Available Lights : Location Cardiff, Wales

Ahh..lighting is the language of photography. Gambar diorang ni terperuk seketika dalam hardisk, jadi share dulu mana yang sempat.

Mengambil gambar dengan available lights ni bagi saya payah nak master. Kalau low sgt susah (contoh dalam bilik, indoor) dan kalau kuat sgt pun payah (contoh terlampau panas) macam dalam gambar-gambar bawah ni.

Gambar ni senang aje...sebab lighting lebih kurang sama aje kat mana-mana. Jadi, saya ambil composition macam nilah..ada blur sikit foreground.

Kalau macam ni ada gelap kat belakang dan terang kat depan (contrast) , jadi saya suruh model tengok kat mana datang cahaya nu..Muka nak terang, clear..karang tak suka Mak Andam nanti. :)..Apo golap yo gamba kau ni Lan?.. "Artistic kak!"..


Model ni pun saya suruh buat yang sama...heeh..tapi saya frame jauh-jauh sikit


Hmm..Miss Jacq, I'm not sure whether you like this image or not. I'll send you everything later.


Ok..kalau pakai flash..kira available light jugak ke?...Kalau dah ada ...pakai jelah. Itu je yang available masa tu. :)

Harap-harap ada orang jatuh cinta dgn you tgk gambar ni Jacq. ;)
Ada sikit smile, relax,ada backlight, ada gerbang2 rambut

Dah macam trademark pulak ambik gambar group macam ni...
senja, gelap, biru, wide.

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Piala Perantau 2009

Piala Perantau organized by Kelab Umno Salford & Manchester. Held in Brookhouse Playing Field, Buckthorn Lane, Peel Green Eccles. (Panjangnya alamat!)

I guess sports photography is not everybody cup of tea. This will test your equipment limitation and experience handling the camera parameters. Viewing the subject through the viewfinder is a dissappointing event where the ball move across the field faster than the autofocus motor. All I wanted to do is tight shot with the ball in the frame. Wide shot easier but not that compelling. Somebody who has been long enough in sports photography told one need to learn to use both eyes, one to frame the shot and the other one to predict the movement. Hail to sports photographers!

Playing football in cold winter must be very exciting to the boys. They need to keep running to manage the cold weather. Wearing gloves while playing must have been their dream like sports figure in EPL.

Sharing some pictures..I thought it's the shot of the day.

Unfortunately, that's not the opponent goalkeeper but the referee. Chit! Hampeh! Or else must have been dramatic.

more pics after the jump..

Action...close but cropped ball & slanted horizon. dang!

Another cropped one :(

Penalty shoot out..kacang je I thought. That meshed net confuse my autofocus. Sharp net but out of focus subject.

Manual focus saves the day however.

Goal!

Berbetov spend some time with the boys..

He must be a dangerous striker. 3 orang jaga.

Celebration

Credit given where is due. Kudos to volunteers

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Group Shots

I went to watch the football game - Piala Perantau organized by Kelab UMNO Manchester & Salford. The weather a bit muddy and hardly to see sun shines through the cloud. Well, I came there a litte bit later, that's why lah. I'm going to blog the so called sports picture soon although I didn't really excel at those type of action photography :).

Everywhere I go out w my camera, I'll try bring a long my speedlights. Even without this lighting device, I can still use my trusty built in flash on my camera. (The results not as pleasing as using the speedlights though). Inspired by Joe McNally works from Nikon CLS DVD, I give it a try to rely on the speedlights TTL.

With the help from the single ladies, I meter the background and prefer the sky like this. Yes, I can increase the ISO senstivity to brighten my subject but I think the noise might ruin those pretty faces. I set my flash to TTL and dial down 1 stop. I like my speedlights because I can turn the picture from this..

to this..

a little harsh but better than the above. A slight error is the shadow overcast to another person far right. This can be fix by rearranging them carefully. Overlooked problem, but it's a valuable lesson. Another tips is to get to know your subject first rather than ask them carelessly to pose for you. Who wants to pose and receive direction from stranger eh? Having a huge camera didn't give us a ticket to ask anybody to pose the way you want it. Except those models in automotive roadshow. heehe

..and last but not least, Thaqif with his new fan.

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Some projects

There are some projects going on to expand my portfolios. I needed to practice and luckily got a volunteer model to help me realize the concept.

Dengan harapan dan doa untuk Ijazah Sarjana dari Universiti of Manchester 2009. Amin.

Di hadapan Whitworth Hall, salah satu bangunan yg sinonim dengan University of Manchester pada pukul 6.30pm..

Ada sambungan sikit..behind the scene

Mula-mula carik exposure yang sesuai pakai ISO200..dapat dalam 10 seconds..kadang-kadang ada bas lalu , tu yang buat line yang kacau bilau kat bawah. Ideanya bagaimana nak buat portrait pakai flash & long exposure. Agak mencabar..

Try ambil gambar macam ni..model kecik sangat pulak. Ghosting dan blur pada subjek. Memang susah nak dapat gambar yang sharp kalau long exposure ni. Idea saya ialah untuk bagi flash freeze the subjek. Tapi tak menjadi. Finally, dah tahu apa masalahnya. Memang flash boleh kasi freeze subjek, tapi kena makesure kalau ambik gambar tanpa flash, subjek& tempat dia berdiri tu gelap habis. Background terang, foreground gelap jadi barulah boleh freeze model tu. Takpe, lain kali boleh try. Gambar ini terang foreground dgn background.

Line-line yang kacau bilau tu ok jugak kalau kena masanya. Tapi pose ni macam cover album penyanyi ballad je...sedih dan mengelamun pasal cinta. Subjek sharp sebab kaku gila lebih dari 5 saat. Sporting la model!

Increase ISO, nak kasi pendek sikit masa exposure sebab photographer pun tak boleh stay lama lebih dari 5 sec. Nota tambahan..saya guna off flash ketuk sikit dari sebelah kanan. Pakai power sikit je nak terang muka.

Zoom sikit dan kasi buang colour. Saya agak suka yang ini sebab background boleh baca la University of Manchester tu.

Haa..kalau belaja buat cara belaja, jangan nak berpeluk-peluk depan U, tapi dah kahwin takpe..:) (Thaqif seperti biasa..tidur dlm stroller)

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Learning to See Differently

I constantly train my eyes to compose different views of some common pics.
Two people looking at the same subject in one location may have different perspectives.
One may see hidden objects and one may see plain postcard view.
Sometimes it just plain luck to capture the great image.
Practice makes perfect macam latih tubi la.


View from the bus tour top.

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Quick & Dirty Way to Control TTL flash Exposure

I know that using flash in manual mode is the way to go to control the
desired power. However, it requires a lot of hours and practice to really
master and bend the light the way you like it. Eventually practice makes
perfect.

Sometimes,...a lot of time maybe, I use TTL to let the camera computes
the desired power for me. Set the camera to manual and bounce the flash.
However, sometimes I found out the flash throw extra power than what I
needed. From my research (by internet laa.) TTL computes quite accurately
when the subject is dead in the center of frame.

Most of time,my subject is not in the centre, probably more to either side.
This is where I open my camera manual and study a bit about the FV lock function
in my camera. I found it very useful for a quick & dirty way to control the
flash power. Here is my experiment:

I set up my subject like this to simulate the distance subject to background. (The toy car is my subject i.e #7)




I wanted to compose the car a little bit to the left and normally I set the camera
to manual mode and set the flash to TTL. Since the ceiling was not that high I
set the TTL to 0 compensation. Here I used shutter speed of 250 to kill all
the ambient light. The flash was bounced straight upward.I find some blown
highlights from the subject and the background was not as dark like I wanted
to. The camera did a very good job to expose the whole scene but not to the
photographer's preference.



Next, to correct this, I centered the subject and fired the FV button. It threw
a flash and kept it in memories. (erm..maybe for those don't know how to
set the FV button need to open camera manual . I took the picture here


Needed to chimp the result, and I think I needed to increase a little more power to the subject. I set Flash Compensation to +0.3


With the flash power still in the memory, I shot the subject with my desired
composition. I think, this time there was a lot of improvement from the first pic


When we have locked the flash value, we can place the subject anywhere we like
(in the frame) as long we keep the distance to the subject as same as the initial setup.
Exposure will remain the same throughout the shots.

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After all those discoveries, I practiced often to familiar myself with the method. Knowledge needs to be applied to let it resides in our head. Here are some..

I use ISO800 and longer shutter speed to control the background exposure.
I use the FV lock to control my flash. Without the FV, the flash throw its
power to compensate the far backgound and blown my subject. I bounce
the flash up to the right. Even though its one directional but I like the way
the picture looks like. Something like there were no flash used.


For this picture, I bounce the flash to the left of camera and use the FV
lock. I need to be quick or else they'll loose their mood to the cold. There's
shadow cast from the son face to his father body that I forgot to notice.


Yeah, U can use it to your built in flash. Especially when you want somebody to take your picture.


Note : Need to check ur camera whether it has the Flash Value Lock Function.

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Against the sun

Kalau pakai kamera point n shoot dulu memang cuba nak ambik gambar melawan matahari, tapi apakan daya, flash dan control ada limitation. Tapi gambar ni agak kurang umph berbanding gambar kalau pakai off lighting. Kat sini pakai flash TTL dgn difffuser dome. Straight atas kamera. Kita akan cuba lagi nanti untuk lebih dramatik.



Haha..sut ni bawak dari Malaysia, Wan dia bagi. Agak lawak pada mulanya, tapi dia punya panas bila pakainya. Fuh! sgt la best time sejuk macam ni. Made in china beb!


Portait Thaqif, backlit, flash tembak straight.


Salah satu fav photo saya


Thaqif pelik nengok ais kepul.

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Ooopss!..

Often, saya selalu mengingatkan diri supaya lebih berhati-hati bila memetik shutter. Background!..background..Background! Itulah yang selalu terlupa bila nak memilih lokasi untuk portrait atau gambar apa saja. Portrait pada saya akan 'ngam' dgn clean background..simple & tak berserabut. Mata kita tak akan merayau-rayau tengok benda lain (ada jugak yg suka merayau mata carik kesalahan gambar..hehe) kalau ada background yang clean and simple. Tapi yang paling pedih adalah ada benda-benda mencacak kat atas kepala subjek macam gambar orang letak peace sign atau tanduk kat belakang kepala member yg lain. Inilah dia gambar saya dok tenung-tenung dan saya rasa patut diperbetulkan...dalam entry saya yang ini



Macam ada tanduk rudolf pulak..erk! Takpe..kita belajar dari kesalahan. Kalau ambik dari angle lain boleh hilangkan masalah ini. Cari lain, boleh guna photoshop blurkan kayu kat belakang tu atau pakai lens 2.8 yg besar batang anak pisang tu. Saya ambik byk shot masa tu dan rasa itu yg saya suka tapi sebenarnya ada salah sikit dari segi komposisi.. Nasib baik ada gambar dari angle lain..



Tapi background agak sharp dan semak sikit tapi rasanya boleh dimaafkan compare dgn tanduk rudolf.

Portrait dgn clean background dan simple macam nilah kira. Mata terus tengok subjek lepas tu barulah figure out apa benda kat belakang tu..tapi background blur dan clean jadi tak begitu penting untuk ditengok lama2.

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Photomerge

I'm struggling with CS2 photomerge to stitch these images.



Rupanya-rupanya ada software yang lagi senang, free pulak tu. Kalaulah tau dulu..


Check out behind the scene of the infamous Old Trafford Stadium Tour later

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Tips on group photo

Kadang-kadang, subject & photographer kena saling bekerjasama jugak untuk dapatkan gambar yang menarik. Entry kali ni saya pinjam gambar dari majlis Mai & Zali. Selalunya, gambar group photo kita dapat macam ni...takde yang salah, tapi dari segi teknikal, pemilihan background saya agak tak menarik dan busy jadi saya kena depend dgn subject untuk diorang punya expression dan emotion untuk mengalih perhatian dari background tu. Pose yg control, safe dan tak seragam.

Sebab kawan-kawan Mai ni sporting, saya nak diorang tunjuk happy & ceria la sikit. Haa...kan?
Tapi yang ni, idea saya yang merapu sikit...haha

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