Photography for geeks

https://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/photo_basics/

by excite1997 • 4 years ago

820 146 4 years ago

lcamtuf.coredump.cx

vanillax• 4 years ago

Love it!

skhr06802• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

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

throw0101c3• 4 years 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_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.

geokon3• 4 years 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_• 4 years ago

no phones have variable apertures.

Even my almost 5 years old Galaxy S9+ has aperture. Surely something better came out since.

CWuestefeld4• 4 years ago

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.

TreeRingCounter• 4 years ago

ISO is basically a linear gain that's done on the sensor.

It's usually not done on the sensor - it's usually done by the ADC that performs sensor readout.

Some cameras use a technology like Aptina-DRPix to dynamically change the capacitance of the sensor FETs, but (as far as I'm aware) this only exists in a simple binary form right now. E.g. one of my cameras reduces sensor gate capacitance when the ISO exceeds 800, but otherwise any ISO changes only affect off-sensor hardware.

mgraczyk2• 4 years ago

This is only true if you take just one capture. On Pixel, iPhone, and others we take many small captures and merge them together. There's lots of cleverness there and it allows you to have less noise without motion blur or blowing out highlights.

throw0101c3• 4 years ago

[…] bc no phones have variable apertures.

rsch• 4 years ago

If you underexpose too severely, the JPEG compression will eat up all the detail in the shadows.

_HMCB_• 4 years ago

I bought that book months back. Have yet to read it but thanks for the reminder.

gofreddygo• 4 years 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.

anta403• 4 years 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.

excite19972• 4 years 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.

skhr06802• 4 years 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.

throw0101c3• 4 years 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/TP0000226...

* https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/how-to-use-the-depth-of-...

* 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• 4 years ago

Is there any good book on photo editing.

kawera• 4 years 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)

Terretta2• 4 years 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).

excite19972• 4 years 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/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.

Terretta2• 4 years 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

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

Hand balanced: 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.

daveslash2• 4 years ago

I thought those types of shots were "woah, cool!" when I first saw them. But they got old and overused fast. I'm so glad those days are (mostly) behind us. It's interesting to me how that came and went as a photography "fad" in less than a decade.

SamBam2• 4 years ago

I had the exact same thought on that sequence.

The angle is a personal choice, though I think I agree that the mirroring angles of the two bridges was more interesting than having the horizon straightened. But the final "Tone Curve Corrected" turned a fairly nice image into a typical HDR-ruined photo, where the eye can't focus anywhere because all the colors have the same value.

To add some praise with the criticism, I thought the explorations of light white the photos of the wife were well done. Pointing the rear light at the subject's back to create that subtle halo is nice and I had not considered it.

dsego6• 4 years ago

For me, the exposure adjusted is the sweet spot, the color balance step is too yellow and loses atmospheric depth, at least on my 14" macbook pro, and then the hdr makes it completely flat. I love the intent, but the results don't look great on my setup. Since it's missing a fill light on the subject, maybe should've selectively edited the shadows only on the kid but left the shadows in the canyon for contrast. All the other examples are excellent.

bambax4• 4 years ago

Straightened and exposure adjusted is good. They should have stopped there. White balance tweaking is often a bad idea; what you want is to get as natural colors as possible.

spoils19• 4 years ago

What a great resource!

qntty2• 4 years 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

mgraczyk2• 4 years ago

Levoy!

qntty2• 4 years ago

Oops, sorry!

keepquestioning2• 4 years ago

Anything like this but for analog?

lxe2• 4 years ago

This is helpful for my stable diffusion prompts.

yieldcrv3• 4 years ago

I’ve been using photography and focal length prompts on stable diffusion since I first installed it, would recommend

lelandfe• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

Thanks for these. Can vouch for golden hour. I can see why directors are obsessed with it.

yieldcrv3• 4 years 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• 4 years 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.

yieldcrv3• 4 years ago

I feel like your definition of rules is my definition of guidelines, and vice versa

same observation, different semantics

canbus• 4 years ago

good things to learn, even better to forget.

muglug• 4 years 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• 4 years 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• 4 years 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.

tsqj2• 4 years 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.

coolandsmartrr• 4 years ago

If you take a workshop or two, you'll better understand the thought process of a photographer, leading you to start taking descent photos within 1000 snaps.

I agree with the need to edit for improvement - meditating on your composition and lighting will ingrain better camera habits for the next round of snaps.

Personally, taking analog photos with an exposure meter taught me about good exposure. Measuring exposure takes time, but it's a great learning process.

emsixteen• 4 years ago

I have a heap of photos that I'm very happy with from my first 10,000 exposures, and I'm sure that if I went back and re-edited them I'd have more. I think it's only when you start to dial down into trying to achieve a specific look where it takes some time and effort.

dmitriid• 4 years ago

it’s in the editing of those first 10,000 photos that you will find the hidden photographer in you.

Instead of taking 10 000 photos, then sifting through them, and then editing them... Take 1000 photos, but take the time to take them: wait for the right moment, come closer, step to the right, anticipate a moment, find great in the mundane. This will make you an infinitely better photographer.

photochemsyn• 4 years 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/

semireg2• 4 years 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-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• 4 years 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.

keepquestioning2• 4 years ago

You might like this book

https://natureofcode.com

kak9• 4 years ago

wait what are the five bad things in baking bread?

semireg2• 4 years ago

Too much or too little energy when baking (burned or raw in the middle), too much or little water (hydration), too much or too little rise time (loaf density). Just off the top of my head.

post_break4• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

Any specific recommendations?

post_break4• 4 years 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_chr...

bcraven• 4 years 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

dsego6• 4 years 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.

antihero3• 4 years ago

Would recommend the X-Tx range over the X-Ex range, as they have an ISO dial on the top at the cost of being slightly bigger and heavier. I have an X-T2 and it's great, but obviously the X-T4 etc will have more features.

One BIG caveat with Fuji though is that the X range use an APS-C sensor instead of full frame, so if you get into vintage lenses (really good fun) your effective focal length is times by 1.5. Your nifty fifty becomes a 75mm because it is making an image too big for the sensor (so it's cropped).

Another thing to note - if you do shoot RAW (I would highly recommend this for maximum post-processing fun), you won't benefit from the camera's film simulation profiles as it isn't handling the render (to JPEG). However, all is not lost. All of these color profiles are embedded into the RAW file (I think that's how it works) so that whatever software you are using (Lightroom, Capture One, etc) can pick them up and select the profile you shot in to render it when you import the photos (on LR it's like a dropdown in the settings somewhere). It is quite cool to shoot in black and white, and then surprise people with being able to switch the colours back on :)

The profiles aren't EXACTLY accurate to the onboard processing, though for me it's good enough. However if you do want to shoot raw and get the perfect film simulation Fuji provides a tool: https://fujifilm-x.com/en-gb/support/download/software/x-raw... which uses the camera's onboard chip to do the processing at your convenience.

They also have the GFX series which are medium format, take absolutely silly quality pictures, and have the price tag you might expect attached.

nop_slide• 4 years ago

I recently picked up an x-t20 and it was a lot of fun, but then I somehow stumbled on the elusive x100v in store so I bought that.

They are indeed very fun! Highly recommend either of the two.

agentdrtran• 4 years 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.

nbzso4• 4 years 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

The Negative https://amzn.to/3U88fsN

The rest is just practice.:)

fedeb953• 4 years ago

Good advice. A film camera forces you to learn, while digital will "fix" things for you

anta403• 4 years 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.

nbzso4• 4 years 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.:)

cfn2• 4 years ago

You missed The Print: https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Ansel-Adams/dp/0821221876

nbzso4• 4 years ago

Deliberately. The Print is only for the chosen ones :)

daveslash2• 4 years ago

Thank you. I came here to post the same thing. Glad to see these three books mentioned. :-) But as another said, The Print is only for the "chosen ones". I have all 3, and I find "The Print" to be an informative joy to read, but not as necessary to the taking of the photos.

js-j2• 4 years ago

I thought so - until film photography prices began to skyrocket. Then I bought a quality second hand DSLR body compatible with my 35mm film lenses, and haven't regretted the decision, not for a minute. The investment has since completely paid out. Great books otherwise...

fedeb953• 4 years 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• 4 years 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.

fedeb953• 4 years ago

Yes of course, if one has time, studying a place in various times is highly valuable

pdpi2• 4 years 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• 4 years 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

pdpi2• 4 years 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.

js-j2• 4 years 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/fre...

ak_111• 4 years 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_proven2• 4 years ago

https://www.photonstophotos.net/GeneralTopics/Lenses/Optics_...

camillomiller2• 4 years 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.

WA2• 4 years 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• 4 years 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.

Etheryte2• 4 years ago

This is not a counter point, you're agreeing with what the parent comment said. Choosing a subject doesn't mean only photographing "interesting" things.

rg111• 4 years ago

This is not a counter-point.

A "subject" might be any concrete thing- not merely valuable things in a worldly way. A candy wrapper, a stone, a broken cup, any thing.

It can also be an abstract thing as well.

What GP is saying- there must be a thing.

atoav2• 4 years 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• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

Wider open aperture, more light on the sensor, more blur outside of the focus area.

/ shallower depth of field

atoav2• 4 years ago

Thats the phrase, I wrote this after waking up

jwr• 4 years 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/ 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• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

One could buy his book https://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/prep/

mod50ack• 4 years 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=...

tsqj2• 4 years ago

thanks for sharing! those are really valuable thoughts.

one of the top takeaways :

The most important thing is to get a lot of practice taking pictures of the thing you like to photograph.

camtarn• 4 years 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!

davidmurdoch• 4 years 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.

lucb1e6• 4 years 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.

bambax4• 4 years 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• 4 years 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.

lucb1e6• 4 years 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.

WastingMyTime892• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

Those are the best photos because he took all the other photos for demonstration purposes.

WastingMyTime892• 4 years 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• 4 years 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.

bambax4• 4 years 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.

SamBam2• 4 years 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.

bambax4• 4 years 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• 4 years 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.

lucb1e6• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

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

serko• 4 years 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.

autorun• 4 years ago

I've been reading this forum since years, and generally its perception of photography is rather technical and very proud to achieve perfect photos with the right color balance and all that. Sure it's nice to know all those technical concepts, so you can be conscious when destroying them, and have fun.

Concerning photography tech, it's great to talk about sensors, how mobile camera is being achieved nowadays, like explained in those Pixel blog posts, or even about analog photo development works.

Hey HN, enjoy bad photos, take pictures with the worst camera you can find. I've read in some comments here that you need to take at least 10k photos first until you get better, this is not a sport

prego_xo• 4 years 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• 4 years 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.

Photography for geeks

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