10 Quick Macro Shooting Tips

1. Check focus: When shooting at 1:1 or higher magnifications, depth of field is extremely narrow. Make sure your camera's diopter is set properly for your shooting eye, and triple-check focus before shooting.
2. Check focus again: After you shoot, if you're using a digital camera, check the image in your LCD screen and zoom into it as far as your camera will let you to confirm that your subject is in focus.
3. Eliminate subject motion: If you're outside shooting a flower's stamen or any other high-magnification foliage, the slightest wind will not only mess up your composition, it will blur it. If possible, plant a stake in the ground and tether the flower to it to add stability. Use the fastest shutter speed you can get away with. If you are shooting at a small aperture, a ring flash or a pair of lens-mounted flash units is necessary.
4. Eliminate camera motion: You can control composition and eliminate the variable of a moving camera very simply: don't move it. Put it on a tripod, a bean bag, or a mini-pod so it goes nowhere.
5. Don't curse the darkness, add a flash: In studios, you can control all of the above variables and use any light you desire (hot lights, strobes, HMI, etc). But in the field, you don't have control of the light. One moment you may be shooting in bright sunlight, the next under the dark canopy of a forest. It could be sunny or cloudy. The solution is to bring your own light -- either a ring flash or a two-flash, lens-mounted setup. This way you can also stop down for greater depth of field and sharper focus. Want backlight? Bring a pocket slave. Overhead sun causing harsh shadows? Diffuse it with a translucent white umbrella.
6. Eliminate background clutter: Remember that the eye naturally goes to the brightest spot in a photo, so if you are shooting in mixed light, be aware of what's in the background. You may need to change your point of view, get closer and fill the frame with your subject, or bring a sheet of plain paper or an 8x10-inch print of generic, highlight-free foliage to hold behind your subject. You can also control background clutter by shooting at wider apertures, which reduces background focus, or using a ring light, which throws most backgrounds into darkness. 
7. Eliminate foreground clutter: If you're shooting through dense foliage to get to something of interest, make sure this doesn't block your view. If permissible, trim away blocking branches or leaves. If not, try to find another angle. Still no good? Move on.
8. Eliminate poor exposure: Be especially conscientious about metering and exposure when using a bellows or extension tubes and a handheld meter. The greater the distance between the rear element and the recording medium (film or sensor), the longer the exposure or wider the aperture. If your camera has TTL (through the lens) metering, you can relax -- somewhat. Bright backgrounds can still mislead the meter, so bracket. Shooting digital? Check your histogram to confirm exposure's right.
9. Eliminate grain and digital artifacts: With so little light reaching your film or sensor, you may be tempted to use fast film or pump up your digital camera's ISO setting. Don't. This adds grain or digital artifacts (also called noise), which is an unwanted distraction. The grain makes the image appear less sharp, which defeats the purpose of using a super-sharp lens at a smaller aperture. Use your digital camera's lowest ISO setting, or a fine-grained film like Kodachrome 64 or Fuji Velvia, and add a tripod or flash to make up for the loss of light.
10. Eliminate bland subject matter: Be bold in your composition, look for stunning color, and don't be afraid to experiment and create abstractions. The greatest benefit of Macro is how it transforms mundane subjects into worlds of wonder by enlarging them far beyond what the human eye is used to seeing. Pump up your digital camera's color and contrast settings if that suits the subject. With a film cam, use super-saturated film.



Using Aperture For Creative Control

Get your aperture right, and you may get mucho better pictures! Now what is Aperture really? OK, I think I recall there is (or was) even a famous fine-art photo magazine called “Aperture“. So, it seems to be an important concept in the field of Serious Photography.

Wikipedia says: “In optics, an aperture is a hole or an opening through which light is admitted… Obviously, the aperture also determines how many of the incoming rays that are actually admitted and thus how much light that reaches the image plane.”

Well, Wikipedia has got it spot-on, as usual. You use a large aperture, ie. a large hole, and lots of light streams in. You use a small aperture… what do you think happens? Right, less light gets through during a set amount of time! One detail to remember: in your camera, large apertures have small numbers and vice versa, like f=2 is a large aperture and f=8 is a small one. Expensive, “fast” lenses are capable of large apertures. OK, I guess we could stop here and let you figure out the rest yourselves…

Still there? OK, the thing about aperture is to get control over how you use it in your photos. You see, if you use a large aperture, the depth of field is small - and conversely: small aperture equals large depth of field.

This is the important thing to know about aperture. Maybe I should add a few words about what depth of field is. Think of it this way: You focus the camera on something, say a flower in a field. Usually, not only that particular flower will be rendered sharp in the picture, but also some of the flowers closer to the camera as well as some of those further away.

This is the phenomenon called “depth of field”. Just how much of it you will get in each case depends on several factors, but the main ones are your distance to the subject and your aperture setting. Assuming you have already chosen a distance that you like, you can now adjust the depth of field by playing with the aperture setting.

Do you have a somewhat distracting background which you’d rather get rid of? OK, try using a large aperture to put that pesky background out of focus! Since the depth of field is now smaller, everything that is significantly further away from the camera than the subject you’re focusing on will be rendered blurry - and hopefully less distracting.

Obviously, if you use a larger aperture you need to change one or both of the two other points in the Exposure Triangle - shutter speed and ISO-setting. You will need to use a faster shutter speed and/or a lower ISO-setting to avoid having the picture over-exposed to light. Complicated? Not at all - I’m pretty sure there is some setting on your digicam which takes care of this automatically. Like, you set the aperture you prefer and the camera takes care of the rest. If in doubt, consult the manual…

Now, suppose you are snapping a picture of something and you want all of it in focus - what do you do? Right again! - you use a SMALL aperture setting. Like the photo of the spiral staircase here, note how all of it is rendered sharp, even the knob in the lower-right corner which seems quite close to the camera.This is how you play with aperture to control the depth of field in an image.

Before closing, I like to give you another short photo tip: You need to remember that the camera’s autofocus always thinks whatever is in the center of the picture is also the thing to focus on. This is by NO means always the case, as in the staircase case here. The photographer wouldn’t have managed to get everything sharp if he had put the focus on the most distant part of the picture - which is in the center. Instead, he must have focused on some point about half-way up the stairs, to get this splendid result.

Using Shutter Speed to Get Image Control

In case you are new to photography, you may feel it is convenient to just put your digital camera on automatic and hope for the best. If you do, I bet you will soon get a bit frustrated with how your pictures often don’t come out the way you intended, and you sit there wondering what’s going on.

Take the clown picture here for example. Imagine how dull it would have been if you had taken the picture using automatic settings. The camera would then have fired the built-in flash unit and ruined the mood of the event (and you may also have gotten thrown out for disturbing the act!).

On the contrary, the photographer here had total creative control. He took the picture using the ambient light, and used a very long exposure time. And, yes, the result was motion blur.

However, what do you feel when you see that “blurry” photograph? Personally, I feel it is a great shot! And you could never make a picture like this unless you had creative control over your camera.

The Exposure Triangle
To begin with, there are basically THREE WAYS you can control how the image is exposed in the camera when you press the shutter. You can think of these as the three tips of a triangle; the Exposure Triangle.

1. Exposure Time = Shutter Speed
2. Aperture = Size of Light Opening
3. ISO Setting = Sensor-sensitivity

The exposure time, also known as “shutter speed”, determines how long time the camera sensor is exposed to the light from the subject of interest. Long exposure is another word for slow shutter speed.

The aperture setting determines how big the opening is allowed to be, for the light coming in. And remember that the larger the aperture opening, the lower the number on the aperture scale. Expensive camera lenses usually allow the use of larger apertures, making it easier to work with them in low light.

Finally, the ISO setting determines how high you crank up the light sensitivity of the sensor unit in the camera - the part that transfers incoming light to an electronically stored image. Higher sensitivity means more “noise” in the image. To get the best quality you usually set this to 50 or 100 ISO units.

So, a few words on shutter speed. Generally, if nothing you’re trying to capture is moving much you can use shutter speeds down to maybe 1/60 of a second. With practise, you can use even slower shutter speeds, ie. longer exposures, for non-moving subjects. In case you want to freeze movement, you need a faster shutter speed. For instance, a car driving past you and going fast may require a shutter speed of 1/500 of a second to “freeze” its movement. The picture of the surfer here was shot at a very fast shutter speed, to “freeze” the movement. Fast movement = fast shutter speed.

To get creative control over the shutter speed point of the Exposure Triangle, you need to consider how you want to use that setting to control the mood of the image. Like, do you PREFER to “freeze” the movement by using a fast shutter speed, or would you rather experiment with a very slow shutter speed to get intentional motion blur, as in the clown picture?

In the case of the clown picture, the low ambient light wouldn’t allow a very fast shutter speed - and neither would it be needed or even desirable in that situation. Conversely, in the surfer photo the light was quite strong which allowed the photographer to snap the picture at a fast shutter speed - likely 1/500 of a second or even faster.

You could have made a very different surfer picture by using a slower shutter speed, to create some motion blur. Then you would have needed to adjust the two other points of the Exposure Triangle accordingly - smaller aperture and/or lower ISO setting, to avoid over-exposing the image



PRATICAL SHOOTING

• Digital camera and its controls
• The strength and techniques
• Visual modification/manipulation using camera
• Media storage devices

WHAT IS THE BULB MODE?

If you want to set your shutter speed for longer than 30 seconds? This is where bulb mode comes in. Bulb mode lets you take a photograph using longer than 30 second exposures. When you put your camera on bulb mode the shutter will remain open for as long as you keep the shutter release button pressed down. Of course one problem with this is that you don't want to be standing there pressing the shutter button down for 213 seconds. Therefore I recommend using a remote shutter release. Many remote shutters that are made for SLR digital camera's can be locked in place. Before purchasing a remote shutter release make sure it has a locking option. This locking replaces the need for you to hold the button down. Then when times up, you simply need to unlock the remote, releasing it to finish the shot. 

When should you use bulb mode?

When photographing the horizons at night time, such as when taking images of the stars or moon etc. Or when you need to increase your shutter speed longer than shutter priority allows you to.

CASE STUDY WEEK 2

Nak beli kamera DSLR? Di sini kumpulan kami akan memberikan sedikit panduan membeli kamera DSLR kepada Siti Noor.

1.    BAJET

Bajet merupakan perkara yang paling penting semasa membuat penilaian untuk membeli kamera DSLR. Tengok dulu bajet ada berapa ribu. Kalau boleh jangan membeli kamera ikut limit bajet. Contohnye kalau bajet ada RM4000 janganlah membeli kamera yang harganya RM4000 kecuali anda seorang pengumpul koleksi kamera. Kalau boleh membeli kamera yang harga RM3000 lebih. Duit yang lebih boleh digunakan untuk membeli lens yang affordable tapi berkualiti. Sebagi contoh Nikon belilah lens Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D harga RM420, yang paling murah untuk professional spec.dan kalau Canon pula belilah lens 50mm f/1.8 harga dalam RM 380.00. Lens-lens ini murah sebab production senang, bukannye murah sebab tiada kualiti. Lens ini kalau nak produce straight forward sahaja tak perlu guna calculation yang pelik-pelik.

2.    TUJUAN

Subjek ni sangat subjektif. Cuba tanya diri kita apa tujuan kita beli DSLR ini? Ada orang untuk saja-saja, ikut kawan, sebab ramai orang dah pakai, jadi kita kene pakai jugak. Untuk majlis kahwin? Untuk hobi? Sebab minat fotografi? Sebab sekarang lebih berpatutan beli entry level DSLR berbanding prosumer compact camera? Sebab nak berlagak atau fotografi? Sebab baru nak belajar? Biasanya kalau untuk wedding (mostly wedding la), sometimes sport as second camera, landscape, hobi dan remaja yang berkemampuan akan guna yang mid level, iaitu yang harga kamera antara RM4000 – RM7000, sebab yang ni reliable, speed laju, performance lebih elok, lebih tahan lasak, compatible dengan banyak aksesori dan bermacam lagi. Kamera dalam siri ni contohnya ialah Nikon D90, D200, D300, D700 n Canon EOS 40D, EOS 50D, dan kadang-kala EOS 5D n EOS 5D Mark II.

Untuk yang kurang berkemampuan, yang baru belajar, yang nak replace compact camera akan guna DSLR yang entry level macam Nikon D40, D60, D5000 n Canon EOS 1000D, EOS 400D, EOS 450D, EOS 500D, biasanya kamera ni harga antara RM1600 ke RM3500.

Kalau untuk cover sport, journalist, wartawan, orang yang ada studio high dan berkemampuan  akan guna kamera yang top level contohnye cam Nikon D2x, D3, D3x n Canon EOS 1D, EOS 1Ds Mark II n Mark III, EOS 1D Mark D Mark II n Mark III n sometimes EOS 5D Mark II, kamera-kamera kategori ni harga antara RM9000 – RM29999 (body only, tidak termasuk lens). Kamera ni memang advance dan banyak kelebihan berbanding kamera lain dalam kategori DSLR.

Antara kelebihan- kelebihan yang ada ialah high performance ISO, high speed, durability (weather proof- stakat ambik gambar dalam hujan, salji , body magnesium alloy n sealed dengan gasket, function yang sangat banyak, compatible dengan sume aksesori, support fuction yang studio perlukan cam flash sync 230v port, no crop factor, bateri tahan sangat lama,viewfinder yang cover 100% dan sangat terang, bunyi shutter yang slow, grip yang kemas dan confortable dan macam-macam lagi. Jadi dalam case ini Siti Noor hendak membeli untuk course yang akan di ambil iaitu photography. Saya rasa Siti Noor beli yang sedang aja iaitu untuk entry level atau mid level sahaja.

3.    SAIZ GAMBAR ATAU MEGAPIXEL (MP)

 Sekarang ni dalam tahun 2011 semua kamera baru ada sekurang-krangnya 12MP dan ke atas. Sebenarnya saiz piksel tidak pentingpun sebab beza saiz adalah terlalu sedikit. Contohnya gambar 6MP (3008 x 2000) dan 8MP (3264 x 2448) bezanya bukan ketarapun iaitu perbezaan sebanyak 256 horizontal pixel n 448 vertical pixel. Jadi kalau didarabkan 256 dan 448 dapatlah 0.11468 Megapixel. Sebenarnye tidak ada bezapun tapi yang kita nampak besar sebab semua itu adalah luas gambar yang sudah didarabkan,

Satu lagi untuk DSLR bawah RM8000 iaitu kamera yang tidak guna frame sensor yang penuh dimana saiz sensor untuk  kamera di bawah price range ni adalah lebih kecik, kamera yang ada bilangan megapixel yang rendah adalah lebih baik dari segi ISO n ketajaman gambar pada aperture kecik. Cuba bayangkan sensor terdiri dari microlens yang kecil-kecil iaitu setiap satu bersamaan dengan 1 pixel. Tugas microlens ini untuk collect cahaya untuk di convert kepadanan arus elektrik untuk diporses jadi gambar. So cuba imagine kalau dalam saiz sensor yang sama iaitu ukuran 22.8mm x 15.7mm apa perbezaan antara yang ada 6MP n 8MP? Bezanya ialah saiz microlens dalam sensor 8MP lebih kecil berbanding sensor 6MP sebab untuk meletakkan bilangan microlens yang lebih banyak dalam sensor yang berkeluasan sama kenalah kecilkan microlens, baru boleh muat dengan banyak. Tapi keburukkannya adalah apabila microlens kecll, bilangan cahaya yang dicollect adalah sedikit,
4. NIKON ATAU CANON?

Canon:

1.    Colour memang super vivid, memang full of life la, sangat sesuai untuk landscape.

2.    Available kat sume kedai gambar yang ada jual kamera DSLR.

3.    Ramai orang guna Canon terutama untuk landscape, student pun ramai guna Canon sebab senang nak share idea dan aksesori. Penggunaan yang ramai di kalangan pelajar.

4.    Terkenal dengan white body lens iaitu lens telefoto atau zoom telefoto yang berjalur merah di barrel depan (sebenarnye tak ada mane pun, kualiti same je dengan lens yang setara dalam siri Nikon, Cuma sebab ramai orang guna so orang akan ingat lens Canon lebih baik padahal same je.)

5.    Banyak megazine fotografi yang guna gambar sample dari kamera Canon.

6.    Lens Canon murah sedikit dari Nikon.

7.    Canon lebih cepat keluarkan kamera model baru berbanding Nikon.

Nikon :

1.    Optik lens memang boleh dikata tip top kecuali beberapa jenis lens, kalau Canon peratus yang kurang sharp banyak jugak.

2.    Lens fokus lambat sedikit untuk siri murah tetapi lebih tepat dari Canon walaupun yang Canon laju, sebab Canon kadang kala terbabas.

3.    Kamera dan lens feel more tough dan solid walaupun yang siri murah, sbb bile banding dengan Canon rase macam plastik murah bile kamera yang siri murah.

4.    ISO performance memang tinggi berbanding Canon, gambar nampak tajam lagi berbanding Canon sebab Canon apply banyak noise reduction utk kurangkan noise dalam gambar.

5.    Ramai wartawan dan sport photographer prefer high end Nikon camera berbanding high end Canon sebab ergonomik feature dari kamera Nikon, grip sume sudah design dengan tepat untuk elak keletihan bila handling kamera dalam masa yang lama.

6.    Metering dan white balance super accurate : Ini yang paling suka pasal Nikon sebab gambar memang properly exposed dan white balance memang tepat, korang boleh leave white balance setting ke Auto all the time, boleh dipercayai.

7.    Flash exposure yang super tepat.disebabkan Nikon menggunakan teknologi Matrix metering dan iTTL so flash diemit berdasarkan jarak subjek dan nisbah kecerahan background dan subjek, bukan macam teknologi lama, just berdasarkan kecerahan subjek. Kalau Canon sekarang pun dah maju cuma tidak tepat macam Nikon lagi.

Siri Kamera – Canon & Nikon?

Canon :

1. Top Series : Siri 1D, 1Ds, 5D (nak kenal siri ni kene tgk no siri yang ada satu digit sahaja. Yang ada “s” tu adalah tahap paling tinggi iaitu megapixel paling tinggi. Lepas tu kalau ada tulis tanda “Mark x” tu adalah menandakan dalam kamera generation ke berapa dalam sesuatu siri digit tu. Contohnya EOS 1Ds Mark III, tu menandakan generasi ke-3 utk siri EOS 1Ds).

2. Mid Series : Siri 10D, 20D, 30D, 40D, 50D (siri ni dikenali dengan nombor 2 digit)

3. Entry Level Series : 350D, 400D, 500D, 1000D (siri ni dikenali dengan nombor 3 & 4  digit)

4. Huruf D kat hujung tu menandakan tu adalah Digital, kalau xde maksudnye kamera filem..

Nikon :
1. Top Series : Siri D1, D2, D2x, D2H, D3, D3x, (siri ni dikenali dengan nombor 1 digit, huruf “x” “H” tu melambangkan high speed, biasanya apply utk kamera model sebelum ni, skarang dah xde siri H dah sbb sume laju. )

2. Mid Series : Siri D100, D200, D300, D700 (siri ni dikenali dengan nombor 3 digit, setakat ni just D700 ada sensor full frame)

3. Entry Level Series : Siri D40, D40x, D50, D69, D70, D70s, D80, D90 (siri ni dikenali dengan nombor 2 digit. “x” bermaksud version yang sama dengan siri yang sama cuma berbeza dari segi saiz gambar yang lebih besar.)

Kenapa DSLR

Sebab setiap DSLR dari sebarang brand ada banyak aksesori-aksesori tambahan macam lens, flash, lens hood, battery pack, sync cord, remote control dan sebagainya. Tetapi kamera dari brand yang berlainan tidak boleh guna aksesori yang berlainan. So amat penting membuat penilaian sebelum membeli untuk kali pertama. Sebab bila sudah membeli kamera dari brand A, memang semua aksesori kena beli yang brand A, tidak boleh pakai dari brand lain seperti brand B. Pendek kata bila dah beli produk dari brand A kita kena stick to that brand for many years, tak boleh tukar-tukar sebab akan berlaku pembaziran.

WHAT IS BOKEH?

Bokeh  is Japanese-originated concept, which describes the appearance, or “feel,” of out-of-focus areas. Bokeh is not how far something is out-of-focus, Bokeh is the character of whatever blur is there. Bokeh is archived by by a camera lens using a shallow depth of field.  Bokeh is also now is used in graphic design to create amazing artwork, background and poster.

In photography, bokeh is the blur, or the aesthetic quality of the blur, in out-of-focus areas of an image, or "the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light."Differences in lens aberrations and aperture shape cause some lens designs to blur the image in a way that is pleasing to the eye, while others produce blurring that is unpleasant or distracting—"good" and "bad" bokeh, respectively. Bokeh occurs for parts of the scene that lie outside the depth of field. Photographers sometimes deliberately use a shallow focus technique to create images with prominent out-of-focus regions.

Bokeh is often most visible around small background highlights, such as specular reflections and light sources, which is why it is often associated with such areas.However, bokeh is not limited to highlights; blur occurs in all out-of-focus regions of the image.

HOW TO CAPTURE "BOKEH" PHOTOS WITH DSLR

With a DSLR camera:

1. Use a lens that offers you the lowest f-stop (personally I would choose my 50mm f/1.4)
2. Put it into AV mode,
3. Set the aperture value to the lowest possible which is really the widest aperture,
4. Now set a focal point,
5. Shoot