WITHLUKE PHOTOGRAPHY MASTERCLASS

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PHOTOGRAPHERS

INFO@WITHLUKE.COM
Hello!
I hope you found the Photography Masterclass a
useful resource to hone your photography skillset

Please use this PDF guide as a reference when

shooting if you want to brush up on your technique
for a particular scenario. If you have any requests for
more details on a certain topic, please reach out to
me and I’ll hopefully be able to assist you directly.

Luke Stackpoole
1.BASICS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

There are 4 main styles of camera these days – DSLR / MIRRORLESS / SMARTPHONE / SLR
FILM – my recommendation would be mirrorless because of the modern functionality, focus
ability and the ease of seeing the final image before you even shoot the photo.

Different sensor sizes – MFT / APSC / Full Frame. Full Frame is larger, captures more light, has
a greater depth of field with equivalent lens choice. Full Frame is used by most professionals.

Exposure Triangle –

The above image is a really useful diagram that showcases the interaction between the three
elements of the exposure triangle, the 3 settings which, when changed will adjust how
exposed the image will be.

Aperture – adjust lower to let more light in, more depth of field (e.g. blurrier background)
Adjust higher, sharper up to around f/11 on the lens, longer depth of field and sharper
throughout the frame, less light comes in to the lens however.

Shutter Speed – Adjusts how long the shutter is open on the camera to let light in. Use a
faster shutter to reduce light coming in to the sensor, capture motion, e.g. for capturing wildlife
or sports
Use a slower shutter speed to allow more light in, brighter image, capture motion or if you are
on a tripod to capture more detail in the image with a lower ISO base.
ISO – The gain level of the sensor. Lower ISO = less noise, sharper image, less gain or light on
the sensor. Good for tripod work if lower.
Higher ISO when handheld, or in lowlight, helps you to offset a faster shutter speed or tighter
aperture. Avoid too high ISO as this will degrade your image.

White Balance – This is usually ok to leave at Auto, especially for just stills photography.
Essentially this is the warmth / coolness of your photo, and if you shoot RAW it should be
simple to adjust in post. However, for more accurate viewing and shooting in the field you can
manually adjust. Usually I like to adjust this when shooting indoors or at night.

2. CAMERA SETTINGS

Focus Modes – AFS – Single focus, won’t track a subject even when half depressed. Very
accurate on stationery subjects e.g. landscapes

AFC – Continous Auto Focus, useful for tracking moving subjects e.g. people, vehicles, sports,
wildlife. Essentially as you half depress the shutter the camera will move the focus point and
track a subject. Always use on moving subjects.

Manual Focus – Full control over the focus using the focus wheel on the lens.

Shutter Type:

High + / High / Med – best for wildlife / events / capturing that perfect moment without
missing a frame. Drawback is lots of files and high files size.

Single Shot – Mostly used for landscapes where you just want a single image and avoiding
shutter shock.

Bracketing – You can take multiple images, underexposed and overexposed and combine in
post production to give you a well balanced image without noise in shadows or overblown
highlights.

Self Timer – Useful to avoid camera shaking when on tripod, personal shooting.

Shooting Dial Modes:

Av – My main shooting mode, aperture priority. Essentially you select your aperture, allowing
flexibility here but the camera will select the rest of the parameters to reach your selected
exposure value. Very convenient for most shooting scenarios, as long as you have enough
light.

S – Gives you the option to choose shutter speed rather than aperture, similar to Av.
M – Full manual mode, all parameters are variable. Best for wildlife, events where light is
varying and you want to ensure a minimum shutter speed to capture motion.

1/2/3 – Hotkey function, I preset these as different modes for video.

Custom Function Buttons – Utilise these for easy access buttons such as varying Eye AF
modes, white balance selector, silent mode on/off etc.

IMPORTANT CAMERA MENU SETTINGS

-ALWAYS SHOOT RAW UNLESS YOU DON’T EDIT IN POST PRODUCTION – this gives you
the most leeway and data to work with when grading.
-Shoot to 2 cards if you are on an important assignment to avoid losing files due to SD
corruption
-Pixel shift mode is useful for maximising sharpness and detail if you are in a studio setting.
Important use case is in archival or capturing artworks in full res. Needs external app support
to complete the full image stack.
-Silent Shutter – Great for weddings / quiet events.
-Release W/O card – Disable this
-Auto minimum SS - I would select fast for this, it will choose a SS double your focal length
i.e. 50mm lens – minimum 1/100th. This will ensure a sharp image always when in AV mode.
3. GEAR OVERVIEW

Sony A1 – High MP camera, fast AF, pro functions, fast operation, fast shutter. Downside is
large file sizes.

Sony FX3 – Video centric camera, 4k 120p.

Sony 14mm 1.8 – Perfect for wide landscape, Astro photography, low light, street. – clickable
aperture ring. Allows us to shoot in low light with a low ISO due to the wide aperture.

Tamron 17-28 2.8 – Great all purpose wide angle zoom, lightweight and useful for most
landscape / interior work as well as video.

Tamron 28-75 2.8 G2 – Covers midrange, standard workhouse lens I use for majority of my
work, both personal and commercial. Lightweight, sharp.

Sony 35mm /1.4 – Great for lowlight, portraits, clean commercial backgrounds, products.

Sony 50mm /1.2 – Same reasons as 35mm, slightly brighter and more bokeh

Tamron 70-180mm – Telephoto, great for portraits, blurred foregrounds, close wildlife

Tamron 150-500mm – Great for long telephoto work, wildlife, compressed landscapes, moon
photography.

Sony 400mm 2.8 – High end telephoto, perfect for wildlife portraiture or sports. Wide
aperture, bokeh is clean, fast AF and sharp.

DJI Mavic 3 Pro – Highest end prosumer drone, telephoto capability, 40 min flight time,
excellent quality visuals. Ensure you bring spare batteries. Really useful to utilise the tele 3x
lens for compression. I believe the latest smaller drones from DJI also offer a tele option.

Tripod – Peak Design CF – lightweight and compact.

PolarPro UV Filters – To protect front lens elements.

PolarPro ND Filters – Good for long exposure work or video
PolarPro CP Filter – To reduce glare or reflections

CF Express Cards – Fast read/write with great capacity.

Backpack – Tenba Axis

4. Shooting Scenarios – Key points are best viewed in the tutorial content. Ideally scroll
through the tutorial video to find an image you are curious about what settings I used for that
particular image. If you are curious as to my settings for a particular image I post in the coming
months, feel free to DM me and I will be happy to share.

5. COMPOSITION

Composition is subjective, use your own unique eye to frame subjects, however there are some
key pointers to note:

-Rule of thirds : Split image into 3 grids, foreground centre and sky
-Use of foreground : leads the viewew through the frame, keeps subject prominent
-Centralised subjects : perfect for social media, keeps subject prominent, for landscape photos
you can offset the subject to the side of frame.

6. KEY TECHNIQUES

A – Focus point selection & using a subject for scale – Add a person into your frames to give
the landscape some emotion, personal feeling, scale is easier to show this way. You can also
use a vehicle or other object to show scale in a frame. It’s important to focus half way through
your frame to maximise sharpness front to back, don’t focus right at the front or back of frame.
You can use the 2/3rds rule also to focus 2/3rds of the way through the frame.

B – Handheld shooting - I shoot 80% of my work handheld. Get comfortable with shooting
handheld whilst maintaining a solid shutter speed to avoid camera shake. Use your feet to
adjust composition and allows you to be flexible.

C – Compression – Utilise a long telephoto to add compression to an image, whilst having a

subject in the frame. An example is using a person for scale in front of a waterfall or mountain
range. Utilising compression on telephoto allows you to show scale in an image whereas a
wide angle lens won’t show off the true nature of scale in a photo. Test out utilising telephoto
in your images to get compressed photos.
G – Daytime Long Exposure – Usually required to use an ND filter to reduce the light enough
to allow a long shutter. Too much light will lead to an overexposed image, even at ISO 100.
Using a 5-10 stop variable ND, a closed aperture such as f/9 and ISO 100 you can slow
motion, e.g. waterfalls, people moving, seascapes and achieve a dreamy look. Use a self timer
and tripod to avoid movement of the camera. Shutter speed you can test and vary depending
on how much movement you want.

H – Night time long exposure – Shoot at a higher aperture to lengthen your shutter speed
whilst keeping ISO low. If there is enough light you can lower aperture. Always use a tripod to
get clean light trails and sharp images.

I – Bracketing Mode – This is useful for when there is a harsh differential in light in your scene.
Use continuous bracket 3 shots to capture 3 different exposures which you can then merge in
post-production. This is called interval shooting function in the menu.
7. WILDLIFE

Key tips :

-Utilise a telephoto lens, at minimum 70-200mm /2.8 , 100-400mm 150-500mm or even a

400mm /2.8 prime if you want to rent.
-You want to ensure you have enough light into the lens to avoid high ISO shooting, this is
achievable at f/2.8
-Utilise either Manual mode or Av mode to achieve sharp images by setting a minimum shutter
speed, as we need to freeze the motion of the animal
-However, when an animal is still use manual mode to adjust shutter speed lower so that you
can lower your ISO to reduce noise!
-Shooting at sunrise / sunset is when wildlife is usually most active (night is difficult to get
good looking images)
-Make sure to get low to capture the animal with foreground to give it some depth in the
image.
-Avoid bright coloured clothing
-Stay quiet when scouting for wildlife, no sudden motions
-Talk to your guide to find the image and framing you want, communication is key.
-Use Animal eye AF or Bird, and disable human eye tracking to avoid mis focus.
-I like to shoot in AF-C to track the eye effectively.

8. TIMELAPSE

Basic tips for shooting timelapse

-Shoot on tripod
-Make sure it’s level and stable
-Shoot in aperture priority, lock your white balance
-Go to drive mode > Interval shooting > capture enough images to make a video, i.e. 25fps
video will need 250 images for a 10 second video. You can shoot more images and then speed
the video up also.
-Keep shutter to electronic to save battery & wearing out your mechanical shutter
-Interval priority should be left off
-Keep ISO low, and lock your aperture
-Turn off display to save battery life
-You can use external battery pack to power camera via USB for extended timelapse
9. ASTRO PHOTOGRAPHY

-Find dark skies without light pollution i.e. away from cities / roads
-Use dark site finder to do this
-Best season is summer in northern hemisphere. Use sky guide to check position of milky way
in your planned location
-Use a sturdy tripod, can balance it with some rocks to stop camera shake
-Use a fast / bright lens – wide aperture primes are best, but use your fastest widest lens for
wide field Astro.
-My lens of choice is Sony 14mm f/1.8
-Want to keep the ISO low enough to have detail, i.e. ISO 1000-2000.
-Lights off when shooting
-Shutter speed should be between 10-30 seconds depending on your focal length, typically at
14mm I shoot 25s or so to avoid star trailing
-Use a self timer to avoid camera shake
-Manually focus on the stars, zoom in using hotkey and get pinpoint stars.
-Level your horizon and take the photo.
-You can use subjects such as people with lights, torches or use trees as a foreground object.

9.B – MOON PHOTOGRAPHY

-I have a very particular technique for this. I do not like using a tripod as it’s too tricky to line
the moon up constantly when its shifting through the frame.
-Instead, I balance the lens on a ledge, windowsill, or lay on my back and use my legs.
-Shoot at a wide aperture slightly stopped down e.g. f/3.5 on a 2.8 lens
-Use a long telephoto if available
-Shoot 1/100th on a dark night with ISO 100 always.
-Shoot 5-10 frames and you should get 1 very sharp. Easy!
10. CIRCULAR POLARISER

Useful for when you want to reduce glare or reflections, or to add a bit of contrast in the scene.
Most notable cases for this is for shooting automotive work or capturing images through
windows i.e. from tall buildings. You can purchase a large filter and use step up rings to cover
your smaller lenses rather than buying multiple expensive filters.

11. PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY

I won’t go into too much detail for portrait work as it’s not the mainstay of my photography
business. However, that being said – everyone loves to take portraits, even if its of friends and
family. There are some key techniques to remember when shooting portraits

- Firstly, I would recommend shooting manual with a minimum shutter speed of 1/250th for
sharpness. Unless there is very low light.
- Try to shoot with a prime lens, not only does this give you a sharper image and low
aperture possibilities but allows you to use your feet to move and adjust subject.
- Prime lenses seem to get skin tones better out of camera
- Shoot low aperture for the nice background blur
- If your model is side on you may need to stop down to make sure both eyes are sharp
- If you are shooting a group then shoot around f4 or higher to avoid blur
- Low light always low aperture to avoid high ISO
- Try both backlit and frontlit images depending on time of day
- Eye auto focus is key these days to composing, or use the point on camera to select the
face / eye
- Experiment, I think it’s also important that the model is comfortable, relaxed and keep the
mood happy.
- Genuine posing, natural always looks best.
- Utilise the environment too.
12. DRONE PHOTOGRAPHY

A – Basics of Drone Photography

Get accustomed to taking off from your hand, to avoid getting your drone landing and taking
off from wet / sandy terrain which can damage it.

C mode – cinematic, slow movement for smooth motion

N mode – normal, regular speed, obstacle detection mode on
S mode – sport mode, max speed, high battery usage, sensors are off. Recommended if
advanced only.

B – Panorama Mode - Vertical Pano mode is incredibly useful for getting a vertical photo
whilst still close to the subject. Utilise this and shoot RAW and then combine the raws in post.

C – Compression - Utilise the 3x / 7x if your drone has these. Adds a unique compression
effect and can really enhance a subject in the frame.

D – Long Distance / Height - You have the ability to push the height limit to 1k and distance
to unlimited. If you are in a non-flight path and rural area with permits you could experiment
here.

E – Hyperlapse – Timelapse via drone. Ensure some movement in frame i.e. interesting sky.
Ensure the drone has a nice subject, good signal from controller so it does not get interrupted.
Set shooting direction, time and speed and lock the course. I would shoot for maximum time,
minimum time between images and a full battery for best results!

F – Drone Bracketing - Essentially similar to DSLR bracketing, shoot AEB mode 3x shots and
combine in post processing, useful if there is harsh light in the scene and a wide dynamic
range.
13. LOCATION PLANNING, WEATHER, TIME OF DAY

It’s important to be proficient in pre-production in order to maximise your chances of a

successful shoot. Some key points to note:

-Plan your route effectively, satellite google maps is useful for this, as well as the mymaps
function
-You can use ChatGPT to plan locations or routes
-Google online blogs of popular locations
-Save locations on IG using the save to inspiration feature
-Plan your weather using an app such as accuweather as well as skyguide to see sunrise /
sunset directions to minimise poorly lit locations.

14. FILE MANAGEMENT

These days I cull my images directly in Lightroom using the rating tool and then removing
unrated images from my disk. This allows me to keep my files organised, small file size and not
clogging up unrequired space in my storage.

Staying organised is key to an efficient workflow, both on current projects and for future
licencing purposes.

Do stay backed up to two sources, especially when in the field. This can avoid losing important
personal or client files. Try to use SSD storage, as well as an online backup solution such as
Dropbox / Backblaze. Super useful to send clients images, similar to wetransfer.

If you have a camera with dual slots, do shoot to 2 card slots simultaneously for a failsafe.
15. BUSINESS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Being a talented photographer doesn’t equate to being a successful photographer. For those
of you thinking of pursuing photography more formally, there are some key notes to take and
some skills that are important to have a firm grasp of, not just the technical skills of
photography. Ensure that you take note of the below:

-A clear website showcasing your work / portfolio

-Public presence on social media, try to grow this each day, engage with your audience
-Use other sites such as linkedin
-Find your niche, landscape photography isn’t really a money maker, look for a style of
photography that has clear clientele.

You will also need to have confidence in these important skills:

1.Knowledge of your gear, lighting, lenses, and your camera system

2.Composition, unique eye for images, creativity
3.Skills in post processing
4.Storytelling in your work
5.Time Management
6.Attention to detail
7.Interpersonal skills, for talking with clients on shoots
8.Networking & marketing
9.Patience, organisational skills
10. Continuous learning, keeping up with trends and latest developments.