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1 BEYOND POINT AND SHOOT

Alpine paraglider, Chamonix (Chiz) Being able to react quickly to changing light or unpredictable action is great, but this still requires a bit more than just ‘point and shoot’

First Thoughts

What’s wrong with point and shoot?

It sounds like such a great idea. You point, you shoot, you get the picture. It sounds like exactly what we want – light, fast and simple.

The first thing wrong is that ‘point and shoot’ misses out one essential first step. It really should be ‘see, point and shoot’. This may seem obvious, but it does no harm to state it. Seeing is a vital part of photography. Seeing is the main reason why we want to take pictures in the first place. And there’s more to seeing than just going around with your eyes open. You need your mind open too.

So something you see makes you want to take a picture … But what, exactly? Maybe you come around a corner on a trail and a wonderful view suddenly opens up before you. The natural impulse is to grab the camera and get a picture. But if you take a second to think about a few possibilities, you’ll almost certainly get a better picture.

What is it that makes the view so wonderful anyway? If you’ve been walking through a gloomy forest for five hours, almost any open view might seem pretty wonderful, but the photograph can’t directly convey your state of mind. A series of photographs might tell the story, but a single shot can only show the view you saw (and it doesn’t always manage that!).

Fell End and Pendle Hill, Lancashire (Jon) It’s often helpful to ask why you are taking a particular shot

What you could do is use the last few trees to frame the view, which will at least give an impression of the way the view opened up. However, it may be obvious that by going on a bit further, you’ll open it up even more. Of course, if you then decide that the framed view would have been better, you might have to backtrack.

There may be a fabulous array of peaks filling the skyline while the foreground is pretty boring. In this case you might frame the picture so it concentrates just on the peaks. On the other hand, there could be a deep green valley drawing the eye towards those peaks, in which case you might frame the shot quite differently.

At any moment there’s a huge range of possibilities. You can give a group of people identical, totally automatic, cameras and send them on the same walk and you will never get two pictures exactly alike. Even if you never think about focusing or exposure – assuming that the camera can handle all that – every photograph you take is the result of a choice. Thinking about that choice, rather than just reacting and letting it happen, will make your photos a lot stronger. Why are you taking this shot? What is it you want to say? What kind of picture do you want it to be?

No doubt someone, somewhere, has estimated how many photographs have been taken since the very first one in the 1840s. Undoubtedly the number is many billions. And in every single instance, there was a reason for taking the shot. However, all too often, it’s far from obvious afterwards what that reason was. And one of the principal reasons for this is that, all too often, the photographer was none too clear about it in the first place.

Another basic problem is that ‘point and shoot’ seems to promise that what you see is what you will get. In fact it never is. This is not an exaggeration but the simple truth. What you see through the viewfinder, or on the LCD screen, is not the same as what you see when you look directly at your scene or subject. The real world hardly ever packages itself in neat little rectangles.

Reality has four dimensions and a photograph has only two. The third and fourth dimensions – depth and time – can only be suggested in a photograph. This might seem to be a limitation, but in fact it may be a strength. 3D movies may be almost commonplace and 3D TV might just catch on, but 3D photography has been around a lot longer without ever really getting anywhere; it was more popular a hundred years ago than it is now. Similarly, movies and video have taken their place alongside still photography without ever threatening to replace it. Photography is irreplaceable; in its ability to crystallise an instant, it appeals to something deep within us.

So photography still matters – and isn’t that why you’ve bought this book? But to get the best from our photography, we need to think photographically. That doesn’t necessarily mean becoming obsessed with shutter speeds and f-stops. Suppose that the camera is clever enough to get that side of things right; much of the time, it probably is. But the camera can’t decide what to point at or when to shoot. Far from being trivial, these are absolute fundamentals of photography.

What to Point at

Knowing why you’re taking the shot is the first step. Knowing what you actually want in the shot is the next. What you leave out is just as important as what you keep in. This is where you really have to use your eyes properly, whether you’re looking at the scene directly or through the viewfinder.

Wadi Rum, Jordan (Jon) Very different results from two views of the same tree taken less than four minutes apart (timing recorded by the camera)

Seeing is something most of us take for granted. That’s part of the problem. Seeing is more complex than we realise; 20:20 vision doesn’t mean you see everything. It’s well worth thinking a little more deeply about how we see.

Our eyes work in a dynamic way. In fact what we ‘see’ is controlled by the brain as much as by the eyes. This gives us the ability to see ‘wide-angle’ and ‘telephoto’ views almost simultaneously. When you spot a friend in a crowded room, your eye does not physically zoom in on them. It’s your brain that does the zooming. We all have a ‘mental zoom lens’ that – most of the time – operates without our even being aware of it.

Wave, Isle of Harris (Chiz) What you leave out is just as important as what you keep in; simplicity is often the key

Suppose you decide to take a quick photo of your friend before they realise you’ve spotted them. You pick up the camera, point and shoot. All too often the result is a photo of a crowd, one of whom happens to be your friend. This happens because you looked through the viewfinder but your brain was still ‘zoomed in’ on that one person and disregarded everyone else. What you saw – or thought you saw – was not what you got.

Seeing your friend in that instant only gave you the potential for a picture. The picture you actually got was cluttered up by all the other people. If you’d only stopped for a fraction of a second to look at the viewfinder you would have seen them. If you’d seen them you could have zoomed in – with a real zoom lens this time – or else physically moved closer. Of course in moving closer you might have missed the picture. But if you couldn’t get it from where you were, you’re no worse off.

Seeing what’s actually in the viewfinder (or on the LCD screen) is a big step on the road from snapper to photographer. It doesn’t demand any extra equipment, nor does it require you to learn loads of technical stuff. It just takes a bit of thought. The more you think about it, the more you practise, the easier it gets. Before too long it’s practically automatic. And it’s a great leveller. The ‘gear freak’ who spends thousands on the latest state of the art equipment but neglects this aspect will get fewer really good shots than someone with a simple camera and an engaged brain.

Seeing what’s in the finder is fine, but an awful lot of time and trouble can be saved when you start to anticipate what you’ll see there. This is one aspect of what’s often called visualisation. This, too, you can develop easily and naturally – but only if you start by seeing.

Visualisation means that you can see your friend across the room and your brain can zoom in on the potential picture – but without even picking up the camera you know that you won’t actually get the shot from where you are. And if you can visualise the shot and work out where you actually need to stand, still without picking up the camera, you’ll be a lot less conspicuous too. This does improve the chances of getting a spontaneous shot, rather than one of someone reacting to the presence of the camera. A crowded room may be the antithesis of the wide open spaces, but the principle is just the same whatever you are photographing.

Indoors or out, the person who gets the best shots won’t necessarily be the one who spends most time looking through the viewfinder. Photographer A looks through the viewfinder, moves a few paces forward, looks again, takes a step or two to the left, looks again, crouches down a bit, looks again, moves a step back right, looks again, and so on. Photographer B looks at the scene, moves about a bit, looks through the viewfinder, makes a couple of fine adjustments to their position, and takes the shot. Photographer A may get a good shot in the end. With a relatively static subject, such as some landscapes, the extra time may not matter. On the other hand, if the sun’s just about to hit the horizon, time is of the essence, just as much as with action shots.

Of course C, who is just a snapper, wonders what all the fuss is about. He sees a nice view, points, and shoots. And afterwards? ‘This was a lovely view. Pity about those two idiots with tripods in the foreground, though …’

When to Shoot

Most photographs are taken in a tiny fraction of a second. This ability to catch a moment in time is one of the most distinctive aspects of photography. It doesn’t quite define what photography is, since some photos may take a much longer time, but it is certainly a very important part of what makes photography special.

Wipeout, Newgale, Pembrokeshire (Chiz) The ability to catch a moment in time is one of the most distinctive aspects of photography

Tom Sparks, Pentland Hills, Scotland (Jon) This shot did not just happen. I spotted the potential in the arrangement of the trees and waited while nephew and dog walked on ahead

So it’s no coincidence that the photographer considered by many to be the greatest of all, Henri Cartier-Bresson, is forever associated with the concept of ‘The Decisive Moment’. This is summed up in his own words as follows:

Photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a single instant, of on the one hand the significance of a fact and, on the other, the rigorous organisation of the visually perceived forms which express and give meaning to that fact.

One (and only one!) of the things that makes Cartier-Bresson’s images great is the super-precise timing that so many of them demonstrate. A moment sooner, a moment later, and the shot would have been utterly different. You can see the same sort of timing very clearly in the best sports photography.

Ullswater (Jon) Even in landscape photography, things can happen fast. A beam of sunlight may strike through heavy cloud, picking out a peak or lake for just a moment

Cartier-Bresson may not have planned every shot but he certainly didn’t just ‘get lucky’. No-one can be lucky that often. In another well-known phrase: ‘chance favours the prepared mind.’ In a photographic context, it’s important to be both physically and mentally prepared. Physical preparation means having the camera ready to hand, with the right lens fitted for the sort of shot you anticipate. Mental preparation means that you are actively looking for shots and thinking about the sort of opportunities that may arise. Even in landscape photography, things can happen surprisingly fast. A beam of sunlight may strike through heavy cloud, picking out a peak or lake for just a moment.

Basic Concepts

What you see is not necessarily what you get. Cameras seem to promise that it will be, but it’s never completely true, and the picture can often differ radically from what you saw.

We’ve already hinted at some of the differences between what the eye sees and what the camera sees, like the two ‘missing’ dimensions of depth and time. These apply equally to drawing or painting, but there are some other more specifically photographic factors.

Sometimes the camera will see more than you do. Sometimes it will see less. Sometimes it will see differently. And sometimes it will do all three! Today, with digital cameras, it’s much easier to compare what we saw with what the camera recorded. It really is worth looking attentively at those playback images, especially with important shots, to see how they measure up. For one thing, if they don’t look quite how you wanted, you may be able to do something slightly differently and shoot again. For another, it all helps to build up an understanding of how the camera sees.

Life through the viewfinder

We’ve already given an example of the camera seeing more, the friend seen across a crowded room. Human beings tend to see what they are interested in: cameras are not so selective. Sometimes the result is that your intended subject almost disappears into its surroundings – like your friend into the crowd. At other times the result may be that the intended subject is sitting in the middle of the frame but surrounded by acres of empty space.

The answer to these problems is learning to use the viewfinder. The ‘point and shoot’ way is to see the subject, aim the camera and press the button. The photographer’s way is to look through the viewfinder and see the whole image before composing the best shot. It is rather like the difference between looking through a window and looking at a picture. The view through a window has three dimensions and the eye tends to home in on whatever is most interesting. A picture is in two dimensions and it’s relatively easy to see it as a whole. If you’re not using a viewfinder at all, but looking at the screen on the back of a digital camera, then what you’re looking at is more picture-like already.

But whether you’re looking at a screen or through a viewfinder, you still need to be aware of two things: the boundaries of the frame, and what’s contained within them. This awareness develops with practice, and with digital cameras you can help it develop by looking carefully at playback images too.

However, the sad fact is that, however carefully you look at the screen or the viewfinder, what you see still isn’t necessarily what you get. To complicate matters further, there are different types of viewfinder, which behave quite differently, as well as the camera-back screen. In simple terms, there are two main types of viewfinders. These are direct-vision and reflex.

Direct-vision finders are found on compact cameras – if they have a viewfinder at all; many digital compacts don’t bother. A direct-vision viewfinder is essentially just a small window. The window’s frame may correspond to the borders of the image you’ll shoot, or there may be a marked area within the window to show the actual picture area. In this case, round the edges of the finder you can see stuff which won’t appear in the final picture.

Because looking through a direct-vision finder is like looking through a window, your eye can adjust to focus on close or distant objects. Just as when you are looking around you normally, whatever you look at appears in focus, so you get the impression that the whole scene is in focus. However, it’s by no means guaranteed that everything in the final shot will be in focus: things that seemed clear in the viewfinder may be blurred, even blurred beyond recognition.

Ribblehead Viaduct, North Yorkshire (Jon) When looking at the SLR finder the eye stays focused at a constant distance. This can weaken our sense of depth, but the third dimension is always there and in some shots it’s immensely important

With a reflex finder, and with the LCD screen, you actually view through the camera lens – the same lens that takes the picture. In a single-lens reflex (SLR) camera the image is relayed to your eye by a mirror that flips out of the way when the shutter is pressed. We can lump reflex viewfinders and camera-screens together as ‘through the lens’ (TTL) finders. Surely TTL viewing means that what you see matches the photo you’ll get? You can certainly be forgiven for thinking that it should, but it’s not that simple. Sometimes it gets very close, but at other times it doesn’t.

Actually, the SLR finder image is a bit of an illusion. It is not a three-dimensional image; you aren’t literally looking through the lens. What you really see is the image projected by the lens on the focusing screen. When you look directly at the world, your eye has to refocus to look at distant or near objects (even although we often don’t notice that it’s happening). When looking at the SLR finder the eye stays focused at a constant distance (of course the lens may have to refocus to give a sharp image of things at different distances). And with your eye to the viewfinder of an SLR, the image becomes your entire field of view, and there’s a tendency to look at it piecemeal rather than in its entirety.

Next time you look into an SLR viewfinder, think about the fact that you are looking at a projected image which has no more real depth than the image on your computer screen. Let’s hope that this helps to focus the mind on the image as an image.

Another problem is that the viewfinder doesn’t necessarily show you the full picture area. Unfortunately, a true 100% viewfinder image is largely the preserve of professional SLRs – most others shave a good 5–10% off what you actually get in the image. Digital camera screens are much more likely to give closer to 100% view, but you should always check.

There’s an even more significant reason why what you see in TTL viewing isn’t always what you get. This is all to do with something called depth of field. We’ll explore this in more detail in Chapter 3, but for now, depth of field simply means what is in focus and what isn’t. If the image shows one object sharply focused, with everything else out of focus, depth of field is small. If, however, objects both nearer and more distant also appear in focus, depth of field is large.

Druidston, Pembrokeshire (Chiz) Focus is on the closest grasses, depth of field is small, and distant landscape soft

Focusing and depth of field: what’s sharp and what’s not

While a direct-vision finder gives you the impression that everything is in focus, with an SLR you can often see that some things are in focus and some aren’t. Focus on a nearby leaf and the distant landscape may well appear soft. This could be a good thing if you want to concentrate attention on that leaf. The problem is that when you take the shot, the background sometimes looks much sharper than it did in the finder or screen. In other words, depth of field in the shot is much greater than in your TTL view.

With direct-vision finders, the opposite is often true. When you view, everything appears in focus but this is rarely, if ever, matched by the final shot. With a little luck the main subject is still in focus, but foreground and background may not be. In this case, depth of field is much less than it appeared in the viewfinder.

It’s not hard to understand that a direct-vision finder doesn’t match the final photo. You’re looking through a separate window, not through the camera lens. But in TTL viewing you are looking through the camera lens, so surely what you see should match the final photo?

Well, no. You are looking through the same lens, but it isn’t necessarily doing exactly what it does when it takes the photo. Specifically, the aperture is often different. When you view, normally the aperture is at its widest and depth of field is minimal. When you take the shot, however, the camera often sets a smaller aperture, causing depth of field to increase. Camera manufacturers set things up this way as it lets the most light in at the viewing stage, and therefore gives the brightest image in the viewfinder (easier to see than a darker one!), regardless of the settings you use to actually capture the shot.

Once you know this, it becomes very easy to check the image on playback and change the aperture if required to reduce or increase the depth of field. Or even use a button called depth-of-field preview to check this before shooting (if your camera has this it’s usually found near the lens mount)

Exposure and contrast

The accuracy of modern autofocus systems means that the camera usually gets the main subject sharp – although this does require you and the camera to agree on what the subject is! Depth of field, however, means that there’s rather more uncertainty about whether other things in the shot are or aren’t sharp.

There’s a very similar relationship between exposure and contrast. Just as the human eye adjusts focus so fast it gives us an impression of immense depth of field, it can adjust almost instantaneously between deep shadow and bright sunlight. Most of the time we don’t see shadows as completely black or bright objects as totally white. We might call them black or white but we can still see detail within them.

However, digital images (like film before them) can’t always stretch this far. If the brightness range (sometimes called tonal or dynamic range) of a scene is too great, the most a camera can do is aim somewhere in the middle.

Again, we’ll go into more detail on this later on. The key point now is that this is another way in which what the eye sees can be different from what the camera records. And understanding that fact is the start of being able to deal with it.

Aperture and shutter speed

Some cameras now have more exposure modes than you can shake a trekking pole at: Landscape mode, Portrait mode, Night portrait mode, Party mode, Alpine bivouac mode (OK, we made that last one up)… And yet the most important task that all of these modes perform is to determine how the camera sets aperture and shutter speed. You might never set these manually but they are still key to every shot.

Aperture just means ‘opening’. There has to be an opening to admit light into the camera, to reach the sensor (or film) which captures the image. Varying the size of that opening is one of two ways in which we control the amount of light admitted.

Graphical display of aperture on screen of a Nikon D3100 (Jon)

However, varying the aperture also affects depth of field. This is a bad thing if it gives us results we didn’t expect, but it becomes a very good thing when we can exploit it to get more control over our results.

Trowbarrow Quarry, Lancashire (Jon) There are deep shadows behind this brightly lit white tree and the dynamic range is very high. However, the shot simply would not work if detail was lost in the tree bark

Raindrop (Jon) Sometimes the camera can freeze movement the eye can’t follow (shutter speed 1/250 sec)

Aperture, as we’ve already indicated, plays a key role in determining depth of field. The combination of these two controls determines the total amount of light that gets through to the digital sensor.

Aperture dictates how wide the lens opening will be: shutter speed determines how long it stays open.

Shutter speed is principally important in determining how movement is captured in the photo. And movement, naturally, is another major way in which what you see can be very different from what you get. This is inevitable in a still picture! The eye sees movement, but the picture is a still.

Sometimes the camera can freeze movement that the eye can’t follow; sometimes movement appears as a blur. Extremely slow movements, like those of the stars, can also be recorded although they appear static to the eye. All of these results depend on shutter speed.

Sensitivity

Well, of course photographers should be sensitive: sensitive to light, to mood, to the fact that your partner’s getting cramp balanced on that pinnacle waiting for a shaft of light… But that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about what used to be called film speed and is now called ISO sensitivity.

This is a measure of how readily the sensor reacts to light. A low ISO sensitivity rating means relatively bright light is needed to get a decent image. With a higher ISO rating, you can shoot with much less light

In the (good?) old days, we couldn’t change this at will. When you loaded a roll of film you had to keep shooting at the same ISO setting till the film was finished. You might load a slow film which was great for shooting landscapes in bright sunlight, then next day you’d run into all sorts of problems trying to shoot mountain bike action in a shady forest.

Digital cameras have a much wider range of ISO sensitivity settings and you can change the setting shot by shot. This is immensely liberating. In fact it’s one of the best things about digital, and it doesn’t get half the credit it deserves.

Jack Bauer, Tour of Britain 2010 (Jon) High ISO allows action shots even in low light – notice the car headlights (ISO rating 800 and shutter speed 1/1600 sec)

With film, you really only had two controls to play with – aperture and shutter speed. If you wanted to set a small aperture to give good depth of field, you probably had to set a slow shutter speed to maintain the overall exposure level. Now you have the option to increase the ISO level as well, which may allow you to keep the shutter speed the same. This doesn’t just add to the possibilities, it multiplies them.

Most cameras now can vary the ISO automatically to suit the shooting situation. However, if you’re into taking control of the camera (and we repeat, it’s a good idea!), then just remember there are three fundamental controls, not just two.

Final Thoughts

At this point you could certainly be forgiven for feeling discouraged. On the other hand, perhaps you’re beginning to understand why some of your shots don’t turn out the way you expected. And understanding a problem is always a major part of correcting it.

The concept of ‘point and shoot’ is almost irresistible in its attraction, but the reality is always likely to be disappointing, at least until the day that the camera can actually read your mind. Even then, some people will still get better pictures than others, because you will still need to have a clear idea of what it is you want your picture to say and to show.

‘Point and shoot’ also suggests that photography is merely incidental to your outdoor activity, rather than being an integral part of it. Investing just a little more thought and time in your photography will bring much better results, not so much because the shots are better in any narrow technical sense but because you were more involved and had a clearer sense of what each shot was about.

There’s yet another argument. By paying attention to what you’re doing, you’ll get more good shots in the first place. Not only this, if a shot doesn’t quite work, you’ll probably have a much better idea what you need to do differently next time. And when you get a really great shot you’ll have much more idea what you did right. If you never go beyond ‘just’ point and shoot, you’ll never learn anything very much. And since cameras don’t learn either, your photos will never get much better.

Leaving everything up to the camera may give you a shot that ‘comes out’, at least most of the time. It’s less certain, however, that it will give you a shot that matches what you actually saw, let alone what you wanted to say. The key to this is understanding how cameras and lenses see the world, and relating that to how you see it.

Kayaker on Ullswater, Lake District (Jon) Although a lucky shot in the sense that the kayaker just happened to pass by, it did help that I was already shooting the landscape and had the exposure settings already dialled