Shooting Inside Museums and Cathedrals

Flash, no flash; tripod, no tripod: We cover all the angles.

Dave Johnson

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Feature: Shooting Inside Museums and Cathedrals

Some of the most stunning photos I have ever taken were inside buildings such as churches, cathedrals, museums, art galleries, and other tourist destinations. I love sweeping, majestic ceilings. I like stained glass, huge tapestries, and dynamic, Renaissance-era paintings. Unfortunately, as you've probably discovered for yourself, these can be some of the most difficult subjects to photograph.

The Built-In Flash Isn't Enough

Wander into a big city cathedral or an expansive art gallery, and the first thing you'll find is that the puny flash built into your digital camera isn't going to cut the mustard. With a maximum range of about 10 feet, the flash on your camera is designed to illuminate someone standing right in front of you--not a hundred-foot-high wall of stone and marble, 25 feet away.

Luckily, many digital cameras come with external flash mounts--called shoes--that let you slide on beefier external flash units. These flash units can throw light 75 feet away, and are much better for illuminating scenes like this. As an alternative, you can get a slave flash that doesn't have to mount on the camera itself. You can hold it with a free hand or mount it on a tripod and it'll fire whenever the camera's flash fires. I recently reviewed a universal digital camera slave flash from Phoenix.

No Flash Photography

One of the most common stumbling blocks with shooting indoor tourist locations is that flash photography is often not allowed. There are a few reasons for this. First and foremost, it's often discouraged to avoid disturbing other visitors. Second, flashing cameras are perceived as ruining the sanctity of the location. And finally, some historical sites want to minimize the damage that bright lights might cause to ancient materials.

Whatever the reason, if you have to turn off your flash, make sure you know how before you get there. Most digital cameras allow you to completely disable the flash by cycling though its various settings until you reach an icon that has a slash through the flash symbol.

Try a Tripod

If you can't use a flash at all--but cameras are allowed--your best bet is to take pictures with a tripod. Even a small, lightweight tripod is enough to stabilize your camera for the long exposure you'll need. Without a flash, your camera's automatic exposure control will leave the camera's shutter open anywhere from 1 to 8 seconds, and that's far too long to hold a camera steady by hand.

But what if full-size tripods aren't permitted? Indeed, some of the most famous landmarks around the world prohibit their use. One solution: steady yourself against a wall or doorway to keep the camera as jitter-free as possible during the lengthy exposure. To minimize the length of the exposure, set the camera to its highest ISO level, which makes the sensor more sensitive to light.

My Secret Solution

Finally, I'll share with you my personal secret, one I rely on when neither a flash nor a tripod is allowed, but I want to capture a sharp, compelling picture nonetheless. Go to your local camera shop and buy a tiny tabletop tripod--the kind with finger-length, flexible legs.

What good is that, you ask? You can use it to hold the camera firmly against a wall, doorway, or some other vertical surface while you take a long exposure. The folks in change probably won't mind because you're not blocking walkways or tying up a huge chunk of floor space--which is the main reason that tripods are banned in the first place. Some photographers also carry a small beanbag that they can set the camera on, which is handy for stabilizing the camera on the back of a pew or on top of a table, railing, or banister. That's great, but my tiny little tabletop tripod has saved my bacon on many an occasion. And guess what? When you're not using it, it fits in your pocket.

Dave's Favorites: Hoodman Makes Your LCD Easier on the Eyes

We all know about our digital camera's embarrassing little shortcoming: When we're shooting outdoors, the display on the back of the camera is hard or even impossible to use. Direct sunlight on your camera's LCD can render the image on screen virtually unintelligible. What can you do? Try adding a hood.

Hoodman sells a $20 attachment that snaps over the top of virtually any digital camera LCD, effectively turning the LCD into a viewfinder that works anywhere, even in bright sunlight. The hood is made of rubber and includes a 2X magnifying lens that makes your LCD easier to use for macro photography and other situations in which accurate focus is essential.

When it's not attached to your camera, the hood folds up, fitting into a small space in your camera carrying case. And I like its universal compatibility; I have moved it from camera to camera with ease.

I've found that the hood makes the camera's display dramatically easier to see outdoors, but at a cost: You have to hold the camera right up to your face, just as if you were using a traditional eyepiece viewfinder.

Q&A: How Do I Control My Magic Wand?

A few weeks ago, you explained how to change the sky in a photo and then add it to the reflection in a river. It worked beautifully--on your sample picture. But when I tried to select just a portion of my own photo, it chose to select the entire image. What am I doing wrong?

--Iris Humphrey, Marietta, Georgia

It sounds like you're having some trouble with the Magic Wand tool, Iris.

The Magic Wand is a handy way to select part of a picture, because it sniffs out regions of similar color. Click a pixel in the sky, for instance, and it'll select most, if not all, of the sky in a single click since all the pixels are somewhat blue. But what if you're working with a picture that has blue in the sky and in the ocean? You might accidentally get too much of your picture included in a selection.

The answer lies in something called tolerance. All Magic Wand tools--regardless of image editing program--have such a control. In Paint Shop Pro, for instance, there's a tolerance slider in the Tool Options palette at the top of the screen.

Tolerance controls the sensitivity of the Magic Wand: A low tolerance picks a very narrow range of colors, while a high tolerance selects a broad color range. If you expect to select a selection of your picture based on color and get more than you bargained for, undo the selection and reduce the tolerance level a bit, then try again.

Hot Pics

Get published, get famous! Each week, we select our favorite reader-submitted photo based on creativity, originality, and technique. Every month, the best of the weekly winners gets a prize valued at between $15 and $50.

Here's how to enter: Send us your photograph in JPEG format, at a resolution no higher than 640 by 480 pixels. Entries at higher resolutions will be immediately disqualified. If necessary, use an image editing program to reduce the file size of your image before e-mailing it to us. Include the title of your photo along with a short description and how you photographed it. Don't forget to send your name, e-mail address, and postal address. Before entering, please read the full description of the contest rules and regulations.

This Week's Hot Pic: "Laughter," by Diane Haman, San Antonio

Some sort of 1960s psychedelic happening? A close pass by a hot air balloon? A kids' party in an inflatable tent? We loved the bright, colorful, playful ambiguousness of this shot. It comes from Diane Haman, who merely comments that this very candid shot was captured with a Sony digital camcorder in still mode.

Hot Pic of the Month: Each month we choose one of our weekly winners to be the Hot Pic of the Month. For our July winner, we chose "The Birds," by Jim Michaels, from New Berlin, Wisconsin.

Congratulations to Jim and to everyone else who won a Hot Pic of the Week this month. Keep those entries coming!