Top 10 Mistakes: Knowing Your Equipment

“HELP!!!  I shot a family session and only one person in the photo is sharp and I need a photoshop expert to help fix it!”

“I think I’m ready to go into business, but it feels like at every session something comes up that’s a surprise that I’m not always sure how to deal with… and it seems like I have to shoot a lot to get enough keepers.”

Let’s be honest here: we were all beginners once.  I think sometimes those of us who have been in photography for years and years forget what it was like to feel like we are progressing one day and are completely lost the next.  There is nothing wrong with trying new things.  After all, you have to try them on someone to learn.  And there is nothing wrong with asking for help either.  With all the resources available to new photographers today, you can go on a forum and ask for help, and have answers within minutes from more experienced photographers around the globe.

But there is a difference between trying new things out using your neighbor, or your kids, or your dog as a subject, and trying new things out on paying clients.

If you’re new to SLR photography, I’m about to give you some resources to learn more about your camera and lenses and exposure and all that cool stuff.  Important words and concepts are hotlinked to other articles (and yes, I know the blog design makes this difficult to see… and I’m working on a new design because of it.) This is all stuff that you need to know before you go into business as a portrait or wedding photographer. I’d say that it’s information you should be comfortable with, but really, I believe you need to be more than comfortable with it.  It needs to be second nature.  And I know that there will be some reading this who say “who does she think she is? I can be in business whenever I want to.”  Well that is true.  But this is Photography 101… and it helps answer the many questions about “am I ready to be in business?” The top three problems that tend to plague newer photographers as far as image creation is concerned are focus, distortion and blur issues, and all can be solved by knowing more about your lenses and how they work with both your camera and your subjects.

Know how your lens choice is going to affect your results

Wide angle.  Telephoto zoom.  Variable aperture.  “Fast” lenses.  What does that all mean?  And why does any of it matter when it comes to portraiture?

I started writing this whole explanation of the “magnification factor” with non-full-frame-sensor DSLRs and then thought no, it’s too much to get into here.    So let’s just talk about standard lens groupings.  Generally speaking, wide angle lenses are those between 10.5mm (the lovely fisheye) and about 35mm.  Traditionally, the “normal” lens for the 35mm format has been the 50mm (aka, the Nifty Fifty).  Telephoto lenses are anything longer.  Some people really love the flexibility of zoom lenses (like the 24-70mm, or the beautiful 70-200mm), that will let you switch focal lengths without changing your lens.  I usually use prime lenses (lenses with a fixed focal length, like the 85mm) because I’ve been using them for so long that when I put a zoom lens on my camera, I tend to forget to zoom it.  It’s a personal choice.  When you’re shopping for zoom lenses, you’ll notice that some will give their focal length range and then something like 3.5-5.6.  That is a variable aperture lens, which means that your minimum aperture will change depending on your focal length.  That does give you less control.  A lens that gives the focal length range (for instance, 70-200mm) and then just one number (like 2.8) has a fixed minimum aperture, meaning that no matter what you zoom in or out to, your camera settings will not change.

So why does all this matter?  Well first of all, each type of lens is perfect for a different situation.  A wide angle lens will be great for showing off your location or working in tight spaces because they’ll give you a wider angle of view.  The disadvantage to using the wider angle lenses in portraiture is that the closer you get to your subject, physically, the more distortion you’ll get in your image.  I see a lot of very pretty girls with unintentionally gigantic-looking feet, and babies with huge foreheads because the photographer chose a wider angle lens (yes, sometimes even with the “normal” 50mm) without considering the distortion that a wide angle will give you.

The longer lenses will cure your distortion problem, but they will also require you to put more space between you and your client to fit them into your frame.  That’s one of the reasons I like the 85mm lens for portraits… it gives my clients some room to breathe, and to interact without feeling like I’m in their faces.  If you’re short on space, they’re going go give you a narrower angle of view and so will limit the type of shots you can take.  This is why so many portrait photographers love zooms… if you have a 24-70 and a 70-200 in your kit, you can cover most of your needs in most locations with just two lenses.

Know how depth of field is going to affect what is in and out of focus in your shot

So what does it mean to have a “fast” lens and why would you want one?  “Fast” lenses have a wide minimum aperture, and are great in low light situations.  They also tend to be very well constructed and reliable lenses.  We run into another problem with fast glass, though… and that is that the larger your aperture gets (meaning the smaller the f-stop number gets), the shallower your depth of field will be.  With one person, if you shoot with a very fast lens at 1.2, your depth of field will be so shallow that it may be hard to keep what you want in focus, in focus.  So… you need to learn what your safe zones are, as far as your subject is concerned.  If you have just one subject who is staying still, you will have fewer problems with missed focus than with a moving subject or a family.  To be safe, you probably don’t want to photograph a family with a wider aperture than about 5.6, so that you can make sure to keep everyone in focus.  Of course, if the idea is to have one member in focus and the others nicely blurred, go to town with that 1.2.    But if you feel that your family work has focus problems, too-shallow depth of field is often the true culprit.

Know how to cure camera shake and blur

The other hidden culprits that create blur (and are often mistaken for focus problems) are camera shake and subject movement, and both of those are related to your shutter speed.  The general rule of thumb is that if you’re shooting hand-held, your shutter speed needs to be at least the same as your focal length to help prevent camera shake.  What this means is that if you’re shooting with a 105 mm lens, and you are not using a tripod, your shutter speed probably needs to be 1/100s or faster.  I have shaky hands by nature, so I know that my shutter speed needs to be a little bit faster than the general rule or I need to use a tripod.

Faster shutter speeds will freeze action, and slower shutter speeds will record more subject motion.  So let’s say you’re photographing kids jumping around, or clapping their hands.  A slower shutter speed will give more of the impression of motion, if that’s the look you’re going for.  But if you want to make sure that the eyes and hands are sharp, you’ll want a faster shutter speed OR you’ll want to use a flash, which also freezes motion.

For a basic class on your camera, check out BetterPhoto.com.  Another great resource: your public library.  Many have copies of a good beginner’s guides.  My personal favorite is The Camera (part of the Time Life Library of Photography),  Yes, it was written in the 70s and revised in the 80s about film cameras, but it will still give you good, basic information about the basic design of cameras and lenses, depth of field, lens choice, the effects of focal length, and much more that can apply to today’s digital photographer as well.

So for those of you who ask “how will I know when I’m ready?”:  if this is a boring post because you’ve already completely mastered all of this information, then you’re on your way there.    But we haven’t talked about the other side of the photography business.  You know: the business part.  We’ll touch on that next week.