Tag: photography

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Camera features helpful for nature photography

The first few posts on this blog were what I would call introductory and general postings about the site and its photographs. In this and the next several postings I hope to address specifics about the equipment, techniques, and processing that are fundamental to nature photography. Since there are many experienced photographers, professionals and advanced amateurs, viewing this site, I hope the posts will generate questions, comments, and discussion - so please, join in. 

Selection of a camera is about as fundamental as it gets when you want to take pictures of our natural world. While the brand of camera is not so important, the features available and the quality of the camera are crucial for good image capture. In other words, a good camera can be used poorly and result in mediocre photos but a bad camera, generally, cannot produce good photos. Having said that, there are many good point-and-shoot cameras and even mobile phones that can take very good photos, but at some point all serious nature photographers will want to take the plunge to a digital single lens reflex (dSLR) camera. Why do I think this is true?

The dSLR gives the photographer tremendous flexibility and choices when photographing in a variety of conditions and terrain. So what are the characteristics of a dSLR camera? The major difference between a dSLR and a point-and-shoot or super-zoom camera is the availability of multiple, interchangeable lenses (and the internal mechanics that allow this.) Interchangeable lenses give the photographer the choice to determine perspective, range of focus (depth of field, DoF), and composition of a photo. Changing lenses changes the "feel" of a photo and not just the sense of closeness to the subject.  Modern dSLR cameras can use standard lenses, wide-angle lenses, telephoto lenses, and a variety of specialty lenses used in creative photography. Manufacturers of the lenses offer a variety of quality and, therefore, price of the lenses to allow lower cost investments initially and higher cost investments for higher quality as skills progress. Lenses are the most important and most expensive part of a nature photographers equipment and I will use a later posting to discuss lens selection in greater detail.

Other features in a dSLR camera that offer flexibility and creative control include the ability to move from automatic control of the camera settings to manual control of virtually all of the settings. You might think that automatic control is a good thing, and sometimes it is, but being able to adjust the settings manually can dramatically alter the quality of your photos. The three components of proper exposure of a photo can each be controlled manually on a dSLR camera. The aperture size determines how much light passes through the lens to the image sensor. Aperture, as we will discuss in more detail in the next posting, also is a key component of the range of focus or depth of field (DoF) in an image.  Shutter speed determines how long the sensor is exposed to light coming through the lens. Shutter speed is another key component of exposure but also determines the effects of movement (either the subject or the camera) on the image. The third determinant of exposure that can be controlled on a dSLR camera is the ISO or the sensitivity of the sensor to light. These three components of exposure (aperture, shutter speed, and ISO) will be discussed in depth next time.

Another setting that can be adjusted automatically or manually on a dSLR camera is the focus. The ability to focus manually is crucial to the nature photographer who often has to shoot through a cluttered scene. Most auto focus systems adjust the lens to the point of greatest contrast of the nearest object in the area of focus. Sometimes this is the subject of the photo and sometimes it is a tree branch in front of the subject. With a dSLR camera you can focus manually or you can choose the point in the viewfinder that the camera will choose as the primary subject. Most dSLRs allow multiple ways to select the focus automatically as a single point, from multiple points, and even from points tracking a moving subject. Since focus is one of the five ways to ruin a photo, this flexibility is needed in nature photography.

Auto-focus speed is another key factor in selecting a dSLR camera. Shutter lag was a technical problem introduced by digital photography. There is nothing worse than pressing the shutter button and having the camera take the photo a third of a second after the bird took off! Shutter lag is still common in point-and-shoot and super-zoom cameras (although it is improving) while quality dSLRs capture the image when you press the shutter release.

Most dSLRs offer the ability to shoot in high speed bursts of images. This is very helpful when shooting birds in flight or a rapidly moving animal. The burst rates have increased from about 3-4 frames per second to well over 12 fps. This feature is useful in sports photography as well as nature photography.

While image sensors are improving rapidly in all cameras, dSLRs tend to have the largest sensors and the highest resolution in each manufacturer's product line. Sensor size and resolution are key components to high quality images and the ability to print these images at a large size. While the pixel count is highly touted in camera ads, it is really the sensor size and pixel size that determine resolution of the image. Larges sensors that approximate the size of 35mm film are referred to as full-frame sensors while smaller sensors are called crop sensors. There are advantages and disadvantages of each but dSLR cameras seem to be moving towards larger, full-frame sensors, even though the cost is typically higher.

The last advantage of a dSLR camera over others tends to be the quality of the construction. The dSLRs tend to be larger, heavier, and have a ruggedness with more metal rather than plastic construction and better seals to prevent dust and water from entering the camera and damaging the sensor or internal mechanics of the camera. These are important to the nature photographer but also create problems of greater bulk and weight when photographing in remote locations.

So like everything in life there are trade-offs when selecting your "perfect" camera. Features are critical, quality is essential, but there are many good quality cameras available that, when coupled with a quality lens, will produce amazing photographs.

Posted on

Camera features helpful for nature photography

The first few posts on this blog were what I would call introductory and general postings about the site and its photographs. In this and the next several postings I hope to address specifics about the equipment, techniques, and processing that are fundamental to nature photography. Since there are many experienced photographers, professionals and advanced amateurs, viewing this site, I hope the posts will generate questions, comments, and discussion - so please, join in. 

Selection of a camera is about as fundamental as it gets when you want to take pictures of our natural world. While the brand of camera is not so important, the features available and the quality of the camera are crucial for good image capture. In other words, a good camera can be used poorly and result in mediocre photos but a bad camera, generally, cannot produce good photos. Having said that, there are many good point-and-shoot cameras and even mobile phones that can take very good photos, but at some point all serious nature photographers will want to take the plunge to a digital single lens reflex (dSLR) camera. Why do I think this is true?

The dSLR gives the photographer tremendous flexibility and choices when photographing in a variety of conditions and terrain. So what are the characteristics of a dSLR camera? The major difference between a dSLR and a point-and-shoot or super-zoom camera is the availability of multiple, interchangeable lenses (and the internal mechanics that allow this.) Interchangeable lenses give the photographer the choice to determine perspective, range of focus (depth of field, DoF), and composition of a photo. Changing lenses changes the "feel" of a photo and not just the sense of closeness to the subject.  Modern dSLR cameras can use standard lenses, wide-angle lenses, telephoto lenses, and a variety of specialty lenses used in creative photography. Manufacturers of the lenses offer a variety of quality and, therefore, price of the lenses to allow lower cost investments initially and higher cost investments for higher quality as skills progress. Lenses are the most important and most expensive part of a nature photographers equipment and I will use a later posting to discuss lens selection in greater detail.

Other features in a dSLR camera that offer flexibility and creative control include the ability to move from automatic control of the camera settings to manual control of virtually all of the settings. You might think that automatic control is a good thing, and sometimes it is, but being able to adjust the settings manually can dramatically alter the quality of your photos. The three components of proper exposure of a photo can each be controlled manually on a dSLR camera. The aperture size determines how much light passes through the lens to the image sensor. Aperture, as we will discuss in more detail in the next posting, also is a key component of the range of focus or depth of field (DoF) in an image.  Shutter speed determines how long the sensor is exposed to light coming through the lens. Shutter speed is another key component of exposure but also determines the effects of movement (either the subject or the camera) on the image. The third determinant of exposure that can be controlled on a dSLR camera is the ISO or the sensitivity of the sensor to light. These three components of exposure (aperture, shutter speed, and ISO) will be discussed in depth next time.

Another setting that can be adjusted automatically or manually on a dSLR camera is the focus. The ability to focus manually is crucial to the nature photographer who often has to shoot through a cluttered scene. Most auto focus systems adjust the lens to the point of greatest contrast of the nearest object in the area of focus. Sometimes this is the subject of the photo and sometimes it is a tree branch in front of the subject. With a dSLR camera you can focus manually or you can choose the point in the viewfinder that the camera will choose as the primary subject. Most dSLRs allow multiple ways to select the focus automatically as a single point, from multiple points, and even from points tracking a moving subject. Since focus is one of the five ways to ruin a photo, this flexibility is needed in nature photography.

Auto-focus speed is another key factor in selecting a dSLR camera. Shutter lag was a technical problem introduced by digital photography. There is nothing worse than pressing the shutter button and having the camera take the photo a third of a second after the bird took off! Shutter lag is still common in point-and-shoot and super-zoom cameras (although it is improving) while quality dSLRs capture the image when you press the shutter release.

Most dSLRs offer the ability to shoot in high speed bursts of images. This is very helpful when shooting birds in flight or a rapidly moving animal. The burst rates have increased from about 3-4 frames per second to well over 12 fps. This feature is useful in sports photography as well as nature photography.

While image sensors are improving rapidly in all cameras, dSLRs tend to have the largest sensors and the highest resolution in each manufacturer's product line. Sensor size and resolution are key components to high quality images and the ability to print these images at a large size. While the pixel count is highly touted in camera ads, it is really the sensor size and pixel size that determine resolution of the image. Larges sensors that approximate the size of 35mm film are referred to as full-frame sensors while smaller sensors are called crop sensors. There are advantages and disadvantages of each but dSLR cameras seem to be moving towards larger, full-frame sensors, even though the cost is typically higher.

The last advantage of a dSLR camera over others tends to be the quality of the construction. The dSLRs tend to be larger, heavier, and have a ruggedness with more metal rather than plastic construction and better seals to prevent dust and water from entering the camera and damaging the sensor or internal mechanics of the camera. These are important to the nature photographer but also create problems of greater bulk and weight when photographing in remote locations.

So like everything in life there are trade-offs when selecting your "perfect" camera. Features are critical, quality is essential, but there are many good quality cameras available that, when coupled with a quality lens, will produce amazing photographs.

Posted on

Post-processing workflow

In the last two posts I presented data about how "successful" my picture taking has been and what common disasters immediately ruin a photograph. On this post I will address how non-catastrophic photo errors can be corrected in the post-processing phase or the "electronic darkroom."

Most snapshot photographers take a photo and allow the in-camera processor to create an image that can be viewed, shared or printed.  Usually, these images are in a file format called Joint Photographic Experts Group or JPEG.  JPEG is the most common file format used on the internet and is a compressed 8-bit file that has been around since the early 1990s. There are three concerns for serious photographers about capturing images in the JPEG format: 1) JPEG is a compressed format so much of the image data is thrown away during the compression in order to make the file size much smaller, 2) JPEG uses a lossy compression algorithm, meaning that every time the file is changed and saved it is re-compressed causing further loss of image data (the picture quality deteriorates), and 3) JPEG is (almost always) an 8-bit format that does not lend itself well to significant image manipulation in common software programs such as Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop. So what is the alternative to JPEG?

Digital cameras capture an image from the sensor in a RAW format.  The RAW files contain luminance (brightness or intensity), redness, greenness, and blueness data from every single pixel in the sensor.  This creates a huge 12 or 14-bit file that is not viewable without processing by additional software. The RAW data are compressed and converted to JPEG files for viewing in the camera and, depending on the camera quality and settings, are saved as JPEG, RAW, or both file types. Most advanced photographers save their images as RAW files so they can be saved and manipulated as needed without worry about data loss caused by file compression. The RAW files can be digitally manipulated over and over and the images will not lose data or quality. The RAW files have many different names depending upon the brand of camera used.  Canon names their RAW files with the extension .CR2 and Nikon uses the file extension .NEF, in any regard, these are RAW files. I allow the editing software to convert my Canon .CR2 files into .DNG (digital negatives), a non-compressed, open-source file type that is common to almost all RAW processing programs.  Conversion of any RAW file is necessary for viewing, sharing and printing and many file formats can be created from the RAW files.  The common formats are JPEG, TIFF, PSD, GIF, and PNG. The differences in these formats are not important now.

So, the point of this posting was to overview the workflow that I use to prepare RAW images for viewing, sharing or printing. I use Adobe Lightroom for 90+ percent of my post-processing and use Photoshop for most of the last 5-10%. Lightroom is a database program optimized for photography.  It catalogs the images so I can find what I want from more than 35,000 images in a few seconds but it is also a powerful image editing tool that is non-destructive and reversible. 

When I import a file from the memory card of my camera, I follow a specific workflow to prepare the images for viewing. First, I rename the images to the day's photoshoot combined with the camera-generated file number, and, at the same time, I tag each images with searchable keywords that indicate the state, season, subject, and special tags for other processing. While this occurs during the image import, I look for the 5 causes of failures and delete these images on the spot. During the file import, I allow Lightroom to perform common "adjustments" to white balance, exposure, contrast, clarity, sharpening, and removal of digital noise - the same sort of things done to create a JPEG file in the camera but without compression of the file and loss of data. Digital cameras automatically capture the EXIF information for each image - this includes date, time, camera, lens, shutter speed, aperture, ISO, flash, copyright, and other information embedded into the image file.

After import and screening for 'bad' images, I view every image for 'first round' processing. I straighten the image and crop it if necessary. Next, I recheck the white balance and adjust the exposure and contrast to assure there is no 'clipping' of the whites or blacks that cause loss of clarity or detail in the image. Next, I add more specific keyword tags to selected images and if needed apply fine detail exposure and contrast enhancements to make the image 'come to life" more realistically as I saw it.  Finally, I geo-tag the approximate location of the shot on Google Earth and back-up the files on the computer and re-format the memory card in the camera for the next day's shooting. 

I put the images out of mind for a day or two and then revisit the image folder for the day to compare and eliminate duplicate (or near duplicate) images. I may refine the keyword tags and grade the images from one to five stars (still no 4 or 5-star images!) The starred images may receive additional cropping, exposure, or sharpening adjustments. Finally, a few images will go to Photoshop for advanced editing to remove artifacts or stitch together panoramas or high dynamic range images.

So there you have it, a lot of steps but much of the process is automated.  The result is searchable, unique, refined images that are ready for conversion to JPEGs for sharing or printing. I will expand much of the post-processing information in later posts. But now it is time to start shooting again.

Posted on

Post-processing workflow

In the last two posts I presented data about how "successful" my picture taking has been and what common disasters immediately ruin a photograph. On this post I will address how non-catastrophic photo errors can be corrected in the post-processing phase or the "electronic darkroom."

Most snapshot photographers take a photo and allow the in-camera processor to create an image that can be viewed, shared or printed.  Usually, these images are in a file format called Joint Photographic Experts Group or JPEG.  JPEG is the most common file format used on the internet and is a compressed 8-bit file that has been around since the early 1990s. There are three concerns for serious photographers about capturing images in the JPEG format: 1) JPEG is a compressed format so much of the image data is thrown away during the compression in order to make the file size much smaller, 2) JPEG uses a lossy compression algorithm, meaning that every time the file is changed and saved it is re-compressed causing further loss of image data (the picture quality deteriorates), and 3) JPEG is (almost always) an 8-bit format that does not lend itself well to significant image manipulation in common software programs such as Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop. So what is the alternative to JPEG?

Digital cameras capture an image from the sensor in a RAW format.  The RAW files contain luminance (brightness or intensity), redness, greenness, and blueness data from every single pixel in the sensor.  This creates a huge 12 or 14-bit file that is not viewable without processing by additional software. The RAW data are compressed and converted to JPEG files for viewing in the camera and, depending on the camera quality and settings, are saved as JPEG, RAW, or both file types. Most advanced photographers save their images as RAW files so they can be saved and manipulated as needed without worry about data loss caused by file compression. The RAW files can be digitally manipulated over and over and the images will not lose data or quality. The RAW files have many different names depending upon the brand of camera used.  Canon names their RAW files with the extension .CR2 and Nikon uses the file extension .NEF, in any regard, these are RAW files. I allow the editing software to convert my Canon .CR2 files into .DNG (digital negatives), a non-compressed, open-source file type that is common to almost all RAW processing programs.  Conversion of any RAW file is necessary for viewing, sharing and printing and many file formats can be created from the RAW files.  The common formats are JPEG, TIFF, PSD, GIF, and PNG. The differences in these formats are not important now.

So, the point of this posting was to overview the workflow that I use to prepare RAW images for viewing, sharing or printing. I use Adobe Lightroom for 90+ percent of my post-processing and use Photoshop for most of the last 5-10%. Lightroom is a database program optimized for photography.  It catalogs the images so I can find what I want from more than 35,000 images in a few seconds but it is also a powerful image editing tool that is non-destructive and reversible. 

When I import a file from the memory card of my camera, I follow a specific workflow to prepare the images for viewing. First, I rename the images to the day's photoshoot combined with the camera-generated file number, and, at the same time, I tag each images with searchable keywords that indicate the state, season, subject, and special tags for other processing. While this occurs during the image import, I look for the 5 causes of failures and delete these images on the spot. During the file import, I allow Lightroom to perform common "adjustments" to white balance, exposure, contrast, clarity, sharpening, and removal of digital noise - the same sort of things done to create a JPEG file in the camera but without compression of the file and loss of data. Digital cameras automatically capture the EXIF information for each image - this includes date, time, camera, lens, shutter speed, aperture, ISO, flash, copyright, and other information embedded into the image file.

After import and screening for 'bad' images, I view every image for 'first round' processing. I straighten the image and crop it if necessary. Next, I recheck the white balance and adjust the exposure and contrast to assure there is no 'clipping' of the whites or blacks that cause loss of clarity or detail in the image. Next, I add more specific keyword tags to selected images and if needed apply fine detail exposure and contrast enhancements to make the image 'come to life" more realistically as I saw it.  Finally, I geo-tag the approximate location of the shot on Google Earth and back-up the files on the computer and re-format the memory card in the camera for the next day's shooting. 

I put the images out of mind for a day or two and then revisit the image folder for the day to compare and eliminate duplicate (or near duplicate) images. I may refine the keyword tags and grade the images from one to five stars (still no 4 or 5-star images!) The starred images may receive additional cropping, exposure, or sharpening adjustments. Finally, a few images will go to Photoshop for advanced editing to remove artifacts or stitch together panoramas or high dynamic range images.

So there you have it, a lot of steps but much of the process is automated.  The result is searchable, unique, refined images that are ready for conversion to JPEGs for sharing or printing. I will expand much of the post-processing information in later posts. But now it is time to start shooting again.

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