Christmas Tree Photography

One thing the Blog seems to have engendered is an interest in photography. We have had three enquiries over the last few days about how our Christmas image was taken, including the lens settings and the lens used.

The strict answer is that I don’t remember, as the photograph was taken on Christmas day 2009. Like most photographs though it does have a story behind it. In the 1950s my grandmother began to make Christmas tree ornaments, as back then Britain was still coming out of war-time austerity and few quality ornaments were available. Since then it has become a family tradition that each year at least one new ornament is added to the family tree. Each ornament has its own history, often after having been purchased by a family member as a result of travel. Without doubt the best Christmas tree ornaments are made in Germany… so this then is the sorry behind this particular image.

Even though I can no longer remember taking the image, right-clicking on the file in Windows 7 (or XP) will help retrieve the basic settings. Click on PROPERTIES, then DETAILS (or similar depending on your version of windows). If they don’t appear look for an additional button for the extra detail. You should then come up with a window similar to the one below:


This tells me that the photograph was a casual snap as the settings used are far from ideal. Flash was used and the lens was most probably a Nikkor 18-200mm zoom lens set at 135mm which tends to live on this particular camera. Again not the best lens for this kind of work, although it does tend to have a good minimum focus.

Little was done to the image other than to add ‘Merry Christmas’ in Photoshop, plus a bit of lens flare to the Christmas tree light to give a bit of atmosphere (another Photoshop feature. Here is the original for comparison:


I realise this has probably not answered the question which was posed. So I have taken another photograph more as it should be done.

This time camera was placed on a tripod as I wanted to have a fairly small aperture to maximise the depth of field. This of course would be at the expense of shutter speed hence the tripod. [ I realise the last sentence requires an understanding of two concepts: the interplay between aperture and shutter speed in arriving at the right exposure and how aperture affects the depth of field – how much in front of and behind the focus point will also be in focus]

Usually I would use some kind of release cable to fire the shutter as clearly I didn’t want to set up undue vibration by pressing the shutter in the normal way. However I tried to take my photograph as most people would if they didn’t have a shutter release – so instead I used the self-timer delay feature which would give ample time for the camera to stop vibrating before the shutter fired.

Again to do this as most of you would be doing it, I have used a standard 18-70mm kit lens. Normally I would use a fixed focus (non zoom) macro lens such as my Nikkor 100mm.

On this occasion the aperture was f 13 and the shutter speed 0.77 sec at ISO 200, and the focal length used was 70mm.

I found the exposure I obtained was a trifle overexposed so added some exposure compensation of - 0.7 stop.

The result is shown below.


I also tried using the camera’s in built flash. The result is again shown below.


Of the two I prefer the one using natural daylight, but this of course is a question of personal taste.

I hope this answers reader’s questions. Don’t despair if some of the technical terms left you floundering as I'm hoping to do an introductory photography course on the Blog in the near future. If there are any additional points don’t hesitate to write in.