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Digital Photography Book Vol 3

1. Hearned a great lesson one day from talking with David duChemin a gifted travel and editorial photographer was in love with a photo he had taken of an old man sweeping inside an entryway right in front of the Taj Mahal It seemed like it must have been taken at dawn because there was literally no one there but him so asked David how he got so lucky to be there when virtually no one else was there He told me that actually there were tourists everywhere and if he had shot a little wider would have seen hundreds of people on either side of him What he had done was make a conscious decision about what to leave out of his shot He framed the shot so just that one man was in his frame and it made itlook ike he and that man were the only two people there that day In the example here these two shots were taken seconds apart and the only difference is the framing The shot on the left was taken from a standing position and you could see the gift shop road and other distracting stuff Now all I had to do to hide that stuff was kneel down behind the small sand dune in front of me and frame the shot so that only the tower was visible The lesson It s not always what you put in your frame it s sometimes what you leave out Shoot the Reflections in Puddles Here s another creative idea shoot the reflections you find in puddles I don t mean shoot a downtown with puddles in the foreground where you see a reflection mean shoot the pud
2. 2 To havea gray background just turn the background light s off White paper needs light not to look gray so when you turn those lights off it gives you gray your second color from the same white background 3 To get a black background leave the lights off and increase your shutter speed to as high as your camera will allow your maximum sync speed which is probably 1 200 or 1 250 of a second This makes your background go even darker to at least a very dark gray or a solid black just by changing the shutter speed What you re essentially doing is by raising the shutter speed you re eliminating any light already in the room called ambient light Using Your Studio Like Using a Ring Flash The hot look right now for fashion photography is to use a ring flash which is a series of small flashes that form a circle around your lens and give a very flat look with a fairly hard shadow behind your subject In the chapter on flash Chapter 1 I showed an adapter you put on your small off camera flash to imitate a ring flash look because ring flashes can be pretty expensive However found one that s reasonably priced for someone who s not going to be making their living as a fashion photographer but some times wants that fiat ring flash look It s the AlienBees ABRBOO and its not terribly heavy as ring flashes go they are fairly bulky and heavy by nature but works surprisingly well considering its
3. Pro Tips for Getting Betta jotos Do You Really Need to Read Your Histogram Highlights bag RGB E SelectR G B Nikon This may be the most shocking thing you read in this book not only do I not use the histogram on the back of the camera but most of the pros know don t either With digital photography our main concern is keeping detail in the highlight areas of our photo so the brightest parts of our photo don t get so bright that there s nothing there but solid white so instead of trying to evaluate the histogram we just tum on our cam era s highlight warming It warns us if any part of our image is clipping losing highlight detail so then we can use exposure compensation to override the exposure our camera chose and darken the exposure a bit until the detail comes back That waming is telling us that the right side of the histogram is hitting the right wall of the graph known as the right wall of death by well rme Anyway here s why the highlight warning is better the histogram only tells me if some part of the photo is hitting that right wall it doesn t tell me if what s hitting the wall is something care about whereas the highlight warning shows me right on the LCD monitor exactly what part of my image is clipping so I can quickly see if it s an area of important detail like a white shirt or something that doesn t have detail like the sun In the example shown above you can see by all the bla
4. shallow depth of field 133 shapes shooting 120 sharpness checking LCD screen for 204 hand held cameras and 61 203 lens aperture setting and 80 shooting tethered 40 41 shoot through umbrella 5 6 accessories for using 5 controlling softness with 6 portable softbox vs 7 shot list 34 shutter button cable release for 68 180 tip on pressing 202 wireless release for 142 180 shutter speed action shots and 215 Auto ISO feature and 146 low light situations and 179 nighttime photos and 180 panning objects and 154 silver reflectors 50 Singh Ray Filters 103 skies including clouds in 109 Slave mode for flash 16 smiling vs non smiling subjects 139 Smith Janine 208 softbox portable 7 strip bank 93 softening light 5 7 portable softbox for 7 shoot through umbrella for 5 6 solid white backgrounds 34 Speedlight stand 26 Sports Illustrated 150 sports photography 145 167 action shots in 150 215 217 after the play shots in 165 Auto ISO feature for 146 backgrounds included in 155 battery grip for 165 before the game shots in 167 celebration shots in 150 close up shots in 159 composing shots in 215 217 225 focus setting to track action in 153 football end zone used for 149 full vs cropped frame cameras and 162 isolating your subject in 158 JPEG mode used for 195 lighting the players in 156 lower level perspective for 157 225 modular belt system for 166 multiple focus sett
5. How can you tell if they re all going to fire You can run a test Just press the red test firing button on the back of your master flash unit and each group will fire its flashes in order one after another so you can see that they all work Note It fires Group A s flashes first then Group B s and then the two background flashes on Group C last You ll visually see each one flash If one doesn t fire then you ll need to do some troubleshooting make sure the non firing flash is actually turned on make sure it s assigned to the right group make sure its sensor is seeing the flash from the master flash etc iter 1_ The Digital Photography Book Shorten the Time Between Flashes J JCFn MODE S ite ZOOM C JE J PLoT Each time your flash fires since it s battery powered it has to recycle before you can fire it again When you first pop a fresh set of batteries into your flash the recycle time is about as fast as it s going to get probably just a few seconds between flashes However the more times your flash fires the more your batteries wear down and pretty soon a few seconds between flashes turns into five seconds then 10 seconds then 12 seconds and then it just feels like an eternity and you know it s time to change batteries However there s another way to shorten the recycle time and that is to lower the power of your flash That s right the lower the power the faster the flash will recycl
6. the shoot above go to the books website at wwwkelbytraining com books digphotogv3 Using Your Studio Like a Pro You know that reflection of your softboxes that appears in your subject s eyes Those are called catch lights and you want them Badly Without them your subject s eyes won t have any sparkle to them and will look like dead lifeless pools of despair okay that s pushing ita bit but you get the idea So don t freak out or as I ve had people suggest in emails to me try to remove them in Photoshop Instead make sure they re there because they re supposed to be there Now that being said the next time you see another studio photographer s work take a good close look at the subjects eyes and you can usually not only tell which type of softbox they used square round an umbrella an octago nal softbox a beauty dish etc but you ll also be able to see the position of the light if they had it right in front over to the side etc And if you see another catch light at the bottom of the eye you ll know the photographer used a reflector positioned down low to put some light back into the eyes It s kind of a mini lighting lesson each time you take a close look Chapter 2 The Digital Photography Book Reflectors come in different colors but probably the most popular are white silver and gold although gold is usually used outdoors because adding warm yellow light in with white studio lights usually
7. 200 on kelbytraining com website 2 viewfinder covering 115 vignetting edge 73 VR Vibration Reduction lenses 65 w waterproof camera housing 110 weather considerations 211 wedding photography composing portraits in 228 JPEG mode used for 195 packing list for 186 super fast lenses for 61 Westcott Spiderlite 88 89 222 229 White Terry 37 white backgrounds 34 46 white balance color correction vs 187 ExpoDisc for nailing 187 outdoor photography and 105 setting using Live View 170 white formica 91 white reflectors 50 wide angle lenses 58 120 214 219 wide open shooting 80 wildlife photography 64 window light home interior shots and 173 product shots and 222 wireless flash channel settings 9 dedicated transmitter 10 group assignments 8 See also flash wireless shutter release 142 180 wireless strobes 35 wireless transmitter 10 2 zoom factor 72 zoom lenses f stops on 74 prime lenses vs 79 telephoto 60 wide angle 58 zooming the LCD 204 This page intentionally left blank Color Control Revolutionized eo and try Viveza for free oftware com dpvol3 This page intentionally left blank I THINK WHAT WE ALL WANT IS A FRIEND WHO LL JUST SIT DOWN WITH US AND SAY Iteach you the same way I would teach a friend so you learn way more in less time im Scot elo and tm the Education Director and a teacher at Keloyiralhing com The Best Teachers on the
8. 74 75 152 B B amp H Photo website 69 babies focusing attention of 142 shooting newborn 141 See also children backgrounds black granite 95 lighting 25 46 sets used as 36 solid white 34 backing up memory cards 201 backlighting effect 121 backup flash 28 batteries rechargeable 14 battery grips 165 battery packs external 13 studio strobes and 45 beach portraits 136 beauty dish 38 221 231 beauty style shots 216 231 black backgrounds 46 black bar gradient 54 black granite 95 BlackRapid R Strap 160 bracketing shots 117 219 breath holding 61 bridal shots 228 bright spots 107 Burst mode 206 BXRi strobes 35 c cable release 68 180 camera gear author s website on 3 downloading manuals for 209 lens gear finder 58 59 modular belt system for 166 packing lists for 102 182 186 Camera Raw 51 cameras See digital cameras Canon cameras 4 Al Servo mode 153 Auto ISO feature 146 exposure compensation on 140 external battery pack 13 eyepiece cover 115 firmware updates for 198 Focus Confirmation Light on 152 HOR bracketing on 117 15 lenses for 65 Live View white balance 170 memory card lock feature 199 mini light stand 26 Picture Styles 124 reformatting memory cards on 197 resetting to factory defaults 193 sensor cleaning feature 196 time lapse photography with 174 TTL feature 27 video capability on 189 zooming the LCD on 204 catch lights 49 celebra
9. 93 underwater 111 Live View white balance 170 location portraits beach setting for 136 packing list for 184 street setting for 137 lower level perspective 116 157 225 low light situations hand holding cameras in 206 super fast lenses for 61 tips for shooting in 179 VRor IS lenses for 65 M macro lenses 68 main light 53 Maisel Jay 137 Manfrotto gear 131DD Tripod Accessory Arm 41 Justin Spring Clamp 26 manual focus ring 71 matrix metering 171 memory cards backup strategy for 201 deleting bad shots from 125 formatting after backing up 205 lock feature for shooting without 199 myth of high speed 207 packing multiple for shoots 197 shortcut for formatting 197 Memory Set button 147 metering options 171 Midsouth Photographic Specialties 24 MiniTT1 Radio Slave Transmitter 10 mirrors tabletop 85 model releases 138 modern day objects 107 modular belt system 166 monolights 45 monopods 63 179 motion shots 154 215 movement effect 103 Mpix com photo lab 178 multiple exposures 176 music in the studio 37 N natural light portraits lit with 227 228 studio lighting combined with 89 222 See also sunlight neutral density gradient filter 66 116 newborn babies 141 nighttime photography cityscapes 180 sporting events 148 Nik Software 172 179 Nikon cameras 4 battery grip added to 165 Continuous Servo mode 153 exposure compensation on 140 external ba
10. Another landscape filter and one no landscape photographer should be without While its designed to greatly reduce reflections in things like lakes and streams which it does brilliantly most folks use it to darken the sky Is like putting a pair of sunglasses over your lens The world looks less annoyingly bright 3 A UV Filter Technically this filters out unwanted UV rays from your lens but what we all Use it for is to protect our lens from getting scratches on it Putting this filter on puts a thin piece of glass between your lens and anything that would scratch or worse yet break it They re very cheap so if one breaks or gets scratches you just replace it Life goes on Get a scratch on one of your lenses and they ll hear you weeping six blocks away I buy a UV filter for every lens lown The Truth About Lenses The Deal on Lens Hoods Lens Hood Besides making your lens look longer and more professional a lens hood serves two very important roles one advertised one not as much The first is that the lens hood helps keep lens flare from the sun or from a flash from getting to your lens and wash ing out your photos Most good quality lenses these days come with a lens hood that is specifically engineered to work with that particular lens The other less publicized use is to protect your lens from getting scratched or broken while it s slung over your shoul der as you walk around can t tell you how
11. These let you use the hand that is steadying the lens to lock in your focus so when the play happens you can just press the shutter button quickly However there s a little known feature that when coupled with back focusing can really make a huge difference in getting the shot We ll use baseball as an example Let s say there s a runner on first so the play is going to be at second base Go ahead and focus on second base itself then turn on the Memory Set button on your long glass if your lens has a memory lock Now turn on your camera s back focus AE Lock feature so instead of focusing when you press the shutter button it focuses when you press the AE Lock but ton on the back of your camera Then swing your camera over to the batter and press the back autofocus AE Lock button to facus on him When he swings go ahead and get the shot by pressing the shutter button you can shoot fast because you don t have to wait for the autofocus to kick in you already focused with the back autofocus AE Lock button If he gets the hit swing immediately over to second base then with your other hand on the barrel press the second focus button on the barrel of the lens and it remembers the focus you locked in for second base so all you have to do is wait for the runner and press the shutter button Both areas home plate and second base will be in perfect focus and you re right there ready to capture the action Shooting Night Games
12. s LCD Monitor E Canon You read a lot online about not being able to really trust what you see on the LCD screen on the back of your camera Some ofthat is old outdated information some of it depends on camera settings which well cover in just a minute and some of it is true Here are my thoughts on it If you shoot in JPEG mode using one of today s newer dSLR cameras and the more expensive the camera usually the better quality the LCD monitor what you re seeing on the monitor is a JPEG preview and it s pretty close to what youll actually see when you apen the photo on your computer or get prints made However ifyou shoot in RAW mode you re not seeing a preview of the RAW phato you re seeing a preview of the JPEG image and the JPEG image usually looks better than an unedited RAW photo That s because JPEG images have been processed inside your camera and they have sharpening applied color correction contrast and basically your camera tries to make JPEGs look really good But when you shoot in RAW you re telling your camera Tum all that in camera make it look good stuff off and just give me the raw untouched file and then Ill do all that sharpening color correction and contrast stuff myself in Photo shop or Lightroom or whatever However oute still seeing that processed JPEG preview on your camera so if you shoot in RAW mode don t be startled when what you see on your computer doesn t look nearl
13. 203 206 HOR bracketing on 117 most common brands of 4 rain covers for 211 reformatting memory cards on 197 resetting to factory defaults 193 sensor cleaning on 196 sophisticated technology of 191 suggested setup for 181 video capability of 189 waterproof housing for 110 zoom factor of 72 See also Canon cameras Nikon cameras The Digital Photography Book digital photos backing up 201 combining in Photoshop 173 176 copyrighting 200 deleting 125 recipes for shooting 213 231 See also JPEG images RAW photos distracting objects hiding in product photos 97 modern day objects as 107 downloading user manuals 209 duChemin David 112 dust spots 210 E edge vignetting 73 editorial style shots 221 effects backlighting 121 movement 103 star filter 104 Elinchrom gear beauty dish 38 BXRi strobes 35 Ranger kit 45 environmental portraits 58 equipment See camera gear evaluative metering 171 ExpoDisc 187 exposure compensation 140 177 180 external battery pack 13 eyeglass glare 50 eyepiece cap 115 eyes in portraits 139 Ezybox 7 225 F file formats 90 fill flash 20 53 filters circular polarizer 66 darkening 103 lens 66 69 neutral density gradient 66 116 uy 103 firmware updates 198 fisheye lenses 59 fishing line 92 flash 5 30 adding units of 19 backgrounds lit with 25 backup 28 channels used for 9 concert photos and 172 diffusion dome for 21 25
14. 399 price tag you can spend over 1 000 on a ring flash pretty eas ily You can check out page 223 for a photo taken with the AlienBees ring flash so you can see the type of look you can expect from one apter 2 igital Photography Using V Flats for Fashion If you re shooting fashion youre probably going to be shooting a lot of length and full length shots and if that s the case you ll probably want to get some V flats these are actually large foam core sheets that are approximately eight feet tall by three or four feet wide and you can usually find them with one side black and one side white You ll use the white side asa giant full body reflector placed either directly to the side of your subject on the opposite side of your main light or in front and little bit to the side leaning back a bit to throw some light back toward your subject The reason these are called V flats is because you take two of them form a large V shape and tape them together on the seam That way you can stand them up and position them where you need them without having to use a stand of any kind Also since one side is black you can use the black side as a flag to keep background lights aiming forward at your subject from spilling through to the camera and creating lens flare or you can face the black side toward your subject which subtracts light from the scene and gives a dramatic edge to your subject To see the resulting image from
15. But if you shoot under sta dium lighting at night then it s a problem because you can t afford to lose that stop of light it might mean the difference between sharp shots and blurry movement GRAB ATELECONVERTER FIRST WHEN m shooting sports or wildlife in bright daylight Teleconverters Don t Work with Every Lens Before you buya teleconverter make sure it works with your lens t witha teleconverter Look on the order page for the teleconverter and itwill usually lenses that it either Lenses with VR or IS Built In Canon Lens manufacturers know that people have a hard time hand holding their cameras in low light situations so they started adding features that automatically help keep the lenses from moving so you get sharper shots in low light Nikon calls their brand of this anti movement technology VR for Vibration Reduction and Canon calls theirs IS for Image Stabilization They re both well named because that s what they do they hold your lens steady for you so you get sharper shots but it really only makes a difference when you are shooting ata slow shutter speed you ll get no improvement when you re shooting in broad daylight because your shutter speed will be so fast which freezes any motion that there s no reason for VR or IS to kick in What VR and IS do is let you hand hold in lower light situa tions so if you wind up shooting a lot in churches museums theaters and other l
16. Group A or both assigned to Group B so they both fire at the same time Just like turning on another light in your home adds more light adding another flash adds more light too By the way adding another flash doesn t double your light output it just adds about an extra stop of light To add another stop of light just add another two flashes and so on kon Some photographers use their camera built in pop up flash as a fill lash when they re not trying to fully light the person they re shooting with flash and they just wanta little bit of flash to help fil in the shadows The problem is your camera doesn t always know that you only want a little fill and it usually sends more flash than you actually want and the photo looks well it looks like you used a pop up flash However most cameras actually have a setting that lets you lower the power of your pop up flash so if you try the of fil lash route and find that it looks more like regular flash you can dial down the power of your pop up and try again On Nikon cameras you do this by holding down the flash mode button the one on the front side of your camera right by the lens it has a lightning bolt on it then looking at the control panel on top and turning the sub command dial in front so you see a negative number On Canon cameras you press the SO flash exposure compensation button look at the top LCD or viewfinder and turn the quick control dial until you
17. Planet Online All i in One Place wwrw Kelbytraining com or call 800 201 7323 Professional Portrait Q Kelhytraining com EXTRAORDINARY PHOTOSHOP TRAINING AT AN EXCEPTIONAL PRICE Mastering Camera Rawin Adobe Photoshop S4 DVD by Scott Kel Scott kelby co fa a KelbyNtediaGroup company Downarrow om Vith 4 000 photographers and creatives attending our even each yeas es to see why Kelby Training LVEis the mos popular seminar ourin the wo Leam onthe most ited and talented photographers and aeative gurus onthe planet al tring their latest tips ticks and adancedteiniques for photography Pots eign Lironi animare COMING SOON TO A CITY NEAR YOU LERE Magam ke mua oe atte nce aeaoe DembodTarPatesstenyteigheon Kelhytraining Safari Books Ontine nummi AIR e gt Get free online access to this book for 45 days And get access to thousands more by signing up for a free trial to Safari Books Online With the purchase of this book you have instant online searchable access to it for 45 days on Safari Books Online And while you re there be sure to check out Safari Books Online s on demand digital library and their free trial offer a separate sign up process Safari Books Online subscribers have access to thousands of technical creative and business books instructional videos and articles from the world s leading publishers e S
18. Servo focus mode and you do that right on the front of the camera tself it that litle switch on the front right under the lens marked M S and C You want C for Continuous Servo On Canon cameras it s called Al Servo AF and you turn it on by pressing the AF Drive button on the top of the camera and then turning the main dial until you see Al Servo in the top LCD panel igital Photography Book Freezing Motion Doesn t Always Look Good If you re shooting a sport like car racing bike racing or even an air show freezing the ac tion doesn t always look right Take car racing for example If you completely freeze the action you won t see the wheels of the car spinning they ll be frozen like the car was parked on the track rather than racing around it Same thing with the wheels on a bike or motorcycle or the propellers on a stunt plane they ll all look like they re standing still The way around this is to lower your shutter speed to around 1 250 to 1 360 of a second and follow along with the moving object called panning That way the shutter speed will be slow enough to show the wheels or prop spinning and you ll get the sense of motion and speed that would be missing otherwise Shooting Sports Like a Pro Avoid the Fence at All Costs If you te shooting your kid s game here s a tip to help you get more professional looking images try to set up the shot so instead of seeing a fence very commo
19. White Balance Let Great Light Be Your Subject Watch for Bright Spots The Three Keys to Landscape Photography Look for Clouds to Hold the Color How to Shoot Underwater Part 1 How to Shoot Underwater Part 2 Its What You Leave Out of the Frame Shoot atthe Lowest ISO Possible Not Sure What to Shoot Try This Keeping Unwanted Light Out Using 2 Graduated Neutral Density Filter How to Shoot for HDR What to Do with Your HDR Shots Scout Your Dawn Shoot Location Dort Always Shoot Wide Angle a4 85 86 87 88 89 90 p 92 93 95 96 97 98 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 no m 12 113 na ns ne n7 ne n9 120 Table of Contents Use Backlighting to Your Advantage Why We Get There Early Why You Should Shoot Panos Vertically Getting More Vibrant Landscapes Delete Now Instead of Later CHAPTER SIX Shooting People Like a Pro Yet Even More Tips to Make People Look Their Very Best They Look Uncomfortable Hand Them a Prop The Advantage of Having Your Subject Sit Shoot From Up Really High Shooting a View Pick a Spot to Look At Get Everything Set Before They Arrive Super Shallow Depth of Field for Portraits Using a Triflector for Portraits Using Scrims for Shooting in Direct Sun Shooting at the Beach Shooting on the Street Get a Model Release They Don t Always Need to Be Smiling Overexpose on Purpose Put Multiple Photos Together to Tell a Story Get Out From Behind the
20. a photo are the brightest part and the sharpest part of the photo Keep this in mind when you re shooting in the studio or on location even with small off camera flash because if you light your entire subject evenly you won t be directing your viewers to look where you want them to which in most portraits is the subject face For a more professional look you want their face to be perfectly lit and then the light should fade away as it moves down their body How much itfades away is up to you it can fade to black if you want but again that s your call but when looking at your photo it should be clear by the lighting where you want people viewing your image to look One way you can control the light is to position itso it doesn t light all of your subject evenly or to use a fabric grid so the light doesn t spill everywhere or even to use something to block the light from lighting the person s whole body evenly 1 use a black flag a 24x36 cloth flag and position it under the light usually on a boom stand so the light is mostly concentrated on my subject s face It doesn t have to block all of it unless want the person s body to fade to black it just has to cut down the amount of light that falls on the rest of them Take a look at your favorite portrait photogra pphers and you ll see this lighting technique used again and again to create interest focus and even dramain their images Using Your Studio Like a Pro W
21. bakery choose the hands down yummiest chocolate cake she sells and then I used a series of A clamps and gaffer s tape to affix this to the head of my assistant Brad to see if this would bring about the Clooney reaction despite his having no Clooney like resemblance Well it worked better than had expected and within two weeks he wound up marrying a supermodel from Prague who to this day refers to herself as Mrs Clooney True story Chapter 6 igital Photography Book If They Look Uncomfortable Hand Them a Prop One of the things that makes some people so uncomfortable in front of the camera is that they don t know what to do with their hands no matter what they do with them they feel like they look dumb if you can see that s the case with one of your subjects give them something to hold ike a prop and you ll instantly see their comfort level go up and that will translate into more natural looking photos If you can give them a prop that they can relate to all the better For example if they re an artist have them pick up a handful of paintbrushes Shooting a nutritionist Have her take a bite of an apple Okay it doesn t have to be quite as obvious as that but you get the idea Once they have something in their hands they feel comfortable with not only will they feel more comfortable but your photos will have added visual interest as well Shooting Like Pro The Advantage of Having Your Subject S
22. fill 20 53 focusing for 27 gels used with 22 24 group assignments for 8 19 mini light stand for 26 outdoor portraits and 17 220 pop up 20 positioning 29 30 power settings for 15 20 recycle time for 12 14 Remote or Slave mode 16 ring 18 47 223 softening 5 7 sync speed for 54 testfiring 11 transmitter system for 10 Fluorescent white balance 105 foam core 94 focusing for off camera flash 27 for sports photography 147 152 153 See also autofocus feature food photography 229 football games action and celebration shots from 150 shooting from the end zone at 149 variety of shots from 151 See also sports photography formatting memory cards backing up twice before 201 immediately after backing up 205 on camera shortcut for 197 formica white 91 frames per second fps 165 framing shots 112 freezing action 154 215 fstops star effects and 104 zoom lenses and 74 full frame cameras 62 72 162 G gaffer s tape 42 gear See camera gear gels 22 24 TO 22 essential 23 Sticky Filters 24 getting the shot 213 231 Gitzo G 065 Monitor Platform 41 glare in eyeglasses 50 Glyda Joe 120 gold reflectors 50 graduated neural density filter 66 116 granite black 95 gray backgrounds 46 gray card 51 green gel 23 Greenburg Ed 200 grid spots 39 230 groups flash 8 19 H hand held shots low light situations and 206 super fast lenses and 61 tips for sta
23. from a boom stand to pinning back clothing on your subject to get rid of wrinkles which is why you need small ones and large ones You ll find these at your local hardware store or go online and you ll find a hundred uses for them Keep these two inexpensive acces sories around and you ll keep from pulling your hair out and it ll keep the shoot moving ahead instead of coming to a halt while you run to the store Using Your Studio Like Why You ll Love Rolling Light Stands At some point you re going to wind up buying light stands for your studio so here s a bit of advice that will make life in your studio much easier buy light stands with wheels There are two big reasons you ll want to do this One is pretty obvious youlll be moving your lights a lot and it s much faster and easier to roll them around than pick them up and move them Plus I ve found and t ve seen firsthand with other photographers that you re more likely to move your lights and experiment if they re on wheels The second advantage is safety Lights are top heavy and all the weight the strobe the softbox and any accessories is at the top of the stand When you pick one up to move it it s easier to bang it into something or lose balance and topple the whole rig over than you d imagine believe me tve seen it Whatever it costs you for wheels you ll make back quickly by avoiding repair bills potential injuries on the set and visi
24. is the more time you can spend shooting right Well Elinchrom s new BXRi strobes come with a Skyport EL wireless trigger built right in all you need is the transmitter that slides into the hot shoe on the top of your camera Besides the fact that the wireless capability is built right into the strobes there s something think is even more helpful you can now control the power ofall your strobes from right at your camera using the transmitter That means if you havea strobe as a hair light up on a boom and it s too bright you can just turn down the power while you re right there at your camera no pulling the boom stand down or climbing up on a ladder to change the power on the back of the strobe It controls up to four different groups of strobes so you can have one assigned to your main light one to a hair light and one to a background light and control them all without ever leaving your camera I now pretty sweet You can get a kit from B amp H Photo with two of the 500 watt BXRi strobes two 26 softboxes two light stands two cases and the wireless transmitter you need to make it all wireless and the whole thing is around 1 550 which think isa steal for this quality of a rig I have one myself Chapter 2 igital Photography Book Using a Set Background If you te shooting in the studio a lot it won t be long before you get bored with shooting on white gray and black seamless paper and the easy way t
25. is very popular with wedding photographers who shoot outdoors It Uses your flash on your subject who is in broad daylight They call this overpowering the sun but what youre really going to do is set your exposure for a regular daylight shot then intentionally underexpose the shot by a stop or two so the photo looks a little dark Then you ll turn on your flash and let it ight your subject instead of the sun which pro duces a very commercial look So first switch your camera to program mode then hold the shutter button halfway down and look at the settings your camera chose to properly expose this daylight shot Let s say its 1 80 of a second at f 11 Switch to manual mode and dial in 1 80 of a second at f 11 Now to make the scene darker underexposed you d just change the f stop to 16 Take a test shot and see ifi s dark enough If not drop it down tof 22 and make another test shot Once it s obviously underexposed now you turn on your flash and use it to light your subject Outdoors I usually start at full power and if it looks too bright I try lowering the power of my flash a bit and then take another test shot Keep lowering the flash power until the image looks balanced lke the shot above taken in the middle of the afternoon in direct sunlight Chapter 1 Getting the Ring Flash Look Using Small Flash It s one of those looks you either love or you just can t stand with its flat bright look and hard
26. it Shooting Sports Like a Pro Ifyou re shooting a team sport like football it s easy to have the player you just shot carrying the ball lost in a big pile of jerseys Who was that player Was it 22 or 37 If you keep shooting for a few moments after the play is whistled dead you ll be able to see who finally comes up with the ball and you ll have a reference photo with their number on it so you can figure out later who the ball carrier on that play actually was In the example shown here when the player started getting up shown on the right could see his number on the top of his shoulder pad 34 Add a Battery Grip for More Frames Per Second You can get more frames per second with certain Nikon cameras like the D300 or D700 by adding a battery grip Adding one and using the proper battery configuration increases your fps rate sometimes pretty significantly For example adding a battery grip to a Nikon D700 increases the fps from five frames per second to eight frames per second That s a 660 increase in framerate not to mention that with a battery grip you now havea shutter button on top for shooting vertical which believe me makes all the differencein the world Chapter 7 igital Photography Book You Don t Have to Drag Around a Camera Bag With all the gear you ll be carrying around to shoot a sporting event the last thing you want to have to do is lug around your camera bag Worse
27. little as 18 95 You can also find lots of cards with manufacturers rebates I recently bought a number of 8 GB memory cards for 69 with a 69 mail in rebate I kid you not That s right free cards It happens Chapter 9 The Digital Photography Book Make Sure You Have the Latest Firmware Firmware version 4 04 1 01 Done One huge advantage of having the brains of today s digital cameras run by software is that the camera manufacturer can release updates to your camera which can range from fixing problems in the camera bugs to adding new features These free camera updates are called firmware updates and you download them directly from the manufacturer s website Once an update is downloaded you just connect your camera to your computer using that little USB cable that came with your camera and run the firmware updater software which usually has some simple instructions with it and itupdates your camera by the way it s not just cameras that get firmware updates off camera flash units can get them too The good news is they don t issue firmware updates very often maybe only two or three times in the life of a camera so this isn t something you ll have to be checking every week but it doesn t hurt to stop by Google com every once in a while and type in your camera s name plus firmware so your search would be Canon SOD Firmware update or Nikon D700 Firmware update and you
28. ll find a direct link to download the update from the manufacturer Once you find the update online check to see if the one available online is a higher number than the one currently installed on your camera for example on Nikon or Canon cameras you go under the Setup menu and choose Firmware Version and it will show you the version of your currently installed firmware like version 1 01 So if you see that a more recent firmware update has been released like firmware version 1 02 or higher you ll want to download and install that firmware Avoiding Problems Like a Pro Don t Get Burned by Shooting Without a Memory Card E 111 No memory card POK c s OK Enable release When camera manufacturers ship their cameras to camera stores they want the sales people at the camera store to be able to open a camera box and hand the customer the camera to take a few shots and see how the camera feels after all how a camera feels in your hands is very important So at the factory they set the camera up so you can take shots without actually having a memory card in the camera The shutter fires just like usual and you see the picture appear on the LCD on the back of the camera just like always except those photos vanish into thin air after because they re not saved to a memory card This is one thing you usually learn about the hard way Well at least did when I did a photo shoot in a studio shot for 35 minutes and wh
29. lokat at first glance The second method is to use a wide open aperture f 2 8 or f 4 to put everything in the background out of focus F 11 is death for sports shots and even an NFL game can look like a high school game without that shallow depth of field you re used to seeing from the pro shooters Keep the idea of isolation in mind and you ll have shots with much more impact your next time out Shooting Sports Like Why You Want to Get in Tight There s nothing more disappointing for a sports photographer than to have to shoot from the grandstands and one of the main reasons why is that you ll come away with shots that are very similar to what everybody else in the stands saw that day You re not bringing anything to them that they couldn t see with their own eyes That s why it s so important to get in really really tight when you re shooting sports That way you re bring ing them something that they can t see with their naked eyes You re bringing the emotion the story of the game not just the score you re showing the sweat the anger the joy and real things that make sports what it is not just far off shots of faceless people running around in uniforms That s why people react so positively to really close up shots you re showing them something they don t usually see It s not just the ordinary view We don t get that close to the athletes during a game and seeing this new side of the game is fascinating to the v
30. looking out for me for keeping me focused and for making sure have the time I need to write books do seminars and still have time with my family You don t have an easy job but you make it look easy To my photography assistant and digital tech Brad Moore I don t know how I would have gotten through this book without your help your work in the studio shooting so many ofthe product shots your advice and input and your patience You ve only been here a short time and you re already having a big impact l m so grateful to have someone of your talent and character on our team To my buddy RC Concepcion My personal thanks for reprising your gig from volume 2 and stepping in to help get the studio shots done for this volume You are the Swiss Army knife of digital imaging and design To Kim Gabriel You continue to be the unsung hero behind the scenes and tm sure I don t say this enough but thank you so much for everything you do to make this all come together To my dear friend and business partner Jean A Kendra Thanks for putting up with me all these years and for your support for all my crazy ideas It really means a lot To my editor at Peachpit Press Ted Waitt Do you know what a joy itis to work on a photo book with an editor who s also a passionate and creative photographer It makes a huge difference You get it You get me I get you Its a beautiful thing To my publisher Nancy Aldrich Ruenzel Scott
31. nil Because this process has become so quick easy and inexpensive there s no reason not to add this pro cess as part of your photo workflow To register your work online in the US start by going to www copyright gov eco indexhhtm it only costs 35 and you can register literally thousands of photos at a time for that same fee By the way make sure you read the tip below Watch These Free Short Absolutely Fascinating Videos on Copyright Idida series of video interviews with intellectual property attorney and noted photography copyrightexpert Ed Greenburg and followed up with interviews with photographer rights advocate Jack Resnick in July 2008 These videos have been a huge hit with photographers and linvite ou to watch them on my blog www scottkelby com Once you re there search for copyright and you ll find the videos Avoiding Probl Back Up Twice Before Formatting There s a rule a lot of photographers well paranoid photographers anyway like me follow and that is we don t erase our memory cards until we absolutely know that we have two copies of our photos elsewhere For example when you download your photos to your computer that s only one copy and you shouldn t format your memory card with just this one copy because when your hard drive crashes one day notice that said when all those photos are gone forever Now once you back up those photos from your computer to a second drive a backup
32. recipient of the prestigious Benjamin Franklin Award Scott is Training Director for the Adobe Photoshop Seminar Tour and Conference Technical Chair for the Photoshop World Conference amp Expo He s featured in a series of training DVDs and online courses and has been training photographers and Adobe Photoshop users since 1993 For more information on Scott and his photography visit his daily blog at wwwscottkelby com Table of Contents CHAPTER ONE Using Flash Like a Pro Part 2 Picking Right Up Where the Last Book Left Off 9 Things You ll Wish You Had Known Before Reading This Book That Was Only 6 Here Are the Last 3 Soft Light on Location the Budget Way Controlling Softness with an Umbrella Get More Control Using a Portable Softbox What Your Flash Groups Are For What Your Flash Channels Are For Using a Transmitter to Fire Your Flash How to See If All Your Flashes Wil Really Fire Shorten the Time Between Flashes Recycle Faster with an External Battery Pack Another Recycle Faster Tip Typical Power Settings for Your Flash Firing a Second Flash in Another Room Overpowering the Sun Getting the Ring Flash Look Using Small Flash What If Your Flash at Full Power Isn t Enough Lowering the Power of Your Pop Up Flash When Not to Use a Diffusion Dome The Pro Trick for Better Looking People Shots Two Other Gels You Really Need Sticky Filters Tips for Lighting Your Background with Flash Usin
33. s not all a thrill there s a lot of what we call hurry up and wait because in all sports there are lots of times where nothing is happening like timeouts penalties breaks between periods or quarters TV time outs halftime someone s hurt on the field etc and you re just standing there talking to other sports photographers who are by and large kinda cranky because it s in those downtime moments when they realize how much they ve spent on the equipment required to really shoot sporting events right and each time they pause to think about it they die alittle inside because they know they could be driving nice cars or living in comfortable homes or they could have sent their kids to a great school but instead here they are waiting for the timeout to end and then they tum to liquor to deaden the pain of a life spent on the road and before you know it they re writing a volume 3 of their book when all they really want is a hug a decent monopod and a bottle of ibuprofen lo Shooting sports especially if you have a family member who is Auto ISO Lets You Always Freeze the Action ISO sensitivity settings ISO sensitivity 200 Maximum sensitivity 3200 Minimum shutter speed 1 1000 If you te shooting a sport where you need to freeze the action like football basketball baseball etc then you need to make sure you re shooting at a shutter speed that freezes action around 1 1000 of a second That s easy
34. subject 2 Normally you d keep your subject about 10 feet away from the white seamless paper background but to get that halo shadow behind her you can reposition your subject so she s only around a foot or two from the background That way you can see the shadows created by the ring flash but they re not too large 3 Since you re this close to the background you don t need to light the background with a separate flash the light from the ring flash is enough to light the background at the same time 4 A ring flash produces a harder light source than a strobe with a softbox so to keep the shadows that outline your subject soft make sure you shoot in close to your sub ject this increases the relative size of your light source which makes the light softer Characteristics of this type of shot Dark dramatic lighting that picks up the chrome and the lines of the bike 1 You only need one light to get a shot like this but it has to be a big one well the strobe doesn t have to be big but the softbox does it has to almost be as long as the bike Place the softbox directly over the motorcycle on a large boom stand aiming straight down at it 2 The reason you don t see the legs of the boom stand holding up the light is that removed them using the Clone Stamp tool found in Photoshop or Photoshop Ele ments In the original you could see part of the base of the rolling boom stand and even part of the light sta
35. the backup That s not the tip though Having a backup for a paying job is an absolute necessity Here s the tip make sure the flash you use as a backup is the same make and model as your main flash That way if you suddenly have to switch flashes in the middle of the shoot you re not trying to figure out how it works or what the settings should be for a flash that doesn t have the same power output or anything else that might freak you out in front of the client because you re not used to working with that model of flash If you use the same make and model as your backup and then you swap out flashes its just business as usual Using Flash Like a Pro Part 2 How High to Position Your Flash So you ve got your wireless flash all set up your flash is on a light stand or a friend is holding the flash for you and now you re wondering How high up do put this thing and where do aim it Here s a simple way to think about it position the flash where the sun would be The sun is usually up in the sky aiming down at us here on earth so put your flash up high on a light stand and angle it so it s aiming down at your subject If you re inside pretend there s no roof You can see the resulting image from this shoot on the book s website at wwwkelbytraining cam books digphotogv3 igital Photography Book Chapter 1 Which Side Should Your Flash Go On once heard a famous portrait photographer say he alwa
36. the standard metal reflectors and a bare flash bulb on each To keep the light from spilling everywhere use a 20 grid spot over each of the reflectors They do a great job of aiming a beam of light right where you want it 3 To keep the light from these two back lights from creating lens flare and washing out the photo put a black flag usually a 24x36 felt rectangle in front of each light to block the light from entering your camera 4 The front light will be a large softbox to the front and left side of your subject from our view which will be powered way down just enough to add some fil light in his face He s shot on a black seamless background Shoot at f 8 to keep everything sharp and in focus and use a long 200mm lens for a more pleasing look The Recipe for Getting This Type of Shot Characteristics of this type of shot A clean bright beauty shot with a wrapping light highlighting the side of your subject face 1 Although you see light wrapping around the sides of her face from both sides there are only two lights used for this look which think makes it even cooler She is not standing in front of a white background she s actually standing in front of a large softbox that s about one foot behind her aiming upward at a 45 angle just to help keep the flash from creating lens flare since it would be aiming straight at the camera So what you re seeing is the light from that large softbo
37. these brackets that s not apparent at first unscrew one little knob and you can instantly rotate your camera to a vertical shooting position while the lens stays put This lets you switch from shooting wide to shooting tall in all of two seconds The Truth About Lenses When to Use the Manual Focus Ring Manual Focus Ring Most lenses let you tum off the autofocus feature and manually focus your lens but a lot of today s lenses actually let you do both start by letting autofocus set your initial focus but then override it and tweak your focus using the manual focus ring usually found at the far end of the lens There are photographers who do this every time start with autofocus and then tweak it but most like myself just rely on today s ex cellent autofocus capabilities to do the work for them If you want to tweak the focus yourself using the manual focus ring just let autofocus do its thing first and lack onto your subject before you start tweaking the manual focus ring Buying a Really Fast Lens for Studio Work Over the years ve run into so many photographers who have spent a ton on really fast lenses like f 28 and f 4 lenses usually the faster the lens the more they cost yet they either primarily or only shoot in the studio This is ust pretty much tossing money down the drain because they probably rarely if ever shoot at f 2 8 or f 4 because they re not shooting in low light situation
38. to Use a Macro Lens When to Use aTilt Shift Lens Howto Clean a Lens When to Use the Manual Focus Ring Zoomed vs Full Frame Lenses Lens Vignetting and How to Remove It Why Some Lenses Have Two f Stops Uke f 3 5 5 6 Tips on Changing Lenses When to Use an All in One Zoom When to Use a Lensbaby Lens What Makes Ita Portrait Lens Flxed Length Prime Lenses vs Zooms Shooting at Your Lens Sharpest Aperture But My Friend Has That Lens and He Shoots 41 2 43 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 s7 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 7 n n 3 74 75 7 7 78 79 80 31 Table of Contents CHAPTER FOUR Shooting Products Like a Pro How to Get Them to Look Like You ve Always Wanted Them To How to Create Real Reflections Mirrors for Those Hard to Light Places Lighting From Underneath The Advantage of Shooting Inside a Tent Using Continuous Lighting Mixing Daylight and Studio Lights Enhancing Highlights and Shadows in Post Making Your Own Product Table Special Wire for Hanging Products The Advantage of Using Strip Banks Using Foam Core A Dramatic Background for Products Use aTripod Hide Distracting Stuff Clean It Before You Shoot It CHAPTER FIVE Shooting Outdoors Like a Pro More Tips for Creating Stunning Scenic images Make a Packing List So You Dont Forget Anything Show Movement in Your Shot Getting the Star Filter Effect Try Getting Creative with
39. what it says tis Ahhh but there s a gotcha snt there always If you puta lens that was made for a stan dard digital camera and most digital lenses are just that on a full frame camera it zooms it basically it crops your photo down to the zoomed dimensions What that means to you and meis if you buy a full frame digital camera you won t get the advantage of a full frame camera at least when it comes to lenses uniess you buy lenses that are specially made for full frame cameras Now that being said some of the higher end more expensive lenses do work fine with full frame cameras and they don t crop down the image So how do you know which ones do and which ones don t put together a partial list for Nikon and Canon users at www kelbytraining com books digphotogv3 The Truth About Len Lens Vignetting and How to Remove It Raves Have you ever taken a shot and then when you look at the shot on your computer you notice that the corners of your image seem darker than the rest of the photo It s fairly common thing especially with some wide angle lenses and some of the less expensive lenses This is called edge vignetting and it is a problem caused by the lens itself that winds up on your photos Luckily you can remove edge vignetting also known as lens vignetting in most image editing programs like Photoshop Photoshop Lightroom Pho toshop Elements etc For example in Photoshop s or Elements Camera R
40. with Super High ISO ISO sensitivity settings ISO sensitivity 5000 6400 Hi 0 3 Hi 0 7 Hi1 Hi2 Nikon One of the most surprising things that new sports photographers learn is just how dark a playing field is at night It may look bright from the stands but for your camera you might as well be shooting in a museum because you have to maintain a high enough shutter speed to freeze the action as mentioned earlier a good rule of thumb is 1 1000 ofa second So how big a problem is this To give you an example when shooting a Chicago Bears night game at Solider Field in Chicago had to shoot at 4000 ISO most of the night to get anywhere near 1 1000 of a second From the stands and even when down on the sidelines it looks incredibly bright until you look through your viewfinder and see the shutter speed So if it s that dim at Solider Field you can imagine the chal lenge of shooting a high school football game That s the reason why cameras capable of shooting at higher ISOs with minimal noise have become so popular cameras like Canon s Mark Il and Nikon s D700 and D3 have such minimal noise that Ill often shoot at 6400 ISO and the noise is barely noticeable If you try to shoot at high ISOs like that with lower end cameras the noise will be so distracting that you won t get the results you re after I hate to tell you to rush out and buy an expensive high 1SO camera but like I said in volume 1 of this book shooting spo
41. your natural light can make a big difference do this a lot when shooting food or wine bottles where use the natural ight for the backlighting so it s really the main light and then use a West cott Spiderlite continuous light for a fill ight in front after all if the light is coming from behind my product the front of the product will be kind ofa silhouette Bringing a little light in from the front makes all the difference in the world The advantage of the Spidertite is that it s daylight balanced and mixes really well with natural daylight To see the final image from this shoot just go to the book s companion website at wwwkelbytraining com books digphotogv3 Chapter4 The Digital hy Book togra Enhancing Highlights and Shadows in Post Before Ater Although we always strive to get as much right in the camera as possible product pho tography is one area where it usually pays to do a little tweaking in Photoshop after the fact called post processing orjustpost by people who can only use one word at atime When shoot a product what fm looking to do in Photoshop besides removing any specks dust or other little junk on the background or the product itself is to enhance the highlights the brightest areas ofthe product and the shadows the darker areas Basically I make the highlights brighter and more obvious and the shadow areas a bit darker and richer Once you see th
42. your set pieces and your subject and the very shallow depth of field You ll be amazed at the results Using Your Studio Like a Pro You ve Got to Have Music During the Shoot Askany pro who shoots people for a living and they ll tell you that they have music on during the shoot Having that music playing in the background goes a long way toward making the people you re shooting more relaxed and comfortable which usually trans lates into better looking images if they re relaxed and having fun the photos will ook that way too All you need is an iPod or any other portable media player go download some songs get a small iPod compatible speaker and you re set Now here s the thing for this really to make a difference don t just play your favorite music that will only make you feel relaxed and comfortable you want to play your subject s favorite type of music The type that will have them on the set saying Oh man love this song For this book shot with a number of professional male and female models and Id always ask them what type of music they liked Sadly they never choose old school funk or 80s big hair rock or would have had them covered Instead they wanted the same music they listen to at home and in their car R amp B hip hop rock rap and alternative So I called another photogra pher I know my buddy Terry White who always has great music playing during his shoots and ask
43. 136 beauty style 216 231 of children 142 143 composing 216 218 220 223 227 230 CTO gel for 22 depth of field for 133 220 227 editorial style 221 environmental 58 eyes looking away in 139 grid spots for 39 grouping together 141 leg up trick for 130 lenses used for 60 78 model releases for 138 natural ight 227 228 of newborn babies 141 outdoor 17 135 136 220 overexposing on purpose 140 overpowering the sun in 17 packing list for location 184 preparing the studio for 132 props included in 128 143 221 scrims for sunny day 135 seating subjects for 129 shooting 3 4 view 131 smiling vs non smiling 139 street based 137 triflectors for 134 wedding 228 posing stool table 129 positioning the flash 29 30 postcard images 114 power settings for flash 15 prime lenses 79 product photography 83 98 below product lighting for 86 black granite for 95 cleaning products before 98 composing shots in 222 224 229 continuous lighting for 88 daylight plus studio lights for 89 dramatic background for 95 foam core used in 94 hiding distracting objects in 97 invisible thread used in 92 light tents for 87 mirrors used in 85 Photoshop enhancements for 90 plexiglass used in 84 86 reflections created in 84 strip banks for 93 tripods and 96 white formica for 91 Professional Photographers of America PPA 138 professional tips techniques 169 189 concert event shots 172 g
44. 2 sec Peripheral illlumin correct Canon There are certain sports like tennis or golf where being quiet and unobtrusive is the name of the game for a photographer yes they sometimes will yell at you if you bring any undue attention to yourself and one simple thing you can do so you don t stick out is ta turn off your camera s autofocus beep that little audible beep that lets you know your autofocus has locked on Instead turn that off then just look in the viewfinder for the visible signal that your focus has locked on on Nikon cameras it s the Focus Indicator the solid round circle on the bottom left side of the viewfinder On Canon cameras it s called the Focus Confirmation Light and it s found at the bottom right of the viewfinder That way the only sound they ll hear is your shutter To turn off the beep on a Nikon camera go to the Custom Setting menu under Shooting Display choose Beep and set itto Off On Canon cameras go under the Shooting 1 menu choose Beep and set it to Off as shown above Shooting Spor If you re going to be shooting sports there s a focus setting on your camera that you re going to want to change to help you track the action and stay in focus Switch fram the default focus which is for non moving objects to a focus mode that tries to automatically track a moving object if it moves out of the focus area On Nikon cameras you d switch from Single Servo mode to Continuous
45. Camera for Kids Don t Shoot Down on Kids CHAPTER SEVEN Shooting Sports Like a Pro How to Get Professional Results From Your Next Sports Shoot Auto ISO Lets You Always Freeze the Action Using the Extra Focus Buttons on Long Glass Shooting Night Games with Super High ISO The Advantage of Shooting From the End Zone The Two Most Popular Sports Shots Once You ve Got the Shot Move On Turning Off the Beep Having Your Focus Auto Track the Action Freezing Motion Doesn t Always Look Good Avoid the Fence at All Costs Leveraging Daylight to Light Your Players 12 12 123 124 125 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 Table of Contents Shoot From a Low Position Isolate Your Subject for More Impact Why You Want to Get in Tight Using a Second Camera Body Get an R Strap Tella Story with Your Shots Full Frame vs Standard Digital Chip Don t Have Long Glass Rent It for the Week Still Players Are Boring Another Reason to Keep Shooting After the Play You Don t Have to Drag Around a Camera Bag Start Shooting Right Before the Game CHAPTER EIGHT ProTips for Getting Better Photos Tricks ofthe Trade for Making All Your Shots Look Better Using Live View to Set Your White Balance Spot Metering Shooting Concerts and Events Shooting Home Interiors Shooting Time Lapse Photography Canon Shoo
46. Close Your Camera Bag Why You Should Download Your User Manual The Photoshop Trick for Finding Dust Spots Shooting in Bad Weather CHAPTER TEN Yet Even More Photo Recipes to Help You Get The Shot The Simple ingredients to Make It All Come Together INDEX xi 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 2 a3 232 f re Le a ca Chapter One Using Flash Like a Pro Part 2 Picking Right Up Where the Last Book Left Off 4 I know what you re thinking If this is Part 2 where is Part 12 Well Part 1is actually Chapter One back in volume 2 Wait a darn minute you e pulling that old bait and switch scam right No a bait and switch scam is where you see an advertisement for a washer and dryer for a really low price the bait but then you go to the store and they tell you it s sold out and then they try to talk you into buying a more expensive washer and dryer that they have in stock that s the switch My scam is totally different 1 This book isn t about washers or dryers and 2 didnt offera cheaper book and then try to trick you into buying a more expensive book Instead my scam is called a jump back where Im trying to get you to buy more books Here s how it works You ve already bought volume 3 the book you re holding in your hands right now but on the first page of the book this page you realize that you
47. Cowlin Sarah Jane Todd and the incredibly dedicated team at Peachpit Press I a real honor to get to work with people who really just want to make great books Toal the talented and gifted photographers who ve taught me so much over the years Moose Peterson Vincent Versace ill Fortney David Ziser Jim DiVitale Helene Glassman Joe McNally Anne Cahill George Lepp Kevin Ames Eddie Tapp and Jay Maisel my sincere and heartfelt thanks for sharing your passion ideas and techniques with me and my students To my mentors John Graden Jack Lee Dave Gales Judy Farmer and Douglas Poole Your wisdom and whip cracking have helped me immeasurably throughout my life and I will always be in your debt and grateful for your friendship and guidance Most importantly want to thank God and His son Jesus Christ for leading me to the woman of my dreams for blessing us with such amazing children for allowing me to make a living doing something I truly love for always being there when I need Him for blessing me with a wonderful fulfiling and happy life and such a warm loving family to share it with Other Books By Scott Kelby Scott Kelby s 7 Point System for Adobe Photoshop CS3 The Digital Photography Book vols 1 amp 2 The Photoshop Elements Book for Digital Photographers The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book for Digital Photographers The Photoshop Book for Digital Photographers The Photoshop Channels Book Phot
48. Photdgraphy The step by step secrets for how to make your photos look like the pros Scott Kelby Author of The Digital Photography Book volume 1 the best selling digital photography book of al time The eigital The step by step secrets for how to make mates Took like the pros Book Scott Kelby The Digital Photography Book volume 3 The Digital Photography PUBLISHED BY Book volume 3 Team Peachpit Press TECHNICAL EDITORS Copyright 2010 by Scott Kelby Kim Doty Cindy Snyder FIRST EDITION July 2009 EDITORIAL CONSULTANT All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or Brad Moore transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical Including photocopying recording or by any information storage ae beeen and retrieval system without written permission from the publisher a except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review TRAFFIC DIRECTOR pospe Composed in Myriad Pro Adobe Systems Incorporated and Lucida Grande Bigelow amp Holmes Inc by Kelby Media Group PRODUCTION MANAGER Dave Damstra Trademarks All terms mentioned in this book that are known to be trademarks GRAPHIC DESIGN or service marks have been appropriately capitalized Peachpit Press EARRA cannot attest to the accuracy of this information Use of a term in COVER DESIGNED BY the book should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any Jessica Maldonado trademark or service mark STUDIO AND Ph
49. Position the camera height right at her eye level 3 To keep everything in focus from front to back you ll need to use an f stop that holds details like f 11 and a long enough lens like a 200mm to give nice perspective 4 She s leaning on the same clear piece of plexiglass that I talked about in the product photography chapter Chapter 4 which is held up by two people assisting in the studio The background is a gray seamless paper background Yet Even More Photo Recipes to Characteristics of this type of shot A tight in shot giving you an up close view you don t usually see and the shot has a lot of energy and vivid color 1 The key to this shot is using a very long lens in this case a 400mm lens to get you really in tight to the action 2 Because you re shooting in direct sunlight during the middle of the day getting a shutter speed greater than 1 1000 of a second won t be a problem at all in fact this was shot at 1 4000 of a second which freezes everything 3 Because the car is coming almost straight at your shooting position you hardly see the wheels like you do with a side or three quarter view of the car so you don t have to be as concerned about using a slow shutter speed to have the wheels blurred to show motion Because of that you can shoot with a much higher shutter speed and create a really crisp image 4 One thing that greatly adds to the energy of the shot is tilting the camera 45 to o
50. a They shoot everything from the birth oftheir child to a space shuttle launch with it because these lenses which you focus and aim with your thumbs and forefingers are just plain addictive So you know that go ing in Lensbaby lenses give you one small area of your photo that is sharp and in focus and then all the other areas around that sharp area quickly go way out of focus and blurry which results in a look that can have a lot of energy movement and excitement to it OF course the look is only part of it because what really gets people hooked on itis that whole move it yourself thing It just feels like you re really making a picture rather than just taking a picture GRAB THIS LENS FIRST WHEN m in the mood to shoot something really creative Chapter 3_ The Digital Photography Book What Makes It a Portrait Lens There are certain lenses that have been referred to as portrait lenses and always get asked What s a good portrait lens That s a good question and one that doesn t like many things with lenses have a single definitive answer would say that generally a portrait lens would be a fixed length lens so it doesn t zoom that is between 85mm and 105mm But here s the problem and where a lot of the mental fuzziness comes in Back on page 72 I talked about the zoom factor and full frame cameras So an 85mm fixed length lens on a regular non full frame digital camera is actually mor
51. a cleaning cloth or a dry towel fa cleaning cloth isnt handy Don t wipe it or you risk moving water into places you dort wantit so just carefully patit dry ve heard of photographers using a blow dryer set on low to help dry things off but luckily I haven t had to test that one out Also leave your camera off until the camera has had plenty of time to dry the inside on its own SHUTTER SP D 1 asec F STORF T 150 100 ChapterTen Yet Even More Photo Recipes to Help You Get The Shot The Simple Ingredients to Make It All Come Together Have you ever looked at a photo and thought wonder how you get a shot like that Maybe it was a studio shot or one taken out onlocation and you re wondering where the light was positioned or maybe if there was even a light at all Maybe you could figure out that there was a flash of some sort used but maybe you didn t know which type of softbox was used or if there was more than one light Has that ever happened to you No Really Rats That s going to make this chapter a hard sell for you because like its two predecessors in volumes 1 and 2 this is more of those types of things but if you re not into that then welll have to come up with a way to give this chapter real value for you Wait wait ve got it Let s make it a photo treasure hunt Yeah Il give you objects and you look through the images in this chapter being careful not to actually read any of the de
52. a street lamp 2 Because the light is aiming straight downward some of the light is spilling onto the black seamless paper background giving a litle spotlight effect behind the subject 3 The subject is not a professional model and didn t know what to do with his hands so since he s kind of a Mac freak we handed him a laptop This is a great trick to use when your subject is uncomfortable in front of the camera just hand them a prop give them something to do and then just capture the moment as they interact with the prop which is what happened here when he started jokingly hugging the laptop 4 The final key to this is having the light fall off so his face is well lit but then the light falls off as it moves down This was done by placing a black flag a 24x36 felt panel just below the bottom edge of the beauty dish That way the light didn t spill too much onto his chest and mostly concentrated on his face This was shot with a 70 200mm f 2 8 lens at 85mm at f 6 3 Chapter 10 The Digital Photography Book The Recipe for Getting This Type of Shot Characteristics of this type of shot Soft daylight looking light with large tall high lights in the bottles and glasses and a very shallow depth of field 1 These shots are a mixture of natural light and continuous daylight fluorescent studio lighting The natural daylight was coming from a window behind and to the left from our view of the wine bottles 2 T
53. ages The Hand Them a Prop Trick Works Even Better with Kids lfadults get intimidated and shy infront ofa camera imagine how intimidating a studio with all the lights and stands etc is to a child To make them relaxed make It fun by using the same trick you do with adults give them an interesting or unusual toy or stuffed animal to get their mind off the camera and on the fun E e s sosoo FOCAL LenGrt z00nn PaM Chapter Seven Shooting Sports Like a Pro How to Get Professional Results From Your Next Sports Shoot one of the participants is one of the most rewarding thrilling exciting frustrating maddening emotionally draining cuss word emoting expensive laborious and downright fun things you can do as a photographer I rank it right up there with accidentally submerging your unprotected camera in saltwater its kind of like that Now say this from experience because these days spend a good amount of my time shooting professional sports everything from motorsports to American pro football from horse racing to baseball and let me tell you it s one royal pain in the So why do I do it Because it s a blast Wait I just said its a pain It is a pain Just ask any sports shooter The day after a serious shoot you re hobbling around like you were actually playing the game instead of Just shooting it but at the same time there s just nothing like the thrill of shooting sports Well it
54. airly evenly put your diffusion dome cap on the flash This spreads the light out wide and makes it appear smoother and more even as shown here on the left Then back the flash itself away from the wall the farther it is away the more the light will spread If instead you want a more defined spotlight look behind your subject just move the flash in closer to the wall behind them and remove the diffusion dome as shown here on the right Chapter 1 The Digital Photography Book Using That Little Flash Stand in the Box Ifyou buy a Nikon or Canon flash take a look inside the box it came in and you ll find a little black plastic stand I call it a foot but Nikon calls it a Speedlight stand and Canon calls theirs a mini stand Anyway your flash slides right into this little stand and now you can put your flash on the floor behind your subject or on a table and it stands right up It like a free mini light stand However it has a feature a lot of folks miss the bottom is threaded so you can screw it directly onto either a tripod or a standard light stand and it will hold your flash up higher Hey it saves you from hav ing to buy a special adapter just to hold up your flash though if you mount your flash ona stand a lot and need a little more control like tilt then fd use my tip from back in volume 2 and buy a Manfrotto Justin Spring Clamp with Flash Shoe for around 57 and then you can mou
55. ality button and the Exposure Compensation button down for more than two seconds or you can press the Menu button go to the Shooting menu and choose Reset Shooting Menu then go to the Custom Setting menu and choose Reset Custom Settings Doesn t mat ter which way you do it it ll reset the camera to the factory fresh settings Chapter9 The Digi hotography Book Instant JPEG From RAW anoc Dm oor m Papusa oac seene ome open all toe ots cetinfo Compress Soccer shoot ad Duplicate Make Alias MPA Copy Soccer shoni Automator Cean Up Selection Send Soccer shoot To Bluetooth Device Label EnableFolder Actions am o ussense Configure Folder Actions Adobe Drive CSA gt Most dSLRs these days will let you shoot RAW or JPEG and usually Raw JPEG which means it writes two separate files to your memory card one is the untouched RAW file and the other is a processed JPEG file This is a big advantage for anyone who needs to quickly send a JPEG file to a client like a pro sports photographer who needs to email shots to the magazine or wire service while the event is still going on RAW files are much larger in file size so they re a somewhat impractical for email some clients don t have the software to read RAW files and the files are unprocessed unsharp ened and uncorrected so having an already processed compressed JPEG makes sense for some shooters The downside is it takes up a lot more room on yo
56. ame lens on a full frame camera Here s how that works out If you put a full frame 200mm lens on a camera like a Canon 5D Mark II you get a real 200mm lens But put that same 200mm lens on a Canon 50D and it essentially becomes a 320mm lens Add a 1 4x tele converter on that 50D with that same lens and now you ve got nearly a 450mm lens for the price of a 200mm lens Landscape photographers make out like bandits with full frame cameras because the full frame sensor lets their wide angle lenses get much wider But when it comes to sports the old school 1 5x and 1 6x cropped sensor is very attractive High Speed Crop on a D3 or D700 Is Not the Sam When talk about this topic Invariably someone asks Why don t you use the Nikon D3 s built in high speed Auto DX crop which switches you to the same cropped sensor fram ingasaD3007 It s because using that feature cuts you down from 12 megapixel images to 6 megapixel images and for sports you sometimes need to be able to crop in tight after the fact in Photoshop and still have enough megapixels to make a high resolution print so it s not really an Ideal option Shooting Sports Lil Pro Don t Have Long Glass Rent It for the Week nae ea Se ko a Tran aoe x y Ifyou havea special game or assignment coming up and you don t have long enough glass to shoot the game the way you want to then just rent it lve do
57. aphy Book Shoot From Up Really High Another perspective we don t get to see very often is a very high perspective and by that mean shooting down from a second floor walkway or shooting straight down on boats going under a bridge These high vantage points offer a view we don t see every day even though we may walk across a second floor walkway that s open to the lower level we don t often see images taken from that vantage point These work great for everything from shooting the bride encircled by her bridesmaids to shooting down on diners at an outdoor cafe The shot above was taken straight down from my hotel room window while on vacation Next time you want a totally different perspective on things and don t feel like getting your pants dirty from sitting down look up and see if there s igher angle you could be shooting from Have Them Get a Leg Up Having your subject prop one of their legs up on a box does two things 1 it helps their overall lines improving their overall look and 2 it usually makes them feel a little more comfortable now that they re not just standing there Many photographers use this trick whether their subject is sitting or standing It doesn t have to be a very high box in fact it shouldn t be it can just be six or eight inches tall enough to give your subject that little extra something Shooting a 34 View Pick a Spot to Look At One of the three most popular positions for for
58. ation shooting friends family or locals keep this in mind avoid tak ing shots where something bright is near your subject a bright beam of sunlight or an area lit brightly by the sun while your subject is in the shade etc By nature the eye is drawn immediately to that bright spot first not to your subject in the image shown here the bright wall on the right side of the image draws your eye away from the subjects on the bridge So when you see a bright area near your subject change the position you re shooting from move left or right and compose that bright area right out of your shot Compose to Hide Modern Day Objects If you re shooting a travel photo and you really want to emphasize the charm of the scene try to compose the shot so you don t see modem day objects For example nothing kills that charming shot of the boat in the misty harbor ike a 250 horsepower Evinrude motor hanging off the back Look for a boat in the harbor that looks timeless and try to exclude other boats around it that have modem looking engines or radar dishes or other modern day accessories to capture that charming look Same thing in the city exclude the new pay phone mailbox garbage can posters etc Chapter S The Digital Photography Book The Three Keys to Landscape Photography Successful landscape photography is made up of three things 1 having the right equipment and knowing how to use it 2 doing your homework and scou
59. aw window you can click on the Lens Corrections tab and you ll see a section for removing lens vignett ing Drag the Amount slider to the right to lighten up the corners The Midpoint slider below it determines how far into the photo the lightening extends so if it s just right up in the corners you can drag the slider quite a bit to the left Ifthe darkening extends pretty far out into your photo then you d drag to the right In just a few seconds your vignetting problem is gone If you use Lightroom you have the exact same controls which work exactly the same way in the Develop module Just scroll down to the Vignettes panel if all this sounds a bit confusing don t worry I made a quick little video just for you to show you what edge vignetting is and how to remove it You can find it at www kelbytraining com books digphotogy3 Chapter 3_ The Digital Photography Book When you see a zoom lens that has two different fstops what that means is that at the short er range let s say it s an 18 200mm lens so we d be talking about when you re at 18mm the stop can go as low as 3 5 but when you zoom it out to 200mm the fastest it can go is 5 6 When you re in between the two the f stop will gradually increase so at 100mm you might be at f 4 What this tells you is two things 1 If you shoot at the wide angle end 18mm you ll be able to shoot in much lower ight than you can zoomed in at 200mm the lower the F stop of t
60. bilizing 179 203 HDR High Dynamic Range images camera settings for 117 composing shots for 219 creating in Photomatix Pro 118 hiding distracting objects 97 modern day objects 107 high vantage point 130 highlights enhancing in Photoshop 90 warning about lost detail 177 High Speed Continuous mode 206 high speed crop feature 162 high speed memory cards 207 Hilite Illuminated Background 34 histograms 177 Hobby David 14 home interior shots 173 hood lens 67 Image Stabilization IS lenses 65 intelligent through the lens metering TTL 27 invisible thread 92 IS Image Stabilization lenses 65 150 setting Auto ISO feature and 146 landscape photography and 113 low light situations and 179 sports photography and 146 148 isolating your subject 158 HTTL intelligent through the lens metering 27 iTunes iMix 37 J JPEG images instantly extracting from RAW photos 194 LCD monitor preview of 192 saving files as 90 when to shoot RAW vs 195 Justin Spring Clamp 26 The Digital Photography Book K Kata Elements Cover 211 kelbytraining com website camera gear page 3 video tutorial 2 knee pads 157 L landscape photography arriving early for 122 backlighting effect in 121 clouds included in 109 composing shots in 214 covering the viewfinder for 115 deleting bad shots during 125 full frame cameras and 162 graduated neural density filter for 116 ISO setting for 113 len
61. bject lighting a white seamless background Youd want to be able to control the power of each flash individually so if the background flash is too bright you can tum it down without having the front flash power down as well You do that by assign ing one flash to Group A then the other flash the background flash to Group B Now you can control the power of each one individually without disturbing the other Also you can have more than one flash in each group So if you have twa flashes on the background one lighting the left side one lighting the right and you put them both on Group B they would move up down in power together but your front flash which is still on Group A would be unaffected Sweet You assign a flash toa particular group right on the flash unit itself Using Flash Like a Pro Part 2 What Your Flash s Channels Are For A CFn MODE it gt ZOOM C ORC OEEC aC PILOT Ey As long as you re by yourself just you and your flash things are good But what happens if you e hired to shoot an event like a wedding for example and you have a second or third photographer shooting along with you it s more and more common to have a second shooter at a wedding especially weddings in Texas where the ceremony is held on a grassy knoll Sorry that was lame The problem you d probably face is that sometimes the second shooter s camera would trigger and fire your flash and vice versa That s why your flash
62. brochures websites and promotions or to resell their images for use in stock photography You need your subject s written permission on a release to use their photos in this way because without it you could open yourself up to lawsuits and an embarrassing situation with your client So you can avoid all that by getting one signed Professional models are used to signing model releases after all what good would it be if you hired a professional model for a job and then they wouldn t let you use the pictures for anything so that won t generally be a problem whatsoever and there s no need to feel uncomfortable asking them to sign one If the subject is a friend or co worker just let them know up front that youll need them to sign a release giving you permission to use their image and you shouldn t have a problem I ve never had someone I hired or set up an actual shoot with refuse to sign a release So now that you know you need a release where do you get one You can find dozens of free downloadable releases online just Google model release or you can visit either the Professional Photographers of America go to ppa com and search for model release or visit the American Society of Media Photographers ASMP at http asmp org commerce legal releases for a great article on releases The laws regarding releases vary from state to state and country to country but having a signed release sure beats not having one Shooting P
63. business exec where the portrait takes in a lot of their surroundings For example ifyou re shooting a fireman in the fire station with wide angle you include a litle or allot of a fire truck in the shot as well They re also great anytime you want to create a view of something just get in real close and things get interesting You can buy wide angle zooms which are what prefer that zoom from wide angle to normal ike a 24 70mm or even a super wide zoom that goes from 12 24mm GRAB THIS LENS FIRST WHEN m going to shoot landscapes using a non fullframe camera body Scott s Gear Finder Wide Angle AF Nikkor 24mm f 2 8D Autofocus Lens around 360 Canon Wide angle EF 24mm f 2 8 Autofocus Lens around 310 _ Sigma 28mm 1 8 Lens around 380 for Nikon Canon and others The Truth About Lenses When to Use a Fisheye Lens These are well named because they give you an incredibly wide almost circular view and the lens itself bulges out like a fish s eye but honestly don t know if the lens was named for how the lens looks or for how the photo it takes looks This is definitely a special effects lens that you want to use occasionally because the fisheye look can get old fast if you use it too much However in the right circumstance it looks really fasci nating try holding it up high over your head when you re in a crowd or at dinner in a restaurant and shooting straight down One thing about fi
64. buting to the chapter that lies ahead What gives Well here s the thing my statement above would all make perfect sense ifthe chapter that follows wasactually about making your photos lookbetter but sady it s not What followsis actually a 22 page excerpt from my doctoral dissertation on neo classical psychology patterns which includes a non apologetic look at mans inability to reconcile events from his pre post natal experiences and how those events have affected his non verbal communication skills in the post modern workplace The reason I m sharing this excerpt with you here is because I feel it deserves a wider audience than just my professor who incidentally did not agree with several of the conclusions put forth in my well documented thoroughly researched and flawlessly executed paper which is why he will be referred to throughout the upcoming chapter as simply Professor Big Poopie Head Now if you r thinking Dr Kelby I didn t know you had earned a doctorate just remember this one underlying rule fm lying Using Live View to Set Your White Balance Tungsten light e KheakHs ow A L S Canon There is a very cool new feature in some of the latest Nikon and Canon dSLRs that lets you Use the LCD monitor on the back of the camera as a viewfinder so you can compose and shoot your image using just it just like a point and shoot camera Now it may not sound that appealing but check this out on some of the
65. camera but when you open them later on your computer or have them printed they will be incredibly blurry and basically unusable So by setting your camera to f 1 8 or f 1 4 you ll be able to hand hold in lots of places and have sharp clear images where normally they d be blurry as heck In this case less a lower number is more I GRAB THIS LENS FIRST WHEN m shooting a wedding If You re Really Serious About Getting Sharper Images Try This Trick Youcan use the same technique sharpshooters with rifes use to minimize any movement while fring they hold their breath That s right When hand holding some pro photog raphers only shoot after they exhale or they take a deep breath and hold it then shoot This minimizes body movement which minimizes camera shake ter 3_ The Digital Photography Book When to Use an Ultra Wide Zoom Lens Although you see this lens used in creative ways for everything from portraits to travel photography this is really a lens born for landscape photography In fact it s so wide it may be the ultimate lens for landscape photography if you re a DVD or Blu ray movie buff think of a super wide angle lens like anamorphic wide screen These lenses go as low as 12mm and my favorite is my 14 24mm f 2 8 lens If you find a lens below 12mm like an 11mm or 10 5mm it usually means that it s a fisheye lens see page 59 so would stay away from that for most serious landscape work N
66. cated to youl Writing books is never easy but you make my job so much easier by keeping me on track and organized and for staying absolutely calm and positive in the face of every storm One of the luckiest things that has ever happened to my books is that you came along to edit them and tm very hon red and grateful to have you making my books so much better than what turned in To Jessica Maldonado You are hands down the Diva of Design and owe much of the success of my books to the wonderful look and feel you give them What you do brings my books to life and helps them reach a wider audience than they ever would have and Im so thrilled that you re the person that works these miracles for us signed your biggest fan To Cindy Snyder A big big thanks for helping tech and copyedit all the tips in the book and as always for catching lots of little things that others would have missed To Dave Damstra You give my books such a spot on clean to the point look and although I don t know how you do it I sure am glad that you do To my friend and longtime Creative Director Felix Nelson We love you We all do We always have We always will You re Felix There s only one To my Executive Assistant and general Wonder Woman Kathy Siler You are one of the most important people in the building not only for all the wonderful things you do for me but for all the things you do for our entire business Thanks for always
67. ck in the sky that these areas are clipping So if you re spending a lot of time worrying about your histogram or worse yet worrying that you don t know what the histogram even is now you can get a good night s sleep Note Same people get really fanatical about technical stuff like histograms so I just want to clarify this m not telling you not to use your histogram Im just telling you that don t use it Wink wink Welcome to Mpix Gallery Wrap Back when was shooting film used to send my most important shoots to a professional film lab for processing but once digital photography and great inexpensive printers came along started doing all my own printing Today do bath still do some of my own printing but also often use an online lab for five reasons 1 It s just so darn fast and easy I upload the photos using my Web browser and if upload the images to the lab use before lunch they print and ship them the same day 2 They ll color correct all my photos for free m pretty handy in Photoshop but sometimes it s just faster to let some body else do it 3 They can print in sizes that perfectly match the size digital cameras produce so there s no cropping of my images to fit outdated sizes like x10 or 11x14 4 You can have your prints mounted matted and framed with glass and 5 you can choose different types of paper including metallic prints matte finishes etc This is one of those
68. cluded in 109 star filter effect in 104 texture shots in 114 three keys to 108 underwater shots in 110 111 vibrant color settings for 124 white balance and 105 See also landscape photography overexposing portraits 140 overpowering the sun 17 P packing lists importance of using 102 landscape photography 182 location portrait photography 184 sports photography 183 travel photography 185 wedding photography 186 panning freezing motion by 154 215 and shooting video 189 panoramas 123 people baby and child photos 141 143 high vantage point shots of 130 model releases for 138 props for shooting 128 143 seating for comfort 129 street shots of 137 See also portraits percentage of great shots 188 perspective child level 143 high vantage point 130 lower level 116 157 225 Peterson Moose 115 photo labs 178 Photomatix Pro 118 photos See digital photos Photoshop Auto Levels adjustment 111 Auto Align Layers feature 219 combining images in 173 176 faking reflections in 84 finding dust spots in 210 gray card color correction in 51 highlight shadow enhancement in 90 panoramas created in 123 removing edge vignetting in 73 Photoshop User TV 92 Picture Controls Styles 124 plexiglass for portrait photography 216 for product photography 84 86 PocketWizard wireless system 10 pop up flash 20 portable softbox 7 portrait lenses 78 portraits 127 143 beach setting for
69. d fan will do hoto Recipes to Help You The Recipe for Getting This Type of Shot Characteristics of this type of shot Lots of detail throughout the shot including both highlight and shadow areas and a surreal look in the sky 1 The key to this shot is shooting bracketed in your camera so that later you can com bine the bracketed shots into an HDR image using Photoshop and or Photomatix Pro 2 This was taken in the middle of the day in direct sunlight it wasn t as cloudy as it appears the clouds are enhanced by the HDR effect so there s enough light to use an stop of f 11 or higher which keeps as much of the image in focus as possible from front to back Set your camera to three or five image bracketing see page 117 for how to do that B To take all this in you ll need a wide angle lens I used an 18 200mm lens so shot this at 18mm for the widest view possible 4 Although I didn t use a tripod for this particular shot I didn t have one with me HDR shots work best when you can shoot on a tripod although obviously you can get away with hand holding an HDR shot if you have Photoshop CS3 or CS4 and can use the Auto Align Layers feature to perfectly align the shots later before you create the HDR image I created a video just for you to show how to combine your bracketed shots into an HDR image like you see above The link to itis on page 118 Characteristics of this type of shot An outdoor port
70. d nighttime images into starbrights However if you don t want to spring for the filter you can get a similar effect right in camera by just choosing an f stop with the highest number you can like f 22 This alone will usually give you that multi point star effect without having to spend a dime Shooting Outdoors Like Try Getting Creative with White Balance There are two ways to look at white balance One is proper white balance where the white balance is appropriate to the lighting situation you re shooting in So if you re shooting in the shade and you ve chosen a Shade setting for your white balance your color looks normal and accurate Then there s creative white balance one of my favorites where you choose a particular white balance because it will make the photo look the way you wantit For example if youre up for a dawn landscape shoot and it s a pretty flat look ing boring moming lightwise you could try changing your white balance to Tungsten and now everything looks blue That alone could turn a really boring daybreak into a very cool morning shoot At dusk changing your white balance to Shade suddenly makes everything very warm like you had a much more exciting sunset than you did In the example shown here the image on the left was shot with the Auto white balance the cen ter one was changed to Fluorescent and the one on the right was set to Tungsten These aren t accurate white balances they are yo
71. d the only person who would ever possibly see it is the insurance adjuster in a different state processing your repair claim they would still shoot it in RAW So for those people you know who you are m going to save myself a lot of angry letters not all mind you but a few and state categorically that you should shoot all photos no matter what the final intended use in RAW format There said it Its been documented Now that being said I ve heard of some photographers who don t post process their images meaning they don t open the photos in Photoshop or Ele ments or Lightroom or Capture of whatever they just take the shots and then either put them on the Web or put them on disc or print them out as is So if you are one of those people who are pretty happy with how their photos look right out of the camera and you do very little if any editing in a photo software application and you enjoy fit ting thousands of photos on a 4 GB memory card rather than a few hundred and you enjoy not having the hard drive on your laptop crammed full all the time guess in that situation it s okay to shoot in JPEG Fine mode Just don t ever tell anyone Also two other groups of people who often shoot in JPEG mode are pro sports photographers who shoot thousands of shots per event and many pro wedding photographers as well but hey tm not telling you its okay wink wink The Digital Photography Book Built In Sensor Cleani
72. dboard box and then you cuta little door out so you can reach in and adjust your strobe Shooting Products Like a Pro Product tents have become more popular than ever because they allow you to easily wrap balanced soft light right around the product while avoiding lots of nasty shadow problems you re likely to run into using multiple lights Shadows are really a problem and soft lightis a problem so having a self contained tent like this makes shooting the products crazy easy The idea behind these is you puta light on both sides or either side of the tent and perhaps one light below aiming straight up if you buy one that includes that feature like the Studio Cubelite from Lastolite shown above and then the front of this is open for you to shoot The light bounces around inside this box in a very wonderful way that lights the living daylights out of your product and you come away with some surprisingly good results without having to be a master of lighting If you re going to be doing a lot of this and especially if you re trying to shoot things like watches or jewelry you should definitely consider buying a light tent Chapter 4 The Digital Photography Book Using Continuous Lighting Although I ve used strobes many times over the years for product photography today when need to shoot a product usually use continuous lights like the Westcott TDS Spiderlite These aren t flashes these are lights that stay on all th
73. dit as I go ifI take a shot and see that it s blurry or way overexposed or just messed up in general I delete it right there on the spot after all if can see it s blurry or really bad on that tiny screen on the back of my camera when I see it at full size it will be beyond unusable There s no sense in carrying around these shots which are just taking up space on your memory card and soon they ll be just taking up space on your computer when either way they re destined to be deleted So why not save time save space and up the number of keepers from your shoot by deleting the obviously bad shots now usually do this in between shoots so if I stop at a caf for a snack Il take a look through the images ve captured and delete the obviously really bad shots There are some people who are hesitant to do this because they re afraid that some blurry overexposed shot is going to be the onel That s certainly never happened to me I ve seen shots that would have been great if they hadn t been blurry or soft or improperly exposed but I ve never used one of those for anything You wonteither It ll just make you sigh and think Man if that had only been in focus m0P F 050 200 FOCAL LENGTH 200nn Chapter Six Shooting People Like a Pro Yet Even More Tips to Make People Look Their Very Best How can there possibly be yet even more tips about how to make people look their very best it s easy have you ever
74. dles themselves you re in a city there s something reflecting in those puddles find the angle that looks best and shoot it Ya never know what you ll come up with Shooting Outdoors Like Shoot at the Lowest ISO Possible If you re shooting landscapes you re probably shooting at around dusk and around dawn and if that s the case you re probably shooting on a tripod and if that s the case see how I m stringing this whole case together then you need to be shooting at the lowest ISO your camera will allow usually ISO 200 on most Nikon dSLRs or ISO 100 on Canons The reason why is youll get the sharpest most noise free best quality images at your lowest ISO and because you re on a tripod you don t need to raise your ISO above that sweet spot remember raising your ISO is usually for hand holding in low light you re not hand holding you re on a tripod so go for the ultimate in quality The Noise You See Onscreen Sometimes Goes Away If you shot at 400 or 800 ISO chances are when you open that photo on your computer you re going to see some noise depending on how well your camera handles noise you ll either see a little ora lot but don t let that throw you even though you see some noise onscreen lot of times that noise will disappear when you actually print the image ter The Digital Photography Book If you ve ever arrived in a city while on vacation and you don t have any idea
75. e Of course lower ing the power of your flash will make your subject look darker because now there s less light from your flash falling on your subject so you ll have to adjust your f stop so your image looks good For example if you re shooting at 1 64 power at f 5 6 you ll need to change your Fstop to at least f 4 if not f 2 8 to brighten the overall exposure and make your flash balance out again Using Flash Like a Pro Part 2 Recycle Faster with an External Battery Pack I you re doing some serious location flash work like a wedding on location fashion shoot etc or anything where you need the shortest possible recycle time with the longest battery life then try using an extemal battery pack like Nikon s SD 9 for the B 900 which holds eight AA batteries or Canon s Compact Battery Pack CP E4 which also holds eight AA batteries What these do is reassign how the batteries inside your flash work Usually those four batteries inside run both the recycling and all the software requirements of the flash unit When you attach one of these external battery packs it assigns all the recycling duties to those eight AA batteries so you get longer battery life and much faster recycling times Use one of these once and you ll never be without one again Chapter 1 Another Recycle Faster Tip Energizer le Ai Energizer Energize Ifyou use off camera flash a lot you re going
76. e backlighting effect but believe me when you nail it you ll know As mentioned in volume 1 the two best times of the day to shoot landscapes are dawn and dusk and if you choose to shoot at either one of these and hope you do make sure you get to your shooting location plenty early Earlier than you d think can t tell you how many times I ve seen photographers scrambling to get their gear out of the car then they lug all their stuff out to the location huffing and puffing and all the while those few minutes of incredible light are nearly gone and you ve never seen more stressed out frus trated and downright angry photographers than when that happens Look if you re getting upat 5 00 am to catch sunrise nearby instead get up at 4 45 a m and be on location all set up ready composed and relaxed so you can not only get the shot but you can enjoy the experience too Shooting a Popular Landscape Destination The Good Spots Go First If youre heading out to shoot a popular landscape destination like the Arches National Park in Utah keep in mind that the shooting locations you hike out to fill up very fast So fast that if you don t get there two hours before dawn you might not get a place to set up your tripod at all Ifyou do get a spot it may be behind 50 other photographers These prime locations just don t have enough space and the ideal shooting spot can sometimes only accommodate a handful of photographe
77. e battle This time just a few minutes before the game is a great time to catch some very emotional images right along the sidelines or in the tunnel or outside the locker room Keep an eye out for capturing the different personalities and how they re reacting to what s about to happen and you might come away with some killer shots before the opening whistle even blows SHUTTER SPEED 1 I25 sec F STOP F S 150 200 FOCAL LENGTH enn PHOTOGRAPHER SCOTT KELBY Chapter Eight Pro Tips for Getting Better Photos Tricks of the Trade for Making All Your Shots Look Better Each of the other chapters in this book teaches you techniques that are pretty specific to a particular type of photography like portraits or shooting in the studio etc but I wanted to once again include a collection of techniques that is just simply about getting better shots At the end of the day that s all we really want right We just want to take better photos It s why we all work so hard to learn how to use our cameras not so we can play around in the menus all day it s because we know that once we really know the camera inside and out then we can focus on getting the shots and not the technology behind it all Now know what you re probably thinking Scott this all makes perfect sense except for one thing lm reading this in one of the chapter introductions and traditionally this is a part of the book that s not widely known for contri
78. e captured that were cover of Vogue quality Even a top pro might have 10 or 12 really great cover quality shots for them to choose from This is true for landscape photographers travel photographers commercial photographers all of us Talk to some of the top pros and you ll ind that most of their shots go in the trash but when they shoot 240 photos there are usually a few really great ones in there too some killer shots but how many of those will they actually frame and put on the wall Maybe one When you see a pro s work on display in a gallery or a slide show presentation you re seeing only their very best work You re seeing nothing but that one killer shot from that day They ve just done a lot of those 240 image shoots If your dSLR has the ability to shoot high definition video like a Canon SD Mark Il ora Nikon D90 or D5000 by the way more and more dSLR cameras are getting video these days then there s a special setting that will help you get much better results from shoot ing video You want to lock the Auto Exposure setting or as you pan across a room ora scene the exposure will keep trying to change as you pan so during your pan the video starts glowing brighter then darker then brighter again ugh On Nikon cameras go un der the Custom menu to Controls and choose Assign AE L AF L Button those acronyms stand for Auto Exposure Lack and Auto Focus Lock Then scroll down to AE Lock Hold and choose
79. e difference this makes you ll want to be doing some post yourself did a little video for you you can find it on the book s companion website at www kelbytraining com books digphotogv3 to show you exactly how the Photoshop post processing was done for most ofthe product shots used here in the book think you ll be surprised at both how easy itis and what an impact it has on the finished image What File Format to Save Your Photos In Even though we shoot in RAW format once you open and edit your photos in a program like Photoshop at some point you re going to have a duplicate of the same image for up loading to a lab orarchiving etc and that s when you have to decide which file format to save your images in choose JPEG mode with a quality setting of 10 out ofa possible 12 forall my final images I think a setting of 10 gives an ideal balance between maintaining great quality and still compressing the file size quite a bit Shooting Products Like a Pro Making Your Own Product Table If you te looking for a great surface to shoot your product shots on look no further than your local hardware store for a large panel of white formica This stuff works great for a number of reasons 1 When you put a product on white formica its surface is already a little reflective so it automatically gives your product a little bit of a natural reflec tion not a sharp mirror reflection like acrylic but kind of a subtle sat
80. e fun of it You may find yourself enjoying taking fisheye shots in a courtroom and tilt shift lens shots of your kid s high school graduation In fact your tlt shift lens may become your go to lens for shooting graduations and there s nothing wrong with that What hoped to do in this chapter is send you in the right direction and give you a start ing point for what type of lens is commonly used for what but because it s a lens it will take a photo of anything you aim it at when you press the shutter button So don t feel bad or feel it s wrong if you use a lens that s commonly used for one thing on some thing completely opposite There s a name for doing stuff like that creativity Have fun with it and don t get put aside by all the lens bullies It s your lens Fire away Chapter Four Shooting Products Like a Pro How to Get Them to Look Like You ve Always Wanted Them To self Why would need to know how to make a great photo of a product There are tons of reasons shooting products is surprisingly fun butthe most obvious might behaving a great product shot is critical if you re selling stuff on eBay com Now you might be thinking But I m not selling any stuff on eBay and if you just said that that tells me one thing that this is the first chapter of the book that you turned to because although this book wasn t designed to make you want to buy new stuff the sad truth i to get the same results th
81. e like a 120mm lens right See what mean That being said you may remember that back in volume 2 talked about how much better portraits look when shot with a longer lens because of the compression longer lenses give which looks more flattering to the face showed a side by side comparison in the book That s why youll see so many fashion and portrait photographers shooting with 70 200mm lenses and they re frequently out at the 200mm range for head or head and shoulders shots especially if the model has dandruff Sorry I couldn t resist I have shot with 85mm lenses on full frame cameras but didn t like the look as well as I do an 85mm on a regular digital camera so for my style like the 120mm range better Ifyou use a telephoto zoom you can try both and see what you like My point is you don t have to buy a portrait lens whatever that means to you to take pro portraits Today s zooms do a beautiful job and as long as you re over 100mm think you ll be pleased with the results Fixed Length Prime Lenses vs Zooms You have to realize one thing about lenses people get really techie about lenses and they are a source of constant debate in online forums where people get really conde scending about which lenses they will or won t use One current debate is prime lenses vs zoom lenses There are people who swear that fixed length lenses lenses that don t zoom they are one particular length and that s it and are more comm
82. e of sight of whichever flash is your master flash so for example if you re triggering your wireless flashes using the pop up flash from your camera the light sensor on the side of each of the wireless flashes has to be in the line of sight of the master flash the pop up flashl so they can sense the little light pulse it emits as a signal for wireless flashes to fire If they can t clearly see that light pulse they won t fire That s why many working pros use a dedicated wireless transmitter and receiver for firing their flashes that way the flashes fire 100 of the time whether they can see the flash on your camera or not because now the wire less transmitter is doing the firing for you PocketWizard longtime maker of wireless gear for studio work has come up with a special wireless system for small off camera flash called the MiniTT1 Radio Slave Transmitter which fits right on your camera s hot shoe and then your master flash goes on top of that Of course the downside to this is you need to buy a transmitter unit and then a receiver unit for each flash but then your flash firing troubles simply go away SPEEDLIGHT SB 900 Let s say you ve got four different flashes and each one is assigned to a different group ust for the sake of this example let s say we re shooting a studio portrait and the main flash up front is on Group A a hair light is assigned to Group B and two background flashes are assigned to Group C
83. e other end you can put the ballhead that would normally be alone on your tripod This way one tripod holds them both and they re right there together Pretty sweet Judging Your Image Quality Onscreen Here s something to keep an eye out for when you open your image on a large screen com puter monitor 24 or larger and view itat 100 chances are it s not going to look tack sharp but keep in mind that you re seeing it at a larger than lifesize Zoom out until the size you see onscreen s approximately the physical size youplan to print the image Ifyou plan to print the image at a large poster size make sure you back up at least six fet from the monitor to see the image at the same view everybody else views large images ter 2 The Most Useful Inexpensive Accessories Ifyou don t have a rol of gaffer tape in your studio put down this book go online and or der a few rolls right now Not duct tape Not electrical tape Gaffer s tape It s one of those things that once you have it you ll wonder how you got through a shoot without it ask any studio photographer Youll use it for everything from holding grid spots in place to fixing a gap ina softbox to keeping things together when doing product shots to could go on and on The other thing you need about six or so of are A clamps They re another one of those things that should be in every studio and youll use them for everything from hanging things
84. e pros get sometimes you have to buy stuff sometimes its an accessory or a light or a filter etc The stuff might not costa lot but still it s stuff you have to buy Okay so if it s stuff you have to buy some of it will probably be replacing stuff you already have right For example if you bought a digital camera kt where you got a camera body andalens together then when you read the chapter on lenses you re undoubtedly going to see a lens you re going to want But then you ll think to yourself don t really need that lens The lens have is fine But the more you think about it the more you start to think If I sold my old lens and some other camera gear I don t use anymore could probably buy that new lens and then you figure that the easiest way to sell your old stuff is to sell it on eBay which was practically invented for photographers and so now you think I need to do a product shot and it s at that moment that you realize you ve been sucked into the whole photography equipment mery go round Once you re on it it s easier to come off drug addiction because they actually have rehab centers for drug dependency but there sno rehab dinicfor photographers which is why the best thing you can do is just skip this chapter and get on with your life See care The first time you look at this chapter you might think to your Chapter 4 The Digital Photography Book How to Create Real Reflect
85. e time and they give bright daylight balanced light but because they use fluorescent bulbs they don t get hot so you can even use them to light food as did in the restaurant shoot above These work incredibly well for product photography because you can see exactly what you re going to get there s no shooting a few shots and then tweaking the lights and shooting again and tweaking the lights because exactly what you see is what you get Outside of the fact that they stay on all the time they re just like strobes and have all the similar accessories lke softboxes in every size including strip banks and fabric grids and all the other stuff but since they re always on you don t have to worry about wireless trigger or flash cables always recommend these to my friends and every body I ve recommended them to has fallen in love with them You can pick up a one light kit which includes the fixture a softbox tilt bracket and light stand bulbs need to be ordered separately from B amp H Photo for around 530 You can also get the fixture on its own for around 280 but again the bulbs need to be ordered separately Shooting Products Like a Pro Mixing Daylight and Studio Lights If you ve got a lot of space with a lot of natural light you can shoot just using the natural ight but the problem is going to be getting light to wrap all the way around your product That s why adding one light and mixing that with
86. eally important technique In short each lens has a sweet spot a particular aperture where the lens takes the sharpest image it can take Where is that sweet spot Usually it s two stops above the lowest number your lens can go So for example if you have an f 2 8 lens then its sweet spot would be two stops above that at f 5 6 Will your photo look sharper at 4 5 6 than it will wide open at f 2 8 Yup When talking about lenses if you hear the term wide open that means that you re shooting at the smallest number on your lens like 2 8 orf 4 Of course you could just say I was shooting at f 4 but it doesn t sound nearly as cool as saying I was shooting wide open at f 4 Hey you re snickering now but wait until you re at one of those at home lens parties and you casually drop a wide open in there Youll see the hostess drop het lens hood But My Friend Has That Lens and He Shoots It s bound to happen You re going to have a friend who s serious photographer and you ll hear that he s using a fisheye lens to shoot executive portraits or a 400mm super telephoto lens to shoot baby photos Then you re going to say But Scott said fisheyes aren t for portraits and you should use a portrait lens for babies Here s the thing if you buy any one of those lenses you re going to try it out on other stuff In fact you should it s your lens and you should try it on as many things as you d like That s half th
87. ed him where he got his music Well no surprise he had one of his models pick it out and he said almost without exception he gets raves from models in the studio about his musical taste He made an iTunes iMix of his collection for me to download and he was nice enough to let me share that iMix with you Just go to www kelbytraining com books digphotogy3 and click on the link which will launch iTunes and take you to that playlist where you can buy one or all of the songs with just a click igital Photography Book Ifyou want a look that isn t as soft as one with a softbox but isn t as hard edged as a bare bulb strobe you should try a beauty dish The light it produces is kind of in between the two giving you more punchy contrast without getting too harsh or edgy A beauty dish attaches to the front of your strobe like a softbox but it looks more like a giant metal reflector The light it produces has more kick which creates a very nice look for close up face and headshots because of the way it defines the face and skin tones and it s great for anything you want to have that beauty look you see so often in makeup and beauty product print ads You can also get asock for your beauty dish which covers the front to give you a little softer look When you use the dish it usually positioned directly in front of your subject up high and tilted down at them at a 45 angle as shown here You have to kind of shoot under it Yo
88. ed on Photoshop User TV a weekly video podcast I ve been co hosting for the past few years and you can see that clip on the book s companion website at www kelbytraining com books digphotogv3 Shooting Products Like a Pro The Advantage of Using Strip Banks Have you ever seen a product shot of a wine bottle or a piece of electronics and reflected in the product you see a tall thin soft rectangular reflection Maybe even two of them These wonderful highlight reflections are most likely from one of the mainstays of a lot of pro product shooters a strip bank also sometimes called a strip light These are actually just tall thin rectangular softboxes picture a softbox that s just 18 wide but around 36 long and they are very popular in product photogra phy because of those wonderful tall reflections they create in products that reflect it s tough shooting products that are reflective because you can see a reflection of everything in the product itself even sometimes the photographer so be careful when you re shooting reflective products You can buy strip banks for strobes or even for the Westcott Spiderlite TDS that use for product photography and the nice thing about them is that you can use them tall vertically or turn them on their side and use them horizontally for a really wide wrapping light Chapter4 The Digi hotography Book Using Foam Core While you ll find portrait photograp
89. edged shadow behind the subject and you re probably better off if you don t like it because ring flashes are big bulky and fairly expensive However there is a ring flash adapter that fits over your off camera flash that does a surprisingly good job of giving you the ring flash look which has become incredibly popular in high end fash ion photography these days without the ring flash price weight or size It s called the Ray Flash it slides right over your flash head and your lens extends through the center ofthe flash as seen above It basically redirects the light from your existing flash into a ring shape and it s really lightweight and doesn t require batteries or anything else If You Long for a Real Ring Flash I did find a reasonably priced real ring flash from AlienBees that attaches to your camera and while it is bulkier heavier and more expensive than the Ray Flash ring flash adapter shown above ts not as bulky heavy or expensive as any of the other real ring flashes lve seen cover it on page 47 in Chapter 2 Using Flash Like a Pro Part 2 What If Your Flash at Full Power Isn t Enough If you re lighting your subject and your flash is at full power but it s just not bright enough to do what you want it to do just add another flash That s right pop another flash up there right beside your other flash but just make sure you put them both on the same group so they d both be assigned to
90. en popped the door on my camera open to back up my photos was shocked to find out there was no memory card even though had been looking at some of the shots on the camera s LCD monitor Those shots were gone forever so the first thing do with any new camera is turn the memory card lock on so it won t even take a shot without a memory card in the camera On Canon cameras go to the Shooting menu and choose Shoot Without Card then set this function to Off On Nikon cameras go under the Custom Setting menu and choose No Memory Card Change the setting from Enable Release to Release Locked Now the camera s shutter release will be locked and it won t take a shot unless a memory card is in the camera With so many of us posting our images on the Web you ve got to protect yourself and your images by legally copyrighting your work Luckily the process atleast in the US is all now Web based so it s never been faster easier or more affordable than it is today What copy righting does isto legally define who owns the photo and even though technically there is some very limited amount of protection afforded simply by the fact that you took the shot if someone takes your photo off the Web and uses it in their brochure or website or print ad etc without actually having registered your work as copyrighted with the US Copyright office your chances of winning a judgment in court against the photo thief are virtually
91. eneral camera setup 181 histogram vs highlight warning 177 home interior shots 173 Live View white balance 170 low light photography 179 multiple exposures 176 nighttime scenes 180 online photo labs 178 packing lists 182 186 percentage of great shots 188 spot metering 171 time lapse photography 174 175 video feature 189 white balance setting 187 props 128 143 221 puddle reflections 112 The Digital Photography Book R radio transmitter 10 rain covers 211 Ranger kit 45 Raw JPEG option 194 RAW photos gray card color correction for 51 instantly extracting JPEGs from 194 LCD monitor preview and 192 saving in JPEG format 90 when to shoot JPEG vs 195 RawWorkflow com website 194 Ray Flash 18 Rear Curtain Sync setting 181 rechargeable batteries 14 recipes for getting the shot 213 231 recycle time for flash 12 14 reflections creating in product photos 84 faking in Photoshop 84 removing from eyeglasses 50 shooting in puddles 112 reflective umbrellas 5 reflectors 50 134 Remote mode for flash 16 renting lenses 163 reseating the lens 75 resetting digital cameras 193 Resnicki Jack 142 200 ring flash 18 47 223 rolling light stands 43 R Strap 160 S sandbags 44 scouting locations 119 scrims 135 sensor cleaning 196 210 set backgrounds 36 Shade white balance 105 181 shadows enhancing in Photoshop 90 including in outdoor shots 109
92. enses at all Best ofall they re compact pretty lightweight and relatively inexpensive compared to some of the more expensive zooms with a smaller range These are ideal lenses for travel photography where you don t want to lug a camera bag around with you all day or for photo walks for city shooting and even for landscapes you ll be shooting on a tripod have one of these 18 200mm lenses and honestly love mine dearly Now you will see some photographers in forums online saying that these lenses are basically beneath them because they re not as sharp as they could be or they re not as rugged as the more expensive lenses etc Don t let that throw you I don t know a single photographer that actually has one of these that doesn t love it mostly because when it s on your camera you re never going to say Oh missed that shot because didn t have the right lens because it does itall in one lens As for quality I have a 30x40 print ofa photo took with that lens while on vacation framed and hanging in my home Everybody loves it and it looks perfectly sharp and crisp all the way through GRAB THIS LENS FIRST WHEN m going on vacation The Truth About Lenses When to Use a Lensbaby Lens Before tell you about this lens I have to warn you people get hooked on Lensbaby lenses and I can t tell you how many times a photographer friend I ve known has bought a Lensbaby and then won t take it off their camer
93. eople Like a Pro If we re shooting a portrait it s our tendency to make sure our subjects are smiling in every shot after all you want them to look like they re happy and having a good time right Smiles are great and we definitely want those shots but make sure you work some real shots in there too We re not always smiling in real life and when we re smiling for a portrait it s often a posed smile so you re not capturing a real genuine emotion you re capturing a fake smile that we ve all been doing since we were little kids Ifyou want to capture portraits that have more depth more emotion and more realism include some shots where your subject isn t smiling as shown above If you want your portraits to be more real this is a great way to open that door They Don t All Have to Look at the Camera Another thing we re programmed to do is always have our subjects facing the camera While it s true that having your subject s eyes as the main focal point of an image adds interest some of the most dramatic and captivating portraits ever taken have the subject looking elsewhere Keep this in mind the next time you re shooting a location portrait and you might be pleasantly surprised at what you ll come up with The Digital Photography Book Here s a different look to try overexpose on purpose This is great when you want a really bright look for portraits because it hides detail and gives everything ki
94. er speed 8 GB card sells for 61 95 but it did come with a mail in rebate of 25 however retail statistics show only a very small percentage of consumers ever actually mail in these rebates which is why mail in rebates are so popular but even with that its still 36 95 more than 3 5 times as much as the regular speed card So why pay the difference if you won t experience a difference eh My friend Janine Smith shared this tip with me last year and ever since she did ve been using it and it s saved my bacon more than once When you re packing your cam era bag for a shoot before you close the bag pick up the camera and take a quick shot of anything This will tell you instantly if you have a memory card with you whether your battery is charged and whether your camera is in basic working order You don t want to learn about any of these problems once you re on location or on vacation You d rather know now while you still have time to grab a memory card charge your battery or fix a potential problem Avoiding Problems Like a Pro Why You Should Download Your User Manual One of the biggest problems with camera user manuals is quickly finding what you re looking for That s why always download the free PDF electronic version of the user manual from the manufacturer s website because the PDF versions have a search fea ture and you can find what you re looking for in five seconds rather than five minutes
95. ere will come a day mark my words where you ll be holding your mortgage payment book in one hand and the B amp H Photo catalog in the other and you re going to be faced with a moral dilemma that will test the very mettle of your commitment to your spouse family and friends You ll start to ask yourself crazy questions like How would we do living on the streets and Would our friends sneak us food and I wonder if they ll throw in a free polarizing lens These are not the kinds of questions you want to be asking yourself at this stage of your life by the way the more expensive the lens the more free stuff you should try to get thrown in Anyway if one day you re faced with one of these really tough decisions I ll give you the same advice I gave my own daughter Honey you can always find another husband but a great sale on some really fast glass only comes along once in a lifetime I didn t say those exact words but it was definitely implied When to Use a Wide Angle Lens A regular wide angle lens as opposed to a super wide is around 24mm to 35mm and it s just about a must if you re shooting landscapes because the wide aspect takes in more of the scene think of how much more wide screen video takes in it s kind of like that Wide angle is also very popular for shooting environmental portraits the type of images you see in magazines when they re doing a feature on a celebrity politician ora
96. ess the Menu button go to the Setup menu and choose Clean Image Sensor In the next menu choose Clean Now and your sensor will be cleaned if you want it to automatically clean the sensor each time you tum on the camera choose Clean at Startup Shutdown Avoiding Problems Like a Pro Many dSLRs have a shortcut which lets you quickly reformat erase all your images on your memory card without having to dig through all the menus on the back of the camera On a Nikon the shortcut actually appears in red beside the two buttons you need to hold down to reformat you hold the Delete trash can button and the Mode button down together for two or three seconds until you see the word For flashing in the LCD info window on top of the camera Once For is flashing release those buttons and press them again just once and your card will format On a Canon there isn t a shortcut but you can go under the Set Up 1 menu select Format and then press the Set button Select OK and your card will be formatted Don t Go Out Shooting with Just One Memory Card Ifyou shoot with just one memory card i s going to catch up with you Your card s going to be full or you re going to have to wind up formatting the card without having two backups or you ll have to stop shooting for the day which is why you ve got to have at least a second if not a third memory card with you on every shoot I just checked and a 4 GB memory card is going for as
97. f tones beyond what your camera alone can capture here are some tips to make the shooting part easier The first tip for HDR success is to shoot with your camera on a tripod your software tweak ing later will be a lot easier Next you ll need to set up your camera to shoot in aperture priority mode then set your camera to take automatic bracketed exposures Here s how Nikon Press and hold the function Fn button on the bottom front of your camera if you have a D300 D700 D3 or D3x then move the main command dial on the back of your camera until you see bracketing tumed on in your top LCD Choose five bracketed hots so it takes one regular exposure then one brighter one way brighter one darker and one way darker Now switch your camera to continuous high speed release mode then hold down the shutter button until your camera takes all ive shots for you Canon Press and hold the Mode and AF Drive buttons to turn on auto exposure bracketing set the number of shots to 5 in the Custom Functions menu so it takes one regular exposure then one brighter one way brighter one darker and one way darker Now switch your camera to shoot in burst mode then hold down the shutter button until your camera takes all five shots for you Chapter 5 igital Photography Book What to Do with Your HDR Shots Shooting the bracketed shots is only one part of the equation because all you ve got is five shots and four of them are eithe
98. f you feel like someone might walk up and take your camera The Digital Photography Book Creating Multiple Exposures Multiple exposure Number of shots Auto gain Ifyou want to combine two separate images into one single frame there are two ways to do it in camera if you own a Nikon dSLR or in Photoshop after the fact for Canon or other dSLR users that don t have built in multiple exposures For the Nikon folks You turn this feature on by going under the Shooting menu and choosing Multiple Exposure then Number of Shots and picking how many images you want to combine into one single image in the example above just chose two then choose OK Ifyou want a consistent background for both shots put the camera on a tripod Take the first shot then have your subject move to a new position on the other side of the frame don t let them move so far away that they re out of the frame and take your second shot That s it both images will appear in the same frame the advantage of doing it in camera is that you have the two images combined as a single RAW file vs doing this in Photoshop where the end result will have to be a JPEG TIF or PSD If you re not shooting Nikon dda litte video to show you how to combine two photos using Photoshop You d still have to start by taking two separate photos of your subject and then welll combine those in Photoshop You can find this video at wwwkelbytraining com books digphotogv3
99. f you give them a spot to look at each time they go for that 4 view they ll hit that same spot every time wapter 6 The Digital Photography Book Get Everything Set Before They Arrive If you re doing a studio shoot you want to keep your subject as comfortable and relaxed as possible and one way to do that is to not keep them waiting around have everything set up tested and ready when they get there You shouldn t be in the middle of setting up the lights or adjusting your camera gear or anything else when your subject arrives for the shoot Have everything ready test all the lighting not only to make sure it works but have it set up approximately where you want it and have your exposure pretty well set when they walk in the door Don t have your subject sitting there for 20 minutes while you try to get the lighting right or while you re trying to get your camera settings right Besides looking unprofessional to your subject they re going to be uncomfortable sitting there and not posing while you re testing everything I have a subject who can t help but smile and pose even when I m just testing the lights and then when it s time to actually start smiling they ve been doing it for 20 minutes already they te smiled out So to increase your chances of success to keep your subject relaxed and to conduct your shoot like a pro have everything ready when they walk in the door Shooting Peopi Pro Super S
100. f your photography while you re on vacation and if you re on vacation in a tropical place at some point you re going to go snorkeling or diving and at that point you ll be wondering How can get shots of this coral reef It s easier than you d think but there are two parts to the equa tion The first part is getting a waterproof housing for your camera but before we go any further when say your camera I mean that small point and shoot camera that you also take with you when you re on vacation The reason I say this is that underwater housings for dSLR cameras shown here often cost more than the camera with a good lens itself l m not exaggerating it s amazing what they cost So unless you plan on making a career of underwater photography take your point and shoot and buy an underwater housing for somewhere around 150 In fact it would be much much cheaper for you to buy a brand new high end point and shoot lke the excellent Canon G10 and an underwater housing for it than it would to buy just about any housing for your existing dSLR I can t explain it but sadly that s the way itis So the first part of this is to buy your housing and resign yourself to the fact that you re not taking your dSLR underwater unless you re just incredibly loose with money Part 2 is on the next page Shooting Outdoors Like a Pro How to Shoot Underwater Part 2 Once you ve got your underwater housing there are a couple of c
101. g That Little Flash Stand in the Box Where You Focus Affects Your Flash Exposure The Paid Gig Flash Insurance Policy How High to Position Your Flash Which Side Should Your Flash Go On CHAPTER TWO Using Your Studio Like a Pro In Volume 2 We Built It From Scratch Now Let s Pimp Itt The Easy Way to a Pure White Background Strobes with Built In Wireless Rock Using a Set Background You ve Got to Have Music During the Shoot The Beauty Dish Look Using Grid Spots Shooting Tethered Directly to aTV Monitor vill a 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 Table of Contents Getting Your Laptop Nearby for Tethering The Most Useful Inexpensive Accessories Why Youll Love Rolling Light Stands Why You Need Sandbags Monolight vs Battery Pack One Background Three Different Looks Using a Ring Flash Using V Flats for Fashion Catch Lights and Why You Want Them Reflectors When to Use Silver or White Using a Gray Card to Nall Your Color Don t Light Your Whole Subject Evenly The Difference Between Main and Fill Light Avoiding the Flash Sync Speed Black Bar CHAPTER THREE Which Lens to Use When and Why When to Use a Wide Angle Lens When to Use a Fisheye Lens When to Use a Telephoto Zoom When to Use Super Fast Lenses When to Use an Ultra Wide Zoom Lens When to Use a Super Telephoto Lens Using a Teleconverter to Get Even Closer Lenses with VR or IS Built In Using Filters with Your Lenses The Deal on Lens Hoods When
102. g the shutter button The problem is this since you re using a cable release your eye isn t right up to the viewfinder like it normally would be 50 you re not blocking the light from coming in through the viewfinder and messing with your exposure The solution is ta cover your viewfinder Some cameras like Nikon s D3 and D3x havea built in viewfinder door you can close the switch is to the left of the eyepiece itself but most other Nikon dSLRs come with the DK S eyepiece cap shown above that snaps into place to keep light out of your viewfinder in cases like this By the way you can test to see if light is getting in through the viewfinder and affecting your ex posure by covering and uncovering the viewfinder with your hand Ifyou see the shutter speed change at all then light is getting in If you don t have that little door Moose rec ommends hanging your lens cap over the viewfinder to block the light f you re a Canon shooter most Canon dSLRs come with an eyepiece cover that covers the viewfinder and keeps outside light from affecting your exposure Chapter 5 The Digital Photography Book Using a Graduated Neutral Density Filter 3 s Ifthe polarizing filter is the most important filter for landscape photographers then a graduated neutral density filter has to be the second most important This filter is designed to help you do something your camera can t usually do on its own and that is expose for the foreground
103. gt 02 01 30 100 x 1 0100 Move Set 08 28 Nikon I youve ever watched a concert video they always seem to have a video segment at the beginning where you see an empty venue and then you watch whilea giant stage with tons of lights and speakers is constructed right before your eyes something that took an entire day or two to construct in real time but here the whole experience lasts maybe 30 seconds total This technique is called time lapse photography you ve seen this used onTV to showa setting sun outdoor events a flower opening etc and to do this you set your camera on a tripod and have the camera take a shot at a regular interval like every 30 seconds or every minute etc over a certain period of time like an hour a day two weeks etc and then you combine all these images into a movie on your computer did a how to video for you at www kelbytraining com books digphotogy3 A number of Nikon dSLRs have this feature built right in like the D3 0300 and D700 so all you have to do is put your camera on a tripod then go under the Shooting menu and choose Interval Timer Shooting Press the right arrow and choose when you want your interval timer time lapse shooting to begin how often you want a photo taken the number of intervals and the number of shots per interval Now choose On and then OK and you can walk away and the camera will record the images for you automatically of course don t just walk away i
104. h on and put the power really low just enough to light your subject Also put an orange gel over the flash head so the light from your flash doesn t look so white and artificial Chapter 10 The Digital Photography Book Characteristics of this type of shot A cropped in tight shot with lots of detail high lights and shadows 1 It s a naturatlight shot a bow of fruit on a table in the shade All you have to do here is position yourself or rotate the bowl so the light is coming from one side giv ing the photo depth and dimension 2 Shoot standing far back and zoom all the way in to 200mm to get this tight compo sition The shot was taken with my favorite all around travel lens an 18 200mm lens 3 When you re shooting in open shade like this there s no direct light so you re going to have to shoot at the lowest number your lens will allow in this case f 5 6 to be able to hand hold the shot and still keep it in focus This will give you a somewhat shal low depth of field especially when you re zoomed in tight like this which is when the depth of field really kicks in Notice how the apples in front are a bit out of focus but the cherries are nice and sharp and the apples behind the cherries are also out of focus That s the f 5 6 at work for you If I could have gone to a lower number Fstop like f 4 or ideally 2 8 the depth of field would have been even shallower 4 By shooting in aperture prio
105. h wind for that fine sand to start blowing around so if you re out on location and need to change your lens your best bet is to go back to your car and change lenses there or bring a changing bag that you can stick your camera body and lenses inside of to do the quick switch a too Also once your shoot is done and you re back in the studio don t forget to clean the outside of your camera and your lenses especially if you were shooting near salt water Outside of that don t forget to bring the non camera things like bottled water for everyone on the shoot a fresh change of clothes and towels if you re going to be shooting in the water at all and know this probably goes without saying but l m going to say it anyway bring sun screen and reapply it often Shooting on the Street There are many famous photographers who specialize in capturing images of people on the street as they wander around capturing real life as it happens around them Unfortu nately these days people are much more aware and wary of people taking their photo on the street than ever but learned a couple of great tricks from a day spent wandering the streets of New York City with living legend Jay Maisel that can really make a difference The first was to shoot with a small lens It can bea zoom lens but the smaller and less obtrusive the better Jay pointed out that with shooting on the street the longer the lens you use the higher the anxiety and potent
106. hallenges you re go ing to face First there are things underwater that want to eat you But that aside one of your biggest issues will be light or really the lack thereof Ideally when shooting in deeper water having a flash or other light source is the only way to get good color in your photo f you re shooting near the surface you ll probably be able to keep a fairly low ISO but once you start going down 30 40 feet take a look at your shutter speed and you ll shudder sorry that was lame The light down at this depth is low and if you start getting shutter speeds of 1 30 1 15 or below what you re going to get is a bunch ofin credibly blurry photos but sadly you won t know that until they re on your computer or you ve made prints because say it with me now everybody everything looks in focus on your tiny LCD screen So if you re buying a point and shoot for underwater photog raphy try to find one that has fairly low noise at higher ISO Your other problem is going to be color casts and a general murkiness or haze over your photos The good news is that Photoshop can usually fix this automatically m not a big fan of Auto settings in Photoshop but this is one case where it works surprisingly well Go under Photoshop s or Photoshop Elements Image menu under Adjustments and choose Auto Levels That alone will usually do the trick Chapter The Digital Photography Book It s What You Leave Out of the Frame
107. hallow Depth of Field for Portraits Right now one of the most popular looks for casual and location portraits is to use a very very shallow depth of field so everything is pretty much way out of focus except your subject You get this look in two steps 1 You have to have a lens that will allow you to shoot ata very low numbered f stop like f 1 8 or f 1 4 so most folks use a fixed focal length lens ike a 50mm lens its not a zoom lens it just shoots at a fixed length of 50mm but that s okay that s the depth we re going for because they re not too terribly expensive usually less than 100 And 2 for a location portrait to be able to shoot outdoors at such a wide open f stop you have to shoot when its really overcast you re totally in dark shade like in an alley or it s nearly sunset If not shooting at that low of an f stop number will totally overexpose your photos and they ll be so bright they ll be unusable So pull this technique out of your bag on those cloudy overcast gray days go to a downtown loca tion and do your best to compose so you don t see the sky Also make sure you re careful about your focus because if you re off by even alittle they ll be out of focus Focus directly on your subject s eyes and understand that everything behind their eyes like the back of their head or their earrings as in the shot above will either be a little ora lot out of focus Chapter 6 Another hand
108. han life Save Your Knees You ll Thank Me Later Mike Olivella a pro sports photographer tumed me on to one of his tricks for saving his knees when shooting at a low perspective buy some gel filled knee pads from the local home improvement store I finally did that a year or so ago and once I tried them all I could think was why did I wait so long They te inexpensive very durable and every time wear them at some point another sports photographer down on his knees looks at me and through their grimace says Ive got to get some of those Check out page 166 where I ve got them on Chapter7 The Digital Photography Book Ifyou want your sports photos to have more impact here s another tip to help try to iso late your subject There are two ways to do this the fist being simply to frame your shots so that only one or two people appear in the shot if at all possible When you get crowds of people in the shot its hard for the viewer to tell which person you want them to look at The last thing you want to do is to make the viewer start searching your photo try ing to find the ball or the puck Look for those opportunities to shoot a player in a team sport all by themselves on the field but during a moment of action if you re shooting something like soccer or football you can have more than one player in the frame but try to make sure your composition makes it instantly clear which player they re supposed to
109. hard drive then you ll have two copies one set on your computer and one set on your backup drive and then it s safe to format erase your memory card and keep shooting with that card Without two backups it s just a matter of time before those photos are gone forever I could tell you the saddest stories of people who have written me who have lost every photo of their kids for the past eight or 10 years because they had them on their computer and their computer died wish it was just one story but I ve got dozens and dozens My Personal Photo Backup Strategy 1 wrote about my entire photography backup and archiving strategy in a very detailed article on my blog at www scottkelby com blog 2008 archives 1410 andif you re paranoid about losing all your photos and you should be it s worth a read Want another tip for getting sharper images Start gently squeezing the shutter but ton rather than just pressing it Actually for the least vibration possible you should kind of roll your finger over the shutter button from back to front By doing this gentle pressing of the shutter button you ll wind up with sharper photos every time Avoiding Problems Like a Pro Tuck in Your Elbows for Sharper Shots Another technique for getting sharper photos when hand holding your camera is to steady the camera by holding it with your elbows tucked in toward your body This helps anchor the camera to your body keeping
110. has different channels At the beginning of the wedding you d set your flash to Channel 1 and you d tell your second shooter to set their lash to Channel 2 That way your camera will only trigger your flash and theirs will only trigger their flash By the way you have to set the channel in two places 1 on the wireless flash unit itself and 2 on whatever you re using to trigger your flash For example if you re shooting Nikon and the second shooter is using their camera s built in Commander unit to control their wireless flash you d need to have them set their Commander to Channel 2 f you re shoot ing Canon then you re probably using another flash mounted on your camera s hot shoe as your master flash and in that case you d set that flash to Channel 2 If all of this master and wireless stuff sounds confusing then you now know why I said you really need to read volume 2 of this book first because it covers all the basics of wireless flash Then all this would make more sense and it would sell another book which isn t a bad thing Chapter1 The Digit hotography Book Using a Transmitter to Fire Your Flash Back in volume 2 of this book showed you how to set up your small hot shoe flash so that your off camera flash can be wireless which is very cool and makes your flash really usable But there is a downside to using the built in wireless system and that is that the flashes have to be in the lin
111. hat kind of images does a maga zine like Sports Illustrated run the most was teaching a class on shooting football and wanted to answer that question for my class so did a little research and can tell you that based on that research they run two types of images 1 Action images where the ball if there is one is in the frame with the athlete so if it s a shot of a quarterback or running back they re holding the ball or if it s the receiver he s catching the ball etc 2 Celebrations Occasionally it s an editorial shot of an athlete who just suffered a crushing defeat but usually it s one or more players celebrating after a big win it s Tiger Woods pumping his fist a hockey team with their sticks in the air a soccer player cheering on his knees two football players bumping chests in midair Almost invariably those are the two types of shots that make it into S Also they re usually in tight on the players so you can see their facial expressions and the emotions of the game So how does this help you Well after all these years you can imagine that Sports Illustrated has figured out exactly which types of sports photos people want to see right Right Now you know which two types of shots you want to be sure to capture the next time you re shooting a game Remember if the ball not in the shot or the players aren t celebrating it doesn t make it into the magazine There s a reason Shooting Sports Li
112. he lens the darker ight you can hand hold your camera in and still get sharp photos This also means 2 that this is a less expensive lens Really good glass as its called has a constant aperture the same Fstop all the way through the zoom range so the lens would be at say 28 whether you re out at wide angle or zoomed in tight for example Nikon s 70 200 f 2 8 VRlens can shoot at f 28 whether you re zoomed out at 70mm or zoomed in tight at 200mm When You Need to Focus Really Fast Turn the Focus Limit Switch On Each time you use autofocus your lens searches everything it sees from a few inches in front of you to miles in the distance and then it locks on what it thinks youre aiming at This takes just a second or two but if what you re shooting is really far away you re shoot ing sports or a bird up in a tree you can switch your lens from Full focus to Limit which tells it not to even try to focus on anything closer than around eight feet away That way it focuses even faster so you don t miss the shot The Truth About Lenses Ifyou have more than one lens you ll probably be changing lenses in the field quite abit and ifso there are just a couple of things you should know The first is that you generally don t have to turn the camera off to change lenses Although you ll read some purists online who claim having the sensor still charged will attract dust and blah blah blah I don t know any pros who actua
113. he main light lighting the front of the wine bottles is a Westcott Spiderlite not a strobe but a continuous light using daylight fluorescent bulbs with a 24x36 softbox attached to soften the light The light is just off to the left of the wine bottle and in re ally close just outside the left side of the camera frame To get that nice tall reflection just rotate the softbox so it s tall rather than a wide 3 Both lights the natural window light and the Spiderlite continuous light are on the left side of the frame so to bounce some light back into the dark area on the right side of the bottles is a white foam core reflector you can buy these at your local office supply store and its standing straight up to the right of the wine bottles just outside the frame 4 This is a product shot so shoot it on a tripod especially in lower light lke this Even More Photo Reci The Recipe for Getting This Type of Shot Characteristics of this type of shot This is the bright flat shadowless look that s very popular right now in flash photography However with ring flash you ll actually see a shadow halo outlining your subject which is part of the look 1 There s only one light an AlienBees Ring Flash seen on page 47 which is a circle of very small flashes and your lens goes through the middle of this circle of flashes so it s mounted right to the camera You shoot from directly in front of your
114. hen working with more than one flash you ve probably heard the terms main light also called key light and fill light Here s what those mean Whichever flash you choose to do most of the lighting of your subject is the main light It s as simple as that If you use another light that is not on the background or on the subject s hair and the flash isn t as bright as your main light that s the fill light The fill ight is usually used to add just alittle extra light to your scene For example let s say you re doing a profile shot of your subject The profile light goes to their side and a little behind them Most of the light ap pears to come from behind and just a little bit of light falls on the side of their face that faces the camera But what if it still looks alittle too dark Well that s when you might add another flash in front d put it opposite the flash behind them but you d lower the power of this flash way way down so just a little bit of light appears just enough to fill in those shadows to see the setup shot for this go to www kelbytraining com books digphotogy3 That s a fill light and now you know the difference between the main light and a fill light Chapter 2 The Digital Photography Book If you re shooting in the studio or with an off camera flash and you start seeing a black bar or black gradient across the bottom or either side of your photo that s because you re shooting at too high a
115. hers using white reflectors a lot in the studio usu ally to reflect or bounce light from the main light into the side of the face that s in the shadows when it comes to product photography more often than not you ll find the pros using a large sheet of foam core instead Form core tends to have a little more sheen to it than most reflectors and reflects more light Plus because you can cut a sheet of form core found at most craft stores or office supply stores down to pretty much any size you need you can make these small enough to sit right on your product table and get right up close to your product but just out of your viewfinder s frame Shooting Products Like a Pro Ifyou want to go for a dramatic look for your product shots try this go to your local home supply mega hardware store and buy a single tile of black granite This stuff is incredibly reflective and just sitting your product on it makes it scream Shoot me It looks like this stuff was made for product shots and yet it s fairly inexpensive well at least for one tile it is Get as large a tile as they have in stock but since it s unlikely to be very large you ll use this for smaller items that you want to have a dark dramatic look Try this the next time you want to go a totally different direction from the stan dard white background that you see so often for products shots iter 4 The Digital Photography Book Use a Tripod Product sho
116. his point you re not really taking a photo you re tweaking your software to get a specific desired result When you press the shutter button it sends a signal to the software to briefly let some amount oflightinto the computer controlled sensor and that amounts determined througha mathematical calculation performed by that s right your onboard computer So is it any wonder that occasionally we make a mistake with this handheld computer and a photo doesn t look how we wanted it to No its not So technically when the photo doesn t look the way we want itto its not our fault it s that dam computer Well that s what this chapter is all about Blame You ll leam how to quickly and easily redirect the blame for any bad shot back to how the software behaved in your camera and you ll be able to do it in such a convincing and logical way that there s no way you could ever be held personally responsible for taking any photo that is not literally Ansel Adams quality Underexposed That stupid software Out of focus Dam autofocus got me again Took a shot of your foot as you were walking It fired without me pressing the button See It s easier than you d think Let s trya few more You hear Gee the color looks off You reply My stupid LCD isn t color balanced Oooh good one O digital cameras are amazingly sophisticated devices and Chapter 9 The Digital Photography Book Can You Trust Your Camera
117. hoot Why so low Because the idea is to balance the light from your flash with the existing light already in the room or already available outside so you usually want just a little bit of flash or your flash will look like flash The goal is to make your flash look like natural light so your power setting will probably stay real darn low Chapter 1 The Digital Photography Book Firing a Second Flash in Another Room Let s say you re shooting the interior of a home and lighting it with off camera flash Nothing looks worse than seeing an adjoining room maybe the dining room in the background looking all dark so you put a second flash in there and aim it at the ceil ing to light that room So far so good Now of course in that dining room you don t want to actually see the flash unit itself so you hide it from view right Here comes the problem these flashes work on line of sight meaning your second flash has to have an unobstructed view of the master flash If it doesn t it won t fire So here s the trick to get around that you set your flash to Remote or Slave mode depending of which brand of flash you own and then it doesn t have to be in the line of sight anymore if it detects even a tiny hint of light from the flash in the main room that puppy fires Keep this in mind the next time you need to hide a second flash or put it where the whole line of sight thing won t work This technique
118. hooting mode use is manual and then only when fm inthe studio using studio strobes try to shoot at ISO 200 as much as possible t s always my starting place and I only raise it if my shutter speed falls below 1 60 of a second that s about as slow as I can go hand holding my camera and still get a sharp shot Some folks can go to 1 30 but not me If l m shooting out in daylight lke on a vacation trip or at an outdoor sporting event I leave my white balance set on Auto IfI wander into the shade I change it to Shade and if I walk inside match the white balance to the lighting tm shoot ingin this keeps me from having to color correct my photos later I leave my camera s flash setting at Rear Curtain Sync 2nd Curtain for Canon users all the time that way I get some movement around my subject but then the flash fires to freeze them and make them sharp leave the highlight warning tumed on all the time and refer to it often so I don t blow out my highlights I neverlookat the histogram sorry ter 8 The Digital Photography Book What I Pack for a Landscape Shoot If m heading out for a landscape shoot here s what pack 1 One full frame camera body I take a full frame body when shooting landscapes to get wider images 2 A 14 24mm f 2 8 ultra wide angle lens 3 A good sturdy tripod with a ballhead 4 One medium zoom lens in case want to shoot a panorama I avoid wide angle lenses when s
119. hooting panos 5 A cable release either a wired release or ideally a wireless release 6 A polarizer to cut reflections and darken the sky 7 A split neutral density gradient filter to let me expose for the foreground and not have the sky get washed out 8 An Epson P 3000 6000 or 7000 for backing up my images when out in the field 9 A neutral density filter to darken a waterfall or stream scene so can use along enough shutter speed to make the water look silky 10 A backup battery my battery charger a cleaning cloth in case get water droplets on my lens and a Rocket Air Blower to blow any dust or specks off my lens 11 Multiple memory cards in a hard sided memory card case 12 Itall goes in a LowePro Pro Mag 2 AW Pro Tips for Getting Better Photos What I Pack for a Sports Shoot If m heading out for a sports shoot here s what pack 1 Two camera bodies 2 A very long lens lke a fast 200 400mm f 4 zoom lens or a 300mm fixed focal length lens 3 Azoom lens like a 70 200mm f 2 8 and one wide angle zoom like a 24 70mm 4 A fisheye lens in case want to get a shot of the stadium arena etc 5 A monopod to support my longest lens 6 ABlackRapid R Strap for my second camera body so can bring my second camera up to fire quickly if ined it 7 An Epson P 3000 6000 or 7000 for backing up my images when out in the field 8 A laptop and a fast FireWire or IEEE 1394 me
120. ial anger of the people you ll be shooting With a long lens on your camera you go from being just another tourist on the street to what they might consider paparazzi and then things can get ugly Besides just shooting with a small zoom or fixed focal length lens Jay told me to leave the lens hood off because anything that makes the rig look more pro means more resistance Another tip was to not ook people in the eye when you see the shot you want dontt lock eyes with your subject just take the shot and if they look right at you just smile and move on Now of course we were shooting in New York City where paparazzi are prevalent and people may be more guarded In most other cities and in foreign countries ve found that a nice smile goes a long way and most folks will actually let you take their picture If you show them the picture on the back of your camera then they ll usually let you take a whole bunch of shots The main thing is to respect everybody If they don t want their photo taken and they make that known by a facial expression or a hand gesture ahem don t take it Chapt igital Photography Book Get a Model Release Ifyou re shooting a subject for any commercial use whether it s a friend or a professional model make sure you get a signed model release from your subject while they re still in the studio This release gives you the photographer the right to use their likeness in com mercial projects like ads
121. id the use of flash and you generally only get to shoot for the first three songs of the concert if that Since you absolutely shouldn t use flash the key is to shoot at a high enough ISO that you can get your shutter speed around 1 125 of a second to give you sharp shots in lower light and yes the stage is often very dramatically lit and the lights are constantly changing which is why shooting performances is so tricky Since you may get some noise at these higher ISOs be prepared to use a noise reduction plug in I ve been using Nik Software s Dfine 2 0 and take along the fastest lowest pos sible Fstop lenses you ve got f 2 8 f 2 f 1 8 etc If you re close to the stage take both a wide angle lens and something like a 70 200mm f 2 8 or even an f 4 if you ve got a good low noise camera Ifyou want better looking home interior shots here are a few things to do that will make a big difference First tum on all the lights in the room tum on every single light you can This isn t to add light to the scene this is to give the room some life realtors have home owners do the same thing when they re showing the house to prospective home buyers Now you have two jobs 1 To make the room look big Nobody wants to see a tiny little room and one trick for doing that is to shoot down low from a kneeling position with a wide angle lens Then position your camera so you re aiming into one of the room s cor ners One of
122. ide through I use a LumoPro LP633 Umbrella Swivel with Flash Shoe Adapter which sells for around 18 and a lightweight light stand Iuse a Manfrotto lightweight 6 2 Nano Stand around 60 So the whole setup is just under 100 Chapter 1 igital Photography Book Controlling Softness with an Umbrella If you re using a shoot through umbrella you have to decide how soft you want the light to be that comes through that umbrella Well this is partially controlled by how far back you place the flash from the inside of the umbrella usually want really soft light for shooting things like brides and portraits of families etc so I slide the umbrella out around two feet from the flash That way the light from the flash fills as much of the umbrella as possible making my light source bigger which makes my light softer remember that from volume 2 The bigger the light source the softer the light Ifyou want sharper edgier light you know what to do slide the umbrella in the adapter so it s much doser to the flash Now the flash has much less room to spread and your light will be smaller more direct and less soft Using Flash Like a Pro Part 2 If you ve got a few more bucks to spend then you can move up to a small softbox designed for off camera flash think there are two big advantages to using this over a shoot through umbrella 1 The light is more contained and directional than with a shoot th
123. iewer You re revealing another side of the game by sharing this emotion That s why we try so hard to get really great access to shoot sporting events The great shots don t usually come from the stands unless you ve got a really really long lens and sadly most major stadiums at least here in the US are really cracking down on fans bringing pro camera gear to professional sporting events Many stadiums now have a 4 rule no lenses longer than 4 Chapter7 The Digital Photography Book Using a Second Camera Body Get an R Strap Last year I was tumed on to BlackRapid s R Strap which for sports photographers using two camera bodies is a dream come true By the way many pro sports shooters carry two full camera rigs during the event one with a really long lens and a second body with a short telephoto or wide angle for when the action gets really close What love about the R Strap is that it straps across your chest and it screws into the bottom of your cam era so your camera kind of hangs there like a gun in a holster except there s no holster When you need to take a quick shot with your second body quick being the operative word here you just reach your hand down to your side and it falls right into place on your camera you just pull your camera up to your face and it slides right along the Strap giving you a fast comfortable way to get the shot When you re done you just put it back dow
124. im positioned a few feet above the subject that diffuses and softens the light Think of it kind of like a giant softbox that spreads the light from the sun What s nice about scrims is they re very lightweight and portable it s just fabric wrapped around or attached to a collapsible frame and they re not crazy expensive you can get a pretty decent sized one like 78x78 with frame and fabric for around 375 Once you get your scrim you re going to need to have a way to support it Because it has to go between the sun and your subject they re usually put either directly over your subject like a roof or behind or beside them at a 45 angle These are really lightweight so you can have an assistant or a couple of friends support your scrim frame or you can support them with light stands f you go the stand route you ll need to buy two little brackets that fit on top of your light stands to hold and tilt the frame so don t forget to get those too Also you ll probably want to bring a reflector and maybe even a flash depending on how late in the day you ll be shooting Chapter 6 igital Photography Book Shooting at the Beach Besides just shooting in a really bright direct sun environment see the previous page for dealing with that shooting at the beach presents its own set of challenges that you ll want to consider before doing a beach shoot The fist is sand the natural enemy of camera gear It doesn t take muc
125. imply visit www peachpit com safarienabled and enter code LEJIZAA to try it today
126. in like reflection 2 It s very easy to keep clean you can just wipe it lightly with a damp cloth so you don t have to replace it often like you do with white seamless paper and 3 because it bends pretty easily you can lie one end flat on a table and then attach the other end toa couple of inexpensive light stands with some A clamps see page 42 for more on A clamps and this gives you a smooth seamless curve behind your product which makes it perfect for product photography A full amp x4 sheet costs about 45 50 at my local hardware store and believe it i s worth every penny The Digital Photography Book Invisible thread It s not just for repairing your clothes this incredibly sturdy stuff can be used to suspend products in midair so you can shoot them well of course it de pends on the weight of the product It s not going to hold a car battery if that s what you re thinking Just put a boom stand arm up high just high enough so you can t see it in your viewfinder then tie one end of the invisible thread to the boom the other end to your product and fire away Now you can also use fishing line if you can t get hold of some invisible thread and while it s pretty unobtrusive you re probably going to have to remove that line later in Photoshop That s what used in the shot you see above and I did a video clip on how I removed the fishing line using Adobe Pho toshop the clip actually air
127. ings for 147 night games and ISO for 148 packing list for 183 panning objects in 154 problem with static shots in 164 reference photos in 165 renting long lenses for 163 R Strap used in 160 silencing the beep for 152 storytelling through 161 super telephoto lens for 63 teleconverters for shooting 64 telephoto zoom lens for 60 variety of shots in 151 spot metering 171 spots and specks 210 stage events 172 star filter effect 104 starbrights 104 Sticky Filters 24 still life photography 226 storytelling with children s photos 141 with sports photography 161 street based portraits 137 strip banks 93 strobes wireless 35 Studio Cubelight 87 studio photography 33 54 A clamps for 42 beauty dish for 38 black bar appearing in 54 catch lights in 49 fast lenses and 71 flash sync speed and 54 gaffers tape for 42 gray card for 51 grid spots for 39 lighting backgrounds in 46 main vs fil light in 53 monolights for 45 playing music for 37 reflectors for 50 ring flash for 47 rolling light stands for 43 sandbags for 44 set backgrounds in 36 shooting tethered in 40 41 solid white backgrounds in 34 uneven lighting technique 52 V flats for 48 wireless strobes for 35 sunlight overpowering with flash 17 portrait lighting using 227 228 positioning the flash as 29 scrims used for portraits in 135 super fast lenses 61 super telephoto lenses 63 super wide zoom
128. ions In professional product photography you ll often see a reflection appear below the product and while you can add these reflections after the fact in Photoshop it s easier to just have real reflections plus depending on the angle of the product the job of creating fake reflections in Photoshop can range anywhere from quick and easy to a real pain in the so you re better off doing it right up front The easy way to get those reflections is to shoot your product on some plexiglass either clear or white frosted Just put a rectangular sheet of plexi right over your background you can pick up these small sheets of plexiglass at your local Home Depot or Lowe s for around 15 and it does the rest Plus plexiglass is handy for all sorts of other stuff you ll see it used again in a couple of pages and another in Chapter 10 To see a production setup using plexiglass go to page 93 Faking Reflections in Adobe Photoshop Ifyou need to fake a reflection here s how its done Make a selection around your product then press Command J PC Ctr to put that product up on its own separate layer Go under the Edit menu under Transform and choose Flip Vertical This turns your product upside down Now press and hold the Shift key and drag your product straight downward until the two bottoms touch then in the Layers panel ower the opacity of this layer to around 20 That s itl Shooting Products Like Mirrors f
129. is to mentally picture arriving on the scene and put together your gear in your mind At some point you ll mentally reach into your bag for something that s not there Add it to the list right then Shooting Outdoors Like Showing movement is an easy way to add excitement to your photos and it s easy to capture The secret to showing movement is lowering your shutter speed For example in the shot shown above in New York s Grand Central Station two things have to hap pen for you to see the blur of people moving 1 the station itself needs to stay sharp and crisp so you shoot ona tripod and 2 you use a long shutter speed so when the shutter opens and people are walking their movement is captured If you re in kind of a dark setting like the shot above you can shoot in aperture priority mode choose a safe all around f stop like f 8 and press the shutter button The shutter will stay open a second or two and everybody will be blurry It s harder to get this movement effect in the middle of the day because your shutter wants to stay open such a short time So what do photographers do Probably the most popular trick is to use a screw on darkening filter like a neutral density filter like those made by Singh Ray Filters to darken what your camera sees so your shutter stays open longer The Digital Photography Book There are special lens filters you can buy that can turn bright lights captured in your dusk an
130. it Another situation where your subject will often feel awkward or uncomfortable is when they re standing They feel so vulnerable just standing there alone in an empty space and that s why some photographers choose to have their subjects sit down Although you ll have to shoot from a lower position which might make you a little uncomfortable most people will be much more comfortable sitting vs standing Also if you see your subject is still really uncomfortable try putting a small table like a posing table for example in front of them Putting something in front of them like that will help them feel less vulner able think of how often public speakers like to hide behind a podium when giving their presentation it s a comfort thing Next time you re in one of those situations where you can tell your subject feels really awkward have em take a seat and you ll usually see a world of difference Use a Posing Stool You can have your subject sit on just a regular o chair but if you want a chair specifically for photography one without a back or arms you can buy a posing stool which is an adjustable height stool that swivels and they re pretty unobtrusive which is good as its job is to not draw attention to itself and keep the focus on the subject You can also buy an adjustable height posing table as well B amp H Photo sells them separately or you can buy them together in a kit Chapter6 The Digital Photogr
131. it is to see your images at this large a size because you can see exactly what the light looks like you can see exactly how sharp your images are you ll catch mistakes you d miss looking at a 2 5 or 3 LCD and your subjects will love being able to see themselves at this size find it really gets them excited when they like what they see onscreen and that turns into much better images all around So what do you need to make this happen besides the TV of course You ll need whichever cable your particular camera uses as a video out many dSLRs come with this cable right in the box That s all it takes Using Your Studio Like a Pro Getting Your Laptop Nearby for Tethering Ifyou decide you want to tether directly to your laptop where your images are downloaded into your computer so you can sort and tweak them as you shoot I showed how to do this in volume 2 then having your laptop in a convenient spot is real a time saver and this rig shown above is about the easiest and most stable way to get there It s a metal platform called the Gitzo G 065 Monitor Platform which screws right into a standard tripod and i s just the right size fora 15 laptop If you often shoot using a tripod then you can have this one tripod do double duty by adding a Manfrotto 131DD Tripod Accessory Arm for Four Heads This is a horizontal bar that screws onto your tripod then you can attach the Gitzo Monitor Platform with your laptop on one end and on th
132. it steadier and giving you sharper photos This is an easier change to make than you d think and once you see the results you ll be glad you did it Chapter 9 The Digital Photography Book Don t Let the Small Screen Fool You If you ve ever taken a shot that looked great on your camera only to open it later on your computer to find out that your killer shot was incredibly blurry don t feel bad everything looks sharp on a tiny 2 5 or 3 LCD screen and every photographer has been burned by this well every photographer know anyway That s why it s so critical to check the sharpness right then and there out in the field while you still have a chance to reshoot the shot When you see a shot that looks really great on the LCD stop right there and make sure it s sharp by zooming in tight and checking the focus Just press the Zoom In on a Nikon or Magnify on a Canon button on the back of the camera to zoom in Once zoomed in you move to view different parts of your zoomed in photo using the multi selector on a Nikon or the multi controller on a Canon on the back of the camera Once you re done checking the sharpness press the Zoom In magnifying glass button again on a Nikon or the Reduce button on a Canon to zoom back out Keep your surprises to a minimum by checking the sharpness now in camera before its too late Avoiding Problems Like a Pro Avoiding the Memory Card Moment of Doubt E Fo
133. ke If you re shooting a game where you re not covering it on assignment and you don t have a family member actually in the game here s something to keep in mind Let s say you re shooting football Once you ve got that great shot of the quarterback where he s posed in the perfect position and the ball has just left his hand for a perfect spiral pass and you framed it just right and you know you nailed it or that shot of the kicker going for the extra point and the ball has just left his foot but it s still in the frame as shown here move on Don t keep shooting them doing those moves for the rest ofthe day expecting something different ve seen so many times where a friend will shoot a game and they ll have 200 shots of the quarterback doing essentially the same move Sometimes they ve nailed it in the first round of shots but they stay on him the rest of the day shooting literally hundreds of shots Instead once you ve got the shot of that player the receiver leaping to catch that ball over his head with the comer hands trying hopelessly to deflect i you ve got it You got the shot Move on to capturing another aspect of the game another player in another position or just stick to where the action is When you get back you won t just have the shot You ll have the shots Chapter7 The Digital Photography Book Turning Off the Beep B Quality Red eye On Off Beep Shoot w o card Review time
134. ket Air Blower to blow any dust or specks off my lens Pro Tips for Getting Better Photos What I Pack for a Travel Shoot IfI m heading out for a travel shoot while Im on vacation here s what pack 1 One camera body a regular cropped frame body 2 An 18 200mm zoom lens I want one lens that does it all 3 An Epson P 3000 6000 or 7000 for backing up my images when out in the field 4 A backup battery my battery charger a cleaning cloth and a Rocket Air Blower to blow any dust or specks off my lens 5 A small tabletop tripod so can shoot food or sneak in a shot where full sized tripods aren t usually allowed ft m heading out for a wedding shoot here s what pack 1 Two camera bodies the extra one is a backup 2 A 14 24mm super wide angle lens a SOmm f 1 4 lens for shooting hand held in low light a 70 200mm f 2 8 VR zoom lens a 10 5mm fisheye lens great for capturing fun at the reception and a 24 70mm f 2 8 lens B An Epson P 3000 6000 or 7000 for backing up on site and four 8 GB memory cards Alens cleaning kit 5 This all fits in a LowePro Pro Roller 1 Bag Lighting Gear 1 Two off camera flashes like Nikon SB 900s 2 Diffusion domes for the flash units B A Nikon SU 800 commander unit to fire the flashes wirelessly 4 Two Bogen light stands with umbrella swivel brackets the second one is a backup 5 Two Westcott 43 shoot through white trans
135. lenses 58 T tabletop mirrors 85 Tapes Michael 194 teleconverters 64 telephoto lenses renting for sporting events 163 super telephoto lenses 63 telephoto zoom lenses 60 television monitors 40 tents product 87 test firing flashes 11 tethered shooting 40 41 texture shots 114 ThinkTank Photo 166 thread invisible 92 through the lens metering TTL 27 The Digital Photography Book tilt shift lenses 69 time lapse photography with Canon cameras 174 with Nikon cameras 175 Timer Remote Control 174 s and techniques See professional tips techniques transmitter wireless 10 travel photography all in one zoom lenses for 76 composing shots in 107 214 219 deleting bad shots during 125 packing list for 102 185 postcard images and 114 texture shots in 114 triflectors 134 Trilite 134 tripods HDR image creation and 117 219 low light situations and 179 nighttime photos and 180 product photography and 96 TTL through the lens metering 27 Tungsten white balance 105 uU ultra wide zoom lenses 62 umbrellas reflective 5 shoot through 5 6 underwater shots 110 111 lighting considerations for 111 waterproof camera housing for 110 uneven lighting technique 52 updating firmware 198 user manuals 209 UV filter 66 180 v V flats 48 vibrant color settings 124 Vibration Reduction VR lenses 65 video feature on dSLRs 189 video instruction on copyrights
136. light already in the room there are two colors of gels you re going to need to keep with you which you put over your flash head 1 an orange gel for when you re shooting indoors under regular lighting usually incandes cent lighting and 2 a green gel for when you re shooting in an office or building under fluorescent lights You May Not Have to Buy These Gels Ifyou bought a Nikon SB 800 or the SB 900 both come with a set of gels including the orange and green right in the box Chapter 1 The Digital Photography Book Sticky Filters Qe Gels for some reason seem to freak people out who are new to off camera flash and even mentioning gels in a live session brings up a host of questions like Where do get them How do I know if m getting the right ones What colors should I get How and where do attach them to my flash Do need to cut them down to size Well guess a company named Midsouth Photographic Specialties heard this so many times they finally went out and created a set of gels for off camera flashes in the most requested colors pre cut to size and ready to go They re called Sticky Filters just slap em on and you re set Tips for Lighting Your Background with Flash Here s a simple little rule that will help you when using your small off camera flash to light a background wall or seamless background behind your subject If you want to light the entire background f
137. lly turn their camera off to change lenses However when you do change your lens to keep dust from actually falling into your camera itself don t leave the open body of the camera facing straight up That s just askin for it You re better off tilting the body down toward the ground Also if you re in a dusty or windy environment let s say you re shooting in Arizona s Antelope Canyon slots where dust is constantly trickling down from the above don t change lenses at all wait until you re ina clear area first and then do it And ideally you don t want to leave your camera body uncovered for long again to keep out dust so don t take five minutes changing lenses take one off and pop on the other You don t have to rush you don t want to risk drop ping anything but don t dilly dally either There s a term you don t hear every day What to Do If Your Autofocus Suddenly Stops Working First check to see that you didn t turn off the autofocus on your lens but if it s on try this just remove the lens and then put it right back on again called reseating the lens This litte trick has worked for me time and time again ter3 The Digital Photography Book When to Use an All in One Zoom 18 200mm eas ecT The most popular Nikon and Canon lenses are their 18 200mm zooms because they doitall They go all the way from a nice wide angle to a tight telephoto and you never have to change l
138. look to the lighting and a very shallow depth of field 1 The key to this type of shot is backlighting Place the main most powerful light behind the food and then use a lower powered light in front 2 These shots were lit with a two Westcott Spiderlite daylight fluorescent lights these are continuous lights see page 88 The larger light is placed behind the food on the left from the camera view and the second smaller light is also on the left with the power turned down a bit To keep the shadows from being too dark on the right side of the food place a large piece of white foam core standing to the right of the food see page 94 B if you don t have Spiderlites or strobes you can use window light behind your food and a white reflector in front and on the side 4 To get that really shallow depth of field you need to use the lowest number Fstop your lens will allow like f 4 or even lower if your lens can go lower 6 This is essentially a product shot so ideally you d shoot this using a tripod Characteristics of this type of shot Hard chiseled light on both sides of your subject s face and a dark dramatic sharp look to the final image 1 This popular look takes three lights You need two lights placed behind and on either side of your subject aiming diagonally in at the sides of your subject s face 2 These two lights need to have a hard edge to them so you re not going to use a softbox just
139. looked at people I mean really looked at them Up close It s scary m not talking about me or you mind you Other people Let s take your average guy for example If he s above the age of 12 or so most likely he has hair coming out of his nose his ears his underarms and it s growing lke ivy on his arms legs just about anywhere you wouldn t actually want hair growing These are just the places you can see I know Gross Anyway what are we as photographers to do about shooting these grotesque human fur balls We find ways to light them using either natural light studio light or some twisted combination of the two so that they re somewhat bearable to look at aslong we don tlook very closely This applies to all men with the possible exception of George Clooney Now when Ilookat George Clooney Isee kind of a well groomed decent looking guy but the women I know including those who are photographers see something entirely different in him They don t see the hairy mass I described previously They have the same reaction to him that they have to chocolate cake They lose complete control of their faculties So based on this my conclusions are strictly based on my own personal observations and not scientific data though I ve never met a female scientist that didn t find George Clooney irresistible in a chocolate molten lava cake kind of way I decided to conduct an experiment I went to my local bakery had the woman who owns the
140. looks kinda weird So that leaves silver and white which do you use when Here s the general thinking on this Silver reflects much more light so you ll use silver when you position the reflector back away from your subject Ifyou need to get a reflector right up close that s when l d use white because it doesn t reflect nearly as much light as silver See page 231 for the final image from this shoot Reducing Glare in Glasses If your subject wears glasses seeing a reflection of the softboxes in thelr glasses is not uncommon but you don t want such a strong reflection that it interferes with or covers their eyes If thats the case just move the main light to the side until the reflection goes away its easier than you d think because you ll see the modeling light reflecting in their glasses However what s important is that the glare Is gone from the angle where your camera is set up not from where you re standing moving the light So this will go quicker ifyou havea fiend orassistant move the light while you stand at the camera and tellthem keep going keep going until you see that the reflection is gone Using Your Studio Like Using a Gray Card to Nail Your Color Ifyou re going to be post processing your images using a program like Photoshop or Photoshop Elements here s a trick that will make the color correction process absolutely painless and nearly automatic Once you get your lighting in place have y
141. lower light like a night game and stil freeze motion However if you generally shoot sports in the middle of the day in nice bright sunlight then you can get away with buying a less expensive super telephoto lens like the Canon zoom telephoto EF 100 400mm f 4 5 5 6 for around 1 460 Also if you buy a long lens you re usually going to need a monopod to support it your monopod screws into a hole on a bracket on the lens and your camera is supported by being attached to the lens It works much better than it sounds I GRAB THIS LENS FIRST WHEN m shooting sports Chapter3 The Digital Photography Book talked briefly about teleconverters back in volume 1 because they re such a handy and relatively inexpensive way to get you in tighter to the action What these do is zoom your whole lens in a little closer usually either 1 4x closer 1 7x closer or even 2x closer though only recommend the 1 4x teleconverter because the quality doesn t change noticeably like it does with a 1 7x or 2x extender As long as you buy a quality teleconverter both Nikon and Canon make very good ones there s only one potential downside and that is you lose around one stop of light for a 1 4x more for higher ones So if the lowest number your lens would go was f 2 8 when you add a teleconverter now the lowest number is f 4 say potential downside because if you shoot in broad daylight losing a stop of light isn t a big problem for you
142. lucent umbrellas the second is a backup AWestcott white silver reflector 7 Atri grip diffuser 8 Four packs of AA batteries AA battery charger and a Nikon SD 9 battery pack for longer battery life and faster refresh times 9 A ladder cart to shoot up higher and to lug the lighting gear around 10 pack my flashes stands umbrellas and brackets all in one Hakuba PSTC 100 Tripod Case Pro Tips for Getting Better Photos White Balance vs Color Correction White balance Shade Approx 7000K Canon If you re wondering why you hear so much these days about getting a proper white bal ance when you re shooting here s why if you get the white balance right in the camera you won t have to do any color correction later in Photoshop or Lightroom or Aperture or whatever That s because if the white balance is properly set the color of the photo will ook spot on Ifthe white balance is off you re going to have to do some color cor rection later or your photo will look too blue too yellow too green etc so if you want to avoid the whole color correction process just set your camera s white balance setting to the type oflight you re shooting in for example if you re shooting in the shade set your camera s white balance to Shade Yes it is that easy If You Want to Nail Your White Balance Every Time Get an ExpoDisc Switching your white balance in camera to match the type of lighting you re shoo
143. lume 2 because those chapters in this book figure you already learned the basics in volume 2 4 Sometimes you have to buy stuff This is not a book to sell you stuff but before you move forward understand that to get pro results sometimes you have to use some accessories that the pros use don t get a kickback or promo fee from any companies whose products recommend m just giving you the exact same advice ld give a friend 5 Where do I find all this stuff Since I didn t want to fill the book with a bunch of Web links especially since webpages can change without notice put together a special page for you at my site with a link to any of the gear I mention here in the book You can find this gear page at www kelbytraining com books vol3gear 6 The intro page at the beginning of each chapter is just designed to give you a quick mental break and honestly they have little to do with the chapter In fact they have little to do with anything but writing these off the wall chapter intros is kind of a tradition of mine Ido this in all my books so if you re one of those really serious types please l m begging you skip them because they ll just get on your nerves 7 if you re shooting with a Sony or Olympus or a Sigma digital camera don t let it throw you that a Nikon or Canon camera is pictured Since most people are shooting with a Nikon or Canon usually show one or the other but don t sweat it if you re no
144. ly at that area hold the shutter button down halfway to lock in that exposure read ing then reframe your photo to look how you want it without releasing that shutter but ton and take the photo In the example above right ljust switched from matrix metering to spot then aimed at the table inside that doorway That s all it took just remember to switch back to matrix or evaluative metering when you re done because you generally only want to use spot metering in tricky exposure situations The Digital Photography Book One of the biggest mistakes people make when shooting concerts or events isto try to use their flash A friend of mine shot a concert once and hated the results he got he used flash He emailed me some of the images and saw exactly why wrote him back So let me get this straight there were around 275 of these huge 1 000 watt stage lights aiming right at the performers but you thought there just needed to be one more We laughed about it but there s a lot of truth to it You want to see the color and vibrance of the stage lights and you want the scene you photograph to look like what it looked like when you were there at the concert Using flash wipes all that out besides making the performers angry and reveals all sorts of distracting things like cables cords plugs duct tape etc that would never have been seen under normal stage lighting in fact if you shoot big name acts they forb
145. m giving you the same tips the same advice and sharing the same techniques I ve learned over the years from some of the top working pros But when I m with a friend skip all the technical stuff So for example if you turned to me and said Hey Scott I want the light to look really soft and flattering How far back should put this softbox I wouldn t give you a lecture about lighting ratios or flash modifiers In real life fd just turn to you and say Move it in as close as you can to your subject without it actually showing up in the shot The closer you get the softer and more wrapping the light gets fd tell you short and right to the point Like that So that s what I do here 3 This picks up right where volume 2 left off and this stuff in this book is what people who bought volume 2 told me they wanted to leam next So for example in the chapter on wireless flash don t show you how to set up your flash to be wireless because all that type of stuff was already covered in the flash chapter in volume 2 Instead it picks Up right after that with all new stuff Now should you have volumes 1 and 2 before you read this book It s not absolutely necessary but it certainly wouldn t bother me one bit if you did like how I phrased that A very subtle soft sell approach Com pelling but yet not overbearing All joking aside if you re into off camera flash or studio lighting itis helpful to have read at least vo
146. magnifier on one side you ll have two different looks for your light Chapter 4 The Digital Photography Book Lighting From Underneath A really popular technique for lighting products is to include a light coming from below the product You see this look fairly often in product photography and if youre shooting a product that has see through areas like glass it really looks great Okay so you re probably wondering how you get that light through the table to your product Plexi glass Instead of setting your product on a white background and then putting the plexiglass on top oft you remove the white background and use your plexiglass as the tabletop if you re going to be doing this often make sure you buy thicker plexi from the hardware store Just suspend the plexiglass between two light stands or even between two sawhorses or two chair backs and then position a light directly under the plexi glass on the floor aiming upward through it Concentrating Your Below Product Light When you re lighting from underneath you really don t want your light to spill out every where you want it concentrated straight upward One way to help with that is to use a grid spot attachment see page 39 which focuses your beam but a lot of folks will just put foam core or black flags around all four sides of the light so the light doesnt spill ut I ve even seen DIY projects where you put the strobe on a short stand inside a car
147. mal portraits is the view which shows about three quarters of your subject s face they e looking away from the camera at around a 45 angle as if they re looking at something off to the side of where the photog rapher is standing and because their head is tuned slightly like this you see both eyes but you don t see the ear on the other side of their head But this tip isn t how to pose a 4 view it s about how to get a more realistic looking 34 view without seeing too much of the whites of your subject s eye if you get too much of the whites of the eyes it looks kind of weird Okay it looks kind of creepy The trick is don t just have your subject look off to the left or right choose a particular object in the room that they should focus on each time they do the 4 view Once you give your subject a spot to look at take a test shot and see if you can see their irises clearly and there s not too much of the whites of the eyes showing If you do see lots of white they re looking too far away have them tum their head a little more toward the camera and focus on a different object in the room if there s nothing for them to focus on put an extra light stand where you want them to look and raise the top of the stand to where you want their eyes to go Also this picking a spot for the 4 4 view technique is particularly helpful when working with professional models because they ll be hitting a number of different poses during the shoot I
148. many times I ve banged my lens against a chair the end of a table even a wall when coming around a corner but all ever hear is the sound of plastic and it bouncing right off If I didn t have a lens hood l m certain would have had a number of scratched or broken lenses but so far not a one keep my lens hood on all the time Besides they look cool don t tell anyone said that By the way you can turn your lens hood around facing back toward you when storing it in your camera bag or when it s not in use GRAB A LENS HOOD anytime one comes with my lens and keep it on always Chapter 3_ The Digital Photography Book This is the lens you pull out when you want to shoot something really really close up Ever see those photos of bees really close up or flowers or ladybugs That s macro Dedicated macro lenses just do that one thing but they do it really really well There are a few things you need to know about macro lenses 1 They have an amazingly shallow depth of field So shallow that you can be shoot ing a flower and the petal in the front will be sharp and in focus and a petal on the other side of the flower will be so out of focus you can barely make out what its That shallow depth of field is one of the things that I love about macro lenses but it s also a challenge when you re trying to get more things in focus try shooting at f 22 to get as much in focus as possible Also try keeping your lens horiz
149. mazing wife Kalebra This year we re celebrating our 20th wedding anniversary and fm more in love more crazy about you and more thrilled that you re my wife than ever Besides being a world class mother a gourmet chef an artist a singer and a brilliant busi nesswoman you re just about the coolest person I ve ever known I still can t believe that you chose me and I ll spend the rest of my life working to make sure you always feel you made the right choice I love you sweetheart To my wonderful crazy fun filled little buddy Jordan If there s any kid on the planet who knows how much their dad loves them and how proud their dad is of them it s you little buddy even though now that you re 12 l m not supposed to call you litle buddy anymore Well at least not in front of your friends You were wired at the factory to be an incredibly fun hilarious creative positive sensitive super bright yet totally crazy kid and Hove it But I have to admit as much fun as I have at our nightly Halo 3 battles on Xbox LIVE last week when I dragged my amp and guitar up to your room you sat down at your drums and we jammed on an extended version of Bon Jov s You Give Love a Bad Name I knew at that moment that if it was possible to have become a luckier dad than I already was it just happened Dude I mean son you rock To my beautiful big girl Kira You re totally blessed with your moms outer beauty and also something tha
150. mory card reader 9 Awireless PC card for uploading photos while the eventis still underway 10 Backup batteries for both bodies battery chargers a cleaning cloth and a Rocket Air Blower to blow any dust or specks off my lens 11 Gel kneepads to save my knees when kneeling to get a low perspective for sports photography 12 AThink Tank modular belt system that holds my fisheye lens backup memory cards a water bottle an energy bar and my wide angle lens 13 A Hoodman HoodLoupe which covers my LCD so I can see it clearly in bright daylight 14 It all fits into a Think Tank Airport Security 2 rolling camera bag Chapter 8 igital Photography What I Pack for a Location Portrait Shoot If m heading out for a location portrait shoot here s what pack 1 A 70 200mm zoom lens 2 A24 70mm zoom lens 3 Two off camera wireless flashes with diffusion domes 4 Two lightweight 7 light stands two shoot through umbrellas and two tilt bracket adapters 5 Two 8 packs of AA batteries for the flash units 6 Two sets of gels for the flashes one orange one green 7 A separate battery pack to get faster refreshes from the flash units 8 An Epson P 3000 6000 or 7000 for backing up my images when out in the field 9 Multiple memory cards in a hard sided memory card case 10 One camera body and a backup body ifit s a paying gig 11 A backup battery my battery charger a cleaning cloth and a Roc
151. n or cars in the parking lot or the road near the field you see the crowd or the other parents or the other players in the background This will look especially good if you re shooting wide open using the lowest number f stop your lens will allow like f 2 8 or f 4 which puts the background out of focus Chapter 7 igital Photography Book Leveraging Daylight to Light Your Players If you te shooting a game during the day try to remember to position yourself so the sun is over your shoulder while you re shooting That way the players will be lit by the sun and you ll be able to see their facial expressions If not they ll be mostly in the shadows which is especially bad if they re wearing batting or football helmets You might have to shoot from the opposite side of the field which may well be the opposing team s side butat the end of the day you ll be able to clearly see all the players and the emotions that make up the game Shooting Sports Like Shoot From a Low Position The next time you see a sporting event take a look at the photographers shooting the event and one thing you ll see again and again is that pros are often shooting down on one knee so they get a lower and better perspective for their shots This goes for everything from motor racing to football that lower perspective gives you the feeling of being right there and helps to make the athletes or their cars look bigger t
152. n by your side Being able to reach down and have my second body ready to shoot in a split second is a sports shooter s dream I wouldn t want to shoot a sports event without it You can watch a video demo of the R Strap at www blackrapid com Shooting Sports Like Tell a Story with Your Shots It s our natural reaction to put down the camera when the play is over but that is pre cisely when you want to keep shooting this is when you get to tell a story with your images Imagine capturing the look on a quarterback s face when he realizes he s thrown an interception or when a soccer player is given a red card How about a coach when they re given what they think is a bad call That s when the emotion pours out and if you stop shooting at the end of the play you ll miss some of the most dramatic emotional and even moving moments in a game the shots that tell a story Chapter7 The Digital Photography Book Full Frame vs Standard Digital Chip Standard Crop Sensor Right now full frame sensor cameras are getting all the buzz but for shooting sports you might want to consider hanging onto that standard crop sensor digital camera Here s why because of the zoom factor regular crop sensor digital cameras have they will get you much doser to the action For example a cropped frame dSLR like a Nikon D300 will get you 50 closer to the action or for Canon shooters an EOS 50D will get you 60 closer than the s
153. n the dark not surprisingly we picked a totally blah spot If had done my homework and scouted a location would have at least had a shot of something really special A lesson learned Since then go out of my way to find a great shooting location first and if can Itake a test shot even if it s during terrible light That way if the shot looks decent in bad light all I have to do is come back and try for that same shot in great light It s a recipe for success and this little bit of homework up front will put you in the best position for something magical to happen Chapter 5 The Digital Photography Book Don t Always Shoot Wide Angle If youre into shooting landscapes you re into shooting wide angle and that totally makes sense because most landscape photographers want to take in as much of a beautiful sweeping landscape as possible But the next time you re out in the field try something dif ferent take out a long telephoto lens and capture a totally different side of your location Sometimes you can uncover amazing photo opportunities that are just outside the reach of your wide angle lens It ets you bring a totaly different perspective to your landscape photography and opens the door to a new way of shooting outdoors that you just might fallin love with Give ita try the next time you re out shooting you might be surprised at what s waiting just 100mm or so away Shoot Shapes Circles Squares I g
154. n the safety wall at the top of the Empire State Building in New ork ve even put the camera on a friend s or family member shoulder to steady it do everything I can to steady it to avoid having to raise the ISO which is our last resort unless you have one of the new high end cameras with great low noise results at high 150s there s just no way to steady your camera then you have to resort to raising your SO keep raising it until you get your shutter speed to 1 60 of a second or higher and then hold your camera as still as possible If you raise your ISO up quite a bit you re going to see noise in your photos so you re going to need to run some noise reduction software ve been using Nik Software s Dfine 2 0 a Photoshop and Lightroom plug in which does an amazing job of reducing the noise without blurring your photo too much Chapter 8 The Digital Photography Book Shooting nighttime scenes is kinda tricky because no two scenes are lit the same However here are some tips to help The most important thing is getting the right exposure Since everything is so dark your first thought might be to aim at the lights but if you do your camera will think the whole scene is bright and it will greatly underexpose your photo Instead try focusing just to the left or right of the lights Take a shot and check your LCD monitor fit still looks too dark use exposure compensation to brighten the image by one stop then take another
155. nd itself just to the right of the front tire 3 To keep the bike pretty sharp throughout use an f stop of at least f 8 or higher 4 This is essentially a product shot and since that s the case you need to shoot it on a tripod to keep the image really sharp and crisp Characteristics of this type of shot A great mix of sunset color and on location flash coupled with a shooting angle that makes these young kids look larger than life 1 There are two keys to the shot The first being composition To make the kids look big you have to get down really low and shoot upward with a wide angle lens I used a 14 24mm ultra wide angle zoom on a full frame camera When say to shoot really low you actually need to be lying on the ground shooting upward to get this perspec tive The other key to this shot is waiting until right around sunset to take it 2 The kids are lit using an off camera flash in this case a Nikon SB 900 flash mount ed ona lightweight portable light stand with a small Ezybox softbox in front of it to soften and control the spill ofthe light For both shots the flash on the stand was on their right from our view just outside the frame 3 The key here is to switch to program mode turn off the flash aim at your subject hold the shutter button halfway down and then look to see the shutter speed and f stop chosen by your camera Then switch to manual mode put in that f stop and shutter speed tum the flas
156. nd of a dreamy morning light look to it Here s how you set this up go ahead and take a regular shot let your camera set your exposure then add some positive exposure compensation which means you re basically telling the camera Okay I see you picked the right exposure for this photo but I want to override your choice and make it even brighter On Nikons you d do that by holding the exposure compensation button the button on top of the camera right behind the shutter button then rotating the command dial on the back of the camera until you can see 1 in the control panel on the top of the camera meaning you just made the exposure one stop brighter than the camera thought it should be On Canon cameras first make sure the power switch is setin the top position above On then hold the shutter button halfway down look at the LCD panel on top and turn the quick control dial to the right to increase the amount of exposure compensation until it reads 1 Now take a shot and see how the image looks on the LCD monitor on the back of your camera fit doesn t look bright enough try increasing the exposure compensation amount and take another test shot and so on until it has that dreamy moming window light look This Doesn t Work in Manual Mode Exposure compensation works in all the standard modes except manual mode Shooting People Like a Pro Put Multiple Photos Together to Tell a Story Ifyou really want
157. ne exactly that on a few different occasions from a company called LensProToGo com They have all the long glass for both Canon and Nikon shooters they rent camera bodies as well and they ship directly to you overnight What most people are surprised to find is how reasonably priced they are For example to rent a lens like a Nikon 300mm f 2 8 a great fast lens for shooting sports for an entire week is just 230 If that seems like alot the alternative is buying that lens B amp H Photo has it in stock as of this writing for 4 899 95 So even though you might not want to rent all the time when you have a really important game or a big assignment they re a great resource I ve rented lenses from them a number of times and they ve always been great never a problem once You ll be there at the game and you ll see a player getting ready to dash down the field and you ve got a really great angle on them and so you take the shot As good as it might have looked in the viewfinder right then when you open that photo later in Photoshop or Lightroom you re going to look at that photo and wonder What was thinking Don t shoot football players in the huddle or standing around Don t shoot the runner standing with one foot on first base Don t shoot the outfielder waiting for a pop fly wait until the ball is there Shoot the action because when you start looking at your photos later you re going to hate the shots that don t have
158. ne side a very popular angle for motorsports shots 5 You ll want to use a monopod to steady a lens 300mm or longer Characteristics of this type of shot Dramatic lighting that doesn t evenly light the subject Having a subject with dark hair on a dark background adds to the drama 1 To get this type of shot you need just two lights the main light is a large softbox positioned to the left from our view and slightly in front of the subject but very close to the subject to create very soft light The key is to keep this large softbox mostly to the side of the subject so the light doesn t fully light her entire face you want those shadows on the right side of her face to add drama Keep the power on the main light down about as low as it will go since it will be so close to the subject 2 The second light is a strip bank a tall thin softbox positioned behind your subject on the right side from our view lighting her hair and shoulders it s at a 45 angle about eight feet behind her to the right The reason the light doesn t spill over every where is that there s a fabric grid over the strip bank I talked about these in volume 2 3 This was shot with the subject on a black seamless paper background No reflector is necessary and no tripod is necessary the flash will freeze your subject It was taken at f 8 to keep everything from front to backin focus 4 To get alittle movement in her hair just add a fan any ol
159. ng Sensor Cleaning Auto cleaning Clean now Clean manually The sensor on your digital camera collects dust like like well ike something that really collects a lot of dust like that film camera up in your closet The sensors in today s cameras are magnetized and each time you change lenses you re screwing a piece of metal into a metal mount and not surprisingly tiny metal shavings appear and those can get sucked down onto your sensor and before you know it you ve got tiny spots and specks on your sensor which means you now have tiny spots and specks on every photo youre about to take That s why we have to do our best to keep our sensors clean and that s why more and more of the newer digital cameras now have built in sensor cleaning ca abilities This basically demagnetizes your sensor for a moment to shake the sensor dust off and it does a decent job Not a great job an okay job it doesn t replace having your sensor fully cleaned but if your camera has it built in you might as well use it For example on a Canon camera like the 50D if you tum the power switch to the On higher position this tums on the auto sensor cleaning feature and it shakes the dust off your sensor right then and there It cleans the sensor when it shuts down too With the power switch in the On Position you can also go to the Set Up 2 menu choose Sensor Cleaning and then choose Clean Now if you have a Nikon camera like a D300 pr
160. not sure how much use you re going to get out of that 23x23 frame mounted diffusion grid but you know what they say that s why God invented eBay Anyway no matter whether you re shooting buses outside or flowers this chapter willfully and completely avoid both of those individual topics If youte starting to see a pattem here it s only because there s Chapter 5 igital Photography Book Make a Packing List So You Don t Forget Anything fore The Night Bef Charge camera Batter es Charge laptop banie Clear memory CF jing List or Po packing List skyports ctor cable Sendbags jmi an There is nothing worse than getting out on location for a landscape shoot or arriving ina foreign country where you hope to do some travel photography and finding out that you forgot an important piece of gear I ve done it a dozen times Well at least used to until I started making separate gear packing lists for my landscape and travel photography trips to see what pack go to Chapter 8 It doesn t have to be anything fancy but pay particular attention to the little things you might forget like a cleaning cloth spare batteries a polarizing filter a cable release etc You re probably not going to forget your camera body if you do maybe improving your photography shouldn t be your biggest concern so focus on those little things that you d really miss once you re out on the shoot One good way to do that
161. nt a flash just about anywhere Using Flash Like a Pro Part 2 Where You Focus Affects Your Flash Exposure Today s small off camera flashes do such a great job partially because they adjust their power output based on the exposure for the shot Canon calls this TTL for through the lens metering and Nikon calls this TTL for intelligent through the lens metering but they mean the same thing So why do you care Well your flash is going to help make the exposure based on exactly what you focus on in the photo So if you focus on your subject it s going to try to give you a proper exposure for your subject and vary the amount of flash power based on making your subject look good However if you focus on something else like the background behind your subject your flash is going to try to light that area instead This is why when using small off camera flash you need to make sure you re careful about focusing on the area you want to look best If you do your flash results will look that much better Chapter 1 igital Photography Book The Paid Gig Flash Insurance Policy Main Flash Backup Flash If you re hired to do a paid gig like a wedding or a portrait session etc you want to make darn sure you have a backup flash because if for whatever reason your first flash dies you drop it the wind knocks your flash over and it dies there s some weird problem with the flash unit itself etc atleast you can grab
162. o Using Lastolite HiLite lluminated Background Now I have perfect solid white backgrounds every time even on location The HiLite is collapsible and when you pop it up you just put single flash head inside on either side or both and aim it toward the back wall Then low er the power of your flash to around power Now when you fire your strobe the light hits the backof the HiLite and evenly spreads out for perfect coverage There are slots for lights on both sides but ve used it with one strobe and it works perfectly just remember to keep a reflector on the front of your strobe so it doesn t get too hot Plus you can take it on location easily because it folds up like a large reflector It takes about three minutes to set up andis lightweight enough to hold in one hand To see the final image from this shoot go to wwwkelbytraining com books digphotogv3 Increase Your Chances of Success With A Shot List if you re preparing for a studio shoot take two minutes now and make a shot list a written list of the types of images you want to create during the shoot List everything from the lighting setups you want to use to the poses you want to try to any props you want to incorporate When you have a plan your chances for success go way upl Using Your Studio Like a Pro As you can see from the previous page m always looking for an easy way to do well pretty much everything after all the simpler it
163. o leverage those is to create your own sets don t worry i s much easier than you d think Notice didn t say build your own sets that s too much work So to make this work you ll need to 1 Go to your local Salvation Army Goodwill or thrift store or keep an eye out at garage sales for things like room dividers with shutters large frames coffee tables an old couch lamps on stands basically just stuff to go in the background It really doesn t matter that much what it is because of 2 and 3 Now 2 you need to create some depth between your white gray or black seamless and your subject then put your set pieces in between them so it goes seamless a few feet of empty space then your set pieces a few more feet then your subject to see the setup for the shot on the right above go to wwwkelbytraining com books digphotogy3 Then and this is key 3 you need to shoot ata pretty wide open aperture like f 4 or f 28 so the background elements are thrown so far out of focus that you can t tell if your shot was taken in a large mansion or in a bedroom or in a studio m consistently amazed at how well just putting a few simple things in the background can Jook when you follow rules 2 and 3 Also ifyou find anything you can hang off a boom stand so it looks like it s hanging from a ceiling in the background that will help sell the effect big time Remember what makes this work is the depth between your background
164. o when I originally wrote the outline for this book volume 3 not only did I not have a chapter on more studio techniques specifically didn t mention the word studio or techniques or use any words with either an s ort in them just in case But then I realized writing a book without ans ort in it would preclude me from using my first name and if that happened I wouldn t be able to refer to myself in the third person like Scott doesn t want to share more studio techniques or Scott made bail So really had to revisit the whole concept with a fresh set of eyes and once I did I realized that not only would have to include a studio chapter that picks up where volume 2 left off but would actually have to rebuild my original studio from scratch because after volume 2 was complete and the chapter was done I built a huge bonfire and destroyed all my gear That s how done I thought was with studio techniques but apparently that s not the case Scott doesn tlike to have to rebuild everything Scott doesn t like to pull out the thin piece of plastic from his wallet Scott needs a second job Chapter 2 The Digital Photography Book Getting a solid white background ideal for shooting kids or fashion can be challenging because you ll usually need two lights to light it evenly and you have to worry about balanc ing the light so there s not ahot spot where one side looks brighter That s why switched t
165. of course it s only five minutes if you re lucky l ve spent much more time looking for certain features Once you use the free PDF version of the manual you ll only reach for the printed manual in an emergency situation when you re out in the field and you don t mind hauling the user manual around with you By the way download the manuals for all my gear flashes cameras wireless triggers you name it They re so small in file size and so handy there s no reason not to Where to Find Those Downloadable Manuals lfyoutea Nikon userin the US gotowww nikonusa com Service And Support Download CCenterpage andif you re a Canon user in the US go towww usa canon com click on the Download link in the menu bar across the top and choose Consumer Ifyou want to do a quick test to see if you ve got junk on your camera s sensor try this aim at something like a solid gray wall or a gray cloudless sky and take a shot Import this photo into your computer open it in Photoshop and then press Com mand PC Ctrl This inverts your photo and any spots specks dust or junk will stick out like a sore thumb and you ll know right then if you need to clean your camera s sensor by the way although you can buy sensor cleaning kits and cleaning your sensor is surprisingly easy some folks just don t feel comfortable digging around inside their camera body and in that case you should stop by your local camera store and have
166. one of their techs do a quick cleaning for you They ll charge you a few bucks for it but it beats having spots on all your shots Make sure you do this before a big trip See page 196 for a tip on using your camera s built in sensor cleaner Avoiding Probl Shooting in Bad Weather Sometimes the best images come from the worst weather but if you re going to be shooting in this type of weather you need to take a few precautions for your gear Some cameras like Nikon s D300 D700 and D3 line have weather sealed bodies that help keep moisture out but your best bet is to buy rain covers for your gear that still allow you to hold your camera and operate the zooms on your lenses while keeping the electron ics inside your camera nice and dry The set use is the KT E 702 Elements Cover made by Kata www kata bags com and it s got special sleeves on the side so you can reach inside the cover and adjust your camera settings and lens zoom don t have to use this often but when I do it s great not having to worry about my gear getting toasted Ifyou get caught in an unexpected rain situation try using the shower cap from your hotel room to cover the entire back of your camera body so just the lens sticks out What to Do When You Don t Have Protective Gear Ifyou get caughtin the ain and don t have protective gear hey ithappens when youget backtoa dry place try patting dry the outside of your gear with
167. one filter and want to use it on a slightly different sized lens you can sometimes buy a step up or step down ring adapter that will let you do that and it will still work ust fine Chapter3 The Digi hotography Book How to Clean a Lens Ifyou get some dust a smudge dirt etc on your lens something really bad is going to happen that dust or smudge etc is going to appear an every single photo you take with that lens All of them Every one That s why it s important to clean your lenses before you go shooting for the day and anytime you see a little junk on your lens Most of the time you can use a simple lens cleaning cloth but before you do that it s best to first start by blowing any junk off the face of your lens you can do that by just blowing with your mouth but ideally you d use a little hand squeeze blower bulb and then once any visible specks and dirt are blown away you can clean the lens with the lens cloth by gently rubbing in a circular motion You can get a lens cleaning kit for around 15 which includes a blower a cleaning cloth and particularly helpful is one that includes a LensPen which hasa little fine brush on one end and a special cleaning tip on the other end It works wonders Long Lenses Usually Come with Lens Collars When you buy a long lens they usually come with a special bracket on the bottom that lets you attach a monopod but there s something else you ll love about
168. only called prime lens are visibly sharper than zoom lenses truly believe that at one point in time this was absolutely the case Zoom lenses were lesser quality and primes were sharper and generally they did and still do let you focus up closer But personally don t think that s the case with today s higher quality zoom lenses not just any zoom buta high quality zoom like one that s 2 8 all the way through think there are but a handful of photographers who with the naked eye can tell whether you took a par ticular shot with a zoom lens or a prime lens think it s more of a perceived difference not an actual difference but again this is what creates these drawn out debates This is going to send people who want to believe there s a big difference into a rage but I ve talked directly with manufacturers who make both the prime and zoom lenses them selves and they ve told me point blank that with today s higher quality zoom lenses there is no visible sharpness difference between zooms and primes That being said I do own two prime lenses They are both very sharp So are my good zooms Either way this isn t something to get hung up on It s just a lens Not a religion Chapter 3_ The Digital Photography Book Shooting at Your Lens Sharpest Aperture I mentioned this in volume 1 in the chapter on getting really sharp photos but couldn t do a chapter on lenses and not include this r
169. ontal and not angling the lens up or down when you shoot for a little more depth 2 Any little movement or vibration will mean an out of focus photo so I definitely recommend shooting on a tripod if at all possible Using a cable release of some sort so you don t actually have to touch the camera possible vibration maker will also help see volume 1 for more on cable releases The Truth About Lenses When to Use a Tilt Shift Lens This is a specialty lens if there ever was one This is used primarily for shooting architec ture because you can shift part of the lens itself to keep your buildings from looking distorted as they climb upward Serious architectural photographers swear by these and many won t shoot architecture without them Of course like any specialty lens they re not cheap I You Buy a Filter Make Sure It s the Right Size for Your Lens The filter you buy has to fit your particular size lens some lenses are larger around in di ameter than others so you have to make sure the filter you order is the same size diameter measured in millimeters as your lens For example my 18 200mm lens takes a 72mm fiter but my 70 200mm lens takes a 77mm filter Want a great way to quickly find out the right size Go to B amp H Photo s website www bhphotovideo com find your lens and youl seea bunch of filter accessories listed below it They will display the size used for that lens Also if you bought
170. or Those Hard to Light Places When you re shooting products it s very important to make sure the product is really well lit and sometimes it s hard to get into little nooks and crannies with your light which is why you ll love this trick buy a few little tabletop mirrors the kind they sell at the local pharmacy or Walmart but make sure they tilt Position a couple of these right outside your frame aim them directly at the area you need to light and they will reflect your stu dio light into those areas if you re using continuous light for your product photography like talk about on page 88 then you ll be able to use these mirrors like litte spotlights as you tilt the mirror back and forth you ll see a small beam of light that you can aim right where you wantit The first time you see this you ll be amazed If you re using strobes it s alittle trickier but what you can dois turn up the power on your modeling lights and then Use that light to aim the mirrors Just know that when you fire your strobe the amount of light you re putting into those shadow areas will be much brighter The great thing about these mirrors is they re inexpensive lightweight and small enough to throw in your camera bag or lighting gear case Buying Your Little Mirrors Make sure you don t buy too largea mirror because you don t want tohave to shoot around them so keep them no larger than four inches around Also if you choose a mirror with a
171. oshop Down amp Dirty Tricks Photoshop Killer Tips Photoshop Classic Effects The iPod Book InDesign Killer Tips Mac OS X Leopard Killer Tips The iPhone Book About the Author Scott Kelby Scott is Editor Publisher and co founder of Photoshop User magazine Editor in Chief of Layers magazine the how to magazine for everything Adobe and is the co host of the weekly video podcasts DTown TV the weekly show for Nikon dSLR shooters and Photoshop User TV He is President of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals NAPP the trade association for Adobe Photoshop users and he s President of the software training education and publishing firm Kelby Media Group Scott is a photographer designer and award winning author of more than 50 books including The Digital Photography Book volumes 1 and 2 The Adobe Photoshop Book for Digital Photographers Photo shop Down amp Dirty Tricks The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book for Digital Photographers Photoshop Classic Effects The iPod Book and The iPhone Book For five years straight Scott has been honored with the distinction of being the world s 1 best selling author of all computer and technology books across all categories His books have been translated into dozens of different languages including Chinese Russian Spanish Korean Polish Taiwanese French German Italian Japanese Dutch Swedish Turkish and Portuguese among others and he isa
172. ot thisidea from my buddy and commercial photographer Joe Glyda who gives himself specific shooting assignments fora specifica mount of time For example he ll give himself a one hour assignment n a downtown area to shoot nothing but things thatare round Or square Im constantly amazed at what he comes up with and you ll be amazed at how a well defined assignment lke this wil bring out your creativity Just remember no cheat ing you have to give yourself the assignment before you arrive at the shooting locale Shooting Outdoors Like a Pro Use Backlighting to Your Advantage Although we often avoid backlighting when shooting travel portraits unless we have a fill lash of course when it comes to shooting landscape photography you can get some amazingly dramatic images when the sunlight is aiming right at you rather than over your shoulder You can even sometimes compose the shot with the sun right in the shot itself and if you re shooting at a high f stop number like 22 the sun will even get little light flares and starbursts that can look really captivating Now because you re shooting right into the sun it can be a little trickier to come away with a killer shot so don t be disap pointed if the first time out you don t come home with something to frame for your wall Ittakes a bit of practice trial and error to find the right exposure and how to frame the shot so the sun actually isn t in every photo just th
173. otoshop Elements and Lightroom are registered trademarks PRODUCTION SHOTS of Adobe Systems Incorporated Nikon is a registered trademark of Brad Moore Nikon Corporation Canon is a registered trademark of Canon Inc Ratael RC Concepcion Warning and Disclaimer This book is designed to provide information about digital photog raphy Every effort has been made to make this book as complete and as accurate as possible but no warranty of fitness is implied The information is provided on an as is basis The author and Peachpit Press shall have neither the liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damages arising from the information contained in this book or from the use of the discs or programs that may accompany it THIS PRODUCT IS NOT ENDORSED OR SPONSORED BY ADOBE SYSTEMS INCORPORATED PUBLISHER OF ADOBE PHOTOSHOP PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS AND PHOTOSHOP LIGHTROOM ISBN10 0 321 61765 7 ISBN 13 978 0 321 61765 1 987654321 Printed and bound in the United States of America wwwkelbytraining com www peachpitcom For my in house editor Kim Doty One ofthe best things that ever happened to my books is you Acknowledgments Ithough only one name appears on the spine of this book it takes a team of dedicated and talented people to pull a project lke this together l m not only delighted to be Working with them but also get the honor and privilege of thanking them here To my a
174. our subject hold up a gray card target that has medium gray ight gray black and white on it the one shown here is a target that comes free with my book The Adobe Photoshop Book for Digital Photographers then take a shot with it clearly in the frame That s it you need just ane shot with the subject holding the card Now when you open your photos in Photoshop or Elements open the Levels dialog click on the gray Eyedropper that lives in the dialog and click it on the medium gray color swatch Then click the black Eyedropper on the black swatch the white Eyedropper on the white swatch and that s it you ve color corrected that photo Now you can open any other photo taken in that same lighting setup and press Command Option L PC Ctr Alt L to apply that exact same color correction to this new photo You can also use this same card for adjusting just the white balance of a RAW photo Open that same photo in Photoshop s Camera Raw or Photoshop Lightroom Develop module and get the White Balance tool from the Tool box or the Basic panel then click it once on the light gray color swatch and now your White balance is set You can now apply that same white balance to all your RAW photos by copying and pasting just that white balance setting to as many photos as you want at once A huge time saver apter2 The Digital Photography Book Don t Light Your Whole Subject Evenly The first two things the human eye naturally focuses on in
175. ow if you have a dSLR with a full frame sensor and you use a wide angle zoom that s made for full frame sen sors like a Nikkor 14 24mm f 28 it will capture a much wider image than it would if you used that same lens on any regular dSLR that isn t full frame see page 72 for more on full frame vs regular or if you used a regular lens on a non full frame camera This is where full frame cameras really shine when you want to go wide In fact when it comes to lenses wide angle is probably where you see the biggest improvement be cause you get a really really wide view with full frame cameras GRAB THIS LENS FIRST WHEN 1 m shooting landscapes When to Use a Super Telephoto Lens We call this the long glass because the lens barrel itself is often very long and it s designed to get you in really tight on whatever you re shooting Typical focal lengths for these lenses would be from around 300mm up to around 600mm or higher They are mostly used for sports photography aerial photography and for shooting wildlife and birds You can buy fixed focal lengths like a Canon 400mm f 5 6 but they also make super telephoto zoom lenses as well use a Nikkor 200 400mm f 4 zoom myself If you want lens that will shoot in lower light like an f 4 or an f 2 8 it can get really pricey for example the Canon 500mm f 4 lens runs around 5 800 they re so expensive because the very low f stop lets you shoot in
176. ow depth of field The Recipe for Getting This Type of Shot Characteristics of this type of shot A bright backlight mixed with soft fill light and a shallow depth of field to create separation of your subject fram the background 1 One thing that gives the photo a dream like quality is the very shallow depth of field and you get that by using the smallest number f stop in this case f 2 8 and by zooming in using a long lens in this case a 70 200mm lens zoomed in to 150mm 2 To keep the sun from being harsh you need to shoot a shot lke this very late in the day but at least one hour before sunset 3 The bride is backlit with the sun behind her and to the left from our view light ing the back of her veil To keep her face from appearing in shadow position a white reflector to the right of the bride s bouquet to bounce some of that sunlight back onto her face White reflectors aren t all that powerful so she doesn t look washed in light because the bounced light looks pretty natural 4 The thing to keep an eye out for is blowing out clipping the highlights in her veil Ifyou have your highlight warning turned on and you see her veil blinking warn ing you that the veil is blowing out use your exposure compensation to lower the exposure by one third of a stop and take a test shot If it s still blinking lower it more and test again and so on Characteristics of this type of shot A bright fresh
177. ow light locations you should probably keep an eye out for VR or IS lenses they usually cost alittle more Also you won t often find this feature in already very fast lenses like an f 1 8 or f 1 4 One more thing if you re shooting on a tripod you should tum VR or IS off there s a switch on the lens to reduce any shake caused by the VR or IS searching for movement Using Active VR for Nikon Users lyou tea Nikon shooter your VR lens may havea setting called Active and that only needs to be tumed on when what you re standing on is moving if you re shooting from a boat ara moving car or a suspension bridge etc ter 3_ The Digital Photography Book Using Filters with Your Lenses There are literally hundreds of different filters you can slap on the end of your lens to either fixa problem lke to help you capture something your camera can t expose properly for or create a look but only own three filters and one of them don t really use as a filter more on that ina moment They are 1 A Neutral Density Gradient Filter This is mainly for people shooting landscapes and it fixes a problem that happens when you expose for your foreground in a landscape shot and the sky gets totally washed out You put this in front of your lens and it darkens just the sky so the sky looks right and the ground in front of you looks right see Chapter 5 for more on this filter 2 A Circular Polarizer shown above
178. positionally leave a little breathing room above your subject in case you have to crop Chapter 5 The Digital Photography Book Getting More Vibrant Landscapes Set Picture Control SD Standard NL Neutral ENI MC Monochrome G Grid Adjust Nikon For years traditional film photographers who shot landscapes used to be hooked on a brand of Fuji film called Velvia because that film had a very vibrant color saturated look that landscape photographers just love So much so that some simply wouldn t shoot without it Today with many digital cameras we have something similar which makes your images look more vibrant right in the camera but you can only take advan tage of it if you re shooting in JPEG format Nikon calls these picture controls and Canon calls them picture styles but they both do a similar thing make your colors more vibrant Here s how to tum this on Nikon Go to the Shooting menu and choose Set Picture Control In the Set Picture Control menu choose Vivid then select OK to give you more vivid landscape photos when shooting in JPEG Canon Go to the menus to the Shooting menu and choose Picture Style Then choose Landscape to give you more vivid landscape photos when shooting in JPEG Shooting Outdoors Like a Pro Delete Now Instead of Later EAEE 103ND300 _DSC1612 NEF T RAW 06 09 2009 13 50 13 4288x2848 Nikon When I m shooting travel photography make it a point to e
179. r overexposed or underexposed So what you need now is a program to combine these into a single HDR image which is what our goal is The program that s the most widely used is called Photomatix Pro from HDRsoft com and it runs 99 You can also download a fully working demo version for a Mac or PC the trial never expires but it does apply a watermark to your images You open your five images in Photomatix Pro and it does all the combining and tone mapping for you recorded a video tutorial just for you to show you how to use Photomatix Pro to create your first HOR image and you can find it at wwwkelbytraining com books digphotogv3 Shooting Outdoors Like Scout Your Dawn Shoot Location Hi never forget the first time I shot at Big Sur along California s coast near Monterey and Carmel a number of years ago It was a mess had been in town earlier that day but didn t think to go scout out a good shooting location and the next morning well before dawn we headed out to the coast where we found ourselves driving around in the dark trying to figure out where a good place to shoot was but of course we couldn t see any thing it was pitch black Out of desperation we pulled off at a scenic overlook well that s what the sign said anyway and we set up our gear waiting for sunrise and then as the sun came up proceeded to capture some of the most unremarkable bland and forgettable images ever taken of Big Sur I
180. r than 1 1000 This was taken at 1 400 of a second 3 If you re shooting at a slow shutter speed like this well 1 400 of a second is slow for sports anyway you ll need to pan follow along with the bike to keep the bike and rider sharp You won t be shooting on a tripod so keep your camera steady when pan ning if you re using a long enough lens you can try using a monopod 4 When panning like this you need to be shooting in high speed continuous burst mode to increase your chances of getting a sharp shot Chapter 10 The Recipe for Getting This Type of Shot Characteristics of this type of shot Abeauty style shot with soft full lighting that wraps around your subject and gives you bright flat almost shadowless light 1 There are two keys to a beauty style shot like this The first isto have the subject put her hair backinto a ponytail and hide as much of that behind her head as possible leaving the face open and clean The second is the lighting which bathes the subject in light and gives the image the clean beauty look 2 There are just two lights used for this look the main light is a beauty dish that s directly in front of the subject but up about two feet above her face aiming down at her ata 45 angle The other light is under the plexiglass aiming up at her at a 45 angle this is sometimes called clamshell lighting because it looks like you re shooting in between an open clamshell
181. rait taken at midday with soft directional lighting the opposite of what you d get at midday 1 The first step is to get your subject out of the direct sunlight If you look at the setup shot on page 30 the subject above is standing under a tree but there s lots of light coming through the branches so you d have her move back a few feet so there are no apples of light falling on her you want her completely in the shade 2 To light a shot like this all you need is one single off camera flash in this case a Nikon SB 800 flash on a light stand up high in front of her and to the left from our view You need something to soften the light in this case we used a Lastolite Ezybox as seen back on page 7 3 To separate the subject from the background you need to have the background blurry and out of focus so you ll need to use a very low numbered aperture In this case used an f stop of f 5 6 the lower the number you use the more out of focus the background will be 4 Set your flash at a very low power so it blends in with the existing light You don t need to shoot on a tripod because the flash will freeze your subject Yet Even More Photo Recipes to Help You Get The Shot Characteristics of this type of shot A dark dramatic editorial style shot 1 This is a simple one light shot It s a beauty dish of all things positioned directly above the subject s head aiming straight down like
182. re usually so hard to create when your head is buried in the back of a camera To make this happen all you need is a wireless shutter release B amp H Photo carries these for all the major brands and now it s just you and your subject and you both can focus on the fun that makes such memorable shots Only Have One Person Focus the Child s Attention on the Camera If mom dad and grandma are all on the set they will all try simultaneously to get the baby to look atthe camera The problem is that they re usually standing indifferent areas behind you so the baby is looking allover the place Choose one person to be the attention getter and have them stand behind and to one side of the camera Shooting Like a Pro Don t Shoot Down on Kids If youre unhappy with your shots of kids it may be because you re shooting them like most people do from a standing position so basically you re shooting down at them The problem with this is that on an average day that s how we see most children with us in a standing position looking down at them and if we photograph them from the same viewpoint that s how the photos are going to look average The trick is to shoot from their level get down on one knee or sit or even lay on the floor to capture them from a viewpoint we normally don t see which honestly changes everything It s one of the easiest things you can do that will have the greatest impact on your im
183. rity mode all you do is choose the f stop and your camera will automatically choose the proper shutter speed for you The Recipe for Getting This Type of Shot Characteristics of this type of shot A soft natural light portrait where the subject has great separation from the background 1 There are four keys to this shot The first is to shoot very late in the day but before sunset The sun is lower in the sky and the angle makes the shadows appear softer and this late day sun is generally a more flattering light 2 The second key is to position your subject so the sunlight is coming from one side In this photo the sunlight is coming from her left from our view and if you look at her hair you ll see it s brighter on the left and more in the shadows on the right 3 The third key to this shot is to just make sure your subject is not in direct sunlight but on the edge of a shady area in this case she s just below the thick branches of a tree high above Because you re shooting in the shade you ll have to increase the ISO a bit to make sure you have enough shutter speed more than 1 60 of a second to keep the image sharp if you re hand holding your camera this was taken at 800 ISO 4 To have such great separation between the subject and the background you need a zoom lens so you can zoom in tight here Im zoomed in to 200mm and you need the lowest number f stop you can use in this case f 2 8 to get a nice shall
184. rmat memory card All pictures on memory card will be deleted OK Ifyou use more than one memory card and highly recommend that you do see the tip at the bottom of page 197 you ll have experienced that moment of doubt when you go reaching for your second memory card and you ask yourself What s on this card Have downloaded these Is it okay to erase it I ve had it happen to me more than once but here s a way to avoid this moment of doubt altogether Once you ve download ed the images to your computer and then backed them up to a second hard drive CDs and DVDs are a little too risky right then and there format your memory card That way if you see a memory card in your memory card case you know it s formatted and ready to g0 and that the images that were once on there are now safely backed up twice Chapter9 The Digital Photography Book Shoot Multiple Shots in Low Light Situations If youre in a situation where you re having to shoot in low light without a tripod if your shutter speed gets under 1 60 of second there s a pretty good chance your photo will be somewhat blurry if you re hand holding and you don t want to raise your ISO because your photo will get too noisy here s a trick you can try that will usually get a sharp photo shoot multiple shots in Burst or High Speed Continuous mode Chances are if you take three or four shots in a quick burst at least one of those shots will be in foc
185. rough umbrella so it s easier to get more dramatic light since it only goes where yyouaim it 2 They don t seem to blow over as easy when using them outdoors This is bigger than it sounds because umbrellas catch the wind like you can t believe and even the slightest wind can send the whole thing umbrella stand and your lash crashing over The small flash softbox use is the Lastolite Ezybox like that its so small and portable it collapses down to small round shape ike a reflector and it sets up without having to use steel rods so itonly takes two minutes Plus Iove the quality ofits soft directional light There are different sizes but use the 24x24 size Hand Holding an Ezybox You don t have to use a light stand to hold your flash and Ezybox You can have a friend ora bridesmaid oran assistant etc hold them using a special accessory which is a small 24 tall lightweight hand held stand with a handle on the bottom that lets your Ezybox pretty much go anywhere your friend can go tuming your friend into what has become known in flash circles as a VAL the acronym for a voice activated light stand Chapter 1 igital Photography Book What Your Flash s Groups Are For SPEEDLIGHT SB 900 evo Winsen Ifyou want to control your wireless flashes independently of each other then you need groups For example let s say that you have one flash off to the left of your subject and one flash behind the su
186. rs so if you plan a trip to shoot there also plan to get there crazy early and be one of those handful with the ideal shooting position Shooting Outdoors Like Why You Should Shoot Panos Vertically Ifyou have Photoshop at least version CS3 or higher you absolutely should be shoot ing panoramas because Photoshop will automatically stitch your individual images into a wide or tall panoramic image for you and it does an absolutely amazing job These days you don t even have to pull a bunch of fancy tricks in the camera you can even hand hold your panos you just have to follow one simple rule make sure each photo overlaps by around 20 Photoshop needs that overlap to do its thing However here s atip that will keep you from having to crop off mountaintops or crop away something interesting in the foreground Once Photoshop creates your pano youll always have to crop the photo a little bit because of the way it assembles your pano Now here s the tip shoot your panos vertically That way when you crop your photo you won t have to shear off the tip of a mountain or part of a beautiful reflecting lake because there will bea little breathing room left above your mountain range to crop in and still keep your mountains intact Of course if you compose so there s 1 16 of an inch above the tallest peak the shooting vertical thing won t help so guess it s really two tips shoot your pa nosin vertical orientation and com
187. rts is expensive so if you re going to do it you d better take a second job to pay for your gear Shooting Sports Like a Pro The Advantage of Shooting From the End Zone If you shoot football you ll probably spend most of your time shooting from the sidelines and if that s the case you ll probably spend a lot of your time pulling your hair out as refs game officials with the first down markers and TV camera crews including the guy holding the big parabolic mic dish all walk into your shots and block you from getting the shot That s why youll see a lot of pros jockeying for space in the end zone and the comers of the end zone they usually have a clear unobstructed line of sight and they re right in position if someone breaks loose to take it to the house as shown above in this shot took from the end zone of an Ohio State vs Michigan game The only gotcha is that if possession changes you have to decide if you want to go to the opposite end zone where the plays are now going towards see there s always a gotchal Chapter 7 igital Photography Book The Two Most Popular Sports Shots The Holy Grail for any serious sports photographer would be to have their work published in Sports Illustrated magazine All the best shooters are there the images are amazing and getting to shoot for SI as you d expect isn t easy which is maybe why every sports photographer dreams of doing it But w
188. s after all they re in a studio if they want things to be brighter they just increase the power of their strobes guess the moral of thls story is if you don t shootin low light situations you don t need expensive really fast glass Save your money for other studio gear and accessories see you thought was just going to say Save your money but had already allocated your savings to other fun stuf like studio strobes Chapter 3 igital Photography Book Zoomed vs Full Frame Lenses You ve probably heard by now that most digital cameras and dSLRs have a zoom factor What that means is that the number of millimeters you read listed on the lens used with a digital camera is different than what you used to get with a traditional 35mm film camera For example if you put an 85mm traditional lens on a digital camera its not really 85mm Ona Nikon the lens is zoomed in by a factor of 1 5 so your 85mm lens is really giving you the results of a 127mm lens On Canon cameras it s zoomed in by 1 6 so an 85mm lens is really more lke a 135mm lens This drives photographers who have moved from film cameras to digital cameras a little nuts because to them an 85mm should be an 85mm but that s just the way its always been However now the big buzz is around full frame cameras and what that means is that with full frame cameras an 85mm isan 85mm once again There is no zoom factor no multiplication the lens is finally really
189. s here s another way to get the job done which is particularly handy for people shooting without an assistant or anyone who can help wrangle the gear during the shoot use a shoot through umbrella setup Now before get into this want to say up front that I just flat out don t ike reflective umbrellas where you aim the umbrella and flash away from your subject then the light from your flash hits the inside of the umbrella and travels back toward your subject like a lighting grenade Yeech However in this case you re actually aiming the flash at your subject and you re using a special translucent shoot through umbrella that s designed to let you fire your small flash directly through it and right at your subject giving you a much more concentrated beam than a reflective umbrella does The advantages are 1 you can get softer wraparound light with it because you can put the umbrella very close to your subject 2 it s an umbrella so it s very compact 3 you can control how large your light source actually is see the next page and 4 it s incredibly inexpensive for a pro setup yes a lot of working pros use a similar setup To make this all work you need three things besides your flash unit of course a shoot through umbrella I use a Westcott 43 Optical White Satin Collapsible shoot through umbrella which sells for around 20 a tilting umbrella bracket with a flash shoe to support the flash and a slot for the umbrella to sl
190. s selection for 120 lower level perspective for 116 packing list for 102 182 panoramas made from 123 scouting locations for 119 three keys to 108 ultra wide zoom lens for 62 vibrant color settings for 124 wide angle lens for 58 See also outdoor photography laptop computers shooting tethered 0 41 Lastolite gear Ezybox 7 Hilite Illuminated Background 34 Studio Cubelight 87 Trilite 134 LCD screens on camera previewing photos on 192 zooming in on 204 lens collar 70 lens hood 67 lens vignetting 73 Lensbaby lenses 77 lenses 57 81 all in one zoom 76 changing 75 cleaning 70 creative use of 60 77 81 edge vignetting from 73 filters for 66 69 fisheye 59 f stops on zoom 74 full frame camera 72 gear finder for 58 59 Lensbaby 77 macro 68 manual focus ring on 71 portrait 78 prime vs zoom 79 renting 163 reseating 75 sharpest aperture on 80 super fast 61 super telephoto 63 teleconverters for 64 telephoto zoom 60 tilt shift 69 ultra wide zoom 62 VRor IS 65 wide angle 58 120 zoom factor for 72 LensPen 70 LensProToGo com 163 light ambient 46 catch 49 fill 20 53 main 53 metering 171 softening 5 7 as subject 106 viewfinder 115 See also flash light stands lightweight 5 rolling 43 light tents 87 ighting backgrounds 25 46 below product 86 continuous 88 daylight plus studio 89 222 mirrors used for 85 sports 148 156 strip bank
191. se newer cameras when you re view ing the scene on your LCD you can actually toggle through the different white balance settings and see right then and there how each white balance setting is going to look for that particular scene This makes dialing in a great looking white balance absolutely ssimple just scroll through the list and when you see one that looks good stop Try it once and you ll use it again and again especially easy when you re on a tripod Pro Tips for Getting Better Photos Spot Metering Ater Most folks keep their camera s metering set at the default which is evaluative metering on Canons or matrix metering on Nikons and that just means it kind of looks at the en tire frame and it tries to create an exposure that works for the entire image These modes on today s cameras do a pretty amazing job most of the time However there s another type of metering spot metering you ll want to know about for those sticky exposures like in the image above left where l m trying to capture both the light inside the little entryway and outside the building at the same time In the default evaluative or matrix metering mode it s going to make that entryway very dark So just switch to spot meter ing mode This essentially tells the camera the part of the photo want to look good is just this little tiny area right in the center of the frame Then you aim the center of the frame direct
192. see a negative number Then take a test shot look at the results and see if you need to lower the power some more Using Flash Like a Pro Part 2 When Not to Use a Diffusion Dome eave my diffusion dome on my flash almost all the time m usually looking to spread the light and make it softer but there are a few instances where you don t want that dome on and it s not just when you want hard edgy light For example if your lash is far away from your subject take the dome off because when you re back that far it will drain your batteries much faster and since the light is far back it s going to spread and soften a bit anyway Another time you d want to remove the dome is when you re outdoors using itas fill flash Chapter 1 igital Photography Book The Pro Trick for Better Looking People Shots One inside tip a lot of big pros use when they re shooting portraits with small off camera flash is to put a very light orange gel over the flash It doesn t matter what time of day itis that orange gel is over the front of their flash The type of gel is called a Y cut of CTO Color Temperature Orange if you shoot people ld keep this on there all the time for better more natural looking color from your flash shots Using Flash Like a Pro Part 2 Two Other Gels You Really Need Ifyou want natural looking color from your flash in other words you want the light from your flash to blend in with the
193. sheye lenses is that they do distort the horizon line quite a bit For the minimum amount of distortion try to keep the lens level in front of you but if you want more creative looks then all bets are off just have fun with it I GRAB THIS LENS FIRST WHEN m going to be in a crowd when I m shooting up high in a sports stadium and want to take the whole thing in or when I m shooting skyscrapers and want to get them all Scott s Gear Finder Nikkor AF 10 5mm f 2 8 Fisheye Lens around 700 cenon EF 15mm 1 28 Fisheye Lens around 660 Sigma 10mm1 2 8 Fisheye Lens around 700 for Nikon Canon and others iter 3_ The Digital Photography Book When to Use a Telephoto Zoom When you want to get up close and in tight this is the ticket Now you could just get a telephoto lens one where the length is fixed like a 200mm telephoto and not a tele photo zoom where you can zoom in fram one length like 80mm all the way through to a really close view like 300mm but then if you hold the camera up and you re either too close or too far away your only option is to physically move up close or back up With a telephoto zoom you can simply zoom in tighter or zoom out if you re too close which makes all the difference in how you ll compose your shots I use telephoto zooms for everything from portraits to sporting events to architectural shots I prefer to zoom in and focus on an interesting aspect or indi
194. should have bought volume 2 first because it had a chapter with the most essential stuff about wireless flash That way you d be ready for the stuff in this chapter which is what people who read volume 2 told me they wanted to learn about next So now you have to jump back in your car get it and head to the bookstore to buy volume 2 But then once you re home and you start reading volume 2 you soon realize that assume if youre reading volume 2 that you have already read volume 1 so skip over stuff that I figure you already learned in volume 1 Now you have to jump back inthe car again and go buy volume 1 as well It s a classic jump back scam but of course would never admit that especially here in the book The whole thin the hit TV show Lost If you didn t start watching it until Season 3 you d realize it was aptly named Chapter 1 igital Photography Book 9 Things You ll Wish You Had Known lt o Keliyteaining it etry Bk wes 1 You don t have to read this part That s because I created a video that explains how to get the most out of this book It s really short and to the point but promise you itwill make using and learning from this book much more enjoyable plus then you can skip reading this section because the video covers ital You can find the video at www kelbytraining com books digphotogy3 2 Here s how this book works Basically it s you and me together at a shoot and I
195. shutter speed for your camera to sync with your flash Generally the flash sync speed the maximum shutter speed your camera will sync with a flash is either 1 200 or 1 250 of a second depending on the make and model of your camera So if you see that dreaded black bar just lower your shutter speed to 1 250 of a second or slower and that should take care of it This page intentionally left blank SHUTTER SPEED RSeC F sTORr a S00700 FOCAL LENGTHiaI n PHOTOGRAPHER SCOTT KELBY Chapter Three The Truth About Lenses Which Lens to Use When and Why One of the questions I get asked most is Which lens should 1 buy next Of course I have to ask a question of my own before I can answer that question and that is How stable is your marriage ask that because if you have a really stable marriage one that s based on trust caring compassion and a healthy fear of handguns it s entirely possible that it can endure having one of you become a serious photographer Otherwise I refuse to answer the lens question because having a serious photographer in the family is going to seriously test the strength of your marriage For example there will come a day when you ll be faced with the decision of whether to get that new super sharp fast f 2 8 lens or to stay married That s because in most marriages one spouse controls the funds and it should never be the spouse that s into photography because th
196. t most of the techniques in this book apply to any digital SLR camera and many of the point and shoot digital cameras as well 8 There are extra tips at the bottom of a lot of pages sometimes they relate to the technique on that particular page and sometimes I just had a tip and needed to fit it somewhere so put it on that page So you should probably at least take a quick glance anytime you see a tip box on the bottom of a page ya know just in case 9 Keep this in mind This is a show me how to do it book m telling you these tips just like Id tell a shooting buddy and that means oftentimes it s just which but ton to push which setting to change where to put the light and not a whole lot of reasons why figure that once you start getting amazing results from your camera you ll go out and buy one of those tell me all about it digital camera or lighting books do truly hope this book ignites your passion for photography by helping you get the kind of results you always hoped you d get from your digital photogra phy Now pack up your gear it s time to head out for our first shoot Using Flash Like a Pro Part 2 Soft Light on Location the Budget Way Back in The Digital Photography Book volume 2 went into great detail about how impor tantit isto diffuse and soften the light from your small flash so you get professional looking results Although usually have you firing through diffuser
197. t do do I go back The more go back the greater my chances are that ll be there on a moming I ll talk about for years Shooting Outdoors Like Look for Clouds to Hold the Color When it comes to shooting landscapes at sunrise or sunset clouds are usually your friends Not a blanket of clouds mind you but scattered clouds The reason is you need something to hold the color in the sky You need something for nature s gradi ents of color that happen right around sunset to play off of and that something is clouds If you ve ever witnessed an empty cloudless sky at sunset or sunrise you know how lifeless they can be so don t let a weather report that s calling for clouds the next day scare you off from your shoot Sometimes it s those clouds that turn the ordinary into the extraordinary Shoot Shadows Inthe studio we try to manage shadows make them softer smoother or we even make them disappear altogether but outside the studio the shadows themselves make great subjects So make the shadows the subject long shadows hard shadows distorted shadows You can also let intentional shadows add to your location shots by putting objects between the light and a wall behind or beside your subject This popular trick can add a Jot of interest when you re shooting a blank empty wall ter5 The Digital Photography Book How to Shoot Underwater Part 1 If you te a travel photographer you re probably doing a lot o
198. t s even more important her inner beauty warmth compassion smarts and charm which will translate into the loving fun and adventure filled thrilling rive it like you stole t kind of life so many people dream of You were born with a smile on your lips song in your heart and a dad that is totally wrapped around your finger To my big brother Jeff A lot of younger brothers look up to their older brothers because well they te older But I look up to you because you ve been much more than a brother to me It s like you ve been my other dad in the way you always looked out for me gave me wise and thoughtful council and always put me first just lke Dad put us first Your boundless generosity kindness positive attitude and humility have been an inspiration to me my entire life and tm just so honored to be your brother and lifelong friend To my best buddy Dave Moser Do you know how great it is to get to work every day with your best buddy I do It s awesome Thanks my friend you are the best To my in house team at Kelby Media Group am incredibly blessed to go to work each day with a group of uniquely dedicated self motivated and incredibly creative people people Who mean much more to me than just employees and everything they do says they feel the same way My humble thanks to you all for allowing me to work with the very best every day To my editor Kim Doty What can I say this book is dedi
199. t vs Battery Pack A monolight also sometimes called a monoblock is just a regular studio strobe that you plug right into a wall socket like a regular lamp If you want to take studio strobes out on location instead you use a battery pack and special strobe heads made to run off batteries for example use an Elinchrom Ranger kit which is a battery pack and strobe head The advantage of something like a Ranger kit is you can take your studio lighting outdoors to the beach in the desert out on a boat etc but the disadvantage is you have to use special made for the battery strobe heads However now more and more companies are selling battery packs that let you plug your regular studio strobes right into them for example ve been using a battery pack called an Explorer XT from Innovatronix that lets me plug in up to two of my regular studio strobes and it was fairly affordable compared to dedicated packs around less than half the price So instead of having to buy strobe heads and a battery pack if you already own studio strobes all you have to buy is the battery pack Sweet One nice thing about buying a white seamless background is depending on how you light it and what shutter speed you use you can get three different looks Here s how 1 To have a white background you have to light it so position alight or ideally one on each side down low aiming up a bit to light the background That gives you white
200. tailed step by step instructions on how to recreate those looks yourself and then you find them Now once you find all these items then go to the website www ohyouhavetobekiddingme com and there youll find a form with a broken link where you can fill in which page you found each object on and then in a month or so Ill forget to go to that site to choose a winner from all the entries that didn t get submitted and that lucky person probably you by the way will win a free copy of one of my books probably this book and welll ship that copy directly to you probably sometime next year but by then you ll have moved to a new address you re probably running from the law and delivery will be refused by the current occupant your ex and then I ll get the book back and send it to the next winner on the list probably your parole officer Or you could Just read the chapter and see what you think Really i s your call Chapter 10 igital Photography Book The Recipe for Getting This Type of Shot Characteristics of this type of shot A sweeping shot that s both a landscape and travel shot in one and with lots of detail all the way through and a clear focus on the hotel there s no doubt what the subject is The location is the Burj Al Arab hotel Dubai UAE 1 You need to use a very wide angle lens to capture this type of expanse This was shot at 14mm with a 14 24mm wide angle zoom lens on a full frame camera which makes
201. test shot It won t take long before you nail the exposure Also your exposure time will go anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes depending on how much light the scene you re shooting has so you absolutely must be on a tripod to get a sharp shot Since your shutter will be open for a long time you ll also want to use a cable re lease or wireless shutter release so you don t add any movement at all by pressing the shut ter button with your finger For getting a white balance that looks good I use the Live View white balance trick on page 170 One last thing the best time to shoot nighttime cityscapes isabouta half hour past sunset so you get the perfect mix of natural light and city lights Remove Your UV Filter for Nighttime Shots When it comes to shooting at night this is the one time when the limited ultraviolet UV Tays work against us potentially giving us washed out images and that s why many pros suggest removing your UV fiter when shooting at night Pro Tips for Getting Better Photos How My Camera Is Usually Set Up set up my camera pretty much the same way each time shoot First I nearly always shoot in aperture priority mode because can choose whether want the background behind my subject to be out of focus or sharp and in focus This works whether m shooting sports or abee ona flower ora sweeping landscape shot have total creative control over how the background looks The only other s
202. that Now when you re shooting video once you start shooting you ll press the AE L AF L button on the back of the camera and it will hold your exposure in place while you re panning the camera Press it a second time to tum auto exposure lock off On a Canon dSLR with video other than the Canon SD Mark I when you re in video shooting mode you can lock the exposure by holding down the AE Lock FE Lock button atthe top right of the back of the camera to keep the exposure from constantly chang ing as you pan or move the camera In addition if you have the Canon SD Markl thanks toa recent firmware update you can also manually control the exposure by switching to manual mode This allows you to manually adjust the exposure controls such as ISO aperture and shutter speed while shooting video SHUTTER SPEED 1 8000s6c F STOP F SO FOCAL LENGTH 24nn PHOTOGRAPHER SCOTT KELBY Chapter Nine Avoiding Problems Like a Pro How to Sidestep Those Things That Drive You Crazy if you take a moment to really think about it you re holding in your hands a lens a shutter mechanism a color TV monitor and a computer That right there actually is a computer inside every single digital camera That s what those menus on the back are for you re navigating the camera s software and tuming on off specific features just like you do on your computer at work or at home You re setting the preferences for how your computer works So at t
203. the biggest ideas to get your head around is what to do with bright window light coming into the room because your camera isn t going to properly expose for what s inside the room and what s outside the window at the same time So here s what you need to consider First it s now fairly acceptable to let what s outside the window completely blow out to white you even see this now in fine home magazines so don t let it freak you out Ifyou feel that what s outside is as important as what s inside then you need to take two shots with two separate exposures one exposed for the room interior then a sec ond where you expose for what s visible through the window and just ignore how dark the interior looks in this second shot Then you put these two separate exposures together in Photoshop yup I did a video for you on that too at www kelbytraining com books digphotogv3 Now 2 the final challenge hey I didn t say this was easy is to evenly light the room Most pros use one or more small off camera lashes hidden behind furniture so you don t see them and aimed straight up at the ceiling to evenly ight the room Chapter 8 The Digital Photography Book Shooting Time Lapse Photography Canon If youve ever watched a concert video they always seem to have a video segment at the beginning where you see an empty venue and then you watch while a giant stage with tons of lights and speakers is constructed right before yo
204. the lens even wider than usual 2 To capture all the detail front to back shoot in aperture priority Av mode and choose the highest number f stop you can this was shot at f 22 which keeps every thing in focus from front to back 3 This was taken right around sunset so the light is low which means you absolutely need to shoot on a tripod to keep the shot sharp and in focus It also means the light is going to be gorgeous even though the sun is tucked behind the clouds the clouds are still great because they hold a lot of the color 4 To eliminate any camera shake you can either shoot with a cable release or at the very least use the camera s built in self timer to take the shot so your finger isn t even touching the camera when the shot is taken Characteristics of this type of shot You re in really tight which pulls you into the action and the rotation of the wheels gives you a sense of movement but without blurring the rest of the image 1 To get in really close like this you need a long lens this was taken with a 200mm lens with a 1 4x teleconverter to get in even closer 2 The key to this shot is finding a shutter speed that freezes the action enough for the bike and rider to remain sharp yet keep some blur in the wheels so it doesn t look like the bike is standing stil You can freeze most sports shots at 1 1000 of a second so to see some wheel spin you know right off the bat it has to be slowe
205. things that once you try it you ll wonder why you waited so long Plus today s pricing for online labs is very competitive Mpix com Is the Only Online Lab Use t veused Mpix com since 2007 but had no idea how many Mpix freaks were out there until I mentioned them on my blog People came out of the woodwork to tell me about their Jove affair with Mpix and now I know why They re not just for pros anybody can use Mpix but their quality makes you look like a pro Try them once and youlllsee what mean Pro Tips for Getting Better Photos Shooting in Tricky Low Light Situations E Wwe AF DANE so Although there are some tried and true techniques for shooting in tricky low light situ ations lke shooting in a cave or at your daughter s dance recital or around a campfire unfortunately there is no secret setting or magic button that suddenly makes it all work However here s what you can do The 1 thing you can do is to find a way to steady your camera Because you re in really low light your shutter speed is going to drop way below 1 60 of a second as low as most of us can hand hold and still get a reasonably sharp photo so ideally you re going to need to put your camera on a tripod If you cantt use a tripod how about a monopod If you don t have either rest your camera on something Ive been known to balance my camera on the seat back of an empty theater chair or on araling at a tourist attraction or o
206. ting in wili definitely get you closer than not doing it but if you really want to nail the white balance every time you need something like an ExpoDisc from Expolmaging This is a translucent disc you hold over the end of your lens aim at the light source then take a photo and it creates a custom white balance for you that is designed for the exact light you re shooting in They do work wonders and lots of pros swear by them Chapt igital Photography Book How Many Great Shots to Expect From a Shoot So ifyourre a pretty serious photographer and you come back from a few hours of shoot ing lets say you were on a photowalk or wandering around a city while on vacation and you took say 240 shots how many of those should you expect to be really killer shots shots you would enlarge frame and hang on the wall A lot of folks are surprised actu ally shocked to leam that even most pros would be happy to come away with one really great shot from that 240 Personally if I can get two or three from that shoot that really like I am thrilled Think of it this way if you were hired to shoot the cover shot for Vogue magazine and you hired a top model and assistants and a big New York or Paris studio and you shot all day long and took thousands of shots how many of those would wind up on the cover One Realistically how many would the folks at Vogue really have to choose from from your shoot How many shots would you hav
207. ting Time Lapse Photography Nikon Creating Multiple Exposures Do You Really Need to Read Your Histogram Using an Online Photo Lab Shooting in Tricky Low Light Situations Shooting Night Scenes Like Cityscapes How My Camera Is Usually Set Up What I Pack for a Landscape Shoot What Pack for a Sports Shoot What Pack for a Location Portrait Shoot What Pack for a Travel Shoot What Pack for a Wedding Shoot White Balance vs Color Correction How Many Great Shots to Expect From a Shoot fYour Camera Shoots Video xii 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 169 170 m1 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 Table of Contents CHAPTER NINE Avoiding Problems Like a Pro How to Sidestep Those Things That Drive You Crazy Can You Trust Your Camera s LCD Monitor Resetting Your Camera to the Factory Defaults Instant JPEG From RAW When to Shoot JPEG When to Shoot RAW Built In Sensor Cleaning Shortcut for Formatting Your Memory Card Make Sure You Have the Latest Firmware Don t Get Bumed by Shooting Without a Memory Card You Need to Copyright Your Photos Back Up Twice Before Formatting How You Press the Shutter Button Matters Tuck in Your Elbows for Sharper Shots Dont Let the Small Screen Fool You Avoiding the Memory Card Moment of Doubt Shoot Multiple Shots in Low Light Situations The High Speed Memory Card Myth Do This Before You
208. ting your locations in advance so when the light is great you re in the right place at the right time and 3 sheer unadulterated luck Sadly 3 plays a bigger role than you d think and here s why You get up crazy early and get out to your location You get your gear set up and it s all ready to go You know your equipment inside and out and you re comfortable with your exposure composition and the whole nine yards Then it starts pouring rain Or a thick fog rolls in Or it s perfectly clear and it s just a blah sunrise with no clouds in the sky it wasn t a majestic morning it was dark one minute and then a few minutes later it got bright Blah It happens all the time You re at the mercy of Mother Nature and dumb luck It s a total roll of the dice whether you re going to get a spectacular sunrise or a murky mess but you can tilt the odds in your favor big time by following one simple rule return to that same location more than once That s right if you know it s a great location and you were there on a blah moming go back the next morning and the next If you re persistent you re going to be there one moming when the light is just magical the cloud pattern is just right and you see colors you didn t know existed You ll be there when the water in the lake is like glass and the dawn light couldn t be more stunning ve been on location on a few dawn shoots just like that But just a few More often than not it s blah So wha
209. tions in sports 150 channels flash 9 children focusing attention of 142 grouping photos of 141 handing props to 143 perspective for shooting 143 taking portraits of 142 143 circular polarizer filter 66 cityscapes nighttime 180 cleaning lenses 70 sensors 196 210 clipping warning 177 close up photography 68 color clouds for holding 109 settings for vibrant 124 color casts 111 color correction gray card for 51 white balance vs 187 composing action shots 215 217 225 beauty style shots 216 231 editorial style shots 221 food shots 229 landscapes 214 portraits 216 218 220 223 227 230 product shots 222 224 229 sports shots 215 217 225 still life shots 226 travel shots 107 214 219 wedding shots 228 computers backing up memory cards to 201 viewing images on 41 concert photos 172 continuous lighting 88 Continuous Servo mode 153 copyrighting photos 200 creativity 60 77 81 120 CTO gel 22 D dawn shooting at 122 daylight portraits lit with 227 228 studio lighting with 89 222 See also sunlight deleting bad shots 125 depth of field for portraits 133 220 227 for sports shots 158 for still ife shots 226 for wedding shots 228 Dfine 2 0 plug in 172 179 diffusion dome 21 25 digital cameras checking before packing 208 downloading user manuals for 209 exposure compensation on 140 firmware updates for 198 full frame 62 72 hand holding of 61 179
210. to be going through a lot of batter ies and you ll probably want to get rechargeable ones so you don t go broke buying batteries all the time But beyond that there s another advantage to using recharge able batteries which learned from David Hobby of Strobist com fame as long as you buy nickel metal hydride NiMH batteries Because of their lower voltage they recycle much faster in flashes anyway than regular alkaline AA batteries Plus you can recharge a set of four in about 15 minutes in fact Energizer sells what they call their 15 Minute Charger for nickel metal hydride batteries I would buy two sets of AA nickel metal hydrides one set in the flash and another set as your backup on location If you need to switch to the backup set you could always throw the first set in the charger so they ll be ready if you need em again and if that s the case you re really poppin a lot of flashes Charge em Right Before You Use em Nickel metal hydride batteries discharge around 10 oftheir battery life per weekifthey re Just sitting around doing nothing so dont charge up your batteries until you need em forajob that way they ll be at full capacity If you re using your flash indoors or outdoors in anything other than bright daylight you ll be running your flash 99 of the time at less than half power In fact youll prob ably be often running it at 25 power I m sometimes at 1 8 or 1 16 power during a typical s
211. to capture a child s personality and like me you re not a big fan of the stiff posed shots then keep firing while your child is goofing around on the set Then take some of the best ones and put three or five together as a series in one frame like the example shown above By grouping a set of photos together like this it instantly goes from a still frame to a story and I can tell you from experience clients parents just love it The Trick to Shooting Newborns and Having Their Faces Not Look So Flat Newborn babies generally have very flat faces and that s one reason why it s so hard to get great photos of newboms The trick is to make thelr faces look rounder by positioning the baby or your lighting so one side of their face is in the shadows That helps give some depth and dimension and keeps thelr face from looking too flat The Digital Photography Book Get Out From Behind the Camera for Kids I learned a great trick from Jack Resnicki a friend who shoots high end commercial shots of children for print ads and displays in stores and he s one of the absolute best out there What Jack does is put the camera in position on a tripod then rather than being stuck back behind the camera and putting something between the child and the photographer he comes right out in front down on the floor to get the child engaged Now you can totally interact with the child and focus on getting reactions and emotions that a
212. to do in broad daylight shooting at a wide open aperture like f 2 8 or 4 like we would normally do with sports but ifit gets cloudy or the light changes or it gets later in the day you run the risk of your shutter speed falling below 1 1000 and coming home with a bunch of blurry sports shots That s why you ll fall in love with the Auto ISO feature which makes sure you never fall below a certain shut ter speed because it will automatically increase the ISO without any input from you What s especially slick about this is it won t ust jump from 200 ISO to 400 ISO it ll only move ex actly as much as it needs so it might go from 200 ISO to 273 ISO something you couldn t even choose on your camera if you wanted to right On Nikon cameras you tum this on by going to the Shooting menu and choosing ISO Sensitivity Settings Then you enter the Minimum Shutter Speed you want to maintain use 1 1000 of a second and turn the ISO Sensitivity Auto Control on Now you get sharp shots every time no matter how the light changes on the field On Canon cameras you need to set the ISO speed to A by look ing at the LCD panel and turning the main dial on top of your camera Shooting Sports Like Using the Extra Focus Buttons on Long Glass If you re shooting sports with some long glass 200mm and on up on most of these lenses you ll find a second or multiple focus button s right on the barrel of the lens down toward the end
213. troduction to this book which is this book picks up right where volume 2 left off Okay if that s the case then why isnt this chapter named Shoot Landscapes Like a Pro Part 2 like back in Chapter 1 Part 2 That s because not all of the tips in this chapter are about shooting landscapes That s why Mr Snoop Smarty Smart Hey it s not my fault you created these questions yourself Did not Did too Anyway this chapter is about getting better results from shooting outdoors and luckily for us it s easier to get better looking images outside because so many of the problems that we run into inside like mall security don t exist outside Also light is easier to find outside I cant tell you how many times I ve been walking down the street I look down and theres a perfectly good flash unit just lying there on the sidewalk Okay that s an exaggeration its only happened three or four times but since the sun is usually found outside our job is well defined we have to learn ways to control the sun to our advantage For example if you re handy with fabric and a readily available commercial grade lathe you ll be able to assemble a rudimentary diffusion panel that s large enough to evenly illuminate a tour bus This comes in incredibly handy if you get a call from a tour bus company wanting you to shoot a cover shot for their new fall catalog However if you get a call from a florist instead have to be honest with you I m
214. ts are one of those things that if they re not absolutely tack sharp they just don t work and that s why the pros use a tripod every time Having that super sharp focus is critical and although Iwill hand hold when shooting people ifm using studio strobes or flash to freeze any movement when it comes to product shots my camera goes right on a tripod and stays there If you re looking for a way to take your product shots to the next level this is absolutely the first step Shooting Products Like a Pro Hide Distracting Stuff Ifyou take a look at most professional product shots you ll find that they go to great lengths to hide anything that would distract you from the presentation of the product even ifit sa part of the product itself Perfect example Headphones You know and know that there s a cord on headphones that plugs into our laptops or our iPods but in ads you rarely if ever see the cord you just see the headphones earbuds are an exception but without the cords they look like a couple of white peas The photographer goes out of their way to hide things like cords or cables or anything else that would detract or take away from the product like a camera strap on a camera If you see Canons or Nikons or well almost anybody s shot of their latest camera you won t see a camera strap in the shot even though in real life every dSLR we buy has one attached Keep this in mind and you ll
215. ts to the chiropractor ter 2 The Digital Photography Book Why You Need Sandbags don t care how sturdy a boom stand you buy one day probably soon it s going to go crashing over The best case scenario is that it just breaks your strobe s bulb or the strobe itself or maybe just tears your softbox The worst case scenario is that it falls on your subject your client a makeup artist or a friend It s not a matter of fit happens its like a hard drive crash it sa matter of when it happens That s why you ab solutely need to have some sandbags and to use them religiously when you ve got any thing on a boom or if you take anything outside on a shoot where the wind can blow it over B amp H Photo sells empty sandbags when they arrive you just fill them with sand you can also find some pre filled bags but prepare to pay for shipping them You can find them at your local hardware store as well Once you get them put them on the legs of your boom stand to balance the weight or hang them off the boom arm to add a counterweight as shown above or both and take a big worry off your big worry list Another thing to watch out for be careful when removing your sandbags because if the weight of them is keeping the boom from tipping over when you remove the sandbag your boom could topple right over So just keep an eye or a hand on things when you re taking them off Using Your Studio Li Pro Monoligh
216. ttery pack 13 eyepiece cap for 115 firmware updates for 198 Focus Indicator on 152 gels included with 23 HOR bracketing on 117 high speed crop on 162 ISO Sensitivity Settings 146 TTL feature 27 Live View white balance 170 memory card lock feature 199 multiple exposure feature 176 Picture Controls 124 reformatting memory cards on 197 resetting to factory defaults 193 The Digital Photography Book Nikon cameras continued sensor cleaning feature 196 Speedlight stand 26 time lapse photography with 175 video capability on 189 viewfinder door 115 VR lenses for 65 zooming the LCD on 204 NiMH batteries 14 noise high ISO shots and 148 onscreen vs print 113 software for reducing 172 179 o Olivella Mike 157 online photo labs 178 orange gel 23 outdoor photography 101 125 arriving early for 122 backlighting effect in 121 bright spots avoided in 107 clouds included in 109 covering the viewfinder for 115 deleting bad shots during 125 framing shots in 112 graduated neural density filter for 116 HDR images from 117 118 hiding modern day objects in 107 ISO setting for 113 lens selection for 120 light as the subject in 106 lower level perspective for 116 movement effect and 103 overpowering the sun in 17 packing list for 102 182 panoramas made from 123 portraits and 17 135 136 220 postcard images and 114 puddle reflections in 112 scouting locations for 119 shadows in
217. u being creative in the camera by making the scene cooler more blue or warmer more yellow because regular white balance while accurate looks so dunno regular Give it a try the next time you re on location and the light doesn t cooperate Every once ina while you get an amazing subject in front of you and there just happens to be beautiful amazing light on it The problem is that this only happens every once in a while However beautiful light happens all around us so instead of waiting for your sub ject to be bathed in beautiful light start looking for beautiful light and then once you find it start looking for a subject that s in and around that light Places I look for beautiful light are usually places with natural light so when traveling keep an eye out for great light in places like markets little alleyways old abandoned buildings workshops small churches anywhere with skylights or any building with really dirty windows which create soft diffused light Outside you can find great light around sunrise or sunset but beyond that keep an eye out for great light right after a rain storm Sometimes where the sun breaks through the clouds you can have beautiful light appear even if it s just for a few minutes In short when you come across some beautiful light start looking for a subject because just about whatever you shoot in itis going to be beautiful Shooting Outdoors Like If you re on vac
218. u may also want to puta reflector flat at your subjects chest level to fil in the shadows under their eyes see page 50 Also depending on which brand you buy use a 17 Elinchrom beauty dish you ll probably have to choose between a white dish interior and a silver one I chose the white because ita litle softer the silver is more reflective and contrasty Using Your Studio Like Using Grid Spots If you took your softbox off your strobe the light from the flash bulb would pretty much just go everywhere That s one of the reasons we use softboxes in the first place to help us put the light where we want it and greatly soften it of course but softboxes are by nature soft That s where grid spots come in These attach right over your strobes reflector the kind use actually snap right into the reflector and they have a metal honeycomb pattern that gives you a narrow focused beam for very dramatic effects the light will be hard edged because there s no softbox it s a bare bulb with a metal reflector and a grid spot Right now you see these grid spots used big time as back edge lights in portraits in fact Im not sure you can find a magazine editoria style cover shot in the past year that doesn t use at least one if not two rear grid spots putting a white highlight on either side of the subject These come in different degrees like a 10 grid a 20 and so on and the lower the number the tighter the beam I us
219. ually use a 20 or 30 grid There s not much to using them You just snap them into place and that s it your beam is greatly narrowed Put one on either side of your subject aim them at the sides of their face then use a strobe up front to put some fill ight into their face and voils you ve got the look Well there is a little more to it make sure you see the last chapter of the book for more on this look but it all starts with a grid spot Chapter 2 The Digital Photography Book Shooting Tethered Directly to a TV Monitor Ifyou want to see a much larger view of what you would normally see on the tiny LCD on the back of your camera try tethering your camera to a television monitor Most newer dSLRs have some sort of video output the newer high end Canon and Nikon bodies even have HDMI outputs so you can take the video cable from your camera go straight to the input on the television monitor and see your LCD at a huge size This is different than tethering your camera to a desktop computer or a laptop because the images are still being burned onto your memory card rather than being imported into a computer and with this type of tethering the TV monitor does actually take the place of and do all the same functions as your camera s LCD screen So you can see highlight warnings see your camera s settings and everything you would normally see on your camera s LCD but now you see it huge can t tell you how helpful
220. ur eyes something that took an entire day or two to construct in real time but here the whole experience lasts maybe 30 seconds total This technique is called time lapse photography you ve seen this used onTV to showa setting sun outdoor events a flower opening etc and to do this you set your camera on a tripod and have the camera take a shot at a regular interval like every 30 seconds or every minute etc over a certain period of time like an hour a day two weeks etc and then you combine all these images into a movie on your computer l did a how to video for you at www kelbytraining com books digphotogy3 Now if you re doing this over short period of time you can just pull out a stopwatch and every 50 many seconds or minutes take a shot However for longer periods if you re shooting a Canon camera you ll need a separate timer accessory like Canon s TCBON3 Timer Remote Control which costs around 140 which is why you probably want the Opteka Timer Remote Control instead for around half the price Either one connects to your camera s 10 pin input and lets you choose how many shots how often and over what length of time to capture your images Now just start it and walk away well walk away providing of course that your camera gear is safe and won t get stolen Pro Tips for Getting Better Photos Shooting Time Lapse Photography Nikon Interval timer shooting Select intvis XX no of shots MOOxf 0100
221. ur memory card and now you have two versions of every photo Now if you re one of those folks who shoots in Raw JPEG have got a tip for you Michael Tapes at RawWorkflow com the guy who makes the popular WhiBal white balance tool created a free downloadable software utility that extracts the JPEG preview that s already embedded in every RAW image and it does it incredibly ludicrously if that s even a word fast All you do is download the utility from www rawworkflow com and run the installer Then click on a folder of RAW photos Control click PC Right click on that folder and choose Instant JPEG from RAW from the contextual menu that appears You ll get to choose what size you d like your JPEG in case you need a smaller size for uploading to a website and then click Extract and literally in just seconds it extracts those JPEGs for you and puts them in their own folder Iuse this all the time and I love it Avoiding Problems Like a Pro When to Shoot JPEG When to Shoot RAW Quality L 15M 4752x3168 999 RAW Ran L AN a AS ds Canon get asked on a regular basis When should shoot in RAW and when should I shoot in JPEG mode This is one sticky question because some photographers are so fanati cal about shooting in RAW that there s no reason you could ever give them that makes sense not to shoot in RAW If the photo you re going to take is of your wrecked car and its only going to be 3x4 in size an
222. us ve done this numerous times and I m always amazed at the results You ll see a blurry one blurry one then all of a sudden there s a nice crisp shot as shown here with the five star image labeled yellow and then right back to blurry So next time you re in one of those situations crank off a few right in a row and keep your fingers crossed that at least one of those will be in focus hey it s better than the alternative Avoiding Probl The High Speed Memory Card Myth Lexar Professional If you upgrade to the latest high speed Compact Flash or SD memory cards isit going to really make a difference Well honestly for most folks probably not These more expensive high speed cards are designed for people like serious sports photographers with higher end dSLRs who need to shoot long continuous bursts of images The reason high speed cards matter to them is that they need any images temporarily stored in their camera s built in memory buffer to be written to the memory card as quickly as possible to free that buffer for their next continuous burst of shots If you re reading this and thinking I never shoot that many shots at once then there s good news you don t really need one of those expensive high speed cards This is good news because regular speed cards are much less expensive For example ust looked up what a regular 8 GB SD Lexar memory card costs at B amp H Photo It was 9 99 The 133x high
223. vidual part of the building rather than trying to show the whole thing at once I GRAB THIS LENS FIRST WHEN m shooting Portraits or sports Jump Start Your Creativity By Using Just One Lens The next time you re in a creative rut try going out shooting and use just one lens the entire day or fall you have is a zoom lens try picking one end of the zoom wide or the other telephoto and shoot at that one focal length the whole day Not having the lens you need for a particular shot forces you to get creative The Truth About Lenses When to Use Super Fast Lenses Ifyou want to shoot indoors without using flash ike in a church museum theater or anywhere flash and or tripods aren allowed then you need a really fast lens which just means a lens whose f stop goes to a very low number like f 1 8 or better yet f 1 4 The lower the number the lower light you ll be able to shoot in without using a tripod Here s why this is so cruciat when you shoot in a dark place the only way your camera can make a photograph is to slow down your shutter speed so more light makes its way into your camera That s not a problem if your camera is mounted on a tripod because it s perfectly still however if you re hand holding your camera which is going to be the case in almost every church museum etc and your shutter speed falls below 1 60 of a second you re going to have photos that look okay on the back of your
224. where or what to shoot your first stop should be a local gift shop to look at their postcards If you see any interesting locations it will usually tell you the name of them on the back of the postcard or you can show the postcard to the shopkeeper and ask them where it s located Okay so why not just buy the postcard and head for the bar Because we re photographers that s why Plus we might be able to come back with some better im ages than the ones on the postcards they re selling in fact maybe next year they ll be selling your shots as their postcards and hopefully they re doing so with your permis sion and a commission Shoot Texture as Your Subject Avery popular subject to shoot especially for travel photographers is texture anything from flaking paint on the wall of an old building to the grain on the wood table at a caf Texture is everywhere and can have great dimension if the light hitting it is from the side becatise side lighting will enhance the texture as the shadows add interest and depth Keep an eye out for texture when you re roaming city streets Shooting Outdoors Like Keeping Unwanted Light Out Here s a great tip picked up from renown wildlife and outdoor photographer Moose Peterson for getting better exposure in your landscape photos when you re using a cable release to fire your camera you use a cable release to minimize any camera shake that s caused by your finger pressin
225. wind up with cleaner looking shots So if you re shooting something with a cord that unplugs like the headphones above just unplug the cord and move it out of the image as seen in the photo on the right Otherwise you ll have to remove the distract ing object in Photoshop did a video for you on how to do this and you can find it on the book s website at www kelbytraining com books digphotogy3 Clean It Before You Shoot It Before you shoot anything clean it frst This is one of those things that if you don t do it I promise it will take you ten times longer to fix it in Photoshop than the 15 seconds it would have taken you to do it right in the studio can tell you how many times in the past ve skipped this step and I don t really notice all the fingerprints and little smudges and specks of dust on the product until I actually open the shot later in Photoshop and then I have to spend 10 minutes trying to retouch it all away It s been so bad on a couple of occasions that actually went back wiped down the product and then reshot from scratch You only have to do that a few times to learn the lesson clean it thoroughly before you start shooting and save yourself a bunch of headaches after the shoot This page intentionally left blank Chapter Five Shooting Outdoors Like a Pro More Tips for Creating Stunning Scenic Images a pattem here That pattern is what talked about in the brief in
226. without overexposing the sky That s why this filter has become so popu lar it darkens the sky but its how it does it that really creates a pleasing effect Ths filter is graduated so it s darkest at the top of the sky and then it graduates down to full transpar ency like a gradient so the ground doesn t get darkened at all The one use is actually rectangular plastic and simply hold it up in front of my lens then take the shot don t use alotof filters in fact just a few go to Chapter 3 to see the other ones use but this is one that makes a really big difference and that s why it s with me on every landscape shoot Get Down Low We shoot pretty much everything from a standing position So everything looks just like It would to anyone walking by that same spot Try something froma different perspective a View people wouldn t normally see Get down low really really low If you go down on one knee you see things from a young child s perspective Sit on the floor and you ve got a toddlers point of view But if you really want to take it to the next level lie on the floor and shoot showing a perspective normally seen by squirrels it gives you some idea why they re so nervous all the time Shooting Outdoors Like a Pro How to Shoot for HDR Ifyou want to create HDR High Dynamic Range images where you shoot multiple im ages then combine and tone map them into a single image with a range o
227. x lighting both sides of her face the underside of her chin and the edge of her neck See page 50 for the setup shot for this shoot 2 You put the second light a beauty dish directly in front of her but up only about one foot above her head aiming down at her at a 45 angle it s almost right in her face just outside the top of your frame That lights the front of her face you can keep the power down pretty darn low like Ya power or less 3 To keep from having lots of shadows under her eyes put a large white reflector at her chest level tilted up just a little bit toward her face Put it up so high that its almost in the frame but not quite This will reflect light from the beauty dish back onto her face to eliminate shadows and make her eyes nice and bright The Digital Photography Book Index A about this book 2 4 Acclamps 42 91 action shots 150 215 217 225 See also sports photography Adobe Photoshop See Photoshop Adobe Photoshop Book for Digital Photographers The Kelby 51 AE Lock button 147 189 AlienBees Ring Flash 47 223 all in one zoom lenses 76 ambient light 46 American Society of Media Photographers ASMP 138 anti movement technology 65 aperture priority mode 117 181 214 226 aperture setting 80 158 architectural photography 69 athletic events See sports photography Auto Exposure setting 189 Auto ISO feature 146 Auto white balance 105 181 autofocus feature 71
228. y as good as it did on the back of your camera l m not telling you on any level not to shoot in RAW mode fm just letting you know how what you see on your LCD relates to what you re going to see on your computer Now ya know Avoiding Problems Like a Pro Resetting Your Camera to the Factory Defaults Clear Settings Clear all camera settings Cancel Canon If you ve tweaked and played around with the menus in your camera and you feel like you ve totally messed something up and you just wish everything was back like it was When you bought the camera then you ll be happy to leam that most cameras havea return to default setting that puts all the customizable settings back to their original factory default settings I use this when it just seems like my camera is all whacked out for some reason and resetting to the defaults usually snaps it right out of its insanity The only downside of doing this is when it returns to the defaults any of the settings you changed in your camera are erased too so you have to go back and customize whatever settings you had customized again which is why it helps to write those little changes down that way you won t forget what your settings were Anyway here s how it s done On a Canon camera you press the Menu button then go to the Set Up 3 menu and choose Clear Settings Now choose Clear All Camera Settings and then select OK If you re using a Nikon camera press and hold the Qual Qu
229. y piece of gear for shooting fashion and beauty style portraits is a triflector and what this is is three small reflectors that mount on ane thin horizontal bar They re hinged so you can aim them right where you want them and create some amazing wraparound light well reflected light they te reflecting light from a light positioned above your subject Because you have three of these aimable reflectors you can not only just reflect light on the center of your subject face you can aim the side reflectors up to put reflected light onto the sides of your subject face giving you a bright clean look which is why these have become so popular with beauty and fashion photographers Another nice bonus of using these trilectors is the great catch lights they create in your subject s eyes There are a number of companies that now make these and I ve tried a few different ones but the one I regularly use is the Trlite from Lastolite with silver reflectors on one side and white on the other like how light weight itis and how easy itis to set up but it doesn t feel cheap and chintzy Shooting People Li Pro Using Scrims for Shooting in Direct Sun Ifyou ve ever wondered how the pros get those amazing portraits out in direct sunlight like at the beach or out in the middle of the day in a field here s the trick they don t They re not shooting in direct daylight because what you can t see just outside the frame isa large scr
230. yet if you do bring it with you you have to keep a close eye on it all day because while you ve got your eye in the view finder someone else could have their eye on your expensive gear You get the shot they get your other camera and lenses That s one reason why a couple of years ago switched to ThinkTank Photo s Modular belt system where my spare lenses accessories memory cards water bottle and even my cell phone are all just inches away because they re right there wrapped around me attached to a belt Their system does an amazing job of distributing the weight and like most sports shooters who use these and there are a lot will tel you you completely forget you have it on When you buy one of these you can choose which types of lens pouches you want they have sizes to fit all your regular lenses which types of accessory pouches you want and basically you just customize this belt system to your gear and your needs don t know a single sports shooter who has bought one of these that doesn t swear by it Go to wwwthinktankphoto com to see whatitsall about Shooting Sports Like a Pro Start Shooting Right Before the Game Right before a big game the energy level is really high and different athletes deal with this rush stress excitement in different ways Some are all pumped up and they re trying to fire up the other players and some are very serious and quiet at moments like this as they mentally prepare for th
231. ys positions his light on his left side because back in his days as a news photographer he used to hold his flash in his outstretched left hand so he could hold the camera and press the shutter button with his right hand He s so used to seeing his light from the left that now even in the studio he puts his studio strobe on the left side I usually light subjects from the left side too but I have no idea why I guess I m just used to it that way However if I m on location and can t light from the left side just move the light to the right side Not everything to do with lighting has to be complicated See page 220 for the final image and recipe for the shoot shown here This page intentionally left blank Chapter Two Using Your Studio Like a Pro In Volume 2 We Built It From Scratch Now Let s Pimp It Back in volume 2 showed you how using just a simple thin piece of plastic that fits easily in your wallet you can completely and fully outfit a one light studio from scratch Well after wrote that chapter people who read it wrote me and asked some really thought provoking and soul searching questions like What if we want to use two lights or What if we want to add a second light and even What if we have one light but think we might need another I m not gonna lie to you was pretty freaked out I thought we covered so much in volume 2 that there was no way anyone would want to learn more s

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