I had a chance to go out shooting with the Opteka BGRXT Battery grip on my Canon EOS 350d / Digital Rebel XT on Monday, and I have to say it was brilliant.
The grip gives you extra stability when shooting hand held – you’ve got much more to hang on to, and the extra shutter release and exposure controls make taking photographs in portrait orientation a breeze.
It is however noticeably heavier, and will take some time to get used to. My camera is now a little too big for my bag, so a new one could be on the cards. I know I won’t have the grip on full-time, but it’s so easy to take on and off this won’t be a problem.
So if you haven’t considered a grip for your dSLR, I strongly recommend that you think about trying one, it’s like having a different camera!
Let’s face it, of the three pillars that make up exposure in photography, ISO is the boring one, and the one that spoils the party.
Shutter speed is cool. You can freeze time, stopping a droplet of water mid-air as it splashes upward from a glass. You can stretch time with a long shutter speed, blurring clouds, the sea, and even people. If you pan while using a longer shutter speed you can bring a real sense of movement to your images, making the background blur as a race-car speeds past.
Aperture is King. Tighten up your aperture and keep everything in your photograph sharp, for an Ansel Adams like depth of field, letting the viewer marvel at the intricate details they see before them. Or perhaps open up your aperture, forcing everything in your photo blurred, while keeping your main subject in sharp focus. Magical.
ISO however, apparently has little artistic value when you change it. ISO is how sensitive your camera is to light, and in the digital SLR world we can simply increase our ISO so we can shoot in lower light, keeping our shutter speeds up to avoid camera shake or movement blur in our subjects. There is an unfortunate side-effect to this – noise.
In the old days of film if you wanted to shoot with a higher ISO you had to change the film in your camera, and higher ISO film usually had larger grain, and in digital cameras we have a similar problem, noise. As we increase our ISO our photos have more “speckles” in them. Details start to become lost, colours become muted, and the quality of the photograph diminishes rapidly. Or does it?
Let me back-track a little and explain the relationship between Shutter Speed, Aperture and ISO when it comes to working out Exposure, or how bright or dark a photo will turn out. To obtain an “acceptable” level of exposure (or brightness) in a photo, we have to let a certain amount of light into our camera. The amount of light that is let in, and hits our digital sensor, is governed by the Shutter Speed, which is how long the camera stays open to let the light in; Aperture, which is how big the hole is in the front of the camera that lets the light in; and ISO, which is how sensitive the camera is to that incoming light.
In all the modes on our cameras except Manual, our camera’s help us obtain that “acceptable” exposure by juggling those three settings, usually with a bit of input from us. Lots of photographers, including myself, enjoy using Aperture Priority Mode, where I choose the size of hole (or f-stop) on the front of the camera. By using this mode I can control the depth-of-field in my photographs, having everything sharp, just my subject, or something in-between. As I change the aperture, my camera adjusts the shutter speed to keep the exposure (brightness of my photo) OK.
The problem comes when I’m shooting hand-held. If it starts getting dark, or I use a small aperture, my camera will choose a shutter speed that is too slow. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve got home to look at photos on my PC only to discover that loads are blurry because I’ve let the shutter speed drop too much – especially when I’ve been using longer focal length lenses and zooms.
(A quick hint here – never, ever, trust the LCD screen on the back of your camera to judge sharpness. That screen makes everything look sharp!)
The answer to this is to increase your ISO as soon as your shutter speeds drops below a certain amount. There’s a simple way to work this out – if your’re shooting hand-held with a 50mm lens, you don’t want your shutter speed to drop below 1/50th of a second. If you’re shooting with your zoom at 200mm (look on the lens barrel) you don’t want to drop below 1/200th of a second. If you’re at 500mm, don’t go below 1/500th. Easy.
(Or of course use a tripod, but that won’t eliminate the blur if your subject is moving).
I’m rubbish at doing this. Maybe its years of reading books and magazines, and listening to Podcasts where the advice is to always shoot at the lowest ISO setting your camera allows. It’s meant to give the best photo image quality, and heck, I’ve even said so myself many times. It’s like I’m locked into believing that I can get sharp shots from a 300mm lens handheld at 1/100th, if I just try harder, but that isn’t ever going to happen, its just an impossible task. I need to bump up my ISO!
In order to free myself of this hang-up I resolved to take some test images with my Canon EOS 350d / Digital Rebel XT, at all the different ISO’s it offers. I wanted a dull, overcast day, because that’s what its like in England most of the time, and its also the occasion when I need those higher ISO’s. I wanted to really get to know what images shot at ISO 800 and 1600 actually looked like, to see if my phobia of those levels was justified or not.
Here’s the result:
Wait a minute! Don’t get disappointed. You can’t see any detail in the above photo, you need to see the original to get an idea about the different qualities of the various ISO’s, and understand what the photo-montage is. What I did was to take a number of shots of the same scene, at various ISOs. When I got home I zoomed into 100% and copied the middle bit out of each photo and created what you see above.
The bottom right part is ISO 1600, but given the Noise Ninja treatment, a piece of software that does its best to reduce noise from inside Photoshop, Elements and I believe Lightroom. (Or you can get it as a stand-alone program too).
Other Things That Can Increase Noise In Your Photos
Sadly, ISO isn’t the only thing that can make your photographs noisy. Any sort of post-processing – changing levels, curves or contrast will often amplify noise. HDR is notorious for being a “noisy” technique. Make sure you save, or export to, .jpg files at the highest possible quality setting, or you’ll end up with the even worse “artefacts” which can ruin the cleanest of photographs. Make sure you’ve turned on “Long Exposure Noise Reduction” (in the custom settings on the 350d), or that’ll degrade quality too. Here’s a comprehensive list of the possible pitfalls.
My Conclusion
The higher ISO settings on my 350d / Rebel XT are not as bad as I thought they’d be. OK, I won’t get any images accepted into Istockphoto if I shoot above ISO 200, but they’re good enough for most of my needs. (Plus when printing out photos lots of noise just disappears). I’ll no longer shy away from bumping up my ISO when I need to. I now know more about my camera and feel more confident in getting the most out of it in challenging lighting condtions. My ISO phobia is cured!
It’s been months and months since I tried to upload any images to Istockphoto or Bigstockphoto, but inspired by an impromptu photo-shoot in the kitchen, I thought I’d dip my toes into the world of micro-stock photography once more.
So, the other day (on one of my rare days off), my wife was preparing a salad in the kitchen. I grabbed my Canon Eos 350d / Digital Rebel XT, snapped the 50mm EF f/1.8 lens on the front, then started shooting. I tried natural light, and some flash, and got some so-so photographs. I then had a look round the kitchen and took some images of some potatoes in a basket(!) and some bananas on a plate.
I decided to upload five images to the two stock sites I’m a member of, then it was just a matter of waiting. A couple of days later the emails started coming through.
First, the bad news. All five had been rejected by Bigstockphoto, for the following reason:
“We have enough of this subject already…sorry. More unique images will help your images stand out from the crowd.”
Ah well. I didn’t hold much hope for Istockphoto accepting any of the shots either, as they’re often pickier than Bigstock, but a few days later I got an email saying that one did, the photo of the potatoes in a basket:
I took this with natural light coming in through the window to the left, with the 50mm set to f/2, at an ISO of 200, which gave a shutter speed of 1/80th of a second, right on the edge of what I can hand-hold before camera-shake becomes an issue. I kept post-processing to the bare minimum, just keeping everything looking as natural as possible.
With hindsight I could have shifted the potatoes around a bit to show them at their best – there’s quite a few “eyes” and nobbly bits on display, not exactly perfect potatoes!
Next lets look at the rejects and Istockphotos reasons, to see what we can learn.
The bananas were rejected, for the following reasons:
-Flat/dull colors
-Direct on-camera flash and/or flash fall-off (bright subject, dark background)
-Harsh lighting with blown-out highlights that lack details and/or distracting shadows
-Distracting lens flares
-Incorrect white balance
Hmmm. Not sure I agree with all of those, but you can make your own mind up. I agree that the lighting could be better, so next time I think I’ll play around with some kind of diffuser, perhaps some netting over the window to soften up the light.
The Cucumber photo was rejected because:
-Flat/dull colors
-Direct on-camera flash and/or flash fall-off (bright subject, dark background)
-Harsh lighting with blown-out highlights that lack details and/or distracting shadows
-Distracting lens flares
-Incorrect white balance
I’d have to agree on this one. The skin tones are way off, and its all a little flat.
This is a bit of a naff photo, but the reasons given were:
-Flat/dull colors
-Direct on-camera flash and/or flash fall-off (bright subject, dark background)
-Harsh lighting with blown-out highlights that lack details and/or distracting shadows
-Distracting lens flares
-Incorrect white balance
Rejection reasons:
“This file contains artifacting when viewed at full size. This technical issue is commonly created by the quality settings in-camera, in post-processing, in RAW settings or scanner settings. Artifacting can also be introduced into an image from the result of other factors such as excessive level adjustments.”
Not surprising really, as I shot this at ISO 800, then used Noise Ninja to try and clean up the image.
Don’t think that all is bad news when you get a rejection, Istockphoto always include some advice, and links to help and articles on their website.
Few! So there we have it. Lots of articles to read, I know that I need to do some more research into what my expectation of what a “stock” photo should look like, and plenty of inspiration to keep trying and submitting!
As I was saying in the video, it’s ultra-easy to import your photos to Qoop from Flickr, or upload them directly from your PC. You can then make money from your work through selling prints, stock licenses, posters, cards, keychains and mugs.
You can go even further by then creating books, calendars, photobooks, PDF’s, and all sorts of media. Everything has a base cost (which you pay when you buy your own work), but then you can add your cut, or commission, to make extra off your imagery.
Click on the thumbnail above to look at (and maybe buy!) my photo-book on Qoop.
My ISO test on my 350d, and a look at Scott Kelbys Digital Photography Book, vol 3.
