Introduce yourself !

[Mikhail Lukichev]

Hi @Frederic! Thanks for starting the club!

As you know, from time to time I take some photos. I believe that there two important component of almost every good photo: preparation and luck! If it is supported by some nice equipment, it's even better!

Sometimes it takes a lot of time to prepare to be in a right place at the right time. For me it might take around a week of research to make a decision to go to the fields trying to capture something like meteor shower, milky way or a nice sunset in the mountains. Sometimes I even request some leave days a year in advance just to be sure that I have enough free time for some event.

Then, once everything is ready, I just commit to the plan. And hope, that plan is good and weather would be nice enough to turn the plan into a picture. 

Honestly, my plans were never perfect. All the time something went not in a way I expect. But! This is the time when luck might be very handy! Sometimes you do not expect much but reality exceeds the expectations! In such moments you can just say "Woooooow" and not more than that.

One more important thing. Very important for me. I keep remind myself not to see the world through the camera but to see it with my wide open eyes. It is much better!

[Thomas Varghese]

1 minute ago, Frederic said:

Thanks for your introduction @Mikhail Lukichev 

As many of us enthusiasts like to take some action shots during the drives, are there some pointers you could help us with in terms of lenses, shooting mode, aperture, ISO ?

Last weekend i tried to get some nice action shots during the AN drive, with ISO on AUTO, Aperture on f8.0, and in aperture shooting mode with a 70-300 Sigma lens. Upon processing i found most photos to be over-exposed and not very sharp. Am i right to assume i should have brought the aperture to f4.0 so the camera would automatically choose a faster shutter speed ? 

The reason i tried f8.0 and f11.0 was because i wanted to achieve a deep depth of field. 

 

@Frederic don't worry about the exposure. Its in aperture priority  I shoot 90% of the time and the camera nails it most of the time.  Sometimes it doesn't nail if the exposure of the surroundings are little harsh. If it doesn't still don't worry. Everything can be corrected in a good RAW processing software. I use Adobe Lightroom even though I would love to do the same in Adobe Photoshop. If you can share the RAW file I can edit and give you back in half an hour. 

[Frederic]

1 minute ago, Thomas Varghese said:

@Frederic don't worry about the exposure. Its in aperture priority  I shoot 90% of the time and the camera nails it most of the time.  Sometimes it doesn't nail if the exposure of the surroundings are little harsh. If it doesn't still don't worry. Everything can be corrected in a good RAW processing software. I use Adobe Lightroom even though I would love to do the same in Adobe Photoshop. If you can share the RAW file I can edit and give you back in half an hour. 

Thanks @Thomas Varghese i'd like to avoid using Lightroom too much and get the best possible result when shooting (if possible). 

[Thomas Varghese]

1 minute ago, Frederic said:

Thanks @Thomas Varghese i'd like to avoid using Lightroom too much and get the best possible result when shooting (if possible). 

@Frederic even though its every photographer's wish to nail it correctly every time it doesn't work that way in real life. The camera metering system is not that perfect for exposures. I can see there is plenty of sunlight and plenty of shadows and the poor camera averaged it as its programmed to do. 

[Pranjal Varsani]

29 minutes ago, Frederic said:

Thanks for your introduction @Mikhail Lukichev 

As many of us enthusiasts like to take some action shots during the drives, are there some pointers you could help us with in terms of lenses, shooting mode, aperture, ISO ?

Last weekend i tried to get some nice action shots during the AN drive, with ISO on AUTO, Aperture on f8.0, and in aperture shooting mode with a 70-300 Sigma lens. Upon processing i found most photos to be over-exposed and not very sharp. Am i right to assume i should have brought the aperture to f4.0 so the camera would automatically choose a faster shutter speed ? 

The reason i tried f8.0 and f11.0 was because i wanted to achieve a deep depth of field. 

Below you can see an example: I used burst mode and had to dim down the white balance a lot in Lightroom afterwards. (below example was post-processing)

 

@Frederic for the sharpest action shots, use shutter speed priority, not aperture priority. Aperture priority is better for portraits and landscapes. Lock it in at around 1/500 or 1/1000. Set your metering in the camera to center-weighted. This will allow your camera to adjust exposure best for what’s mostly in the middle of the frame. Make sure your camera is not on spot metering. I would leave ISO on auto.

If you want a deep depth of field, set your camera in manual mode with shutter speed of 1/500 and aperture to F20 or 21. ISO on auto. This way everything in the distance will be sharp as well. On bright sunny days you should be able to pull of great well exposed and sharp shots with these settings. 
 

The reason you have ISO on auto is because the sun and your position  keeps moving and with auto ISO the camera will automatically try and get the best exposure. You don’t have time to adjust this when shooting. The Centre weighted metering will help in your camera to guess the right ISO setting. 
 

Hope this helps. 

[Frederic]

2 minutes ago, Pranjal Varsani said:

@Frederic for the sharpest action shots, use shutter speed priority, not aperture priority. Aperture priority is better for portraits and landscapes. Lock it in at around 1/500 or 1/1000. Set your metering in the camera to center-weighted. This will allow your camera to adjust exposure best for what’s mostly in the middle of the frame. Make sure your camera is not on spot metering. I would leave ISO on auto.

If you want a deep depth of field, set your camera in manual mode with shutter speed of 1/500 and aperture to F20 or 21. ISO on auto. This way everything in the distance will be sharp as well. On bright sunny days you should be able to pull of great well exposed and sharp shots with these settings. 
 

The reason you have ISO on auto is because the sun and your position  keeps moving and with auto ISO the camera will automatically try and get the best exposure. You don’t have time to adjust this when shooting. The Centre weighted metering will help in your camera to guess the right ISO setting. 
 

Hope this helps. 

Thats brilliant @Pranjal Varsani thanks for the tip, i was using Evaluative metering mode so far. Indeed i keep the ISO on Auto as my main focus is to get the aperture and shutter speed right, and leave ISO over to the camera for now.

I avoided using Shutter speed priority for now because i wanted to be in control of the depth-of-field. Will do some trials soon.

 

[Thomas Varghese]

3 minutes ago, Frederic said:

Thats brilliant @Pranjal Varsani thanks for the tip, i was using Evaluative metering mode so far. Indeed i keep the ISO on Auto as my main focus is to get the aperture and shutter speed right, and leave ISO over to the camera for now.

I avoided using Shutter speed priority for now because i wanted to be in control of the depth-of-field. Will do some trials soon.

 

In this case if you use any other metering mode than evaluative it will blow out either the high lights or shadows and all details in that area will be lost. 

[Pranjal Varsani]

Just now, Thomas Varghese said:

In this case if you use any other metering mode than evaluative it will blow out either the high lights or shadows and all details in that area will be lost. 

Yes agreed, you could blow out highlights with centre weighted, but because the aperture is f21 you minimize the chances of this. The reason I am recommending centre weighted is so that mostly the car (which is the subject of the shot) will be in the centre of the frame and I would try and expose perfectly for the subject. 
 

I will play around with evaluative metering as well next time and see how that works. Thanks for your point of view on this.

 

[Thomas Varghese]

1 minute ago, Pranjal Varsani said:

Yes agreed, you could blow out highlights with centre weighted, but because the aperture is f21 you minimize the chances of this. The reason I am recommending centre weighted is so that mostly the car (which is the subject of the shot) will be in the centre of the frame and I would try and expose perfectly for the subject. 
 

I will play around with evaluative metering as well next time and see how that works. Thanks for your point of view on this.

 

@Pranjal Varsani thanks for your comments. I'm not a professional photographer. I only have some equipment and play with them as a hobby whenever I get time. In @Frederic's picture I think his whole idea was to take the SUV with the background and foreground properly exposed which is impossible as there is bright sunlight and dark shadows. In evaluative metering mode the camera assess the entire scene and fixes the shutter speed which it thinks its correct for a proper exposure. If any other metering mode like spot metering or center weighted average with the focus on the SUV the camera adjusts the shutter speed as per the reflected light from the car and then the back ground gets blown out and we cannot recover the details whatever we do. Shutter priority is not the option here as its not an action shot but rather a stationary car. My thoughts are he wanted to picturize the car along with the surroundings and all the other settings are correct including evaluative meter mode. Unfortunately this is the best we can get in this circumstance and all the adjustments has to be done in a photo processing software to balance the light and colors. 

As mentioned earlier I'm not into professional photography and I just shared my thoughts and experiences with the entry level cameras and lenses I have. DSLR and in that matter all photographic equipments have limitations and you can only work around them to match our amazing eyes God gave us to an extent. 

[Frederic]

3 minutes ago, Thomas Varghese said:

@Pranjal Varsani thanks for your comments. I'm not a professional photographer. I only have some equipment and play with them as a hobby whenever I get time. In @Frederic's picture I think his whole idea was to take the SUV with the background and foreground properly exposed which is impossible as there is bright sunlight and dark shadows. In evaluative metering mode the camera assess the entire scene and fixes the shutter speed which it thinks its correct for a proper exposure. If any other metering mode like spot metering or center weighted average with the focus on the SUV the camera adjusts the shutter speed as per the reflected light from the car and then the back ground gets blown out and we cannot recover the details whatever we do. Shutter priority is not the option here as its not an action shot but rather a stationary car. My thoughts are he wanted to picturize the car along with the surroundings and all the other settings are correct including evaluative meter mode. Unfortunately this is the best we can get in this circumstance and all the adjustments has to be done in a photo processing software to balance the light and colors. 

As mentioned earlier I'm not into professional photography and I just shared my thoughts and experiences with the entry level cameras and lenses I have. DSLR and in that matter all photographic equipments have limitations and you can only work around them to match our amazing eyes God gave us to an extent. 

Actually the car was approaching a hill at about 25km/h so it was a bit of an action shot that needed burst mode as well.