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Tips Q&A

Lesson 11 from: Photography Tips for Everybody

Khara Plicanic

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Lesson Info

11. Tips Q&A

Lesson Info

Tips Q&A

We have some time for questions love questions all right behind all right, there are really let's really good ones this is from art photographer when is the zoom lens better or just a cz good is getting closer to your subject if you have a choice oh well that's a great question ultimately they're going to accomplish the same thing which would be to change the composition so it's actually more close up the difference in one case, the difference would be that if you're using a really long zoom lens, you're going tohave compression so I feel like I just got word just like my nose if you're using a really telephoto really long the ones you're going to be compressing your scene which and if you're shooting with like a wide open aperture, you're going to get a nice blurrier background. So if that's what you're going for if you're shooting, for example a portrait and you want to be able to have a really nice background and compress that scene a lot, then you might want to opt for a longer len...

s and shoot with a bigger zoom then then by physically getting closer because it's just going to change the aesthetic slightly of the actual image, but in some cases you know you can't get closer maybe you are somewhere like I don't know shooting animals photographing animals at the zoo or your at, you know, a show or some event or something, and you you physically can't get closer than obviously gonna have to reach her for a zoom of some sort. You just want to be careful if you are using a point and shoot camera. Um, a lot of point and shoots have optical zoom, and then they have digital zoom, and you want to be careful that you're staying in the optical range, so the way that that works is there's a whole range of zoom. One portion of that would be optical, meaning the cameras actually doing with the optics of the lens and all the like, actually zooming once you get beyond the optical zoom than its digital zoom, which is just what it sounds like it's, like enhanced digitally, which basically means is just enlarged on your camera sensor, so the image is basically, falsely, in large that's not acquired optically by the lens, it just blown up, like in photo shop for something, just enlarge on your sensor, and that would be a low quality choice so that if you've ever zoomed in on something and taking a photo and they thought this looks really pick silly and kind of garbage garbage e that's a highly technical term garbage e, but if you've ever experienced that it's possible that you were in digital zoom, so be careful and a lot of trains on on the point shoots when you get there, you'll see the indicator change colors like if you're zooming, you'll see, you know, like the little trees like little trees are big tree, it'll often times change colors, so you'll know when you sort of past or maybe you feel it. If you stand there and you push a little button or whatever to zoom, you'll hear the camera be like, who? And then it sort of pauses, and then if it keeps going, that second part is the digital zoom and a lot of times in your functions, you can turn it off. So on my little point shoot camera actually turned off the digital looms, so I never had to worry that I was accidentally using it. Great that we have a question right here in the studio with a microphone. Arthur. Thank you. Um, I'm going to go back to where you were talking about, um, uh, pixels per ok. You said we wanted to be between one hundred fifty and three hundred k guidelines. Okay, how does that compare to so many by so many pickle, yes, okay, good question, let me see. Where was that somewhere close? I don't know I was going to try to find it, but maybe I'm just pushing a lot of buttons now, so we'll stop. So how does that compare? Well, that's a great person when we talk about revolution being a pitiful per inch number, we're talking about a physical like print out, so if we're going to print if we're going to print an image that's for my six, for example and we wanted it bliss just for easy math for my sake because math was not my strong suit let's just say that we wanted one hundred pixels per inch and we're gonna print a four by six physical print with one hundred pixels per inch. The image would measure four hundred by six hundred pixels, right? So the those numbers are the same thing, so four hundred by six hundred pixels talks about the pig full dimensions of an image, the length and the width in pixels. If we talk about the physical like print out of that leverage, we would say it's for my six inches at ah hundred pixels per inch does that make sense? So they're the same thing it's just that in one way we're talking about the number of pixels and in the other way we're talking about the physical because those pixels, if we have four hundred by six hundred pixels they might not necessarily be in a four by six print here's where it gets mind work e and if I had a dry erase board, I could drive for you, but I actually have another workshop on this. I didn't teach a whole segment on this exact staying about resolution, so anyone, if you have questions at home that is super great was really fine workshop that was yeah, so the same four hundred by six hundred pixels could be distributed differently. So for example, instead of taking the foreigner by six hundred pixels like the peanut butter or think of it like sand if we have, if I have a pile of sand here let's, just say how much stand I have. I have four hundred by six hundred grains of sand I could take those grains of sand and put them pour them into a four by six, then I'd have one hundred green per inch or I could take the greenest of sand let's, say a pour them into a little wallet size two by three inch okay, same amount of sand smaller area so now instead of only one hundred grains per inch, I'd have two hundred grains fringe right so two inches times two hundred grains would be four hundred grain on one site, three inches by two hundred grains per inch would be six hundred so they're always equal so the four hundred by six hundred pixels just tells you how many pixels you have to work with. Then the other number we talk about the four by six at one hundred pixel fringe that's telling us how we have chosen to distribute the four hundred by six hundred pixels. Right? So in that frame that I was trying to find with the peanut butter, you remember what number that was? Oh, I think it's here, here we're close. We're club here, ok? Yeah. So if this is the peanut butter you have, you only have this much peanut butter, so we could say that this is four hundred by six hundred molecules of peanut butter way. Then we could spread that out on the cracker and maybe this is a four by six and we have one hundred pixels per inch or if we take the same amount of pick pick sold urbina better and we spread it out on a bigger surface like a tortilla or let's say a pizza or something is going to be thinner, so those numbers are always equal. It's just this the four hundred by six hundred tells us how many people we have when we talk about inches we're talking about how it's distributed I hope that it's wonder if you can choose that in the camera the question so in the camera you're basically just choosing how many pixels you want total, you're not saying I wanted to be a four by six ornate by ten or whatever you're saying, I want twenty megapixel there. Ten megapixels and megapixel is just fancy speak for million, so if you take a twenty megapixel image or if your camera that twenty megapixel camera, it means that that camera is capturing twenty approximately twenty million pixels in each photo on those people might be distributed again. I'm making the mass up just because for illustrative purposes, those people might be like five thousand by three thousand pixels. That might be how it's laid out, but then it's up to you how you arrange them when you get it so you can take all those and you can order a four by six print or a sixteen by twenty four poster or whatever. So you're just telling the camera or the cameras telling you how many pixels it's going to capture in that frame? So you generally the rule of thumb is to shoot at the highest pixel capture that your camera will allow because you can always throw away pixels like we did in the other segment where we weighed the little four by six. I threw away a ton of people clad way more than I need it. You can always throw away pixels to come down to a smaller size, but you can't just add, well, you're not supposed to because it doesn't work out too well, but you generally don't want to just add make believe pixels to enlarge your image. So if you if you got into the habit of shooting at a lower revolution on your camera because you thought well, now I can fit ten billion pictures on my memory card. That's not a best practice for a number of reasons one if you lose your memory, carter gets corrupted. Now you've got ten billion photos you lost, right? So that's not good, but the other thing is, those pictures would be more useless because they have so few pixels. You couldn't make an eight by ten print or you couldn't use it in a high resolution composite or something, because you wouldn't have enough pixels. You want to capture as many people as you can in the camera and then you can you have more options of what to do with them later that makes sense from the internet, bring it on great thiss was really interesting, could you? Talk a little bit especially to the newer folks out there about crop censor the question was does it change the way you compose an image that is a good question and yet they could so what is across sensor mean well on some cameras well let me start this thing a full frame dslr is going to be the equivalent of thirty five millimeter film right? So when we are talking about the rectangle I mean we're really talking about rectangles here so geometry basic stuff the rectangle on a full frame camera sensor is longer and narrower then it would be on a crop sensor so it's kind of like if you compare widescreen format on your dvd whatever to like an old tv that was what we call three by four it was almost square right? That sort of crop sensor versus full frame sensor um and so some dslr have a cropped sensor which it doesn't mean the quality's bad or anything all it means is that that sensor is shaped differently essentially it's not is long like a wide screen would be it's more closer to square it's not square but it's closer to square so what does that mean? Well there's actually an advantage to that you could say because it actually boost the performance of your your zoom lenses your lenses so if you have a hundred millimeters the ones for example and you put it on a crop censored camera is going to behave possibly like one hundred fifty or one hundred seventy five or whatever the ratio is it's going to act like more resume than it really is so if you are like a wild life photographer and you want tons of them you might want a cross sensor camera because your zoom lenses will actually be mohr doomed on a cross sensor camera now if you like to shoot wide shots or you shoot like architecture than you probably don't want that crap sensor camera because your wide angle lens will not be so wide on a crop sensor s so there's that to think about it changes your composition I guess in the sense that like on my camera is a full frame uh sensor so if I'm shooting like a wedding for example and I came shooting like the formal portrait you know, like the whole family everybody I'm very aware and familiar with my full frame center so I know when I'm framing my shot that I can't have I mean, I was talked about getting closer and that's good, but if I get too close so let's say I'm shooting like twelve people like a wedding party if I get too close and I have like the bride made or the groomsmen on the ends and they're like right up against the edge of my rectangle andan someone orders an eight by ten I'm going to be screwed because a full friends sensor has what we call it two to three ratio, which means if I shoot a picture on my camera and I order a four by six, the four by six will be exactly what I saw through the lens as far as the rectangle there equal, but if I order an eight by ten it's actually more of a square, they're not obviously it's, not a square, but it's closer to square, so I'd have to crop in. So just if you if you've ever experienced this, you know exactly what I'm talking about. So in those group photos, if I wasn't careful and aware that I was shooting a full frame center and that my my viewing rectangle is longer, um, I'd be in big trouble if I filled the frame completely. So how do I deal with that? I just know in my head I'm shooting a full frame sensor, so when I'm taking a big group portrait, I I have to actually back up just a little. So I've got room on the side blank space on the sides because if someone orders an eight by ten that's going to get cut off and I wanted to be blank, so I'm not cutting off like somebody's brother or, you know, uncle or something, so you just have been no what the shape of your sensor is, is it full frame? Is it cropped on dh then you just keep that in mind? Um if it was cropped, then you'd be ending up if it was croft and you wanted to order a four by six, then you'd be ending up trimming the top in the bottom, which is going to be probably less problematic, but you'll figure this stuff out when you, when you're shooting and reviewing your stuff and you're trying different crops, you know, and don't be intimidated, it sounds really confusing and no, and I wish there was a way to, like, make the math easier to just but just think of it really is rectangles and there's, different shapes of rectangles, some are longer and skinnier, some are whiter and almost more square, so in our world we have things like three by five four by six is five by ten eleven by fourteen sixteen twenties on dh they're all different well, sixteen by twenty of the same is eight by ten, but the rest are all different what we call aspect ratios so the length toe with relationship is different and it really just takes practice I mean, I can tell you about it and without having prepared graphics it's very hard for me that illustrated for you with only my hands, but I can tell you all about it and you came like kind of get the maybe the idea behind it but really the best way is to shoot something and then go and photo shop and crop it and see oh, I'm screwed if I try to crop this indio four by six or an eight by ten or whatever I don't I don't have the room in the composition and you know or if you worked with squares that's the same thing like I shoot everything square on my phone because I got so used to instagram making you do that and then I realized, oh, now I really if I want to frame this and I don't have a square frame, I'm gonna have to crop my square image into a rectangle, right and whatever science shaped rectangle that's going to be, but I have to crop it and that might or might not destroy my composition I mean maybe it's fine, but if I really composed it to be a square, it may look really dumb as a rectangle depending what I shot so it's the same concept that was a long answer, right? Okay, I'm going to make sure I get to your time and money okay, well one last question before we go to our lunch break and it's a it's a two parter one is how can folks find you after the fact you have social if you could bring that side up and then also how did you initially get into photography on dh? What final words of wisdom would you have for folks of how to sort of get to where you are? What's what's a sort of a big picture takeaway? Oh that's great. Okay, so yes find me on social here I'm everywhere I'm at cape pushing it so instagram, facebook whenever twitter I'm always k put it, I think pretty much youtube well, youtube, I think I'm a care a pledge in it, but you know you'll find um how did I get here so much? Just trial and error and not being afraid to suck really? But I started with film, so I have my own darkroom, actually. And actually I brought it to college with me. I had it in my dorm room, if you can imagine, um and yeah, I just it was a lot of trial and error, and in the beginning I will say I was really caught up in fads that was what drew actually, what drove me was those old, you know, when it was the thing to have the black and white selective color, but I was old school, I will say, I'm going to do it by hand so pre photo shop I was shooting film developing in myself in a dark room, and then I was actually hand coloring it with these oil paints and all of that and was kind of fun but really messy and I knew there was a better way and that's actually what led me to photo and then I must never left but I was a voracious reader that was pre creative live back in those days, it's been like almost going on twenty years ish and we didn't have creative life. One of the most helpful book I ever bought was an outdated book for whatever version of photo shop I had back then they would like finish up four five um I bought some terrible book. It was actually quite terrible. Well, the cover design is terrible. I bought it used online for like eight dollars. It was this thick is over a thousand pages. It was terrible, it was printed on terrible, like newsprint. It was like the worst book is turned the print, but I read it cover to cover and I did all the examples in it and I not only just follow the examples, but I did them over and over again until I understood what I was doing and why I was doing it and why it was having the effect it was having so you know, when you follow a tutorial or whatever it's, easy to just be like those step five, click here, do this and that's great, but you want to it's the point where you're like, ok, why am I doing this? And what happens if I did it this way instead? And then you can really like, piece it all together? Andi, I thought that was a very fun process. I mean, it was a long it was a long, messy road. I think now that learning her would be much a sharper and quicker because of creative live and all these great resource is, but the process is still the same, and I think you just have to be determined you have to not be afraid, tio suck and and make horrible, ugly, messy, embarrassing I mean, so many embarrassing work, like, embarrassing, but I just kept going, and I just really I fought through it to get to a point where I really understood it, and now I get to help explain it to everyone else and it's just tremendously fun. So I just encourage people that to stick with it, you know? As long as you're still loving it, stick with it, and don't be afraid to suck great, perfect final or be afraid.

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