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• Photo Histogram: Part 1

Are you confused, or maybe even a little intimidated by the photo histogram? In the first video of this three part series, I explain how to understand and interpret the data in your camera’s histogram display.

 

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If you want to know more about histograms, and see more histogram examples, check out what is a histogram, interpreting the digital photography histogram, and histogram examples.

Video Transcript

Are you confused or even a little intimidated by the histogram display on your camera? You are not alone! Hi, I’m Julie from Ultimate Photo Tips, and I’m going to do a little mini-series as part of the Two Minute Photo Tips, all about histograms, and today is part 1 or 3. I want to take the mystery out of this super-important feature on your camera.

What is a histogram? Your photo histogram is a graph that shows the distribution of all the brightness levels in your image. In other words, it shows how much of you image is bright, how much is dark, and how much of it falls into the mid-tones. Let’s look at what a histogram looks like.

First of all, this is the graph without any image information. The left-most edge represents pure black, and the right-most edge represents pure white. All the shades of gray are represented in between. Let’s look at some actual image examples to make things more clear.

The first image I’m showing is of bubbles. It’s a high key image full of light tones. Now, think for a second; what would you expect the corresponding photo histogram to look like? Here it is. It’s a bump on the right hand side of the graph. Now if you had a low key image full of dark tones, you’d expect a bump on the left hand side of the graph instead.

Here’s an image that has three distinct areas of tone: an area of dark, and area of mid-tone, and an area of light tone. The photo histogram looks just as you’d expect. Here we have three bumps in the graph. The left one corresponds to the very dark area, the middle bump corresponds to the grey puzzle piece, and the right bump corresponds to the white puzzle piece.

Here’s a more typical image, where you have a full range of tones. The histogram for this one has a spike at the left that represents the dark tones in the doorway. It has a larger spike at the right that represents the white wall. Finally, it shows lesser amounts of data throughout the rest of the tonal range, corresponding to the other tones found in the image.

Now, you might be wondering what you do with all this great information that you’re getting from your histogram. Next week, I’ll be doing part two in this series on histograms. In that video, I’ll cover how you can use the information from your histograms to correct your exposure.

For more information about histograms and more examples, make sure you check out the other histogram pages on ultimate-photo-tips.com, linked below this video.

Happy shooting and I’ll see you next time!

 

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• Digital Photography Technique
• Live View for Focusing

Do you ever have trouble getting accurate focus? It can be touch in low light, when you’re close to your subject, or if your eye-sight is less than perfect. In this short video, I show you how to use live view to improve your focusing.

 

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Video Transcript

Do you ever struggle with getting accurate focus in your images? Hi, I’m Julie from Ultimate Photo Tips, and in today’s Two Minute Tip, I’m going to share with you how you can use live view to improve your focusing. Now the trick here is going to be to turn on live view, and then zoom in on the part of the image that you want to have sharp. This is a great tip to use for close-up where you need really perfect focusing, but you can use it anywhere.

Alright, let’s get started. On this camera, this is the button right here (A) that I’m going to use to turn live view on and off. This right here (B) is what I use to move my little zooming square around, up and down, and left and right. You’ll see what I mean in just a moment. An this right here is what I use to zoom in (C). Now of course, on your camera, the controls will likely be a little bit different, but I’m sure you’ll have something equivalent.

© Julie Waterhouse Photography
(A) Turn on live view, (B) Move the zoom box around, (C) Zoom in.

Let’s go ahead and turn live view on. Now you can see that I’m photographing a close-up of a flower. Now what I want to make sure is that the thing that’s closest to my lens, these petals right in here, I want to make sure that they’re nice and sharp. So what I can do is move my little square right over the petals that I want to make sure are sharp.

© Julie Waterhouse Photography
Zoom box is over the area that I want to be sharp.

Then I can go ahead and zoom in. And I can zoom in by a factor of 5 times or even 10 times. Once I’m zoomed in, I have this little image in the corner which shows me a dark spot relative to the overall frame so I can get some context. That dark spot is where I’m zoomed in in the whole image.

© Julie Waterhouse Photography
Zoomed in 5x.

Now that I’m here, I can go ahead and make fine adjustments to my focus to make sure that the tip of this petal right here is nice and sharp. I can check it at 5x as well. If I’m satisfied that it looks good, then I can zoom out, and then go ahead and take my picture.

That’s it for today. For more great tips, come on over and join me at ultimate-photo-tips.com, and while you’re there, don;t forget to sign up for my newsletter. That’s where I share insights and inspiration that I don’t share anywhere else.

Happy shooting, and I’ll see you next time.

 

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• Winter Photography

Are you planning any outdoor winter photography? I have some tips that you need to know! Here are four things you should keep in mind when you’re photographing in cold weather.

 

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Video Transcript

If you’re planning any photography in cold weather, I have some tips that you need to know! Hi, I’m Julie from Ultimate Photo Tips, and this week’s Two Minute Tip is all about shooting in cold weather. Here are four things you should keep in mind when you’re doing outdoor winter photography.

1. First and foremost, carry a couple of fully charged batteries, since batteries drain quickly in cold temperatures. To keep your spare batteries warm, or to breathe a little extra life into a dying battery, keep your batteries close to your body for warmth.

2. Avoid changing lenses outside so that you don’t get any moisture or condensation inside the camera body.

3. Be careful when you bring your gear back inside, as condensation will form on it. Ideally, wrap it up in a plastic bag, and seal it before bringing it in. That way, any condensation will form on the outside of the bag. Let it warm up slowly before you open up the bag.

4. Keep yourself warm! You’ll be able to stay outside longer, and take more pictures, if you are wearing protective, layered clothing, and winter boots. You also need a good way to keep your hands warm! I use these fingerless gloves with a mitten top that pulls over. That allows me the dexterity to use my camera controls, but also keeps me warm in between shots.

That’s all for this week! Now you’re ready to get outside and enjoy winter photography with your camera! For more great tips, please visit me a ultimate-photo-tips.com, and make sure you sign up for my mailing list while you’re there. That’s where I share ideas and inspiration that I don’t share anywhere else.

Happy shooting and I’ll see you next time!

 

• Home
• Digital Photography Technique
• Photo Histogram: Part 2

Are you confused, or maybe even a little intimidated by the photo histogram? In the second video of this three part series, I explain how to use the data from your camera’s histogram display to correct your exposure.

 

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Did you miss it? Watch Part 1 in this video series first.

If you want to know more about histograms, and see more histogram examples, check out what is a histogram, interpreting the digital photography histogram, and histogram examples.

Video Transcript

Are you ready to learn more about how to use your camera’s histogram display? Hi, I’m Julie from Ultimate Photo Tips. Last week, I brought you part 1 in this series about histograms, and I covered the basics of understanding and interpreting your histogram. This week, I want to show you how you can use that information to correct your exposures. Let’s jump right into looking at some more examples.

In this first landscape, you can see that the photo histogram goes all the way to the right edge, and there’s a spike right at pure white. We refer to this as the histogram being clipped. It means you’ve lost detail in the whites (we sometimes say the whites are "blown out"), and this is not recoverable later in software. You need to correct it in the field and re-shoot the image. So what do you do if you see this kind of photo histogram? It means your image is too bright, and that you have too much light. That means you need to reduce your exposure, either by using a smaller aperture or a faster shutter speed.

Here, I’ve reduced my exposure by 1 stop, and the histogram is no longer clipped. If your histogram is clipped on the left, it means you’ve lost detail in the shadows (we sometimes say the shadows are blocked up). To correct that, you need to add light to your exposure with a wider aperture or longer shutter speed.

Now what about this instance? I have both dark shadow and bright highlights in the same image. Here, my photo histogram is clipped on both ends. This means that the dynamic range of the scene is too great to be captured by your sensor. If I try to correct the darks by adding light, I just make the whites worse, and vice versa.

The only way to deal with this is to create an HDR image, which means making several exposures – some that correctly capture the shadows, and some that correctly capture the highlights, and then merging them together in software. This is the result. And here’s the histogram. Remember, our eyes can see much more than our camera’s can.

Now, all of the histograms that I’ve been showing you have been what’s called "luminosity" histograms that show the averaged brightness levels in the image for all three color channels. Your camera can also split this out into an "RGB histogram" that shows the brightness for each of the red, green and blue channels separately. When would you want to use that?

Here’s an example where I have a completely red image. If you see just the luminosity histogram, it looks like the image may be under-exposed. Certainly, it seems like I could increase the exposure without blowing out any highlights.

However, when I show you the RGB histogram for the image, you can see that the reds are right at the right edge. If I increased the exposure, I would blow out the red channel. That means that I’d lose detail in the reds. That’s why, when you’re photographing something in a single color, the luminosity histogram can be deceptive since it’s showing an average of the brightness levels across all channels. Displaying the RGB histograms separately gives a more accurate picture of what’s going on.

That’s enough for today! Next week, I’ll have the final part in the photo histogram video series. It’s a tip for those of you shooting in RAW mode called "exposing to the right." It’s a way to use your histogram to help you maximize the amount of data and detail your camera is capturing. Stay tuned!

For this week, if you want to see more examples, make sure you check out the other photo histogram pages on ultimate-photo-tips.com, linked below this video.

Happy shooting and I’ll see you next time!

If you want to know more about histograms, and see more histogram examples, check out what is a histogram, interpreting the digital photography histogram, and histogram examples.

 

• Home
• Digital Photography Technique
• Photo Histogram: Part 3

Are you confused, or maybe even a little intimidated by the photo histogram? In the third and final video of this three part series, I explain the technique of exposing to the right, which you should use if you are shooting in RAW.

 

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Did you miss them? Watch Part 1 and Part 2 in this video series first.

If you want to know more about histograms, and see more histogram examples, check out what is a histogram, interpreting the digital photography histogram, and histogram examples.

Video Transcript

Are you shooting in RAW? Do you want to make sure that you are capturing the maximum amount of detail in your images? Hi, I’m Julie from Ultimate Photo Tips, and this week I have the final part of a three part series that I’ve been doing on histograms. This week, I want to talk about a technique called "exposing to the right." It applies only if you are shooting RAW, and not jpeg, because it assumes you will be post-processing your images.

When you look at your camera’s histogram display, and you see an even division of the space from dark to light tones, you may think that your camera captures an equal amount of data at each brightness level. It does not! In fact, your camera captures exponentially more data in the light tones. Half of your camera’s data is reserved for the brightest stop of light. That means if you are not exposing in such a way that your photo histogram stretches all the way to the right, you are wasting mega pixels! If you don’t have any data in the top stop of your histogram, then you are not using a full half of your available megapixels. Let’s look at an example:

If I use the camera’s meter to judge the exposure, a light colored subject like this will be rendered as middle grey. If you look, there is a lot of room at the right side of the histogram. That means we’re only making use of less than half of the available data that our camera is capable of capturing. If we increase this exposure after the fact in our RAW editor software, you will be able to see that the image gets a bit noisy because you’re trying to fill in missing data.

If, on the other hand, you expose to the right – in other words, increase your exposure while shooting in the field, you will capture more data. Here, the photo histogram stretches all the way to the right, so we’re making the most of the camera’s data storage. You never want to go beyond the right edge, because then you’ll blow out the highlights and lose detail, but you do want to go as close to that right side as you can.

Sometimes, as in this example, you can see that the image will look too bright if you apply this technique. That’s okay! You should shoot it like this, and then use your RAW editor to reduce the exposure to your taste.

Now, in the final image, there’s room at the right side of the photo histogram, but because I photographed it using the data storage in the light tones, I have captured more data, and will have an image that’s much richer in detail.

That’s it for this week’s tip! Remember, for more explanation of histograms, and more examples, make sure you check out the other photo histogram pages on ultimate-photo-tips.com, linked below this video.

Happy shooting, and I’ll see you next time!

If you want to know more about histograms, and see more histogram examples, check out what is a histogram, interpreting the digital photography histogram, and histogram examples.

 

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• Photo Challenges
• December 2012

Photo Challenges:
December 2012

"Two’s Company"

Last month, I used "One Is the Loneliest Number" as your challenge topic. It only makes sense that this month, we have "Two’s Company!"

We’re looking for images with two of something — anything you want — but keep in mind the rest of the title: "Company." Your goal is that the two elements in the photo tell the story of keeping each other company. Have fun with it! I can’t wait to see what you come up with. You can find a few of mine below.

Read the rules. One entry only each month per person, please!

Enter your super-amazing photos in our photo contests. The winning image will be featured on the Ultimate Photo Tips homepage for all of the following month.

Submit your image.

See what other people are submitting, and vote for your favorite:
View other entries.

 

Keeping Each Other Company

 

Calla Lily Lovers
© Julie Waterhouse

 

Pals
© Julie Waterhouse

 

Sharing Lunch
© Julie Waterhouse

 

Table for Two
© Julie Waterhouse

 

Pakora and Papadum
© Julie Waterhouse

 

Lilypad Love
© Julie Waterhouse

 

 

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• Home
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• Camera Tripod

Is your camera tripod feeling lonely and neglected? In this short video, I give you two good reasons to dust off your tripod and take it out in the field with you.

 

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Video Transcript

Is your tripod feeling lonely and neglected? I’m Julie from Ultimate Photo Tips, and for today’s Two Minute Tip, I really want to encourage you to dust off your tripod, and take it out with you the next time you go shooting.

There’s two great reasons that you should be using a tripod. The first one is the one you probably think about first when you think about a tripod, and that is stability. Having your camera on a tripod keeps it nice and solid, so that if you’re taking a long exposure, you don’t introduce blur into your image due to camera shake.

But it’s the second reason I want you to think about more today, and that is: using a tripod slows you down. Now, you might think of that as a negative, but I think it can be a real positive. What happens a lot of time when you’re photographing, is that you pay so much attention to your subject that you mentally filter out everything that’s going on in the background, and you often don’t see things that are distractions. Putting your camera on the tripod slows you down enough that you become much more deliberate about where you put the edges of your frame, and about scanning your images to make sure there are no distractions. Having your camera on a tripod almost always improves your composition.

Alright, I have a bonus tip for you today. When you’re using your camera tripod, if you need to raise the height of it, make sure you extend the legs first, and only use the center post as a last resort. Using the center post give the least amount of stability, so definitely extend the legs first.

That’s it for today, so if you want any more great tips, please come on over to ultimate-photo-tips.com and make sure, if you haven’t already signed up for my newsletter that you get on the mailing list now!

Happy shooting, and I’ll see you next time.

 

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• Photo Challenges
• January 2013

Photo Challenges:
January 2013

"The Decisive Moment"

Henri Cartier Bresson’s photographic style, and his 1952 book, popularized the notion of the "decisive moment" in photography. It is candid action captured at the moment at which the action is at its peak or at its best. Think of a sprinter in a race. The decisive moment may be when she crosses the finish line with an expression of joy on her face. Think of someone giving a speech. It may be a momentous speech, but not any photograph of the speaker will capture a decisive moment. You would want to capture the best facial expression and hand gestures that form the peak of the moment.

This month, we’re looking for photographs that were taken at the right time to capture the best and most expressive moment of what was happening. Capturing that precise moment has an element of luck, so the trick is to be prepared and anticipate the action!

Entries are not restricted to street photography, but can be any style.

Read the rules. One entry only each month per person, please!

Enter your super-amazing photos in our photo contests. The winning image will be featured on the Ultimate Photo Tips homepage for all of the following month.

Submit your image.

See what other people are submitting, and vote for your favorite:
View other entries.

 

Some Decisive Moments

 

Sunset Play
© Julie Waterhouse

 

At the Rodeo
© Julie Waterhouse

 

Reach
© Julie Waterhouse

 

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• Home
• Digital Photography Technique
• Photographing Christmas Lights

Looking for something fun to shoot? Holiday lights make a great photographic subject! Here are some tips to create both realistic, magical shots, as well as abstracts.

 

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Video Transcript

Are you looking for something fun to photograph? How about holiday lights? Hi, I’m Julie from Ultimate Photo Tips. It’s holiday season now, and my neighborhood is filled with beautiful and colorful lights on all the houses and trees. It inspired me to get my camera out and take some pictures, so I hope I can inspire you to do the same! I’m going to share a few tips to help you get some great images.

The first thing to think about is that when the lights are on, it’s dark out, so your exposures are going to be long; long shutter speeds. The other thing is, I usually use ISO 100, since it gives me the least noise. I don’t mind if the shutter speed goes long; I’m expecting that.

The big decision you have to make when photographing Christmas lights is whether to keep your camera still on a tripod, and go for a more realistic looking shot, or to hand-hold it, and move your camera during the shot. That will give you more abstract images. Let me share a few examples so that you can see the difference.

© Julie Waterhouse Photography
30s at f/14, ISO 100

Let’s start with a couple of shots on a tripod. The first is my neighbor’s tree. I really love those blue lights! The exposure here was 30 seconds at f/14. The small aperture created the round spots that you see. They were water droplets on my lens.

© Julie Waterhouse Photography
8s at f/9.0, ISO 100

Here’s another shot of house and tree lights, with an exposure of 8 seconds at f/9.0.

© Julie Waterhouse Photography
8s at f/9.0, ISO 100
Photographing Christmas lights up close

Here’s one more, which is a closeup of the tree lights under the snow. This was taken with a shutter speed of 8 seconds at f/9.0.

© Julie Waterhouse Photography
6s at f/7.1, ISO 100

Now let’s look at a few more abstract shots! In these shots, I’m using a longer shutter speed, pointing my camera at some lights, then moving the camera during the exposure. This first one is a 6 second exposure at f/7.1

© Julie Waterhouse Photography
3.2s at f/7.1, ISO 100

For this shot, I moved my camera around in a spiral pattern that was then traced out by the lights as lines in the image. This was a 3.2 second shutter seed at f/7.1.

© Julie Waterhouse Photography
6s at f/7.1, ISO 100
Photographing Christmas lights gets funky!

This last one is another closeup shot of those colored lights on the tree under the snow. For this one, though, I zoomed the lens slowly while I was exposing. This is a 6 second exposure at f/7.1. I was actually on the tripod for this one, but zooming the lens so that there’s movement in the image.

I hope those photos inspire you to try some of your own. The key when photographing Christmas lights, is to experiment! The beauty of digital is that you can see right away what kind of effect you’re getting and what’s working. Have fun with it!

Happy shooting and I’ll see you next time!

 

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• Snow Photography

Are you looking for something to do with snow besides shovel it? 🙂 How about some snow photography? Here are eight great tips for photographing snow.

 

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Video Transcript

Are you looking for something to do with snow besides shovel it? 🙂 How about photographing it? Hi, I’m Julie from Ultimate Photo Tips, and today, I’m going to give you eight tips for photographing snow.

The first four tips are about photographing falling snow flakes.

© Julie Waterhouse Photography
focal length: 100mm

Snow Photography Tip Number 1 is about choosing the right focal length for your lens to get the effect you want. A long lens will compress distance, so you can get a layered look to the falling snow, with snowflakes at different distances appearing as different sizes. If it’s not snowing very hard, this is a good way to get a lot of flakes into your image. This photo was taken with a focal length of 100mm.

© Julie Waterhouse Photography
focal length: 30mm

A wide angle lens can take in more of the scene, but it has to be snowing quite hard to get a layered look. This was shot with a 30mm lens.

© Julie Waterhouse Photography
aperture: f/4.0

Snow Photography Tip Number 2 is about choosing an aperture. When you shoot wide open, you can get snow flake bokeh, with some out of focus flakes. This can work well in combination with a long lens. If you stop you lens down and use a small aperture, you can get your flakes sharp, but be careful. If your shutter speed gets too long, to compensate for the small aperture, your flakes may start to appear as streaks. This shot was taken at f/4. Watch out for those big, out of focus flakes.

© Julie Waterhouse Photography
shutter speed: 1/200s

Snow Photography Tip Number 3 is about choosing your shutter speed. You need a fast shutter speed to freeze the flakes. This one was taken at 1/200 of a second.

© Julie Waterhouse Photography
shutter speed: 1/60s

The longer you leave the shutter open, the more your snow flakes will appear as lines or streaks. This one was taken at 1/60 of a second.

© Julie Waterhouse Photography
shutter speed: 1/60s

Exactly which shutter speed to choose depends on how much wind there is too. This was also shot at 1/60, but the streaks are much longer because the wind was blowing hard.

© Julie Waterhouse Photography
flash: fired

Snow Photography Tip Number 4: You can use flash when you’re shooting snow in low light to freeze the flakes. You should take lots of shots when you try this because you often get one or two flakes close to the lens that turn out as large white splotches over your image.

© Julie Waterhouse Photography

Snow Photography Tip Number 5: Include something with a pop of color to liven up your image!

© Julie Waterhouse Photography
white balance is off

Snow Photography Tip Number 6: Watch your white balance. If you’re photographing snow in the shade, the only light is reflected light from the sky, and your camera’s auto white balance can be fooled into giving you blue snow.

© Julie Waterhouse Photography
corrected white balance

Shooting with a white balance set to "Shade" can help to correct this.

© Julie Waterhouse Photography

Snow Photography Tip Number 7: Photographing snow on a sunny day can be a tricky situation for your light meter. Keep an eye on your histogram, and watch for blown out highlights.

© Julie Waterhouse Photography
exposed on meter

Finally, Snow Photography Tip Number 8! Let’s not forget about the most commonly cited tip. If you use your camera’s meter to expose an expanse of snow, it will be rendered as grey.

© Julie Waterhouse Photography
exposed 2 stops over meter

You’ll need to tell your camera to over-expose by 1.5 to 2 full stops to get your whites looking white!

Whew! That’s it! Now grab your camera, and go enjoy the snow! For more great photo tips, please visit my website at ultimate-photo-tips.com, and make sure to sign up for my mailing list while you’re there.

Happy shooting and I’ll see you next time!