Shutter Speed and F-Stops: An Informative Post! | Omaha Photographer

I had some questions this week from Kati! She asked:

Hello there! I had a few questions for you!! I was wondering what type of camera you use? Do you shoot on auto or manual mode? When you do shoot do you adjust your shutter speed and f/stops or do you leave all that up to the camera and adjust your photos with photoshop/lightroom? I have a cannon digital camera and want to know if I really need to dive deep into the math of changing your f/stops etc. If you could help me out it would be GREATLY appreciated!!Thank you,
Kati 

Thanks for the post, Kati! I shoot with a Sony a99. It's Sony's most recently released full-frame DSLR.

I shoot in manual because it gives me greater control over the images I'm making. I adjust the settings as I go, determining the settings as I change scenarios. I adjust the f based on how far away from the subject I am, how much of the subject I want in focus, how bright/dim the lighting is. Adjusting the f changes the shutter speed, so I adjust that accordingly. Understanding how the f correlates to the composition, focus, and style of the image is really important. Let me show you a side by side example that I recently shot to help explain.

The photo on the left has a much shallower depth of field, which is due to the wider (lower number) f-stop. The one on the right has a smaller (higher number) f-stop which increased the area of focus. You can see how the change in f changed the shutter speed. There's no way I could have achieved these two results by shooting in auto. I would have pointed the camera at the branch and the camera would have just picked something that it calculated as being correct. By taking those decisions away from the camera, you're allowing yourself to compose the photo how you envision.

Try as I might, I don't nail the exposure in every photo. :) I get as much correct as I can in-camera and then make adjustments in Lightroom. The only time I ever use Photoshop is for portrait editing and some color toning on black and white images. Lightroom allows me to batch edit whole sessions so the process goes much faster.

Thanks for the questions! Keep 'em coming!

Editing and Identity - An Informational Post! | Omaha Wedding Phographer

Photo editing. It is something that I am obsessed with. In love with.

Professional photographers typically shoot in raw file format so they have more leeway with editing. A raw file preserves more information than a JPG and leaves a lot more room for adjustments without losing image quality. (This is also why the answer is usually "No." when clients ask us for rights to the raw files. A raw file is huge and pretty much useless without editing software and lots of time.) There are literally thousands, if not millions, of adjustments that can be made to an image in a program like Lightroom. Each photographer has their own recipes for adjustments that they make. I can't tell you how much time and money I've spent working on editing workflows and buying processing packs from photography businesses. Those tweaks take an image that is "straight out of the camera" (SOOC) and turn it into something with style and identity.

Identity - that's the word right there. Photographers not only rely on the way they shoot, but they way they edit, to create identity in their work. I'll show an example of what I'm talking about because this idea is kind of abstract. The following photo is one that I took. I sent the raw file to Jennie Davis Photography, Niki Manning Photography and Two Creative Photography. I asked each of them to process it the same as they do with their own client sessions. This is what I got back from them, along with my own edit:

 

 

Isn't that kind of crazy? The four of us were shocked when we saw those images lined up together. Even funnier is that I have no idea how they each got their version to look like that. :)

I love, love shooting photos. L-O-V-E. (I love it. Just wanted to emphasize that one more time.) But I GO BONKERS when I get to edit. My brain is definitely wired for puzzles and fixing things - and editing feels like solving puzzles. This is too dark, this is too bright, what was I thinking having her stand next to that yellow wall OMG she looks seasick. HOW DO I FIX THIS!? ...That kind of stuff. It's fun to me. But what's even more fun is seeing an image come alive and go from something sort of flat looking SOOC to something bold and colorful that looks like my brand and identity.

And that brings me to something that photographers go a little madhouse over. Without sounding preachy and mean... We hate it when you apply your own edits to our photos. Editing is a very personal process and we have a very clear vision of what we want our finished product to look like. It's like a little stab in the gut when we see a photo we love changed without our approval. Even something as simple as a black and white edit. That probably seems pretty straightforward, but there are so many ways to edit a black and white photo. Here's the same image from above edited by each of us in black and white.

CRAZY!!! I always thought that my editing was too bright and too red, but after seeing these side-by-side comparisons it's exactly the opposite. Mine are the darkest and the greenest. I feel like I learned so much by doing this! Photographers never get such clear comparisons of their work to their peers.

So, there it is. Just a little insight into why we take so much time and so much care to edit your images juuuuuuust right. I love to talk about photography to people and answer questions. If anyone has questions about anything else photography related, contact me above and maybe I'll start doing a semi-regular informative column on here.