Transcripts
1. Course Intro: Hello and welcome to the camera essential course. Today I'm going to show you how to turn an image that looked like this to this. That's by knowing the fundamentals of how the camera works and how the image actually transmitted to the camera and how light affects the whole image. Without further ado, let's get started. My name is Mostafa Nassar. I'm an engineer, artist based in Toronto, Canada. My videos relate to the creative process, art and investment. In this course, I'm going to take you step-by-step on how I set up my camera to come up with really beautiful images. Step 1, we're going to dive into shutter speeds and how they affect your image. Step 2, we're going to go into aperture and how aperture affects the light going into your camera. Step 3, we're going to go through ISO and understand what high ISO does to your image and how you can improve the image by using the triangle of trust. Step 4, we're actually going to dive into the triangle of trust by going through examples and how to increase one and compensate with the others. Step 5, we're going to go into the video mode and how to shoot beautiful videos with very low budget. I hope you really like this course as much as I enjoyed making it. If you have any questions, just leave me a comment below or just send me an email directly. I have my YouTube channel connected to my profile, and I would love to connect with you.
2. Reality check & Prerequisites: Let's get the elephant in the room first. Are professional cameras better than cellphone cameras? I guess it all depends. Depends on your usage, your situation, and your location. Sometimes having a camera that is so tiny and fit in your pocket way better than having a bulky reg that you can go take somewhere because sometimes you need something to take on the fly, something quick. Every camera is situational. When you look at it from a GoPro perspective to an iPhone to a Samsung, each camera has its pro and con and everything has a place and location to be used for. That being said, I don't want you to be discouraged if you don't have a camera yet when watching this course, all the fundamentals can be applied to a phone camera as well, because in the phone camera, you can adjust your shutter speed and sometimes you can adjust the ISO. It depends on the make and model of your phone. I wanted to affirm you that knowing these fundamentals and how an image work and how to set up your camera, will allow you to take better photos regardless of what camera make or body that you're using. To start with, I'm actually using an A73 with a 28 millimeter F2, and for demonstrations, I'm using an A6600 body with a 50 millimeter 1.8 lens. My preference is Sony, but don't be discouraged. You can use any other make and model because all of the fundamentals work the same. What really makes an image? An image is basically the light bouncing off of objects going into your sensor and creating a digital image onto your camera. That being said, light is pretty much all the image. If your image is not exposed properly, you're going to have a very dark image or a really bright image. You need to strike that balance of brightness and darkness to get that contrast. So you have the blacks, which is your shadows, and then you have the brights. It creates a good exposed image. If you can balance your dark shadows and the bright into something that is cohesive, the image is going to look very beautiful. What creates a good exposure? Exposure is created by three main things really. You have a shutter speed, you have ISO, and you have the f-stop, which is an aperture. We're going to dive into these three in the next module.
3. Camera Overview: In this module, I'm just going to go and change my settings to manual. I wanted to go and show you each of the ones that show on the screen. Usually, the number that shows one over 60 or one over any number is the shutter speed. The F is the f-stop. The number that shows minus two to plus two is your exposure and that's the camera actually telling you if the image is overexposed or underexposed. That's something in the software and AI and it's very, very useful to use. Sometime, when you're doing video, it's not highly accurate. You've noticed a lot of people are using an external monitor that goes on to adapt the camera. They want a monitor that can actually tell them or show them how it's going to actually look. When you're taking pictures, that is actually very useful, but when you're taking videos, most of the time you want to be able to see and view how it works. But for the time being, this is very, very useful to go and monitor your pictures and video. The last thing is your ISO. A quick overview of what these are. The shutter speed is the one that controls how fast your shutter in and out is closing so this one is going to be very detrimental. Let's say if you're shooting a sports and you wanted to do a very quick slow motion, you want to have a very high shutter speed to show all the movements because if you have lower shutter, you can have some motion blur and we're going to show you how that works in the shutter module. The f-stop is how big your iris is on the lens, and you're going to notice some lens that have variable apertures that go between 3-5.6 and there are some that has a very fixed aperture from F4 and some that has aperture of F1.8 and lower. The rule of thumb is, the lower the number, the more expensive the lens is. Let's say, for example, if you have two options and one of the lens is an F1.8 and the other one is F4, the four is going to be way less expensive than F1.8 because the F1.8 actually allows you to get more light in and is going to be way better in low light. But we're going to explore how the aperture works in the aperture module. Lastly, is the ISO. The ISO is different from camera body to camera body because the ISO is the actual body working on itself and digitally enhancing the image and increasing the brightness and correcting the exposure. The ISO definitely is body to body but that being said, the more expensive the body is, the better the ISO sensitivity is going to be. If you actually have a better lens and better f-stop, you definitely can have a huge advantage where you don't have to rely so much on the ISO. The ISO will come in handy in a way, but if you can control your shutter and your f-stop and also your lighting, you can have a really, really good-looking image with very, very cheap equipment, so just keep that in mind. Now, let's dive into the shutter speeds.
4. Controlling Shutter Speed: Welcome back. Shutter speed is basically the first number we have on the Sony cameras. If you notice, when I increase the shutter, the image gets darker, and when I decrease the shutter, the image gets brighter. That being said, let's say if we want to take a picture, that's how it's going to look. But let's say, how do you know if a higher shutter is better than lower shutter? Well, the thing is, if this is a moving object, the lower shutter is going to create a lot of motion blur. Let me show you. Now that we have this image, I'm just going to move this one back and forth and take a picture. Now I'm going to go into a very, very low shutter. The first one I shot 1/50, and the second one I shot at 1/5. We can see that with less shutter speed, I got a lot of motion blur, but the image is a lot brighter. Keep that in mind when you're taking an image, you have to definitely expose it properly. Now that you know how the shutter speed works, we're going to dive into how the aperture works.
5. How to adjust Aperture - F Stop : Now, let's jump into the aperture. The aperture basically is what is the lens capability of letting light into the body. This is at f/1.8, and I'm increasing the f-stop slowly, and now it's at f/22. Do you see the difference? I'm going back into f/1.8. Now, this is how the image will look when it's at 1.8. When you increase, obviously because the iris is closing down, the image gets darker and darker and darker. But do you notice what's happening to the background as well? The background is getting sharper and sharper, so you can actually get to see what's going on in the background. The lower the f-stop is, the more depth of field that you get. I'm going to show you another example right now. Now, to demonstrate how the f-stop affects the depth of field, we're just going to do this thing. Currently it's at 1.8 and I'm going to show you how it affects it when I increase the f-stop. By doing that, it gets darker, so I'm going to compensate by decreasing my shutter and I'm just going to keep doing that. I'm just going to go to f/22 and decrease my shutter. Also, I'm going to increase my ISO. We're going to cover ISO in the next. But as you can see, the lens is fully, fully visible. But if you want to compare it to before, now I'm going to go back to f/1.8. I'm going to go back to my shutter. The lens is not visible, it's actually quite blurred. That's how you can see how the f-stop actually affects the depth of field. This is the only thing that affects the depth of field when you have a body. No matter how much tinkering you do with your shutter speeds, your ISO, the only thing that will affect your depth is obviously the depths of the items and your f-stop. The lower the f-stop you have, the creamier the background's going to be. Just keep that in mind. Obviously, there are some bodies that can give you a little bit of an edge. If you have a body just like this one is an APS-C body, that means the sensor is a little bit smaller. Then you have a full-frame sensor, which is a little bit bigger. Then you have an IMAX sensor, which would allow a lot more light to come in. But these comes with a different price ranges. But if you're using these pictures for social media, the difference is not going to be really much, unless you're actually planning on showing it on an IMAX, which you might see a little bit of difference. Just for the purposes of this video, we just want to focus on the f-stop and how it affects your image. Next step, we're going to dive into ISO.
6. What is ISO ? : The ISO is like I said before, is that digital enhancement into the body that increases your exposure and decreases it. So for the time being, I'm having my shutter speed at one at 1.8, and I see that the image, it looks balanced, it's actually minus 0.3. So I want to increase that. So I can just go into the ISO and increase it by a couple of stops, and now it shows me that the image is well exposed. But let's say I just want to exaggerate to show you how it looks. So the higher the ISO, the more bright the image will look. But keep in mind that when you introduce ISO because it said digital enhancement, you add noise. I'm going to show you how noisy the image could look. I'm just going to increase my F-stop, and just take, there we go. I'm going to just try and exaggerate. I'm actually going into a very dangerous territory. Is 32,000 ISO, which is highly not recommended. But just for demonstrations, I want to show you how this is going to look. So now that we have this in here, I'm just going to take a picture, and I'm going to take a picture again when it's properly exposed with let me just do 22, and just wanted to do that. We're just going to go buy the property exposed image. So this is at F22 and ISO 32,000, because I'm trying to compensate by increasing my F-stop and increasing the shutter. Or I can just go into, let's say F1.8 and increase my shutter speed to something crazy. For this camera is 1/4,000. So I can just compensate by adding a little bit of F-stop. So at F-4.5. Now that we have this, I'm just going to go back to my native ISO and I want it to be the lowest ISO as I can. I'm just going to go 100 just for this video, and since I have it on a tripod, I can go a little bit lower. Now I'm shooting at 1/100, which is very, very acceptable for low-light images and F1.8 and ISO 100. Now I'm going to put these pictures side-to-side and show you how it looks like with really high ISO and the lowest ISO.
7. Understanding the Triangle Of Trust: Now that we've explored the shutter, the aperture, and the ISO, the next step is to how to balance them out and that what we call the triangle of trust. The triangle is trust basically, if one of them works, the other one can compensate. Let's just say you are in a very, very low light situation and you can go lower than 50 frames per second because any lower than that, you're gong to get a lot of motion blur. Let's just say your aperture is set at 1.8 because it can't go any lower than. That means ISO is going to be the one brother that's going to try and help out. Let's just say for demonstration, I'm just going to set my image at 1/100, F1.8 and I turn off the side light that I have. Now I'm just going to go and see how much I can improve with the exposure because right now it's showing me at minus two. I want to try and get that back up. I'm just going to go up to ISO 400. It says minus one. I'm going to try and go to 1,000, maybe I can do 800, so that's okay. Now it can just take a picture and I call it quits. Now that I got that done, I am okay. But let's just say for example, I am at the maximum ISO that I can go. I'm not talking 32,000, I'm talking some of the cameras, they perform well at 800 and some of them perform better at 400 ISO and sometimes you can go push it all the way to 4,000 ISO and you can see a little bit of noise, but it's still manageable. You can correct it if you have Lightroom or you can correct it in Photoshop, which is very, very acceptable. But let's just say that you have exhausted everything and you have to run it 4,000 ISO because this is your maximum. Maybe you can try and go down into your shutter, but you have to compensate that. Let's say if it's a moving image or a moving target, you are pretty much maxed out. It's always important to know the limitations of your gear because now you have to make a decision. Do I want to take an image and fix it in post process? Or do want to try and get the picture perfect in the body. That is a decision that you have to make, and it all depends on your skill level and how you want to take that image and push it further. But right now if you can see, it's actually very highly exposed and we cannot do that. I'm just going to go back down and I want to show you another example. Let's say for this example, I actually shooting a sport event and I need to have a very, very high shutter speed to try and catch a moving target. Let's just say I'm trying to shoot a football and I want to get that very perfect spot when he's throwing that football to his teammate. I want to go at least, let's say to 1/2,500 and put down my f-stop at 1.8, so this is the maximum I can do, and that gives me the same as before what I have to play with the ISO. I'm actually going at 10,000 ISO, which is completely not ideal, but the thing is, I'm actually shooting indoors. But if you're shooting a sports events, most of the time is going to be outdoors, very, very well lit. You definitely can have a leeway to play around with the ISO and have lower ISOs. That is one example. Another example is let's say you're actually shooting yourself in a room and you're doing a YouTube video. It's always behoove you to go into zero shutter speed and set it into 1/50, if you're shooting 24 frames per second, unless you're trying to do something in slow motion. You shoot like, it depends on your camera, like 120 or 250. But just say that we're shooting 24 frames per second and we want to keep our shutter speed at 1/50 to get the best looking image out there. But now when I do that, everything is so exposed, so I have two options, either to go down with the ISO or play around with my f-stop and all of that depends on your lens. But let's just say that you want to keep your f-stop at 2.8 for whatever reason maybe your lens is fixed at 1.8 and you still have a very underexposed image. You have two options, either to go down further into your shutter speed, which something you don't want to do and then your next option is always ISO. But let's just say that you have a little bit more leeway. You can go down into the f-stop, so 1.8 and now I can go into my ISO and get it down to 640. Now it's a very, very well balanced image. Now you can see how these three numbers play with each other and compliment each other. If you take it out in the field and it's actually very, very bright, you actually cannot use the ISO because your ISO is going to be tapped out at 100 and this is the lowest you can go. Now what you can do is you can increase your shutter speed and increase your f-stop. That depends on your body, depends on your lens. But most of the lenses, they tap out at 22 f-stop and somebody's tap out the shutter speed at 1/4,000 and some at 1/8,000 and some even higher. It all depends on what you can. Obviously there are solutions out there. We can actually add ND filter in the front of your camera to get or lower exposures and this could give you a little bit more flexibility if you still want it to use that f1.8 in a very, very harsh sunlight and that way you can get a really nice looking image into your camera.
8. Limitations and Common Mistakes: Now that you know how to expose your image using the triangle of trust, it's time to know the limitations. Sometimes even if you expose everything correctly, the image doesn't look good enough. Why is that? If your light sources are not quality light source, you're not going to get a really good image. Demonstrating the first example that I showed, where I actually had all of my lights off, the image was exposed correctly, but it didn't look good enough. The reason is, you have to have light. This is the number one deadly mistake that I see a lot of photographers going in thinking that the camera itself is going to make them better. That is not true. The best investment that you can do is to invest into light. This is the biggest mistake I see a lot of photographers going in and they're spending a lot of money and expensive gear, but they overlook the lighting. When in reality the best investment is to get better light, especially if you're shooting a YouTube video. But if you're out on the field or doing that neon shots, you can definitely invest into different flashes and all of that. But we're not talking about that. We're talking about how to expose your image correctly indoors, especially if you're shooting a YouTube video or you're doing an indoor photo shoot.
9. Light is Everything - How I got my look: In this module, I'm going to show you how to get a setup like this and try and expose it well with whatever you have. The first thing you need is to have a primary light source. I have a light source that I have over here, which is a portable Yongnuo 360. This one, pretty much, I put it on a 45-degree angle, and I'm just going to turn it on right now. That being said, I have to compensate that with my camera because I'm shooting and I'm using that with my app, so I'm just exposing it correctly. That being said, I set up my shutter speed at one over 50 because I'm shooting a video, and my f-stop at 2.0 Because I want it to have a blurry background. Right now, I'm only tinkering with the ISO, and I went from 5000 ISO-640. That being said, I have my face well exposed, but I want to do some isolation because now my back looks very dark. I have two options, I can get one of those, and I can just turn it on, and I can have something like this. I can put it on the side and now you can see that I created an isolation. That could be a fill light. If you have something in the back, and you see that in a lot of videos that they have some practicals in the back with different colors to create isolation, but in this time being, because I'm actually shooting in my camper home, I have two lights in there and they pretty much expose me very well, and they fill lights on both sides, and they act, also, at headlights. It actually comes in handy, and I really like that setup a lot. But the number one thing is, you need to have a good fill light. Because without a fill light, you've seen how it looks before and after. Even if it's well exposed, the image doesn't look because the light doesn't act just like a light source. It also acts like a color. If you have an image, you can have 50 percent of the work done for you by the light, and 50 percent has to be done with editing. Some people would like to get the picture-perfect in the camera. What they usually do is they try and get the colors baked into the camera itself, so you don't have to do any post-processing, but if you want to take that step further, you can shoot in raw image, and raw will give you a very flat profile of the image and you can go in and add color into it later. You can add saturation. You can play around with the balance, your white balance, and even sometimes with the tense. It's up to you how you want to do it. But the best thing I've found from my workflow is to try and shoot at the flattest color profile possible and to try and add a little bit of color in post. That way, you can have full control over your image and how you want it to portray in the real world.
10. Video Tips for Indoors shooting: Now let's go to the next step. You want to shoot a video indoors. The first thing is you need to find a good light source. You can get a lamp, or you can buy an external light and set it up 45 degrees onto your face, and next step is to do something in the back. It's up to you. You can add a hair or not, completely up to you. Now the next step is to adjust your record settings. I have them at 24P, and now that will allow you to do a shutter speed of 50. Usually, the rule of thumb is whatever your record-setting is, multiply that by two, average it out, and have the shutter speed. Let's say, if you want to shoot slow motion and your camera allows it to do a 120P, that means 250 shutter speed. If your camera only allows 60P, that means a 120 shutter speed. Let's keep it simple. Now that you have your shutter speed locked, now you need to do your f-stop. I recommend to use the lowest f-stop that you have with your lens. In that case, I'm using an F2, so I'm setting it up at F2. Now the only thing I need to play with is just the ISO. That's pretty easy. Now the only trick that I can tell you is, try and adjust your light source to expose for your background. What does that mean? You see my background? You can actually see the details, but if I increase my light, I'm going to have a very high exposed image, and the background is going to be dark. Let me show you. Now I actually set up my light at 100 percent. I usually set it up at 40 percent, and as you can see, my background is very dark. You can't really get to see a lot of that light. That light is not actually doing much. By exposing to my background first and adjusting my light second, I get to have full control over what I want to see in the image. Because if I just set up the light blindly and try adjusting the camera, I'll have to tinker with a lot of stuff in the back, but I don't have that luxury because these lights are fixed. If I have a fixed light in the back, my solution is to expose to what I want to see in the background, and after I fix that, I can sit down and then fix my light percentage or power output to match the lights that I have, and that will give me a good looking image.
11. Parting Notes and Gear Used: Now that we've shot an image and a video, you can see there is a lot of similarities between the two. The only thing is with the video, if you're looking for that cinematic look, you're pretty much limited with how much shutter you have. For 24p, the rule of thumb is 50 frames per second. You can definitely go higher if the circumstances don't allow you and you need to add a little bit more shutter. For example, if it's still bright and you already exhausted all of your options, the only next step to do is to increase your shutter. You can always break that rule and just do it consciously knowing why you're doing it, not because of what happened because you don't know what you're doing. When I started, I used to crank up my shutter speed because I wanted to get all of the frames, but I would really crank up my ISO to compensate. That didn't really work really well because I got a really ugly-looking image and it didn't have that cinematic look. Once I started to understand how the shutter, ISO, and f-stop react to each other, now I can go in and bake in, let's say, I want my shutter speed to be minimum 100. Then if I set that up I can play with the other two and play around with how my image would look. Let's say if I know that the image is way underexposed, I need an extra set of lights and I'll bring that in and boom, it's gone. Just keep that in mind now that you know the power of the triangle, you know how to get your outside environment to influence the image that you want from your camera. That is the true power of shooting in manual mode. I hope you have a lot of fun with that and I hope to see a lot of your images. Please post them in the projects. I would love to see what you come up with. This is an overview of the gear that I'm using. I usually typically use obviously the camera, or I'm going to use the Rubik's Cube for some demonstrations. I have two different light sources. I have this one called the Yongnuo 360, which is very light, portable LED light. You can control the light with RGB colors and different color temperatures. My second light source is the Aputure MC, which is a very nifty small-looking light and it's awesome. It can fit in your pocket and it has very nice capabilities. I usually use that to carry it like a rim light or just a fill light on the side. This is one of the best purchases I've had, which is the JOBY tripod. I pair it with that and I can just put that light source anywhere. If I wanted to get a diffusion, I just add a white bag on top of that and I just put it in. That's pretty much how I come up with my lighting.
Mostafa Nassar, One step at a time
