Understanding Exposure Value in Photography |  |
- Understanding Exposure Value in Photography
- A Photographer’s Favorite Image of His Son and How it Was Captured
- Techniques to Photograph Fire and Pyrotechnics During Daytime Hours (Video)
| Understanding Exposure Value in Photography Posted: 26 Sep 2013 04:40 PM PDT Quick Reminder: Only a few days left! in the popular deal on: Topaz Adjust w/ Adaptive Exposure Before explaining Exposure Value (EV for short), it helps to know what Light Value (LV, for short) means. When you find something (whether it’s a person, a landscape, or even a ninja), there are (generally speaking) two main levels of light you need to deal with. The first is the average amount of light in the area (we call this luminance or brightness), and the second is the amount of light bouncing off of the subject (also known as Light Value, or LV for short).  Photo captured by zuhair sait (Click Image to See More From zuhair sait) When you want to take a picture, the different things in your scene will absorb light, reflect light, or even block it and cause shadows. This will cause some things to appear brighter than others. This is what we call contrast. For example, imagine a person standing on a sandy beach. The water will be one level of brightness, the sand will be brighter, and the sky will be even brighter. The shadow from the person will be darker. This represents a higher-than-normal contrast scene. There is a common standard we use to measure light in a given situation. We use a scale ranging from 0 (a dim interior) to 18 or so (a super bright interior). Many professional photographers will go into a given location and think, “This is a night club, so it’s around LV-5,” or, “It’s sunset outside, so it’s LV-10ish,” or even, “It’s a bright, sunny, cloudless day, so it’s LV-16ish.” Like measuring temperature, LV levels are a standard. Try freaking out a photographer (the guy with the big lens at the wedding) by saying, “Hey, it’s LV-16 outside, but there are clouds coming so it’s going to drop to LV-14 by noon!” For more info, google “Light Value Chart” for a list of examples where you may encounter different LV levels. Now that we understand LV, let’s focus on the camera (nice pun, right?). When your camera takes a picture (let’s assume you are in automatic mode and shooting at ISO-100), it goes through a series of calculations to determine what the aperture and speed should be in order for the main subject in that picture to be reproduced as a middle tone of gray.  Photo captured by caroline jones (Click Image to See More From caroline jones) These settings are known as Exposure Value. It uses middle gray because it allows the camera to get as much of the dark and light tones as possible while keeping the subject visible in the picture. It’s like shooting a dart as a bulls-eye and aiming for the center: The camera can only allow so much light and dark in at the same time (in relation, the edges of the dart board), so it aims to make sure the subject is at the center of that light scale. Another example: If you are at the beach and it’s LV-15 outside and you whip out your camera to take a picture of a absolutely nothing, the camera says to itself, “Oh my gosh, it’s bright out here. I mean, it’s a whopping LV-15! I am going to increase my shutter speed (let less light ina) and shrink my aperture (also letting less light in) to a certain setting to make sure that I capture all the range of light in this picture.” Those settings (aperture, shutter speed, and ISO) combined are called the Exposure Value for the overall picture. It will probably assume the sand is gray, and as such, because the sun is so much brighter than the sand, the sun appears completely white as well as most of the sky (vs. blue). Whereas if you took a picture of the sun, it would appear as gray and the sand would appear as black because it’s no longer in the range allowed by the camera. (P.S. Don’t aim at the sun or you will zap your eye and render it useless). Now, let’s say you are outside taking a picture at sunset. The camera then says, “Hey, it’s darker out here, so I’m going to reduce my shutter speed and open up the aperture allowing for more light.” It recalculates a new Exposure Value, but it’s doing so with the primary intention of making the subject a middle level of gray. Finally, let’s say that it is still sunset, but a Ninja (not one ones in black, but the ones in white) comes running at you… Of course you want to document this, so you snap a picture. Here something different happens. The camera says, “Hey, it’s kinda’ dark outside, but that ninja is wearing all white. I am going to adjust my exposure again.” Here is where you have to be sneaky (like the Ninja). The auto-exposure on a camera ALWAYS wants to make sure that your subject is a middle-level of lightness. In this case, because the sneaky Ninja is in all white and you want to see white, not gray, you have to override your camera and say, “Hey, you need to allow for MORE LIGHT because I want that ninja to be reproduced accurately, and in order to do that, he needs to be white and not gray.”  “Vineyard Sunrise” captured by Debra Vanderlaan (Click Image to See More From Debra Vanderlaan) This is where you’d take your camera and use the feature called “Exposure Adjustment” (which can force it to allow more light in). Exposure Adjustment (EA, for short) will be the topic for another article. About The Author Related Exposure Adjustment Deal Ending Soon:The popular Topaz Adjust plug-in is currently at it’s lowest price – 50% off. Adjust’s intelligent “adaptive exposure” technology finds the best way to adjust contrast, detail, and color by analyzing the entire image. Then apply anything from simple photo enhancements to complete stylistic makeovers. Found here: Topaz Adjust at 50% Off Go to full article: Understanding Exposure Value in Photography |
| A Photographer’s Favorite Image of His Son and How it Was Captured Posted: 26 Sep 2013 01:54 PM PDT While visiting an aquarium with his family a photographer took the incredible image you see below and shared it with the internet. The image received much interest and accolades on social media which inspired the photographer to share the workflow he used to create the portrait. The image was taken using a Canon 5D Mark II and outfitted with a Sigma 10-22mm f/4-5.6 EX DC/HSM with a shutter speed of 1/160 at f/4 on an ISO of 800. The RAW file was digitally developed using Adobe Lightroom. Here is the final image:  Father’s favorite photo captured of son (Via Imgur, Click for Full Size) Upon importing the original RAW file into Lightroom, the first step was to crop down the original image, seen below.
Next, he added a post-crop vignette and called on Lightroom’s Auto Tone as a starting point and further tweaked the settings so the blacks and shadows did not appear so washed out and really complimented the golden tones in the bottom of the image. He then moved on to sharpening the image using the Clarity function.
Moving on to the the sunbeams, the next step was to bring down the Highlights from -50 to -90 which effectively removed the ‘washed out’ look. The Whites were boosted from +35 to +54 to enhance the light. At this point, he also rotated the image slightly to straighten it out. Still not entirely pleased with the image, he went back to the Clarity setting, setting it at +48 in addition to ramping up the Sharpening to +91. Another noticeable crop was made which brought him to this image:
It was now time to focus on the colors in the image. Tweaks were made to the Saturation as it was set to +10 and Vibrance to +20. To make the colors further pop from the image the shadows were dropped dramatically from +50 to -30 and the Highlights up to +32. He also set the Light Tones to -51, Dark Tones to +37, and Shadow Tones to +2. While the low light capabilities of the 5D are relatively decent, the noise levels had to be brought down a bit so the Luminance Smoothing was left at (0) while the Color Noise Reduction was put on +25 and the Color Detail settled at +50.  Wrapping up the editing process (Via Imgur) To wrap things up, a final exposure adjustment was made by increasing it to +24. The color balance was also shifted slightly to 5.3k which warmed up the look of the light along with a White Balance set to Auto.
Go to full article: A Photographer’s Favorite Image of His Son and How it Was Captured |
| Techniques to Photograph Fire and Pyrotechnics During Daytime Hours (Video) Posted: 26 Sep 2013 11:18 AM PDT If you’ve ever thought the difference between digital and film photography was simply a matter of media, think again. There’s just no comparing the level of detail hidden in the average RAW file with what you’re bound to get out of an old-school photo negative. So when an abandoned Belgian abbey and a team of Brazilian martial-artists fell in photographer Von Wong‘s lap for a daytime shoot, the sunny skies didn’t dissuade him from getting collaborator and fire-eater Andrey DAS to join: In the video, Wong is pretty stingy with the details of his setup, but from the looks of things he’s definitely not winging it. His Ranger Quadra lighting system is there to highlight his subjects out of the already plentiful ambient light. This kind of lighting is often enough to cast the background in a nondescript shadow, but the details in these photos is remarkable.
Obviously, these shots were not without post processing—the sharpness and contrast give them an HDR appearance—but every crack in the wall or bit of mortar between bricks that’s visible didn’t come from nowhere. Every one of those fine details landed on Wong’s Nikon’s sensor, and it’s just a matter of using the right tools to extract them. Try doing that with an enlarger and the chemical bath of film processing. For Further Training on Light Painting:There is a best-selling eBook on how to do many photography techniques that produce unusual, eye-catching results (including extensive chapters on various light painting methods). The new version can be found here: Trick Photography and Special Effects Go to full article: Techniques to Photograph Fire and Pyrotechnics During Daytime Hours (Video) |
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