Photographic tips

I've been listening to Chris Marquardt's Tips From the Top Floor on my iPod while I ride the bus to work and there are lots of useful tips and tricks for aspiring photographers like myself. One trick I learned recently and has become my favourite is using the fully manual setting on my camera when shooting in consistent light conditions.

I like trying to use natural light through windows when shooting indoors and it is relatively consist for Julie's entire attention span while she's being my model. Since my ist D L2 tends to underexpose my photographs in indoor, natural light conditions, I like to correct for this so there is less post-processing to do. I can set my shutter speed and aperture and the camera also indicates if it thinks the settings are correct or not. I typically overexpose by one full stop to get results I like.

Another great advantage comes during the post processing. Since conditions do not change, all the photos I take are similarly exposed. Ergo, if I'm still not happy, I can batch correct all my photos quickly. I use iPhoto for most of my general corrections and Elements for anything that needs particular attention. iPhoto allows me to copy and paste edits between photos.

My only word of warning is to watch the ISO on the camera. If I take a few shots to start with, I use the P setting and then switch to fully manual when I see that Julie is in a good mood and going to give me a lot of cute faces. The camera remembers the P settings when I switch to M but the ISO resets itself so my first manual shot is horribly underexposed if I'm not paying attention since the P setting with an automatic ISO will often select an ISO of 1600 in low light. My minimum ISO is 200 so I'm typically three stops underexposed if I don't force the ISO to something higher or adjust my shutter speed or aperture.

I'm currently switching from Picasa to Flickr so you can check out those sites if you want to see more of my photography (read: Julie). If you use a news reader, you're probably better off subscribing to the Flickr feed. And check out the Tips From the Top Floor podcast.