Photography Tutorials
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How To Make Seamless Instagram Gallery Carousels with Photoshop | Simple Instagram Panoramas
To skip the introduction, the tutorial starts at 01:06 - if you find it helpful, please like, comment and subscribe to help me grow my channel. Every little action helps me to keep creating.
I am forever trying to find creative ways to make the most of Instagram as a platform to showcase my work. Instagram is one of the most popular image based social media platforms and has been for many years now. Whether you're on Instagram to chat to family and friends, share your photography, videography, art, music or another hobby through images, you've probably come up against the limitations of the platform when uploading photos.
Instagram doesn't have the best resolution, there's no real zoom feature, you can't upload 2:3 aspect ratio images (vertical) natively, and there are lots of other niggles and annoyances. That said, it's where people go to hang out, and so sometimes it's good to find workarounds that help you to showcase your work in the best possible light.
I started using carousel posts - Instagram's gallery posts - to showcase my landscape images in higher resolution, as well as to upload 2:3 aspect ratio (vertical) images without cropping them or adding white borders. I do this by making seamless carousel posts with Photoshop, and so I thought I would share the method in a video tutorial in case it is helpful for other artists and photographers. I'm approaching this method as a photographer, but you can also do something similar with artwork if you're an illustrator, graphic designer or artist specialising in something completely different and want to showcase your work through images.
This method is nothing new and I don't claim to have invented it, I am simply passing the baton from my hand to yours so that you can create something interesting with it.
Make sure to use high resolution images as your starting images so that you can crop and reposition them in Photoshop without impacting your image quality. I export my images from Lightroom at 300dpi and 2048px in width as my standard export setting, so I have plenty of image to play with in Photoshop. I suggest using similar settings, and certainly images as big as or greater than 1080px on the horizontal.
My work in other places:
Website | https://www.stephaniegarstin.co.uk
Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/stephaniegarstin
Vimeo | https://www.vimeo.com/stephaniegarstin
Patreon | https://www.patreon.com/stephaniegarstin -
Make Your Digital Photos Look Like Film | How To Get The 35mm Film Look In Camera | Film Emulation
In today's video, I show you how to make your digital photos look like film. This video is based on one of my most popular written tutorials which I originally published in March 2016 over on my personal blog: https://www.stephaniealice.co.uk/make-photos-look-like-film/
To this day, that tutorial still receives a lot of traffic, so I thought that I would sit down and make a video version too, for those of you who prefer to learn through videos.
This video is a long one - over twenty minutes - but you can skip through to different sections by using the time stamps below. I encourage you to watch it through from start to finish though, because it is about the process as a whole rather than any one single tip. Also, don't be one of those photographers who falls into the trap of thinking that if they just spend money on presets that their photos will suddenly look like those of their favourite film photographer on Instagram! There really is more to it than that. Presets are an important part of film emulation, but if you use them on their own without changing your digital technique, your digital photos will continue to look like digital photos and you will remain underwhelmed.
Introduction and why I shoot hybrid - film and digital 00:00
Why I love 35mm film 02:29
Why I started emulating the film look with my digital work 03:10
A comparison of my film and digital work 05:12
Summary of my technique in four parts 05:30
Expose to the right (ETR) for a bright digital negative 07:06
Use your ISO 08:45
How to use vintage or legacy lenses with your digital camera 10:41
Film emulation presets as the icing on the cake 16:36
A book I recommend every photographer - film or digital - read is 'The Luminous Portrait' by Elizabeth Messina. Buy it from your local, independent bookshop, or borrow it from your library.
https://uk.bookshop.org/books/the-luminous-portrait-capture-the-beauty-of-natural-light-for-glowing-flattering-photographs/9780817400125
A website detailing Helios 44 lens compatibility for various digital cameras. I am not affiliated with this website and have not bought equipment from them, this link is not an endorsement - or a criticism - but I want to make it clear that I am just sharing it here for the compatibility information:
https://helios-lens.com/compatibility
The presets I use (and paid for in full myself) are made by Totally Rad. They are called Replichrome and I have been using them since the summer of 2015, for both my personal work and my professional work. I have been very happy with them, as they are such a close match to real film. The secret of these presets is the camera matching that is available - each preset is fine tuned for different cameras so that when it is paired with a RAW file it can adjust the file according to the specific colour profile of the camera you are using. I have both the Icon and the Slide packs, but I mostly use the Icon pack. If you get just one pack, pick the Icon pack. Sometimes they hold sales, so sign up or keep your eye on their website to get a good deal on the presets - I bought mine during a sale.
https://gettotallyrad.com/replichrome
There are many different options though from VSCO to Mastin Labs to Rebecca Lily to name just a few.
https://mastinlabs.com/
https://www.rebeccalily.com/
My work in other places:
Website | https://www.stephaniegarstin.co.uk
Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/stephaniegarstin
Vimeo | https://www.vimeo.com/stephaniegarstin
Patreon | https://www.patreon.com/stephaniegarstin
And a note for the passionate and pedantic: what I like might not be what you like. What I think looks like film, might not be what you think looks like film. The beauty of photography is that it is more art than science, and it is incredibly subjective. If you're pixel peeping and taking a colour picker to the greens to compare Noritsu scans of Porta 400 to film emulation Portra 400 to see how much they vary, you would benefit from zooming out a little bit and seeing the bigger picture! The technique I share in this tutorial creates images that are - to my naked eye - very close to the look of real Portra 160 or Portra 400 film, and that makes me happy. I want to share my technique in case it helps other photographers create images that make them happy, too, especially if it helps them to save money as real film can be a very expensive habit. That really is all there is to it! 35mm film isn't going anywhere, in fact it is more popular as a format than it has ever been since the beginning of the digital era, so you don't need to worry about digital killing film. Both formats can coexist, side by side, quite healthily and happily. Some of us will choose to shoot film exclusively, others - like me - will shoot hybrid - and some can choose to shoot digital exclusively. All are valid options, so let's keep the comments friendly and not turn this into a format war!
Videography & Filmmaking Tutorials
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Basic Video Settings | A Quick Start Beginner Guide to Filming with your DSLR or Mirrorless Camera
I am beginning my new video series for beginners in filmmaking with a quick start guide to basic video settings. There are so many topics to cover, but I wanted to give you a very quick overview of camera settings before diving into detail about the exposure triangle and the theory and practice of filmmaking.
Sometimes it's good to just get started and to make something, without worrying too much about settings or experiencing easily avoided hiccups. This video will help you do just that. Whether you are filming on a DSLR, a mirrorless camera, or your smartphone using a manual camera app, this video will help you get the most out of your equipment and get off to a good start.
The settings I cover in this video include:
Choosing and setting PAL vs NTSC and why it matters
Choosing and setting a frame rate
Shutter speed and shutter angle
Colour profiles or picture styles
White balance
Each of these topics could be a video in and of itself, and I will return to each of them to share more tips and advice over the course of this video series. For now though, I chose to keep things simple and stick to the basics.
If you don't know whether you should be using PAL or NTSC, check out the Wikipedia listing for PAL to see if your country is included. PAL or PAL / SECAM is the dominant format (matching an electricity grid frequency of 50Hz) but countries in North America as well as Japan and a few other territories do use NTSC (to correspond to a grid frequency of 60Hz).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAL_region
It's not the end of the world if you shoot a PAL frame rate in an NTSC country or vice-versa, but it's good to get into the habit of shooting frame rates which match electricity grid frequencies because eventually you will need to film under artificial light and flickering light is a nuisance that is easily avoided. Mixing frame rates is an option, but it's good to have a back catalogue of clips that can easily sit together on one timeline, so start as you mean to go on.
If you are using a mobile phone rather than a dedicated camera to film with, make sure that you use a manual camera app and that you don't just leave these settings for your phone to decide. There are lots of options out there to choose from. I'm not an expert on smartphone filmmaking but the article linked below gives an overview of a few different apps that you might like to try, including options for both iOS and android. I can vouch for Open Camera as I have personally used that app, albeit on an underpowered phone which couldn't make the most of the app's offerings.
https://momofilmfest.com/best-smartphone-video-recording-apps-for-2020/
My work in other places:
Website: https://www.stephaniegarstin.co.uk
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stephaniegarstin
Vimeo: https://www.vimeo.com/stephaniegarstin -
Learn How To Film | A New Video Series For Beginners | Photography | Filmmaking | Storytelling
Join me as I step out of my comfort zone and sit down in front of the camera to announce a new series of video tutorials all about photography, videography, filmmaking and storytelling. In this video I share a little bit about my own experience and how I learned photography and filmmaking through ten years of Photo a Day / Project 365, and a habit of daily practice.
I am entirely self-taught in both photography and filmmaking and want to give back to the online community that helped me so much when I was just getting started myself. Drawing on my ten years of photography, eight years of filmmaking, and five years of experience as a professional wedding and events videographer and photographer, this series will cover technique from beginner to advanced, and lots of tips and tricks to help you learn and develop your own skills in photography, videography, filmmaking and storytelling.
My work in other places:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stephaniegarstin
Vimeo: https://www.vimeo.com/stephaniegarstin
My second channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChYz9W0QiMtAiHO1qZkGzUQ
