Sivilingeniør, terrengsyklist og relativt datakyndig. Ble bitt av sykkeldilla i ung alder, men først i 2008 slo det ut for fullt. Krydrer gjerne tilværelsen med gåturer og skigåing. Har siden 2009 bidratt på Sykkelhjulet.no og gjør det fortsatt. Trives best i skogen på sykkel, gjerne med følge og kamerautstyr.
Back in the film days a common way to modify the final result was to add filters in front of the lens while capturing those photos. These filters can be used on a digital camera as well, but the results might be a bit different.
A lot of these filters manipulate colors. Filters like yellow filters, grey filters, red filters, warmth filters and so on, will generally be of little use as long as you know how to use a photo editing application. Combine this application with a RAW format file from your camera and you are good to go. The raw format save all your sensor information and makes it easy to adjust color warmth (Kelvin) in your image and the balance between Red, Green and Blue.
There are a couple of filters that are hard to mimic in an application. Filters that reduces light and polarizing filters. The first group is actually filter that you don’t really need unless you want a 60 second exposure at a sunny day. Neutral Density (ND) filters will just reduce the amount of light that lets trough to your sensor. You can do this partly on your camera, but a 60 second exposure is hard to compensate with high aperture value and low ISO numbers. And a photo taken with f/5.6 and 1 second exposure at ISO100 will be totally different that a photo taken with f/22 and 1/100 second exposure at ISO100. To understand the relation between aperture, time and ISO, have a look at this post.
NiSi filtersett
While ND filters reduces all light other filters can reduce light at a given wave length. Night sky filters are filters that stops wave lengths from mercury vapor and sodium. This will reduce light pollution from close by cities. The most commonly used filter is the Ultra Violet (UV) filter. Film cameras had to have this filter to stop UV light from hitting the film. Today a digital camera got this filter built in, with some exceptions.
Polarizing filters will only let through light waves/rays that has a given orientation. Once you turn the filter, waves from reflections on your objects will not let through. If you use a polarizing filter on a camera pointing to a puddle or a calm lake you can decide if you want the reflection or the bottom of the puddle or lake. If the water is too deep you will only see a non-reflective surface in a dark colour. This filter can be used on most surfaces that creates reflections.
I mentioned ND filters but there is a group of ND filters that you really don’t need and that is the graduated ones. As long as you know how to use your photo editing application, applying a exposure compensation on parts of the images is really easy. If there is a big difference in exposure levels on your subjects you might need to bracket the image on two or three exposure adjustments. Adding a filter on your lens will result in a permanent adjustment on your raw file. If you put the filter on just a centigrade out of line, your image is ruined permanently.
So what you really need in your photo bag is a polarizing filter and maybe a ND filter or two if you like to take long exposures. If you’re into night photo and want to get rid of that light pollution you can buy yourself a filter that removes these wave lengths.
Hope this article was of interest for you and that it made sense. Do not hesitate asking questions or post comments.
Norway is still affected by Corvid-19 and it is strongly advisable to stay at home or close to your home. Since we live on the countryside its possible to move around a bit, but not too far. My family live in a valley called Orkdal and the hills surrounding this valley is mostly covered in forest and farmland. One evening I was out biking and I came across this beautiful little area with some old trees and rocks. I always bring a camera with me, but my M100 was not capable of capturing all details in those trees.
A couple of days later I went up there again with my big camera (Canon 5Ds) and my 24-70mm lens. I’m really pleased with the result.
In the early days I read all the technical stuff I could find about photography, but it didn’t really make me a better photographer. So my general advice is to go out there and try and fail. One day you will succeed.
I still do recommend that you go home and analyze your efforts and try to understand why your results aren’t as you expected. Understanding how composition work is not an easily learned subject, but understanding the technical result of your photo can be thought because it’s a technical answer.
So let me try to explain this in a simple manner. All cameras behave the same. Some might not have the possibility to adjust all parameters, but they do the same behind the scenes. To capture an image the camera will evaluate something called Exposure Value or EV for short. This is the amount of light reflected/emitted from the objects you want to make an image of. Now the camera does an equation of three (3) parameters. The time (T) one should spend taking the image, the amount of light (A) one should let trough during that time and the sensitivity (ISO) of the sensor.
The relationship between the four (EV, T, A and ISO) can be written as a formula. You don’t walk around thinking of formulas when you capture a beautiful scenery, or at least I don’t. So let me present a figure for you instead.
Exposure Value
By this simplified figure one can state that, given a defined EV, one need to adjust either Aperture (amount of light that is presented to the image sensor) or Time if one wants to do an adjustment of the ISO (Sensitivity of the image sensor).
In full auto mode the camera will make an effort to adjust these parameters based on given rules. If you choose manual mode you will need to handle all these parameters yourself. So why do you really want to do this if the camera can do it? Let me explain that for you as well.
Aperture
If you look into the front glass of your camera you might see several blades going into each other. In the middle you will see a hole. The diameter of this hole is adjusted up and down according to the selected aperture number. This value is often presented as a f-number. F-number is a relation between focal length and aperture. Let’s just use this f-number for now since that is what the camera will show you. As the f-number grows the aperture diameter get smaller, resulting in less light getting to your sensor. So as the f-number grows the scenery goes darker.
But there is second effect of the aperture. As the f-number grows the depth of field also grows. Now what is depth of field (DOF) you might ask yourself. If you want a portrait with a nice blury background you want a shallow depth of field. If you have a fantastic landscape with a foreground tree and a beautiful mountain behind it, you will want both to be pin sharp. Then you want a deep depth of field (big f-number).
Time
Now time is a safe one right? Not necessarily I’d say. Time is often measured in seconds on a camera. Some talk about minutes, but this is for special occasions. So lets keep to seconds for now. The more time you spend exposing your image the more light will be presented to your sensor. What you seldom think of is how far an object will move during a second. And also how much your hands will move (shake) during a second.
With some practice you will be able to handheld your camera at about 1/[focal length] second rounded down. Say you have a 50mm on a full format camera, you will be able to handheld 1/50s which will be rounded down to 1/60s. If you concentrate you might be able to get good images at 1/30s.
Now over to your image. How far will your object move during 1/60s. A car moving at 90km/t translates to 25m/s. During that 1/60s the car has moved 42cm. This will lead to a nice and crisp image except for the car witch has motion blur. Of course this can be done by intention, but you should know the effect of a slow shutter speed (time).
ISO
The final parameter is the ISO or sensor sensitivity. Basically the higher the number the more sensitive will the sensor be. The negative side is that the more sensitive the sensor is, the harder it will be to be accurate. This introduces noise in your final image.
This can easily be illustrated with two buckets and a glass. If you fill one bucket with water and pour that water over to the other bucket it’s quite easy to stop at a certain height in that big bucket. If you take the same bucket at try to stop at a certain height in a glass, you will most certainly go over or under the line. The big bucket is a sensor at low sensitivity (small ISO number) and the glass is a sensor at high sensitivity (big ISO number). The deviation between the height in the glass and in the bucket will be visualized as noise.
Summary
Complete Exposure Value Figure
So let’s try this in normal day light. The Exposure Value is at a level that can leave the ISO to a standard 100 or maybe even a extended low value at 50. The Aperture (f-number) can be placed at maybe f/8 and the time at 1/200s. This means that any camera can operate at it’s best. Even the mobile phone camera gives acceptable results. A camera set to automatic mode will give you good quality images in most cases.
Now let’s imagine another situation. You’re out during the twilight to capture some wild animals. The light conditions are totally different. The Exposure Value will be quite low. You have your long focal length lens with you to capture those shy animals. It might be a 300mm or 400mm lens. Handheld you will need about 1/300s, so maybe you are lucky if you get a good shot at 1/200s. The lens has a f/5.6 at minimum meaning that you have to sacrifice something. Either time has to go up or ISO has to go up. You either introduce motion blur (you are moving the camera while capturing the image or the animal will move) or you add noise.
Most cameras will struggle with this in automatic mode. This is actually outside the comfort zone of the camera. The camera is programmet to reduce speed and f-number down to a certain level and then start rising the ISO number. With manual mode you’re able to do some tweaking of these parameters and the amount of acceptable images might go up. Here is where you should be in control of all those parameters yourself.
A final note to camera gear is that an expensive camera body will add less noise on higher ISO-numbers. An expensive lens will have smaller f-numbers that allows more light to get to your image sensor. This does not mean that you need to spend a fortune on new gear, but now that you know your gear limitations you can go out there and push it to its limits and see what you have to deal with.
One of my favorite activities, in addition to photography, is bicycling. Singel track and real mountain biking is my favorite. There is something about the big vistas and the majestic mountains in Norway that really calms the mind. Or just grab the bike and ride the local tracks for an hour or so. (More about my biking can be found at sykkelhjulet.no)
I’ve always had a camera with me. But that camera often was my mobile phone. In the right conditions it is a good camera as well, but not always. This season I’ve had my small mirrorless Canon M100 with me as well. And it has already proven itself usefull.
My advice for you this time is to always bring your camera.
One of many fallen trees found while I was out biking
Every now and then I surf the web looking for inspiration and where ever I look I find images that would be very beautiful if it weren’t for that quite obvious mistake.
I do make a lot of them myself and most often I see them during post processing and maybe i manage to get rid of the problem. If not, I’m not going public with that picture.
So let me dig into the details and tell you the most common mistakes done.
Incomplete central objects
This is one of those mistakes I did more frequently, but now a days I’m more aware of it. I often see images with chopped of mountain peaks, half buildings, arms or foots entering the frame from the edges or branches entering the frame mid air. This mistake can be used intentionally as an illusion, but you should really be aware of your edges and give objects enough room.
Could be an image of a nice scenery, but look at the trees entering the edges.
Non-leveled image
Not leveling the image is one of the mistakes that really destroys an image. It is also one of the intentional mistakes that can extend objects otherwise blended into the image. It is one of the rules that you should really be aware of before you break or bend it.
It is easiest seen in images where the horizon is present. Seeing a beautiful sunset where the ocean is not leveled is horrible. Leveling a non-leveled tree and then rendering other elements non-leveled can be just as bad.
Horizon out of level
So my suggestion is that you pay attention to your cameras internal leveling tools or use your tripods bubble level. Once you know how to level your images you will also see that you can emphasize objects by bending this rule. A quite steep hill might become even steeper if you tilt the camera just a little.
Out of focus image
A out of focus image is one of those mistakes you cannot fully heal in post process. So paying attention to focus and where the camera is setting focus is critical. One of the main camera parameters is the aperture. The aperture number, often presented as a f-number, will tell you what area in your frame that would be sharp.
Common objects that end up not being sharp is foreground objects like flowers, grass and straws. A colorful flower out of focus will draw a lot of attention in the wrong direction in your image. In portraits eyes should always be in focus. Too wide aperture (small f-number) will render the portraits nose out of focus. Choosing another mode than auto on the camera will reveal the possibility of selecting focus points manually. Selecting the focus point where you would like the image to be at its sharpest is recommended.
Focus and camera technologies are two topics that you will find a lot of information on. There is a handful of approaches on how you will get images acceptably sharp. My advice is to know your camera and know what you would like to be in focus when you frame your image. When you get an out of focus image, analyze what happened and try to correct your mistake the next time you frame your image.
Post process exaggeration
When the digital cameras became common the, almost magical, art of post processing became more available too. Even your smartphone have tools for post processing. Enhancing some elements in your images makes them even better. There might be a color that should be saturated a bit or maybe the image would look better when slightly sharpened.
Some tend to go crazy here. Over saturation and heavily contrasted images will never look good. When you push those post processing sliders a bit over the edge, unwanted effects like halos will appear.
So learn to post process your images and ask for second opinions.
Post process exaggeration
The image above might look OK the first time you see it, but have a look at de details. The little waterfall to the right has a yellow glow to it. The moss to the left of the main waterfall has some strange droplet looking effect on them. This is a typical sign of post process exaggeration.
Signature craziness
And then your master piece is done. Of course you would like to keep it for your self, but still present it to the world. The one thing most people do is to add a signature to the image. And placing a signature can actually give a professional final result.
But adding a massive signature or even watermarking the whole image with your signature will not give that professional result you’re looking for. It will draw too much attention and distract the viewer. Adding objects like a camera or elements that does not exclusively present you for who you are will not work either.
That signature is WAY too big
Create yourself a unique looking simple signature and add this to all your images. The size should not be more than 10% of the width and height of the image. If you are afraid that others might use your image, then scale it down before you upload it to the web. Longest edge of 1024 pixels will be acceptable for on screen presentation but almost unusable for printing.
Of course you might have done one or more of the above intentionally, but you should really know the rules before you break them.
Back in 2016 I went on an expedition across the Greenlandic Icecap in a group of 11 people. I will remember this for as long as I live and luckily I have som fantastic images from the expedition as well.
I keep coming back to one specific waterfall close to where I live. Its not the biggest one, but it keeps changing based weather conditions. I often find new aspects of the waterfall. And for some reason I have not posted this image on this page.
Now a days one have time to digg trough the photo library for old hidden treasures. I found this piece from the woods.
I’m not quite sure where its taken, but I believe its shot south west in Norway at a place called Urdådalen. It has a remarkable good quality given that its taken by a Canon 350D back in 2009.
Negative space is a effect used to strengthen elements in the frame. You don’t need to use just one colour, but the image above is a typical example where the lack of details in the mist actually draws attention to the two trees.
Those images are so beautiful, he must have very expensive gear!
Maybe you’ve seen it written in comments or maybe even somebody have said so while you were listening. And unfortunately that is one of the aspects with photography that is commonly misunderstood.
So let me try to explain it in a few words. The camera is about catching light. In general, the better this ability is, the more expensive the camera will be. However, the most important part of capturing an image is the person handling the camera.
This person needs to know what limitations the camera holds. This knowledge together with experience and a trained eye for good compositions will lead to beautiful images.
To demonstrate this for you, I took my Canon 5Ds equipped with a EF 24-70 f/2.8L, my Canon M100 equipped with a EF-M 22 f/2 and my iPhone with me to one of the local streams. The 5Ds and the lens had a retail of $5 048 and the M100 and the lens $849. The idea here is to show you what limits the different cameras have. Can you guess what camera that has produced what image? (Answer on the next page)
