Impressionistic; Abstract Art with ANY Camera! (4K/UltraHD) Video Lecture | Capture like a Pro: Digital Photography Tutorial - Professional Skills

Hi, I'm Chelsea and this is Tony and
today we're doing a video on
abstract photography using long
exposures.
Ah, there's an osprey. Come on, Tone.
I love this photography project for a few reasons;
first of all I love it abstract and it looks great
but it also doesn't require a lot of
expensive gear
and it's really fun to do. So you really just need
any old body
a camera and a neutral density filter.
And because the image quality isn't super important
it doesn't have to be the latest and
the greatest gear.
Taking the pictures itself is easy too
because
it just requires a few easy steps. First, you
need to put your
neutral density filter on
then you need to use a long exposure,
like 2-4 seconds depending on how bright
it is
and you want to use a low ISO so that you don't
have
a ton of noise in your picture, and then
once you're shutter's open
you just paint with your camera to get that smooth effect.
Now the difficult part for taking these
pictures is that you have to find a good
subject.
I found that things with banded colors
work really well
simple compositions worked well, and the
other difficult part is that you have to
really get used to
how to shake the camera to get it to look nice and smooth. So I'm gonna take a few test
shots
and then I'll go over my technique more
and show you what works for me.
So there are few different ways you can
move the camera
and I found it going with the natural
lines in the photo is what works best
so here the natural lines are horizontal because I'm taking
shots of the horizon. So if I move my camera
vertically when I'm taking the shot, it's
just gonna blur
all of the colors together.
So you want to
go with the lines in the shot. The next
problem is that if you're not pretty
steady about moving your camera
then all you straight lines are going to
swing or
be unlevel. Another problem you might
run into is that
your picture might not be smoothly
blurred. So some pictures look better if
you
shake the camera small shakes. You can do
you small circles
you can do large sweeping movements but
I found the just keeping my body
relatively still and using it as a tripod
and moving my whole body rather than my hands
lets me pan a lot smoother. You'll have to try it
out and see what works for you.
And just see what your style is.
I like this spot because where I am I can
see the green grass in the front,
the background of the water and the
lighter blue sky
as well as this here, so I have colors in
layers
and all the details are going to
disappear when I pan to the left.
Now because it's so bright here and this
camera's base ISO is 200
I can only get down to a shutter speed
of about 1/30th of a second, even at f/22
even with my ND filter!
But if I whip my hand, if I move it real fast
while taking the picture I can still get
plenty of motion.
To erase some of those details, I also de-focused
the lens so its way out of focus but
ends up looking pretty good, I like the
results.
So I like the horizontal lines of the
ocean here but I'm finding a
a problem; if I take a picture and I
use my wrist and it ends up all
kind of tilty. And so what I decided to do is
kind of go with a golf swing, like put my elbows in and rotate my whole body
and that seems to let me keep those
horizontal lines level. Chelsea was smart, she got
a 64X filter. Ihave a stupid ND4 filter
here and it's not cutting the light enough. So even
at f/22, the max aperture even at
the lowest ISO, ISO 200, I'm still at 1/60th
of a second. I'm making it work
I'm just moving moving real real quick. I'm starting
the motion
before I hit the shutter. So I'm moving,
pressing the shutter all in one
motion. That way I'm getting as much motion
out of the camera as I possibly can
But you can't get a too powerful ND filter for this type of stuff, so just get
the most serious ND filter you can
find.
Lenses have different filter sizes so
you have to make sure you buy an ND
filter that matches the front
of your lens. You'll see it written down there with like a Greek symbol.
This one's 37 millimeters so I can only use it on
37mm lenses.
Hah, ok, that's a good idea
If I'm going to meter for this thing I'm gonna have to
put my ND filter
over meter, I usually use my phone. I have a light meter
app for my phone
So I'll just set the f/stop to that of the
lens, so the hightest f/stop number, the ISO
to the ISO of the film, 100.
Then I'm going to hold my ND filter over my
phone's sensor and let it meter it.
alright, looks like I'm at about... 1/8th
That should be enough for me to get
some blur.
Take out the dark slide
Can't see anything through this viewfinder. Oh, there we go.
Alright, it's a Polaroid so I have to get it right the first time.
Now we have to wait 90 seconds
Is it beautiful? It's all black. Under exposed.
My app lied to me. It clearly wasn't right.
I'm just gonna have to guess and give
it like... another three stops?
I have a full second to work with now so I
can go slower.
Maybe this is it.
I think it still might be a bit
underexposed. That seems like a lot of
exposure though, what was your
shutter speeds at that with that ND
filter?
Three seconds (oh three seconds!) and...
f22, ISO 64
and yours was ISO what? ISO 100
so maybe you have to go all the way
down to F like 16
or 11? Yeah maybe.
Around Christmas time you'll see a lot of these sorta silly Christmas tree shots
where
someone'll zoom in and you'll see the Christmas
lights have this kind of streak affect
so
I just kind of emulated that with this D3300
just pointed it at some trees and a couple
buildings over there and
I think it turned out alright. Maybe not as pretty
as Chelsea's photos but
it's just something different.