Light Through the Day

I spent the entire day today just going into the garden every hour to take photos of the light and how it fell creating different shadows and changed in colour over the time period. My aim was to look at how and when the light changed in colour and intensity an in turn what this meant to the over all feel of the images. Here is the day in photos below:

9am

1/50 sec

f/8

ISO 200

 

10am

1/200 sec

f/8

ISO 200

 

As with the judging colour temperature exercise, you can see that first two images taken early morning have a cooler blue look to them due to the time of day. 

11am

1/200 sec

f/8

ISO 200

 

12pm

1/160 sec

f/8

ISO 200

 

1pm

1/160 sec

f/8

ISO 200

 

2pm

1/200 sec

f/8

ISO 200

 

Between the hours of 11 and 2, the light stays at a very neutral colour, the tones of shadows and highlights stays roughly the same throughout and even the shutter settings used don’t have to be altered much during this period as lighting conditions stay constant.

3pm

1/160 sec

f/8

ISO 200

 

4pm

1/160 sec

f/8

ISO 200

 

4.30pm

1/125 sec

f/8

ISO 200

 

You can see that more golden tones are seeping in as the light gets lower to the horizon. The depth of the shadows has changed and are a little lighter.

5pm

1/80 sec

f/8

ISO 200

 

5.15pm

1/50 sec

f/8

ISO 200

 

5.30pm

1/50 sec

f/8

ISO 200

 

Now the sky has begun to turn to a more violet shade as the sun gets even lower, and the over all tone of the image is becoming darker in the shady foreground. Also the shutter speed as been reduced dramatically over the past half an hour as opposed to how often it changed during the middle of the day.

5.45pm

1/25 sec

f/8

ISO 200

 

6pm

1/2 sec

f/8

ISO 200

 

6pm

1/20 sec

f/8

ISO 200

 

In the last few photos the light becomes a much more intense blue/violet over the whole frame very quickly. Light changes very rapidly in its last few moments so there is scope to get so very interesting colourful shots. The second 6pm shot was actually what my cameras light meter suggested would be the correct reading for the scene, but I think it was recording the colour of the sky more than the foreground which has produced the very inky blue colour all over. This obviously shows I should take more readings before shooting to get it as accurate as possible!

Judging Colour Temperature

So for this exercise I had to look at what time of the day does to the colour of the light in a photograph. I took three shots all with the white balance set to daylight and compared the tones of the light in each image. By choosing a subject without a strong colour it was easier to determine the effect the light would have.

1/400 sec, f/9, ISO 200 Sunlight

1/15 sec, f/9, ISO 200 Shadow

 

1/320 sec, f/9, ISO 200

As you can see in the above shots it is very clear that there is a range from blue light in the shade, neutral or white light in the sunlit photo, through to deeper oranges in the sunset image. It makes it very clear to me that being able to tell what colour the light is can make a strong impact on the outcome of the photograph. The results above seem  to be much deeper in intensity of their colours than I remember them being at the time. This is due to our eyes being able to continuously adapt to the lighting conditions around us where as the camera is not quite so advanced. It’s useful to know what kind of hue certain times of the day and the amount of light will produce in my work.

I took a similar situation to the one above and used the three different kinds of light, but this time changed the white balance on my camera so that it was set to daylight, shade and the auto settings. Here are my results to compare:

Sunlight – white balance daylight

1/500 sec

f/9

ISO 200

Sunlight – white balance shade

1/500 sec

f/9

ISO 200

Sunlight – white balance auto

1/500 sec

f/9

ISO 200

In the sunlight, there is a definite difference from auto and daylight white balance settings from the shade setting. With the shade white balance setting turned on it gives a much more orange tone to the image making it appear warmer as though the sun were lower in the sky when it was taken around 11am. The differences between auto and daylight settings are a little more subtle, but I fell that the auto setting has over compensated which has resulted in a few of the highlights on the pages of the book being over exposed and too bright. The day light setting worked very well as it reproduced the bright midmorning sun without loosing detail in highlights or shadow. I think that afterward the auto setting is the photo that actually appears to look more like it was the one taken in daylight as the slight over exposure sends messages that the sun would have been very bright and high in the sky.

Shadow – white balance daylight

1/60 sec

f/9

ISO 200

Shadow – white balance shade

1/60 sec

f/9

ISO 200

Shadow – white balance auto

1/60 sec

f/9

ISO 200

In the shade, the daylight white balance setting makes the photo appear quite blue and cold, but the shade setting again as it is intended too has reproduced colours very true to the real thing as it has still retained the soft colours of the page without making them feel like they are being too strongly lit like the daylight setting has done. The auto setting is very close to the shade setting again but seems to have over exposed the image a little in favour of letting a little more light into the image. On reflection, the settings were very good at reproducing the exact colours that appeared at the time, but I much prefer the look of the daylight setting after I have viewed the shots together as the blue hue of the image makes it feel more in shadow than the original shade setting photo does.

Sunset – white balance daylight

1/500 sec

f/9

ISO 200

Sunset – white balance shade

1/500 sec

f/9

ISO 200

Sunset – white balance auto

1/500 sec

f/9

ISO 200

With these images its very easy to see that the shade setting produces the most orange looking tones. I’ve realised now that this is most likely due to the fact that when in the shade there are usually a lot of blue tones, so the camera has reduced the amount of blue light so that it balances the red and orange hues. The auto setting has lost any of the tones that originally were there so it looses the effect of being taken at sunset. The daylight setting was the most true in colour, but again after looking at the images it is a different setting that makes it appear as though it is taken as the sun is coming down.

The photo that looks as though it is in strong neutral daylight is the one taken with auto white balance, the one that looks as though it is in shade is the one with daylight settings used and the one taken looking most like it is at dusk is using the shade settings. As I have already describe this is because the camera assumes when you are in shade or daylight there will be more blue or orange tones respectively, so it doesn’t allow as many of those tones to be included in the final image, and that changes the over all colour temperature of the shot. If I am looking to enhance the idea of shade and light close to the horizon it may be better for me to use the opposite setting to what would normally be recommended.

Light Metering

It’s been quiet on here for a while, due to my holiday and also that the light has been fading quickly so I don’t have any chance to take photos before I’m finished with work. Also I’ve been very very confused with light metering. Some of my next exercises have asked me to take readings and I just didn’t get how or what they meant. Tonight I finally cracked it! By choosing spot metering or centre weighted, then aiming the camera at the lightest, darkest and mid tone areas of the frame I could see on the camera how over or under exposed the image would be with my intended aperture and speed settings. There is a little bar on my camera which tells me how the exposure is going to work out, and that I’m best taking readings from the mid tones so that I don’t loose detail in shadows, and so highlights are not too bright. So by checking this bar when aiming the camera at the different tonal areas, I can then adjust my shutter speed and aperture accordingly till the bar is balanced in the middle which means the camera thinks the exposure is about right for the lighting conditions.

I’m so glad I finally get this! I can now actually get some more work done!

The Intensity of Light: Higher and Lower Sensitivity

I finally understand what exactly the ISO settings do with my photography. It makes the camera more sensitive to light, there by letting you use a higher shutter speed or smaller aperture for those shots that require them in low light conditions. But it does have it limits, so here are my test shots taken inside at late evening to explain what I found:

 

ISO 200, 1/30 secs, f5.3

ISO 200, 1/15 secs, f5.3

ISO 200, 1/4 secs, f5.3

As you can see with these first shots is that to begin with they are too dark, even on a very slow exposure, and on the last photograph the little bit of movement in the wings is distorted as the exposure is too long to capture the wings perfectly.

 

ISO 320, 1/2 secs, f5.3

ISO 320, 1/10 sec, f5.3

ISO 320, 1/10 secs, f5.6

With a slightly higher ISO I am able to capture the light how it appeared to me, but at a cost of having a completely blurred picture. A shorter exposure time darkens the images but is still unable to capture the images clearly with the birds fast movements.

 

ISO 500, 1/5 secs, f5.3

ISO 500, 1/8 secs, f5

ISO 500, 1/8 secs, f5

At ISO 500 I can capture the right amount of light very well at an exposure setting that freezes the birds movement if the bird itself is still. Unfortunately with any movement the camera is still unable to freeze the bird enough, even though it is now 5x more sensitive to the light.

ISO 800, 1/13 secs, f.5.6

ISO 800, 1/15 secs, f5.6

ISO 800, 1/25 secs, f5.3

800 ISO is almost perfect for capturing my budgies jumping around, and the right amount of light so that the images appear with the same light intensity of real life. The only time it doesn’t capture everything is when the bird moved very quickly, But his little hops around his cage were caught fine.

For one last test I bumped the ISO right up to 1600 just for an extreme comparison:

This time everything was sharp and the lighting was perfect! But the trade of is this:

These two images are portions of my final image and cropped at 100%. As you can see in the beak there are grainy particles and the image is not smooth, and in the second image which is actually the shadows in the black parts of the feathers, there are no clear lines at all and it is very distorted.

So using a higher ISO can be very useful in making the camera more sensitive to light so that you can use the shutter speed and aperture settings that you want to achieve the look you are going for, but it leaves a lot to be said about the quality of the image which becomes grainy and unfocused in areas that might actually hold detail that you need to make the image work. On the flip side though, you may like this effect as it can create the feeling of an old photograph, or the image may be so busy in other areas that you wouldn’t notice the tiny flaws in quality. It will also depend on the size you are going to produce the image at, the larger the image the more noticeable it will be, just like increasing the size to 100%.

The Intensity of Light: Measuring Exposure

Ok, Assignment 4 begins and I can nearly see the light at the end of the tunnel for this course. Ironic as the next chapter is all about light!

To start to understand how light works with my camera and affects my photography this first lesson is how to measure the exposure and how it changes the look of the image. I started by taking some photos and using the different metering modes on my camera and changing the exposure time to determine what the average exposure would be for that photo, i.e; the one that looked the most true to life. Then I chose a few that were deliberately darker or lighter than average:

This one is lighter, or over exposed to amplify the posts by the sea as I wanted them to be the most prominent feature, and I wanted the rest of the photo to appear washed out to give a feel for how the day was on that cold day at the beach.

 

This image was purposefully under exposed so that the whites in the roses would come forward, as they would be much brighter than the shadowy background. This was actually taken in the evening as the sun was going down so it was actually very light outside! It makes the picture feel a little more moody with darker lighting throughout.

Over exposed again but this time to express how light the morning was that this was taken, and also to intensify the light that was falling on my dogs fur, I liked how it was giving him a sort of halo and he looked so peaceful.

 

This last one comes from my cousins wedding. There was actually quite bright fluorescent lights in the barn this was held in, so I under exposed it to give it the evening feel and to soften the image which just looked far too bright and harsh the way it looked in reality.

 

 

So after choosing images that were specifically over and under exposed, I looked at a range of photos that went from over exposed to average and then under exposed so I could see how it would change the impact of that photo, and if the average settings actually turned out to be the best image at all.

Exposure: 1/60 sec

F Stop: f14

 

 

 

Exposure: 1/80 sec

F Stop: f14

 

 

 

Exposure: 1/200 sec

F Stop: f14

Average

 

 

Exposure: 1/320 sec

F Stop: f14

 

 

 

Exposure: 1/500 sec

F Stop: f14

 

 

 

As you can see the middle image is the one I chose as the average exposure as it captured the correct colours in the greens of the trees and the lightness in the clouds. the two images above this are very over exposed making the sky appear almost entirely white as too much light was let into the camera through the longer exposure time. I don’t think either of these images work particularly well because the sky is lost and the trees seem out of place in the vast whiteness. The two images below are under exposed and I feel that either could work in some capacity as they cast more shadows in the clouds and the trees to make the image feel darker and gives the highlights in the clouds more contrast.

Exposure: 1/40 sec

F Stop: f5.6

 

 

 

Exposure: 1/160 sec

F Stop: f5.6

 

 

 

Exposure: 1/250 sec

F Stop: f5.6

Average

 

 

Exposure: 1/400 sec

F Stop: f5.6

 

 

 

Exposure: 1/640 sec

F Stop: f5.6

 

 

 

This second series of photos really shows how you can make the image become much darker by changing the exposure so that it is under exposed. shadows become deeper and  lighter areas or colours really being to stand out. All of these images work in one way or another depending on the effect you want to get across. personally I quite like the over exposed first image, it might be a little too over exposed in places but with a few teaks it could make in interesting image showing off the vivid colours of the child’s toy without so many burnt out white highlights. I also think the under exposed images work well as it makes the scene appear dark as though it was a very dark cloudy day outside, which in fact it wasn’t.

Exposure: 1/200 sec

F Stop: f8

 

 

 

Exposure: 1/320 sec

F Stop: f8

 

 

 

Exposure: 1/500 sec

F Stop: f8

Average

 

 

Exposure: 1/800 sec

F Stop: f8

 

 

 

Exposure: 1/1250 sec

F Stop: f8

 

 

 

Not one of these images could be counted as being wrongly exposed as each one retains the quality of the image through the highlights and shadows, although to go even more under or over exposed with this image I feel would ruin the overall feel for the shot, being too brightly lit and loosing important details in the rose which is the focal point. if it was to become too dark it would spoil the relationship of the hues of blue and red and how they contrast together to project the rose forwards. I actually personally prefer the tones of blue in the 4th image as it seems to match more closely the warmth in the rose and the leaves and it much more pleasing on the eye than the harsh contrast of the tones in the under exposed shots.