Here's something for you SX40'ers to think about.
It can be really confusing when it comes to Aperture because our SX40 doesn't respond quite how an SLR will to changing Aperture.
When you change the aperture of an SLR lens, it essentially widens the hole that light passes through when you use a low number like f2.7. This allows more light to pass in and therefore helps us take pictures in lower light conditions.
HOWEVER, there is another aspect of our picture that is affected by this. In the SX40 it is incredibly subtle, whereas an SLR responds very strongly to it and it is the amount of blur aperture controls.
When all of that light floods in, the focus is on the foreground and the background is blurred out. If the aperture was at a higher value such as f8.0, the light is travelling through a much smaller gap and the focus is more concentrated allowing the background to be more in focus.
So with an SLR, a small aperture number like f2.7 lets in more light and causes more background blur. A higher number like f8.0 lets in less light and causes less background blur.
This is how many pictures are taken where the photographer has blurred out everything but their main focus - they set their aperture to a low number.
A lot of people are asking how to do this on the SX40 and the truth is, it just doesn't respond the same way an SLR lens would and makes that effect a little more out of reach.
Best plan is to use the Bokeh tips. Keep a big distance between you and your subject and another big gap between your subject and it's background. Zoom all the way in and it should throw the background out completely.
You can also try using macro mode and getting up close but that isn't always ideal.
I hope that clears up some peoples questions about background blur.
Just a last note to mention the recent lighting guidelines helpsheet I posted. That is only really ideal for the SX40 because of the issue with the aperture varying between cameras so bear that in mind ;)
Tuesday, 31 July 2012
Wednesday, 25 July 2012
So what did I learn whilst away?...
Hi All!
So I realize I have been ridiculously absent since I came back from my trip. Main reasons being, getting back into work and the need to travel away from home the last few weekends (and every weekend in the foreseeable future at the moment).
I have a list of new videos in mind, it's just getting the time to do them. If I don't get one done tonight then we're probably looking towards Sunday or early next week but I will be doing them again for sure.
But returning to chat about my trip, there were a million different things I wanted to get pictures of and some pictures were a real challenge but I had successes and failures throughout - mega learning curve in terms of photography.
One thing I didn't manage during the trip, was a decent night time shot of the sky which was gutting because the sky was so clear. Some of the areas we stayed in were amazing at night. We stayed at this Navajo Indian site in Monument Valley and slept out under the stars in our sleeping bags.... what a view. I basically fell asleep looking at the stars. However.... it wasn't the best experience camera-wise as I managed to run out of battery and lose my spare battery (which I still haven't found!). So whilst I could have got some amazing night shots... I had no battery left.
I had a bit of a fight with CHDK while I was away too, I kept finding it made my screen go white when I activated it and I had to keep resetting the camera until it showed up properly. I don't know if it was something to do with the memory card, the version of the hack or the camera but I'm hoping it was the hacks fault!
As most Facebookers will probably know I also had a bad time with CHDK in terms of HDR. I took sooooo many HDR triple exposures when I was away and the RAW files were saved as CR2 files which don't open in photoshop... usually they do, but not when CHDK creates them for some reason. This was my fault as I didn't check what file type I was saving but it was totally gutting that pretty much all my HDR images are gonna have to be done with JPEGS now. Nevermind... we live and learn right!
One thing I did discover in my photography was a far nicer image ratio of 16:9. I always knew the camera could do this but I never thought to use it as I was always one to stick with a much more "square" shaped image.... no idea why really. But we went out one night, someone had got hold of my camera and accidentally changed the ratio to 16:9. I hadn't noticed for ages until a couple of days later I was in Bryce Canyon I believe and I saw one of my scenery images on the camera and realised that it looked much better than a lot of the pictures I had taken previously. The new ratio gave it a more widescreen look which seemed to get far more of the scene than I was expecting. I really loved the setting that I left it like that for the rest of the trip and was really happy with the results. Even the images of people and small objects were taken with that setting and they still looked good.
And now for my guilty confession.... I used Auto quite a lot when I was away :P. Whilst it was nice to work on my photography and mess around with the camera, for most places I was being hurried along by the group and leaders and just didn't have the time so sit down for some proper photography. However the pics I took on auto came out really well and those that didn't were an indication for me that I needed to switch to Manual.
I went down to Miami beach quite early on in the trip and had a great evening taking pictures down there. I did some 10 second exposures which came out really nicely. I had a similar experience in Chicago. The fountain there is absolutely gorgeous next to the harbour and turning around you just see this stunning city skyline. Chicago was certainly one of my favourite places. I took some pictures down by the fountain there and they also came out quite nicely.
So that's the short version of my photography experience. I'm sure you will hear more snippets about things I learnt in America/Canada but for now I won't chew your ears off!
I will post some pictures into this blog so you can see what I am talking about but they are at home at the moment.
Ciao for now :)
So I realize I have been ridiculously absent since I came back from my trip. Main reasons being, getting back into work and the need to travel away from home the last few weekends (and every weekend in the foreseeable future at the moment).
I have a list of new videos in mind, it's just getting the time to do them. If I don't get one done tonight then we're probably looking towards Sunday or early next week but I will be doing them again for sure.
But returning to chat about my trip, there were a million different things I wanted to get pictures of and some pictures were a real challenge but I had successes and failures throughout - mega learning curve in terms of photography.
One thing I didn't manage during the trip, was a decent night time shot of the sky which was gutting because the sky was so clear. Some of the areas we stayed in were amazing at night. We stayed at this Navajo Indian site in Monument Valley and slept out under the stars in our sleeping bags.... what a view. I basically fell asleep looking at the stars. However.... it wasn't the best experience camera-wise as I managed to run out of battery and lose my spare battery (which I still haven't found!). So whilst I could have got some amazing night shots... I had no battery left.
I had a bit of a fight with CHDK while I was away too, I kept finding it made my screen go white when I activated it and I had to keep resetting the camera until it showed up properly. I don't know if it was something to do with the memory card, the version of the hack or the camera but I'm hoping it was the hacks fault!
As most Facebookers will probably know I also had a bad time with CHDK in terms of HDR. I took sooooo many HDR triple exposures when I was away and the RAW files were saved as CR2 files which don't open in photoshop... usually they do, but not when CHDK creates them for some reason. This was my fault as I didn't check what file type I was saving but it was totally gutting that pretty much all my HDR images are gonna have to be done with JPEGS now. Nevermind... we live and learn right!
One thing I did discover in my photography was a far nicer image ratio of 16:9. I always knew the camera could do this but I never thought to use it as I was always one to stick with a much more "square" shaped image.... no idea why really. But we went out one night, someone had got hold of my camera and accidentally changed the ratio to 16:9. I hadn't noticed for ages until a couple of days later I was in Bryce Canyon I believe and I saw one of my scenery images on the camera and realised that it looked much better than a lot of the pictures I had taken previously. The new ratio gave it a more widescreen look which seemed to get far more of the scene than I was expecting. I really loved the setting that I left it like that for the rest of the trip and was really happy with the results. Even the images of people and small objects were taken with that setting and they still looked good.
And now for my guilty confession.... I used Auto quite a lot when I was away :P. Whilst it was nice to work on my photography and mess around with the camera, for most places I was being hurried along by the group and leaders and just didn't have the time so sit down for some proper photography. However the pics I took on auto came out really well and those that didn't were an indication for me that I needed to switch to Manual.
I went down to Miami beach quite early on in the trip and had a great evening taking pictures down there. I did some 10 second exposures which came out really nicely. I had a similar experience in Chicago. The fountain there is absolutely gorgeous next to the harbour and turning around you just see this stunning city skyline. Chicago was certainly one of my favourite places. I took some pictures down by the fountain there and they also came out quite nicely.
So that's the short version of my photography experience. I'm sure you will hear more snippets about things I learnt in America/Canada but for now I won't chew your ears off!
I will post some pictures into this blog so you can see what I am talking about but they are at home at the moment.
Ciao for now :)
Tuesday, 24 July 2012
New Website!
I'm so sorry for being so quiet since I've been back.
I have been taking all of the requests for new videos down and I haven't forgotten about the potential giveaway I was planning :) (I just need to make sure I can afford to do it :P)
My new website is: http://fatdragon100.weebly.com/
It will keep all of the links and downloads and videos etc in one place so you don't have to look through a million different links to find everything.
I have been taking all of the requests for new videos down and I haven't forgotten about the potential giveaway I was planning :) (I just need to make sure I can afford to do it :P)
My new website is: http://fatdragon100.weebly.com/
It will keep all of the links and downloads and videos etc in one place so you don't have to look through a million different links to find everything.
Monday, 9 July 2012
Back in the UK
Hi All,
I am back in the UK after a 3 month break to the USA. I have many many pics to show and lots more to mess around with in Photoshop so hopefully they will be up here soon!
Just dropping in for now to update everyone so keep your eyes peeled for new stuff coming soon :)
I am back in the UK after a 3 month break to the USA. I have many many pics to show and lots more to mess around with in Photoshop so hopefully they will be up here soon!
Just dropping in for now to update everyone so keep your eyes peeled for new stuff coming soon :)
Sunday, 15 April 2012
Flickr Group
Hellooooo!
Long time no speak.
I haven't had a chance to update my blog as I have been manically sorting my life out before I head off to the USA for 3 months!
This is just a quick message to mention that I am now on Flickr with a Flickr group where we can share images at full resolution so there's no Facebook compressing and quality degradation or anything of that malarchy!
Please do feel free to come along and post your pictures to the group if you have some images you want to share!
Click HERE for the link to the group or search for FatDragon100.
See you there :)
Long time no speak.
I haven't had a chance to update my blog as I have been manically sorting my life out before I head off to the USA for 3 months!
This is just a quick message to mention that I am now on Flickr with a Flickr group where we can share images at full resolution so there's no Facebook compressing and quality degradation or anything of that malarchy!
Please do feel free to come along and post your pictures to the group if you have some images you want to share!
Click HERE for the link to the group or search for FatDragon100.
See you there :)
Thursday, 29 March 2012
Intervalometer!
I have been looking into the CHDK lately and what it can do that our camera can't offer on it's own.
A while ago I realised that there was no option to plug in a remote trigger to the SX40. So this meant that to trigger the camera without touching it, I would need to set it to self timer. This doesn't really help when you want to take a continuous set of images to create a lime lapse effect where you can see something moving over a long period of time.
My main goal was to create star trails. At the moment, I have about 300 images sitting on my computer that I took last night. I haven't yet composed them into one image but I'm hoping they achieve the star trails I wish to capture.
Quite often people take long exposure images for hours at a time and they get the star trails that way. However I don't really like this idea for the SX40. I had a go with it. Now granted I didn't have my settings perfect and the image was pretty over exposed, but my main worry was how hot the camera got. It was just sitting there in the garden in the evening so it wasn't sitting in direct heat and when I got it back in afterwards it was pretty heated. On top of this, the image usually takes the same amount of time to process as it does to take, so a 1 hour shot takes about 1 hour to process which obviously takes a lot of waiting time for something which may not have worked out. (It is also very annoying when your battery cuts out during the picture processing).
So in general, long exposures over many hours seem to be something best kept on SLRs in my opinion - at least I hope it's not only my camera which overheated!
There is also the option of time lapse by leaving the camera filming and then speeding up the footage in programs like Premiere Pro or Windows Movie Maker. Whilst this does work, the camera limits the films clips to around 4GB per clip which means that you then have to sit with the camera so that you can restart the filming when it cuts out so you don't miss anything. I tried this method at Frensham Ponds about a month ago and I really liked the results, but it just wasn't practical for a long time of say, 2 and a half hours.
In addition, filming takes up a lot of memory whereas taking multiple pictures means that you can fit around 2 hours of pictures on a 2GB card, rather than having to use a 16GB card for the 1 hour of constant video footage! (These are rough amounts from my experience)
I have gone on a tangent.
My point being, I looked into the Intervalometer because it does all the hard work for you! Once you have set it up, you can leave your camera star gazing in an evening and with a well charged battery you can get around 2.5 hours worth of stars passing by and capture their movement.
A normal intervalometer would be built into a good remote trigger which would just plug into the camera and tell it to take a picture every <enter number> seconds/minutes. But as we cannot plug in a remote, we need to use CHDK in order to achieve this.
One of the Facebook page followers cleverly suggested something as simple as tying an elastic band around the shutter button so that it would continuously take pictures as long as you have the camera set to multi shot. I haven't tried it but this seems to be a good idea if you wish to avoid CHDK.
Personally I am growing to really like CHDK so I decided to go for it.
So I set up the SX40 yesterday, set the focus to infinity so it didn't bur any of the images (Infinity focus is done through the hack kit), set the shutter speed to 15 seconds and did an override of the ISO using the hack kit (however the ISO wasn't quite high enough to capture the stars). I'm going to cover all of this in a video tutorial because I am doing the one thing I hate which is talking techno mumbo jumbo without actually explaining how to achieve it.
So the camera sat in the garden taking a new picture every 30 seconds and this was the result (Try watching it full screen as the detail is small and quite dark - my bad!):
Don't be put off by that awful thumbnail... I have no idea why it shows up like that.
As you can see, I obviously had my ISO too low in the end as the stars sort of disappear however I wanted to share it to show how it came out. So I will try again tonight with slightly different settings and will make a video to show how I did it.
For those who are wondering why I would use a higher ISO instead of using a longer shutter speed, it is essentially because, the picture takes 15 seconds to take, so it needs 15 seconds to process. If the picture takes 30 seconds in total to take and process I will only just get enough pictures without getting gaps in the movement of the stars. If I did a 30 second shutter speed, it would take 1 minute in total to make the picture if we include processing time.
1 minute per picture would leave quite a big gap between the stars movements. The very first test I did of the intervalometer took one picture every 2 minutes and looked like this:
So you can see the gaps in the stars/moons movements where there were no pictures being taken. Ideally these would look like streaks and would look quite surreal.
So I now have 300 images from last night which I need to compose together so make the star trails I have been aiming for! I will update to see if it worked and I will post a tutorial on the Intervalometer and time lapse photography in the next couple of days!
Ciao for now!
A while ago I realised that there was no option to plug in a remote trigger to the SX40. So this meant that to trigger the camera without touching it, I would need to set it to self timer. This doesn't really help when you want to take a continuous set of images to create a lime lapse effect where you can see something moving over a long period of time.
My main goal was to create star trails. At the moment, I have about 300 images sitting on my computer that I took last night. I haven't yet composed them into one image but I'm hoping they achieve the star trails I wish to capture.
Quite often people take long exposure images for hours at a time and they get the star trails that way. However I don't really like this idea for the SX40. I had a go with it. Now granted I didn't have my settings perfect and the image was pretty over exposed, but my main worry was how hot the camera got. It was just sitting there in the garden in the evening so it wasn't sitting in direct heat and when I got it back in afterwards it was pretty heated. On top of this, the image usually takes the same amount of time to process as it does to take, so a 1 hour shot takes about 1 hour to process which obviously takes a lot of waiting time for something which may not have worked out. (It is also very annoying when your battery cuts out during the picture processing).
So in general, long exposures over many hours seem to be something best kept on SLRs in my opinion - at least I hope it's not only my camera which overheated!
There is also the option of time lapse by leaving the camera filming and then speeding up the footage in programs like Premiere Pro or Windows Movie Maker. Whilst this does work, the camera limits the films clips to around 4GB per clip which means that you then have to sit with the camera so that you can restart the filming when it cuts out so you don't miss anything. I tried this method at Frensham Ponds about a month ago and I really liked the results, but it just wasn't practical for a long time of say, 2 and a half hours.
In addition, filming takes up a lot of memory whereas taking multiple pictures means that you can fit around 2 hours of pictures on a 2GB card, rather than having to use a 16GB card for the 1 hour of constant video footage! (These are rough amounts from my experience)
I have gone on a tangent.
My point being, I looked into the Intervalometer because it does all the hard work for you! Once you have set it up, you can leave your camera star gazing in an evening and with a well charged battery you can get around 2.5 hours worth of stars passing by and capture their movement.
A normal intervalometer would be built into a good remote trigger which would just plug into the camera and tell it to take a picture every <enter number> seconds/minutes. But as we cannot plug in a remote, we need to use CHDK in order to achieve this.
One of the Facebook page followers cleverly suggested something as simple as tying an elastic band around the shutter button so that it would continuously take pictures as long as you have the camera set to multi shot. I haven't tried it but this seems to be a good idea if you wish to avoid CHDK.
Personally I am growing to really like CHDK so I decided to go for it.
So I set up the SX40 yesterday, set the focus to infinity so it didn't bur any of the images (Infinity focus is done through the hack kit), set the shutter speed to 15 seconds and did an override of the ISO using the hack kit (however the ISO wasn't quite high enough to capture the stars). I'm going to cover all of this in a video tutorial because I am doing the one thing I hate which is talking techno mumbo jumbo without actually explaining how to achieve it.
So the camera sat in the garden taking a new picture every 30 seconds and this was the result (Try watching it full screen as the detail is small and quite dark - my bad!):
Don't be put off by that awful thumbnail... I have no idea why it shows up like that.
As you can see, I obviously had my ISO too low in the end as the stars sort of disappear however I wanted to share it to show how it came out. So I will try again tonight with slightly different settings and will make a video to show how I did it.
For those who are wondering why I would use a higher ISO instead of using a longer shutter speed, it is essentially because, the picture takes 15 seconds to take, so it needs 15 seconds to process. If the picture takes 30 seconds in total to take and process I will only just get enough pictures without getting gaps in the movement of the stars. If I did a 30 second shutter speed, it would take 1 minute in total to make the picture if we include processing time.
1 minute per picture would leave quite a big gap between the stars movements. The very first test I did of the intervalometer took one picture every 2 minutes and looked like this:
So you can see the gaps in the stars/moons movements where there were no pictures being taken. Ideally these would look like streaks and would look quite surreal.
So I now have 300 images from last night which I need to compose together so make the star trails I have been aiming for! I will update to see if it worked and I will post a tutorial on the Intervalometer and time lapse photography in the next couple of days!
Ciao for now!
Monday, 26 March 2012
Where I have disappeared to!
So I realise I have disappeared for a while now and just wanted to keep those blogger followers who are interested, up to date with what's been going on.
I have basically been studying a new animation method which has taken up a fair bunch of my time, but on another side of things, I have plans to use this new method to demonstrate the next part of my video making which is a clear example of Shutter Speed, Aperture and ISO and how they work together in photography.
Whilst many of you are already quite familiar with this now, I think it's important that those who aren't completely up to date with how the three aspects work, can now see it clearly and without all the technical mumbo jumbo that quite often gets pushed in peoples faces! I hope to achieve this with the animation I intend to make.
I am also preparing for a trip to the USA which will take me away for about 3 months. With this is in mind I hope to leave my YouTube channel at a point where people can use what is on there and avoiding as many unanswered questions as possible so we will see what I manage to get covered in the next 4 weeks before I go.
I'm really looking forward to the trip and I will try to keep posting pictures here and on my Facebook page as I go so that you can see what sort of places I am discovering and what sort of photography I capture along the way.
I also plan to do some quick tip sheets that you can print out and use to troubleshoot if you are in the middle of photographing something and you can't figure out your settings.
On a completely different note, to anyone who is interested in this news, I recently found out that Glen Keane, one of the most talented and down to earth animators I have seen in action (not in real life unfortunately but on video), has taken the decision to retire from Disney.
Whilst some may not care about this information, I find Glen Keane a real inspiration to work from and his passion in his work and the way that we completely embodies the characters he works on is fascinating. He surely will be missed from the animation community but I hope he enjoys his deckchair and beer in the garden!
So anywho, there is the quick run through where I have been and what I really hope to achieve/create in the next 4 weeks before I go.
FD :)
I have basically been studying a new animation method which has taken up a fair bunch of my time, but on another side of things, I have plans to use this new method to demonstrate the next part of my video making which is a clear example of Shutter Speed, Aperture and ISO and how they work together in photography.
Whilst many of you are already quite familiar with this now, I think it's important that those who aren't completely up to date with how the three aspects work, can now see it clearly and without all the technical mumbo jumbo that quite often gets pushed in peoples faces! I hope to achieve this with the animation I intend to make.
I am also preparing for a trip to the USA which will take me away for about 3 months. With this is in mind I hope to leave my YouTube channel at a point where people can use what is on there and avoiding as many unanswered questions as possible so we will see what I manage to get covered in the next 4 weeks before I go.
I'm really looking forward to the trip and I will try to keep posting pictures here and on my Facebook page as I go so that you can see what sort of places I am discovering and what sort of photography I capture along the way.
I also plan to do some quick tip sheets that you can print out and use to troubleshoot if you are in the middle of photographing something and you can't figure out your settings.
On a completely different note, to anyone who is interested in this news, I recently found out that Glen Keane, one of the most talented and down to earth animators I have seen in action (not in real life unfortunately but on video), has taken the decision to retire from Disney.
Whilst some may not care about this information, I find Glen Keane a real inspiration to work from and his passion in his work and the way that we completely embodies the characters he works on is fascinating. He surely will be missed from the animation community but I hope he enjoys his deckchair and beer in the garden!
So anywho, there is the quick run through where I have been and what I really hope to achieve/create in the next 4 weeks before I go.
FD :)
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