Tips/Tricks thread

Long exposures are images that produce some of the most dramatic results. They can show images and scenes in low light, or show movement. They can make images extremely sharp and images with a huge depth of field(DOF). Many people complain about their pictures being out of focus when taking long exposures. You must remember, if your camera moves during an exposure and the shutter speed is not fast enough, then the image will move during the exposure giving you an image you probably did not want. In any situation, you will need a tripod. Again, a tripod is to a photographer like a hammer is to a carpenter, you need one. Even with a tripod, sometimes images will still be less than desirable due to camera shake. To solve this problem, many people tend to buy wired or wireless remotes to keep their hands off of the camera. This is an excellent way to solve the problem. Unfortunately you will still have to compose and expose the image properly which leads to hands being on the camera. If you are fiscally pinched or frugal there is another way to get out of this purchase. The self-timer is an option available on every camera, unless it is disposable, even most of them have one as well.
For myself, step one is the composition(assuming focus as well) of the image. It is the most important, especially because if I am taking a long exposure it is necessary to make sure there is enough time to properly set up. Once it is composed, I figure out what the DOF should be(At night, a high DOF/f-stop will result in starred light sources). Then choosing the shutter speed to expose the image properly with complete the setup. Once you find the right composition and exposure, turn on the camera's self timer. Taking a series of images at -.07, 0, and then +.07 manually will make sure you will leave with an image you need minimal post production with, or an image you can work through in post production to result in a quality image. Hopefully this will help someone in the future, or save a few more pennies.

This is a rough guideline to my personal process of long exposures. Everyone will develop their own technique but for those who are still beginning, here is my own style.

For those of you who are experienced, please feel free to add to this if something is missing.

http://atncentral.com/

If you use photoshop, there is a tab where you can review the history of your actions. If you pay close attention or are familiar with photoshop, there is another tab next to the history tab, it is an action tab. This is where all of your plugins can be run through. This website has a bunch of free photoshop plugins for a variety of things. Some run from simple black and white conversions and image borders, to converting things into cartoons. It was named after photoshops actions as 'ActionCentral' for the plugins created by a number of different programmers. Since they have been developed by programmers and photographers, they are extremely useful at times and completely free. Regardless of your experience with photoshop, you should check this site out, it will give you some great ideas once you get familiar with some of the plugins. Some of my favorite are the Orton Effect, Professional Retro, Duotone Dream, and Maredas Cartoon Action. Hopefully this will give some of you something else to play with. I know you all have LOTS of time on your hands.

There was an earlier post about thinking outside of the box. There was nothing in particular about that post that would inspire anyone to get creative with the materials they have laying around that would never be used for photography. It seems the light box worked for at least one person, but I am disppointed about the first post of thinking outside of the box. It might not have been stated explicitly before, but pushing myself to become inventive as creative as possible is the key to becoming the best I can be and should be the case for anyone. After some use with a new light box, there has been a new revelation in materials that are laying around the house. This might not be something that everyone has laying around. Sometimes, a macro lens is a great thing to have. What if you do not have the money for it. Improvise! A poor mans macro lens. It might not come out as crystal clear as a macro lens, but there is a different effect. (It doubles as a super macro lens if you already have a macro lens - my case) Just think about what you have laying around the house. I believe Henry Ford once said, "Thinking is the hardest job there is, that is why not many people do it." If you really think about what materials are readily available, there are a number of countless possibilities at your disposal to create extremely creative and captivating images. Hopefully this will inspire a few more people to try something new. Maybe not this exact technique, but something outside of the standard photography routine. If you want to try macro out but are on a really tight budget, this might be the way to go. This is just showing you what I have done. I will post a few of the actual results in the Show your picture thread.

Upon further review, I decided I really liked this photo and ended up doing some PP work and ended up with this. This is an edited version of the original now.

Of course, there’s always the old trick of turning a prime lens (50mm works best) around backwards and holding it up to the camera for another version of the “poor man’s macro”. You can even get adapter rings to help avoid getting dust on the sensor or scratching the lens for about fifteen bucks on eBay.

It is always a shame when you are looking at someones pictures from their vacation from the South American rain forests or the picture of their friend on a beach. Although it looks like it would be a great picture, our eyes function quite differently than our camera does. What seems like a nice picture of the sun over the mountains is really a blown out sky with not texture and some mountains, usually smack in the center of the image. Since we have already touched on the rule of thirds, the mountains in the middle of the picture are going to get left alone. However, you must pay attention to where the light is coming from that your camera will be using. The sun is going to be brighter than almost any light you will ever use. Just shoot into it. Unless you are going for an HDR image, and at that point, this advice will not matter to you. When looking out into a nice scene, make sure you are not facing the sun. If it is, turn 180 degrees and see if you see close to the same thing. If you do, then you can take the picture, it will almost always be better. If you are facing the sun, then your subject will almost always be a shadow. Whether it is a person or a forest, the camera is will almost always adjust for the sky instead of the foreground. Sometimes, and I really mean sometimes....you can shoot into the sun and still get decent results. If you cannot turn away from the sun and still get the picture, then use your flash. The flash might not inherently seem necessary, but it is. Since the person you are taking a picture of will have their back to the sun, the front of their body will not have enough light to show up in the picture. If you turn on your flash, the flash will make sure there is enough light to allow the persons face to be seen, while still being able to see the beach. Since the sun is probably a trillion times brighter than the flash on your camera, you will always be able to see the background. Take these tips into consideration next time you go out. You will have better pictures to remember your memories with, and better memories means a better time.

I didn't see this topic anywhere in this forum so I'd thought I'd talk about it here a little. Most of my info on this subject comes from personal experimentation and from online research. I will be pretty brief here, assuming that if you would like more in depth info, you can always google the subject.

The moon is a bit tricky to photograph. Most people's first reaction, me included, is to shoot it at night, we it is most prominent. The problem with that is that the moon is too bright and the camera cannot capture enough dynamic range to correct expose both the moon and the rest of the scene. There are 2 basic work-arounds for this problem: post-processing and evening out the dynamic range.

Many people, me included, just take 2 separate pics, one with the moon properly exposed and one with the rest of the scene properly exposed, and composite them in post (I guess you could do an HDR if you really wanted too). You'll need a tripod for the long exposures and I recommend a low iso and small aperture for more dof. I use the spot meter in my camera to meter off the moon when taking the moon shot, otherwise the camera will overexpose it because of the dark background (unless you have a super long lens and can fill most of the frame with the moon). The shot of the scene can be metered regularly. Then, just use a photo manipulation software to "cut 'n paste" the moon in where you want it (of course, it's more involved than that, but that's the basic idea).

The other method is to shoot the moon when there is more light out so that there isn't such a difference in dynamic range. I've taken pics of the moon during the daytime. If you want more of the nighttime effect, you can shoot during twilight, after the sun goes down but before it gets really dark out. You'll have to do some trial and error to get the exposures even. You can meter the moon, then wait until the scene meters similarly.

A note about moon pictures: The moon is usually not interesting enough to be the subject or focal point of a picture alone. Try finding a nice scene or subject, then composing a shot with the moon as an added element.

Here is one of my early attempts at compositing a moon into a pic. There are a lot of things wrong with this pics, but it's good for illustration purposes. The moon was shot with a longer lens than the rest of the scene, so it looks bigger than it was in the original. Sometimes it's a good look, sometime it looks fake (kinda like here). Most of the time, you can start out with a moonless scene and add one in. You just need to be aware of how the light would interact with scene.

The 2 pics of the moon are to show how big the moon will look in the frame at different focal lengths. The larger one was taken with a 300mm lense, 200mm for the smaller one.

Edit images on a mid-gray background. Fairly self-explanatory and something I have just recently started doing.

I miss my eye popping wallpaper but the colours were conflicting with the images and throwing my eye off.