Exercise - Light throughout the day

Planning:
I went around the area near the house to find a place where the Sun can reach through out the day and where I can make several trip throughout the day to do this homework.
I had to watch the MET office forecast to see how the weather is likely to be.
After a few places in mind. I have decided to go for this place, Portable Airship Hangar, which is very near to my house. The structure is very interesting and I never get bored looking at it. This place is only 5min walk from my house and it has very seating which I could sit and relax.
I went to this place a few times before the day of homework just to see where the Sun will rise and where the Sun will set.
Luckily it's authumn and the Sun rises slightly later now, 7am and set a bit early, 7pm. The time changes on a daily basis. The day is shorten by 5-7 min every day.

As I can only do this homework during weekend due to work time constraint, I am also quite lucky that this past weekend we have had very nice cloudless warm sunny day.
I planned on doing this exercise over a period of 5 days by covering different times.

I had a look on MET office forecast and Wednesday - Sunday were going to be cloudless sunny warm days.
I set the camera on aperture priority at f/14 with WB set to auto.

Shooting:

Wednesday - I went to take photos between 5-5.30pm. The light was already low in the sky. There were many birds tweeting.

Thursday - The Sun was to set at 6.42pm. After doing some house shore, I went to take photos between 6-6.45pm to cover the Sun set. the light was amazing. I took a few photos after the sun set.

Friday - I finished work at 1pm, I went straight to the place and started taking photos with interval of about 40 min. I planned to finish the photography for today at 4.30pm since I did some evening shots already.

Saturday - The Sun was to rise at 7.02am. I set the alarmclock at 6.30am just to make sure I get there before the Sun rise. When the Sun actually rose, I couldn't see it because it rose behind a buidling but I could see the light changed so fast. I was there until 8.30am and got home just to have breakfast. I then went back again at 9.15 and stayed until 11am because I had other appointment to go to.

Sunday - I only had just over half an hour to cover so I went back out at 11.45 and stay until 12.30. The cloud was much less today and I could feel the heat on my skin. I was glad I didn't have to stay that long.

I really enjoyed this exercises. I took 3 different angles of this hangar but I like this view the most because I can see the changes in colour in the sky. I could have used tripod but I couldn't leave it so I decided not to use it.

3different version:
1)


2)


3)


I chose photo 1 here because it looks real pretty at all the lighting. The other 2 photos are only pretty at certain light

06.54


07.07


07.21


07.36


07.55


08.27


09.13


09.49


10.29


11.06


11.55


12.22


13.10


13.57


14.33


15.13


15.44


16.27


17.17


17.50


18.02


18.13


18.22


18.42



I love all the photos I took. They just give different feeling. All the light was just as beautiful.
My favourites photos are the one at the earliest morning time when the sky was quite red, the one in the mid morning, blue sky with some contrail which gives some texture in the sky and at Sunset when the edge of the sky seems to be quite yellow.
The best moment would be the morning time because it's quiet and no mosquito!

I think which time of the day is good to take photo of a certain scene really depends on how the scene sits facing the light. From this exercise it seems to me that only 1 of the scences I took photos of looks really good all day while the other two looks nice at only certain times of the day.

Exercise - Judging colour temperature 2

I had my husband to be a model once again.

Full sunlight during middle of the day:

daylight/sunlight white balance
The result looks OK.


shade white balance:
The photo looks too orange.

Auto WB setting:
The photo looks OK.



In shade during the middle of the day:

daylight/sunlight white balance
The result looks slightly too blue.


shade white balance:
The photo looks only just too orange.


Auto WB setting:
The photo looks OK.


In sunlight when the sun is close to the horizon:
I took the photos near sun set. All setting look quite orange.
The colour temperature is lower, hence orange and the camera is trying to compensate by applying higher colour temperature, blue, to the photos but they still look cold .. orange.

daylight/sunlight white balance



shade white balance:


Auto WB setting:


The result of auto white balance, AWB, of this camera came out OK for most photos condition. I don't tend to change the white balance that much unless the photos look really strange like too blue or too orange then I would use RAW converter to change the white balance.

The colour of photo should not look the same. The different in colour has effect on how you feel when you look at the photo. The photo at sunset or sunrise will be more orange because the colour temperature is lower and by looking the photo, you will feel that it's the different time of the day than the photo taken during the day with slightly blue in the colour.

Exercise - Judging colour temperature 1

I have always taken photos in RAW + JPEG The camera I used is Canon 450D. When I open Raw file in CS3, the colour temperature set by the camera "Day light" is different to the "Day light" in raw file converter. It seems the "Day light" in the camera is cooler (about 5000K) than the "Day light" in raw file software (about 5500K)
I like the "Day light" colour temperature set by the camera more. The one set by CS3 software seems a little bit on the orange (warm) side.

I took a few photos of Graham's face, a few in the early afternoon under the Sun with front light and side light, one in the shade by standing under the tree or waiting for the Sun to go behind the cloud and another one in the late afternoon at around 6.45pm when the Sun was at the horizontal. I chose that time because I checked the MET office and found the Sunset was at 7pm.

1.Full sunlight early afternoon

This image has quite harsh shadow on the face. It makes the photo high contrast. some area on the face and t-shirt have overexposed.


2. In shade during the same time (early afternoon)

This image has lower contrast with less harsh shadow on the face. Overall the face looks somewhat under expose.


3. At sunlight when the Sun was about to set (very close to horizon)

This image looks similar to the one taken under the shade but slightly better. It has a bit more red in the light.

During taking photos, the eyes adjusted to the ambient light and could not see much different between the one in shade and the one at Sun set. All I could tell at the time of shooting was that there was not much light while the one taken directly under the Sun had too much light that it's difficult to get photo taken with properly exposed.

Exercise - Higher and lower sensitivity

I took 12 different photos, 6 with higher ISO of 800/1600 and another 6 with lowest ISO of 100.
The purpose of this exercise is to see how easy the photography was and assess of the image quality.

Higher ISO
I took 6 different photos in low light situation.
1. this one was taken in a cript under Winchester Cathedral. By setting ISO of 1600 (the highest ISO available in my camera) I could manage to get this shot without using tripod.



2. I was trying to capture image of fish in a pond. With ISO of 800 I managed to get shutter speed to 1/60 sec and therefore just about to freeze the movement of the fish.



3. This image was taken in a pub and with low light. the high ISO of 800 able me to get this shot without too much blur.



4. Taking an image in this Cathedral with ISO of 800 helps increasing shutter speed enough to freeze the moment of the choir



5. This image was taken just after the Sun had set. By using ISO of 1600 I could just about to manage to take this image without tripod.



6. This image was taken under a slightly overcast day. I set an ISO to 800. The only movement in the image was I trying to hold a camera very still.



Summary: Most of the images using higher ISO (800/1600) has made it more possible of taking photos at lower light level and with movement of subjects.

Lower ISO (sensitivity) All images below were taken with ISO setting at 100. The purpose was to see how easy capturing images with low ISO .

1. I had to admit that I took the image below using tripod. With ISO100 the shutter speed was too slow (1/6sec) for me to able to hold the camera still.



2. This image was similar to the image using higher ISO. With ISO 100 the image was really blur.



3. This image was taken in a pub at the same time as taken with high ISO.
The lower ISO of 100 has made the image very blur with somewhat artistic! (captured all the hand movement)



4. This image was taken in a low light gallery. Setting ISO 100 has made it more difficult to prevent image blur.


5. This image was also taken using tripod to be able to get the flow of the river.



6. This image was taken on a tripod. Without it the image would be quite blur because of the low light level.



Summary: The lower ISO of 100 has made it more difficult or near enough impossible to take photos in low light level without any image blur because of the lower shutter speed. Using tripod has helped making it possible in reducing any camera shake.

Conclusion:
The images taken with much higher ISO (800/1600) contain speckled texture or grain while the images with lower ISO (100) have much visible grain.
The higher the ISO setter, the higher shutter speed the camera can achieve with the same f stop which consequently less blur / shaky images produced.
The preferred images are the ones with lower grain. However with lower grain images, it means to use lower ISO setting and consequently slower shutter speed which possibility of causing camera shake during photography.
Without the help of tripod to reduce camera shake with the slow shutter speed, higher grain would be the preferred choice.

Using advanced image manipulation, the grain can be reduced, but the blurry photo can not be corrected!!