This is a brief description of what High Dynamic Range photography or, HDR is. Have you ever looked at a scene and took a picture and said, Wow! This is going to be an incredible photograph!” only to realize once you get it home and loaded on your computer to realize that something is missing.  There’s no detail in the highlights like the clouds that are just a white mass, not what you remember when you photographed them. Or, the beautiful detail in the shadows that are now nothing but black. So what happened? Your eyes and brain are  incredible image processing computer mechanisms. They can see things that a camera can’t. You can see the detail in the shadows and highlights. Why is that? I think what you’re really seeing is when you record that image through your eyes is actually a short video recording that is processed in your brain. When you look at a scene, your eye wanders around and records the image and adjusts its sensitivity to also record the information in the highlights and the shadows. Then the brain processes the image and your perception is that beautiful scene with all the highlights and shadows intact. Your eye has a dynamic range as high as a 24 f-stop swing.  The camera, on the other hand, only has one chance to record the RAW image. A camera can only record a dynamic range swing of about 5 to 11 f-stops depending on the camera. But we can fix this by using a process called HDR. This process involves taking 3 or more photos at different exposures and then combine them in post processing with the program like Adobe Photoshop CS5 or HDRsoft Photomatix Pro to increase the dynamic range in the photograph. This process allows us to produce a photograph that can closely represent what our eyes can see. The process can also produce some pretty cool special effects, as well.

Basic camera setup for high dynamic range photography or HDR.

1. READ YOUR CAMERA MANUAL
2. Set your ISO to 100 or as low as possible. Do not use AUTO ISO
3. Set meter pattern to matrix.
4. Turn off LCD automatically rotate. You don’t need it anyway.
5. Use a sturdy tripod and shutter release cable or remote. I don’t recommend handholding your camera.
6. For best results set your cameras to the raw file format.
7. Set your camera to aperture priority exposure mode. Do not use shutter priority mode.
8. Set your cameras EV steps to it’s highest setting — 1 or 2 (2 is better if available).
9. Set the camera to auto exposure bracketing.
10. Set the number of exposures to at least 3 (some cameras have 5, 7 or 9 exposures).
11. You will need at least a 4 EV swing.  If you’re highest EV setting is 1, you will need at least a 5 exposure setting.
12. Set the camera burst rate to high if available.
13. Turn off your image stabilizer.
14. Switch to manual focus and don’t forget focus the lens.
15. Use and understand your camera depth of field preview button.

Expanded explanation for these settings.

Tripod and Remote

Use a tripod with ashutter release cable or remote. Using a tripod will ensure all of your bracketed images are all in the same position and minimizes camera shake. The cable release or remote will ensure you don’t move the camera during the shooting sequence. However, you can shoot with out a tripod but, you better have a steady hand.

ISO

Set your ISO to 100 or as low as possible. Do not use auto ISO. ISO refers to the sensitivity of your cameras image sensor. Using a high ISO setting will inject noise into your final photograph.

RAW or JPG

For best results set the camera to the RAW file format, if available.  RAW files have all the information and will even have more detail in the shadows and highlights that are lost in the JPG file format.  JPG files from your camera discards a lot of useful information that can help in HDR post processing.

EV Steps

Set the exposure compensation EV steps to 1 or 2. (2 is better, if available). Common values in cameras are 1/3, ½, 2/3, .7, 1, 2, 3.

Auto Exposure Bracketing (AEB)

Set the camera to auto exposure bracketing.  Set the number of exposures (most cameras have at least 3 but some have 5, 7 or 9).  Just remember, cameras with a maximum 1EV or less may require 5, 7, or even 9 exposures to achieve a 4EV range or more. Auto exposure bracketing is probably the most important camera setting for HDR photography. In the most basic setting, 3 exposure bracketing the camera will shoot one exposure over exposed, one photo under exposed and one photo properly exposed.  In post processing all three of these photographs will be blended or combined together using a program like Photomatix Pro or Adobe Photoshop. EV stands for exposure value so one EV equals one f-stop.

High Speed Burst Rate

Set camera’s burst rate to high, if available.  This will minimize ghosting of moving objects. Burst rate refers to how many photographs can be taken in one second.

Aperture Priority

Set the camera to aperture priority. This will produce multiple images at different exposures and all with the same depth of field. Do not use shutter priority. If you set your camera to shutter priority instead of adjusting the shutter speed, it will adjust the aperture which will affect depth of field. This will cause problems in post processing as each photograph will have different depth of field characteristics which will not provide a satisfactory image.

Image Stabilizer

Turn off your image stabilizer. The image stabilizer works great when you’re handholding your camera but, in most cases, it is not necessary on a tripod.  Plus, the image stabilizer may ever so slightly shift your images and cause a slight blur or make it hard for the HDR software to align the images properly.

Manual Focus

Switch to manual focus and don’t forget focus the lens. When shooting for HDR you are shooting between 3 to 9 frames. By using manual focus you eliminate the chances your camera will refocus partway through the bracketing sequence. This is very important because you want every photograph in the sequence to be at the same focus on every shot.

Time to Shoot

HDR Video Tutorials

HDR Software

HDR books

Lynda.com has over 65,000 tutorials and all at a very reasonable monthly price. Lynda.com has an extensive list of courses on photography, including lightroom, Photoshop, video editing, graphic design and other applications, such as web design, WordPress, programming languages, operating systems, Microsoft office, Apple applications and much much more. Give the gift of education at Lyndy.com. It’s a great place to brush up on your computer skills or learn something new for a new job or promotion.  I have been using Lynda.com training library for two years now and can highly recommend it. Don’t forget to check out the Creative Inspiration section of Lynda.com. It has full-length interviews with leading industry professionals.

Give the gift of education at Lyndy.com

Looking to speed up  Lightroom 3?  In my last article, Speed Up Lightroom 3, I talked about setting up preferences in Lightroom 3 to increase performance and adding a few small upgrades to help speed things up.   But, sometimes, your computer may be too old to make a difference. you may need a major upgrade or a new computer.

I recently upgraded my own computer and saw significant Lightroom 3 speed increases. Well, it’s basically a brand-new PC at this point. My old computer had a Gigabyte brand motherboard with the Pentium D dual core processor 2.8 GHz processor with 4 GB of memory. Here is a list of the components I used to build my new PC:

Case – Cooler Master Haf 912 with three additional optional fans. Five fans total. Why so many fans? Heat can kill a computer or at least slows it down. A cool PC is a happy PC.

Power Supply – Antec 520 Watt high current power supply.

Motherboard – Gigabyte brand model Z68X-Ud3-B3 discontinued. (Update December 2011 new generation motherboard Gigabyte brand model GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3) This is my third Gigabyte brand motherboard I have installed in my computers. I just install them and they work.

• LGA1155 CPU Socket
• Intel^® Z68 Express Chipset
• 4 x 1.5V DDR3 DIMM sockets supporting up to 32 GB
• 2 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors
• 4 x SATA 3Gb/s connectors
• Up to 14 USB 2.0  ports 8 external
• Up to 4 USB 3.0  ports 2 external
• ATX Form Factor; 30.5cm x 24.4cm
• 6 x audio jacks
• Up to 2 IEEE 1394 port 1 external

CPU – Intel Core I7 2600k 4 core / 8-Way Multitask processor. Unlocked 3.4 GHz and 3.7 GHz in turbo mode. This processor and motherboard combination can be over clocked but it is not necessary at this time.

Memory – 2–Gskill, 4GB, 2 channel DDR3 1600 memory modules for a total of 8 GB.

I used my old hard drive. Seagate 1TB

I also used my old video card – EVGA GeForce 9500 GT 512MB video card. New version EVGA GeForce GT 430 1GB

Operating System – Windows 7 Professional.

Upgrading the PC to this new configuration has dramatically improved my performance when using a program like Lightroom 3. Just starting up Lightroom would take approximately 60 seconds and now it only takes 3 seconds. Other Programs like Photomatix Pro, an HDR plug-in for Lightroom used to take 5 to 6 minutes to process, now takes less than a minute. Another program I use is Proshow Gold, a slide show presentation program, also saw dramatic improvement.

Windows 7 is a real improvement over Windows XP. I chose Windows 7 Professional because it has a Windows XP emulation mode that allows me to run older software that is only compatible with Windows XP.

Conclusion

Upgrading this computer was well worth the expense of about $700 to $800. You may not want to build a computer yourself, but if you’re looking to purchase a new computer you can use the specifications here to give you a guide on what to look in specifications. I hope this article helps you in your photography editing and improves your Lightroom experience.

In a future article I will discuss drive management — how to protect your photos and data.

Places to buy computer and computer parts

Newegg

Compusa

Learn more about Lightroom 3

The tools or functions listed below may or may not be on your camera. Check your camera’s manual to see if they are available.  If so, these tools can help you achieve better exposures even in default lighting situations.

RAW File Format

If available this is probably your first defense in better exposure but, it may require special software. Shoot in the RAW file format if possible.  RAW files have all the  information and will even have more detail in the shadows and highlights that are lost in the JPG file format. JPG files from your camera discards a lot of useful information that can help in post processing. This may save an otherwise  bad exposure.

Camera Histogram

Use the histogram on your camera and try to keep the graph somewhere in between ether side of the histogram box. This will give you the best exposure possible. If the graph goes beyond the right or left it will be over or under exposed. This is called clipping. Just note that if you have really bright or dark spots in your photograph you may not be able to remove all the clipping.

Examples below of  histograms with under exposed, properly exposed  and over exposed photo

This is an example of an under exposed photo. Notice the graph is running past the left side of the histogram. This is clipping on the left.  Remember all the information that is past the left or clipped is lost and will show up as pure black on your photo.

This is an example of a properly exposed photo. Notice the graph is centered and to the left side of the histogram. There is a small amount of clipping on the right. This is normal because there are some bright white spots in the photo.

This is an example of an over exposed photo. Notice the graph is running past the right side of the histogram. This is clipping on the right. Remember all the information that is past the right or clipped is lost and will show up as pure white on your photo.

Please note I have used Lightroom histograms in these examples. The histogram on your camera may look different but will basically work the same.

Highlights or Blinkies

Highlight point display or the “blinkies”. This is a mode where the display on the back of the camera will blink in bright spots on the display or photo. This works similar to the histogram. as the blinking shows the clipping only on the overexposed portion of the display or photo. This can be an easy way to check exposure. Just a note -  some blinking may be ok in areas of your photo such as clouds, the sun or very bright spots.

Exposure Compensation

Consider using the exposure compensation function in Aperture-Priority or Shutter-Priority. Use this function if your histogram is clipping. In manual mode this can be done by adjusting the aperture or shutter so that you compensate by over or under exposing as needed to get the histogram to not clip as much as possible. This is really handy in default lighting situations like bright sunny days or in winter with snow and sun.

Exposure Bracketing

One more option to consider is the exposure bracketing function. In this function you will take 2 or 3 frames or more (I set mine to 3 frames and +/- 5EV in increments 1/2) . 1  would be properly exposed, 1 over exposed and 1 under exposed. Then in your photo editing program pick the one with the best exposure.

Exposure bracketing can also be used in HDR or High Dynamic-Range photography and the program I use, Photomatix Pro 3.1,  It is a standalone program and also has plug-ins for Adobe Photoshop CS5 and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4.  In HDR you shot multiple  photos all at different exposures. Then using a program in post processing to combining them into one photograph that uses the best exposed portion of each photo shot.  Real Cool!  I will cover this more in detail in a future article.

Software

The post processing software available today can do a lot to repair a badly exposed photo, but it cannot repair or bring back information that is lost by clipping.

This is the software I use in the order that I use them the most.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4

Photomatix Pro

Topaz labs Adjust

Adobe Photoshop CS5

The pictures in this slide show are not paintings, they are photographs! These photographs are processed with a Photoshop plugin called Simplify 2 by Topaz Labs. This is a sample of what you can do with this program. It will remove detail from photographs and make them look like a painting or a cartoon and even a line drawing representation of a photograph.

Click photo to view photo slideshow

Topaz Labs Simplify

Adjust 4

Below is a list of photography terms

we will be adding to this list as we find new terms.

..

Aperture

The Aperture is the size of the opening in the camera lens at the moment a photo is taken.  Aperture is measured in fractions, so the larger the number, the smaller the aperture opening.  Shutter speed and aperture are the two primary controls for limiting the amount of light that hits the film or sensor.

Application

An Application is just another word for computer program.

APS-C Format

Refers to size of the digital camera sensor. With Nikon’s  DX or APS-C format sensor size is about 23.5 x 15.5mm and has a lens multiplier number of 1.5. This makes a 200mm lens equal to a 300mm lens in 35mm format equivalent. Math example — 200mm * 1.5 = 300mm.

Browser

A Browser is an application that allows the photographer to sort and rename the pictures in his or her collection.

Burning

Burning means darkening part of a photograph.  In the darkroom, it’s done by blocking some of the light that would normally reach the rest of the photo.  In digital photo editing, it’s usually a paintbrush-like tool built into the application.

CD

Compact Disks are the typical means of storing digital photographs.  They hold about 700 megabytes of information, and can be CD-R for writeable CDs and CD-RW for re-writeable CDs.

Cloning

Cloning is an image editing term for copying one part of the image into another part of the same image or a different image entirely.  It’s used for painting out unwanted items, like electric lines.

CMYK

CMYK is an acronym for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black.  These are the four colors used in the standard printing process.  It’s also a color mode in photo editing programs.

Compact Flash

Compact Flash is one form of digital camera media.  It was the original standard, and is still one of the most common formats. It has a capacity that starts at 2MB to a maximum capacity of 128GB.

Cropping

Cropping involves chopping out part of a picture.  You might crop to focus attention on the real subject, or to remove extra stuff that intruded on the picture.

DVD

When it comes to storing digital pictures, a DVD is basically a monster-sized CD.  It will hold over four and a half gigabytes of data.

Dodging

Dodging is making a section of a photo lighter.  When this is done in the darkroom, it’s usually by blocking some of the light from reaching that part of the picture.  In a photo editing program, it’s a paintbrush like tool that lightens instead of painting.

Download

Downloading is the opposite of uploading.  Downloading means to pull data from another location.  Normally it means to get data from the Internet, but in digital photography, it also means to get the pictures from the camera.  Sometimes used interchangeably with Importing.

DPI

Most photo printers and monitors measure their resolution in Dots Per Inch, or DPI.  The higher the number, the higher the resolution.

EXIF

EXIF stands for Exchangeable Image Format.  Most digital images have two parts.  The first is the image itself, which is usually stored as a JPG image.  The second is the EXIF data.  EXIF data most often includes all of the photographer’s information, like the date and time the picture was taken and the shutter speed and aperture set at the time.

Flip

Flipping an image is the same as reflecting it in a mirror.  Flipping is one of the basic image editing tools.

F-Stop

Comming soon

Full Frame Format

Refers to size of the digital camera sensor. The Nikon FX or Full Frame Format sensor size is about 26 x 24mm or about the same size as 35mm film.

Grayscale

Technically speaking, a spectrum of gray shades from black to white.  A grayscale picture is the digital equivalent of a black and white photo.

HDR

Comming soon

Highlights

The Highlights are the whitest part of a picture.  Normally, they are a very small percentage of the picture, because it’s very easy to lose details in highlights.

Histogram

A Histogram is a chart that graphs all of the tones in a photo.  Most programs will generate histograms, and most digital cameras can create them also.

Hue

Comming soon

Image File Format

The format of an image file determines the size of the file, the overall image quality, and several other things.  Common image file formats are JPG, GIF, TIFF, and PNG.

Image Resolution

The Resolution is the number of pixels, or dots, in a picture.

Inkjet Printer

An Inkjet printer sprays tiny jets of ink onto paper.

ISO

The sensitivity of film is measured by ISO, and the larger the number, the more senstive the film.  ISO 100 needs a lot of light, like outdoors on a sunny day.  ISO 1600 doesn’t need much light.  However, higher ISO means more grain in the film.  Digital images borrowed the ISO scale to measure the sensitivity of a camera sensor.  Just like the grain that’s added to film at higher ISO settings, more “noise” is added to digital images at higher ISO.  In general, as ISO goes up, quality goes down.

JPG or JPEG

The Joint Photographic Experts Group developed a method for making digital images smaller while sacrificing only a little bit of quality in the process.  This is called JPG compression, and is the most common picture format on the Internet.

Landscape

The word landscape, like portrait, actually has two meanings.  The first and original is the photography term for a picture of wide open spaces, like a mountain or sunset.  The second meaning is a description of the alignment of a picture.  Pictures that are oriented horizontally–with the narrow sides upright–are known as Landscape images, whether they depict a mountain or not.

Layers

Think of Layers as sheets of tracing paper or transparency film laid over top of your image.  Graphic designers use layers to separate out elements of their project, so that they can work on individual pieces without damaging others.  Adjustment Layers are a special kind of layer that shows the results of whatever filter or function is attached to that layer.

Luminance

Comming soon

Media

Media is a technical term for storage.  Compact disks, DVD’s, memory cards, thumb dieves, are all storage media.  Removeable media is a memory cards, thumb dieves, or disk that can be moved from one computer to another without losing data.

Megabyte

A megabyte is generally about a million bytes, or a thousand kilobytes.  Technically, a megabyte is 1024 kilobytes.

Megapixel

A megapixel is one million pixels, or dots.  Megapixels are the de facto standard for measuring the power of a digital camera.  Generally speaking, a four megapixel image can be printed at about 5x7 or perhaps even 8x10 without making the pixels so large it ruins the picture. However a 12 megapixel or 24 megapixel can produce a much larger quality print, but lens quality plays a more important roll with large prints.

Memory Stick ®

One brand of digital camera media.  It looks like a small stick of chewing gum.

Online Photo Printing

Online Printers are Internet companies that allow their members to upload pictures for printing.  Once the prints are done, the company then mails them to the customer.

Panning

Panning the camera involves following a moving subject while snapping the picture.  Done properly, the subject will be sharp and the background behind it will be blurry.  This technique can be duplicated by using a radial blur on the background in a photo editing application.

Pixel

Pixel is short for Picture Element, and it’s basically a dot.  All digital pictures are made up of these dots, and counting them is a measure of the image (pixels per inch, or PPI), print (dots per inch, or DPI), and camera power (millions of pixels or megapixels).

Plug-in

Plug-ins are small or large programs that can be added to a program application like Photoshop or Lightroom to enhance the capability of the application. Theses plug-ins are usually created by a third party company.

Portrait

The word Portrait actually has two meanings.  The first and original is the photography term for a picture of a person.  The second meaning is a description of the alignment of a picture.  Pictures that are oriented vertically–with the long sides upright–are known as Portrait images, whether they depict a person or not.

RAW

RAW is the internal format of a digital camera.  Many cameras “pre-process” images.  They will do JPG compression, white balancing, and a number of other adjustments.  The RAW image is the starting point for all of these.  Digital photographers prefer to start from the RAW file so that they can make their own changes to these items.

Red Eye

Red Eye is the reflection of the camera flash off of the back of the subject’s eyes.  It happens most often with a bright flash in dim light.  Many photo editing applications have red eye removal features.

Resize

Resize is one of the basic photo editing tools.  It’s used to change the size or resolution of an image.

RGB

RGB is the standard color format for digital images.  It stands for Red, Green, Blue.  Each of the three colors is given an amount between 0 and 255, and the blend of the three produces all of the other colors.  Three zeroes produce white, and three 255s produce black.

Rotate

Rotation is one of the basic photo editing tools, and is commonly used to fix portraits that have been downloaded from the camera as landscape.

Saturation

Saturation is a measure of the richness of the colors in a photo.  When a picture is desaturated, all of the color information has been removed, and what’s left is a grayscale or black and white picture.

Shadows

The shadows are the darkest part of an image, just as highlights are the brightest.

Sharing

Sharing photos generally involves uploading them to a website (like Flickr) so that other people can view them or even order prints and photo gifts.

Sharpness

Sharpness is a description of the focus and clarity of a picture.  It concerns how clearly the details appear to be.

SD or Secure Digital

One versions of digital camera media card that can support a maximum capacity of 2GB.

SDHC or Secure Digital High Capacity

One versions of digital camera media cards that support a maximum capacity of 32GB. Some older cameras do not support this format.

SDXC or Secure Digital Extended Capacity

One versions of digital camera media cards that support a maximum capacity of 2TB. Only some of the newest cameras support this format as of 2010.

Shutter Speed

Shutter Speed is the amount of time the shutter remains open when a photo is taken.  Shutter Speed and Aperture together determine just how much light hits the film or camera sensor.  The shutter speed is also a fraction, just like the aperture.  A shutter speed of 500 is actually 1/500, or “one five hundredth of a second.”

Smart Media ™

One of the several versions of digital camera media.

Thumb Drive

A Thumb Drive is one name for a USB Flash Chip.  Other nicknames are Jump Drive and USB Keychain. The Thumb Drive comes in various sizes, like 1mb to 16mb and higher that plugs into a computer’s USB port.  It’s like having a pocket hard drive.

Thumbnail

A Thumbnail is a small version of a larger picture.  Many browsing and editing programs use thumbnails to index a picture collection.  Some programs will even generate Contact Sheets, which are basically page after page of thumbnails showing the entire collection or directory.

Uploading

Uploading is the opposite of downloading.  Uploading involves sending a file from your computer to another system, either through a cable or over the Internet.

USB

USB stands for Universal Serial Bus.  It’s an industry standard for connecting things to computers.  Most digital cameras and chip readers use a USB cable to connect to the computer.  USB 2.0 is a newer and faster standard, most computer can handle the 2.0.

White Balance

White Balance is a camera setting used to compensate for changes in the color of light.  Some artificial lights “tint” the color they project, so the camera’s white balance setting is used to balance this back to a more normal color cast.  If the camera’s white balance was incorrect, then the photo editor has to account for this by changing the color scale.  The program will use an area that was supposed to be white as the starting point, and will remap every other color in the picture accordingly.

Wizard

A Wizard in computer terms is a program that walks you through a process step by step.  For example, a scanning wizard might ask a series of questions on color vs. black and white, automatic scratch removal, and image resolution, before it actually triggers the scanner.

This is a list in progress. We will be adding to this list as we find new terms.  You can help make this a more complete list. If you have a term that is relates to photography. Please leave a comment related to photography terms. (SPAM will not be approved) Thank You Doug

Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

So you are looking for a new camera lens or you went out and bought a brand new D-SLR digital camera with the kit lens. Now you want to produce 11 x 14 or 16 x20 or larger sharp prints.  You will need a good tripod and know your camera lens sweet spot. The lens sweet spot is the aperture or F-stop setting which produces sharpest image possible.

The lens sweet spot is determined by which F-stop or aperture to get the sharpest image. All lenses have a sweet spot.  What we are going to determine is what aperture will produce the sharpest image.  A simple rule of thumb is to take the widest aperture and stop it down 2 full f stops or 2 full aperture values ( see chart below).  Let’s say you have a lens with a maximum F-stop of F4.  That would make the sweet spot of your lens about F8.  The problem is this may not be the exact sweet spot for your particular lens. The only way to really know is to test the lens for yourself or you may find it in a lens review article in one of the many photography magazines.  The problem is that your lens may not have been tested or at least may not have identified the sweet spot of your lens.

Full F-stop Chart

Your lens may have other F-stops not listed on this chart above.

The chart above gives the corresponding aperture value to F-stop.  As each aperture value increases it cuts the light in half.  As each aperture values decreases it doubles the light.

So let’s test the lens.  The first thing I did was find a test pattern chart to test the lens.  I found one at http://www.graphics.cornell.edu/~westin/misc/ISO_12233-reschart.pdf You can print it right from the site or downloaded it.  Once downloaded you can print the test chart in the best quality your printer will allow you to print.   This is what you will need to run this test: your camera and lens; a sturdy tripod; a remote cable release; a board to mount the test chart on; the test chart.

Step 1. Attach the chart on the board with tape so that the chart will not move if there is any wind.

Step 2.  Find a bright spot outside and set the board with the chart in the sun.

Step 3.  Install your camera on a tripod.

Step 4.  Select the camera to aperture priority.

Step 5.  Focus your camera on the chart.

Test Chart Location Below

Next, we’ll start with full open.  Let’s say at f5.6 and shoot your first picture.  Next we’ll shoot a photo at each f-stop, making note of each photo’s f-stop so that when you import them you will know which F-stop corresponds to each photograph.  Be sure to use your remote shutter release cable and don’t move the camera through the whole process.  Please note  that any camera shake or movement will cause an inaccurate test.

After you finish, take your memory card and import into your favorite photo editing software.  (I use Adobe Lightroom 2.)  Open the photos in your editor and set the  magnification to one to one.  Use a side by side compare function if available.  Now, carefully inspect and compare each photograph to see which one is the sharpest.  Once you have determined which photo is the sharpest you have found your lens F-stop sweet spot.

If you are using a zoom lens you may want to repeat these steps for several focal lengths.  Let’s say you’re using a 70 to 200 mm lens.  First use 70mm then 130mm then 200mm. This will let you find the best F-stop for the sharpest picture at all F-stops.

The chart below shows the tests results I found with the lenses I have.

Conclusion.

One thing that I found when performing these tests is the better the lens quality the harder it is to find the exact sweet spot. These lenses generally had between two and three F-stops with the best sharpness. With some less expensive lens I found it easy to find a single F-stop sweet spot. But it is possible with higher end consumer lenses with ED glass (extra low distortion glass) you can get very sharp images.

Now you know what your lens sweet spot is.  Even if you have a less expensive lens, by using this knowledge, you will be able to get very sharp photographs with most lenses.  But, we do live in the real world.  Sometimes, because of low light conditions, or the need to adjust the depth of field, we may have to adjust our F-stop to our needs.  So, if the situation is right to use the sweet spot of your lens,  you will find you will get the sharpest pictures possible with your lens.

The Teleconverter

I was not happy with the test results on the Nikon TC-20E II 2X Teleconverter.   I have read other reviews of the Nikon brand Teleconverter that come to same conclusion. They also revealed that the Nikon TC-17E II 1.7x and Nikon TC-14E II 1.4x both had superior performance over the TC-20E II 2X Teleconverter.

If you are in the market for a new lens or camera, buy the best lens you can afford.  In my opinion, the lens is more important than the camera.  Consider this the lens has a life cycle of about 10 or more years and because the camera technology changes so fast, the camera’s life cycle is only 2 to 5 years.

So do your homework before you buy any camera, lens or teleconverter.

Please share your questions or comments below.

Happy sharp shooting.

Doug Niedermiller

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Lens aperture, shutter speed and ISO are the three primary adjustments available to achieve a properly exposed photograph. These settings can also affect the image quality and artistic effects of your photography.

Lens Aperture

The aperture is the size of the opening in the camera lens at the moment a photo is taken.  Aperture is measured in fractions, so the larger the number, the smaller the aperture opening.  Shutter speed and aperture are the two primary controls for limiting the amount of light that hits the camera sensor.  Aperture also controls the depth of field.  A small aperture will produce a photograph with almost all objects in focus.  A large aperture will produce a photograph with a small amount  of the objects in focus.  This will give you control over what you want in focus. That is why I primarily use the aperture priority camera setting in my photography.

Typical apertures include:   f1   f1.4    f2     f2.8     f4     f5.6    f8     f11     f16     f22     f32    f45

Camera Shutter Speed

Shutter speed is the amount of time the shutter remains open when a photo is taken.  Shutter speed and aperture together determine just how much light hits the film or camera sensor.  The shutter speed is also a fraction, just like the aperture.  A shutter speed of 500 is actually 1/500, or “one five hundredth of a second. To hand hold a camera, the rule of thumb is a 50mm lens can be hand-held at 1/60 of a second.  A 200mm lens at 1/200 of a second and so on.  To achieve this you can adjust the apertures or the ISO settings.

Typical shutter speeds:  30s    20s    10s   4s   2s   1s   1/2s    1/4s     1/8s   1/15s    1/30s   1/60s   1/125s     1/250s     1/500s    1/1000s    1/2000s    1/4000s

Camera Sensor ISO

The sensitivity of film or camera sensor is measured by ISO, and the larger the number, the more sensitive the camera sensor.  ISO 100 needs a lot of light, like outdoors on a sunny day.  ISO 1600 doesn’t need much light.  However, higher ISO means more grain in the film and more noise in digital.  Digital images borrow the ISO scale to measure the sensitivity of film.  Just like the grain that’s added to film at higher ISO settings, more “noise” is added to digital images at higher ISO.  In general, as ISO goes up, quality goes down.  Some of the new mid to high-end D-SLR have improved the noise levels at the higher ISO settings up to ISO 1600.  Some of the new cameras have ISO settings between 100 and 102400.

Typical ISO settings:   50   100   200 400   800   1600   and high ISO 3200 6400

Conclusion

My basic camera settings I use related to this article  are: ISO 100 for best image quality  and set camera to aperture priority.  Also, use a tripod when ever possible.  All three settings work in concert and affect proper exposure.  All have their advantages an disadvantages, so experiment with all of  these settings and you will become a better photographer.

Reference

Hear is a nice Exposure Chart

Doug Niedermiller Photography