Lens hood & Tripod by Dominic Lee

I was recently asked by a colleague how I got such vibrant colours and sharp photographs in my new book “Out of Your Tree 2”.

There are a few reasons but here are two of them:  (1) most of shots are taken on a tripod and (2) all of them with a lens hood attached.

It does amuse me when I see so called professionals shooting with the lens hood in reverse (storage position).  It’s easy to spend 150 Euro on a lens hood if you lose one, so why bother? Well it wasn’t designed to keep the rain off although it serves that purpose too. Its main function is to keep stray light from bouncing off all those layers of glass which has the effect of reducing the sharpness of your image. The sun does not need to be shining for stray light to hit your lens; it can come from a 40 watt bulb in the ceiling reflecting off a table below. So never leave home without a lens hood and better still never ever take a photo without a lens hood attached and you will discover a noticeable change in the sharpness of your images.

Next bit of kit you should never leave home without is a tripod. Some think tripods are for holding heavy equipment/big lenses. They were actually designed to allow you to shoot at slow shutter speeds. Slow shutter speeds allow the film or digital chip to soak up the available light. Forget about opening up the aperture to allow in more light, it will not have the desired effect if the shutter goes off so fast that the available light fails to make an impression on the film/chip. Use the aperture for dept of field only (what’s in or out of focus).

Take a photo of a green hedge at 1/250 sec and another at 1 second (naturally you must adjust your aperture to balance the exposure), what you will see is this: The hedge shot at 1/250 sec will be full of black areas and it will look like a snap taken by your average tourist with a pocket camera. The shot taken at a one second exposure will be bursting with luscious green leaves including the ones inside the hedge which are black in the 1/250 photo. There is light in those dark areas but the film/chip needs time for that light to register. Naturally you can’t hand hold your camera at speeds slower than 1/60 sec, so ask Santa for a tripod and “slow down”.

 By the way the book in question – “Out of Your Tree 2” is available through most of the photo suppliers and labs North & South who have kindly agreed to supply it without taking a commission as I’m donating all the proceeds to The Irish Cancer Society. Price 35 Euro. See sample pages on www.priorystudios.ie/publications

 

Dominic

Comments

[Chris Moody]

"Take a photo of a green hedge at 1/250 sec and another at 1 second (naturally you must adjust your aperture to balance the exposure), what you will see is this: The hedge shot at 1/250 sec will be full of black areas and it will look like a snap taken by your average tourist with a pocket camera. The shot taken at a one second exposure will be bursting with luscious green leaves including the ones inside the hedge which are black in the 1/250 photo." - quote

As far as I understood it, 1 second at F22 delivers the same amount of light to the film/sensor as 1/250 at F1.4. Under controlled lighting the image should be identically exposed, shouldn't they? (We'll ignore light fall off at the edges at F1.4, narrow depth of field etc).

"There is light in those dark areas but the film/chip needs time for that light to register" - quote

Or a wider aperture, surely?

Now if the sun bursts through the clouds during the 1 second exposure that's different.

[Dominic Lee]

Chris, take a city street at night at 1/250 of a sec and another at 1 second, even though you can adjust the aperture to give both a correct exposure, you will have two totally different effects (shite and stunning). My advice is to stop using your aperture to allow in more light, use it to balance your meter reading but giving priority to long exposures which soak up the available light. There are lots of situations where this wont be possible but you would be surprised how slow you can shoot people standing still, even at 1/8 of a second (with a tripod). And your photos will look so different to every other snapper who stood beside you who was hand holding their camera at 1/60 or faster.
Dominic

[Chris Moody]

I agree entirely with the benefits of slower shutter/smaller aperture shooting - Greater depth of field, better sharpness across the sensor as well as the ability to bring 'movement' to a still image.

'giving priority to long exposures which soak up the available light' - quote

'There is light in those dark areas but the film/chip needs time for that light to register' - quote

Are you saying that using 1/250 at f4 exposes the sensor (or film) to less light than 1/125 at 5.6? The hedge example would suggest that.

In the instance of film I would agree that a longer exposure can sometimes result in more interesting colours and saturation due to reciprocity failure.

[Dominic Lee]

Chris's Question: "Are you saying that using 1/250 at f4 exposes the sensor (or film) to less light than 1/125 at 5.6? The hedge example would suggest that?"
Answer: No, just a different kind of light, light which may not be visible to the human eye but its there and it takes time for it to reach and effect the sensor! And no matter how wide you open the aperture it will never collect all the available light unless you allow it time, loads of time.
PS.This has nothing to do with reciprocity failure.
Dominic

[Chris Moody]

I'm sorry Dominic but I just don't understand your theory.

What is "a different kind of light"? - a light that seems to ignore the reciprocal relationship between aperture and shutter speed.

If you have the time/inclination could you post/email examples with metadata intact for me to look at.

I'm just curious.

[Dominic Lee]

Ye have to be wearing your Y-fronts and your crocodile hat, and then when you meet the rubber duck you twist his coconuts and stick the lot up the jelly giraffe’s aperture and as long as it’s not snowing your saxophone wont freeze and Bob the teapot will get you sorted!

[Tony Maddox]

I was wondering how you were going go out of that task Mr lee and you did by making me LOL. I love those rowntree randoms but I love the ads better. Tony

[Chris]

Ye have to be wearing your Y-fronts and your crocodile hat, and then when you meet the rubber duck you twist his coconuts and stick the lot up the jelly giraffe’s aperture and as long as it’s not snowing your saxophone wont freeze and Bob the teapot will get you sorted! - Why didn't just say that in the first place?

[Michael McKay]

Sadly the truth about this lens & tripod blog is that many so-called "photographers" reading that would say " what the hell is an aperture???? Drag the shutter -what's that all about??
Most point and shoot on Auto or Program mode!!!

M McKay