The featured image is a prime example of what I mean. I took this picture with the venerable Sony Alpha 100. Besides featuring the same CCD sensor as the twice as expensive Nikon D200, it also features a more or less infallible light meter whenever you set it to either multi-segment or centre-weighted metering mode. This is a relatively rare achievement, especially given the camera’s technology dates back to 2006. Set another camera to anything else, such as evaluative metering, and you will be lucky if it doesn’t randomly under or over expose. Traditionally there where two types of metering common to most cameras: So-called centre-weighted average covering about one fifth of the central viewfinder area and the spot meter roughly covering between 2% – 3.5% at the centre of your viewfinder and image. While the centre-weighted mode does a fine job of reading exposure value averages in generally good lighting conditions, the spot meter really come into its own when you wish to get readings of specific pin points within your image. Taking the image of the couple sitting back to back reading the Sunday paper, I wanted to expose their faces correctly. I did this by pointing the Sony Alpha 100′s spot meter at the palm of my own hand that was also lit by sunlight, knocked off half a stop on the exposure reading to compensate for reflected-light luminescence and took the picture. Alternatively I could also have used the spot meter to try and measure the reflected light off one of their faces. However, one runs the risk of accidentally metering their hair or dark coats and this would ruin the exposure.

Whenever you use the evaluative metering mode you expose yourself to your camera manufacturer’s presumptions how you should see the picture you’re about to take. Most if not all modern digital cameras sport a highly arrogant and presumptive evaluative metering mode. If you’re happy to leave yourself and your photography in the hands of the different respective manufacturers, that’s fine of course. However, you’re unlikely to learn the fine art of deciding upon and using the correct exposure value in any given lighting situation. Each and every manufacturer enjoys telling us how they prefer to see the world, they also try and indoctrinate us by presuming to know best what they consider to be the correct exposure value for our own very personal scene. Put differently, would you let a complete and utter stranger guess and order your favourite ice cream flavour on your behalf, when in actual fact you could more easily and precisely order it yourself?

Happy snapping!

Unlike large dSLR cameras compact cameras are, by their very nature, much less intrusive when capturing scenes of people in all kinds of random situations. Pull out a professional looking camera and people will become very shy and even annoyed, turn away their heads and, thus, ruin what could have been a perfectly nice composition before you’ve even had time to press the shutter release. However, what is most important of all to bear in mind, regardless of whether you’re taking pictures with a compact or larger type of camera, any scene will look unnatural and frozen in time, if you select a fast shutter speed. Pay careful attention to the speed at which your main subject and general surrounding is moving. In the above picture the elderly couple were near motionless, while the two Giants circling around them moved with considerable haste. I chose to take this particular handheld picture using 1/8th sec in order to simulate as much raw motion as possible and by doing so leaving the viewer with a sense of uncertainty as to what might happen next. If only it hadn’t been for the Leica D-Lux3′s noisy sensor. Then again, it was the dead of night with good light sources few and far between.

Happy snapping!

Personally I also find it helpful going over some good and tried and tested photography literature written by some of the truly great photographers in the business, both past and present. If you haven’t yet read Ansel Adams‘ book “Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs” you shouldn’t hesitate to purchase it at your nearest bookshop. It is one of those book that makes you realise how simple some of his most amazing compositions are. It also impresses one of the most important truths upon your mind, for Ansel Adams was quite right when he mentioned, almost in passing, that: “You don’t take a photograph, you make it”.

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Some might call this cheating, but is tilting your head, or rather the viewer’s head really cheating? I really rather doubt it. After all, it has to do with how the photographer conceived and visualised the image in the first place and with nothing much else. So, the next time you’re at a loss whether or not to change the perspective or angle of an otherwise quite ordinary looking picture, remember Garry Winogrand‘s fine words on the subject matter: ”If I see something in my viewfinder that looks familiar to me, I will do something to shake it up”.

Happy snapping!

Years ago, when I was trying to replace the loathsome Canon EOS 350D with something that had a lot less buttons on the back, I came across a review for the amazingly good (even by today’s standards come to think of it) Sony Alpha A100. The A100 shares the identical CCD sensor as the venerable Nikon D200 and telling the two apart when using either of the two cameras in RAW is next door to impossible. There really is no different, except for the price tag. Anyway, this reviewer bemoaned the fact that changing the ISO speed on the Sony A100 took him a turn of a knob and the press of a button. Apparently, so he told his readership, this was completely unsatisfactory for him, because he needs to change ISO speeds frequently at any given moment in time.

I felt sorry for the poor bloke. Either he’d never experienced the joy of taking pictures using proper film and having to wisely choose your film speed and even the type of film prior to taking the respective pictures, or he simply had no clue how to use available light that usually negates the need to frequently switch film speed. Unfortunately, this chap totally missed the real beauty of the Sony A100. For, unlike the annoying and frustrating Canon EOS 350D, the trusty and surprisingly sturdy A100 features virtually no buttons on the rear. Trust me, in the case of the Canon 350D the timed self exposure button, or something else entirely, always felt like interfering with a perfectly good shot. Not so with a Sony A100 that was and occasionally still is a pure delight to use. Instead of a minefield of buttons it employs a second dial on the top left hand side of the viewfinder with which to speedily change all those common settings (incl. ISO) that made digital photography so revolutionary and popular in the first place.

The moral of the story is simple, don’t let technology get in the way of a good picture. Instead use your imagination and learn how to use your camera’s technical limitations to your own advantage in low and available light situations.

Happy snapping!

By far the most common and useful type of filter is the standard issue UV filter. These come a variety of flavours and to be honest with you I only use UV(0) filters, since they take care of nigh everything that could possibly ruin an otherwise perfectly good picture.

However, besides filtering nature’s unwanted side effects, I use UV(0) for one main reason and no other. Filters act as added protection for your valuable and fragile lenses. Granted the lens casings are usually quite sturdy, as least mine are, but once you get a scratch on the front lens element you can basically kiss your investment good-bye and shop around for a new one.

Experience has shown that there is little need to buy the most expensive filters. For my birthday I recently asked for and was very kindly given an excellent filter by my parents. It’s a Hoya Super HMC Pro1 Multi-Coated UV(0) filter. It’s truly excellent, because it weights virtually nothing, is extremely thin and doesn’t produce any noticeable ghosting effects whatsoever when mounted on Canon’s equally brilliant EF 85mm f/1.8 USM prime lens. However, keeping the filter spotless and clean is proving really rather more difficult than with any of my other cheaper lenses. I don’t know why this should be, but grime and dust sticks to it like mud on the inside of a car’s wheel arch (to put it mildly).

The moral of this story, then, is buy cheap filters that you can simply wipe clean without fear of damaging the delicate multi-coating. At the end of the day your UV filter is going to be more useful protecting the front of your lens than anything else. Going over the top investing in expensive high-grade once again appears to be more trouble in the real world than it is worth.

Happy snapping!

Compact cameras are not to be sniffed at. Indeed compact cameras are great for street photography and parties when it simply isn’t practical to be seen wielding a larger professional looking camera around the place and sticking it in people’s faces. Admittedly the Leica D-Lux3 is a little outdated these days. It’s autofocus takes forever to wakeup and the CCD sensor so noisy it negated most of the advantages the brilliant Leica lens offers the serious street photographer. These days I would choose the brilliant Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5 or Canon’s equally amazing and super flat S95 and soon to be released S100, despite sorely missing the native 16:9 format CCD sensor offered by the trusty and amazingly sturdy  Leica D-Lux3.

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The easiest and most reliable method is to set your camera’s light-meter to spot metering. Next set your camera to auto exposure bracketing (AEB). Now aim the centre of your lens at the moon, so it covers the centre of your viewfinder and with that also the spot-meter. Next use your automatic exposure lock button to lock and fix the light-meter’s spot reading. Now you can freely position the moon in your viewfinder prior to pressing the exposure button. If the moon is shining very bright you shouldn’t even need a tripod with which to take pictures of earth’s natural satellite, although a tripod can of course never harm.

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Useful, because I need not concern myself too much with unnatural looking colour casts when shooting indoors. Pleasing, because colour can and frequently will distract the human eye from the simplicity one is actually trying to depict. One of the reasons war photographers used to prefer black & white film was due to the fact the viewer didn’t first have to process the colour information contained within a picture, before visualising the actual image itself.

Unlike colour photography, black & white photography lends itself exceptionally well to documenting nature’s simplicity that continuously surrounds us and binds us.

Most cameras you can set to RAW & JPG. Set your camera accordingly and make sure your camera is set to record the JPG images in black & white. This way you will always have a black & white JPG image and an original RAW colour image of your pictures. Just bear in mind shooting in RAW and JPG simultaneously uses up three to four times as much storage space on your memory card than merely shooting in JPG alone. However, given the vast storage capacities of modern-day memory cards this shouldn’t really a major consideration preventing you from getting the best of both worlds.

Happy snapping!

I have always had a fascination with trees. They are friendly and supportive creatures when reading books underneath them or when one quite simply feels exhausted and needs to lean on something that offers ample shade. In autumn trees can and usually do also offer a quite stunning array of colour few other plants can rival.

The above picture was taken in RAW and contained so much vivid colour information even Adobe Lightroom 3.5 struggled to downsize it to a sensible JPG.

Instead of simply pointing the camera straight at a single tree or a whole forest of them, it pays to venture underneath these magnificent creations and take a peak at them from underneath. You will be amazed at the spectacle of colour that awaits you when the sunlight shines through their crowns lighting up the leaves as if they were sparklers set alight by magic.

Happy snapping!