What's the best photography trick you've ever learned?
This should be fun. And possibly a good source of new knowledge for many of us. Tell me what was the most awesome photography trick/tip/workaround?
For me it was learning to remap camera buttons and dials. Most modern cameras let you reconfigure some of the default button settings. I did it for both my E-M5 and RX100. I feel like I've improved Sony's user experience so much ;)
But seriously, default settings are not always the best settings. If changing the aperture in your camera takes pushing 3 different buttons (it can happen with Sony), you should just remap one of the buttons and link it to only changing the aperture.
Ok, what are the best tricks you've learned?
tania But maybe it was obvious for most people...
Joost van Halm No! very good tip!
Luke I actually noticed this when using a very old manual lens. I could get close to the clarity I wanted with the focus ring, but I could gain a bit more sharpness by physically moving back and forth. I didn't realize you could also do that with new AF lenses!
Grace I'm interested to know what you changed the buttons on EM5 to?
tania Me too
Magda Korzewska @Grace @tania in polish owners manual it is page 66. Should be the same in your language.
Grace haha yes I know how to change, just curious what it was changed to
Magda Korzewska LOL
Aaron Langley Back button auto focus and half shutter press for auto exposure change the way you shoot. Negative exposure compensation for dark subjects and positive exposure compensation for light subjects. Helps avoid muddy colors.
Aaron In-camera exposure compensation confuses me.
Aaron Langley Your camera tries to average a scene at 18% gray. It it's very bright with lots of white your picture will turn out more gray than you see it. Positive exposure compensation can fix this. This is especially helpful for snow and white animals. If your scene has lots of shadows or black it will try to make the black gray, over exposing it. Negative exposure compensation will avoid over exposure. This is helpful for dark animals and dark scenes. Obviously these apply more in JPEG than raw, but correct exposure can help saturate the colors and preserve details.
Satoshi T I had used only Digital Photo Professional (Canon's RAW post-process soft) before I began to Tookapic. but after June, I've try to post-process by Adobe Light Room, and now I get ability to handling not only Canon's RAW but also Olympus , Nikon, Sony and Tiff file from film scanner. It's Great capability! :)
jazzie When I got my first camera I was maybe 12 years old. One day I took pics of a sunset. My dad came to me and told me that I should not only observe the sky, but look for a nice foreground, i.e. some blades of grass or something like that. I think that was the moment when I understood that it was important not only to look at the subject you want to show, but at the whole picture, and that there was something like an image composition. That's exactly what I nowadays try to teach my pupils when they take pics :)
tigg Do you teach photography?
jazzie Among other things, yes. I teach all kinds of visual arts. Bildnerisches Gestalten as the school subject is called in Switzerland. My pupils are 13-15 years old.
tigg Sounds good - if the students are interested!
Satoshi T I hear that, I understand why I feel story from your pic :)
jazzie Mostly they are! They especially like photography - and photoshop ;-)
Steve Karg Rule-of-Thumb exposure settings: stop down to capture colors in sunsets, Sunny-16, fill flash, etc. I also found that you need to know the limits and capabilities of the camera you are using so that you can accommodate those limits and exploit the capabilities to make the photo.
Joost van Halm I was taught by a pro photographer named Thijs Wolzak (back in the '90's) in the Netherlands. He focused our attention to get out of the box with photography and had some seriously good way to teach you the way a metering system of a camera works/gets fooled. He explained this by letting us use our meters to take photographs of a white, a gray and a black sheet that covered the whole frame. He also let us predict the outcome. When we developed our pictures every one of them was just middle gray. A very important lesson in compensating for your camera that wants to have every picture 18% gray! Also he taught us to expose for gray tiles in shadows parts in the streets on sunny days When you finally put your camera to your face to take that quickly passing moment, your exposure is mostly ok. Of course we were al shooting analog in that period and used manual camera's exclusively, the same rules still apply today.
Joost van Halm
Two flash tricks come to mind:
1. using a CTO Gel on your flash and setting your white balance to tungsten will enrich your portrait shots with very punchy blue skies.
2. using a camera which can use High Speed Sync (HSS) or which uses a leaf shutter (fuji X100, some pocketcamera's like the Nikon P7000 series, Oh yeah, a Hasselblad...), you can take photographs at speeds like 1/500s or higher. Your camera wil expose the sunny day or sky correctly or even underexpose it if you like that, and your flash will expose your subject correctly. This way you can achieve a nice small depth of field or make a really dramatic portrait. This is also called 'over powering the sun'. You can uses both tricks together!
Remembering that when you use a flash, you can have one photo exposed by two methods in just one photo: Flash and shutter are two separate exposure methods...
jewels A very simple one, but that always, always comes to my mind when I hit the shutter button. Simply to take a good look at the entire frame to ensure that there won't be any distracting elements creeping up in the corners. Usually, I will get so engrossed in my subject that I tend to overlook what's around it. Obviously, you can always crop your photo afterwards, but I find it also helps me get a more balanced composition and I'd rather get it right the first time around.
Joost van Halm @jewels, that is indeed a great tip. Heard it before and used it since. This one tends to be most useful with people that you already know. You relate to them and forget to check framing and composition.
Gogi Golzman
im in love with flares ..
very very cool trick
take a piece of glass, prism,bottle ,any think made of glass or even your smartphone ( the screen side)
and put it on one of the sides (when you shoot with light source in front of you) you will get a cool cool flares!
Joost van Halm Nice! I will try it!
jewels Hi Gogi, not sure I get it. Do you have an example in your photos?
Gogi Golzman ill make a photo tutorial in couple days =]
Satoshi T Setting a camera on bottom end of the center pole of the tripod. Before I began Tookapic, I didn't know this method. Now when I take long exposure in a very low point of view or take an overhead point of view, this method is very useful at work.
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tania When I use the auto focus with the macro 60 mm, I can slightly move forward ou backward and then choose where I want the object to be really sharp. It has changed the way I photography flowers and drops.