photography 101
posted 2004.05.21
I'm an information addict; most of you who stop by here from time to time may have already guessed this. And most of the time, I acquire information best by simply reading (and then doing) by myself. Classroom environments stifle me.
But once in a while I hit a brick wall, as I have done for years with photography. After four years of working for a stock photo agency, and more photographer friends than you can shake a stick at, you'd think simple manual photography concepts would not have eluded me. But they have. Despite the best efforts of many of my friends and coworkers to educate me, my brain has consistently slipped into "lalalalalalala" mode whenever someone tries to explain it to me, or whenever I pick up a book.
I decided to give it one more try yesterday with a good friend of mine (who is also an excellent photographer).
And finally, the lalas went away long enough for me to grasp some simple concepts.
So for those of you (those two people, yes you, right in the back) who have managed to learn even less about photography than I have over the years, here's what I learned today:
1. F-stop and aperture refer to the same thing. Two different words, same part of the camera.
2. Depth of field refers to how much of your photo is in focus. If you're focused on one thing and the backdrop is blurry, you have a narrow depth of field. If both the foreground and background are blurry, you have a wide depth of field.
3. A narrow depth of field requires a low f-stop setting (like 2 to 4, maybe), a.k.a. opening the aperture very wide (lots of light comes in at this point, as well). I'm thinking this is how MarthaOprah type photography is shot.
4. A wide depth of field requires a higher f-stop setting (like 8 or 11 or 16, maybe), a.k.a. keeping the aperture opening very small (very little light comes in).
5. Shutter speed controls how much light goes into the camera. (I kind of knew that one.) But what that means for example: if you're taking a shot with a high aperture setting (small opening) because you want the background to be sharper, there's not much light coming into the camera. You compensate with setting the shutter speed slower. But MarthaOprah pictures can be accomplished with a relatively quick shutter speed because the aperture setting would be very wide.
6. Tungsten light is indoor light with your average 60-100 watt lightbulbs. Why can't they just call it lightbulb light? Anyways.
7. Professional cameras confuse the hell out of me because in some cases what you see in the preview is horizontally flipped; sometimes it's flipped both horizontally AND vertically. How do pictures ever get taken?
8. ISO (that's film speed to you and me - like 100, 200, 400 film) is how sensitive the film is to light.
9. Low ISO speeds means more detail and more sharpness but it also needs a LOT more light. High ISO (like 800+) needs far less light but also can get grainy and less detailed.
10. "Fill flash" refers to using a little bit of flash (not full strength) to light something in the foreground. So, for example, if you're taking a photo with lots of light behind the subject and don't want the subject's face to be too dark, you'd use a fill flash just to compensate for the light in behind the subject.
What I still need to learn:
1. Still not solid on ISO as it relates to digital cameras (did you know that you can get 3200 speed film? Who knew. I've only ever seen 100, 200, 400 and 800). Something I need to learn given that I'll probably be taking mostly digital photos.
2. I need to find a chart that lists common shutter speeds and puts them beside situations in which you'd use those settings.
3. White balance. Because I suck at balancing out colour in Photoshop.
But for a first attempt, after years of mental lalas, it wasn't a bad bundle of information and more importantly understanding, to walk away with. Now I just need to get myself a decent manual camera to play with. I've been looking at the Canon Powershot G5; that's probably around where I'll end up.
There are 10 comment(s) so far for this entry.
Join in the discussion below!
comments
Let me try to shed a little light -- pun intended -- on your three "to do" items.
1. ISO and digicams. Setting the "film speed" on a digital camera adjusts the profile of the metering system in the camera and the characteristics of the signal (image) processing logic. I keep mine cranked as far down as possible in hopes of telling the camera to do everything possible to get as much detail it can. This is not resolution, mind you, but shadow detail, highlight control, tonal range... all of which are the key ingredients to good digital imaging. Now, having said that, you may want to go in the other direction _on purpose_ and set a very high ISO, which may well increase contrast by the very nature of increasing sensitivity. For example, I shot stills of both my daughters' births in the hospital, and I wanted a contrasty, grainy and emotional look to those pictures. I also used the black and white mode on my camera (a SONY S-85) in hopes of focusing more on the content. Check out the results below. You'll notice a distinct contrastyness to the images.
http://www.lillygoodyear.com/gallery.asp?page=maddie
2. Shutter speeds and typical situations. This is something you'll have to learn by experience. In the 35mm world, there was a simple rule of thumb for knowing the _threshold_ below which you wouldn't want to shoot handheld (without a tripod or monopod.) The formula worked like this: 1/focal length = minimum handheld shutter speed, e.g.: with a 180mm lens, I wouldn't shoot below 1/180th of a second by hand. Since that's an arbitrary number in the pre-digital world, the next nearest shutter speed was actually 1/250th of a second or "250" on the shutter speed dial. Using a 28mm lens... 1/30th of a second is about the minimum.
Now, that was just an example of what _not_ to do as it relates to shutter speeds, but I'm sure you were asking about situations, not thresholds. The same reason that the focal length of a lens affects a reasonable minimum shutter speed also builds one of the foundations of the creative use of shutter speed. That is to say, you can create and control motion blur (you've seen that filter in Photoshop before) to a proportional amount based on focal length of the lens. A 28mm lens would require a pretty fair amount of subject OR camera movement to show motion blur, whereas a 180mm lens at the SAME shutter speed would require very little subject or camera movement to show a great deal of motion blur. In a real world example, shooting a motorcycle passing you with a wide angle lens, you could get away with a handheld shot at, say, 1/30th of a second, and you'd get a pretty attractive blurring as you panned the camera by. But 20 or 30 feet off the side of the road with a telephoto lens, even at 1/250th of a second, you're going to have to work pretty hard to get even a crisp shot of the motorcycle passing by.
3. White balance. There's actually a lot more to think about than just white balance, which is probably why you think you suck at it. You mentioned earlier your annoyance at "Tungten" lighting. It used to be a lot worse when the only thing we could shoot with for magazine reproduction was transparency film (slides.) Every single type of light source would cast a different pallor on a subject, like flourescent, halogen, sodium, mercury, daylight, incandescent... you name it. Shoot one architectural interior and you'd have what's called "color cross" where making adjustments in one direction to take out the green cast of flourescents would cause the orange mercury vapor lights to get even worse.
Long story short: color balancing is a lot harder than general color swings on a slider. Unless you're talking about an outdoor shot with broad, even lighting that just needs some de-blueing, color correction is pretty tough to get perfect. You'll find that shadows will pick up a different cast than midtones and highlights, or vice versa. Even a shot on a clear, sunny day can exhibit different casts where main, highlighted illumination may be "daylight balanced" and look accurate, many of the shadows and midtones that aren't in direct sunlight will be contaminated with blue because they're being lit by the other 99.97% of the sky that's a rich blue, not the direct sunlight itself.
You might want to consider a Canon 300D SLR, which is around the same price.
I own a G5 and I have issues with violet (like flowers) being rendered blue. I wish I had spent the little exra and went with the EOS 300D as Paul reccommended.
I also find the auto-focus to be slower than desired. Other than these two issues, The camera is great for still photography.
cheers
I am, or will be rather, a first time shooter...interested in black & white. What camera/film might be best to start with?
I realize I'm a bit late to the conversation... but for what it's worth, I have the G3. I don't know much about cameras, but I still like it (it's my first non-disposable camera). However, if the G5 is like the G3, you may be a bit dissapointed. There are 2 areas where the G3 performs poorly: flash and low light photography. The built in flash is awful. But, I have seen some nice pictures taken with the G-type cameras that looked very nice with the external Speedlight flashes. Not much can be done with the low light issues, though.
Also worth noting is that the G-type camera's default lenses have issues with chromatic aberrations or purple halos. You *can* work around this by making the aperature smaller than 4.0 (give or take a little).
I was impressed by what I saw in the review of the 300D, especially since it is the same listed price as what I paid for my G3 2 years ago (~$800 U.S.). The night photos on the 300D were virtually noiseless at the 100 ISO setting. Isn't this the camera where you can "hack" the firmware to unlock all the nifty features that were turned off in the software?
If you want to learn about photography, the best thing to do is to learn about Light. Study Light. Set aside for now all the technical data and just play with the Light.
indeed it is, the digital rebel in the usa, makes it almost a 10d... http://www.bahneman.com/liem/photos/tricks/digital-rebel-tricks.html
the photokina show (http://www.photokina.de/) is on September, 28 – October, 3 2004 though, expect some new stuff to be anounced.
I'm still on my EOS film camera at the moment, and plan to wait and see.
using a 24-85 on a D1x, photographing a large grooup with auto focus on "wrap", I still get a little out of focus on subjects to the out side. Any Help? thanks
Try to use a red filter on your lense or hand hold redish jell enlargement filter(the kind used for b/w negatives to print making).
Great summary of what you learned. I definitely would have found use for this article when I started on digital photography last year. You can see some of my photos here: http://micahgoulart.deviantart.com/gallery