Thursday Tips: When To Ignore Those Blinkies

If you have a DSLR, you should be familiar with the "blinkies". When you review an image on the LCD screen, these are the little blinking black warnings that tell you there are blown-out (overexposed) highlights. Many photographers advocate exposing so your histogram is as far to the right as possible, without getting the "blinkies" (i.e. overexposing any of the highlights). The rationale behind this method is to retain as much noiseless detail in the original capture as possible, to give you maximum leeway during post-processing. This can be a useful rule of thumb, but of course like other photographic rules, there are times to bend or break it. Following this rule may lead you to believe that you should always reduce your exposure when your camera registers "blinkies" after taking a shot. But there are times, namely when your image includes the sun, specular reflections, or other bright highlights, when reducing your exposure will lead to a muddy, severely underexposed image.

Here I provide two examples from my own photography. First, the image above, taken recently at Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens, of dew drops hanging beneath the edge of a lotus leaf and refracting the morning sky with rising sun. My camera was telling me emphatically that most of the sky and the sun refracted in the drops was grossly overexposed. However, I knew that if I lowered my exposure any further, the top of the leaf, which was beautifully backlit by the sun, would have become a muddy, underexposed mess. I also would probably have lost much of the impact of the sun stars which attracted me to this subject in the first place.

As a side-note, I've recently read opinions from many photographers that view sun stars as cliche or hackneyed. While that may be true of one (and I'm not even so sure of that), twelve sun stars are just awesome, in my humble opinion! 8-)

In the second image below, I used my telephoto zoom at 300mm to capture this crab boat next to the rising sun. Due to the low angle on the horizon and very high humidity, the sun was muted significantly, but not nearly as much as the surrounding sky and water. If I had tried (vainly) to preserve detail in the sun and the specular highlights on the foreground water, I would have dulled and muddied the gorgeous orange and gold colors, as well as losing any detail in the silhouetted crab boat.

Always remember that your camera provides a lot of useful tools, but you must use them thoughtfully to create great images on a consistent basis.

Serenity

Today's image comes from a recent morning trip to Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens in DC. This park is unique in that it is the only National Park dedicated to the cultivation of aquatic plants (and I believe the only National Park solely dedicated to cultivated flowers at all). There are many ponds full of lotuses and water lilies along the banks of the Anacostia River. I made the image of this vibrant water lily in a small pond tucked behind the visitors center. I was on my way out at the end of a very hot morning. There weren't many lilies in these tanks this time of year (in fact one of the ponds was being "planted" while I was there). This meant that this lily was all by itself, which was perfect for my purposes. I was also lucky in that this specimen was blooming very close to the edge of the tank. So by raising my tripod to its full height, setting the legs right at the edge of the pool, and slightly cantilevering the tripod forward, I was able to shoot pretty much straight down on this blossom and keep the surface of the water parallel with the sensor plane of the camera.

Thursday Tip: Compromises

Sometimes composing an image is a series of compromises. In the image above, "Obstacle", I really didn't want to put the rock so close to the center of the frame. I tried moving closer and recomposing with the rock in the immediate foreground, but then I lost most of the flow of water around the rock and the interesting patterning in the shelf of rock that made up the stream bed. These were the features that drew me to the scene in the first place and really made the photograph. From this vantage point, however, I couldn't tilt the lens any further upward without including washed-out white sky or any further downward without losing the nice green forest at the top of the image and including my tripod legs in the composition. So the rock had to stay where it was.

Sometimes you have to let go of the "composition rules", or your own preconceived notions of the composition, and work with what nature gives you. Don't sacrifice elements that drew you to the scene, at least not without careful thought, to satisfy some notion of what you think the composition "should" be. Otherwise you may end up with a "perfect" composition of a totally uninspiring subject.

Photographing Waterfalls

You might have noticed that last week I did not put up a Thursday Tips post. Instead I spent my time working on a new guest post for the Nature Visions Blog entitled "Seven Ways To Improve Your Waterfall Images" that includes some more of my waterfall photography. That post went up this afternoon, and I hope you will take the time to visit and read it. While you are there, take notice that there are lots of other great posts on the blog. It might be a site you want to bookmark and return to often (or follow @NatureVisionsEx on Twitter to get notified when a new post is up). There are some good photographers sharing interesting perspectives, locations, and techniques (in particular photographers from the greater DC area).

So this post doesn't end up being just an advertisement for a blog post somewhere else, I've included two new waterfall images from Ricketts Glen State Park in PA. I hope you enjoy them (I love to receive feedback in the comments section), and if you missed them originally, check out my other Ricketts Glen images in my previous posts on using hyperfocal distance and Ganoga Glen.

As always, if you enjoy my posts, please consider linking to the blog or sharing the posts via social media. Thanks!

Note 6/14: As the images on the Nature Visions Blog are pretty small, I thought I'd reproduce them here as well.

Garden of Delights

Today's post will be mostly a visual one (whew...!). With continuing health complications, even on my good days I usually can't go far or for very long. So this has forced me to spend more time in the area's lovely public gardens. This is a collection of recent images from Brookside Gardens in Wheaton, MD and Green Spring Gardens in Alexandria, VA. Note that most of these images were taken just after or during rain. The water droplets were added by nature, not by spray bottle.

Love-in-a-mist (Nigella damascena) at Green Spring Gardens

Brookside Rose Garden (var. "Opening Night")

A peony-like rose variety from the Brookside Rose Garden

A yellow "red hot poker" (Kniphofia sp.) at Green Spring Gardens

Brookside Rose Garden (var. "Opening Night")

Taken through the fountain in the Brookside Rose Garden, looking towards the trellises

Another love-in-a-mist from Green Spring Gardens

Brookside Rose Garden (var. "Opening Night")

Brookside Rose Garden

Again through the fountain in the middle of the rose garden, focused on the water, small aperture, slow shutter speed

Brookside Rose Garden (var. "Opening Night")

Brookside Rose Garden

Go Hyperfocal!

For today's (late) Thursday Tips post I wanted to talk about using hyperfocal distance. Hyper what now? Setting hyperfocal distance on your lens is a great technique to know if you are shooting landscapes or really anything with a relatively wide lens (50mm or shorter).

So what is hyperfocal distance? Put most simply, for a given focal length and aperture combination, it is the focus point that gives you the most depth of field. Basically when you set your focus point at the hyperfocal distance for a particular focal length/aperture combination, everything from half that distance to infinity will fall within the range of acceptable focus in your image.

So, how do we calculate hyperfocal distance? The hyperfocal distance (in mm) is calculated by squaring the focal length of the lens, then dividing by f-number times the circle of confusion (see below), then adding the focal length of the lens. The circle of confusion is different for different camera models.  The circle of confusion values for many digital camera models are available on the internet. There are also equations you can use to calculate the near and far distances in acceptable focus (whether you are using hyperfocal distance or not). However, we are in the new millennium; you don't have to pull your slide rule out of your pocket-protector and madly work these equations in the field; not surprisingly, there's an app for that.

I've been using the Depth of Field Calculator available from Essence Computing on my iPhone which is only $0.99 in the App Store. It is a great little application, that I find very easy to use. All you have to do is plug in your camera type once, then each time you use it plug in your aperture, focal length, and distance to subject. It will calculate the depth of field for that particular combination (including a useful graphical depiction) and also give you the hyperfocal distance for that particular lens/aperture combination. For us foolish Americans, it will also accept and give all the distance measurements in feet, making your life easier. Another popular app ($1.99) available for iPhone, Android, and Desktops is DOFMaster available from Viewpoint Photography.

Note, it is more difficult to accurately use hyperfocal distance and the associated calculations if you have a cheaper lens that does not include a distance scale for manual focusing. You can still either estimate distance, or use a tape measure, or use a rangefinder, but it adds some complexity and room for error to the process. It is recommended in this case that you stop down one f-stop from the aperture you used to calculate the hyperfocal distance to give yourself some leeway. When in doubt of your estimating abilities, it is better to focus a little farther beyond what you think is the proper distance.

Both of the images in this post, taken at Ricketts Glen State Park in Pennsylvania as well as the image of Ganoga Glen in my previous post, were taken using the hyperfocal distance method. In the case of the picture of Oneida Falls ("Fog And Flow") above, I plugged in 11mm at f/14 into my Depth Of Field Calculator app on my iPhone (I was trying to open up my aperture as much as possible to get a shutter speed that allowed some definition in the flow of water) and got a hyperfocal distance setting of 1.49 feet. Meaning that everything from about 0.75 feet to infinity would be in reasonable focus if I set the focus of my lens at just about 1.5 feet. I did that and then shot away without worrying about what was or wasn't in focus on LiveView or having to use the DOF preview button under the dim conditions. I could even change my composition without changing focus. As long as any foreground objects were at least 0.75 feet from the front of the lens, I knew I was okay. My technique for "Emerald Spring", an image of R.B. Ricketts Falls in Glen Leigh, was similar, except in this case I had the lens zoomed out to 16mm, so my calculated hyperfocal distance was 3.16 feet. By setting my lens to focus at just a hair over 3 feet, I knew that everything from about 1.58 feet in front of the lens to infinity would be in acceptable focus. Being precariously balanced on slippery rocks and logs in a vigorous rapid that was almost over my hip waders, it was nice to be able to just set my focus ring, forget it, and "focus" on other things.

Hyperfocal distance and depth of field calculations are pretty easy techniques to master (particularly with the apps now available) and they will lead to great improvements in your consistency and ease of work when shooting with wide lenses. So brush up, grab a compatible app, and get out there and shoot!