Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I. Re-shoot FC Take it to the next level! 26 slides Copyright Kenji Tachibana

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Re-shoot FC Assignment One More Time: Yes! Now that you’ve done it once, you’ve got a hands-on perspective earned through experience. And now we’ve all seen your first assignment shots based on your own story idea. That’s irreplaceable. Now it’s time to take it to the next level on: 1.Story – make it more focused on telling your story. 2.Composition – use design and negative space to lead the eye to the focal point. 3.Technique – zero in that brightness, use the Skylight to get the right tone and color, and focus on the subject. 4.Lighting – use soft broad-source Skylight from the side direction to draw form and texture. Avoid harsh light.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Re-shoot FC Assignment Aside Metaphor: Archery as process Goal of archery is to hit the bull’s eye. But you start off feeling lucky to just get close to hitting the target at all. It takes a while to consistently hit the target. Once you start hitting the target, the next step is to achieve a consistent pattern. And pattern is about predictability. With predictable patterns, it becomes possible to move the pattern towards the bull’s eye in incremental stages. ‘Re-shoot to make incremental improvements.’

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Re-shoot FC Assignment Reference Image: The results from the Free Choice shoot was your starting point Reference Images. Try to notch up from there. And be sure to avoid making the same technical, lighting, or other obvious errors.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Re-shoot FC Assignment Reference Image: Use it… The reference image must be used during the re- shoot process. That means that your Best image must be left on the memory card. If you removed it off of your memory card, you will have to copy it back to the digital film.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Re-shoot FC Assignment Mistakes: Great for learning Yes, we all make them. And, probably, too many times for our delicate egos. Although mistakes offer the best learning opportunities. They give you a hands-on reference point that’s totally yours (real). The only warning is … DON’T KEEP MAKING THE SAME MISTAKES!

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Re-shoot FC Assignment Playback Review: Overview During your re-shoot (any shoot), you must Playback review your images before you leave the shooting location. Even if your shooting location is your backyard, the shooting conditions in the backyard will never be the same.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Re-shoot FC Assignment: Playback Critical Review Topics: Please make a 3x5 card with the list below: 1.Story – make it more focused on telling your story. 2.Composition – use design and negative space to lead the eye to the focal point. 3.Technique – zero in that brightness, use the Skylight to get the right tone and color, and focus on the subject. 4.Lighting – use soft broad-source Skylight from the side direction to draw form and texture. Avoid harsh light

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Re-shoot FC Assignment: Playback Digital Camera LCD Screen: Compared to the 17” to 21” computer monitor, even the largest camera LCD screen is puny. Besides that, it’s too bright, contrasty, cool in color, and overly saturated. Consider the LCD image to be only an approximation. At the beginning of the quarter, many students will be fooled by the LCD image. By mid-quarter, you will less likely to be fooled by your LCD image. Until you can really see and interpret the LCD image, I highly recommend exposure bracketing.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Re-shoot FC Assignment: Playback LCD Screen: Another take The manufacturer’s focus on the LCD screen is to show a ‘pumped up’ image that helps to sell the camera. So, an overly bright, high contrast, and too saturated image makes most LCD images looks great. When that same great looking image is viewed on a computer monitor at ‘actual size’, it often disappoints.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Re-shoot FC Assignment: Playback LCD: Useful information Most compact digitals have ‘active’ exposure graph called a Histogram. The exposure graph is active (changes in real time) before the shot is taken. Although, the graph is not part of the default Display Option and its size is very small. Cycle through the Display Options until you find the Exposure Graph, Histogram, shown to the right. Most DSLR cameras have ‘passive’ Histogram.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Re-shoot FC Assignment: Playback Histogram: Passive and Active The active histogram displays the exposure graph before the picture is taken, which is a fantastic learning tool. It can act like a tachometer for ‘driving’ your stick-shift camera. The passive histogram only shows up after the shot is taken. It’s less useful than the active histogram. The passive histogram is more useful when combined with flashing zebra striping of the blown out areas of the image.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Re-shoot FC Assignment: Playback Exposure Assessment: Histogram views UnderNormal ExposureOver Way Too DarkBelievable Way Too Light This simple solution will only work properly when you follow assignment requirement such as: 1.Use soft broad-source Skylight. 2.Don’t have a light source in the background. 3.Don’t shoot a light source. 4.Don’t shoot black, white, or shiny objects. This indicates blown out highlights. Avoid this at all cost. Lost detail can’t be retrieved!

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Re-shoot FC Assignment: Playback Exposure Compensation: Adjustment (bias) and range Digital camera exposure can be adjusted lighter or darker using exposure compensation (EC). EC has an adjustment range from -2 to +2 f/stops as shown below: | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Re-shoot FC Assignment: Playback Adjustment: Bias considerations Exposure can be lightened or darkened in 1/3 f/stop increments. Usually the adjustment change can be seen in the camera display. Corrective action shown below: If UnderNormal ExposureIf Over Add “+”No changeSubtract “-” Try it for yourself now!

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Re-shoot FC Assignment: Playback and more… Focus: Overview Most blurry pictures are the result of camera movement. There are 3 aspects to sharpness and they are distinct aspects but are intimately inter-related. 1.Focus point (plane-of-focus). 2.Depth-of-field – illusion of sharpness. 3.Shutter speed – use 1/30 sec or higher speed for general purpose shooting with the zoom set on Wide. Use 1/125 sec or higher speed to shoot using the zoom set on Telephoto.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Re-shoot FC Assignment: Playback and more… Auto Focus: Not so smart You have to be the smart one. This shot probably looked sharp in the DSLR’s LCD screen. Although a magnified Playback inspection would have shown the Back-focus problem. The position of the focus bracket tells the back-focus story. The student would have been better off to focus manually with his DSLR camera.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Re-shoot FC Assignment: Playback and more… Auto Focus: Mechanism Most auto focus works by looking for the highest contrast change in the focus bracket area and notice that the highest contrast area is between the cheek and the background. So, that’s where it auto focused, which is behind the subject. The focus mechanism does not know what your subject is – you have to be the smart one.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Re-shoot FC Assignment: Playback and more… Smart focus: Take control With today’s technology, I would have set the focus to the ‘Face Recognition’ mode. But that technology didn’t exist when this image was made. But, manual focus was readily available. And that’s the preferred focus method for complete control over the focus point when using a DSLR camera.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I DSLR: Disadvantage? Ironically, the DSLR high image quality shows off the focus error. This was shot at 1/80 second using the standard 33mm focal length with the aperture set to f/5.6. Partial Solution - using f/8 could have helped with the deeper dof. Although the cigarette tip would still have been out of focus. Better Solution – re-shoot with the focus point on the finger tip using ‘spot focus’. That would have carried the dof from the eyes to the cigarette tip..

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Re-shoot FC Assignment: Playback and more… Correct Color: Use Auto White balance Getting neutral color balance manually is very tricky. My advice is to use White Balance set to Auto. The WB is a mature technology perfected on the camcorder. It will deliver good color 99% of the time. I recommend that you keep the white balance set to Auto for all your class assignment shoots. Although make sure to shoot based on all the assignment requirements.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Re-shoot FC Assignment: Playback and more… Zoom Lens: Wide angle to Telephoto The terms Wide and Tele come from the well established 35 mm camera tradition. Those who are familiar with 35 mm photography, the actual numbers are confusing because they are too small. A work- around to this is to use the idea of equivalents. Term35 mmCompact DigitalFactor & Reason Wide 35 mm7.2 mm approximate7.2 mm x 4.85 = 35 mm Tele 105 mm22 mm approximateRelative to actual chip size

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Re-shoot FC Assignment: Playback and more… Ideal Focal Length: 105 mm on the 35 mm format is favored by many photographers. It’s good for shooting both portraits and still life. Compact digital equivalent number is 22 mm. And the DSLR equivalent is 70 mm. The usual focal length assignment recommendation is 22 mm for the compact digital and 70 mm for the DSLR.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Re-shoot FC Assignment: Playback and more… Portrait Lens: The 105 is ideal for shooting portraits because it allows for: 1.Good physical working-distance for lighting. 2.Good psychological working-distance for both the subject and photographer comfort. 3. Slight flattening of facial features considered flattering by most subjects. 4.Good for putting the background out of focus due to the telephoto tendency for shallow DOF.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Re-shoot FC Assignment: Playback and more… Still Life Lens: The 105 is also ideal for shooting still life because it allows for: 1.Good physical working distance for lighting and set manipulation. 2.Good for minimizing perspective distortion on objects preferred for rendering most objects.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Re-shoot: FC Summary: Learning can’t be rushed nor forced. Give yourself time to reflect consciously and subconsciously on all this new information. When doing further research, trust your gut to guide your research topics. Pacing is important to learning. If you try to rush and force feed yourself to learn, your more likely not to learn and to burn out before the end of the quarter. Keep your learning expectation real.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I x End