Architecture photography

BenQ S1420 has a zoom lens that offers 26-130mm focal length (equivalent to 35mm format). At 26mm, it provides an about 80° angle of view that adds a sense of depth to the scene. In other words, BenQ S1420 is suitable for architecture photography, for example, shooting the exteriors of a museum or church. In addition to using a wide-angle lens, shooting a building should also pay attention to lighting and lines.




Lighting

In shooting the exteriors of a building, the ambient light is the only source of lighting. Thus, you have to shoot them at the right time in order to get an ideal lighting.To use front lighting is OK. At least, you can take a picture with low contrast between the sky and the building. However, the evenly lit building might lack a sense of three dimensions. For this reason, it would be better for you to shoot a building in a sunny day when the sun shines from either side of a building.



Side lighting produces shadows so as to create three-D effects. Take the following pictures for example. I took those pictures at around 4:30 p.m. At that time, the sun shined about 35°above the horizon and from the left side of the building. Thus, I acquired the side lighting to produce a gradation between brightness to darkness, which gave an impression of form, depth and texture to the building, especially the beautiful Greek-style columns.



Lines

A building contains many vertical and horizon lines. Thus, in shooting it, you have to pay attention to those lines so as to keep your picture look balanced. If not doing so, the building in the picture would tile to one side and look like the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy.

Thus, when doing composition, you have to keep the vertical lines near the center of the frame straight and the horizon lines parallel to the frame of the picture. Take the following two pictures for example. I draw a vertical and a horizon line respectively on each picture.


Keep the vertical lines near the center of the frame straight. 

Keep the horizon lines parallel to the frame.

To set the camera is easy when shooting a building at daytime. Either use building scene or program mode, and the camera will get a good picture for you.



Shooing a building at night

If the weather is not good enough, shooing a building at night is a good alternative. You can even get a good picture by shooting a building on a raining day. The easiest way to shoot a night scene is to use night-scene mode. The camera (S1420) will automatically use ISO100 combined with lower shutter speed so as to produce a picture of good quality.


Night scene & auto white balance.



Even though to use the night-scene mode is a good way to get a decent night picture of a building, you might want to use advanced modes, such as program or AV, to have more parameters (functions) to fine-tune you picture. For example, you can use the function of EV (Exposure compensation) to compensate a brighter or darker picture. Further more, those advanced modes allow you to change white balance from auto to daylight or fluorescent in order to modify the mood of a picture.






Program mode & daylight white balance.


Program mode & fluorescent white balance.

Finally, to prevent camera shaking, you have to turn off O.I.S., set self-timer to 2 or 10 seconds and use a tripod. By the way, don’t forget to set focus to infinity and turn off the built-in flash.






Program Mode & B&W Color Mode.

*****Other pictures taken with BenQ S1420 in June, 2011*****


Program mode with Macro focus.


Program mode with Macro focus.

Further reading: “Call on spring with BenQ E1480”: http://www.wretch.cc/blog/WCHUAN99/1636906



Sunset Mode.

Further reading: “Techniques of shooting sunrises and sunsets”: http://www.wretch.cc/blog/WCHUAN99/1681760