Some DIY Camera Accessories

Every photographer knows that accessories for our cameras cost a fortune, and we “need” so many.

So here are a few ideas to save on things that we may not use all the time.

DIY Monopod (sort of)

This one is going to sound odd but trust me, it works. Take a piece of heavy string or tent cord about 6 feet long and tie a loop in one end into which you can put your foot. That’s it, job done! No, I’m not kidding that really is it. When you need an extra bit of stability all you have to do is stand with the loop under one foot and the other end wrapped around your “camera” hand. Adjust the length of the string so that it is taught when your camera is held to your eye. The tension in the string between your foot and your hand will help to stabilise your camera.

Simple Flash Diffuser

I really do mean simple. A piece of tissue paper placed over your flash will reduce the power of your flash enough to cut down on over-exposed areas especially in close-ups. One layer peeled from a tissue is often enough but do experiment, more layers will soften the light even more.

Cheap Reflectors

There are so many things you can use as make-shift reflectors that it is hard to know where to start. A sheet of white paper, a pillow case, a length of baking foil, all are useful for portraits. A large white towel or a bed sheet can be used for full length shots. How easy is that?

Effective Portable Snood

First, for those who aren’t sure what a snood is: It is a cone shaped bit of plastic which fits over your flash unit and is used to light a very precise area in a photograph.

The easiest snood you will ever make is made from heavy paper, a sheet of A4 photo paper is ideal. Just roll it into a tube shape so that the end of the tube fits neatly over your flash gun and tape it in place. Then tighten the other end a bit so you have a cone and secure it with another bit of tape. The beauty of this is that it is endlessly adjustable so you can control the width of your flash lit area.

These are all ideas that I have used and they really do work. They may not look very professional but who cares? They will save you a bit of cash which you can spend on gadgets that you can’t make yourself. Take a look at my wedding and portrait photography, I bet you can’t tell which images were taken using some of the tricks above.

Candid Photography 

Candid photography is by definition taking pictures of people when they are unaware.  It can be very difficult to catch your subject off guard because most people will react when you point a camera at them, some will strike very artificial poses and others will shy away from you. Taking candid shots may appear easy but nothing could be further from the truth. So what can we do to get those great natural looking portraits?

At our portrait photography studios in Londonderry a technique I often use is to get my subject in the position I want and chat about the weather, the latest big movie, sports, anything except photography, at this point I don’t even have my camera in hand. Get the idea? Try to get your subject to relax. Next I pick up my camera, still chatting away and tell them that I am just checking the settings. At first I don’t even point the lens at my unsuspecting victim. Nine times out of ten the person will forget about the camera and I can get a couple of sneaky shots before they even realize what I am up to. Very often these completely natural shots are the ones that get chosen.

 

A good portrait relies on the intensity and angle of light as much as on the subject; however, you may not always have as much control over these as you might like. This is particularly true of location shoots or in wedding photography. In the studio as soon as a flash or strobe is fired, the opportunity for an unguarded image is often lost. To get around this I will fire my lighting units without my camera, testing my settings again, so that my subject gets used to the idea of sudden explosions of bright light. Then I continue as above with my camera in hand. Where possible though I prefer to work using only natural light so there is no give-away burst of artificial light.

You will notice that I haven’t mentioned camera settings yet. To quote a very successful portrait photographer “Portraiture is 10% camera skills and 90% people skills”. For the beginner the automatic settings on your camera will work perfectly well for candid photography. It is far more important to learn how to get your subject to be comfortable in front of the camera than to be completely expert in the nuts and bolts of your camera’s workings.

For the more advanced user the choice of settings will be determined by the end result you are looking for. I always use AP mode (Aperture Priority) and let the camera control shutter speed making sure that I have an acceptable value, usually no less than 1/125, by adjusting the ISO value myself. I use wide apertures e.g. f2.8 to create an image with lots of out of focus area so that the viewer’s gaze is drawn to the areas in sharp focus which will usually be the subject’s eyes.

Try these techniques for yourself and you will soon find that taking candid portraits can be more like having a coffee and a chat with a friend than a full on photo session. Remember, have fun!

HDR Photography


Ok so just what is HDR? Well, it stands for High Dynamic Range but what is that exactly? A normal camera can only capture a limited range of tones from light to dark depending on the exposure used. In high contrast scenes in particular, a compromise has to be made and we lose detail in either the lighter or darker areas. It is up to the photographer to decide whether to bias the exposure for light or shadow. HDR gets around this by combining a bracketed set of exposures and retaining the most of the tonal detail from each. So much the technical explanation but how do we do it?

Assuming you already have a camera and computer etc the first thing you are going to need for HDR photography is some software. The good news is that there is a selection of completely free software on the internet, just Google "free hdr software" and take your pick, try to find some user reviews before you download. Be warned though, as with all free stuff some of it may disappoint and you may have to try a few programs before you find one you like. There is also a selection of programs for sale which are typically easier to use and have more features. One of the most popular is Photomatix, the image below was created in Photomatix Essentials which costs around £25.

Right, let's get down to brass tacks. You have found a suitable scene to photograph, now what?

You are going to want to take a set of 3 to 5 bracketed exposures at about +/- 1EV. Don't panic! All that means is that you want one properly exposed image and if you are using 3 images,one over exposed by one full stop and one under exposed by the same amount. In a set of 5 images you will need 2 more under/over exposed by 2 full stops. Most modern camers will be able to do this for you, just have a look in your manual for the bracketing setting. If you are going to do it manually then I recommend leaving your aperture unchanged if you can, this will mean your depth of field will remain constant. Using a tripod is also best so that each image is framed identically. HDR software will allow you to merge your images and play around with the look of your final photo. This is always going to be a matter of individual taste and will range from the fairly subtle treatment above to the very surreal images that HDR can create.

Here at Images By George we specialize in portraiture and wedding photography so you might think we don't use HDR but imagine the inside of a church or chapel with those amazing stained glass windows, chandeliers, gilt fixtures etc. HDR has given us new ways to add a little something special here and there in our albums. It can do the same for you too, allowing you to look at old scenes in new ways.



Learning to think in Black and White

Many professional photographers will choose not to do their work in color but just black and white, sometimes referred to as monochrome or mono for short. Using black and white will often give your images a classic look and can rescue a shot that otherwise looks washed out and lifeless. For the beginner black and white photography can also make you concentrate more on light, composition and character, rather than color. Consider black and white photography especially when shooting outside on overcast or rainy days. Look at puddles which may have distorted reflections in them. They may look grubby in colour but in black and white contrasting tones may well create a memorable image.

Being able to think in black and white is certainly an asset to wedding photographers in Northern Ireland. Our "unsettled" weather can be challenging and overcast skies often appear as washed out, boring pale grey expanses. A quick conversion to mono can reveal tonal depth which is not evident in colour and can create wonderfully atmospheric moods in your wedding photography.

You will find that black and white is a good choice for portraits too. Skin tone is a tricky thing in many color photographs; people tend to dislike close-up shots because they can clearly see any skin blemishes. Black and white can be very flattering and blemishes are easily removed without the added complication of colour matching. The stark contrast between someone’s bright face and a dull background is also more easily coped with.

In this portrait the skin tones are just a little too warm for my taste. It's fairly easy to deal with this but what if we convert the image to black and white?


 Now we have a much more striking portrait; the eyes, almost always the desired focal point in any portrait are much more prominent. The contrast between the light and dark tones causes the model's face to be clearly framed by her hair, an effect that is less obvious in the colour shot.

Using black and white pictures will also help you to focus on shapes and lines, details which are often overshadowed by bright colours. After a while you will develop an “eye” for what will look good in black and white. As mentioned above, overcast skies can look pale and boring in colour but when converted to black and white they can show great tonal contrast. A good example is this photo I took of Stonehenge. Take a look at some of your own photographs and try to pick out some which you think might look  more interesting in black and white. Don't wait for perfect weather to get out and about with your camera, you may have a long wait after all. Get out under cloudy skies and try to find your own monochrome masterpieces.

Is it Cheating to use Photoshop ?

In the history of photography, there has never been a time that we can achieve such phenomenal results in editing as has happened in the digital age,but is it cheating to use photoshop?  The use of Adobe Photoshop in particular has become so widespread that the term, “to Photoshop” has become a verb that means to enhance or alter an image. 
We can “Photoshop in” new outfits, accessories or even people to a shot where it was just not possible before. Similarly, we can “Photoshop” out things from a picture we don’t want to see there anymore.  So if you have a physical flaw, that can be removed.  You can even remove distractions from the background of a shot.  The program is so sophisticated that these images are possible and you really cannot tell the alteration has been made.

So, is it cheating? Like many things that depends on your intentions. If you present a heavily altered image as a true likeness then the answer is yes. If you simply intend to present that image looking its best and make no claims to the contrary then you are doing absolutely nothing wrong. In my opinion at least! At my own studio we often use Photoshop to enhance our images. This can range from removing a cold-sore from a subject's lip to completely changing a background. In Portrait Photography, often the trick is to make it look as if nothing has been done. On the other hand there are times when your trickery with Photoshop will be obvious as in the image here.

Photoshop has become a fact of life in the photographic industry. We have all seen heavily retouched images of models and celebrities on the front pages of magazines or in advertisements, often presenting a picture of unrealistic perfection. Taken this far it is certainly cheating but that is the fault of the advertisers and publishers. Photoshop is an amazing tool, use it wisely and honestly to enhance your images and your conscience should be clear.

Visit our website at Images By George and see if you can spot which images have been Photoshopped. If I have done my job well you should have difficulty, most of the time.

To upgrade or not to upgrade

One of the questions I am asked more than any other is " Should I replace my old camera with the latest model?" The simple answer is, there is no simple answer! Are you upgrading because the retailer's ad has convinced you that you can't do without this latest fancy toy, or have you exhausted the capabilities of your existing equipment? If you can answer this question honestly, then whether or not you should spend your hard-earned cash becomes clear.

I honestly believe that it is rarely worth upgrading a little compact camera. If you are satisfied with the picture quality why bother? Newer models are often sold on the promise of massive pixel count but what does this mean? To the average user, not much I'm afraid. On average an extra two megapixels, that's two million pixels, will add a border less than three centimetres thick around the outside of an A4 print. Not terribly impressive is it? There is also the issue of sensor size, the more pixels that are crammed in, the more digital noise becomes a problem. My first digital compact was a little Toshiba with 3.1 megapixels, a miserable amount compared with modern offerings yet the photos I took with it seven years ago are still perfectly acceptable today.

 If you are using a DSLR camera you may think that the latest Canon, Nikon or whatever will immediately let you create better photographs; not necessarily. Any modern camera I have used has been capable of stunning results when used properly. I have three Nikons, a D40x, a D200 and a D700 and in decent light you would be hard pressed to tell which of these produced any given image on your monitor. Which lens rather than which camera you are using will often make the greatest difference. Even then, in good light at average settings there will be very little visible difference between the typical kit lenses offered with many cameras and the most expensive glass on the market.

So, should you upgrade or not? Get to know your equipment inside out and explore its potential fully. When you have done that you won't have to ask anybody else, you will know the answer yourself.

Go to www.imagesbygeorge.co.uk to see more of my work.