Understanding Aperture

Continuing on our start-of-the-busy-season refresher courses, this week we’re talking about aperture.

Aperture refers to the hole or opening through which light passes through a camera lens.  Aperture is often referred to as f-stop and is written as a f/# value such as f/8, f/1.4, f/22, and so on.  The larger the f-stop value (eg: f/22), the less light passes through the lens compared to a smaller f-stop value (eg: f/1.8) at the same shutter speed and ISO.  For example, at a 1/40th of a second shutter speed at ISO 100, less light comes into your camera at f/22 than at f/1.8.

This f-stop business confuses a lot of new photographers:  “Why the heck does a bigger number let in less light???  MAKE IT SIMPLER!!”

APERTURE MATH (THERE WON’T BE A TEST)

The terms F-stop and aperture are often used interchangeably and have effectively come to signify the same thing, but they actually aren’t exactly the same thing.  That may contribute to the confusion new photographers have with the numbering system.

Technically, aperture is the opening in a camera lens.  The term f-stop refers to the focal length of the lens divided by the actual diameter of the opening of the lens.  For example, a 100mm lens with an aperture of 25mm has an f-value of f/4.  100 / 25 = 4.  If you make the opening size smaller, for example 10mm, the f-value goes to f/10.  100 / 10 = 10.  That’s why a larger f-number refers to a smaller aperture.

You don’t have to know all that.  You can just memorize the fact that as your f-stop number goes up, less light comes through the lens.  Smaller f-stop number, more light comes in.

What real effects does aperture have on photography?

APERTURE AND DEPTH OF FOCUS

The larger your aperture (remember: this means a SMALLER f-number, like f/1.4), the shorter the depth of focus.  Translation:  if you want lots of background blur in your image, use a small f-stop.

Here are some rules of thumb (Remember: rules are made to be broken) for which f-stop to use in different photographic situations:

PORTRAITS: f/2.8-f/4  If you’re only photographing one person, you can use a smaller f-stop, but it’s a good idea to use a bit of a larger f-stop when photographing larger groups in order to make sure everyone is in focus.

LANDSCAPES:  f/8-f/32  If you’re shooting a big expansive landscape that stretches back to the horizon, stop that aperture down as small as you can get it so that everything in the picture is tack sharp!

NO DEPTH:  f/8-f/11  If you’re shooting a scene that doesn’t have any depth, like a wall of graffiti shot straight-on or a footprint on the ground shot from overhead, use an aperture between f/8 and f/11.  That range of f-stops is optically the sharpest range in nearly every lens.

One thing to keep in mind when shooting at a wide open aperture like f/1.8 is that f/1.8 gives you a very small area that will be in focus in your picture.  Be careful–it’s easy to have everything be out of focus when shooting wide open like that because the area in focus is so small and it’s easy to miss your focus.  Stopping down to f/3.2 or so will give you a bit more “room” to play with while still giving you nice background blur.

DEPTH OF FOCUS 2:  APERTURE PLUS FOCAL DISTANCE

Depth of focus is also determined somewhat by how close to your subject you are when you photograph it (this is called focal distance).  How close or far your background is from your subject also determines how in focus your background will be.  You can cheat and get great background blur using a larger f-stop if you photograph your subject in front of a background that is very far away.

Give it to me straight, dude.

Okay.  If you shoot a head shot at f/8 and get very close to your subject, the background will be more out of focus than if you stand back.  You can get even more background blur if you stand close to your subject and put them in front of a background that is very far away.  Try it.  You’ll love it, and you’ll probably think I’m awesome for showing this to you.  I won’t argue with that.

APERTURE PLUS FOCAL LENGTH

The longer the focal length of a lens, the more background blur you can get in your pictures.  If you love background blur and want to get as much of it as possible, shoot at a wide aperture and a very long focal length.  For example, a 70-200mm lens at 200mm and f/2.8 has TONS of smooth background blur and is a great choice for photographing head shots.

CONCLUSIONS

There is a time to use a wide open aperture like f/1.8 and there is a time to use f/22.  Every aperture has a use.  Too often, people just shoot wide open all the time.  Think about how much depth of field you want.  Don’t be afraid to use a wide range of f-stops to achieve different looks and to keep your photography looking fresh and varied.

I hope this was helpful.  Get out there and experiment.  Be creative.  Good luck, and have fun!

-Josh Lamkin, PWD Editor

Life in the Balance :: Evaluate

Guest author Emily Potts runs her own photography business, heads the exceedingly popular Moms With Cameras blog, and still finds time to be “Mom.”  As a fan of PWD, Emily has honored us by extending to our readers the same kind of heartfelt advice and insight Moms With Cameras has become known for.

My grandmother was recently in the hospital. During one of my mother’s visits to check on her, a nurse struck up a conversation. She and my mom chatted about all of the usual small-talk topics, including the welfare of their children. When she got to talking about me, my mother mentioned that I had been under quite a bit of stress in the past few months. Upon discovering my line of work, the nurse was shocked. “What does she have to be stressed about?” she asked. “All she has to do is point the camera and shoot!”

Ahhh if only it were that simple. That’s really what I would like to be doing . . . pointing and shooting . . . (A camera, folks!  I’m not that mad about the comment!)

That really is what I would like to be doing, though. I would love to devote the majority of my time photographing people. It is the part of my business that I love, that energizes me, that stokes my creative fires. In my personal life, I’d like to be reading books to my son, working in my garden, cooking meals for my family and taking dance classes. At this point, I’d love to be doing anything in my personal life on a regular basis! But lately, I haven’t been. I have been hacking away at the to-do list I mentioned in my last post.  In doing so, I have come to the realization that I have only 24 hours in the day. And I’m human. (I would so love to be Superwoman, but the sheer fact of the matter is I’m not.)

What does this mean for me? That I have to get help. I have to admit I can’t do it all on my own and that trying to only makes me a tired (and sooooooo cranky) wife and mother, and that it’s probably prematurely aging me.

For this challenge, I am going to ask all of you to pull out the lists you made last time. Take a highlighter and highlight those things that YOU absolutely, positively MUST do yourself or your business/home will crater in on itself. For me, this includes things like photographing sessions, conducting sales appointments and running the family schedule. Those are the things you have to keep doing. (It should comprise maybe a third of your list or so. If your whole page is neon yellow, you need to try again!) Now I would like you to look at the list and determine what things you know you can unload on someone else, or simply stop doing. In my world, these are things like retouching, packaging orders and scrubbing baseboards. Circle those things. Now, I am going to ask you to find someone else to do these things or make the decision that these things (like baseboards) simply don’t belong on your overcrowded task list any longer.

Shoot Day Checklist: Be Prepared!

Be prepared.  It’s a motto good enough for the Boy Scouts, and it’s good enough for us photographers too.  You just can’t say enough about how important it is to be prepared for a shoot.  Knowing you have everything you need and that you haven’t forgotten everything can really help contribute to a calm, focused state of mind while you’re on a shoot–it’s better to be thinking about being creative and getting great shots than it is to be wondering if your battery will last through the whole shoot.

This week, at the suggestion of our PWD colleague Tricia, I offer you a list of things you should do to prepare for every shoot.

THE DAY BEFORE: Do these things the day before so that if something needs to be fixed or bought, you’ll have enough time

1. MEMORY CARDS:  Erase and reformat all of your memory cards.  You should be working with empty, freshly formatted memory cards on every shoot.
2. BATTERIES:  Charge all of your batteries, both AAA, computer, and camera batteries.  Don’t forget to charge your cell phone battery!!
3. GEAR:  Physically inspect every piece of your gear the day before a shoot.  Make sure it all works.
4. TIME LINE:  For weddings, you should do this step weeks before wedding day and confirm everything with your client.  If you have to wait until right before the shoot, that’s still better than not doing it at all.  Personally, I started doing this one, and just this one thing probably reduced my stress by half.  It’s worth the effort!
5. CONTACT INFO:  Make sure you have all of your contacts and their phone numbers.  I recommend programming them in your phone AND writing them down on a piece of paper in case your phone is lost or damaged.
6. CHECK IN:  If possible, check in with your client the day before the shoot to make sure nothing has changed and that you both know where you’re supposed to be.
7. DIRECTIONS:  Have all directions printed out including location contact numbers.  Even if your phone is an Einstein level smart phone, I still recommend printing things out as a backup.
8. TIME SYNC YOUR CAMERAS:  Make sure the internal clock on each one of the cameras you’ll be shooting with reads the exact same time.  Doing this will ensure that all of your images from different cameras are grouped together for sorting, editing, and post-production.  DON’T FORGET TO SYNC CAMERA CLOCKS WITH YOUR SECOND SHOOTERS!!  (Click here for a link to a previous PWD blog on how to time sync your cameras.)
9. PACK:  I’m a big believer in packing the night before.
10. GAS:  Fill up your car with gas!
11. VISUALIZATION:  I love this one and never did it before PWD’s Melissa Bugg told me she does this before every single wedding she shoots.  Sit down in a quiet place and mentally visualize the events of your shoot, the locations, all the shots you want to get.  Visualize success.  This is a great thing to help you prepare, and studies also show that visualization can actually help improve your performance as if you actually went out and practiced!

ON THE DAY:  Do these things on the morning of a shoot.

1. EAT:  Eat breakfast.  Yes, it’s still the most important meal of the day.  If your shoot is in the evening, have a nice meal before you leave.  Don’t shoot hungry!  Shaky hands and an unfocused mind do not a good photographer make.
2. LOAD:  Put all your gear in the car.
3. RELAX:  Great news–you already did everything the night before!  Awesome, right?  I told you I’d take care of you.

You may have other things to add to your own check list, but this should get you started.  Be prepared!  Be organized!  You’ll thank yourself.

-Josh Lamkin, PWD Editor

Film Cameras Become Digital Cameras!

On April Fools Day we fell for a good one here at PWD.

 

Click this link to see what it was:  www.re35.net

 

Personally, I thought this was a fantastic idea.  Film canisters that contain digital sensors and can be used in old 35mm film cameras!?  So fun.

I love to shoot with my Nikkormat FTN 35mm film camera.  It’s not the greatest camera ever made, but I love the simplicity of it, how it makes me take my time when I’m shooting.  The only thing I don’t like about shooting film, though, is that I have to wait until I shoot 24 or 36 pictures before I can see even one of them, and it usually takes me a long time to get through a roll of film.  If there were such a thing as this 35mm film digital sensor cartridge, I could just take a couple of photos and download them right away like I do with my digital camera.

The only big challenges I can imagine with this kind of product are keeping the sensor clean and finding a way to produce film quality images from a digital sensor.  Perhaps the latter isn’t a problem for most people, but I love the way film looks and it’s extremely difficult to reproduce film quality in digital format.  Who knows, maybe the dust that would inevitably get on the sensor would help produce film quality images.  Not likely, I know….

I know this isn’t a real product yet, but I do hope this product gets made someday.  I think it would be really fun and a great way for us all to get more use out of our old film cameras.  I’m crossing my fingers, but not holding my breath.

-Josh Lamkin, PWD Editor

Understanding ISO

We’re about to fall headlong into the busy season of weddings and portrait sessions, not to mention all the traveling you might be doing this summer if you’re not me. (Sigh…)  I thought it’d be helpful to do a couple of refresher courses on some photography basics.  This week’s topic is ISO.

WHAT IS ISO

ISO is the eponymous name of the measure of film speed sensitivity as determined by the International Standards Organization.  You might have also seen ISO called ASA (American Standards Association).  The higher ISO number, the more sensitive film is to light.  Almost everyone shoots digital these days, but the ISO measurement is still used in digital cameras and refers to a digital sensor’s sensitivity to light.

ISO AND SHUTTER SPEED

As you increase your camera’s ISO number, your camera becomes more sensitive to light.  Often, the benefit to increasing your camera’s ISO is to allow you to use a faster shutter speed.  For example, if you’re photographing a subject inside in a dimly lit room and your ISO is set at 100 at f/1.8, your shutter speed might need to be 1/15th of a second in order to properly expose for your subject.  1/15th of a second is too slow a shutter speed for most people to use when holding their camera in their hand and often results in subject motion blur or blur from camera shake.  If you increase your ISO to 400, you can then use a shutter speed of 1/60th of a second, which is a manageable shutter speed for most people to use.

ISO AND IMAGE NOISE

The more you increase the ISO value, the more you will get image graininess, or “noise.”  In high-end professional cameras like the Nikon D3s or the Canon 5DMarkII, the high ISO noise levels are extremely low, but in almost all consumer level cameras high ISO noise levels become almost unbearable above ISO 1600-3200.  IMPORTANT TIP:  Underexposing an image when shooting at high ISO greatly increases noise levels.  If you are using a high ISO it is very important to get a good exposure to minimize noise levels.

ISO AND BOUNCING FLASH

One extremely helpful use for increasing your ISO number is when you are bouncing flash in a large room.  If you’re bouncing your flash off of a wall or ceiling that is 20 or more feet from your subject, increasing your ISO may be necessary in order to get the bounced light from the flash to register well on your subject.

ISO GUIDELINES FOR VARIOUS LIGHTING SITUATIONS

Here are a few starting points for how to set your ISO in different lighting conditions.

• OUTSIDE / SUNNY DAY: ISO 100-200
• OUTSIDE / CLOUDY DAY:  ISO 100-200
• OUTSIDE / SUNRISE or SUNSET:  ISO 100-400
• INSIDE / BRIGHT ROOM: ISO 400
• INSIDE / DIM ROOM:  ISO 800-3200
• INSIDE / DIM ROOM with FLASH:  ISO 400-800

This should be enough to get you started understanding ISO or to give you a good refresher.  Talk to you next week.  Happy shooting!

-Josh Lamkin, PWD Editor

When Is Photography Illegal – Guest Follow-Up

Editor’s note:  We received a number of good comments about Josh’s post on illegal photography. One of our customers, Robin Nathan, even went so far as to write about her own experiences, which we think are worth sharing.

 

Here are some things I learned from my time working for newspapers and my communication law classes. First off, these guidelines are for editorial work, not commercial. That is an entirely different ballgame where you need to get consent from everyone and everything.

Photographing on private property without consent of the owner is illegal: it’s trespassing. It can be confusing because there are many semi-private spaces such as the mall, stores and restaurants. If you’re allowed to enter a property to shop, that does not give you rights to photograph.

Consent of the owner can only come from the owner. If you are taking pictures of a police officer and he enters a private house and tells you to come with, the owner of the house can sue you for trespassing. With pictures posted online, it is incredibly easy for someone to prove where you were shooting.

What people put out in public, from a park to a window visible from the street is safe to photograph. They are making the choice to be in view of the public.

In general, public areas are fair game. People in public spaces have no rights to their image, children included. That said, no one wants to be a jerk and photograph someone who is uncomfortable with it (plus, you might get punched in the face.) But, they’ve got no ground to tell you not to take their picture.

You can shoot private spaces from public spaces, but limited to what your eye could see. So, you can set up on the sidewalk outside of my house with a camera aimed at my window with a 50mm but not a 600mm.

It’s up to each of us to understand the law in this area.  If in doubt, ask before you shoot.