A little while back a friend told me I should think about writing stuff about photography, stuff that may not run parallel with the rules normally set out.

In my mind there are a lot of people out there who are like me, snappers. I don't expect to sell pictures, I don't expect to find galleries fighting over my work to display, I just love having a camera in my hand taking photos.

It's therapy for me, I simply can't believe the serenity and happiness I gain from snapping away, capturing moments and memories. The fact some people like to look at my pics just adds another dimension, the chance to make others happy too.

A lot of photography rules are there for a reason, keep to them and there's a better chance of becoming a saleable photographer, but what if you just want to snap away?

That's what I'm hoping to do here, in a high-and-mighty way, simply use a bit of plain English to hopefully demystify the world of photography and help anyone who reads it to either get more out of their camera or maybe get some new ideas how to use it.

I'll write about camera settings, maybe a bit of equipment, maybe dissect a photo I've taken, I'll probably talk about the rules so you either use them, or at least know what you're breaking... I'm actually not sure yet what's going to end up here.

So if there's anything you think I should do a post on or anything you'd like me to write about, comment here and I'll try my best to accommodate.

Just remember I'm not a professional, sometimes I'm talking more out of my own head than any official-speak so if I make a mistake or say something that contradicts something else... Well, I don't mean anybody to think I'm the oracle of photography, the other person? They're actually probably right and I'm wrong.

So, there we go, a heavy handed mission statement.

Thanks

AJ

These days even some smaller cameras give you the option of picking a file format to save in, normally RaW and/or jpg.

The easiest way to describe the two of these is that RaW is like an old film camera negative, jpg is like the fully processed image.

RaW is bigger because it stores pretty much everything it sees, what you snap is what you get and it's far more adjustable when taken from the camera.

Because of the way the information is held things like white balance, exposure, saturation and sharpening can be done to the original file and is overlayed over the image so is infinitely removable and replaceable.

Jpg's on the other hand are processed and "flattened" so, although they can be edited, changing things is harder because the computer is having to work with something already saved, an already compressed image.

Jpgs are smaller because they've been put through a compression algorithm, the processor marks a pixel of a specific colour... then marks for how many pixels that colour appears.

That's why a photo, for example, of a postbox would be smaller when compressed than a bunch of flowers, the computer thinks, right, that pixel is red... and now for the next however many pixels I just repeat red... the only information saved is that first pixel and a short note saying "repeat for this long..."

To make a hopefully understandable analogy to editing RaW vs jpg, imagine you're baking a cake.

Editing RaW is like adding more brandy to the mixture before you put it in the cake tin and bake it.

Editing jpg is like baking the cake then adding the brandy by pouring it over the top, it's sort of the same... but the result won't be as good because it wont change the whole cake, merely the top layer of it.

Oh, an addendum... I have no clue about baking, this just sounded logical and may have no actual truth in cake preparation... but that's what the recipes group is for

Really both formats have their uses, if you don't mind a little post-processing RaW is easily the best but if you'd rather just snap and get the image straight from the camera without having to play with it then jpgs are the way to go.

My thoughts? I'd never not shoot in RaW...

We've all done it, taken a picture indoors and it's come out orange because of the artificial light because the camera has got confused, it finds it very hard to lock in the right colours like our brains do.

Confusingly White Balance has very little to do with actual white and more to do with how the three primary colours Red, Green and Blue are recognised.

The best way to fix this is to shoot in RaW rather than jpeg but some cameras don't have that option...

Many though do have a way of selecting a white balance in camera. The tungsten setting for example will vary the colours and lessen, or even eliminate, the orange cast, the flash option will register light as bringing a sharper white cast to things etc...

Especially if shooting indoors this can be a photo-saver, jpegs are a right sod to correctly edit to fix colour casts and by simply using the tungsten or artificial light setting you can get a far more natural looking picture straight from the camera.

Now this is one of my favourite types of photography but is a mini-rule breaker.

Standard convention is never to shoot into the light, it confuses the camera exposure and can cause some lens flare etc in the image.

Now the thing is... I quite like doing both

Contre-Jour comes from the French for "into the day" and is a style of photography where a light source, either the sun or an artificial light is directly in the shot, often as the focal point.

It's fair to say this probably no longer comes under the heading of a rule breaker, as it's a well known and well used style now.

Oh, and I'd better get the health warning out of the way... be VERY careful looking towards the sun through your lens, it is a magnifying device after all and can damage your eyes. I used to be very bad at this, now I tend to be a lot more careful.

Here's a few of my own efforts:

As you can see, the biggest unwanted effect can be lens flare, the one middle-left has a very obvious yellow/green circle. This happens when light scatters and bounces in unwanted ways in one of the lens elements/inside the lens.

Some lenses/cameras are better than others when it comes to controlling flare.

A lot of photographers use digital editing software to clone these unwanted blemishes out, I do if I can but often leave them in if either the image would suffer or if, in some cases, I think it helps.

Often when doing this type of photo I'm actually wanting to emphasise the light but it's really personal choice, If no lens flare is possible, then great, but be prepared for it sneaking in.

The other thing about contre-jour is to expect minimal details in the shadows.

Because the light is pushing the exposure well down anything dark, any shadows, will be either mostly, or totally burnt out.

The problem is to dive too far the other way and get detail in the shadows will then cause the light to burn out... it's a balancing act.

I admit to being a fan of silhouettes, I even burn the shadows more in digital editing software sometimes purely to get that sharp black deliniation of anything caught in the light.

There are two options if you want a good exposure for both highlights and shadows, one is to take multiple shots at different and merge them together in a digital editing program like Photoshop.

The other, more hardware based is to use what's known as a ND Grad filter, these are glass or plastic that's been dyed black at the top but slowly graduates into clear, you line up the graduation with the horizon and this allows the camera to balance the exposure by darkening the sky while leaving the ground as it is.

The first method is often better at bringing out all the different shades but can look fake, the second looks much more natural but doesn't change the exposure as much.

The really good thing though about Contre-Jour is you get great clarity in most of the silhouettes because the camera aperture/f-number will go very low because of all the light it's getting, leads to brilliant depth of field!

Personally I think it's a great effect if you get it right and don't overuse it, just make sure you expect to lose detail one way or t'other.

Certainly one of my favourite subjects and a popular snap around blogworld is the moon, but it can be a bit tricky to get right.

So, in a potentially granny sucking eggs moment I thought I'd share tips I've picked up...

One trap I fell into a lot in the early days of trying to snap her is... It's night, and the majority of your frame will be black so if your camera is on automatic it'll try to even the exposure and make the moon too bright.

The simple fact is the Moon is a source of a lot of reflected light, it's actually much brighter than we might think for a camera so letting it choose will mean we lose the moon into a bright white halo like snapping a mini sun.

So, if you can, set your ISO to 100 to minimise noise and blurring and then plant your shutter speed as low as you can, I took this one at ISO 100 with a shutter speed of just 1/200th of a second, or 0.005 seconds:

If your camera doesn't allow this try having a bit of black card or scarf, something black and not see through... let the shutter snap... then cover the front of the lens! Do it yourself shutter speeds

The other trick is to have the camera resting on something, you'd think with a shutter speed of just 1/200th of a second handheld would be ok, and it can provide good results but with the moon so far away the smallest movement will blur, and we all know what you really want is all those pits and crevices...

Of course, you don't actually need a tripod, I took the above shot leaning on a slightly more DIY support... my work fleece rolled up and rested on top of a nearby car

So...

Rest the camera on something.
Use the lowest possible ISO setting.
Zoom in as close as possible.
Use a fast shutter speed.
Take more than one, so you can pick the best!

EssPee mad a comment on my previous post about aperture and said "Thought F numbers basically changed depth of field!"...

Which is funny because that was my next planned post

As well as deciding how much light is let into the lens aperture also changes the depth of field of a picture, or in plain English... how much of the pic is in focus.

It does this because... because... OK, it's some scientific reason I'm not smart enough to understand or even research, so lets just call it magic

Basically, the smaller the aperture the more of the picture will actually be in focus.

Earlier today I went out with my camera, popped it on a tripod with my 50mm lens and snapped a shot for every aperture range I have on the lens...

If you want to see them all (you strange person...) then you can go HERE but to save you all from the tedium, lets pick a few...

These were taken on a tripod, focussed on the branch and as close together as they could be, I snapped, turned the wheel, snapped... and repeat.

Taken at f/1.8 (smallest available aperture)

Taken at f/7.1

Taken at f/13

Taken at f/22 (widest available aperture)

As you can see, at f/1.8 anything not the branch I focussed on is bokeh (fancy word for out-of-focus blur) there's a distinct item in focus with everything else fuzzing out.

As we slip through the aperture numbers the pot it's in and the background start looking much clearer until finally, at f/22, the entire scene is in some kind of focus.

Obviously this means you can't simply aim for the biggest aperture all the time, if you want more than your main subject in focus you'll need to 'stop down' a bit.

One use for this in the opposite direction is to use a large aperture for portraits as you can isolate your subject by removing the background.

The easiest way to explain aperture is like this... Think of your camera as an eye, and the aperture is the iris.

The darker the surroundings the more your eye opens up to let in more light, and that's exactly how the aperture works.

Aperture itself is counted by a system called the f-number, or f-stop. The slightly confusing part (or I thought it was) is that the numbers work backwards, the higher the number, the smaller the aperture.

A value of f/1 is the widest aperture and therefore the 'fastest' lens with the numbers dropping down to the 20s and 30s for the smallest opening.

Most, if not all, cameras allow you to change the aperture, any f-number that's on the lens of camera is purely it's maximum width, it can still go smaller.

Obviously the wider the opening, just like an eye, the more light let in, and vice versa.

Here's a little visual representation...

Both those pics were taken in the same conditions with the same shutter speed but the left hand one was with an aperture of f/5, the one on the right was at f/1.8.

You can see the vast difference in the two pictures thanks to all the extra light allowed in by the wide f/1.8 aperture.

You can also see on the box how most lenses (and this works for other cameras too) marks it's maximum aperture, in this case f/1.8... ignore the II after it, that's because this is the mark II version of the lens... just to add extra confusion

The only thing to note when picking an aperture is sometimes it's not best to simply go for the widest option. Most lenses for DSLRs or compact cameras work best when shrunk by one or two 'stops'.

For example the lens I used for the above pics actually gives a sharper picture at f/2.5 than it does at f/1.8, so if the shutter speed allows it it's often best to let the eye close a little for a better photo...

Basically, your camera needs a bit of a squint.

Aperture also has a bearing in other things but I'll leave that for a different post

A lot of digital cameras these days (not just the expensive ones) let you fiddle with ISO settings and juggling these carefully can really help your photos in darker areas or places where you can't use, or don't want to use, flash to get a more natural shot.

From the early days of film the ISO standard has been used to give a rating for light sensitivity.

The upshot of this is easy, higher ISO means your camera is more sensitive to light. This means your camera's "open" for less time which means less blur.

For example I've just grabbed random pic in the room to see the difference between ISO, shutter speed and apeture...

As you can see, as ISO doubles, shutter speed approximately halves.

On the negative side, on digital cameras a higher ISO means more 'noise' and graining on the snap.

Most cameras have a default of ISO 100 with various steps up to around ISO 3200 for the REALLY fancy cameras, most will end a lot shorter than that, but it all makes a difference.

As an example I took five pictures of a Family Guy DVD cover, with the image stabilisation on my lens switched off and the camera set to auto. I then cropped out Cleveland. All these pics are 100% sized (when clicked on) and haven't been edited in any way.

ISO 100 - 2 and a half second exposure

ISO 200 - 1 second exposure

ISO 400 - half a second exposure

ISO 800 - quarter of a second exposure

ISO 1600 - 1/8th of a second exposure

As you can see, the shutter speed shrinks and the picture gets sharper.

However, there is a flipside. If you look at the ISO 1600 pic it seems very grainy compared to the others, in this situation probably an ISO 800 shot is the best compromise, sharp enough, especially if you're making the image smaller, but with a lot less 'noise'.

It's a balancing act really, but if it's darker and you're finding the pictures are blurring finding and changing your ISO setting can help, sometimes you're happier with a sharper shot than a less 'noisy' one.

Just remember to put them back before you go shooting in good light

A

Aperture - How wide the lens opens, it's just like the iris of your eye. Defined by the f-number/f-stop number.

B

Bridge - A point and click camera which boasts features more usually seen on a DSLR.

C

Contre-Jour - A style of photography that breaks the rule, never shoot into the light.

D

DSLR - A type of camera most commonly associated with the fact it has interchangeable lenses.
**Depth of Field (DoF) - How much of the photo is in focus, can be changed using different apertures.

F

Flare - or Lens Flare, bright spots on the lens from refraction and reflection of light inside the lens.

I

ISO number - How sensitive to light your camera is, most default to ISO 100.

F

F-number/F-stop - a number that defines the size of the aperture. The numbers go in reverse, f1 is biggest.
Focal length - a measurement in millimeters, eg 50mm or 300mm that defines how zoomed in you get to the subject.

L

Lens Flare - see Flare.

P

Point-and-click - a type of camera that is usually the easiest to use. Simply point and...well, click.
Prime Lens - A lens with a single focal length.

S

Shutter speed - How long the camera stays "open".
Shutter lag - On non D-SLR cameras there's a distinct lag between pressing the button and the photo being taken due to the technology involved.

Z

Zoom lens - A lens with a changing focal length allowing zooming.