Final famous words

Although photography is not new to me, and I did experience the use of a digital camera, I always preferred to use the automatic mode for my photo-shoots. The main thing this unit tough me was not to be afraid of experimenting new things. I learned how to take my time, try taking one photo, examine it and re-adjust if need be; instead of clicking automatically and then realising I only have 2-3 usable photos.

I learned how ISO affect the background noise and can be used to create more interesting outcomes, in a creative manner that appeals to the eye rather than random outcomes that might look nice but have no creative meaning. Understanding how sensitivity to light creates different results and being able to manipulate the scene to my needs makes me feel I am in control of the scene instead of being controlled by it.

The ISO function is, to me, the true revelation of this course, as I really didn’t know anything about it before taking this unit.

Another thing I learned was basic terminology such as Exposure, Aperture, Shutter speed etc, which I then looked online for tutorials that can contribute to my understanding of the subjects learnt in class. Practicing those new skills allowed me to explore deeply and more thoroughly towards producing better photographs.

Shutter speed controls the time the shutter is open, allowing the image to “burn” into the sensor of the camera (before digital cameras, the image was burned onto the film).

Therefore, when she shutter opens for a brief of a second, the image burned will be clear (mostly used to capture bodies in motion like sports events, body in the air etc.) while when the shutter is open for longer, the image burned will be blurry. The shutter speeds measures in 1/x of a second, meaning that 1/3000 will let half as much light in than 1/1500.

Depth of field refers to how sharp the image or the object taken or how in focus they are. Depth of field is measured by the focus point. When the object stands in the focus point, meaning when it is the sharpest once a photograph is being taken, the further we adjust the Fpoint the deeper the depth of field will be, and the blurrier the background will show.

Focus point of F/1.8 will give us a deep depth of field, while focus point of F/1.6 will be a shallow depth of field and the objects in the background will be blurrier.

Depth of field is determined by the aperture size, the distance an object is from the lens and the focal length of the lens.

ISO is the camera’s sensitivity to light. The higher the ISO is, the grainier or “noisy” the background will appear. Unfortunately, in my camera, the highest ISO setting is 1600, which didn’t show the result I was hoping for.

White balance controls the resulted colour of the object under different light settings. Because the camera is not the human eye, the definition of “white” is schematic and not always realistic, therefore we need to define either what we consider white, so the camera can adjust object colour accordingly, or we need to define the (artificial) light we are using to make the object appear more natural.

Focal length (zoom) determines how much of the scene will be captured in the photo and how bit the objects will look. When we zoom in – fewer objects will be captured in the photo, and the object we do capture will look bigger. As we zoom out, more objects will be captured in the photo, but we will lose details.

Evaluation of my work:
There is no doubt my performance have significantly improved. My first photos (first blog entry), as much as I love them and they do look artistic to me, had nothing to do with understanding photography or the camera. The more I learned about photography and the more I practiced the use of aperture, white balance, ISO and shutter speed, I could create more usable photos and not just relaying on luck. I started this unit thinking I know a lot about photography, while, in fact, I mostly used the camera’s settings and not really gave much thought about what I can create and capture. I now know that I will use more manual function when taking photos.

Another thing that has changed since I took this unit is the amount of photos I am taking. While in the beginning of the unit I took over 200 photos to come up with four good ones, I now take about ten of the same scene to choose 3-4 good ones.

I can now operate the camera manually, understand and predict the outcomes of my work. I can control the scene rather than letting the scene control me, and take the time to plan before shooting.

Focal Lengths

I understand the logic behind wide images that contain full scenery; however I much prefer the close detailed ones. On this occasion, it mostly passes the feeling of an old private eye film noir.

ISO and White Balance

The task is to create 3 images that show creative use of camera’s ISO to add grain to the photograph.

My camera’s max ISO is 1600, and I have used both 1600 and 800 in my work.

I have created a series of photos using different settings of ISO to get the same object in different levels of noise:

Auto WB

ISO 1600

1/30 F5.6

 

Auto WB

ISO 400

1/30 F5.6

 

Auto WB

ISO 200

1/30 F5.6

I have also created a series of photos using different settings of White Balance to get the same object in different artificial colours:

ISO 1600

 1/30 F5.6

WB setting Shade

 

ISO 1600

 1/30 F5.6

WB setting Tungsten

 

ISO 1600

 1/30 F5.6

WB setting custom - All Servo

Aperture and Depth of Field

A large aperture will cause a shallow depth of field – only a small area will be in focus and the background will be blurry. The closer you are to the object you are taking, the blurrier the background will be, but also, the further the object is from the background, the background will be blurrier.

With a smaller aperture, you will get a larger depth of field and you will be getting most (if not all) the objects in focus.

On my Cannon camera, there is an option called A-Dep that allows me to see exactly what my camera will see at a chosen aperture so I can decide what will be in focus and what will be blurry, but I didn’t use it on this occasion.

My task for this week was to create four images:

Two showing a shallow depth of field, meaning only one point of the picture will be in focus.

Two showing a deep depth of field, meaning all or most of the image should be in focus.

I chose the following pictures:

Getting the proper exposure for a “Usable photo”

Brief subject:  Surveillance

My first task is to create a final series of 3 photographs that creatively explore the use of shutter speed to show blurred movement within the image.  For that, I needed to understand what a shutter is, how it works, how to adjust the speed and what the outcomes of different speeds will be on my final photos.

 My first point of investigation was Google. I had a general idea of what I will shoot, but needed to make sure my idea meets the requirements of the brief. I choose my children to be the subject of my photo shoots, and the locations varied from inside the house with different lights, our back garden and the park, where there are shady and sunny points, and the backgrounds keep changing as people walk by, the sun appears and disappears etc.

 My second point was YouTube, where I learned to know my camera and how to use it. I learned about shutter speed, ISO and F point.

Now that I had the basics, I could start playing with all variants to see what comes out of that.

 In all occasions, I either used ISO 200 or ISO 400.

I learned that inside the house, the best shutter speed is 1/10, as it lets enough light in to give a good result. I could have chosen to use the TV option, that allows me to adjust the shutter speed but the Aperture will adjust automatically by the camera, and indeed, I tried taking some photos this way, and although the outcome was great, that was not what I was asked to do, so went back to fully manual.

As I wanted to catch good portraits with blurry background, I mostly used F1.4 or F1.6. The wide aperture allowed a shallow depth and gave satisfying results.

On few occasions, I chose low shutter speed to produce blurry pictures of my son playing with Lego and of my daughter moving her head from side to side. I didn’t use a tripod so the shakes of my hands, although trying to stabilise them on the back of a chair or a table, were inevitable and it shows in the final outcome as well.

On this occasion, I used fast shutter speed (1/30 ) F5.0 and ISO 400

Here we go!