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In a series of articles X-Photographer Jeff Carter will be shooting at sports events in the UK and showing how to capture great images with the Fujifilm X Series without the need for a media pass.
With the 2017 RBS Six Nations Tournament in full swing, rugby union is once again Read More
There are many photographs which are taken in ‘the moment’ where something happens and if you know your camera well enough you’ll be able to quickly respond and get the shot. However, sometimes you have an image or story in you head that you simply can’t move past.
In this new series we are going to look at some examples, where photographers have to dig deep, problem solve and follow their vision. Hopefully lifting the veil on the phrase “Wow you were so lucky to be there just at the right moment, all of those factors came together”. What I’ve come to realise over the past few years is that if you look at the great photographers of our time, many have one thing loosely in common – time. Time to hone an idea, experiment with a subject, to get under the skin of a location, ultimately to fulfil an idea.
I spent the second half of last year working as a scarlet macaw researcher (I’m also a zoologist by training) studying a reintroduced population in a rural part of South-Western Costa Rica. What this gave me, more than any other opportunity so far was that same key factor – time. Quite quickly into the placement I became fascinated with these gorgeous birds, it’s pretty easy to see why.
I really like using a wider focal length with the macaws, however as the previous image illuminates, it often includes part of the canopy in frame. Light which penetrates the canopy shines down creating these blown out highlight trails. Sometimes these work quite nicely, but often they are difficult to make work, especially if the birds fly in front of a canopy gap, then you get these weird looking highlights cutting through the flapping wings!
All in all this process went on for three/four months. It was a very interesting exercise, and laying the photos out like this you can see how the project steadily developed. Often with projects like this it is all about problem solving, from fixing kit in the middle of nowhere to getting around problems out of your control, such as the flash-camera interaction. Though incredibly frustrating at times, it was a brilliant experience and yielded some good results by the end.
Here is a 2 minute something video visually summarising my project and its issues.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ns4EtN2wOo?rel=0&w=1280&h=720%5D
I am currently in the middle of a six-month research stint with the Wild Macaw Association, gathering data on a scarlet macaw population for a study in Costa Rica, associated with Gent University. This remarkable opportunity allows me to study these birds closely and to explore the surrounding area during our two daily treks. To find out more about this very successful project, in which 75 macaws were released from 2002-2012, please check out this link here.
Scarlet macaws are incredible birds, with their bright colours and quirky behaviour making them very photogenic. However, they are often found within the rainforest and this often means in dark conditions, too dark for even the XF50-140mm F2.8 and high ISOs to capture any sort of motion. This problem will sound familiar to many of you in different situations, where OIS is redundant as the problem is subject movement, not camera shake. There is however one way to get around this: add artificial light. It may not be suitable for some situations but with a little bit of time and understanding this can allow for that otherwise impossible shot.
Here is a video showing how I developed my flying macaw photographs.
For me, there are two reasons to add flash to an action situation; we’ll take a look at both of these in a little bit of detail.
In other words you simply can’t get a sharp image without more light. This is the most common reason to switch to flash. Most will start with the popup flash on their cameras and/or then get a dedicated flash and mount it on the hotshoe of the camera. There are photographers who can produce exceptional images using just this simple technique, and if you have a TTL (through the lens metering) flash then this becomes relatively quick and simple as the camera will communicate with the camera how much flash output there should be. Generally this will be fine for most needs, especially if you are short of time and need to take a variety of photos.
If you do have a TTL flash and you haven’t experimented with manual flash outputs before I would highly recommend that you give it a go. This slows you down and makes you think more about what you want to produce – do you simply want the flash to give a little bit of fill light to an otherwise correctly exposed scene? Or would you rather the camera underexposes the scene while the flash exposes correctly, so bringing the focus onto your subject and away from the darker background? These are all fun things to play with.
This all sounds great but flash photography can drive you around the bend if you’re not careful. On current X-Series cameras the maximum flash sync is 1/180sec (except the X100 series because of a leaf shutter allowing 1/1000sec flash sync). Anything more than this will not allow proper flash input. When it comes to action 1/180sec is pretty slow! There is one flash currently available, the Nissin i40, which is different. It offers high-speed sync (HSS), which allows you to use the flash up to 1/4000 sec, this is certainly helpful when adding some fill flash but it does cut the overall output of the flash. The reason for the downgraded power in this mode is because the flash sends out a series of very high speed flashes (instead of one, more powerful flash) that are fast enough to expose the subject within the maximum shutter speeds.
If you want to freeze the subject and aren’t bothered by the background then what you want to do is find an exposure combination that creates a totally black image. For example 1/180sec (max sync), F11, ISO200 – a mix which should require too much light for a lot of scenes, thus leaving your image black/heavily under exposed. The next thing to do is to add the flash that will offer all the light on the subject. If your subject is moving quickly then you’ll want to cut the flash output, this sounds counterintuitive, but as you cut the light output say from 1/1 to ¼ then the flash time is four times faster than maximum 1/1 power. This ensures that the subject is completely frozen.
Sometimes a scene just looks flat and no matter what you do images just don’t ‘pop’. This is where some creative artificial light can make an image. In the rainforest undergrowth this definitely applies, as apart from being really dark, there is generally very little direct sunlight so the light is muted. Some images where I panned with the subject came out ok, partly thanks to the wonderful colours of the birds, but I still felt that it need an extra something. This is where the aforementioned video shows the progression from initial photos to more dynamic, off-camera flash images.
There are countless blogs on creative use of artificial light and I’m not going to pretend that I am a flash master, instead I’m simply going to show the set up I ended up using and why.
First of all I love off-camera flash, it opens up so many more opportunities compared to simple on-camera flash (this is just my opinion and not fact). So I very quickly knew that for the image I had in mind, I needed to use flashes off camera. I experimented from backlighting the birds to using the two flashes one from each side and then from slap bang in front. But the combination that created the image I really wanted involved having both flashes to the right-hand side, where the bird was flying. One flash was in line with where the birds fly over, while the other was slightly around towards me so giving a bit of light onto the side of the face towards the camera. This gave sufficient light onto the face to freeze the detail (especially as the face is lighter than the body) but didn’t cast enough light onto the rest of the bird to freeze more detail so creating motion. Here is a sketch to indicate what I did.
There are two curtains in a flash exposure. The first curtain reveals the sensor to the light coming through the lens and then the second that closes the sensor to light, completing the exposure. This is important to understand as it can greatly affect how you use flash.
Where the flash is triggered as the first curtain opens. This is the most common set up, where your main priority is the flash. The go-to set up unless you’re using slightly slow shutter speeds with subjects or moving lights. It captures the exact action that you press the shutter to capture, if you use second curtain/slow sync then you could miss the split-second moment you were hoping to catch.
As the second curtain is about to come up and finish the exposure the flash fires making it effectively the last light to hit the sensor. This method does send off a flash initially to get a meter reading if used in aperture priority mode (no meter flash in manual mode). I generally avoid this method as it can give weird results (see video).
Slow sync is only available in aperture priority/auto-shutter speed modes, generally it is the same as second curtain flash but without the disruptive initial metering flash (note that it can only go down to 1/8sec). This is my favorite option for any kind of action photography and is the method I used for the panning images. The reason why this works best is it lets the ambient light reach the sensor first; correctly exposing the background and THEN the flash is triggered reaching and freezing the subject. This is preferential for panning/slow shutter speeds because it prevents ghosting – where the subject is flashed and but there is time afterwards for some light to reach the subject and any subject movement creates a bit of a psychedelic feel!
There concludes a rough/quick break down of different flash curtain types for the X-Series. To summarise there are a number of ways you can use flash to help your action photography:
I hope that gives you a little bit of inspiration to get out there and try your hand at creative flash photography.
Ben is an environmental photojournalist, zoologist and Fujifilm X-Photographer. His passion is showing the beauty and fragility of the natural world. Find more of his work at:
What is “Exposure”?We’ve all taken them – an amazing once-in-a-lifetime photo but when we look closer, the photo is too dark or too bright or the subject doesn’t pop enough. A properly “exposed” photo will show details in both the lighter and darker areas of a photo AND show the subject and background in proper focus.
Exposure can be defined as the amount of light that enters the front of the lens and hits the sensor of your camera.
There are 3 elements that determine the correct Exposure and they are heavily dependent on each other – ISO, Shutter Speed and Aperture. There are many combinations of these 3 elements that can produce a correctly exposed photo BUT the “effect” of each combination will drastically impact the creative look of the photo. Let’s look at each element.
If you’re old enough to remember using a film camera, you would have bought various “speeds” of film depending on the lighting conditions you were shooting in. ISO determines how sensitive the camera is to incoming light.
Today’s digital cameras allow you to adjust the ISO (aka film speed) either through an ISO dial or through the menu system. The downsides of using a high ISO is that the photo will become “grainy” or noisy. It might be properly exposed but it will not be as sharp.
Generally, you don’t need to fiddle with ISO, as it has the least effect on the creative side of your image out of the 3 elements. To minimise the grainy effect simply set your maximum AUTO ISO to 1600 through your menu system and your photos should never appear grainy. Or if you prefer, you can also set your ISO to a specific number like 200 or 400 and adjust the other 2 elements to get the correct exposure. You may need to use a higher ISO if you have manually set the other 2 elements and your camera is still warning your photo is underexposed. Most cameras have the capability to shoot at ISO 12,800 or higher if needed, but generally you are ok at ISO 3200 before you will see any “noise”.
We’ve all seen them. Those professional looking photos of Aunt May where only she is in focus and the background is blurry. This is easily achieved by adjusting the Aperture setting on your camera. Aperture is the amount of light that can pass through the camera lens and determines how much of a photo will be in focus (called depth of field).
Click here to learn more about Depth of Field
Setting the correct Aperture setting (called f-stop) will provide you with the desired effect for your photo. BEFORE you set the Aperture you need to know what type of “effect” you want depending on what scene you are shooting.
If you are shooting a landscape, for example, you will want to have everything in focus so an F-stop of F8 or higher should be used. If you are shooting close-ups or portraits, you will want to blur out the background to make the subject stand out so you should use the lowest F-stop your lens allows like F2.8 or F1.4. Or if you are shooting in low light, you will need as much light as possible so an F-Stop like F2.8 will be adequate. Each lens you use will have different F-stop ranges so be sure you use the right lens depending on what you are shooting.
Next to Aperture, Shutter Speed is probably the next element that you will adjust the most. Shutter Speed is defined as how long the sensor is exposed to the light and scene you are shooting. The longer the exposure (slower shutter speed), the more light that hits the sensor and the more movement will be captured. The shorter the exposure (faster shutter speed), the less light and less movement will be captured.
Shutter Speed comes into play mostly when you are shooting moving objects OR low light scenes. Again, you will need to determine beforehand what kind of “effect” you want your photo to show. If you are shooting a moving object like your child playing soccer or a friend playing badminton, you can “freeze” the action by selecting a high shutter speed of 1/500 or faster.
Likewise, if you are shooting a moving object like a flowing water, you can show “movement” by selecting a slow shutter speed of ½ second or even longer with the use of a tripod.
You can even use a slow shutter speed to help capture the drama in an image by panning with the subject as you take the shot.
Or if you are shooting low light scenes, like a night sky, where fast moving objects is not an issue, you can select a slow shutter speed of 1 to 30 seconds with the use of a tripod. You can also use slow shutter speeds to create light trails from cars and other similar light sources.
Keep in mind, that slow shutter speeds will usually require a tripod as even the smallest hand movement will cause a blurry image. General rule for hand holding, is to take the focal length you are shooting at, say 100mm, and use the reciprocal number for the min shutter speed 1/(focal length) or 1/100. Any slower, and chances are you will get a blurry picture.
One of the hardest photos to take is an action shot in low light, like your child’s school play. You will need a fast shutter speed to “freeze” the action and prevent “blur” due to camera shake so an f-stop like F2.8 or lower is required to allow as much light in as possible. In this instance, you may need to increase the ISO setting to ensure the photo is properly exposed up to 1600 or higher.
How do you know if your scene is properly exposed BEFORE you shoot? Most of our Fujifilm cameras will either show on the LCD screen the shutter speed or aperture settings you have selected in RED if it’s not exposed properly. OR your LCD screen will actually preview the exposure on the LCD screen itself before you shoot.
We know that this topic is probably one of the hardest ones to get your head around at first, but don’t worry, you definitely will and it’ll be sooner than you think!
Happy snapping! 🙂
So who am I? Well, I’m a bearded English gent with an unhealthy obsession with photography and camera gear, amongst other things. This obsession started, like I’m sure it did for many other parents, with the birth of my daughter. Up until then the only camera in my possession was an ancient point & shoot with a broken mode dial, which resulted in every photo coming out about 2 stops overexposed.
With the due date rapidly approaching I mentioned my predicament to my dear old dad who kindly gave me his old Canon 300D. Within a couple of days I added to that a 50mm f/1.8 and a copy of “Understanding Exposure” by Bryan Peterson, which I devoured over a weekend. Shortly afterwards I was driving at high speed to the maternity ward, ready to witness the miracle/horror of childbirth, and to put my newfound skills to the test with some photos of my new daughter. To my surprise, I did a pretty good job (my wife also deserves a mention for her part, I suppose). From that point onwards I had an incredibly photogenic, fairly static subject to practice my photography with, and it all went from there.
These days my main passion is documenting my kids growing up, but I also do wedding and portrait photography, and earlier this year I tagged along on the Gumball 3000 rally – an epic, whirlwind journey following supercars across Europe and the US, starting in Stockholm and ending 6 days later in Las Vegas. An amazing (and tiring) experience that I was incredibly lucky to be a part of, one which I’ll never forget (at least what I can remember of it).
Oxford Wheels Project is a local charity run by a bunch of skate and BMX nuts, who after years of hard work and determination have built a rather impressive park in Meadow Lane, Oxford. On the 5th July they acted as hosts for the Globe skate team when they hit Oxford as part of their Globe EU Trippin’ tour. I’d heard that one of my heroes, Rodney Mullen, would be in attendance so myself and the kids headed off for an afternoon watching some of the finest skaters in the world, and the chance to meet a true legend of skating.
As I was there as a spectator with two kids to entertain I didn’t want to be burdened with my hefty DSLR and an array of lenses, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to test out the X-T1 that Fuji UK had kindly loaned me. As chance would have it Fuji had released the version 4 firmware update for the camera a couple of days before, so I installed it, had a quick read of the new features and set off for the skate park with the X-T1, the XF35mm F1.4 R, two children and all the associated stuff that goes with them (snacks/bribes etc).
Up until that day I’d only ever used the X-T1 with a single focus point so I had no idea how well the new focus modes introduced with the firmware update would work. I set it to wide/tracking mode and set the aperture to f/1.4, to make sure I gave the camera a proper challenge. How well can a mirrorless camera with an electronic viewfinder cope with capturing sharp images of a lunatic on a skateboard flying in and out of the frame at a bazillion miles an hour, with the lens wide open? To my surprise, incredibly well. Faultlessly, in fact.
The X-T1 just nailed the shots, every time. With it set to fast continuous shooting mode I simply aimed the camera at the skater, let the tracking mode do it’s thing, panned and held down the shutter button. The result = perfectly sharp photos, with beautiful contrast and colours and a lovely shallow depth of field from the incredible (and tiny) 35mm lens, the focus system even managing to lock on to a skater suddenly coming into a wide frame, tracking him all the way across.
After a few hours witnessing some world-class skateboarding things started winding down so we picked up our gear and headed out of the skate park, where we came face to face with my hero, Rodney Mullen, who had been signing autographs and chatting with his fans for the last couple of hours. I just about managed to blurt out “I love you Rodney” and tell him that the kids had been enthralled by his videos on YouTube, but lost the ability to speak coherently after that and I’m not entirely sure what came out of my mouth. Rodney chatted to the kids, complimented my daughter on her tiara and kindly posed for a photo with them – a photo which, despite being incredibly badly framed due to my panic, will grace the wall of my house forever.
Thanks Fuji.
To say I was impressed with the performance of the X-T1 that day is a massive understatement. To come away with so many great images from the X-T1 was, frankly, unexpected given the pace of the action I was shooting. Would the 5D Mark III’s autofocus system have done as good a job, and would I have got as many keepers? From my experience I’m not sure on either counts, and that thing is no slouch when it comes to autofocus and tracking.
Perhaps more importantly though, I wondered would I have even taken my 5D with me on that day? Probably not. It’s big & heavy and I needed to be able to comfortably carry a camera for several hours whilst keeping my 6 and 4 year old companions entertained. It also screams “I’m a photographer!” when I just wanted to be a part of the crowd, not getting in anyone’s way whilst still getting great images.
It was at that moment I realised I’d fallen more than a little bit in love with the X-T1 and the whole Fuji philosophy. It’s small, unobtrusive, with great handling and a sense of quality engineering, and above all else the images it creates are simply beautiful. I’m also hugely impressed by Fuji’s habit of tweaking and improving their cameras via firmware updates (something I had experienced with my old X100).
Since then the X-T1 has accompanied me pretty much everywhere – weddings, portrait assignments and family holidays (where I made use of the WIFI image transfer feature, editing and uploading my photos to social media without going anywhere near a computer) whilst my 5D and industrial-sized bag full of lenses sits at home more often than not. I think I’ve found my perfect camera system.
Photography-wise I’ve got a few weddings left before the season quietens down, and then I’ll be mainly concentrating on portrait sessions throughout the autumn. For more day to day stuff my son has started skateboarding lessons at Oxford Wheels Project, so I’m there most Sunday mornings and I’m hoping to get involved with them on future events. The place has a really welcoming atmosphere and is run by a very friendly bunch of people, who clearly work very hard in keeping the park running for the local community.
Please take a moment to check out the Oxford Wheels Project website (http://www.owp.org.uk) – they are a very worthwhile charity doing amazing things for the Oxford community. If you’re local I recommend you just head down there and see what it’s all about for yourself.
And if you fancy seeing more of my work please visit me here: www.paulbrowsephotography.com