camera settings settings 041217.pdfcamera settings april 12, 2017 • what is “digital...
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Camera Settings
April 12, 2017
• What is “Digital Photography”?
• How to set up and use a digital camera to do “Digital photography”
• A simple approach to processing digital images
Fountain Hills Photo Club Information Series
©BBoyce 2017 1
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A Little History
• Ansel Adams spent his career developing his manual exposure techniques and darkroom printing techniques
• Color film became popular in the 1950’s • In 2000’s, digital sensors replaced film • Photoshop has largely replaced the darkroom • All digital cameras now have Auto Exposure & Auto Focus
1950’s
2000’s
sensor
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Let’s Define “Digital Photography”
• You don’t have to wait hours or weeks to see your images
There is a powerful way to instantly review your images when you take them, and ...
... there is a convenient and powerful way to immediately correct camera settings and retake any sub-standard image
• Digital post-processing is rapid and powerful, and opens the creativity door wide open
Beware of the danger of being able to do many things many different ways)
Requires a logical approach, not a random trial and error process development (recipe hopefully does this for you)
Using Key Camera Settings is Essential to Implementing Digital Photography
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What Makes a Good Picture?
Subject, Lighting, Composition
• The traditional big 3
Focus Control
• Main feature should be in focus (especially the eyes)
• Often, you want the background blurred out (bokeh)
Exposure Control
• Capture bright and dark scene elements (camera settings)
• Optimize the contrast (usually done in post-processing)
Mobility, Luck
• Get out there and find opportunities - catch that special moment when the lion looks right at you ...
Plan Ahead
• Envision a photograph, make it happen
Creativity
• Path to establishing YOU as a photographer 4
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These Are The Key Digital Camera Controls Needed
Subject, Lighting, Composition
• The traditional big 3
Focus Control
• Main feature should be in focus (especially the eyes)
• Often, you want the background blurred out (bokeh)
Exposure Control
• Capture bright and dark scene elements (camera settings)
• Optimize the contrast (usually done in post-processing)
Mobility, Luck
• Get out there and find opportunities - catch that special moment when the lion looks right at you ...
Plan Ahead
• Envision a photograph, make it happen
Creativity
• Path to establishing YOU as a photographer 5
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Result of a critique of 60 or so images taken by a diverse group of photographers
• Purpose of any critique is to indicate where pictures can be improved • No judgments – not a matter of liking a picture • Purely a technical assessment of the techniques of
image capture and processing
Where Are The Challenges In Digital Photography?
Rank #
1 21 highlights & shadows
2 14 Composition/cropping
3 10 brightness
4 8 Overall sharpness
Most recurring "Needs work" critique
Critique
/contrast
Exposure Control
Focus
6 Automatic exposure control in cameras is not perfect
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Example of Poor Exposure Control
• Blown out scene elements is a very common problem, often difficult problem to avoid 7
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Example of Good Exposure Control
• Good Exposure Control is a combination of camera settings, processing, and image file type 8
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Meet the Histogram – Your New Best Friend
Think of each pixel in your camera’s sensor as a very small light bucket collecting particles of light (photons)
• A histogram shows the distribution of the amount of light (Luminance) in all the buckets (i.e., pixels)
# or % of
pixels Good histogram !
Bad histogram !
0 255 brighter pixels
0 255
Job 1; when shooting pictures, capture entire histogram
Bad histogram !
Blown out (saturated) pixels are white pixels
Totally black pixels
Pixel values =
MOST IMPORTANT
CHART
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Bad histogram ! Bad histogram !
Histogram Tells You When You Have The Proper Exposure
Good histogram !
Automatic Camera
Exposure Metering
(Matrix)
vs.
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Set camera to show histogram when picture you take is displayed
Critical - For each picture, look at the histogram on camera LCD
• Histogram will tell you if you have captured a good image • If not, adjust Exposure Compensation*, retake picture • Particularly important with sunlit clouds in landscapes
Histogram is much easier to see on LCD in bright sunlight than the picture itself (white on black) – trust the histogram!
Why The Histogram Is So Important
Nikon D3300 &D7200 Panasonic ZS50 Sony RX100M3
* A control unique to digital cameras – much more on this later 11
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An Example of Correcting an Improper Exposure
Picture Retake Exposure Compensation ΔEV = +2
First Picture Exposure Compensation ΔEV = 0
1 stop
If you see this, you need to increase Exposure Compensation and retake the picture
Result
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Answer : Shoot Raw
• Jpeg images (8 bit) contain 256 discrete levels of each of the primary colors (R, G, B) in every pixel
• A properly exposed Jpeg image looks fine, but ... ... there are severe limits to recovering problem images
• RAW images (12-14 bit) contain 4,096 to 16,384 discrete levels of each primary color (R, G, B) in each pixel
• 16x to 64x more data allows you to recover dark shadows and blown-out highlights quickly (simplifies processing)
• Raw files are much bigger files (memory is cheap!)
• You can set camera to record RAW & Jpeg files for every picture, or just Jpeg, or just RAW
You must still use the Histogram/Exposure Compensation method for good histograms when shooting RAW
How Else Can We Make It Easier To Get A Good Histogram?
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Camera Modes – What Are They, really?
Record Mode Dial
Zoom lever (W to T) Movie
Shutter Release Nikon D3300
Panasonic ZS50
Sony RX100 M3
• All 3 cameras have Auto, SCN, P, A, S and M Modes
• All 3 cameras come from different companies
• All 3 cameras have complex menus for setting up the camera
• But all 3 cameras allow you to set important parameters on the fly w/o going through the complex menus 14
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Key Camera* Settings (available on the fly)
• Select MODE A (Aperture priority), or select Auto MODE
• On back of camera; Select ISO value (low, ~ 200) On back; Select Image Quality (Jpeg, RAW, Jpeg+RAW) On top; Set Exposure Metering to Full Picture (aka Matrix) On top; Exposure Compensation is always on for MODE A • On side; focus (Auto/Manual, focus mode, # pts) • On top; set f/no ≅ 2 stops above max lens min f/no
Key Menu Settings (set once and forget)
PLAYBACK menu Enable Histogram Display Option
SHOOTING Menu (also on back of camera) • Image Quality; Select either Jpeg fine, RAW or
RAW+Jpeg fine
* Nikon D7200
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Simple Recipe for Post-Processing in Photoshop
• We will use only 3, maybe 4 sliders in photoshop
• To manipulate histogram and recover blown out areas, we will use • Highlights and Shadows slider, and maybe • Exposure slider, in Camera Raw
• To improve and optimize contrast, we will use • Curves, in Photoshop
• By doing these simple operations, we are addressing and
hopefully fixing exposure problems
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Jpeg Picture Right Out of the Camera
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Jpeg Picture After Some Very Simple Processing
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Before and After Processing Histograms
Directly out of camera
After some simple processing 19
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Processing Can Be Viewed As Histogram Manipulation !
Directly out of camera
After some simple processing 20
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Next – A Recipe For Histogram Manipulation !
Directly out of camera
After some simple processing 21
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Larger copy of this is contained
in Appendix A
Here is the Recipe
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Photoshop • Opens Jpeg files • Image Processing
Bridge • File management • File viewing
Camera Raw • Opens Raw files • Image Processing
Lightroom • File Organization • Image Processing
How Adobe Photoshop Is Structured
You can move freely between these two parts
• The Recipe uses both Camera Raw and Photoshop • Works for both Jpeg and Raw files • The basic operations are also in other Processing
programs, so this recipe is largely S/W independent
Supports all 3 programs
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• To open an image, open Photoshop, click ‘File/Open’, then browse to folder containing the file, and double click the file
• If it’s a Jpeg file, it will open in Photoshop
• If it’s a Raw file, it will open in Camera Raw*
How to open a Jpeg or Raw File
* You can also open a Raw file by going to the folder holding the image file, and double clicking the file – file will open in Camera Raw.
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Moving From Photoshop Into Camera Raw
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Moving from Camera Raw into Photoshop
Click ‘Open Image’ or ‘OK’ to go back to Photoshop 26
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This is the Camera Raw Screen with Larger, Readable Slider Labels
• Nothing has been done – sliders are at zero 27
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• Highlights to -100, Shadows to +100; use Exposure to center the histogram (check to be sure picture looks good)
1. Using Camera Raw Highlights, Shadows and Exposure Sliders
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Repeat : Think We Can Do Much With This Image?
This Panasonic ZS50 Image is a Raw file
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Using Camera Raw Highlights, Shadows & Exposure Sliders
Slider settings Highlights* -100% Shadows* +100%
Exposure = +2
• This shows that with a ‘Good’ histogram you can recover image
* Actually went into Camera Raw 2 times for this image
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With your cursor, you can drag these points around; try
it and see what happens to the
image darker darks
brighter brights
2. In Photoshop, Using Curves to Improve the Contrast of an Image
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• Improved contrast reflected in wider histogram
2. In Photoshop, Using Curves to Improve the Contrast of an Image
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Out Of Camera image (properly exposed to get ‘Good’ histogram)
After taking care of Highlights, Shadows &
Exposure in Camera Raw
After optimizing Contrast & Exposure in Photoshop using Curves
How The Processing Recipe Affects The Histogram
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Monument Valley - Before
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Monument Valley - After
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Monument Valley - Before
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Monument Valley - After
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What we’ve learned about “Digital Age” photography, ...
• The Histogram is key “quality control” camera setting for detecting the need to correct an imperfect camera exposure
• Exposure compensation (ΔEV) is key camera setting for adjusting the camera exposure to get a good histogram
• Shooting Raw will make it much easier to capture good histograms and process images
Taking pictures technique – for each picture,
• Check Histogram for acceptability; • If not good, use Exposure Compensation to adjust exposure, retake
picture and check Histogram on new picture (erase old one)
Simple recipe for post-processing images (histogram manipulation)
• Use Camera Raw Highlights, Shadows & Exposure sliders to manipulate histogram (many programs have these sliders)
• Use Curves to improve contrast 38
Summary
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Post-processing
Use Camera Settings To Step Up To Great Pictures!
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Appendix A