One of the most common mistakes that
beginning photographers make, is that
you confuse blurry with out of focus,
and in this episode we're going to
discover why it's so important to know
the difference between the two, because
if you don't know what the problem is,
you can't fix your mistakes.
Hi everybody..
welcome to another episode of
Exploring Photography right here on
Adorama TV.
I'm Mark Wallace joined by Nadia Boulif.
You probably recognize her from some
videos that we did recently, right here
on AdoramaTV. Well a couple of things
have happened that have made me want to
make this video, specifically I made a
video about shooting high contrast
grunge portraits, with a wide open
aperture with my friend Paulo.
People have been trying that and having issues
getting those images to work with their
cameras. The other thing that happened
recently was that the holiday season
just ended, so a lot of people were
shooting photos inside at night of their
family at Thanksgiving and Christmas
and New Year's etc...
And I got a lot of emails
from people saying hey what is wrong?
My images are blurry? And so they're trying
to fix things, and when I looked at the
images that people sent, both of the
shots that they try to make of grunge
portraits, and indoor shots of holiday
season. One of the things stood out
really clearly was... that they were using
lenses that have really wide apertures.
f/1.4, f/1.2, and they were confusing
images that were blurry.
They're saying hey my images are blurry ..
but they were actually out-of-focus.
They're confusing these two things.
It's important to distinguish if your image,
is blurry or out of focus, because if you
don't know which one is the problem,
you don't know what to fix, and so we're
going to break
things down, and compare blurry with out
of focus, and then we're gonna talk about
how to fix each one of those issues
separately.
Well let's begin by talking
about the difference between blur and
out-of-focus. First let's talk about
focus remember when you're focusing your
camera. You're focusing at a specific
distance from the camera to the subject.
If that changes, at all, you're gonna be
out of focus. And so let me just show you
a real quick example of this.
I have my camera on a tripod intentionally here.
So I'm going to be shooting at f/1.4,
a really wide open aperture. So take
another half step forward for me, even..
a little bit more, a little closer. There
you go.
Okay, so I have this focused right on Nadia.
Click, and I've got a beautiful image, but
I'm not gonna change anything. The focus
is locked, so Nadia just lean forward
just a little bit. Yeah, there you go
just like that. So she's just moved
slightly, I'll take an image, another shot
and you can see just by her moving just
a tiny little bit, our focus is thrown
off. The same thing can happen and this
is what is commonly happening if you're
shooting handheld. So if you're shooting
at a f/1.4, f/1.8, really wide open aperture.
So I'll shoot this first shot here, and
it looks great, and then oops... I don't
refocus, I lean forward just a little bit..
just that tiny bit of motion makes my
distance between my camera, and my
subject change. Throws off my focus, and
people are confusing that with blur.
That's not what blur is, let's talk about
what blur is. Blur is when something
moves, while this shutter is open.
So let's demonstrate that really, really quickly.
So I'm gonna put my camera again
on a tripod.. why?
Because blur can happen
if the subject moves.
So if Nadia is moving around, or if the
camera moves. Either one can cause blur,
so to eliminate that, put your camera on
a tripod for slower shutter speeds.
So let's check to take a look at blur.
So I'm going to close down my aperture.
We're gonna shoot it a really slow
shutter speed, of a fifteenth of a second.
I just want you to move just a little
bit, maybe move your head around..
Something like that... yeah, there you go!
Yeah, okay, so I just moved the camera,
Nadia moved, and you can see in these
images, that we have blur all right. Well
now that we know the difference, blur is
caused by motion.
Focus is caused by the distance between
the camera and the subject changing.
How do we fix those two things?
Well let's start with focus.
All right, well now that we know about blur
and out-of-focus, we're gonna go and talk
about focus specifically. Our lights
changed here, so we had to move locations,
but as far as focus goes, I just want to
note that I've made a video a few years
ago, that goes in-depth about auto focus
modes, out of focus points, drive modes,
everything you want to know about focus.
So we're not going to go into that in
this video. I've included a link to that
video in the description of this video.
In fact, we're gonna put up a little link
here on the video. So you can click on
that, and check that out. It goes
really in depth into all the autofocus
modes, but I do want to give you a couple
pointers for shooting with a wide open
aperture of f/1.4, and that is this very
simply use a tripod, because when you use
a tripod, that's going to keep you from
moving in and out, away from your subject,
that's going to keep your focus from
falling out of focus, and so that will
eliminate that problem, or use continuous
focus mode, and that might work, but the
best thing is use a tripod. Just to keep
your camera from moving around.
Right check that video... use a tripod next..
Let's talk about how to solve blurry images.
Alright now that we know about focus,
let's talk about the thing I really want
to talk about, and that is making sure
you don't have any blur in your image.
Now to fix motion blur, there are a few
things that you can do, and then the most
common things are either.
1. Stabilize the camera using a tripod, or a really
nice stand.
Number 2. You can increase
your shutter speed to freeze the motion or,
Number 3. You can use a flash to
freeze the motion.
Now we're not going to talk about flash
today we don't have enough time.
But I've made a bunch of videos about
freezing motion with flash,
and it is a blast. You can check those
videos out, by clicking on the links.
I've included the links to those videos in
the description of this video, so make
sure you check that out. Cuz it's a
really fun thing to do. So let's talk
about freezing motion, a using a tripod.
So we're going to assume we're shooting
things like indoors, outdoors things in
low-light, and so we have a slower
shutter speed. So I am going to take a
picture right now on a tripod, with a
shutter speed of about 1/24th of
a second.
So to do that I'm shooting at
f/11. So I'm gonna focus here on Nadia,
we've got this picture, so Nadia, try to
hold really still. So at a 1/15th of a
second on the tripod. That looks okay, I'm
gonna take this off the tripod.
The same thing 1/15th of a second, we're gonna
come in here. Let's see how I do,
and well I'm a little bit shaky because
I've had a little bit of coffee, and so
you can see the difference. When you have
your camera on a tripod. It's gonna be a
little bit better than off a tripod. But
at those speeds you're gonna have issues.
So really what we need to do is, go to
the second thing, which is increasing our
shutter speed to make sure that it's
fast enough to freeze the motion, and
we're gonna assume that you're shooting
handheld. Alright we're gonna assume that
you're shooting at a party, at an event,
at a holiday....something. So how fast does
your shutter have to be to shoot
handheld? Well there's a rule of thumb
that says your shutter speed needs to be
at least as fast as the length of your lens.
So what does that mean? So right now
I have a 50mm lens, that means
that my shutter speed should be at least
1/50th of a second or faster.
Well there is no 1/50th of a second, so
we're go to the next fastest shutter
speed. That's 1/60th of a second, if
our focal length is longer, so let's say
we have a 100mm lens,
well our shutter speed should be at
least 1/100th of a second, or
faster, and the longer your lens the
faster your shutter speed should be.
So first, shooting at a 200mm lens,
our shutter, shutter speed, should be at
least 200th of a second, but
probably even faster, probably closer to
1/500th of a second. So the longer
lens, the more you need to compensate for
that. The other thing that you can do is,
to make sure that you hold your camera
in the right way. So the worst thing that
you can possibly do, if you're shooting
with a slower shutter speed is, use the
LCD screen on the back, because you're
out here like this..
Your camera's going to be moving around,
there's no way you're going to be
holding your camera steady. What you need
to do is get your camera in close, tight,
use the viewfinder, take a shot and that
is going to be perfect. Well there's an
exercise that you can do to figure out
how good you are at holding your camera,
and how fast you can get away. Because
with practice, you can shoot handheld at
slower and slower shutter speeds.
because you can hold your camera
steadier and steadier.
So let me show you a little
exercise that you can do to figure out
just how good you are at holding your
camera still.
This little exercise is a
lot of fun.
All you need to do is get a
camera that has video built-in.
So most DSLR's have this, and then take your
camera, make sure you have a zoom lens so
I've got a little Lumix here.
It zooms in and out, and start at the
widest setting on your camera.
So if you have a 24-70mm lens start at 24 mm.
If you have a 70-200mm lens start at 70, and
and all you have to do is start at the
widest area.
Put your camera to your face,
and just hold it, and then start
recording video, and then see if you can
hold that for about ten seconds, and then
you can watch the video, and see how you
did, and then zoom to the next part of
your lens. So I'm going to zoom to a
100mm here, and I'm gonna
try the same thing.
I'm going to try to hold this for about 10 seconds.
I'm holding, and you can see that I'm not
doing so well, and the longer that it..
your lens is.. so I'm going to zoom all
the way out here to 300mm.
I'll step back and I'll try to hold this. So
go back just a little bit.. Nadia okay?
Good, I'm gonna see if I can hold this
steady, and you can see as I'm holding
this, that things are jumping all over
the screen, and so you can see by doing
this. Just hold your camera, turn on the
video hold it for about 10 seconds and
then go and look and see how you did at
different focal lengths, and you can see
that the longer your lens is. The harder
it is going to be for you to hold that
steady. The other thing you can do is if
you have an image stabilization.
Turn that on.. and try this again, and see exactly
how that works, and you can see the
difference between image stabilization
and image stabilization off.
It's just a little technique for you to look and see
how exactly you're doing, holding your
camera. Maybe try different things, hold
it out, hold it in, hold it up to your eye etc..
and see which works best. It's a
really good exercise to figure this out.
Thanks so much Nadia, that was a lot of fun.
I hope you learned some things about
blurry and out of focus, and how you can
shoot handheld and keep your camera nice
and steady.
Make sure you check out Nadia
on instagram. Nadia Boulif...here is her
Instagram feed right there, also check me
out on Instagram J Mark Wallace
because we've got a lots of behind the
scenes stuff, and it's really awesome.
Also don't forget to check out the
videos that I talked about earlier in
this video. There's a ton of information
that you don't want to miss out on as
far as autofocus and zones and all kinds
of things, and freezing motion with flash
is awesome. I lost a tooth making that
video, that's why we stopped throwing
water balloons at my face.
Make sure you check it out.
It's really a lot of fun, thanks again for
joining us and I will see you again next time.