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Crossfit Shoot D-3300

Lesson 14 from: Taking the Fear Out Of Low Light Photography

Jared Polin

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Lesson Info

14. Crossfit Shoot D-3300

Lesson Info

Crossfit Shoot D-3300

Yeah, now we're doing the crossfit gym now the concert stuff is done, but keep in mind with that concert stuff that we shot yesterday, you would have watched me for three hours going through the whole process, answering all these questions from people had in the chat room and making stuff really work out well in low light, keep in mind that that stuff can translate into anything. So all the things that were in my mind for shooting a concert are also in my mind when I'm in a crossfit gym or any low light situation that we're going to be in. So what you're going to watch right now is a crossfit gym shoot. We just showed up figured out what we were going to do when we got there ran through situations like hey, how do we freeze motion of the guys swinging his leg back and forth with the d thirty three hundred? And we made it happen, and there were some happy accidents that definitely did occur, and you don't have to worry. My shirt stayed on for the entire time, but there is somebody else'...

s shirt that did come off, and I won't tell you who it is you'll just have to wait and see, so can I throw it to the show? Let's, go to jared. All right jared thank you for throwing it to me now we're hearing a crossfit gym why? Because this is a low light situation extremely low light we've got the fluorescence up here we have a garage door back there that if we want to open it up we're gonna let light in there but what am I doing here? What is the point I have the d thirty three hundred the lowest end camera that you can buy from nikon I have a kit lends eighteen to fifty five on here because if you can do it with this you can do it with just about anything we've got any we've got chris chelsea's over there we have people toe work out here but I'm going to direct them my whole idea behind being here is to do a photo story in the low light situations so that doesn't doesn't mean we're going to do pull ups and push ups and do action there's portrait's that you can capture there's the warming up all the things that are going on that's what we're looking to capture here and you know being it's a low light situation we have to figure out everything on the move how we're going to shoot it and I'm going to attempt to do it starting with this eighteen the fifty five just to show you how well we can do or how poorly we can do because I don't know what can happen yet I also have some other cameras in the in the bag but I want to use what a lot of you guys were gonna have and maybe leave the d for us alone so hi you guys good so they're they're just going to do they're warming up thing and I'm just going to sit here and figure out the lighting first things first I have to figure out how to use a d thirty three hundred and the first thing really means turning it on which I did figure out how to do this is on ly a three five lens at eighteen when you get out to fifty five it goes to a five point six so that is a total loss of light but what you have to remember when you have a camera like this most cameras today have s o capabilities into the sixty four hundred s so all the way up to twelve thousand eight hundred of course when you get into those higher ranges that's when you start to get into places where you'll see more noise more grain but the whole point of this low light photography thing is to take the fear out of doing it it's ok to push your eyes so so we're going to start here right now I'm in eight hundred s o and I'm in manual settings I'm not doing aperture priority I'm not doing I want to make all this the changes myself, so we're going to do it if I was to guess my settings at eight hundred eyes. So at five point six I bet you it's going to be somewhere in the tenth of a second range because it's extremely dark. So chris is over here kicking his leg up. This is an interesting thing at a tenth of a second, so I need to just back up and find my frame lock my focus in boom did you hear how slow that was? Because it was a tenth of a second you heard being think that's slow that means that his leg is probably going toe go and out get out of focus! Well, not out of focus there's movement in there now his head seems to be perfectly fine because he's sitting he's sitting pretty much still but then you get his leg that's moving. How are we going to freeze his leg moving, chris, you're going do that forever, all right? You got to stretch those groins out, you've got to get it going. We got to figure out how we're going to freeze his leg moving. We're not going to add flat, we're not going to add any more light I could shoot wider because if I shoot at eighteen oh actually, I was shooting at eighteen what was I shooting at I better check that out because I did zoom wider in it's, a variable aperture lens, which means the thie aperture is going to change no matter what. When we zoom, I was at one tenth of a second it have three point five, so the exposure wasn't bad, but I want to get my shutter speed up, I want to go to somewhere around to freeze him. I'm thinking, what do you guys think to freeze him? What do you think? Just yell at me three twenty I'm thinking around two hundredth of a second I'm going to go just because I know that going from a tenth of a second and going from a tenth of a second too two hundredth of a second going to be a pretty big jump, but that means I also need to bump my eyes so up got to get into the camera here, but my eyes so let's go to let's go to thirty two hundred will jump into thirty, two hundred three five, one twentieth of one two hundredth of a second I'm going to make you, uh do that again and where I'm locking my focus is right on his chest there we got about at the same place, and this time we froze the motion there's just a little bit of motion going on in his foot. So that is a good thing we figured this out the reason I'm taking my time and getting the exposure right in the first place is once you lock the exposure in in a situation where the lights aren't changing, unless you move into a darker area is that you can focus on shooting at that point, you don't need to sit here and fidget with the settings the whole time, get your settings right, and then you can focus on directing and shooting. It makes everything so much easier, and a reason we don't shoot in aperture priority in here is if I was to focus on chris he his face is brighter than the background if for some reason the aperture, if I was in three d matrix metering in this camera, it's going to read the background scene, which is going to then slow the shutter speed down to try to expose for the back there that's not what I'm looking to do, I don't want to read for the shadow area, I want to set the settings right myself, and then I want to shoot chris right here. So looking at this the two hundredth of a second at three point five, I'm pretty happy with how this looks again I'm shooting raul, so I do have a little bit of leeway when we go in process and edit this to determine what we're going to do, I would love to open up a little bit in terms of my aperture but this lens on lee goes to three, five and eighteen so if I stay at eighteen millimeters it's going to stay at three five, which is the widest aperture so I think I need to just stop talking to you guys out there and and actually just shoot and talk on the way so chris, why don't we get back to doing some more lady make later thing things more swing what you call that? Is there a special term hip swings? I like it it's it's very hip swinging so you keep doing that I'm going to come over here find a good composition and if I wait till the sport gets to the all the way to the apex, the peak action it's most likely going to stop there and be almost fully and focus let's see, is there a lot of movement not so much movement there but he's in focus it looks good all right, so all right you can you can stop hip swinging and just do whatever you need to do stretching lies but I love this this this is great, I'm going to get down here on your angle anne and I'm going to shoot this is good that's good, you can look over towards chris boom I like to check my screen I'm going to check the screen because we have it there's no reason not to check your screen that's what it's here for you want to look at your images just to make sure that you're framing your composition and everything that you're looking for is spot on and this I'm liking the exposure you also have to remember that the screen isn't perfect it's going to be pretty close depending on where your brightness is but you just have teo trust it pretty much this is good look right at me perfect I like that let me see let me see what we have I want to come in a little closer so I do want to zoom and I may go vertical I may want to let more light and oh what I should have said is because any isn't moving I don't need to really worry about that two hundredth of a second right now because she's not moving and I have to freeze anything I can slow my shutter speed down I could well let's think about what we could do to let more light in one thing is slow the shutter speed down from two hundredth of a second the one hundredth of a second we could let more light into brighton this up and if we're doing that and we want the same exact exposure as we're getting right now we could then drop the I so want the s o one stop so from two hundredth of a second toe one hundredth of a second is one stop and if we want to correspond that with the eye so we would go from thirty two hundred to six hundred that is one stop so let's see if we can go to one hundredth of a second and then we can change the s o two sixteen hundred and then that will give us the should give us the same exact exposure if you've been holding that the whole time that's good boom and it's the same exposure is before but I want to let it I want a little brighter so I'm gonna I'm gonna stay here and being that any isn't moving I want to go to I'm gonna go to a sixteenth of a second let's go to a fiftieth of a second and also on this lens being a kit lends it actually has v r which is vibration reduction I'll talk about that in a second that's going to help me when we're not shooting a moving object bone and that should be good I like that a lot there you go what other stretches do you have in your arsenal because now that your hips are all good hands from stretch all right good. I'm going to go vertical for this you look up where you were just towards chris there you go. So compositionally you can see how I'm rearranging myself I'd lock in the focus on her face and then I'm composing properly because I want to get my framing and everything correct on bit's good let's that's going to do that again that works so that works too and now if we want to start zooming now I have to worry about my aperture changing because out of fifty five it's going to five point six which means I want to bump my eyes so up a little higher going to go back to thirty two hundred billion believe it at a fiftieth of a second let me talk about the v r real quick v r is one of those things that it's misunderstood so people think that vibration reduction is going to keep the subjects still it's not meant to do that so if you're shooting a fast moving subject they're not going to stay still when you shoot with the r one fiftieth of a second they're going to keep moving the v r is going to help you stay still and the background is going to be nice and sharp but that's not what you're going for s o v r is really meant to help you stay stable and being that and he wasn't moving too much and if she's standing still well the v r is going to help me stabilize to allow me to shoot at a slower shutter speed is that all makes sense? I don't want to ignore you guys over there. We'll get if you have questions, raise your hands and then we'll get the mic over and you guys can ask it so I'll get back to shooting, but hold your hold your thoughts, and then we'll get back to that let's. See? So I just want to do some zooming in stuff to show you that you can blow out the something out of focus. All right? Can you, uh, ridge over here and do that stretch to that? Yep. I am going to focus in right here on shoo in the hands boom. And even at five six, you can see that she's out of focus. There's my butt. Look good from that angle. Good. It is good. Well, what I just did there. You know how many people say that? You need the best glass in the world to blow out the background? It's not true. I mean, I look, I'm all about glass, glass, glass, glass, glass. But I'm showing you with the kid'll ends that we sat here and we focused in on the shoe in the hands of any shoe in hands, and she is out of focus even at five six and was she about two feet away from her foot there that is pretty good that's showing you that if you can blow out focus with this lends you could do it with anything else so that's that's an important thing to keep in mind what's your question now that the bells are tolling outside my question is when you're looking at are you looking at the meter itself in there or you're not paying attention that you're saying I know my you know I knew my settings so that's a really good question I do look at the meter I tried to line it up when I need to but I also know that the meter may be thrown off by the outside not the outside but darker areas or brighter areas a lot of what I did is I guess the settings right off the bat I wanted to get I love guessing the settings I play that game all the time where it's let's walk into a situation guess the setting and then figure out what to do from there the reason I do that as I pick my settings I take a picture kind of like a light meter a camera is a light meter these days because you can see the image when it's done so when I see the image I go is it over exposed is it under exposed and my shooting somebody that's moving fast or my shooting, somebody that's moving slow if I'm shooting somebody that's moving fast, I know that I need maybe move my shutter, speed one direction or if I want to blow out the background, I need to move my aperture another direction. But one thing to keep in mind when you are trying to get your settings correct is try not to change multiple things at once if you take one picture than change one setting, don't try to change three things at a time because to try to change three things at a time, you're going to get nothing right now. That all makes sense focusing on getting one thing right first and that's and that's the thing we know that here we're doing these stretches when we start hitting this thing and we try to freeze the motion, we're going to need to have a faster shutter speed. But in this case, for stretching and blowing the background out, even with this kit lends, we know we don't need that fast of a shutter speed. So all make sense, any other questions while we're over here? Let's pass that mike, how do you do to determine which meeting mode to use? So when you're shooting manual, I mean so when I determine meeting mode spot monitoring. Is going to be if you want to get a specific meter right off of somebody's face so chris right here we could spot meter for him and that would even in manual mode tell us what the give us the meter for his face all right, so that's a that's not a bad place to be matrix metering what three d matrix metering is doing that in the nikon and in the can and you have a evaluative meet oring what that's doing is taking the average of the entire scene the brightest area and the darkest area and it's giving you the average in the middle so I'm I've gotten to a place where I don't really rely on the meter that much some people rely on the history graham which can also be thrown off because when you're shooting in low light situations, especially concerts, the history graham becomes worthless because it's a dark scene with one spike on one side and technically the history and they say right in the middle is about where you want to see your spikes I don't even worry about it I just like to rely on the screen now some people out there don't you? They say that's not the way to do it that's cheating you shouldn't look at the screen, the screen is here on our cameras for a reason, so I'm going to use it so in terms of mentoring modes, I leave it on three d for the most part, but I really don't I don't really worry about it too much I don't look at it that much anymore, but when you're starting out, if you know that you want to get just him, then that's when you could look at it there and that's going to give you a better opportunity to get a starting point like I said earlier when we started it's all about getting your settings lock it in so you can focus in on shooting, so if I was just doing a shoot here and not having to teach, I would you know, just be directing and moving around more, but I want to get as much information out as possible for you guys so that we can keep going, so I'm going to get back down here, I'm gonna I said, I'll shut up already. I think I've already said that I want to focus in on shooting and I'll probably break my own rules into second because I want to teach something um, any house that stretch feel that that's a good stretch can we get back to doing the sitting up? Any chance you can use the rope tow to do what you need to do if you can't? I mean I can't reach I started taking yoga, it didn't help it didn't help but that's good. So what I'm gonna have you do and we're just working with this light. This is this is not bad. How low can you go there and then just look at me, bring the eyes right up to me and in this picture you can see that I cut off the top of her head a little bit. I want to get to her whole foot in there and her whole top of the head. I'm always making sure that my composition is right and I'm not getting rid of something that I shouldn't get rid of. Is it hurting? Ok, good moved my focus point boom change my exposure a little bit to get more light in the face boom compositionally I'm liking it. Do you like that? You see that? Did you think that's possible in here? You did? You thought it was possible. So that works. See it's all about the story it's all about the story. We're warming up the s this is a long warm up. They're probably pretty warm and probably shot right now, but we're just going to keep going. Chris what other? Uh, yeah, I like that. I like that it's just it's a cool looking shot compositionally we've got similar lookout sim it symmetrically his look at his chest muscles affliction can you make them dance? Can you make him dead yet? He's got it too. He could make him dance. That's a good thing. All right, I want to show I want to teach people at home something stand right there. I think it's also a little brighter up here so I'm going to bump up my shutter a little bit and this should be a little bright, so I have more room to grow up with my shutter. So now I'm going up to hundreds of one twenty fifth move my focusing point. The reason I'm taking this picture is I want you guys to see I have a merger going on here. This rope is coming out the top of his head. He looks like a unicorn, but he's not a you know, are you a unicorn? He's, not a unicorn. All right, so I saw that in the frame, but I wanted to show you what it would look like toe have that coming out of the top of his head. So how do we change that? Do we ask him to move? No, we don't need to ask him to move. I can simply move myself to get a better composition and a better frame that's perfect now bring your eyes right to me right to the camera boom and that should be good another reason you hear the folks I like to use the focus beep the focus be helps me because my eyes aren't the sharpest in the world I do wear glasses but I'm not wearing them when I shoot I have trouble shooting with glasses so I do rely on the auto focus in these cameras because they are very strong, so I used to focus people for me as an audible way to understand that my I am locked in. Now if you're in a church, if you're in a synagogue, if you're in a place where you're not supposed to have a lot of noise, you may want to turn it off so that you don't become a distraction because that's important there you bring your hands and just a little bit more there you go bring a chin down a little bit now actually looks up a little that's good that makes you look tougher you want look tougher no, you don't look tougher boom! That looks good. I like that your chest looks good. Looks good. Keep doing that. Keep doing that stretch. I'm gonna get down here because I want to get some rule of thirds composition. Now I just zoomed in a little wider to eighteen and if I'm not actually I think the exposure is going to be good because mike meter is actually telling me that it's good hold that right there, right about keep going keep going keep going up top a little more and right there what I like about this shot is I like I like the angles but I also like there's a workout ball there there's a there's a different tone color right here. So this is splitting up the frame adding dimension there's a mat right here. You can see that in the photo and I like that the balls here. So this is that's a heavy bull. What does that's not a ball at all? Is that what do you call this? This is an atlas stone so you can shrug your atlas stone atlas shrugs it now I know you know so what you're supposed to do? Lift this, chris, you want to get in on this, you can get in on that. So show me what you need to do here so I could get a visual representation of what's going on good form. Look how he's bending the knees he's bringing it up he's using all the knees how heavy is that? How many stones? Ninety three stones that's like that's, like eight hundred kilos? I don't know him two kilos it is so where do you go from there wow, all right, hold it, okay don't hold it if you don't need to hold it if you can't hold it if you can, it would be cool to get some shots up here. This could be tough, so if you need to put it down, you go ahead and do that should be interesting. Yeah, but I don't like that framing very you could put it down if you want. I also got some lens. Oh, I didn't get one sparing their that's a purple ball in the back that was good. I mean, we have our settings pretty much locked in. We know what we want to do, I'm just thinking, just thinking that was cool, so squat down again, I want to get you down there in the squad, so don't actually pick it up and again, the lights changing over here because we're now turned away from most of the light should be a little on the dark side, but it's not bad and you can see that in this case, if we want to blow out the background at twenty four millimeters, I'm not really going to blow out the background very much, but the way that I could blow out that distracting background here is I can zoom out to fifty five and I can get closer to my subject the closer that you get to your subject with your telephoto lens. The easier it is to blow out the background no matter what lends you have even in eighteen millimeters if I was to get really close to chris we could still work on blowing the background out it's going to be much harder but it's still a possibility so I want to go to fifty five here and I also have to keep in mind now that I'm a five point six I'm going to leave my eyes so a thirty two hundred I'm going to drop my shoulders speed to say one eighty eighth of a second let me get you down into that squad again and I wantto try toe do something interesting here actually just do this head shot and hopefully we can see that we blow out the crossfit thing in the background and show you what we can do so probably it's out of focus a little bit got a bump my exposure to compensate again so we'll go down tio let's do a fortieth of a second which would be fine with this we are on a lot of times I don't want to push the eye so all the time too high I could do sixty four hundred we might as well do it nothing to be afraid of doing that that's going to give me more leeway andi I'm just focusing on your head here so don't worry about anything else bring your eye right to me and we'll see that the backgrounds blown out a lot more it's almost totally gone which is good one more boom that works as well all right, relax questions while we're here okay now are you when you're setting up your scenes and everything are you looking for the most available light that you have or you just taking what you have it's good question again I am so I'm looking for what I have I like the framing I look for certain backgrounds I may not look for where the light is I mean yes when chris was sitting here in this direction there was almost no light hitting his face will be able to work with that in the raw file to try to bring some of it back but in that case it would be good to step into this area haven't move around where the lighting would be that would be a better option because you have to look at that that's that's why you brought that up but you have to watch that he's not in total shadow if he isn't total shadow it kind of defeats the whole purpose of shooting it you want to look for the light turned him around and then go from there ah good question any others while we're over here pass it down please so I know you're all about shooting rob for those a lot of a lot of times people have them the software to edit raw images. So what would you do, said this auto white balance? Or we go to fluorescent on something like this that's, a good question. Well, I one of the only things that I do, an auto, would come down to the white balance that's, not something that I really want to futz with too much. You could do it, because it, well, the thing in here, you do have a mix of daylight coming in from up here, and you do have some of the and you have the fluorescence. I kind of just leave it as it is. I also have a feeling that a lot of these images are going to black and white after the after we get into processing, because there's, not a lot of good color in here. And I just feel that this working out stuff can work better as a a cz, black and white images. More photo, journalistic.

Ratings and Reviews

Rusty Shinault
 

I'm a huge fan of Jared Polin; love his humorous and relaxed style of teaching. I love that he's passionate about photography, and that he is willing to share his experiences, opinions, and knowledge. I really enjoy Creative Live classes, and really enjoyed watching Jared teach in front of a live class. Hope to see more of Jared teaching on your platform.

user cf5d2d
 

Jared did not disappoint! He shared his knowledge of composition, exposure, and capturing the moment - all while engaging his audience and keeping things light and fun. I absolutely LOVE when how he sets up his equipment so that we can see each snapshot he takes, and then tells us why it's a good shot or why it's not a keeper. It's so easy to learn that way. I'm a second grade teacher (a.k.a. an educator) who, thanks to Jared can call myself a photographer. Jared is a photographer who is also a great educator!

a Creativelive Student
 

I've seen a few CreativeLive sessions and this was one of the best. It was very unique and engaging I liked the onsite shooting and review and critique. I have done teaching and I know how hard it is to teach WHILE you are doing and I think Jared did a great job of balancing that. I'm quite familiar with his FroKnowsPhoto podcast and website so I knew what to expect and both HE and CreativeLive EXCEEDED my expectations. Thanks much also for letting him use use studio for Raw Talk on the Road (my suggested name for it), I could see a real opportunity for CL to provide access to their facilities for others wanting to record training, etc.

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