Chapter Eleven. Pro Tips for Getting Better Photos: More Tricks of the Trade for Making Your Shots Look Better
SHUTTER SPEED: 1/1600 SEC F-STOP: F/4 ISO: 4000 FOCAL LENGTH: 400MM PHOTOGRAPHER: SCOTT KELBY
One day, while doing research for an upcoming talk I was giving on the history of American photography, totally by accident, I stumbled upon something I clearly wasn’t supposed to find. It piqued my curiosity, so I kept digging around, and the more I dug, the more shocking what I uncovered became. Soon, I had no choice but to share what I had learned with a well-known top photographer, and after my solemn promise to protect his identity at all costs, he was willing to not only corroborate my findings, but he let me in on a truly startling, highly-guarded, and explosive secret—one that, once revealed, will likely have a devastating effect on our entire industry, but this is a story that must be told. Deep breath—here we go. First, you need to know that there is a secret council of photographers called the Zeta 7, founded in 1946 in Bensonhurst, New York, with the sole purpose of protecting a set of hidden camera settings, techniques, and camera functions which, when used together, create professional-looking images every single time. The Zetas only share these secret settings with their Zeta Brothers as a way of ensuring only Zeta members will be able to create truly amazing images. Each year, the Zetas induct seven more hand-picked photographers into their order during a ritualistic blood oath ceremony (supposedly held in an abandoned New York subway tunnel that runs directly beneath the B&H Photo showroom on 9th Ave. and West 34th St.), where they are sworn never to divulge the inner workings of the order. Then, and only then, are they allowed to don the ceremonial robes for their one-time, candlelight access to the “sacred settings scroll,” which contains those secret settings to getting pro-quality images, and this is why only a select group of top pros seem to get these amazing images time after time. Interesting side note: According to one Zeta who was excommunicated from the order, the secret password to enter the Zeta meetings is, “It’s not about the camera.” True story.
Fit a Lot More Shots on Your Memory Card
I mentioned back in volume 1 of this book series that, to have enough resolution to print a 16×20" print, you only needed an 8-megapixel camera. Of course, most folks will never print anything larger than an 8×10, so you could make the case that, for most photographers, 8 megapixels is actually overkill. That being said, what if you don’t make prints at all? Today, most people’s images wind up on the web, and if that’s the case (and you shoot in JPEG mode), you might consider lowering the megapixels your camera shoots. Not the quality, just the size of the images. That way, you fit more images on your memory cards, you take up less space on your hard drive with your photos, and even Photoshop will run faster, because you’re working with smaller file sizes. To do this on most Nikon DSLR cameras, go under the Shooting menu, under Image Size, and choose Medium. If you have a 12-megapixel camera, that still gives you an image size of 3216×2136 pixels, which is still more than enough resolution to print an 11×14" image. (Remember, this only takes effect if you shoot in JPEG mode, and make sure you keep your Quality setting on Fine.) On Canon cameras, on the Shooting 1 tab, go under Quality, and choose the first Medium choice, which on a 50D still gives you an 8-megapixel image (medium is even larger on a 5D or 5D Mark II).
Sneaky Trick When You Can’t Use Your Tripod
More and more places, like museums, observatories on top of tall buildings, train stations, and even cathedrals, have very strict rules about not using tripods, but so far I haven’t found a single one that has a rule about using a Manfrotto Magic Arm and Super Clamp. You just clamp it on something (like a railing or a pew, for example), and it holds your camera steady so you can shoot in really low light. Security guards are totally perplexed by them, because there’s nothing in their rules about accessory arms. In fact, if they approach you and ask, “What is this?” You can say something like, “Oh, this is a way for me to keep my camera still without having tripod legs sticking out where someone might trip.” (See, you’re looking out for them.) Of course, you could add, “I have to use this because I have shaky hands.” However, I would never stoop to using this slightly modified response, “I have to use this to steady my camera because of a medical condition,” because a line like that would probably work every single time. I’m just sayin’.
When Exposure Compensation Doesn’t Work
I think one of the most important things a new photographer can learn about their camera is how to use exposure compensation, which is basically where you don’t agree with how the camera exposed the shot. It thinks it did a great job, but when you look at the LCD on the back of your camera, you think the image looks too dark or too bright (both are pretty common, especially in tricky lighting situations). Whatever it did, it didn’t nail the exposure. Luckily, you can override the camera (it thinks it’s right; you know it’s wrong) by using exposure compensation. You can learn more about how to do this for your particular camera on page 74, but one thing that catches a lot of photographers about exposure compensation is this: it doesn’t work if you shoot in manual mode. It only works in modes where the camera is figuring out the exposure automatically (like when you shoot in aperture priority mode, shutter priority mode, or program mode). But, here’s where the camera companies “gotcha!”: the dial for exposure compensation still moves when you’re in manual mode and shows you the minus or plus number, even though it’s not actually doing anything. So, you’ll be looking in your viewfinder and it says you’re at –1 stop or up 2/3 of a stop, but then you take the image and it looks exactly the same. That’s what happens in manual mode, so if you shoot in manual and your exposure doesn’t look right, exposure compensation won’t help. This one’s totally on you (in other words, you’ll have to adjust your aperture or shutter speed until the image looks right to you. That’s why they call it “manual”).
Avoid Signs Because They Draw the Eye
If you’re like me, and you’re worried about things distracting your viewer from the story or subject you want them to see in your photo, keep a sharp eye out for any printed signs or text that might appear in your photos. We’re all mentally programmed to read signs, and unless the sign is the subject of your image, your viewers will automatically start reading the sign, instead of looking at your subject. I learned this tip a few years ago from Jay Maisel, and I’ve seen it play out time and time again, whenever I showed an image with a sign somewhere in it. Even if it was in the background, it seemed that within a split second of me showing the image, the viewer was reading it aloud. So, in short, try to compose your shots so signs or text don’t appear in them unless you want them to be the first thing your viewer sees (and reads!).
The “Gotcha” of Using Picture Styles
Picture styles, those in-camera color and contrast effects that let you, for example, have more vivid colors for landscapes, or a more neutral look for portraits, or a really vivid look for shooting in cities, etc., have a hidden “gotcha”—they don’t get applied to your image if you shoot in RAW format. They only actually affect the image at all if you shoot in JPEG mode. What stinks about this is that, when you’re shooting RAW, the preview you see on the LCD on the back of your camera is actually a JPEG preview, so you see the picture style being applied, even though when you open your RAW image in Photoshop or Lightroom, that picture style is long gone. If you shoot Nikon, and you shoot in RAW, but you really, really want to use these picture styles and actually have them applied to the image, you can buy Nikon’s Capture NX program, which actually keeps the picture styles intact when you shoot in RAW. It runs about $130, so you have to really, really want to keep those picture styles in a bad, bad way. Of course, if you have Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, or Lightroom, you can use the camera profiles in Camera Raw’s or Lightroom’s Camera Calibration panel to apply these same picture styles to your RAW file.
Rotate Tall or Rotate Image or Both?
When it comes to rotate settings in your camera, there are actually two different ones that do two entirely different things, and knowing which is which can save you a lot of frustration. Rotate Tall (on Nikons, under the Playback menu) means that when you shoot vertical (tall), the camera will rotate the image on the LCD on the back of your camera (that way, you don’t have to turn your camera sideways to see tall images). The other rotate setting is called Rotate Image (under the Setup menu), which means it embeds the orientation of the image right into the file, so when you open the image in Lightroom, or Bridge, or Photo Mechanic, etc., it automatically rotates the thumbnails of tall images so they don’t come in sideways and have to all be manually rotated by you. On Canon cameras (like the 50D), go under the Set-up 1 tab, and choose Auto Rotate. If you choose On with an icon of a camera and computer monitor beside it, it rotates the photo both on the LCD on the back of your camera and your thumbnails when you import the photos onto your computer. If, instead, you choose On with just the computer monitor beside it, then it only rotates the image on your computer (your camera will still show it on its side). If you choose Off, it means there’s no rotation at all—everything stays on its side, on your LCD and on your computer.
Reducing Noise in Low-Light Shots
If you shoot in low-light situations or at night, it’s almost a lock that you’re going to have some noise in your image (little red, green, and blue dots—kinda like film grain, but not nearly as endearing). Anyway, we used to have to buy plug-ins to get rid of noise, but in Photoshop CS5’s (and higher) Camera Raw or Lightroom 3 (and higher), the noise reduction built right in is so good, we can pretty much skip using noise reduction plug-ins altogether. If you shoot in RAW, it works really brilliantly, because unlike most plug-ins, it removes the noise while the image is still a 16-bit RAW image. If you shot in JPEG mode (so it’s already 8-bit), you can open that JPEG in Camera Raw or Lightroom and still use its Noise Reduction, but it’s not quite as robust (because now you’re kind of using it as a plug-in). To find this noise reduction, open your image in Camera Raw, then click on the Detail icon. In Light-room, go to the Detail panel in the Develop module. There are five sliders in this section, but we’re only going to focus on the two most important ones: Luminance and Color (you can leave the others set at their defaults). The Luminance slider is kind of the overall noise reduction amount slider—the more noise you see, the farther you’ll need to drag it to the right, but be careful, if you drag it too far, your image will start to look soft and lose contrast. Without going into too much detail (this isn’t a Photoshop book, after all), if you increase either the Luminance or the Color sliders and things start to look too soft, or you lose detail, or the colors look desaturated, that’s what the other three sliders are for—to help bring some of those back (the names of those sliders help you figure out which one is which).
What People Looking at Your Photos See First
Knowing what your viewer’s eye is going to see first in your photo can really help a lot in planning it out. Basically, the human eye is drawn to the brightest thing in the image, so if your subject is in the foreground, but behind him is a window with bright sunlight, their eye is going to go there first (not generally what you want). So, knowing that, you can recompose or relight the photo to make sure the brightest thing in the photo is precisely where you want your viewers to look. After the brightest thing, next they look for the sharpest, most in-focus thing, so if there’s a very shallow depth of field, they lock right onto whatever’s in focus (hopefully, your subject). Knowing these two things (where people looking at your photos are going to look first, and then where they’ll look next) can really help you in creating photos where your viewer’s eye goes right where you want it, by making sure that brighter and sharper areas don’t appear somewhere else in your photos.
Keeping Your Camera Info from Prying Eyes
If you’re going to be sharing your photos on the Internet, you’re going to be sharing a lot more than your photos. That’s because your camera embeds a ton of information about your camera gear, including your camera’s make and model, the lens you used, your f-stop and shutter speed, and depending on the camera, perhaps the exact location where you took the photo, and even your camera’s serial number (this info is called EXIF data or camera data). If you don’t want strangers to have all this inside info on your camera and your photos, here’s what to do: copy-and-paste your image into a new blank document. That way, it doesn’t have any background info at all. To do that: Open your image in Photoshop (or Photoshop Elements) and press Command-A (PC: Ctrl-A) to select the entire image. Now, press Command-C (PC: Ctrl-C) to copy your photo into memory. Go under the File menu and choose New, and click the OK button (don’t change any settings—just click OK). Now go under the Edit menu and choose Paste (or press Command-V [PC: Ctrl-V]) to paste your copied photo into the new blank document (and, of course, this new blank document has none of your camera information embedded into it). Lastly, since your image pastes in as a layer, you’ll want to flatten your image by pressing Command-E (PC: Ctrl-E), and then save your document in whichever file format you like (I usually save mine as a JPEG with a quality setting of 10). That’s it—your secret’s safe!:)
Why JPEGs Look Better Than RAW Images
I know what you’re thinking, “I’ve always heard it’s better to shoot in RAW!” It may be (more on that in a moment), but I thought you should know why, right out of the camera, JPEG images look better than RAW images. It’s because when you shoot in JPEG mode, your camera applies sharpening, contrast, color saturation, and all sorts of little tweaks to create a fully processed, good-looking final image. However, when you switch your camera to shoot in RAW mode, you’re telling the camera, “Turn off the sharpening, turn off the contrast, turn off the color saturation, and turn off all those tweaks you do to make the image look really good, and instead just give me the raw, untouched photo and I’ll add all those things myself in Photoshop or Lightroom” (or whatever software you choose). So, while RAW files have more data, which is better, the look of the RAW file is not better (it’s not as sharp, or vibrant, or contrasty), so it’s up to you to add all those things in post-processing. Now, if you’re pretty good in Photoshop, Lightroom, etc., the good news is you can probably do a better job tweaking your photo than your camera does when it creates a JPEG, so the final result is photos processed just the way you like them (with the amount of sharpening you want added, the amount of color vibrance you want, etc.). If you just read this and thought, “Man, I don’t even use Photoshop...” or “I don’t really understand Photoshop,” then you’ll probably get better-looking images by shooting in JPEG and letting the camera do the work. I know this goes against everything you’ve read in online forums full of strangers who sound very convincing, but I’ll also bet nobody told you that shooting in RAW strips away all the sharpening, vibrance, and contrast either. Hey, at least now ya know.
When You Don’t Need to Shoot on a Tripod
In volume 1 of this book series, I had a whole chapter about how the pros get really sharp images, and one of their secrets is that they’re willing to use a tripod when most photographers won’t. In fact, they’re pretty freaky about it, but that’s one reason why their shots are so tack sharp. So, do these pros ever not shoot on a tripod? Yup, and there are two occasions where it’s really not that necessary: (1) When you’re shooting flash. The super-short duration of your flash of light freezes your subject, so you don’t have to worry too much about any movement in your image (which is why you don’t often see tripods in the studio). And, (2) when you’re shooting outdoors on a bright sunny day. That’s because your shutter speed will be so fast (probably around 
of a second or higher) that you could almost throw your camera in the air while taking a photo and it would still take a sharp shot (although I wouldn’t recommend testing that theory).
What to Do If Your Image Isn’t Quite Good Enough to Print
If you’ve taken a shot that you really, really love, and it’s maybe not as sharp as you’d like it to be, or maybe you’ve cropped it and you don’t have enough resolution to print it at the size you’d like, I’ve got a solution for you—print it to canvas. You can absolutely get away with murder when you have your prints done on canvas. With its thick texture and intentionally soft look, it covers a multitude of sins, and images that would look pretty bad as a print on paper, look absolutely wonderful on canvas. It’s an incredibly forgiving medium, and most places will print custom sizes of whatever you want, so if you’ve had to crop the photo to a weird size, that usually doesn’t freak them out. Give it a try the next time you have one of those photos that you’re worried about, from a sharpness, size, or resolution viewpoint, and I bet you’ll be amazed!
When to Switch to Spot Metering
I get a lot of questions about when to switch to Spot metering (a metering mode that measures just one small area of the photo). I can tell you that 99% of the time, I leave my camera set to Matrix (or Evaluative on a Canon) metering (the standard metering mode that does an amazing job of getting you good exposures without having to break a sweat). However, there are times (few though they are) where I need to switch to Spot metering and those are where there’s something in the image that I’m worried about being properly exposed. Now, do I worry about something being properly exposed when it’s well-lit? Nope. Usually, it’s when something that’s really important is in bad light—like a shadow area of my photo. So, in short, when there’s something in the photo whose exposure needs to be right on the money, I switch to Spot metering just for that shot, and then I switch back to Matrix (or Evaluative), which works wonderfully in 99 out of 100 situations.
Try Cinematic Cropping for a Wide-Screen Look
Last year, I came up with a style of cropping photos that kind of approximates what a wide-screen movie looks like onscreen (which is why I call it “cinematic cropping”). It really gives your image that wide-screen, almost panoramic look, and I find myself using it more and more. Luckily, it’s easy to crop like this in either Photoshop, Camera Raw, or Lightroom. We’ll start with Photoshop. Step One: Click on the Crop tool, then up in the Options Bar, in the Width and Height fields, for Width, enter 2.39, and for Height, enter 1. That’s it. Now when you drag out the Crop tool over your image, it will be constrained to those cinematic crop proportions. In Camera Raw, just click on the Crop tool and, from the pop-up menu that appears, choose Custom Crop. When the dialog appears, from the pop-up menu, choose Ratio, and then type in 2.39 in the first field and 1 in the second. Now your Crop tool will be constrained to the cinematic crop proportions. Lastly, in Lightroom, press R to get the Crop Overlay tool and, from the pop-up menu to the immediate left of the Lock icon, choose Enter Custom. Enter 2.39 in the first field, and 1 in the second field, and click OK. Now your Crop Overlay tool will be constrained to the cinematic crop proportions, so just drag it out over your image and bring the cinematic feel to your images.
Sharpening Your Images for Print
This should really be called “Oversharpening Your Images for Print in Photoshop,” because that’s pretty much what you do. Here’s why: after you get your sharpening so it looks good onscreen, when you print your image, you’ll think it looks a little soft and that’s because you lose some of the sharpness you see onscreen during the printing process. So, to get around this, we oversharpen our images in Photoshop. Here’s what to do: First, get the sharpening so it looks good onscreen (I use Photoshop’s Unsharp Mask filter, and if you’re looking for a starting place, try these settings: Amount: 120%, Radius: 1, and Threshold: 3). Now, if that looks good onscreen, start slowly dragging the Amount slider to the right, which increases the amount of sharpening, and as soon as you think “Ewwww, that’s too sharp...” just stop. Don’t backtrack the Amount slider—just stop. Now, I know you’re looking at your screen and you’re thinking, “This looks a bit too sharp” and if that’s what you’re thinking, your sharpening is probably right on the money. I know it’s hard to print something that looks too sharp onscreen, but you’ll have to trust that a little too sharp onscreen means a little just right in print. Also, if you’re going to need to use this same image on the web and in print, before you apply this sharpening for print, duplicate the Background layer and apply your sharpening just on that layer (and rename this layer “Sharpened for print,” so you’ll know it’s oversharpened). That way, you’ll still have the original Background layer that’s not oversharpened.
How to Rescue a Damaged Memory Card
Memory cards go bad. It happens. However, it never happens when you took a bunch of experimental photos that really don’t matter. They only go bad when you shoot something really important. I believe, on some level, they sense fear. Anyway, if the unthinkable happens (you put your memory card into your card reader, and it appears to be blank when you know it’s not), there are downloadable software recovery programs (some of them even free) that do a pretty amazing job, so all is usually not lost. However, if this happens, stop what you’re doing, and start your recovery process immediately for the best chance of getting your images back (in other words, don’t put the card back in the camera and keep shooting. Don’t reformat the card. Don’t do anything—just launch your recovery software right away). As for the recovery software itself, I’ve used SanDisk RescuePro software (you can download a free demo version at www.lc-tech.com/), and it has worked well (even on non-SanDisk cards), but my favorite is Klix, and maybe only because it’s rescued the images on every card that’s ever died on me (a friend turned me on to it after it saved his hide, too).