A fabulous 40 gigapixels

Do you remember the 80 gigapixel panorama of London that we featured in November? (No? Here’s a reminder.) Well, the guy behind it, Jeffrey Martin, has just unveiled a 40 gigapixel picture taken of the Philosophical Library of the Strahov Monastery in Prague, Czech Republic. This, apparently, makes it the largest ever indoor picture. Forty gigapixels is a lot of pixels, people. If it were printed out, the picture would be 23 long and 12 metres tall. Nope, that won’t fit in the Small Aperture Mansion.

The picture – okay, 2,947 images that have been stitched together – was shot on a Canon 550D with a 200mm lens. It took five days to capture. I don’t want to think about how long it took to edit. You want to know? Deep breath, then: over 110 hours. I go goggle-eyed after a just a few hours of editing. The detail on it is so fine that you can see the brushstrokes on the ceiling’s Baroque fresco and the creases in the spines of the library’s 40,000-odd volumes.

I think I might’ve just lost a chunk of my evening dedicated to zooming in and zooming out of this. You can do so, too, on the 360cities website.

(Headsup to TechCrunch.)

Lightroom from the inside

When I reviewed Lightroom 3 back last year (such a hard life, I know), I realised that I was amassing a bundle of questions for the people who developed it. Everything from ‘What was the starting point?’ to ‘Which camera do you use?’ Adobe very kindly agreed to let me loose on one of their developers, and I was even allowed to put some of your questions to him, too. This is what Tom Hogarty had to say about Lightroom.

Tom has worked for Adobe for almost six years and he’s the Principal Product Manager for Lightroom, the Camera Raw plug-in, and the DNG file format. Before then, he worked in New York with commercial and fashion photographers, helping them to transfer from film to digital workflow. Ever get the feeling someone knows more about your workflow than you do?

The best photo-editing package available?

Team Small Aperture are all Lightroom users, and right now we can’t see us trying anything else. When we asked Tom if Lightroom’s founding principle was to be the best photo-editing package out there, he was very modest about it and reminded us that Mark Hamburg was responsible for the concept behind Lightroom.

But, he did say that he and his team are committed to creating a product that’s easy to use and maintains the highest image quality possible. Whilst Photoshop has a rich history of serving the photographic community, it also caters to a diverse set of customers ranging from pre-press professionals and graphic designers to medical imaging experts. Lightroom, on the other hand, focuses solely on the photographic experience.

And it isn’t just for professionals, either. It might be engineered to meet and exceed a pro’s expectations, but it is meant to be approachable for anyone who’s interested in photography. That degree of professionalism is of course reflected in its price. There are a heap of other editing suites available, at all different prices, but Tom rightly points out that photography is an industry that is full of choice. (In the first six weeks of 2011, over 100 new cameras have been launched.) Lightroom’s another choice, and one that the team believes offers value commensurate with its price.

Editing that pushes creativity

I was really interested to hear Tom’s response to the charge that editing packages are the spawn of the devil and the clamour that they’re detrimental to the art of photography because people are so reliant on software rather than their own skill. He said that in the film days, people might have said the same about roll film, automated film processing, darkroom densitometers, and the introduction of robust in-camera metering systems.

For Tom, it’s all about the expansion of the art form as technology supports creativity and experimentation, and that’s a good thing. And he’s fortunate to work with a bunch of incredibly talented engineers who seem to have no limit to their imagination to push editing software as far as they can.

Consumers, cameras, and snack-foods

Seeing as Lightroom is about the user experience, I wanted to know how much of the alteration from Lightroom 2 to Lightroom 3 came from consumer feedback, as well as the team’s own experience of using it. It turns out that a whole heap of different sources contribute to each iteration of Lightroom, from quantitative customer satisfaction research, customer visits, public beta releases, discussions with industry leaders, internal engineering efforts to discover where technology can take the product, and of course the team’s own daily use of Lightroom.

If you’re wondering what camera Tom uses so that he can test out his own work, he has access to the photographic lab at his office and he can, and does, swap equipment quite regularly. (Are you going green yet?) He’s biased towards anything that captures in RAW and has HD video, but most importantly, seeing as he has two small children, it’s about having a camera at all, so that might be his phone. But that doesn’t stop him from picking up a film-based medium format rangefinder every now and again!

So, with all these cameras at his disposal, where would he most like to go in the world to take photos? (Don’t ask me this question. I still don’t know the answer.) Well, actually he’d really like to be able to open his eyes wider and see the images that are all around him. He’s been lucky enough to go all over the world shooting people and places, but is still amazed by the ability of his colleague Kelly Castro to find more compelling images on his way to lunch in San Jose, than he can find in a year!

And finally, I rather flippantly asked what snack-foods sustained Tom when he was up against a deadline. He admitted that he’s a chocolate fiend, and there’s a jar in the kitchen at the office. As well as a fridge of Diet Coke. So now we know that Lightroom runs on sugar. I’d always thought it was hamster-powered.

Your questions

Tom very kindly agreed to answer some technical questions from Small Aperture and Photocritic readers, too. He couldn’t manage all of them, so here’s a selection.

Jacob asked: ‘What makes Lightroom 3 better than Aperture 3?’
Tom: I prefer not comment specifically on other products. But I do know that Lightroom’s focus on image quality, application performance and community interaction has made it a favourite of the professional community. You can read more on that here.

Jonathan Bourke asked about the future availability of some features. Tom replied he prefers not to speculate on future feature direction. But, he could point him in the direction of some solutions to some of the points:

• Export to FTP (not the web module) – This is provided as part of our SDK and has been productised here
• Export to WordPress – A WordPress plug-in is available here

Sorry, looks as if you’ll have to wait to find about face recognition and the ability to customise keyboard shortcuts!

Edgar Malle asked: ‘What is the purpose of the extra checkbox “Enable Auto Import”. Why not just auto-import it?’
Tom: Through our testing and customer feedback we realised this functionality needed an on/off switch.

Many thanks to Tom for taking the time to respond to us. If you’d like to follow what he and the Lightroom team are up to, check out the Lightroom blog and Tom’s Twitter feed.

Krome: outsourcing your editing

We’ve reviewed all sorts of editing suites here on Small Aperture: free ones, cheap ones, and not-so-cheap ones. Some won our affections whilst others left us hyper-ventilating with frustration. But they were all aimed at people who have the time, the inclination, and the skill to edit their own pictures. What if you don’t have any of these things?

What if you’re a bit like my mother? The camera only comes out on holiday or at special events. You take okay pictures that with a bit of tweaking could be good, or even really good. But honestly, you don’t know what you’re doing when it comes to editing and really, you can’t be bothered.

Step forward Krome.

It’s a paid-for editing service. You upload and organise your images, and someone who does know what they’re doing crops them, fiddles with the contrast, corrects the colour, and does anything else that might make an average snap look like a decent photo. If they don’t think that an image needs any help, or if it’s beyond help, they won’t touch it and you won’t get charged. You can choose from a one-off service, which costs up to 25c a picture, or a monthly subscription that starts from 12.5c a picture.

But is it worth it?

I uploaded 11 of my photos and let my assigned editor loose on them. (And of course I gave them an edit myself, for comparison purposes.) Twenty-four hours later, when they were ready, how did things look? Well, some results surprised me, some also disappointed me, and others pleased me. I won’t take you through all 11; I’ll show you three examples.

The disappointments

Oddly, all three images that I would have sent back to be re-edited (which is free) were portraits. This one happens to be of my brother.

Original, unedited:

My brother, composing

Edited by Krome, and in my opinion over-sharpened:

Over-sharpened by Krome?

Edited by me, and sent black and white:

Josh, in black and white

The surprises

A few images came back and surprised me. They were by no means bad edits. They just weren’t how I envisaged they’d come back. If nothing else, it shows you a different creative vision. And I suppose for people who want creative control over their pictures, this is where Krome falls down, even if you can leave notes on each photo for your editor. She or he isn’t in your head. But, if creative control isn’t top of your agenda, and editing is just about having a better picture, what does it matter?

Original:

It's a dahlia. I think it looks as if it came from outer space

Edited by Krome, and far more vibrant than I expected:

Far more vibrant than I would have expected

Edited by me, and more muted:

A muted version of the alien dahlia

The thumbs-up

Some photos came back looking almost identical to my edited versions of them. I couldn’t really ask for better than that.

Original:

This is Incy Wincy. She took up residence by the dining room of the Small Aperture mansion in the autumn.

Edited by Krome:

Incy Wincy, edited by Krome

Edited by me:

Incy Wincy, me-style

The verdict?

For me, editing photos is part of the package of practising the craft of photography. Sometimes it frustrates me, sometimes it delights me, sometimes I surprise myself with it. But it is an important part of my creative enterprise, of me making my photos look as I think they should look. So Krome isn’t for me.

But, I reckon that Krome could supply a service for people who don’t really know what they’re doing with editing tools, and perhaps aren’t really that bothered, they just want their photos to look better. It’s pretty simple to use – although you do have to download a special image uploader, which struck me a little odd – and if you don’t like the edits made to a picture, you can send it back.

If you’re not convinced about people outsourcing their editing, think of this way: I pay people to do jobs that I can’t do well, or can’t be bothered doing. For some people, the job that they can’t be bothered to do, or aren’t very good at, is editing photos. So there’s Krome.

Merry Christmas!

We’re going to be taking a few days’ break over the festive season. All our opinionated ranting takes it toll! We’ll be back in the New Year ready to rock and roll again.

Until then, everyone at Small Aperture would like to wish you a merry Christmas and a happy, healthy, and peaceful New Year.

November photo competition winner!

Hello and welcome to the Small Aperture November photo competition awards ceremony. Please do help yourself to some birthday cake – it’s lemon, which is my favourite – and a glass of champagne or cup of tea. November’s theme was darkness, and there were some cracking entries. Haje and I had a tough time choosing a winner. After we’d narrowed it down to three contenders, there was a bit of back-and-forth to settle on an over-all victor. So well done and thank you to everyone who entered.

We’re delighted, however, to announce our winner:

Untitled, by Jonathan Horst.

Many congratulations to Jonathan. If you’d like to get in touch with me via email, I shall arrange for your prize to be sent to you!

Please do take a look at all the entries, which you can see here. And December’s theme will be announced very soon. We hope that you’ll enter that one, too!

October photo competition winner!

Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. Welcome to our announcements show for the results of the Small Aperture October photo competition, the theme for which was long exposure. If the sun is over the yard-arm where you are, please help yourself to some virtual champagne and canapes. If that’s slightly early for you, or you don’t drink, we have a selection of virtual teas, coffee, fruit juices and pastries for your delectation.

We received some great entries (you can see them all here), and Haje and I enjoyed the selection process. We are, therefore, delighted to unveil the winner:

'Swingspace 1' by Samuel Hall

Many congratulations to Samuel Hall for his photo ‘Swingspace 1′. If Samuel would like to get in touch with me via email, I can arrange for his awesome prize to be sent to him!

The November competition is coming up shortly. We’re looking forward to judging that one.

What time is it? Oh, it's f/5.6 o'clock!

Lately, photography-related novelty items have appeared all over the web. Look around online and you’ll see things like bowling ball camera bags, lens coffee mugs and camera dial laptop decals, just to name a few. So what have they come up with now?

The latest is the F-stop Watch. What makes this watch fun is its lack of hour and minute labels. Instead, it features several aperture stops in order to help you tell time. While the design might make things tricky when someone asks you what time it is, I’m sure it’s easier to read than on some of these watches.

The F-Stop Watch is available through NeatoShop for $36.

Our October Photo Competition!

Hello Lovely People. We’ve a little treat for you. We thought that you might like to have a go at a monthly photo competition. We’ll set a theme or technique, you submit a picture to our Flickr pool, we choose a winner. If you’re really lucky, we might even try to rustle up some prizes. What do you say? Interested?

Thought you might be.

Cos it isn’t autumn all over the world, we thought that we’d avoid the cliched ‘Autumn’ theme and instead go for a technique this month. I’ve been obsessing over long exposures recently, so I’d like to see what you guys can come up with using a slow shutter speed that can dazzle and impress me.

You’ve between today and Wednesday 27 October 2010 (that gives you three weeks) to submit your, what will doubtless be stunning, entries here.

We’ll try to decide on a winner before Wednesday 3 November. If you’re the lucky person with the super-groovy winning entry, we’ll show it off here on Small Aperture and send you a copy of 365 Photography Days, which has some gorgeous inspirational shots in it.

Any questions? Ask away.

Being a competition, we have had to draw up The Rules. Sorry. I know it’s not that exciting, but it’s got to be done.

• If you decide to enter, you agree to The Rules.
• You can’t have written for Small Aperture or be related to either me or Haje to enter.
• One entry per person – so choose your best!
• Entries need to be submitted to the right place, which is the Small Aperture Flickr group.
• There’s a closing date for entries, so make sure you’ve submitted before then.
• You have to own the copyright to your entry and be at liberty to submit it to a competition. Using other people’s photos is most uncool.
• It probably goes without saying, but entries do need to be photographs. It’d be a bit of strange photo competition otherwise.
• Don’t do anything icky – you know, be obscene or defame someone or sell your granny to get the photo.
• We (that being me and Haje) get to choose the winner and we’ll do our best to do so within a week of the competition closing.
• You get to keep all the rights to your images. We just want to be able to show off the winners (and maybe some honourable mentions) here on Small Aperture.
• Entry is at your own risk. I can’t see us eating you or anything, but we can’t be responsible for anything that happens to you because you submit a photo to our competition.
• We are allowed to change The Rules, or even suspend or end the competition, if we want or need to. Obviously we’ll try not to, but just so that you know.

Found photographs

No, I haven’t found a stash of mysterious photographs in the attic of the Small Aperture Mansion. (Although, it is altogether possible there are heaps of photos up there. I should take a look.) I suppose it was more a question of, if I were to find a suitcase bulging with prints of no known provenance, what exactly would I do with them? I got thinking about this when I used a Polaroid print quite randomly as a bookmark. (My usual bookmark of choice is a train ticket.)

You see, I follow a blog called Forgotten Bookmarks. The guy who runs it owns a secondhand bookshop and he documents the postcards, the recipes, the newspaper clippings, the receipts, and all the odd things that turn up amongst his stock. Unsurprisingly, the largest category of forgotten bookmarks is photographs. And some of them can be very sweet indeed. Go take a peek.

But you can probably follow my train of thought.

So, what to do with these hypothetical found photos of mine? There are quite a few websites out there devoted to cataloguing found photographs. Let’s start with a big hitter. Flickr has not one, but two found photo pools: Found Photographs and The Museum of Found Photographs. How much information you get with each picture depends on who submits it, but it’s a fun way to while away some time!

Look at me was started by Frederic Bonn and Zoe Deleu when they found a few photos lying in a Paris street in 1998. From those few pictures, there are now 634. It hasn’t been updated in yonks, but it isn’t exactly as if things have gone out of date on it.

Time Tales was a project started by Astrid van Loo, a photographer, and Dick Dijkman, a webdesigner. I love the design on this site. It’s arranged according to the suspected decade of the photos, and whatever information that can be gathered from the picture is displayed, but nothing that amounts to speculation. You can even send a small selection of the images as e-cards.

The picture that started it for Lost Photo Gallery

The Lost Photo Gallery all started when a guy found a passport photo in the street. And then another. And then another. The site has grown from just passport photos, but it still reminds me of the film Amelie.

There are other takes on the found photo ideal out there: some guy has catalogued his finds from filesharing at Found Photos, and someone tried to set up a forum to help learn more about found photos at Lost-and-Found-Photos. That seems quite dead, though. Somehow, though, letting these pictures just be seems okay, too.

If you’ve ten minutes to spare, go for a browse and let yourself wonder who these people were and the kinds of lives that they lived. (But be careful, because some of the pictures aren’t always entirely safe for work.)

10 titillating tilt-shifts

Tilt-shift photography used to be the preserve of architectural photography. But not so much any more, and looking at these glorious examples, that can only be a good thing. If you feel as if you want to play that bit more with your viewer’s perspective, you can always use a tilt-shift to fake a miniature, too. If you’re not blessed with a tilt-shift lens, you can always manage it with editing software. But meanwhile, take a look at our ten of the best tilt-shifts.

1 – You can tell

'You can tell', by B Tal (Brian Talbot)

2 – Real models

'Real models', by kennymatic (Kenny Louie)

3 – Classy Chassis Car Show

'Classy Chassis Car Show' by baldheretic (Jay Lee)

4 – Miniature Airport

'Miniature Airport', by {Away until inspiration comes} (Stav)

5 – Fishing boats

'Fishing boats', by SantiMB

6 – Little game

'Little game', by Pattagon (Nicolas)

7 – Toy Boats

'Toy Boats', by moonstar909

8 – Miniature All Blacks

'Miniature All Blacks', by Pattagon (Nicolas)

9 – Lensbaby Macro

'Lensbaby Macro', by Jari Kaariainen

10 – Ricardo

'Ricardo', by lpm (Catherine Currie)

All photos used in this article are used as ‘fair dealing‘. If you have strong reservations against your photos appearing on Small Aperture, please contact us, and we’ll get them taken down. Please support the artists creating these photos by clicking on the photos to take a closer look at their work!

What is shutter speed?

When we’re thinking about exposing our pictures correctly, there are three variables to consider – aperture, ISO, and shutter speed. All of these have an effect on how light or dark your picture is, as well as affecting other aspects of your photo. We have looked at the effects of aperture and ISO in previous articles, so it’s time to consider shutter speeds, and what lowering your shutter speed can do to your pictures.

What do you mean by shutter speed?

To get to grips with what shutter speed is, we need to know what a shutter is. And to do this, it helps to understand the very basics of how a camera works. Light enters a camera lens, travels into the camera body and is recorded as an image when it hits the sensor (or film) in the back of the camera. The amount of time the light is allowed to hit the sensor for is controlled by the shutter; a piece of metal or fabric that opens and closes when the picture is taken. The slower the shutter speed, the longer the shutter is open for. Get it? Okay.

What does this mean for your pictures?

Well, two things. First, the longer your shutter speed is, the longer that you’re letting light hit the sensor – which means that your picture will be brighter. This is great news for taking pictures at night, as you can correctly expose dark scenes without having to use flash. As long as you’re photographing still objects, that is – the second effect of slow shutter speeds is that whilst a shutter is open, all movement during this period is recorded. This means that photos of people in dark rooms can be out of focus if slow shutter speeds are used without flash.

Long Exposure, by Danny Wartnaby

How can I control it?

Try changing your camera from Auto mode to either Shutter Priority mode (‘TV’ on a Canon camera; ‘S’ on a Nikon) or Program mode (P), and experiment! For most long shutter speed work, a tripod is necessary, as it allows you to ensure that your camera isn’t moving whilst you’re taking your pictures. This makes sure that any static objects in your photo remain in focus.

Be Creative

Using slow shutter speeds, you can get some amazing effects – I’ve always loved photos featuring light trails and more recently have become amazed by shots of star trails, which use exactly the same premise as capturing the trails left by car headlights. You can also use slow shutter speeds to create fantastic panning effects.

A Haunted Trail, by Joshua Debner

I’ve chosen just a few examples, but there are plenty more ideas out there. So what are you waiting for?

All photos used in this article are used as ‘fair dealing‘. If you have strong reservations against your photos appearing on Small Aperture, please contact us, and we’ll get them taken down. Please support the artists creating these photos by clicking on the photos to take a closer look at their work!

A camera in the attic

If you follow Small Aperture on Twitter, where we’re known as smallaperture, you might have noticed my incredibly enthusiastic announcement last night that we found a Canon Auto Zoom 518 Super 8 movie camera in the attic of the Small Aperture mansion. Then again, I’m surprised people the other side of the city didn’t hear me squeeing. It was certainly the most exciting thing that happened to me yesterday.

Anyway, now that I’ve calmed down—if only marginally—I have a 1967, or thereabouts, home movie camera in my possession. Apparently it has a 9.5-47.5mm f/1.8 lens, shoots at 18 frames per second normally as well as having a slow motion option, has manual and automatic settings for aperture, and a super-zoom. It’s in its cute carrying case and everything.

It comes in a cute case and everything!

But I don’t have any super 8 film cartridges, hence my task is to locate some of those. I don’t think it’ll be too difficult, though. Then, I need to find out if this baby still works. Although she isn’t exactly antediluvian, it looks as if she’s been up there, amongst decades of accumulated junk and curios, for quite some time. It gets me thinking about what she might’ve shot, too, and maybe if any of the films are up there in random boxes.

Definitely a camera in there

Okay, I know that there isn’t exactly a great deal to tell you all right now, but I was far too excited to keep this to myself. I shall doubtless keep you updated on progress!

My new toy!

10 funky fisheyes

Recently, we posted an article on the use of a fisheye as an everyday lens. While writing that article, I came across some amazing photos that are perfect examples of how a fisheye lens can make your images stand out far above the rest. If you’re thinking about buying one, or perhaps borrowing a friend’s, then take a peek at these photos for some fisheye inspiration.

1 – The Gas Company Tower

The Gas Company Tower by Metal Man (Michael Chen)

2 – The Shelby Street Bridge

The Shelby Street Bridge by joshunter (Josh Hunter)

3 – Office: Want Otso’s job?

Office: Want Otso's job? by wili_hybrid (Ville Miettinen)

4 – Dan Deacon @ Coachelle 2008

Dan Deacon @ Coachelle 2008 by Mick 0

5 – Under the birches

Under the birches by taivasalla (Niklas Sjoblom)

6 – La Fontaine des Mers – Instax Windows

La Fontaine des Mers - Instax Windows by Slightlynorth (Shawn McClung)

7 – Washing Time!

Washing Time! by Zak Milofsky

8 – HDR IR A look up

HDR IR A look up by Lone Primate

9 – Going down

Going down by Potyike

10 – Natural History Museum

Natural History Museum by wokka

All photos used in this article are used as ‘fair dealing‘. If you have strong reservations against your photos appearing on Small Aperture, please contact us, and we’ll get them taken down. Please support the artists creating these photos by clicking on the photos to take a closer look at their work!

10 essentials for your kit bag

There’s heaps written about what every photographer should have in her or his kit bag: camera bodies that can sink battleships, a range of lenses to bankrupt the Sultan of Brunei, flashes enough to illuminate the Sahara on a moonless night. And really, we know about this sort of stuff; we’d not be taking very many pictures without any of it.

There are other kit bag essentials, though; the little things that you learn about from your friends, the bits that you only realise should always be in your bag after the event. Between us, we’ve accumulated a few suggestions, so we thought that we’d share the sum of Small Aperture’s collective kit bag wisdom.

1. Gaffer tape. I grew up in a rural community, where most anything could be fixed using baling twine, lolly sticks, and gaffer tape. It has stood me in good stead.
2. Spare memory cards. I can’t think why.
3. Spare batteries, of all varieties: for your camera, for your flashes, for your brain.
4. Business cards. Seriously, you don’t have any business cards? Go to Moo and get some. Now.
5. Torch. I don’t know about you, but my night vision isn’t that good.
6. Something to fasten or secure things: string, cable ties, tie-twists, elastic bands. (Or baling twine, even.) Don’t forget that string can double as an emergency tripod.
7. Microfibre cloth. Shiny!
8. At least one plastic bag; preferably several in a few different sizes.
9. Some kind of multi-tool business, you know, Swiss Army Knife, or Leatherman.
10. Notebook and pencil or pen. Yes, we all have mobile phones capable of taking notes now, but you never know when you might need to actually write down something.

Anyway, this is what we schlep around with us, pretty much. Is there anything that you’d like to add to our mix?

Playing with your pictures

So taking photos should be fun, right? Right! And sometimes we want to have a bit of fun with our photos themselves, right? Right! So, ehm, what can we do with our photos to play around with them a bit more? Well, we’ve been pooling braincells over here at the Small Aperture mansion, and just before they expired from over-use, we came up with the following.

First of all, you could go out and buy yourself a toy camera. But maybe you don’t really want to. Perhaps you’d rather fiddle with photos you’ve already taken with your top-of-the-range dSLR. In which case, Photocritic has the perfect tutorial for creating your own post-processing pre-sets in Lightroom.

Or perhaps you’d prefer to go the vintage route? Take a look at Photojojo’s four ways to vintage-ify your pics. This one covers all sorts, from post-processing ideas to tips such as vaseline on the lens or shooting through an old stocking.

Over at befunky.com they’ve what feel like hundreds of different effects that you can apply to your pictures. My personal favourite would be the speech bubbles, though.

And Gareth, a member of the Small Aperture Scriptorium, has this easy method to cartoon-ify your pictures. Begin by selecting an image. How about this one?

And then:

• Open said selected image in Photoshop
• Create a duplicate layer
• Turn that layer to black and white using desaturate (Image>Adjustments>Desaturate)
• Duplicate the black and white layer and invert it (Image>Adjustments>Invert)
• In the layers panel, set the blend mode to Colour Dodge
• You should now have three layers. Select the top layer, the inverted one, and go to Filter>Other>Minimum to add the sketch effect. The higher the value of the pixel radius, the more pronounced the sketch effect.
• If you want to re-add colour, duplicate the bottom layer (the non-black-and-white one) and add it to the top of the stack. Set the blend mode to Colour.

Tad-dah!

I’m off to do silly things with photos now.

How exposure works

To understand exposure in photographical terms, EV is probably the single most important number you will have to understand, to understand the theory behind the art of photography. This goes from your tiniest, least significant compact camera, to your cock-on-the-table style medium format camera with a digital back.

Non-technical

Let us imagine a value called TCE. This TCE (The Correct Exposure) does not exist, because you might for a variety of reasons want a different exposure than the TCE. But for the sake of argument, let’s assume TCE exists, and this is what you will want when you take a certain picture.

To get a correct exposure, you will want to have EXACTLY the right amount of light to capture your image. Not too much, and not too little.

So, what is it that might affect how much light comes to the film or imaging chip?

• Shutter speed – Imagine a mug with a lid containing a mysterious source of light, and the room you stand in is covered in darkness. Shutter speed would be how long you open the lid.
• Aperture – Same cup, same concept, but this time, how far you open the lid (if you open it a little – small aperture, i.e. high aperture numbers (for example f/22). If you open it all the way – large aperture – i.e. low aperture numbers (for example f/2.8)
• These are the two basic ones. The last factor that comes into play is your film speed, or the light sensitivity of your surroundings while holding the cup if you will.

That’s all there is to it – these three factors combined allow you to manipulate the light in all kinds of ways (big depth of field through small apertures, freezing motion through fast shutter times, etc).

So, to get TCE, you will want to combine these three factors into JUST the correct way. Now, if you replace TCE with TCEV (The Correct Exposure Value), you understand what I have been on about.

EV is a number describing an exposure – any exposure – regardless of its “correctness”.

Technical

The definition of EV=0 is an exposure of 1 second at f/1 using ISO 100 film, or any equivalent thereof (2 seconds f/1.4, 4 seconds f/2.0 etc)

The technical definition of EV is 2^EV = LS/C.

EV = the exposure value – explained above
L = field (or zone) luminance –
C = Exposure Constant – This is a constant that depends on what unit you are using to express the luminance (L)If you use candelas/ft², it is 1.3. If you are using candelas/m²*, it is 12.5*. If you use apostilb, it is 3,98.
S = film speed following the ISO standard

*) some of you might know cd/m² as lux or lumens/m²,

This also means that 2^ev = A²/T

A = the f-stop number of the aperture
T = shutter time in seconds

Combining these two; EV = log2(A²/T) = log2(LS/C) – which is the only formula you are likely to need, if you want to understand the basics of mathematics behind photography.

So what is the EV number used for?

Ah. Well, the EV number is used internally in cameras – an EV number of 10, for example, would refer to all the combinations of shutter times and apertures that would give a given exposure using ISO 100 film. This is useful, because a camera only has to add one thing to this equation; A light measurement. A camera with a lookup table or an algorithm to calculate the correct EV is all set for using all the different combinations that are able to give you the exposure you want.

But why would I care, if the camera handles everything?

Because the camera doesn’t always get things right. You may also want to use alternative exposures for artistic reasons.

Most cameras have an EV compensation wheel/dial, allowing you to choose how much you want to over/underexpose an image. This is usually measured in +/- 2EV, 1/3 steps. This means that you can over- or underexpose an image by two whole EV steps (which, incidentally, would mean the same as two full f-stops either way), in steps of 1/3 EV.

I hope that made things a little clearer – if not, leave a comment, and I’ll see what I can do!

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