Low Cost

High
Impact
Photography

By
Steve
Johnson

Low Cost High Impact Photography

Contents
INTRODUCTION
About This Book
About the Photographs
Who is This Book For?
The Photography Industry
Where to go for Good Information

3
4
5
6
7
8

EQUIPMENT
First Camera
A Quick Note About Light
Second Camera
Third Camera

9
12
14
15
17

TECHNIQUE
Low Light Photography
Beginners Tips
Ebay and Product Photography
Getting the Most From a Budget Camera
The Flaming Christmas Pudding
Staying Focused
White Balance; Different types of Lighting

18
19
28
31
38
52
55
61

AESTHETICS
Quick Thoughts
Are Rules Made to be Broken?
Positive and Negative Space
Rethinking Beauty

64
65
70
73
76

PHOTO ESSAYS
Autumn Color and a Macro Trick
Lake Effect Snow
Winter Photography
Lake Michigan in January
Icicles and Parking Lots
My Personal Favorites 2011

80
81
84
88
93
97
103

Final Thought
Lighten Up
About the Author

109
110
114

CONTENTS

Low Cost High Impact Photography

1
Marble on Glass Brick. Canon A3100 IS macro.
Aged in Adobe Lightroom

INTRODUCTION

Low Cost High Impact Photography

About This Book
The main purpose of the book is to save you money. It will show that serious
photography does not need to be a prohibitively expensive pastime. The vast
majority of the photographs in this book were taken with a camera that
currently retails for around $130..
The sections in this book are written to be as self contained as possible. In other words it
doesn't have to be read from one cover to the other. Most of the chapters are completely
self contained.
The division between the aesthetic and the technical is not a complete one in this book,
and this is intentional. Even though they have their separate sections there is a lot of
crossover. Too many photography books and tutorials place an artificial divide between
these two aspects for the sake of neatness. I have chosen to sacrifice neatness and order
for a more holistic approach, even if it is a little messy around the edges.
Most of what follows is written with the point and shoot compact type camera in mind.
Almost all of it can, however, be applied to the more expensive dSLRs. Every dSLR
owner that I know also owns at least one compact camera and regards it as a serious
photographic tool.

Ice on Lake Michigan. Canon A3100 IS

INTRODUCTION

Low Cost High Impact Photography

About The Photographs
Most photography books use a set of very predictable images illustrating a very
predictable set of chapters. There would be the landscape chapter, the studio
portrait chapter, the sunset chapter, and the street photography chapter, etc., all
illustrated with boilerplate picture postcard type imagery.
I wanted to get away from that by using photography that is a little more
challenging, that doesn't fit neatly into expected boxes. The photographs here
are not great photographs by any stretch of the imagination but they are the
right photographs for this book.
The vast majority of these were taken with a budget point and shoot. A few, like
the one below, were taken with a dSLR.

Marble on glass brick. Nikon D40X. The relatively large depth of field makes the
transparent marble appear solid.

INTRODUCTION

Low Cost High Impact Photography

Who is This Book For ?
Those who want to move on from the simple snapshot.
Those who have started to move on but feel overwhelmed by the potential
expense and learning curve.
More experienced photographers who may feel that they are in a rut.
Visual artists who are thinking of the camera as a potential creative tool
rather than just a recording device.
Just about anyone who is interested in the creative process.

Items and window. Canon A3100 IS

INTRODUCTION

Low Cost High Impact Photography

The Photography Industry
I want to get into talking about equipment but first I'd like to give you a little
bit of advice. Become an informed consumer! Photography is a potential hole
into which money can be endlessly poured or it can be a rewarding, relatively
cheap pursuit. The point is that there are options. Your interests are not aligned
with the industry's. You want to take great photographs and they want your
money. They don't care a fig about your images, only that you keep on
purchasing stuff.
One essential thing to realize when embarking on the photographic journey is that there
is a whole industry invested in separating you from your hard earned cash. This industry
runs much deeper than just the manufacturers and retailers of cameras and related
equipment. The camera review that you read on a blog probably links to the camera
being reviewed on Amazon, and if you click on that link the reviewer makes a percentage
of the sale.
There is a group of people who by and large are good photographers but are also
relentless self promoters. One in particular who I won't name knows his photography, of
that there is no doubt, but his priority is marketing. I did a quick count of the plugs for
other services he puts in one of his photography books aimed at the complete beginner,
and the number came out to around 60. Of course these are not formal advertisements
but rather come in the form of this is a tip picked up from my good buddy x who's
website can be found at y. This same author also has very strong ties to one of the big
two camera manufacturers and to the main photographic software company.
Everything that person writes is done either as a quid pro quo or with a view to calling in
a favor further down the line. In other words, that author's priority is to feed your money
into his particular food chain; whether it makes you a better photographer or not is, I
suspect, not a huge concern of his.
Bottom line is that the photographic industry is just about the most incestuous one that
I've come across . You will need to interact with it, but an awareness of the underlying
financial structure and networks is a good thing to have as it will allow you to make the
most of your budget and avoid wasting money. Always remember that even the experts
in this industry do not lose credibility by promoting useless, expensive crap.

INTRODUCTION

Low Cost High Impact Photography

INTRODUCTION

Egg and dripping water. Nikon D40X. Photographed in a

commercial sink using on camera SB600 flash unit and
shutter speed of 1/200 (flash sync speed for the
camera)

TECHNIQUE
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Low Cost High Impact Photography

Getting the Most From a Budget Camera - 1

Introduction
An expensive camera and an in depth knowledge of photography is not required to take
good photographs. This chapter is an attempt to illustrate that point and to provide a
little insight into how a relatively cheap piece of equipment can give perfectly acceptable
results - by acceptable I mean good enough to be published on major websites and in
high circulation mainstream publications.

All of the photographs in this piece were shot with a Canon Powershot A3100 IS camera
that retails for about $150. The photography industry has decreed that 'serious' point
and shoot or compact cameras start at $250 but they like making lots of money so they
would. The camera itself is considered to be pretty basic without many features that
contributors to techie and geeky websites consider so essential. Generally the reviews of
it are mixed erring slightly towards the positive. The point that I am really pushing here
is that this is in no way an exceptional camera and none of the things that I am going to
describe are specific to this camera.

Canon A3100 IS zoom photographed with Nikon D40X

TECHNIQUE

Low Cost High Impact Photography

Getting the Most From of a Budget Camera - 2
Introduction - (continued)
The A3100IS does possess one thing that is now pretty standard and that I would make
an absolute priority if I were replacing it and that is image stabilization. I cannot stress
enough what a difference that makes - basically it lets you work in much lower light
without a tripod and that is often the difference between photographs getting shot or
not. All of the photographs here were shot hand held, i.e. no tripod or other support was
used.

Partial footprint in snow at sunset. Canon A3100 IS

The format I'll use here is to post some shots taken with the camera described and write
a bit about the thought processes and techniques involved. I will go as light on the
technical stuff as I can as the whole point of compact cameras is ease of use. All
cameras differ slightly so you may have to adapt some of these instructions but I have
tried to stick to suggestions that should be fairly universal across models and makes. I'm
not going to go into stuff like face recognition or shooting video for example.
If you have a Canon assume that the mode I'm using is P. This will give more than
enough flexibility for what we need here. I would guess that the same applies in the case
of other makes. P for program is a standard designation but different manufacturers tend
to interpret it a little differently.

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Low Cost High Impact Photography

Getting the Most From a Budget Camera - 3
This is the view out of my office/studio door and this is one of a series of shots of work in
progress on resurfacing the parking lot. The steam behind the guy is being kicked up as
part of the asphalting process. I was inside with my door open when I took this photo
and the action was around 30 yards away, so the camera was at full zoom.

Worker. Canon A3100 IS

Tip with zooms on compact cameras - use the optical zoom to your heart's content but if
you can, avoid extending it into the digital range as there is a definite drop off in quality.
The optical zoom on my Canon goes to 4 x its starting point which is around 35mm. This
is about the same as point and shoot cameras were in the days when they didn't have a
zoom. These numbers are pretty standard.
Obviously this image is black and white. Now, most compacts will shoot in black and
white and most photographers will tell you to always shoot in color as the conversion can
be done later and you will always have a color version should you need it. My take is that
if the photographs are important, shoot in color - don't even think about it. If, however,
you are just taking some shots around town or working on a still life then it is worth
shooting in black and white sometimes. This is a very fast way to get a good appreciation
for the importance of tone and it will feed back into your photography very quickly.
Nothing beats seeing the scene in front of you and the black and white version of the
same on the viewscreen - trust me on this if nothing else!
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Low Cost High Impact Photography

Getting the Most From a Budget Camera - 4
Unusual Angles
Sometimes unusual angles work and, it has to said, they often dont. This was taken
during daylight but I turned the spots on. To get the faucet in focus I aimed the camera
roughly where I thought it should be, I couldn't see the viewscreen, and knew that if I
heard a beep the auto focus had locked onto something. I took about 3 shots before I
came up with this one which had the relationship between the faucet head and the spots
exactly as I wanted it. The vertigo inducing angles are not everyone's cup of tea but I
really like them, whether in still images or in movies especially Film Noir.

Faucet and spotlights. Canon A3100 IS

TECHNIQUE

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Low Cost High Impact Photography

Getting the Most From a Budget Camera - 5
Flowers
Flower photography is hard. The thing that makes it hard is that there are so many
photographs of flowers in existence, so to stand out a flower photograph has to be pretty
good. I find it harder to photograph things that people think of as beautiful in of
themselves as the pressure is on not to screw up. This is not the case when
photographing an object that is thought to be boring as expectations will be low and
easily matched or surpassed.
In the case of the image below two things were critical: light, and distance from the
flower.
The sky was cloudy and this was critical. Direct sunlight does two bad things with this
type of shot: it causes hard shadows which in this case would have really made the
structure of the flower hard to determine, and it would have bleached out the colors so
the interplay between the green and the red wouldn't have been so apparent.
Just about all compact cameras come with a macro setting. All this does is allow you to
get closer to the object and therefore cause the object to fill more of the sensor. This
photograph was shot with the camera positioned about 2 inches from the flower. It
obviously has the effect of making the object look big but it also blurs the background,
forcing the attention to the subject of the photograph.

Flower. Canon A3100 IS

TECHNIQUE

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Low Cost High Impact Photography

Getting the Most From a Budget Camera - 6
Sunsets
This is what is known in the trade as a grabshot. I was photographing a shop window
and turned and saw this view and took a couple of pics. Now the thing is that the view
itself didn't look much like this.
The trick here is to make sure that the camera exposes for the sky and not the
transformers. Don't worry about the technical implications of this just line up the shot,
half press the shutter, and if it makes the foreground objects appear silhouetted and the
sky much darker and more dramatic and more reddy orangey on the viewscreen than it
really is, this will be the result. Make sure that the object blocks any direct sunlight.

Utility pole and wires. Canon A3100 IS

If on the other hand you have a gray fairly boring sky and lots of detail in the
transformers and poles when half pressing the shutter, let it go, aim the camera towards
the sky, half press the shutter, and then re-aim the camera and press the shutter fully.
This is not nearly as tricky as it sounds and becomes instinctive after a while. It is a very
fast way of changing exposure on the fly in any situation.

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Low Cost High Impact Photography

Getting the Most From a Budget Camera - 7
Food
Food photography is another case where the macro setting is really useful. This plate of
hummus is only around 4 inches in diameter and the texture was created using a fork.
The olives are not the product of some GMO experiment but are in fact normal size. The
thing with food photography is to make it look appealing to the eye. This is not the same
as making it look anything like it does in real life - think of all those awful Red Lobster
commercials where everything is super-saturated in both color and fat.
The most important thing is light and please do not use the on-camera compact flash.
Food cannot look good, ever, with that! Either use ambient daylight or lamps. This was
shot in a room with one south facing and one west facing window on a sunny day but the
sun was not shining directly through either window.
Quick tip for food photography with a compact camera: overexpose by about 2/3 of a
stop. On most compacts this means adjusting the little plus minus scale up two notches
and have one source of lighting behind the food, in other words put the plate in front of a
window, ideally about 2 or 3 feet in front of it. Taking the photograph from a couple of
inches away will cause the background to blur out. This arrangement does require
another light source though, otherwise the result will be a silhouette. The ideal source is
another window on one of the adjoining walls but a daylight balanced desk lamp can
work well. Make sure that the camera's macro setting is turned on.

Hummus and olives. Canon A3100 IS

TECHNIQUE

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Low Cost High Impact Photography

Getting the Most From a Budget Camera - 8
Car Passenger Seat Photography
My wife was driving one rainy day. I was bored and had my camera in the cup holder and
though I've driven past here a hundred times it was only this time that it seemed to
contain a sort of run down beauty. No tricks here at all, literally point and shoot. The
reason that I include this shot is because if I didn't have the cheap compact the shot
never would have happened. It also shows that composition is composition, whether the
camera costs $50 or $5,000. The eye and the brain are the important thing. Even if you
don't like this particular shot the principle really does apply.

Parking lot at night. Canon A3100 IS. Adobe Lightroom 3 noise reduction for smooth effect.

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Low Cost High Impact Photography

Getting the Most From a Budget Camera - 9
Macro and Distortion
This macro shot of a die intentionally uses the imperfection of the lens. The edges of the
die are not straight, they curve, illustrating something called barrel distortion; if they
curved inwards it would be called pincushion distortion. These effects can happen when
cheap lenses are used at their extreme settings (they tend to be optimized for average
settings). This is where knowing your camera really comes in handy as sometimes these
imperfections can be worked with rather than fought against.
Regarding the lighting, the eye doesn't see this shot like the camera does. The sharp
divide between the light and the dark parts of the table does not look nearly so dramatic
in real life because the eye sees a much greater dynamic range. Being able to mentally
convert from actual view to photographic outcome does take a little practice but
practice is easy with the viewscreen. After a very short while it becomes second nature.
Best practice is to look at a scene, make a mental note of how you think it will look as a
photograph, then take the photograph. Look at the viewscreen and see how far off you
were. No amount of words can substitute for practice on this one!

Dice. Canon A3100 IS macro setting

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Low Cost High Impact Photography

Getting the Most From a Budget Camera - 10
The Dramatic
There is a common assumption
that a dramatic shot must
involve an expensive camera.
Not so. This is exactly what it
seems, a folding chair on a table
(not visible) in front of a window.
Again, it all comes back to the
eye.
One thing I've noticed when
watching other photographers is
how they walk up to an object,
put the camera to their eye (or
look at the viewscreen), and fire.
It is almost as if they have a gun
and want to kill the subject and
get off home as quickly as
possible.
I normally spend some time
walking around an object,
looking at it from on top and
underneath if possible, really
working to find the shot. Even
after this I'll take pictures from a
few different angles and only
then decide on what is likely to
work the best.

Chair and door. Canon A3100 IS

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Low Cost High Impact Photography

Getting the Most From Budget Camera - 11
Back Lighting
This is a 50 year old plastic padlock that is simply known as "Big Lock." My wife carried it
around everywhere as a child for years when she was growing up on her parents' farm.
She found it the other day while trawling through her old stuff still at said farm. Anyway
she wanted a photo of it that showed it in all its plastic-y see-through glory. The problem
with this type of shot is how to make the transparent layer completely see-through and
the answer is to back light. I placed a lamp under a glass desk and took the shot. There
was just enough natural light to illuminate the number ring. If there wasn't I would have
just fired another desk lamp at the top.

Plastic lock. Canon A3100 IS

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Low Cost High Impact Photography

Getting the Most From a Budget Camera - 12
Creative
Here is a more arty type shot just to show that a cheap camera is more than just a
recording device, and that interesting stuff can be done in camera. This night time shot is
blurred as there was very little available light - I think the shutter was open for over a
second and even leaning against a wall and using image stabilization won't compensate
for that. I do believe in treating a camera, especially a compact, as I would a sketchbook
though; there is enough here for me to go out when it warms up a bit and recapture the
scene using a tripod and more expensive equipment. I have a feeling that I may end up
preferring this imperfect image to a sharp cleaned up version.

Street . Canon A3100 IS

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Low Cost High Impact Photography

Getting the Most From a Budget Camera - 13

Limitations of a Point and Shoot

These types of cameras have a much smaller sensor area than dSLRs and this does
impact quality. There is less nuance in the tonal and luminosity changes. In English that
means that images from a cheaper camera will tend to have a bit more contrast.
Personally I think raising the contrast adds impact to an image so this is a fault that I am
more than happy to live with. Saying that, if I was shooting landscapes at dawn for a
high end magazine I would use a compact to get some quick test shots but the product,
i.e. photos that I submit, will always be from the dSLR.

The lens quality is another issue. The cheaper the camera the smaller the distortion free
sweet spot in this regard. A $4,000 zoom lens will be distortion free throughout its range
- the lens on a $150 compact is probably distortion free for just about the exact middle
of its range. Again these distortions can actually be worked with to produce interesting
shots but if absolute accuracy is required then this may not be the tool. I work on the
basis that it is a feel that is being conveyed and accuracy can work either way. My get
out of jail free card is software that can very effectively remove distortion if I should
need to.

Lighting is the biggie. Basically you will have to work with what is in front of you as most
budget cameras do not have the facility for separate flash that can either be mounted on
the camera or off camera. The built in flash can be used for a little fill lighting but never
as the main source of light. Saying that it doesn't have to be a huge problem, many
excellent photographers only shoot in available light and refuse to use any supplemental
lighting. I work on the principle of available if possible, mixed as the next option, and
flash only as a last resort unless I'm doing recording type photography, such as artwork
for cataloging.

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Low Cost High Impact Photography

Getting the Most From a Budget Camera - 14

Concluding Thoughts
Photography is never as complicated as it sounds on paper or screen; always treat this
sort of writing as jumping off points for your own ideas and experiments. If something
doesn't make sense don't worry about it, it may tomorrow or in six months' time.
Take lots and lots of pictures and treat the camera and photography as a learning
process. The best photographers are the curious ones who have a reasonably developed
eye.

Woman on bridge in the snow. Canon A3100 IS

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