Basic Techniques | Slow-Sync Flash

Slow sync flash is a technique that's used in unison with a long shutter speed. It's used to capture any movement within your shot along with a still image too. This happens because the movement is captured throughout the long exposure with the ambient light but then a still of the movement is captured too as the light from the flash bursts onto it. There are two flash options on your camera which will accomplish this technique but in opposite ways, they are know as 'Slow-Sync' flash and 'Rear-Sync' flash and I am going to be explaining these in more detail throughout today's post.

As you can see in the diagramn below, rear-sync captures the movement trailing behind the subject, as you would expect to see it, however, if the flash fires at the beginning it will make the subject look as though it's moving backwards creating a rather odd looking picture.

Source

Slow-Sync Flash:

As the diagramn shows above, this option will fire the flash at the beginning of the exposure, freezing the movement first and then capturing the trail of movement. It's generally best to avoid this technique though as it will make your subject matter look as though it's moving backwards rather than forwards. This is shown in the image below, as you can see, the woman has just hit the snooker balls but it looks as though they are moving back into the centre not away from it.

Source

Rear-Sync Flash:

This is the best flash type to use for capturing movement as it will fire the flash at the end of the exposure opposed to at the beginning, creating a more accurate representation of the trail of movement. As you can see in the shot below, this is how the image should look to accurately display the movement of the snooker balls.

Source

I hope this post has helped you to understand these flash techniques a bit more, if you'd like any more help then check out this website here where I got all my examples from as I found it explains it very simply and clearly.

Thanks for reading!

Basic Techniques | HDR Photography

After explaining dynamic range in a previous post, I felt that it would be appropriate to expand on that in this post by talking about 'HDR Photography'.

A while ago I did a tutorial on how to get perfect exposure across your whole image, which touches on what I'll be talking about today, so you can check that out here first if you'd like, but today I am going to expand on the concept of HDR photography a little bit more by explaining what it's is all about.

HDR stands for 'high dynamic range' and is achieved in post-processing by combining a number of images of the same scene, shot at varying shutter speeds, to create one "perfectly" exposed image, creating a more accurate replica of what your eye would have seen at the time, therefore creating a more dynamic range throughout the photo.   

People often use it to create hyper-real photographs by combining numerous exposures to get every section of the image to the "correct" exposure. A photographer called Albert Knuttson is incredibly good at this technique as you can see in the images of his that i've included below. He manages to get every area of the scene to the best exposure creating these incredible hyper-real images.

©Albert Knutsson

As you can see, they are very different to most normal shots, they have a very different look and feel to them, they're more like pieces of art/illustrations than photographs, very intriguing!

©2014HannahBennett

I'm not a big fan of HDR photography though, it seems like a very hard skill to perfect, however, I do find that it's useful when used subtly to achieve a perfect overall exposure like this image I shot above which I included in the post I spoke about earlier where I used a technique known as bracketing to achieve this.

What are your thought on HDR photography? Let me know in the comments below!

Have any of you ever given it a go? I'd love to see them if you have :)

Thanks for reading!

My Photography | iPhoneography

Today I have decided to share a quick snap with you that I took a while ago on my iPhone which I was very pleased with. I was visiting a local garden centre and didn't have my camera so I had to take a quick shot using my phone of some flowers that caught my eye.

©2014HannahBennett

As you can only "point and shoot" with a phone camera, you have very little control over the outcome of the final image as you can't alter any settings such as the aperture and shutter speed. However, this has turned out exactly how I would have hoped to have captured it with my dslr manually. I would have chosen a low number f stop to create a shallow depth of field just like the phone has done here, I love the way the background flowers fade off into the distance, drawing the focus of the image into the face of the pansys at the front.

I also think the phone has captured the colours perfectly and gives a good representation of the colours that they were in person. I really struggle to capture puple tones when using my dslr camera, I can never find the right white balance so I never do the flowers justice, I think my phone has done a better job than I would have in this area!

I chose a compositon to fit the dimensions of my phone, by placing the two front flowers centrally within the frame. I'm pleased with this as it works really well as a background for my phone's lock screen.

It just goes to show that you don't really need expensive fancy equipment to get a good shot, you can achieve just as nice an image with any equipment.

I hope you liked this shot!

See you soon

My Photography | Nature Snaps with my Telephoto Lens

As the weather brightened up a bit this weekend I took this as the ideal opportunity to take my camera out into my garden and photograph the wildlife. Along with the sunshine, quite a few birds came for a visit too so I made sure to use my telephoto lens and had a practise at photographing them. The results weren't particularly great though, I got some nice shots but they're not fabulous. I find that despite using a 300mm telephoto zoom lens, I still can't get close enough to the birds in camera. I have to sit fairly close as it is but ideally I'd like to get even closer, however this isn't possible without frightening the birds as my lens doesn't seem to zoom as far as I'd like.

Here is the first shot I took...

©2014HannahBennett

You can see that the quality of the image is pretty poor, it's not a very smooth image at all. I've cropped into the original (seen below) quite a lot and I don't think the focus was sharp on the bird either which has resulted in this unclear image. I am pleased with the composition of the bird though, it looks like he's peeking round the cocunut shell which is pretty cute! I'm also aware that the background is quite cluttered too, it's extremely difficult to get a nice background in my garden without including the orange fence.

ISO Speed:ISO-400
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/125
©2014HannahBennett

Here is the original image above, as you can see, I've cropped into the bird to try and remove a lot of the background clutter, i don't like the stray twigs in the background and the hideous dull grey pole of the bird feeder running along the left hand side is extremely distracting as well. I also forgot to use a form of flash to add a catchlight to the birds eye, a tip I learnt through a book I read a while ago by Guy Edwardes, called '100 Ways to Take Better Nature Photographs', which you can find here if you'd like more info about it. Because of this I used Photoshop to add one in by selecting the brush tool, making sure the colour was set to white, then I zoomed in to the eye and added a tiny little circle, recreating the effect of a catchlight. In the image below, I've added the extract from the book where Guy has enhanced the eyes of birds in his images. I created my own version of this technique using his example for guidance.

©GuyEdwardes

I have another shot from my mini garden shoot which I am going to do a post on so look out for that, it should be coming sometime throughout this week so keep your eyes peeled!

See you then