There's a Thing in my Pocket - Tips on Mobile Phone Photography

I'm going to be really frank here - serious DSLR photography is by no means a cheap hobby. The cost of DSLR bodies and good lenses are significant investments for almost everyone but professional photographers. It's especially painful if you're a student surviving on meagre allowances from parents.

Enter the cameraphones. Almost everyone has one these days, and they come in a humongously diverse array of (software) specifications. Whilst some cameraphones come with very attractive-looking in-camera processing (I'm a fan of the Sony Ericsson K850i's), the most important aspects of mobile phone photography revolve around two main factors - their small physical size, and small sensor size.

Swaying in the Wind

Because of their small physical size, the cameraphones are a lot more prone to the effects of shaky hands. This is why you should always use two hands to support your cameraphone.

Depth of What?

To keep their dimensions down, cameraphones utilise tiny image sensors - smaller than those in compact cameras! Small sensor sizes cause cameraphones to have a very deep depth of field - in other words, the background doesn't blur much, nor can you achieve those "bokehlicious" shots. Aesthetically speaking, this means that you get less subject isolation.

In this case, composition becomes even more important. Focus on the form of your subject. Does it have a distinctive shape? Are there lines in the frame that can help direct the viewer's attention to what you want to show?

Noise

Small sensor sizes also mean that cameraphones aren't usually terribly good at noise control - definitely not good for shooting in the dark. The LED or xenon flashes on cameraphones are also of limited use since they have too much of a tendency to washout your subjects.

That leaves only one option - clever post-processing. Try to process your cameraphone shots to emulate film such that the noise looks like film grain. Be liberal with tinting your photos! Or convert it to monochrome so that the noise actually adds to the overall quality of the image for a gritty feel. Here are some examples of the heavy processing I usually apply to photos from my Samsung INNOV8.

On another note, high-end cameraphones usually have more advanced algorithms that are actually quite effective at noise control. However, this usually happens at the expense of losing precious details in the shadow areas.

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For all their shortcomings, cameraphones have two huge advantages. The first of that is discreetness. By learning how to roughly compose your shots with the phone to your ear (like you're answering the phone), you can get street shots that are as interesting as those made by professional street photographers shooting their rangefinders from the hip.


The other advantage is the fact that you'll always have a camera in your pocket, ready to capture the magical moments right as they unfold before your eyes.

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I hope you've found this article useful - as usual, constructive comments will be much appreciated!

Counting Down to 2010 - Fireworks Photography

Happy new year folks!

I celebrated the new year through fireworks photography at the Marina Bay countdown. I would consider shooting fireworks to be of moderate difficulty, but there's some stuff I've learnt that I shall share to make the learning curve easier for those intending to shoot fireworks in the future.

Essential Equipment

Equipment isn't everything when it comes to photography, but in some instances, having the proper equipment is absolutely necessary. Fireworks photography is one of such instances. You'll need at least a good stable tripod and a cable or remote shutter release.

You'll need stable tripod because you'll be shooting in the low-light conditions of night. Trying to shoot without a tripod will result in blurry photos or squiggly light trails from the fireworks. Forget those cheaper, shaky tripods - the vibrations of the literally earth-shaking boom from some fireworks may be enough to affect your shots. Likewise, your tripod had must be capable of being solidly secured in position to avoid the same problems. The point is, use a tripod that is as stable as possible.

What I did was to borrow a really heavy-duty Manfrotto 055XPROB tripod with a rock-solid Manfrotto 486RC2 ball head.

Next, the cable/remote shutter release. You don't want to directly trigger the shutter release on your camera because that introduces more vibrations that you've tried so hard to cut out! Using timed shutter release isn't a viable option either because you'll probably miss the fireworks that you want to capture by the time the shutter actually flips. Furthermore, remote shutter releases can come really cheap - I spent S$10 on a great third party - Jue Ying RC-4 5-in-1 infrared remote shutter release. It can remotely control the shutter release on Pentax, Nikon, Canon and KM/Sony DSLRs (and some compacts, I think). Furthermore, I tested it to work even at a range of about 10 metres. Didn't regret not buying the original Nikon ML-L3 remote shutter release (which costs the same but was out of stock) at all.

The last (albeit really small) piece of equipment is a viewfinder cover. What this does is to block out stray light that may pass through the viewfinder to the sensor during the long exposure's you'll be doing for fireworks photography, ruining the accuracy of your exposure. Remember, if you can see through the lens via the viewfinder, conversely, light can travel via the opposite direction.

Whether you'll really need a viewfinder cover depends on quite a number of things. In theory, since you'll be taking pictures at night, the amount of stray light that reaches the sensor through the viewfinder is greatly reduced. However, in practice, if you're standing really near the fireworks display, light from the fireworks display itself may enter the viewfinder as stray light. If you're standing near to concert lights, you'll also get stray light entering through the viewfinder. Camera flashes from other photographers may become stray light to you as well.

So how about this - when in doubt, just use the viewfinder cover. If you're using the latest DSLRs, that wouldn't be a big issue since you can simply use Live View to compose your shots. That's what I did. Unfortunately for me, I forgot to bring my viewfinder cover along, and there was plenty of potential stray light where I was. I improvised by wrapping my camera strap around the viewfinder to cover it. Not too elegant, but it worked!

Doing Your Homework

You should have an idea of what kind of photo you intend to take. Think of it as a "pre-composition" in your mind. Do you want to freeze the sparks of each burst in mid-air, or do you want the fireworks display to do a light painting for you? It helps to look at works of other photographers first.

Knowing what kind of photo you want will help you in choosing the settings to use for each exposure. More on that later. Your pre-composition will also affect your choice of location, which I will touch on now.

You'll have to look at maps of the area of the fireworks display. Think about which spot you should go to for a shot that matches your pre-compostion as much as possible. Which landmarks do you want in your photo? Will crowds be expected?

For my case, there was certainly a crowd. Singapore does have the highest population density of any country anyway! When I arrived at 6pm, I could barely squeeze into the prime positions for photography - there was already an army of photographers armed with their tripods, ready for an event that will only take place a full 6 hours later! Lesson learnt - if crowds are expected, do go early, or be prepared to get really friendly with other photographers when trying to ask them to shift a little so you can squeeze in!

Your pre-composition will dictate your lens choice. You may need to use an ultra-wide angle lens if the wide end of your standard zoom isn't enough. You may also want to consider if lens distortion will significantly affect your photo - you'll may want to get a wide prime lens if it does.

On Location

First up - compose your image to try to fit your pre-composition. Since you're likely to be doing a landscape photo of sorts - do remember to check that your horizon is straight. The in-camera gridlines really help.

The settings you use depends on the look you're after. I set my camera to shutter priority mode, and metered for the brightest building on the skyline using centre-weighted metering.

If you want to more or less stop the fireworks in mid-air, use a shutter speed of 1 to 2 seconds. If you're after longer light trails, you may want to use up to 8 seconds.

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Of course, there's the element of luck involved in fireworks photography - whether the fireworks will appear the way as you envisioned, etc.

May 2010 be a good year for everyone!

Realistic HDR photography

Limited dynamic range is something that plagues many photographers who have gone digital. Or rather, the range itself isn't a problem per se; the problem is with how the two different media perform at the limits of their range.

I don't know the mechanics behind dynamic range, but that doesn't matter here. What matters more to me as a photographer is how they look.

Digital systems tend to clip highlights in a very abrupt manner. Film tends to handle the highlights in a more gradual, elegant manner.

But frankly, in today's day and age, most of us wouldn't want to commit the time to shoot in film. Digital systems simply provide too many conveniences. Solution? High dynamic range (HDR) photography.

First, a note on HDR photography in competitions. HDR photography can either be a multiple exposure technique, or a single exposure technique. The multiple exposure technique involves taking a series of images of the exact same scene with different exposures (such as EV-2, EV0, EV+2), or taking a single RAW image and then manipulating it to make three images of "different exposures". In other words, the first technique would, strictly speaking, be disallowed for competitions requiring entries to be made from a single exposure. The second technique may yield less desirable images, and will most probably present a grey area in such competitions.

We've most probably seen some stunning examples of surreal-looking HDR photography. These are most probably the result of tone mapping by plugin (for Photoshop, Lightroom, Aperture etc) called Photomatix Pro.

By hto2008 on Flickr

Results from Photomatix Pro are easily identifiable - incredible detail in the entire range of the image, and often saturated colours. Aesthetically, this may or may not be desirable depending on what you wish to achieve. Clearly, however, Photomatix Pro isn't an option if more toned down or realistic HDR images are required.

Thankfully, Photoshop has its own HDR funtions that do a pretty good job.

I'm working with Photoshop CS4, but most recent versions should be similar. My tutorial will be based on three separate JPEGs taken handhleld at EV-2, EV0 and EV2 using the bracketing function on my D5000. When the shutter release is held down, what the exposure bracketing function does is to take quick successive exposures in the pre-defined increments (2 stops in my case). White balance exposure is also available on my camera, but I haven't really found a use for it since the Auto WB does a good enough job for me most of the time.

If you require more detail in the final image, some cameras may have a bracketing function for up to 5 images, or you're really going all out and require even more, or if your camera doesn't have a bracketing function, you'll need a steady tripod and a static subject so that you can set the exposures manually.

Go to File>Automate>Merge to HDR. This brings up the following dialogue box.

Browse for the desired images, and if you've taken your shots handheld, check the "Attempt to Automatically Align Source Images" box for Photoshop to line up your images (since they composition wouldn't have been identical due to shake). This works very well for most of the time, but when it does occasionally fail, you'll have to align and crop your images manually by overlaying them on each other.

When you click "OK" after you're done, this appears:

First thing you'll have to to do here is to ensure that the Bit Depth is set to 32 bits/channel. Even though our computer displays wouldn't be able to display this much bit depth, it helps for conversion to an 8-bit image later. Next adjust the slider such that as much detail as possible is visible in your merged result. Remember, the image doesn't have to look good yet, just as detailed as possible. If your merged result just doesn't cut it no matter how you adjust the slider, you may then choose to exclude certain exposures by unchecking the appropriate checkboxes on the left. When you're done, hit "OK".

Now you should be left with a rather unimpressive-looking image. Don't worry, the HDR is there, just that our woeful displays aren't quite capable of displaying 32 bits/channel yet. The next step, which involves the conversion to an 8-bit or a 16-bit image that is capable on our displays, is absolutely crucial.

Go to Image>Mode>8 Bit/Channel (or 16 Bit/Channel if you prefer, but that means some filters for further processing won't be available).

You'll get a dialogue box that gives you four methods of converting the bit depth of the image. Only two of them have settings that can adjusted by you. (Guess what, they're my favourite methods!) As usual, I'm not too sure what the sliders do, but what's more important is that the image looks the way you want it to. So play around with the sliders until you get the effect you want.

In particular, Local Adaptation allows you to adjust the Toning Curve of the image. Play with it like you'd play with a normal curve, except you can be a lot more liberal with clipping the highlights and shadows if necessary since your HDR image has a much larger range than a normal image anyway.

After more processing, this is what I got.

Hope this tutorial has been helpful. As always, constructive questions and comments are warmly welcomed!

EDIT:
I just put my paws on a copy of Photomatix Pro. It can produce realistic HDR images, but the purpose of this tutorial remains. Firstly, it's more convenient to do everything (HDR image generation and processing) in Photoshop. Secondly, local adaptation curves are likely to be more familiar to Photoshop users than the sliders in Photomatix. Thirdly, of course, sometimes you just may not have access to Photomatix Pro.

Beijing - A Lesson in Travel Photography During Winter

I recently went on a guided tour to Beijing, the capital of China. As expected the chilly winter presented many challenges for a photographer like me who's more used to shooting in tropical Singapore.

I'll list out the challenges that I faced, and how I managed to overcome them.

Cold!!!

First of all, I had a little trouble adapting to the cold. It was so uncomfortable that I had trouble focusing my mind on compositional elements and the likes of that. To make matters worse, within a couple of days, my discomfort increased as I had a perpetually blocked nose and cracked lips due to my refusal to use lip balm despite the very dry climate of Beijing.

Hence, we have lesson number one, which may seem like a no-brainer, but should never be under-emphasised - take very good care of yourself not just when shooting in winter, but more generally, when shooting in a climate different from the one you are used to. Know the new climate, and bring the appropriate attire. Have sufficient sleep every night. If not, you'd be busy thinking of how to keep yourself alive instead of concentrating on your photography!

Clumsy Fingers

However, sometimes the appropriate attire brings about even more restrictions on your photography, as was in my case. Thick leather gloves made it difficult to operate the the buttons of my Nikon D5000. Most of the single buttons were still usable, but I had trouble pressing the Fn button (which I had programmed to control ISO when pressed while turning the control dial), the D-pad (which meant I had trouble selecting the focal points) and worst of all, at times I couldn't feel the shutter release button! As you can guess, I probably missed a few good shots due to a combination of these.

Shooting without gloves wasn't much of an option for me as they'd take too much time to remove, allowing for golden photo opportunities to flash pass way too easily. Not wearing gloves at all is even worse, as I lost all sensation in my fingertips within 10 minutes if I left them exposed.

My solution was simply to get used to shooting with gloves. I did get better with operating my camera with my gloves on towards the end of the trip, so that method worked.

Another possible approach is to learn to anticipate that golden moment. Start taking off your gloves when you think there's a high chances of something interesting to capture. However, this method may not be very applicable in even colder climates, and you'll never learn to shoot with your gloves on (admittedly, only DSLRs can be operated with gloves on - point-and-shoot cameras have buttons that are way too tiny).

Zap!

Another problem was that of static electricity. Static electricity accumulates due to the dry climate of Beijing (while static is usually discharged into the water vapour that's in abundance in Singapore's air). This causes two issues for the photographer.

Firstly, a discharge of static electricity from your hands into the electronic contact points of your camera could easily fry its electronics. I was worried about the exposed hotshoe of my D5000 (I don't have a habit of putting on the hotshoe cover, so I didn't bring it to Beijing), hence I minimised contact with my bare hands. That's why all exposed electronic contacts on your equipment should be kept covered.

Secondly, a buildup of static electricity on your equipment attracts dust. It didn't help that Beijing is an extra-dusty city with air pollution and sand blown in from Mongolia. That's why it's important to use a blower to blast dust particles off your equipment at the end of everyday. DO NOT, I REPEAT, DO NOT BREATHE ONTO THE GLASS ELEMENTS OF YOUR LENSES IN COLD WEATHER. While this is a good method in clean your lenses in hot weather, in cold weather, the condensed water droplets from your breath will instantly turn into a layer of solid frost on your lens, which will have to be melted before it can be removed. If not, the minute ice shards will do a pretty nice job of scraping the delicate coating off the glass. Not nice.

I forgot to bring my blower along for the trip, but thankfully I had a UV filter on the only lens I brought along, so I could simply wipe off the dust using a lens cloth. UV filters are definitely recommended when shooting in dusty environments as I was.

Safety

I was sure about the safety level of Beijing, but walking around in dark alleys of a low-income district at night while carrying expensive camera gear sure got me jittery. Carry a discreet camera bag if possible. I like Crumpler's camera bags as they don't scream "CAMERA BAG!" like other brands such as Lowepro, Domke etc.

If you already have a camera bag and don't want to spend more money on getting a new discreet-looking one, you can always buy one of those neoprene camera sleeves for your camera, or fashion one out of foam and/or a small towel, and chuck the whole bundle into a large rucksack.

Another thing is, as much as possible, you don't want to hang your camera around your neck. Sounds like another no-brainer? You'd be surprised.

What To Bring

Don't bring too much gear when you're travelling. Firstly, most tours will involve a lot of walking, and unless you're some hyper-muscular beefcake, you probably wouldn't last a few days lugging a heavy camera bag around for 5 - 6 hours daily. Locking many pieces of supposedly unneeded gear in the hotel room defeats the whole purpose of bringing all that gear anyway. Secondly, the more equipment you bring, the more you're likely to lose or damage.

The question now is, how much is too much? The maximum amount of equipment you should bring is the amount that you can physically carry around daily, and comfortably, over the entire duration of your trip. You probably wouldn't need to cover every focal length, unless your life depends on capturing every single moment during the tour.

A fast standard zoom would be a good idea. I brought along just a single Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8. If you're feeling brave, you could bring along a few prime lenses instead, such as a 24mm, 35mm and a 50mm if you're using an APS-C camera. A flashgun isn't necessary unless you expect to take lots of pictures of people in low light, or if your lenses are not fast enough (of course I'm biased in that I tend to avoid using flash as much as possible). Tripods are most definitely too cumbersome to lug around in a fast-paced guided tour.

All Grey!

Physical challenges aside, Beijing in winter presented some interesting challenges to the style of my images. The first of which would be the lack of colour. The trees, without their leaves, are in shades of grey. Evergreen conifers, shrubs and grass are in a shade of dull grey-green. Modern buildings are, you guessed it, mostly grey. To make matters worse, Beijing is known to be dusty, so the sky was mostly in a sickening shade of grey as well!

I dealt with the lack of colour by doing away with it altogether in the most extreme cases. I concentrated on the composition of my images instead, as though I was shooting in black and white (my camera was still producing coloured JPEGs). I then processed these photos to look like blue and white Chinese porcelain (like the one above) by meddling extensively with gradient maps.

Remember, if you can't beat them, join them!

Contrast and Dynamic Range

The greyish surroundings resulted in many high contrast scenes. Focusing on foreground subjects often resulted in the sky being completely blown out. I'm not sure if the greater dynamic range of film cameras will fare significantly better, but my solution was to use the bracketing function of my camera to fire off a quick succession of images at EV-2 , EV0 and EV+2 for high contrast scenes. Unfortunately, I'm no good at composing them into HDR images, so I'll probably touch on this when I get better at HDR photography.

I Can Take a Photo Like That Too


At the more famous places of interest, we often have a crowd of people with cameras packed at a single location jostling for the best spot for that cliched shot that we've all seen.

Which I think is completely not the point. Don't bother with joining the crowd. Wander off to somewhere nearby to look for an alternative angle to capture the image in an innovative new way (well, I do lean quite a fair bit towards abstract photography anyway). For example, try going really low for a low angle shot like the one above. Lie on the ground if you must (though the flippy screen of my D5000 means I rarely have to do that)!

If you really must take that picture, by the time you're done, they'd be done as well, and that spot would probably be empty enough for you to make a quick snap.

Serendipity


Sometimes, interesting photos may await in the least expected of places. The photo above was a long exposure shot of street lights and traffic taken hand-held through the glass window of the moving tour bus!

That's why you should always be alert and ready to get snap those photos that no one ever thought of!

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That's about as much as what I can wring out of my photography experiences in wintery Beijing, but please, do add on about your experiences in travel photography. I hope this article was helpful for you!

P.S. You may find this article about shooting in the snow by The Photo Argus useful as well.

A Fresh Start

Hello and welcome to Happy Got Rho, a blog dedicated to still photography and filmmaking.

My name is Kenny Chua, and I've recently graduated from Victoria Junior College. I'm currently awaiting the commencement of my temporary job at the Ministry of Education of Singapore, and also awaiting the release of my GCE A Level results before entering two years of compulsory military National Service in April 2010.

With plenty of inspiration from filmmakers and photographers like Philip Bloom, Tom Guilmette, Todd Owyoung, Dan Chung, Stu Maschwitz and Leon Neal, I've started this new blog with the intention of dedicating it to my photography and filmmaking hobbies.

I do not consider myself a professional photographer, and I currently have no intention of going into full time professional photography or filmmaking at a career. Since I'm neither a genius with words nor music, still photography and filmmaking are ways in which I seek to express myself, i.e. they are artforms to me. As such, I hope not to be influenced by commercialisation and the likes that will inadvertently creep in if I were to go pro.

I'm also not a pure hobby photographer per since I'm willing to do simple freelance jobs every now and then to support my photography and filmmaking. No doubt, I'm relatively inexperienced in photography, but do take a look at my portfolio (under construction) on my Flickr page. If it impresses you, I'm available for hire (details on the right sidebar).

Brief updates on my photography are usually available via my Twitter account (follow it!) before a blog post. Comments on my blog posts are most welcomed.

A brief note on my policy on comments though. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Comments can help to make this blog a better resource for everyone out there. But if yours doesn't, I will delete it. Blogger allows anonymous comments, but if your comment is constructive, what's stopping you from putting it under your name? Anonymous comments are likely to be deleted.

Now that that's out of the way, enjoy!