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

2

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

3

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

9

Bad histogram ! Bad histogram !

Histogram Tells You When You Have The Proper Exposure

Good histogram !

Automatic Camera

Exposure Metering

(Matrix)

vs.

10

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

12

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?

13

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

15

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

16

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

17

Jpeg Picture After Some Very Simple Processing

18

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

22

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

23

• 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.

24

Moving From Photoshop Into Camera Raw

25

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

28

Repeat : Think We Can Do Much With This Image?

This Panasonic ZS50 Image is a Raw file

29

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

30

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

31

• Improved contrast reflected in wider histogram

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

32

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

33

Monument Valley - Before

34

Monument Valley - After

35

Monument Valley - Before

36

Monument Valley - After

37

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

Exp

osu

re C

om

pe

nsa

tio

n

Post-processing

Use Camera Settings To Step Up To Great Pictures!

39

40

BB

oyc

e 1

4 A

pri

l 20

17

Appendix A