Frederik Bøving – Page 8

Ricoh GRIIIx: Focus modes explained

Starters

Before diving into the details of the focus system on the Ricoh GR3x camera, I just want to make sure you do not have the camera in macro mode.

Ricoh GRIIIx: Focus modes explained — The little flower on the screen (red arrow) tells that the camera is in macro mode. Push the button at the blue arrow to toggle in and out of macro mode.

In the image above, push the button shown with the blue arrow to toggle the camera in and out of macro mode. In macro mode, the camera will not focus to infinity, but on the other hand it can focus very close to the subject. I have many times been struggling to understand why it would not focus, only to find that macro was engaged.

Another thing to check is the firmware version. My copy of the Ricoh GRIIIx was sent with version 1.1 of the firmware, so I have never tried version 1.0 but the word on the street is that version 1.1 is much better and hence upgrading the firmware is worth the while.

Basics

The Ricoh GRIIIx works like many other cameras when it comes to focus: if you half press the shutter the camera focuses, and full press takes the image. You can touch the screen to select the area for the camera to focus on and this presents a little box that frames what the camera will focus on.

That little box can be moved around with the command wheel if you before that press the OK button.

If you long hold the “Disp” button bottom right on the rear of the camera, the LCD will zoom in, and again you can use the command wheel to select the area to view. Press “Disp” again to leave zoom mode.

Focus modes

The Ricoh GRIIIx comes with a series of focus modes that give different levels of control vs automation. You can go into the large menu system and select the focus mode, but I find that pushing the so called compensation lever top right on the rear of the camera is easier – it takes you into a smaller menu system where the image profile, focus, etc can be adjusted.

The focus menu is the second from the left, where the first one is image control. Use the control dial to move the cursor in the menu system – the selected value is highlighted in yellow. Push the OK button in the center of the control dial to select an option, and press the Menu button to leave the menu system.

There are a total of 9 (!) different focus modes:

Auto-area AF is the most automated one and you have no control whatsoever. The camera chooses what to focus on. This is a good option if you want to use the camera in a “point and shoot” style. If you tab the LCD, a box will appear and the camera will focus here, but only for 1 image! After that, it is back to fully automated.
Auto-area AF (centre) is like the first option, but it prioritizes the center of the frame when choosing what to focus on.
Select AF gives you a little square on the LCD screen, and whatever is in that square is what the camera will focus on. You can move this square around with the control wheel as described above, or just tab the LCD to position the square where you have touched the LCD.
Pinpoint AF is the same as the 3rd option, but the area is smaller. Good if you have something very small that you want to focus on hiding behind other objects that are closer.
Tracing AF works like Select AF, but it keeps track of whatever you selected if either the subject moves or you move the camera – provided of course it stays within the frame. This is great if you have something moving within the frame or if you want to focus and then recompose. I use this option a lot.
Continuous AF adjusts the focus as you half press the shutter. This is great if your subject moves closer to or away from you, as the camera will adjust focus accordingly. For example someone walking towards you.
Manual Focus is where you select the position of the focal plane by turning the control wheel. I do not use this option a lot even though I usually like manual focus. The reason is that you have to turn the wheel a lot for the focal plane to move and this makes it very cumbersome to use.
Snap is where the camera focuses on a pre-set focus distance. If you hold the macro button in and at the same time turn the front dial, the value can be changed. The options are 1m, 1.5m, 2m, 2.5m, 3m, 5m and infinity. Notice that if you press the shutter fast (i.e. no pause half pressed) the camera will focus using snap focus.
Infinity is where the camera focuses to infinity and this can be useful if you don’t want the camera to “hunt” to find focus. But of course your subject then also has to be something where focus to infinity is meaningful.

Other options

If you hit the “Menu” button the full menu system of the Ricoh GRIIIx is displayed and in here many of the same options as in the control lever menu can be found.

However, there are more options and details in the menu system. One useful option is to turn the face and eye detection on and off, you can control if the auto focus assist light is to turn on or not, if focus peaking is to be shown, etc.

Also, if you scroll down to the customize controls menu, you can turn the touch sensitivity of the LCD on and off, and you can also control how much the camera does when the LCD is touched, and if you take the most elaborate option, the camera will both move the focus point to where you touch the screen, focus and shoot! Enjoy!

Shopping link

Affiliate shopping link for the Ricoh GRIIIx (40mm FF equivalent).

Video link

Try micro variations in your photography

Innovator!

Some time back I made a video where I talked about micro variations in photography and recommended to try to take a lot of images of the same scene and subject, but with small changes to angle and framing. I have found that small variations sometimes is the difference between a really good picture and a “naaah” picture. Something as simple as turning the camera 90 degrees can also be the difference between great and average.

And I was very happy with this little “discovery” and thought that I for once had invented something new and fresh! Until I visited a museum and saw the work of the Danish painter Vilhelm Lundstrøm.

Same but different!

Apparently Vilhelm Lundstrøm also worked with variations over the same theme, and in the example below he has painted the same stilleben two times – one with more pale colors and viewed a bit further away than the other version that has more bang for the buck color wise but also has moved a bit closer to the subject.

It is probably subject to taste and personal preference which of the two paintings you like the best, but the point is that even small variations depicting the same subject can lead to vastly different results. So when you are out and about shooting, take some time to shoot several versions of the same scene using micro variations – I am sure that when you get back to the computer and open up the images for processing, you will be positively surprised how some images work and others don’t, even when they at first glance seem very similar.

Golden leaf. — It took several shots of this scene to get the result I was after.

Video link

Mind the background in your pictures

Leading role

If you have ever talked to a flower or macro photographer about their best tip for getting a good shot, you will often hear them talk about finding a good background for the subject rather than worrying about the subject so much. Don’t get me wrong, the subject is of course also important, but often the balance tilts to the favour of the subject at the expense of the background.

I don’t know why this focus on the background apparently is more important to macro and flower photographers, but I think it has to do with the nature of the subject – it is often very simple (= elegant, minimalistic, focused) and hence any distractions from the subject hits extra hard in this line of photography.

I think the rest of us (i.e. non flower / macro photographers) can learn from the focus they have on getting the background right. Often, when I review my images in Lightroom, the difference between a good shot and a bad one is determined by the background. As Joel Sartore says in his book Photo Basics: If there is something in your frame that is not working for you, then it is actually working against you!

I’ll leave you some examples below where I think the background works as it should.

Photography composition and the background to the subject. — A large aperture and some distance to the background helps bringing the right parts of the image out of focus.

Video links

Horizontal vs vertical photography

Simple or not?

Many years ago when I took my drivers license, my first thought after reading all the driving school theory was: this is not so complicated! I got this! And then I got wiser!

When you read this blog you may well think: Ok king obvious, haven’t you got something more interesting or challenging for us to read? But please remember that it is the appliance of the theory that makes photography so challenging (and fun!) whereas the theory itself may (sometime) seem so straightforward that it is pointless. But photography is often about making choices, not solving problems. So please read the following in that light: it is about making choices, not solving problems.

Portrait and landscape

Horizontal and vertical is amongst photographers often referred to as landscape and portrait. If the image is wider than tall, then it is landscape (horizontal), if it is taller than wide, then portrait (vertical). The sensor in a digital camera is not square, but typically 3:2 or 4:3, so when shooting with the camera horizontally, you will get a landscape image, turning it 90 degrees you’ll get a portrait mode image.

Choosing

In theory, the “right” way to choose between portrait and landscape is to consider the composition and how the subject and scene works together with the oriententation. So wide subjects like a coastline would suggest landscape mode, whereas a tall subject like a tree or a skyscraper or a Giacometti statue would suggest portrait mode. And then of course you can go against convention (or what most would do) and thereby create some tension. There is no right or wrong here, only choices that work with you or against you relative to what you want to achieve.

When out and about with my DSLR or ML camera, I shoot in landscape mode 99% of the time. I think most do, probably because the way our eyes sit in our head makes us see the world in landscape orientation. But recently with my new Ricoh GR3x camera, I’ve found that I more often shoot in portrait mode. Maybe because the camera is so small and handy, that turning it falls more natural now. So a mix of convenience and coincidence can also be a factor in the orientation of the image.

Many images and video are shown on wide screens (TV and computer ) that typically are in a 16:9 format, and here obviously landscape images make a better fit to the format than portrait does. But if you read this blog on a smartphone, it is likely that the format is taller than wide. And in that case, portrait works better than landscape, unless you tilt your smartphone to become a wide screen. If you study people and how they use their smartphone, it is seldom the phone is tilted unless they play a computer game. So there is the use case to consider: in what format is the final image intended to be used? And that can drive your choice of orientation.

Portrait mode — I was struggling to capture this scene. The landscape mode versions of the image somehow did not work. Turning the camera 90 degrees gave me the result I wanted.

The square alternative

Square image (1:1) — The quare alternative created in post.

Post processing enables you to change the format into whatever you’d like and 1:1 is certainly also an option, especially if you post to Instagram, where 1:1 is the only format! And if you have made the shot sufficiently wide and with plenty of resolution, a portrait image can be changed into a landscape and vice versa. So post processing certainly gives a lot more options when the image is framed with this in mind.

Instagram posting with a landscape image — To overcome the Instagram limitation of 1:1, I often post my images with a white frame that allows a landscape image in the square format.

Summary

It is my hope that you after reading this will give portrait mode a try more often than previously! And some “aha!” or “eureka!” experiences to accompany! There are plenty of blogs (including this one) that will tell you what the “correct” composition theory is relative to the image format, but if you ignore that for now and just go with your intuition and use portrait as you see fit, then I think you will find it rewarding. And if you also can muster the energy to think about the use case (is the image to be viewed on a smartphone or printed big for an exhibition) before you hit the shutter, well, then my day is made!

Does low light photography make any sense?

Write with light

Although Latin will never be my forte, I seem to remember that photography stems from the words “writing” and “light”, i.e. writing or creating with light. So bearing this definition in mind, does low light photography then make any sense? In a word: Technically: no, emotionally: yes.

Signal to noise

Signal to noise. Sounds complicated, right? And it is, if you want to be an engineer and dive into this interesting concept. Lots of math and complexity. But for us photographers, all you need to know is that light is a signal and that your camera is a system that inherently holds or produces noise. So there is a balance between the input in the shape of light and noise during the production of the output, the image. That balance is signal to noise. And the stronger the signal is relative to the noise, the better, i.e. the more clean the image will appear.

When shooting in low light, the signal to noise ratio is appalling! Your camera struggles to “see” if there is light or darkness, and it makes mistakes! And the mistakes show up in the shape of grain and noise and washed out colors. The camera sensor simply gets so little light, that the noise is as strong as the light, and hence the sensor starts mistaking noise for light. And that is not good.

So the obvious solution here is to add light – a big fat flash that will lighten up half the city and take out the noise, right? Well, right from a technical perspective. But people sitting in a dimly lit restaurant may find that this is exactly what will break the cosy atmosphere and you will not capture the emotion of the scene, as the added light ruins it all.

So the way forward is to find a way to capture the scene with very little light, and as with so many other aspects of photography there is no silver bullet. You have to find the optimal compromise.

What to do

First of all you need to make sure you get as much of the ambient light in the scene into your camera, so the faster your lens is (larger aperture) and the larger the camera sensor is, the better. Just like a big bucket gathers more water when set out on a rainy day than a small bucket, your camera will gather more light the larger the surface to gather it. And here the “size” of the (fast) lens and the size of the sensor is a remedy. But it comes literally with a price, and full frame glass is a lot heavier than say APS-C glass.

Your next friend when there is little light available is time. The longer you can let the shutter stay open, the more light will be gathered obviously. But with time comes two new enemies: camera shake and motion blur. You can use both camera shake / movement and motion blur for artistic purposes, but if not, movement while the shutter is open is not your friend.

Camera shake can be countered with a tripod or maybe just leaning the camera towards something stable. When I am in town at night, I often use lampposts or other stable objects to give some level of stability to the camera. Next, you can invest in a camera (or lens or both) that has image stabilisation. This helps a lot and has made it possible for me to shoot sharp handheld images with shutters open at 1/4th of a second – something that would be completely impossible without stabilisation.

Motion blur is when your subject moves while the shutter is open. It can be hard to avoid when you are shooting fast moving objects at night e.g cars on a highway. One technique is to follow the subject with the lens (panning), so the subject is kept in the same position in the frame and everything else gets blurred. This requires some training, but is great fun when you succeed! If you just want to take pictures of people in a restaurant, keep an eye out for an arm moving or a glass being lifted – maybe that is not the right time to hit the shutter!

Cranking up the ISO is what many do! If not deliberately, then because the camera is in some automated mode where it struggles to find a way out! Shooting at high ISO is often necessary in a low light scene, but be aware that in digital photography the sensor has the sensitivity that it had when it left the factory! When you turn up the ISO value, it is factor applied to the readings of the sensor. You can see this as camera internal post processing being applied. So both signal and noise will be amplified. It is just like an old tired analogue radio with a muffled sound and bad reception of the signal: turning up the volume will not make it sound better, as both music and noise is amplified. So try to limit or cap the use of ISO – I normally do not go beyond ISO 3200, but a “max acceptable level” varies from camera to camera.

Finally, it is not only the exposure that struggles in low light, also your focus system will struggle. You may find that your otherwise super stable and fast (daytime) auto-focus system starts hunting and acting weird. And images out of focus may result. The remedy here is manual focus. Yes, I know, if you rely on auto-focus in your daily work, switching to manual focus is not what you hoped for. But it may be the very thing standing between you and some great low light images. So use all the focus aid systems available in your camera: zooming in in the viewfinder or focus peaking highlights or focus confirmation dots. Take all the help you can get as you take control of the focus.

Next step

I know that photography can be a pain: you were hoping for a quick fix only to learn that photography as per usual is about finding the best compromise. But don’t give up: low light images can be very rewarding and capture a tranquil scene or sentiment that no other type of photography offers. So I hope you will take up the low light challenge – the rewards on the other side is worth it.

What is fill light in photography?

The main character and….

Remember Tom Hanks’ performance as Forest Gump? Outstanding! Remember the supporting actors? Robin Wright as his girlfriend and later his wife? Gary Sinise as his commander and later his friend and best man? Although Tom Hanks clearly steals all the light, the supporting actors are just as important to make a great movie.

Light is a bit the same way. The main light or the key light is of course the starring role. But the fill light is also important to make the leading character shine.

Message from the dark side

Where the light is the brightest, the shadows are the darkest. Wise words that I think are intended to give us hope in troubled times, and not fly too close to the sun either. But it is also very true in photography. When you have lots of light hitting your subject from a specific angle, it will – unless the light source is extremely big like the clouds on an overcast day – give shadows in the opposite direction from where the light originates.

Every time a scene is lit with directional light you will be met with this simple fact: bright areas and dark areas go hand in hand like horse and carriage. This is where fill light comes to the rescue: it is simply light sent from the opposite direction of the main light.

Single light source on a ring. Notice the shadow top right of the ring that reveals the direction of the light.

Mood

When you have a high contrast image with bright brights and dark darks, your viewer may find the image to be a bit unsettling. The fill light can fix this: it reduces the dynamic range so the histogram of the image is more centered than without the fill light. Many focus on the fill lights role to reduce or eliminate shadows, but it actually has a major impact on the expression the image gives – it has a more positive or uplifting vibe. And especially when it comes to portrait photography, this is a key feature.

How to?

The simplest remedy for creating fill light is to place a reflector or just a white plate in the opposite direction of the key light. In the example below you will notice how the shadow top right of the ring has been significantly reduced due to the reflector introduced. Notice that the key light can be daylight coming through a window.

Adding a reflector helps reducing the shadow from the ring, but the challenge with using a reflector is that it can be difficult to control the strength of the light (you can move it closer and further from the subject, but it is not always an option if in a small room).

The challenge with fill light is to find the balance between the fill light and the key light – if the fill light is too strong, it will introduce a new set of shadows which is certainly desirable. To balancing the key and fill light is – well, key!

Adding a second light source helps. You can see the shadow of the ring top right is now gone. The light is so strong that it now causes the ring to reflect in the table, so turning down the volume could yield a better result. My assistant came to the scene and did not allow me to pursue that idea!

If you fill light can be controlled precisely by you, either the strength of a flash or steady light, I find this to be the easiest way to find a good balance between key and fill light. With a reflector or reflecting surface, you may need to experiment with the distance to the subject to find the right balance.

What is pop and blur in photography?

Flash and ambient light combined

When you shoot with a flash, there are two exposures going on at the same time: one originating from the ambient light, the other to the flash firing. The pop in “pop and blur” is the flash firing, and the blur is the shutter being open for sufficiently long time to let in the ambient light. So pop and blur is combining flash and ambient exposure in one and the same image.

Behind the cow here I am waving a stick of light like a pendulum. The long exposure makes it look like a white background. The flash lights up the cow – had it not been for the flash, the cow would have been a black silhouette. EXIF: 0.8 Second at f/22 and ISO 100.

If something in the frame gives off light, like the headlights of a car or a flashlight, any movement made will be captured by the long exposure. This is in stark contrast to objects only being lit up by the flash. It is this combination of things moving and things standing very still that makes pop and blur so fascinating, if you ask me.

Here I am moving a constant light in a circular motion captured by the ambient light. My hand is lit up by the flash and is hence absolutely still despite the movement.

If you let your subject be lit up by both the flash and the ambient light while moving, then you get a “trailing” look – you may have seen photographers use this for catching people dancing as this gives a very sharp image and illustrates the movement at the same time.

If your subject is moving and is hit by both ambient light and the flash light, you get this trailing look – the pop and blur classic!

Your cameras default setting is most likely to activate the flash at the beginning of the exposure – also known as first curtain synchronisation. Most cameras allow that you change this to be flipped upside down, so the camera now fires the flash with second curtains synchronization. This way you can control the order of the flash and blur. With first curtain sync the flash fires at the beginning of the exposure, with second (or rear) curtain synchronization, it fires at the end of the exposure.

What is the guide number (GN) for a flash?

Power

The guide number is an indication of how powerful the flash is, i.e. a high guide number indicates that the flash can illuminate a subject far away when shooting at a closed down f-stop. But you may not need all this power, if your subject is close to the camera (product shoots for example). So there is an element of marketing hype involved in the guide number, a bit similar to the marketing hype related to megapixels.

Back in the days when you were shooting film, the feedback cycle from shooting to seeing the result was pretty long and involved a darkroom and lots of chemicals. Back in those days, it was pretty important to calculate how far away from the camera the subject could be and still be illuminated by the flash firing. And hence the guide number was very much needed. Today, where the feedback is instantly available in the rear screen on the camera, the math involved in setting the flash power is less relevant and has been replaced by simply trial and error. Or automation in terms of TTL.

However, the guide number (often abbreviated GN) gives an indication of how powerful the flash is. Unfortunately the way to measure it differs from vendor to vendor – some shoot at ISO 100, others at ISO 200, some use reflectors, others not, and then it is not comparing apples and apples. And to confuse matters more, some give the guide number based on feet, others on meters, and this gives some significant differences obviously. But within spec sheets from the same vendor, the numbers can be compared. And as such this could be a parameter in your choice of flash, subject to your needs and preferences.

What is flash exposure compensation?

FEC

Flash Exposure Compensation (FEC) is very similar to exposure compensation that you may know already from shooting with ambient light.

When you use a flash, the flash is typically the dominating light source and if you find that the flash light is either too strong or too weak, the remedy is to adjust the light via flash exposure compensation.

Why not set the flash power manually? Indeed, that is an option, but if the lighting conditions change, then the manual settings need to be adjusted accordingly, and that requires a bit of adjustment. If you have the flash exposure compensation engaged and the light conditions change, the automated reading of the light will factor in the change. Just like exposure compensation, FEC pushes the automated reading of the light either above or below the automated reading.

You set the flash exposure compensation in stops of light. My Godox V860iii allow that up to 3.0 stops of light are added or subtracted.

You will typically use FEC when you are not happy with the automated exposure, but don’t want to switch to manual flash power. It can also be that you are happy with the exposure or find that it is just right, but want to make say a high key image where the exposure is deliberately adjusted.

What is a camera’s max flash sync speed?

Get moving

Most cameras have a mechanical shutter consisting of two curtains. One that exposes the sensor and another that covers it (rear curtain).

If you go to a theater and see a show, the first thing you will see is also the last thing to see: the shoes of the actors (provided they are on stage!). That is not so smart in photography, as one end of the sensor would be more exposed than the other. By having two curtains – one that goes up like the curtain in the theater, and another that – in this metaphor – comes up the floor, you are certain all of the sensor gets the same amount of light.

The curtains move fast, but no matter how good technology you apply, it will take a bit of time to move the curtains. When we are talking shutter speeds at 1/8000th of a second for example, it takes – in relative terms – a long time to move the curtain. So to secure that the shutter is fast, the second curtain starts moving before the first curtain has revealed all of the sensor. And the faster the shutter speed, the closer to each other the two curtains will move. At very high speeds the curtains cover most of the sensor at any point of time and only a small crack of light is between them.

The max sync speed is the highest speed at which the camera at some point in time during the exposure reveals all of the sensor. Beyond that, the second curtain starts to move before the first curtain has revealed all of the sensor.

The max sync speed is a vital part of a cameras spec sheet if you want to use it for flash photography. When you go beyond the max sync speed, the flash needs to fire a series of flashes as the two curtains move across the sensor., also known has High Speed Synchronisation (HSS). If you shoot beyond the max sync speed without using HSS, you will get black bars or black areas in the image. The black areas are caused by the curtains on the move. HSS is very taxing on the flash and its battery as the flash has to fire several times in a very short while.

Starters

Basics

Focus modes

Other options

Related reading

Shopping link

Video link

Innovator!

Same but different!

Related reading

Video link

Leading role

Related reading

Video links

Simple or not?

Portrait and landscape

Choosing

The square alternative

Summary

Related reading

Write with light

Signal to noise

What to do

Next step

Related reading

The main character and….

Message from the dark side

Mood

How to?

Related reading

Flash and ambient light combined

Related reading

Power

Related reading

FEC

Related reading

Get moving

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