Shooting Technique – Part 1 (mshafik)

Self Portrait - Canon 60D, 35mm f/2, 580EX II

I never posted about my shooting or processing techniques, but according to our reader comments, this is a requested post, so here it is, this will be part 1, my own shooting technique, as a Canon user. Now that I think about it, it makes perfect sense to write about this topic, which is one of my favorite reading material, along with post processing and "what's in my camera bag?" posts.

Here's how this will go, in this first part, I will talk about the general camera settings I use, next, I will describe some different shooting scenarios (the most usual ones I face) with examples, and tell you how I handle them.

DISCLAIMER: I am not a professional photographer, i.e. I don't earn money from photography, not even this blog, I learn and buy photography equipment to take great photos of my growing up girls, and because I like it as a hobby. You could call me an advanced amateur/hobbyist.

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GENERAL CAMERA SETTINGS

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This will be described from a Canon DSLR point of view, Nikons or other brands for that matter, might have the same settings under different names, consult your user manual or ask in the comments and we'll do our best to answer.

These are my typical camera settings for 95% of the time, and the first things I setup when I get my hands on a new camera:

Back Button Focusing: check my detailed explanation here, but to make it short I don't want the camera to focus every time I press the shutter button. I usually use the middle (*) button for focusing, the AF-ON button is quite far away, and I set it for AE Lock instead.

Select AF Point Directly: because I don't focus and recompose, I change the AF point I am using all the time, I love to move the joystick (or press the 8-direction pad, for you 60D users) directly to change my AF point, without pressing any other buttons first. It is much more versatile this way, and a press in the middle chooses the center AF point directly.

Single Point AF: I don't focus and recompose ever, except in very rare shooting situations, with the shallow DoF of fast lenses and now full frame sensors, I never got pixel-level sharp results with focus and recompose. I always put one of the focus points on the near eye of my subject, and if required I crop the picture in post to get the desired composition. My 60D had 9 cross type AF points, so shooting like that was always accurate, the 5D Mark II however had crappy outer AF points, but I patiently used them anyway, and now with the 5D Mark III, I live in a 41 cross type AF points all over the frame, splendid!

AI Servo: this setting, in conjunction with back button focusing, is an excellent way to shoot kids. I select the required focus point, and hold the back button to focus, if my subject is stationary, it will act as one shot AF, maybe even more accurate, however if my subject is moving (which my kids always do), the focus point will track them, and that way I never change focus settings. The Mark III however seems to change all my focusing habits, I will report about that in my review, one thing I just discovered while writing this article, low light focusing, the 5D Mark III can focus down to -2 EV, so I tried to focus in very low light (ISO 6400, f/1.4, 1/15 sec) and it failed to focus although I could see through the finder, it just kept hunting, however I thought to try focusing using one shot AF and to my surprise it locked focus easily, weird, maybe I will be using AI Focus in the future (switches automatically between One Shot AF and AI Servo if the subject moves), we'll see how it turns out.

Hi-Speed Continuous Drive: since I am usually tracking moving subjects, I want the camera to be ready anytime for fast shooting, I don't understand the slow speed continuous drive, I can control that with my shutter finger. I don't want to miss a shot because I have to fiddle with some setting. Again, the 5D Mark III is changing my behavior, the silent mode is really silent, and I love being discrete, so I am using it at high speed, which in my case is 3 fps.

Evaluative Metering: I used to shoot center-weighted metering full time with my G11, 550D and 60D, I got the most consistent (not accurate) results that way, but it required lots of use of exposure compensation. However, I learned by chance that when using the evaluative metering on Canon DSLRs, it will give more metering weight to the selected AF point, I never knew that before, so when I tried it on the 5D Mark II, I found I could get more accurate results most of the time, and it certainly solved the always needed exposure compensation issue for me.

Aperture Priority Mode: I shoot in this mode 90% of the time, I select the suitable aperture for the required depth of field.

Manual ISO: rarely do I use Auto ISO, I select my own aperture, half press the shutter to see the resulting shutter speed, and adjust ISO as necessary, I use the lowest ISO possible most of the time. After a few years of shooting experience, I can now tell in certain lighting what will the shutter speed be based on a certain aperture and ISO.


RAW: I shoot RAW because I can tweak my white balance and carefully control the sharpness and details that I want, check this article for more details.

Auto White Balance: since I got the 60D, I have been an auto WB user, the camera nails it 90% of the time, it is really good except under tungsten lighting where I need my WB to be 2500k, and since I am shooting RAW anyway, I can tweak the WB in post.

Beep Off: I hate it, and it draws too much attention (event photographers, take note), if I'm using one shot AF, I can see the green dot in the viewfinder confirming focus.

LCD Image Review - Off: I don't like the camera to display every picture after I take it on the back LCD, and when shooting in the dark and the LCD turns on brightly, it dazzles your eyes. Some times I set it to 2 seconds when I want to have a quick look at the image or the histogram after I take the picture.

LCD Preview - Histogram: I don't judge the picture by how it looks on the back LCD, but rather use the histogram to determine if I'm correct or I need to adjust something.

LCD Preview - Blinkies: I also set the blinkies on, if you have blown out highlights they blink in the preview image, this way you can quickly determine if the blown out highlights are in an important part of the picture.

One Touch 100% Zoom: I didn't have this option before until I got the 5D Mark III, one press on the zoom button goes all the way to 100% magnification on the selected focus point so that I could judge the focus.

Custom Settings (C1, C2 & C3): I use one of these modes to store the following settings so that when I give my camera to someone else, they can get good pictures, I set the "focus on" to the shutter button, auto ISO, all AF points active, single shot drive, aperture priority and f/8. It works.

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SHOOTING SCENARIOS

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Before I delve into the examples, here's one more personal preference of mine, I shoot available light portraits 90% of the time, I find that carrying lighting equipment is a hassle, and I usually prefer to go out of the house with the camera and just one prime lens, The only zoom lens I currently have is the 24-105 L, and I only take it when I know I'll need a wide angle.

Available Light Portrait, 60D & 35mm f/2

Here's my first example, I used the upper middle focus point to focus on his right eye (left eye in the picture), and snapped away. I don't give any importance to the background blowing out in that case, as long as my subject is correctly exposed, let the background go to highlight hell, it's out of focus anyway.

Cute Girl, Canon 60D & 85 f/1.8

Another available light portrait, when shooting in direct sunlight, I try to keep my subjects standing in open shade, like this one, one thing to take care of, is to make sure the left part lit with the sun is not severely over-exposed, with experience, you'd be able to tell how much your camera will be able to recover. Focus was on one of her eyes.

Hair Spray, Canon 60D & 85 f/1.8

Here I did the same as above, but I knew I'd have to push the shadows open because of the high contrast, it works, I stopped down a bit for more depth of field, and chose a high ISO (400?) despite the strong light to get a high enough shutter speed to freeze the water droplets.

One thing I learned from shooting on a beach with the sea as a background, when shooting on aperture priority and evaluative metering, I usually increase the exposure compensation by 1.7 ~ 2 stops.

Happy Strawberry, Canon 5D Mark III & 100 Macro L

Same as the first picture, focus on the near eye, and the evaluative metering did the rest, that macro has some nice bokeh.

Contemplation, Canon 60D & 85mm f/1.8

Same scenario, but lighting is from an open window, I love it's softness and gradual transition from highlights to shadows.

Bad metering, Canon 60D & 85mm f/1.8

Solved with a Canon flash in the Lumiquest SBIII

Now we move to artificial lighting, as you can from the first picture, the camera's meter was fooled by the bright background, and our subject was living in shadows. In the second picture, I left my camera in aperture priority mode, and used my Canon 580EX (HSS active) with a Lumiquest SBIII to the camera left and fired away, the camera and the flash figured out the correct amount of light required using E-TTL. The speedlite was triggered by the camera's popup flash.

The picture doesn't quite scream "lighting", but rather a subtle effect, unlike the next one.

Obvious Lighting, Canon 60D & 35mm f/2

Here I wanted to express the lighting effect more, my friends did like it and their comment was "looks like it was shot in a studio", my camera was still on aperture priority mode with the same flash and Lumiquest softbox, but this time I dialed in a -1 exposure compensation, this, in Canon cameras, reduces the ambient exposure by one stop, and the flash did the rest of the lifting. What I really like here, is how soft the SBIII lighting is in relation to its small-ish size.

Old Man, Canon 60D & 35mm f/2

Now we move indoors, my favorite and most used technique is Neil VN's on-camera bounce flash technique, it is very simple, quick and effective. In these situations I use manual exposure mode, I set my desired aperture (for depth of field control) and shutter speed (less than or equal sync speed, depending on subject motion and ambient light level), then set any ISO and take a test shot without flash.

I usually try to keep the ambient 1 or 1.5 stops under exposed, this way it is still registering enough lighting, but not enough to decide the color temperature or the lighting position, then I turn on my flash on E-TTL and bounce it to the required direction (usually to my right or left, and behind my back), your new light source is the patch of light where your flash is hitting. set the white balance the same as the flash since this will be the dominant light in the final picture, if the flash power is not enough, I will increase the ISO or open the aperture a little.

If you look again at the picture, it is not that apparent I was using a flash, the secret is not to underexpose the ambient by much, and to bounce in an area reasonably far away from your subject, that it won't be totally obvious.

Would you imagine this was lit with flash? Canon 60D & 85mm f/1.8

Here I used the exact same technique, but underexposed the ambient very little, less than one stop, the flash is acting as a fill light.

Mr. Zizo, Canon 5D Mark II & 50mm f/1.4

Same as above, the flash was bounced from a far away ceiling. By keeping the ambient levels apparent, you make the picture more natural looking.

Smile! Canon 60D & 85mm f/1.8

The final bounce flash picture, same as above, but more obvious since the ambient was very low, and 80% of the lighting is bounce flash.

Jet Ski, Canon 5D Mark III & 200mm f/2.8 L

This final picture has no flash, but what's different is that I used manual exposure mode, which makes perfect sense in this scenario, the jet skis were moving fast and in different positions regarding the sun, and I wanted to get consistent exposures, so I switched to manual mode, adjusted the settings so that I got my histogram barely touching the right side, and then I blasted away at 6 fps. :-)

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Well, that marks the end of part one, in part two Michael will tell us about his own shooting technique from a Nikon user point of view. I hope you've enjoyed this post as much as I did writing it, and I'd love to see any questions, suggestions, requests in the comments. Shoot away.

BTW, what do you think of the new layout, with the airy theme, larger pictures (no need for clicking anymore) and all?


RELATED POSTS

Canon 60D Review

Canon 35mm f/2 Review
Canon 85mm f/1.8 Review
Canon Speedlites Review
TTL Flash Tutorial
RAW vs JPEG
Back Button Focusing

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Further Experiments with the Nikon D600's Exposure

This post is a follow up to my earlier post about experiments on the Nikon D600's exposure.  In that post my observation was that the Nikon D600 appeared to have a tendency to not give importance to highlights.  For some shooters, the resulting image looks fine.  For me, I like to protect highlights and there were way too many blown highlights even with ADL (i.e. the exposure is too "aggressive").

I posted about this observation on DPReview.  Here is the thread.  I received many helpful suggestions.  I tried out the suggestions, and I will discuss the results in this post, learning a few things in the process.



METERING METHOD
One suggestion is that I ought to meter a midtone then check the highlights.  That means I find an object in the scene that is in Zone V (middle gray tone, such as grass and dark-toned skin).  I spot meter that object and use manual exposure to adjust the exposure to 0.  Alternatively, in matrix mode, I focus on that object using single point AF.  The camera will attempt to render that object as a middle gray tone.

If a middle gray object is rendered as middle gray then the exposure will indeed be accurate for that object, and every other object in the scene will also fall into the right place.  However, sometimes the scene's dynamic range is outside the range of the sensor, so to avoid losing highlights, I should also spot meter any relevant highlights in the scene to see how far above Zone V they are, and adjust exposure downward as necessary to protect the highlight.  (If I do this, I need to alter the tone curve in post-processing to bring the midtones back up.)

If this method works for you, then it is a fairly accurate method and you don't need to read any further.  In my case, I usually shoot candid portraits of my family (wife and two kids).  They don't usually stay put in one place, making this method hard for me to implement.

PERILS OF AUTO AF
In the previous experiment, I used Auto-Area AF.  That means the camera automatically selects the object to focus on.  The potential problem with this is that the camera may choose an object that is dark-toned or bright-toned and the matrix metering would be influenced by the tone of that object.  So, blindly trusting the Auto AF may result in an unexpected exposure.

However, in my case, when I use Auto AF I don't just accept whatever AF point the camera gives me.  Rather, I have an area that I want to focus on, even before I half-press the shutter.  When I half-press the shutter and the camera chooses the area to focus on, I see whether it is what I intended or not.  If it is as I intended, then I go ahead and shoot.  If it is not as I intended, I refocus.  I do that until the camera chooses the area I want, not some random area.  I find that, with practice, this method can be faster than single point AF.  I will post about that next time.

For purposes of this experiment, the fact that I used Auto AF as opposed to single point AF does not have an impact because I made sure the camera chose an AF point that would be the same as if I had chosen single point AF anyway.  It's just a different way to get to the same end result.

AF POINT POSITION
Another suggestion was that the reason the previous experiment showed exposure is because the AF point was positioned on the black Ferrari, which is of course a dark-toned subject.  It is well known that Nikon's Matrix Metering takes into account the entire scene but gives more weight to the object that is focused upon (because it is likely to be the subject).  In the case of the Ferrari, the AF point was indeed on the car, as I intended.  Here it is (the AF points for the other shots were similar).

One explanation to the overexposure is that because the Ferrari is dark-toned and the AF points were on the Ferrari, therefore the camera tried to make the Ferrari a midtone instead of a shadow.

I tried to take a shot of a scene yesterday to see how much the scene metering would be influenced my the selection of the object to be in focus.

I tried a yellow pipe in shade...

dark green bushes in shade...

a sunlit gray wall (I focused and recomposed a bit because the AF point couldn't reach it)

I chose Program exposure.  The exposure was the same in each case:  f/7.1, 1/200, ISO 100.  This was unexpected for me.  I thought the exposure would be influenced by the focal point, so I ran more tests.  This time I used a Fotodiox Trifold Reflector as a target. It has a gray card, black card, and white card (as well as silver reflectors on the other side).

I first ran the test with just the trifold reflector, but the camera couldn't focus on the black or gray sides.  I added a black leather jacket and a white undershirt.  With the AF Point on the gray card, the exposure was 1600 ISO, f/5.6, 1/30:

With the AF Point on the black leather jacket, the exposure was still 1600 ISO, f/5.6, 1/30:

However, with the AF Point on the white shirt, the exposure did change 1 stop to 1600 ISO, f/5.6, 1/60:

Looking back at these tests, I did not observe a change in exposure when the AF point was on a dark-toned object (doesn't mean it doesn't ever happen; just that I didn't observe it on these tests).  I did observe a change in exposure when the AF point was on a light-toned object.  Therefore we ought to pay attention to the AF point location because it may affect the exposure.

As an aside, in case you're wondering, what if instead of autofocusing, I just used manual focus override (I was using the 24-70 with M/A mode) but kept the AF point over the black or white card?  I did try that and in that case: 1) the camera did not record the AF point - as though I had used manual exposure; 2) there was no change in exposure no matter where the overriden AF point was.

TRYING OUT THE SUGGESTIONS
So anyway I had taken more shots yesterday, this time using some of the suggestions from the DPReview forum.  My subject was my son, whose complexion probably falls into Zone V and I used single AF point.  Here are three test shots where I was able to focus on a midtoned subject.  And a screen capture showing the clipped highlights.

Test shot 1:

Test shot 2:

Test shot 3:

As we can see there are still plenty of clipped highlights.  In the previous post where the subject was a black Ferrari, one hypothesis was that the exposure was weighted toward the black Ferrari, which fooled the camera into overexposure, thus the abundance of blown highlights.  In these examples, the focal point was on a midtone, but there are still many blown highlights.

The exposures above are not necessarily wrong. Like I said in the last post, if you don't postprocess at all, the images look fine (lacking in contrast because I intentionally chose the Neutral picture style, but the exposure of the subject is more or less correct).

However, it appears that the camera doesn't care much about protecting highlights.  That is a concern for shooters like me who postprocess their images and who care about highlights (some shooters don't).  For shooters like me, I would describe this kind of exposure as "aggressive."

NOT ALL IS LOST
When I looked at the images above and their clipped highlights, it seemed disappointing because of the amount of clipping, even in relevant areas like the skin (the red channel was clipped).  But what I found is that the clipping display is not accurate and that there is indeed more recoverable information than is shown by the clipping display.

Sample 1:

Clipped highlights:

But if instead of highlight recovery I use digital exposure compensation, here's what I get (in this case -1 EC).

No clipped highlights at all.

And what's strange is if I undo the digital exposure compensation, here are the clipped highlights:

Sample 2:

Clipped highlights:

Digital exposure comp -2 [barely any clipped highlights :) ]:

Undoing the digital exposure compensation:

I found out that what ViewNX2 was doing was to take the initial display of the clipped highlights and histogram from the JPEG image (!).  Here's the JPEG's clipped highlights - identical to that of the initial display of clipped highlights and histogram:

Sample 3:

Initial clipped highlights from Raw:

Clipped highlights from JPEG for comparison:

With -2EV exposure compensation applied - virtually no clipped highlights.

Exposure compensation undone.

So, after all, the D600 wasn't losing anywhere near as much info as I previously thought.  Indeed, it was great that the camera appeared to be maximizing the amount of light, short of blowing relevant highlights, i.e., exposing to the right.  This could be awesome for minimizing noise.

However, in low-contrast scenes, it appears that the histogram is not biased to the right.  In the test shot below, you can see that the camera placed the tones toward the left side of the histogram even though there was plenty of room for highlights.

To my eyes, this was close to the actual amount of light in the scene.  If the camera were exposing to the right, then the histogram would be bunched toward the right side but it is not.  So, rather than ETTR, I think the camera is attempting to get the 'correct' exposure of the subject.


In high-contrast situations, the D600's attempt to get the "correct" exposure of the subject may result in the loss of some highlights (even with Active D-Lighting).  Nonetheless, you could say that the D600's exposure is correct in the sense that the subject will be "correctly" exposed.  For shooters with that perspective, the D600's metering algorithm is perfectly fine.


AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH


On the other hand, because I typically postprocess shots, then my preferred type of exposure is the one that maximizes the amount of information on the sensor.  For shooters like me, you need to be aware that it appears the D600 will prefer to get the "correct" exposure of the subject rather than try to fit the dynamic range of the scene within the sensor's range.  Fortunately, the D600 appears to have more highlight range than was previously apparent, and therefore it is actually able to preserve much of the highlights.

However, if I truly want to fit the scene's range into the sensor's range, a more conservative method would be to just avoid blown highlights, and let the rest of the tones fall where they may.


Here is a shot with the D600's automatic exposure:

Here are the clipped highlights after -2EV exposure compensation applied in ViewNX2:

Here is another shot of the same scene.  This one had -1.3EV dialed in at the time of shooting.

Here are the clipped highlights - without any digital exposure compensation applied.

With further exposure compensation in post, all but the brightest specular highlights were recovered, i.e., the scene's range was able to fit in the sensor's range.

I could even reduce the exposure compensation adjustment and still retain every relevant detail.  This is at -1.5 exposure comp:

Using this method in a low-contrast scene, the image would appear overexposed but that is fine because the sensor was exposed to the maximum amount of light possible.  Bringing down the exposure would result in a lower-noise image than a normally-exposed image.  In a high-contrast scene, this method may make the subject look underexposed but the D600 appears to have exceptional shadow recovery abilities, therefore bringing the exposure back up would not be difficult for a D600 image.  I would also prefer to have a little more noise than to lose highlights that would otherwise be within the sensor's range.

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