Exporting metadata from Lightroom

For further photography-related information check out my tips for photographers.

I used to publish a selection of photos from every wedding with associated EXIF data but had to give up as I was doing it manually and it took ages. I subsequently received many e-mails from people asking if I could reinstate this feature so have been looking at a more efficient way of doing it.

I quickly found a method for doing most of what I wanted to do with Apple's Aperture. Using the wonderful Automator software that comes with the MacOS it's easy to extract some of the metadata from shots in Aperture's database. However, this doesn't include the lens used to take the shot nor the flash exposure compensation - even though this data is accessible in Aperture under extended metadata. Shutter speed also comes out as a decimal so I had to export it to Excel to convert it. Not very slick.

I really wanted a method that works with Lightroom, my software of choice, but couldn't find anything. I therefore contacted Jeffrey Friedl, whose Export to Facebook plug-in I use, to see if he knew of anything. He pointed me in the direction of The Photographer's Toolbox which features plug-ins written by Timothy Armes and includes LR/Transporter which is exactly what I required.

It only took a couple of minutes to set-up and get the output looking like this:

1/1250, f/1.6, ISO 200, ‒ ²⁄₃ EV, Did not fire, 85 mm, EF85mm f/1.2L II USM

Unfortunately there's a small gremlin currently corrupting the exposure compensation data (it should read -2/3 above). I've contacted Timothy and am waiting for a response.

The only data I get regarding flash is did fire/did not fire as Lightroom is unable to extract flash exposure compensation. Please add this feature Adobe!

So at the moment some manual input is still required but it's a lot quicker than it used to be. As a result, I'm steadily working my way back through blog posts and adding EXIF data and some shot analysis.

I've already received lots of positive feedback on this so I'll continue!

My website: Wedding Photographers in Kent

Adobe Lightroom 3 beta

Just to let my fellow Lightroom aficionados know that the beta version of Lightroom 3 is available for download. There are some nice new features, of which you'll be able to find plenty of details elsewhere, but I was most interested in performance. On the basis of my scientifically-robust performance-measuring methodology (stopclock in one hand whilst moving between images in Lightroom with the other) I'm pleased to announce that there seems to be a further improvement with this latest version.

My website: Kent wedding photographers

Weddings at Leeds Castle

The above two shots were taken a minute apart on Saturday at Leeds Castle. The first uses purely ambient light and lacks drama - details in the sky have been lost and the subjects' faces are poorly lit. I therefore decided to liven things up with a bit of off-camera flash.

I asked the chauffeur of the Rolls Royce to hold a 580EX II Speedlite fitted with a Lastolite micro Apollo. This was set to slave mode and then triggered with an ST-E2 transmitter. The flash head was rotated so that the light could be directed at the couple and the wireless sensor at the transmitter.

Ambient light was underexposed by 2 stops and flash exposure compensation of -2/3 stop was used.

My website: Kent wedding photographers

Wedding lenses

My website: Wedding Photographers in Kent

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I first posted on my lens usage at weddings about a year ago so thought it was time for an update. I now take only four lenses with me to weddings in a Lowepro Fastpack 350 rucksack. Two primes - the 35mm f/1.4 L and 85mm f/1.2 L - and two zooms - the 16-35mm f/2.8 L and 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS.

I've analysed my last 10 weddings in Adobe Lightroom. The table below indicates the percentage of shots taken with each lens.

If I could only take one lens with me to a wedding it would be the 35mm f/1.4. The optical quality is stunning, it's incredibly fast, allowing me to work with very little natural light, and it delivers shallow DOF with beautiful bokeh. Plus the AF never seems to miss. The 16-35mm f/2.8 is my second most frequently used lens. The 85mm and 70-200mm lenses require a bit more space for effective use and are therefore more venue-dependent.

It's fairly clear that I love shooting wide. I like to see people in their environments. To do this in a typically compact UK wedding venue often requires the use of a wide angle lens (and by this I mean less that 24mm). The reason for this is that field of view (measured in degrees) for a rectilinear lens drops off rapidly with focal length: FOV = 2arctan(x/2f), where x is the diagonal of the sensor in mm and f is the focal length in mm. Thus 16mm gives a FOV of 107 degrees, 17mm gives 103.5, 24mm gives 84, 35mm gives 63, 50mm gives 47, 70mm gives 34, 85mm gives 29 and 200mm gives 12. Even the difference between 16 and 17mm is visually striking.

The downside with the 16-35mm lens is perspective distortion, but a touch of vignetting can reduce this distraction.

My website: Kent wedding photographers

Snow Leopard and Adobe Lightroom

My website: Wedding Photographers in Kent

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I've just installed Snow Leopard on my Mac Pro. Apparently, it optimises multicore performance and so I was optimistically hoping for an improvement in the performance of Adobe Lightroom. My initial impression is that there might just be a slight improvement - though it could be wishful thinking clouding my judgement! Canon EOS 5D Mark II RAW files seem to take no more that 4 seconds to load in to the develop module as opposed to an occasional previous wait of 6 seconds.

Please share your experiences. The performance of Adobe Lightroom is still my bete noire!

My website: Kent wedding photographers

A corrupt Lightroom catalogue

My website: Wedding Photographers in Kent

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I was just finishing off the post-processing for Saturday's wedding this morning when we had a very brief power cut. I restarted the computer and relaunched Lightroom to be greeted by:

Lightroom encountered an error and needs to quit. There was a problem reading one of the Lightroom catalogues.

Aaaarghh!!!

I experienced a brief moment of optimism when Lightroom offered to repair the catalogue but, alas, the operation was unsuccessful. It then instructed me to use a recent back-up copy. I'm reasonably conscientious at keeping my catalogues backed-up but the most recent version was from Saturday morning, and therefore did not contain Sunday's post-processing efforts.

After 30 mins of tinkering, and elevated blood pressure, I managed to recover my work. I created a new catalogue, used 'Import from catalogue', chose the corrupted catalogue and then selected the folder containing Saturday's wedding. The photos were imported together with the sidecar file containing the Lightroom edits. I got an error message when I reached the photo I'd been editing when the power cut occurred, but on restarting Lightroom all the edited photos were present. What a relief! I then imported the remaining unedited wedding photos into the catalogue.

The power supply in Sandwich is a little flaky - we've had about 10 cut-outs in the three years we've lived here, but this is the first time it's impacted on my work. And hopefully the last. Immediately after I'd resolved my Lightroom issue I went to the online Apple store and bought myself an uninterruptible power supply - an iDowell iPack UPS 1000VA. It provides power for about 15 mins in the event of a power cut and fully integrates with the Mac's built-in power management software. This means that the computer can be instructed to shut down when the unit's battery power reaches a certain level - critical if I'm not present when the power cut occurs!

My website: Kent wedding photographers

FTP publishing issues with Blogger

My website: Wedding Photographers in Kent

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For those of you who publish your blog to your own domain using FTP, rather than being hosted by Blogger, you've probably encountered problems uploading images from time to time. Apparently this is due to communication issues between the webhost servers and Blogger. The images do end up on your server but the information required by Blogger to generate the html code is not returned.

One solution is to publish to a custom domain using Blogger but this has to be to a home directory rather than a subdirectory, which is probably what most of us use, eg www.davidfenwick.co.uk/blog

It's been so bad this week that I've been publishing my photos manually. Here's the procedure I came up with:

1. Uploaded images are stored on your server at blog - uploaded_images. Select a unique image name for your new images.

2. Export photos from Lightroom with your Custom Name - Sequence specified and resized to fit 400 x 400 pixels.

3. Paste the following HTML code into your post for each image. You need to specify the domain name, image name and pixel dimensions for each image (shown in bold). Blogger normally generates two jpeg files for each image - one for displaying in the post (resized to within 400 x 400) and one with the original pixel dimensions for displaying if you click on the image within the post. Since our image has already been sized correctly we can use a single jpeg file.

<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.domainname.co.uk/blog/uploaded_images/ imagename.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 278px;" src="http://www.domainname.co.uk/blog/ uploaded_images/imagename.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>

It doesn't take too long to do this, though it's obviously not ideal, but it does avoid the irritation of seeing the 'Your file upload is taking longer than expected' error message!

My website: Kent wedding photographers

Depth of field calculator

My website: Wedding Photographers in Kent

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A nice little widget for calculating depth of field from Canon. I know there are plenty of these around but I thought this one was particularly well done.

My website: Kent wedding photographers

Minimum focusing distances

My website: Wedding Photographers in Kent

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Part II of Stephen's question today (in italics). My responses are in plain text.

My brother and I were trying to take a photo of a passion flower in the garden, he with his Nikon D3 with 24-70mm f/2.8 and me with my Canon 5D MkII. Now I had perhaps argued incorrectly that I could get a sharper shot with my 85mm f/1.2 L II than he could with his zoom but his shots were better and I'm prepared to be corrected on the technical reasons as to why.

Lots of factors affect sharpness. The 85mm counts against you since you'll need a faster shutter speed to counter camera shake (at least 1/focal length). Also the minimum focusing distance of the 85mm lens is 0.95m which means the flower will occupy a smaller amount of the sensor compared to the 24mm lens which can focus much closer to the subject (the Canon version of this lens can be focused only 38cm from a subject). When you expand it to be the same size in both shots your image quality will suffer (though as you point out, the 5D Mark II is higher resolution than the D3 so this complicates matters). For a given aperture your image will have lower depth of field at 85mm compared to 24mm because of increased magnification.

See my blog post on factors affecting depth of field.

I wanted to get the whole flower in focus therefore I figured I needed a DOF of 40mm, so by using the handy iPhone App 'Simple DOF' I dialled in 85mm lens, 1.5m focus distance and then increased the f/stop until it told me I had a DOF of about 40mm. Sounds straightforward to me but in practise the shots were disappointing.

You may know that the DOF is 40mm but you need to know exactly where to focus. DOF extends in front of, and behind, the focal point but it changes with focal length! Also the DOF calculation is only a guide. You've not given yourself any margin for error.

My brother then questioned why I was using my 85mm stopped down to f/2, when I could have just used another of my lenses at f/2.8 and perhaps got the same shot.

I would have the lens stopped down to at least f/8 for a shot like this (to ensure sufficient depth of field and good sharpness) and had the camera on a tripod for real image crispness. f/8 - 11 is the sweet aperture range for most lenses (above this the image deteriorates due to diffraction).

So, a quick visit to my local camera store and they suggested some interesting explanations to me:

1) "perhaps your 85mm lens is back-focusing, as most Canon lenses do, you should calibrate it using the micro-focus adjustment procedure." - One to investigate perhaps.

Microadjustment is worth doing with the 5D Mk II (since resolution is so high and the differences are visible) but is unlikely to be responsible in this situation.

2) "when using a shallow DOF at such a close focus distance the diameter of focus is very small, what you should have done was stop down to f/8 at least." - This one really surprised me, I have always thought about the settings required to get the DOF (i.e. 40mm in example above) but never thought that I needed to think about how the diameter of the focus area is affected.

I assume they're referring to the fact that the DOF will be shallow at wide apertures - see earlier.

3) "why did you use your 85mm lens when the minimum focusing point of your other lenses is shorter, therefore making it easier to get the shot?" - this one annoyed me after spending near £2k for a prime lens I thought I'd use it as I had expected it to be sharper.

I agree! The 85mm f/1.2 L lens is probably the best portrait lens in the world (and a favourite of mine, along with the 35mm f/1.4 L) and it's therefore designed for taking shots of head-sized objects! If I were doing the flower shot I'd have reached for my 100mm f/2.8 macro lens first of all, followed by my 24-70mm f/2.8 L (which can serve as a substitute for a macro lens since its minimum focusing distance is only 38cm).

Hope this helps.

All the best,

David

My website: Kent wedding photographers

On aperture

My website: Wedding Photographers in Kent

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Part 1 of a question from Stephen today.

Hi David,

I'm a regular reader of your blog - which is fantastic BTW - and had a discussion over the weekend on various photographic matters. I thought you would be the perfect person to enlighten me and perhaps a blog post might come of it?

Firstly lets take the subject of lens aperture. If you take a 24-70mm f/2.8 L lens and set it to 70mm at f/8, would that be the same size aperture, and therefore capture the same amount of light as a 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS USM set at 70mm at f/8? Now when I thought about it I did wonder whether manufacturers had a 'standard' aperture size to conform to thereby making any lens set at f/8 equal?

Thanks in anticipation,

Stephen

Hi Stephen,

Thanks for the feedback.

Aperture is a unitless measure (rather than a size) - it's the focal length of the lens divided by the diameter of the diaphragm. It correlates with light-gathering ability.

As you change the focal length on your zoom lens, the diaphragm has to change to maintain a constant aperture. Not all lenses do this equally well though - L-series Canon lenses vary by only 1/3 of a stop over the focal length range which is pretty good.

f/8 at 70mm on both 24-70 lens and 70-200mm lenses means they will have the same diaphragm diameter. They won't be letting in precisely the same amount of light however. It will be close but lenses vary in their ability to transmit light - it depends upon the number of elements within the lens, the albedos of the materials used and probably lots of other factors too.

Yours,

David

My website: Kent wedding photographers

One lens to do one job really well!

For further photography-related information check out my compendium of tips.

I had a great question from a reader yesterday.

Hi David,

I hope you don’t mind me emailing you out of the blue, I always enjoy reading your blog and thought I would push my luck with the following question. Anyway, I have an interesting event coming up and if you can spare the time I would really appreciate any thoughts you may care to offer as you are without doubt the most qualified person I can think of on the matter!

My brother Rob is getting married next April and I'm hoping to get some nice pictures. I should stress that I’m only a keen amateur. I will be using a Canon 450D which has a cropped sensor, the lenses I have at present are the Canon 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 and Tamron 70-300mm f4.5-4.6 (this may change to Nikon kit in due course but the principle of the question doesn't really change).

I know that there is nothing especially poor with my lenses, however I’m thinking that as it’s going to be such a special day I might hire a top-notch lens to firstly increase my enjoyment of the day and secondly to hopefully obtain some better pictures!

My thoughts are that I would only wish to carry the camera with lens attached as I don’t want the hassle of changing lenses nor do I fancy spending the whole day with the unused lens in my pocket or carrying a separate bag with it inside. Just a camera and lens seems right. I’m guessing at this stage your bracing yourself for the inevitable 'which lens to take' question however there is a bit of a twist! ….

I'm probably going to be concentrating on taking candid portraits and especially so of my 3 year old nephew and so I’m not interested in taking pictures of the same thing that everybody else captures. Things like the the wedding vows, speeches, aisle walk etc are not important as they will be well documented by others, plus it’s my brothers wedding and I want to watch the important bits with my eyes and not through a lens!

I’d rather come home with only a few pictures that stood out rather than 100s of pictures of the usual quality. Question is how do I achieve it!! Obviously an f2.8L zoom would seem to fit the bill for a great all rounder but I’m thinking one step ahead of that (or at least I think I am!). I'd rather have a lens that absolutely excelled at one particular type of picture than having a jack of all trades, master of none type lens and so I’m thinking of specialising in portraits with good bokeh on the basis that nobody else apart from the professional will have an f1.2 lens in their bag to achieve it and he she wont be pointing hers where I’m pointing mine. Therefore my plan should result in me producing portraits with unique characteristics, i.e. bokeh.

I think my plan a good one, at least in theory!!!

My thoughts are that the following lenses would fit the bill:

50mm f1.2L USM (80mm on cropped sensor)
(small, compact, light, inconspicuous, great for leaving camera with other people for moments I can’t hold it and comfortable when the camera is around my neck).

Or

85mm f1.2L II USM (136mm on cropped sensor)

I know that you must get hundreds of which lens questions but I really have tried to work it out myself, I’m just stuck on the last bit and interested on whether you think an amateur (and the AF) could handle an f1.4 with a 50mph kid or would I be better off with an f2.8 zoom.

Any thoughts you might have on a lens choice would be very much appreciated and obviously I appreciate that you are a busy man so there is absolutely no rush for any response you may care to give.

Best regards

Andy

Hi Andy,

Many thanks for your positive feedback.

I love receiving questions - particularly when they're as well-thought out and eloquently written as yours is.

I think your analysis is absolutely spot on. One lens to do one job really well.

However, rather than hiring a 50mm f/1.2 I would suggest you buy a 50mm f/1.8 - they're about £80 at the moment.

It's not an L-series lens but the optical quality is absolutely stunning. In terms of value-for-money it's Canon's best lens. You'll be able to have a good go with it before the wedding - shooting at wide aperture close-up to a subject requires a bit of practice - and you'll be able to enjoy it after the wedding too. You may need to start using focusing points other than the centre - focus-recompose can leave your subject out of focus.

Keep me posted with what you do.

All the best,

David

Any other suggestions for Andy?

My main website: Kent wedding photographers

Flash photography - The Hot Shoe Diaries

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I've just finished reading The Hot Shoe Diaries by Joe McNally and highly recommend it to those who love lighting with flash. It's written in a very casual, chummy style (in a similar vein to Scott Kelby's books) which I found a little grating at times, but it's packed full of useful information, with plenty of case studies and detailed notes on set-ups. Joe comes across as a very likeable, down-to-earth chap.

He has a no-nonsense approach to shooting: aperture priority with evaluative metering, letting the camera get him into the correct ballpark for exposure and then using exposure compensation to adjust; using TTL metering for flash and then flash exposure compensation as required. Those who regularly read my blog will know that that's exactly how I like to shoot.

One last observation. As I always suspected, but never liked to explore in too much detail, Nikon's creative lighting system (CLS) seems to have a real edge over Canon's system. One feature I would love to have with my Canon set-up is a single button to be able to disable flash for a shot, as opposed to having to turn the flash unit off - simple but incredibly practical. If there is a way to do this, please feel free to enlighten me!

Check out my main website: photographer in Kent

Wedding Photography - exposure values

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Continuing on from yesterday's post.

Thanks for that detail David. So just to clarify - you did not use flash in that shot? I'm not too clear on what the thinking is with point 1 in your reply. I'm keen to know at what point you decide to turn off your flash outdoors. For example, in your full length portraits of the couple (over 100mm focal) would there be any point using flash on a bright day? I'm guessing the shutter speed would always be above the flash sync, so would even FEC +2 give enough power to make a difference?

Thank you, Neil

David, was there a reason you went with f/8 for this shot? With the crowd in a level line you could have gone wider right? Underexposing for ambient is difficult in daylight as the shutter speeds become so high, the Speedlite HAS to work in high-speed sync mode, reducing its range a lot - I think about 7ft is your limit. David what do you think?

Peter

Hi chaps,

Thanks for the comments. I'll address them one by one:

1. No flash was used with any of the group shots.

2. To address point 1 in my original reply let's look at some hard exposure figures (also check out my post on exposure values for some background info). To expose correctly for faces in the group shot (the subject) required 1/125, f/8.0, ISO 100 (we'll ignore the exposure compensation tweak) - this equates to an exposure value of 13. If I had wanted to expose correctly for the sky (the background) the exposure would have been in the region of 1/4000, f/8.0, ISO 100 - an EV of 18 and a 5-stop smaller exposure than that required for the group shot. If I'd wanted a bit of drama I would have needed to underexpose in addition. If I did so by a further 2 stops (ie 1/8000, f/11, ISO 100) the subject matter would now be 7-stops underexposed - and I'd have to make up this difference with my Speedlites! This is a huge amount of light which is beyond their capabilities. Their output is further limited under these conditions since the X-sync speed on my camera is 1/250 so we'd have to set the Speedlites to high-speed sync (FP) mode which reduces power output to about 1/3. Also the smaller the aperture of your lens the harder the flash unit has to work - and we're at f/11!

3. Using flash outdoors is a judgement call based upon the factors I mentioned in the original post - primarily the exposure balancing required and the subject area that needs to be lit (both of these determine the amount of power output required).

4. I probably could have used flash with the couple shots to just add a 'kiss of light' - I was shooting at f/2.8. Speedlites have a Fresnel lens for focusing light (up to a focal length of 105mm on my 580EX IIs). Having said this, I would probably have taken the flash off-camera though and had someone holding a Speedlite just out of frame and directing the light for me.

5. Flash units are quickly overwhelmed outdoors!

On to Peter's comments:

6. f/8.0 - f/11 is generally the sharpest aperture of a lens. If I can, I try and shoot groups at this aperture as well as the crowd-pleasing wider apertures!

7. High-speed (FP) sync mode reduces output to about 1/3. Range will depend upon the aperture you're shooting at but it probably won't be far from the figure you suggest.

Hope this helps! All the best, David

My main website: Kent photographer

Wedding photography - sunny days

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Sunny days without a cloud in the sky (particularly when the sun is low and there's no shade available) create demanding conditions to shoot in - check out the original post regarding the placement of the sun in the above shot. It prompted a few questions.

Hi David,

Did you also use flash when shooting into the light in this shot? Couldn't you underexpose the ambient to bring out the sky and flash light the group for more drama?

Ta, Neil

Hi Neil,

Many thanks for your comment. I should have addressed this issue in my initial post.

As you rightly point out, underexposing for ambient light and then lighting the subject with flash is a great way to add drama to a shot.
The factors to consider when doing this are:

1. The difference in exposure between the subject and the background.

2. The subject area that needs to be lit.

3. The number of shots that need to be taken in this situation.

In my example above, all of these factors were against me applying this technique.With the sun at full tilt mid-afternoon there was at least a 5-stop difference between the sky and the faces of the guests and I had to take lots of large group shots. Lighting wedding groups evenly under these conditions is beyond the three Canon 580EX II Speedlites I have in my bag! To have a few shots without the sky being blown out (there were no clouds but the sky was a lovely blue away from the sun) I shot a few groups with sidelighting. A blue sky is a more manageable middle-grey tone. I hope this all makes sense. Feel free to post further comments.

All the best, David

My main website: wedding photographer in Kent

Wedding photography - exposure technique

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Another question:

Hi David,

What's the best way to expose faces in bright sunshine when shooting towards the sun? It's really hard to judge on the LCD screen (shooting wide angle full length portrait for example). Would you suggest spot metering is the way to go? How do you manage blinking highlights and histogram information in this scenario?

Thank you

Tim

Hi Tim,

I'm not suggesting that what follows is the 'best' way, it's just 'my' way. It doesn't matter how you expose your shots as long as it's accurate, reliable and efficient.

I have to say I never spot meter at weddings - too time consuming and easy to get wrong in a high pressure situation. I prefer exposure compensation and do it on 'instinct'. I certainly wouldn't claim that all of my shots are perfectly exposed but I haven't lost a shot due to an exposure error for over a year.

I quickly judge if the scene is lighter or darker than middle grey, or is backlit as in the scenario you mention, and then compensate accordingly. This happens in an instance - I'm unconciously competent at this now. But occasionally I might underexpose if I want to guard highlight details or overexpose if I want more detail in the shadow regions.

I don't have a formula that I follow - it's on a shot-by-shot basis. I may have a quick glance at the LCD screen after an occasional shot (the 5D Mk II produces high resolution thumbnails which are pretty accurate) but I rarely check the histogram. Again, due to time considerations.

This is probably not much use to you but it is honest!

All the best,

David

My main website: Kent wedding photographer

Wedding photography - the confetti shot

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Another question:

Hey David,

Looking at your galleries, I can't see any pics of the bride exiting the church and the confetti shower etc. I'm interested to know your tips for photographing this sequence, does autofocus have difficulty with all that stuff flying around. Do you switch to AI Servo mode? Do you walk backwards while using single shot?

Thank you

Tim

Hi Tim,

I always take a shot of the bride and groom walking down the aisle after the ceremony. I generally use my 16-35mm f/2.8 L lens in one-shot mode (occasionally AI servo), shoot at f/4 with a kiss of flash, and keep the shutter speed above 1/100 by adjusting the ISO speed, whilst walking backwards! I've not had problems with autofocus in these situations. If the church is really dark the AF-assist beam of the 580EX II will kick in.

At many civil venues, couples don't actually exit the building but move to another room for drinks. So there's no opportunity for the pose outside the building and they obviously don't bother with confetti!

With church ceremonies I take a shot of the couple exiting the church and will post it online if the venue is photogenic - a surprising number of churches seem to be in a permanent state of scaffolding. Bear in mind also that I only post 20% of shots.

Even with church ceremonies the confetti shot only occurs at about 30% of weddings. I've included an example from Louise and Adam's wedding last year, which was a traditional church affair.

All the best,

David

My main website: Kent photographer

Wedding Photography - In the church

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More recent questions:

Hi David,

I'm interested in how you approach lens changes at a wedding. What sort of strategy do you have for each lens usage? How do you handle church weddings where you are not permitted to move around - stick with the 24-70?

Thanks!

Robert

Hi Robert,

I change lenses a lot. I have a Lowepro rucksack loaded with all my lenses on me at all times. Even if the vicar is very strict this allows me to discreetly changes lenses without problem. During the ceremony I use the 16-35 f/2.8 as the bride and her father enter, then switch to the 85 f/1.2 and 35 f/1.4 for the exchange of vows, the 35 f/1.4 for the signing of the register and then back to the 16-35 f/2.8 for the exit. Being familiar with the ceremony procedure means you're not changing lenses at key moments.

Hope this helps.

Yours,

David

Hi David,

Yes that's very helpful. Many thanks. This is a really good blog btw. What is your cue for making it to the exit in time if the vicar doesn't like you to move? Would it be okay to take flash shots before the ceremony starts generally? I'm shooting my first church wedding in a few months - and I've got a stern vicar to deal with. Any other tips appreciated!

Robert

Hi Robert,

Thanks for your positive feedback. The vicar ought to invite you to photograph the signing of the register. Shortly after this will be the exit from the church. Try and establish the ground rules for photography with the vicar before the wedding. There ought to be no problem with using flash before the ceremony but, unfortunately, it's impossible to generalise about what's acceptable. See previous posts on the behaviour of vicars!

Good luck!

Yours,

David

My main website: Kent photographer

Canon EG-S focusing screen

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Another recent question:

Hi David,

Like you I enjoy using fast apertures for portraits. I am considering the EG-S focusing screen so I can see the DOF in the viewfinder. I understand you've used one on your old 5D (I think you mentioned it in another post). My question is as these are designed for lenses F2.8 or faster - does stopping one of these lenses down give you the darker image problem you would have if you used a default F4 or slower lens? Or does a darker image only apply if your lens is default F4 or above?

Thank you!

Ricko

Hi Ricko,

The EG-S focusing screen is only designed to help you with manual focus. It makes it easier to see when a subject is properly focused. It won't give you any benefit in visualising DOF. To do this you'll still need to press the DOF preview button adjacent to the lens release button on the front of the camera.

When you look through the viewfinder the lens is always set to its widest aperture to allow the maximum amount of light in. It only stops down to the aperture you've selected for your exposure when you fully depress the shutter release button. Hence the reason that a DOF preview button is available (though I have to say I don't find it very useful).

The EG-S screen will transmit less light, hence it's recommended that you only use it with a lens with an aperture of f/2.8 or below. For slower lenses the viewfinder may be unacceptably dark.

Yours,

David

My main website: Kent wedding photographers

Wedding Photography - Glasses and Flash

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Another recent question. This refers to the post entitled Photography at The Salutation, Sandwich.

Hi David, Second picture down in this post - I can see you used flash. How did you avoid the reflection in the groom's specs?

Thank you!

Ricko

Hi Ricko,

That's a good question. I typically ask glasses-wearers to lean their heads forward by a degree or two to reflect the flash light downwards. Sometimes a little trial-and-error is required but you can generally get a shot without a reflection.
All the best,

David

My photography website: Kent Wedding Photographer

Lightroom and the Canon EOS 5D Mark II

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I received the following question today.

Hi David,

I just discovered your blog and was especially interested in your post "Lightroom vs Aperture with 5D Mark II RAW files". I'm a big fan of Lightroom and a new owner of a Canon 5D MkII. However, I'm a little bit disappointed. Although I have the latest version of Lightroom (2.3) and Camera Raw (5.3) and always shoot in RAW (usually sRAW1, 10MB), my pictures are always too contrasty and I frequently lose information in the shadow/dark areas, getting only a black surface.

Do you have any idea what might be the problem? How do you personally capture and process your images?

Congratulations on your blog. It's a real pleasure and inspiration to look at your pictures. Thanks for your help.

Regards,

Olivier

Hi Olivier,

Thanks for your kind words.

I've not shot in sRAW 1 and so am not aware if there are any particular limitations with this format. I'd be surprised if it were different to the 5D Mark II's standard RAW format but life is full of surprises! I've not yet encountered any problems with recovering detail from shadow areas whilst shooting the standard RAW format on the 5D Mark II.

I think you need to do a few photographic experiments.

Put your camera on a tripod and shoot a scene in both RAW and sRAW 1 with -1, 0 & +1 stops of exposure compensation. Process the six shots using Lightroom and also Canon's DPP software. Comparing your results you might be able to answer some, or all, of the following questions.

Is there a difference between RAW and sRAW 1?
Is there a difference between Lightroom and DPP?
Is the camera underexposing with the lens you're using?
Which settings give the best results?

I'd love to know how you get on.

All the best,

David

Any other suggestions or comments?

My main photography website: Kent Photographer

Strong sunlight with no shade

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Whilst taking Chloe and Aidan's wedding group shots in Herne Bay's Memorial Park last Saturday, the weather was transformed from that of a gloomy winter's to a glorious summer's day in the space of 5 minutes as the sun burnt off all the cloud cover. My soft lighting was replaced by intense, high contrast lighting and there was no shade in sight.

What can you do in this situation?

Well, you should certainly try and avoid that old adage about 'keeping the sun behind you'. This will direct the sun into your subjects' faces, often causing them to squint, and can easily cast shadows under their brows (causing 'panda eyes') and noses - not very attractive. Even if you get away with this, the lighting can often look flat.

Try putting the light behind your subjects, as in the shot above. You may need to exposure compensate depending upon the tonal distribution of the shot. Expect to see the sky being burnt out though - don't worry about an unhealthy-looking histogram, we're only interested in detail in the subjects' faces.

Here's a close-up of Chloe and Aidan - no squinting, no shadows on their faces. The rim-lighting (and shadows in front of the group) also add depth to the shot.

Two more examples of shots taken under these conditions - strong, high contrast lighting with no shade.

One caveat - if the sun really is directly above you (most likely at midday in mid-summer in the UK) then you won't be able to avoid shadows on your subjects' faces. Open shade will have to be sought under these circumstances.

Side-lighting can also add depth to a shot. You just need to decide if the shadows created are too great a distraction for your purposes.

Check out my main photography website: David Fenwick Photography

Wedding photographers love Curves

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And if you're a digital photographer so should you, since it gives you complete control over the contrast in your images.

Here's a shot of my chum Jack, taken last week, with the corresponding 'Curves' dialogue box in Photoshop. In light grey within the graph is the RGB histogram. To make it simpler to understand what curves can do, let's discard the colour information from the shot by converting it to greyscale.

The horizontal (X) axis runs from 0 (black) to 255 (white), encompassing all shades of grey. It corresponds to the 256 tones being input into the 'Curves' process. The histogram shows the relative number of pixels at all 256 of these tones. The majority are towards the darker end of the scale - the image can be described as 'low key'. The vertical (Y) axis is identical to the horizontal axis except that it represents the tones being output from the 'Curves' process. At the moment our 'Curve' is the line indicated in red. Choose any point on the X-axis, the input tone, travel vertically until reaching the red line or 'Curve', and then travel horizontally left to the Y-axis to see the output tone. At the moment 0 maps to 0, 255 to 255, 127 to 127 etc - the image remains unchanged.

Let's introduce some extreme contrast! The red path now shows the 'Curve' that I've input - look at the affect this has on the image. All input tones from 0 to 130 have been mapped to an output of 0 (black) and all input tones from 131 to 255 have been mapped to an output of 255 (white). The resultant image now contains only black and white - the ultimate in contrast but not so useful as a treatment for our images.

A more pleasing result is seen with the path in red shown above - known as an 'S-curve'. Darker tones have been darkened slightly and lighter tones lightened. The slope of the line in the midtone region has increased leading to a more subtle increase in contrast.

The same process can be applied to colour images but the extreme contrast procedure would make your image look rather odd (which is why I converted to greyscale). In Photoshop curves can be applied to colour channels independently giving great control over colour balance.

Feel free to contact me with questions or comments.

Check out my photography here: photographer in Kent

Capturing light - digital sensors and histograms

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Each pixel in a digital image has a corresponding light-collecting 'photosite' on the sensor of the camera that took it (on the 5D Mark II there are 5616 x 3744, or 21 million, of them!) In the majority of digital cameras each photosite can only record light intensity for one of the primary colours (red, green and blue), assigning it a number between 0-255 (256 values = 2 to the power of 8 = 8-bit). For each photosite information about the other two primary colours is deduced from adjacent photosites using a process known as 'demosaicing'. The Foveon sensor, featured in Sigma's cameras, is the exception - it records the intensity of R,G & B light at each photosite. This information can then be converted and displayed as a digital image or graphically as a histogram.

I took the above 'snap' of my daughter Emily this morning, deliberately including some vibrant primary-coloured objects, to give clear histograms.

Pressing the 'info' button whilst the image is displayed on the LCD of the 5D Mark II gave the above screen which shows a brightness, or luminance, histogram.

Pressing the 'info' button again leads to separate histograms for R, G & B light (the order in which these screens are displayed can be adjusted by a setting in the menus).

In Photoshop the above histograms can be displayed for the image - the 'RGB' and 'colours' histograms are in addition to those that the camera displays.

The horizontal axis on all these histograms represents brightness values which run from 0-255. The vertical axis represents the number, or frequency, of pixels occuring with this brightness value.

It is not always possible to expose a shot so that it is cleanly captured within the brightness range of these histograms - the dynamic range can be too great for the camera (think outdoors on a bright sunny day). In this case some of the tonal detail of the shot will be lost or 'clipped' - it will be either pure black or pure white. One of the benefits of shooting RAW is the greater tonal range that can be captured.

I tend to pay most attention to the brightness, or luminance, histogram as it corresponds most closely to the scene as our eyes see it (the 5D Mark II displays a luminance histogram but many cameras only display the RGB variant). The histogram is calculated by taking a weighted average of the R, G & B light at each pixel, with more emphasis placed upon green light as the eye is most sensitive to this. As a result, notice that the luminance histogram bears most resemblance to the green-only histogram.

The separate colour histograms can be used to see if individual colours have been clipped.

The RGB histogram is purely a summation of the colour histograms and can be used to assess colour clipping - but as a result of this simple maths, 'pixel location information' is lost. The histogram can show strong clipping at the far right of the histogram, due to bright R, G and B pixels at separate locations, without there being any pure white pixels in the image. A white pixel requires values of 255 for all three colours at the same location.

The 'colors' histogram is an overlay of the separate colour histograms and is a convenient way of visualising all three at once - Lightroom displays this.

How this colour and brightness information can be manipulated will be the subject of further posts.

Check out my photography here: Kent photographer

Lightroom vs Aperture with 5D Mark II RAW files

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I'm a huge fan of Adobe's Lightroom but since upgrading to the Canon EOS 5D Mark II I've become a bit impatient with the length of time it takes to move between shots in the develop module. Obviously Lightroom is having to work hard to render a 21 megapixel RAW file (which can be up to 30Mb in size) but, time is money, and I'm a busy man!

When moving from one file to another it takes Lightroom about 2 seconds to display the new histogram, after which some simple adjustments, such as to brightness and contrast, are possible and 4-6 seconds before the 'Loading' dialogue disappears, after which all adjustments are possible. It doesn't sound like a long time but when processing 500 shots from a wedding I may well move between shots over a 1000 times - this equates to an hour waiting for Lightroom!

This is with a reasonably powerful computer as well. I'm currently using Lightroom 2.3 on an Apple Mac Pro featuring two 2.66GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon processors, 9Gb RAM, a NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT graphics card, a 30" Apple Cinema display and running OSX 10.5.6. Not state-of-the-art any longer (the latest Mac Pro behemoth from Apple features two 2.26GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon "Nehalem" processors) but still a powerful beast nonetheless.

Obviously I could use one of the 5D Mark II's lower resolution settings (sRAW 1 uses 9.9 megapixels with files sizes about 15Mb) but this seems a retrograde step. The extra resolution of the 5D Mark II is a very welcome addition for wedding photography - it gives you much more flexibility in post-processing and allows you to print 'big'.

I read on the internet grapevine that Lightroom, unlike Apple's Aperture, was not able to fully exploit the powers of the Mac Pro so I downloaded a trial version of Aperture 2.1.2.

I found Aperture very accessible and much faster at moving between shots than Lightroom (it takes about a second). The significant drawback, however, is the time lag when applying adjustments, in stark contrast to Lightroom's real time response. I wonder if this is because Aperture is not fully rendering the RAW file initially? Anyway, the bottom line is that there's no way I could work with this limitation and so I'm sticking with Lightroom for the time being.

A couple of further observations regarding Aperture:

1. It displays flash exposure compensation information in the EXIF data. Wonderful! Why doesn't Lightroom?

2. Oddly, some EXIF data is displayed numerically - so rather than displaying 'flash did not fire' you see the number '16'. Not very helpful.

3. Highlight recovery seems better compared to Lightroom.

4. A 'Quick Preview' setting allows you to move between images with no delay. It would be good to see this in the develop module of Lightroom.

If you've got experience of using both pieces of software I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Check out my photography here: Kent photographer

Wedding Photographers in Kent

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Here's a question that I'm sure concerns many wanting to take their first steps in wedding photography:

Hi David,

I'm looking to start out as a wedding photographer. One question remains - Nikon or Canon?

Does Canon have better lenses? Does Nikon focus better and have better Flash performance blah blah.

I'd like your impartial opinion without considering price issues.

A second question - have you played much with the video capabilities of your 5DMk2 - I've not read of any wedding photographers making any use of it.

Thank you!

Alex

Hi Alex,

The bottom line is that you can't go wrong with either.

One of the key factors to base your decision upon is the lenses that you favour. If treated well, they'll be with you for the rest of your working life.

You'll be replacing your camera bodies every 18 months and flash units as required.

I'm not familiar with Nikon kit, and don't spend any time fretting about these matters, but it seems that they have the edge at the moment with camera bodies - the Nikon D3 is very highly regarded. Still it should inspire Canon to greater heights!

All I can say from personal experience is that Canon has a very fine stable of lenses.

I have been using my 5D Mark II at weddings and the results are stunning. The world-renowned wedding photographer Yervant has just posted a clip on his blog.

Yours,

David

Check out more of my photography here: Kent photography

On learnng

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The most frequent questions I receive are on the subject of flash photography - balancing ambient and flash light, flash exposure compensation etc. People are keen to understand the 'rules' or logic behind the technology so that they can develop their technique in a rational manner. Although I would encourage people to seek out as much information as possible on all photographic subjects (reading widely broadens your horizons), ultimately, for a practical subject such as photography, nothing beats 'doing it'. It's the only way to truly develop a deeper understanding and, with digital cameras, this learning process is aided by the almost instantaneous feedback loop between experiment and results.

The concious competence learning model captures this learning process nicely. It was probably developed by management consultants (it reminds me of Donald Rumsfelds infamous 'known unknowns' quote), as it has that business-ring to the language, but I think it captures an essential truth about learning.

1. You start out 'unconciously incompetent' - you don't know what it is you're unable to do.

2. As you develop an interest in the subject and seek out information you become 'conciously incompetent' - you know what it is you're unable to do. If you only read about the subject you'll be stuck at this stage.

3. As you practise the discipline that interests you, you become 'conciously competent'. You can get the results that you want but it requires a great deal of mental effort.

4. As you practise more and more (apparently 10,000 hours of practice are required to become an expert) you finally become 'unconciously competent'. You're great at the discipline without even having to think about it.

So put your books down, stop browsing the internet, and get out with your camera and flash unit and start learning!

Check out more of my photography here: Kent photographers

Depth of field

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I received this question during the week.

David,

I'm struggling with the concept of aperture used at long focal lengths. Close-up I understand how wide apertures demand accurate focusing, but what about at a long distance? It seems much more forgiving. Another layer to my question is how a long focal length will compress the background - does this have an impact on aperture use too?

Thank you!

Matt

This presents a good opportunity to reflect on the factors that affect depth of field (DOF), the distance range from the camera (or more accurately the focal plane, marked on your camera's body by a circle with a single line through it) where subjects appear to be in focus. I shall stick to the headlines in this blog post but, for a more in-depth view on this topic, check out Sean McHugh's fantastic Cambridge in Colour website.

The most important variables in controlling DOF are:

1. The aperture of the lens. As the aperture becomes bigger, the DOF becomes smaller.

2. The magnification of the subject. As the subject increases in size in the image, the DOF becomes smaller. You can easily illustrate this by picking up an object and moving it closer to your face - watch the background blur as your eyes' DOF shrinks. You can increase the magnification of your subject by either moving closer to it (reducing the focal distance) or by using a telephoto lens (increasing the focal length).

The magnification of the subject depends upon the focal distance (distance between subject and the focal plane of the camera) and the focal length of the lens. Note the key difference between focal distance and focal length! It is possible to keep a constant magnification of the subject, and hence DOF, whilst changing the focal length of the lens by making changes to the focal distance. This may seem like nit-picking but it's worth getting your head around.

You can convince yourself that DOF depends on magnification, rather than focal length, by taking a series of shots of a subject at various focal lengths and keeping it the same size in the frame. The DOF appears independent of focal length.

Let's say you're using Canon's 24-105mm f/4.0 L IS zoom lens. You focus on your model at a focal length of 105mm in aperture priority mode at f/4.0. You take your first shot, which with these settings will have a modest DOF. You zoom out 10mm to 95mm, making your subject smaller in the frame, which means you have to move in closer to restore your model to their original size. You repeat this until you're at a focal length of 25mm. If you were to estimate the DOF in each shot by eye you'd say it was constant.

It isin't exactly the same, however. At shorter focal lengths the DOF does increase minimally, even if the subject stays the same size, which means that DOF is not completely independent of focal lengths. The impact of this is small compared to the impact of magnification though.

The following is also worth noting. Most photographers are interested in a shallow DOF for blurring backgrounds. DOF extends in front of and behind the focal distance, but the ratio between the two changes with focal length. At shorter focal lengths the DOF extends approximately 1/3 in front of the focal distance and 2/3 behind. At longer focal lengths this changes to 1/2 in front and 1/2 behind. Therefore longer focal lengths have an advantage for blurring the background.

It's important to note that moving closer to a subject will affect its appearance due to changes in perspective. It is possible to have a blurred background when shooting a model at shorter focal lengths, but the reduced focal distance will distort their features due to the impact on perspective. If you want to shoot people with a blurred background then use a telephoto lens.

To address Matt's comments directly.

1. Using a wide aperture at a greater focal distance gives you a greater DOF and therefore makes accurate focusing easier.

2. A longer focal length will magnify the subject and therefore reduce the DOF. Wider apertures always give less DOF - this is not dependent upon focal distance or focal length.

Questions and comments (due to confusion or errors on my part) are most welcome!

Check out more of my photography here: wedding photographers in Kent

Auto white balance with tungsten lighting

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Today's question:

Hi David

I shoot a lot of low light event photography with a 5D and 5DII and have always had to dial out lots of red when the dominating light is tungsten (or candle) shooting auto white balance. The 'shot at' white balance when converting raws is always way out. Do you find this?

Thanks

Lloyd

Hi Lloyd,

Yes, I do. Canon's auto white balance system struggles with tungsten lighting. This may be due to the range of colour temperatures and colour casts that occur with this type of lighting, and also the fact that rooms are typically lit by more than one light bulb, which means that there is more than one distinct light source. Even more problematic is the presence of fluorescent lighting in addition - this really adds to post-processing time.

I find Adobe Lightroom's ability to sync settings between shots very useful for post-processing - get the white balance right for one shot and then paste these settings into all the other shots taken under the same conditions. If a colour cast remains, I use Lightroom's hue, saturation and luminance sliders to try and neutralise it.

Yours,

David

Check out my photography here: Kent photographer

Lenses for Wedding Photography

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Another good question today:

Hi David,

I am a regular reader of your blog - thanks for doing this, it is a great source of information for people new in to the business like myself.

I hope you don't mind but I do have a quick question. I shoot with a 5DMKII and am looking to buy either the 24-70/2.8 or the 70-200/2.8 - I have the 16-35/2.8, 50/1.4 and a 100/2.8.

I have read your blog post and am tempted to get the 24-70/2.8 as you say you use it more often. If you had the choice between the two - which would you get? I know you answered this question fairly recently but I would be interested to know whether your stats have changed much since.

This is for shooting weddings - I have a 30D as a backup.

Many thanks for any light you can shed on the situation!

Al

Hi Al,

Many thanks for your feedback on my blog - I really appreciate this.

With the lenses that you already have I'd be tempted to purchase the 70-200mm first - it will extend your current capabilities more than the 24-70mm. I'm sure you'll end up buying both of them eventually anyway - L-series glass is habit-forming! ;-)

These two lenses feature in many professional wedding photographer's kit. The 24-70mm is incredibly versatile, allowing you to shoot wide without too much perspective distortion, and also has just enough reach for classic portrait shots - but you already have this covered with your current lenses. The 70-200mm is a wonderful portrait lens and is also great for grabbing candid shots from a distance - something you can't do at the moment. Obviously you do need plenty of space to use this lens in this way - I tend to use it less frequently at winter weddings when I'm primarily shooting indoors.

Unfortunately lens prices are very high at the moment. 123fStop.com, who import lenses from the US and Far East, have the 24-70 for £923 and the 70-200mm for £1315. Since you're buying them in the UK, you can register these with Canon and they will be treated as UK stock. Warehouse Express has them for £1049 and £1550.

Yours,

David

Check out my photography here: wedding photographer in Kent

Liaising with vicars and registrars

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I just received the following question: Ever had any hassle from registrars or vicars?

The short answer is, unfortunately, yes. I'm sure all wedding photographers have. No matter how polite and diplomatic one is, occasional misunderstandings occur. One problem is that guidelines tend to be rather vague and open to interpretation. The following, for example, is from A Kentish Ceremony:

Can people take photographs during the ceremony?

If you wish, photos and videos can be taken at any point before, during and after the ceremony provided that they do not interrupt the ceremony. Please advise your photographer-videographer to speak to the celebrant on the day to agree where they should stand.

The problem here is what counts as an interruption? For me a verbal command would be an obvious interruption. But what about movement? Should we be rooted to the spot for the entire ceremony? Often you need to move in response to the movement of the registrar. If the registrar, holding their folder with the ceremony notes, moves closer to the couple this means you have to move in closer to get a clear shot of the couple. Some registrars can be bothered by this but others aren't. Some are completely laissez-faire. I'm often reassuringly told "Do what you need to do!".

My advice is to always speak to registrars before the ceremony to try and establish the rules of engagement. Inevitably, minor misunderstandings will occur, but most registrars want what is best for the couple and are a pleasure to work with.

Now on to vicars. They tend to be less flexible as, not unreasonably, they feel a great sense of ownership or dominion over the ceremony and church. For a minority of them though, what the couple wants is not even on their agenda, despite the fact that the couple are paying for the use of the church. I would say that 20% are very flexible (do what you need to do, but remain quiet, move discreetly etc), 70% are reasonably flexible (an agreement can be reached about what the rules are before the ceremony and they're willing to listen to your requests) and 10% are inflexible (stand at the back, do not move). I even have a wedding booked in June 2009 where the couple have been told that photography is forbidden during the ceremony! I have to say I find this very mean-spirited, particularly since royal weddings presided over by the Archbishop of Canterbury are televised.

I look forward to your comments and tales!

Check out my photography here: wedding photographer Kent

Wedding Photographer Kent - Using flash

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Another good question that deserves a post of its own.

David,

When using flash in AV mode, but trying to capture ambient light in backgrounds, do you take your meter reading from the background (without the main subject) then recompose with the subject and let the flash balance itself? Or just meter the whole scene, and adjust EV?

Thanks!

When lighting for portraits, photographers talk specifically about key and fill lights. In the simplest scenario, the key light is the principle light source and determines shadow placement, and the fill light is used to reduce the contrast between highlight and shadow, by 'filling in' the shadow regions with light. A similar situation exists when you have to balance ambient and flash light - your flash can act as either the key or fill light. This is pertinent to the above question, since if you shoot in an automated flash mode, you have to be aware that the camera is making this decision for you, and can get it wrong.

90% of my shots are taken in aperture priority mode, with evaluative metering, and I use my flash in E-TTL II mode (the other 10% of the time I use manual mode). This requires me to make both exposure and flash exposure compensations and requires me to think about what I'm doing. In fact, although there is no best method for using your camera, to expose shots correctly in a wide range of lighting conditions will require you to think, whatever the process you use. Cameras are not yet clever enough to do it all for you, although I hope one day they will be. In the meantime, it's all about finding a reliable and efficient method that works for you.

So in the above example I would typically (alas, there are always exceptions) meter the whole scene and then apply exposure compensation to adjust the ambient light to the level I required, followed by flash exposure compensation to control the level of flash light. The ambient light is easiest to get right. Getting the right level of flash can occasionally be tricky, particularly when the camera has been fooled and is trying to use the flash as a key light rather than a fill light - it attempts to flash light the whole scene, resulting in your subject being massively over-exposed (nuked!). In this situation, you can either dial the flash right down (up to -3 stops) or use flash exposure lock on your subject.

Check out more of my photography here: wedding photography Kent

Wedding Photographer Kent - High ISO

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A few questions on the high ISO performance of the 5D Mark II:

Hi David,

How do manage noise at the higher ISOs? I recently bought a 5D mk II, a great camera but when I did a series of test shots at different ISOs I could clearly see noise (noticeable in blocks of even colour) from ISO 400 up. I am used to shooting for stock at ISO 100 so am I being overly picky? I shoot RAW and process through Lightroom v2.2. I understand the on camera noise reduction only applies to JPEGs. What should I be doing to get good photos at ISO 800 and up?

Duncan

Hi Duncan,

If you're used to shooting at ISO 100 then you'll find the noise quite offputting at high ISO. The 5D Mark II is about as good as it gets for low noise due to its large sensor - you should try using a compact at high ISO!

For cleaning up images I highly recommend NeatImage - an amazing piece of software!

Yours,

David

Hi David,

Thanks for posting.

Which format did you use when you compared the 5DmkII to the 5D? (iso 1250 vs. iso 6400). JPEG or RAW? If RAW which program did you use to convert the files?

Thanks,

Ivan

Hi Ivan,

I always shoot in RAW and convert with Adobe Lightroom 2.2.

Yours,

David

Check out more of my photography here: wedding photographer Kent

Wedding Photographer Kent - 85mm f/1.2 L

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Hi David,

What are your thoughts on the 85mm f/1.2 L as a more general lens for weddings. Clearly it is fast enough for any environment and ideal for posed portraits, but what about guest shots and candids. Can it focus quickly or will it miss the shot - I keep reading that it is slow - but slow compared to what? Do they mean if switching focus from a close to a far object? Compared to a 24-70L what % are we talking about here?

Thank you

James

Hi James,

The 85mm f/1.2 L and 35mm f/1.4 L prime lenses find great favour amongst wedding photographers. You can use them in all scenarios but there is a learning curve with the 85mm lens.

The 85mm lens is slower to focus than most other AF lenses - I don't have hard figures for you on this though. It does take some getting used to, but if you want an aperture of f/1.2 and awesome optical quality (and I do) that's the price you have to pay! People need to learn how to shoot with this lens - it has a minimum focusing distance of 95cm for example! Focusing on objects between 1-2m is probably where people encounter most of their problems. Beyond this, focusing becomes much quicker. I use it for candids but you do need plenty of space.

Yours,

David

Sorry David,

If you have time, can you please expand on what the difficulties are with this lens and what the learning curve relates to? What also is the significance of the minimum focusing distance? I'm looking to buy one but don't want to make a very expensive mistake.

Thanks in advance!

James

Hi James,

The key points to be aware of:

Objects need to be more than 95cm from the focal plane for the lens to be able to focus on them - so you need to keep your distance.

You need to be aware that if you focus on an object between 1-2m away and then refocus on an object further away it can take the lens time to refocus.

Focusing technique needs to be very accurate with wide apertures.

It's not a steep learning curve but, as you can see from the above points, there is one nonetheless.

Yours,

David

Check out my photography here: Kent photography

Kent Photographer - Lens Hoods

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Here's a good question:

Hi again David,

I always see pro photographers using their lens hoods indoors - is this needed for flash photography? Does it do any harm leaving it on?

Thank you

Jane

Hi Jane,

I always have my lens hoods on - both indoors and outdoors. They reduce the chance of stray light being reflected within the lens, which causes flare and reduces contrast, and also offer increased protection for your lens.

If your camera has an in-built pop-up flash unit then a lens hood will probably cast a shadow on to your subject, but so will most big lenses without a lens hood. This can be avoided by using an external flash unit.

Yours,

David

Check out my photography here: wedding photographer Kent

Kent Wedding Photography - wide angle lenses

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I received the following question earlier:

Hi David,

I notice you use the 35mm f/1.4 lens a lot for head and shoulders images - and they all look fantastic.

My understanding was that one should use 80mm + to avoid facial distortion in these kind of shots. What's your take?

Cheers

Geoff

Hi Geoff,

Thanks for your kind words.

Focal lengths of 80mm and above are typically used for portraiture since it forces you to stand further from your subject in order to fill the frame, giving a more flattering perspective to your subject's face. See my earlier post on perspective and portrait lenses.

The important thing to note is that perspective depends upon distance to subject. If I fill the frame with someone's face using a 35mm lens it probably won't look too flattering. Increasing the distance from the subject will diminish the distortion though. Some of my shots have probably been cropped making it appear that I was closer than I actually was.

Some portrait photographers might find some of my shots taken at 35mm unacceptable. It's all in the eye of the beholder!

Yours,

David

Check out more of my photography here: Kent wedding photography

Wedding Photography Kent - Manual Mode

For further photography-related information check out my compendium of tips.

If you struggle to understand what follows, I'd recommend you read the post on metering and exposure.

Exposure is determined by incident light. Cameras, however, measure reflected light. Therefore, to estimate the incident light from the reflected light measurement, cameras assume that a scene has an overall reflectance of 18% (equivalent to a tonality termed middle grey). In most cases this works very well, but when the overall tonality of a scene is not middle grey, a situation which occurs frequently at weddings, exposure inaccuracies result. Exposure compensation is one way of correcting for this and is a technique that photographers need to be familiar with. Under the correct circumstances though, an alternative approach is possible - using the manual mode of your camera.

Let's say you're shooting outside at a wedding reception. All the guests are standing in open ground, not shaded by trees or buildings. It's a lovely sunny day and there are no clouds in the sky. In this case all of the guests are being lit by the same amount of incident light and the exposure settings will therefore be identical for any shot you take under these conditions. Once you've found an exposure that you're happy with, using the camera's reflected-light meter and by checking the histogram, you can put these settings into your camera's manual mode and shoot away without worrying whether a scene's reflectance deviates from middle grey. If you keep an eye on your camera's light meter, you'll notice that when taking shots of the bride in her white dress the camera will think you're overexposing (which would have resulted in underexposure if left in an automatic mode such as aperture priority, requiring positive exposure compensation) and that with the groom in his dark suit the camera will think you're underexposing. You know, however, that your exposure is spot on and that it's the camera's reflected-light meter being fooled. If you do this, don't forget to regularly review your exposures, just in case a cloud has crept in front of the sun and reduced the amount of incident light!

Manual mode is also extremely useful when shooting indoors in low light. Let's say, for example, that the maximum ISO setting you're prepared to use on your camera is 1600, that the minimum shutter speed you're prepared to use when shooting people is 1/60 sec, and that the maximum aperture of your lens is f/2.8. These personal criteria determine the maximum amount of ambient light that you can capture.

Let's say you're in a dark wedding reception venue. To correctly expose for ambient light requires an exposure of 1/15 sec at f/2.8 and ISO 1600 - 2-stops lower than your exposure criteria. What you can do in this situation is to dial 1/60 sec, f/2.8, ISO 1600 into manual mode, underexposing for the ambient light, and then use flash to illuminate your subjects. You'll be capturing the maximum amount of ambient light allowed by your exposure criteria and not allowing your camera to give an unusably slow shutter speed, which would occur if it tried to correctly expose for ambient light.

manual, 1/50, f/2.8, ISO 1600, 0 EV, -1 FEC, 35mm

If you've not done this before you'll probably be surprised to see how much detail you capture in the background with this amount of underexposure. The image above was taken using this approach and the background is over two stops underexposed (and I've added a vignette).

1/25, f/2.8, ISO 6400, +1 EV, 16mm

If you have a DSLR which performs well at high ISO, and you're happy to use these settings, then you can expose correctly for just ambient light in very low light settings. Check out the shot above taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II.

Check out more of my photography here: wedding photographer Kent