My eBook is Out

t-3d-coverA bit more than six months after I seriously began writing my eBook, it is now available for purchase.  I’m both excited and a little nervous to put this out there after so long.  I always heard the description that art is never complete, but only abandoned.  Definitely put that as my experience with this eBook.  Until literally the last day possible, I edited and made changes.  I make no claims of perfection, but I really believe this contains valuable information for anyone either new to photographing of the nude or frustrated with their efforts to do so.  My focus is not on the equipment, but on planning, lighting, and working with the model to get the best results.  My focus is on making art through photography of the nude form.  You find learn more about the book and buy it at http://www.workingwithanakedlady.com/.  Still working on The formatting for the Kindle version that will (hopefully) be available through Amazon early next week.

I’d like to especially thank Melissa Troutt, Katlyn Lacoste, Hannah Perez, Bree Addams, Nyxon, Keira Grant, and Brynn Cook who were especially helpful by doing interviews that are part of the eBook or reviewing parts of the eBook along the way.  You’ll find all those wonderful models quoted in the book along with photos of them and many more.  In the eBook you’ll see photos of:

  • Abree Anna
  • Adrina Lynn
  • Ali
  • Ashley Graham
  • Bree Addams
  • Brynn Cook
  • Carlotta Champagne
  • Charlie Kristine
  • Deanna Deadly
  • Ginger Lee
  • Hannah Perez
  • Katlyn Lacoste
  • Katy T
  • Keira Grant
  • Kimberly Marvel
  • Laura New
  • Lauren WK
  • Melissa Troutt
  • Nyxon
  • Rachel Dashae
  • Velocity
  • Xlcr Moon

It’s been a long ride and over the last month it feels that I’ve done little other than work and edit this eBook.  Writing it turned out to be much more work than I expected, but also more rewarding than I’d expected.  It’s also been the reason I’ve been rather silent on here the last few months with all my writing time focused on the book instead.  I have a lot of shoots to catch up on editing and a lot to post here.  The irony is that I shot quite a bit in November, but had time to edit almost none of it.  I have shoots with some old friends in Melissa Troutt, Adrina Lynn, Charlie Kristine, Nyxon, Katy T, Xlcr Moon coming in addition to some new models in Kerri Taylor, Rachel Dashae, and Briella Jaden.  I also have some material that didn’t make the final book for size or time reasons I hope to put out here sometime soon.

Sample Chapter from my eBook

Below is a sample chapter from my eBook Working with a Naked Lady coming out December 14.  You can find out more information about the eBook at http://www.workingwithanakedlady.com/.

 

Equipment

Let me begin by stating that equipment doesn’t matter as much as you think.  I don’t mean that equipment is unimportant.  I can be a tech head as much as anyone and spend hours discussing the differences between megapixels, sensor sensitivity, and lens specs.  I will spend hours researching any technology related purchase to make sure I find the one that is just a little better.

The truth is that you can have the best equipment and still take crappy photographs.  Great images are being taken every day with camera phones and simple point-and-shoots.  Equipment is a necessity, but knowing how to use your equipment is far more important than the brand or model of your equipment.  To take the photos you have in your mind’s eye, you will rarely find your equipment to be the most important tool.  Knowing what you want to capture and having a plan to do this are more important.

You generally get what you pay for when buying photographic equipment.  I suggest frugality when starting out.  In most cases lenses, cameras, and lights that cost more do so because they have better quality, more capability, faster recovery time, or more features (though there are always exceptions).  As a beginner you probably don’t need many of these more advanced features.  Starting with a beginner DSLR will be adequate.  The key is to buy solid equipment when starting out that you can expand and grow as your needs increase.  Be smart about spending money to get the best bang for your buck.

There are many brands of good cameras and other equipment out there and I’m not going to get into what brand is better because ultimately it doesn’t matter.  You can go out and buy the same guitar and amplifier as Eddie Van Halen or Stevie Ray Vaughn, but when you play it’s still going to sound like you playing the guitar. Likewise you can buy the exact same camera gear as another photographer, but you will be the one taking the photos. You need to know and learn how to get the most out of your equipment. Technical ability is the start, not the end of producing work that you’re proud to show others.

Cameras

We’ll begin with the most basic, and most necessary, of the photographer’s tools, the camera.

I divide cameras in three types.  The first type is the point-and-shoot camera that is usually small and self-contained.  These cameras are generally designed to be simple to operate and compact enough to take everywhere.  They are targeted at casual shooters and work great for the types of photos that most people want to capture – memories of time spent with friends and family.  These cameras will make most of the decisions for you and get decent shots most of the time. 

The second type of camera is the camera built into most new cell phones.  Many cell phones now contain a camera nearly as capable as a point-and-shoot camera.  They also have the advantage of being almost always with you without carrying a second device.

The third type of camera, and the one we’re most concerned with, is the SLR or single lens reflex camera.  These are named for the mirror system that directs light from the lens to either the viewfinder or image sensor/film.  When the camera uses an image sensor instead of film, they are usually referred to as digital SLR or DSLR cameras.  I will largely reference DSLR cameras in this eBook for the times that I reference a camera.  Most of the concepts here are just as appropriate for a film SLR and many even will be relevant to a point and shoot camera or camera phone.

The first obvious difference of the DSLR from the other types is that the DSLR camera will feature lenses that can be changed.  This allows you to choose a lens depending on the type of photos being taken, a feature referred to as interchangeable lenses.  The greatest advantage of the SLR and DSLR comes from this ability to change lenses to match the needs of your shoot.  While many better point-and-shoot cameras will let you tweak exposure settings, a SLR will give you more options and a greater range of settings that give you more control and flexibility.  Most SLR and DSLR cameras also offer a mode that works similar to the point and shoot and makes most of the decisions for you.

You’ll want the extra functionality that a DSLR offers, but don’t feel that you need to buy the top of the line pro model and a dozen different lenses before you take a single photo. Start small and keep things affordable.  Buy a good, basic DSLR to start with and look for a kit that will includes a basic lens in one package.  If you want to splurge, spend the extra money on a better lens.  Be aware you can easily spend more on your second or third lens than you did for your camera body.  By starting small you can learn your equipment.  When you start to hit the limitations of the equipment you have, you’ll know it’s time look at an upgrade.

New cameras and lenses come out everyday.  Any advice that I give here will be outdated by the time you make it to this page of the eBook.  I suggest looking at reviews of the current equipment.  Some resources for sites that I currently like and use when considering new purchases are listed on the web site for this eBook under Book Resources.  Reading a number of sites to get a variety of opinions will serve you well as every reviewer will have biases and preferences that influence reviews.  Before you buy a camera you should definitely hold it in your hands to make sure you like how it feels and can work the buttons and controls easily.  Cameras are one of the items that you really need to touch and try before you buy.

I suggest that you ignore film when starting.  That may seem sacrilege to many, but the truth is that learning with digital will be a simpler process.  As a photographer of the nude you can’t just drop your photos off at the local pharmacy to develop.  You will likely need to find a specialty developer willing to work with nudes or learn to develop your own photos.  Developing your own photos will require a darkroom space, chemicals, and equipment.  I primarily work in digital, but do own and occasionally use a film SLR.  If you feel the desire to move in that direction, by all means follow that interest at some point.  Starting with digital will still make things easier while learning.

And just for the record, I use a Canon camera.

Lenses

Without a lens, your DSLR is just a camera body.  As mentioned under cameras, you will often find kits offered that pair a camera body with a basic lens.  The job of the lens is to collect light and bring it to the sensor in the camera.  As a photographer there are two primary aspects of a lens you should be concerned about: focal length and aperture.

Focal length, usually measured in millimeters (mm), notes the distance from the center of the lens to the sensor when focusing at a point an infinite distance away.  Because of the way lenses are manufactured this might not be the physical center of the lens.  Think of it as a measure of the field of view or how much of what’s in front of you the camera will capture.  A lens with a low focal length will capture a wide field of view or a wide angle of the scene in front of you.  The scene will also appear further away.  In fact you can capture a wider angle than you can see with the unaided eye.  A lens with a high focal length will zoom in to a scene and show you a narrow field of view.  The scene will also appear closer to the viewer.  A lens with a low focal length will also be called a short lens and one with a high focal length will also be called a long lens.

image001image002

Photo 3 – In both these images the model and I remained at same location, but I changed the focal length.  I shot the photo on the left at 40mm and the photo on the left at 51mm.  Notice that the objects in the photo taken with a larger focal length appear larger and that background objects in that photo appear closer to the model.

If you wanted to take a picture of an entire valley from a mountain, you would use a short lens and therefore a wide angle.  If you wanted to take a picture of just a cabin in that valley you would use a long lens.  Generally a focal length of around 50mm is considered to record a scene the way the naked eye sees it.

There is a complication on focal length specific to digital cameras.  The focal length of a lens generally is given relative to the traditional 35mm film size.  To reduce cost, many digital cameras use a sensor smaller than this 35mm size.  The smaller sensor results in what is called a crop factor.  This is the ratio that the smaller sensor changes the focal length of the lens.  For my Canon T2i this ratio is about 1.6 which means that a lens showing a focal length of 50mm will actually function as 50mm x 1.6 or 80mm would on a 35mm sensor.  The result is that I get a tighter field of view than I otherwise expect for the focal length of the lens with this camera.  Therefore if I want a result of a 50mm lens on a cropped sensor, I must use a lens showing a smaller focal length.  On my 1.6 ratio camera, this means I’d need to use a 50 mm / 1.6 or about a 30mm lens.

Using a lens with a small zoom will make objects appear further apart in distance from the camera than a long zoom of the same scene.  Think of a wide angle as stretching the distance between objects in the scene while a zoomed lens compresses this distance and makes objects appear closer together.  You can use this to either shrink or stretch the apparent depth of your scene.

Some lenses have a fixed focal length that cannot be varied.  These lenses are referred to as prime lenses.  Other lenses will transition through a range of focal lengths and are known as zoom lenses.  Zoom lenses are popular because of the flexibility, but this flexibility comes with some loss of clarity since the lens must work through a larger range of settings.  You also will usually find a smaller widest aperture in a zoom lens compared to a fixed lens of similar cost.

We will discuss aperture later, but for now know that a lens will usually be marked with the largest aperture it will support.  A fixed lens will have a single number, while a zoom lens will usually state the largest aperture the lens supports at each end of the lens’s zoom range.  You will hear the terms fast and slow to describe a lens.  This is in reference to the maximum aperture of the lens.  A lens with a maximum aperture of f/5.6 is slower than one with a maximum aperture of f/4.5.  A greater maximum aperture produces a faster lens.

For most work I use a zoom lens with a range of 18mm to 135mm. In addition I often use 24mm and 50mm fixed lenses.  Those fixed lenses have a larger maximum aperture than the zoom lenses allowing use in darker conditions or to produce a smaller depth of field.

Each camera brand usually has a specific mount and only lenses made for that mount will work with the camera.  Camera manufacturers generally only produce lenses for their specific camera and these usually work across models.  Many third party lens makers produce their lenses with a mount compatible with each of the major camera brands.  You can also find adapters that will let you use some lenses, especially older film SLR lenses, with older mounts on newer cameras.  These adapters usually do not support the automatic features the lens offers such as automatic focusing.

A better lens will provide more improvement in the quality of your photos more than a better camera body.  You will be better served upgrading your camera lenses before buying a new camera body.  In fact when you start running into limitations in your equipment you likely will find it in the kit lens before the camera that you bought with the lens.  As long as you stay with cameras with the same mount (generally the same brand) then your lens investment will come with you as you buy new camera bodies in the future.  The one exception will be if you buy a lens specifically designed for cameras with a cropped sensor and you later purchase a camera with a full size sensor.  In this case the lens may no longer work.

Memory Cards

Each photo that you take will require an amount of memory to store on the camera.  The device that the photo is stored onto is known as a memory card.  A few cameras include a small amount of built in memory to store images, but you will want or need a memory card to store the images taken by your DSLR camera.  There are two common types of memory cards you’ll find in digital cameras.  The first is the small, thin SD card and the second the larger Compact Flash card.  They are not interchangeable.  You should make sure which type your camera uses before buying a memory card.

The camera sensor size is measured in megapixels.  While many photo formats use compression to reduce the size of the photo, you can assume that the megapixel gives a good indication of the size of each photo captured by your camera.  Most memory cards will state on the packaging the approximate number of images they hold for a given megapixel camera.  I suggest buying at least two memory cards as it will give you a spare to use if you fill up one during a shoot or one malfunctions during a shoot.  Swapping cards only takes a few seconds while copying images off a card can take several minutes.

Memory cards will be rated with a maximum speed they can transfer data.  A faster card allows data to be written more quickly and therefore clears the camera buffer more quickly for new data.  You will want a higher speed card if shooting images in fast succession with your camera often called “burst mode.”  If shooting video on your DSLR, you will likely find it requires a minimum card speed.  The manual for your camera will provide this information.  On my Canon T2i a class 10 card or better must be used for video.

I’ve known photographers who use a different card for each set and then let the photos copy off the card while they begin the next set of images.  This minimizes the risk of losing photos if a card goes bad.  I do believe it’s a good idea to get the images off a card as quickly as possible and I never erase the images off a card until I’ve verified they copied correctly.

Other Equipment

You can conduct successful shoots with those three pieces of equipment.  After you have worked for a while you will likely find two items that you may want look to add to your equipment.  One will be artificial light sources and the second will be a light meter.  Both of these we will discuss in the section of this eBook on light.

Know Your Equipment

No matter what equipment you own you must learn to use it.  As boring as it may be, read the manual that came with your camera, flash, or other equipment.  If you don’t like the manual (or as happens too often happens the manual was badly written or translated) most popular brands of cameras have books that delve into the operation of your specific model of camera.  There may be features that would be valuable, but not obvious from the controls.  Ultimately equipment is your tool in photography.  You would learn to properly work your new chainsaw before trying to cut down a tree, and you need to learn your camera equipment properly.  While you are less likely to cut off your leg if you don’t read your camera manual, you are just as likely to not get the results you want.

Announcing the eBook Working with a Naked Lady

Last year I started a series on this blog that I’d hoped to turn into a how to series. Basically I wanted to go through the things that I’d learned since starting to photograph the nude and share the lessons and experiences.  I quickly realized that I couldn’t keep posting at the rate I’d hoped and I ended up setting the project to the side. I didn’t give up on the idea though and after a little encouragement this spring started looking at the notes I’d made and what I’d written with the idea of turning it into an eBook.

This summer I began working on that eBook. I wanted to cover the things I wish I’d known when I first picked up a camera and asked someone to pose nude for me. Too many photographers focus on just the technical side of photograph.  While it is important to get lighting correct and I think too many photographers and books for new photographers overlook the even more important aspects of working with models and moving from just snapping pictures of a pretty woman to trying to create something deeper.

Many hours later I’ve almost completed the eBook and am ready to announce it. How to Work with a Naked Lady be available for purchase beginning on December 14, 2011. The book is right now at 119 pages (that may vary a page or two as I finish editing) and contains forty photographs (that will probably increase a bit as I finish editing). I plan to have it available as a PDF file and also on the Amazon Kindle and it will be priced at $9.99.

I also interviewed and discussed what I cover in the book with several experienced and talented models.  Many of them have appeared on this blog before and include Melissa Troutt, Katlyn Lacoste, Bree Addams, Hannah Perez, Keira Grant, and Nyxon. Their input and feedback directly influenced the contents of the book. I address the problems they’ve seen, the things they wish photographers did, and what they need from during a shoot to get the best work. This isn’t just me providing advice, but also advice and suggestions from models about what you should and shouldn’t do.

More info about the book can be found at http://www.workingwithanakedlady.com/.  I should have a sample chapter up in a few days along with some sample content from.  You can sign up to be notified as updates are published to the site and when the book is available.  There will be a special discount for everyone who signs up before December 14.

Exposure – Building Your Image

Exposure is the amount of light you allow to reach the film or image sensor when you take a photo.  This amount of light is largely determined by the aperture and shutter speed you set along with the ISO of your image sensor or film which we covered in the last article.

A scene has an exposure that determines the amount of light needed to correctly light the scene.  The exposure needed for a scene is generally measured in exposure values or EV.  An EV of zero represents the exposure obtained from an aperture of f/1 along with shutter speed of 1 second and an ISO of 100.  Every change you make that halves the amount of light such as doubling the shutter speed or halving the aperture will increase the exposure by 1 EV.  So a scene with an EV of 5 represents half the light that an EV of 4 does.  This means that an aperture of f/5.6 (which is 5 stops or ½ x ½ x ½ x ½ x ½ the light) with the shutter speed left at 1 second and ISO left at 100 would result in an EV of 5.  If we leave the aperture at f/5.6 and reduce our shutter speed to 1/125 of a second while leaving the ISO at 100, we would now have an EV of 12 as 1 second to 1/125 of a second is 7 stops (or ½ x ½ x ½ x ½ x ½ x ½ x ½) less light.

Most digital cameras can meter a scene and provide a pretty accurate exposure in most cases.  This is usually a mode on the camera called something like automatic or automatic exposure.  There might be several of these modes that give varying degrees of freedom to control settings other than shutter speed and aperture.  The camera does this by analyzing the amount of light that is reflected off of the scene and back to the camera.

You can also use a light meter to determine the exposure for a scene.  Most light meters can measure the light reflected back much as the meter inside your digital camera does.  You can also use a light meter to measure the amount of light that is falling on the scene directly.  This is called incident light.  We will talk about light meters and using them in the next entry in this series.

There are also a few handy rules of thumb that can give you the exposure needed for a scene.  The rule of 16 is a common one that states on a sunny day the correct exposure would be achieved with an ISO of 100, an aperture of f/16 along with a shutter speed of 1/100 second.

However you arrive at the exposure needed for the scene, once you have it the next task is to determine what combination of shutter speed, aperture, and ISO that you wish to use to produce this light.  You will generally be mostly concerned with aperture and shutter speed with the ISO set to allow correct exposure.  As we mentioned in the last article, shutter speed primarily allows you to freeze or show motion while aperture allows you to control depth of field or how much of your photo is in focus.  After setting either aperture or shutter speed depending on what you wish to do in the photo, you must then set the other along with the ISO to produce the correct exposure to capture an image.

Once you have set the three to produce the perfect exposure you will sometimes find that things are a little off.  The shutter speed may be a little too long allowing blurring of the subject or the aperture may be too large blurring parts of the image you wish to keep in focus.  The benefit of knowing exposure is that you can adjust these values and keep them in balance.  The concept of the stop, a change that doubles or halved the amount of light falling on the sensor, allows us to make an adjustment and keep the exposure in balance.

For example if your image is taken with a shutter speed of 1/60 second, and ISO of 100, and an aperture of f/5.6.  You find that the subject of you photo is moving too much and blurry.  So you decide to reduce the shutter speed to 1/125.  This halves the amount of light reaching the sensor so you’ve decreased the exposure one stop.  To compensate you must either increase the aperture one stop to f/4 or decrease the ISO one stop to 50.

This also allows you to make compensations if your image is underexposed (too little light reaching the sensor) or overexposed (too much light reaching the sensor).  If your image is overexposed then you can decrease the aperture or shorten the shutter speed will reduce the amount of light falling on the sensor.  A small adjustment will bring a slightly off image into balance.

The digital camera is the perfect tool for learning exposure because your results show immediately through the LCD on the back along with the ability to display the histogram for each image.  Looking at the image on the back will visually allow you to tell if the image doesn’t look right.  The histogram is a graph that represents how light is distributed in your photo.  The left end represents the shadows or dark areas of the photo while the right end represents the highlights or bright areas.  In the middle are the mid-tones of your photo.

A properly exposed image should look like a nice gentle curve starting at zero on the left, be higher in the middle, and then drop down to zero again on the right like this:

image

An underexposed image the histogram will show will be shifted to the left starting above zero on the left usually meaning there is image data “lost” in the shadows.  In an overexposed image, the histogram will be shifted to the right ending with the histogram at above zero meaning that there is data likely lost in the highlights.  Don’t worry as much about the heights of the bars or the overall shape, but if there is a sign that data is being lost off either the right or left side.

image             image

With digital cameras it is easier to correct underexposure than overexposure.  If you shoot in RAW mode (more about this to come) then you can pull data out of a slightly underexposed image, but things in an overexposed area are usually lost.

The Three Key Concepts –Shutter Speed, Aperture, and ISO

 

When it comes to photography, the most important element that you must master is light. I’ve heard photography referred to as painting with light. That is because the basic element of your image is exposure, the amount of light that falls on the film or image sensor when taking a photograph. It sounds like a simple concept, but as with most simple things there are complications. Today we are going to talk about the three basic elements that together make up exposure. The three elements are shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. Let’s take each of these individually first. Balancing these elements to achieve the results that you want in your photos will be a crucial skill in bringing your artistic vision to your photographs.

Shutter Speed

Shutter speed is simply how long the shutter is open and the film or image sensor is exposed to light. It should be obvious that the longer the shutter is open, the more light will reach the sensor and the brighter the image will be. The other effect of leaving the shutter open longer is that any motion by the subject will appear on the final image. This can sometimes be a desirable effect. For example when photographing a waterfall you will often want the movement of the water over the falls to show on the image and this can be achieved by lengthening the time the shutter is open. In general fast shutter speeds freeze motion while a slow shutter speed will blur motion.

Shutter speeds are expressed in a fraction of seconds. A digital SLR camera will normally show only the bottom part of the fraction. For example a shutter speed of 1/200 of a second, meaning the shutter is open for one two hundredth of a second, will usually show on the camera as 200. Times greater than or equal to one second will normally show the number or seconds along with an indicator, often an s, to show that it should be seen as seconds and not a fraction of a second. A change in the shutter speed that either doubles (for example changing from 1/200 to 1/100) or halves it (changing from 1/200 to 1/400) will double or halve the amount of light that reaches the sensor respectively. This change is often referred to as a stop.

The biggest problem that can occur with longer shutter speeds is camera shake, where the movement of the camera causes the image to blur. It takes surprisingly little movement to introduce a blur into the image. A good rule is that with a steady hand you can generally use an exposure of 1 over the focal length of the lens or shorter without worrying about camera shake. With image stabilization on the camera or lens or developing a way to steady your hand, you can often get away with a longer exposure than that rule would indicate. For very long exposures a tripod can provide a stable camera platform.

Most cameras have a mode call shutter priority mode that allows you to set a desired shutter speed and the camera will determine the aperture to provide a proper exposure.

Aperture

Where shutter speed determines how long light is allowed to reach the sensor or film, aperture is how large the opening light comes through is set. As you might guess the larger the aperture, the brighter the image with the shutter speed and ISO set the same as more light will be allowed in to the image.

The effect of aperture on an image is to control the depth of field, or how much of your image is in focus. You can think of depth of field as the distance in front of and behind the point of focus or focal point of your image that will be in focus. A larger aperture will have a smaller depth of field than a smaller aperture. So the larger your aperture, the more of the image will be in focus. Commonly in portrait photography, the aperture is set to be large so the subject is in focus and the background will be softly blurred. In a landscape image you would normally want a small aperture so the entire landscape is sharp and crisp.

Aperture is expressed in terms of f-stops such as f/2, f/4, etc. Again as with shutter speed most cameras only show the number so that f/2 will be shown by the camera as 2 and f/22 will be shown by the camera as 22. When determining if you have a large or small aperture, remember that these are fractions so an aperture of f/2 (shown on the camera as 2) will actually be larger than an aperture of f/4 (shown on the camera as 4). Moving from one aperture (such as f/4) to the next (such as f/5.6) is referred to as one stop. Note that a stop is not quite a simple doubling or halving of the number as it is with shutter speed (and ISO to come). A list of the full stops you’ll encounter most are:

f/2 f/2.8 f/4 f/5.6 f/8 f/11 f/16 f/22 f/32

Moving from one of these to the next is a full stop. Many camera lenses will have settings between these full stop values that are either ½ or 1/3 of a stop each. For example the lens I have on my camera right now gives me these aperture options:

f/4.5 f/5 f/5.6 f/6.3 f/7.1 f/8 f/9 f/10 f/11 f/13 f/14 f/16 f/18 f/20 f/22 f/25 f/29

Each lens will have a range of f-stops that it is capable of providing. The minimum and maximum apertures the lens is capable of will normally be printed on it or in the documentation with the lens. You will often hear the terms fast and slow to describe a lens. This is in reference to the maximum aperture of the lens. A lens with a maximum aperture of f/8 is slower than one with a maximum aperture of f/4.5.

Most cameras have a mode that allows you to set the aperture to a desired value and the camera will calculate the appropriate shutter speed to produce a correct exposure.

ISO

ISO is how sensitive that your film or sensor is to light. This is measured as ISO or ISO equivalent for digital cameras. The normal ISO for outside on a sunny day is 100. A doubling scale is used with ISO and most digital cameras will start at ISO 100 and go up from there. Increasing the ISO will produce a brighter image with the shutter speed and aperture left constant.

Most digital cameras produce the best quality image at their lowest ISO setting. As you increase the ISO you will begin to introduce unwanted noise into the image. This noise will usually appear in a digital image as a multicolor grain or dots in the image. Some sensors will see more noise than others, but as ISO increases an increase in noise is unavoidable. Most modern digital cameras can produce acceptable images even at higher ISO values. If quality of the image is most important, then you want to use the lowest ISO value that you can.

Now that we’ve discussed the three basic concepts, next time we will discuss more how they relate with the idea of exposure and how to use them together to get the images that you want.

Advice for Beginners Series … Begins

Recently I had someone ask me for advice about buying a new camera.  They were looking for something more advanced than the point and shoot model they’d had in the past and wanted a more advanced digital SLR camera.  While they have no interest in using it for the same type of photography that I do, it brought to mind something that I’d first considered back when I worked with Melissa in late March.  Working with her again almost four years after our first shoot gave me a chance to consider some of the things that I’d learned between the two shoots.  So I’m beginning a series of posts today written for anyone thinking about or just starting to do nude photography.  I hope to cover equipment, basic concepts, locations, finding models, working with models, and some tips and ideas to get started.  My goal is not to cover every detail or concept about creating great nude photos, but to share some tips and advice from what I’ve learned over the last four years.  Basically these are the things that I wish I’d known back when I first started.

In this first post we’ll start with equipment.  This will be a short one because to be honest equipment doesn’t matter as much as most people think.  I say that as someone who will spend hours researching any technology related purchase. There are basically two types of cameras.  The first types consists of point and shoot models that are mainly designed for simple operation.  They make most of the decisions for you and are often very compact.  These are great for the types of photos that most people want to make.  That is quick shots to capture memories with friends and family.  The second type is the SLR or single lens reflex camera named for the mirror system that directs light from the lens to either the viewfinder or image sensor/film.  When the camera uses an image sensor instead of film, they are usually referred to as digital SLR or DSLR cameras.  The first obvious difference of the DSLR from the point and shoot is that the DSLR camera will be larger.  It also features interchangeable lenses that can be changed depending on the type of photos being taken.  They also normally offer much greater control when taking the photo.  The other big advantage is that what you see through the viewfinder is exactly what photo you will take.  Many DSLR cameras also offer a way to preview effects such as depth of field that will be seen on the final photo which is critical in certain types of photography.  You may have guessed that you’ll want the control and features that a DSLR offers for any kind of advanced photography.  Artistic nude photography in particular often needs careful lighting and control that only a DSLR can provide.

There are many brands of good cameras and other equipment out there and I’m not going to get into what brand is better because ultimately it doesn’t matter as much as most people think.  You can go out and buy the same guitar and amplifier as Eddie Van Halen or Stevie Ray Vaughn, but when you play it’s still going to sound like you playing the guitar. Likewise you can buy the exact same camera gear as your photography hero, but you will be the one taking the photos. You need to know and learn how to get the most out of your equipment. Technical ability is the start, not the end of producing work that you’re proud of showing to others.

As I stated, you’ll want the control and extra functionality that a DSLR offers, but don’t feel that you need to buy the top of the line pro model and a dozen different lenses before you take a single photo. Start small and keep things affordable.  Photography equipment can be expensive and it’s easy to spend a lot of money very quickly if you’re not careful.  By starting small you can learn your equipment and when you start to hit the limitations of the equipment that you have, you’ll know it’s time look at an upgrade.  A couple of sites that I like and use when considering new purchases are Digital Photography Review and Digital Camera Resource Page.  Reading a number of sites to get a variety of opinions will serve you well and before buying any camera you should definitely hold it in your hands to make sure you like how it feels and can work the buttons and controls easily.

And just for the record, I use a Canon camera.

Once you have a camera, you will likely want at least one light.  Natural light and sunlight can go a long way (and for some things may be all that you need), most photographers of the nude will want at least one flash.  Again starting small with a single light is a good path to take. For good examples and demonstrations of what can be done with just one flash, check out Strobist.  The Lighting 101 article there is a great place to start, but ultimately you will need to learn lighting by practice and experimentation.  Learn to use one light and use it well before you begin to buy or bring in more lights.

One other piece of equipment to consider is a light meter.  There is a lot of debate on whether you really need one given the digital camera’s ability to let you see results instantly on the back of the camera.  After a long time in that camp, I’ve recently started using a light meter in shooting and am finding it quite useful, especially when working with rapidly changing outdoor conditions and complex lighting effects.  I’ll discuss using a light meter in a later entry, but for now I’m going to suggest getting a light meter, but also state that you can get along without one for quite a while.

I’ve tried to suggest frugality in your equipment.  You do get what you pay for to a degree in photography equipment.  In most cases lenses, cameras, and lights that cost more do so because they have better quality or more features (though there are always exceptions).  That said, for a beginner, you probably don’t need many of these advanced features.  The key is to buy solid equipment when starting out, but to be smart about spending money.  Good reviews are your best route here as any advice I give today on models will be outdated next week.

In our next article in the series, we’ll discuss the three basic concepts of photography you must learn: ISO, aperture, and shutter speed.