panning

Color Fringing Fungus: An Example of Chromatic Aberration /  by Todd Henson

Side by side example of chromatic aberration

Today I wanted to tackle the topic of chromatic aberration, what it is, and how to attempt to correct it. Please click on all the photos in this post to see larger versions.

What is Chromatic Aberration?

This topic has the potential to get very technical as chromatic aberration, also called color fringing, is something caused by the optical physics of lenses. But I don’t want to get too technical, so a simple description is that chromatic aberration is unwanted bands of color, most often along the edges of objects in the photo and often when there is strong contrast between light and dark areas. It’s best to start with an example, so look at the closeup photo below of some fungus where I’ve circled the areas showing chromatic aberration.

A closeup showing chromatic aberration in regions where light and dark meet

See how the top section has a band of magenta color along the lower edge of the light band on the fungus, right where it transitions from light fungus to dark background? In the middle and lower sections the fringing is in the form of bands of green color. Neither the magenta nor the green are a natural part of this scene. They are distortions caused by imperfections and limitations in the lens.

Chromatic aberration is generally more likely to occur when using wider apertures, so you can reduce or eliminate it by stopping down to a smaller aperture. But sometimes this won’t create the photo you’re trying for and you need to use a wider aperture. In those cases you may end up with some color fringing. Thankfully, today’s software provides methods to correct this.

Auto Correcting Chromatic Aberration

I used Adobe Lightroom for these examples. This is from an older version so it’s possible the options may look different on the version you have but the concept is the same.

Shows I’ve checked Remove Chromatic Aberration and Enable Profile Corrections under the Profile section of Lens Corrections in Lightroom.

Lightroom provides a means of automatically correcting chromatic aberration, and in this case it was done by checking a checkbox labelled Remove Chromatic Aberration within the Profile section of Lens Corrections. I also check Enable Profile Corrections to correct other sorts of lens distortions. Sometimes Lightroom does a great job and this is all I need to do. But as we’ll see, sometimes it doesn’t correct as much of the color fringing as I’d like.

Below are examples showing the uncorrected closeup followed by an attempt at Lightroom’s autocorrection of chromatic aberration with specific sections circled in red to show the color fringing. Notice, even after the correction there still is a fair bit of color fringing.

Shows the uncorrected sections with chromatic aberration

Shows the autocorrected sections. Note, there is still noticeable color fringing.

Below is a slideshow of the above two images. Click on the photo to cycle between uncorrected and autocorrected.

Manually Correcting Chromatic Aberration

I wanted to remove more of the color fringing than Lightroom did when I checked the Remove Chromatic Aberration box. So I clicked on Manual and used the dropper tool to specifically select the areas of the photo that were showing the strongest color fringing. I did this multiple times, over both the magenta and the green fringing. This told Lightroom the specific color fringing it should attempt to correct.

Shows the default settings for the Manual section of Lens Corrections in Lightroom.

Shows the settings after manually using the dropper tool to select regions with strong color fringing.

Below are examples showing the uncorrected closeup followed by my attempt at manually correcting the chromatic aberrations. By using the manual dropper I was able to do a much better job at removing the specific color fringing present in this photo.

Shows the uncorrected sections with chromatic aberration

Shows the manually corrected sections. Most color fringing is now gone, or at least reduced.

Below is a slideshow of the above two images. Click on the photo to cycle between uncorrected and manually corrected.

Conclusion

Chromatic aberration won’t be a problem in all photos. In fact, I’d say it’s not a problem in most of my photos. And in many cases when it is present Lightroom does a great job automatically correcting the color fringing. But in special situations, often when I’m doing macro work with wide apertures and subjects with strong regions of contrast between light and dark, chromatic aberration will become a problem and I’ll put a little more effort into manually correcting for it.

Below is the final photo after manually correcting for chromatic aberration.

The final photo after manually correcting for chromatic aberration.

Bonus: Hidden Flying Insect

Did you happen to notice the tiny little insect hiding in the photo and closeups above? I’d not even seen it until I zoomed way in using Lightroom. Below is another of the closeup images where I’ve circled the little creature in red.

Check out the tiny flying insect on the fungus.

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Painterly Kingfisher in Flight /  by Todd Henson

Belted Kingfisher Flyby

Sometimes paintings that look very much like real life are called photorealistic because they appear almost like photographs. Similarly, photography can be used to create more painterly images, even using techniques mostly performed in camera. Today we’ll explore one method of doing this, that of panning with a subject using long exposures to create intentional motion blur, and it doesn’t require pro-level cameras or lenses.

The Setup

On July 3, 2009, my brother and I visited Luray, Virginia and their fabulous Greenway, a beautifully maintained park system with a stream and walkway that runs through the town. In one area we heard the call of a belted kingfisher and watched as it repeatedly flew quickly upstream, and then back downstream. I had with me the kit lens that came with my camera, an 18-200 mm f/3.5-5.6 lens. In this case the 200 mm helped me get a little closer to the kingfisher, but if you photograph larger subjects or are willing to have a smaller subject then you can easily use a shorter focal length just as well.

The kingfisher was moving quickly and the light was a little subdued under the leaves of the trees. I doubted I could get nice clear photos of the kingfisher in flight, though I did initially try that, so I eventually settled on creating slightly more abstract painterly photos. I wanted the kingfisher as large as it could be so I zoomed in as far as I could to 200 mm. There wasn’t a lot of light so I knew shutter speeds would be an interesting challenge. I opened up the aperture of the lens all the way, to f/5.6 at 200 mm. I then raised my ISO to 640 to let me set faster shutter speeds. This gave me shutter speeds between 1/15 to 1/60 of a second. I could have worked in manual exposure mode and set everything, and if you want a specific look this is what you should do, but given I was panning through different areas with different light levels, and I was just having fun experimenting, I chose to work in aperture priority mode, my typical setting, where I choose the aperture and let the shutter speed fall where it may.

The Kingfisher Soars

Technique: Panning

So what is panning? It’s moving the camera with the subject and letting the background blur. If you see the bird coming from the left then face straight ahead and twist your body towards the left. Find the bird in your viewfinder and begin focusing. Stick with it as it flies by, pressing the shutter button in continuous mode so you create many images as it flies by, with you continuing to track it as it does, twisting your body to the right. Keep with it as it flies by to the right until it’s flown beyond your view. Hopefully, somewhere in that group of photos you’ve created a winner.

It requires a lot of experimentation to find just the right shutter speed for your subject. Do you want the subject in perfect focus, or are you willing to let the subject remain a bit blurry as I chose to here? And how fast is the subject moving? The shutter speed you need will depend on those factors, so you’ll need to practice to find what works for you in that specific instance.

The Kingfisher Calls

Painterly Aspects

Notice how different each of the three photos here look. In the case of the first photo, Belted Kingfisher Flyby, the bird is moving very quickly so I’m panning very quickly which creates a complete blur to the background. The shutter speed is 1/15 second so there’s plenty of time for the background to blur. You can see how far the bird, and my camera, moved in that time by looking at the length of the lighter colored lines in the photo.

The second photo, The Kingfisher Soars, is similar but the bird was flying at an angle so I didn’t pan quite as fast, and I used a faster shutter speed of 1/50 second. You can see the lines of color from the background are shorter. They begin to look a little more like long paint strokes.

With the third photo, The Kingfisher’s Call, I’m now at a faster shutter speed with 1/60 second, and the bird isn’t moving nearly as fast, almost hovering as kingfishers sometimes do. Look closely at the lines of color and light in the background of the photo. See how much shorter they are? Now, perhaps, they most resemble strokes of a paintbrush. And the bird is almost in focus, or at least more so than with the other two photos.

One thing to note, you could find a fast enough shutter speed that works with both the subject movement and your ability to pan, such that you actually get the subject almost completely in focus and the background a blur. This can be a lot of fun, too. But in this case, trying for a more painterly effect, I was fine with the subject remaining a bit blurry from the motion. I thought it contributed to the look of the images.

Post-processing

So the majority of the technique is in-camera using the three basic camera settings of shutter speed, aperture and ISO. But I did do work in post after I’d downloaded the photos to my computer. I used Adobe Lightroom to adjust exposure, lessening some of the highlights, darkening some shadows, blurring the backgrounds a bit more by lowering clarity, and accentuating the kingfisher by keeping the whites of its body bright and the colors dark and bold.

Below are before and after examples of each photo showing how it looked before I began processing in Lightroom and when I’d finished so you can see what effect this had. Click on each image to cycle between before and after

Final Thoughts

So what do you think? Have you tried this before? If not, give it a go. And you don’t have to photograph a bird to do this. You can chose any moving subject, such as a car or bicycle. In fact, you don’t even have to chose a moving subject. I’ve show before how you can use this technique on landscapes to create slightly more painterly views of the world. Give it a try, and let me know how it goes.

For other examples, see A Day for Abstracts in the Forest and Turbulence in Motion.

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Shooting From the Road /  by Todd Henson

There is a particular photographic technique, or perhaps style of photography, that I don’t practice often but have thoroughly enjoyed each time I have. And that is shooting from the road, from a moving vehicle. But before we get ahead of ourselves, lets get the required warning out of the way: Please only do this as a passenger. Never shoot from the road while driving. Seems pretty obvious, right?

Panning From the Road: Farm and Motion Blur

Farm from the road

My earliest successful attempt at shooting from the road might have been a short day trip my brother and I took many years back. While driving down a road I was taken by the scene of a farm and the green fields in front of it, so I had my brother drive back and forth several times. There was no one else on this road so we didn’t get in anyone’s way. What I was hoping for was a panned image where the barn and silos were sharply in focus but the green fields closer to the car were blurred from the motion of driving by them. I was remembering as a kid how much I enjoyed staring out the side window of a car watching the blurred fields beside the road. I wanted to capture something of this in a photograph.

This was a challenging photo to create. I needed a fast enough shutter speed, and good enough panning technique, to get the barn and silos in focus. But I needed a slow enough shutter speed to capture the motion blur of the nearby field. That’s why I had my brother drive back and forth several times so I could experiment with settings until I found something that worked for me. In the end I used the following lens/camera settings: 105mm, ISO 200, f/18, 1/20 sec.

A quick note on panning, if you’re not familiar with it. Panning is where you move your camera, tracking your subject as the subject moves (or in this case as we moved past the subject). It requires a steady hand if you’re using a slow shutter speed. It takes a lot of practice but it’s worth it, and lots of fun. Give it a try if you haven’t.

Panning From the Road: House in Focus

House from the road

Another example of panning from the road was of an attractive house my father and I saw as we were driving by on our way back from a visit to Blandy Experimental Farm. This time we didn’t drive back and forth, so I needed to get it right the first time. I wasn’t looking for blurred fields or grass, just capturing a nice image of the house and its lawn, so I used a much faster shutter speed. I shot a quick burst of frames as we passed by, panning with the house from the passenger side of the car. I had no idea at the time if I captured a decent image, but when I got home I was very pleased with the results. Here are the lens/camera settings I used: 80mm, ISO 400, f/8, 1/500 sec.

Shooting the Road Ahead

On the road

Another obvious way to shoot from a moving car is to photograph the road ahead. You still have options here as far as whether you want to capture some motion blur at the sides of the road or whether you want to try to freeze all motion. In my case for each of these I opted to mostly freeze all motion, so I used faster shutter speeds. I like the perspective these photos give, facing forward with the road in front, sometimes visible far into the distance. I think there’s an aspect of storytelling to it. Here are the lens/camera settings I used for the photographs below: 58 - 80mm, ISO 400, f/8.0, 1/640 sec.

Driving through the hills

On target at mile marker 100

Tips

One of the most important tips for shooting from the road is to experiment, try different settings, see how they affect the look of the image. You can introduce intentional blur, or you can try to reduce all blur and create sharp images, or some combination of them both. Try experimenting with depth of field. I really didn’t pay too much attention with that in these photos, but it’s an option you have.

This tip applies in just about any circumstance: practice! Panning can be a challenge so it’s worth practicing any chance you get. You can practice closer to home by tracking a bird in flight or a car in motion. Try to move the camera such that you keep the subject directly on the focus point.

Another tip is to use the vibration reduction feature of your lens or camera if they have it. This can help reduce some of the natural vibration you’ll encounter from the vehicle and help you get sharp images (if that’s what you’re trying for).

It might be a good idea to wash the windows of the car before setting out, especially if they’re very dirty. I’ll be honest, though, I didn’t do that for any of these photos.

Have you ever tried shooting from the road? What were your experiences? And if you haven’t tried this, do you think you will in the future? Let me know in the comments below.

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