Welcome to Tall's Camera - one of the largest selections of Digital SLR's cameras, Compact Digital cameras, as well as a complete inventory of camera lenses, flash, tripods, camera bags and accessories in the Northwest.

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Welcome to Tall's Camera - one of the largest selections of Digital SLR's cameras, Compact Digital cameras, as well as a complete inventory of camera lenses, flash, tripods, camera bags and accessories in the Northwest.

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Compact Digital Cameras

Lighting

This section will deal mostly with ambient light. Ambient light can be as descriptive as any artificial light. Use the compositional tolls discussed and treat light not only as a way to illuminate your scene, but also as another object in your composition. Descriptive light will only help your photographs.

The angle of light on your subject can create a scene. Locating the light source, will help direct how you compose you picture, so you get optimal exposure. Try using light coming from the side across the subject. This will enhance textures, render better contrast, and give a more dramatic feel. Light from above, such as bright midday light, will cast large shadows under the eyes, nose and lips. Bright light coming from the angle of the camera will illuminate very bright on the front and eliminate shadows. Changing the angle of light can completely change the look of a picture.

The Golden Hours are the hours just before sunset and just after sunrise. These 2 times during the day will create the best ambient lighting in color and contrast. Many photographers photographing outdoors will work early in the morning or late in the afternoon for this reason. Light during this time can change drastically in minutes. Here in the Pacific Northwest,you will start the morning off with low bluish light and end with bright warm yellow light. In the evening you will start with bright yellow light and end with dim reddish light. Year round the light is changing. So these effects will be different almost day by day.

It's Quality not Quantity. More light is not always better. The quality of light is equal if not more important than quantity. Quantity can be controlled by exposure and supplemented with a flash if needed. The quality is something that you will see more than it can be described. Good light makes sense. The subject looks perfect in the right light. Good light is fully dependent on the subject matter and the scene. The goal of the picture will define how the light should look. That could be soft and warm or bright and harsh.

Hard light usually brings out detail. It can also show flaws in skin and enhance textures. Soft light will cover flaws and smooth tones. This can be also referred to as high and low contrast light. A bright cloudless day has very hard and high contrast light which will render deep shadows and bright highlights. A cloudy rainy day has much softer and lower contrast light. It seems that light is all around, but from no apparent source.

Be aware of an on-camera flash's limitations. With SLRs, buy a Speedlight from the same brand as the camera. They help dramatically. Also, get a diffuser for the Speedlight. For compact cameras, know that the flash will not illuminate a whole room. The average is about 8 feet. Beyond that, the light does not illiminate a subject well and becomes ineffective. Some cameras can correct for bad lighting using digital technology. In bright overhead daylight, use a fill flash. Fill flashes are used to lighten deep shadows, caused by high contrast light.

Indoors, nighttime or other special situations require some lighting tricks and a little patience. If you are not sure, shoot again. Nightime can be especially tricky because the light is very directional and there is little ambient light to help out. If you want to get creative and your camera has a center weight meter, now is the time to use it. Try taking different exposures metering on the lights. Then meter on the darker areas with lights in the scene. The center weight or spot meter will allow you to tell the camera more specifically what you want to use as the light source. Try combining flash with the nighttime ambient light. Sometimes at night if you are shooting, for example, fireworks, you must leave the shutter open for the length of the firework, but close it before the next one. The aperture will then control the amount of light entering the camera.