WelcomeWelcome| 00:04 | There are a lot of decisions that go into
the making of a photograph, how to compose,
| | 00:09 | how to expose, how to process the final result,
but one of the most critical decisions that
| | 00:14 | you'll face at any scene is lens choice.
| | 00:17 | Your lens choice will impact where you
position your camera, what you can include in your
| | 00:21 | composition, and your lens choice will
heavily impact your exposure options.
| | 00:26 | Lens choice can also dramatically alter the spatial
relationships of different objects within your scene.
| | 00:31 | In this course, we're going to look at a
number of specialty lenses, as well as some lens
| | 00:35 | attachments that can modify
how your regular lenses work.
| | 00:38 | In general, these specialty lenses fall
into two categories, lenses designed for a very
| | 00:43 | specific shooting task, and lenses that simply
have characteristics that are very different
| | 00:48 | from the regular types of
lenses that you might normally use.
| | 00:51 | With lenses like these, you can see
the world in a very different way.
| | 00:56 | Specialty lenses can give you a new take on
old subject matter. They can add energy to
| | 01:01 | otherwise static scenes or
add atmosphere to an image.
| | 01:04 | Most importantly, those specialty lenses often
open up new subject matter, things that wouldn't
| | 01:09 | be interesting when shot with more traditional
lenses or sometimes fascinating when you're
| | 01:14 | shooting with a specialty lens.
| | 01:16 | With the lenses we're going to look at here,
you're not only getting new ways to shoot
| | 01:19 | familiar objects, you'll likely find new
subjects that you've never shot before.
| | 01:23 | Now, not all of these lenses will appeal to
everyone, but they are all worth considering.
| | 01:28 | So in addition to showing you what they can
do, I'm going to also offer lots of specific
| | 01:32 | tips on how to get the best
results with each of these lenses.
| | 01:36 | By the end of this course, you'll have a much
better idea of how specialty lenses can give
| | 01:40 | you new shooting options, and how they can
help you solve your photographic decisions in new ways.
| | 01:47 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Roadmap of the course| 00:01 | So I'm here up above beautiful San Francisco.
| | 00:03 | If you've watched the Night and Low Light
course, then you might recognize this location,
| | 00:07 | this is Tank Hill up above the Ashbury Heights
area of the Haight-Ashbury District in San Francisco.
| | 00:13 | We were here in January shooting late
at night, and it was just freezing cold.
| | 00:17 | We're here now in the late afternoon in
October, and it's warmed up to merely icy.
| | 00:22 | The fog has pulled out, though, it's very clear.
| | 00:24 | We still get this 400-mile-per-hour wind that
we're dealing with, which is a bit of an issue,
| | 00:29 | but we've got some really cool lenses that
we brought with us that we're going to be
| | 00:33 | taking around town and shooting
with in a lot of different ways.
| | 00:37 | We're going to be going to the Golden Gate
Bridge to a new Visitor's Center where we'll
| | 00:40 | face the problem of trying to shoot one of
the most photographed locations in the world.
| | 00:46 | We'll be heading downtown to a rooftop garden
where we'll try to capture some of San Francisco's
| | 00:50 | urban ambiance using a few different lenses.
| | 00:53 | A couple of friends of mine are putting on a
house concert at their place in the mission,
| | 00:57 | so we'll be going over there
one evening to shoot that event.
| | 01:00 | And while I'm expecting the performances to
be great, they are not necessarily going to
| | 01:04 | be that visually interesting, I think, so I'm
going to spice things up with some special lenses.
| | 01:09 | San Francisco's Conservatory of Flowers and
Golden Gate Park is another heavily photographed
| | 01:14 | location, but it also houses an amazing botanical
collection, so we'll be packing up our macro
| | 01:18 | lenses and heading in that direction.
| | 01:20 | And finally, we'll be doing some time on
Alcatraz, and if you've ever taken a tour of Alcatraz,
| | 01:25 | then this location should be especially
interesting to you because we've been given access to
| | 01:29 | some places that aren't on the normal tour.
| | 01:32 | Now, while all of these are really cool places, we
are not organizing this course around the locations.
| | 01:38 | Instead, we've organized
it around individual lenses.
| | 01:42 | So, for example, if you want to know about
fisheye lenses, there's a single section that
| | 01:46 | covers that lens, but you might see me in
several different locations during those movies.
| | 01:52 | I also want to point out that I'm carrying
a pretty deep bag of lenses to all of these
| | 01:56 | places, and that's very often how it
is with these types of specialty lenses.
| | 01:59 | And there might sometimes be occasions when
you know that a particular lens is going to
| | 02:03 | be ideal for the specific location you're
shooting in, but most of the time you'll be
| | 02:07 | working in a more
exploratory experimental mind set.
| | 02:11 | So I'll be taking an assortment of lenses
into each location experimenting with each
| | 02:14 | one there and trying to find the ones that
work for that particular shooting situation.
| | 02:19 | So that's my next step, I'm going to pack all those
lenses into a bag and get ready for our first shoot.
| | 02:24 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
1. Understanding Specialty LensesWords about focal length| 00:01 | If you've watched my Foundations of Photography:
Lenses course, well actually, I'd like to say thank you.
| | 00:06 | But in addition to that, you should already
be familiar with the idea of 35 mm equivalency.
| | 00:12 | Now, if you haven't watched it, if you
don't know that term, then you're going to need
| | 00:16 | to take a look at that
course before you go on here.
| | 00:18 | In this course, I will be shooting with a
Canon 5D Mark III, which has a full-frame sensor.
| | 00:24 | As such, when I speak of focal lengths and
field of view, I'm talking about field of
| | 00:29 | view that is equivalent to a 35-mm film camera.
| | 00:33 | Therefore, from my camera, a 50-mm lens is
considered normal, anything longer is considered
| | 00:39 | telephoto, and anything
shorter is considered wide angle.
| | 00:42 | If you're shooting with a camera that has
a sensor that's smaller than a piece of 35-mm
| | 00:46 | film, then you'll need a lens with a
different focal length to get the equivalent field of
| | 00:51 | view to what I'm getting on my camera.
| | 00:54 | Now these smaller sensors are
generally referred to as Cropped Sensors.
| | 00:59 | So if you're using a Canon camera with a
cropped sensor, then you'll need to multiply all of
| | 01:03 | your focal lengths by 1.6 to figure out the
equivalent focal length on my full-frame camera.
| | 01:10 | If you're using a Nikon camera with a
cropped sensor, then you'll multiply by 1.5.
| | 01:14 | Other cameras such as Four Thirds and
Micro Four Thirds require multiplying by 2.
| | 01:19 | This is important to understand when you
here me categorize lenses by Focal Length.
| | 01:24 | For example, I might say that a 16-mm lens is extremely
wide angle, and that's because on my camera, it is.
| | 01:31 | But that same lens on a Canon Rebel would have a
Field of View equivalent to a 25-mm lens on my camera.
| | 01:37 | Now that's still wide, but it's not ultra-wide.
| | 01:40 | To get the same ultra-wide field of view on
a Rebel, I need a lens with a focal length
| | 01:45 | of 10 mm, 10 multiplied by 1.6 equals 16.
| | 01:49 | I'll try to point out equivalencies when I
can during this course but in general, you'll
| | 01:54 | need to be paying attention to these issues
on your own if you use a cropped sensor camera.
| | 01:58 | Now again, if all of this is confusing, check out Foundations
of Photography: Lenses, for a more in-depth explanation.
| | 02:09 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding camera position| 00:01 | Before we dive into our specialty lenses in depth,
I want to quickly go over one very important
| | 00:07 | idea that was covered in Foundations of
Photography: Lenses, but that people often forget about,
| | 00:12 | and that has to do with camera position.
| | 00:14 | It's going to be particularly
important when we get to telephoto lenses.
| | 00:17 | Take a look at this image.
| | 00:18 | I want you to pay very close attention to
the distance between her nose and her ear
| | 00:23 | and the overall sense of proportion in her face.
| | 00:26 | I was shooting this with a 50-mm lens,
and I was standing very close to her.
| | 00:30 | Now watch what happens when with
the same lens I step backwards.
| | 00:34 | Now, the sense of distance between
her nose and her ear seems to change.
| | 00:39 | Here's before, here's after.
The proportions of her face are very different.
| | 00:43 | Here, this distance appears shorter, her face
appears to flatten out compared to here where
| | 00:49 | I see greater increase in depth.
| | 00:53 | As you change camera positions,
sense of depth in your scene changes.
| | 00:57 | People often mistake this for
something to do with focal length.
| | 01:01 | They say that as your focal length increases,
the sense of depth in your scene changes.
| | 01:06 | Technically, that's not true.
| | 01:08 | There's nothing optically
happening here between these two images.
| | 01:12 | The change is only happening
because of my camera position.
| | 01:15 | The thing is, if you're using a very long lens, you
don't stand close to your subject, you stand far away.
| | 01:22 | And so, we end up feeling like long
lenses make for this change in depth.
| | 01:27 | And that's usually what we say, and that's how I'm
going to be referring to it later in this course.
| | 01:32 | I'm going to say that when you're working
with longer lenses, the sense of depth in
| | 01:36 | your scene is going to be compressed.
| | 01:38 | It's not happening because of focal length,
it's happening because of where you stand
| | 01:43 | with your long lenses, and it's
important to understand that difference.
| | 01:48 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
2. Working with Lens AttachmentsWhat filters are for| 00:01 | These days, when you say the word filter to
a photographer, they probably assume you're
| | 00:05 | thinking about an effects plug-in in an
image editing application, Photoshop, Lightroom,
| | 00:10 | Aperture, and some other editors all support
the addition of little bits of extra image
| | 00:14 | processing code that can be used to filter
your image to create a huge assortment of effects.
| | 00:19 | Before Photoshop though, if you said filter
to a photographer, they assumed that you were
| | 00:24 | talking about a piece of glass that screwed
on to the end of a lens, and that's what we're
| | 00:29 | going to be talking about in this chapter.
| | 00:31 | A camera lens, of course, is
not a single piece of glass.
| | 00:34 | It's a complex array of optical elements,
and a Lens Filter is just one more optical
| | 00:39 | element, one that you screw on to
the threads on the front of a lens.
| | 00:43 | A filter does just what its name implies, it
filters light to create a particular effect.
| | 00:49 | Now, hopefully, you already have experience
with at least one type of filter, the UV or
| | 00:54 | Skylight filters that most photographers put
on the end of their lenses to provide protection
| | 01:00 | for the front of the lens.
| | 01:01 | These filters don't usually visibly alter
the light passing through, so they provide
| | 01:06 | a way to protect the front element of the
lens from scratches and even from breaking
| | 01:10 | if you drop your camera.
| | 01:12 | The elements inside your lens are all curved
in one precisely engineered way or another,
| | 01:19 | but lens filters are flat.
| | 01:20 | This means that they don't add any
magnification or distortion to your image.
| | 01:25 | They serve only to change the
quality of light that enters the lens.
| | 01:28 | Now, there are lots and lots of different kinds of
lens filters, but we're going to look at just a few.
| | 01:34 | A lot of lens filters that you can buy,
honestly, don't offer much to the digital photographer.
| | 01:40 | Colored filters, for example, are far more
useful to the black and white film shooter
| | 01:44 | than they are to a digital shooter because our
black and white process is just simply very different.
| | 01:49 | Many of the lens filters that are out there
can be replicated digitally using that other
| | 01:54 | type of filter, the kind
you use in your image editor.
| | 01:56 | So in this chapter, I'm sticking with lens
filters that are of particular use to digital
| | 02:01 | photographers, and that create effects that
are not easily replicated in an image editor.
| | 02:05 | Now, honestly, there aren't a lot of these,
which is nice because it means you don't actually
| | 02:10 | need a huge investment in lens filters.
| | 02:12 | However, the things that we're going to
look at here can be extremely useful and might
| | 02:16 | in fact be required if you
want to shoot certain things.
| | 02:20 | If you like shooting cloudy skies, for example,
if you regularly shoot shinny surfaces, water,
| | 02:25 | if you shoot through windows, if you like
shooting architecture, or if you want to create
| | 02:30 | certain atmospheric looks then you're going
to need to invest in some of the lens filters
| | 02:35 | that you'll see here in this chapter.
| | 02:40 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Shopping for filters| 00:01 | Before we dive into specific filters, I want
to mention a few general things about filter
| | 00:05 | shopping, which can be a little
confusing if you've never done it before.
| | 00:08 | There are three main filter manufactures,
Tiffen, Hoya, and B+W, and I am not listing
| | 00:14 | those in any particular order,
that's just how they came to mind.
| | 00:18 | There are also lots of other little
filter vendors that you've never heard of.
| | 00:21 | When you go to Amazon or to a photo
website like B&H and do a search for a particular
| | 00:27 | filter like maybe a circular polarizer, you're
going to see filters by those three big vendors
| | 00:31 | and lots of other people, and you're
going to see a huge variation in price.
| | 00:36 | Tiffen or Hoya or B+W might sell a circular
polarizer for $100, while some company you've
| | 00:41 | never heard of has one for $25.
Can you just go for the $25 one?
| | 00:46 | Let's talk for a minute
about really what a filter is.
| | 00:50 | We saw before that they are flat pieces
of glass that go on the end of your lens.
| | 00:54 | If you've watched my Foundations of Photography:
Lenses course, then you know that the lens
| | 00:58 | on your camera is actually a
series of individual optical elements.
| | 01:04 | So if you bought a $2,000 lens because you
love the quality of the glass, you don't want
| | 01:09 | to mess it up by putting an
inexpensive lousy filter on the end of it.
| | 01:13 | So there is a difference between
the $25 filter and the $100 filter.
| | 01:17 | A cheaper filter might introduce
aberrations to your lens that you don't want, it might
| | 01:21 | introduce flare, it might introduce chromatic aberration,
which are going to appear as colored fringes around lines.
| | 01:27 | So that's the advantage of
going for the more expensive filter.
| | 01:30 | How do you tell how expensive you have to go?
| | 01:33 | Typically, you can follow that a filter
that has multiple coatings on it, a multicoated
| | 01:40 | filter is going to do a better job of
reducing those aberrations that I mentioned than a
| | 01:44 | cheaper filter that lacks those coatings.
That's what those coatings are for.
| | 01:48 | And for the most part, that's what you're
buying when you're paying more money for a
| | 01:52 | filter, and it's worth doing, particularly
if you have a very good piece of glass that
| | 01:56 | you're wanting to put a filter on.
| | 01:57 | All of your lenses need a
Skylight or UV filter for protection.
| | 02:02 | With that filter on the end of the lens,
that front element can't get scratched.
| | 02:06 | I actually dropped a camera once on its
lens and the filter shattered that I had on
| | 02:11 | there, but the lens remained intact.
So it is a good level of protection.
| | 02:15 | It does nothing to the quality of
light that's going into your lens.
| | 02:18 | It's really just there for protection.
You won't see any change in effect on your lens.
| | 02:23 | When you go shopping for filters
you need to know what size you need.
| | 02:26 | Every lens has a filter thread size
which is listed on the end of the lens.
| | 02:29 | For example, this filter wants 77-mm
filter so that's what I need to buy.
| | 02:33 | The bad news is as filter
size goes up, so does price.
| | 02:37 | So if you've got a lens that has a really big front
element, you're going to be spending more for filters.
| | 02:42 | Because of that you don't necessarily want to
buy each filter for every lens that you have.
| | 02:47 | For example, a nice Circular Polarizer or
Infrared filter can be very, very expensive.
| | 02:52 | So you're going to want to think about what
lens you might want to put that on. A circular
| | 02:55 | polarizer is something you'll probably use
for landscapes if you're shooting a lot of
| | 02:59 | clouds and something you might use for
architectural photography or product shooting to reduce glare.
| | 03:04 | You probably only have one or two lenses
that you'll use for those things, so those are
| | 03:07 | the only ones that are going
to need a circular polarizer.
| | 03:10 | You're probably going to be able to figure
out which lenses are used for which purposes
| | 03:14 | and therefore, can make do with which
filters and not have to spend a lot of money on a
| | 03:17 | full filter set for every lens.
| | 03:20 | Note that some filters don't
ship with multiple coatings.
| | 03:24 | A Special Effects filter, for
example, may not have that sort of thing.
| | 03:27 | Typically, you won't find lots of vendors
selling, for example, a particular type of
| | 03:31 | diffusion filter, so you
don't have to worry about that.
| | 03:35 | So those are just a few things to keep in
mind when you go filter shopping to ensure
| | 03:39 | that you get the best
quality you can for your money.
| | 03:41 | The best way to find out for sure about a
very specific filter is just to read those
| | 03:45 | user reviews that you'll see
on Amazon or another photo site.
| | 03:48 | Try and get as much firsthand information
as you can from people who've actually used
| | 03:52 | the filter before you
make a final buying decision.
| | 03:57 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding neutral density filters| 00:01 | One of the most useful filters that you can
use is one that doesn't actually alter the
| | 00:05 | light that passes through your lens.
| | 00:06 | A neutral density filter does nothing more than
cut the amount of light that passes through it.
| | 00:12 | An ND filter doesn't alter the
light's qualities in any way.
| | 00:16 | It doesn't change its color or diffuse it or
anything like that, what they do is broaden
| | 00:20 | your range of exposure options.
| | 00:23 | For example, say I'm shooting some moving
water in the daytime, and I'd like to use
| | 00:27 | a slow shutter speed to create a
blurry, silky look on the water.
| | 00:31 | If it's too bright out I might not be able
to get a slow enough shutter speed to smear
| | 00:35 | the water even if I
slowdown my ISO as much as I can.
| | 00:39 | With the Neutral Density filter I can cut
a bunch of light out of my scene, which will
| | 00:43 | allow me to use a longer shutter speed.
| | 00:45 | Neutral density filters can also be used
to buy yourself more aperture latitude.
| | 00:49 | As you stop a lens down, you run the risk of softening
your image because of something called diffraction.
| | 00:54 | Many lenses get noticeably
softer once you pass f/16.
| | 00:58 | With a Neutral Density filter you can cut
out some light and open your aperture back
| | 01:02 | up to restore any sharpness lost
to those diffraction artifacts.
| | 01:06 | ND filters come in different strengths, so
you have some control over how much light
| | 01:11 | you cut from your scene, and you can stack multiple
ND filters to build up increasing amounts of darkening.
| | 01:18 | In the old days, ND filters were measured
and rated according to their optical density.
| | 01:22 | A 0.3 ND filter would cut one stop of light, a 0.6
would cut two, a 0.9 three stops, and so on.
| | 01:30 | Some vendors still rate their ND filters
this way, but others have adopted an ND rating.
| | 01:34 | An ND 2 filter, for example, cuts one stop
of light making it equivalent to a 0.3 filter.
| | 01:40 | ND 4 cuts two stops making it
equivalent to a 0.6, and so on.
| | 01:45 | So when you're shopping for an ND filter,
you'll see filters rated either way.
| | 01:49 | Some vendors even use both ratings.
| | 01:52 | This chart shows you the
equivalent ND and optical density ratings.
| | 01:56 | In general, it's good to
have a range of ND densities.
| | 01:59 | If you have some lighter ones and some heavier
ones, you can stack them in different combinations
| | 02:04 | to get different levels of light stoppage.
| | 02:06 | If you're not sure exactly how much darker
one stop is take a shot with your camera as
| | 02:11 | metered, then dial in minus one stop of
exposure compensation and shoot again.
| | 02:15 | This will show you how much darker the image
would be if you had a one-stop neutral density
| | 02:19 | filter on the front of your lens.
| | 02:21 | In recent years, a new technology
has come along, the Variable ND Filter.
| | 02:26 | A Variable ND screws on to the front of your lens just
like a normal filter, but it has this rotating element.
| | 02:32 | And as I rotate it, I get
more or less ND filtering.
| | 02:37 | The image gets lighter or darker.
This one gives me a range from 2-8 stops of ND.
| | 02:44 | Now, what's great about the Variable ND is
that it takes up much less space in your bag
| | 02:48 | than a bunch of separate ND filters.
That said, there are some caveats.
| | 02:52 | I find that with this particular ND I can't
go too far to the extreme dark end without
| | 02:58 | getting really bad
variation in effect across my image.
| | 03:02 | What's more, my camera doesn't
meter properly through this filter.
| | 03:05 | So to get good results, I do an initial
shot and then manually adjust my metering until
| | 03:09 | I get a better exposure.
Now, here's the weird thing.
| | 03:12 | If you work with a Nikon camera rather than
a Canon you probably won't have this problem.
| | 03:15 | The Nikon metering system more
accurately handles the Variable ND.
| | 03:20 | As convenient as a Variable ND is I'd still
recommend sticking with traditional ND filters.
| | 03:24 | Yeah, they will take up more space and they are more
of a hassle to work with, but they are more reliable.
| | 03:29 | They yield cleaner results and might
actually cost you less money especially if you don't
| | 03:33 | need a full six-stop range.
| | 03:36 | Here's another variation
on the ND, the Graduated ND.
| | 03:39 | So this filter has two stops of ND filtering
at the top here, but the filtering ramps off
| | 03:45 | to none by the middle of the frame.
| | 03:48 | So with a Graduated ND I can even out an
exposure when I'm shooting into something that's very
| | 03:53 | bright at the top of the frame like a sunset.
| | 03:56 | With the Graduated ND I can expose for the
foreground but still have detail on the sky.
| | 04:00 | I won't blow out my nice sunset.
| | 04:03 | Graduated ND's are tricky to recommend, not because they
don't work but because they need very special conditions.
| | 04:08 | If the ratio of dark to light that you want
isn't the same as your filter, for example,
| | 04:13 | if you want the dark to come down lower or
end earlier, then you might not get all the
| | 04:17 | darkening you need or might end up
with a foreground that's too dark.
| | 04:21 | What's more, if there's anything poking up
from the bottom of the frame into the top,
| | 04:25 | into this darker area like a tree or
something, then that object will also be darkened.
| | 04:29 | Now, in the old days Graduated ND was the
easiest way to get this type of effect, but
| | 04:34 | nowadays you can easily create
this effect in your image editor.
| | 04:38 | That said, in the next movie you're going to see
an ideal application for the Graduated ND filter.
| | 04:43 | ND filters aren't everyday items, but for
times when you want the kind of effect that
| | 04:47 | they can yield, they are
really your only options.
| | 04:50 | So you might always want to keep at
least a couple of them in your bag.
| | 04:55 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying neutral density filters| 00:01 | I'm here in North Beach in San Francisco.
| | 00:02 | I'm standing here in front of the Transamerica
building, a very famous iconic San Francisco landmark.
| | 00:09 | What you may not be as familiar with is
the original Transamerica Corporate offices.
| | 00:13 | That's this green copper
building that's right in front of me.
| | 00:17 | Beautiful building, it was the
Transamerica head office for a long time.
| | 00:20 | And then Francis Ford Coppola bought it
and started to use it as his corporate office
| | 00:24 | for his Zoetrope Studios, then he got into
making food and wine, and that's what this
| | 00:28 | cafe is here at the bottom.
So I want to get a shot of both of these.
| | 00:32 | So I've lined up my camera,
I've taken a picture, and this is what I get.
| | 00:36 | I like it except for the cars.
| | 00:39 | If the traffic has stopped, there are
just a bunch of cars in front of the cafe.
| | 00:42 | I can't really see it.
| | 00:43 | If the traffic is moving then there
is a car right in front of my camera.
| | 00:47 | It's a really dynamic scene here, and I'd
like to get more of a sense of the traffic
| | 00:50 | moving and not have it blocking the building so
much, and I can do that with Neutral Density filters.
| | 00:56 | With Neutral Density filters, I can slow my
shutter speed down so much that I can actually
| | 01:00 | just get the cars blurring.
| | 01:02 | So what I've done here is put a stack of a
few ND filters, including my Variable ND filter
| | 01:07 | on the front of a camera.
| | 01:10 | Because of my Variable ND filter, I'm not
getting accurate metering through the camera,
| | 01:15 | so I've put it into manual mode, and
I'm simply--I've done some experiments.
| | 01:19 | I'm shooting shots at a very slow speed like
6 or 10 seconds and then reviewing the results
| | 01:24 | on the back of the screen.
| | 01:25 | What I finally decided that I need a shot
that's 20 seconds long, I've got my Aperture
| | 01:28 | set to f/8, so I've got a nice deep aperture.
| | 01:31 | What I'm going to do now is wait for the
light to change so that these cars over in this
| | 01:35 | half start moving, and I'm hoping that
they're going to just be blurred out as they go by.
| | 01:39 | And the light should be changing any second.
| | 01:41 | Hopefully, we're not going to
see pedestrians get run over.
| | 01:44 | Well, actually we've got to wait now.
| | 01:47 | A couple of things to bear in mind when
you're doing this, you've got to be locked down on
| | 01:51 | a tripod because you're
using a very, very long exposure.
| | 01:53 | If you're using the Variable ND filter, you
may, depending on the quality of your filter,
| | 01:58 | have to be very careful about how much Variable
ND you dial in, because what I've been finding
| | 02:03 | is as I dial in more I get very
strong color change across my image.
| | 02:07 | Here goes the traffic, starting the shot.
Again, I'm doing a 20 second exposure.
| | 02:11 | I'm just going to wait for
the traffic to go through.
| | 02:12 | I'm being very careful not to bump my tripod.
| | 02:16 | So I have done some experimenting with the
Variable ND to making sure I am getting a
| | 02:19 | clean filtering and the shot is going through.
Looks like we've got just a few seconds left.
| | 02:25 | Hopefully, the traffic will keep moving.
| | 02:27 | And hopefully, a really tall bus isn't
going to come along. Okay, that's done.
| | 02:31 | And here's what I get. I like this shot.
I like the dynamic cars moving by.
| | 02:37 | It definitely is giving me a clearer view
of the building, but it's also giving me some
| | 02:40 | of that downtown excitement
that's going on right here.
| | 02:43 | Unfortunately, some fog has blown in.
| | 02:45 | I like how the fog is smearing,
but it's completely overexposed.
| | 02:48 | Fortunately, I have a fix for that.
I have a Graduated ND filter.
| | 02:52 | So I put that on my camera.
I'm going to take another shot.
| | 02:54 | I've had to lengthen my
exposure time, and I'm off.
| | 02:58 | The traffic is just started moving.
| | 03:00 | So what I've got here is I have a +8 and a +4
filter, a Graduated ND filter, and a Variable ND filter.
| | 03:10 | I'm cutting out a tremendous
amount of light on this shot.
| | 03:13 | That's how I'm able to get such a long exposure.
I'm here--my watch is gone.
| | 03:17 | I'm here at about noon.
| | 03:19 | It's very, very bright out
here and here's what I get.
| | 03:22 | So this is working and just fine.
I've restored the exposure to the clouds.
| | 03:25 | I'm not seeing a visible change
in brightness from top to bottom.
| | 03:30 | That's something you need to be careful
with that Graduated ND filter, that you're not
| | 03:33 | actually seeing the ramping off.
| | 03:35 | So here I have managed to
completely change the exposure of this scene.
| | 03:39 | I've gotten it much darker so that I can use a
longer exposure time to blur out the traffic.
| | 03:44 | I've used a Graduated ND filter so I can have
a separate exposure between the top and bottom
| | 03:48 | of the frame, and I've gotten a shot that would be
absolutely impossible without these filters.
| | 03:53 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Polarizing filters| 00:01 | If you've ever worn polarized sunglasses,
then you already know the dramatic change
| | 00:05 | that can happen when you polarize light in
front of a lens, and we're going to do that
| | 00:09 | now with a polarizing
filter on the end of our lens.
| | 00:12 | Before we get to that, I want to say we're here at the
new Visitor Experience at the Golden Gate Bridge.
| | 00:18 | I've lived in San Francisco for 25
years, and they've just changed this.
| | 00:21 | I've got to say it's
remarkable, how cool it is here.
| | 00:25 | The bridge has always been a thing that's a must see
when you come to San Francisco, and now it's even better.
| | 00:29 | They've got this cool new pavilion that's
got a lot of really nice stuff inside, a lot
| | 00:33 | of great history of the bridge.
| | 00:35 | This was the bridge that couldn't be built, so
actually the story of its construction is really cool.
| | 00:38 | There is a cafe that's got much better food
than used to be here. Really nice options.
| | 00:42 | So this is definitely worth seeing when you
come to San Francisco, and it's really worth
| | 00:46 | walking at least halfway across the bridge.
| | 00:47 | It's a really cool experience and they've got
some guided tours and things you can do here.
| | 00:51 | One thing you might notice
about the bridge is it's orange.
| | 00:55 | This is a great contrast
against the blue of the water.
| | 00:59 | However, the blue is really, really
blue because it's reflecting the sky.
| | 01:02 | One of the cool things you can do with a polarizing filter
that you cannot do in post-production is control reflections.
| | 01:08 | This can be a critical thing if you are
trying to shoot through windows, if you're shooting
| | 01:13 | against glass, if you are shootings against
reflective tables inside a house, that sort of thing.
| | 01:19 | What we've got here, the problem
is the water is really reflective.
| | 01:22 | So take a look at this.
We've put a circular polarizer.
| | 01:25 | It's called a circular
polarizer because it actually rotates.
| | 01:28 | We've put it on the end of our camera and
watch what happens as the polarizer is rotated.
| | 01:33 | Pay particular attention to the water.
Notice that it's changing color.
| | 01:36 | We can remove the reflection of the blue sky,
and get really down to just the green of the water.
| | 01:41 | And when we do that, the orange
of the bridge really pops also.
| | 01:44 | So, we're really changing the color of the
entire scene, not an unrealistic shift, but
| | 01:51 | making some nice distinction
between the bridge and the water.
| | 01:54 | And notice also the sky is
getting a better gradient.
| | 01:57 | Here are a couple of stills that I shot.
| | 01:58 | Here's without the circular polarizer, and
here's with, so same shot, with and without,
| | 02:03 | we get very different results.
| | 02:06 | Some other examples here, controlling reflections,
this can be really critical to simplify your image.
| | 02:12 | If you've got distracting reflections,
you can take them out altogether.
| | 02:15 | Now, polarizers have another really handy
use, and that's when you're shooting skies.
| | 02:21 | You've seen a little bit of a change of the
gradient of the sky when we were looking at
| | 02:24 | the bridge, but if there are clouds in the
sky, you can really make them dramatic, you
| | 02:28 | can really make them punchy,
you can really make them pop.
| | 02:31 | Using the polarizer is very easy.
| | 02:32 | You just stick on the end
of your lens and turn it.
| | 02:34 | And you can actually see the effects through
your viewfinder whether it's an optical viewfinder
| | 02:39 | or whether it's a live view screen.
| | 02:40 | So, this is a really handy
thing to have in your bag.
| | 02:43 | It's not an everyday item, but for times when
you are finding your image hassled by reflection
| | 02:49 | or when you've got really dramatic skies,
and you want to punch them up, or if you've
| | 02:52 | got skies that seem a little flatten, you
could use a little extra drama, a circular
| | 02:56 | polarizer is going to be a way to deal with
all of those situations and to deal within
| | 03:00 | the way that you simply
cannot achieve in post-production.
| | 03:05 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Some shooting tips for working with a polarizing filter| 00:01 | Now, while there's not much to using a
circular polarizer--you just turn it until the image
| | 00:05 | looks right--there are still a
couple of things to bear in mind.
| | 00:08 | A lot of people think, I'll just put the
circular polarizer on my favorite lens and just leave
| | 00:12 | it there and then I'll always have it.
| | 00:13 | I don't really recommend that because
you're going to forget that it's there, and it's
| | 00:17 | going to be set to a certain level of
polarization, and you're going to take your shot and maybe
| | 00:21 | that level of polarization will be good for
your shot, maybe it won't, but you're probably
| | 00:25 | not going to remember to adjust it.
| | 00:27 | So it's better to put it on when you're
in a situation where you think you need it.
| | 00:32 | The polarizer also is going to cut some light.
| | 00:35 | Depending on how you have it set, it may
require more exposure that could have serious impact
| | 00:40 | on your motion-stopping power or your depth of
field depending on what you're trying to do.
| | 00:44 | You can compensate for that with ISO.
| | 00:46 | It's not going to be a lot, but it's still
something to be aware of, and that's another
| | 00:49 | reason not to leave the filter on your camera.
| | 00:53 | Depending on the size of your filter threads on your
lens, the polarizer is going to be more or less expensive.
| | 00:58 | So, you probably shouldn't expect to just run out
and buy polarizing filters for all of your lenses.
| | 01:03 | You want to really think about
when am I most likely to use this?
| | 01:08 | If you tend to find yourself outdoors shooting
more with one lens and another, then you might
| | 01:12 | only need a polarizing filter for that one lens.
| | 01:15 | Bear in mind that when you're working with
wide angles, you want to be really, really
| | 01:19 | careful about polarization, in fact, you probably don't
ever want to put a polarizer on a super-wide angle lens.
| | 01:25 | The reason being at super-wide angles, you
can have a great variation from light situation
| | 01:30 | on one end of the frame to the other.
| | 01:32 | And so you could get a change in polarization from one end
of the frame to the other, and that change might be visible.
| | 01:37 | It will actually show up in
your image and be distracting.
| | 01:40 | Now, you might find that it's hard for you
to remove reflections even with a polarizer.
| | 01:46 | Here we've trumpeted this great ability for
it to make glass transparent and so on and
| | 01:50 | so forth, but conditions have to be right.
| | 01:52 | First of all, if the glass is treated somehow,
if it's polarized, if it's tinted, if it's
| | 01:57 | got some other process that's been done to it, you may
not have much luck removing reflections with a polarizer.
| | 02:03 | Also, angle of incidence, the angle that
the light is hitting the glass and coming into
| | 02:07 | your lens is really critical.
| | 02:09 | So you may find in certain situations you're
just not getting results from your polarizer.
| | 02:13 | When that happens, you can try moving around,
but if you're really dead set on a particular
| | 02:17 | shot, that may not be an option.
So, the circular polarizer is not completely magic.
| | 02:22 | It's not always going to do the
reflection stuff that we've talked about.
| | 02:26 | Still, it's a really handy thing to have in your bag
because when it does work, it can be a real lifesaver.
| | 02:35 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using infrared filters| 00:01 | Our eyes see the world, of course, in
visible light, but there are other kinds of light.
| | 00:05 | There's ultraviolet light.
There's also infrared light.
| | 00:08 | If you have an infrared filter on your lens,
you can photograph the world in infrared light
| | 00:13 | which yields a very different
result than normal visible light.
| | 00:18 | Most infrared photographs are black and white,
although it is possible to do color infrared.
| | 00:23 | And typically, what you get is a dramatic
change in vegetation, sometimes in skies,
| | 00:29 | and it's possibly, maybe you can
get a difference in skin tone.
| | 00:33 | But doing infrared portraits with a digital camera
is actually somewhat difficult, and we'll look at why.
| | 00:40 | Sitting in front of the image sensor of your camera,
there is a filter that serves a lot of functions.
| | 00:44 | And one of the things it does
is it cuts out infrared light.
| | 00:48 | So, by default, your digital camera is not
necessarily super sensitive to infrared light.
| | 00:56 | You can get an idea for how sensitive it is
by putting the camera in bold mode, opening
| | 01:01 | the shutter, and shining like your TV
remote, or something else that's infrared.
| | 01:05 | If you see the little light bulb at the end light
up, then your camera is able to perceive infrared.
| | 01:11 | You also need a filter to go on your lens, and
there are a lot of different kinds of filters.
| | 01:15 | The most popular is the Kodak
Wratten 87 series of filters.
| | 01:20 | There are different
variations with different densities.
| | 01:23 | Which one is right depends partly on the
look you're going through, going for, and partly
| | 01:27 | on the infrared sensitivity of your camera.
| | 01:30 | The problem is these filters are very
expensive, particularly if you need a large filter size.
| | 01:36 | And some cameras are more
sensitive to infrared light than others.
| | 01:39 | So, before you commit to this idea, before
you go out and buy the pricey filter, you
| | 01:44 | really ought to do some searches on the web
for your specific camera model, and infrared
| | 01:49 | to find out what people are saying
about your camera's infrared sensitivity.
| | 01:53 | If you see indications that your camera is
a good candidate for infrared shooting, then
| | 01:59 | by all means go ahead and get yourself a
filter and find yourself some subject matter that
| | 02:03 | seems like it will lend
itself to infrared shooting.
| | 02:06 | We're here in the Conservatory of Flowers
in San Francisco, and I've got behind me some
| | 02:10 | palm trees that are in nice direct sunlight.
| | 02:15 | Different kinds of vegetation responds
differently to infrared, vegetation usually turns white.
| | 02:20 | I know palm trees do a good job.
| | 02:21 | It also helps to really have some
direct sunlight on them, which we've got here.
| | 02:25 | So I've framed up a shot, and I've done
this just like I would frame up any shot.
| | 02:29 | I'm going to show you what I've got.
| | 02:30 | I don't have an infrared
filter on the camera right now.
| | 02:32 | I have simply set my
camera to aperture priority.
| | 02:37 | I'm at f/11 because I want to
ensure some deep depth of field.
| | 02:39 | And if I take this, so here's what we get.
It's not the most captivating image.
| | 02:45 | It's a simple still life made out of some
palm trees, but once we get into infrared,
| | 02:49 | it's going to become much more interesting.
| | 02:50 | Now, to get it into infrared, I need to get
my infrared filter on the front of the lens.
| | 02:54 | But before I do that, there
are some things to consider.
| | 02:58 | This infrared filter is extremely dense.
| | 03:01 | It's going to cut 8 to 10
stops of exposure from my scene.
| | 03:05 | That means my viewfinder is going to be
useless once I put this filter in, I'm not going
| | 03:09 | to be able to see through it, and
neither is the autofocus system in my camera.
| | 03:12 | It's going to go blind because it's
basically just going to be looking into dark.
| | 03:17 | So, I need to make sure that my image is composed and
focused before I put the filter on. It's already composed.
| | 03:23 | I haven't changed anything
since I took the last shot.
| | 03:24 | It's also still focused
because I haven't changed anything.
| | 03:28 | However, if your shutter button is your
autofocus button, then when you go to press the shutter
| | 03:32 | button to take your next shot,
the camera is going to refocus.
| | 03:36 | If your focus points end up focusing on the
sky, your image is going to go out of focus.
| | 03:40 | So you have a few options.
| | 03:41 | One, if your camera allows it, you can take
autofocus off of the shutter button, for example,
| | 03:46 | I have my camera set up so that this button
back here auto focuses, so I can press the
| | 03:50 | shutter button without
worrying about it refocusing.
| | 03:53 | Another thing you can do though is once the
image is focused, simply switch your camera
| | 03:58 | from autofocus to manual focus.
| | 04:00 | Now, the autofocus mechanism is
disabled, so my focus is locked in.
| | 04:04 | So I've got my shot
composed, I've got it focused.
| | 04:07 | I can't tell anything about
exposure until I get the filter on.
| | 04:11 | So I'm going to do that next.
| | 04:12 | So I'm taking the filter, and I'm just
screwing it onto the front of the lens.
| | 04:16 | I'm being kind of careful for two
reasons, I don't want to change my shot.
| | 04:20 | I don't want to bump the camera such that
it will move around and recompose my shot
| | 04:24 | because once these are on there, I can't see, so
I would have to take them off and start all over.
| | 04:28 | Also, these are 77 millimeters
filters, 77 millimeters in diameter.
| | 04:32 | They're big enough that screwing them
on straight can be a little complicated.
| | 04:36 | So, I'm trying to be careful with that,
because if I get them screwed on crooked, they're
| | 04:39 | going to be very difficult to remove.
| | 04:41 | So I am framed, I am focused,
I have the infrared filter on.
| | 04:45 | On my particular camera,
metering at this point is useless.
| | 04:49 | The camera is going to
meter completely incorrectly.
| | 04:52 | If I hit my metering button, it's
telling me f/11 at an eighth of a second.
| | 04:57 | If I take this picture,
it's just going to be black.
| | 04:59 | So, the meter has gotten it totally wrong.
I have to go to a completely manual mode here.
| | 05:02 | I'm going to switch my
shooting mode over to manual.
| | 05:05 | Now, when I took this shot before, I shot it
at f/11 to try to guarantee deep depth of field.
| | 05:10 | I could continue to do that except that it's
going to require a very, very long shutter speed.
| | 05:16 | Let me show you what I mean.
| | 05:18 | I'm going to dial in to 8 seconds just because
from experience, I know that an infrared image
| | 05:25 | at ISO 3200, which is where I am at right
now is going to need at least 8 seconds.
| | 05:33 | So I'm going to take that
shot and see what happens.
| | 05:36 | But as I watch during these 8 seconds, I
realize that the trees are blowing around.
| | 05:42 | That might be kind of cool looking. All right.
First of all, it's a little bit dark.
| | 05:45 | I am going to go up another stop.
| | 05:47 | So I'm going to go to 15 seconds which is
going to brighten things up a little bit.
| | 05:53 | Your histogram is critical at this point when
you're feeling around for your exposure because
| | 05:57 | it's going to tell you whether you've
actually got things bright enough or not.
| | 06:00 | So, I'm going to do this 15-second exposure.
| | 06:02 | The tree branches are
going to be very, very blurry.
| | 06:06 | I might decide I like that.
| | 06:07 | I think in this case, I want some
of them to be as sharp as possible.
| | 06:10 | So I'm just checking my exposure here. This looks
pretty good. I think 15 seconds is right at f/11.
| | 06:18 | But it also means that the tree branches,
as you can see, here are pretty smeary.
| | 06:22 | I actually like the look, but I'd also like
to try it with tree branches that aren't quite
| | 06:26 | so over rot with motion blur.
| | 06:30 | So I'm going to open my aperture up some.
I'm at 15 seconds right now at f/11.
| | 06:34 | If I go to f/8, that will get me down
to roughly 8 seconds. So let's try that.
| | 06:40 | I'll set that to 8, and this down to f/8.
I could go down another stop.
| | 06:45 | I'm going to go down to f/5.6.
That will get me down to 4 seconds.
| | 06:49 | So let's see what that looks like.
I'm going to take the shot.
| | 06:54 | Now, on my camera, I know
that ISO 3200 is a useable ISO.
| | 06:58 | It doesn't yield an image that's too noisy.
| | 07:01 | Yours may not be capable of shooting so
fast, or it might be able to go faster.
| | 07:04 | If you can go faster, that's great.
| | 07:06 | You can use even quicker shutter speeds, but
if you have to go to a lower ISO, then your
| | 07:10 | shutter speeds are going to get longer.
I like this better.
| | 07:13 | The branches are not as smeary,
and I think the exposure is good.
| | 07:18 | Let me check the Histogram one
more time. That looks right.
| | 07:21 | So, I think this is the shot.
I might bracket it a little bit.
| | 07:25 | So by bracket it, I mean shoot it
with a couple of different exposures.
| | 07:28 | I think I'll go to a longer one.
I'm going to go up half a stop to six seconds.
| | 07:32 | A stop, of course is a doubling.
| | 07:34 | If I'm at four seconds, I can go up half a stop
by going to six, leaving my aperture the same.
| | 07:38 | I don't really want to go any wider
because I like to keep the depth of field I have.
| | 07:41 | That's giving me some nice stuff.
| | 07:43 | These images all look really red,
because I'm shooting through a red filter.
| | 07:46 | This is not my final image.
| | 07:48 | There's still lot of processing that has to be
done, and we'll look at that in the next movie.
| | 07:54 | This is the infrared shooting process.
It is obviously a handful.
| | 07:58 | There's a lot you have to do here.
You've got to have the special filter.
| | 08:01 | Also, you can only shoot with
very long shutter speeds there.
| | 08:04 | I'm in bright daylight here.
| | 08:06 | There's no situation where my shutter
speed is going to go down below 4 or 5 seconds.
| | 08:10 | That makes it troublesome for shooting
landscapes because things blow around, makes it hard
| | 08:15 | to do portraits because it's hard
for people to hold still for that long.
| | 08:18 | If you're really in to infrared, and you
would like a more capable infrared digital camera,
| | 08:23 | you can have your camera altered.
| | 08:26 | You can have that filter that sits in front
of the image sensor removed, and you'll find
| | 08:30 | that your shutter speeds go way
up, your infrareds go much faster.
| | 08:34 | Your infrared sensitivity increases a lot,
but it permanently alters your camera.
| | 08:39 | Without that filter, you can see some variety of
different artifacts when you're shooting normally.
| | 08:46 | You might see weird moire patterns,
you might see weird color shifts.
| | 08:50 | So, when you do this alteration, you are really
permanently changing your camera to an infrared camera.
| | 08:56 | So if you've got an old SLR that you're not
using, this might be a fun thing to play with.
| | 09:00 | Again, do some Internet searches, and you
will find companies that will modify your
| | 09:05 | camera for infrared shooting.
| | 09:06 | So, the next step to finish the image is to
get it into the image editor, do our black
| | 09:10 | and white conversion, and see what we can do by
way of playing with the tones in the image.
| | 09:15 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Processing the infrared image| 00:01 | Once you've shot an infrared image, that is
once you've shot an image through an infrared
| | 00:05 | filter, you'll end up with something like this.
| | 00:08 | It is very, very red, and it needs a lot of
work to get it into a finished useable image.
| | 00:14 | As you can see, this particular camera filter
combination did not really yield me any color at all.
| | 00:21 | Sometimes, if your infrared filtering
doesn't have to be so small, you will actually see
| | 00:26 | some traces of other hues. This is so strongly red.
| | 00:29 | We're not going to pull any other color out of it,
so this is going to end up a black and white image.
| | 00:33 | I'm going to open this up in Photoshop.
| | 00:36 | It is a RAW image just like any other, and
I can edit it just like any other RAW image.
| | 00:40 | I'm going to try to pull some of
those over-exposed highlights down.
| | 00:45 | They're not horribly clipped.
| | 00:47 | It's just the red channel
oddly enough, no surprise there.
| | 00:50 | But I can still take that over-exposure out
just to make sure that those highlights aren't
| | 00:56 | blown out to complete white.
There's not much else that I need to do here.
| | 01:00 | I can play with contrast some, but when working
with an infrared image, most of your adjustments
| | 01:05 | are going to need to be localized.
| | 01:06 | You're going to be hard pressed to find
global adjustments that do much for you.
| | 01:10 | That said, I will up the clarity a
little bit, and then I'm going to hit OK.
| | 01:13 | I want to make sure that I'm working in 16-bit
color just to give myself more editing latitude
| | 01:19 | so that I don't start seeing
tone breaks, and posterization.
| | 01:22 | Then I'm going to open that
up, and I'm ready to move on.
| | 01:24 | First thing I need to do is get my
black and white conversion going.
| | 01:28 | There's no color correction
that I need to work with here.
| | 01:30 | I need to just go right into Gray Scale
mode and start manipulating tone that way.
| | 01:35 | I'm going to add a black
and white adjustment layer.
| | 01:37 | If you are not familiar with working in black
and white or working with the black and white
| | 01:41 | tools in Photoshop, check out my
Foundations of Photography: Black and White course.
| | 01:45 | That will walk you through the whole thing as
well as help you understand more the aesthetics
| | 01:49 | of working in black and white.
| | 01:51 | Normally, of course, I would be able to manipulate
these color sliders to tone things in different ways.
| | 01:56 | But really the only color in my image is red.
| | 01:59 | Manipulating the red slider is going to
change the brightness of everything, and none of
| | 02:03 | these other color sliders are really going to do anything
at all because everything in my image is just red.
| | 02:08 | I'm just going to take the default black
and white recipe that Photoshop has given me,
| | 02:13 | and work the rest of my
adjustments using localized tools.
| | 02:17 | I really like how
vegetation goes white in infrared.
| | 02:21 | That's a great thing to offset against a blue
sky, so I would like to manipulate the sky some.
| | 02:26 | I'm going to set up Levels Adjustment layer, and
start to think about how I want to alter my sky.
| | 02:33 | I need to be a little bit careful
because of the vignetting in the image.
| | 02:37 | I don't want to exaggerate that too much.
| | 02:40 | I'm just working my Levels
Adjustments, and really only watching the sky.
| | 02:44 | I'm not worried about what might be
happening to the rest of the image because I'm going
| | 02:48 | to then go back and locally apply this edit.
So there's my adjustment.
| | 02:52 | Now, I would like to fill
my layer mask with black.
| | 02:57 | So, with black as the background
color, I'm going to hit Command+Delete.
| | 03:01 | Again, I know I'm going through all of this
very quickly, but this is all explained in
| | 03:04 | Foundations of Photography: Black and White.
| | 03:07 | If you're not familiar with working with
Adjustment Layers, there are lots of other places in
| | 03:11 | the lynda library where you
can learn about these techniques.
| | 03:15 | So now what I would do is go in
and paint my adjustment into my sky.
| | 03:22 | I might, in a real editing workflow, I would probably
choose to do this a little bit more refined.
| | 03:27 | I'm just going to rush through this here so
you can see the overall effect and what the
| | 03:30 | techniques are, some of the techniques.
| | 03:32 | So, what I might do here is use Refine Edge
to grab all of the frilly stuff around the
| | 03:37 | edge of the palm tree, and
build a very, very accurate mask.
| | 03:40 | Instead, I'll just quickly brush this in,
so you can see the tonal effect that I would
| | 03:44 | ultimately end up with.
This might be a little aggressive.
| | 03:47 | I may not want the sky this dark, although
I am kind of liking it, and I would need to
| | 03:50 | go in obviously and retouch the bits of the
palm fronds that I'm screwing up with this
| | 03:56 | adjustment because they're getting some of this
contrast adjustment that I want targeted on the sky.
| | 04:01 | So, that's looking pretty good.
| | 04:03 | I might want to go in and
brighten up the clouds a little bit.
| | 04:06 | I can do that with another Levels Adjustment
layer this time simply manipulating the white point.
| | 04:13 | There's not a lot of bright white in those
clouds though, and as I brighten them up,
| | 04:16 | I'm going to be exaggerating the noise,
so I may not want to take them too far.
| | 04:19 | Again, I'll fill that with black and then
go back and paint my mask on that adjustment
| | 04:26 | layer to bring the clouds out.
| | 04:28 | So, I could just keep
working the image this way.
| | 04:30 | This is straight black and white editing.
| | 04:31 | It's no different than what you do on any
other black and white image or what you do
| | 04:35 | on a lot of color images.
| | 04:36 | What I typically find with infrared stuff is
you end up with very low contrast textures,
| | 04:42 | so you'll do a lot of localized levels
adjustment to put contrast back in the areas.
| | 04:46 | Let's consider these palm fronds
and the bark of the tree there.
| | 04:51 | That could be more contrasty, and
it would have a lot more appeal.
| | 04:55 | So, I'm going to just do basic contrast adjustment, and then
I can actually probably keep that on the whole image.
| | 05:03 | But instead, I think I will go localized and edit each
palm tree individually with its own contrast adjustment.
| | 05:11 | What I like about this is it's taking some
of that kind of gray haze off of the palm
| | 05:16 | fronds, and it's giving me nice texture on them.
| | 05:21 | So again, you're often going to find a strong
loss of contrast when you're working in infrared,
| | 05:26 | now that my mask is in place, I can play with
exactly what kind of contrast adjustment I want.
| | 05:32 | So, this is going to be a pretty regular
thing that you're going to need to do particularly
| | 05:35 | working with vegetation is go in and make
localized contrast adjustments to put some
| | 05:41 | punch back into the textures on your
vegetation and maybe on all of your subject matter.
| | 05:47 | So, we're far from a finished image here, I just wanted
you to see the types of edits you're going to do.
| | 05:51 | This is straight black and white image editing.
There's not much else to it.
| | 05:55 | If you have a camera set up that doesn't
block out all your color, then you might want to
| | 05:59 | preserve a little color
and play with that somehow.
| | 06:01 | But most of the time, you'll be working
simply in black and white using perfectly normal
| | 06:05 | black and white image editing techniques.
| | 06:10 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Handling stuck filters| 00:01 | If you stack multiple filters on your lenses,
there's inevitably going to come a day when
| | 00:05 | you can't get your stacked filters apart.
| | 00:08 | This is especially true if you have a lens
that requires very large filters with threads
| | 00:12 | so tiny it's hard to screw filters together
so that they're perfectly straight, especially
| | 00:16 | if the filters are very large.
| | 00:17 | If you keep UV or Skylight filters on all
of your lenses, then anytime you add a lens,
| | 00:22 | you'll be stacking filters.
Now, getting them apart can be tricky.
| | 00:25 | First, you need to unscrew
the entire stack of filters.
| | 00:28 | I have two filters here.
| | 00:30 | I've got an ND filter and then I put a
Variable ND filter on top of it to create this stack.
| | 00:37 | When I went to unscrew the variable ND filter,
the whole thing came off, and now I'm trying
| | 00:41 | and trying and trying to
get them undone, and I can't.
| | 00:43 | Now, lots of people have lots of ideas
about how to get stuck filters apart.
| | 00:49 | Some people say that you should set one
side on an ice pack because the cold will make
| | 00:53 | that side contract and then
you can unscrew them easier.
| | 00:57 | Other people say that you should put the
filters on a flat surface and then try to mash down
| | 01:02 | on it really hard with the hope that you'll
snap the threads back to where they are supposed
| | 01:06 | to be and then you can unscrew them.
| | 01:08 | I've always been afraid of that last one
because it sounds like all it's going to do is screw
| | 01:12 | up lens threads and the cold thing has
never actually worked for me. I've tried it.
| | 01:16 | Instead, the only thing I've ever found
that's really worked for filters that are really
| | 01:20 | stuck together are these filter wrenches.
| | 01:24 | So these are just cheap-o
little pieces of plastic.
| | 01:26 | They have kind of got some, not serrations
on the inside, but a little grippy plastic
| | 01:32 | bits on the inside, and the idea is I latch
on to one of my filters with one of these,
| | 01:39 | and I'm going to just do that right here, and then
I'll latch on to the other one with the other one.
| | 01:45 | And now, if I twist in opposite directions,
they should come apart, and they will eventually,
| | 01:49 | but it's going to take you awhile.
| | 01:51 | It's going to be really frustrating, and you've got
to hold your mouth just right, or it doesn't work.
| | 01:55 | It's particularly complicated if you're
dealing with a circular polarizer, or in this case,
| | 01:59 | a Graduated ND filter than can rotate
because you'll latch on to the rotating part, and
| | 02:04 | it will just spin, and that won't
actually get your filters apart.
| | 02:07 | The best thing I've found is to work on a table.
| | 02:10 | So I set the filters down, and I put one
wrench here and then the other wrench here.
| | 02:19 | And then while trying to hold them down on
the table, I can usually get them to unscrew.
| | 02:25 | I'm not going to make you suffer through all
the grunting and foul language that will ensue
| | 02:30 | if I actually try this right now.
| | 02:31 | A couple of other tips though, you can
sometimes get this to work a little better if you get
| | 02:36 | a little thin strip of double-sided tape or
something and put it on the inside of here
| | 02:39 | because that will make this a little bit
grippier and a little bit easier to use.
| | 02:42 | It usually takes me 10 or 15 minutes
to get them apart, but ultimately I can.
| | 02:48 | And as I said, this is the only mechanism
that I've ever found that reliably works for me.
| | 02:52 | You can find filter wrenches on Amazon and
while they may take some work, they're still
| | 02:57 | the best way I've found to
get stuck filters unstuck.
| | 03:02 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Working with Wide AngleWorking with ultra-wide lenses| 00:01 | On a camera with a full-frame sensor--that
is a sensor that is the same size as a piece
| | 00:05 | of 35-mm film--we typically think of wide angle to
be a lens with a focal length between 24 mm and 50 mm.
| | 00:14 | Curiously, 10 years ago I would have said 28
and 50 mm, but thanks to advances in engineering
| | 00:20 | and manufacturing, high quality 24-mm
lenses can now be made very affordable.
| | 00:25 | Once you go shorter than 24 mm, you're
into the realm of the ultra-wide, which is what
| | 00:29 | we're going to explore in this chapter.
| | 00:31 | On a full-frame sensor, ultra-wide
lenses typically range from 16-24 mm wide.
| | 00:37 | If you're using a cropped sensor camera
then the ultra-wide focal length range is going
| | 00:41 | to be more like 10 to 15 mm wide.
Now, 8 mm may sound like a very small range.
| | 00:47 | After all telephoto lenses range across
hundreds of millimeters, but there is a surprising
| | 00:52 | amount of difference in field of view
when you get to very short focal lengths.
| | 00:55 | For example, here is an image shot at 16 mm and
here's the same scene zoomed out just 2 mm more.
| | 01:02 | That difference of 2 mm buys us
quite a bit of additional field of view.
| | 01:06 | As with wide-angle lenses of any focal length,
as you shrink the length of your lens into
| | 01:11 | the ultra-wide domain, you run the
risk of distortion in your image.
| | 01:16 | Distortion is the geometric warping that can occur in
your images, especially in the corners and on the edges.
| | 01:22 | Notice the curved blinds
in the corner of this image.
| | 01:25 | Now, they're noticeable but this is actually a
very low amount of distortion for a lens this wide.
| | 01:30 | This is a 16 mm.
| | 01:31 | This lens actually has special optical elements
in it that aimed to reduce spherical distortion.
| | 01:37 | And so, the lens is called a Rectilinear Lens.
| | 01:40 | As much as possible, the engineers have worked
to ensure that the lens produces straight lines.
| | 01:45 | Once you go shorter than 16 mm, it
gets very difficult to control distortion.
| | 01:49 | This is why the ultra-wide
domain has a bottom limit.
| | 01:52 | Mind you, it's not impossible to build a wider
lens without distortion, but to reduce distortion
| | 01:57 | requires the addition of more lens elements, and that
makes the lens bigger and heavier and more expensive.
| | 02:02 | So what can you do with a
Rectilinear Ultra-wide lens?
| | 02:07 | As you might expect, it's a lot like what you can do with
a normal wide-angle lens only more so, much more so.
| | 02:13 | Two things happen as focal length shrinks,
your field of view increases and the sense
| | 02:18 | of depth in the scene expands.
| | 02:20 | Things in the distance will
appear farther away and much smaller.
| | 02:24 | This dramatically changes the entire sense
of space in your scene and the relationships
| | 02:29 | between objects that are closer and farther.
| | 02:32 | Ultra-wides are great for shooting people
in situations where you want to see their
| | 02:35 | environment or things that they
are holding or interacting with.
| | 02:39 | When shooting people, you need to
be very careful about distortion.
| | 02:42 | With any wide-angle lens, it's very
easy to create very unflattering portraits.
| | 02:46 | With an ultra-wide, you can
really make people look weird.
| | 02:49 | Ultra-wides can be very
effective for shooting interiors.
| | 02:51 | If you're going for accuracy, you'll need
to be careful that you're not presenting an
| | 02:55 | inaccurate sense of the space of the interior.
| | 02:57 | But for small spaces, these lenses are a
great way to capture a wide field of detail.
| | 03:02 | I like ultra-wides for street shooting
because when you're out on the street just walking
| | 03:06 | around, you usually have an awareness
of a fair amount of space around you.
| | 03:10 | An ultra-wide lens lets you capture that
expansive field while simultaneously giving you a kind
| | 03:14 | of a more abstract wider view
than what you would actually see.
| | 03:18 | Like all of the lenses we'll be looking at
in this course, ultra-wides are useful anytime
| | 03:22 | you want a very different take on
something that you're used to regularly shooting.
| | 03:26 | I often find they work very well in
situations that you wouldn't always think of as being
| | 03:30 | a wide-angle situation. Have fun with skies.
| | 03:33 | Ultra-wides are great for
capturing huge sky full of clouds.
| | 03:37 | Geometry is also a great
source of super wide subject matter.
| | 03:40 | In addition to letting you capture longer
lines and bigger geometric objects, ultra-wides
| | 03:45 | let you show relationships between shapes
and objects that you might not normally see.
| | 03:50 | No matter what lens you're using, you should
always experiment with changes in point of view.
| | 03:54 | But with ultra-wides, you can play a lot more.
| | 03:56 | Because they can capture such a wide field
of view, an ultra-wide lets you create really
| | 04:00 | dramatic angles and interesting points of
view that are very different from what you
| | 04:03 | can capture with a longer lens.
Move up, move down, and by all means get close.
| | 04:09 | That's the easiest way to ensure that your
subject is obvious in the frame when you're
| | 04:13 | shooting with an ultra-wide.
| | 04:14 | Now, many people are surprised to find that
ultra-wide focal lengths are usually not very
| | 04:19 | effective for shooting landscapes because
they place the horizon so far away and they
| | 04:24 | make it so small, an ultra-wide can easily
shrink that big grand vista you're looking
| | 04:29 | at to something really small and boring.
| | 04:32 | If you're going to shoot with an ultra-wide,
you have to be ready to move your feet more.
| | 04:36 | Using an ultra wide means getting very close
to your subject, and as you work to minimize
| | 04:40 | distortion and to find the best angle, you'll
probably find that you have to move more than
| | 04:44 | you do with a normal lens.
| | 04:46 | To get the best results with an ultra-wide, you'll
need to consider a few simple shooting practices.
| | 04:52 | Take a look at this.
| | 04:53 | This is video capture of a
Canon 5D with a 16 to 35-mm lens.
| | 04:58 | I've pulled the lens out to 16 mm.
| | 05:00 | Watch the horizon as I
tilt the lens up and down.
| | 05:04 | Now the middle stays fine, but look what
happens to the edges, they bow up and down.
| | 05:08 | When you're shooting with an ultra-wide, you have
to pay very careful attention to the tilt of the camera.
| | 05:13 | Even a slight tilt will cause distortion of the
lines in your image, especially on the edge of the frame.
| | 05:19 | You should also pay attention to
the size of objects in your frame.
| | 05:22 | Remember, closer things will appear to be much bigger
than things that are even just a little bit far away.
| | 05:27 | When you're shooting people, this can create some
very strange proportions which aren't always flattering.
| | 05:33 | You have to be careful with polarizers
when you're using an ultra-wide angle lens.
| | 05:36 | The effect of a polarizer depends on the
angle of the light that's hitting your subject,
| | 05:41 | but with the huge fields of view, ultra-wide
lenses don't necessarily have the same angle
| | 05:45 | of light striking all
elements across their frame.
| | 05:48 | So you'll sometime see a change in polarization across
the frame if you slap a polarizer on your ultra-wide lens.
| | 05:54 | Similarly, exposure can be uneven across your
image because your camera will meter for light
| | 05:59 | sources that are included in
the extreme edges of your frame.
| | 06:02 | You'll sometimes find that your foreground
is dark even though there are light sources
| | 06:06 | on the edges of the frame.
| | 06:08 | Speaking of light sources on the edges of
the frame, be sure to keep an eye out for
| | 06:11 | lens flare when shooting with an ultra-wide
and remember that lens flare isn't always
| | 06:16 | those obvious circular artifacts on the image,
sometimes it's simply a loss of contrast in your image.
| | 06:21 | If that happens, you're going to want to
try to shield your lens from the light source
| | 06:26 | to get that reflection
off the front of the lens.
| | 06:28 | That should put some contrast back in your
image and remove any of those circular patterns.
| | 06:33 | If you are shooting with the sun behind you,
then you'll need to be careful of your own shadow.
| | 06:37 | If the sun is low, you may not be able to
get as close as you like to a subject without
| | 06:41 | seeing your own shadow in the frame.
| | 06:43 | Finally, when you're composing with an ultra-wide, be
absolutely certain that you have a clearly defined subject.
| | 06:49 | This can be hard with these lenses because
there can be so many things in the frame that
| | 06:53 | can distract, and because your
subject might be rendered very small.
| | 06:56 | So really take that extra effort to ensure
that the subject of your shot is obvious.
| | 07:02 | As you can see, there are many applications for
these lenses, and we can't show you demonstrations
| | 07:06 | of how to shoot all of them.
| | 07:08 | But in the next movie, you're going to see me work
at very particular type of shoot with an ultra-wide.
| | 07:12 | And as I do, I'll let you know what I'm noticing, what
I'm working with, and how I'm thinking about using the lens.
| | 07:23 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using a wide-angle lens| 00:01 | So some friends here in San Francisco
are throwing a house concert.
| | 00:04 | We've got in someone's house and
reshaped it into a concert space.
| | 00:08 | We moved some furniture around, we've got
a nice little performance space, we have a
| | 00:12 | great crowd of fun people who have shown up
to watch the show, and we've got two great
| | 00:17 | performers, a singer-songwriter named
Larry Gallagher and a poet named George Bilgere.
| | 00:21 | Even if you think you don't like poetry,
George's poems are really a lot of fun.
| | 00:27 | So we've got this wonderful event here of an
evening on a Saturday night, and I want to shoot it.
| | 00:31 | Now, I'm thinking predominantly, probably
the lens I'm going to be working with, and
| | 00:34 | this may come as a
surprise is an ultra-wide angle.
| | 00:37 | A lot of people think ultra-wide angle?
| | 00:39 | But that's for shooting the Grand Canyon,
that's for shooting Monument Valley, because
| | 00:42 | those are big wide spaces.
That type of lens doesn't work too well there.
| | 00:46 | It's much better in a smaller space like this.
| | 00:50 | What a wide-angle lens is going to give me
is the ability to capture the performer and
| | 00:54 | the audience so that I can better see the
relationship and see how close they are, and
| | 00:58 | see what a tight intimate space this is.
| | 01:00 | I'm not going to be shooting
exclusively with an ultra-wide.
| | 01:03 | I'm going to be using a fisheye also, and I will
also be using a telephoto to get some close-ups.
| | 01:08 | But I really think I'm
going to stick with the fisheye.
| | 01:10 | I'm going to try some of the other lenses.
I'm not sure what's going to work the best.
| | 01:14 | Did I say fisheye, I mean wide-angle.
I'm going to work mostly with both of those.
| | 01:16 | I'm going to shift around some.
That's how you do an event like this.
| | 01:19 | You try a lot of different
things and see what works.
| | 01:22 | So the show is going to start in a minute.
| | 01:24 | I'm going to try some things,
see what works, see what doesn't.
| | 01:28 | George Bilgere: ...and water the yard, fiddling
with the nozzle, misting this, showering that.
| | 01:34 | Sometimes in the hot twilight, my sisters and I
would run in our swimsuits through the grass
| | 01:40 | while he followed us with a cold beam of water.
| | 01:44 | (music playing)
| | 02:17 | Ben: The first set is over.
We're taking a break here.
| | 02:19 | Everyone is off to enjoy themselves and
mingle, while I reassess my shooting strategy.
| | 02:23 | This has been very interesting.
I am glad that I have the ultra-wide.
| | 02:27 | I'm shooting with a Canon 16-35 f/2.8L, which
is a really nice lens for a space like this.
| | 02:34 | So I can get it open pretty wide if I need
to, I've got to watch depth of field at that
| | 02:38 | point, and I've got a lot of field of view
to work with that's letting me get interesting
| | 02:41 | compositions of the performers and the audience.
But there are some really tricky bits.
| | 02:47 | That lens is so wide that I'm picking up lights in
my frame, lights that are really blowing out a lot.
| | 02:53 | They're even screwing up my exposure.
| | 02:55 | Sometimes they're causing
the foreground to go dark.
| | 02:57 | So, I'm needing to compensate for that to
try and brighten up the foreground, which
| | 03:02 | is causing the lights to go brighter.
I'm trying to compose around them.
| | 03:04 | I'm trying to knock them out of the frame, but very often
that ends up pretty dramatically changing my composition.
| | 03:10 | It's another thing about an ultra-wide lens
that you really need to remember, a tiny little
| | 03:14 | motion really changes the
relationships of the things in your scene.
| | 03:18 | And I'm finding that to be a pretty critical
observation while I'm shooting, particularly
| | 03:22 | as I'm shooting through the crowd.
| | 03:24 | To change the relationship with the performer to
the crowd requires only a tiny little movement.
| | 03:29 | I'm trying to think about how
big I want the performer to be.
| | 03:32 | I can't make them--that makes it because
it's a really wide-angled lens, but I can
| | 03:35 | raise them up above the crowd with just a
little bit of a camera movement at the same
| | 03:39 | time I'm needing to worry about my corners
and figure out where all my lines are going.
| | 03:42 | It's a lot to look at.
| | 03:43 | You've got to take your time, move
slowly, make sure that your exposure is set.
| | 03:48 | Make sure that you're getting good exposure
so that you can focus on your composition.
| | 03:51 | I am also finding that once I get all of that
done, there's this whole other thing to think
| | 03:55 | about, which is what does
the performer look like?
| | 03:57 | It's really easy to get focused on all the
details in your frame and not realize that
| | 04:00 | when you're taking the shot their tongue's
hanging out their mouth or something.
| | 04:03 | So what I'm finding I am doing is getting
the shots set, then watching them, being very
| | 04:08 | careful not to move, waiting until a good
moment and shooting, I am also shooting a lot.
| | 04:12 | I'm changing lenses up.
I'm not just shooting with the wide angle.
| | 04:15 | I put the telephoto on.
I had our 100 to 400 on.
| | 04:19 | I shot with a lens maybe.
I shot with my 24 to 105.
| | 04:22 | The 24 to 105 actually goes pretty wide so
that was giving me a nice in-between, between
| | 04:26 | an ultra-wide and a more normal lens.
| | 04:28 | It gave me a little telephoto reach.
| | 04:30 | And I'm doing a lot of different things,
trying to find what I like and what gives me some
| | 04:34 | variety, but I'm really sticking with this
wide-angle approach, and that's making me
| | 04:37 | very excited to try something else, which is my
15-mm fisheye, and you're going to see that next.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding fisheye lenses| 00:01 | Ultra-wide lenses give you a fantastically broad field
of view, but it's actually possible to go even wider.
| | 00:06 | Fisheye lenses give you an
extreme field of view, but at a cost.
| | 00:11 | Unlike the rectilinear ultra-wide angled
lenses we looked at earlier, fisheyes will have
| | 00:15 | a lot of spherical distortion.
| | 00:17 | This means that straight lines might get bent dramatically
and at the middle of the frame can get very bulbous.
| | 00:24 | Because they lack rectilinear correction,
fisheye lenses can actually have a wider field
| | 00:27 | of view than a rectilinear
lens of the same focal length.
| | 00:31 | So the first advantage of the fisheye is
that it simply gives you a wider field of view,
| | 00:36 | than even an ultra-wide.
| | 00:37 | But I also think of that spherical
distortion as a possible advantage sometimes.
| | 00:42 | In certain situations, having those curved
crazy lines can add a lot of visual interests
| | 00:46 | to your scene and can make a
somewhat stead scene much more dynamic.
| | 00:51 | So here's the Sigma and here's another
fisheye which we'll talk about in a moment.
| | 00:56 | Look at on both of these, the
front element is incredibly spherical.
| | 01:00 | This is how the fisheye lens is able to gather
such a wide field of view, but this big spherical
| | 01:06 | glass on the front means that you
can't put lens filters on these lenses.
| | 01:10 | You can see that there
really are no lens threads here.
| | 01:13 | Now, the Sigma technically comes
with this cap that has threads in it.
| | 01:20 | But on my full-frame camera, when I put this
cap on the end of the lens, the cap is actually
| | 01:24 | visible on the frame, so
this still isn't a solution.
| | 01:27 | If you really need to use a filter on your
fisheye lens, check out the Wonder Pano System,
| | 01:32 | which offers a way to mount filters on
lenses that don't offer lens threads.
| | 01:37 | Be careful when you're using filters on a
lens this wide, though. Just as with ultra-wide,
| | 01:41 | polarizers are going to be
a very bad idea on a fisheye.
| | 01:44 | Now, you can also see that this Sigma has a
built-in sun shade with a very specific shape.
| | 01:50 | Because they are so wide, fisheyes are very
susceptible to flare, so you need to be constantly
| | 01:55 | on the lookout for it when you're shooting.
| | 01:57 | And not just flare from the sun, if you're
shooting indoors, lights anywhere in the room
| | 02:01 | can create flare problems
because the lens is so wide.
| | 02:04 | Now, while this lens is very wide, there are even
wider fisheyes, such as the Canon 8-15-mm zoom fisheye.
| | 02:12 | In addition to having a wider field of view
and much more pronounced distortion, a fisheye
| | 02:17 | like this doesn't always fill
the entire frame of your camera.
| | 02:20 | In fact, at 8 mm, this lens produces
an image with a very strange shape.
| | 02:25 | These images have to be cropped so they
may not be printable at the sizes that you're
| | 02:29 | used to straight out of your camera.
| | 02:31 | If you really want to use every pixel, and
you want to be able to see the exact framing
| | 02:35 | of your shot in camera, then a fisheye
that goes this wide may not be for you.
| | 02:41 | Note that if you put either of these lenses on a crop
sensor camera, you'll lose a lot of the fisheye effect.
| | 02:46 | Most of the visible distortion on a fisheye
happens at the edges of the frame and your
| | 02:51 | cropped sensor camera will crop those parts out.
| | 02:54 | So if you're shooting with a cropped sensor camera,
you want to be sure to get a fisheye designed
| | 02:57 | for smaller sensors, typically,
these fall on the 10 to 10 & 1/2-mm range.
| | 03:03 | Fisheyes are great for all of the same situations as
ultra-wide, and they come with all of the same shooting concerns.
| | 03:08 | You need to really pay attention to your
entire frame when you're shooting with a fisheye,
| | 03:12 | because there are lots of details to keep track
of, both in terms of composition and exposure.
| | 03:17 | One of the ultra-wide concerns I mentioned
earlier in this chapter was that you need
| | 03:20 | to be careful that you don't
get your own shadow in the frame.
| | 03:23 | That's true with the fisheye, but with the
fisheye you also need to be careful that you
| | 03:26 | don't get your own body in the frame.
Yes, fisheyes can actually shoot that wide.
| | 03:31 | If you have the camera tilted down, it's
possible you'll see your own feet or legs.
| | 03:35 | So be sure to keep an eye on the bottom of the
frame anytime you start tilting the camera down.
| | 03:39 | A lot of people avoid fisheyes lenses,
because they think they yield images that are too
| | 03:42 | weird or too recognizable as a fisheye, but
with modern fisheye optics and a little care,
| | 03:49 | you can really create some great images
that aren't upstaged by their own fisheye-ness.
| | 03:54 | So if you've already got an ultra-wide, and
you really like it, you should try out a fisheye.
| | 03:58 | You may find that it opens your
eyes up to a new type of imaging.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with fisheye lenses| 00:01 | Earlier, you saw me shoot this house concert that
we've set up here with a bunch of different lenses.
| | 00:07 | I was primarily working with my ultra-wide-
angle lens, and I shot the first half of the show,
| | 00:11 | George Bilgere a poet, and Larry Gallagher,
a singer-songwriter.
| | 00:14 | And I was focusing mostly on using my ultra-wide.
At intermission I kind of stopped and reassessed
| | 00:20 | what I was doing and realized I was
really looking forward to using the fisheye.
| | 00:24 | And I've done that now, and
it's been very interesting.
| | 00:27 | I have a 15-mm fisheye and
my ultra-wide is a 16-35.
| | 00:30 | It's only a 1 mm difference between the
fisheye and the widest angle on my 16-35, but there's
| | 00:37 | more than just the focal length there.
| | 00:39 | The ultra-wide-angle has some rectilinear correction
that straightens outlines, and the fisheye doesn't.
| | 00:44 | And when you get into focal lengths that short, a
single millimeter can make a big change in field of view.
| | 00:49 | So switching to this fisheye
really changes what I'm seeing.
| | 00:52 | I get a much wider angle.
| | 00:54 | Now, in addition to the 15-mm fisheye,
I also have an 8-15-mm zoom fisheye.
| | 01:00 | A couple of trade-offs between these two lenses,
they both go 15, so ultimately they have the
| | 01:04 | same field of view at the long end.
| | 01:07 | But my 15-mm prime is faster, so for
shooting in low light like this, I can get a wider
| | 01:11 | aperture which can be nice.
| | 01:12 | However, with the really wide field of
view, sometimes I was needing to stop down.
| | 01:16 | Anyway, so I decided to switch to the 8-15, and
go for the really, really super fishy fisheye.
| | 01:23 | So the trick with the 8-15 is that when you zoom out
all the way, you actually don't have a full-framed image.
| | 01:28 | You have this very strangely, bordered,
much smaller than a full-frame image that's got
| | 01:34 | a whole bunch of distortion in it.
| | 01:36 | What's nice about it is on the edges you
really get distortion, you really get blurred lines,
| | 01:41 | you really get this very
abstract geometry coming in.
| | 01:45 | So I tried a few shots like that and then
started experimenting with, because of the
| | 01:49 | light in here slowing my shutter down and
spinning the camera during a long shutter release.
| | 01:55 | This worked okay.
| | 01:56 | What I meant was that the center of my image
stayed mostly--I'm not going to say sharp,
| | 02:01 | but recognizably in focus.
| | 02:03 | But because I had such a tremendously wide
field of view, I got lots and lots of smearing
| | 02:09 | around the edge of the image.
| | 02:10 | Again, I'm just looking for a way of adding
some dynamism to what is a pretty static scene.
| | 02:15 | So I was experimenting
with that sum with the 8-15.
| | 02:19 | I didn't switch back to my normal
15 and did a lot of other shooting.
| | 02:22 | And I mentioned before it goes faster.
It can open all the way to 2.8.
| | 02:26 | Normally 2.8 would be extremely shallow
depth of field, and it is still extremely shallow
| | 02:31 | depth of field on this lens.
| | 02:32 | But because the distant objects appear so far away,
you don't notice that shallow depth of field as much.
| | 02:38 | You don't notice that they're defocusing as much, so
using that lens in low light is still pretty practical.
| | 02:43 | Now, of course, one thing about the
fisheye is everything looks really far away.
| | 02:47 | It is really wide angle, so I took
the opportunity to get in closer.
| | 02:50 | It takes some nerve.
This is a somewhat controlled situation.
| | 02:54 | This is just a house concert with some friends,
so I didn't feel bad about crawling up closer
| | 02:59 | at some point and trying to
really get in tight with the fisheye.
| | 03:02 | I was being careful not to do that during
particularly quiet songs, and I didn't do
| | 03:06 | that during any of George's reading.
| | 03:08 | I didn't want to be too distracting, but
getting in close allowed me to crop out some extra
| | 03:14 | details but still play
with that wide-angle stuff.
| | 03:17 | Particularly with Larry, I was able to get
down to just him on a really wide background,
| | 03:21 | which gave me this kind of
nice environmental portrait.
| | 03:25 | So fisheyes are really
interesting way to work in this situation.
| | 03:29 | They obviously give you the very wide field
of view, but almost more than that, what I
| | 03:33 | like about them is just those
fun lines you get to play with.
| | 03:35 | Again, if you're dealing with static subjects,
a guy reading poetry, this can be an interesting
| | 03:39 | way of mixing it up and adding
a little more life to the image.
| | 03:42 | You just got to be careful about how wide
things go, how distorted things are, the relationship
| | 03:47 | with everything to each other in
the frame, and where your lights are.
| | 03:51 | This requires a very, very careful eye for
composition, and in that regard it's a really
| | 03:55 | good exercise because it really makes
you pay attention to the entire frame.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding fisheye exposure| 00:00 | I'm standing here inside C Block on Alcatraz,
and you know, as photographers we spend a lot
| | 00:07 | of time thinking about spatial relationships,
about how one shape relates to another in a frame.
| | 00:12 | And as I stand here right now looking in
this teeny tiny jail cell, I am very glad about
| | 00:18 | my relationship to the door.
| | 00:19 | I am on this side, not that side, and I
really hope it always stays that way.
| | 00:25 | If you've never been to
Alcatraz, it's really worth a trip.
| | 00:28 | Now that may sound strange.
| | 00:29 | Hey go have a great time at the prison, but
it really is a fascinating piece of history
| | 00:34 | and the park service has done an
extraordinary job of presenting it.
| | 00:38 | The audio tour that you can do is really fascinating,
and just being able to roam the grounds is really interesting.
| | 00:45 | We're here today with a ranger who is guiding us around
to a lot of places that you normally don't get to see.
| | 00:50 | One of the things that's fascinating about
Alcatraz is that there are several layers of history here.
| | 00:56 | There's the Civil War era fort layer, there
is of course the prison, there is the Native
| | 01:01 | American occupation, there
is just a lot going on here.
| | 01:04 | And on top of that it's a very interesting
piece of natural history, it's an island right
| | 01:08 | in the middle of San Francisco Bay.
| | 01:09 | It gives you a vantage point of the city and the
bridges that's very different than you'll get anywhere else.
| | 01:16 | So we got the chance to go to this cool old
boiler room, an underground tunnel, we ended
| | 01:21 | up in the hospital, the
original prison hospital.
| | 01:23 | There's a lot of cool stuff
that we've been provided access to.
| | 01:29 | It's an interesting shooting situation here.
| | 01:31 | I've brought all of my specialty lenses with me
because I wasn't sure what we were going to find.
| | 01:36 | And it's an interesting puzzle, you find
yourself moving between, well, I want to document what
| | 01:41 | I'm seeing here, the cells and things like
that but there's also just a lot of great texture.
| | 01:45 | This place is rusting and peeling and
falling apart, so there's a lot of fun detail and
| | 01:51 | a lot of just atmospheric stuff you can shoot.
| | 01:53 | So I was really glad I had a
big assortment of lenses with me.
| | 01:58 | Now this may not come as a surprise to you, but I'm
finding lots of small enclosed spaces in this prison.
| | 02:05 | So I'm finding my fisheye lens to be
particularly useful for a couple of reasons.
| | 02:10 | One, the extremely wide field of view
is letting me capture the entire space.
| | 02:16 | Sticking a tighter lens in one of these cells,
I maybe can't get all four walls or six walls,
| | 02:22 | however many there are.
| | 02:24 | And so the fisheye gives me a
wider vantage point which is nice.
| | 02:28 | But there's something else, one of the
cells down on the floor, the door was open, and
| | 02:32 | I stepped inside, and I'm normally not a claustrophobic
person. In fact, I've never experienced claustrophobia
| | 02:37 | before, but I got some weird kind of
disorientation, these cells are very, very small.
| | 02:44 | And the fisheye lens with its weird
distortion and its weird abstract viewpoint gives me
| | 02:49 | a chance to create kind of disorienting images
which can be appropriate in a place like this.
| | 02:55 | When you're using a fisheye, though, you are
very often going to encounter very difficult
| | 02:59 | exposure problems, and I'm going
to show you how to deal with that.
| | 03:04 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Taking fisheye further| 00:04 | Your fisheye lens is great for
cramming a really big space into your frame.
| | 00:09 | I am facing a boiler on Alcatraz.
| | 00:13 | And I really want it all because the ceiling
has beautiful texture on it, the boilers are
| | 00:17 | really interesting thing, there's
all sorts of decay all the way around.
| | 00:21 | And with my fisheye lens, I can very easily turn that
huge field of view onto the subject, and I get this.
| | 00:30 | So compositionally, this is not going to win
any awards, but it's a really nice document
| | 00:34 | of the scene, and it is showing
me everything that's in the frame.
| | 00:38 | That's what I was hoping to get.
| | 00:39 | But check out the exposure,
the exposure is really off.
| | 00:41 | Now, this is an absolute way, something you're
going to run into when you shoot with a fisheye,
| | 00:45 | particularly in a situation like this where
we've got a really varied lighting situation.
| | 00:49 | We've got a big dark shadowy boiler in the
middle of the frame and then I've got these
| | 00:53 | bright lights on the edge through the open
doorways. That's what's messing up my meter.
| | 00:58 | The fisheye is wide enough that it's
picking up the doors which you can see on the edge
| | 01:02 | of the frame and the brightness of the floor,
but it's also tall enough that it's trying
| | 01:07 | to reach into the shadows.
It has metered overall pretty well.
| | 01:11 | Actually, I've got good shadow detail, and
I've got pretty good detail on the floor and
| | 01:15 | the bright highlights, but
there's still a little hot.
| | 01:17 | This is something you're going to run into
the first minute you put your fisheye lens
| | 01:21 | on, it's just so wide
your meter can get confused.
| | 01:24 | Now, you've got a few
options for how to deal with this.
| | 01:27 | You could switch to spot metering and meter
off of the floor to get it properly exposed.
| | 01:33 | So I'm going to meter here, and I'm going to lock
in that exposure, reframe my shot, and I get this.
| | 01:39 | Now, the floor is metered properly now,
but everything else is gone way too dark.
| | 01:43 | I could try to brighten that up in my image
editor, but anytime you head towards brightening
| | 01:47 | up something, particularly something as dark as
this, you're going to run the risk of introducing
| | 01:51 | more noise into your image.
That's also kind of a drag of a way to shoot.
| | 01:56 | I'm having a meter here, and reframe, and
make sure that I don't lose focus, and make
| | 01:59 | sure that I've locked my
metering and all that kind of stuff.
| | 02:02 | So I'm really not a fan of
spot metering in this instance.
| | 02:06 | Instead, I'm going to try something else.
| | 02:08 | I'm going to make sure that I'm on my full
matrix metering or evaluative metering, depending
| | 02:13 | on what your camera calls it.
| | 02:16 | This is it where it's going to analyze the
entire frame and come up with a good overall metering.
| | 02:21 | This is what I think I was doing before.
| | 02:23 | I wasn't really paying attention
obviously, so let's take a look at this.
| | 02:26 | Yes, that is a matrix-metered shot.
| | 02:29 | It's done a good job overall, but things
are a little over-exposed on the foreground.
| | 02:33 | I'm simply going to tell it to under
expose using Exposure Compensation.
| | 02:36 | I'm going to dial in one stop of under-exposure.
| | 02:39 | I'm shooting on Aperture Priority mode, so
I know that it's going to hold the aperture
| | 02:43 | that I want as it does this under-exposure.
| | 02:46 | So that's going to ensure that I
continue to get a depth of field.
| | 02:50 | And now, I'm starting to get
some more detail back on my floor.
| | 02:52 | I think I'm going to go a
little bit further, though.
| | 02:54 | I'm going to go two stops under, and it's
fine to just experiment like this until you get
| | 02:59 | something that looks like
it's a little better exposed.
| | 03:02 | So, now I've got more detail on the floor.
I don't have to worry about those highlights.
| | 03:05 | I haven't compromise too much of my shadows.
| | 03:07 | Finally, there's one other approach I can
take, and that is to go to an HDR approach,
| | 03:13 | that's shooting three frames metered differently
that I'm then going to combine later using HDR software.
| | 03:18 | If you're not familiar with HDR, check out my HDR
course. It will walk you through this whole process.
| | 03:24 | So when I do that, I get something.
| | 03:28 | It's a little dark in here, so
shooting HDR handheld is a little bit tricky.
| | 03:32 | I'm going to bump my ISO up.
| | 03:34 | I'm actually going to go ahead and dial in
some under-exposure because I don't think
| | 03:38 | I need super bright highlights in here, and
because it will keep my shutter speeds up,
| | 03:43 | and that will give me easier handheld shooting.
So these are my three RAW shots.
| | 03:48 | And if I merge those together I get
this, so this is another approach.
| | 03:52 | So lots of different options here for
getting my exposure right in a situation like this.
| | 03:57 | The important thing to take away from this
movie is an understanding that when you're
| | 04:00 | working with a fisheye, you're pulling in
such a wide field of view that you're going
| | 04:03 | to have a variety of lights sources that
may confuse your metering, so you're going to
| | 04:07 | have to pay very close attention to your
highlights, check the Histogram on your camera, and employ
| | 04:12 | some kind of strategy for
getting that exposure under control.
| | 04:17 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Processing fisheye and wide-angle images| 00:01 | Of course, you choose to shoot fisheye and wide-angle
lenses because you want a very wide field of view.
| | 00:06 | Very often, the problem with a really wide
field of view is that there are going to be
| | 00:09 | light sources on the ends or in the edges
of your image that are very distracting.
| | 00:16 | I like the flower here, I like all these
lines on the background, but, boy, this whole big
| | 00:20 | bright white thing back here,
it needs to come under control.
| | 00:23 | It's not always going to be a big
backlighting situation like this.
| | 00:26 | Sometimes there might be a situation where there
is simply a lamp or a light source over on one side.
| | 00:30 | The point is that when working with wide-
angle lenses, you are very often going to face the
| | 00:36 | tonal problem of having to darken things.
| | 00:38 | For the most part, editing a fisheye or a wide-
angle lens is just like editing any other type of image.
| | 00:43 | But because they are so wide, and because
you don't always have control of the light
| | 00:46 | sources in your field of view, you're
often going to need to darken things.
| | 00:49 | So I want to talk about a few
different ways of doing that.
| | 00:51 | I'm here in Camera RAW, and I can
see that I've got bad over-exposure.
| | 00:55 | So I'm going to start by trying to pull the
highlights down, and lucky there, that's brought
| | 00:59 | back a bunch of nice detail.
| | 01:01 | I think I need to get even more
back by working the exposure slider.
| | 01:05 | I can also try and pull the
whites down some, which is helping.
| | 01:09 | That's darkened up my flower, but I can easily
fix that by brightening with the adjustment brush.
| | 01:16 | Oops, it's set for darkening right now, and
you turn that up, the adjustment brush, of
| | 01:20 | course is always set to
whatever your last adjustment was.
| | 01:24 | So I can choose to brighten this up this way.
| | 01:26 | I can go into Photoshop and brighten
it with an adjustment layer, and so on.
| | 01:31 | But this is a critical step in managing a
wide-angle image like this is to get those
| | 01:36 | over-exposed bits under control.
Now, that part is still over-exposed.
| | 01:40 | I want to show you a way to deal with that
and a way to dim things on non-RAW images.
| | 01:45 | I'm going to cancel out of this and
go back here and open the file again.
| | 01:50 | And I'm not going to do anything in Camera
RAW this time, I'm just going to open it on
| | 01:53 | the Photoshop so that you can see if I had been
shooting, say in JPEG mode what would my options be.
| | 01:59 | Now, because I'm not in RAW, I no longer
have a Highlight Recovery Option, but the best
| | 02:03 | way to darken things in Photoshop is to go
here to the Adjustment layer pop-up menu and
| | 02:09 | choose an exposure adjustment layer.
| | 02:13 | Exposure lets me adjust the brightness of
my image in actual stops of exposure, so I
| | 02:18 | can just darken my image there.
| | 02:21 | Now, I'm not getting detail back but I at
least don't have bright white over there,
| | 02:26 | so I might then choose a gamma correction, Gamma
correction the other direction to brighten things back up.
| | 02:34 | So I haven't gotten that, you know, really
nice recovered highlight, punchy look that
| | 02:39 | I was able to get in Camera RAW, but I've
at least calmed the background down some.
| | 02:44 | This, of course is a reason to shoot RAW. The ability
to recover highlights like we did is kind of critical.
| | 02:51 | And now I'm just putting all that brightness
back so I'm going to need to mask this off here.
| | 02:57 | Oops, I'm doing this backwards.
| | 03:00 | I manipulate my layer mask to get
that adjustment right and where I wanted.
| | 03:04 | I know I'm just stepping
through this real quickly.
| | 03:06 | Again, this isn't a Photoshop course, so
there are plenty of other places you can learn to
| | 03:10 | work with adjustment layers and layer masks.
So let's go back to the RAW image for a second.
| | 03:16 | Now, let's combine these two steps.
| | 03:18 | I'm going to first recover
my highlights in Camera RAW.
| | 03:23 | So that's going to give me some detail back.
| | 03:24 | I'm going to go ahead and do a fair amount
of tonal adjustment here in RAW and try and
| | 03:29 | get the image as good as I can.
| | 03:31 | I'm going to up the contrast to
try and get more stuff in there.
| | 03:35 | Now, this is going to need to be brightened.
| | 03:38 | So rather than doing that doing that here in
Camera RAW, I'm going to do that in Photoshop.
| | 03:42 | I find Camera RAW's paintbrush to be
a little bit of a blunt instrument.
| | 03:46 | So I'll fix that later just
to add a little bit of clarity.
| | 03:49 | So let's take this into Photoshop
and see what we can do with it here.
| | 03:55 | I'm going to grab my Quick Select brush here.
| | 03:59 | Increase my brush size with the Right
Bracket key, and I'm just going to brush over
| | 04:02 | the flower to do a very quick grab of the flower. I am
going to go up here and feather the edge by 8 pixels.
| | 04:13 | And now I'm going to add
a Levels Adjustment layer.
| | 04:16 | And I'm going to hide the edges of
my selection and brighten up my image.
| | 04:24 | Because I had a selection made before, I created
Levels Adjustment layer, I had a lousy selection made.
| | 04:30 | I need to go back and fix this with the Refine
Edge command would be the way to do that, or
| | 04:36 | I can ditch this layer and start over.
| | 04:39 | I'm going to deselect, create a new
adjustment layer, and this time I'm just going to brush
| | 04:43 | the edit, and I'm going to brighten up the flower,
that's brightening up the background as well.
| | 04:50 | But if I fill my mask with black
and do that with Command+Delete there.
| | 04:55 | And since black was my background color,
just filled the adjustment layer with black.
| | 04:59 | I'm going to paint my mask in here
and then go back and adjust my settings.
| | 05:06 | So there, I brightened up the flower.
| | 05:09 | So I'm using a combination of Photoshop and
Camera RAW to get detail back in here, get
| | 05:13 | brightness where I want it, but I
still got this bright stuff up here.
| | 05:17 | So I'm going to go ahead and try
and make an Exposure Adjustment layer.
| | 05:22 | I'm going to go and lower the exposure.
| | 05:24 | And this time I'm going to again fill my
mask with black here by hitting Command+Delete,
| | 05:30 | and it goes to black because
black is my background color.
| | 05:33 | And then I'm going to take a
white brush and paint in here.
| | 05:37 | Ooh, that's too dark.
| | 05:42 | So I'm going to go back and back off on
that edit and just see if I can get that down.
| | 05:47 | See, the thing is we can't darken an area
that's complete white because the computer
| | 05:51 | sees the complete white has no data.
So there's really nothing for it to darken up.
| | 05:55 | But I've at least calmed that down, so
it's not quite the eye magnet that it was.
| | 05:59 | I think to just finish this off I'm going
to duplicate my background layer and go here
| | 06:03 | to Filter > Lens Correction, and I'm going
to add a vignette, thinking that that will
| | 06:08 | darken the corners and bring a little bit more
attention to the center of my image where my flower is.
| | 06:15 | So let's see what that looks like.
| | 06:16 | The preview that I'm seeing in here does
not show the effects of any adjustment layers
| | 06:20 | that are above the layer that I'm editing.
Okay, that's looking pretty good.
| | 06:23 | So there's before the vignette and after.
| | 06:26 | And the entire before-after, there is
the image that we took out of Camera RAW.
| | 06:31 | There is our edited image.
| | 06:32 | I might play with this mask a little
more, but for the most part I like that.
| | 06:36 | Anyway, the point is when you're working
with fisheye and wide-angle lenses, you're often
| | 06:40 | going to face this issues
of needing to darken things.
| | 06:42 | I might want to do something
about this highlight right here.
| | 06:46 | Probably the best thing to do.
| | 06:47 | I'm sorry, I didn't notice this before
I started my little conclusion there.
| | 06:50 | I'm just going to clone that,
and that's going to take that out.
| | 06:54 | I have some transparency on my clone brush here.
| | 07:00 | So I can take that out, clean that up a
little bit, I might want to do the same there.
| | 07:04 | Anyway, as I was saying before I so rudely
interrupted myself, when you are working with
| | 07:08 | fisheye and wide-angle lenses, this is a very common
problem you're going to face, how to dim bright lights.
| | 07:15 | What I should have done
shooting this was bracket my shots.
| | 07:17 | I should have shot something
under-exposed, I didn't have time.
| | 07:21 | So in Camera RAW I can recover a lot of those
highlights using Exposure Adjustment layers.
| | 07:25 | I can calm down others using
clone tools and spot healing brushes.
| | 07:29 | I can take out others.
| | 07:31 | Just something to look for when you're
reviewing your wide angle and fisheye lenses.
| | 07:34 | Make sure that bright lights
are not attracting undue attention.
| | 07:39 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Correcting tone in fisheye images| 00:00 | If you choose to shoot with the fisheye or
ultra-wide angle lens, it's because you're
| | 00:04 | going for a particular look, and so you probably expect
a certain amount of distortion and strange final results.
| | 00:12 | This is about as strange as
you're going to get with the fisheye.
| | 00:14 | This is the Canon 8215-mm fisheye used on a 5D.
| | 00:19 | So it's a full-frame camera, and the fisheye
can't cover the whole sensor, so I've got all
| | 00:23 | this black around here.
So it's not real practical on this camera.
| | 00:27 | This lens makes a little more
sense on a cropped sensor camera.
| | 00:29 | Still, I really like the extreme
fisheye distortion that you get here.
| | 00:34 | That said, it is a little bit annoying that
these lines up here that are so plainly supposed
| | 00:40 | to be straight or curved, it makes the
effect of the lens a little too obvious.
| | 00:46 | Granted, the stringy arms are going to be
obvious no matter what, but still, is it possible to
| | 00:49 | correct some of the distortion and
still have a nice wide-angle stylized look?
| | 00:53 | Yes it is, and in Photoshop CS6, it's very easy to
do using the Adaptive Wide Angle correction feature.
| | 01:01 | So this is just a filter that I apply that
is going to let me correct the distortion
| | 01:07 | in specific parts of an image.
| | 01:09 | Now, I'm still going to need a
heavy crop, but here's how it works.
| | 01:12 | You can see that it has identified my lens model so it
knows that it's some fisheye correction that needs to happen.
| | 01:18 | It knows a lot of specifics
about exactly how this lens distorts.
| | 01:23 | So what I need to do is tell it where there is a
line in the image that is supposed to be straight.
| | 01:28 | So I'm taking this Straight Line tool.
| | 01:30 | I can also do this with a Polygon, but I'm just
going to do a straight line, I get the same results.
| | 01:34 | And I click on this in, and as I drag, it's
creating a line that automatically fits perfectly
| | 01:40 | the curvature of this line because it knows from the
profile of the lens exactly how much distortion there is.
| | 01:47 | So I can tell it, "Okay, you know that, that
line right there is supposed to be straight.
| | 01:51 | I want you to straighten it." When I let go,
it warps that part of the image to straighten
| | 01:56 | up that particular bit.
| | 01:58 | So now I can work through here and just straighten out
whatever parts of the image I find are distractingly distorted.
| | 02:07 | So I'm looking for really strong curved
lines, and I'm just straightening those out.
| | 02:12 | Now, as I do, I am making my
image a little more difficult to crop.
| | 02:16 | I'm forcing myself to go to a tighter crop.
| | 02:19 | So I want to pick this images or
these lines a little bit carefully.
| | 02:23 | But what's cool is now, when I'm done--I'm
going to hit Okay--I end up with an image
| | 02:30 | where big curved lines aren't so obvious.
| | 02:33 | This line of wall to the ceiling that we
would all recognize as being a straight line is now
| | 02:37 | a straight line, but I still get all of
the fun fisheye distortion that I had before.
| | 02:41 | Now, I just need to crop
the image down to a rectangle.
| | 02:45 | This is not only something
you'll use with fisheye lenses.
| | 02:48 | This is also--oops, my
Crop tool is all messed up here.
| | 02:52 | Let me just go unconstrained.
| | 02:56 | This is something you will use for ultra
wide angle lenses as well as fisheye lenses.
| | 03:00 | It's an easy way to take out a level
of distortion that you may not want.
| | 03:04 | It's an easy way to make super
distorted lines not so obvious.
| | 03:09 | It keeps them from upstaging your image.
| | 03:12 | Now, that said, there's no way that
anyone's not going to look at this and see it as a
| | 03:16 | heavily distorted very stylized image.
| | 03:18 | But still, I like that he is now this real rubbery
arm guy standing in what appears to be a normal room.
| | 03:23 | So, again, this is the Adaptive
Wide Angle filter in Photoshop CS6.
| | 03:29 | If you're using an earlier version
of Photoshop, you won't have this.
| | 03:32 | It's a very good reason to upgrade if you regularly
shoot with fisheyes and wide-angle lenses.
| | 03:37 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Shooting Super TelephotoUnderstanding super telephoto| 00:01 | When most people think of a telephoto
lens, they think of one that magnifies.
| | 00:04 | And while it's true that a telephoto lens
does let you enlarge things that are far away,
| | 00:09 | you can also think of a telephoto lens
as one that has a narrow field of view.
| | 00:13 | In fact, if a lens has a field of view that's
narrower than a normal lens, that is narrower
| | 00:18 | that what you can see with your eye,
then we think of that lens as a telephoto.
| | 00:22 | A little bit of telephoto isn't that noticeable.
| | 00:24 | For example, there is a difference between a
50-mm lens and an 80-mm lens, but you wouldn't
| | 00:29 | necessarily look at the 80-mm image and
immediately think, "Oh, that's a telephoto image."
| | 00:34 | So we tend to think of telephoto as lenses
that present a very telescopic magnified view,
| | 00:39 | and you probably already have some
telephoto power in your camera's kit zoom lens.
| | 00:44 | Typical telephoto lenses
range between 50 and 200 mm.
| | 00:49 | Once you go passed 200 mm, you're entering
the range of the super telephoto, which I'm
| | 00:53 | going to call 300 mm and up.
| | 00:56 | The defining characteristic of these
lenses is that they give you a tremendous amount
| | 01:00 | of magnification power, making them
ideal for shooting far away objects.
| | 01:05 | You'll use super telephoto for times when
you can't get close to your subject.
| | 01:08 | Nature shooters and sports shooters are the
most obvious candidates for this big lenses.
| | 01:13 | But longer focal lengths also
compress the sense of depth in your scene.
| | 01:17 | If you're unfamiliar with this idea, check out
my Foundations of Photography: Lenses course.
| | 01:21 | With the ability to compress depth, I can
create compositions that are impossible with
| | 01:26 | the lens that has a shorter focal length.
| | 01:28 | The depth of field in your image is a function
of your current aperture setting and the size
| | 01:32 | of the image sensor in your camera.
| | 01:34 | But depth of field is also controlled by
filling more of your frame with your subject.
| | 01:38 | This is all explained in
Foundations of Photography: Exposure.
| | 01:42 | Because of their narrow field of view and
their depth compressing qualities, super telephoto
| | 01:46 | lenses lets you isolate your subject
with shallow depth of field effects.
| | 01:50 | For the mot part, lenses in this category
work pretty much as you'd expect, and you've
| | 01:54 | probably already got some experience with
zooming into your subject to get a closer view.
| | 01:58 | However, working with a very long lens can
actually be a little bit tricky, and to get
| | 02:03 | the best results you'll need to
practice some specific techniques.
| | 02:06 | Your main concern when working with an
extremely long lens is vibration and camera shake.
| | 02:12 | Now, if I got a field of view that's this
big, and I shake the lens a little bit, I
| | 02:16 | don't really notice it that much because the
area that this image is being cropped is so tiny.
| | 02:22 | But if I've only got an area that's this big, and I
shake by the same amount, you'll notice it a lot more.
| | 02:28 | So with a very long lens it can be harder to
frame your shot because a tiny little motion
| | 02:32 | will create a big change in your composition.
| | 02:35 | Since a very long lens makes vibration more
noticeable, image sharpness becomes much more of a concern.
| | 02:41 | If you're shooting handheld with one of this
lenses, then it's critical to remember your
| | 02:45 | handheld shutter rule: minimum shutter speed
should not drop below one over your focal length.
| | 02:51 | If you're shooting with a cropped sensor camera,
then be sure to multiply your focal length
| | 02:54 | by your focal length multiplier when
doing your handheld shutter speed rule.
| | 02:58 | Now, that rule is just the starting point.
| | 03:00 | With these lenses it's safer to err on
the side of an even faster shutter speed.
| | 03:05 | It takes a lot of glass to make a big telephoto
lens which means that they're inherently going
| | 03:10 | to be big, and it takes even more glass to
make a lens that can open to a very wide aperture.
| | 03:15 | For example, a 300-mm F4 lens will weigh
about 2 pounds while a 300-mm F2.8 lens will weigh
| | 03:22 | in more like 7 or 8 pounds.
| | 03:25 | Consequently, most super telephoto lenses
don't have particularly large maximum apertures.
| | 03:30 | For example, this lens here is an f/4.5 to 5.6.
| | 03:36 | So the practical upshot is that when I'm
using a lens like this I'm more often going to be
| | 03:42 | shooting with smaller apertures, and that
will mean, again, longer shutter speed which
| | 03:46 | will add further complication to
the whole stable shooting thing.
| | 03:50 | So with that in mind, most of these lenses
come with stabilization, and stabilization
| | 03:54 | will make your telephoto shooting much easier.
| | 03:57 | Stabilization is an internal mechanism in
the lens that allows it to rebuild its optics
| | 04:02 | on the fly to compensate for any
vibration or shake you have in your hand.
| | 04:07 | Here, you can see that I've got a stabilizer
switch for turning stabilization on and off.
| | 04:12 | You might find it's better to turn it
off when you're working on a tripod.
| | 04:16 | Sometimes tripod movements, because they're so
controlled, can confuse stabilization mechanisms.
| | 04:20 | I've also got two
different modes of stabilization.
| | 04:23 | Depending on your lens, some cameras will let
you control stabilization so it only stabilizes
| | 04:29 | on one axis or the other to help you smooth
panning or give you overall stabilization.
| | 04:35 | Other lenses will have stabilization options
that let you change the frequency of the vibration
| | 04:39 | that the lens is trying to correct.
| | 04:41 | So stabilization will go a long way
towards helping you shoot more stable footage.
| | 04:47 | Tripods, of course, are the other
obvious way to stabilize your camera.
| | 04:51 | And with a lens this big, and this heavy,
your tripod choice is going to be more relevant
| | 04:57 | than the tripod head choice.
| | 04:59 | It's really going to come down to how sturdy the
sticks are and how well they hold your camera up.
| | 05:05 | Something else to notice about a lens like
this is in addition to my autofocus and manual
| | 05:08 | focus switch, I have the option of changing
the focus range of the autofocus mechanism.
| | 05:14 | This is here just to speed up auto focusing.
| | 05:16 | If I know that I'm working with a subject
that's closer, then I might switch to the
| | 05:21 | 1.8 meters to infinity that will allow
it to focus as close as almost 2 meters.
| | 05:27 | If my subject is definitely farther away than that, then
I might want to switch out to 6 & 1/2 meters to infinity.
| | 05:32 | That will keep it from searching through the
entire focus range, and that will speed up my autofocus.
| | 05:37 | If you're shooting a moving subject, then you'll want
to enable your camera's servo tracking feature.
| | 05:42 | With an especially large lens like this,
though, rather than trying to track a
| | 05:46 | moving subject, you might want
to try to anticipate its location.
| | 05:50 | Particularly when you're zoomed in all the
way, it's difficult to find something out
| | 05:54 | there in the world when you're
looking through a lens like this.
| | 05:56 | So trying to get it and
follow it can be trickier.
| | 05:59 | If you see that it's going to be in a particular
place, set up your shot there, get everything
| | 06:03 | focused, and then fire
when it gets in the frames.
| | 06:05 | This is true for wildlife and sport shooting.
| | 06:08 | All of the lenses that we're going to look
at in this course require practice to you
| | 06:12 | as well, and these big
telephotos are no exception.
| | 06:14 | They take a very different
skill set than wide-angle lenses do.
| | 06:18 | So be prepared to spend some
time learning how to use them.
| | 06:23 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Shooting distant subjects| 00:01 | Behind me is a small herd of buffalo,
majestic animals. It's really impressive to
| | 00:06 | stand out here in the presence of this thundering
herd and just imagine what it was once like
| | 00:12 | out on the Great Plains.
| | 00:13 | All right, let's talk about this lens. This
thing is enormous, this is the Sigma 800-mm
| | 00:21 | Canon Mount lens, and it's ideal for a
situation like this where I've got a distant subject,
| | 00:26 | and I'm wanting to get in close.
| | 00:29 | This is a case where I cannot get in close
because there's a fence in the way, and I
| | 00:32 | don't really feel like trotting
up to a herd of buffalo anyway.
| | 00:34 | And very often, of course, that's how it is
with nature shooting, sports shooting and
| | 00:38 | any other subject where you can't actually
get access to the thing you want to shoot.
| | 00:43 | Now, you may think, wow, then I guess telephoto
shooting isn't for me because there's no way
| | 00:48 | I'm going to carry something like this around.
| | 00:50 | And you're right to think that way.
This lens is enormous.
| | 00:53 | It's very unwieldy, it's a lot of
trouble to work with, you cannot handle it.
| | 00:59 | It's so heavy, it's got its own tripod mount.
| | 01:01 | This thing has its own room actually.
| | 01:03 | And so we have mounted the lens on the tripod and
just stuck the camera on the back, it's that heavy.
| | 01:12 | Carrying its drag it comes in this huge bag.
| | 01:15 | Working with it, carrying it around on a
tripod is a hassle, this is a lens for a time when
| | 01:19 | you can sit in one place and know that
your subject is going to be in front of you.
| | 01:23 | If you're shooting a soccer game or something,
and you can just set up on the edge of the
| | 01:26 | field in one spot, this is
probably a more practical lens.
| | 01:30 | For toting around the world, not really.
| | 01:33 | But do you need 800 mm? What's the
difference between one long lens and another?
| | 01:37 | Take a look at this, here's a shot at 50 mm,
now we're going to shoot the same scene at
| | 01:43 | increasing focal lengths, with a series of
different lenses, and you can see that there
| | 01:48 | is obviously a change.
| | 01:50 | I'm hoping going to give you an idea of what the
difference is between these different focal lengths.
| | 01:54 | But I want you to pay attention
to what happens once you past 300.
| | 01:57 | There's not actually a huge gain.
| | 01:59 | The difference between a 300-mm lens and
a 400-mm lens is not actually that great.
| | 02:04 | 400 to 800 is not as big as
you would think it would be.
| | 02:08 | I'll confess I was a little surprised when
we came out here today, and I mounted the
| | 02:11 | lens and pointed at the buffalo, I thought
I was going to see you know a buffalo eye,
| | 02:15 | and I wasn't, it was still a pretty wide shot.
| | 02:17 | So whether you need this much
power, it's a very specialized lens.
| | 02:23 | You probably don't actually need to worry
about whether you're supposed to be carrying
| | 02:26 | something like this around, most of us are not.
| | 02:29 | One advantage of this lens is or one reason
it's so big is because it has the advantage
| | 02:33 | of being a fairly fast lens, this is a 5.6.
| | 02:39 | If you look at the front of the lens--and
notice it takes me some effort to turn it around
| | 02:44 | here--it's got this huge front element.
| | 02:46 | This is just actually a lens hood,
it's got this huge front element in there.
| | 02:51 | Trying to stick a filter
on that would be ludicrous.
| | 02:54 | You would have a filter the size of a Frisbee, and Wham-O
doesn't make lens filters, so that's not really an option.
| | 03:00 | So instead Sigma has built this really cool
mechanism that gives you a different way of
| | 03:06 | adding a filter to this lens.
| | 03:10 | This is somewhere in my pocket I have the
polarizer for this lens, and it's very tiny.
| | 03:18 | In fact, it's so tiny I can't find it.
No, here we go, here it is.
| | 03:23 | All right, so rather than having to deal with
that huge front element, I have just this little
| | 03:27 | thing, this very, very small polarizer.
| | 03:30 | So what I do with it is on the top of the
lens is a little tray, and all I have to do
| | 03:39 | is squeeze this and pull this out, and I have
a little filter holder. There's already like
| | 03:44 | a UV filter in here.
| | 03:45 | I just unscrew this and put the
polarizer in here and then slip this back down.
| | 03:50 | It's a circular polarizer, and there's a built-in
mechanism for actually rotating the polarizer.
| | 03:55 | So this is very cool, this
lens has some wonderful features.
| | 03:58 | It's not stabilized, which is probably
good, it would make the lens even heavier.
| | 04:02 | But it does have focus limitations which are
nice, these can really help speed up auto-focus
| | 04:07 | and the auto-focus is
very quick and very accurate.
| | 04:10 | I'm really impressed with this lens, but again,
whether you need something this big, you probably don't.
| | 04:17 | So how do you shoot with a lens like this,
or even a more reasonable lens like a 400?
| | 04:21 | In a situation like this--I'll be honest these
buffalo aren't really thundering around, they
| | 04:25 | are not moving very much--so in a
situation like this it's pretty easy.
| | 04:28 | You just point it at the buffalo
that's sitting there, and you shoot.
| | 04:31 | If it's a moving situation,
you've got to work a little bit harder.
| | 04:35 | This is not a lens--this lens has such a
tight field of view, you're going to have trouble
| | 04:39 | trying to follow and track a moving subject,
even on the tripod moving it around is pretty slow.
| | 04:45 | So you need to really be able to
anticipate where something is going to be and try to
| | 04:48 | plan ahead, get focused ahead of time.
| | 04:51 | If it's something that's moving in a predictable
manner, you're going to have an easier time following it.
| | 04:55 | If you're working with a smaller lens like
a 70 to 200 or 100 to 400, you're going to
| | 05:01 | stand a better chance of actually
being able to move the lens around.
| | 05:03 | What's really going to help is to activate your
camera's servo focus mechanism or focus tracking.
| | 05:09 | This is where the camera identifies what's moving in
the frame and keeps it in focus as it moves around.
| | 05:14 | We're not going to go into specific
controls here because every camera is different.
| | 05:19 | So check out your manual or look for one of
the camera-specific courses that we have here
| | 05:23 | at lynda.com that will walk you
through the features of specific cameras.
| | 05:27 | Servo focus features often have
different modes for different types of motion.
| | 05:32 | So if something is moving in a
predictable manner, you can set it in that mode.
| | 05:36 | If something is moving a little more erratically, you can
set it in that mode, and it will try to keep it in focus.
| | 05:40 | This can be really critical when
you're working up close like this.
| | 05:44 | I mentioned earlier that vibration and camera shake
is your real issue when working with something this long.
| | 05:51 | It's such a tiny field of view that even a little
bit of camera motion will cause your frame to change.
| | 05:56 | You will actually have a pretty significant
shift in composition as well as running the
| | 06:01 | risk of introducing camera shake.
| | 06:03 | In fact, the camera shake is so significant
that by simply placing my hand on the camera
| | 06:08 | and pressing the button I can
see a change in composition.
| | 06:12 | Take a look at this, here's my shot and
here's my shot while pressing the shutter button,
| | 06:17 | there's a little bit of a bump there.
| | 06:19 | So to get around that I'm working with a
remote control, I've got a wired remote here.
| | 06:23 | It can easily be a wireless remote.
| | 06:25 | If you don't have that, you
could use the self-timer.
| | 06:28 | You just need to get your hands off the camera
when you're zoomed in this far to ensure that
| | 06:31 | your composition doesn't change.
I have not always been a big telephoto person.
| | 06:38 | I like wide angles, and I do most
of my shooting with wide angles.
| | 06:42 | But over the last couple of years I've been
in a few situations where I've been around
| | 06:45 | people with some long lenses who have shot
some things, I've seen them shooting things
| | 06:48 | that I've shot a lot and been really struck by
how they've come back with very, very different
| | 06:53 | things than I usually see.
| | 06:55 | If you don't usually use a telephoto, it's
worth renting one or borrowing one and taking
| | 06:58 | it out for a day to see how
much it changes your visual sense.
| | 07:02 | What's great about a telephoto is it really
changes the relationships of things in the
| | 07:07 | scene because it compresses depth, and because
a shallow depth of field can blur things out,
| | 07:12 | you get a lot of new shapes to play with, you
get a lot of new relationships to play with.
| | 07:16 | It's a bad idea to always shoot
with the same range of focal lengths.
| | 07:20 | All your pictures end up
having kind of the same character.
| | 07:23 | So switching it up with a longer lens is going
to give you a very different look, and that's
| | 07:27 | going to make pictures that maybe go
together in a more interesting way.
| | 07:32 | So I really recommend if you don't normally
shoot with a telephoto, taking one out and
| | 07:36 | seeing just how different the
world looks when you look through it.
| | 07:39 | Now, conversely if you regularly shoot with
a telephoto, go get yourself an ultra wide
| | 07:43 | and give that a try because you're going to
have the same experience in the opposite direction.
| | 07:47 | My big surprise is there's so much depth
compression that things will end up in your frame that
| | 07:52 | you didn't realize would be there.
| | 07:54 | Sometimes that's a drag, but more often than not,
you go, oh look, here's another shape I can work with.
| | 07:59 | So there's really nothing too much to shooting
with it other than that you've got to be careful
| | 08:04 | of shutter speed, and you
got to be careful of vibration.
| | 08:06 | The real power of the telephoto comes from
the way that it makes you see and what that
| | 08:12 | change feels like to you while you're working and
the new types of photos that it can lead you to.
| | 08:17 | So, you don't need an 800, but as you saw
earlier, even going up to a 300 can get you
| | 08:22 | a very different reach, and that can
lead you to a very different type of image.
| | 08:27 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Compressing the sense of depth| 00:00 | Somewhere behind me is the Golden Gate Bridge.
| | 00:02 | You might notice it. We're here.
| | 00:05 | This is your lighting guy comes to town,
you want to show him around.
| | 00:08 | You take him out to the Golden Gate Bridge and he
decides he wants his picture taken in front of it.
| | 00:12 | So, Greg is standing here.
| | 00:14 | I've just got this
incredible vista in front of me.
| | 00:16 | We really are lucky with the
weather today. There's no fog.
| | 00:19 | I can see all the way
from the bridge to Alcatraz.
| | 00:22 | And a lot of times in a situation like this,
your first impulse is wow, look at all this.
| | 00:27 | I got to get it all! And so you
reach for your ultra-wide lens.
| | 00:30 | Now, watch what happens when I use my ultra-
wide lens to get a shot of Greg here. All right!
| | 00:36 | How about a smile Greg? There we go!
| | 00:39 | All right! I get this.
Boy, there's a lot here.
| | 00:42 | Yeah, I've got the bridge, and I've got Sausalito behind
me and a little bit of Angel Island, and a lot of bay.
| | 00:50 | But there's all this stuff on
the right side that I don't need.
| | 00:53 | There's this tree that I don't need.
What's the subject?
| | 00:56 | Is it Greg or is it the bridge?
| | 00:58 | This is not a very good picture.
| | 01:00 | So, my next step would be
to go to a different lens.
| | 01:04 | Ultra-wide is not going to work.
| | 01:06 | So I've changed to my mighty
100 to 400 millimeter lens.
| | 01:09 | You didn't even see me
do that. Wasn't that cool?
| | 01:11 | This is an extraordinarily super-telephoto lens.
| | 01:14 | This might actually be more telephoto
power than you need for most situations.
| | 01:18 | But I want to show you something
that you can do with a lens this strong.
| | 01:21 | You can also do this with 200 millimeter,
300 millimeter, even 150. You're going to
| | 01:26 | get some of the effect
that we're going to see here.
| | 01:28 | So, I'm going to start thinking
very differently about this shot.
| | 01:31 | Before I had way too much in it; I want
to get it down to Greg and the bridge.
| | 01:34 | So, I'm going to zoom my
lens in all the way to 100.
| | 01:37 | Now, where I'm standing right here,
I would have to really move around a lot.
| | 01:43 | And even still here, I've got way too much
extra stuff. I have another problem in
| | 01:47 | this image that we'll talk about in a minute.
| | 01:49 | So, the great thing about this
telephoto lens is I can go farther away.
| | 01:53 | So, I'm going to come back here somewhere.
| | 01:55 | I am still zoomed out to 100.
| | 01:58 | I'm going to see what I can get here.
| | 02:01 | I need to go back a tiny bit more. I get this.
| | 02:07 | I'm shooting with a deep
depth of field here, f/11. This is getting there.
| | 02:12 | I've cut out a lot of clutter.
| | 02:14 | It's down to Greg and the bridge,
but the composition is kind of dumb.
| | 02:18 | I've got Greg standing there, and then just
up in the corner is the Golden Gate Bridge.
| | 02:22 | It's a weird place for it.
| | 02:24 | We can actually put a little thought balloon
around it, and it would like he was thinking
| | 02:27 | about the Golden Gate Bridge because
the placement is just kind of strange.
| | 02:29 | And then I've got all this
extra space above his head.
| | 02:32 | He is the subject of the image.
| | 02:33 | I want to fill the frame with him, but I
still want people to know he is in front of the
| | 02:36 | Golden Gate Bridge.
So I'm going to try something different here.
| | 02:39 | I'm going to keep my same focal length.
| | 02:41 | I'm going to keep my same camera position,
but I'm going to get down here because this
| | 02:45 | will change the
relationship between Greg and bridge.
| | 02:48 | From here, he and the bridge are
sharing the space a little bit better.
| | 02:52 | I actually need to get a little closer.
| | 02:54 | And this is very often the
thing with a telephoto lens--I'm sorry, a telephoto lens.
| | 02:57 | You're going to have to move around a lot
because you can really control, as you see
| | 03:02 | here, the relationship of objects in the frame,
how they relate to each other. So, this is great.
| | 03:07 | Now, I've got Greg is
plainly the subject of the image.
| | 03:10 | He is filling the entire frame,
and the bridge is still back there.
| | 03:13 | Now, you may think, well, but
you're not seeing the whole bridge.
| | 03:16 | You can trust your viewer to
understand certain things in your image.
| | 03:20 | The Golden Gate Bridge is one of the
most recognizable icons in the world.
| | 03:24 | They know what this is.
| | 03:25 | Even if they think, oh!
| | 03:26 | there he is standing in front
of the Bay Bridge. That's okay.
| | 03:28 | It's still a big bridge.
| | 03:29 | You're still getting the bridge in there.
They're going to understand it.
| | 03:32 | You don't have to finish
the entire thing for them.
| | 03:34 | That said, this shot is still not
quite right as far as I'm concerned.
| | 03:38 | If you've ever been to the Golden Gate Bridge,
then you know that one of the things that
| | 03:43 | really gets you about it when
you first see it is it's enormous.
| | 03:46 | It's difficult to explain what it feels
like when you kind of walk up over the hill and
| | 03:51 | there's just this giant orange bridge there.
| | 03:55 | I'm not getting that in
this shot that we just took.
| | 03:57 | If you look at it again, you see Greg
looks like he has grown to 80 stories tall.
| | 04:02 | That's not really what I'm going for here.
| | 04:04 | I want to capture the grandeur of
the bridge, which is that it's enormous.
| | 04:07 | It dwarfs everything around it.
| | 04:08 | And right now I've got him dwarfing the bridge.
| | 04:11 | So, as you know, if you've watched my
Foundations of Photography: Lenses course, as focal length
| | 04:16 | gets longer, the sense of depth
in your scene gets compressed.
| | 04:21 | Things that were far away seemed to be closer.
| | 04:23 | I'm going to try and use
that to my advantage here.
| | 04:25 | We often think of a really long telephoto
lens as being just about shooting things that
| | 04:30 | are really far away.
| | 04:31 | I'm using it here to shoot
something that's pretty close up.
| | 04:33 | Greg is not that far away from me.
| | 04:35 | The reason I'm choosing this lens is that by
going to a longer focal length, I can really
| | 04:40 | squish the depth in my scene and perhaps
restore the bridge back to something that feels more
| | 04:46 | right about its size.
| | 04:48 | Again, when I come out here, I need to think
about, what is it that's really striking me
| | 04:52 | about this location?
| | 04:53 | It's the size of the bridge.
| | 04:54 | So I want to take images that
are going to convey that scale.
| | 04:57 | So, what I'm going to do now is move further
back because as I zoom in, I'm going to need
| | 05:02 | more distance to my subject.
| | 05:04 | And as I change camera position, a few
different things are going to happen.
| | 05:08 | So, I could take this shot standing up like
I did before, but if I do, I'm going to have
| | 05:13 | the same problem with the headroom above my
subject, above Greg, and I can see all that
| | 05:18 | through the viewfinder. So I'm going to go ahead and
just assume that I need to be back down here, like I was earlier.
| | 05:23 | So, one thing that happens as you change
camera position is that the relationship between
| | 05:28 | you and your subject and the
background gets all screwed up.
| | 05:30 | So, I'm going to need to make some changes here.
| | 05:31 | I'm going to have Greg move.
| | 05:32 | Greg, could you move to your
right a little bit, please?
| | 05:34 | I'm just going to tuck him in. Tiny bit more.
| | 05:37 | I am going to just tuck him
in there up against the bridge.
| | 05:41 | That's looking good.
| | 05:42 | So, now I'm going to take my shot, and I'm
going to stick with deep depth of field here.
| | 05:49 | I'm going to stay with a smaller aperture.
| | 05:51 | I'm going to frame the entire
tower, and I get this. Okay.
| | 05:57 | This is very different than what we had
before, and I think we're zeroing in on the shot.
| | 06:01 | The bridge is back to its true grandeur.
| | 06:04 | It looks much larger than Greg does,
but Greg still looks like my subject.
| | 06:08 | I've cropped the bridge a
little bit, as I did before.
| | 06:11 | I'm trusting that the viewer is going
to understand what they're looking at.
| | 06:16 | I've still got all that
empty space above his head.
| | 06:19 | I'm not sure that that matters, but
I want to try working my shot here.
| | 06:22 | I'm going to try a few different things.
| | 06:23 | I'm going to go in tighter.
| | 06:24 | I'm going to really fill the frame with Greg,
and I'm going to need to get him to move again.
| | 06:28 | Greg, could you move a half step
to your right? Yeah, that's it.
| | 06:34 | I'm not really sure how much a half step
is, but apparently it's about that much.
| | 06:38 | So, I'm cutting the top of the bridge off here.
| | 06:42 | But again, I think that we can trust the viewer
to understand that this is the Golden Gate Bridge.
| | 06:46 | And by cutting it off, it actually
makes the bridge look even larger.
| | 06:49 | Now, if you're wanting to take a picture
of the bridge, that's a different thing.
| | 06:53 | I'm trying to take a picture of
Greg with the bridge in the background.
| | 06:55 | So, it doesn't matter that
I'm losing a lot of detail.
| | 06:58 | There are some other things that I can do here.
| | 07:01 | I'm going to switch to a
shallower depth of field.
| | 07:03 | I'm going to go down to f/5, which is as far as
this lens will go, and grab that same shot again.
| | 07:10 | And now I've got a nice
soft bridge in the background.
| | 07:14 | Now, this is a weird situation to be
shooting, and Greg is way, way over there.
| | 07:18 | I'm way, way over here.
| | 07:19 | If there were a lot of people
around, I might feel self-conscious.
| | 07:22 | Here I am out by myself here.
| | 07:23 | Here he is out by himself.
Don't worry about that.
| | 07:26 | I promise you those people are not
going to go home, and be talking about, wow!
| | 07:29 | We saw these two people taking a picture in front of
the Golden Gate Bridge and they were really far apart.
| | 07:32 | Can you believe it?
No one is looking at you.
| | 07:34 | They're dealing with their own stuff.
| | 07:36 | Don't worry about what you have to do to get
the shot that you want in a situation like this.
| | 07:41 | And remember that telephoto lenses are not
just for shooting things far away; they are
| | 07:45 | very often useful when shooting close-up subjects
because they allow you to manipulate the relationship
| | 07:50 | between your subject and your background.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with shallow depth of field| 00:00 | In the last movie we looked at how a long
lens really compresses the sense of depth
| | 00:05 | in a scene and how you can use that
to create very different compositions.
| | 00:08 | We're going to work with that again here,
but we're also going to take a look at depth of field.
| | 00:12 | We've pulled Greg out from in front of the Golden
Gate Bridge and dropped him into this polo field.
| | 00:16 | And what I want to do here is play up the
shallow depth of field that I can get with
| | 00:21 | my long lens and combine that with some of
the depth compression to create an environment
| | 00:26 | and a sense of space in the scene
that I just can't get with a wide lens.
| | 00:30 | So I'm up pretty close to him here because
this is very often how it is when you're hanging
| | 00:35 | out with somebody and you decide to take their
picture: you're usually standing pretty close
| | 00:39 | when that moment happens and so you tend to
work with shorter focal lengths, even if you
| | 00:43 | have a very long lens on your camera.
| | 00:44 | So I'm at 100 mm. Greg is standing up here in
the bleachers. I'm going to take his picture.
| | 00:50 | I'm framing a shot, and I'm just kind of
trying to fill the frame with him as much as I can.
| | 00:55 | I'm getting a little bit of background.
| | 00:57 | I've opened my aperture up all the way.
| | 00:59 | Now, as I'm facing this scene, I know that I
want shallow depth of field. I want to separate
| | 01:03 | him from the background. With my 100 mm lens
| | 01:07 | the background is large in the frame.
| | 01:09 | That's going to make it
easier to see that it is defocused.
| | 01:11 | So I've opened my aperture up all the way,
which at this focal length on this lens is at 4.5.
| | 01:17 | So I'm going to take my shot after I focus.
| | 01:19 | It's not much else to it on a shot like this.
| | 01:22 | The stabilizer is on the lens so I'm getting a
nice stable shot. Notice that I got my elbows
| | 01:28 | up against my body. That's giving me a lot
of stability. And I fire away and I get this.
| | 01:34 | So I like this, it's a nice shot.
| | 01:37 | Greg is mostly filling the frame.
He is obviously the subject of the image.
| | 01:41 | Notice that the background is shallow.
| | 01:42 | It's not super shallow.
| | 01:44 | It's also in some ways a little cluttered.
| | 01:47 | There's a lot going on in the frame.
The background back there looks a long way away.
| | 01:51 | Now in the last video you saw how I could
bring the background closer by going to a
| | 01:55 | longer focal length.
| | 01:57 | I can do that with this lens.
| | 01:58 | I can zoom out all the way to 400, but at
this point I'm seeing Greg's left nostril.
| | 02:03 | So what I need to do is pull farther back so that
I can frame the same shot with this longer lens.
| | 02:10 | So take a look at this one and make note of
how much Greg is filling the frame because
| | 02:14 | now I want to frame the same
shot from a different location.
| | 02:19 | So to do that, I am going to zoom my lens
out, which means I need to get really far away.
| | 02:23 | Now again the idea here is that by zooming
out I'm going to be able to make the depth
| | 02:27 | of field, the shallow depth of field, more
apparent because it's going to compress the depth.
| | 02:32 | That's going to bring the background
closer, and it's going to be easier for me to see
| | 02:35 | that the background is out of focus.
| | 02:37 | So, this is an example of a telephoto lens
| | 02:40 | that's being used not because I need to see
something really far away. I've got full access to Greg.
| | 02:44 | If I want to, I can just walk right up to him.
But I'm wanting this shallow depth-of-field
| | 02:48 | thing so I need to get far
away and use my longer lens.
| | 02:52 | So I've moved back here, I've zoomed out to
400, and I'm finding that's a little bit close
| | 02:56 | so I'm going to zoom in a little bit.
| | 02:58 | I'm at, like, 380 or something like that.
| | 03:02 | So I'm framing him about the same way.
| | 03:04 | I've still got my aperture wide open;
however, at this focal length, now wide open is 5.6.
| | 03:10 | So I've lost a little bit, but it's not
really going to matter because it doesn't matter
| | 03:14 | to my exposure, and it's not going to
matter really to the depth of field because with
| | 03:19 | the background larger, the shallow depth
of field is a little bit more obvious.
| | 03:23 | So here I can see that the depth
of field is really nice and soft.
| | 03:27 | But look what else has happened:
the bleachers have been compressed.
| | 03:31 | Before, Greg was kind of sticking up off of them.
| | 03:34 | Now he's more kind of surrounded by them.
| | 03:37 | They're really filling the frame a lot more.
| | 03:39 | It's a cozier environment.
| | 03:40 | It's also a simpler image.
| | 03:42 | There's less in the background.
| | 03:44 | It's more just bleachers
and some green and some sky.
| | 03:48 | Now, I'm not sure what I think of about the
green. Actually, I don't have sky just got green.
| | 03:52 | I'm not sure what I think about the green.
| | 03:53 | I would like to try a different composition.
| | 03:57 | These super-telephoto lenses and the ultra-
wide-angle lenses, when you get to these extremes,
| | 04:03 | tiny movements, tiny changes in camera position can
really have a big impact in the composition of your scene.
| | 04:10 | This is part of the fun about working
super telephoto or working ultra wide.
| | 04:14 | I have a huge variety of
relationships that I can play with.
| | 04:18 | So watch what happens if I
move from right here to up here.
| | 04:22 | I've raised my camera maybe six inches and
when I do that and frame Greg at the same
| | 04:28 | size, still shooting wide open, I get this,
a very, very noticeable change in composition here.
| | 04:37 | Most of the, well not most, a lot of
the green stuff has been cropped out.
| | 04:41 | His head is now below the horizon.
| | 04:43 | And again, that's simply going,
moving the camera from here to here.
| | 04:48 | That's the change we're talking about, and
this is the kind of change that you've got
| | 04:51 | to pay really close attention to when
you're working with these extreme lenses.
| | 04:55 | Moving from here to here might change the
relationship of many different items in the frame.
| | 05:01 | So that's something to always
be diligent about looking for.
| | 05:03 | It's also something that you can play with.
| | 05:05 | One of the fun things about these lenses is
moving around and seeing what kind of different
| | 05:09 | compositions you can compose.
| | 05:10 | But here what we're really going for is that
cozy look that's created by the shallow depth
| | 05:15 | of field and the compressed background, and
that's something that I can do with one of
| | 05:19 | these nice long lenses.
| | 05:20 | So, you will use this for more than
just shooting things that are far away.
| | 05:25 | Even in more ordinary circumstances,
you might want to employ your super-telephoto lens to
| | 05:30 | change the sense of space in the
image and go for a very different feel.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with teleconverters| 00:00 | One of the problems with these really
long lenses is they make you greedy.
| | 00:04 | You zoom in a certain amount and
you just want to go farther.
| | 00:07 | And I've got an 800-millimeter lens and I
still want to get closer, but to do that would
| | 00:11 | be to go to a bigger lens, which is going to
be even heavier and more unwieldy, and it's
| | 00:15 | going to cost even more money.
| | 00:17 | There is another option and
that is to use a teleconverter.
| | 00:20 | This is a small piece of hardware that's
going to go between the lens and the camera.
| | 00:25 | It's actually got some optics in it.
| | 00:26 | It's going to add another optical element
to my lens that's going to magnify it, in
| | 00:31 | this case by 1.4. So that's
going to get me from 800 to 1,120.
| | 00:36 | Now, there are other size tele-extenders.
| | 00:39 | You can get a 2x extender,
which would get me from 800 to 1600.
| | 00:42 | So you might think, well, why don't
you just leave that on all the time?
| | 00:45 | There is a price to pay, as we'll see.
| | 00:47 | First, let's put this on.
| | 00:49 | Taking the caps off, it's just like any lens.
| | 00:52 | Notice that I've sandwiched these together so that
when they go in my pocket, they don't get full of dust.
| | 00:57 | So now I need to take the camera off the lens because
on this lens, you don't take the lens off the camera.
| | 01:01 | I'm going to put that there.
| | 01:03 | And this attaches just like any other lens.
| | 01:05 | I line up the red dot and turn it and it locks.
| | 01:09 | Now, here's another red dot.
| | 01:11 | I line that up with my
lens and turn it and it locks.
| | 01:16 | And now I am at 1,120.
| | 01:20 | Here's the difference between 800
millimeters and the same lens with my tele-extender.
| | 01:24 | So it has given me a little bit of extra reach.
| | 01:27 | The problem is I've lost a stop.
| | 01:29 | This is normally a 5.6 lens. With the tele-extender,
with the 1.4x tele-extender that drops to eight.
| | 01:35 | Now, that can be tricky if I'm aiming to
shoot with smaller apertures because I'm losing
| | 01:40 | shutter speed there.
| | 01:41 | If I had been shooting at, say, f/11 right
now and it was saying that I had a 60th of
| | 01:45 | a second, sticking the tele-extender on is
going to drop me down to a 30th, and this is
| | 01:50 | all way, way, way too slow for
reliable shooting with this lens.
| | 01:54 | So losing that extra
stop can really be an issue.
| | 01:57 | If you go to the 2x extender,
you're going to lose two stops.
| | 02:01 | So there's kind of no free
lunch when it comes to this.
| | 02:04 | You can't just get the longer lens by
buying an expensive gizmo like this.
| | 02:09 | Nevertheless, in this case one stop in
bright daylight, I can work with that.
| | 02:12 | I can crank up the ISO to make up for it.
| | 02:15 | And it is nice having that
extra little bit of reach.
| | 02:18 | This is not just something
for the big 800-millimeter lens.
| | 02:20 | If you've got a 200-millimeter lens, you
can turn it into more of a super telephoto by
| | 02:24 | sticking a tele-extender on.
| | 02:26 | So that's something to consider. If you don't
want to invest in another lens, if you don't
| | 02:30 | want to carry a bigger lens, if you feel
like you sometimes need a little more reach, but
| | 02:34 | not that often, a tele-
extender is a great way to go.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Editing telephoto images| 00:00 | For the most part, you won't do anything special when
you're editing your telephoto and super-telephoto images.
| | 00:06 | However, there is probably one consistent
thing that you're going to find with your
| | 00:10 | telephoto images, and especially really long
telephoto images, and that is this: they're
| | 00:15 | going to look like an old prison.
| | 00:17 | Oh, wait, no that's not it.
| | 00:18 | They are going to be low contrast.
That's the problem.
| | 00:21 | The reason this is a low-contrast image is
because I'm simply looking through so much
| | 00:25 | atmosphere, a lot more than I normally would
with a shorter lens, where I wouldn't try to
| | 00:30 | get such close-up detail.
| | 00:32 | Obviously, I could put a shorter lens on this
subject and still be looking at as much atmosphere,
| | 00:37 | but because Alcatraz wouldn't be so big,
I wouldn't notice how much contrast I've taken off of it.
| | 00:43 | This is a very easy thing to fix.
| | 00:44 | Low contrast simply means we don't have
any black and we don't have any white.
| | 00:48 | All of our tones are grouped
here in the center of the image.
| | 00:51 | If you're using Camera Raw here in CS6,
it's just going to be a process of dropping the
| | 00:56 | blacks down, raising the exposure, and maybe
playing with the Contrast slider to spread
| | 01:03 | the intermediate tones out a little more.
| | 01:06 | So when I do that, I immediately
see better detail on the image.
| | 01:09 | Most importantly, it lifts that haze off the
top of the image that makes it look kind of flat.
| | 01:15 | Now, again, if I'm shooting with a wider-angle
lens and Alcatraz is, say, in the background,
| | 01:20 | I'm going to have this same problem, but
it's going to look more appropriate because we
| | 01:25 | expect things farther
away to be a little bit hazy.
| | 01:28 | So in this case, the fact that the mountains
in the background are hazy and low contrast,
| | 01:32 | that's okay; they're way in the background.
| | 01:35 | If I did want to put some more detail in them,
then I might consider doing something like
| | 01:40 | a graduated adjustment and trying to roll some
contrast into the scene in a somewhat controlled manner.
| | 01:49 | But I don't want to put too much contrast
back here in the back because it is far away.
| | 01:53 | It should look like it's lost in
a distant haze. So, there we go.
| | 01:57 | I'm not sure that I don't actually like
it better without the gradient adjustment.
| | 02:02 | But again, this is simply something that I'm
going to face when I'm working with a telephoto image.
| | 02:08 | This exact same edit that I've done here,
if I was not working in raw, I would simply
| | 02:13 | do this in Photoshop using
something like a Levels adjustment.
| | 02:17 | So I've gone back here to my
original non-corrected version of the file.
| | 02:23 | I'm going to just drop a
Levels Adjustment layer on here.
| | 02:26 | Set my black point, set my white point, and
maybe play with the Midpoint slider to open
| | 02:31 | up those middle tones a little bit.
| | 02:34 | Another thing that you're possibly going to
run into with a super-telephoto lens, especially
| | 02:38 | a very, very long super-telephoto lens like
the Sigma 800 millimeter--in this case this
| | 02:44 | is the Sigma 800 millimeter
with a 1.2x tele-converter on it.
| | 02:48 | Look at all this weird distortion I've got.
| | 02:52 | That again is atmospheric haze.
| | 02:54 | I'm looking through so much atmosphere,
trying to resolve fine detail, and it's causing a
| | 02:59 | lot of distortion in my focus.
| | 03:01 | I've also got a contrast problem. So, I'm
going to start by just dropping the contrast back
| | 03:05 | to where it's supposed to be.
| | 03:07 | So setting my black point, I'm going to
expand the contrast there, brighten things up.
| | 03:12 | Now, my black point has given me a big saturation
boost, which I'm not too crazy about. The Transamerica
| | 03:17 | Building is not actually--I
don't think it should look that yellow.
| | 03:20 | So I'm going to drop out a little bit of
saturation, maybe bump some clarity a little bit.
| | 03:25 | But I've got this weird shimmery stuff through
the image--usually, nothing I can do about that.
| | 03:30 | There's no reasonable way to remove that.
| | 03:33 | What I might do instead is if I can't remove
it and I decide it's distracting or annoying-
| | 03:38 | looking--actually, what's a drag about it is
that it looks like bad compression artifacts.
| | 03:41 | It looks like I'm using a cheesy camera
instead of a really high-dollar really enormous lens.
| | 03:46 | I can try to hide it and go for a
more stylized look by adding some grain.
| | 03:51 | I'm over here in the Effects tab in Camera Raw.
| | 03:53 | I'm just going to turn up
some grain to a very large size.
| | 03:58 | This is going to put
some texture into the image.
| | 04:00 | I am going to zoom in here a little bit.
| | 04:02 | You can see that I've
picked up a bunch of noise.
| | 04:05 | That doesn't change the fact that I can see all
of this modelling on the side of the building,
| | 04:09 | but maybe it hides a little bit. Maybe it makes it
look more like I have chosen a grungy style on purpose.
| | 04:18 | If you're not shooting raw and you want to
add grain, there are techniques to do that,
| | 04:22 | and you'll see this later in this course when we
talk about simulating Holga and Lensbaby effects.
| | 04:27 | So, again, for the most part, your telephoto
editing is just going to be like all of your
| | 04:31 | normal editing, but be ready to tackle low-
contrast problems and possibly know that you're going
| | 04:38 | to run into these atmospheric haze problems that
can cause a weird shimmery distortion in your image.
| | 04:42 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Understanding MacroUnderstanding macro basics| 00:00 | I've always thought that macro photography
was something of a misnomer. Macro shooting
| | 00:05 | implies that I'm taking pictures of really
big things, but actually it's just the opposite;
| | 00:09 | macro shooting is the
process of shooting small things.
| | 00:12 | When you shoot macro images, you're blowing
up small details or images of small things
| | 00:17 | to macro size to view them up close.
| | 00:20 | All lenses have a minimum focusing distance;
that is, they can only be taken so close to
| | 00:25 | a subject and still be able to achieve focus.
| | 00:28 | Now, most SLR lenses can only get to within roughly
a foot or so of a subject and still be able to focus.
| | 00:34 | If you're a metric shooter,
that's about a third of a meter.
| | 00:37 | Depending on the focal length of your lens,
that foot may or may not let you get a macro
| | 00:42 | shot of your subject.
| | 00:44 | Technically, a true macro image is one
that shows your subject at exact size.
| | 00:50 | We refer to this shooting at one to one.
| | 00:52 | An inch in your image
corresponds to an inch in the real world.
| | 00:57 | With the right lens,
it's possible to go even closer.
| | 01:01 | In this chapter, we're not going to be that
particular about what we consider a macro photograph.
| | 01:05 | We're simply going to look at any close-up
shooting or shooting small objects
| | 01:10 | in details as macro shooting.
| | 01:12 | When you say macro, the first thing that most
people think of are pictures of bugs and plants,
| | 01:15 | and those are certainly good types of macro
subject matter, but there's lots of other stuff.
| | 01:20 | Just working around your house with
a macro lens can be very interesting.
| | 01:24 | Looking at things up close, finding small
details can be a fascinating way of seeing
| | 01:29 | the familiar objects in your
life in a completely different way.
| | 01:33 | Macro shooting is very often
a form of landscape shooting.
| | 01:36 | When you get in close to stuff,
surfaces become terrains that you can explore.
| | 01:40 | Macro is great way of shooting completely abstract
images or playing with light in an entirely new way.
| | 01:46 | To shoot macro, you need a macro lens,
or you can use your regular lens at its close-up
| | 01:52 | end. A lot of lenses will have
an area of focus that says Macro.
| | 01:55 | That won't let you get to a true one to one, but
you'll still be able to get very close to stuff.
| | 01:59 | If you really want to dive into serious macro,
you're going to want a macro lens like this
| | 02:03 | 100-millimeter macro.
| | 02:04 | This works like a normal 100-millimeter lens
that can shoot things that are far away, but
| | 02:08 | it also allows me to
focus in at macro distances.
| | 02:11 | Now, before we dive in, I want to say that
this chapter is not meant to be a comprehensive
| | 02:16 | lesson of macro photography.
| | 02:17 | Macro shooting is a big subject that covers a lot
of specific practices and a lot of specialized gear.
| | 02:23 | We're working on a macro course right now,
and you should see it in the lynda library in 2013.
| | 02:29 | In the meantime, this chapter should help you with
the basics of this very popular form of shooting.
| | 02:34 | So I'm standing right now in front of the
Conservatory of Flowers in San Francisco.
| | 02:37 | Inside that building are
a lot of amazing plants.
| | 02:40 | The grounds are really beautiful.
| | 02:42 | I'm really looking forward to see what I can
find as I head into it in a macro frame of mind.
| | 02:46 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Shooting close| 00:00 | So we've come inside the conservatory.
| | 00:02 | If you ever come to San Francisco, this is
definitely a destination you want to see.
| | 00:06 | There is a botanical
collection here that is extraordinary.
| | 00:11 | There's also a fine display of varying
degrees of humidity throughout the conservatory.
| | 00:15 | Some rooms are really humid
and some rooms, not so much.
| | 00:19 | In fact, it's so humid in here that both I
with my still camera and the crew with their
| | 00:23 | video cameras have had to wait
a while before we can shoot anything.
| | 00:26 | We had the cameras in an air-conditioned car.
| | 00:28 | They were very cool when they came in here,
so we walked in and lifting the camera up
| | 00:32 | to my face, it fogged over.
| | 00:34 | So if you do come to a place like this to
shoot, a hothouse where it's very humid,
| | 00:38 | you may have to wait till your camera warms up
before the lens and the viewfinder are not fogged.
| | 00:43 | So I found this nice flower
here that I want to shoot.
| | 00:47 | And I do not have a macro lens on my camera.
| | 00:49 | Before you run out and buy a macro, I want to
encourage you to try some close-up photography
| | 00:53 | with the lenses you already have, partly just
to see if you really like close-up photography
| | 00:57 | that much, but also so that you can get a sense
of what power you might already have on your camera.
| | 01:02 | So what I have here is the Canon 24-105.
| | 01:04 | It's a very nice lens.
| | 01:06 | It is actually a kit lens that is provided
with several of their cameras, so this may be
| | 01:10 | a lens you already have or you
might have something similar.
| | 01:13 | So, again, this is a
24-105 at the telephoto lens.
| | 01:16 | I've got 105 millimeters.
So I'm going to try taking a shot here.
| | 01:19 | I've zoomed the lens in all the way,
and I am focusing just like I normally would.
| | 01:25 | I'm using autofocus to focus on the flower.
| | 01:28 | And that's in focus.
| | 01:29 | Now, the problem is it's a
little small in my viewfinder.
| | 01:31 | If I take this shot, a lot of my
frame is wasted with some extra stuff.
| | 01:36 | I'd really like to zoom in there on the flower.
| | 01:38 | So I'm going to--I can't zoom
anymore, so I'm going to get closer.
| | 01:41 | I'm going to move into here so that
the flower really fills the frame.
| | 01:45 | But now, autofocus isn't working.
| | 01:47 | I'm pushing the button and nothing has happened.
| | 01:49 | So I'm going to grab the focus ring and turn it and
sure enough, I cannot get it to focus. Here is the thing.
| | 01:56 | Every lens has a minimum focusing distance.
| | 01:59 | There is a certain point that you just can't go
closer to something and still achieve focus on the camera.
| | 02:04 | So let's just find where that is
on this lens. This is in focus.
| | 02:09 | Oh, the rain's are coming.
| | 02:12 | This is in focus here.
| | 02:14 | If I move forward just a little bit, it
won't find focus, so minimum focusing distance on
| | 02:18 | this lens is about this far,
maybe a little bit over a foot.
| | 02:22 | So if I can't get the framing that I want
there, I'm either going to need to crop in
| | 02:27 | camera or run out and buy a macro lens.
| | 02:30 | But let's see what we can do with this lens.
| | 02:32 | Again, if I take this shot at the
closest focusing point, I get this.
| | 02:39 | It's looking pretty good.
| | 02:41 | You might think, well, why don't you zoom
out and move the camera in closer? All right!
| | 02:45 | I'll try that.
I'll go all the way to 24.
| | 02:47 | This is as wide as it goes, and then I can fill
the frame like this, but I still can't focus.
| | 02:54 | The minimum focusing distance
does not change with focal length.
| | 02:58 | Even at full wide, my minimum focusing distance is
still out here, the exact same distance we had before.
| | 03:04 | So that minimum focusing distance is simply
something you have to deal with with each lens.
| | 03:09 | This lens actually marks an area of focus.
| | 03:11 | This is my focus ring here, and it
actually marks an area as macro.
| | 03:15 | That's to let me know that I'm in the macro
focusing distance of this lens, which isn't really macro.
| | 03:21 | I won't ever get true one to one,
but it will let me focus very closely.
| | 03:26 | So I'm going to just make do with this lens.
| | 03:28 | I'm going to frame as close as I can, which
is about here, and I'm ready to take my shot.
| | 03:34 | Now, one of the things to know is when
shooting up close like this, depth of field is going
| | 03:38 | to be very shallow.
| | 03:39 | It's not too bad, but if you notice the
back petal there is just a little bit soft.
| | 03:44 | So I'm going to go to a smaller aperture.
I'm going to dial out to F9.
| | 03:48 | And now my thing to
worry about is shutter speed.
| | 03:52 | When I do that, my shutter speed drops to a 50th
of a second, and this flower is moving a little bit.
| | 03:57 | We have got some ceiling fans going
on that are creating some air currents.
| | 04:00 | The flower is moving a little bit, so I'm a
little worried about getting a sharp image.
| | 04:03 | So I'm going to bump my ISO
up a couple of stops to 400.
| | 04:06 | That gets me a shutter
speed of 160, and now I get this.
| | 04:11 | So notice also that the background is changing.
| | 04:13 | I've got the whole flower in focus, and I
have got a little more sharpness in my background.
| | 04:17 | I can maybe back off from f/9 and try to find
out where's the depth of field that's going
| | 04:23 | to give me the whole flower in focus but still
give me a very deep focus background if I want that.
| | 04:28 | So depth of field is simply
something I can play with.
| | 04:29 | I can of course use the depth of field preview
button to try and get an idea that ahead of time.
| | 04:34 | Remember, judging depth of field on the LCD
screen is a little bit complicated because
| | 04:38 | images always appear more in focus on the
back of the camera than they really are.
| | 04:42 | So I'm liking this, but I really wish I could
get closer, and I just can't on this lens because
| | 04:46 | of its minimum focusing distance.
| | 04:48 | So next, I'm going to switch to a macro lens, and
that's what we'll take a look at in the next movie.
| | 04:51 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Shooting macro| 00:00 | So I've switched to my Canon
100-millimeter f/2.8 macro.
| | 00:04 | I really like this lens.
| | 00:06 | It works as a normal 100-millimeter lens.
| | 00:09 | So if you've got a zoom lens that has a
100-millimeter focal length, you know what kind
| | 00:14 | of field of view you're
going to get with this lens.
| | 00:15 | So I can be out shooting. I can shoot
landscapes with this lens because it's got a nice reach,
| | 00:19 | and so on and so forth.
| | 00:21 | What makes it a macro is
its minimum focusing distance.
| | 00:24 | Watch what happens here.
| | 00:25 | I'm going to fill the frame with this
flower, something I couldn't do earlier.
| | 00:32 | I'm doing that from back here
and I've got the image in focus.
| | 00:36 | Shoot that like this.
| | 00:40 | So this is a nice shot.
| | 00:42 | I was not able to fill the frame with the
flower with my 24-105 earlier. But watch this.
| | 00:47 | I'm going to come in here now, and I
think I can get even a little bit closer.
| | 00:53 | I'm getting much closer than I could before.
| | 00:57 | This lens has a very tiny,
tiny minimum focusing distance.
| | 01:01 | And so that lets me get in like this.
| | 01:04 | Now, as you can see, just as with the other lens,
I have got an extreme depth-of-field problem here.
| | 01:08 | I'm shooting at 3.5 on these shots.
| | 01:12 | I would like to get down to a smaller
aperture because I want to get in that close, but I
| | 01:15 | want to have more things in focus.
| | 01:16 | So I'm going to go to a smaller aperture.
| | 01:19 | That's going to really slow down my
shutter speed so I'm bringing in this tripod that
| | 01:21 | just happened to be sitting over there.
| | 01:24 | This is a Velbon EL Carmagne 540
tripod with an Acratech Ultimate ballhead.
| | 01:30 | I really like this tripod.
| | 01:32 | It's very lightweight and because of my sling
strap here, it's really easy to get the camera
| | 01:37 | off and get it right on the tripod.
| | 01:39 | So I'm going to just try and frame up that
same shot, or roughly that same shot that I
| | 01:43 | had before, and get myself some focus.
| | 01:45 | Now, one thing about macro shooting is most
of the time, you'll ballpark your focus and
| | 01:51 | then you will refine it by moving
the camera forward and backward.
| | 01:54 | And this is the tricky
part about macro shooting.
| | 01:56 | That's why you usually want a tripod or a
monopod is that tiny little motions are going
| | 02:01 | to throw your focus way in and out,
| | 02:04 | and so focusing macro more often becomes
about camera movement as it is about working
| | 02:11 | with the lens focus ring.
| | 02:13 | So that looks pretty good.
| | 02:13 | I'm going to lock this down here.
| | 02:16 | I'll set my aperture to f/11, which drops
my shutter speed to a 20th of a second.
| | 02:22 | This is why I'm going with a tripod here.
| | 02:25 | I'm going to take that shot.
| | 02:26 | I'm skeptical that it's going to be sharp
though, because the flower's moving around a
| | 02:30 | little bit, so I'm going to bump my ISO up
a couple of stops to try and get me a little
| | 02:34 | more motion-stopping
power, and I end up right here.
| | 02:37 | Of course I'm changing depth of field a lot.
| | 02:39 | One thing to know about a lens like this:
this lens in particular, the Canon 100-millimeter
| | 02:43 | macro, has a pretty profound change in
focal length as you focus in and out.
| | 02:49 | The focal length, the field of view
actually changes as if you were zooming.
| | 02:52 | Some macro lenses have that more than others.
| | 02:55 | It's something to be careful with here.
| | 02:56 | Now, that last image that I shot has a lot
of focus in it, a lot of depth of field, and
| | 03:01 | I still don't quite have full depth of field.
| | 03:03 | If I really wanted full depth of field,
I would have to try going to a smaller aperture,
| | 03:08 | which might soften my image overall because
of diffraction artifacts, or I would have to
| | 03:12 | go to a more complex shooting technique
involving a focus rail and special software and a bunch
| | 03:17 | of stuff like that, which we're
not going to cover in this chapter.
| | 03:20 | As I said earlier, we'll have
a full macro course for that.
| | 03:23 | Take a look at this.
| | 03:24 | Some other features about this macro lens.
| | 03:27 | First of all, it's stabilized.
| | 03:29 | I have Canon's image
stabilization built into this lens.
| | 03:33 | This is about three to
four stops of stabilization.
| | 03:36 | This is great for the types of
problems that I have with macro shooting.
| | 03:38 | When I'm in real close, even a tiny movement of
the camera results in a big change in composition
| | 03:45 | and possibly introduces motion blur, so it's
really nice having stabilization on your lens.
| | 03:49 | I've got, of course, my auto and manual
focus switch, and then I've got this thing up here,
| | 03:54 | which has a bunch of distance markings.
| | 03:56 | The thing about this lens, because it's a
macro lens, it can focus way out of a distance.
| | 04:00 | It can focus in very close, as you saw.
| | 04:02 | It's got this huge range of focus
possibilities, and I can tell the autofocus mechanism which
| | 04:08 | part of that range I want to work with.
| | 04:09 | Right now, it's set to full, which means that
autofocus will seek through the full entire
| | 04:14 | range of focusing
possibilities that the lens has.
| | 04:17 | I can drop it down to infinity, down to half
a meter, which means it's not going to go in
| | 04:21 | super close in its searching, or if I'm
working really up close, I can constrain it to just
| | 04:26 | 0.3 to half a meter.
| | 04:29 | The idea here is that
I'll be able to work quicker.
| | 04:31 | If I'm focused in real close, I don't want
the camera searching out to infinity to see
| | 04:36 | if something is in focus.
| | 04:37 | I didn't even want it searching out to
a meter to see if something is in focus.
| | 04:40 | So the ability to constrain focus to
particular ranges makes my autofocus work much faster.
| | 04:46 | In general, I think you'll find that you're
going to work with manual focus and simply
| | 04:50 | moving the camera in and out.
| | 04:52 | So the issues that I'm dealing with, that
I'm wrestling with, are depth of field and
| | 04:56 | shutter speed often gets played into there
because as I'm trying to get deeper depth
| | 04:59 | of field, my shutter speed is
dropping so then ISO is going up.
| | 05:03 | It's all the usual ballet of balancing those
three parameters that you have to do to get
| | 05:07 | any type of good shot.
| | 05:09 | But they're really going to
come into play with macro shooting.
| | 05:11 | What a macro lens gets you is that minimum
focusing distance that lets you get in real
| | 05:15 | tight and frame shots much closer
than you can with a normal lens.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with a point-and-shoot for macro| 00:00 | That 100-millimeter macro lens that you saw
me using in the last movie, the one on the
| | 00:04 | front of my SLR, will run
you about a thousand bucks.
| | 00:07 | You're not going to get into a
good macro lens inexpensively.
| | 00:11 | But there's another option,
and that's the point-and-shoot.
| | 00:14 | Now, this may sound strange, but this is actually a
really viable option for extreme up-close macro photography.
| | 00:21 | I have here a Sony Cyber Shot DSC RX100, a
point-and-shoot camera that I really, really like.
| | 00:27 | And it's got that thing that I want for macro
shooting, which is a very small minimum focusing distance.
| | 00:32 | I can really get in here close on something.
| | 00:35 | I mean, look at this.
| | 00:36 | I'm just a few centimeters here, and I can
get in really tight and get some nice stuff.
| | 00:42 | I think I can probably even get in a little
bit closer than that and still achieve focus.
| | 00:48 | Some other advantages to shooting this way,
I'm shooting this flower that's up above my head.
| | 00:51 | I wouldn't be able to get up there through
the viewfinder, but of course, I've always
| | 00:54 | got Live View back here.
| | 00:55 | I have also got the ability to shoot video.
| | 00:57 | I can do video macro stuff with it.
| | 01:00 | This camera will run you about $500 to $600, so
it's almost half the price of a good macro lens.
| | 01:06 | It's small, so it doesn't take up any more space.
| | 01:08 | Actually, it doesn't take up as much
space in your camera bag as a macro lens.
| | 01:12 | So you can keep your kit small and have a
really versatile camera that makes the shooting
| | 01:18 | of not just macro but some other stuff a
little bit easier than working with an SLR.
| | 01:23 | So it's kind of nice to have a
quality point-and-shoot around anyway.
| | 01:25 | So if you've already got a point and shoot,
look into its macro capability. It might be
| | 01:29 | a good way to practice.
| | 01:32 | Get your hands on some macro
subject matter and see if you like it.
| | 01:35 | You're going to run into the same issues of depth
of field so you're going to want a point-and-shoot
| | 01:39 | camera that has aperture control.
| | 01:41 | And of course you're going to be spending a lot
of your time focusing simply by moving in and out.
| | 01:45 | It's a great way to get into macro shooting.
| | 01:48 | It's also possibly a better way to go for you,
even if you have an SLR, than investing in
| | 01:53 | an expensive dedicated macro lens.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using a two-lens strategy| 00:00 | I've wandered into an
ancient boiler room on Alcatraz.
| | 00:04 | Okay, maybe ancient is a
little strong, but it's really old.
| | 00:07 | And it's an extraordinary space.
| | 00:09 | There's a gigantic rusty boiler behind me.
| | 00:13 | There's cool pipes going everywhere.
| | 00:14 | The place is just nothing but
texture, truly from floor to ceiling.
| | 00:19 | And it's a nicely lit room.
| | 00:21 | There's some artificial lighting, but there's
also beautiful light coming in through the windows.
| | 00:24 | It's a great place to shoot,
and it's just immediately confusing.
| | 00:28 | Because, though it's a slightly small
enclosed space, it's still big. It's really tall.
| | 00:34 | And I walk in and the first thing
I do is go, wow, look at all this.
| | 00:38 | I want it all.
| | 00:40 | And so, I put my 16-35 on.
| | 00:42 | I was trying to shoot, and I wasn't
really getting anywhere because it didn't fit.
| | 00:45 | So in these situations where you feel like
I can't fit this space that I want to shoot
| | 00:50 | into my frame, I'm going to
recommend a two-lens strategy.
| | 00:54 | Get your fisheye lens and shoot some with
that, shoot the space. Don't just shoot single
| | 00:59 | frames. Shoot panoramas of the space.
| | 01:02 | Really do try to make an effort to get
the entire field of view into your frame.
| | 01:07 | I may or may not work, but with the fisheye, you
really got a good tool for making a go at it.
| | 01:13 | Then take the fisheye off
and go to the other extreme.
| | 01:15 | Put your macro on and shoot detail.
| | 01:18 | Shoot the rivets, shoot the switches, shoot
little patches of rust to get all that fine
| | 01:22 | detail that does not necessarily convey a
sense of the space, but gives you a sense
| | 01:27 | of the age and the decay that is in here,
because that's a big part of what's really compelling.
| | 01:32 | You may not find that with either lens there's
a single shot that really captures this place,
| | 01:36 | but if you work with both, you can maybe put
together a series of a few images that work
| | 01:41 | together to create an essay about this space,
and give the viewer a better eye of what it's
| | 01:45 | about, both at the large
scale and with the fine details.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
6. Using Tilt-Shift LensesUnderstanding tilt shift| 00:00 | A tilt-shift or perspective control lens lets
you alter the perspective in an image, allowing
| | 00:05 | you to, among other things,
restore converging lines to parallel.
| | 00:10 | This allows you to shoot objects with a
truer representation of their real shape.
| | 00:14 | A tilt-shift lens is always a manual focus
lens, so you won't find any autofocus switches
| | 00:19 | or stabilization controls.
| | 00:21 | Instead, you'll find this odd
series of knobs and locks and switches.
| | 00:26 | So let's go through them here.
| | 00:27 | You are looking at this side of the lens right now,
which is currently on the bottom side of the camera.
| | 00:33 | We've set it up this way so that you
can really easily see what's going on.
| | 00:36 | And I've got this switch here that says LOCK
and this little knob here, and then I've got
| | 00:40 | another set of them right here.
| | 00:42 | These are locks for one of
the movements of the lens.
| | 00:45 | With these all locked down
right now, the lens stays rigid.
| | 00:49 | It can't move in any way.
| | 00:50 | It just stays just like a regular lens does.
| | 00:54 | So what I'm going to do first is unlock
this switch and I'm going to turn this knob.
| | 00:59 | The lock is a really hard lock.
| | 01:01 | It absolutely makes sure nothing moves.
| | 01:03 | The knob lets me create some drag to give
me a little more ease of making sure that
| | 01:07 | the lens doesn't move more than I want it to.
| | 01:09 | I've also got this switch down here.
| | 01:10 | If I push this, I can rotate the entire lens.
| | 01:15 | And this is not unscrewing the lens or anything.
| | 01:17 | It's actually rotating it on its mount.
| | 01:19 | So now I turned it 180 degrees so you can
see the controls that are on the other side,
| | 01:23 | and I've got this two knobs.
| | 01:24 | So with those locks undone that I just undid,
I can turn this knob, and look what happens.
| | 01:30 | The lens tilts from one side to the other.
| | 01:35 | I don't actually have to use the knob either.
| | 01:36 | I can just grab the lens and move it.
| | 01:39 | And if I've got the lock completely
loosened, this is actually very easy to do.
| | 01:44 | So I'm going to put it back where it was,
and let's look at the other locking controls that we had.
| | 01:49 | So I'm rotating the lens back around.
| | 01:51 | And now I'm going to undo this lock.
| | 01:56 | And what that does is let me turn the other
knob, which is again on this side of the lens
| | 02:01 | and when I do that, the
lens shifts from side to side.
| | 02:07 | So you can see it's shifting that
direction and then shifting this direction.
| | 02:12 | Now, what's cool is I can actually combine
all these motions, so I can shift and I can
| | 02:18 | tilt and if I want, I can then rotate.
| | 02:23 | So this gives me a really fine degree of
control of getting the front lens element into a very
| | 02:29 | particular relationship with the rear element,
and that's where things really start happening.
| | 02:33 | That's why we get all of this power.
| | 02:35 | Now, let's try and get this back to normal here.
| | 02:39 | One thing to remember about a tilt-shift lens
is that it comes in a variety of focal lengths
| | 02:44 | just like any other lens.
| | 02:46 | This is a 24-millimeter lens, so
it's got a very wide field of view.
| | 02:49 | In the next few movies, we're going to look
at what you can do with these various controls.
| | 02:53 | Right now I just want you to
understand what the movements are.
| | 02:56 | Tilt is this movement from side to side.
| | 02:59 | Shift is this movement back and forth, and I
don't know what direction I'm pointing. There we go.
| | 03:04 | Shift is this moving back and forth and again
I can, if I loosen my locks enough, just shift
| | 03:09 | these things, or push these things.
| | 03:10 | I don't have to use the knob.
I just accidentally took a picture,
| | 03:13 | a nice shot of the ceiling that I'll treasure always.
| | 03:16 | Another thing to realize is that I can
actually do one more rotation, which is to turn this
| | 03:21 | so now I can tilt in this
direction and shift in this direction.
| | 03:25 | So I've got a tremendous amount of flexibility.
| | 03:26 | So what can I do with all this power?
| | 03:28 | Well, in the next few movies we're going to
look at what you can do by twisting and bending
| | 03:33 | your lens around this way, and we're going to
start by looking at perspective correction.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Correcting perspective| 00:00 | So I'm in the Financial District here in San
Francisco, standing in front of this really
| | 00:04 | nice building with this colonnade in
front of it, and I want to get a shot of it.
| | 00:08 | As I look at it here with my naked eye, I see a
little bit of perspective distortion, but not a lot.
| | 00:14 | However, to get the shot framed,
I'm having to use a pretty wide-angle lens.
| | 00:18 | I'm using a 24-millimeter wide angle, and I
cannot get any further back from it to use
| | 00:24 | a longer focal length,
so I'm pretty much stuck here with this framing.
| | 00:28 | And when I shoot with this
framing, here's what I get:
| | 00:31 | I get a pretty wildly distorted building.
| | 00:35 | I'm getting--I mean, okay maybe not wildly
distorted, but I get a lot of distortion.
| | 00:38 | I get a lot of perspective
shift going up the columns.
| | 00:42 | That's not really what it looks like to my eye.
| | 00:43 | I would really like to square it off more.
| | 00:46 | So this is where I'm going to go
to work with my tilt-shift lens.
| | 00:50 | This is a 24-millimeter Canon tilt-shift.
| | 00:53 | So what I'm going to do is shift the lens
upward, which is going to correct this perspective
| | 00:58 | distortion, but as I do that, it's also going to
change the composition of my shot because as I shift upward,
| | 01:03 | I'm going to crop the bottom of the building.
| | 01:05 | So as I'm shifting upward, I'm also
going to need to tilt my camera down.
| | 01:08 | Now, we're rolling video on the camera, so
you're going to be able to see this whole process.
| | 01:12 | The first thing going on here is that I need to
adjust how the shift on my lens is working.
| | 01:19 | The last shot that I took with
it was a portrait orientation,
| | 01:23 | so right now that shift is set to go
from side to side. That's not what I need.
| | 01:27 | So I'm going to flip a release here on the
side of the lens and that lets me rotate the
| | 01:32 | entire mechanism around until--there we go--
now my shift is back to going vertical.
| | 01:39 | Lots of locks on this lens to keep
things from accidentally shifting or tilting.
| | 01:44 | So I've got to loosen those.
| | 01:47 | Once I do, I have two
options for controlling the shift.
| | 01:50 | I can use this little knob here or I can
actually just grab the lens and push it up and down.
| | 01:54 | The knob is nice for really fine control.
| | 01:57 | So what I'm going to do--and you can see
this changing here--I'm shifting the lens up and
| | 02:01 | as I do, it's a little hard to tell because of the way
the crop is changing, but the building is squaring up.
| | 02:07 | So now I need to do that second motion I
was talking about and tilt the lens down.
| | 02:11 | Sorry, that wasn't smoother, but this is a
ballhead on my tripod so that is making--it
| | 02:19 | makes it difficult to just do a straight tilt.
| | 02:21 | So now look at the difference.
| | 02:22 | The columns are very, very straight.
| | 02:28 | And in fact, they may
have been corrected too much.
| | 02:29 | They might now be tilting forward,
so I'm going to back off on this a little bit.
| | 02:34 | Now then, you are seeing that the
bottom of the building is cropped off.
| | 02:39 | That's because as we're shooting video,
I'm stuck with a 16:9 aspect ratio,
| | 02:44 | so the way that I'm actually framed for stills is
going to still show the top and bottom of the frame.
| | 02:51 | So that looks much better.
I'm going to take my shot.
| | 02:53 | I'm going to wait for some
traffic to go by so I get a clear shot.
| | 02:57 | There's one right now. I take my shot.
| | 02:59 | Oh, okay, this is all wrong.
| | 03:02 | My exposure is way off.
| | 03:04 | And the exposure is off because the camera
cannot actually, or accurately, meter through
| | 03:10 | the lens when it's shifted.
| | 03:11 | So I've got to back up and
start this process over now.
| | 03:14 | I'm going to put my lens back to normal,
and I'm going to frame my shot the way that I
| | 03:19 | want it, and I'm going to meter.
| | 03:24 | I'm in Aperture Priority mode.
| | 03:25 | I want pretty deep depth of
field, so I'm metering at f/10.
| | 03:30 | So that meter is in at a
shutter speed of a 30th of a second.
| | 03:33 | So I'm going to go over here to Manual
mode and just dial those settings in.
| | 03:38 | Now my exposure is locked correctly.
| | 03:40 | Now, I can do my shift again.
| | 03:41 | I'm going to shift this down. No, that's wrong.
| | 03:43 | I'm going to shift this up.
| | 03:46 | Going down is going to shift it the wrong
direction and make the perspective worse.
| | 03:49 | And then I'm going to tilt this
down, and that's looking much better.
| | 03:54 | Now, I can take my shot
and I get accurate exposure.
| | 03:59 | So this is the process that I'm going
through all the time with my tilt-shift lens.
| | 04:03 | Again, it's manual focus so I'm manually
focusing ahead of time, then setting my exposure, locking
| | 04:08 | my exposure in, and then I can do my
adjustments to the lens to correct my perspective.
| | 04:14 | I don't use tilt for this.
| | 04:16 | All I need to get this
working is shifting up and down.
| | 04:19 | And I can go in either direction.
| | 04:20 | I can either pull the
perspective in or push it back out again.
| | 04:24 | That's how you square up a building
when you need to get that wide-angle shot.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating the toy effect| 00:00 | Now, you've seen how we can use a tilt-
shift lens to greatly expand the depth of field
| | 00:05 | in certain situations.
| | 00:06 | I can also use my tilt-shift lens to
really compress the depth of field.
| | 00:10 | And when I do that, I can end up with an
effect like this: something that looks like a little
| | 00:14 | miniature set, like a little toy set
of something or re-creation of something.
| | 00:19 | That's not what this is.
| | 00:20 | This is an actual real-world
scene shot through a tilt-shift lens.
| | 00:25 | The thing is, when we're looking in real life
at something very small, we have very, very
| | 00:29 | shallow depth of field.
| | 00:31 | So when we see a scene with shallow depth
of field, we take that shallow depth of field
| | 00:35 | as an indication of scale and we interpret
that scene as being something very small.
| | 00:38 | So even though I've got a real full-size
real-world scene here, if I can get the depth of field
| | 00:44 | compressed to something really tiny, when
I look at the picture, I will interpret it
| | 00:47 | as a miniature set.
| | 00:49 | So we're going to create
one of those shots right now.
| | 00:51 | This is, honestly, in my opinion,
something of a kind of cliche now.
| | 00:55 | It's kind of tired effect, but it's still
pretty fun and if you have got a tilt-shift
| | 00:58 | lens, you have got to play with this.
| | 01:00 | It's hard to resist.
| | 01:01 | So I'm standing here in Downtown San Francisco
as the sun is setting and I'm on a rooftop here.
| | 01:06 | I'm looking down onto an intersection.
| | 01:08 | I'm just going to take a normal shot
of it so you can see what it looks like.
| | 01:11 | Going into Aperture Priority, I've got
my 24-millimeter tilt-shift lens on here.
| | 01:15 | I've got it set normally.
| | 01:16 | I have no tilt or shift or
rotation or anything dialed in.
| | 01:20 | Like all tilt-shift lenses, it's a
manual focus, so I'm focusing it manually.
| | 01:24 | I'm at f/11 so that I can have some deep depth of
field, so you can really see what my scene looks like.
| | 01:30 | Because I'm shooting with a wide-angle lens
into the sun, I'm having a little bit of a
| | 01:34 | problem with flare.
| | 01:35 | So I'm just going to just hold my hand up
here and block out that flare, and here's what
| | 01:40 | I'm looking at over the rooftop.
| | 01:42 | So I want to turn this into a toy effect.
| | 01:45 | I want to shrink the depth of field.
| | 01:46 | I'm going to do that by performing a big tilt
on my lens, but there are a couple of things
| | 01:50 | I need to do before then.
| | 01:52 | When I tilt the lens up or when I shift it,
I am radically cutting the amount of light
| | 01:57 | that gets to the sensor, and unfortunately,
the camera cannot accurately meter through
| | 02:01 | the lens when it's tilted and
shifted that way, so I need to meter first.
| | 02:05 | Now, I shot that scene at f/11.
| | 02:07 | I actually want my aperture wide open,
| | 02:09 | so I'm going to dial it down to
3.5, which is as big as I can go here.
| | 02:12 | I want very, very shallow depth of field to
exaggerate the effect that I'm going for here.
| | 02:18 | So what I'm going to do right now is just meter.
| | 02:19 | So I'm in Aperture Priority
mode still. I'm at ISO 400.
| | 02:23 | I probably don't need to be at ISO 400 when I'm
wide open, so I'm going to bump it down to 100.
| | 02:27 | And my camera is telling me that
at 3.5, I need a 160th of a second.
| | 02:33 | So I've got a couple of options.
| | 02:34 | I could use the exposure lock on my
camera, which would lock in that exposure.
| | 02:39 | The thing is, it will time out eventually.
| | 02:40 | So if I lock it in and I'm spending some time
tilting and shifting, it may release the exposure
| | 02:46 | and then I'd have to start all over.
| | 02:47 | So instead, I'm going to just go into manual mode
and dial that in by hand, and now I forgot what it was.
| | 02:52 | It was a 160th of a second at 3.5.
| | 02:55 | So I'm switching to manual
and I'm going to 160th at 3.5.
| | 02:59 | Now, I'm ready to go. My metering is set.
| | 03:02 | The last thing I want to do is focus.
| | 03:03 | It can be hard to focus really
accurately when you got the lens all messed up,
| | 03:07 | so I'm just going to focus at a particular point in
the intersection down there, and now I'm ready to go.
| | 03:12 | I've got all the locks loosened so I can
really easily move the lens by hand, so I'm just
| | 03:15 | going to tilt it upwards.
| | 03:17 | And as I soon as I do that, through the viewfinder,
I can see the shallow depth of field take hold.
| | 03:23 | If I want, I can kind of move the plane that is
in focus back and forth by focusing in and out.
| | 03:30 | I still have my flare
problem, so I need to block that.
| | 03:33 | Ooh, and the sun is going down quickly. It's hard to
get it all without getting my fingers in the shot.
| | 03:38 | So I'm going to take the shot, and my
exposure looks good, and here's what I've got.
| | 03:43 | So I've radically shrunk the depth of field
and just by doing that, we now interpret it
| | 03:48 | as a little toy scene.
| | 03:49 | Obviously, you need a particular
vantage point for this effect to work.
| | 03:53 | You need to be up high so that you can
work with that plane that's below you to shift
| | 03:57 | depth of field back and forth.
| | 03:58 | As you saw earlier, the way that I can
control focus on here is across a receding plane,
| | 04:03 | so I need to be up high.
| | 04:04 | Again, if your SLR supports video, you can
shoot video through this effect and the actual
| | 04:10 | little moving cars and
people will look like little toys.
| | 04:13 | If the motion is perfectly smooth,
they look a little bit less like toys.
| | 04:17 | So a better way to get a toy mini-effect is
to do a time lapse because then your motion
| | 04:22 | isn't all perfect and smooth, and it
just looks a little more abstracted.
| | 04:25 | Again, I personally feel that this
is a little bit of a cliche now.
| | 04:30 | Lots and lots of people are doing this,
but it is a lot of fun to play with.
| | 04:32 | If you have got a tilt-
shift lens, give it a try.
| | 04:34 | If you don't have a tilt-
shift lens, don't worry.
| | 04:36 | We're going to show you how to create
this effect digitally later in this course.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Deepening depth of field| 00:00 | In the last movie, you saw how you can use a
tilt-shift lens to greatly decrease depth of field.
| | 00:07 | We used it to create a toy effect.
| | 00:09 | You can also use it for more practical things.
| | 00:11 | You can use it for throwing backgrounds out very
easily, to create really shallow depth of field effects.
| | 00:16 | We're going to do the opposite here.
| | 00:17 | We're going to use it to
expand the depth of field.
| | 00:19 | Now, you can't use it to expand depth of field
in just any situation, but you can in a situation
| | 00:24 | like this, where your camera is
at an angle to your focal plane.
| | 00:29 | So take a look at what we have got here.
| | 00:30 | If I look through my camera,
I see that I have these two lenses.
| | 00:33 | This lens up here is out
of focus and so is that one.
| | 00:37 | So I'm going to start by focusing my lens here,
and I'm going to focus on this frontmost lens.
| | 00:42 | So, again, this is a tilt-shift lens, so
it's manual. So I'm just working until that's in
| | 00:49 | focus. It looks like it is.
| | 00:50 | Now, look at the lens in the
background, the long telephoto lens.
| | 00:54 | It's still out of focus.
| | 00:55 | I could possibly try to get it in focus through
a depth of field--through an aperture change
| | 01:00 | to get more depth of field, but it's
awfully dark in here, and it's actually going to be
| | 01:04 | easier to do this with a simple tilt.
| | 01:08 | So as you saw in--when we were reducing depth
of field, if I tilt this way, I can make depth
| | 01:15 | of field more shallow
| | 01:16 | and now that far lens is
going even further out of whack.
| | 01:20 | If I go to the other way though, just a tiny,
little adjustment, I can bring that far lens into focus.
| | 01:27 | Now if you look at the front lens, it's still
in focus as well, so I've got this tremendous
| | 01:32 | depth of field here.
| | 01:33 | Now, I have made slight changes
to the proportions of the image.
| | 01:37 | Let me go back to where we were before.
| | 01:38 | You can see that there is a little bit of
stretching going on, but I don't feel like it's egregious.
| | 01:44 | It's not really changing
the shape of the objects.
| | 01:46 | It's not changing the
relationships of the objects too much.
| | 01:49 | It is changing some of the composition.
| | 01:52 | Look at how far the upper lens is from the top of
the frame here and when I correct the depth of field,
| | 01:58 | it's moving closer to the top of the frame.
| | 02:00 | Now, in this case, obviously this is just a
kind of a dumb experimental setup so composition
| | 02:05 | isn't that critical. But if it really was, if I wanted
to keep it as far from the top of the frame as it
| | 02:11 | was before, then I could just employ a shift.
| | 02:14 | I can now use my shift control there to bring
it back down and now I've got the composition
| | 02:19 | that I had before, with deeper depth of field.
| | 02:22 | There's been a little bit of perspective
change, but I'm not worried about that.
| | 02:26 | I like this extra focus that I've got.
| | 02:28 | Now, this doesn't work if I am pointing the camera
at an object and I've got another object behind it.
| | 02:35 | In other words, if I'm perpendicular to the
focal plane, I can't expand depth of field.
| | 02:38 | So I can't have someone up here at a distant
object and manage to get them both into focus.
| | 02:43 | This is, again, for times when you have got
your camera at an angle to your plane of focus.
| | 02:49 | So obviously, it's great for shooting a
couple of lens on a tabletop and I understand that
| | 02:53 | that might not be something that you do that
often. But you might be a landscape shooter.
| | 02:57 | You might actually often stand on a tremendously
broad plane with your camera angled a little bit down.
| | 03:05 | Sometimes with a tilt-shift lens in that
situation, you are going to be able to get deeper depth
| | 03:09 | of field than you would be able
to with a simple aperture change,
| | 03:14 | particularly if your aperture change requires
you to go down to an aperture like 16 or higher,
| | 03:18 | which would result in your overall image
being sharpened because of diffraction artifacts.
| | 03:22 | So it's a trade-off.
This is a heavy lens to carry.
| | 03:25 | Another thing about sharpness in a landscape
photo is you definitely want the foreground
| | 03:29 | sharp because that's going
to be large in your print.
| | 03:31 | If your distant background is a
little soft, you may not be able to see it.
| | 03:34 | So sometimes sharpness in a landscape photo
isn't as critical or super-deep depth of field
| | 03:39 | isn't as critical as you think it is.
| | 03:40 | If it is for you though, and if you know
it is, if you know your printing is going to
| | 03:43 | require it, then a tilt-shift lens is
probably a better way to go to get that super-deep
| | 03:47 | depth of field than just
relying on a really small aperture.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
7. Exploring Specialized LensesWorking with specialty lenses| 00:00 | So far in this course, we've been looking
at lenses that are really just more extreme
| | 00:05 | versions of the type of lens you use every day.
| | 00:07 | So some of them go more telephoto than what
you're probably used to, maybe a lot more.
| | 00:11 | Some of them go more wide angle than what
you're probably used to--again, maybe a lot more.
| | 00:15 | But for the most part they really just offered
exaggerated versions of the type of lens that
| | 00:20 | you work with all the time.
| | 00:22 | In this chapter, that's all going to change.
| | 00:23 | We're going to go really far field here and
look at some radically different types of lenses.
| | 00:28 | Lensbabies, Holgas, and the other things
| | 00:30 | we're going to look at in this chapter offer
radically different image-making possibilities
| | 00:35 | from any kind of lens that you
might have worked with so far.
| | 00:39 | These lenses take great liberty with focus.
| | 00:41 | Sometimes they've got full-on optical problems.
| | 00:44 | They might mess up color.
| | 00:46 | They might have light leaks, which might lead
you to think, why would I take a lousy lens
| | 00:52 | that has known problems and
stick it on my expensive camera?
| | 00:56 | The answer to that goes back
to the idea of abstraction.
| | 00:59 | These lenses help you create images that
are far more abstract than any kind of normal
| | 01:04 | lens that you might work with,
| | 01:06 | and with abstraction comes,
sometimes, a stronger pull on the viewer.
| | 01:11 | As an image gets more abstract, the viewer
has to do more work to make sense of it, and
| | 01:16 | that extra bit of work often helps bring them
into the image, or helps make it more personal
| | 01:21 | for them, and that's really
the power of these lenses.
| | 01:23 | Also, a lot of these images create a look
that feels like an aged photograph or like
| | 01:29 | it was shot with a toy camera of some kind,
and that part of the visual vocabulary carries
| | 01:35 | a lot of meaning of its own.
| | 01:36 | People have a very particular emotional
response to an image that feels more antique, or feels
| | 01:41 | atmospheric because it looks aged.
| | 01:43 | And so that's some power you have when
you're making your image-making choices, whether you
| | 01:47 | want to play with those vocabulary elements
and put those types of effects into the image
| | 01:52 | to play on those particular emotions.
| | 01:54 | Finally, almost all of these attachments
we're going to look at are very cheap, and by that
| | 01:59 | I mean inexpensive.
| | 02:01 | And so, if you're looking for a way to
break out of what you're used to shooting or if
| | 02:05 | you're looking for a way of adding a distinctive
look to something that you shoot very regularly,
| | 02:09 | this is a very affordable way of doing this.
| | 02:11 | Most of the things we're going to look at
here in this chapter are replicable in digital
| | 02:15 | effects, and we'll be looking at that later.
| | 02:18 | The advantage of doing it with an actual lens
is that there's a random element to your shooting,
| | 02:22 | and a lot of people really like that.
| | 02:23 | You don't quite know what you're going to
get when you take the image home, and that's
| | 02:27 | sometimes a nice antidote to the digital
perfection that we're used to working with where we have
| | 02:31 | our histograms and everything else to
let us know exactly what we're capturing.
| | 02:35 | So that's another way of kind of
breaking out of your normal shooting habits:
| | 02:38 | get one of these lenses and throw a little
more randomization into your shooting life.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Lensbaby| 00:05 | The doctor will see you now.
| | 00:07 | Is this cool or what?
We're in the surgery on Alcatraz.
| | 00:11 | It's this really beat-up room with this
creepy old operating table in the middle of it.
| | 00:16 | It's just waiting to have its picture taken.
| | 00:19 | And that's giving us some problems.
| | 00:21 | It's a tricky thing. What do you do?
| | 00:22 | It's an empty metal table
in the middle of a room.
| | 00:26 | So it's kind of a small room.
| | 00:27 | We've got this cool light
coming in through the outside.
| | 00:29 | The first thing I tried to do was just
stick a 50-millimeter lens on my camera and take
| | 00:33 | a shot, and I got this.
| | 00:34 | And it's pretty nice.
| | 00:36 | It is what the room looks like.
| | 00:38 | But looking at it I just, I don't know, I'm in
here right now and it feels creepier than this.
| | 00:43 | How can I up the creep?
| | 00:45 | So I'm going to try something called a Lensbaby.
| | 00:48 | A Lensbaby is a specialized lens.
| | 00:51 | It's not an attachment; it's an actual
gizmo that I put directly on my camera.
| | 00:56 | This is one of the Lensbabies here.
| | 00:57 | There are lots of different Lensbabies models.
| | 01:00 | I'm using something called
the Lensbaby Composer Pro.
| | 01:03 | All Lensbabies have one critical feature
in common, and that's this action right here:
| | 01:09 | the whole optical mechanism is
on a ball joint that moves around.
| | 01:15 | The practical upshot of this is I can
create an area of selective focus in my image.
| | 01:20 | Anything outside of that area smears
and streaks out into being defocused.
| | 01:26 | The cool thing about the Lensbaby is I
can move that area of focus around.
| | 01:31 | So what I'm thinking is I'm going to be able
to create some cool motion around the table.
| | 01:35 | The Lensbaby is great for anytime where
you're shooting something really dynamic, like these
| | 01:39 | images, anytime where you want some
selective focus to control the viewer's eye.
| | 01:43 | It's a lot using a shallow depth-of-field
effect, except that you get all this cool texture
| | 01:48 | and stuff in your image.
| | 01:50 | So I don't want you to think that you use
the Lensbaby when you want a creepy image.
| | 01:54 | That's not what it's about. You can actually
use it for a lot of different things,
| | 01:58 | everything from really kind of pretty
romantic images to really dynamic images, to making
| | 02:03 | 50-year-old operating tables to look really
creepy, and that's what we're going to do here.
| | 02:07 | So I want to show you my shot.
| | 02:10 | I'm shooting video with the SLR so that
you can actually see through the lens.
| | 02:15 | So I have got the Lensbaby set here.
| | 02:17 | That's my hand there.
That's what that was. Pretty wide here.
| | 02:20 | So I can focus a Lensbaby
just like any other lens.
| | 02:23 | It's a manual focus.
There is no autofocus.
| | 02:25 | Now, in this area right in here and
around here, you should see defocusing.
| | 02:32 | Watch what happens as I move the lens around.
| | 02:34 | I'm focusing now on the head of the table.
| | 02:37 | I have tilted the lens really far to the left,
and now all of this stuff in here smeared out of focus.
| | 02:43 | I can move that down to here to
the end of the table, focus on that,
| | 02:47 | and now the head of the
table is all out of focus.
| | 02:51 | So this is what I mean about I have got this
area of selective focus and everything going
| | 02:54 | into it has got this nice defocusing effect.
| | 02:58 | So I'm going to stop the video now
and go into actually taking my shot.
| | 03:02 | Now, this is pretty easy to do.
| | 03:04 | I typically start by setting the lens to
its normal orientation, which is right here, and
| | 03:10 | focusing it, just to be sure
that I've got everything in focus.
| | 03:15 | That looks pretty good.
| | 03:16 | Now, what I'd like to do is get some of
that smearing, and I'm going to tilt the lens up
| | 03:20 | a little bit to blur the legs out.
| | 03:23 | I have framed with the window in the shot
because I like the light coming through the
| | 03:27 | window, and I think it's going
to give me a little blurring.
| | 03:28 | That's looking pretty good.
I'm going to take my shot here.
| | 03:31 | I'm working with Live View because the way
I've got the tripod crammed into to the corner
| | 03:34 | here, I can't really get my
eyes behind the viewfinder.
| | 03:38 | So I am at ISO 800 right
now, and I'm in Manual mode.
| | 03:45 | Right now, my Lensbaby is set to an aperture
of f/4. Just like any lens, bigger the aperture,
| | 03:50 | the softer the depth of field.
| | 03:52 | So at f/4, this is what I get.
| | 03:54 | So that's pretty cool.
| | 03:57 | I've got a good amount of
smearing there. I'm liking that.
| | 04:01 | I think I might want a little less smearing.
| | 04:03 | I think I might want to play
with the depth of field some.
| | 04:06 | Now, normally, I would do that simply by
changing the Aperture control on my camera, but there's
| | 04:10 | no automatic aperture selection on here.
| | 04:12 | I've got the camera in Manual mode, and I'm
just following the camera's light meter to
| | 04:17 | get my metering correct.
| | 04:19 | I'm looking for my aperture. Here we go.
| | 04:21 | When you buy a Lensbaby,
you get a collection of apertures.
| | 04:25 | Now, this is really cute, I think.
| | 04:28 | I'm at f/4 right now. Here's f/8.
| | 04:31 | It's actually a tiny little aperture.
| | 04:33 | So I need to take the f/4 aperture out
of there and put in the f/8 aperture.
| | 04:37 | So fortunately, they give me this little magnet,
and these things are magnetized, so I can hold them.
| | 04:43 | All I have to do is reach into the Lensbaby
with this thing, pull out the f/4 aperture.
| | 04:48 | This is so appropriate that we're doing
this in an operating room. Isn't this cool?
| | 04:52 | And now, I'm going to take the f/8 aperture
and stick it in there, and there are little
| | 04:57 | magnet things that hold it in there.
| | 05:00 | So that should be in there.
| | 05:02 | This is also a nice little touch: the cap
of the aperture little holder thing here is
| | 05:07 | an old 35-millimeter film cap,
| | 05:09 | so you get a little bout of nostalgia every
time you change apertures on your Lensbaby.
| | 05:15 | So now I've got a smaller aperture.
That should give me some slightly deeper depth of field.
| | 05:20 | So let's see what we get here.
| | 05:22 | I actually see the depth of
field change in the viewfinder.
| | 05:25 | There's a little bit less
blurring than there was.
| | 05:27 | I'm going to go ahead and take that shot
and this is what I get. I'm liking that.
| | 05:33 | I'm not quite sure about it though.
| | 05:37 | I'm thinking that it's just a little cramped.
| | 05:39 | This is--part of what's creepy about this is
that operating table is just sitting there
| | 05:44 | in the middle of this bare empty room.
| | 05:46 | I'd like a wider field of view.
| | 05:48 | Now, the Lensbaby by default has, it's not
a zoom lens, it's got a fixed focal length,
| | 05:52 | but you can get these special attachments.
| | 05:55 | This is the wide-angle attachment.
| | 05:57 | There's also a telephoto attachment.
| | 05:58 | And the way these work is the end of the Lensbaby
is threaded. I can just screw this right on there,
| | 06:06 | and now I'm going to have a wider field of view.
| | 06:10 | So right away, I see the change in camera.
| | 06:13 | That's pretty wide.
| | 06:15 | And one problem here is that I can
actually see the edge of this thing in the view.
| | 06:20 | So I don't have--when I'm using these
adaptors--as much latitude for bending as I do when
| | 06:26 | I'm not using the attachments.
| | 06:28 | So I'm going to take that shot and I get this.
| | 06:31 | Now, I've lost some of the smearing.
| | 06:34 | The wider angle is
resulting in a less smeary image.
| | 06:38 | So I want to go back to my other aperture.
I'm going to switch back to f/4.
| | 06:40 | To do that, I've got to take
the wide-angle attachment off.
| | 06:44 | One thing that's nice is if you buy the
entire Lensbaby set, there's a whole other optical
| | 06:48 | piece that you can pull out of
here and replace with other things.
| | 06:52 | This is actually a very nice piece of glass.
| | 06:54 | The areas that are sharp are very, very sharp.
| | 06:57 | There are other optics that you can put in
there that leave the sharp area not quite
| | 07:01 | so sharp. So for example, there's a
plastic optic that you can put in there.
| | 07:06 | Personally, I'm finding that I'm
shooting most with the high-quality optic.
| | 07:10 | I really like the focused part being as focused
as possible and really playing with the smeary
| | 07:17 | part around the edges.
| | 07:18 | So there's my aperture change.
| | 07:20 | Another cool thing about these apertures is
an addition to straight circular apertures
| | 07:25 | of various sizes, you also get these:
apertures with weird little shapes.
| | 07:29 | What these do is turn specular highlights,
bright highlights in your image, into funny shapes.
| | 07:35 | Maybe not funny shapes. I don't know whether
I really laughed when I looked at one of them,
| | 07:38 | but more curious shapes than simple highlights.
| | 07:41 | Now, I'm going to put my wide-angle adaptor
back on, so again, I've just gone from f/8 to f/4.
| | 07:48 | That's going to give me a
shallower depth of field.
| | 07:50 | I often find I need to focus to bring the
threads all the way out before I can get the thing on.
| | 07:55 | Again, metering-wise, all I'm doing is putting
the camera in Manual mode and changing shutter
| | 08:01 | speed until the meter in my camera
shows me that I have got a decent exposure.
| | 08:05 | So it's actually, even though I don't have any
automatic aperture control, it doesn't matter.
| | 08:10 | It's very easy to work with the Lensbaby.
| | 08:12 | You have just got to remember to pay
attention to the manual meter when you're shooting.
| | 08:18 | Okay, this I'm liking.
| | 08:19 | I have got a nice wide angle.
| | 08:21 | That wider aperture has given me more smear.
| | 08:23 | And this is starting to get
something more--I don't know.
| | 08:26 | It's got a little extra something over
that 50-millimeter shot that I shot earlier, of
| | 08:31 | just the tables sitting
in the middle of the room.
| | 08:33 | So that's the Lensbaby.
| | 08:35 | It's a really fun way of getting a
really different look in your image.
| | 08:38 | One thing you need to be careful is the
Lensbaby images can be very distinctly Lensbaby,
| | 08:43 | so you really want to work a little extra
hard to find some creative ways to use it
| | 08:47 | so that the first thing people think when
they see your image is not, "Oh, you'd shot
| | 08:51 | that with a Lensbaby." You don't want
the effect to upstage your image itself.
| | 08:57 | There's a macro attachment that goes with this
| | 08:59 | that's very cool that we'll see later on.
| | 09:02 | And together the whole thing is a very inexpensive
way of getting a really different look to your images.
| | 09:08 | So check out Lensbaby's site for details.
| | 09:10 | They have lots of different
models at various price points.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with the Lensbaby Macro attachment| 00:00 | Earlier, you saw me doing some macro work
using a very expensive macro lens on my SLR.
| | 00:06 | You also saw me using a pretty expensive
point-and-shoot camera for some macro work.
| | 00:11 | If you've got a Lensbaby,
you've got another option.
| | 00:13 | It turns out that the Lensbaby is actually a
really good macro solution and a very affordable
| | 00:19 | macro solution if you add
a little attachment to it.
| | 00:22 | I want to work on this flower here.
| | 00:24 | There's this really cool-looking flower that's got all
this kind of flame-like flower things coming out of it.
| | 00:30 | And so, I am going to want to be able to get in
close and I'm thinking that Lensbaby is going to be cool.
| | 00:36 | Macro images are always shallow depth of field,
but with the extra smeary out-of-focus bits
| | 00:40 | with the Lensbaby, I'm thinking that
this could end up looking really cool.
| | 00:44 | Now, if you watched the macro chapter, you
know one of the critical things about macro is
| | 00:48 | being able to focus in close.
| | 00:50 | So with the normal Lensbaby, I cannot
actually focus any closer than this.
| | 00:57 | And so that's hardly a macro shot.
I'm really not in very tight there.
| | 01:01 | Fortunately, the Lensbaby company sells a macro
kit that turns your Lensbaby into a nice macro lens.
| | 01:09 | It's, in this case, two little macro lenses
that screw onto the front of your Lensbaby.
| | 01:14 | This one says plus 10 macro; the
other one zooms out to plus four.
| | 01:18 | I'm going to go with the plus 10
because I want to get in real close.
| | 01:20 | So I just screwed these onto the
threads on the front of the Lensbaby.
| | 01:23 | You can see right there that
the Lensbaby is threaded in there.
| | 01:26 | Now, note that if you were focused inward,
the threads are going to be recessed, and you're
| | 01:31 | probably going to have a difficult time
getting in there, so be sure to zoom that out.
| | 01:35 | And then this just screws
right on to the front here,
| | 01:38 | he says, unable to screw it
onto the front. There we go. All right!
| | 01:41 | With that there, I'm now macro-ready, and what that
means is I'm going to be able to get in real close.
| | 01:46 | I'm going to take the tilt out of the lens.
| | 01:49 | I'm just going to have it set
straightforward, and I'm going to get in here.
| | 01:53 | Now, I want deep depth of field in this image.
| | 01:57 | Macro images, because I'm so
close, they are always very shallow.
| | 01:59 | So I've put the f/11 aperture in here.
| | 02:02 | That means it's real
dark as I'm getting in here.
| | 02:04 | There's not a lot of light in here.
| | 02:05 | So I have bumped my camera up to ISO 1600,
and I know from experience that 1600, 3200,
| | 02:11 | those are very usable ISOs on this camera.
| | 02:13 | So I'm going to get in here and right off
the bat, look how much closer I am in. I'm down
| | 02:18 | to just a few inches here.
| | 02:20 | So, this is really getting me
into these nice macro distances.
| | 02:24 | And focus, at this point, is really about tiny
subtle movements in and out, and it may take
| | 02:29 | you a while to find it and get settled,
particularly if the viewfinder is dark.
| | 02:34 | Just to be safe,
I'm going to shoot a couple here.
| | 02:36 | I'm kind of bracketing my focus by moving
in and out because the viewfinder is so dark.
| | 02:40 | So, here's what I've got. I like it a lot.
| | 02:44 | I have got a few in my bracketed set that
aren't in focus, but this one is, and I like
| | 02:48 | how the stem is just
vanishing into that blurry background.
| | 02:51 | Now, vanishing into blurry
backgrounds is what the Lensbaby is ideal for,
| | 02:56 | so what happens if I start tilting it around?
| | 02:58 | What if I shift my point of focus to be at the
very top and really let that bottom bit smear?
| | 03:05 | I end up with something more like this.
| | 03:09 | And to be honest, there's not a
huge amount of difference there.
| | 03:14 | And I think you're going to find out with
most of your macro shots with the Lensbaby;
| | 03:17 | you don't actually pick up a lot of blurring
around the edges because your depth of field
| | 03:22 | is already so shallow because you're working
at macro distances, so you might as well leave
| | 03:26 | your focus in the center.
That's going to give you a larger in-focus area.
| | 03:30 | It's going to be easier to work with when
you're into those really tight distances.
| | 03:35 | So, this is a very affordable, very effective
macro solution if you've already got a Lensbaby.
| | 03:42 | So if you think you're interested in macro,
before you invest in a lens, if you already
| | 03:45 | have a Lensbaby, I'd pick one of these
macro sets and do a little experimenting.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Shooting with a Holga attachment| 00:00 | After you've spent hundreds, maybe thousands
of dollars on a really nice camera body, I
| | 00:05 | really can't recommend enough putting a
really cheap plastic toy lens on the front.
| | 00:09 | Now, I'm actually being serious here.
| | 00:11 | You're probably familiar with a Holga camera.
| | 00:12 | It's a Russian cheap kind of toy camera with
a plastic lens and a lot of light leaks and
| | 00:17 | a lot of other optical problems. It shoots
medium-format film and has become very popular over
| | 00:23 | the last few years because it shoots these
really nice kind of randomly beaten-up images.
| | 00:30 | There are companies that sell Holga
lenses that you can attach to your SLR.
| | 00:35 | It's a Holga lens attached to a modified
mounting system for Canon or Nikon, or other cameras.
| | 00:41 | Attach it to the front and you actually have
a Holga-equipped SLR that you can use to shoot
| | 00:47 | digital Holga images.
| | 00:50 | Now, these images are very, very beat up.
| | 00:53 | The Holga lens that I got has
extreme vignetting. The focus is pretty soft.
| | 00:58 | Your focus mechanism--there is no auto-focus on a
Holga--your focus mechanism is sketchy at best.
| | 01:05 | There's not a lot of focal range on it, and trying
to see focus through the viewfinder is difficult.
| | 01:10 | This is not a lens for the person who's
a real perfectionist about image quality.
| | 01:14 | You're just simply taking a lot of the
image on faith when you shoot with the Holga, and
| | 01:19 | you kind of need to shoot around your house
some and get the images into your computer
| | 01:22 | and look at them before you really head off
to seriously shoot with it, to try to get an
| | 01:26 | understanding of exactly how
well focus is or is not working.
| | 01:30 | You'll see a lot of variation from one Holga
lens to another, and some people then go further
| | 01:34 | and potentially trying to beat up
their lens and get more of that toy look.
| | 01:39 | You can see that it is a fixed f/8.
So metering--obviously there's no automatic metering on
| | 01:47 | the Holga either--metering is always going
to be about shooting manually so you need
| | 01:50 | to know how to use the
manual meter on your camera.
| | 01:53 | Other than that, there's not much to it.
| | 01:54 | You still need to worry about focus.
| | 01:56 | You still need to work to compose your
images, and you've got to keep a very close eye on
| | 02:01 | your manual metering
while you're shooting with it.
| | 02:03 | There are some cool attachments
for your Holga that I got with mine.
| | 02:07 | I've got here a wide-angle lens attachment.
This is another actual optical lens that just
| | 02:12 | sticks over the front of
the Holga, and that's it.
| | 02:15 | Now I'm ready to shoot wider angle.
| | 02:17 | It's a little bit wider.
| | 02:18 | There's still a whole lot of vignetting,
so you're not getting the full width of what
| | 02:22 | this can do, and it's not
a huge wide angle change.
| | 02:26 | There are also telephoto adaptors. Here's one.
| | 02:28 | This is a two-and-a-half X adaptor
that also just slips over the front.
| | 02:32 | If you like one of these, it's easy
enough to just leave them on all the time.
| | 02:34 | It just comes right off with the lens.
| | 02:37 | So this is a fun way of getting a really
random analog kind of look out of your SLR.
| | 02:43 | Again, it takes some practice to
really figure out what it can and cannot do.
| | 02:47 | A big part of working with a lens
like this is managing your expectations.
| | 02:50 | Try to get a solid idea of the type of effects
it produces before you go out and shoot with it.
| | 02:56 | That way you'll be able to work to its
strengths, not fall prey to its disadvantages, and have
| | 03:00 | a better idea of what you're
going to get when you get home.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using an alternative mount lens| 00:00 | Your camera has a very specific lens mount,
and most camera vendors make their own custom mounts.
| | 00:05 | So, for example, you can't just take a
Nikon lens and stick it on your Canon camera; I
| | 00:10 | mean that would just be wrong, wouldn't it?
| | 00:13 | Not necessarily, because you can get adaptors that
will let you use lenses designed for other mounts.
| | 00:18 | This is a very easy way to gain
access to entire ranges of lenses.
| | 00:23 | Many video shooters, for example, who use Canon
cameras use adaptors to gain access to certain
| | 00:28 | Nikon lenses because of their manual controls.
| | 00:31 | Adaptors also make it possible to use
older lenses that are no longer made.
| | 00:36 | Canon used to make a 50-mm f/0.95 lens that
you can still sometimes find for sale used.
| | 00:42 | It uses an older Canon lens mount that
isn't supported by your EOS camera, but with the
| | 00:46 | right adaptor you can get it to work.
| | 00:48 | Here we're using a lens adaptor to attach a 21
mm f/2.8 Zeiss lens to this Canon EOS 5D Mark III.
| | 00:57 | What's great about this lens is
that it's fantastically sharp.
| | 01:00 | So this is a case where I'm using an adaptor
to get access to a lens with better quality
| | 01:05 | than anything that Canon provides.
| | 01:07 | Now in almost all cases, when you
use an adaptor you'll lose autofocus.
| | 01:11 | The adaptor simply adapts the lens mount; it
doesn't actually send any electrical commands
| | 01:16 | to the autofocus system.
| | 01:18 | You'll also probably lose aperture control.
| | 01:20 | This Zeiss lens has a manual iris ring, but
if your lens doesn't, then it may only work
| | 01:26 | on your camera with its iris wide open.
| | 01:28 | Now, a few companies make adaptors that
attempt to convert autofocus and aperture settings,
| | 01:33 | as well as lens mount.
| | 01:34 | For example if you have a Micro Four Thirds
camera, Redrock Micro makes an adaptor that
| | 01:40 | lets you attach Canon lenses to that
camera with full aperture control. But you still
| | 01:44 | won't have autofocus.
| | 01:46 | You might also need to be careful
about any lens hoods or other accessories.
| | 01:49 | In this case, this lens
hood is visible in the image,
| | 01:54 | so I would want to take this off, and I
certainly wanted to check into those kinds of things
| | 01:57 | before I headed off to shoot with this lens.
| | 02:00 | Lens adaptors are also great if you own several
camera systems and you want to share lenses between them.
| | 02:06 | These days, adaptors exist to convert just
about any type of lens to any other mount,
| | 02:11 | and they're usually pretty cheap.
| | 02:12 | Do some Google searches for your specific needs and
you should find suitable adaptors with little problem.
| | 02:16 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using super-fast lenses| 00:00 | Lenses come in different speeds,
and by speeds I mean maximum aperture.
| | 00:05 | So you might have a 50 mm
lens that can open to f/1.8.
| | 00:09 | This would allow you to work in very low light
and to have extremely shallow depth of field.
| | 00:13 | However, it's possible to
get an even faster lens.
| | 00:16 | Here is a 50 mm f/1.2 lens. With it I can
shoot an even lower light and get depth of
| | 00:21 | field that's even more
shallow than with a 1.8 lens.
| | 00:25 | Now, this may not be as exotic as some of the
other specialty lenses that we've looked at,
| | 00:29 | but it's still pretty different from most
lenses you'll encounter, and it allows you
| | 00:32 | to shoot with a very particular look.
| | 00:35 | When opened up all the way, this 50 lets
you get depth of field that's so shallow that
| | 00:39 | when you use it on a portrait you can get
something like this: eyes in focus, nose a little soft.
| | 00:44 | The super-shallow depth of field
creates a kind of a dreamy look.
| | 00:48 | It's really flattering to skin tone, and it
really brings focus to the subject's eyes.
| | 00:53 | Now shooting with a wide-open super-fast
lens is mostly just like shooting with any other
| | 00:58 | type of lens, except that you can work in lower
light and you have to be extremely careful with focus.
| | 01:03 | For example, for this headshot I shot a lot
of frames, both because I was working with
| | 01:07 | George to get a good look, but also because
I knew how critical the focus can be when
| | 01:12 | you're working like this.
| | 01:13 | If your focus is off at all, your image
can appear soft because you won't have a deep
| | 01:17 | depth of field to make up for it.
| | 01:19 | For example, here the focus is on his
ear, and it's left his whole face soft.
| | 01:24 | When you're shooting portraits with an
aperture this wide you'll have to have your subject
| | 01:27 | facing directly towards you
if you want both eyes in focus.
| | 01:30 | If your subject's head is turned, even
slightly, then their far eye will be out of focus.
| | 01:35 | Working with shallow depth of field in this way
is really fun, but it can also be frustrating.
| | 01:39 | It's not the type of thing you want to do
in a rapidly changing situation, until you're
| | 01:43 | sure you're comfortable with
focusing extremely quickly.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Correcting Lensbaby images| 00:00 | You don't shoot with a Lensbaby with the idea
of getting a really technically perfect image
| | 00:05 | obviously, but still there are things that
you might want to correct from time to time.
| | 00:09 | I have this Lensbaby shot that I've got here,
and I really like this stuff over here, the
| | 00:15 | smeared lights aiming right into Larry.
| | 00:18 | His face is a little bit out of focus, but
I don't think that's a problem. Again, I'm
| | 00:21 | not aiming for a
super-technically accurate image.
| | 00:24 | Nevertheless, whether I'm going for technical
accuracy or not, I still need to think about
| | 00:29 | some corrections in this image to
ensure that it's working well as a photo.
| | 00:33 | I don't like this thing right here;
this bright spot is distracting to me.
| | 00:38 | I've got all of this stuff in the image
that's trying to point right into him, and then I've
| | 00:41 | got this bright highlight
that's soaking up my eye.
| | 00:44 | The white balance is maybe a little bit off.
| | 00:45 | I can see from my Histogram that I have some
over exposed highlights. That's probably these
| | 00:49 | bright light sources, so I don't
have to worry about that too much.
| | 00:53 | Overall though, there's a kind of
consistent tone to the entire image. The wall is the
| | 00:58 | same color as the floor, as the couch, and
some of that is going to be white balance.
| | 01:02 | I'm going to just cool the image off a little bit to
put some white back into the wall, and that's helping.
| | 01:08 | But now instead of this being uniform
yellow, they're all kind of a uniform beige, so I
| | 01:12 | think I may want to look at that.
| | 01:13 | Let's start by addressing this
overexposed highlight question.
| | 01:18 | Even if it is in the lights, I want to take
it out, just in case there are some overexposed
| | 01:23 | specular highlights somewhere.
| | 01:25 | I'm going to darken the blacks to get a
little more contrast in, and I think I'm going to
| | 01:29 | bump up the contrast a little bit, just to
try to put a little more punch into the image.
| | 01:34 | I need to deal with this thing, so I'm going to grab
the Selection Brush, or the Adjustment Brush rather.
| | 01:40 | And one thing to know: I'm doing these edits
in Camera Raw; I can also do them in Photoshop
| | 01:46 | just with adjustment layers.
| | 01:47 | So what I'm trying to get through to you
here is kind of just the conceptual details of
| | 01:52 | how I'm thinking about this
and what I'm choosing to do.
| | 01:55 | However you choose to make
the adjustment is up to you.
| | 01:59 | You can do this with the Levels Adjustment
layer in Photoshop or a Curves layer or whatever
| | 02:05 | editing tools you prefer.
| | 02:07 | So just to give you a before and after, that's
the bright spot, and that's the bright spot darkened.
| | 02:12 | I like that a little bit better.
| | 02:13 | It's still there so I think I might
just darken that up a little more.
| | 02:21 | Again, I'm just trying to do something that's not
going to create such an eye magnet right there.
| | 02:24 | My edit spilled over on to the post, so I'm
going to click the erase bit of the Selection
| | 02:29 | Brush and just take that edit off of there.
| | 02:34 | Again, I know that I'm going quickly through
this; I'm assuming that you know how to use
| | 02:38 | the Adjustment Brush.
| | 02:39 | If not, don't worry; there are plenty of places in
the lynda library where you can learn how to use it.
| | 02:46 | So that takes care of that issue.
| | 02:48 | I think the rest of what I want to do here
I'm going to do in Photoshop, so I'm going
| | 02:51 | to go ahead and open the image.
| | 02:53 | There are a few things. There's a
compositional thing that I want to change, and I want to
| | 02:57 | continue to work some of the tonality.
| | 02:58 | I'm going to do the compositional thing first,
because I want to see if it's actually going to work.
| | 03:02 | Here's my problem. I really like the post with the
smeared lights pointing towards Larry.
| | 03:07 | I like the overall sense of
motion that the blur is creating.
| | 03:10 | I don't like all of this space in here; I
wish I had taken a step to the left, because
| | 03:15 | if I've taken a step to the left, the
pole would have moved closer to him.
| | 03:19 | This is why you work your shot; it's why you
move your shot around a lot, or why you move
| | 03:22 | your camera a lot while you're shooting.
| | 03:24 | It may be that I didn't take that step to
the left because there was a person sitting
| | 03:28 | right next to me, I'm not sure.
| | 03:30 | I'm going to try though, to fix this in
Photoshop by going to Select All and then I'm going
| | 03:37 | to go Edit > Content Aware Scale, and this is
going to let me squeeze the image while trying
| | 03:43 | to preserve the proportions of things
in the image. So here's what I mean.
| | 03:46 | If I grab this handle over here and just
squeeze to the left, the post is getting closer to
| | 03:52 | him, but Larry is not distorting.
| | 03:54 | The couch is distorting.
| | 03:56 | It's gotten a lot thinner, but I don't
think most people are going to notice that.
| | 03:59 | So I've closed up some of that space there.
| | 04:01 | I think I like that better. I have
not distorted the post too much.
| | 04:05 | I've added some weird artifacting over here.
| | 04:07 | But it's a Lensbaby image;
there's going to be weird artifacting.
| | 04:10 | We're used to that, and I might
be able to blur some of that away.
| | 04:12 | So I'm going to accept that, and I'll let you see it
before and after as soon as it's done calculating.
| | 04:17 | Also, some of this distortion should improve
after it actually does the transformation.
| | 04:21 | Well it didn't, but anyway, I
think it's still acceptable.
| | 04:25 | Before, after, before, after, so
I've closed up the space a little bit.
| | 04:30 | It's not a lot, but I still prefer this.
| | 04:33 | I need to crop the image now
with my selection still made.
| | 04:35 | I can just go to Image > Crop.
| | 04:37 | The important thing is he didn't distort at all.
| | 04:40 | To take care of this, I'm going to grab the
Blur tool. I'm going to turn the Strength
| | 04:44 | up and get my brush size bigger.
| | 04:47 | I'm using the right bracket key to make the
brush bigger, and I'm just going to try and
| | 04:52 | blur some of this out so that I don't see
hard-edged bends. That's the part that makes
| | 04:58 | it very conspicuous-looking.
| | 05:00 | So I think that's working a little bit better.
| | 05:02 | I could also use a blur filter. So I like that.
| | 05:06 | Still though, I need to get more focus onto him.
| | 05:08 | I've got all these lines pointing in his direction,
but I've got uniform brightness throughout the image.
| | 05:14 | So I'm going to go here to the Exposure
Adjustment layer and I'm going to lower the exposure
| | 05:20 | in my image to darken it.
| | 05:22 | I might even do a little bit of a gamma
shift to get some contrast into those areas while
| | 05:29 | I'm darkening them. Now the problem is I've
darkened him also, but I have my layer mask here.
| | 05:34 | So if I simply grab the paintbrush and
some white paint and a big soft-edged brush, I
| | 05:40 | can--oh I'm sorry, and some black paint--
I can protect him from that darkening and
| | 05:48 | end up basically putting him in a pool of light.
| | 05:52 | Now, I don't want this halo around him, or
around his feet, but I wouldn't mind having
| | 05:59 | some brightness on the ground.
| | 06:00 | If it is supposed to look like him in a pool
of light, I need to have some of that spilling
| | 06:05 | over onto the ground.
| | 06:07 | So now I'm just painting with gray, varying
shades of gray, to blend that masking effect
| | 06:16 | into the rest of the image.
| | 06:17 | So black is completely protecting the image
from the darkening; white is completely allowing
| | 06:22 | the darkening; gray is
going somewhere in between.
| | 06:25 | I think I will try and work that area around
his head a little bit so that he doesn't have
| | 06:32 | a conspicuous halo around him.
| | 06:35 | Finally, my lights got
darker over here. That's no good.
| | 06:37 | So I'm going to put some black paint into these
areas to brighten up this post full of lights.
| | 06:44 | These were Christmas lights that were
wrapped around the pole. And with the Lensbaby I can
| | 06:49 | change the aperture to an aperture that turns
bright specular highlights into funny shapes,
| | 06:55 | so this was giving him a nice oval shape.
| | 06:56 | I can also turn them into squiggles or diagonal
lines. It's really a fun way to work if you're shooting
| | 07:02 | in an area with some bright speckly lights.
| | 07:05 | I think I need to just do one more thing, which
is ensure that I'm getting this bit brightened up.
| | 07:12 | Now with my mask in place, I can go back and
refine my settings here and if I let go, even
| | 07:20 | a little--well, maybe I shouldn't go darker.
| | 07:23 | I think I'll leave that alone, actually.
| | 07:25 | Oh, I need to brighten that light back up. I'm just
going to grab a brush and paint this into the mask.
| | 07:33 | One of the things that very often happens
with the Lensbaby is a loss of contrast.
| | 07:37 | It smears stuff out so much that you really
get textures and colors just blurring together
| | 07:45 | into kind of an indistinct blob.
| | 07:48 | And I've got that happening
some here through the image.
| | 07:52 | I think that's why we've lost texture on
the carpet, and because the carpet is so close
| | 07:56 | to the same color as the couch, this is all
turning into kind of one big dominant gray
| | 08:02 | thing at the bottom of the image.
| | 08:03 | I'm wondering, if I put a little contrast back
into the floor, would I set it apart somehow?
| | 08:08 | So I'm going to add Levels Adjustment layer.
| | 08:11 | I am going to brighten the carpet a little
bit but stretch the midpoint into the blacks
| | 08:17 | and try and put some texture back onto the
carpet, texture which has been smoothed away
| | 08:22 | by the Lensbaby smearing.
| | 08:24 | I think that's looking a little better, but
right now that's being applied to the entire
| | 08:27 | image. So by pressing the D key, I have set
these back to white as a foreground color,
| | 08:32 | black as a background color.
| | 08:34 | With my mask selected, I can simply hit
Command+Delete and it fills my mask with black.
| | 08:39 | Now, I can take my white paintbrush and
just paint that contrast onto the floor.
| | 08:44 | I'm also getting a saturation bump here, but I'm
actually okay with that. That's not bothering me.
| | 08:50 | I think this is helping.
| | 08:51 | I think this is breaking apart the
couch and floor problem that I had.
| | 08:57 | Here it is before. Here is after.
| | 08:59 | So that's something you may find yourself
doing regularly with your Lensbaby images,
| | 09:03 | is trying to put back a little bit of contrast
in areas that have been totally smeared away.
| | 09:07 | Obviously, this is a very particular
situation in this photo, but I think there are things
| | 09:12 | you can take away from
this for general Lensbaby use.
| | 09:14 | Watch for low contrast, watch for details
being smeared away, and then think about what
| | 09:20 | you can do in any image with playing with that
Content-Aware Scale thing for stretching stuff.
| | 09:27 | Because Lensbabys, particularly with a wide-
angle attachment, you're often working on a wide
| | 09:31 | field of view, and you do that because you're
going to have more smearing on the edges than
| | 09:35 | in the center, so you tend to
compose across large areas.
| | 09:38 | Having that Content-Aware Scale tool can
be a really handy way where pushing elements
| | 09:42 | back so that they're closer together.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
8. Creating Lens Effects DigitallyCorrecting perspective| 00:00 | Earlier in this course you saw me
shoot this building with a tilt-shift lens.
| | 00:05 | I used a tilt-shift to correct the
perspective in the building because when I shot it with
| | 00:09 | my regular lens, I got this. I was standing at
ground level so as I looked up, this wonderful
| | 00:15 | repeating colonnade of strong vertical lines
became a repeating colonnade of diagonal lines,
| | 00:21 | which takes away a little bit
of the imposing strength there.
| | 00:24 | With the tilt-shift lens I was able to
correct that perspective, bring everything back to
| | 00:28 | square, and end up with a
much nicer architectural shot.
| | 00:32 | I was using the Canon 24mm tilt-shift, which
is an incredible piece of glass; it really
| | 00:36 | is one of the sharpest lenses that Canon sells.
| | 00:40 | It's also real heavy; in fact,
it's a drag to carry around.
| | 00:44 | It's heavy. It's bulky.
| | 00:46 | It doesn't have autofocus.
| | 00:48 | It's not something that you would use necessarily
as an everyday walkaround lens, especially at 24mm.
| | 00:54 | And it's big enough and specialized enough
that you're not going to say, well, I'll just
| | 00:58 | throw it in my bag just in case.
| | 01:00 | Fortunately, these days you can replicate
the perspective-correction capability of that
| | 01:05 | lens in software, and that's what
we're going to do in this movie.
| | 01:08 | I'm going to take this image that I shot with
my regular old 24-105 and I'm going to correct
| | 01:13 | it, to try to get the same kind of
look that I got here with my tilt-shift.
| | 01:17 | This is a raw file so I'm just
going to open it up in Photoshop.
| | 01:21 | The perspective-correction tools that we're
going to use are here as part of Camera Raw.
| | 01:26 | Don't worry. If you're not a Raw shooter, you
can still do the same edits within Photoshop,
| | 01:30 | and we'll look at how to
do that later in this movie.
| | 01:33 | If you use a different image editor, then you
may not have a perspective correction facility,
| | 01:38 | and so you'll need to turn to Photoshop.
| | 01:40 | What I'm going to do first is simply make
the tonal adjustments that this file needs.
| | 01:45 | I've got some overexposed highlights, so
I'm going to bring those down, and I'm going
| | 01:49 | to try and deal a little bit with the
contrast issue here, get a little more contrast into
| | 01:53 | the image, punch in a little bit of
Clarity, just to make some of the details pop.
| | 01:59 | And then I am going to
take a look at White Balance.
| | 02:01 | I was shooting in auto white balance and
so the shade here went a little too cool.
| | 02:05 | This is a tricky white balance
situation because it also got daylight.
| | 02:08 | The camera did an okay job, but I think I can do
better by grabbing the White Balance eyedropper.
| | 02:13 | I'm clicking on something in the image that is
supposed to be gray; fortunately, I have all
| | 02:16 | this gray sidewalk just lying on the ground.
| | 02:19 | Click there and immediately the
shadows are warmed up a little bit.
| | 02:21 | I like that look better.
| | 02:22 | I think it's a more inviting image, but of
course white balance can be somewhat subjective.
| | 02:27 | You could cool this down to
make a more imposing image.
| | 02:30 | Now, you might think the next thing that I
would need to do would be to crop because
| | 02:33 | I've got all of this extra space around here.
| | 02:35 | But in this case I really don't want to crop, and I
think you're going to see why, pretty much immediately.
| | 02:41 | Before I do the perspective
correction, let's do one more thing.
| | 02:43 | This bit is a little hot.
| | 02:44 | It's not overexposed. I can see that
because there's no spike over on the right side.
| | 02:48 | I'm going to grab my adjustment brush real quick
and just tone those bright bits down a little bit.
| | 02:55 | This is all basic Camera Raw stuff.
| | 02:57 | You should already know this.
| | 02:58 | If not, there are plenty of
courses in the lynda library
| | 03:00 | for you to learn this kind of stuff. I thought
I'd just quickly walk you through my edit so
| | 03:04 | you could see my take on this image.
| | 03:06 | Now, I'm going to click over here on the Lens
Corrections tab and I want to be in the Manual
| | 03:10 | tab, and I've got a number of sliders here
that are going to help me address specific
| | 03:14 | lens-related issues.
| | 03:16 | Let's start here at the bottom, Lens Vignetting.
| | 03:19 | If I had a vignetting problem--that is, a darkening
in the corners--I could eliminate it by brightening
| | 03:24 | the corners, by sliding the slider to the right.
| | 03:26 | This is also a nice way of creating a vignette.
| | 03:29 | I can scale the image, which is basically
resizing it, letting me zoom in and out.
| | 03:33 | This is not real substitute for an optical zoom.
| | 03:36 | I'm making my image effectively smaller.
| | 03:38 | I won't be able to print it as big. But it
can be handy for doing slight, little resizings
| | 03:42 | to correct certain other problems.
| | 03:45 | I could rotate my image
if I wasn't shooting level.
| | 03:47 | We're going to look at these two controls
to do our perspective correction, and then
| | 03:50 | I've got Distortion, which is going to let
me correct barrel and pincushion distortion.
| | 03:55 | These are the sliders that we really
want to pay attention to right now.
| | 03:59 | Vertical and Horizontal basically take the
image and map it onto a 3D plane and then
| | 04:02 | let me rotate that plane by
way of correcting perspective.
| | 04:06 | So if I take the Vertical slider here--and
I'm picking vertical because my main problem
| | 04:10 | is the vertical axis; the image
looks like the top is tilted backwards.
| | 04:14 | So I would like to tilt it forward, and you
can see these little icons here indicate that
| | 04:18 | I'm going to be able to tilt
this plane forward and backward.
| | 04:22 | Notice my adjustment brush adjustment
disappeared there, but it will come back.
| | 04:26 | So watch what's happening.
| | 04:27 | I'm able to just tilt the image so that the
bottom recedes into the background. The top
| | 04:32 | comes to the foreground.
| | 04:33 | One practical upshot is my columns are
ending up straighter, so I think maybe right about
| | 04:39 | in there, and you can see the
adjustment brush edit pop back in. That's looking nice.
| | 04:44 | I need to be too careful that I don't go too
far because then the building starts getting
| | 04:48 | really stretched weird, and it
starts to look like it's leaning forward.
| | 04:52 | I could create a very stylized look to make a
big imposing building that's leaning over me,
| | 04:57 | but I'm actually going for more other
realistic interpretation here right now, so I'm going
| | 05:02 | to go back to about there.
| | 05:05 | So right away I'm doing much better.
| | 05:07 | I've got a really nice perspective correction
on this, but the image has a couple of other
| | 05:10 | little geometric problems.
| | 05:12 | Look at this line on the top of the building.
| | 05:15 | It looks maybe tilted.
| | 05:17 | It also looks a little bit curved.
| | 05:19 | I believe it's bowing out in the center here.
| | 05:21 | That is a distortion problem.
It has a little bit of barrel distortion.
| | 05:26 | So I'm going to just pinch the image in
a little bit with this Distortion slider.
| | 05:30 | I'm just sliding it to the right, and that's
serving to flatten out that line there on top.
| | 05:36 | I'm liking that.
| | 05:37 | I'm wondering about this.
| | 05:40 | It feels to me like this
end is dropping a little bit.
| | 05:43 | Now, that could be that I didn't have the
camera level, but I think it's more that I wasn't
| | 05:48 | perfectly perpendicular to the building.
| | 05:50 | So in addition to there being perspective
distortion going this way, I think there's
| | 05:53 | a little bit going that way.
| | 05:55 | In other words, I need to take my
Horizontal slider and just tilt the right end of the
| | 06:01 | image towards me a little bit, and I really
think that's done it. That's squared off my
| | 06:06 | perspective quite nicely.
| | 06:08 | Now, the problem is I've got all this here.
| | 06:10 | I've thrown my image out of square
with my frame, so it needs a crop.
| | 06:16 | I can do that crop here. This is why I
said earlier that we weren't going to crop yet,
| | 06:20 | because I knew we would
need to crop our image later.
| | 06:22 | I can do this crop here, and I immediately
face the question of, do I want to just crop to
| | 06:30 | the colonnade part or do I
want to the whole building?
| | 06:33 | And now I cannot adjust my crop
past the edges of the image.
| | 06:38 | So if I wanted the whole building, I can't do it.
| | 06:40 | I'm going to not crop here. I'm going to
crop in Photoshop, because I will be able to crop
| | 06:44 | into the area where there's no data
and try and fix that after the fact.
| | 06:51 | Before we do that, I just want to point out
that I intentionally shot this image with
| | 06:55 | all these extra space around it, because I knew I
wanted to try perspective correction in Photoshop.
| | 07:00 | So if you are out shooting with this type
of edit in mind, you have to pad your image.
| | 07:04 | You have to put a lot of extra space
around it because your image, your final edit, is
| | 07:08 | going to require a big crop.
| | 07:10 | So now I'm going to open this up in Photoshop,
and the first thing I'm going to do is grab the Crop tool.
| | 07:15 | Now, I'm going to crop this image.
| | 07:18 | Here we are in the Crop tool.
| | 07:19 | I have an unconstrained crop. I'm not
going to try to preserve an aspect ratio.
| | 07:24 | I'm going to crop this image to the edge of the
building rather than the edge of the colonnade.
| | 07:29 | I want to see what that looks like, and I
can always crop into the colonnade later.
| | 07:32 | So I'm going to just try and preserve as much
of the image as possible, there on the bottom,
| | 07:39 | and crop to right in there.
| | 07:43 | Now, the problem is it's not centered.
| | 07:44 | I've got a little more space on this side
than I have on this side, so I think I'll pull
| | 07:47 | back into the tree a little bit, about
there, and I'm going to double-click to take that
| | 07:54 | crop, go back to my Move tool.
| | 07:56 | This is looking pretty good.
| | 07:57 | I actually think I want to lose some of the top,
but before I do that, I want to address this issue.
| | 08:02 | I've got these bits down here that were
empty because of my perspective distortion, so I
| | 08:07 | need to do something to try to fill those.
| | 08:10 | In Photoshop CS5 or later, the best way to
work this is to immediately start with Content-
| | 08:14 | Aware Fill. So I'm going to select that area
with the Lasso, go up to Edit > Fill and choose
| | 08:20 | Content-Aware, and let's
see what it comes up with.
| | 08:23 | Hey, it did a really good job. Looking in there
| | 08:25 | that just looks like an actual staircase.
| | 08:27 | So now let's try this side.
| | 08:29 | This is a little bit trickier because
there's that bit of column right there.
| | 08:33 | Edit > Fill > Content-Aware, and
no, that did a pretty good job also.
| | 08:40 | You could argue that the curb is messed up, or
you could argue that that's a wheelchair ramp.
| | 08:44 | Just in case you are not wanting that to
look like a wheelchair ramp, you could grab the
| | 08:48 | Rubber Stamp tool and simply clone that bit of
curve back in, and now we're doing pretty good.
| | 08:55 | So, this is what it looks like, taking a
larger view of the building, and I was able to fix
| | 09:01 | the corners down there, which is nice.
| | 09:02 | I'm going to just quickly see what it looks
like if I crop in a little bit tighter, because
| | 09:05 | that bright stuff at the top is so
bright, I feel like it's a distraction.
| | 09:09 | So I'm going to pull that in a little bit,
and I think I will just go ahead and square
| | 09:15 | off to here and get something more like that.
| | 09:20 | Just so you can see, this is an image shot
with a 24-105mm lens and then perspective
| | 09:26 | corrected in Photoshop, and this is
an image shot with a tilt-shift lens.
| | 09:32 | There's really not much difference.
| | 09:34 | I have done a very capable job of correcting the
perspective, thanks to Photoshop's perspective-correction tools.
| | 09:41 | As I said before, you don't have
to be working in Raw to get this.
| | 09:44 | If you were shooting JPEG you can open up this image
in Photoshop and then go to Filter > Lens Correction.
| | 09:51 | I would recommend turning off all of the
Auto Correction, switch over here to Custom, and
| | 09:56 | you get the same Transform
commands right down here.
| | 09:59 | Vertical and Horizontal perspective let me
tilt my image around so I can do this to any
| | 10:04 | type of image that I want.
| | 10:06 | What's nice about the Lens Correction control
is if I want, I can turn on the grid, and that
| | 10:11 | makes it a little bit easier to tell
when I have actually squared off my image.
| | 10:15 | So, this is a great way to deal with
architectural photography or anytime you've got a perspective
| | 10:21 | problem, even sometimes product photography.
If you're working real close you might want
| | 10:25 | to tilt some things around,
correct a little bit of perspective.
| | 10:27 | I don't need to carry the
big heavy tilt-shift lens.
| | 10:31 | Now, optically I'm not getting as perfect,
as pure, an image, but still, for most uses,
| | 10:36 | I think this is a great
workaround for a heavy tilt-shift lens.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating the toy effect| 00:00 | We created this toy cityscape earlier using
a tilt-shift lens. By throwing the depth of
| | 00:06 | field way out of whack,
| | 00:07 | I got a strip of focus right here in the
middle, and because everything at the top and bottom
| | 00:14 | looks out of focus, our eye interprets it
as a very small, miniature scene that we're
| | 00:20 | looking at. Shallow depth of field
to our eye is an indicator of scale,
| | 00:24 | so when we greatly reduce depth of field,
it changes our sense of how big something is.
| | 00:29 | A tilt-shift lens is a big heavy lens to
carry around and honestly, how often do you need
| | 00:33 | to make something look like a toy?
| | 00:35 | Fortunately, you can do a pretty good
reproduction of this effect in Photoshop, or any image editing
| | 00:42 | program that gives you the ability to
blur an image with some level of control.
| | 00:47 | Here I have the same scene shot without the
tilt-shift lens, so I've got the exact same
| | 00:52 | angle on the shot, but I've got full
depth of field all the way through.
| | 00:55 | I've also got some lens flare problems because
the sun was setting quickly and I was shooting
| | 00:59 | with a wide-angle lens.
I kind of like them.
| | 01:01 | I'm going to just keep them.
| | 01:02 | It's really hard to remove lens flare anyway.
| | 01:04 | So what I would like to do is blur the top and
bottom of this image to create that same type of effect.
| | 01:09 | Let's go for a minute back to the
tilt-shift image and look again.
| | 01:13 | Oops, that's not it. That's it.
| | 01:15 | So you can see, blurry here, blurry, blurry,
blurry, less blurry, less blurry, less blurry.
| | 01:19 | Sharp, sharp, sharp, sharp, sharp, sharp.
| | 01:21 | Starting to get blurry again, blurry,
blurry, blurry, blurry and back out to here.
| | 01:24 | And the blurriness is ramped.
| | 01:26 | It's not uniform down to here.
| | 01:27 | It's really blurry here, getting less so
down to here. No blur, then starting up again.
| | 01:32 | So all I need to do is re-create that selective
blurring effect in Photoshop, yeah just that.
| | 01:38 | Actually, it's pretty easy. What I'm going to do first, after
I have done any tone and color corrections that I might
| | 01:43 | want to do, is to duplicate my
image layer. I want two copies.
| | 01:48 | My goal is to create a copy that is
blurred, and I'm going to leave the unblurred copy
| | 01:52 | sitting below it, and then I'm going to
create a mask that lets me selectively show some
| | 01:56 | parts of the blurred image and
other parts of the sharp image.
| | 02:00 | So I need to now blur this copy, so I'm going
to go up here to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur.
| | 02:07 | There are a number of different blur filters.
Gaussian Blur works fine for this effect.
| | 02:11 | How much to blur is kind of up to you.
| | 02:13 | You can slide the Radius slider
around to get different amounts of blur.
| | 02:18 | I don't think I want it so
blurred out that I can't tell detail.
| | 02:22 | If we go back and look at our original--or
not our original. If we go back and look at
| | 02:25 | our tilt-shift version, we see that we do
have some detail left in there. So I'm going to
| | 02:32 | pull this way back, maybe to about there.
| | 02:37 | If you think about when you look at something up close,
your depth of field doesn't go that shallow.
| | 02:41 | So I'm going to take it to about there.
| | 02:43 | It's better to err on the side of a little
bit not enough. Too little I guess would be
| | 02:47 | the best to say that.
| | 02:49 | I can also attenuate this blurring effect later.
| | 02:52 | Now what I need to do--let me show you my layer
stack here. I've got this image, which is blurred.
| | 02:56 | I'm going to just label that as such.
| | 02:59 | If I hide it by clicking on the eyeball,
I see the sharp version down below.
| | 03:04 | So my image is not actually sharpening up;
it's just the blurred version is being hidden.
| | 03:08 | So what I need now is a mask that I can use
to control which parts of the blurred image
| | 03:13 | are going to be seen, and I can get one of
those by clicking on this button right here,
| | 03:17 | the one that says Add Layer Mask. And it sits
down at the bottom of the Layers palette there.
| | 03:22 | I click that and I get this white box.
| | 03:25 | This should already be familiar to you, using
these layer masks like this. You've probably
| | 03:29 | used them in adjustment layers.
| | 03:31 | Where the mask is white, that part
of the blurred image is going to show.
| | 03:36 | So what I want to do is fill this so that I
have white at the top and bottom and a strip
| | 03:42 | of black in the middle, with a
nice gradient between the two.
| | 03:46 | And I have my Gradient tool right
here, which is going to let me do that.
| | 03:50 | I've got black and white
selected as foreground and background.
| | 03:53 | But I need to make a very
important change up here.
| | 03:55 | By default, the Gradient tool is set here;
I want it over here on reflected gradient.
| | 04:01 | And let me just drag out here
a gradient from top to bottom.
| | 04:04 | I don't know if this is going to be right,
but it's going to let you immediately see
| | 04:08 | what kind of mask I'm getting.
| | 04:09 | I'm getting a little strip of white at the top,
blending to black, and then blending back to white.
| | 04:15 | And you can see the effect starting to happen.
| | 04:17 | I've got some blurring up here and then a big area
of sharpness, and then it's going back to blurring.
| | 04:22 | So the tool is working.
| | 04:23 | I just got to find the right place to drag.
And this is kind of trial and error. And actually,
| | 04:27 | that's looking pretty good.
| | 04:29 | Look at my mask again. Strip
of black across the middle.
| | 04:32 | Again, where it's black, the
corresponding part of my image is not showing.
| | 04:37 | So I'm getting sharpness through here
and blurriness in here. I like that.
| | 04:42 | I might try one more.
| | 04:44 | I can always undo if I don't like this.
| | 04:46 | I'm going to drag this a little bit farther,
and that gave me a little tiny bit of extra
| | 04:50 | blur down at the bottom.
| | 04:51 | So, here is before, here is after.
All I'm doing is hiding that blur layer.
| | 04:58 | I need, I think, to see the traffic in focus.
| | 05:00 | So let's go back and look
at our tilt-shift version.
| | 05:03 | Well, of course the traffic is different.
| | 05:05 | No, it was blurry; the tilt-shift version was even
blurry in here. Okay so that's looking pretty good.
| | 05:12 | Here in Photoshop that's blurry. This was a
little bit blurrier in the tilt-shift version,
| | 05:17 | so I'm going to try again here.
| | 05:19 | There we go. That's better.
| | 05:20 | I'm getting a little more
blur up here on this building.
| | 05:23 | It's a little soft in here,
but I think that's okay.
| | 05:25 | Now, if I wanted, I can actually go in and
manipulate this mask by hand using the paintbrush.
| | 05:31 | Let's say I did want to sharpen up these
details in here, which may not be entirely accurate
| | 05:35 | from an optical perspective. But if I wanted
to sharpen these details up, I could get some
| | 05:41 | black paint and paint in here, just to ensure
that that part of the blur layer is not showing,
| | 05:49 | and I think that's working a
little bit better to give me my effect.
| | 05:53 | So you can see what I've done here is I've painted
a little bit of black on there, which is letting
| | 05:56 | the sharp part show through.
| | 05:59 | I could go in and retouch my mask in a lot
of different ways that way, dropping in a
| | 06:03 | little bit of blur, a little here, a little
bit of blur there, adding some sharpness here
| | 06:07 | and there simply by
carefully obscuring my blur layer.
| | 06:10 | So this is a very easy way of
creating that toy tilt-shift effect.
| | 06:14 | Actually, some cameras now
have this built into them.
| | 06:17 | Some SLRs and point and shoots will automatically apply
this random blur to an image to give you that toy look.
| | 06:22 | But this is a nice easy way to get it using
any image editor that lets you add blurs on
| | 06:26 | a gradient, and it's a lot easier
than carrying a tilt-shift lens around.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Getting the lo-fi Holga look| 00:00 | The Holga attachment that we looked at earlier,
the Lensbaby lens that we looked at earlier,
| | 00:05 | certain filters that you might put on a lens,
all of these allow you to create a grungy
| | 00:09 | beat-up low-fi toy camera look.
| | 00:12 | This is a look that most people are familiar with
through applications such as Instagram and Hipstamatic.
| | 00:17 | Those applications simply take a normal
picture and postprocess them using image editing
| | 00:21 | tricks to create their toy camera looks.
| | 00:23 | And there's no reason you can't do
the same thing here in Photoshop.
| | 00:26 | And I'm just going to show you a few little
things here that allow you to create a more
| | 00:29 | beat-up toy camera effect.
| | 00:32 | The first thing you might do is what I'm going to do
right here, and that is to crop your image to a square.
| | 00:37 | Most of the low-fi looks are built around the
square format, because then you look like you're
| | 00:42 | working with an old box camera or
any one of the old square film formats.
| | 00:47 | So I'm just going to take that out to a square
and then I'm going to open my image in Photoshop.
| | 00:52 | One way to figure out how to create a low-fi
look is to go shoot some images with Hipstamatic
| | 00:56 | or Instagram and simply try and
take a part what it is they do.
| | 01:00 | One of the things they do is they create
images where the blacks are really crushed--dark
| | 01:05 | areas have no detail and
then they go to complete black.
| | 01:07 | Similarly, white areas are very overexposed.
And of course color ends up with a very different
| | 01:13 | saturation and a very different quality.
| | 01:16 | Here's a quick way to, with just
one edit, get all of those things.
| | 01:19 | No, okay, actually it's three edits,
but conceptually, it's just one edit.
| | 01:22 | What we're going to do is we're going to stack
two layers and blend them in a particular way.
| | 01:25 | But before we do that,
we're going to manipulate them a little bit.
| | 01:28 | I'm going to take this
layer and do just what I said.
| | 01:30 | I'm going to crush the blacks.
| | 01:32 | I'm going to blow out the whites, so you can
see that I've lost detail here. All of these
| | 01:36 | stuff has gone to complete black.
| | 01:38 | I'm not paying attention to numbers in any way.
| | 01:41 | I'm just dragging the sliders.
| | 01:42 | I want to brighten up the mids because
the crushing the blacks is going to make an image
| | 01:46 | that prints a little darker, and I want to
brighten things up some so I'm just going to pull those up.
| | 01:51 | Again, I'm being really rough here.
| | 01:53 | I'm not worrying about exact stuff.
| | 01:54 | This is supposed to be a very analog rough-
looking image, so it's okay if I don't nail this in
| | 02:00 | some perfect conceptual way.
| | 02:02 | I did not use an adjustment layer.
| | 02:04 | I actually physically altered this image.
| | 02:06 | Well, I didn't physically altered it,
but I permanently altered this image.
| | 02:09 | I baked that Levels adjustment in.
| | 02:11 | I'm now going to duplicate that layer, and I'm
going to do the same thing to the duplicate.
| | 02:16 | I'm going to further crush the blacks, and
I'm going to further blow out the whites,
| | 02:19 | and I'm going to brighten up the mids some more.
| | 02:22 | I'm going through all of
these things very quickly, I know.
| | 02:24 | I'm assuming that you're
familiar with these Photoshop steps.
| | 02:27 | There are lots of Photoshop courses you can
take throughout the lynda library that will
| | 02:30 | bring you up just being on what the Levels
dialog box is, what layers are, and so forth.
| | 02:35 | So I'm hoping your understanding what I mean
when I say that I'm dropping the blacks out
| | 02:39 | to complete black, overexposing the
highlights, and brightening up the midtones.
| | 02:43 | So now, I've got two layers
that are mostly identical.
| | 02:45 | One has got a little more of an
extreme edit on it than the other.
| | 02:48 | What I want to do now is change
the blending mode of the top layer.
| | 02:51 | If I pop this open, I get a list of options that
let me change how different layers are combined.
| | 02:56 | Normally, when I'm in Normal blending mode,
a higher layer simply replaces a lower layer.
| | 03:02 | But if I pick a different thing
here, I can change how they combine.
| | 03:06 | So, for example, if I choose
Soft Light, I get this effect.
| | 03:10 | I choose Hard Light, I get this effect.
| | 03:13 | Everything in this category
is going to lighten the image.
| | 03:18 | Up here, where it says Darken, Multiply,
Color Burn, all these effects are going to create
| | 03:21 | an image that is ultimately darker.
| | 03:23 | I'm going to go with Soft Light.
| | 03:25 | I like what this is doing.
| | 03:26 | It's giving me those overwrought colors that
you often get from a toy camera look, and I've
| | 03:31 | got total black here, total white there.
| | 03:33 | It really looks like a bad exposure,
and who wouldn't want that, after all?
| | 03:38 | Really, that's what we're
going for with this kind of look.
| | 03:40 | If I like, I can attenuate the look a little
bit by lowering the opacity of the upper layer.
| | 03:45 | That's going to let more of
that lower layer come through.
| | 03:48 | There are lots of other
ways I can attenuate this look.
| | 03:50 | Obviously, we'll look at a
couple of this in a minute.
| | 03:52 | I need to get on to the
rest of the low-fi look, though.
| | 03:55 | These images are often very
noisy, if you're going for a low-fi.
| | 03:59 | There is a filter up here called Add Noise.
| | 04:03 | I could just add that to my upper filter,
but my upper filter is being blended with
| | 04:07 | the lower filter, and that would be a destructive
edit. I would really like more control over my noise,
| | 04:13 | so I'm going to add it to its own layer.
| | 04:14 | The way I'm going to do that is to create a new
empty layer with my New Layer button down here.
| | 04:18 | I'm going to pick a middle-gray color, and
then I'm going to fill the layer with this color.
| | 04:24 | There are a lot of different ways of doing that.
| | 04:26 | I'm going to do it with the Paint Bucket tool.
| | 04:29 | So now I've got a layer that's all gray.
| | 04:31 | And then I'm going to go up here to Filter >
Noise > Add Noise, and I'm going to add some
| | 04:36 | monochrome Gaussian noise.
| | 04:37 | I'm going to add, I don't know, this much.
| | 04:41 | So now I have a bunch of noise.
| | 04:43 | If I go back and change my blending mode
to Soft Light, it's blending that noise into
| | 04:48 | the underlying layer.
| | 04:50 | Again, because this is its own layer, I can
change opacity if I want to lessen the noise.
| | 04:55 | If I decide I would actually like more
noise than that, I can simply go back up here to
| | 04:59 | my Noise menu, choose Add
Noise again, turn up the Noise.
| | 05:02 | This will simply replace the
noise that was there before.
| | 05:06 | It's not cumulative. So this is great.
| | 05:07 | Now, I've got some noise in my image.
| | 05:10 | These types of images are often heavily vignetted,
and you also saw that with the Holga attachments.
| | 05:14 | So let's add a vignette.
| | 05:16 | I'm going to take these two layers and merge them,
because I am confident in the color effect that I have there.
| | 05:21 | I'm not going to want to change those.
| | 05:23 | And now I'll add a vignette to this layer.
| | 05:25 | So I'm going to go to Filter > Lens Correction.
| | 05:30 | If I go over here to the Custom
tab, I have vignette controls.
| | 05:33 | So I'm just going to slide the Amount
slider down to darken the image. So, there we go.
| | 05:39 | I've got a nice vignette around the image.
What's cool is my noise is being laid on top of that vignette.
| | 05:44 | So this is looking pretty good.
| | 05:46 | I've got a pretty beat-up image. It's noisy.
| | 05:48 | It's got a vignette. It's got this weird color.
| | 05:50 | It's got this strange contrast ratio.
| | 05:54 | Maybe I wanted a cooler image, though.
| | 05:55 | Maybe I was looking for
more of a cool los-fi look.
| | 05:58 | I can easily get that
| | 06:00 | if I go down here and add an
adjustment layer called Photo Filter.
| | 06:05 | You can see by default I got a warming filter.
| | 06:06 | My image is warm enough already.
| | 06:08 | I don't want that, but I could
also throw on a cooling filter.
| | 06:11 | And now I've totally changed
the color palette of the image.
| | 06:14 | I can change the density of the filter.
| | 06:16 | I can even change the
color that's being applied.
| | 06:18 | I've got a few different cooling filters here.
| | 06:20 | So this is a way that I can
easily change the color palette.
| | 06:23 | This is something you can't do that easily
with low-fi application on your cellphone, is
| | 06:28 | really go back and change to
look after, and I can do that here.
| | 06:31 | I'm going to stick with the original warming.
| | 06:34 | Well, now, I think I'll
keep the cooling. I like it.
| | 06:37 | So that's another edit that I can make.
| | 06:39 | A lot of these low-fi apps will add dust
and scratches and texture to your image.
| | 06:43 | We can do that easily enough here.
| | 06:44 | I'm going to create another empty layer,
and this time I'm going to set black and white,
| | 06:50 | our foreground and
background back to black and white.
| | 06:52 | And I'm going to go to Filter > Render > Clouds.
| | 06:54 | And that's going to give me a layer filled
with clouds that's now being rendered a little
| | 06:59 | bit blue because of my photo filter.
| | 07:01 | And I'm just going to do
my Soft Light trick again.
| | 07:03 | I'm going to change the blending
mode of the cloud layer to Soft Light,
| | 07:07 | and now it's compositing the
clouds over my entire image.
| | 07:10 | This looks a little bit look like I'm looking
at the image through a screen door or something.
| | 07:14 | That's not quite what I wanted.
I don't like the carpet looking stained.
| | 07:18 | So I'm going to mask this off a little bit.
| | 07:20 | I'm going to add a layer mask to this layer.
| | 07:22 | And now, if I just grab the paintbrush and
paint with black paint, I can remove the clouds
| | 07:27 | from different parts of the image.
| | 07:29 | So I think I'll leave them maybe up
here on the wall and on the screen.
| | 07:33 | Maybe I'll take them off of Larry's face.
| | 07:37 | I kind of like them on the guitar.
| | 07:38 | So now, I've added some texture.
| | 07:40 | If I wanted to add that pattern in to a
more varying degree, I could paint with a shade
| | 07:45 | of gray, and that's going to give me a
little bit of masking in those areas.
| | 07:49 | So this is a way that I can
drop other textures onto my image.
| | 07:52 | I could go out on the web and very easily
find scans of scratched film or other grungy
| | 07:57 | artifacts that I could then simply composite
on my image, by dropping those scans into their
| | 08:02 | own layer in choosing Soft Light.
| | 08:05 | So I want you to think about this as a way
to work when you want to grunge up an image,
| | 08:08 | that by duplicating a base layer
and changing its blending mode,
| | 08:12 | I get changes in contrast and exposure,
particularly if I'm manipulating the levels on the individual
| | 08:16 | layers. And I can drop noise and scratches
and texture and other artifacts on top of
| | 08:21 | the image by sticking those artifacts in their own
layer and changing their blending modes to Soft Light.
| | 08:27 | And I can tone and color the image after the
fact with a photo filter adjustment layer.
| | 08:32 | If you do this type of edit a lot and you
get to look that you like, you can record
| | 08:35 | it as an action and then easily
apply it to lots of other images.
| | 08:40 | If this is something you really need to do
an awful lot, then you might want to consider
| | 08:43 | using a plugin such Alien Skin Exposure 4.
| | 08:47 | I'm going to open one more
image here and show you Exposure.
| | 08:53 | Exposure is a film stock simulator.
| | 08:56 | It's got a big list of very specific film
stocks, and it will make your image look as
| | 08:59 | if it were shot with those
analog film stocks. So this is great
| | 09:03 | if you are used to shooting with a particular
film look, if you're trying to merge an image
| | 09:07 | with a particular film stock. You can see
I've got a long list of films of all kinds,
| | 09:13 | very specific films, and
I've also got, down here, Lo-fi.
| | 09:17 | And I've got Lo-fi cross processed also.
| | 09:19 | And so I can just go
through here and pick a look.
| | 09:22 | I'll try some Kodak Ektar 100 with Dust.
| | 09:26 | I'm sure that's just what you were thinking;
you wanted some Kodak Ektar 100 with Dust.
| | 09:31 | It's going to apply that filter and when it's
done, I will have a nice low-fi-looking really
| | 09:35 | analog image, complete with
dust spots and scratches.
| | 09:39 | What's cool about this dust spots and scratches is
that they are not simply a composite of scan dust.
| | 09:44 | They are procedural.
| | 09:45 | The computer is making up what they look like
algorithmically, which means if I apply this
| | 09:49 | effect to a bunch of images and line them
up side by side, they won't obviously all
| | 09:54 | have the same dust.
| | 09:55 | Finally, one last thing
I want to take a look at.
| | 09:59 | In Camera Raw, I have the option
to add a vignette and to add noise.
| | 10:03 | Over here in the Effects tab I've got Grain.
| | 10:06 | I'm going to really show you some big chunky grain.
| | 10:09 | It does a very good job of
adding realistic-looking film green.
| | 10:14 | And I've got the option to add a vignette.
| | 10:17 | There are two vignette controls in Camera Raw.
| | 10:19 | There's this one in the Effects tab.
| | 10:20 | There's also this one in
the Lens Correction tab.
| | 10:23 | This is the better tool of both because it
works on a cropped image and because it creates,
| | 10:28 | through this highlight priority style, a
very realistic-looking vignette. A bright light
| | 10:33 | here in the corner would still show
through. There are some other styles I can choose.
| | 10:37 | The problem with these is you have to apply this
to your raw file before you get into the Photoshop.
| | 10:41 | So then if you start manipulating color exposure in
Photoshop, it's going to change your noise and your vignette.
| | 10:47 | So I don't recommend using these in Camera
Raw if you're planning on adding additional
| | 10:52 | effects in Photoshop like we saw here.
| | 10:55 | So these are some simple ways you can grunge
and beat up your images to get that toy look.
| | 11:00 | That way if you are out shooting regular
images and decide later that you should have been
| | 11:03 | using a Lensbaby or a Holga or maybe your cell
phone, you've got the option of adding these effects.
| | 11:09 | Also, of course, your camera has a
tremendous advantage over your cell phone, in that it
| | 11:12 | captures far more pixels so you can
print your toy images much larger.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Reproducing the effect of a Lensbaby| 00:00 | You can replicate some of the Lensbaby's
effects in Photoshop, and I say some because you're
| | 00:07 | not going to get an exact Lensbaby simulacrum
here. But you are going to be able to duplicate
| | 00:12 | some of the smeary effects, and that's what
we're going to do right here using a filter
| | 00:15 | called Radial Blur.
| | 00:17 | So let me tell you what I'm after here, so
you can kind of follow my thought process.
| | 00:20 | I want to create a Lensbaby-type effect where
I've got an area that is in focus here, around
| | 00:27 | Greg's head, with everything around that
smearing outward in long streaky blurs.
| | 00:34 | So I'm going to do that with a single filter.
| | 00:35 | Before I do that, I'm going to
duplicate my background layer.
| | 00:38 | I do this duplicate for a couple of reasons.
| | 00:40 | First of all, if it turns out I don't like
the effect, I can just ditch this layer and
| | 00:44 | start over, because I always have a
redundant backup there in that original layer.
| | 00:49 | But also, it allows me to have a little
more control of exactly where the blurring goes,
| | 00:52 | and we'll see that after we get the blur set.
| | 00:56 | So I'm going to go up here to Filter.
| | 00:57 | Actually, before I do that, I'm going to
make sure that my upper layer is selected here.
| | 01:02 | Then I'm going to go up here
to Filter > Blur > Radial Blur.
| | 01:06 | Now, this filter is a little bit different,
in one very important way, from Photoshop's
| | 01:11 | other filters, and that is that
it doesn't show you a preview.
| | 01:13 | So this is kind of a drag.
| | 01:15 | We're going to have to do a lot of trial and
error to get our blur settings set correctly.
| | 01:20 | The first thing I need to do is set the
Blur method to Zoom rather than Spin.
| | 01:24 | That's what's going to get
me that zoomy Lensbaby look.
| | 01:27 | I'm also going to switch Quality to Draft,
because right now I'm just trying to figure
| | 01:31 | out what my setting should be.
| | 01:33 | Our Amount scale goes from 1 to 100.
| | 01:36 | We really have no idea where to start.
| | 01:38 | Let's just start in the middle.
| | 01:40 | So I'm going to put it there
around 50, or actually exactly on 50.
| | 01:43 | And this is trying to get me a preview of
how much streaking there is going to be.
| | 01:46 | It's also showing me where the center point
is going to be, and that center point is going
| | 01:50 | not have any blur applied to it.
| | 01:52 | So I'm just going to hit OK.
| | 01:53 | I've switched to Draft mode to speed up the
processing, because all I want is just a quick
| | 01:58 | preview of what this is going to look like.
| | 01:59 | It's not a preview; it's actually applied
to my image, but a quick assessment of what
| | 02:02 | this is going to look like so
that I can go back and make changes.
| | 02:05 | Okay, first of all, the blur is radiating
entirely out of his stomach. That's not what
| | 02:10 | we want, so we're going to
need to move our blur point.
| | 02:12 | Second, I think it's maybe too much streaking,
| | 02:15 | so I'm probably going to turn that down.
| | 02:17 | So what I do now is undo that and
then just go back and try something else.
| | 02:22 | And because there is no preview in the
blur filter, I just have to keep doing this.
| | 02:25 | When I click here on the center point and
drag it upward to where I hope it hits his
| | 02:31 | head, and then I'm going to cut my Amount
in half just because it feels like that's
| | 02:35 | a reasonable way of trying to keep track of how
much blur I've applied and how to control my changes.
| | 02:41 | I'm still in Draft mode. I hit OK.
| | 02:43 | It's calculating another attempt here.
Aha, that's looking pretty good.
| | 02:47 | I feel like we've got the point okay.
| | 02:49 | It might need to go a little bit to the right.
| | 02:51 | I really want it just centered on his nose.
| | 02:53 | I think maybe it's still too much blurring
though. His foot has gone away completely.
| | 02:57 | Now, of course with the Lensbaby, I can change
apertures to get shallower and shallower depth of field.
| | 03:03 | This is mighty shallow here,
| | 03:05 | so I'm going to undo that. Filter > Radial Blur.
| | 03:09 | Note that it always shows me the
last filter that I used up here.
| | 03:12 | If I just pick Radial Blur though, from here,
it's not going to give me the dialog box.
| | 03:17 | It's actually going to apply the
filter using the previous settings.
| | 03:20 | So instead, I'm going to go back to Blur >
Radial Blur, and I'm going to just pull this over
| | 03:25 | to the right at tiny bit.
| | 03:26 | And I think I'll cut my Blur
amount in half again, down to 12. Hit OK.
| | 03:31 | I'm still in Draft mode.
| | 03:32 | Now, when we're done we will
do a final high-quality one.
| | 03:37 | That's looking pretty good.
| | 03:38 | I've got a nice area of sharp focus around here.
| | 03:40 | Let me zoom in so you can see that.
| | 03:45 | He's a little soft, but that's actually kind
of authentic to how to Lensbaby would look.
| | 03:51 | His foot is actually awfully blurred,
so I think I am going to stick with this.
| | 03:54 | I'm going to stick with 12.
| | 03:55 | I could have split the difference and gone
to like 16 or 18 or something, but I think
| | 03:59 | I'll stick with this.
| | 04:00 | That said, I'm going to undo it because I would
like to do a better-quality version of it now.
| | 04:06 | So I'm going to say Blur > Radial Blur, I'm
going to leave this set to 12, I'm going to
| | 04:10 | leave my center set where it was, and
I'm going to switch to Best Quality.
| | 04:13 | Now, the reason you don't leave it on Best Quality
all the time is that it takes it longer to process.
| | 04:19 | So when all we're trying to do is
determine our center point and the amount of blur,
| | 04:24 | it doesn't make sense to be sitting
through this long progress bar if all we're going
| | 04:28 | to do is undo it and apply different settings.
| | 04:30 | So Draft mode is a way that we can work quickly, but
then when we're done we apply this final full-quality pass.
| | 04:37 | Now, this is not going to create, as
I said, a perfect Lensbaby replica.
| | 04:43 | Lensbaby, if there were specular highlights
or bright lights in the area, those would
| | 04:47 | smear differently than they
do here. They would bloom.
| | 04:50 | They would maybe change shape, and you could
even alter the shape further by putting in
| | 04:54 | special irises into your Lensbaby.
| | 04:57 | So optically, this isn't real accurate.
| | 04:59 | It's not creating the types of halos and light
flares that I would get from a true Lensbaby.
| | 05:04 | It is giving me that motion blur, which can
be very dynamic, and which can serve to focus
| | 05:10 | attention to one part of the image.
| | 05:12 | So this is not a full substitute for a
Lensbaby, but it is a startling simulation.
| | 05:17 | It's like Lensbaby mania.
| | 05:19 | So I'm just going to zoom in here.
| | 05:22 | Now, you may go, well, what's the difference
between this blur and the blur we had before?
| | 05:26 | Before, this was a little bit noisier.
| | 05:29 | This has just done a better job of creating
really clean streaks and a really nice level
| | 05:33 | of image quality overall.
| | 05:35 | Now, while this is not a perfect replica of
what the Lensbaby would do, I do have an option
| | 05:40 | to do something here that I cannot do with
the Lensbaby, and that is to manually control
| | 05:45 | blur throughout any part of the image.
| | 05:48 | And here's what I mean.
| | 05:49 | I have this layer here which has been blurred.
| | 05:51 | In fact, I'm going to rename it Blur.
| | 05:54 | If I click the eyeball to hide the layer, you see
that my sharpened layer is sitting right beneath.
| | 06:00 | So if I add a mask to this layer,
I can control which parts of the image are going to appear
| | 06:05 | blurry and which parts are not.
| | 06:06 | I can add a mask by clicking
right here, on Add Layer mask.
| | 06:11 | And now, anywhere I paint with black paint,
that area is going to appear to sharpen up,
| | 06:17 | because where I paint with black paint I
am blocking out that corresponding part of
| | 06:22 | the blurred image and revealing
the sharp part that's underneath.
| | 06:27 | So if I wanted, I could
sharpen up his entire face.
| | 06:29 | All I'm doing is using the paintbrush
with black paint, painting into my mask,
| | 06:34 | and you can see there's now that little black
dot right there, and that indicates that this
| | 06:38 | part of the blurred layer is masked, and so what's
being revealed is the sharpened layer that's underneath.
| | 06:44 | Now, what's cool about this is if I paint
with something other than black, like 50% gray,
| | 06:50 | I'm going to get a little bit of both.
| | 06:52 | So if I paint in here with 50% gray, I'm showing
half of the blur layer and half of the sharpened layer.
| | 06:59 | So I can, if I want, choose to kind of create
my own controlled focus blur here, by painting
| | 07:07 | into areas with different shades of gray, or
using gradient tools to create ramped shades
| | 07:13 | of gray in my mask.
| | 07:16 | So again, you can see the black area.
| | 07:17 | It's showing fully or it's blocking completely the
blurred area to fully reveal the sharpened area beneath it.
| | 07:23 | The gray areas are changing the opacity of
the blur layer so that I see a varying degree,
| | 07:30 | or a varying mix, of blur and sharpened.
| | 07:33 | So this is something I can do with the Lensbaby.
| | 07:34 | I can create shaped areas of focus
rather than the simple circular area of focus.
| | 07:40 | So again, I'm not getting
the cool lighting effects.
| | 07:43 | I'm not getting the true optical qualities of the
Lensbaby, but I am getting the ability to control blur.
| | 07:49 | Now, this area behind him should
possibly be more blurred than it is.
| | 07:54 | I can now add another blur layer and paint
in some blur there and really build this up
| | 07:59 | in a very controlled way.
| | 08:00 | So you may not always be carrying your Lensbaby.
| | 08:04 | If you see a shot that you think, well, this would be
perfect for the Lensbaby, but I don't have it with me,
| | 08:08 | you could still take the shot with a
regular lens, apply this type of effect, and
| | 08:11 | you'll not get a perfect Lensbaby simulacrum,
but you would get something pretty close.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Cropping and enlarging images| 00:00 | So I shot this image with the Sigma 800 mm lens.
| | 00:05 | This is as big and beefy a lens as you could
reasonably carry around, and actually it's
| | 00:09 | completely unreasonable
to carry this lens around.
| | 00:11 | Still, I had this tremendously long lens and
I still couldn't get the reach that I wanted.
| | 00:15 | It would have been nice to just frame his head,
because he's got this great expression on his face.
| | 00:21 | Actually, I don't know.
| | 00:22 | Maybe that's what his face always looks like,
but it looks like a great expression to me.
| | 00:24 | It would be great to be framed and tied on it.
| | 00:26 | Now, it's very tempting at this point to go,
"Well, I have got a 22-megapixel camera. What
| | 00:30 | do I care how far my lens can reach?
| | 00:32 | I'll just crop it and enlarge it." In my course,
Inkjet Printing for Photographers, we go into
| | 00:37 | great detail on the process of sizing and
sharpening, and what the benefits and trade-offs are.
| | 00:43 | So I want to give you just a very, very
quick overview of why you can't always just crop
| | 00:48 | and enlarge, why you do need to get things
framed properly in camera, which is why you
| | 00:53 | might actually need a super-telephoto lens.
| | 00:56 | Right now, if I go to Image > Image Size, I
see that I have, when set to 240 pixels per
| | 01:03 | inch, a document width at 24x16.
| | 01:06 | I'm going to be printing this on an Epson
printer, which needs a resolution of 360 pixels
| | 01:12 | per inch, which changes
my document size to 16x10.
| | 01:15 | If you don't understand the relationship
between resolution and print size, don't worry.
| | 01:19 | That's all explained in
Inkjet Printing for Photographers.
| | 01:21 | I'm going to assume
you're familiar with this idea.
| | 01:25 | So I can print a 16x10 at my
printer's native resolution.
| | 01:28 | Now, I could scale up a little bit from there if I
needed to and not suffer too much loss of detail.
| | 01:33 | Well, watch what happens if I did what I
wanted and cropped down to just his head.
| | 01:39 | And I'm going to preserve a 2:3 aspect ratio
so that it preserves the original aspect ratio
| | 01:45 | of my shot, because maybe I want to fit it
into a standard frame size of some kind.
| | 01:50 | So here is a nice shot of a
very thoughtful-looking buffalo.
| | 01:54 | This is the--a buffalo can run for
office on this expression, I think.
| | 01:57 | So I'm going to just take that.
| | 02:01 | That is truly a buffalo with integrity there.
| | 02:04 | Now, if I go up to Image > Image Size, and
set again to 360, which is my printer's native
| | 02:12 | resolution, I'm down to 3x5.
| | 02:14 | Now, again, I can go up a little bit from
there, but if I was hoping to get a nice
| | 02:17 | big print from my cropped image,
I'm not going to be able to do it.
| | 02:21 | Maybe I could pull an 8x10 out of this, maybe.
| | 02:25 | That wasn't too soft, but probably I'm
going to really regret having to crop this much.
| | 02:30 | Now, I was using the longest lens that I had.
| | 02:33 | What were my options?
I could have put a tele-extender to go longer.
| | 02:36 | I could try to get closer,
but there was a fence in the way.
| | 02:39 | Anyway, the point of this is just that
cropping and enlarging is not always a substitute for
| | 02:44 | a super-telephoto lens.
| | 02:46 | And even with your super telephoto lens,
if you're thinking you may want to do more, you
| | 02:50 | do need to understand the limitations of how
much things can be cropped and enlarged, if
| | 02:56 | you're hoping to go to a particular print size.
| | 02:58 | And again, for more on that, check
out Inkjet Printing for Photographers.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
ConclusionChoosing whether to borrow or buy| 00:00 | One of the great things about some of the
lenses that we've looked at here is that they're
| | 00:04 | extremely affordable.
| | 00:06 | Some of the other things that we've
looked at here are not so affordable.
| | 00:08 | Tilt-shift lenses, very long telephoto lenses,
high-quality ultra-wide lenses, these can
| | 00:14 | easily start at a thousand dollars apiece, depending
on the specs of the particular lens you're looking at.
| | 00:18 | And before you think, "Well, then I'll
never be able to shoot with any of these,"
| | 00:22 | consider the possibility of lens rental.
| | 00:24 | It used to be that to rent a lens you had
to have a good rental house in your area,
| | 00:28 | but with online rental you can now rent just
about any type of lens no matter where you live.
| | 00:32 | In fact, several of the lenses that you've seen
in this course are lenses that we have rented.
| | 00:37 | And we've rented them all from borrowlenses.com.
| | 00:40 | Borrowlenses has a huge assortment of lenses
for various cameras, great pricing, and they're
| | 00:45 | very easy to deal with.
| | 00:46 | If you think shipping the lens back and
forth is going to be a hassle, it's really not,
| | 00:50 | thanks to Borrowlenses' easy-to-use packaging.
| | 00:53 | So even if you're loaded or even if you're
a serious photographer who makes a living
| | 00:57 | shooting, you might want to
consider rental for certain types of lenses.
| | 01:01 | For example, I don't actually own a fast
telephoto lens because for the types of things that
| | 01:05 | I typically like to shoot
I just don't need one.
| | 01:07 | They're big and heavy so I just can't
imagine myself lugging one around just in case.
| | 01:12 | But a couple of times a year, I find myself
shooting, say, a live performance in a dark
| | 01:16 | venue with mediocre access, and I realize that a
long, fast lens would really make a difference.
| | 01:22 | So for under a hundred bucks I can get a lens for
the weekend, get the shots I need, then send it back.
| | 01:27 | I could do that for a lot of years before
I ever actually pay the full cost of the lens.
| | 01:32 | And along the way I'd always
be getting the latest technology.
| | 01:35 | So if you find that there are lenses that
you sometimes use but can't imagine using
| | 01:39 | every day, then it's worth
checking out some rental sites.
| | 01:42 | Rental sites are also a great way to test
the lens before you buy and to get practice
| | 01:46 | with the lens that you don't
normally use or feel you understand.
| | 01:50 | So if you've seen me using something here that you
thought looked cool, don't let cost be an obstacle.
| | 01:54 | Check out a rental site and see if there's a path for
you to get your hands on some of this really cool gear.
| | 01:59 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Goodbye| 00:00 | We have covered a lot of gear in this course.
| | 00:02 | Some of it was extremely specialized.
Maybe you're not going to use it.
| | 00:06 | Some it is more general purpose.
| | 00:08 | There's a lot of stuff we didn't talk about:
pinhole lenses, special attachments for shooting
| | 00:14 | panoramas, special effects filters.
| | 00:16 | There's a lot of other stuff that you
can stick on the front of your camera.
| | 00:19 | So keep your eyes open for it: do
web searches, do some exploring.
| | 00:22 | The important thing to remember is that for
all of these types of lenses while yes, they
| | 00:28 | may give a very particular effect, the
important thing is they let you see differently, and
| | 00:33 | that's the key to
becoming a better photographer.
| | 00:35 | So, whether you're shooting with a
specialized lens or a more run-of-the-mill lens, keep
| | 00:40 | your eyes open, keep trying to notice new
things, expand the way you see, and keep shooting.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
