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December 17, 2009
[THE DECISIVE YULETIDE MOMENT]
Now is the time to start planning for the Yuletide photo ops. Especially for capturing that moment when the little tacker’s face lights up when she discovers that Santa has come good on her wishes. And also the moment of rapture when she gets her first taste of the joys of materialism and conspicuous consumption.
The first rule of happy Christmas snapping is so obvious it hardly needs repeating, but just in case you’ve forgotten it is this: get down on their level. There is no missed opportunity as boring as a shot from above from which you miss the eyes completely. Get down on the floor, eyeball to eyeball.
The second rule is: do not use flash, except as a last resort. Flash from an onboard camera unit will always look flat and artificial and is almost guaranteed to produce red eye. So if you don’t want your little one looking like an extra in a vampire movie you should use available light.
However, available light is not without its problems. There is usually not much of it under the tree and what there is will be a funny colour needing some tweaking of the white balance to compensate for incandescent or fluorescent light.
We compensate for inadequate light by cranking up the ISO speed. With compact cameras there is a limit to how far we can go and ISO 400 is about it. Beyond that point the picture noise becomes intolerable and even the smoothest infant skin starts to look acne blitzed.
With a digital SLR the limits are higher. ISO 800 is good and up to ISO 1200 may be acceptable, depending on the camera.
One way to move the odds of capturing the magic moment in your favour is to set the camera to its burst mode. Most digital cameras will take rapid sequences of shots by holding the shutter release down and following the action. Compact cameras have modest burst rates of three or fewer frames per second but DSLRs can usually manage five frames per second in JPG mode. It’s well worth experimenting with the camera in burst mode before the big day to see what it can do. Just keep in mind that you probably can’t do bursts with flash and expect them to all be correctly exposed – the flash takes longer to recharge than the time between exposures.
This is not an occasion for getting people to watch the birdie. (Does anyone still say that?) What you need as a record of the festivities is a collection of people interacting with each other, not with the camera.
In this day and age of big flat screen TVs and instant gratification don’t miss the opportunity for instant playback. Most LCD TVs have a USB port into which to plug a USB memory stick. Some can play back movies from digital cameras. And most have video inputs for connecting the camera directly to the telly. ‘Tis the season for convergence!
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Posted by terry at December 17, 2009 07:51 AM
