snpsht

Tricking auto-exposure

Mon, 26 May 2008 11:47:00 +0200

(Sorry for the absence…)

Your camera is set up to show you an image that becomes an exact shade of 50% gray when you blend all colors together. At the same time, it is trying to give you everything in a contrast ranging from black to white.

The (left) histogram below represents the amount of black, dark gray, gray, light gray til white. See how it flattens up against the too dark and too light? This way you can tell that there is no over- or underexposure.

When the sky is bright, and the sun does not shine on the object you would like to photograph, move your camera down to let the software in your camera adjust to showing contrast within the darker object and then quickly move it up to the original frame you were looking for to take the photo (with an overexposed sky).

The untouched histogram on the right shows this in having a large amount of white and hardly any black.

Now your photo will be brighter in the foreground, how you wanted it.

You can now submit to snpsht.com

Mon, 26 May 2008 11:20:26 +0200

via this form: http://snpsht.com/submit/text

About snapping portraits in the sun

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 10:41:00 +0200

Not so advisable.

If you shoot in direct sunlight and do not have a bouncer or fill flash handy, you will have to deal with shadows under the eyes, nose, chin etc. and it just does not look good. Leave alone them squinted eyes.

Genrally speaking, a non-genuine photo is probably best taken in the shade.

There are two types of shade:

1) An overcast day, which is the better solution.

2) If your photo is taken in the shadow cast by a building or tree, your camera will quickly adjust and the scene will look natural and not dark or cold at all, as long as you have no streaks of strong and bright sunlight interfering.

(listen or read) What is shutter speed/exposure time? Shutter...

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 19:35:00 +0200

(listen or read)

What is shutter speed/exposure time?

Shutter speed is the time that your camera measures the sensor to be exposed to the scene you are taking a picture of in order to get enough light onto it.

Darker situations require longer exposures and are more likely to get you a shaky photo.

As a rule of thumb, 1/100 for anyone and 1/25 of a second for an advanced photographer are okay to hand-hold.

Shutter speed stands in direct correlation with aperture/f-stop (more about this later).

(Alternatively, above is the audio version of this post — please...

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 23:19:00 +0200

(Alternatively, above is the audio version of this post — please leave feedback: do you want this?)

How to dress for a portrait or family photo

If you want to photograph one person or a group of people and bring out their faces and personality, it is advisable to make them wear some non-distractive clothing.

Pastel colors like light blue, light pink and light green (without type and big logos) forward the attention to the actual human and virtually disappear beyond their faces — this helps a lot, especially when photographing a group of people.

It is also a good idea to turn down white and black clothing for the reason of over- or underexposure, where all structure would be burned out and gone; and to avoid small crazy patterns which can create a moiré.

Framing a photo at a sight I come to shudder when tourists take...

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 14:53:00 +0200

Framing a photo at a sight

I come to shudder when tourists take photos with their friends.

Comparing photos you like to the photos most people take of their friends will show you why.

Seemingly the #1 reason for this are heads being placed in the center horizontal line of the snapshot, no matter what’s going on behind them. Why? (Anybody that crazy about the sky?) How about making room in the middle of your picture for the sight or location itself, which is usually behind you, or getting closer to it?

Also, a simple line-up of your fake-smiling peeps is probably a lot less interesting than them actually interacting at the spot – talking, joking, hugging, or anything that will make you refeel the situation and relation between them once you go back and look at your vacation photos at home. Something you probably want instead of bragging about having been in a certain spot.

(top example photo from Mike Pearson, photo below is property of M. Fischinger)

Why we don't like ourselves in photos

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 19:24:42 +0200

I keep hearing sentences like “I never look good in photos”. This originates from the reality of how we usually see ourselves. We look in the mirror every day and the person looking back at us is someone we know like our mother or siblings.

We are “used” to that look, speaking of the angle we take at ourselves, the height of the view (eye-level) and most importantly, the reverse sides. No face is symmetrical, and a sudden horizontal flip of our whole self, as it is in photos of us, is double the change of unsymmetricality to us.

No wonder we like the look of ourselves in Photobooth pictures taken with our Macs: They act like mirrors. Ever noticed?

Just as it is possible to get used to your own voice in a recording, you can get used to your look in photos. It just takes some time and practice. Release your muscles and put on a genuinely happy face.

In ten years, you will be happy you didn’t hide from every photo taken.

Let’s talk about sensor sizes! Sensors have different sizes, as...

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 13:11:00 +0200

Let’s talk about sensor sizes!

Sensors have different sizes, as you can imagine by taking a look at the different camera sizes and models.

The smallest ones are smaller than a fingernail and have the same 12MP resolution as a APS-C (22,5 x 15,0 mm) sensor built in in a semi-pro DSLR.

The smaller a sensor is, the higher is the effort required to amplify the information it gathers from the scene it is photographing. But more calculation leads to more errors, which means more noise.

The bigger a single physical “pixel” on a sensor, the less noise it produces. Take a look at the different sensor sizes.

(graphic above from wikipedia.org)

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(first contribution from Martin, edited by Mareen)

How to translate a color photo to a better black and white You...

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 23:14:00 +0200

How to translate a color photo to a better black and white

You probably know the bad attempts on bw conversion, where the saturation is taken out of an image. There are several complicated explanations of Photoshop procedures to make it look better. But all they do is increase the contrast in your photos in one way or another and bring out certain before-colors darker than others.

What you can do when desaturating an image (grayscale) is simply increase the contrast afterwards.

Additional Tip: If you take a photo of a girl and intend to make it black and white, you can do the silent film trick and ask her to paint her lips dark red before you take the photo so they stand out from her skin later.

About leaning in

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 19:36:00 +0200

Oftentimes when I take a snapshot of people who are not used to being photographed, they tend to lean into the center of the photo or group, with their head or upper body.

This never looks good, not even when the photo shows only their faces. All it does is enhance the look of a fake situation, staged happiness or closeness.

Therefore, I generally advise to be turned and sit in all sorts of directions, bent back, curled up, however you were before someone pulls out the camera, possibly going a little more to the extreme of that position to make it clearer.

The one taking the photo can still tell you whether you guys fit or not, or just step back a bit.

(This post contains embedded pictures, view it on snpsht.com to see them)

Why digital zoom is bad and optical zoom is good

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 20:37:01 +0100

On most snapshot and bridge cameras, it is possible to turn off the so called digital zoom in the settings menu.

I advise you to do so, because the digital zoom is nothing else but artificially cropping the photo you would take without it and fake-repeating the pixels (called interpolation) to get back to the original size. (more on Wikipedia)

Optical zoom is something that you should look for when buying a camera. Because this time, your camera’s optics are actually making physical movements to acquire a real zoom.

About the difference between wide-angle and telephoto

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 04:07:00 +0100

If you are wondering why your face or body looks so distorted in a close-up picture, there is an easy solution for that one, just zoom in slightly to get away from the wide-angle your camera (except a DSLR) usually starts with when being turned on.

While wide-angle (small mm) is helpful when you want to photograph a room or a landscape, it makes more sense to step back a bit and use the optical zoom if the space is there.