Shooting The Sinulog Festivities
Monday, January 16, 2012
Albert Pedrosa
Photo mania
MEMORY card, check. Battery, check. Lenses, check. Raincoat, check.
The excitement rises as we approach the grand mardi gras on Sunday. Many photographers, amatuer or pro, prepared and waited the whole year for the Sinulog Photo Contest. This is the mother of all Photo Contests in Cebu where more than a thousand of hopeful photographers coming from different parts of the world and different cities in the Philippines vie for the pride of at least placing in one of the categories or bagging the bragging rights of winning the grand prize.
Last year 2011, Mikhail Arrogante won the grand prize and celebrated his grand slam as well. Winning the grand prize twice in a row is almost impossible given the fact that there are more than 16,000 photo entries each year. Mikhail made history by winning three times. Will Alex Badayos or Erwin Lim regain their crown or a new grand prize winner will emerge?
Camera shops are busy catering last minute orders for lens, camera body, memory card, battery and the rest. Photography clubs are organizing themselves on how to cover the event. Even photography workshops are full in preparation for the ultimate photo contest of the year. So here’s my take on some camera setting you might find useful in shooting Sinulog.
In relation to my article a few weeks ago about creative modes, I’d like to further discuss some camera settings that would help you expose your shots properly and efficiently during the grand mardi gras. In this article, I will be covering metering modes, exposure compensation and semi-automatic modes. Note that most of these settings are now available in compact cameras.
I’m sure that some photographers will disagree in using semi-auto modes and that manual mode should be the mode of choice for true photographers. I believe that the advancement in metering modes and advanced features in cameras today will help you do your job better and faster in certain photographic scenarios.
Metering Modes
The heart of exposure in photography is very much dependent on metering. This is one utility you cannot do without. You can access the meter inside your viewfinder or through your lcd display. The meter tells you if the scene you’re about to capture will be over or under exposed. Every camera has a different way of displaying the meter. Mostly, there’s an indicator that moves pointing to a negative or positive sign which represents under or over expose respectively.
The metering can be set according to your requirement. There are actually three (3) modes from which you can choose from. These are “evaluative, center weighted and spot”. The “evaluative” metering mode meters the entire scene and computes for the right exposure using the average of the different zones. When shooting a bright background with a poorly lit foreground using an “evaluative” metering mode, the result of the subject will be very dark while the background will be exposed just right. This happens because majority of the scene is bright. You can resolve this issue using exposure compensation which I will discuss in the later part of this article.
“Center weighted” metering mode computes the same as the “evaluative” but with more emphasis on the center of the frame. So even if the background is lighter, the camera will put more weight on the center during the computation for the right exposure. If the subject is mostly position in the center, then this would be the best metering mode.
The “Spot” metering mode computes for the right exposure basing it on a small area of dot in the center of your frame. In some Nikon camera, you can even set the diameter of this small area. When using this metering, it is very important to choose the right spot to meter, otherwise, your exposure will result into extreme over or under expose.
The reason I’m explaining about metering mode is because the semi-automatic modes such as aperture priority, speed priority, program mode and even the manual mode is basing its computation from the metering modes of your camera. Therefore, in order to get the right exposure using these different creative modes, you need to use the right metering mode for a specific scene.
Aperture and Shutter priority
When shooting during the festivities, a split second delay in releasing your shutter would mean a lot. If you’re shooting in manual mode, you will have to put attention if both the shutter speed and aperture is set correctly for a good exposure. This is too much attention taken from you since the festivities is outdoor and the light will definitely shift a lot. Your attention in getting the right composition will be compromised by the factors affecting your exposure. The solution is semi-automatic modes.
By setting your shooting mode to Aperture priority, you’d be able to control the depth of field while the camera sets the right shutter speed for you automatically. Should you decide to shoot your subjects with blur backgrounds, just set your aperture to the smallest number or biggest hole while bigger number or smaller hole will offer you sharper backgrounds. This is very handy especially if you want to put more attention on the dancing subjects and waiting for the right timing.
Another setting that you should consider is the “Auto ISO”. Since there are three factors to consider in getting the right exposure, you will have to address the ISO as well. By setting it to “Auto ISO”, your camera can also take charge in setting the right ISO leaving you with just the aperture to control. You have to also configure your camera to set the maximum ISO since you don’t want your camera to choose those high ISO which in turn, gives you more noise or grains.
Although Shutter priority is not very much used in this kind of scenes, there are some creative photographers who plays a lot of capturing the motion of the dancing subjects. A moving person can be frozen if shot at 1/125 sec. To capture their movement, you can lower down your speed to around 1/30 sec or less. This is very difficult to achieve and would take a lot of practice to master but if you manage to get a good one, it should be very rewarding.
Exposure Compensation
The major advantage of digital photography is the ability to preview your shots. When shooting semi-automatic modes where it is basing its exposure values from the metering, there will be times that the exposure will be off. This is where “exposure compensation” come handy. You can override the metering and set it to over or under expose to a few notches.
If the result of the shot is a little bit under exposed or dark, you can set the “exposure compensation to “+1” or more, or to “-1” or less for too bright shots. Don’t forget to set it back to zero if you change to another lighting scenario because you might end up compensating the exposure of all your shots.
If you plan to join the photo contest, don’t forget to set your camera to shoot RAW.
The organizers require you to submit those RAW files together with the printed entries. Set your drives to shoot burst so you can capture every part of the action.
You can also set your Auto-Focus to “AI servo” mode so the camera will focus the subject as they move around.
Enjoy the Sinulog Festivities and don’t forget to drink lots of water. Happy shooting everyone! Pit Senyor! For comments and suggestion, please email me at photography@grp.ph
