Cameras

Beach photography presents many unique challenge to the amateur photographer due mainly to the extreme photographic conditions in which it is often undertaken. Contending with an abundance of light, reflections and movement can leave some photographers grasping at straws, but it can also produce some of the most starkly beautiful images of any subject matter. We’ve put together a list of things that you may want to consider more guidelines than rules, but which might help you take your beach photos from the realm of average to great. Well, at least we hope they do.

1) Shoot in the Golden Hours It is going to be very difficult to take an above average beach photo in the middle of the day. Even on cloudy days, there is usually going to be a problem with over exposure. While many photographers put their cameras away between 10am and 2pm, that time is usually extended dramatically when shooting beach scenes especially if you are lucky enough to live in an area with reasonably good weather. As you can see from the photos below, the best images are usually taken at sunset or sunrise, so try to emulate that.

2) Capture Motion With lower light and longer exposures comes the chance to capture the motion of the waves and sea. As you can see, this can really result in some haunting images that are ten different kinds of awesome.

3) Remember the Rule of Thirds Composition of beach photos is just as important as any other type of photography. Remember to consider the rule of thirds and you shouldn’t go too far wrong with your beach composition.

4) Remember the Sunny F16 Rule If you absolutely, positively must shoot at the beach when the sun in shining, then you might at least come away with some images worth looking at if you remember the sunny F16 rule. This is not an ideal situation, but if you are even remotely experienced with photography you will realise that there are very few ideal situations in this hobby and when they come up, you usually get a prize for the resulting images!

5) Take Advantage of Reflection Being around so much water is going to give you a lot of opportunities to take advantage of reflection. If you need some inspiration then check out these reflection photos to see what we mean. Getting reflections under the right circumstances can add a huge element of interest to your images.

6) Don’t Ignore Black and White While you may think of the water or beach as a place where you can get fantastic contrasting colours (and you would be right) you might also like to take a moment to consider black and white images. Some of the greats were able to get incredible black and white seascapes that ooze atmosphere. Look at this image for instance:

7) Use Driftwood in the Composition You can find it on almost any beach and you can use it in good composition and to draw the viewer’s eyes to an area of the image. You can also move it around to build the image you want. (Ok, some people might consider that cheating, but we all do it!)

Think About the Weather While the beach might provoke mental images of flawless cloudless days, more dramatic weather can result in incredible images at a beach. Look at the brewing storm in the image below to see what we mean or check out these storm photos to see what can be done when shooting in extreme weather.

9) Use Clouds for Drama Going along with considering the weather is watching out for clouds. Most of the best images of beaches somehow incorporate clouds into the composition to add interest to the beach.

10) Don’t Forget Night Time Beaches usually make us think about beautiful sunrises and sunsets. Don’t forget that you can get some spectacular night time beach photos too. There are a whole heap of separate issues in incorporating the moon into a photo but the results can be great. Check out our moon photos post to get some more inspiration.

Other Awesome Beach Photos

Concluding Thoughts

Shooting at the beach presents its own set of challenges with lighting, motion and composition. Even so, even a rudimentary adherence to some of the suggestions here should increase the chances that you’re able to capture an image a cut above most other beach photos. A bit of experimentation and deference to the conditions will mean you should come up with a couple of solid photos.

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40 Reasons why you don’t need 18mp

In February 2010, Canon released the EOS 550D with an 18 megapixel sensor, HD video and a $900 price tag. Will Canon tell the folks lining up to buy this camera how much extra work it will add to their simple lives? And how much pain it will bring to their photo hobby? Not likely.

The was released late in 2006 and remained on the market until late 2009. Three years in production is a long time in the land of digital, where 18 months is about the average life of a camera body. What was so special about the D40? For once, there’s a simple answer: the D40 set a new standard for entry-level DSLRs in terms of size, cost, build quality and performance.

In a nutshell, the D40 was affordable, weighs less than 500g and can make great photos. Build quality is better than you’d expect from an all-plastic body and a dinky 18-55mm kit lens after two years and 50,000 shutter actuations, there isn’t a scratch on my D40’s body or the LCD, and everything still works with crisp enthusiasm.

D40, D59, D80 size comparison. Photo courtesy of Thom Hogan http://www.bythom.com/D40REVIEW.htm

Nikon D40 Features

I bought the D40 when it was already obsolete, just after the D60 was released. The speeds and feeds were never much to drool over and now look decidedly crude:

• 6 megapixel DX format CCD (1.5x FOV crop, as D50)
• 3D Color Matrix Metering II, 420 pixel sensor (as D80 / D50)
• ISO sensitivity range 200 1600 plus HI 1 (3200 equiv.)
• Custom Auto ISO (selectable maximum ISO, minimum shutter speed)
• 2.5 fps continuous shooting (as D50), unlimited in JPEG
• Large 2.5 230,000 pixel LCD monitor
• Viewfinder with x0.8 magnification, 95% coverage
• Support for SDHC (SD cards over 2 GB in capacity)

Nikon D40 Lens Options

The D40 achieves its compact size by doing away with the focusing motor that graced the D50, D70 and D80 (and graces the current D90). That means you’re limited to lenses in Nikon’s AF-S and Sigma’s HSM line if you want auto-focus. If you don’t mind doing everything yourself, as we used to a few decades back, you can mount any Nikkor lens on the D40.

The more recent AF Nikkor lenses will meter okay and give you a focus dot in the bottom left of the viewfinder. There’s no anti-shake (Vibration Reduction) technology in the body either, but Nikon has been building VR into most of its lenses for years. Even the cheap and kit lenses have VR, and they’re the lenses you’ll use most of the time. Yes, they’re cheap and they look it and feel it but Nikon is good at making great lenses at the plasticky bottom end of the price scale. The new follows that tradition.

If you want to go beyond 200mm, there’s a cheap option without VR or a more pricey . There’s a , which is less than $300, auto-focuses on the D40 and is as sharp as a tack but has no VR.

A word of caution: these are full-frame (FX) lenses so they’re equivalent to 105 450 mm on APS-C sensor (DX) cameras like the , and due to the 1.5x crop factor.

Navigation

The D40 body has very few buttons and knobs to confuse the unwary, and it does without the small LCD that sits atop older and bigger Nikons. The dial that takes the LCD’s place has the usual MASP modes, plus Auto and a few scene modes I never use.

The main screen gives you all the settings you’re most likely to need in a single window you can navigate and dig into. Nikon is well-known for its standard-setting ergonomics, and deservedly so. The rest of the menus are almost as easy to get around. You can check them in detail here.

Handling & Performance

This is one of those rare pieces of equipment where everything just falls to hand, and nothing gets in the way. Intuitive is the word that comes to mind taking photos is point & shoot easy but a hell of lot quicker. You turn the D40 on and it’s on, bang, just like that. You focus, press the button and it shoots. And it’s ready to shoot again. Even when you’re using flash, there’s little of the frustrating lag you get with digicams.

The D40 is always ready to catch the action with kids, pets or sports. Continuous shooting is only 2.5 frames a second but, if you’re shooting JPEGs, the D40 will keep going until the battery runs out. It helps to use a fast flash card, of course. I’ve never come near filling up the 4GB card I use, even shooting RAW + JPEG, and the battery is good for about 500 shots.

The Nikon D40 is all about light and easy, so it comes as a surprise that it’s one of the few DSLRs on the market that supports flash synch speeds of up to 1/500 sec. Why is this important, you ask. One answer is that you need to shoot at 1/500 or faster to freeze action so, if you want to shoot your kids doing crazy things, faster is better. What if the sun’s bright enough for 1/500 without flash? The problem is that you’ll get harsh contrasts, that’s why you see a flash atop every wedding photographers’ camera. ‘Fill flash’ softens harsh sunlight and is essential when you’re shooting against the sun.

The other reason why 1/500 synch speed is useful is that faster synch speeds let you shoot at larger apertures, which gives you more depth-of-field potential, requires less flash power, lets your flash recycle faster and lets you shoot more frames per second.

Larger apertures also let in more light from the flash which allows you to get further away from the subject. For a two stop increase (from 1/125 to 1/500 for example) you effectively double your maximum flash range. It also means you can make do with a cheaper flash unit, like the compact $150 Nikon SB-400. Read more about it here.

With the D40, even the image files are easy to handle: JPEGs are about 2-3mb and RAW files tend to be around 5. RAW + JPEG is a practical option with the D40, and the combined file size is just under 6mb. That’s one third the size of the Canon EOS 550D’s 18mp files.

Image Quality

The sensor in the D40 is the same 6mp CCD Nikon used in the D50 and D70s. Less than 6 months after the D40’s release, Nikon announced the D40x which borrowed the 10mp sensor from the D80. The reason? Competitors were pushing up the pixel ratings on their cameras, making buyers think 6mp wasn’t nearly enough. That’s rubbish. At 100%, a full size JPEG from the D40 is almost 90 cm wide, much too wide for my 24″ screen.

The textbooks say that the D40’s 3008 x 2000 pixel images will let you print up to 30 x 20 cm (12 x 8″). Don’t believe any of it I have a number of 75 x 50 cm prints from the D40, and they don’t lack detail. If you don’t believe me, different megapixel prints are put to a very public test here.

How good is the sensor?

Resolution (pixel count) by itself doesn’t equate to sharpness. Image sharpness is more to do with the lens you’re using, your shooting technique, and how steady your hand or tripod is. Image quality overall has a lot do with the sensor in your camera.

DxO labs publishes ratings for digital camera sensors using DxOMark, a new scale for measuring RAW digital camera image quality performance.

Let’s come back to the Canon 550D we started with, and do some comparisons:

Comparing the Nikon D40 with the Canon 550D shows us that, no matter how huge the gap in specs, the actual difference is remarkably small. In terms of colour depth and dynamic range, there not much in it but the Canon’s low-light performance is clearly a step ahead of the D40.

When we compare the D40 to Canon’s 15mp Powershot G10 (last year’s pocket wunderkind), we see that the biggest gain in image quality is seen when going from a digicam to a DSLR.

G10 (15mp) G11/S90 (10mp)

DxOMark Sensor 37.8 46.5

Colour Depth 19.5 20.2

Dynamic Range 10 11

Low-light ISO 157 185

I copied the DxOMark for the G11/S90 to show that Canon saw the light on megapixels with its digicams late last year, settling for 10mp sensors in the G11 and S90. Why Canon’s DSLR division hasn’t done the same is puzzling.

The Nikon D40 is not perfect

It uses the sensor from the older D50/D70s, while the D40x uses the D80’s 10mp sensor. The D5000 uses the new generation sensor from the D90. The improvement is less to do with the 12 megapixels and more with Nikon getting better at sensor design and image processing.

I’ve used a friend’s D90 and it does produce more detailed images, and cleaner ones in low light situations. It also has three times as many settings to waste time with because 98% of them are just techno-clutter (the user manual is several hundred pages long). If only they’d make a version of this sensor with 6 or 8mp it’s low-light performance should rival that of a D700.

What about live view and video?

Live view is as yet a clunky affair on DSLRs but I admit that there are situations where I’d like the flip-out viewfinder from the D5000. Video? It holds no interest for me, and Thom Hogan calls Nikon’s DSLR video ‘toy video’. Canon is probably ahead on that score.

The dark side of megapixels

I might buy a Nikon D90/D5000 for the sensor, not for the extra pixels. All the files are twice as big, and your PC will be slow to open the RAW files. Imagine what happens with 18 megapixels: your PCs knees will buckle unless you have a serious graphics processor in it. Remember, the ability to record quality RAW files is one of the key reasons for lugging a DSLR around.

The Canon’s RAW files will be around 25mb in size, and bigger if you shoot RAW and JPEG like most of us. Suddenly your PC is too slow, your flash card too small, your back-up drive too cramped and backups take forever. Unless you have a hot-shoe 4-cpu rig with a potent graphics card, editing RAW files will be painful. And what can you actually do with those extra pixels and those huge files? Print wallpaper for your lounge room? My bet is you’ll soon choose medium or small JPEG files on the shooting menu.

Small is beautiful. The D40 is light, easy and quick to start, focus and shoot. You can chuck it into the back seat of your car and it doesn’t mind. It has all the essentials except for DOF preview and a motor drive for older lenses, and it has very few features you don’t need. You can buy a refurbished one with kit lens for <$400. What more can you ask for? Check the photos galleries in my blog, and you'll see why I love my D40.

digital-photography-school.com

Making mistakes is part of any learning process and photography is certainly no different. In fact, the amount of information one needs to learn to become proficient in photography means there are probably a lot more mistakes we can make. There are however, a few mistakes that you can learn to avoid very quickly. Here are what we would regard as the five most egregious photography mistakes.

1) Holding Your SLR Like an Amateur This one is a dead give away. It’s especially embarrassing for people who rushed out and purchased a top of the line DSLR without first bothering to learn anything about photography first. If you learn how to hold a camera properly, you will avoid the sneers and muffled laughter of other more experienced photographers and your images will be better due to your more steady camera.

Photo by Keith Wills

2) Trying to Take “Overall Picture” Shots There is a saying the the three rules of photography are “Get closer. Get closer. Get closer.” Most people are shy of walking up to their subject and filling the lens with whatever they are taking a photo of. But this is usually how you can get much more striking photographs. The sad fact is that trying to stand back and take an “overall picture” maybe with the intent of cropping it later, is a sure-fire way to get a mediocre shot. Fill the lens with the image that you want to have in the end.

3) Photoshopping it Later With the invention of the digital camera and DSLR came the technique of simply shooting thousands of shots and then hoping one or two will turn out ok. Even worse are people who try to save their mediocre shots by running them through Photoshop after. Photoshop cannot make up for poor photographs. Spend a little time planning your shots and composing the image in the frame. Photoshop or any other photography software can be great, but the real skill is in only having to make minimal use of it. Photoshop skills are not the same thing as photography skills.

4) Using Inappropriate Equipment You do not need a high-speed super telephoto lens to take a standard landscape shot. And you kind of look like a nonce when you try. This one harks back to the issue of people running out and buying gear that they haven’t really learned how or when to use. Don’t be one of those people! It really doesn’t take that much effort to look up a few guides online about the correct gear to be using in certain circumstances and for certain shots.

5) Not Knowing Your Camera Ok, this one may have happened to most of us, but it makes it no less embarrassing. You’re setting up a picture of a group of people, you say “say cheese” and then press down on the button. Nothing. The camera doesn’t take a shot. You look down at the camera. People start to giggle. It’s not even on. Now, for somebody who truly knows their camera, there is usually no need to even take your eye away from the view finder. You can just use your hands to automatically go to the appropriate controls without looking. And that is what every camera user should be aiming at being able to do.

Now, there are potentially hundreds of mistakes that a new photographer can make so this list is nothing like comprehensive. In fact, we’d be very surprised if we didn’t have at least some disagreement over these being the top 5 at all. But when such mistakes are so easily fixable it would be a shame for a new photographer to not make the few minor adjustments needed to banish these ones altogether.

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