More images of the flood can be found at my PBase site.

The workshop had  a number of different areas where members could learn some tips on photography.  Personally I really enjoyed the lighting setup from Les.  Interesting to see how such a simple setup can produce fantastic results.   No need to spend hundreds of dollars on a fancy lighting system to capture great photos.   Here are a few of the shots I took during the evening.

You can check it out here:  Strobist

This website is about one thing: Learning how to use off-camera flash with your dSLR to take your photos to the next level.

Here, you’ll find everything you need to know about how to more effectively use your small speedlights. There are more than 1,000 articles about lighting. Over a million photographers from around the world have learned small-flash lighting techniques from this site. We’re thinking you can, too.

Have fun…….. 

Edit:  For those of you using Canon EOS speedlights here is a great resource for getting help in understanding how the Canon speedlight system works.  This is required reading if you are having trouble with your Canon flash system.   

Flash Photography with Canon EOS Cameras

However I have asked myself many times how much of the program do I actually use?  After some honest reflection I have come to realize that I am just scratching the surface of what one can actually get out of the program.  Then I ask myself if the high cost is really justified, especially if there are a number of excellent photo adjustment tools out there that are basically free.

I thought I would share with you some of the free photo adjustment tools you can check out and perhaps save you a lot of money. 

1.  The GIMP -  This is a very popular photo tool that has been around for a long time and is in fact FREE for use.  Originally getting its start in Linux, recent versions also support Windows.  The program is actually very powerful and with a bit of work can pretty much match what you can do in Photoshop.  One of the biggest issues though is getting used to the user interface.  But once you get the hang of it, it proves to be a very very capable image processor.

2.  Picasa - This small little program from Google is actually a very capable photo tool.  With its excellent photo archiving / viewing features you can also perform some basic photo touch ups.  I personally use this program a lot for viewing photos on my computer as well as preparing photos to email to family.  It is very easy to use and I strongly recommend it, perhaps not as your primary photo tool but as a tool for easily seeing your photos on your PC.

3. Paint.Net - This is another free and powerful tool that I have putting on computers at work.  Here is a little blurb about the program:

Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. An active and growing online community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plugins.

I will end it there, with a small little plug for FastStone added as it is a tool recommended by a lot of people at out Photo Club.  I personally do not use it but from what I have seen it does have a lot of features for viewing and basic editing of photos.  If anyone else has any other suggestions for photo editing tools please feel free to share them here. 

PS:  The tools I use, but are not free. 

-Photoshop CS3 (I get the educational price as I work at a College so it is a fraction of the street cost).
-Adobe LightRoom (I have not been sold yet on this program but I have not tried version 2 yet).
-FotoFusion (excellent tool for placing photos on a canvas or book templates.  I am using the Extreme version.)
-PhotoCleaner  (a very small and simple, but I think a very powerful photo editing tool.  I use it with every photo I have processed for years and is the primary tool I use for resizing photos).
- Noise Ninja 2 (for removing high ISO noise from tools.  The paint brush tool for masking areas of the photo you do not wish to have noise removed from is extremely useful).

1. Getting you to dive into your camera settings to change how the camera meters for a scene.  I know a few people had difficultly with this.  No big deal and nothing a quick glance to your owners manual would not fix.
2. I also wanted to show how the different types of metering affected the overall exposure for a photo.  If you looked at the fstop and shutter-speed for each of your shots you may see a big difference.  To the camera though, each shot would have been “proper” exposure. 

But before we go lets take a look at some metering modes you will come across with cameras.  Note that your camera may not support all metering modes.  Check your manual.  The square in the images below respresent your sensor

• Evaluative (Canon), Matix (Nikon) – Basically takes the entire scene and with some magic algorithms (which differ between the companies) calculates an average for the scene.  Takes into account dark areas and very bright areas of the entire scene.  In most cameras using auto-mode, this is the metering modes the camera uses and works fine for most photos taken in very good light.  However, due to the complex algorithms employed by the camera in this metering mode, the results can be difficult to predict.

•  Center-Weighted Metering – A mode of metering where the camera adjusts its calculation in a weighted manner where the center portion receives  70-80% preference, while the edges receive only 20-30% preference.  Some of you who have been in photography for many many years may know that Center-Weighted metering was the old-standard cameras used.  Replaced today with Evaluative or Matrix metering.  If your camera supports center-weighted metering make some comparisons of it to evaluative metering.  Test during the day with a blue-sky and white clouds.  You may be surprised with the results.

• Partial Metering- Meters a small part of the around the center scene (9-14% depending on camera).   Can be very useful for photographing subjects that overly backlit.  Your subject will be metered properly, however your background will be overexposed.  Using evaluative metering would most likely resulted in the subject being underexposed (if you are having a hard time understanding why please ask for some help).

• Spot-Metering-Unless you have a newer camera or a professional camera you may not have spot-metering.  Nikon cameras usually have spot-metering however and until recently Canon did not support spot-metering on their entry-level or mid-range dSLR’s. As the name suggests, spot-metering meters off of a very specific spot in the scene (2-4% or the scene).  This allows the photographer to get a meter reading from a very specific part of the scene.  A very useful mode in certain situations.

 Now that you have a somewhat basic understanding of each of the metering modes, you may be wondering what is the camera doing or rather trying to do when it meters?  I will explore this in the next update.  If you want to jump ahead a little google the following:

• 18% gray
• Incident vs Reflected Light metering
• Exposure compensation (remember the tip I sent out in the winter to set exposure compensation to +2 when shooting a scene with lots of bright snow.  The same can be said when shooting a photo at the beach as well).

Also for practice when taking a photo learn to look at what the camera is setting for fstop and shutter-speed.  Move the viewfinder betwen light and dark areas and watch how it changes.  Read your manual to find out what exposure-lock is and the button that needs to be pressed to activate it.  Exposure-lock is a very useful feature of a camera and one you should become very familiar with.

Also if you have any questions please ask, either by email or using the comments section of this site.

Just put any camera into complete auto mode and the camera will most likely end up with a nicely exposed photo.  However, there will also be times when these “auto” exposed photos do not turn out the way you may have seen it with your eyes.  According to the camera’s auto metering system the shot was exposed properly.  So what was the problem then?  In a nutshell the camera is not a smart as you think. 

The whole purpose of these lessons is to give you some knowledge of how the camera works and have you become the decision maker in capturing that perfect exposure.  Let’s get off of auto-mode and move into the realm of what Canon calls “creative mode.” 

Assignment:  This is going to be a simple assignment but one in which I hope will show you how the camera, in auto-mode operates based on the type of light metering mode being used.   For this to work you are going to need a camera that has a “P” (Programmed Auto) mode.  This mode, although it is basically auto-mode gives you the photographer a bit more control on some of the camera settings (i.e., type of metering used, ISO etc….).  I hope everyone has read their manual and will know how to change settings.

1.  Try to have camera on a tripod and turn off auto-flash.  We do not want the flash firing.
2.  Pick a scene to photography that has both some dark elements and light elements.
3.  Now take a photograph of the same scene, changing just the type of metering used for each shot.

If you picked a scene with lots of contrast you should see quite a difference in results (especially cameras that have support for a spot meter).   My goal with this exercise is to illustrate how the camera, while in auto-mode can have very drastic changes in results just be changing one setting on the camera.  I also hope you realize that each photo taken in this exercise can be considered (by your cameras calculations) to be a perfect exposure.  They may not look perfect too you but the camera is not an artist.  It is just a machine.  You are the artist and it is up to you to learn how to use your machine (or camera) to capture that one correct or creative exposure.

UPDATE

Some examples of photos I have taken to illustrate how meter mode affects the overall photo.

As you can see, there is quite a bit of change in the overall appearnace of the photo depending on the type of metering used by the camera. 

1st photo – center weight metering
2nd photo – evaluative metering
3rd photo – spot metering

Your photos may show bigger differences or may show smaller differences depending on the lighting of the subject.  What I would like you to do is take photos of scenes using different metering modes and think about what the camera is doing with each metering mode (this exercise will be easier if you read your manual to get definition of what each metering mode actually does).  The next lesson will discuss metering in a bit more detail. 

The whole purpose of this exercise is to get you to see how lighting (and how the camera meters for light) affects the overall exposure.  With a bit of practice you will come to recognize light and how your camera will react.  Once you learn this taking the next step of manually changing exposure settings will be much closer.

Information on how to access the site as well as user credentials will be emailed out shortly. I want to first test the features with a specific few members before I release to everyone. I want to make sure it works as planned.

Thanks.

Does anyone know of a good online place that we can use to post pictures we will be taking over the summer? I would like to have a spot that allows everyone to post pictures within the same account. The website must also support “link to” which will allow people to post their pics back to this site.

Thanks

Richard

First Lesson: Read your camera manual. Cannot stress enough the importance of reading the manual that came with your camera. You have to become comfortable using your camera with all of its dials, buttons and menu settings if you really want to take control of it. Remember, the whole purpose of these lessons is to have you, the photographer have complete control of the camera. The camera is the tool and you are the artist. But before you can paint the picture you first must know your tools.

Although I do have a basic outline of where I want to go with these lessons there is a lot of room for improvision. If you are particularily interested in a specific topic please let me know and I will try and get some info out to you.

Also, I really feel this group will work best if there is a lot of feedback from other members. This blog does have a comment section I an encourage everyone to make use of them. Ask questions, give ideas, link to pictures (web sizes please), etc… Everyone will get more out of this if everyone participates.

Till next time……