The click.

Week 3- Aperture! (Depth of Field)

Hopefully from last weeks lesson, you have a pretty decent idea of how shutter speed works and what you can get it to do. As always, keep playing, keep experimenting! It will get better I promise!

Remember, it took me 8 months and about 10,000 pictures before it 'clicked' and I got how the three worked together. And an hour after I 'got it' my camera broke! I thought I somehow blew it up!
Our goal is to get it to 'click' for all of you..but not the snap of a broken camera!

I'm getting a lot of positive feedback for the blog- thanks, I appreciate it! I love knowing when y'all are getting something, even if it's something simple!

This week we're talking aperture. I talked about aperture in my recent instant message conversation that was blogged.

Aperture (also referred to as f-stop or depth of field/DOF) serves two purposes. It is part of the creative triangle that controls how much light reaches your sensor and it also controls the amount of your subject that is in focus or is more blurred.

The lower the number, the wider your aperture. Meaning- if your aperture number is the lowest it can go, your aperture is wide open. I remember by thinking low aperture is good for low light. It lets in the most light in the smallest amount of time. The higher the number, the least amount of light is let in. A high f-stop will require a longer shutter speed to let in the same amount of light. So if you have a lot of light, you will want a high f-stop number. (the camera will be letting less of it in)


To get more of your subject in focus, you will want a smaller opening (higher number) Bryan Peterson explained it perfectly in his book 'Understanding Digital Photography' he says " If you think about how you squint to try to make something appear sharper to your eye, you get an idea of why you need a smaller aperture opening to render this greater depth of field"

So squint away, raise your aperture number(lower your number) and get everything in sharp focus.

If you want parts of your picture to be blurred, drop the number (Raise your aperture) and focus on one part and watch the others have a nice blur to them.

Use this techniqe to make a flower in a bouquet stand out or to get a landscape in tack sharp focus!

The assignment this week- Go buy yourself flowers! Set the camera on AV mode (aperture value/aperture priority) and shoot away. You'll probably need to use a tripod and/or your flash for this one.
Start out with the lowest number your camera will go to, then work your way up, look at the differences. See the difference in focus? Notice how your shutter speed is changing as you change the aperture?

To change the aperture in this mode, just turn the dial that you did for shutter speed, watch where the number is changing, the number will be in the same place when we go to the big M.

This one is kind of challenging to explain appropriately, email me with any questions TheStephStanley@gmail.com and feel free to post any questions/comments here (with your email addy)
I can't wait to see your samples!
My excercise-

posted by Steph @ 6:30 PM