Wedding photography on the Isle of Skye, mastering exposure, home developing film, garden birds.

thanks for joining me again in one of the world's best locations for photography we've got another action-packed show lined up for you so lock the door turn off your phone unless you're using it and make yourself comfy camera sound makeup and stylist no never mind let's go [Music] coming up on this month show we show you how to get shorts like these from your back garden we talked with bags and pants and we try home developing slide film what could possibly go wrong welcome to our June edition of photography online as he gives you've got another action-packed show lined up for you so let's get right on with it the west coast of Scotland there's not only a huge attraction for photographers but also for couples looking to get married this place has a certain romance to it which seems to lend itself so well to people tying the knot especially if you look into photos taken in the surroundings one photographer whose people flying from all over the world to stand in front of her lens is Lynn Kennedy we caught up with her in her back garden to find out how she makes a living from photography I am Lynn Kennedy and I live in the northwest highlands of Scotland and I am a wedding and elopement photographer [Music] I've been doing it since 2007 and then in 2015 I decided that I was going to specialize in allotments and intimate weddings and that's what I've been doing since then for the last five years I think the location is quite a big part of how busy I am because Scotland is such a big destination for for people coming from all over the world and sky seems to be one of those places that that people are really drawn to and I think for couples that are planning to elope here or have a small wedding they see all these amazing pictures on the internet of other people getting married and they just think that's it that's where I want to go [Music] I tend to stay away from the kind of more famous iconic locations especially for the ceremony because for an elopement or small wedding you know they don't want to be surrounded by lots of people it's quite an intimate thing that they're doing so I try and find places that are a little bit off the beaten track where it's less likely that there are going to be people [Music] I try not to go anywhere that's going to be too difficult because walking around in a big long dress especially if you're having to lift it a bit to keep it off the ground from stop it from getting dirty just gets too difficult working outdoors is definitely an additional challenge because you're at the mercy of the weather if it rains on your wedding day it's not a total disaster because actually submarine and your pictures can actually make them really atmospheric and some of I think my base pictures have come on weddings where it's been raining for part of the day I think rain on your wedding day is actually considered quite good luck well that's what I tell all my couples anyway [Music] most of my clients are pretty Hardy I think because from the photos that they see there they know that the print is going to be in their hair or that they might get a bit wet and they all know that Scotland's where there is no you know like the Bahamas so most of them are kind of prepared in their head but then when they get here sometimes you'll notice a bride is really struggling if it's particularly wet and cold so you just have to give them a bit of time in the car with some blankets on just to let them come back to a normal body temperature because you can't take really intimate pictures if someone is sort of half blue and shivering you know you gets to a point where it just doesn't work [Music] if I wake up on a wedding day and it's full Sun blue sky your clothes yeah that's my nightmare it's much harder to shoot in those conditions and everyone always says oh you must be pleased it's a really nice day but actually no my favorite way there to shoot in is overcast weather and if you get lots of clothes all different sort of heights and and shades that is just yeah with the maintenances it's what I love I think the most important skill is being good with people because if you can't make a couple relax with you you're not going to get that emotion and intimacy in the photographs usually what I will do is and we'll get to a location and I'll see to the couple okay just go and stand over there and just either hold hands and look at each other or have a little hug and I just want to see how they are with each other so I'll be taking pictures and chatting a bit to them but I'm just observing how they act with each other and sometimes they will just go straight into being all huggy and kissy and they'll move and look at each other and I literally don't have to say anything to them they're just doing it and it's it's perfect other people which are most people and I think I would be exactly the same are feeling a little bit awkward so I will tend to choose one or two poses where I think that they can start to relax a little bit so usually if it's a groom and a bride I'll put the groom behind the bride and just get him to kind of put his arms around and hug her and kind of nozzle in there if it's two brides or two grooms the taller one will go behind and usually just when they're having a little snuggle like that that kind of relaxes them a bit getting them to force pressing to each other's ear anything to kind of break the ice [Music] so I am a canon camera girl I've only ever used canon I used the 5d Mark force I looked a Sony mirrorless and a Fuji mirrorless and I don't know what it is about me I just can't I can't use them they just feel too small the button I don't know they're just not for me so I love Canon and but my lenses I love Sigma lenses my favorite lens of all is this Sigma 85 millimeter art lens I think if I could only have one lens it would be that one it's great for cropping and tight on ring shots and things in the ceremony and also if you just want to to focus on the couple on how they're looking at each other without all the other distractions but in the portrait shoot it's just love it [Music] the ceremony part of the day that is the most important part of the day that's what they're there to do and capturing the emotion of them seeing their vows to each other is like one of my favorite parts of the whole thing because they've chosen to do something very different from most people for it just to be themselves and so you have to respect the intimacy of that and yeah that's it the photo shoot comes later I guess a lot of people think that being a wedding photographer is basically showing up one day a week to take pictures of a wedding and that's it and and occasionally people will see what you do the rest at the time actually the photography is probably a quite a small part and then the rest of the time it's the editing it's the planning the allotment for them marketing and PR and that that kind of thing as well my busiest ever was 11 weddings and 14 days that was a big editing queue what an amazing job lynn has although having to work in the worst that the Scottish where they can throw it you would put many off if you'd like to know more about Lynne then see our link section in the description down below and next month on location feature we'll be heading out to one of the remotest places in the world the one which is world-class in terms of the unique photography opportunities that it offers now in addition to our main run three shows we sometimes like to surprise you by producing an extra mid month episodes these are only available for a limited time before they get deleted so subscribing to the channel and enabling the notifications will ensure you never miss out last month we produced a bonus 30 of an episode which will only be active until June 7th so make sure you see that before it's too late now every month we bring you a photography quote and this month's is from an anonymous author who once said when people ask me what equipment I use I tell them my eyes and with us in mind we're about to start a four-part series on mastering exposure over the next four months we'll be looking at how to use your camera's meter how to use the histogram and how to use a handheld light meter all different ways to measure exposure before all of that though we thought we should lay down a few basic foundations which are essential if you want to be a master of exposure when we look at a scene we're seeing reflected light take this view for example I can only see everything here because the light from the Sun is being bounced and reflected back to my eyes regardless of whether the sky is clear or cloudy or the lights that falls on a landscape is from the Sun it's just the atmospheric conditions and the weather that influences the character of this light when we look at this scene here the same amount of light is falling onto much of it but some areas such as the wall of the church here which is in shadow appear brighter to our eyes compared to other areas such as this part of the roof which is also in shadow the reason for this variance is that different objects surfaces and elements reflect different amounts of light the shadow area of the roof is receiving the same amount of light as the brighter wall but it's reflecting less of that light which is why it appears darker the brighter and area the more light it is reflecting into our eyes or the lens of our camera the light falling onto a subject is known as incident light and the only way we can measure this is with a handheld light meter we'll be looking at how to use these in a future part of this series let me quickly explain the difference between incident and reflected light if I place this white and black card in the same light and use a handheld light meter to measure the light falling on them the exposure for both will be identical and that's because the same amount of light is hitting each card however if I'm me too the reflected light then I'll get a very different reading as the white card is reflecting a lot more of the light than the black card these are going to be different to the result I got from the handheld light meter so out of all of these which is the correct one the answer in this situation is the handheld light meter but hang on a minute you didn't think it was going to be that easy did you you see correct exposure doesn't necessarily mean best exposure exposure in photography doesn't just mean measuring light it also means understanding the limitations of our camera sensor or the film we're using without this knowledge getting the correct exposure is going to be a very hit and miss affair all cameras have a range of luminance levels from pure black to pure white and this is known as the cameras latitude or its dynamic range the unit of measurement we use for exposure is known as a stop one stop brighter will double the luminance of the photo and one stop darker will part the luminance of the photo so if you see talk about a camera having ten stops dynamic range simply means that there are ten stops of exposure between the camera rendering a subject as a pure black and the same subject as a pure white for example if I photograph this black card so it is rendered as a pure black and then increase the exposure by ten stops it will now appear pure white because I've used the entire range of the camera I can render the same subject as any tone of gray alike by simply choosing the many variables in that ten stop range this is what mastering exposure is all about giving you control rather than letting the camera make any decisions they will often get things wrong and that's going to limit your potential for photography some cameras may only have six or seven stops dynamic range some film even less so it's essential to know the limitations of your camera otherwise when we try and get the correct exposure we're gonna be stabbing in the dark I did their dark exposure no never mind you'd be like trying to buy a shirt for someone without knowing their size to get a good fit we need to know the size of the person as well as the size of the shirt same goes for an exposure it's all about fitting the dynamic range of the scene into that of your camera we look at how to measure the dynamic range of a scene in part two of the series on next month's show for now though we're going to look at how to calculate the dynamic range of our cameras if you shoot on film then the range known as latitude is fixed to the film itself different films have different latitudes these are the same regardless what camera you put them in so a film camera has no limitations of dynamic range as it's limited simply by the film being used digital cameras have a sensor instead of film to record the light so a latitude is fixed to the camera each camera model will differ but all identical cameras should be the same so if we've got the Canon here's our and we know the dynamic range is about nine stocks then if we pick up another Canon EOS R then it will also be nine stocks but if we pick up a completely different model of camera then it's going to have a different dynamic range it's therefore important to know the dynamic range and limitations of each camera model we might be using you can just look on the specs in the manual but they're not going to give you the realistic range in the same way that if you want to know how many miles to the gallon you're gonna get from your new car you wouldn't trust what it says in the promotional brochure so I want to show you how to work out the exact range for your camera in real terms so what you're going to need is a gray card and if you don't have one lying around at home we've prepared our own printable one which you can download we put our logo onto here it nice and subtly and what this is going to do is help us with the exercise later on I've also left the very center of the logo in full contrast and this is going to make focusing much easier join me later in the show where I talk you step-by-step through our guide in how to calculate the dynamic range of your own camera do make sure you hang around for that as later in the show Harry walked us through a simple step-by-step process but something else Harry's been busy working on recently is a new webinar service something I'm now involved in as well along with a couple of other pro photographers we host these on the second Sunday of each month at 8 p.m. UK time with every session lasting around 60 minutes and covering topics such as post processing tutorials image critiques and general camera skills if you'd like to join us live and have the opportunity to ask questions and get immediate feedback then all you need to do is sign up to our newsletter to have the first opportunity to register there's a small charge to join these and spaces will be limited but if you can make it we'd love to see you on the first one no last month short we showed you how to clean your camera sensor so you should have no excuse for dust spots on your images anymore but if you edit the old photos then this month's a 60 second editing skills may come in handy this month I'm going to show you how to clone out dust spots using Lightroom now when we look at this picture at this resolution it's not that obvious that there's anything wrong there but if we zoom in on the sky well all of a sudden we can see lots and lots of spots all over the sky which are basically dust on the sensor so it's not a major problem we can get rid of those and what we're doing to do is we're going to go to the second tool in our tool bar under the histogram and this is called the clone tool and when you click that it opens up a new panel here at the top you've got the option of clone or you've got the option of heal I'll show you the difference between those two in a minute but most of the time you want heal and not clone the next one down is size we can do that with a shortcut on this on the keyboard so I won't show you that the one below is feather that's the softness around the area that you're cloning so if you have that up to a hundred percent it will be very soft if you have that down to zero then you'll see a very very hard circle around where you've repaired the opacity is the last one we're gonna leave that a hundred because we want to completely eliminate all of these dust spots we don't want them still ten percent there so placing the cursor over the offending item you can now use the brackets left and right to make the tool bigger and smaller ideally you want to make it as small as possible but comfortably covering the area that you want to clone out so that's a good size for this particular spot here once you've got the cursor in the right position you just simply click and Lightroom will analyze the tones and texture of that area and it will choose an area that it thinks is suitable to copy to that new area so most of the time ninety-nine percent of the time it will get it right so it literally just a case of going around and just clicking on all of these spots now occasionally Lightroom will choose a bad area to copy from I'm going to force it to do that by asking it to copy from down here in the mouth because we're on heal up here and not on clothe all it's doing is it's copying the texture from this area here and it's placing that texture over this area here but it's keeping the color of the original area that we want to clone over if we go to clone you'll see what it does it copies the texture and the color over so now it's copying everything in this circle here and it's putting it in this circle here this is what we don't really want to happen in this situation so here is what you're going to want to use most of the time there are times when clone is more suitable but for this purpose and this exercise we really just want to be copying the texture of the cloud over the cloud I'm just going to carry on clicking here but for now you're going to have to leave me because my 60 seconds is up thanks Marcus hopefully that was useful for you now one thing which many of you have been asking is about is photography or online merchandise and this is something we'd like to make available to you it's a great way for you to support the channel so what I'd like to know is what would you like to see us offer do you want a t-shirt a hat a mug maybe something more novel let me know your thoughts in the comment section we do read every one of them and reply to any questions so don't hesitate to get in touch whatever the message now with most of us be encouraged to stay home recently galio to do photography hasn't been very convenient this is especially the case with wildlife photography but if you have your own garden space or a local park then we've got a couple of ideas for you let's join pro photographer James McCormick along with photographer line expert Nick Hanson and someone called Robin do we have a surname for Robin [Music] the first step towards getting any successful photo it's a concept you need to have a clear idea and a plan for what it is they trying to achieve I wanted to get a shot of a garden bird but not just any shot I wanted something again special something that would stand out the best way to refine an idea such as this is to simply invest time observing the scene and the behavior of the individual birds I noticed a particular Robin which would fly between a couple of regular locations and thus the idea of capture it and fly it was born the obvious thing to do here would have been to use a longer focal length but with the subject small fast and in close proximity this would have been a frustrating challenge in trying to get both the bird composed and focused and all in fraction of a second instead I decided to use a wider angle lens and let the bird compose itself to achieve this I would need to get it feeding from my hand so that I could dictate and predict the path upon which it would fly taming garden Birds is not difficult but it does require patience and persistence I ordered some mealworms online and started by sitting out in the garden allowing the Robin to get used in my presence while occasionally throwing mealworms on the grass he soon got a taste of them and then it was just a case of dropping the treats closer and closer until I had it feed him from my hand I also position the camera on the tripod to get it used to this unusual lump of metal and glass as introducing this at the final stage could potentially have made it weary as you can see no such problem here okay so we have established our tame robin which is a good thing that's taken about a week or so to do so the Robin tends to live in the apple tree over here I've worked out that's the routine of the Robin he flies into the apple tree and he flies backwards across to almost ring line behind us and surveys the garden but basically is watching me the entire time now so the first thing that I considered when conceiving the shot was first of all to get the Robin time obviously and then secondly what sorts of background now we've got beautiful blue skies today so I've decided just to isolate the bird and use nothing other than the sky as a background no trees the oak tree up here it would have worked very well maybe some of the hedgerow maybe not particularly the bungalow which is neighbors bungalow there but other than that there's many choices of background but what I particularly like is the blue sky so the critical thing to remember in a shot like this is the bird has to be pin pin shot we have to get it I shot autofocus will not work it will not be fast enough so the best thing is to switch to manual focus turn the lens all the way using the focus ring there so it's now focused at its closest point is minimal focal distance in order so I know where that third of a meter is below me on the floor here there is actually a marker so I know where to hold the mealworm so that's going to be the plan then hold the mealworm at the right distance the bird comes from the apple tree across in front of the camera press the button shoot as many frames as we can and on this model which is the 5d SR that's not many frames per second but it's the only camera I have with me at the moment so that'll have to do so turn it on manual exposure focus is set four thousandths of a second f4 iso 400 for those that are interested in that kind of thing I could probably have got away with a hundred to thousands were second an f28 but for the sake of it for a little bit of extra depth of field and a little bit more shutter speed I've gone to ISO 400 the Sun is constant nothing is changing and the bird is flying towards the Sun so it should illuminate its face all right it is now up in the apple tree up here so I'm gonna hold the mealworm finger on the trigger just out of shot and get ready and fire away there we go now I got in probably I don't know six to eight actuations there will probably only be one or two where the Robin is in the very center of the frame but hopefully do that a few times over the course of the afternoon in spurts with a light refreshment and hopefully one of the shots will work and come out if you don't have the time or the patience to tame a garden bird you can still achieve great shots of them perched from a distance this is something Nick Hanson has been doing in his own garden I've been observing the birds in the garden for a few weeks now we've been attracted by the seeds and the fat balls which I put out to increase activity now getting a shot of a bird patio feeder isn't really that difficult however it's hardly going to win you any awards and doesn't look very natural with defeated in the shot to get a shot I was going to be happy with I knew I would need to create a custom perch this would need to be positioned close to the feeder so as to give the Robin a place to rest and observe the scene there are three things to consider in creating a custom perch the first being the perch itself and I've been using these three different perches for the past few weeks now they were a rather photogenic piece of decaying wood I have another piece of wood with a rather thin twig on it which won't be very dominant in the frame helping to place more emphasis on my subject and then have a garden Spade which helps to tell a story the second thing to consider is your background you ideally want to position your pair to a maximum distance from the background as a father this is from the perch the more after focus you'll be able to render it you really want an uncluttered clean smooth backdrop void of any vibrant colors lastly you need to consider the direction of light this will obviously change throughout the day but if you plan to be shooting water in the morning when the crowds are likely to be more active then make a note of where the Sun will be at this time in terms of equipment in settings I am using a 100 to 400 millimeter lens but you could get away with using something around 200 millimeter especially if you have a crop sensor but you would just need to position yourself closer to the perch to get the robbing the reasonable size in the frame you want to use a wide aperture probably the widest your lens will allow in my case is there 5.6 so ever I do stop down to have 6.3 or F 7.1 as I find this gives me better quality the two main reasons to use your widest aperture is to get the background suitably soft and also to provide the fastest possible exposure time while the bird is perched it won't be moving much so fast exposure time is not necessary your ISO wants to be as low as possible so if ISO 100 gives a fast enough exposure time at your chosen aperture then use this setting if not then don't be afraid to go to ISO 400 or higher you just don't want to raise this unless it's necessary I always shoot in manual mode as I want all my shots to come out the same exposure if the light isn't changing then there's no need to shoot in any other mode although a tripod is not necessary it will certainly save your arms which will ache if you set hand holding the camera for long periods of time also having the camera on a tripod reduces the amount of movement the bird will see when it lands so you have less chance of scaling it away [Music] now it's simply a case of waiting for the subject to turn up and on a day like this who wouldn't want an excuse to sit out in the garden all day [Music] now one thing which comes in really handy when you're doing wildlife photography and particularly bird photography are these I was gonna say a pair of binoculars but there has been some debate that Nate's cute recently but whether this is the correct term or not half the crew by which I mean Marcus seemed to think it should simply be this binocular as a pair of binoculars would be to the funeral the correct term let us know in the comments anyway regardless of what the correct term is we have these kite optics binoculars to give away and tell us more about than I thought I would get the view of wildlife expert Harry Martin Harry you're a rarely seen with a pair of binoculars around your neck what is about them that makes you take them out with your camera well part of the challenge with wildlife photography is finding the wildlife and a pair binoculars just makes it so much easier and these kite optics binoculars are in particularly quite nice these are a pair of 10 by 42 binoculars a lot of people don't know what they're the numbers mean but the first numbers our magnification and the second is how big the opening is so basically if you magnifications is around 8 or 10 that's a good number and the wider the opening is it's like with photography lenses it's lets more light in and we get a clearer view of our subject so these are a really good balance so anything we've got right over in the distance it's gonna be nice and clear for a soak now I'm quite jealous of the winner of these yeah well we actually drew the winner of these a little bit earlier on today we went out with our bingo wheel and we're pleased to say that the winner was luke case number 269 whose numbers came out of the wheel at random he'll be receiving these binoculars or this binocular with 260 pounds and if you want to find it more about Kate lot expand oculars we've put a link to their website below we actually have a second prize to give away we have got a sensor cleaning kit from visible dust to give away no we do the winner out earlier as well and congratulations to Alan wise whose numbers came out at random he'll be receiving the visible dust kit worth 240 pounds which includes this innovative anti-static brush which we showed you how to use in last month's tool you'll get a brand new one because I want to keep this one I can think of a couple of uses for it actually alright well let's get on with our next feature to cater for the recent resurgence of film photography we launched our analogue affair series and so far we've looked at a couple of medium format cameras so this month we thought we'd do a bit of home film developing this is an area which none of our experts have any experience in whatsoever so team Mara Marcos enrolled the expert help of a familiar face back in the day I used to shoot hundreds sometimes thousands of rolls of film each year and the development of my film was done in a pro lab in London where I would turn up with a bag full of expose film go and get a coffee and admittedly sometimes a cake and then come back 45 minutes later and pick up my photos this was the way things used to be but in the digital revolution arrived and it simply wasn't the volume of film processing to keep every lab busy gradually they dwindled and the 45 minute turnaround service became a thing of the past now today you'll be lucky if you have a local lab which can offer a professional film processing service so it's most likely you'll need to do it by post now I've done this myself and the service from a couple of companies that I've used has been fine for the whole postage has slowed 45 minutes down to three days and that's if the weekend doesn't occur in the middle also paying for two lots of postage doesn't help the whole economy of shooting film so with this in mind I've looked into home developing I mean how hard can it be it's also nice to be in control of every process from conception to capture through to development and then printing this concept to completion is far more practical with digital I reckon it's got the potential to be far more rewarding with a physical product which we can actually touch with my hands so I've got hold of all the gear I need and we'll be linking to all of this below in case you want to know what everything is and where to get it from now although you've probably already gotten a hint I would just like to State for the record I've never done this before I've never developed any film of any kind so my experience is absolutely zero so I thought I would team up with someone who has infinitely more experience in this field I'm right in saying that anti well I've developed the film once in school right well that's infinitely more experienced than I've got so what we're gonna do is I think the best way to do this is I've done a kind of like an idiot's guide step by step done a lot of research on this using the Internet and if I read out the instructions to you and then you just follow my instructions and we'll see how difficult it is so we've got everything that we need here so we'll go through a list you need a changing bag which is this here now this is quite a large one you don't need to necessarily need one this big if you're in doing 35 millimeter film but we'll show you what that does in a minute but you're definitely gonna need that you're gonna need one of these this is a pass and developing tank these come in various sizes but this is the smallest size I think we're just gonna be doing one roll at the moment you're gonna need chemicals so here we're going to be developing slide film today so that's a process known as a six so these are the e6 chemicals but you can also buy c41 chemicals which will be used for color negative film and then of course you've got different chemicals for black and white as well so you're also going to need some storage containers once you've mixed these chemicals and need mixing we'll do that in a minute then you're gonna need some storage containers to keep those mix chemicals in because you can use them more than once you can need a measuring jug a thermometer you're definitely going to need that because the the temperature is critical a film squeegee which is here once we've got the film developed then we're going to need to run that down so that we don't get any drying marks I'm gonna need some hanging Clips which we've got here these basically allow you to hang the film one's got a weight on it so it pulls the film down stops of curling while it dries a stopwatch which just use my phone because everything needs to be timed and the last thing that you'll need is access to hot and cold water you may have guessed that we don't have that hit so once we've done the first part we're then going to move through to the bathroom which is where we'll have access to that there's a bit more space here so first stage is to get the film from this exposed roll onto this empty reel and you can do a bit of practice something with the air blank film okay but the the key is here you can't do it while you're looking at it because obviously we're in daylight here so this is where this change in value into its own and everything needs to be done inside the changing Bay so you can only feel it you can't actually see what you're doing so it's one of those things I think first few times it's probably a lot more tricky than it it was once you get the knack of it so these are my beloved photos so no pressure none at all but once you've loaded the spool obviously you need to put it inside the developing tank and once that's click that's now light tight so then we can bring that out and we can take you through to the bathroom and start pouring the chemicals okay okay are you ready I'm ready are you ready if you're ready let's go all right see how we got on later on in the show now due to travel restrictions that we've been under we've been unable to film our next location in our top 10 Skye series so we'll be continuing that for you in next month's show now though it's time for Kate corner and so far this year we've looked at a couple of top-end cameras the world's longest super zoom lens tripods and filters so it seems only right that we now have something to put them all in so we sent the best-looking member of the team out into the hills to give us their view well I don't know who you were expecting today we're going to be talking about one of the most important pieces of camera gear a camera bag and I don't know about you I find it pretty painful to try and find the right kind of bag there are so many variables depends on where you're planning on if you're planning hiking up a hill if you're probably just going into the city center maybe you just got a small amount of gear maybe you've got loads of different lenses and piece of kit there is no right bag for everyone personally I have this dinky little thing it's the plate term for it the guys call it something else but it works absolutely fine for me it is small but you've just caught maybe one body and a lens it's great now if I open it up you can see there's actually lots or room inside here that's not a bag that's a handbag what are you talking about it's perfectly sufficient for my needs let me show you a bag this is a bag it's a beast I've had this bag for I don't know over 20 years and it's been around the world with me several times yeah it's a good thing about this bag is I can get all my gear in it plus at least ten days worth of clothes but you know where you can get 10 days worth of clothes in there plus all your gear ok well that I take that as a challenge all right here we go got ten socks 10 t-shirts a spare pair of trousers and a fleece on one pair of pants everything you need for 10 days on the road and then the most important item toothbrush because you can't go without a toothbrush for 10 days and the back scratcher so there we go I reckon I could get two weeks worth of stuff in Olo here we go what do you want I just come to see what you're up to we're doing a feature about bags oh well lucky I'm here then I've I've got just the one you want to look at yeah here we go on you you want a bag check out this bad boy you want a bag so what's that that is a think tank mind shift backlight 35 litre and what's good about it what's everything it's a great all-in-one bag I have to carry all my camera gear and you know when I'm up say you know up there on the hill behind you I need everything else that you can carry all the the first-aid kits your spare layers were wrong come on sky for God to say you don't even in the middle of summer you need your thermals on so I can carry everything in that and all my camera gear and my lunch and my dinner and my water but without without looking like a pack horse can you get 10 days worth of clothes a back scratcher a toothbrush and two cameras and for five limbs who invited him did you tell him no I didn't say he's gonna arrive with his alright I've got the best bag anyway here he comes okay okay here's the bag you want the Shimoda explore 40 and why do we want that bag we're looking at your big beastie Oh Marcus I know you always like to have the biggest one besides doesn't always really matter this one's 40 litres does me for a day in the hills no problem so we got hereos got a weak handbag I've got a two-week bag and a and then Bruce got a handbag which is good for like an afternoon we think okay so go on then show us what's good about this bag I have camera body three lenses plenty room for filters and even more start mean I can get you know more water proofs in there as well as far as I know there's no other camera specific bag which allows you to adjust the length of the back I also carry on kept a table I've got another one in the back here which is the worst bag ever made you got your camera and everything in there that's all good this is designed for a laptop look that's gonna fall out of there yeah okay so you now have to do that under there like that so that now that needs to be done up then this goes over here like this then these go in to here like this okay so that's now done up right you just arrived on location the lights fantastic go get your camera hurry up Nick the lights disappearing hurry up I'll get my camera the lights the lights almost gone there'll be another sunrise tomorrow oh these zips are horrendous on this bag here we go so can we see the problem here yes I mean is that just not the worst design ever because they not anything that's in there just ends up cascading down the hill if there was an award for the worst bag ever designed this one would win it hands down so if anybody has this bag here then you just want to throw it away just no no no look if you're gonna throw something do it properly [Laughter] job done so I'm not as Marcus has got inserts that move about you guys have interesting move about but yours the lift they left out the whole thing left so what is the advantage of that so we have the internal camera unit so this is the same type which is in my bag here okay so you've got to the airport discovered that your bag is too too large for carry-on so you can actually take the inset off out and take that as your carry-on and put your the rest of the bag through into the hole and it makes obviously more space in your bag for other things there okay alright well you know we like to give stuff away so I reckon we should give away one of these camera bags and Marcus is I'm afraid it's just a bit too much of a beast so Eric and on the whole Nick we should give away your bag what but obviously not your back I think we've got one that is a bit newer here it is this is an identical bag to the one but you've been showing us Nick exactly same as everything you've seen in Nick's and it comes with everything you've just seen and inserts and also we're giving away an extra insert come on Nick you know you want to thank you so you can actually win all of this worth over theatre pounds I believe in a lovely colour parousia night and all you need to do is go to the link in the description below the video alright so I know I reckon to my bag give me your final arguments for which type of bag you reckon I should replace it with well a couple of main things modular system so you can change your size in the end say if should you wish and so allows you to use the top compartment for you other bits and pieces and the fact that opens on the back of the bag compared to the front so you're not getting the back of the bag dirty when you put it on the ground I like the the top access as you can see the bags are lying Rea flat whereas these ones because you pack everything in on the back of them they lie kind of you know wonky you get way more stuff in these top access bags this one's airline compatible as well obviously that was not so this is the bag for me you know me I like things on the wonk and this is it's very comfortable I can take out all the dividers in this if I need to so I can fit big lenses I can then Pat it all out and it fits all my other stuff but this is why I have a bit of a I've got so many bags and it completely depends on what you need it for your bag is perfect I might borrow this actually it's quite a nice little bag [Music] so as mentioned we're giving away the Shimoda Explorer for t-bag what you saw being used by Nick Plus these internal camera units which will increase the amount of gear you can pack into this thing it's worth around 400 pounds and all you need to do to be in with a chance of winning is put your name in the draw by clicking on the competition link in the description down below you can access all the links by pressing the shore more icon if watching on a desktop or by pressing this down arrow if viewing on a phone or a tablet the competition will be active until June 21st so make sure you enter before then I'll be announcing the winner in our July show now earlier on in this show Harry kick-started our four-part series in mastering exposure let's catch up with a mode to continue part 1 as I explained earlier in the show we prepared our own gray card which you can download and use if you don't have one you can use any gray cards though just make sure that it's a reasonable size something this small it's absolutely no use so make sure it's around a 4 8 by 10 inches something like that we're going to take a series of photos of the card at different exposures and it's essential the light is constant throughout so don't do this on a day when the Sun is going in and out of the cloud or the light is changing in any other kind of way it will only take about a minute to take all the photos you need so just ensure that you start the first one at a time when you know the light will be constant for the following 60 seconds or so ideally you want to lens around a hundred millimeters but as long as you avoid anything wider than about fifty millimeters and longer than 200 millimeters you should be absolutely fine what we want to do is fill the frame with the gray card but avoid getting too close and having to block light that might be illuminating it to place the gray card somewhere where it's not going to move and position your camera on a tripod so that it remains fixed make sure your tripod all yourself is not casting a shadow onto the gray card compose the frame so the camera is looking at a right angle onto the gray card avoiding any flare then manually focus make sure you turn off auto focus so that the camera doesn't try to refocus between shops finally you want to make sure your camera is in manual shooting mode this will not work in any other mode you also want to make sure you're shooting in RAW you can do this exercise in JPEG but you'll find that the dynamic range is gonna be slightly less set your exposure time to one sixtieth of a second and set your ISO to its native setting this is the lowest it will go without going into any extended setting now alter your aperture to your camera's exposure meter displays zero in the middle of the scale if you're unable to achieve this then move to a brighter or darker environment outdoors in the shade or indoors close to a large window on a bright day should provide the perfect amount of luminance as long as your camera's exposure meter reads zero then we should be recording the gray card as a mid-tone we're now going to follow this step-by-step process which we've made available as a free download see the relevant link in a description below step 1 take a photo at one sixtieth of a second ensuring that the camera's exposure meter is displaying zero if it is not then adjust the aperture accordingly it's really important that from now on your aperture and your ISO remained constant which is why we need to be in manual mode make sure your camera is not set to auto ISO step to quickly check the histogram to make sure that the bulk of the graph is in the center as this indicates that you've done everything correctly so far step 3 now take six more photos app following exposure times one hundred and twenty-fifth of a second 250 F of a second 500 for a second you should know as you do those first three that your cameras light meter corresponds accordingly to minus one minus two and minus three stops then carry on with three more one thousandth of a second mm and four thousand what we've just done is taken seven shots each one stop apart covering everything from a mid-tone the shot that we took at one sixtieth of a second all the way through to a pure black time what we're gonna do is do the opposite I'm going to take everything from a mid-tone all the way up to a pure white tone you will now have a total of 13 photos all with a stop of exposure between them step 4 is to transfer these photos onto your computer and label them so they appear in sequential order from the darkest at 1/4 thousandth of a second to the brightest at 1 second now import these 13 photos into Photoshop you can use other image editors but I'm going to use Photoshop here they should automatically appear in the correct order from the darkest on the left to the brightest on the right if they are not in this order please reorder them accordingly simply by dragging the tabs at the top of the screen most photo editing software has a tonal scale of one to two five five with one being a pure black from 255 being pure white activate the info tab in the window menu now I'll place the cursor over the center of the image and look at the red green and blue values known as RGB if your camera has recorded a pure mid-tone which is what it should have done then your RGB values should all be around one to seven however is very unlikely the camera will have achieved a perfect mid-tone so anything in between about 120 and 135 is going to be good enough if one color is much higher or lower in value than the others that it means you have a color cast to the image you should reshoot the images with a neutral color balance assuming your RGB values are fairly similar and are within the range of around 120 to 135 then go to the next brightest shot your one taken a one thirtieth of a second and check the RGB values there they should now be higher keep taking readings from each photo until your RGB value goes above 250 this is essentially now a pure white if you continue to sample any following images you will see that they don't actually get any brighter on the screen because you've essentially reached the upper limit of the range of your camera so I'm going to delete my three brightest images here taking a 1/4 of a second half a second and 1 second as these are all outside the range of my camera now do the same for the photos which are darker than your mid-tone so start with your shot taken up one hundred and twenty-fifth of a second then two hundred and fiftieth of a second and keep going down until your RGB values all read less than five you've now essentially hit pure black any further photos will not get any darker even though they are at a lower exposure so these can be dismissed along with any that are outside of the brighter end of the range if you increase the exposure of the darkest shot within range you should see the photography online logo start to appear and vice-versa if you decrease the exposure at the brightest image within range you should also start to see the photography online logo appear however this will be very subtle so keep a careful eye out I'm now left with a total range of my camera from one four thousandth of a second to an eighth of a second if I count them and it shows my camera has a usable dynamic range of ten stops this is very different from the thirteen and a half stops you'll see quoted from various tests for this camera you'll now probably find that the range of your camera is more biased towards the dark end of the range that means that we've got slightly more dynamic range in the shadows than the highlights in practical terms this means that we're more able to recover detail in the shadows of an image than we are in the highlights of the image and this is very important to bear in mind when we're out taking images in the field once you know your camera's dynamic range you're all prepared to go to the next level we're going to be covering this in the next segment of mastering exposure in July's episode of photography online if you want to give that a try then disturb' having to write it all down we've typed up our step-by-step guide and a minute available for you to download from our website just go to the link section in the description below next month we'll be looking at how to use your camera's exposure meter effectively regardless of what camera you use every part will have loads of relevant information so make sure you catch the rest of the series now earlier on in the short Marcus drafted me in to take full advantage of my film developing experience which was basically one roll of black light film with someone else supervising me I think we both know who's gonna get the if this goes wrong so you're gonna need the scissors you need a roll a reel and you need the developing tank if you put all the those inside the the changing by changing bags come in various sizes but the bigger they are at the larger tank you can use to develop more rolls of film at any time all right I can tell you now even after many practice sessions without the bag it's still not easy doing this without being able to see your hands how's it going so far all right I can feel the tank you can feel the real the scissors and the film okay so you need to pull the tape off of the reel and pull the film out I can feel where the film joins the paper okay so you pull that off then you sure yep okay and I'm gonna attempt to snip the corners off in the dark okay they're lined up your films and don't cut giant coroner's office [Applause] [Music] okay it's on and it's rolling okay I think that's it yeah yeah okay so you can bring your hands out now and we'll see you've done it right about oh that's not on painful are you ready how precious was this film - well this is probably the one where I hyped up a mountain for four hours in the dark okay okay that's not film I know yes yeah so far you've completed step one load film onto spools step two is mix chemicals the mixing of the chemicals is straightforward so don't be afraid to give this a go yourself at home it's simply a case of following the instructions which come with the e6 kit once mixed the chemicals can be stored for up to six months and can be used to develop multiple reels of film so that one needs to be labeled bleach fix but if you're in the know if you if you're down with the kids you can say blix okay I think I'll say bleach fix okay so we head into the bathroom all right for step three will save you from the next 30 minutes before turned out to be the blind leading the blind but basically there are five stages starting with a pre wash which gives a satisfying purple color to the wastewater then it's a case of apply each chemical at the right temperature for the right amount of time it's critical to get this exact otherwise it can affect the exposure color balance and density of the film the good news is is that we're on stage eight out of sixteen sixteen yeah while each chemical is inside the tank the film needs to be agitated every 15 seconds to ensure it gets a consistent coverage as it turns out 15 seconds is an annoying interval too short to be able to do anything useful first time I reckon we're doing pretty well well let's not count our photos until they're developed between each chemical the tank needs to be washed thoroughly with water at the same temperature as the chemicals the final chemical can be applied after the film is taken out of the tank I can take it out yeah you can take it out and then we're just gonna stabilize it although I see photos seeing something oh okay no it's just a case of getting as much water off the film as possible before hanging it up to properly dry once the film is dried it's there in just a case of cutting it into manageable length strips or in this case individual photos and admiring the fruits of your labor on a lightbox so I think we can call that a success yeah I would say so they're stunning was it easier than you thought yeah with your faithful instructions I think we got on pretty well yeah I mean for me I've always historically shied away from doing this because I was always under the impression that the temperature was so sensitive they could easily ruin the film but as we've just proved it's not that difficult to do at all and it's just a case of getting a water temperature up to 38 degrees which is not that difficult and it's no more difficult than getting the exposure right in the camera in the first place and we don't shy away from doing that so I just think that it's far more fulfilling and satisfying than putting a memory card in a computer and watching the photos just pop up on the screen yeah I agree you know getting this hands-on thing in fact you know what I've got a bug for it now I'm gonna go and do these all right well let me give you a hand I do have way more experience than you after all I have to say that that was really fun and true to his word markings did spend the following few hours developing his other rules of film here are some of the results and as we said in the feature there are links to everything you will need to get if you want to try this for yourself to give you an idea of time and cost takes around about 40 minutes once you've got everything prepared and the cost works out around 1.50 parole for the chemicals as with most of our tutorials this month we've created a downloadable PDF with the step-by-step guide that we used just go to our website page or use the direct link down below and do let us know how you get on if you give it a try so the next stage in the process or concept to completion is scanning the film before it can be printed and then framed next month we'll be looking at what's involved in getting a good scan so make sure that you don't miss that so I hope you've enjoyed this month show if you have please let us know in the comments and remember to give us a thumbs up as well if you can i'll see you next time when we venture with a group of photographers to a very special place take the new olympus em1 mark 3 out on the Isle of Man and continue our top 10 views of the Isle of Skye series as well as part two of mastering exposure until then take good care but most of all take nude photos [Music]

Channel: Photography Online

Views: 61,634

Keywords: photography, isle of skye, camera tips, photography trips, landscape photography, photography show, photography online, highlands, scotland, photography tutorials, wildlife photography, photography news, digital photography, adobe lightroom editing, adobe photoshop editing, learn photography, how to take better photos, photography skills, camera skills, photography programme, wedding photography, elopement photography, camera bags, home developing, exposure, robin photography

Id: yuglbC5WbV0

Length: 59min 14sec (3554 seconds)

Published: Sun May 31 2020