Technical controls P3 (b)

On the lesson we have tried to make a composition and to take a picture of it. We've chosen subjects and tried to put them together in such way that it would look good on the photography. We've also used extra lighting to make the light better and to make the picture look more clear and interesting. 

Before choosing the settings of the camera we had to make sure we know what do aperture, exposure, shutter speed and ISO mean. Below you can see a brief information about manual photography.

I've tried to change the settings of the camera and taken a lot of pictures of my composition. I found some of my pictures really successful but some of them are not so good as I'm not a professional photographer. Below you can see what pictures I've taken and my opinion about them. 

 

In my view this picture is quite interesting. You can see that the shutter speed was set really slow and ISO was low. I haven't used a tripod and as a result this effect has been occurred on the picture. I actually think that this image is really eye-cathing and people are likely to be interested in it and find it attracting and not ordinary. 

I like the composition of this photography. The background is just a black wall so attention is not distracted by the background. The picture is not really light because of ISO speed was 400 so the camera was not really sensitive to light. 

As we can see this picture is unfocused so it cannot be considered as a good photography. However, I still like this picture. I think it looks quiet interesting that the subjects are not in focus and you can't see everything clearly. I like the light of this picture and the colours of the subjects look quiet bright. 

This picture is not successful. We can see a wall which was supposed to be hidden by the black paper. There are some shadows on the picture which I don't like and we can't see clearly some subjects because of them. The ISO speed of 3200 is too high so the light of the image is not really good.


PHOTO OF PRODUCTION PROCESS

WHITE BALANCE

White Balance is considered is one of the most important settings of a digital camera. It is a process of removing unrealistic colour casts, so that objects which appear white in person are rendered white in the photo. Color temperature is a way of measuring the quality of a light source. It is based on the ratio of the amount of blue light to the amount of red light, and the green light is ignored. The unit for measuring this ratio is in degree Kelvin (K). A light with higher color temperature (i.e., larger Kelvin value) has "more" blue lights than a light with lower color temperature (i.e., smaller Kelvin value). 

In class we tried to set the white balance. 

The first step was to understand what white balance is and how it affects the camera. The camera we used has a white balance control and has the following settings: 

• automatic white balance (camera will set the white balance automatically). AWB is an icon for this setting

• daylight (for shooting in direct sunlight)

• cloudy light (compensates the cooler light by warming the photograph)

• flash (this only applies for situations in which the flash is the solesource of lighting)

• shade (this setting compensates by warming the colours even more. You can also use this setting to get warm colours even in daylight)

• tungsten (light from tungsten bulbs is substantially more orange than daylight, so the camera compensates by adding blue to the picture)

• fluorescent light (fluorescent lamps are somewhat redder than daylight, so this setting will compensate by cooling the picture somewhat)

Own examples.

After learning the theory of white balance and how to set it, we've made some pictures that demonstrate the different settings of white balance. Below you can see what we have got.

Custom white balance. It enables to more accurately access the colours of the image. As you can notice this image looks much more natural compared to others.

Shade setting. As you can see we've achieved warm colours on the picture even when it was bright enough in the classroom where we were shooting. This setting is more suited to the areas of light shade rather than very heavy shadow. You can notice that the colours look quiet interesting and not ordinary.

Cloudy Light Setting. This setting is more suitable for using outside on a cloudy day as it helps to compensate the cooler light by warming the photograph. As we have taken this picture inside we can't really see the impact of this setting.

Tungsten Light Setting. This setting is suitable for most tungsten lamps which give more orange than daylight so the camera compensates by adding blue to the picture. As you can see we have got too blue colours which wouldn't look like this if we used special lighting equipment.

White Fluorescent Light. As we haven't used fluorescent lights which would give us redder colours we can't really see how this setting made the colours cooler. On the picture we have got you can notice that they look quite blur compared to other pictures.

Flash Setting. This setting is usually used as a sole sours of lighting. There we can see that the colours look quite warm but not bright as others examples of settings. 

Colour Temperature Setting. As you can see the colours of this picture are as warm as on previous one. However, it looks brighter and the colours look slightly different compared to the one before.

Automatic White Balance. This setting allows the camera to set the white balance automatically. However, as we can see the colours of the picture don't look natural. They do look much colder than they actually are.

Daylight Setting. This setting is more suitable for the shooting  outside as it suggests that the pictures should be taken in direct sunlight. However, in the room where we have taken this picture we haven't used any extra lights so we have used only natural daylight inside. As a result we got quite nice colours.