How To Take Photos In The Mist
Saturday, April 24th, 2010 at
11:46 am
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It’s often very difficult to achieve the best exposure in misty weather conditions, especially if the sun shines through and causes light levels in parts of the picture to go very high. Many digital sensors, even in expensive cameras, have a tendency to burn out to white above certain light levels, whereas film seems to be able to handle these wider levels of light more effectively.
The path to perfect exposures is nothing you can’t navigate with some basic skills. For dark, underexposed images, the instant first aid is to make sure the ISO is turned up far enough to increase sensor sensitivity. Couple this with widening your aperture or lowering the shutter speed. Overexposure can arise from using the wrong metering mode or a combination of an extremely high ISO, very slow shutter speed and a wide aperture.
Composition is the term used to describe the way in which a photographer divides and organizes the separate elements of a subject into a image. Well composed images encourage the viewer to spend more time looking into and around the photograph, rather than moving on. Just like the best paintings, photographs that are carefully composed and organized show off the subject better-and really show off a photographer’s design skills. All photographic assignments involve a challenge, be it a technical one or a creative judgment, but the photographer who is armed with solutions can turn the most mundane scenes into stunning images.
The reason that so many portraits lack impact is that nothing seems to be happening. The person is just standing there, staring at your digital camera. Often they look bored. Sometimes they even look scared. The ’startled rabbit syndrome’ is often much in evidence. Rarely does the person actually look as if they’re having a good time.
Standard thinking about camera lenses when it comes to taking pictures of people is that you want a short telephoto for studies of individuals and wide-angles for groups and environmental portraits. And while there’s a lot to be said for this tried and tested approach, it’s hardly a recipe for creating exciting images. On a digital compact with a zoom using the middle of the range will produce full-body and head-and-shoulders compositions with natural perspective. With a digital SLR camera, bear in mind that all but the most expensive models have a digital magnification factor of 1.6x, so a 28-80mm zoom becomes an effective 45-128mm, which is ideal for pleasing, flattering pictures of people. But unless they’re particularly photogenic – or the situation is interesting in some other way – the results can often be rather bland.