Comments (1) Here’s an update to the wedding section. Shot Su Yin and Vance’s wedding last Saturday and these images were shown during their dinner at The Sentosa Resort and Spa. A Little Dream were there to entertain the guests with Hsin Yeow on vocals. Great atmosphere, great ceremony and a great couple too!
Congrats guys!
Here’s something you can try at home. No fancy lights, and you can do it at night, without natural light. All you need is one lamp, I got mine from Ikea. And a styrofoam board. But any white surface will work as well – paper, cardboard, etc. This is to just bounce the light and improve its quality. You may not want harsh lighting with strong shadows. So that will be useful.
Working with one light is easier because you only need to worry about the colour temperature of that light. Whatever it is, don’t mix light sources unless you plan to shoot in b&w. The different colour temperature will make you pull your hair. Even if it’s another similar lamp, the bulbs do not necessarily give the same colour. So make life easier and work with one source, and use light modifiers. In this case, a styrofoam board.
Learn to use the custom white balance to get a neutral tone under your light. The info is found in your camera’s manual. Essentially it involves setting the white balance to custom white balance, shooting a piece of white paper, and using that setting. This is only neutral under that lighting. So you see the problem if you mix light sources? If your camera is tuned to warm light, any daylight that is captured will appear blue.
Here’s what the setup looks like. The velvet cloth sucks up light so shooting against it makes it easier if you don’t want to worry about shadows.
You can use this same setup for shooting small products. I wrote about something similar awhile back about shooting products at home with a simple setup.
Have fun!
Many people struggle with composition and in my workshops, the bulk of the time is spent discussing this. There are a few rules but they are not cast in stone. Break them by all means if it gets you the image you want. I remember a long time ago, people were discouraged to shoot against the light but now I love doing that. It’s kind of my style nowadays.
Anyway, here are the rules and a few examples which might demonstrate it.
Rules of Thirds . I would say this is the most basic. In fact many cameras now come with grid lines to help you compose. I don’t like that because it makes everything so technical, as if photography is a set of formulas. Learn to see the image before you. This rule states that the subject should be positioned at the side and not in the middle of the frame. If you imagine the scene to have 2 lines running across vertically and horizontally, place the subject on one of the lines. The idea is not to have the subject dead-center of the image.
In portraits, this is useful if you want to take an environment portrait like below.
Colour is used to draw attention to a particular subject, for eg, a red umbrella in front of a mostly gray building. Or like this flower against a green monochromatic background. The whole idea is to draw the viewers attention to your subject.
Frame. Framing your subject can be used to draw attention. The frame becomes a natural boundary. In can be an arch or this case, I used legs to frame and of course contrasting colours to isolate the subject.
Leading lines. The eye naturally follows lines in the picture. It could be straight lines or curves. So if you have lines to help lead the viewers eyes to your subject, it makes a stronger image.
Isolate background. Especially useful in portraits. You would want to avoid a distracting background. One of the most effective way is to completely blur it. You’ll need a very wide aperture to achieve that. The images below were taken at 200mm with an aperture of F2.8. With that blur background, you’ll just concentrate on the athletes.
Different angle. Shoot from a different viewpoint. Try shooting from bottom up, top down, etc. Too often, people take images from eye level, straight. A different angle would introduce variety.
Layering. If you shoot everything far away in the same plane, it looks flat. Try to layer ie, having a foreground, middle ground and background. This is very useful in shooting landscapes. You create depth by having different layers in your image.
Break rules. Try to incorporate as many of these elements as possible in your image.
Just came back from shooting the city with the Samsung. We’ve been getting great lighting so I thought I’ll shoot cityscapes as part of the Samsung series. This week, my fireworks images will go up on Samsung Camera’s facebook.
Perhaps in a couple of weeks, this cityscape series will be featured. Anyway, here’s an image from this series.
Stay tuned for more images to come!
High key. Flare. B&W.
I was just thinking of these ‘keywords’ when I was with Jon and Christel last week in Penang. I was out to capture their playfulness. Never mind if the images were a bit out of focus or had motion blur. It just adds to the high energy moment. They were keen to work with me to get these images. Awesome sport, the both of them. Besides, it was the last bit of their pre-weddding shoot so it was a let-the-hair-down time!
I’ll post more pictures in a bit.
A month more to the Singapore National Day. The great thing with all the previews now is there’ll be fireworks displays every weekend till then. So you’ll have plenty of practice. The picture below was taken last night in front of the Marina Bay Sands. Camera used was the Samsung NX11, the camera on loan to me by Samsung.
I’ll be first to admit that this is not a great shot. Too tight. With the ‘fingers’ of the burst above cropped away. So I guess the important lesson would be to shoot wide. Makes sense since you have no idea how high they’re gonna hit. This was one of the first few shots before I recomposed. The other better ones will be on Samsung Facebook hopefully next week.
Here are a few more tips to help you get the shot you want. Shooting fireworks takes a lot of luck and practice but once you nail that shot, it’ll be a real keeper.
1. Location
You’ve heard it many times before – location, location, location. I was fortunate enough to meet Ben, a total stranger and super helpful guy, to tell me I was pointing the camera in the wrong direction. Yes that was how way off I was! Someone told him the main display will be above the buildings from where we were. And not where the stage was. If you plan to shoot outside the MBS and opposite the stage, point your camera towards the buildings. You will have a rough idea when you see the barges and cordoned off area in the bay. That’s where the fireworks are fired from.
2. Exposure
This is a bit tricky. Fireworks are bright so keep your ISO to lowest. The NX11 I was using gave me ISO 100. To cut down exposure even further, try F11 or F16. You’ll notice your shutter speeds will drag to seconds. That’s how you can capture the streaks. If you use a wide aperture and high ISO, you’ll get a lot of smoke and dots of light. Not exactly what you’ll expect to see in a fireworks picture.
A lot of compact cameras have fireworks settings. In the NX11, that gives the following settings: F9 at 2s and focus locked at infinity. That works too but you’ll notice that in that 2s maybe nothing is happening or the burst is after the 2s and you’ll waste precious times just saving the image to the card. I’ll teach you a method below you can try.
3. Focus
Focus at infinity. If you are using a compact camera, just focus at the buildings and make sure you lock that focus. Use Manual focus or switch off the auto focus once you’ve locked focus. And don’t touch the focusing ring after that! If your auto focus is on, the camera will waste precious time trying to lock focus before each shot.
4. Equipment
Unless you want really arty shots, a tripod is essential to prevent camera shake. Bear in mind the shutter speeds will be in the range of a few seconds.
Cable release or remote shutter release. This allows the shutter to be fired electronically or mechanically. Every time you press the shutter button, you risk camera shake so these devices prevents it. If you don’t have it, you can use the timer. Or just be as careful as possible not to bang hard on the shutter button.
Black card. Just a piece of card to cover your lens. I’ll describe this method in detail below.
Lenses. Zoom lenses are useful to allow you to make quick final changes to your composition without moving yourself. Get ready to shoot wide. I was using the kit lens 18-55mm throughout the whole shoot. There just isn’t enough time to play with lenses and moving around.
5. Technique
This is where it gets interesting. You can just bang away the shutter at a fixed shutter speed and hope for the best but that’s just like a ‘Hail Mary’ situation….you know, when you just fire away above your head without live view. And hoping for the best.
Or, you can try to get a higher hit rate with a black card. Actually anything will do, even your hand. I use a black (black is preferred to avoid reflection) piece of foam coz it’s easy to stuff into the bag. The idea is to cover the lens when there’s nothing happening. And then open at the burst to get multiple exposure. Takes a bit of practice to know when to block and withdraw.
So what I would do is use the BULB mode. If your camera doesn’t have one, you can use maybe 10s shutter speed. You can only do this in the Manual Mode. Throughout the shutter duration, open the lens at the burst and close when there’s nothing.
With the NX11, I had one hand on the shutter button and another holding the foam.
And that’s about all there is to be done. Remember to make sure everything is within the frame! Don’t follow me on that one.
All the best and have fun!
We are so proud (and immensely excited!) to be partners with Caramel & Co! They are extremely talented designers so you have check them out!
So what’s in it for you? With this collaboration, we’d like to offer you our photobook when you sign us up with our Actual Day Basic Photography Package and have your gown tailored by Caramel & Co. Now, that’s worth a cool $600! Give us a call to find out more.
Just a teaser, here’s their design for Yan Leen, taken in Paris.
Tested the Samsung NX-11 at my friends’ wedding last weekend. I was shooting the type of shots I normally shoot at weddings with the 30mm F2 pancake lens and the 50-200mm F4-F5.6. The bright F2 lens performed beautifully and good thing for me, the area where the ceremony took place was bathed in beautiful warm light. So I could use the 50-200mm despite the small aperture. I kept my ISO to 800.
The verdict. I shot aperture priority throughout with a -2/3 EV at some point and the exposure was pretty spot on despite the tricky spot lights. Image quality was quite good. I’ve been pampered by my 5D Mk2s so I had to get used to the higher noise but compared to a lot of other cameras in the same range, I’m very happy with it. Because of its compact size, it’s not a problem holding the camera at low shutter speeds. The above image was taken at a focal length of 137mm (35mm camera equivalent) at F5 and 1/20s. I could easily hold this rig at even lower shutter speeds with its OIS (image stabilizer on). Colour reproduction was good. I shot mostly with AWB and looking at the images in Aperture, I’m seeing quite accurate colour. In the picture above, I only added a bit of sharpening and reduced the saturation a little. Just a preference since I don’t like overly saturated images. But straight out of the camera, it looks good.
More images will be available in the Samsung facebook page at a later stage.
So far, I’m quite happy with this camera indoors. I didn’t use the flash at all though since I work a lot with available light. Will have to find an opportunity to test that out one day.
My next shoot will probably be fireworks over at Marina Bay. I think I’ll be there this weekend. If you like to join me, please let me know.
I was shooting mostly with the electronic viewfinder to conserve batteries and that didn’t disappoint me either.
In case you’ve missed it, here’s an intro to the wonderful folks at The Wedding Paparazzi. We’ve been working together for about 6 years and developed an almost telepathic way of working. But hey, that’s the result of our long time collaboration! If you’ve been together with your partner for 6 years, you know what I mean.
We’ve sat down and thought of ways to make your wedding day ultra special so give us a buzz to find out what we have in store for you.
You won’t be disappointed!!
These images were from a shoot in Paris last year for Esther and Huan. It was lost when my blog was attacked so here it is again.
For a couple of months I’ll be using this new mirror-less interchangeable lens camera from Samsung. This is a loan unit from Samsung and I’ll be subjecting this camera to my type of photography: people, action, street, etc. I’ll blog about my experience and sometime next month, I’ll post images on Samsung Cameras Facebook page Feel free to comment on images, ask anything and I’ll give tips and advice to help you with your photography.
At first glance, I’m impressed. The 14.6 Mpix NX11 kinda sits in between the DSLR and the micro-four thirds of the Panasonic and Olympus. It looks like a small DSLR and size-wise, the body is slightly larger than my Canon G9. I’m a sucker for well-built. well-balanced and ergonomic cameras so the NX11 feels perfect in my hands.
The images below are taken with the 30mm f2 pancake lens.
Focusing is fast and silent. Actually I was a bit surprised at how fast it is. This should be quite useful in taking action shots. I’ll see how true that is when I start shooting moving objects. Shutter is triggered almost instantaneously. Everything works like a DSLR does.
With the pancake 30mm f2 lens, it is probably the size of the micro-four third cameras but once you fit the kit 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 and the 50-200mm f/4.0-5.6, it tends to be bulkier than the MFT. This is also because of the APS-C sensor which is physically the same size of sensors used in entry-level DSLR. I love the layout of the buttons. Very easily accessible and I really think the i-Function on the lens is god sent. It’s a button on the lens that allows you to change settings like aperture, shutter speed, ISO, EV and WB without lifting your eye off the viewfinder. The focus ring changes the variables. Of course, like any SLR user, I tend to use the viewfinder instead of the bright AMOLED screen behind. It’s just habit. Like any other mirrorless system, the viewfinder will be electronic since, well, you don’t have the mirror. As for the electronic viewfinder, there’s a slight lag when sweeping the camera fast but I have yet to see if it bothers me later.
My first impression is definitely positive. I think I’ll be using the 30mm pancake lens a lot. It really suits my style – shooting with prime lens with large aperture.
Read more about my experience here.
Here’s a fun thing to play with. You remember those images that comprised of 2 in one? Superimposed images? In the days of film, one would take a shot, without advancing the frame and take another. The result? 2 images in one frame. We used to have a ball of a time playing with montages. Not all cameras allow you to do this nowadays so you’d probably have to do it in post processing.
So here’s my take on something similar, shot with the Canon G9, our ever trusty travel camera. Really old school stuff but kinda fun. Lydia and I were in KL last weekend and we took this in the hotel room before checking out. To get a shot like that, a lot depends on camera position. It has to be at an angle where the light is not reflected off the glass and with enough light falling on the face. It was bright outside, so I used a -0.67 EV to capture details of the next building and balance ambient light and flash. As a result, I had to increase the flash power to overcome the overall exposure reduction. With a compact camera like the G9, it’s hard to find the right flash exposure, so I had to play with the aperture to get the right amount of light on her face.
Here’s the result.
So finally, my settings: ISO100, f/4.5, 1/200, -0,67EV.
A lot of trial and error. But I love the shot! Give it a try next time.
Changes indeed. I know have a new page for Wedding images. Previously my wedding images were in the main body of the blog. It was fine when I first started it but as the blog grew in the past few years, it became maddening to navigate. Well, since I’m reconstructing the blog, I inserted this page to just display wedding images. And to keep the posts short, I’ve used a gallery instead of just pasting images on the posts.
I plan to include other pages for other areas of photography in future. Perhaps even a page for sharing tips and techniques. I think the picture will become clearer in days to come. In the meantime, hope you’ll be able to navigate better with a newer layout. Have fun and as usual, any suggestions is definitely welcomed.
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