by John & Barbara Gerlach

It is truly stunning how fast the digital revolution changed our photographic field workshops and tours. Participants in our Yellowstone, hummingbird, and Kenya tours were about 90% digital shooters. Our field workshops in Michigan attracted 70% digital shooters. We have shot digital exclusively for the past two years and don’t expect to shoot film again. All the digital changes have forced us to modify our workshop program a bit to accommodate the new technology. Our new digital projector worked very well, though it still doesn’t look quite as good as a velvia slide, but that is the fault of the digital projector technology, not the digital file. Obviously, digital was a big part of the workshop and a number of issues were discussed during the four week-long intensive field workshops which include the summer and fall color sessions. We would like to share some of these discussions in this article.

Since so many of our workshop participants were fairly new to their digital cameras, they wanted to know what settings we would use during the workshops. Naturally, the exact settings depend on the light, subject, and other circumstances. We seldom photograph action in our Michigan workshops so most subjects are still and we use tripods most of the time. For photographing the typical subjects we might encounter such as mushrooms, rock landscapes, waterfalls, autumn reflections, dew-laden dragonflies, here is a good place to start. Set the camera to single autofocus and put the control on the back button (back focus) if possible. Use ISO 100 for the best quality and to greatly minimize noise problems. We shoot RAW images so we set the white balance to cloudy to get a warmer rendition which helps us with the initial edit because the images are more colorful when they show up in our PhotoMechanic browser and in Adobe Capture RAW software. For JPEG shooters, it’s important to match the white balance set on the camera to the light. Make sure the flash and natural light compensation dials are set to zero compensation to begin. Set the drive to single frame or two-second delay if you have it. We set the meter to matrix for most situations and also on aperture priority. While there are times when a spotmeter is helpful, spotmeters are not really necessary with digital cameras so don’t be afraid to buy a digital camera body if it doesn’t have one. Set the mirror so it locks up prior to the exposure if possible. Not all camera models permit this. Make sure no other dials or custom functions are set that you don’t know about. Many students have problems because they have something set they don’t know about. Digital cameras are precise instruments. They do precisely what you tell them to do so make certain you know what you are telling them to do.

The decision to shoot JPEG vs. RAW digital capture was an important issue with no definite right answer. It depends on the needs of the photographer. We shoot RAW to get the absolute best quality from our files because there is no compression so no data is lost. The controls for adjusting the exposure, sharpening, white balance, and noise reduction are better with RAW. We think most photographers agree that if you plan to make huge enlargements, RAW is the best way to go, even if it does mean more work for you because RAW images must be processed. Many of our digital shooters didn’t want the work involved with RAW images which is most understandable so they opted for large JPEG images so the camera would do the processing of the files for them. It is important to get the exposure just right with JPEG images which is easy to do by using the histogram. You also want to nail the white balance and perhaps increase the sharpening and color saturation to get the desired results. Shooting JPEGs is an efficient way to work and the quality resulting from the file is very good if you select the highest quality JPEG setting. So the choice between shooting RAW or JPEG images is entirely yours to make. If you demand the absolute highest quality and don’t mind extra computer work, then RAW is the way to go. If you dislike spending time on the computer and still want excellent quality, then shoot high quality JPEGs. You might wonder why cameras even let you shoot low quality JPEGs. Perhaps you are short of memory so you want to take more photos. Lower quality JPEGs take up less memory making more images possible. If you know the images are intended for web use or to be sent over the internet, you might just as well shoot low resolution JPEGs since you will need to reduce the file size anyway to speed up transmission of the images.

We actually found out the hard way that there are times when we want to shoot JPEGs too. On our back country horse tour of Yellowstone and the Kenya safari, we only shot RAW images including many shots of the group and individuals working in the field. We wanted to share these photos with the group members later on. It took a long time to convert all of our huge RAW files of these group grab shots into JPEGs so we could burn them to a CD. From now on, anytime we shoot images of the participants in our workshops, we plan to shoot both RAW and Large JPEGs at the same time. Then we have a choice!

White balance was a bit of a problem for many of our participants. This is a new feature on digital cameras so it is not well understood. It was actually an easy adjustment for John because he once owned and used a color temperature meter many years ago to precisely record colors on film. Little did he know that white balance and color temperature would become such an issue later on. As we all know, the color of light changes from time to time and place to place. Sunlight has more red in it early and late in the day than during the middle of the day. Light is green in a summer deciduous forest and blue on a cloudy day or in the shade on a sunny day. Often we used warming filters (81 Series) to absorb the extra blue light to "warm up" the image. The nice thing about digital is you don’t need filters to adjust the colors in your images. Instead, your camera comes complete with a handy white balance control. John’s Canon 20D offers a choice of nine settings which include Auto, Daylight, Shade, Cloudy, Tungsten, White Fluorescent light, Flash, Custom, and Color Temperature.

These nine white balance choices are designed to match the light so you get the best color in your images. How important is setting the correct white balance setting? It all depends. If you shoot RAW images, it is not very important at all. That’s one of the benefits of shooting RAW images. It is simple to precisely adjust the white balance after the fact. So you might just as well use auto white balance when shooting RAW just to get it close and then tweak the colors later with the raw converter such as Adobe Camera Raw software. Tim Grey is a well known digital photography author and someone I greatly admire who has this to say about white balance in his excellent book, "Photoshop CS2 Workflow." On page 44, Tim says, "With RAW capture, you can trust the Auto setting completely because even if the camera does a poor job, you can correct the image in the RAW conversion with absolutely no penalty in image quality." That says it all! Never-the-less, we seldom use the auto white balance setting even though we normally shoot RAW images. We use the cloudy setting most of the time, even on a sunny day, because we prefer warm images. This means our RAW images appear a bit more colorful to us when we view them on the cameras LCD screen or during the initial edit of our RAW images before making any white balance adjustments in the raw converter. Since it really isn’t necessary to precisely match the white balance setting with the light when shooting RAW, it’s one less thing that we have to do when shooting images.

Adjustments to the colors of JPEG images can be done in Photoshop too or other imaging software, but you don’t have the precise control available in the RAW converter and you will lose some quality. So selecting the best white balance setting is far more of a concern for JPEG shooters. Most of the settings are quite straightforward. We would not use the Auto setting when shooting JPEGs because it tries to make colors neutral. The Auto setting drains the red away from a gorgeous sunset which is just what you don’t want. The manual for my Canon 20D shows the cloudy setting should be used for cloudy days, twilight, and sunsets to keep the brilliant colors. Obviously, if you are photographing a subject lit by sunlight in the middle of the day, you might use the daylight setting, but you could keep it on cloudy to get a slightly warmer rendition. If you are shooting in the shade on a sunny day, the light reflected into the shade from the blue sky above makes the light very blue so use the Shade setting. If it is a cloudy day, the light has a weak blue cast to it so use the Cloudy setting. We never photograph under Tungsten or White Florescent light, but if you do, select the appropriate setting. Light emitted from a flash is a bit bluer than sunlight (unless the flash is filtered with yellow) so it emits a light that is slightly blue, similar to the light on a cloudy day, so use the Flash white balance setting when using flash.

That leaves the Custom and Color Temperature white balance settings. These settings seem like they are difficult to use and not all that useful. Actually, these settings are most useful and quite easy to use once you do it a few times. We would use both of these settings frequently if we shot JPEGs and you should too. If you want a magenta sunrise or sunset, try this. Set the camera on the Color Temperature white balance setting and then dial in a color temperature of 10,000K. You’ll get a magenta sky! It might seem a bit confusing to dial in 10,000K to increase magenta because a light source at that temperature should be extremely blue. Really red colors are found at the other end of the Kelvin temperature scale near 2000-3000 degrees Kelvin. Here’s what is happening. Dialing in 10,000K tells the camera you are shooting in blue light so it adds a lot of magenta to balance it out. Since the light really isn’t blue, the magenta colors your sky tremendously creating brilliant magenta sunsets. Just remember to take your camera off the Color Temperature white balance setting when you don’t want loads of magenta.

The most used white balance setting if we shot JPEGs would be the Custom setting. We actually use this setting quite often shooting RAW. Even though we can completely change the white balance of our RAW images with no harm to the image with the RAW converter, it helps to get the white balance close in the first place. This is a powerful tool and is useful in a wide variety of situations where you are dealing with an assortment of color casts that you don’t want. It is fairly easy to use once you get used to it. We use Custom white balance in situations where a variety of color casts are influencing the image colors and they aren’t doing us a favor. For example, let’s photograph a yellow mushroom on a cloudy day with green foliage all around it. A blue cast is present on a cloudy day and the green foliage is reflecting a lot of green light on the mushroom too. This blue-green light is totally inappropriate for a bright yellow mushroom. If you use the cloudy, flash, or shade white balance settings which warm up the image, you might solve the blue cast problem, but the green still persists. The best way to deal with this mixture of blue-green light is to use Custom white balance because it will automatically correct for both the blue and green light. All cameras seem to let you use Custom white balance in slightly different ways, but here is a summary of it. Buy a neutral 18% gray card that is commercially made at any good camera store. Place the gray card near the mushroom in the same light that is illuminating the mushroom and photograph the gray card. Be sure to properly expose it which should be no problem. Now select the image of the gray card and set the camera on Custom white balance. You have just told the camera to adjust the colors to make the light illuminating the gray card neutral with no color casts. Keep the camera on Custom white balance and photograph the yellow mushroom and your colors should be excellent! Naturally, if you photograph another subject in a different lighting situation, you’ll need to repeat the process.

For years when shooting slide film, we wanted 1/3 stop shutter speed and f/number intervals. Eventually, we got our wish. We loved being able to tweak our Velvia slides by 1/3 stop intervals. The default settings on our digital camera bodies are 1/3 stops too. Try as we might, we can’t make a case for using 1/3 stop intervals when shooting digital images. The latitude of digital cameras is so much greater than slide film (but not quite as wide as print film) and there is so much exposure control with the adjustments in the software that we have set our cameras to ½ stop intervals. John’s EOS-1 Ds Mark II required him to go to custom function #6 and set selection number two. The EOS 20D also used custom function #6, but selection number one had to be set. We think most photographers would benefit by going to ½ stop intervals because it would be quicker to make exposure adjustments with the compensation dial while using the histogram to lead the way to the best exposure.

While we have already covered autofocus in detail in a previous article, it’s important to learn the autofocus controls on the camera well. There is a lot more possibilities than most folks realize. We are huge fans of using back focus in nature photography so see if your camera body can do it and give it a try.

The camera’s instruction manual is your friend. While most normal humans don’t like reading instructions manuals, it’s important to study them very closely to fully exploit the features your camera offers. While it does take effort, your photos will improve and you’ll enjoy photography more if you fully understand the camera. It’s worth the time!

Another common error we found and John committed too when he first used his EOS 20D was to confuse the exposure compensation dial. Most cameras today have two compensation dials, one for natural light exposure and another for flash. If you try to compensate a natural light exposure with the flash compensation dial, you won’t get any compensation. Most flash compensation dials have a zigzag arrow to indicate flash. Make sure you know where both compensation controls are found on your camera and use the correct one. On the 20D, a button on the top of the camera shows the plus and minus sign indicating exposure compensation, but many people fail to notice the flash indicator too. Instead, the natural light compensation control on the 20D is unexpectedly found on the back of the camera and isn’t marked. The on/off switch for the camera actually has three settings which include off, on, and another setting above the on setting. When you set the camera to this setting that is indicated by a line, you can set natural light exposure compensation by turning the quick control dial on the back of the camera. Just try to find that setting without reading the manual!

Virtually all the digital cameras we have seen offer a noise reduction feature. Noise is a problem that digital cameras have when shooting long exposures of one second or longer or when using high ISO’s such as 1600. Noise isn’t grain, but it looks like grain when you make a print. It occurs most commonly in the dark or underexposed portions of the image. Instead of a pure black, you might get black with red and blue spots randomly distributed in the black area. You can reduce noise in your original digital capture by turning on the noise reduction feature when shooting long exposures. Noise can also be minimized with image processing software as well. With each generation of cameras, the noise problem is being reduced.

We are all used to adjusting exposures with shutter speeds and f/numbers. However, digital cameras make it easy to use another exposure control. It is easy to adjust the camera’s ISO from one frame to the next. We teach our students to use the ISO to shoot very different images of the same scene. For example, let’s photograph some waterfalls. To blur the water, set the camera at ISO 100 and stop down to f/22. If it is a dark cloudy day or just very late in the day when the natural light is dim, you’ll likely get a fairly long exposure of one second. By using a polarizer, you can knock out two more stops of light so now you have a four second exposure. This will produce some waterfalls with a very silky rendition. Shoot an image and make sure the exposure is correct using the histogram and highlight alert controls. Suppose you want to freeze the water more so try shooting at f/11. You probably don’t want to open up the aperture any more because depth of field is needed to adequately cover the waterfalls. But, if you want to freeze the waterfalls even more, move the ISO up to 200, 400, 800, and even 1600. The waterfall will look different at each ISO because the shutter speed will get faster if the camera is set on aperture priority. You might like slightly frozen water better than very silky water. It all depends on personal preference. So use the ISO control to bracket the amount of motion you get in your waterfalls. You may like some versions better than others and it doesn’t cost you anything to try a variety of shutter speeds!

It’s nice to be able to vary the shutter time by adjusting the ISO setting. Many cameras have an extended range option of ISO’s that you might use. Both of my Canon cameras have the ability to expand the ISO range by using custom functions. Another great way to get to longer shutter times is to use a circular neutral density filter over the lens. We own a B&W .9 neutral density filter that reduces the amount of light coming through the lens by three stops. If the waterfall’s exposure is f/22 at one second, the .9ND filter lets us shoot at eight seconds. This is a great filter to own for those who love the look of silky water.

Another filter every digital photographer needs is an excellent polarizing filter for all of their shorter lenses. Glare is a real problem in your images and it is normally easy to remove with a polarizer. Software for digital images is amazing, but we still don’t know of any software that can really duplicate the effects of a polarizer properly used. You need polarizing filters!

Some digital cameras have auto ISO. This let’s the camera automatically move the ISO up to use a faster shutter speed so you will get a sharp image. The camera assumes you are not using a tripod. If you are using a tripod, be sure to turn this feature off. There is no point in letting the camera select ISO 1600 where noise could become a problem when you are using a tripod that will ensure a sharp image no matter what shutter speed is used. We found a few Nikon D70's doing this in the workshops so the feature was turned off.

Autoexposure worked well nearly all of the time. By using the histogram and highlight alert (blinkies) that is found on most digital cameras, it is fairly easy to adjust the exposure with the natural light exposure compensation dial. But, it didn’t work well in every situation. Let’s examine two situations where manual exposure proved to be the best way to photograph the scene. Colonnade Falls is one of Yellowstone’s most photogenic falls. Yet, few visitors to the park see it and even fewer serious photographers have ever photographed it because it’s located several miles into the back country along the Bechler River. We began photographing the waterfalls with a fixed aperture zoom lens in the 24mm to 70mm range. Starting with a tight shot of the double waterfalls, we checked the histogram to make sure the white values were as close to the right side of the histogram as possible without getting any blinkies which indicate overexposed pixels. Using aperture priority and matrix metering, we set the exposure compensation to +1/2 stop to get the best histogram. When we zoomed to a shorter focal length, making the waterfalls smaller in the frame, we noticed some overexposure in the waterfalls as indicated by blinking pixels. And when we zoomed to an even shorter focal length, we got even more blinkies. Here is what is happening. As the waterfall gets smaller in the frame, the meter measures a larger percentage of the surrounding dark forest. The meter tries to make the dark forest record closer to middle tonality which overexposes the white water. We found that we had to check the histogram and apply different exposure compensations every time we changed the focal length by 10mm or so. Eventually, we found it easier to set the camera to manual exposure and use the spotmeter. We spotmetered the whitest water in the waterfalls and adding 1 ½ stops of light to that exposure to get plenty of detail in the white water without getting overexposed highlights. Then we could recompose and change the focal length setting and shoot using the same exposure. This worked well as long as the ambient light didn’t change. We were using zoom lenses with a fixed aperture. This would not work with a variable aperture zoom lens. To summarize, this is a case where zooming the lens in our out caused the cameras meter to see a varying percentage of white water and dark forest that really tricked auto exposure.

In a second case, it is possible to find a subject where the overall reflectivity of the subject changes from moment to moment. We were photographing waves crashing on the rocky shores of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. Depending on the size of the waves as they smashed on the rocks, the meter saw varying amounts of white. Huge waves exploding on the shoreline filled the frame with white causing severe underexposure. In this case, we would have been more accurate to determine the best exposure using the histogram and the highlight alert control, set the camera on manual exposure, and shoot away, but still keeping alert to changes in natural light levels.

Another problem we ran into quite often was the diopter control that is now found on most cameras. This control lets you set the camera’s viewfinder for your eyesight. All too often participants inadvertently move the diopter setting to something that didn’t work for their own eyesight. Make sure the diopter adjustment is properly set on your camera.

Here’s another problem we saw all the time. Far too many photographers are judging their exposures by how the image appears on the LCD screen on the camera back or on a computer screen. Do not judge exposures this way! LCD screens tell you nothing about exposure. If an image looks too dark on the LCD screen on the back of the camera, just changing your viewing angle can make the image even darker or much lighter. Many cameras have a control that permits you to adjust the brightness of the LCD viewer. The best way to judge exposure is to use the histogram, along with the highlight alert. The histogram really tells you in great detail how good your exposure really is. Use the LCD screen to verify you have an image and perhaps check the sharpness of the image using the zoom tool or composition, but don’t use it to judge exposure! How the image looks on the LCD screen is meaningless for judging exposure.

Tripods were a problem at times too. We always extend the lowest leg segment on our tripods a bit to keep the locking joints out of the dirt. If you don’t do this, you’re certain to get dirt in your locking mechanism which is nothing but trouble and difficult to clean. Also, while using a cable release or self-timer, don’t touch the tripod during the exposure to ensure getting the sharpest image possible. Far too many photographers needlessly touch their tripod while shooting. This may cause the tripod to vibrate resulting in a loss of sharpness. When shooting in flowing water, set the legs out of the fastest currents because moving water causes vibration too.

We saw some problems with CF (compact flash) cards going bad. While they are durable, it’s important to use them correctly. We always turn the camera off when inserting or removing CF cards from the camera. Be sure to insert them into the camera correctly. It shouldn’t take much force to do this. We know several people who tried to jam the CF card into the camera backwards causing an expensive repair bill. While we do delete a bad image directly from the card from time to time, when we are loading a card in the camera and want to erase the card so it is ready to accept new images, we always format the card with the camera that will be used. So far, we have never had any problems with any CF card ourselves.

Always monitor the camera settings. Digital cameras are complicated instruments full of dials, menus, and buttons. Most of us are prone to just pushing and turning dials when the camera isn’t working the way we want it to. This leads to many undesirable settings resulting in inferior images. You must learn to slow down and precisely adjust the buttons and dials on your digital camera because it will do what you tell it to, not what you want it to do. Precision is important here!

A constant problem we have teaching workshops is our clients get too much advice. Some of this free advice is worth the cost while some is absolutely terrible. More than one person didn’t bring a polarizer because some "advanced" photographer they knew said it wasn’t necessary. A polarizer is the most necessary and useful filter in digital photography. You do need them most of the time for all of your lenses! For doing closeups, we always recommend buying high quality closeup lenses such as the Canon 500D series or the Nikon 3T, 4T, 5T, 6T series. These work well on zoom lenses. Unfortunately, when our client goes to the camera store, these closeup lenses aren’t stocked so they encourage them to buy an inexpensive set of three diopters with a name that we have never heard of. These low quality closeup lenses deliver inferior results and often won’t even let you hit sharp focus on a long zoom lens. Too many people are offering advice who shouldn’t be so be careful what you believe.

Colorful autumn leaves hanging on maple trees are exciting to photograph, but you need overcast days for low contrast and calm periods to do it well. Unfortunately, autumn is a time of unsettled weather. Cloudy and calm periods are rare during the peak of fall color so whenever it happens, you must shoot then. This is not a time to squander. No matter how much you may want to eat lunch, keep on shooting whenever perfect weather is present for the subject because it may not last long and you’ll love the images you make during this fleeting and precious time.

One problem with the digital revolution is it requires laptops or other storage devices to download and store the images. All of this equipment requires cords or batteries. Make sure you take all the batteries, battery chargers, and cords you need so you can manage and store your digital images efficiently and easily.

I hope you have enjoyed reading about some of the issues that came up during our field workshops. It was an interesting year for us as we learned how to teach digital in the field and worked with so many new issues and equipment. We think digital is terrific and enjoy being forced to think about new ways of conducting teaching programs. Enjoy your digital journey too.