Take a moment to look at the photo and how the different elements change with each "stop" change. There are a few obvious elements, one being detail and clarity. In every photo the bulb is in focus, and can be seen clearly. However the background isn't clear until the higher f stops. This effect is known as depth of field. The background seems to be lost behind what is focus on the wider apertures. This is known as the "bokeh", and is desirable typically in portraits. Alternatively you sacrifice this depth of field for clarity with a higher f-stop, as you see when you go all the way up to 8. My photojournalism teacher once told me the key to being a photojournalist is "f8 and be there". Because f8 will capture the entire scene.
But there's a catch here, and it has to do with a key component of exposure, which is how bright and or dark the photo is. Think about it, a wider aperture is letting more light in all at once, while a tiny "pin hole" aperature is going to be the sensor be exposed to the image quite slowly. This trade off will effect your picture immensely. For example, if you are capture fast moving sports and you want everything to be clear, you're going to want a high f stop number, however the pictures will be darker because of this. The sensor isn't getting enough light fast enough. Make the shutter speed longer you say? The action will blur, if you recall our previous lesson.
What then is a budding photographer to do?
Similar to my question on your last post, how do you know what your camera's aperture is? If you are buying a new camera there are a lot of important features to look at and to a certain point it comes down to preferences and what you're going to be doing with the camera, right? If you had to say the top 3 things to look at when buying a camera what would they be?
ReplyDeleteHi Lindsay, my apologies for not addressing your other comment. Addressing your question on shutter speed: No camera using a single shutter speed. With cameras that have manual exposure settings it's a timing that you can choose. When shooting in automatic mode, the camera tries it's best to figure out what is appropriate based on the light and the profile you choose (i.e sports, landscapes). Most of the posts on the blog are discussing how these elements would effect your photo when you manually set them.
ReplyDeleteYour camera's aperture range depends on the lens. Different lenses have different ranges. However, even upper end point and shoot cameras allow you to manually set the aperture's size. It can be a little more difficult to figure out the range your camera has however, because these numbers aren't marketable to the masses. Your user manual would perhaps have a number somewhere. Again, the aperture is automatically set when you're shooting in an automatic mode.
It's not necessarily a certain camera is better for different things, as much as it is different lenses are good for different things. If you're using a point and shoot camera with a fixed lens, you're limited by that factor. The top three things to look at, in my opinion, when buying a camera is the absence of noise in high ISO settings (ISO is next week's topic) and if it's a point and shoot with a built in lens, it needs to be one with wide aperture range that I can manually control.
Megapixels are no longer an important factor in buying a camera and I'm certainly going to discuss that in the future.