In light of my warnings about technology in yesterday’s post, I feel like I should reiterate that it’s not technology itself that tends to be the problem. The problem arises when we allow technology to become our master – whether in our use of it, or our desire for it. Viewed and used appropriately, modern technology can be a great blessing.

Since my last couple of photography posts, I’ve tried to be more intentional about using the photographic tools in my arsenal. In addition to grabbing a camera more often when I head out the door, I’ve been doing more research on the features at my disposal.

One of the possibilities I never paid attention to is the option of directly photographing in black & white. What makes this cool is that when shooting in this mode, you actually see the preview (both on the screen and in the viewfinder) in black & white. You can even select a colored “lens” filter – for example, red to give more contrast in the sky – and see its effect in the preview as well. So for those times when your final intention for the photographs is black & white, you can actually see it that way when framing the shot, giving you a better sense of how you might want to frame it for black & white tones vs. color content. Shooting RAW+JPG, you can always convert the RAW file to black & white later if you decide you can do a better job than the in-camera JPG of that photo. (In the snapshot of the camera screen below, there are some colored moiré artifacts from taking a picture of the LCD, but those artifacts aren’t there in real life).

I’ve also been learning about “exposing to the right” (ETTR), which involves using “+” exposure compensation, while monitoring the on-screen histogram, to overrule the camera’s automatic exposure settings. The idea is to “overexpose” the RAW file just shy of blowing the detail out of the brightest parts of the photo, then adjusting it back down in post-processing. Doing so allows more dynamic range, as well as additional shadow detail, in the final image.

Next, I got the low-down on “focus peaking”. Most old-school film SLRs, and some DSLRs, have a pentaprism in the optical viewfinder, which slightly splits the vertical elements in the center of the frame, lining them up perfectly when whatever object you’re trying to photograph is in focus. It’s a great manual focusing aid, especially since most of the lenses back in the day were not autofocus lenses. Nowadays, pretty much all the newer lenses available for modern camera systems are autofocus lenses, and manual focus isn’t nearly as necessary as it once was. However, an increasing number of folks are getting adapters to use old prime lenses from the days of film on their modern cameras, because some of those lenses are exceptionally bright (letting in lots of light) and sharp. There’s even a crop of new makers of inexpensive manual focus lenses to serve that market as well.

Newer mirrorless cameras have a feature called “focus peaking”, which temporarily magnifies the preview and displays bright (or dark) lines around the edges of objects as you manually focus in and out, clearly showing which objects are in focus. Unfortunately, the original Olympus E-M5 does not have focus peaking as a feature. But some clever user discovered that it’s possible to use one of Olympus’ built-in art filters, along with a magnification feature in the camera, to effectively do the same thing. Those settings can be saved as a preset, then that preset can be assigned to a button on the camera, allowing you to pull up “focus peaking” on demand when that button is pressed (so you can manually focus easily), and going back to your regular shooting mode when you take your finger off of the button. Brilliant! I can see myself picking up some inexpensive, fast, manual-focus prime lenses off eBay or Amazon at some point in the future.

Speaking of the Olympus built-in art filters, I’ve been experimenting with one called “dramatic tone” in the past week or two. The results aren’t always that great, but sometimes it creates a pretty interesting, and occasionally even compelling, image. These kinds of art filters and effects can easily become clichéd and cheesy, but seeing a scene depicted in a way you wouldn’t necessarily have chosen can also serve to fire up some neurons in the creative part of your brain. And we shouldn’t forget that going back to the days of film, stylized photography using lens filters and darkroom procedures has been a staple in the art (ever heard of Ansel Adams?). For me, it’s just another one of those things that can help maintain an interest in grabbing the camera. I’ll try to post some examples in the coming days.