What is a black card for photography? Introduction of photography black card.

What is a black card for photography? How to use black cards in photography? The following explains what is a black card for photography and the skills of using it in landscape photography.

What is a black card?

Black card is simply to cover the brighter part of the picture with a piece of black non-reflective paper, so that the darker part can have a longer shooting time. When using the black card, you should shake it slightly to avoid leaving traces of the black card, so the black card technique will be called shaking the black card.

As the name implies, it is a small black card! Its material can be cardboard, plastic and other slightly hard materials, but the surface needs to be treated with fog, extinction and hair planting in order to reduce reflection and refraction. The black card should be in the photographic equipment store (not sure). The next fellow villager used ordinary black cardboard and cut it at home (if you are careful, you can also stick a layer of black flannel on the surface to reduce reflection and refraction, even if one side is black and the other side is white, and the black side is of course a black card). Next, I use a booklet with black skin (similar to a portable address book), which can be used for taking notes or as a black card.

When should I use a black card?

Black cards are recommended in the following two situations.

1, when the light difference of a certain part of the photo is too large (such as the sky and the ground), you need to use a black card.

2. Black cards can only be used if exposed for a long time.

The most common method is to use black cards at sunrise or sunset and at night, because the sky is different from exposure value on the ground. If you only expose the light level, the dark part will become a black silhouette and all the dark details will be lost. On the contrary, if only the dark parts are exposed by photometry, the bright parts will be overexposed, which will make the photos lose saturation and layering, and using black cards can solve this problem.

The real meaning of shaking black cards

To make good black card works, we must first emphasize composition and observation of light in the environment. If this is done, the work is half done. When it comes to shaking black cards, there are only two real focuses, and at the same time, everything is returned to the most fundamental aspects of taking pictures, namely, composition and observation of light in the environment, metering and shutter time control. In fact, as long as you have the heart to search, you can find all kinds of black card styles and even thousands of black card techniques on the Internet, but without the above two basic concepts, even if you know all kinds of black card techniques, you can't play them out.

Composition and observation of light in the environment

I think there is a concept that needs to be clarified. If half of the composition is full of shadows and the other half is bright forest or sky, then the black card keeps shaking at the junction of light and shadow, trying to make the dark half bright, which is actually a wrong idea! Because when there is no light, the object becomes dull, the shadow part is cold color temperature, and the bright part of the sun is warm color temperature. Such a photo will be full of contradictions when it is shaken successfully. At this time, it is better to wait for time or change the perspective, and then start shooting when the sun shines in the dark! When capturing the twilight in the morning, you can carefully measure the light by using the skylight reflected from the water surface and the lake surface, and get the time difference of shaking the black card up and down, so it is easy to complete a good photo.

How to control the light and dark part of the picture within the shutter time that you can reflect is one of the most important keys to shooting black card works. Everyone tries to think of a question, which should be understandable. Do you need wind to fly a kite? Taking pictures is like flying a kite. When there is wind, if you put your hand against the wind, the kite can fly into the sky! And when there is no wind, how can you pull a kite and run hard? When your feet stop, the kite will still land. What do you need when flying kites and taking pictures? The answer is light, light is the wings of photos, with light, photos can fly with the wind! No matter how you shake the shadows, they can't become bright. If you are not on the shore or near the water, you can observe everything in the environment carefully. As long as the place where the light shines is used as the foreground, the success rate of shaking the black card can also be improved.

Photometry and shutter time control

When shooting the twilight, you can use the skylight reflected from the water surface to complete a good visual work by shaking the black card. How to control the brightness of the picture within the shutter time that you can reflect is very important. For example, try to reduce the shutter time after sunrise, because no matter how to reduce the aperture or add a reducing mirror, the shutter is often higher than1125 or even 1/250 seconds. At this time, friends are often seen shooting and shaking black cards directly in the sun, and many people exclaim that the shaking is successful! Actually, think about it carefully. How fast is1125 or 1/250 seconds? I believe he succeeded, but the reason for his success is not that he shook the black card, but that he didn't shake it at all. I also believe that the exposure of that photo should be no problem, because the composition at that time was in the dynamic range allowed by the camera when the black card did not shake and the environmental contrast was in the sun.

Black card operation steps

first step

Assuming that the sky needs to be exposed for 2 seconds and the landscape needs to be exposed for 10 second, you can first set the shutter time on the timed shutter line as 10 second.

Second step

Cover the sky with a black card first, and shake the black card slightly for a few seconds. When 8 seconds comes, quickly pull out the black card and let the sky part begin to be exposed (2 seconds).

Third step

After the exposure stops, an exposure balance image can be obtained. First of all, we must master the time difference between bright and dark exposure. Suppose the sky needs to be exposed for 2 seconds and the landscape needs to be exposed for 10 seconds to get a balanced image, then cover the sky for 8 seconds (let the ground be exposed first), then pull out the black card, and the remaining 2 seconds can expose the sky and the landscape.

Using ND mirror (medium gray density mirror) to improve the success rate of black card lottery

Facing the backlight scene after sunrise or before sunset, the exposure time of the sky is very short. At this time, no matter how to reduce the aperture or ISO value, the shutter is still much faster than people's reaction speed. Therefore, it is suggested to cooperate with ND filter to reduce the amount of light entering the lens in exchange for a longer exposure time.

abstract

Black cards are not only for maintaining the exposure balance of the picture. Take this picture as an example, brush the shadow of the distant mountain with a black card to create the feeling of mist at the foot of the mountain.

In fact, after taking a photo, the key point is not whether the exposure is perfect or not, but whether you can control the camera to get the desired exposure, so that the bright parts in the photo will not be overexposed, and there is a feeling that people are wandering in the sun. How much detail the bright part should show is actually a black card in your hand, while the dark part is the total exposure time required for the whole picture. Therefore, when shooting, you can grasp your own beat in time, master your own rhythm in a few seconds, and check the exposure results by observing the overexposure and underexposure warning or histogram of the camera. As for shaking the black card, there is actually no residual image. How to shake, how to shake? As long as you experience it yourself, you can master the tricks, but please remember the first two points: master the light and shadow and composition, do a good job in metering different areas, and then complete the photos within the shutter time you can control.