Choosing the Right Lens

Shooting with different lenses can drastically change they way your photo looks. And zooming vs. not zooming can also make a big difference on how the subject appears. Here are some tips:

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Prime Lenses: Don't zoom, they are fixed in one position. Advantage: generally cheaper and produce more sharpness/crispness/clarity. Disadvantage: you have to switch lenses often or move around! And you may have to buy several prime lenses to cover your bases, instead of one zoom lens.

Zoom Lenses: Advantage: you don't have to move as much to get the shot you want, and don't have to switch lenses often. Disadvantage: more expensive, heavier, less sharpness.


What's the Difference between Fast and Slow Lenses?

"Fast" Lenses = you can shoot in lower light (fast lenses go to a low F-stop number, like F1.8 or F2.8)

"Slow" lenses = not great in low-light (slow lenses don't generally go to an F-stop number lower than F4 or F5.6)


Lenses are measured in length, by Millimeters (mm):

-Wide Angle (16mm, 24mm, 35mm...): show more of the scene
-Long (100mm, 200mm, 300mm...): Shoot things farther away (like a telephoto lens)
-Mid-range "normal" lenses are somewhere in between (40mm to 80mm? although it depends on the size of your sensor because lenses on full frame cameras will appear wider...see below).


Longer Lenses Condense the Background. See example image below (image credit: Lynda.com):

Image on left: 100mm lens.  Image on right: 24mm lens. (The photographer shot with a zoom lens and walked closer to the subject when taking the the wide angle shot on the right to be able to crop it the same.)

See how the background looks more condensed and closer in the image on the left? This can also be more flattering when taking portraits, as it doesn't spread the features as much (image credit here.)

Image on left: wide angle lens (24mm?). Image on right: longer lens (100mm?).

How does your sensor affect your lens? 

Cameras with a full frame sensor will make lenses seem wider. (These are generally more expensive or professional cameras so may not affect you). If you upgrade your DSLR to a full frame sensor camera, you may notice your lenses suddenly seem wider. (Some lenses may not be compatible when you upgrade).

In addition to an offered aperture (like F2.8) and length (like 50mm), lenses also contributes to the overall Color, Contrast and Sharpness of your image. Whereas these elements can be added later in Photoshop, it can often be to your advantage if it's done in the camera and offer a unique creative style.

Adobe Camera Raw

When opening up a RAW file into Photoshop, it will initially open into the Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) window. It looks like this (click to enlarge):

Be sure to click the text at the bottom to set your resolution to 300. Leave everything on "DEFAULT" so you can control the quality of all aspects of the image. When you move each slider, the adjustments are saved into a "Sidecar" .xmp file that is stored in the same folder as your RAW file. If you toss this .xmp file, your image will go back to how it was when you had just downloaded it off your camera.

The main adjustments you want to make for most images are:

• Temperature
• Exposure
• Highlights
• Shadows. 

In the image below, I made it a bit warmer by moving the temperature slider to the right, and I brought out detail in the shadows by moving the exposure and highlights sliders to the left and the shadows slider to the right.

If your exposure is off, you can save yourself sometimes if the image was shot in RAW. Because this was shot RAW, we are able to pull a lot of detail out of the blown-out areas. Were it shot JPG, we would not be able to do that.

Welcome!

Welcome to Art 35 at Stanford Continuing Studies! This 6 week course will introduce you to the basics of your DSLR camera, enable you to take better photos and will provide an introduction to editing and retouching your images in Photoshop CC.

Each week, you can find course materials via this Dropbox link.

Week 1 Class Outline:

• Introducing the group
• Learning from the masters: What makes a good photo?
• Composition/Lighting
• Digital Camera Basics: F-Stop/Aperture, Shutter Speed, priority settings on camera, Flash, White Balance, ISO, lens length, motion control, light meter in camera.
• Shooting in RAW (RAW vs JPG)
• File type and size basics (jpg/tiff/psd/png/pdf, etc…).
• Thinking ahead: creating a cohesive series of images

What Makes a Good picture? Lighting, exposure, composition, quality, color, and subject matter are some of the main considerations.

Let's start with composition. We will look at the work of 3 well known photographers to think about composition: Henri Cartier-Bresson, William Eggleston and Gregory Crewdson.
Here's a short video interview on the working process of Gregory Crewdson:



Main considerations when thinking about composition:

1. Clear Subject/Background
2. Overall Balance
3. Rule of Thirds
4. Point of View (shoot from different angles)
5. Keep it Simple (move in & crop out background distractions)

More tips:

• Look at all 4 corners of your frame- are you chopping anything off awkwardly?
• Try NOT centering your subject
• Point of View: try shooting from below or above the subject, or at eye level.
• Look for lines, shapes, geometry that guide the eye and frame the subject in an interesting way.
• Create some "tension space" between objects in the frame.

Rule of Thirds: breaking the frame in thirds both horizontally and vertically, place points of interest in the intersections or along the lines so that your photo becomes more balanced.

Look how the composition in the above image by Henri Cartier-Bresson falls perfectly into the rule of thirds.

Always Shoot RAW: (not JPG)
RAW files are much bigger because they store much more information in the shadows and highlights that can be subtracted later if need be.

Digital Camera Basics:
Try taking your camera off Auto and shooting on Manual. "M Setting". You'll really be able to custom tailor the look you're going for that way.

There are 3 main factors that determine exposure, or how bright or dark your picture will be: F-stop (same as aperture), Shutter Speed and ISO:

Start here:

Try setting your camera to ISO 200, 1/60 Shutter speed and F3.5.  Think of it as a science experiment - keeping one item constant, change the other 2 variables. I usually keep my F-stop as the constant (at the lowest number my lens allows like F2.8 or F3.5) and change the shutter speed and ISO according to the lighting around me. I change the shutterspeed first, and changing the ISO is my last resort (and usually only happens when I'm in a darker area).

• Aperture/F-Stop: (Aperture and f-stop are the same thing). I generally set my F-stop to the smallest number possible (like F2.8 or F3.5) because I like a blurry background (shallow depth of field). The smaller the F-stop number, the blurrier the background:

• Shutter Speed: Set your shutter speed to 1/60 or faster (1/125, 1/250 etc...) to avoid motion blur when shooting hand-held. Shooting at a shutter speed slower than 1/60 (1/30, 1/15, 1/4 etc... ) may cause motion blur. You should use a tripod when shooting at a number smaller than "60".

• ISO: Take ISO off "Auto" and set it manually. The only reason to increase the ISO number is if you're in a low light setting (indoors or at night). Depending on your camera, when you choose a really high number, like 1600 or higher, you may start to see unattractive graininess (speckelled noise). Like this:

 Other items to set on your camera:

• Auto White Balance. This will ensure your image never looks too blue or too orange. Below is what may happen if you have your white balance on the wrong setting for where you are shooting. (the flower images below were shot inside)

How do different lenses make the picture look different?
Here's a great overview. But basically, if you have one zoom lens, try shooting your subject both from up close and from far away. The perspective will change:

Generally, portraits are more flattering when you stand far away and zoom in as well.

RAW vs. JPG:

RAW files are the ones that come right off your camera. You can't save a file as RAW. Each manufacturer has its own label...Nikon RAW files are .NEF,  Canon's are .CRW, etc...

JPGs are smaller compressed files. They take up less room on your computer because they don't have as much detail and information. JPGs can be both hi-res or lo-res. You can print from the hi-res ones, and the lo-res ones go online.

When files have layers in Photoshop, you save them as .PSD or .TIF. (JPGs and RAW files cannot have layers).  It really varies file to file and camera to camera, but below is a very estimated summary of approximately how big these types of files are.

Also very important to remember is that once you shrink an image, you can't make it big again. It's kind of like cutting a piece of paper in half: you can tape it back together but it won't look as good. When making a web size image, always save a duplicate.

Image on the left is print size (hi-res). Image on the right was shrunk to web size (lo-res) then enlarged back to print size (and looks terrible!)