Things I dint know!

A few things I dint know when I first took the DSLR in hand and started out. I learnt them one by one with after a bad shot or from various sites. I have compiled a list of all those, that my brain can recollect.

Some so very silly and minute but still makes tremendous change to the quality of the shot. Some are major and so very obvious that I have been so very ignorant about that I ended up dumping a bunch of shots after hours of shooting and editing.

- Higher ISO is good to shoot at low light situations but it makes the picture so very noisy (grainy) which certainly pulls down the quality of the picture.

- Pictures with good natural light is always better than any other source of light.

- Taking pictures is direct mid day light gives burns / skin tone wash outs. It washes out the details of the subject.
 

I concentrated on natural light while taking the above picture, but dint know about mid-day light and the washout. It is so evident in the above picture that one half of the face has lost its details. So put away the camera on mid day and enjoy.

- The last one hour of the evening when the sun is still there(setting) is called the "golden hour" and the golden lining that we get around the subject is one of the kind of natural light that is preferred.
( I am so very surprised to find that I have deleted a bunch of precious pictures. Warning myself for not doing the picture transfer job anymore after 11 pm. Lesson learnt hard way.)

- Reflection of the light source on the subject's eyes gives a boost to the picture that it doesnt require any major editing.



- Most of composing cant be done only with cropping. You NEED to compose the picture atleast partly while shooting.

- Limb chops seriously look awkward and more snapshotty.

- Majorly fix the yellow light effect with manually setting the White Balance which barely takes about 5 minutes before shooting anything in yellow light. It saves the shot.





The first one is straight under a yellow lamp, but I did majorly pull off the yellow from the shot, not by editing but with manual white balance setting. The second one is with auto white balance, which surely shows it is under a yellow light.

- Never, ever, ever use camera flash. It renders very "ameturish" look aswell a load of harsh shadows and plainly take away the life from the picture.

- Farther the backdrop from the subject, the more blurred and smooth is the background. The subject POPS out naturally.

- Not convert a regular picture to black and white without knowing the intricacies of knowing a beautiful b&w picture. I am yet to learn and explore this area, though I learnt that a plain, flat conversion to black and white doesnt make any sense and is pure injustice to the otherwise magnificent, volume speaking b&w shots.  It calls for much more details like Black, White, contrast, muddy, flat, gray and etc.,. I have stopped converting pictures to black and white blindly.

- Dump that 55-250mm lens (anything with f# >4.5) when you are attempting a portrait. It gives a lot of limb chops.



- The magic of RAW. Crop, chop and do anything to the picture without losing the size or quality of the image. Best for prints.

- The time invested in learning about composition, exposure and lighting is way better than trying to edit and fix an otherwise average image.

- And the one that I DID know - to start with manual from the very first picture. Going to auto will one lazy and reluctant to try manual mode. But I did the "auto" mistake with focusing and I majorly do auto focusing particularly with Sujaya. Hey, but seriously, with this kind of eye sight every single picture will have to hit the recycle bin otherwise.

Cant rake my brain any more. Learning every day and kindling the creativity is one major thing, that need not be said. 

Bonus Shots!

The wonderful bonus that I never miss, or try and take it myslef - the additional miscellaneous shots that come along with, when I go out thinking to take a picture of something else.

I finally found some time to go through all those miscellaneous shots that I had taken a week back along with the Sun Rise and Moon Set pictures.



The wonderful reflection of the small bunch of trees in the lake water.



One more reflection shot.



Absolutely not great, but for some reason very close to my heart.





Did not want to adjust the exposure in this shot since this was the exact color and light I had that morning.





I know I wont get enough of Robins. I dont want to miss them anywhere I see them. :) I trailed this little guy who was busy picking breakfast.

And I got some amazing portraits of my husband, only I wish we knew earlier that we MIGHT take a picture of each other too. We were right out of the bed, glad that we atleast combed our hair :)



The morning sunlight is mild unlike the mid day sunlight which is harsh and the latter tends to wash off the natural color / skin tone or to call causes burns in the pictures. Where as the morning light is very young, pleasant and gives a dramatic effect to the portait. It hasnt washed off his color, or it has not burnt the picture either.



Though he really liked the pictures of him, I know, he wont appreciate the fact that I have posted them here on the blog :)

Not a single of the above pics were edited. Not even cropped. I should admit that I am too lazy to edit the bonus shots, when I did nothing to the actual (sunrise) shots.

So what next? Indoors, Outdoors, Counter top (nay! Not now), night shots? Clueless!

At the break of the Dawn.

It has been in my "to try" list for such a long time.  Finally I decided to hop out of the bed well before the sun to capture the beautiful sky, the vibrant colors  and the early morning serenity.

Headed straight to the Shoreline Park, Mountain View to take the sunrise with its reflection on the lake. It was one of the worst planning, since it is on the west side and what was I thinking when I had earlier picturized the picture of a raising sun against the lake?! It just hit my mind when I was all set and leaving the house.

But I consider myself more than lucky, that I found a beautiful full yellow moon and it was setting when I just reached there and mounted my lens.

I did not have enough time to set up the tripod, the moon was too quick - quickly setting behind the mountain. So I shot up the ISO to 400, which made the pictures so very noisy.

Played with several ISOs, which gave me a cheese like yellow moon against a super dark blue sky and a beautiful white moon against a royal blue sky.







The noise is so very evident in the later picture, where the picture has lighter tone of the sky and water.

This time instead of altering the shutter speed, I changed the ISO. Set the shutter speed at 40 and aperture at 5.6 (possible minimum), I kept moving between ISO 200 and 400 which rendered darker night sky and the beautiful break of the dawn blue sky.

Happy with the moon shots. But wait, where do I see the sun? I saw a blend of palette on the other direction and went towards it. Aw! The beautiful pink, orange, purple, blue, yellow and a few other shades which I certainly donot know the name of or describe it.

The dawn was breaking.






Now the sky is been rendered some colors which is beyond description  but where is this BIG sun who rendered it?! Still waiting. And while waiting, a few more clicks just to keep the few minutes moving.









And now the BIG guy arrives.





By this time I was wishing and hoping for a crisp and circle sun instead of it having so much of flare around it like in the one above. Despite adjusting the settings for the nth time, I was not able to get the sun without the flare which made it look like all smudged.





And while I dint want to leave the place, I played some more while hoping for the crispy round sun.






And thought would try a fully AUTO picture while I was waiting ;)



Well, now where is the sun?!

And then ... (back to Manual, donot forget)







I had to climb on a bench nearby to discover a water body which gave a lovely reflection.





The above picture was taken the very next second after the one above that. The above picture was taken in complete auto mode and it was truly this bright when I took the other shots.  It was bright like the mid day and taking in auto mode killed most part of the picture. Where is the lake/bay, the electricity lines, towers and most of all where is the sun?

The settings that I did for the other shots was to pop up the aperture to 11 or 16 or even 22 as it got brighter as the sun came out fully and increase the shutter speed to upto 300, with ISO maintained at the minimal 100.

I have absolutely not done any editing to the above shots except for cropping, only for the sake of composing. I should honestly say, I did not know what else to do to these pictures. I liked to keep Mother Nature untouched atleast here.

I will have to do another post for the pictures that came as a bonus with this shoot - all those miscellaneous shots :) while waiting and while roaming around the park, since this post is already overloaded.

Flowers, bugs and more!

There is a bunch of pictures that I have taken - all from my eeny tiny Patio.

On those evenings when Sujaya decides to be on her own I get a good half hour to play with my toy! :)

Some pictures from my playing!



That was an attempted macro. But it turned not so well with reverse ring. So went ahead with RAW, 55-250mm and cropped it super tight to fit the frame, like I wanted. And a bit of editing to fix the color. Cropping a file when it is in RAW does not reduce the picture size later and a RAW file is more comfortable and flexible for editing.





Some super tight macros of some bugs on the plants. It is quite boring to take the pictures of the flowers all the time. But sure this one was so creepy, that I did not care to edit these pictures.













This little guy was in such nice mood to pose for me and also gave me some time to experiment with the lenses. First I started with macro. It did not turn out well since it was also hiding inbetween the flowers. Then went on with the the kit lens and the 55-250mm (with all the time, the file format being constant at RAW), and was not happy. So kept juggling and finally settled with the 55-250mm lens, ISO 200 since it was an overcast day and shutter speed = half of the ISO that is 100.



The dreamy effect in this picture is with: the subject isolated, the background being atleast 3-5 feet far off, and with my ever so favorite 50 mm prime lens with f stop at 1.8.

Setting the subject atleast 10 feet away from the background in case of bigger subjects and 4 feet away in case of smaller subjects like the above helps in yielding a beautiful dreamy bokeh replacing a harsh, distorted and distracting bokeh.











This shot of the water drops on the leaf was one of the easiest shots that I took in quite a while now.  I borrowed Sujaya's spray bottle for a second, sprayed on the lily leaf. The setup was done. Loaded the 55-250mm lens, ISO 400 (one can clearly see some grains) and shutter speed 30, since aperture was 5.6, the picture was done. Crop it tight, up the colors and tweek the contrast, editing is done too.

My next item on the "to try" list is different lightings. I am now trying to play with different lightings (natural) for quite sometime now. Let me try to make my next post all about lightings when I get to try it and when a few of my experiments turn out well. 

Yum Yum Yummy!!

Food in a picture needs to look equally appealing, inviting and appetizing, just like what it is in real.

After going through so many good pictures of really simple dishes or just plain fruits and vegetables and also a bunch of "not so appetizing" food, which actually tastes good, I did a small study on the net to take better pictures of our everyday, not so fancy food. I started taking pictures for the next one month of random things from my kitchen, some prepared by me and some not. This was sure a learning experience and I am sharing the tips and techniques to take better and inviting pictures of food that I learnt and sure, some of those pictures that I took.

First of, starting with the tips,

* I always preferred using Canon EF 50mm /1.8 lens, since I preferred shallow DOF when it came to food, and what else beyond my prime lens?
* Lighting: Natural light preferred. But in my case, I have used the kitchen light, since most of them were set on the counter. Needless to say, with Sujaya around, she will disturb the subject. If taking in yellow light, donot forget to change the white balance or make one - of your own.
* Take several pictures, from various angles, first covering the safe angles like "from the top", "45 degrees" and then explore a few more creative angles. The one I liked the most was getting low as much as possible - lower than being low, to an angle where the texture and depth of the food is actually revealed.  And also found the "from the top" or "bird's view" was the most non-appealing angle, since it shows the food more flat and doesnt do justice to its texture.
* Use Rule of Thirds.
* Make best use of the subject. Now that this subject is not going to squirm, walk away or complaint, take your own darling time to try taking pictures from various angles, juggling the props, altering its arrangement and etc.,.
* Also be quick! In certain cases, the dish gets tired easily and since we are doing tight closeups it is clearly visible that this food is been traumatized for quite some time now. So QUICK - finish it - finish taking pictures and finish the plate too.
* Watch for colors - some are so bright and vibrant and add a zing to the picture as a subject or as a prop.
* When there is a bunch of choices available, choose the best. Like a muffin with a dent would ruin the shot, where as one with a uniform shot would complete a perfect picture otherwise.
* Some food categories are really easy to take pictures of and surprisingly they turn out well even with minimal effort. While some are not that nice, even after trying from various angles with various props and etc., The problem is the color and texture of the food. Examples - soups are so sloppy and messy. How much ever you try they cant be shown with a dash of glamour. So are curries - anything that is brown, they are better off when eaten. They are just meant for that! Brown food, sloppy food, anything gooey is plainly not going to turn that great!
* Some also rub oil on the food to make it more glossy and glitzy for pictures. I did not do that though, since these food were actually consumed sooner or later and not just destined to trash.

The pictures:






The regular 45 degree angle, which I personally donot find great.



Sliced it up, to show more texture and color.




Very shallow DOF.









Birds eye view - seems to be working for this picture.



A bit of prop (clock) to show that this was a bedtime snack + drink.



Rule of thirds.





With this super low angle, I love the texture details in this shot.



And no, I dint down them all. I am not a cookie monster, though I popped in one or two. That was certainly hard to keep my fingers on the camera and camera alone :)


I had one more lolly - a pink one, which I had to offer as a bribery to Sujaya to keep her engaged, without which this shot would have been impossible.



This was the only shot that I had taken with the 18 - 55mm lens and was taken at ISO 400, that the grains are clearly visible.



And the brown curry shot, with which I certainly did more than 25 shots and not any of those were good despite serious editing and natural lighting. Lesson learnt - brown curries and soups, put that camera away and fetch a spoon and enjoy the dish when it is still hot! :)

And some more known facts:

* To get nice shallow Depth Of Field, use the lowest possible f stop. It fetches a good DOF and also helps in low light situations like inside the kitchen.
* Since mine was a prime lens, I took pictures and then cropped them to compose them.
* Prepared for cropping and editing, always take pictures in RAW.
* Use a tripod when required.

Happy cooking, happy clicking and happy enjoying! Num Num Num!!