#photography basics

[pixelspeaks]

Depth of Field in Digital Photography

In digital photography, the term Depth of field is the zone within a photo that appears sharp and within focus. In a photograph, there is a point of focus, where the lens actually focused. But there is also an area both in front of, and behind, the point of focus that also appears sharper. That area correlates with the depth of field. In other words, Depth of field is the area in an image where objects appear acceptably in focus or have a level of acceptable sharpness. The main factors to determine depth of field are aperture(f-stop), distance between the lens and subject, and the lens' focal length.

Aperture is a hole in camera lens through which light enters the camera and reach to the sensor. The f-stop values are normally f2.8, f3.5, f4, f5.6, f8, f11, f16, f22 etc. The smallest f-numbers means the widest apertures and therefore the shallowest depth of fields. And the larger f-numbers means to the narrowest apertures and therefore the deepest depth of fields. For landscape photography we need higher f number, e.g. f22. For portrait photography we need smaller f number e.g. f2.8.

[krisroley]

Getting To Know The Exposure Triangle

The three parts of the exposure triangle are aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. Aperture acts just like the iris in your eyes, and it opens and closes to let in more or less light. Shutter speed is how long the camera's shutter stays open when you take a photo. Finally, ISO is the camera's sensitivity to light.  

Let's go over each one of these in detail. 

Aperture

Aperture is the adjustable iris of your camera, and it's indicated by what's known as an F-Stop. I must confess this was something that got me for the longest time because it acts in reverse to my assumption that the higher the number, the more open the aperture. The opposite is the case, so that F32 would be a tiny opening, and F1.4 would be a very wide-open aperture. 

As you can see from these photos, the wider the aperture, the more blurry the background gets from the subject of your focus, which is called depth of field, or basically how much stuff you can keep in focus when you're taking a picture. Depending on the kind of photo you're taking, this could be very desirable. For example, a portrait would look amazing with this effect, but maybe not an action photo.  

Shutter Speed

Shutter speed controls the amount of time the shutter stays open to reveal the sensor, indicated by fractions of a second. So, 1/1000 of a second is much faster than 1/2 of a second.   

As you can see from this series of photos, the faster the shutter speed will freeze action clearly, while a longer shutter speed causes motion blur. Sports photography or bird photography would benefit from faster shutter speed, but a longer shutter speed would be better suited for astral or nighttime photography.  

ISO

ISO controls the sensitivity of the camera's sensor, indicated by numbers like 50, 100, 200, all the way up to 25600 or higher in some digital cameras. The lower the number, the less sensitive the sensor is to light. The higher the number, the more sensitive the sensor is to light. Higher numbers mean you can use the camera in lower light situations.  

As you can see in this photo, the camera becomes more sensitive to light as the ISO Numbers rise. You will also notice that the image becomes grainier. In some cases, this might be an artistic choice; in a lot of cases, it may be noise and undesirable.  

The Tradeoff

What I've shown you in the pictures above is the effects one leg of the exposure has on your photo, but that's not the whole story. The truth of the matter is that this is a juggling act. If you change one of these settings, it will affect that setting and the factors that you've already dialed in like your depth of field or your shutter speed. 

If you're starting in photography, there's no shame in shooting in Auto Mode and letting the camera work this out. If you're serious about photography as a hobby or more, you can move out of Auto into one of the semi-auto modes, like aperture or shutter priority mode. Those do pretty much what they say, choosing one setting to lead while the camera works out what the other parameters should be in correlation to the priority. Eventually, you could move into Manual and work out the exposure settings yourself, and play with them.  The fun begins when you know the rules, so you can learn how to break them.  

There's a great resource that I've found many photography blogs linking to, and that's Daniel Peters' chart at Fotoblog Hamburg. There's a reason everybody links it, it's fantastically simple to understand. So, I'm linking to it as well.  

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFBx_4zAoHs)

[astrikos]

Photography for Beginners

I updated this post here: https://artres.xyz/post/ultimate-guide-to-photography/. 

Note– The tumblr editor  scrambled some of my paragraphs upon importing, but I think I fixed most of it! Let me know if you see some messed up errors. Anyways, I hope you enjoy this post! It’s a little long! 

Thank you to @thelittlestprincess7 & @sashakazanov for responding to my question on @art-res. 

I'm by no means a pro, but I have worked on my artistic photography on both DSLR & compacts for over 4-5 years.

Step 1: Purchase a cheap DSLR/Compact where you can access manual mode. I personally have the Canon T3i & the Sony RX100 (the first version), both are great cameras and now more affordable because they are older models. Of course, you can start with a $2k camera, but that's pretty overkill, especially when you're starting out and maybe on a budget.

On Amazon 

Check out my camera buying guide here!

If you decided to get a DSLR/compact, you also need to get an SD card to store the images. I use class 10 because it's fast enough for video and has good transfer speeds. They’re pretty cheap, so I don’t recommend going slower than class 10, if you can help it. 

To get a cheap camera, consider going refurbished, used (without too much use, otherwise the shutter might die on you quickly), or buying an older model. 

OR: just use your phone and access pro mode/get an app where you can access manual mode. Phone cameras have gotten good lately!

To really learn how to photograph properly, you want to get off of auto mode and switch to manual mode, aperture priority mode(my personal favorite) or shutter priority mode.

Experiment a little now, just change some stuff and see what happens. A little experimentation goes a long way in learning what does what. You might be a little overwhelmed at first by all the dials and controls, but it's alright! Just tweak some stuff and experiment. Live view will be really helpful when you’re first starting out. 

Now for a bit more guidance on what does what on your camera. Exposure depends on 3 things: shutter speed, aperture, and ISO (exposure sensitivity)

Shutter speed, which is displayed by a fraction, ie, 1/80, 1/4, 1/2000, determines how fast your camera closes the shutter, or basically, the time out of a second (fraction!) the sensor is exposed to the light.

 To prevent camera shake, a useful rule of thumb is to take the focal length (For example, your kit lens, 18-55mm lens, is set to around 55 ) take the number 55  & put your focal length at 1/60 or above.  Or you might not need this tip if you have sniper photography skills. 

Slower shutter speeds blur motion. Good for motion trails, light trails, blurring waterfalls.

Faster shutter speeds freeze motion. Good for action shots of your cat or dog.

Aperture, which is measured in f-stops, determines how wide open your lens hole is. Yes, the blades actually will open up. You can take a look.

Lower f-stop number, ie, f/1.2, f/1.4, f/1.8, means your lens is wider open, and thus, letting in more light.

Lower f number also yields a more thin depth of field, meaning only a thin plane of the image is sharp, while rest of the frame is blurred out, and then you get the lovely bokeh effect.ex: 

following ex w  the blurry background

Higher f-stop number, ie, f/8, f/11, f/22, means your lens is more closed and letting in less light.

Yields a larger/wider depth of field, which means more of your background will be in focus

Great for landscapes! 

the following ex: f/11

Advanced note: if you're using a macro lens, you want a high enough f number that enough of the subject is focused. Or you can focus stack, but that's a bit above the basics. 

ISO - with this, you can increase your sensor's sensitivity to light, though higher numbers (ie, ISO 1600 & up) often results in more noise, or grainy color/luminance artifacts.

All three of these variables work together, which is sort of complicated. If you use aperture priority mode or shutter priority mode, you can adjust either aperture or shutter speed, and then the camera will automatically set the other variable in order to create the correct exposure. You can also set ISO or have the camera automatically calculate it. I recommend experimenting with this to learn if you are overwhelmed with manual mode.

For general shooting, I like aperture priority mode because manual mode makes it harder to quickly react to rapidly changing light conditions and action. However, for some shots where I am looking for a particular effect, I go manual! (Macro shots, waterfall shots, exposure/focus stacking, and anything with tricky lighting)

A practical example of what goes on in my head for indoor shot of something, which is sort of low light. 

I want to take a picture of this small statue, and I want a blurry background (shallow depth of field). That means I want a low f/ for a wider lens hole so more light can come in. That’s great because I don’t need to push my ISO too too far, 800 will do. It won’t be too noisy at this level, but too much lower will force me to use a super slow shutter speed to expose the picture correctly, which will result in a blurry image because of camera shake. The focal length of my lens is at 50, so now I am going to put my shutter at 1/60. 

Metering – the way exposure is determined by the camera, examples include spot metering (measure a small area), center weighted average, or multiple zone (matrix/evaulative/etc) metering.

Experiment with these and how they interact with different lighting conditions.

Spot metering is useful for high contrast scenes

Average metering is great for landscapes because it takes into account both the sky and the landscape.

There is a lot of other terminology to cover, but for now, I think this is a good start for the absolute fundamentals. I hope this helped!

I also wrote a post explaining RAW vs JPG, if you're interested in learning about that!

Thanks for reading! I hope it helped! 

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[cameraguide-blog]

What is Shutter Speed?

This is the click you hear when you press the button to take a photo. You can adjust your shutter speed in the manual mode on your camera by turning the dial on top to the letter ‘M’.

Once here you can make your shutter very fast, or extremely slow. Each camera is different in how these settings are changed, but largely most use the main navigation dial on the front face of the camera or a rotating dial on the top of the camera to adjust the shutter. 

The benefits of a fast shutter, such as having it appear as 1/1000 is that you can capture objects, animals or people that are moving very fast and have them appear still without any motion blur. 

A slow shutter such as 0.5″ or 25 seconds is how you can capture more light, especially when in darker environments. Having the shutter set slower allows the sensor (the thing inside your camera that captures light) to be exposed to light for a longer period of time. A ver slow shutter is great for astrophotography or other kinds of night photography. Be aware though that with a slow shutter any bump or movement to the camera could cause blur, this is why using a tripod is always handy. 

What is Aperture? 

Aperture is a setting you can change in manual mode that affects how much light can enter the camera and how to create depths of field (essentially how to get an out of focus background behind a subject). 

The aperture ring is inside your camera lens and  it can become very narrow or very wide depending on your settings. A wide aperture will let in a lot of light where as a narrow one will let in as little light as possible. You can make it wider to let in a lot of light by selecting a low ‘f.stop’ number such as 1.8-2.5, or you can make it very narrow by using a higher number such as f.5-8 or above. 

Wide apertures are great for night photography as they allow as much light in as possible. A narrow aperture is best for a bright sunny day as you don;t want your photos becoming over exposed and completely washed out. 

The aperture also controls how shallow the depth of field in an image is. A wide aperture such as f1.8 will give a very narrow depth of field, this is great when shooting portraits as the subject is the main focus. A narrower aperture such as f.5-8 is great when shooting landscapes as it allows all of the image to be crisp and in focus. 

How do these two things work together?

The shutter speed and aperture work in unison to create the great images you desire. When you have a fast shutter, this lets in less light, so to compensate for this you need a wider aperture that will let in the light. 

For example if you were shooting at a shutter speed of 1/2500, this is extremely fast and wont allow much light in, to brighten the image you would need to put your aperture setting at around f1.4 to f.2.5. 

If you are using a slower shutter during the day time and your images are too bright, you will need a narrower aperture such as f.5 or f.6 to stop too much light hitting your cameras sensor. 

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Photography Basics

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Free Photography Basics certification exam tests basic level skills in Photography. The foundation level certification exam by StudySection is available online.