Hot answers tagged light
37
This appears to be a beautiful example of Fraunhofer diffraction. It is due to the wave nature of light. The effect depends on the wavelength (that is, the color). It is most pronounced when bright light from a practically infinite distance passes through narrow slits, causing the light to spread perpendicular to the slits. This spreads a point-like beam ...
19
Body - you can get better high ISO performance from a full frame body, if you're willing to rent one. That's worth a couple of stops.
Lens - another couple of stops if you buy/hire an f/1.4 or f/1.8 lens, especially if you're shooting at the long end of your zoom at f/5.6
Light - in the picture you've given as an example, you seem to be standing in the ...
14
This is usually due to a color temperature shift that occurs at certain points in the day, as the angle at which the light from the sun changes with the rising and setting sun.
From Wikipedia:
Typically, lighting is softer (more
diffuse) and warmer in hue, and
shadows are longer. When the Sun is
near the horizon, sunlight travels
through more of ...
14
This is known as a high-key photo, which basically means it is brighter than usual.
The simplest way to go in that direction is to add positive exposure compensation to make the whole thing brighter without overexposing any important areas. Some cameras have a high-key mode that helps or you can tweak the brightness parameter (may be called differently ...
14
You can definitely improve on the standard "cloudy day" look with some preparation at shooting time and a bit of post-processing afterwards.
As you shoot...
Switch the camera's white balance setting to cloudy: this will help keep the tones a bit warmer.
Compose to avoid large amounts of sky: you can play with the rest of the photo in post-processing but a ...
13
What you encountered is the dynamic-range limit of your camera. All cameras and films have a limit to the dynamic-range they capture and scenes where the contrast is too high will always cause exactly this kind of problem.
For cases with moving subjects, like a wedding, they are two avenues to diminish the issue:
Reframe so that your subject is surrounded ...
13
The problem is that the exposure meter in the camera does not know whether the subject itself is bright or not. It simply measures the amount of light that comes in, and makes a guess based on that. The camera will aim for 18% gray, meaning if you take a photo of an entirely white surface, and an entirely black surface you should get two identical images ...
13
No, this is not the case. Aperture F stops are calculated on pupil size and focal length of the lens.
From wikipedia
In optics, the f-number (sometimes called focal ratio, f-ratio, f-stop, or relative aperture1) of an optical system is the ratio of the lens's focal length to the diameter of the entrance pupil.2 It is a dimensionless number that is a ...
11
Hard light (i.e. a single bare lightsource) from underneath.
Look at any old black and white horror film and you'll see this technique used.
Or for a more modern example of the [mis]use of this technique see Jill Greenberg's photos of John McCain:
http://www.rachelhulin.com/blog/2008/09/pdn-on-jill-greenberg-the-atlantic-and-john-mccain.html
10
I don't have an issue shooting images at any point during the day; I try to take advantages of the lighting and go from there.
I would wholeheartedly say: SHOOT ANYTIME YOU CAN!
Midday sun is overhead, and gives you dark (often called harsh shadows). On the plus side, mid-day sun is very bright and gives you plenty of opportunities for good exposures ...
10
You've got the problem space pretty much pegged. Incident light metering measures what's falling on the subject independent of its characteristic reflectivity, etc., while reflected light metering measures what's being reflected from the subject, independent of the characteristics of the incident light. The recording medium in the camera, as you pointed out, ...
10
Your foreground is not at all close in any real sense of the word "close", and it is sharp. Your middle ground isn't exactly a creamy bokeh; there's some actual detail there. The details in the far distance aren't razor-sharp. Problem? Not unless this was taken on a clear day in the desert. (Pictures taken in the desert tend to look a little bit fake to ...
9
It's due to diffraction where the aperture blades meet as stated by John and Pearsonartphoto. It's a neat way to test how many aperture blades you have!
To answer your second question, the length of the exposure doesn't directly affect the effect. There are two main factors, the first is the size of the aperture (it needs to be small), and long exposures ...
9
EV is a measure of illuminance, which is defined in the link you provided as "luminous flux incident on a surface, per unit area". You are correct in stating that when if you keep field of view, depth of field and subject brightness constant:
Ev_crop = Ev_ff x c²
however since:
Area_crop = Area_ff / c²
and
Light(total) = EV x Area
we arrive at
...
8
That's a huge question. I'm going to assume you're a beginner, because of the lack of jargon in the question -- apologies if I'm wrong about that...
Anyway: there are plenty of resources to learn about exposure -- I'd recommend the book "Understanding Exposure", but I'm sure you'll get plenty of suggestions to choose from.
[EDIT: added the next two paras ...
8
The wide beam is going to fill the umbrella more completely than the narrower beam, creating a better spread. I don't think you would get a hotspot, as such, with a narrow beam but it wouldn't spread and soften the light as much.
Scantips has a pretty good writeup on umbrella and softbox usage.
8
Metering from the background as rfusca suggests may not give you the results you desire - the background will likely be very overexposed spoiling the beautiful location.
One solution to that problem is to shoot two exposures and merge them. One exposure is optimal for your subject and one optimal for the background. If your subject remains relatively still ...
8
Sunrise can be a better time to shoot for few reasons too:
There are considerably less people about if you are shooting scenery, landscape and/or nature shots.
There is often moisture about which can potentially be used to create some unique images .. check out http://www.thetrueshot.com/Photographs/Pages/Drops_Of_Life.html#0 which was shot early in the ...
8
A light meter is a device that measures light.
There are two types of light meters:
Incident light meter: Measures light falling on the meter itself. Those are characterized by a dome-like shape which is used to average incoming light.
Reflected light meter: Measures light being reflected from an object towards the light meter.
All digital cameras have ...
8
Don't just look at the photo, but look at the histogram, too! Often when looking at just the photo on an LCD, you can't get a good feel for under- or over-exposure, or even color balance, but if you look at the histogram (especially the RGB histogram if your camera model supports it), it will be immediately obvious if something serious is off.
7
Assuming there will be test prints involved (that is, you won't be working exclusively with the screen), you'll want the lighting to be full-spectrum and daylight-balanced. If it looks good "in broad daylight" it will look right under just about any lighting conditions. I figured that out the hard way when I was painting -- there's nothing quite like putting ...
7
Street photography comes with a lot of constraints on equipment and methodology – no diffusers, no reflectors, no asking people to please move one way or the other – so the best advice is to concentrate on what you can control: where you shoot, and how you shoot.
The environment
Much of this boils down to know your city, or be ready to explore it. ...
7
Looks like lens flare to me. Odds are there's a similarly-shaped pattern of lights in front of the camera (possibly behind/above the subject since you noted backlighting) and what you're seeing is a result of those lights being bounced around inside the lens. update: Now that you've posted an updated photo, one can see the chandelier which is being ...
7
Exposure is essentially controlled by Aperture, Shutter speed and ISO. You need to balance these to get correct exposure. Assuming you are shooting manual (M on the left top dial).
The delicate balance between aperture, speed and iso depends on the image you are trying to capture. I usually ask myself questions before taking a picture.
Do i need to ...
7
Great question! There's a rich history of photographic images created without a camera. The best known type is the photogram which (according to a purist definition) involves placing objects in contact with unexposed film then exposing it to light to capture silhouette and/or refraction patterns. A famous practitioner of this technique was the early ...
7
As a very general guidance, you should place the sun at the 3/9/12 o'clock position of the subject, and try to avoid the 6 o'clock position.
That is, the left, right, or behind the model (back lit), and try to avoid direct sunlight straight onto the model's face.
Why not straight on?
the model will have a VERY hard time keeping their eyes open, and ...
7
The cheap option: create monochrome images. (some may even look great in monochrome)
The image you have shown there is mostly lit by tungsten light. This light contains very little blue light, and therefore the blue channel in the image will have a very poor signal to noise ratio. When you perform white balance correction, the blue channel will be amplified ...
7
This shot has been taken with star 4 filter.
You could simulate it with photoshop, but I prefer to put a filter and have that effect while shooting.
There are multiple different start filters: star 4, star 6, star 8 - number tells how many streaks from each strong light point you will get.
As for the second part, it does not matter outdoors or indoors, as ...
7
You must use a flash to balance the exposure. You can either use your camera's on-board flash, or an external one, it doesn't matter. Depending on your camera (it would help if you offered more information on that part), you should expose (i.e. meter) for the scene outside - as if there were no people, and you simply wanted to take a photo of the outside ...
7
The color of sunlight reaching the surface changes based on the thickness and quality (in terms of things like particulate matter and water vapor suspended in it) of the air it passes through. Whether the sun is at an angle 30º above the horizon because it is noon in winter at a high latitude or because it is 4 p.m. in the tropics doesn't make much ...
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