Photographing a wedding is not for the faint hearted, especially if you are the primary shooter. the top photographers in this field can command top dollar, as the client you are paying for their expertise and all the gear they bring. As a beginner I would not photograph a wedding as the primary shooter. Sure there are many great tutorials available on what to do for a wedding but all seemed to targeted towards professionals. In my view the best way to acquire the experience necessary is to be a second shooter to a professional. I have photographed a friend's wedding however it was nothing official, I stayed out of the way of the official photographer's way and I got some decent shots. What did I learn from this experience you ask?

• Your feet hurt, ALOT, for the entire day expect to be on your feet. It is hard work.
• Always have extra batteries physically on you, not in your car or in your bag which is located somewhere in the reception hall, have them on you.
• Flash diffusers help, no one wants to look like a ghost.
• Know your camera's flash sync speed, exceeding this produces some not to nice effects.
• Try to anticipate the shot and position of the subject and position yourself to capture it.
• If possible have two camera bodies with two lenses to prevent having to change lenses mid shoot and miss a key moment.
• Auto mode will not work for a wedding, you need to be comfortable in manual mode.

Speedlites

Most DSLR's come with a popup flash, in fact just about all cameras have a built in flash to help with providing light to illuminate the subject. Unfortunately the built in flash rarely ever assists in producing good light. This coupled with its short range and its battery draining systems make it a last resort choice. My first speedlite was an aftermarket brand with only manual controls. I had to adjust the flash output after the first shot if it was too high or low. Aside from this quality it was an ok speedlite. However upon purchasing a proper Canon 430 EXII I realized the advantages of a good speedlite. For starters this had TTL (Through The Lens). Everything is done automatically for you. 

This feature was a huge help to me being a beginner and not fully understanding how to adjust the power and other settings. In hindsight however using the speedlite manually was becoming easier the more it was used. Canon & Nikon all have excellent speedlite options from base models to expensive ones. Also there are some aftermarket manufacturers that supply speedlites that come very close to meeting the quality of Canon & Nikon. If at all possible when purchasing a speedlite acquire one that has TTL but also supports connection to an external battery pack. This will reduce the number of battery changes needed especially during a crucial moment.

White Balance

One of the more difficult/confusing aspects of photography is this whole idea of white balance and achieving the correct white balance in your photographs. I know for me it has been a sore point at times the end result sometimes is my falling back to I will just fix it in post processing, which is of course the wrong view to have. The white balance of a photograph is basically about getting the colours in your image correct. Ever realized when looking at photos after taking them they seem, not like how your eye saw them? They have a noticeable red, blue or yellow tone. This is due to the different "temperature" of the light at the time of taking the photograph. You can compensate for these different temperatures by either using the automatic settings for White Balance in your camera, both Nikon and Canon have these settings. Or adjusting it manually. I will admit sometimes i forget about the white balance of the image and only after in post processing with Adobe Lightroom do I realize my error. I usually use the auto white balance setting in my Rebel T3i which typically works pretty ok, but using the other auto modes depending on the shooting situation will be necessary.

If you are looking for more details on White Balance you can check these two links:

Introduction to White Balance by Darren Rowse

White Balance Explained by Jeff Meyer

ISO, Shutter Speed and Aperture

These three terms form the basics of any photography process, because I am such a Canon fan naturally I found a video by Canon that explains these three terms way better than I ever could. However these properties would apply regardless of if you are using a Nikon, Sony, Olympus or any other brand. Enjoy the video and remember to leave a comment below.

Essential Gear

Photography is one of those activities that just has alot of gear, or specifically additional gear that you would just love to spend those hard earned dollars on. There is an entire industry outside of the usual brand names, devoted to supplying photographers with the best, most expensive gear. If you are not careful you can find yourself buying many un-necessary things. There are a few things that in my experience as a beginner I think are important, which are shown in the two tables below.

Is there any essential gear you think I left out? Please indicate it via a comment.

Full Frame vs Crop Sensor

Seeing everything vs seeing some of it. Confused huh, so was I. When talking about DSLR's you will hear people say I have a full frame and I will never go back to a crop sensor camera again. What they are in fact referring to is the size of the sensor of the camera. If you want to get really number specific, older film cameras had a film size of 35mm so a full frame camera's sensor had basically the same size as this, a crop sensor camera would be less. How does this translate to you? Well the easiest way is to show you. If you look at the photograph below you will see a red square, basically if you were using a crop sensor camera (such as the Canon T3i Rebel) that is the image you would actually see, whereas if you were using a full frame camera such as the Canon 5d MkIII your image would be the entire photo.

The full frame camera simply gives you more image to work with. Now do not disown a crop sensor camera simply because of that reason. One of the major advantages of crop sensor DSLR's is that they are usually cheaper, so if you don't have the cash to splurge on that full frame you can get a crop sensor. Also the other advantage is the "crop factor". 

Nikon cameras are either full frame (FX) or crop sensor 1.5x (DX) with a crop factor of 1.5x

Canon cameras are either full frame or crop sensor with a crop factor of 1.3x or 1.6x 

The crop factor comes in very handy for telephoto lenses. Say for example you have a 5dMkIII with a 300mm lens attached. That 300mm focal length is only 300mm, however if you were to attach that to a crop sensor camera with a crop factor of 1.6x then you effectively have a 480mm lens!!. More lens for your money, sadly though it works the same way for smaller lenses so that 35mm lens would really be 56mm on a crop sensor camera which makes getting wider angle shots a bit harder.

Your First Camera

So you have decided that you like photography and want to buy a camera, but which one to buy? There are so many options it is enough to make you head spin. With all the talk of mega pixels, crop sensor or full frame and shutter speed the frustration level creeps up quickly. It took me about 2 months of research before deciding on which DSLR to purchase, a Canon Rebel T3i. This is one of the entry level DSLR's on the market, but there are several others. Picking your first camera will depend heavily on two factors:

1. Where do you want to get to in your photography? Hobby, professional or just for fun.
2. How much money are you prepared to spend on your camera and related gear?

Let us look at the main points of the more popular types of camera currently available:

1. Point and Shoot camera: This is your basic digital camera that most persons are familiar with, they are small, lightweight, inexpensive with limited features. Many Electronics manufacturers have Point and Shoot camera (Samsung, Sony, Canon, Nikon, Fuji, Olympus).
2. Bridge Camera: These are larger than the Point and Shoot and heavier, the features they have are similar to a DSLR, (including manual control) They also usually have quite an extensive optical zoom allowing for very close up photos. The lenses however are not interchangeable.(Fuji, Olympus)
3. DSLR: Typically the camera of choice for serious photographers. Big, heavy on weight and price, a lot of add on lenses (if you have the finances) Feature rich, with full control over several of the camera's features. (Canon, Nikon, Pentax, Leica, Olympus)

The most popular brands for DSLR's are Canon, Canon and Canon :) Yes I am a Canon fan, the other popular brand however is Nikon. These two brands between them have the most camera types and lenses. Also after market lens makers such as Sigma, Tokina and Tamron are usually sure to have lenses for their systems. Of course there are other DSLR camera makers such as Olympus, Leica and Pentax, but their market share is much smaller and the lens options are limited. This factor will also play a role in your choice, that of availability of attachments for the camera body you select.

Below you can find a list of the more popular Canon and Nikon cameras, this is by no means an exhaustive listing, if you seek more specific details on any of these you can visit the following sites, either one will open on a new page in your browser:

Information on Canon DSLR's

Information on Nikon DSLR's