Photography Notebook -- Photography Shots

Photography Notebook: Shots

Night Shots

My tips for making a night photo are:

Use a tripod because you will need to take time exposures.
Take the photo in RAW format also, as you may need to adjust the white balance. Look in the raw file editor to see what appears most natural.
Use the Canon Wireless Remote Control RC1 for Digital Rebel to snap the shutter so as to avoid touching the camera and shaking the tripod, even slightly; uses CR1220 battery cells.
Note that you can use the manual setting and the "bulb" setting for the time value so you can take as long of an exposure as you want (The Tv setting allows up to 30 seconds--don't let this make you think this camera can only take a 30 second exposure).
Consider using a Double Bubble Axis Level to ensure the shot is level.

Here is a photo I took using the camera's timer and a tripod:

High Dynamic Range

High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography combines several images of different exposure values in one image. The result is an image with more vivid tones and light qualities.

For example, these three shots (taken at 0 exposure bias, -1 EV, and +1 EV) were combined:

to produce this single HDR image:

My tips for making an HDR photo are:

Use a tripod because you will take several shots, and the scene in each must line up perfectly.
Use the Auto Exposure Bracketing (AEB) feature of the camera to take three shots with standard exposure, darker exposure, and brighter exposure.
Use the Canon Wireless Remote Control RC1 for Digital Rebel to snap the shutter so as to avoid touching the camera and shaking the tripod, even slightly.
Use the HDR Software Qtpfsgui to combine the shots.

Infrared + High Dynamic Range

You can take several infrared (IR) shots and combine them using HDR software. Here is an example:

Stage Shots

It is a particular challenge to get good photos of a stage performance. Bright stage lights can overwhelm a camera with too much light if the shutter is open too long, and the moving performers appear only as a blur. I took photos at a bellydance performance, and I eventually found the following works fairly well:

Tv = approximately 1/50 sec or 1/60 sec
ISO = 800

Here is a photo at 1/60th second exposure and ISO 800:

Of course, you might want to have blurred action. Here is a photo at 1/15th second exposure and ISO 1600:

Custom Functions

You can access a variety of settings by choosing: Menu, then going to the 3rd options symbol (a wrench with three dots) and pressing the SET button when "Custom Functions (C. Fn) is highlighted.

Here are some that I found useful. The notation corresponds to what is on the screen as you scroll through the functions. The number in parenthesis is the function number (ranges from 1 to 13):

C. FnII: Image (3): Long Exp. noise reduction. I set this to "Auto."
C. FnII: Image (4): High ISO speed noise reduction. I set this to "On."
C. FnII: Image (5): Highlight tone priority. I set this to "Disable." I want to take time to experiment with this when I do portraits. Some preliminary experiments showed me that this is not useful for landscape photography (!)