How To Use A Camera
Mini-Blog #1
When shooting a photo, we essentially capture the light around us. The art of photography, uses some ways to manipulate the light and time, in order to come up with unique photos. Here are some comparisons between the two most important determinants of how much light will reach our lens. Aperture and shutter speed.
Wide vs. Narrow Aperture
The above two photos, depict almost the same scene. What’s different though, is their depth of field. For the first one, I used wide aperture and specifically f/4.0. I also set the shutter speed to 1/80. For the second one, I used an aperture of f/29 and shutter speed of 1/15. As the aperture gets narrower, I want to make sure that enough light gets through, so that’s why I set a slower shutter speed. As a result of all these, in the first photo, we can clearly see the coffee mug and the books being in-focus, but the background being blurry and in the second photo everything is in about the same focus. In addition, I used the natural light coming from my window to illuminate the main objects.
In another example of narrow and wide aperture, we can see the entrance to the playground in the first photo in focus, as if it’s inviting you. Whereas in the second photo, there is no main point of focus.
Shutter Speed
We can use shutter speed to indicate movement or show blurriness. In the first photo, I used a shutter speed of 1/5. To balance the light that goes through the lens, I set the aperture to 11. We can see that everything seems still, except of the name card which I held in the air and shook while the photo was being taken. I did the exact same thing for the second photo, as well. But this time, I set the shutter speed to 1/2500 and the aperture to f/4.0. Even though I shook the name card, the shutter speed was so fast that it captured the card as if it was still. Again, in the third photo, I used a fast shutter speed of 1/1000 in order to capture the moving cars clearly without being blurry.
Long Exposure
For the first photo above, the shutter speed I used was 3"2 and we can see that it gives a ghostly feel to it, especially when you compare that photo with the ones above in the shutter speed section. For the second photo, I used an even longer exposure with a shutter speed of 6", to capture the lights of the moving cars. We can see the orange and red lights as two almost straight lines in the middle of the image.
