Camera Settings settings 041217.pdfCamera Settings April 12, 2017 • What is “Digital...

Camera Settings

April 12, 2017

• What is “Digital Photography”?

• How to set up and use a digital camera to do “Digital photography”

• A simple approach to processing digital images

Fountain Hills Photo Club Information Series

©BBoyce 2017 1

A Little History

• Ansel Adams spent his career developing his manual exposure techniques and darkroom printing techniques

• Color film became popular in the 1950’s • In 2000’s, digital sensors replaced film • Photoshop has largely replaced the darkroom • All digital cameras now have Auto Exposure & Auto Focus

1950’s

2000’s

sensor

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Let’s Define “Digital Photography”

• You don’t have to wait hours or weeks to see your images

There is a powerful way to instantly review your images when you take them, and ...

... there is a convenient and powerful way to immediately correct camera settings and retake any sub-standard image

• Digital post-processing is rapid and powerful, and opens the creativity door wide open

Beware of the danger of being able to do many things many different ways)

Requires a logical approach, not a random trial and error process development (recipe hopefully does this for you)

Using Key Camera Settings is Essential to Implementing Digital Photography

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What Makes a Good Picture?

Subject, Lighting, Composition

• The traditional big 3

Focus Control

• Main feature should be in focus (especially the eyes)

• Often, you want the background blurred out (bokeh)

Exposure Control

• Capture bright and dark scene elements (camera settings)

• Optimize the contrast (usually done in post-processing)

Mobility, Luck

• Get out there and find opportunities - catch that special moment when the lion looks right at you ...

Plan Ahead

• Envision a photograph, make it happen

Creativity

• Path to establishing YOU as a photographer 4

These Are The Key Digital Camera Controls Needed

Subject, Lighting, Composition

• The traditional big 3

Focus Control

• Main feature should be in focus (especially the eyes)

• Often, you want the background blurred out (bokeh)

Exposure Control

• Capture bright and dark scene elements (camera settings)

• Optimize the contrast (usually done in post-processing)

Mobility, Luck

• Get out there and find opportunities - catch that special moment when the lion looks right at you ...

Plan Ahead

• Envision a photograph, make it happen

Creativity

• Path to establishing YOU as a photographer 5

Result of a critique of 60 or so images taken by a diverse group of photographers

• Purpose of any critique is to indicate where pictures can be improved • No judgments – not a matter of liking a picture • Purely a technical assessment of the techniques of

image capture and processing

Where Are The Challenges In Digital Photography?

Rank #

1 21 highlights & shadows

2 14 Composition/cropping

3 10 brightness

4 8 Overall sharpness

Most recurring "Needs work" critique

Critique

/contrast

Exposure Control

Focus

6 Automatic exposure control in cameras is not perfect

Example of Poor Exposure Control

• Blown out scene elements is a very common problem, often difficult problem to avoid 7

Example of Good Exposure Control

• Good Exposure Control is a combination of camera settings, processing, and image file type 8

Meet the Histogram – Your New Best Friend

Think of each pixel in your camera’s sensor as a very small light bucket collecting particles of light (photons)

• A histogram shows the distribution of the amount of light (Luminance) in all the buckets (i.e., pixels)

# or % of

pixels Good histogram !

Bad histogram !

0 255 brighter pixels

0 255

Job 1; when shooting pictures, capture entire histogram

Bad histogram !

Blown out (saturated) pixels are white pixels

Totally black pixels

Pixel values =

MOST IMPORTANT

CHART

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Bad histogram ! Bad histogram !

Histogram Tells You When You Have The Proper Exposure

Good histogram !

Automatic Camera

Exposure Metering

(Matrix)

vs.

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Set camera to show histogram when picture you take is displayed

Critical - For each picture, look at the histogram on camera LCD

• Histogram will tell you if you have captured a good image • If not, adjust Exposure Compensation*, retake picture • Particularly important with sunlit clouds in landscapes

Histogram is much easier to see on LCD in bright sunlight than the picture itself (white on black) – trust the histogram!

Why The Histogram Is So Important

Nikon D3300 &D7200 Panasonic ZS50 Sony RX100M3

* A control unique to digital cameras – much more on this later 11

An Example of Correcting an Improper Exposure

Picture Retake Exposure Compensation ΔEV = +2

First Picture Exposure Compensation ΔEV = 0

1 stop

If you see this, you need to increase Exposure Compensation and retake the picture

Result

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Answer : Shoot Raw

• Jpeg images (8 bit) contain 256 discrete levels of each of the primary colors (R, G, B) in every pixel

• A properly exposed Jpeg image looks fine, but ... ... there are severe limits to recovering problem images

• RAW images (12-14 bit) contain 4,096 to 16,384 discrete levels of each primary color (R, G, B) in each pixel

• 16x to 64x more data allows you to recover dark shadows and blown-out highlights quickly (simplifies processing)

• Raw files are much bigger files (memory is cheap!)

• You can set camera to record RAW & Jpeg files for every picture, or just Jpeg, or just RAW

You must still use the Histogram/Exposure Compensation method for good histograms when shooting RAW

How Else Can We Make It Easier To Get A Good Histogram?

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Camera Modes – What Are They, really?

Record Mode Dial

Zoom lever (W to T) Movie

Shutter Release Nikon D3300

Panasonic ZS50

Sony RX100 M3

• All 3 cameras have Auto, SCN, P, A, S and M Modes

• All 3 cameras come from different companies

• All 3 cameras have complex menus for setting up the camera

• But all 3 cameras allow you to set important parameters on the fly w/o going through the complex menus 14

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Key Camera* Settings (available on the fly)

• Select MODE A (Aperture priority), or select Auto MODE

• On back of camera; Select ISO value (low, ~ 200) On back; Select Image Quality (Jpeg, RAW, Jpeg+RAW) On top; Set Exposure Metering to Full Picture (aka Matrix) On top; Exposure Compensation is always on for MODE A • On side; focus (Auto/Manual, focus mode, # pts) • On top; set f/no ≅ 2 stops above max lens min f/no

Key Menu Settings (set once and forget)

PLAYBACK menu Enable Histogram Display Option

SHOOTING Menu (also on back of camera) • Image Quality; Select either Jpeg fine, RAW or

RAW+Jpeg fine

* Nikon D7200

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Simple Recipe for Post-Processing in Photoshop

• We will use only 3, maybe 4 sliders in photoshop

• To manipulate histogram and recover blown out areas, we will use • Highlights and Shadows slider, and maybe • Exposure slider, in Camera Raw

• To improve and optimize contrast, we will use • Curves, in Photoshop

• By doing these simple operations, we are addressing and

hopefully fixing exposure problems

Jpeg Picture Right Out of the Camera

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Jpeg Picture After Some Very Simple Processing

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Before and After Processing Histograms

Directly out of camera

After some simple processing 19

Processing Can Be Viewed As Histogram Manipulation !

Directly out of camera

After some simple processing 20

Next – A Recipe For Histogram Manipulation !

Directly out of camera

After some simple processing 21

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Larger copy of this is contained

in Appendix A

Here is the Recipe

Photoshop • Opens Jpeg files • Image Processing

Bridge • File management • File viewing

Camera Raw • Opens Raw files • Image Processing

Lightroom • File Organization • Image Processing

How Adobe Photoshop Is Structured

You can move freely between these two parts

• The Recipe uses both Camera Raw and Photoshop • Works for both Jpeg and Raw files • The basic operations are also in other Processing

programs, so this recipe is largely S/W independent

Supports all 3 programs

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• To open an image, open Photoshop, click ‘File/Open’, then browse to folder containing the file, and double click the file

• If it’s a Jpeg file, it will open in Photoshop

• If it’s a Raw file, it will open in Camera Raw*

How to open a Jpeg or Raw File

* You can also open a Raw file by going to the folder holding the image file, and double clicking the file – file will open in Camera Raw.

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Moving From Photoshop Into Camera Raw

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Moving from Camera Raw into Photoshop

Click ‘Open Image’ or ‘OK’ to go back to Photoshop 26

This is the Camera Raw Screen with Larger, Readable Slider Labels

• Nothing has been done – sliders are at zero 27

• Highlights to -100, Shadows to +100; use Exposure to center the histogram (check to be sure picture looks good)

1. Using Camera Raw Highlights, Shadows and Exposure Sliders

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Repeat : Think We Can Do Much With This Image?

This Panasonic ZS50 Image is a Raw file

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Using Camera Raw Highlights, Shadows & Exposure Sliders

Slider settings Highlights* -100% Shadows* +100%

Exposure = +2

• This shows that with a ‘Good’ histogram you can recover image

* Actually went into Camera Raw 2 times for this image

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With your cursor, you can drag these points around; try

it and see what happens to the

image darker darks

brighter brights

2. In Photoshop, Using Curves to Improve the Contrast of an Image

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• Improved contrast reflected in wider histogram

2. In Photoshop, Using Curves to Improve the Contrast of an Image

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Out Of Camera image (properly exposed to get ‘Good’ histogram)

After taking care of Highlights, Shadows &

Exposure in Camera Raw

After optimizing Contrast & Exposure in Photoshop using Curves

How The Processing Recipe Affects The Histogram

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Monument Valley - Before

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Monument Valley - After

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Monument Valley - Before

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Monument Valley - After

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What we’ve learned about “Digital Age” photography, ...

• The Histogram is key “quality control” camera setting for detecting the need to correct an imperfect camera exposure

• Exposure compensation (ΔEV) is key camera setting for adjusting the camera exposure to get a good histogram

• Shooting Raw will make it much easier to capture good histograms and process images

Taking pictures technique – for each picture,

• Check Histogram for acceptability; • If not good, use Exposure Compensation to adjust exposure, retake

picture and check Histogram on new picture (erase old one)

Simple recipe for post-processing images (histogram manipulation)

• Use Camera Raw Highlights, Shadows & Exposure sliders to manipulate histogram (many programs have these sliders)

• Use Curves to improve contrast 38

Summary

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Post-processing

Use Camera Settings To Step Up To Great Pictures!

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Appendix A