Photography tips for boaty pics

[kingfisher]

Allright you amateur photographers: time to prove that you actually take pictures of boats, and not only of scantily clad crew.

What are a few tips and pointers if I want quality pics of my boat? I've already taken loads of pics, and the main complaint is, that they are all quite bland, ie no vibrant colours like Rick Tomlinson's.

A photograph-friend told me to cheat with the ASA/ISO-markings, so tell the camera there's a 200ISO-film in there, while it's actualy a 400 ISO. This will over-expose each frame, and gives you more colour.

Any other tips on technical maters, lighting or framing?

Group of people on the pontoon: skipper is the one with the toolbox.
http://sirocco31.tripod.com

 

[bedouin]

Are you sure you've got that the right way round? I thought you normally got more colour with under-exposed rather than over-exposed pictures (over exposed can look a little "washed out") - but perhaps my memory is playing tricks.

To get Vibrant colours you need the right light, the right film and the right processing. Different manufacturers films will give different colours for the same picture. The classic film for vibrant colours used to be Kodachrome 64. If you are interested buy a photographic mag. They normally give film and exposure information for each print.

 

[jimi]

Have you tried any filters?

 

[Twister_Ken]

A. Choose a nice bright day.
B. Shoot at a time when the sun is realtively low, so it is shining sideways at the boat, and not more of less straight dowm
C. Use a polarizing filter to beef up the blue sky, and give more contrast to sails against sky.
D. You'll get most colour saturation using a slide film, and having cibachrome (or whatever they're called nowadays) prints made directly from slide.
E. The most satuarated slide film is Fuji Velvia (50 asa). Rate it at 40 asa, and make don't tell the lab. 40 asa plus a pol filter means you need a relatively fast lens unless the day is really bright.
F. Bracket your exposures at 1/2 and a full stop over and under. White sails and hull can fool lightmeters.
G. A good saturated print film is Kodak Porta ES, but it won't give the punch of slide film and Cibachrome prints.
H. The punchiest shots published always seem to be from just off the windward bow when going to windward or on a shy reach, so the bow wave figures large.
I. If you can get a kite up, that obviously helps the colour
J. Make sure the sails are well trimmed, no lines are trailing, that the crew are not grinning inanely at the lens, that you can't see the smoke from the exhaust(!) etc.

 

[snowleopard]

lenses & filters

there's a lot of uv around on the water which will cause washing out. a 1A filter will help plus protecting the lens.

i expect you already use wide-angle for on-board shots and telephoto for views (35 & 100 mm restectively is probably a good compromise) i have an slr with 28-200 zoom but it's just too big & clumsy for general use.

another option is digital, then pep things up with photo editing software!

 

[steve_cronin]

Sailing mags always cut the masthead off*....

..in an effort to comply with rule#1

Get close enough/zoom in enough to fill the frame with boat. Otherwise you get a landscape with a boat in it instead of a boat against a marine background

*dead annoying though if like me three boats back you're looking for the correct way to rig the roller jib halyard!

 

[steve_cronin]

When i used to be keen on this....

I once read that pros. use Ektachrome for artificial light with an artificial to daylight filter. Then make prints from the slides because this prints well in magazines.

Tried it, it worked well giving gentle contrasts (unlike Agfa) but went back to Fuji & Kodachrome to avoid all the fuss of loss of light due to the filter, E6 developing and expensive printing. Now I get them put onto Picture CD or Photo CD (more expensive but more options) and play with zooming & contrasts on the computer.

Steve Cronin

 

[skint_sailor]

Fuji Velvia does give excellent colour saturation but as its only iso 50 its unlikely that you will be able to obtain a fast enough shutter speed to keep everyting sharp especially on a boat where everything is moving. This will be even worse if you add a polarising filter. You might get away with it on very bright days though. You dont say what sort of camera you have (SLR or Compact) obviously the quality of the lens plays a big part. My advice would be to use a decent print film (Fuji or Kodak iso 400) and choose your time of day carefully. E.G dont shoot in the middle of the day choose early morning or early evening when the light is warmer and lower in the sky, this will greatly improve your shots. Also consider adding an extra stop of compensation on bright days if your camera has it, because shooting a person in bright summery clothes next to a shiny white deck will fool your cameras meter and you will get underexposure. Of course there is an alternative if you have the budget - go digital and you can sort out colour saturation in photoshop afterwards!

 

[pugwash]

All good tips but...

Bracketing exposures is important but usually (using print film) the printing machine evens them out so they all look the same. A mate of mine testing his new camera shot the same picture repeatedly using every f stop but when he got the prints back they were identical. How do you get around this?

 

[Gunfleet]

Re: All good tips but...

use slide film. The exposure is critical

 

[Cornishman]

Go digital. A moderately priced digital camera (you can get recons at e-bay) will produce excellent pics, and as has been said before you can work wonders with them on the computer afterwards. No processing, immediate view on a video screen, and very little knob fiddling are other advantages. You can also send your pics all round the world by e-mail without pre=scanning, too. Cameras are tiny compared to ones using film.
Send me a pm with your e-mail address and I'll show you what I mean.

 

[tr7v8]

Re: All good tips but...

Print film has a huge margin of under & over exposure to cover the happy snappy brigade.
For Wedding work I used to use Fuji professional print which comes in daylight & artificial (make sure you get the right one!). It needs keeping in a fridge has a relatively short shelf life and gives brilliant colours especialy whites (so good for boats). I used to use it in 120 roll film but am pretty sure its available as 35mm.
Another way of getting blue sky is to use a 1/2 blue filter to cover the sky, another good one is a tobacco brown 1/2. All of these will mean good light because otherwise they'll mean slow shutter speeds.

Jim
----------

 

[bedouin]

Don\'t go digital!

Digital is okay for snapshots, but a CCD simply does not have the "dynamic range" even of a colour print film, let alone a good slide film.

If you are looking for intense colours, and eye catching prints then film still rules.

 

[jimi]

<A target="_blank" HREF=http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jim.robertson/greece/greece.htm>Some examples of digital photographs with Fujufilm Finepix 2800zoom</A>

 

[pugwash]

Re: All good tips but...

Jim -- But if you bracket exposures then take your Fuji professional to the local chemist you still get the different exposures evened out on the prints. No doubt using a professional lab for developing is much more expensive. Is there any way round it? What does a 1/2 blue or brown filter do to a socking great white sail sticking up in the middle of the picture? I remember having this trouble taking pictures in the High Arctic. A polarising filter helped a lot but gave the ice a strange look.
Best bit of general advice I ever got on photographic boats is to shoot from leeward.

 

[Twister_Ken]

Only bother to bracket with slide film. nm

§

 

[Tantalus]

As several other people have pointed out...the only way to get a decent picture of anything these days, with automated processing, is to shoot using slide film. When film is processed it's done according to strict time/temperature specifications. When it's then printed to photographic paper a brainless machine does it's best/worst to even things out so that contrast and such all comes out to some disgusting "average".
I've always preffered to use slide film...you get what you shoot, overexposed or under, filtered well or badly. Then take the slide which best represents the image you wanted to obtain and have it printed by a good lab.
Lacking that...a decent digital camera allows you to do much of this yourself...I like them. You get to easilly control hue, saturation, contrast...and the film costs you nothing.

 

[wishbone]

I all comes down to how much you want to spend, I have used slides for years, also telephoto lens for candid shots, very wide angle for the bigger picture! I bought a Kodak digital a few years ago for web use, My next stage for really good pics will be a digi SLR I can use all my lenses and filters with it but the body isn’t cheap see Jessops web site for a good selection of cameras, I also tend to shoot at obscure angles to get a different perspective of features, but depends of the type of shot’s you want. One last point I invested in a Sony Handicam DCR SC1000E a few years ago Wow! Great video especially viewed on the big screen via my Epson projector!!! 40foot x 40foot.

Wishbone

 

[Grehan]

Photography tips

The key is to take lots and lots of pictures - don't be afraid.
Frankly, the more you take the better you'll become (if you recognise what worked, and what didn't, and learn from that) and the more you'll have to choose from to be satisfied with.

Take pictures on the boat, from the boat, towards the boat, but most of all - of the sailing and the people.

Don't get too bogged down with anoraky techno stuff. Most people couldn't tell Ektachrome from Fujichrome unless you put similar pics side by side. What people can tell, is a good pic from a bad one. Filters, bracketed exposures and all that jazz is all very fine . . but take pictures! The big problem (my own problem) is not enough pictures. Once the moment/day/weekend/week has gone, its gone forever.

When you take the picture, think not just about what you can see, hear, smell and experience right then, but about how it will turn out, how the camera will translate the viewfinder view into a coloured piece of paper. Just what are you producing a snap of?

As Steve Cronin says, "get in close and frame the shot" This counteracts the usual amateur's snapshots of Aunt Betty in Lakeland where you can certainly see all of A.B but she's the size of an ant set in an expanse of what looked beautiful landscape at the time but looks dead boring as a photograph.

Long time ago I sold Leicas, Hassleblads and Nikons, worked in a photo studio, did loads of my own processing, etc. Now I just take as many colour (print) photos as I can. 400 ASA film 'cos it'll work most anywhere, anytime without resorting to flash (which I dislike). Given up with transparencies - never got them out the blinking box after the first few weeks. (Although transparency stock has the best colour range, gradation and capacity for detail and enlargement - which is why professionals use it).

Bigger (5" x 7") than normal enprints that are still convenient to look at again and again.

And to savour and remember.

(I do miss the developing and enlarging stuff, though - that was fun)


Man:
Why don’t you paint things the way they are?
Picasso:
What do you mean?
Man:
Well, like this photo of my wife
Picasso:
Isn’t she rather small and flat?

 

[Grehan]

Fuji Vulvia?


sorry, couldn't resist it
.
.
how very juvenile!