My Camera Sucks

By far the most popular question I get from new Digital SLR owners is “what lens should I buy first?”. I usually recommend people buy a more powerful flash first, but having a good lens is definitely another key to taking better digital pictures. Lenses seem like a big purchase to most new DSLR owners, but the truth is that lenses will last a lot longer than your camera. If you buy good lenses and stick with the same manufacturer, your lenses will out live many cameras.

Go BIG…Aperture
As we started to learn in our lesson on aperture and shutter speed, larger apertures provide more flexibility in low light situations. For that reason, lenses with apertures of f2.8 and larger are considered “professional” lenses by most and carry a pretty hefty price tag. The good news is, they also hold their value really well, much better even than the camera itself. Professional zoom lenses are especially pricey, so prime lenses are the way to go when starting out.

Prime lenses are simply lenses that do not zoom, they have a constant focal length like 55mm. Since they are a constant focal length, they are less complicated and therefore less expensive. I have a few lenses that are just amazing professional zoom lenses. These lenses will be handed down to my son one day, they are like family but don’t talk back, carry germs or want to watch Noggin ALL day long. But I have to say my favorite lens still is my prime lens, a 50mm f1.8. This lens is “old school”, it’s like the Sinatra of camera lenses, it’s just always going to be cool. I shoot probably 60% of all of my indoor wedding shots with that lens and guess what, it is my CHEAPEST lens.

With $4.00+ gas now, I have another way to justify purchases (to myself at least). So the way I see it, something costs more or less than a tank of gas, makes it seem so cheap. Check out these two “professional” quality lenses that cost about as much as it costs to fill up an SUV (and much “greener” too!).

For you Canon folks, consider this bad boy. It will cost you about one tank of REGULAR unleaded!

If you fill up with 90+ octane, you are probably richer than me, so you might have enough pocket change to purchase this one if you are a Nikon person:

So if you really want to be “green”, car pool or ride your bike or hoof it to work next week and buy a professional lens. Put your camera on aperture priority, dial in f1.8, pump up your ISO to 800 and play around with low light shooting.

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The most common question I get from new DSLR owners is “which lens should I buy?”. That is a fun subject and one that will make your tax return disappear quicker than you can blink. In my opinion though, there is a more important and possibly cheaper purchase for first time DSLR owners that will drastically improve their photography. I recommend buying an external flash first, let’s look at why…

More Power!
One differences between an external flash and the built in flash on your DSLR is power. To really take good photos in a dark area past, say 10 feet, you need more power than your built in flash will generate. Otherwise you will get dark and blurry photos, which I am sure you have seen by now. A flash’s power is designated by a guide number. Guide numbers are usually expressed in effective range (feet or meters) at a certain ISO, but who cares. All you really need to know is that a higher guide number is better. A typical pop-up flash for a DSLR has a guide number equivalent to around 60 feet at ISO 200. Even the cheapest (and weakest) flash I am about to recommend has a rating of 98 feet at ISO 200. Most are at least double the power of your current pop-up flash.

Control The Light
To really get good at taking flash photography pictures, you need to be able to control the light. No one likes deer-in-the-headlights, harsh flashlight-looking pictures. Softer and more natural light can easily be achieved by just tilting the flash up and bouncing the light off of the ceiling. Here are two examples. The first was shot with the flash pointed directly at my patient helper and the second was shot with the same DSLR settings, but with the external flash pointed straight up at the ceiling:

As you can see, the second photo has much softer, natural looking light, just by pointing the flash at the ceiling!

The Choices
Let’s look at the flashes out there on the market. As with lenses, you MUST use flashes from the same manufacturer as your camera. Remember, your built-in flash has a guide number (power rating) of about 60 feet at ISO 200:

Nikon
For Nikon shooters, there are 2 different models to consider:
1. The first option is the Nikon SB-400 AF Speedlight for Nikon Digital SLR Cameras. The SB-400 has a guide number of 98 feet at ISO 200. The advantage to this unit is that it is nice and compact, but can still swivel up to bounce off of the cieling. Oh yeah, this thing is CHEAP too!
2. Next is the Nikon SB-600 Speedlight Flash for Nikon Digital SLR Cameras. At a rating of 138 feet at ISO 200, this flash is twice the power of the built in flash. It also rotates horizontally and vertically, so you can do some cool stuff like bounce off of walls!

Sony
Sony now has a flash built for their digital SLRs, Sony HVL-F36AM High-Power Digital Camera Flash for Sony Alpha Digital SLR Camera. The Sony flash is pretty powerful, with a guide number of 166 feet at ISO 200! Without any other choices from Sony, this one is an easy choice.

Canon
From Canon, we have the Canon 430EX Speedlite Flash for Canon Pro1, Pro 90, G Series and all EOS SLR Cameras. This is the most powerful of the bunch, with a rating of 197 feet at ISO 200, but also the most expensive.

So if you really want to start getting great photos from that new digital SLR, try purchasing an external flash. The digital SLRs make it really easy to take great flash pictures even with automatic settings. The two shots above were set at aperture priority and the only change was pointing the flash up in the second, my camera did the rest!

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In our first lesson on metering modes, we talked about how to tell the camera which parts of the photograph are the most important. Matrix metering (Canon calls it Evaluative metering and Sony calls it Multi-segment metering) takes the entire scene into account and averages the exposure across the entire image. This is great for landscapes, but lousy for portraits with tricky lighting (such as the back lit scene below). By using more precise meter modes like center-weighted metering and spot metering, we can fine tune our camera’s meter and take better digital pictures.

So now that we understand the difference, let’s take a detailed look at how to use these settings. The method used to set the metering mode will vary by camera manufacturer and model. Refer to your camera’s manual under the subject “Metering Mode”. Most Canon and Nikon digital SLRs have a button with a metering mode symbol on it that you can hold down and then use the scroll wheel to change modes. Sony provides access to metering modes through the function button. The current metering mode you are using is usually displayed on your camera’s LCD window as well. You may have seen these symbols before and not known what they meant:

Matrix/Evaluative/Multi-Segment Metering Mode:

Center-Weighted Metering Mode:

Spot Metering Mode:

How to use your metering mode…
Now that you have your metering mode set, let’s talk about how to use it properly to gain your desired exposure. For center-weighted and spot metering modes, follow these few steps:

1. Center the part of the subject you are most concerned about (say, a person’s face) in the center of your view finder.

2. Press and hold the AEL button that should be near your right thumb when you index finger is on the shutter button.

3. While you continue to hold in the AEL, compose your shot as normal, press the shutter release button halfway to auto focus and take your picture! Your exposure settings will stay locked in as long as you hold that AEL button.

Knowing these less “automatic” camera settings, and most importantly when to use them, will help you take better pictures more often! If you have questions on how to do this with your specific camera model, please leave a comment and we will be happy to help.

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Communication is the key to every relationship, right? Well, the same applies to you and your camera. It’s usually a love-hate relationship, based on the last set or prints you ordered. But if you haven’t given your camera any direction, don’t you deserve some of the blame? Yes, you do!

The key to taking better pictures is to understand what your camera is trying to do and knowing when to step in when it might be confused. Your camera’s meter is how it determines what aperture and shutter speed to use when taking a photo. The camera will do a great job choosing those settings, but you have to help it out sometimes.

So let’s take a look at an argument my camera and I got in recently. I was trying to get some shots of my son and his friends having fun at a backyard party. I was shooting up at them from a low angle and the sun was behind them. In this case, I told my camera to use it’s MATRIX meter setting, which is the most “automatic”. Matrix is the term Nikon uses, Canon refers to the same mode as Evaluative and Sony refers to it as Multi-Segment. By selecting matrix metering, I told my camera “hey, it’s up to you, just make it look pretty”. So my camera took the high road and tried to make everyone happy. It tried to expose the bright sky properly, thus making the whole scene dark:

Well, I obviously could care less about the sky, but I never opened up and told my camera that, so can I be mad? Well with digital I have no excuse since I should be monitoring my camera’s feed”back” (get it?) and better communicating my desires. Luckily, the camera manufacturers give us two more settings that allow us to be clear in our desires.

CENTER-WEIGHTED metering is the “I trust you, it’s just that…” setting for your camera. With center weighted metering, we are saying we care about the whole scene, we just care most about the center of the photo. Center weighted works great when there is a slight difference in lighting between your foreground and background.

The “you betrayed me, don’t say another word” setting is called SPOT metering. With spot metering, we are telling the camera to throw all of the rest of the scene under the bus, we only care about the very center of the photo. This comes in handy when there is big difference in brightness between the foreground and background, like in our backyard party example.

So to create the proper exposure for this photo, I locked in the exposure by using spot metering and putting my son’s head in the middle of the view finder. I then pressed and held the exposure lock button (AE button, located by your thumb on most digital SLRs), reframed the photo to include his buddy before taking the photo. I think you will agree, a much better photo:

We will detail how to set and use these settings in a future lesson.

Bottom line, was the first crappy photo my camera’s fault, no, I just needed to fully express my desires to take better digital pictures…

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ISO-So-Sensitive

While we are psyched about exposure (you know you are), let’s throw in the other factor, ISO. Back in the day, way back in 1999, remember when you bought “Indoor” or “Outdoor” film? The difference in those films was ISO, or how sensitive they were to light. These days, with our new fancy digital cameras, we can just change the ISO rating on the fly. Instead of changing the roll of film for “indoor”, we just raise the ISO to make our camera more sensitive to light. Kind of like how we men can turn up our sensitivity at just the right moment so we don’t get into even more trouble after we say something stupid like, well, you get the picture.

So what happens when we raise the ISO on our digital camera? Let’s take a trip back to the high tech My Camera Sucks science lab (click the video below):

Click To Play

Another way to look at it, think of ISO 1600 as a pale 4 month old’s hiney and ISO 200 as a leather skinned fisherman’s back, a fisherman that smells of sweat and sardines and beer with a bitter mistress called the sea….which one is going to burn quicker in the sun?

Why would I use this knowledge, my camera does it for me?
If you want to take better pictures in low light, you need to get away from automatic settings. If you use automatic settings, your camera will take the easy way out and pump up the built in flash. The result is a harsh light that looks like someone illuminated with a flashlight. If you like that look, go get a disposable camera from the drug store. Instead, take some control, pump up your ISO and use aperture priority to choose the lowest aperture value, or biggest hole. The result will be a much more natural looking photo. We will get into more details about how to do that next week…

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