The Powers of RAW

RAW Images are this thing that confuses and bewilders many people, it has immense advantages over standard image types such as JPEG or TIFF. RAW is also something that took me a very long time to comprehend, due to the fact that anything you read about RAW images were pages of numbers and charts and lengthy explanations of its properties and uses. My goal is to write a piece on RAW Images, explaining its uses and properties, without all that intensive language and numbers on RAW statistics.

The first thing is to explain why you should be using RAW over a JPEG or other image format. The secret of RAW's power is in the format it saves images. RAW's are known for their detail, in both colors and in blacks and whites. This is because a RAW image saves every single pixel of the image as its own color, a JPEG bunches colors together, in JPEG this gives you loss in detail on objects that are similar colors and in blacks and whites resulting in an overall lower detailed image. Because of these styles of image capturing RAW is a much larger file than JPEG, because of this you will have to compensate with a larger memory card or more memory cards, a RAW image for example on my Canon 7D depending on image factor will sit anywhere between 20-30mb. Shooting JPEG image files sit around the 7-9mb size (It also fills computers hardrives very quickly)

The list of RAW's possibilities don't just end with its superior image quality. When a raw image is processed in a post processing program such as Abode Lightroom or Photoshop, You will have the opportunity to do a  wide range of editing before you do the normal editing that you would do with a JPEG image for example. In Photoshop it looks like this:

 In the above image you see a RAW image being opened in Adobe Photoshop (CS5) The panel with all the sliders is what gives RAW its power over JPEG. You will get this window every time you open a RAW image in Photoshop, as seen you can change many factors of the image, doing this you can correct small technical errors in the image without losing major detail in the image. In Adobe Lightroom it looks slightly different:







Adobe Lightroom does not have a special window for opening RAW images because the nature of Lightroom, it stores all of your images as well as being a powerful editing program, its editing panel is on the right and has everything the Photoshop editing panel has and much more.

Advantages of image quality and editing properties give RAW a huge advantage over other image formats, the problem of image size is easily outweighed by the other factors of this format. If your camera is not currently switched to RAW shooting i strongly suggest you do this, the only time you should be shooting JPEG is when you have very little card space left, no spare cards and need to keep taking images. If you haven't used this format before you will very quickly be won over it when you are sitting at your computer, sometimes at ungodly hours of the morning if you are someone like myself and you will be forever grateful for shooting in RAW.

The Final Image for the Day

I hope this little piece have filled in some vague areas of RAW for you and has giving you new knowledge,
Till next time,
            Nick

For more of my photos see Here

Birds. Part 1

Birds are these wonderful creatures that come is hundreds of sizes, shapes and colors. They are one of my favourite subjects to shoot. A bird has one trait that people don't , They don't speak English, You as a photographer cannot simply tell a bird to face towards the left, lift it's chin to get that perfect pose. Its up to you and I as photographers to capture the bird using our own skill. Over a series of posts I hope to share with you some tips on how to get in the position you want to be in, to capture some outstanding photos.

A Tip Before The Tips Begin
Buy yourself a field guide! A small field guide is all you need, its helpful to know and learn what birds you are seeing and photographing when you are out on an adventure. I also suggest buying a larger reader digest style bird book for a more detailed identification when you get home.

Tip 1 # Finding Birds

ISO 400 F/5.6 1/500th sec

Birds and everywhere. If you go somewhere and there is not birds you are not looking. Of course not all birds are everywhere, if you are looking for a wetland bird there is no chance that you are going to find it at your local park. However if you are not targeting particular species then a local park will do fine. A bonus to us as photographers is that in the instance of your local park the birds are humanised, no this doesn't mean they will come and sit on your shoulder but this does mean they are much more docile that truly wild birds, this is an excellent opportunity for us , as you can get much closer to the birds and often spend time taking your photos and you can get some very nice images from this.

However if you want to see birds in the habitat they are supposed to be in it is still not hard at all to get close to a very wide spectrum of species. Obviously this is dependant on how far you are willing to travel. A simple day trip up to Belair National Park and even a short walk ( 2-5km) would easily find you with a bird list up around 20-30 species on an average, from Black Ducks and White Faced Herons to White Browed Treecreepers and Australian Kestrels. If you wanted to go and see wetland birds the Laratinga wetlands just outside Mount Barker is a very nice spot, its not a huge walk to get around and its all nice gravelled paths the whole way, there you get many species of ducks and if you have a keen eye and a fast shutter finger you may even see and capture a Crake or Rail.

Now obviously the above is well and good information, but to find the birds yourself. That will just take some practise of honing in your eyes and ears, and learning the calls of birds which I still struggle with so don't be bothered if you cant pick the calls up.

Next post I plan to talk about the camera settings you need to have in mind for shooting birds.

Till next time,
                 Nick

Long Exposure Effects: Water

ISO 100 F/14 30 sec

Welcome, This is my first post on my first blog so bear with me. The main goal I have here is to help you, my readers learn and develop skills in photography with help from my knowledge, whenever I learn something new I will also share this with you. Firstly we are going to get into the nice interesting stuff straight away, no beating around the bush with basic camera controls and functions, we all know what does what enough to use a camera effectively.

Long Exposure is something I have recently begun to experiment with this style and I am loving it. So many different variables come in to play, all of which you can take control of to make a photo turn out the way you want it, With practice you can end up with spectacular effects.

This post will focus of the long exposure effects on moving water . Before you start taking any photo over a long period of time to gain a "long exposure" effect you need to have a tripod, or access to one, a cheap one will do but as with all camera accessories you get what you pay for. You will also want a shutter release, wired or wireless doesn't matter they both do the same thing. Now we have the gear we need you need to look at settings. First thing you want to look at is your ISO it needs to be at is lowest possible ( 100 ) because you are exposing for a long time you do not need a high ISO, this is the only fixed setting you need to have. Aperture and Shutter Speed as with every photo in photography is chosen on the effect you desire. Generally you will need a small aperture to compensate for the prolonged time you are exposing for, if you want a shallow depth of field in your photo you can compensate and shoot with a large aperture by using neutral density filters ( I use variable ND filters which give you options on the "darkness" the filter provides) Your Shutter Speed depends on the effect you want with the water a longer exposure will give you white washed water, a short exposure will give you frozen water, in the middle will give the water a silky look in some parts of the water. You also need to factor in the speed the water is flowing at when you set up for your shot.

With the settings out of the way you need to look at the basics of positioning your camera and tripod. For example in this photo i had the tripod in the water, with the camera sitting about 10cm above the water level. Don't be afraid to get your tripod wet, just keep a hand on your camera strap in case something goes wrong. You need to take in the external factors when you position your camera, generally if there grass or plants along the waters edge they will not stay still over the course of your exposure, and it will have movement in it. Keep in mind you need your tripod on firm ground ( or wedged in rocks in the photo above ) because tripod / camera movement will also make your photo blurry and of course if your camera is close to the water you may be getting slash onto your camera itself or on the lens.

With these basic ideas in your head you can get a head start on learning this style of photography. Of course I cant teach you everything so get out there and practice! Till Next time

Nick