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Photography for geeks

820 points by excite1997 4y ago

skhr0680 4y ago
Pretty awesome overall, one improvement would be to shoot the model in the focal length shot face on to better illustrate the big nose, no ears (too wide) and pancake face (too tele) effects
system2 4y ago
Adding examples makes it better than other sites I've seen. I will share this with friends. Thanks!
vanillax 4y ago
Love it!
throw0101c 4y ago
If anyone wants to move beyond using the "auto" setting on their camera (or phone), I would recommend the book Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson, the first edition of which was published in 1990: * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/142239.Understanding_Exposure https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/142239.Understanding_Exp... The principles involved haven't changed much in the intervening decades; the current fourth edition was publish in 2016. If all you have is a phone you don't have to get new equipment: just perhaps a third-party 'camera app' that allows you manual control of aperture, shutter speed, ISO/sensitivity. Once you know how each of these settings alter the resulting photo you can use them to alter the composition of photos, which is a whole other craft. Edit: seems recent smartphones have little-to-no adjustable camera settings.
- geokon 4y ago
  I think when you break down all the variables there is really very little to play with bc no phones have variable apertures. ISO is basically a linear gain that's done on the sensor. As long as you aren't blowing out your photo and loosing information, it basically makes not difference if you do it in sensor or later while editing So the only variable left is the shutter speed - which is basically directly dictated by the amount of light you have. You try to get as much light as you can without blowing anything out. This is how you get the most information. You can decrease it to get faster shots with less blur, at the cost of more noise So it all boils down to basically one "slider"/variable between blur and noise
  - sva_ 4y ago
    > no phones have variable apertures. Even my almost 5 years old Galaxy S9+ has aperture. Surely something better came out since.
    - wtallis 4y ago
      Wikipedia says the S9/S9+ was the first phone since 2009 to have a variable aperture. The S10 series also had it, but it was gone again in the S20. So it's definitely not common, and even in the handful of phones that had it, it was only one stop of adjustment.
  - CWuestefeld 4y ago
    ISO is basically a linear gain that's done on the sensor. As long as you aren't blowing out your photo and loosing information, it basically makes not difference if you do it in sensor or later while editing This is true for some cameras, but certainly not all. Many cameras, especially pro or pro-sumer grade, have non-linear ISO. That is, there are ranges for which it behaves linearly, but typically there will be some range - say the minimum up to 1600 or something - where it behaves as a linear range, and then the next setting up from that (where the settings are typically 1/3 stop) will reset to a lower snr. (And yes, that does imply that in such cases it often yields better results to go up by one or even two clicks in ISO) I'm not sure if there any camera-phones that behave this way, though.
    - geokon 4y ago
      "then the next setting up from that will reset to a lower snr" How does it magically make more photons fit the sensor..? And why wouldn't you use that same magic at lower iso gain factors?
      - timbeccue 4y ago
        The base stops are ISO 100, 200, 400, etc. Many cameras let you set the ISO in 1/3 stop increments, but if I recall correctly, many camera manufacturers just keep the sensitivity at the base stops and adjust the brightness via software. So shooting at ISO 250 really means ISO 200 (underexposing what you requested) but then adding a third stop equivalent of brightening to the digital file. Conversely, using ISO 160 actually means the camera is using ISO 200 (overexposing) and lowering the brightness in software. What this means, at least 10 years ago when I was more in tune with the photography world, is that people would prefer to shoot at the [base ISO stop - 1/3] levels to because those were the levels with the least noise near that exposure setting. The cost is you risk saturating more pixels in the highlights. And for the same reasoning, the ISO setting s 1/3 over the base stops were typically avoided as they were noisier, albeit with slightly more dynamic range.
- _HMCB_ 4y ago
  I bought that book months back. Have yet to read it but thanks for the reminder.
- gofreddygo 4y ago
  Aperture Size, Shutter Speed and ISO. Just understand what they are. And their units. Actually see pictures varying one and keeping others constant to get a hang of things. Then go backwards, check professional pictures and guess the values. Professional photography forums all photos have these values published . Night/Day photography, moving/still and background focus are the only 3 skills you need as an amateur photographer. They rely on the 3 settings above. Beyond that lies the rabbit hole that, if you venture, speak not to any people whom you wish to keep friends. They hate when you try to tell them. Don't spend over 2k on lenses. Have printed photos on glossy, matte paper. Touch and feel them. Worth the time.
  - anta40 4y ago
    +1 for printing, which are a rare habit on social media era. Virtually any image looks great on FB/Instagram/etc, but once you printed it big, you'll notice how good or bad actually it is.
- excite1997 4y ago
  > The principles involved haven't changed much in the intervening decades. My problem with many old-time tutors is that they refuse to recognize that photography has gotten a lot easier. We don't need to learn the craft the way they did. For example, you don't need stuff like the "sunny 16" rule of exposure if you have real-time previews in the camera. You use visual feedback, usually with better accuracy. In the same vein, you probably don't need to learn about flash guide numbers when modern continuous LED illumination covers 99% of use cases without any guesswork. Or, you don't need to learn about optical filters (perhaps except for the polarizer) when almost all their functions can be accomplished in software without loss in fidelity.
  - skhr0680 4y ago
    The point of learning Sunny 16 is that once you’ve internalized thinking in full stops, you don’t need visual feedback, which makes you faster, which can make the difference between getting your shot or not and having a happy or angry client. > Or, you don't need to learn about optical filters (perhaps except for the polarizer) when almost all their functions can be accomplished in software without loss in fidelity. I still think it’s a good idea to learn what they do, so you know when to use a (digital) BW red filter because you want brighter skin.
  - throw0101c 4y ago
    > For example, you don't need stuff like the "sunny 16" rule of exposure if you have real-time previews in the camera. You use visual feedback, usually with better accuracy. Except that it may not, unless you know what you are doing and press the right button: > With the monitor or viewfinder, you may see an image with an aperture that differs from the shooting result. Since the blurring of a subject changes if the aperture is changed, the blurriness of the actual picture will differ from the image you were viewing prior to shooting. > While you press and hold the key to which you assigned the [Aperture Preview] function, the aperture is stepped down to the set aperture value and you can check the blurriness prior to shooting. * https://helpguide.sony.net/ilc/1420/v1/en/contents/TP0000226642.html https://helpguide.sony.net/ilc/1420/v1/en/contents/TP0000226... * https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/how-to-use-the-depth-of-field-preview-button-on-your-dslr/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/how-to-use-the-depth-of-... * https://www.slrphotographyguide.com/depthfield-preview-button/ https://www.slrphotographyguide.com/depthfield-preview-butto... > In the same vein, you probably don't need to learn about flash guide numbers when modern continuous LED illumination covers 99% of use cases without any guesswork. And leaving your camera in "auto" also probably "covers 99% of use cases without any guesswork"… but you give up creative control to the software. Why bother learning what aperture is at all if 99% of the time you won't ever matter to taking a photo? The whole point of reducing the use of "auto" is to make creative choices yourself.
- billfruit 4y ago
  Is there any good book on photo editing.
- kawera 4y ago
  A quite technical but fascinating book on lighting and photography: "Light Science & Magic" by Fil Hunter and Paul Fuqua (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/290153.Light https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/290153.Light)
Terretta 4y ago
This is very well done for a new-to-photography audience. Will be sharing around to people who say all their things look like snapshots, what's up with that. Great use of examples, except for one: kid on bridge. > At the same time, it must be said that color and tone can be what separates a mediocre photograph from a memorable one. To illustrate, let's look at the potential evolution of this vacation shot deliberately chosen for its mediocrity... Then the dynamism is removed by 'correcting' the dutch angle to horizon, the surprisingly good color balance is skewed off, and the whole thing gets that circa mid-2000s HDR look from Flickr and Shutterfly and the like where every photo got tone-mapped. Underwhelming of an end result, especially compared to the later color and tone examples (e.g. kitchen superhero).
- excite1997 4y ago
  In the mid-2000s, HDR was all about jacking up local contrast, giving you that unique look of gritty skin and halos cropping up all over the place. I'm talking stuff like this: https://digital-photography-school.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/hdr-tips-too-big.jpg https://digital-photography-school.com/wp-content/uploads/20... Less obnoxious tone mapping that compresses shadows and highlights is a more modern trend, I'd say post-2012. It's basically done by every cell phone today when shooting a high-contrast scene.
  - Terretta 4y ago
    > It's basically done by every cell phone today Yeah, it's a problem. I shoot iPhone in RAW to back that off, or Halide RAW if it really ticks me off. // Disclosure: Like most everyone, my top community ranked Flickr photos were heavily HDR'd, such as this one that hit #1 on Explore on 2006-08-17: https://live.staticflickr.com/60/216486412_0e3542fb85_k.jpg https://live.staticflickr.com/60/216486412_0e3542fb85_k.jpg At the time, I produced some top ranked HDRs out of annoyance, like, oh, use tone map plugin? Automatic upvotes! Called it the "Flickr craze" and polled on comparison between: HDR tool: https://live.staticflickr.com/91/212613394_c1db0694ad_k.jpg https://live.staticflickr.com/91/212613394_c1db0694ad_k.jpg Hand balanced: https://live.staticflickr.com/88/213584770_8175d4ec45_k.jpg https://live.staticflickr.com/88/213584770_8175d4ec45_k.jpg When compared side by size, the community preferred the hand mapped version, which hit #7 on Explore.
qntty 4y ago
See also, Marc Levey (CS professor at Stanford specializing in computational photography) gave some good lectures at Google a few years ago on digital photography: https://sites.google.com/site/marclevoylectures/home https://sites.google.com/site/marclevoylectures/home
- mgraczyk 4y ago
  Levoy!
  - qntty 4y ago
    Oops, sorry!
    - lucb1e 4y ago
      The word "Levoy" does not occur on the page. Perhaps the site's author should have put their name in the page title instead of, ironically, embedded in a picture on the page's header!
      - Wistar 4y ago
        It is in the URL cited.
- keepquestioning 4y ago
  Anything like this but for analog?
spoils19 4y ago
What a great resource!
lxe 4y ago
This is helpful for my stable diffusion prompts.
- yieldcrv 4y ago
  I’ve been using photography and focal length prompts on stable diffusion since I first installed it, would recommend
- lelandfe 4y ago
  A lot from the article will not work, because the terms are too overloaded ("three point"). SD photography and lighting keyword dump I've tested for 1.5: f1.8, dof, bokeh, soft focus, chiaroscuro, backlit, golden hour, soft lighting, natural lighting, warm colors [but not "cool"], Polaroid, lens flare "85mm", "50mm" etc all make the image realistic, but don't do anything specific. Pro-tip: use "windows" to get many of the outdoor lighting keywords available indoors.
  - kyleyeats 4y ago
    Thanks for these. Can vouch for golden hour. I can see why directors are obsessed with it.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - lxe 4y ago
      Golden hour is great if you want things to be very warm. Sometimes I throw in a (sun behind subject) as a negative prompt to reduce the "sunset" effect
yieldcrv 4y ago
This is good, I would add that “made up composition rules” are instead “made up composition guidelines”, that people should learn how to deviate from after constricting themselves with false constraints
- trap_goes_hot 4y ago
  Artists will not have a common answer to "Are there any rules in art?". Personally, I think there are patterns in art, and there are often rules that can describe those patterns. Oddly, I think the word rule works out OK. 'guidelines' is problematic in another way as it also implies that one is being guided towards a certain aesthetic/end result.
  - yieldcrv 4y ago
    I feel like your definition of rules is my definition of guidelines, and vice versa same observation, different semantics
- canbus 4y ago
  good things to learn, even better to forget.
muglug 4y ago
The main thing about photography is your first 10,000 photos will likely be bad. Modern technology makes it possible to get through 10,000 snaps much faster and much cheaper than when using film. But taking those photos is not enough — it’s in the editing of those first 10,000 photos that you will find the hidden photographer in you. Photography is a lot like writing code: you can create something that does the job, but does not do it beautifully. You can keep on creating until creating beauty becomes easier.
- bradknowles 4y ago
  I wouldn't say it's your first 10k photos. Because anyone can just hold down the button and take hundreds of photos. And those hundreds of photos don't really count as separate pictures in this regard. I would say that it's more like your first 10k different photographic compositions/subjects. From there, I agree that you really learn in the editing.
  - oogali 4y ago
    For me, it truly was after my first 10K photos — speed shutter and all. Once you sit down and go searching through that burst for the perfect or otherwise usable photo of that burst, you start to notice the small things: the slight detail changes at the edges, what may have transpired between captures, how a light source that changes in milliseconds can affect the overall feeling. It took me about 2.5 years to reach that point. Shooting at different times of the day, different seasons. Countless hours tweaking levels and cropping in Photoshop, Capture One, etc. Lots of changes in gear: UV/haze filters, circular polarizers, tripods, zoom lenses, prime lenses. Flashes, reflectors, gray cards. Exploring the different modes on my camera, Magic Lantern firmware, etc. It all counts. But the post processing is the crucial part of the feedback loop.
  - tsqj 4y ago
    reminds me of that most quoted lines from Bruce Lee, "I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times." same as what you are indicating here. Deliberate / mindful practice leads to significant improvement.
photochemsyn 4y ago
An interesting site with lots of information about 35mm photography and film vs digital techniques is 35mmc.com. Here for example is a very clear and concise discussion of depth of field and the factors that control it (such as aperture, focal length): https://www.35mmc.com/25/07/2016/basic-optics-photographers/ https://www.35mmc.com/25/07/2016/basic-optics-photographers/
semireg 4y ago
The things I’m drawn to in life is where art meets science. In hindsight, so much of the secret is knowing how to avoid failure. Baking bread? Build the intuition over time and you’ll realize baking is forgiving so long as you don’t do these “5 bad things.” Gardening/farming? Yeah, there’s a big list of bad things. Brewing beer? Another list of things to avoid. The basic rules (rooted in science) are like guardrails and everything else is the art. I love this so much. In my early 20s I had a week long mind meld knowledge transfer from a self taught photographer. It made me fall in love with photography. I’m still using it to this day to photograph new label printers (black plastic is terrible to photograph) and labels (oh god they are 2D!). I’m doing an OK job. Room for improvement but fine for the initial launch. You can see them here: https://mydpi.com/products/professional-synthetic-direct-thermal-labels https://mydpi.com/products/professional-synthetic-direct-the... In case you’re like “why is this guy selling label printers?!” I’m a solo software dev that wrote Label LIVE (electron) to design and print labels. Now I’m vertically integrating with a printer I’ve imported from China and labels made in the USA. Business and entrepreneurship: just avoid these 9999 things and you’ll be fine! Science and art…
- causi 4y ago
  Another list of things to avoid. The basic rules (rooted in science) are like guardrails and everything else is the art. Too many guides and educational material in general fail to do this. I'd try a lot more new things if along with the "how to replace your transmission" book there was "the top ten ways you could screw up replacing your transmission and their consequences" section.
- keepquestioning 4y ago
  You might like this book https://natureofcode.com https://natureofcode.com
- kak9 4y ago
  wait what are the five bad things in baking bread?
  - semireg 4y ago
post_break 4y ago
Somewhat related but if anyone is looking to get into photography Fuji is putting out digital cameras that emulate their film stocks. The results are pretty incredible. Also they have manual dials on the top so you're not trying to program a computer to use it. It's like driving a manual transmission vs an automatic.
- safeimp 4y ago
  Any specific recommendations?
  - post_break 4y ago
    If you want interchangable lenses look at the X series, XT-3, XT4, XT5 (just released). X100V is sold out to eternity due to popularity. XPro3 is popular too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujifilm_X_series#X_series_chronology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujifilm_X_series#X_series_chr...
    - cfn 4y ago
      Or an XE-4 if you want a smaller body and keep the interchangeable lenses.
  - bcraven 4y ago
    Start with a second-hand Fuji XE-2 and a 35mm f1.4 lens. The YouTube channel GxAce recently did a video about the lens and it made me fall in love with it all over again. https://youtu.be/f6bm_0aNpMM https://youtu.be/f6bm_0aNpMM
  - dsego 4y ago
    I'm very happy with my xt-30 and a combo of 35mm f2 prime + 18-55 kit lens. This is my first interchangeable lens camera though, so take it with a grain of salt. I don't miss the ISO dial found on the more expensive models, because I like to keep the ISO on auto and don't worry about grain and noise. The mode dial on the left is a bit gimmicky and the autofocus can sometimes struggle, but overall it's been nice. I have been eyeing the x100v but so far I can't justify the price, and I'm not sure the fixed 23mm would work for me, I love the flexibility of the zoom lens. I only wish there was a lighter zoom lens, like the 15-45 but without the power zoom and maybe f2.8. I also love using the film modes, specifically Astia with the color chrome on max is my go-to choice, I don't have the time and will to edit so I like good jpeg results straight out of camera.
agentdrtran 4y ago
I've been trying to learn more about photography recently and this is the best guide I've seen, especially the color and tone section.
nbzso 4y ago
Just sharing: If you want to learn photography, buy yourself a film camera and read those two books. Ansel Adams: The Camera https://amzn.to/3gMyCa5 https://amzn.to/3gMyCa5 The Negative https://amzn.to/3U88fsN https://amzn.to/3U88fsN The rest is just practice.:)
- fedeb95 4y ago
  Good advice. A film camera forces you to learn, while digital will "fix" things for you
- anta40 4y ago
  I think for learning photography today, using a film camera will very likely wasteful, unless you are pursuing a photography degree, for example. Get a digital camera. Instant feedback and histogram are very useful for judging your exposures. Once you are comfortable with that, you may pick a film camera.
  - nbzso 4y ago
    Using a film camera will force you to take the picture with your mind first. You will understand exposure and light in a fundamental way. You always can use your phone, computational photography will give you the best result, algorithmically speaking.:)
    - dsego 4y ago
      You can force yourself by setting everything to manual on a digital camera. Especially on a non-pasm camera, like fujifilm, where you can see and control physical dials.
      - antihero 4y ago
        It's still way too easy with digital mirrorless where you have a tight feedback loop of being able to see the image respond to adjustment live, and also there's no cost associated with pulling the trigger. I guess the best thing to do would be turn off exposure preview (so you can't see what settings are going to look like and the EVF becomes "dumb"), and perhaps buy a tiny 512MB SD card or something so you can only fit 26 or so RAW files on it :)
fedeb95 4y ago
All good advices. I've been taking pictures for a decade and reading books really does help more than a lot of online stuff you find. Also, looking at masters' photographs and reasoning about how they were made. After some time when I thought composition was all that mattered, I realised that light is all that matters. I use only natural light, so that means I shoot only when the intersection of good light and free time is not empty, but this has improved my craft.
- Loic 4y ago
  Time. It takes time and preparation to wait for the right light at the right place. Waking-up early is oft very well rewarded.
  - fedeb95 4y ago
    Yes of course, if one has time, studying a place in various times is highly valuable
pdpi 4y ago
Seeing as this is photography for geeks: Colour temperature is exactly that, a temperature. Things glow when hot, with the colour of the light depending on the temperature and the material. When you say "a colour temperature of 6200 K" it means the light is the same colour as that emitted by an ideal black body at that temperature. It's no coincidence we perceive colour temperatures around the high 5k to low 6k as white, because the surface of the sun is around 5800 K.
- zokier 4y ago
  In practice vast majority of scenes are not illuminated (directly) by a blackbody source, so for white balance purpose its inherently crude tool to achieve a color look, and often there is no "correct" color temperature setting for a scene
  - pdpi 4y ago
    Yup, of course. That's why software like Lightroom usually has a "tint" slider next to their colour temperature slider. It's just that "colour temperature" seems like a pretty weird turn of phrase (and the article seemed pretty befuddled by it), so it's worth knowing what it actually means.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
js-j 4y ago
If you want to understand exposure, look no further than Fred Parker's Ultimate Exposure computer: https://www.reddit.com/r/AnalogCommunity/comments/t2bi0y/fred_parkers_ultimate_exposure_computer/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AnalogCommunity/comments/t2bi0y/fre...
ak_111 4y ago
Whats a good intro book to understand optics that is technical but doesn't completely overwhelm (bonus if it includes how vision works from a physiological level)?
- formerly_proven 4y ago
  https://www.photonstophotos.net/GeneralTopics/Lenses/Optics_Primer/Optics_Primer.htm https://www.photonstophotos.net/GeneralTopics/Lenses/Optics_...
camillomiller 4y ago
This article doesn't touch on the most important aspect of the trade, something that makes a shot into a photograph: the choice of a subject. You can make the most technically perfect shot, and yet it would still look bland and empty and boring if you don't have a subject. No amount of technical understanding will help you choose a subject, as it has to do with with curiosity for the world and the art of observation. A shot originates in your camera. A photograph originates in your brain. Worth reading, in my opinion even before you pick up any technical book: Roland Barthes - Camera Lucida, reflections on photography.
- WA 4y ago
  Counter point, directly from the article: > An intriguing interplay of light and shadows can make a discarded candy wrapper look profound. And I agree. I recently saw "good" photos of a mundane university bathroom, but they were intriguing.
  - sph 4y ago
    Yeah, I seem to understand the art of photography goes through different stages of mastery: - Level 0: Newbie. - Level 1: The art of lighting, composition and colour theory, i.e. this article. This is very technical and scientific. - Level 2: The choice of subject and hidden meaning, if any, of the picture. This is more abstract and "artistic." Many skilled photographers don't go past level 1. I reckon the reason photography is such a common hobby is because it can attract both technically- and artistically-minded people.
    - dsego 4y ago
      And then the next level yet is to do a series of photographs encompassing a common theme and message. And then developing a personal style perhaps? Not long ago I've participated in a local photo marathon, where you get a piece of paper with themes to interpret in limited time, there are checkpoints as well. Lots of walking and running around, it was really difficult, but I would recommend anyone dabbling in photography to give it a try.
  - 4y ago
atoav 4y ago
Longer focal length, more zoom, more perspective compression, more blur outside of the focus area. Wider open arperture, more light on the sensor, more blur outside of the focus area. Longer exposure time, more light on the sensor, more motion blur. Bigger sensor sensitivity (ISO), more light collected per unit of time, more grain/noise. Bigger sensor, bigger field of view, more blur outside of the area of focus. Then you also have neutral density filters (ND filters), which allow you to modify the exposure time/aperture while keeping the ISO where it is (e.g. if you wanna blur the background in bright sunlight). You become a good fotographer if these interconnections are so well understood you don't need to think about them anymore — and you can focus your effort on finding the right combination of camera position, angle and lense settings. The position and angle is what makes and breaks a good picture. This is why a good photographer with a smartphone takes better pictures than an amateur with a Hasselblad.
- nerdponx 4y ago
  > You become a good fotographer if these interconnections are so well understood you don't need to think about them anymore — and you can focus your effort on finding the right combination of camera position, angle and lense settings. Much like any skill: music, computer programming, cooking, etc. Mastering the technical fundamentals liberates you from having to worry about the technical fundamentals.
- jeromenerf 4y ago
  > Wider open aperture, more light on the sensor, more blur outside of the focus area. / shallower depth of field
  - atoav 4y ago
    Thats the phrase, I wrote this after waking up
jwr 4y ago
Can we all stop for a moment to appreciate this fantastic content? Great writing, with well-picked and carefully crafted examples, with lots of good (and correct) advice. On a web page. That you can just read. If you don't appreciate this, let's describe what this website is NOT: it is not an ad-ridden cesspool of misinformation with auto-generated text interspersed with ads. It does not smack you in the face with a SUBSCRIBE NOW popup. It does not drag you through the mud of misleading "customize my cookie preferences" dialogs. It has zero trackers. And the information is not posted on Facebook, Tumblr, Blogger, Medium, or any of the other black holes where content goes to be stamped with "SUBSCRIBE NOW LOGIN NOW" popups and eventually disappear and die. Michał's writing is excellent (his "Guerrilla guide to CNC and resin casting" at https://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/gcnc/ https://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/gcnc/ is a classic already), but it's not just the writing that makes this content so great. When reading this, I am reminded of the early days of the web and it makes me happy.
- nickpp 4y ago
  Totally agree but now I wish the author would get some kind of small reward for his effort so that he's incentivized to keep writing this kind of content.
  - feydaykyn 4y ago
    One could buy his book https://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/prep/ https://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/prep/
mod50ack 4y ago
I've been taking pictures for a few years now. Not all of my photos are fit for Wikimedia Commons, but I've put a lot on [1], especially of baseball players and buildings (just what I happen to enjoy photographing). I began originally with point-and-shoots, which I borrowed from my parents and basically used as they're designed: pointing and shooting. The quality of those early photos is not always great. But with time, I learned how to get a quality shot of a person or action (in baseball) and how to wait for the right moment and so on. This was without cheating (using burst mode). Of course, you don't get 100% of the moments that are interesting. Sometimes someone blocks you, sometimes it just doesn't happen at the right time, sometimes you're eating a snack. It's OK. The most important thing is to get a lot of practice taking pictures of the thing you like to photograph. You might thing non-moving subjects are easier. They are in a way. But if you are photographing buildings, for instance, then you should care about straight lines and getting the right perspective. This can be infuriating if you know what to look for. People move, but at least we humans don't have straight lines or flat surfaces and so it's pretty easy to capture us from many different angles. The point-and-shoots helped me develop my sense of timing. You don't need to use a point-and-shoot for this, though; a better camera will be perfectly good (and give you better image quality). You can get a used DSLR for pretty cheap. The switch to interchangeable-lens cameras (DSLRs, which are a bit older, or mirrorless cameras, which are newer) will give you the opportunity to try out different lenses, which make a huge difference for your photography. (By the way, DSLR lenses can generally be used on newer mirrorless cameras.) My first photography-changing DSLR lens was a Canon 70-300, which made my baseball photography much more credible. You don't need to practice to use a new lens, of course. But if you practice using some, then you can gain a better understanding of the importance of focal length (and aperture) to your ptohography. The next step is getting out of auto mode and getting a full understanding of manual exposure and RAW. For me, for a long time, I shot mostly in a program mode on my DSLR because I only saw through the optical viewfinder and wanted my exposure to be right, especially as I was shooting JPEG on small SD cards. That's all very well. But to get to the level I am at now, I needed to start shooting in full manual (the mode I now use 99% of the time), and shooting in my camera's RAW format (which gives you MUCH more editing latitude in basically every way, as well as the full quality of your camera). Using a contemporary mirrorless camera can actually make manual exposure significantly easier. You can now see your exposure in your viewfinder (generally this can be turned off, too). (On DSLRs from the last ~ten years, you can get this same feature by using live view --- i.e., shooting with the back screen rather than the viewfinder.) This can confirm your exposure visually and also get you more familiar with the different settings and how to "eyeball" it even on a DSLR/without exposure simulation in the viewfinder. At every step, practice is key. If you want to take pictures, go out and do it. It doesn't matter if they're bad. They will not all be good, especially not at the beginning. Find the things you like to photograph and keep at it until you are happy with what you're doing. (Or, if you find you don't like photography, that's OK, too.) [1] Shameless plug: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MediaSearch?type=image&search=Q113531294&sort=recency https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MediaSearch?type=...
camtarn 4y ago
Nitpick: 'collimated' is a technical term for a beam of light where all the rays are exactly parallel. When using 'collimated' in the article, the author means 'focused' or 'narrow' - as in, the focused beam of light emanating from a spotlight, which spreads out slower than an omnidirectional light, but isn't strictly parallel. You'd think that an article titled 'Photography for geeks' would take some care to get the technical terms right!
deleted 4y ago
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davidmurdoch 4y ago
Great article. In case the author stops by: Why no mention of CRI? It's definitely a great geeky topic, and the article links out to professional lights with exceptionally high CRI.
- lucb1e 4y ago
  For anyone else who's not a walking TLA dictionary: > color rendering index (CRI). CRI is a quantitative measure of a light's ability to reproduce the colors of objects faithfully in comparison with an ideal or natural light source.
bambax 4y ago
Re: focus. Most cameras focus on shutter button half-pressed. Learn to use this by focusing first (with a half-press), framing, and then taking the picture by finishing the press (not doing a complete press again as that would reset the focus point). Some cameras let you have a focus button different from the shutter button. This can be super useful and can become natural after a little while.
- yetihehe 4y ago
  Or even use manual focus. Want to do "artistic" photos? Get lens with wide aperture (below f/2), it has very low depth of field, so you can focus on your subject and have blurred background. After using "normal" cameras all my life, I've recently (less than 3 weeks ago) bought cheapest mirrorless camera and bought f/1.2 lens (50mm without zoom, those are cheapest lens there are). First photos of my dog were so sweet I instantly fell in love with that camera and lens.
  - lucb1e 4y ago
    I was going to ask the stupid question "why bother with special lenses to introduce unsharp parts if you can just destroy details in software still anyway" but I think I realized the answer, in case anyone else has that question also: introducing it later depends on knowing which parts were further away. Pictures (typically) don't have depth/distance information for each pixel.
WastingMyTime89 4y ago
Best pictures of the article: the first four. Why are they the best: their composition is interesting with great use of vertical lines, background colors and well positioned windows. First line of the core of the article: "It is said that composition is the most important aspect of a photograph. I disagree." Well, let's agree to disagree then.
- xiande04 4y ago
  Those are the best photos because he took all the other photos for demonstration purposes.
  - WastingMyTime89 4y ago
    That's kind of the point. The perfectly lit and exposed pictures they took for demonstration purpose are infinitely less interesting that the well composed ones. From my experience, a well composed picture with technical flaws will always be more interesting than a studio perfect picture showing something uninteresting. I'm intentionally provocative with this comment in that I don't entirely disagree with the article. Contrary to what's stated, I do think that composition is everything. Still, I also think that lighting is a part of composition.
nippoo 4y ago
Unrelated to the content: I'm curious about the domain! It's the first time I've come across a Christmas Island (.cx) domain since the infamous one back in the '00s.
bambax 4y ago
Good advice and good writing. But the title is misleading: this is photography for aspiring photographers, not esp. geeks. I was expecting more geeky things. For example, I have recently been toying with making a kind of photobooth / selfies machine for parties by connecting a DSLR with a Raspberry Pi; people take pictures of themselves with a remote (the excellent Yongnuo RF-603 which is radio, not infrared); the Pi downloads the images (with gphoto2), resizes them, prints the date, and uploads to a server. People can see their images on their phones less than a minute after it was taken. It's a lot of fun.
- SamBam 4y ago
  Around 2012 I was asked to make a photo booth for a friend's wedding. I ended up managing to rig an old-fashioned doorbell to an Arduino to give me a 3-second countdown, attached to a DSLR for the photo, an eye-fi card for the wireless connectivity because I think the camera didn't have on-board WiFi, and an iPad attached outside the both that always showed the last photo and let you scroll back. I think I'd have to recreate it from scratch if I had to do it again because I have no idea now.
  - bambax 4y ago
    Yeah, Eye-Fi (the company) doesn't exist anymore, probably because newer cameras all have wifi. But for a photobooth at a party that needs to run unattended, it's better to use an old camera you don't care about too much ;-) Having gphoto monitor the camera constantly (my first attempt) is not a good solution, because if for whatever reason the connection to the camera is lost, gphoto just dies. In my current setup, gphoto downloads new files at regular intervals (via cron), puts them in a directory on the pi, which is then rsynced to a server. This is very resilient: it survives rebooting the pi, turning the camera off or on, etc., with zero intervention. All it needs is a network connection to the Pi (wifi or ethernet) and nothing else. No app, no phone nearby, no bluetooth, no nothing ;-) I use an old Pi 3 for this that's plenty fast; it would probably work on a zero (but I've never been able to buy one) or other single boards. Ideally it could be put in a small box that could be mounted on the flash shoe and that would also act as a remote...
gmiller123456 4y ago
I'd be curious to know if any beginning photographer could actually put those tips to good use. I find it odd they did not cover adjusting exposure with ISO, shutter, and aperture. Getting the right exposure, and not blindly accepting auto-exposure, is probably the most fundamental skill to develop, and is usually where most teaching starts. The example I use as to why auto-exposure is unreliable is that most manufacturers have auto-exposure adjust to produce 18% grey (there's some variance in manufacturers). So if you take a picture of a white wall, the camera will expose it as 18% grey. If you take a picture of a black wall, the camera will expose it as 18% grey. As the photographer, it's up to you to decide if you wanted the wall to be black, or show fine differences in shade, you can't do both well at the same time.
- lucb1e 4y ago
  > not blindly accepting auto-exposure, is probably the most fundamental skill to develop Bit late to the party (why is hn so ephemeral) but this made me realize that my Samsung phone camera has literally 1 option to adjust: exposure. Sure, zooming is also default-accessible but that's selecting what to capture than photo-technical adjustments of what you're capturing. Any other such slider, you have to go into pro mode. Never realized this was the most fundamental skill but why they picked this just clicked into place! > if you take a picture of a white wall, the camera will expose it as 18% grey. If you take a picture of a black wall, the camera will expose it as 18% grey. That sounds like the two pictures should look the same in the end, then. If the walls are perfectly black and white and nothing else is visible, of course, but even with imperfections it should still look similar and not necessarily recognisable as a white or a black surface. Am I understanding you right?
nayuki 4y ago
Geekier with math: https://www.nayuki.io/page/the-photographic-exposure-equation https://www.nayuki.io/page/the-photographic-exposure-equatio...
serko 4y ago
The author gave a nice general overview of the topic. But the thing is, none of these technical things are essential. Like a lot of people here (me included, but I am actively trying to get rid of it) the author has an engineering mindset, that was built (I am just guessing here) through years and years of engineering work. And it is really cool and may give an advantage in some professions (and sometimes in life overall), but it is not the best approach to photography or in any other arty topic where one could not objectively measure pleasure and value, and where aesthetic perception is the main definition of something being excellent and desirable. People often forget that photography is still mostly an art form. And in art, the most important aspect is provoking some kind of emotional response (folks mostly pursue pleasant ones, but it is not limited to that). To understand lenses, focuses, and shutter speed how much time does one need? A couple of days? Weeks? It is objectively easy to learn the rule of thirds, focal points, white balance, etc. But which white balance makes beautiful images? Which calculations would make your friends adore their faces in the photo? I have no answer to that, do you? Should images be dark, moody, and sharp like Roger Dickens's cinematography to be likable? Or dark, blurry, and saturated like Wong Kar-wai movies? Or they should be bright, light, and symmetrical like Wes Anderson's fairytales?? Or grainy and geometrically precise like Henri Cartier-Bresson's works? Or maybe images need to be provocative, erotically charged black-and-white photos, fashionable and borderline pornographic like Helmut Newton's works? There are a lot of cases then some person with a developed sense of beauty creates unimaginably stunning photography by using a smartphone build-in camera, but even more cases when someone with a pricey a-la Hasselblad, titan tripod, cinema-level lenses, 5-point professional lighting, and a long list of detailed photogear videoreviews making the most boring and forgettable images possible. Feelings > Any technical aspect, rules, or calculations I am not saying that knowing your tools is not important at all, but it definitely less important than the internet wants it to be. For example, I know a Magnum agency photographer who takes all his photos with any digital SLR in auto mode (p-mode). And he adores Instagram. So for any person who wants to start into photography (but not photography-related technology), I suggest watching a lot of photo books and cinematographically superior movies (all by critically acclaimed authors), visiting classical art museums, and for all costs avoiding any online photography communities. And you should take as many photos as possible every day. Not only on vacations or holidays but just as a visual diary with colors that you found beautiful, unusual patterns that you start to see around, and unexpected shapes that things around us are forming. Aesthetic goes first. It should be like a tingling feeling on the tips of your fingers when you see something interesting. Then from it go lighting, composition, and color. And these three are codependent. You need to start seeing light, feeling colors, and thinking in shapes. Need to develop your sense of beauty and your watchfulness/visual awareness/contemplation (sorry, I don't know how to translate this properly). One cannot create beautiful photography if one does not know what beauty is.
prego_xo 4y ago
As with any art form, it takes getting creative to make something amazing. It's super helpful to know what each part of the camera does, but also what you can do in spite of them. One of the best lessons I learned in my high-school film class was that lighting is important, but never a limitation. The beginning of this article talks about avoiding/using certain lights, but I would argue against the need of having the perfect circumstances for a photo. The combination of two flashlights in the dark or car sunshades in the sunlight are creative ways to make any camera take sharp photos with meaning.
thih9 4y ago
> Telephoto optics tend to produce shallow DOF; wide-angle lenses keep almost everything in focus most of the time. Isn’t this incorrect? I.e. the article itself states that telephoto is just a crop of the wide angle. And sure, the background gets “larger” and if that changes the composition, it might make it look less busy. But the DOF (blur factor) stays the same.

820 points by excite1997 4y ago

Pretty awesome overall, one improvement would be to shoot the model in the focal length shot face on to better illustrate the big nose, no ears (too wide) and pancake face (too tele) effects

system2 4y ago

Adding examples makes it better than other sites I've seen. I will share this with friends. Thanks!

vanillax 4y ago

Love it!

throw0101c 4y ago

If anyone wants to move beyond using the "auto" setting on their camera (or phone), I would recommend the book Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson, the first edition of which was published in 1990: * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/142239.Understanding_Exposure https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/142239.Understanding_Exp... The principles involved haven't changed much in the intervening decades; the current fourth edition was publish in 2016. If all you have is a phone you don't have to get new equipment: just perhaps a third-party 'camera app' that allows you manual control of aperture, shutter speed, ISO/sensitivity. Once you know how each of these settings alter the resulting photo you can use them to alter the composition of photos, which is a whole other craft. Edit: seems recent smartphones have little-to-no adjustable camera settings.

geokon 4y ago
I think when you break down all the variables there is really very little to play with bc no phones have variable apertures. ISO is basically a linear gain that's done on the sensor. As long as you aren't blowing out your photo and loosing information, it basically makes not difference if you do it in sensor or later while editing So the only variable left is the shutter speed - which is basically directly dictated by the amount of light you have. You try to get as much light as you can without blowing anything out. This is how you get the most information. You can decrease it to get faster shots with less blur, at the cost of more noise So it all boils down to basically one "slider"/variable between blur and noise
- sva_ 4y ago
  > no phones have variable apertures. Even my almost 5 years old Galaxy S9+ has aperture. Surely something better came out since.
  - wtallis 4y ago
    Wikipedia says the S9/S9+ was the first phone since 2009 to have a variable aperture. The S10 series also had it, but it was gone again in the S20. So it's definitely not common, and even in the handful of phones that had it, it was only one stop of adjustment.
- CWuestefeld 4y ago
  ISO is basically a linear gain that's done on the sensor. As long as you aren't blowing out your photo and loosing information, it basically makes not difference if you do it in sensor or later while editing This is true for some cameras, but certainly not all. Many cameras, especially pro or pro-sumer grade, have non-linear ISO. That is, there are ranges for which it behaves linearly, but typically there will be some range - say the minimum up to 1600 or something - where it behaves as a linear range, and then the next setting up from that (where the settings are typically 1/3 stop) will reset to a lower snr. (And yes, that does imply that in such cases it often yields better results to go up by one or even two clicks in ISO) I'm not sure if there any camera-phones that behave this way, though.
  - geokon 4y ago
    "then the next setting up from that will reset to a lower snr" How does it magically make more photons fit the sensor..? And why wouldn't you use that same magic at lower iso gain factors?
    - timbeccue 4y ago
      The base stops are ISO 100, 200, 400, etc. Many cameras let you set the ISO in 1/3 stop increments, but if I recall correctly, many camera manufacturers just keep the sensitivity at the base stops and adjust the brightness via software. So shooting at ISO 250 really means ISO 200 (underexposing what you requested) but then adding a third stop equivalent of brightening to the digital file. Conversely, using ISO 160 actually means the camera is using ISO 200 (overexposing) and lowering the brightness in software. What this means, at least 10 years ago when I was more in tune with the photography world, is that people would prefer to shoot at the [base ISO stop - 1/3] levels to because those were the levels with the least noise near that exposure setting. The cost is you risk saturating more pixels in the highlights. And for the same reasoning, the ISO setting s 1/3 over the base stops were typically avoided as they were noisier, albeit with slightly more dynamic range.
_HMCB_ 4y ago
I bought that book months back. Have yet to read it but thanks for the reminder.
gofreddygo 4y ago
Aperture Size, Shutter Speed and ISO. Just understand what they are. And their units. Actually see pictures varying one and keeping others constant to get a hang of things. Then go backwards, check professional pictures and guess the values. Professional photography forums all photos have these values published . Night/Day photography, moving/still and background focus are the only 3 skills you need as an amateur photographer. They rely on the 3 settings above. Beyond that lies the rabbit hole that, if you venture, speak not to any people whom you wish to keep friends. They hate when you try to tell them. Don't spend over 2k on lenses. Have printed photos on glossy, matte paper. Touch and feel them. Worth the time.
- anta40 4y ago
  +1 for printing, which are a rare habit on social media era. Virtually any image looks great on FB/Instagram/etc, but once you printed it big, you'll notice how good or bad actually it is.
excite1997 4y ago
> The principles involved haven't changed much in the intervening decades. My problem with many old-time tutors is that they refuse to recognize that photography has gotten a lot easier. We don't need to learn the craft the way they did. For example, you don't need stuff like the "sunny 16" rule of exposure if you have real-time previews in the camera. You use visual feedback, usually with better accuracy. In the same vein, you probably don't need to learn about flash guide numbers when modern continuous LED illumination covers 99% of use cases without any guesswork. Or, you don't need to learn about optical filters (perhaps except for the polarizer) when almost all their functions can be accomplished in software without loss in fidelity.
- skhr0680 4y ago
  The point of learning Sunny 16 is that once you’ve internalized thinking in full stops, you don’t need visual feedback, which makes you faster, which can make the difference between getting your shot or not and having a happy or angry client. > Or, you don't need to learn about optical filters (perhaps except for the polarizer) when almost all their functions can be accomplished in software without loss in fidelity. I still think it’s a good idea to learn what they do, so you know when to use a (digital) BW red filter because you want brighter skin.
- throw0101c 4y ago
  > For example, you don't need stuff like the "sunny 16" rule of exposure if you have real-time previews in the camera. You use visual feedback, usually with better accuracy. Except that it may not, unless you know what you are doing and press the right button: > With the monitor or viewfinder, you may see an image with an aperture that differs from the shooting result. Since the blurring of a subject changes if the aperture is changed, the blurriness of the actual picture will differ from the image you were viewing prior to shooting. > While you press and hold the key to which you assigned the [Aperture Preview] function, the aperture is stepped down to the set aperture value and you can check the blurriness prior to shooting. * https://helpguide.sony.net/ilc/1420/v1/en/contents/TP0000226642.html https://helpguide.sony.net/ilc/1420/v1/en/contents/TP0000226... * https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/how-to-use-the-depth-of-field-preview-button-on-your-dslr/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/how-to-use-the-depth-of-... * https://www.slrphotographyguide.com/depthfield-preview-button/ https://www.slrphotographyguide.com/depthfield-preview-butto... > In the same vein, you probably don't need to learn about flash guide numbers when modern continuous LED illumination covers 99% of use cases without any guesswork. And leaving your camera in "auto" also probably "covers 99% of use cases without any guesswork"… but you give up creative control to the software. Why bother learning what aperture is at all if 99% of the time you won't ever matter to taking a photo? The whole point of reducing the use of "auto" is to make creative choices yourself.
billfruit 4y ago
Is there any good book on photo editing.
kawera 4y ago
A quite technical but fascinating book on lighting and photography: "Light Science & Magic" by Fil Hunter and Paul Fuqua (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/290153.Light https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/290153.Light)

Terretta 4y ago

This is very well done for a new-to-photography audience. Will be sharing around to people who say all their things look like snapshots, what's up with that. Great use of examples, except for one: kid on bridge. > At the same time, it must be said that color and tone can be what separates a mediocre photograph from a memorable one. To illustrate, let's look at the potential evolution of this vacation shot deliberately chosen for its mediocrity... Then the dynamism is removed by 'correcting' the dutch angle to horizon, the surprisingly good color balance is skewed off, and the whole thing gets that circa mid-2000s HDR look from Flickr and Shutterfly and the like where every photo got tone-mapped. Underwhelming of an end result, especially compared to the later color and tone examples (e.g. kitchen superhero).

excite1997 4y ago
In the mid-2000s, HDR was all about jacking up local contrast, giving you that unique look of gritty skin and halos cropping up all over the place. I'm talking stuff like this: https://digital-photography-school.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/hdr-tips-too-big.jpg https://digital-photography-school.com/wp-content/uploads/20... Less obnoxious tone mapping that compresses shadows and highlights is a more modern trend, I'd say post-2012. It's basically done by every cell phone today when shooting a high-contrast scene.
- Terretta 4y ago
  > It's basically done by every cell phone today Yeah, it's a problem. I shoot iPhone in RAW to back that off, or Halide RAW if it really ticks me off. // Disclosure: Like most everyone, my top community ranked Flickr photos were heavily HDR'd, such as this one that hit #1 on Explore on 2006-08-17: https://live.staticflickr.com/60/216486412_0e3542fb85_k.jpg https://live.staticflickr.com/60/216486412_0e3542fb85_k.jpg At the time, I produced some top ranked HDRs out of annoyance, like, oh, use tone map plugin? Automatic upvotes! Called it the "Flickr craze" and polled on comparison between: HDR tool: https://live.staticflickr.com/91/212613394_c1db0694ad_k.jpg https://live.staticflickr.com/91/212613394_c1db0694ad_k.jpg Hand balanced: https://live.staticflickr.com/88/213584770_8175d4ec45_k.jpg https://live.staticflickr.com/88/213584770_8175d4ec45_k.jpg When compared side by size, the community preferred the hand mapped version, which hit #7 on Explore.

qntty 4y ago

See also, Marc Levey (CS professor at Stanford specializing in computational photography) gave some good lectures at Google a few years ago on digital photography: https://sites.google.com/site/marclevoylectures/home https://sites.google.com/site/marclevoylectures/home

mgraczyk 4y ago
Levoy!
- qntty 4y ago
  Oops, sorry!
  - lucb1e 4y ago
    The word "Levoy" does not occur on the page. Perhaps the site's author should have put their name in the page title instead of, ironically, embedded in a picture on the page's header!
    - Wistar 4y ago
      It is in the URL cited.
keepquestioning 4y ago
Anything like this but for analog?

spoils19 4y ago

What a great resource!

lxe 4y ago

This is helpful for my stable diffusion prompts.

yieldcrv 4y ago
I’ve been using photography and focal length prompts on stable diffusion since I first installed it, would recommend
lelandfe 4y ago
A lot from the article will not work, because the terms are too overloaded ("three point"). SD photography and lighting keyword dump I've tested for 1.5: f1.8, dof, bokeh, soft focus, chiaroscuro, backlit, golden hour, soft lighting, natural lighting, warm colors [but not "cool"], Polaroid, lens flare "85mm", "50mm" etc all make the image realistic, but don't do anything specific. Pro-tip: use "windows" to get many of the outdoor lighting keywords available indoors.
- kyleyeats 4y ago
  Thanks for these. Can vouch for golden hour. I can see why directors are obsessed with it.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - lxe 4y ago
    Golden hour is great if you want things to be very warm. Sometimes I throw in a (sun behind subject) as a negative prompt to reduce the "sunset" effect

yieldcrv 4y ago

This is good, I would add that “made up composition rules” are instead “made up composition guidelines”, that people should learn how to deviate from after constricting themselves with false constraints

trap_goes_hot 4y ago
Artists will not have a common answer to "Are there any rules in art?". Personally, I think there are patterns in art, and there are often rules that can describe those patterns. Oddly, I think the word rule works out OK. 'guidelines' is problematic in another way as it also implies that one is being guided towards a certain aesthetic/end result.
- yieldcrv 4y ago
  I feel like your definition of rules is my definition of guidelines, and vice versa same observation, different semantics
canbus 4y ago
good things to learn, even better to forget.

muglug 4y ago

The main thing about photography is your first 10,000 photos will likely be bad. Modern technology makes it possible to get through 10,000 snaps much faster and much cheaper than when using film. But taking those photos is not enough — it’s in the editing of those first 10,000 photos that you will find the hidden photographer in you. Photography is a lot like writing code: you can create something that does the job, but does not do it beautifully. You can keep on creating until creating beauty becomes easier.

bradknowles 4y ago
I wouldn't say it's your first 10k photos. Because anyone can just hold down the button and take hundreds of photos. And those hundreds of photos don't really count as separate pictures in this regard. I would say that it's more like your first 10k different photographic compositions/subjects. From there, I agree that you really learn in the editing.
- oogali 4y ago
  For me, it truly was after my first 10K photos — speed shutter and all. Once you sit down and go searching through that burst for the perfect or otherwise usable photo of that burst, you start to notice the small things: the slight detail changes at the edges, what may have transpired between captures, how a light source that changes in milliseconds can affect the overall feeling. It took me about 2.5 years to reach that point. Shooting at different times of the day, different seasons. Countless hours tweaking levels and cropping in Photoshop, Capture One, etc. Lots of changes in gear: UV/haze filters, circular polarizers, tripods, zoom lenses, prime lenses. Flashes, reflectors, gray cards. Exploring the different modes on my camera, Magic Lantern firmware, etc. It all counts. But the post processing is the crucial part of the feedback loop.
- tsqj 4y ago
  reminds me of that most quoted lines from Bruce Lee, "I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times." same as what you are indicating here. Deliberate / mindful practice leads to significant improvement.

photochemsyn 4y ago

An interesting site with lots of information about 35mm photography and film vs digital techniques is 35mmc.com. Here for example is a very clear and concise discussion of depth of field and the factors that control it (such as aperture, focal length): https://www.35mmc.com/25/07/2016/basic-optics-photographers/ https://www.35mmc.com/25/07/2016/basic-optics-photographers/

semireg 4y ago

The things I’m drawn to in life is where art meets science. In hindsight, so much of the secret is knowing how to avoid failure. Baking bread? Build the intuition over time and you’ll realize baking is forgiving so long as you don’t do these “5 bad things.” Gardening/farming? Yeah, there’s a big list of bad things. Brewing beer? Another list of things to avoid. The basic rules (rooted in science) are like guardrails and everything else is the art. I love this so much. In my early 20s I had a week long mind meld knowledge transfer from a self taught photographer. It made me fall in love with photography. I’m still using it to this day to photograph new label printers (black plastic is terrible to photograph) and labels (oh god they are 2D!). I’m doing an OK job. Room for improvement but fine for the initial launch. You can see them here: https://mydpi.com/products/professional-synthetic-direct-thermal-labels https://mydpi.com/products/professional-synthetic-direct-the... In case you’re like “why is this guy selling label printers?!” I’m a solo software dev that wrote Label LIVE (electron) to design and print labels. Now I’m vertically integrating with a printer I’ve imported from China and labels made in the USA. Business and entrepreneurship: just avoid these 9999 things and you’ll be fine! Science and art…

causi 4y ago
Another list of things to avoid. The basic rules (rooted in science) are like guardrails and everything else is the art. Too many guides and educational material in general fail to do this. I'd try a lot more new things if along with the "how to replace your transmission" book there was "the top ten ways you could screw up replacing your transmission and their consequences" section.
keepquestioning 4y ago
You might like this book https://natureofcode.com https://natureofcode.com
kak9 4y ago
wait what are the five bad things in baking bread?
- semireg 4y ago

post_break 4y ago

Somewhat related but if anyone is looking to get into photography Fuji is putting out digital cameras that emulate their film stocks. The results are pretty incredible. Also they have manual dials on the top so you're not trying to program a computer to use it. It's like driving a manual transmission vs an automatic.

safeimp 4y ago
Any specific recommendations?
- post_break 4y ago
  If you want interchangable lenses look at the X series, XT-3, XT4, XT5 (just released). X100V is sold out to eternity due to popularity. XPro3 is popular too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujifilm_X_series#X_series_chronology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujifilm_X_series#X_series_chr...
  - cfn 4y ago
    Or an XE-4 if you want a smaller body and keep the interchangeable lenses.
- bcraven 4y ago
  Start with a second-hand Fuji XE-2 and a 35mm f1.4 lens. The YouTube channel GxAce recently did a video about the lens and it made me fall in love with it all over again. https://youtu.be/f6bm_0aNpMM https://youtu.be/f6bm_0aNpMM
- dsego 4y ago
  I'm very happy with my xt-30 and a combo of 35mm f2 prime + 18-55 kit lens. This is my first interchangeable lens camera though, so take it with a grain of salt. I don't miss the ISO dial found on the more expensive models, because I like to keep the ISO on auto and don't worry about grain and noise. The mode dial on the left is a bit gimmicky and the autofocus can sometimes struggle, but overall it's been nice. I have been eyeing the x100v but so far I can't justify the price, and I'm not sure the fixed 23mm would work for me, I love the flexibility of the zoom lens. I only wish there was a lighter zoom lens, like the 15-45 but without the power zoom and maybe f2.8. I also love using the film modes, specifically Astia with the color chrome on max is my go-to choice, I don't have the time and will to edit so I like good jpeg results straight out of camera.

agentdrtran 4y ago

I've been trying to learn more about photography recently and this is the best guide I've seen, especially the color and tone section.

nbzso 4y ago

Just sharing: If you want to learn photography, buy yourself a film camera and read those two books. Ansel Adams: The Camera https://amzn.to/3gMyCa5 https://amzn.to/3gMyCa5 The Negative https://amzn.to/3U88fsN https://amzn.to/3U88fsN The rest is just practice.:)

fedeb95 4y ago
Good advice. A film camera forces you to learn, while digital will "fix" things for you
anta40 4y ago
I think for learning photography today, using a film camera will very likely wasteful, unless you are pursuing a photography degree, for example. Get a digital camera. Instant feedback and histogram are very useful for judging your exposures. Once you are comfortable with that, you may pick a film camera.
- nbzso 4y ago
  Using a film camera will force you to take the picture with your mind first. You will understand exposure and light in a fundamental way. You always can use your phone, computational photography will give you the best result, algorithmically speaking.:)
  - dsego 4y ago
    You can force yourself by setting everything to manual on a digital camera. Especially on a non-pasm camera, like fujifilm, where you can see and control physical dials.
    - antihero 4y ago
      It's still way too easy with digital mirrorless where you have a tight feedback loop of being able to see the image respond to adjustment live, and also there's no cost associated with pulling the trigger. I guess the best thing to do would be turn off exposure preview (so you can't see what settings are going to look like and the EVF becomes "dumb"), and perhaps buy a tiny 512MB SD card or something so you can only fit 26 or so RAW files on it :)

fedeb95 4y ago

All good advices. I've been taking pictures for a decade and reading books really does help more than a lot of online stuff you find. Also, looking at masters' photographs and reasoning about how they were made. After some time when I thought composition was all that mattered, I realised that light is all that matters. I use only natural light, so that means I shoot only when the intersection of good light and free time is not empty, but this has improved my craft.

Loic 4y ago
Time. It takes time and preparation to wait for the right light at the right place. Waking-up early is oft very well rewarded.
- fedeb95 4y ago
  Yes of course, if one has time, studying a place in various times is highly valuable

pdpi 4y ago

Seeing as this is photography for geeks: Colour temperature is exactly that, a temperature. Things glow when hot, with the colour of the light depending on the temperature and the material. When you say "a colour temperature of 6200 K" it means the light is the same colour as that emitted by an ideal black body at that temperature. It's no coincidence we perceive colour temperatures around the high 5k to low 6k as white, because the surface of the sun is around 5800 K.

zokier 4y ago
In practice vast majority of scenes are not illuminated (directly) by a blackbody source, so for white balance purpose its inherently crude tool to achieve a color look, and often there is no "correct" color temperature setting for a scene
- pdpi 4y ago
  Yup, of course. That's why software like Lightroom usually has a "tint" slider next to their colour temperature slider. It's just that "colour temperature" seems like a pretty weird turn of phrase (and the article seemed pretty befuddled by it), so it's worth knowing what it actually means.

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js-j 4y ago

If you want to understand exposure, look no further than Fred Parker's Ultimate Exposure computer: https://www.reddit.com/r/AnalogCommunity/comments/t2bi0y/fred_parkers_ultimate_exposure_computer/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AnalogCommunity/comments/t2bi0y/fre...

ak_111 4y ago

Whats a good intro book to understand optics that is technical but doesn't completely overwhelm (bonus if it includes how vision works from a physiological level)?

formerly_proven 4y ago
https://www.photonstophotos.net/GeneralTopics/Lenses/Optics_Primer/Optics_Primer.htm https://www.photonstophotos.net/GeneralTopics/Lenses/Optics_...

camillomiller 4y ago

This article doesn't touch on the most important aspect of the trade, something that makes a shot into a photograph: the choice of a subject. You can make the most technically perfect shot, and yet it would still look bland and empty and boring if you don't have a subject. No amount of technical understanding will help you choose a subject, as it has to do with with curiosity for the world and the art of observation. A shot originates in your camera. A photograph originates in your brain. Worth reading, in my opinion even before you pick up any technical book: Roland Barthes - Camera Lucida, reflections on photography.

WA 4y ago
Counter point, directly from the article: > An intriguing interplay of light and shadows can make a discarded candy wrapper look profound. And I agree. I recently saw "good" photos of a mundane university bathroom, but they were intriguing.
- sph 4y ago
  Yeah, I seem to understand the art of photography goes through different stages of mastery: - Level 0: Newbie. - Level 1: The art of lighting, composition and colour theory, i.e. this article. This is very technical and scientific. - Level 2: The choice of subject and hidden meaning, if any, of the picture. This is more abstract and "artistic." Many skilled photographers don't go past level 1. I reckon the reason photography is such a common hobby is because it can attract both technically- and artistically-minded people.
  - dsego 4y ago
    And then the next level yet is to do a series of photographs encompassing a common theme and message. And then developing a personal style perhaps? Not long ago I've participated in a local photo marathon, where you get a piece of paper with themes to interpret in limited time, there are checkpoints as well. Lots of walking and running around, it was really difficult, but I would recommend anyone dabbling in photography to give it a try.
- 4y ago

atoav 4y ago

Longer focal length, more zoom, more perspective compression, more blur outside of the focus area. Wider open arperture, more light on the sensor, more blur outside of the focus area. Longer exposure time, more light on the sensor, more motion blur. Bigger sensor sensitivity (ISO), more light collected per unit of time, more grain/noise. Bigger sensor, bigger field of view, more blur outside of the area of focus. Then you also have neutral density filters (ND filters), which allow you to modify the exposure time/aperture while keeping the ISO where it is (e.g. if you wanna blur the background in bright sunlight). You become a good fotographer if these interconnections are so well understood you don't need to think about them anymore — and you can focus your effort on finding the right combination of camera position, angle and lense settings. The position and angle is what makes and breaks a good picture. This is why a good photographer with a smartphone takes better pictures than an amateur with a Hasselblad.

nerdponx 4y ago
> You become a good fotographer if these interconnections are so well understood you don't need to think about them anymore — and you can focus your effort on finding the right combination of camera position, angle and lense settings. Much like any skill: music, computer programming, cooking, etc. Mastering the technical fundamentals liberates you from having to worry about the technical fundamentals.
jeromenerf 4y ago
> Wider open aperture, more light on the sensor, more blur outside of the focus area. / shallower depth of field
- atoav 4y ago
  Thats the phrase, I wrote this after waking up

jwr 4y ago

Can we all stop for a moment to appreciate this fantastic content? Great writing, with well-picked and carefully crafted examples, with lots of good (and correct) advice. On a web page. That you can just read. If you don't appreciate this, let's describe what this website is NOT: it is not an ad-ridden cesspool of misinformation with auto-generated text interspersed with ads. It does not smack you in the face with a SUBSCRIBE NOW popup. It does not drag you through the mud of misleading "customize my cookie preferences" dialogs. It has zero trackers. And the information is not posted on Facebook, Tumblr, Blogger, Medium, or any of the other black holes where content goes to be stamped with "SUBSCRIBE NOW LOGIN NOW" popups and eventually disappear and die. Michał's writing is excellent (his "Guerrilla guide to CNC and resin casting" at https://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/gcnc/ https://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/gcnc/ is a classic already), but it's not just the writing that makes this content so great. When reading this, I am reminded of the early days of the web and it makes me happy.

nickpp 4y ago
Totally agree but now I wish the author would get some kind of small reward for his effort so that he's incentivized to keep writing this kind of content.
- feydaykyn 4y ago
  One could buy his book https://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/prep/ https://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/prep/

mod50ack 4y ago

I've been taking pictures for a few years now. Not all of my photos are fit for Wikimedia Commons, but I've put a lot on [1], especially of baseball players and buildings (just what I happen to enjoy photographing). I began originally with point-and-shoots, which I borrowed from my parents and basically used as they're designed: pointing and shooting. The quality of those early photos is not always great. But with time, I learned how to get a quality shot of a person or action (in baseball) and how to wait for the right moment and so on. This was without cheating (using burst mode). Of course, you don't get 100% of the moments that are interesting. Sometimes someone blocks you, sometimes it just doesn't happen at the right time, sometimes you're eating a snack. It's OK. The most important thing is to get a lot of practice taking pictures of the thing you like to photograph. You might thing non-moving subjects are easier. They are in a way. But if you are photographing buildings, for instance, then you should care about straight lines and getting the right perspective. This can be infuriating if you know what to look for. People move, but at least we humans don't have straight lines or flat surfaces and so it's pretty easy to capture us from many different angles. The point-and-shoots helped me develop my sense of timing. You don't need to use a point-and-shoot for this, though; a better camera will be perfectly good (and give you better image quality). You can get a used DSLR for pretty cheap. The switch to interchangeable-lens cameras (DSLRs, which are a bit older, or mirrorless cameras, which are newer) will give you the opportunity to try out different lenses, which make a huge difference for your photography. (By the way, DSLR lenses can generally be used on newer mirrorless cameras.) My first photography-changing DSLR lens was a Canon 70-300, which made my baseball photography much more credible. You don't need to practice to use a new lens, of course. But if you practice using some, then you can gain a better understanding of the importance of focal length (and aperture) to your ptohography. The next step is getting out of auto mode and getting a full understanding of manual exposure and RAW. For me, for a long time, I shot mostly in a program mode on my DSLR because I only saw through the optical viewfinder and wanted my exposure to be right, especially as I was shooting JPEG on small SD cards. That's all very well. But to get to the level I am at now, I needed to start shooting in full manual (the mode I now use 99% of the time), and shooting in my camera's RAW format (which gives you MUCH more editing latitude in basically every way, as well as the full quality of your camera). Using a contemporary mirrorless camera can actually make manual exposure significantly easier. You can now see your exposure in your viewfinder (generally this can be turned off, too). (On DSLRs from the last ~ten years, you can get this same feature by using live view --- i.e., shooting with the back screen rather than the viewfinder.) This can confirm your exposure visually and also get you more familiar with the different settings and how to "eyeball" it even on a DSLR/without exposure simulation in the viewfinder. At every step, practice is key. If you want to take pictures, go out and do it. It doesn't matter if they're bad. They will not all be good, especially not at the beginning. Find the things you like to photograph and keep at it until you are happy with what you're doing. (Or, if you find you don't like photography, that's OK, too.) [1] Shameless plug: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MediaSearch?type=image&search=Q113531294&sort=recency https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MediaSearch?type=...

camtarn 4y ago

Nitpick: 'collimated' is a technical term for a beam of light where all the rays are exactly parallel. When using 'collimated' in the article, the author means 'focused' or 'narrow' - as in, the focused beam of light emanating from a spotlight, which spreads out slower than an omnidirectional light, but isn't strictly parallel. You'd think that an article titled 'Photography for geeks' would take some care to get the technical terms right!

deleted 4y ago

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davidmurdoch 4y ago

Great article. In case the author stops by: Why no mention of CRI? It's definitely a great geeky topic, and the article links out to professional lights with exceptionally high CRI.

lucb1e 4y ago
For anyone else who's not a walking TLA dictionary: > color rendering index (CRI). CRI is a quantitative measure of a light's ability to reproduce the colors of objects faithfully in comparison with an ideal or natural light source.

bambax 4y ago

Re: focus. Most cameras focus on shutter button half-pressed. Learn to use this by focusing first (with a half-press), framing, and then taking the picture by finishing the press (not doing a complete press again as that would reset the focus point). Some cameras let you have a focus button different from the shutter button. This can be super useful and can become natural after a little while.

yetihehe 4y ago
Or even use manual focus. Want to do "artistic" photos? Get lens with wide aperture (below f/2), it has very low depth of field, so you can focus on your subject and have blurred background. After using "normal" cameras all my life, I've recently (less than 3 weeks ago) bought cheapest mirrorless camera and bought f/1.2 lens (50mm without zoom, those are cheapest lens there are). First photos of my dog were so sweet I instantly fell in love with that camera and lens.
- lucb1e 4y ago
  I was going to ask the stupid question "why bother with special lenses to introduce unsharp parts if you can just destroy details in software still anyway" but I think I realized the answer, in case anyone else has that question also: introducing it later depends on knowing which parts were further away. Pictures (typically) don't have depth/distance information for each pixel.

WastingMyTime89 4y ago

Best pictures of the article: the first four. Why are they the best: their composition is interesting with great use of vertical lines, background colors and well positioned windows. First line of the core of the article: "It is said that composition is the most important aspect of a photograph. I disagree." Well, let's agree to disagree then.

xiande04 4y ago
Those are the best photos because he took all the other photos for demonstration purposes.
- WastingMyTime89 4y ago
  That's kind of the point. The perfectly lit and exposed pictures they took for demonstration purpose are infinitely less interesting that the well composed ones. From my experience, a well composed picture with technical flaws will always be more interesting than a studio perfect picture showing something uninteresting. I'm intentionally provocative with this comment in that I don't entirely disagree with the article. Contrary to what's stated, I do think that composition is everything. Still, I also think that lighting is a part of composition.

nippoo 4y ago

Unrelated to the content: I'm curious about the domain! It's the first time I've come across a Christmas Island (.cx) domain since the infamous one back in the '00s.

bambax 4y ago

Good advice and good writing. But the title is misleading: this is photography for aspiring photographers, not esp. geeks. I was expecting more geeky things. For example, I have recently been toying with making a kind of photobooth / selfies machine for parties by connecting a DSLR with a Raspberry Pi; people take pictures of themselves with a remote (the excellent Yongnuo RF-603 which is radio, not infrared); the Pi downloads the images (with gphoto2), resizes them, prints the date, and uploads to a server. People can see their images on their phones less than a minute after it was taken. It's a lot of fun.

SamBam 4y ago
Around 2012 I was asked to make a photo booth for a friend's wedding. I ended up managing to rig an old-fashioned doorbell to an Arduino to give me a 3-second countdown, attached to a DSLR for the photo, an eye-fi card for the wireless connectivity because I think the camera didn't have on-board WiFi, and an iPad attached outside the both that always showed the last photo and let you scroll back. I think I'd have to recreate it from scratch if I had to do it again because I have no idea now.
- bambax 4y ago
  Yeah, Eye-Fi (the company) doesn't exist anymore, probably because newer cameras all have wifi. But for a photobooth at a party that needs to run unattended, it's better to use an old camera you don't care about too much ;-) Having gphoto monitor the camera constantly (my first attempt) is not a good solution, because if for whatever reason the connection to the camera is lost, gphoto just dies. In my current setup, gphoto downloads new files at regular intervals (via cron), puts them in a directory on the pi, which is then rsynced to a server. This is very resilient: it survives rebooting the pi, turning the camera off or on, etc., with zero intervention. All it needs is a network connection to the Pi (wifi or ethernet) and nothing else. No app, no phone nearby, no bluetooth, no nothing ;-) I use an old Pi 3 for this that's plenty fast; it would probably work on a zero (but I've never been able to buy one) or other single boards. Ideally it could be put in a small box that could be mounted on the flash shoe and that would also act as a remote...

gmiller123456 4y ago

I'd be curious to know if any beginning photographer could actually put those tips to good use. I find it odd they did not cover adjusting exposure with ISO, shutter, and aperture. Getting the right exposure, and not blindly accepting auto-exposure, is probably the most fundamental skill to develop, and is usually where most teaching starts. The example I use as to why auto-exposure is unreliable is that most manufacturers have auto-exposure adjust to produce 18% grey (there's some variance in manufacturers). So if you take a picture of a white wall, the camera will expose it as 18% grey. If you take a picture of a black wall, the camera will expose it as 18% grey. As the photographer, it's up to you to decide if you wanted the wall to be black, or show fine differences in shade, you can't do both well at the same time.

lucb1e 4y ago
> not blindly accepting auto-exposure, is probably the most fundamental skill to develop Bit late to the party (why is hn so ephemeral) but this made me realize that my Samsung phone camera has literally 1 option to adjust: exposure. Sure, zooming is also default-accessible but that's selecting what to capture than photo-technical adjustments of what you're capturing. Any other such slider, you have to go into pro mode. Never realized this was the most fundamental skill but why they picked this just clicked into place! > if you take a picture of a white wall, the camera will expose it as 18% grey. If you take a picture of a black wall, the camera will expose it as 18% grey. That sounds like the two pictures should look the same in the end, then. If the walls are perfectly black and white and nothing else is visible, of course, but even with imperfections it should still look similar and not necessarily recognisable as a white or a black surface. Am I understanding you right?

nayuki 4y ago

Geekier with math: https://www.nayuki.io/page/the-photographic-exposure-equation https://www.nayuki.io/page/the-photographic-exposure-equatio...

serko 4y ago

The author gave a nice general overview of the topic. But the thing is, none of these technical things are essential. Like a lot of people here (me included, but I am actively trying to get rid of it) the author has an engineering mindset, that was built (I am just guessing here) through years and years of engineering work. And it is really cool and may give an advantage in some professions (and sometimes in life overall), but it is not the best approach to photography or in any other arty topic where one could not objectively measure pleasure and value, and where aesthetic perception is the main definition of something being excellent and desirable. People often forget that photography is still mostly an art form. And in art, the most important aspect is provoking some kind of emotional response (folks mostly pursue pleasant ones, but it is not limited to that). To understand lenses, focuses, and shutter speed how much time does one need? A couple of days? Weeks? It is objectively easy to learn the rule of thirds, focal points, white balance, etc. But which white balance makes beautiful images? Which calculations would make your friends adore their faces in the photo? I have no answer to that, do you? Should images be dark, moody, and sharp like Roger Dickens's cinematography to be likable? Or dark, blurry, and saturated like Wong Kar-wai movies? Or they should be bright, light, and symmetrical like Wes Anderson's fairytales?? Or grainy and geometrically precise like Henri Cartier-Bresson's works? Or maybe images need to be provocative, erotically charged black-and-white photos, fashionable and borderline pornographic like Helmut Newton's works? There are a lot of cases then some person with a developed sense of beauty creates unimaginably stunning photography by using a smartphone build-in camera, but even more cases when someone with a pricey a-la Hasselblad, titan tripod, cinema-level lenses, 5-point professional lighting, and a long list of detailed photogear videoreviews making the most boring and forgettable images possible. Feelings > Any technical aspect, rules, or calculations I am not saying that knowing your tools is not important at all, but it definitely less important than the internet wants it to be. For example, I know a Magnum agency photographer who takes all his photos with any digital SLR in auto mode (p-mode). And he adores Instagram. So for any person who wants to start into photography (but not photography-related technology), I suggest watching a lot of photo books and cinematographically superior movies (all by critically acclaimed authors), visiting classical art museums, and for all costs avoiding any online photography communities. And you should take as many photos as possible every day. Not only on vacations or holidays but just as a visual diary with colors that you found beautiful, unusual patterns that you start to see around, and unexpected shapes that things around us are forming. Aesthetic goes first. It should be like a tingling feeling on the tips of your fingers when you see something interesting. Then from it go lighting, composition, and color. And these three are codependent. You need to start seeing light, feeling colors, and thinking in shapes. Need to develop your sense of beauty and your watchfulness/visual awareness/contemplation (sorry, I don't know how to translate this properly). One cannot create beautiful photography if one does not know what beauty is.

prego_xo 4y ago

As with any art form, it takes getting creative to make something amazing. It's super helpful to know what each part of the camera does, but also what you can do in spite of them. One of the best lessons I learned in my high-school film class was that lighting is important, but never a limitation. The beginning of this article talks about avoiding/using certain lights, but I would argue against the need of having the perfect circumstances for a photo. The combination of two flashlights in the dark or car sunshades in the sunlight are creative ways to make any camera take sharp photos with meaning.

thih9 4y ago

> Telephoto optics tend to produce shallow DOF; wide-angle lenses keep almost everything in focus most of the time. Isn’t this incorrect? I.e. the article itself states that telephoto is just a crop of the wide angle. And sure, the background gets “larger” and if that changes the composition, it might make it look less busy. But the DOF (blur factor) stays the same.