It’s been a while since I shared any little photography or photoshop tips. I know so many little things that are just second nature to me now and I never know what kinds of things people would like to learn. (I think I’ve mentioned here before that I do not have the gift of teaching.) While on our girls getaway this week, I shared this with my cousin Tonya since she recently got a new Canon digital SLR.
These photos are all straight out of the camera with no editing (except to remove dust spots) and were taken by the pool/deck area behind our hotel with my Canon 20mm 2.8 lens. My camera was set to Av mode – a.k.a. aperture priority. (That’s usually what I shoot in unless I’m at a wedding or working in tricky lighting situations and then I use manual more often.) The photo on the left was taken wide open at an aperture of 2.8 since that’s the widest that particular lens will go. The one on the right was set to the complete opposite at an aperture of 22 (or f/22 in technical terms). If you aren’t familiar with apertures or how to figure out what those numbers mean – keep in mind that the smaller the number (2.8), the more light you’re letting into the lens and the more background blur you will get with less of your photo in focus, and the larger the number (22), the less light you’re letting in and more of your image will be in focus. Obviously, I was outside for these photos, so we’ll just focus on that this time. I love the little starburst you get from shooting into the sun like this.
These were taken from our boat on the way back from Put-In-Bay island in Lake Erie with my 85mm 1.8 Canon lens. This one, I actually didn’t set the camera to f/22, I only went to f/14. I was playing around with my settings a little on the boat.
This was also on the boat. Obviously, you can see that the photo on the left has a buoy in it and the boat was moving so fast that I wasn’t able to get that into the second photo after I changed my setting. There was also a girl in front of me whose hair whipped into my picture at the last minute. Ah well …
Also … when shooting into the sun at f/22, you want to make sure your camera sensor is clean or you will end up having to touch up the photo to get rid of all the dust spots. My camera sensor is really dirty right now from all the shooting and switching lenses lately, so I had to use the healing tool and patch tool to get rid of all the spots before I posted these. f/22 will show ever single speck of dirt on your photo. There is information in your camera manual about cleaning the sensor. The camera’s sensor is very delicate and if you do damage to it during the cleaning process you could really mess up the camera. I do my own with a kit I purchased and am very very careful. But if you feel too nervous doing it yourself then there are people at camera stores who are trained to do it for you.
Hope this little tip is something you can use in your own photography.
Have a happy weekend!
AJAXed with AWP