Tutorial – Photography Basics, Every technical thing you need to know: EXPOSURE

EXPOSURE TIME

Second Photography Basics tutorial from the series! (intro and index here).

Exposure time, or shutter speed, is the amount of time the shutter remains open, to let light into the film or sensor of your camera. If you already know exposure you might want to skip to the animation showing everything #INaGIF, if you want to know what we’re talking about, go on reading

That’s easy! This of course will determine the global brightness of the picture, but it will also define more or less the captured moving objects. If you want a very defined and sharp moving object, it’s better to have a fast shutter (short exposure), while if you’re only portraying still objects, or if you’re aiming for a creative effect, you can use a slower shutter.

Here you can see a fan series with different values (the right part of the images is corrected as always, to make things more visible).

MatericLook Photography Basics 2 Exposure 0,5

0.5

MatericLook Photography Basics 2 Exposure 1/60

1/60

1/400

1/1600

1/4000

The unit of measure is seconds, so the above examples range from 0.5 seconds to 1/4000th of a second.

Also in this series I changed a single setting ONLY (exposure), you can see things getting very dark or very bright pretty fast. In a future series I will use all settings to give a comprehensive example.

To have good result with a handheld camera and slow moving or still objects a good common setting is around 1/60 or 1/80. A general rule is to have the speed corresponding to your lens’ focal length reciprocal, so 1/50 for a 50mm, 1/300 for a 300mm and so on. This can vary depending on how steady you hand is, how you handle your camera, your position, camera and lens weight, your heart rate, etc. For example, snipers breathing techniques can help a lot with relatively long exposures or “long” lenses.

A short or fast exposure corresponds to a fast shutter, that’s less time it stays open, to summarize this part, here’s an animated recap*:

Exposure #INaGIF

Fast Exposure Time<-> Less Light Captured <-> “Freezed” movements

Long Exposure Time <-> More Light Captured <-> Objects Trails

Taking pictures with a slower shutter requires usually a tripod or some sort of decent camera support. Of course, that’s if you want your subjects focused and defined, experimenting with long exposures while moving the camera around could be pretty interesting….

It’s possible to reach extreme results with specific accessories, to capture, for example, the movement of the stars as a trail, or a bullet in mid-air, as if freezed.

More info on Exposure Time on Wikipedia.

If you’ve find those info useful, please consider supporting my Patreon campaign for more tutorials and custom art!

*As always, #INaGIF animations are conceptual and serve the purpose of explaing a behavior, some aspects are exaggerated or reduced to clearly show the fundamental notions.

MatericLook Photography Basics 1 Aperture

Photography, tutorial

Tutorial – Photography Basics, Every technical thing you need to know: APERTURE

APERTURE

First Photography Basics tutorial from the series! (intro and index here).

Aperture indicates how much light enters your camera. If you already know aperture you might want to skip to the animation showing everything #INaGIF, if you want to know what we’re talking about, go on reading

There’s a diaphragm inside your camera lens that can be wide or narrow:

MatericLook Photography Basics 1 Aperture max

f min

f mid

f max

Here’s an animation showing the diaphragm opening and closing:

Of course the math giving the f number has the diameter as denominator in a fraction, so basically:

High f -> Closed

and

Low f -> Open

f is usually indicated as f/value (for now let’s ignore the why), where “value” is a number, usually from around 3 to around 15 (limits can be higher and lower, depending on lens).

here you can see the effects of different f values in a series. Left part of the images is exactly as shot, the right part is corrected for measurement (top scale is cm, bottom is inches):

MatericLook Photography Basics 1 Aperture f/1,4

f/1.4

MatericLook Photography Basics 1 Aperture f/3,2

f/3.2

MatericLook Photography Basics 1 Aperture f/5

f/5

MatericLook Photography Basics 1 Aperture f/10

f/10

MatericLook Photography Basics 1 Aperture f/16

f/16

What can you easily see from the pics above?

–LIGHT: the amount of light for low value of f is higher, so the image is lighter (the diaphragm is “more open”, so more light enters the lens and reach the film/sensor):

F/1.4

F/16

–DOF: (Depth Of Field) is greatly reduced for low value of f. The area (defined by the distance, or DEPTH from the camera) in focus, is smaller and smaller for lower f values.

In the last pictures some elements are out-of-focus because they’re near the lens. Too much for it to be able to keep them in focus, at ANY f setting.

The amount of light and DOF can change for different lenses, depending on size and lot of other parameters, but all of them show this same general behaviour.

One f-stop corresponds to a single step, up or down, in your camera’s settings (so, for example from 5.6 to 8, or from 2 to 1.4). Each step will double or halve the pupil area and, consequently, the amount of light passing through the diaphragm.

So, to summarize this part, here’s an animated recap:

Aperture #INaGIF

More Light Caught <-> Less Depth Of Field <-> Lower f Value

or, if you prefer

Less Light Caught <-> More Depth of Field <-> Higher f Value

One last thing: most lenses have the maximum sharpness for subjects in focus at around f/10 or f/11, but it really depends on each lens and it’s better to experiment and find it.

More info on Aperture on Wikipedia.

Please consider supporting my Patreon campaign for more tutorials and costom art!

Photography, tutorial

Tutorial – Photography Basics, Every technical thing you need to know: INTRO

INTRO

Hi, this is a quick tutorial explaining the FEW things you need to know to take good pictures consistently. Not saying that you can’t get a nice shot when catching the phone while it’s falling…. it’s just that you cannot be sure you’ll get a nice photo each time

I’ll keep the technical explanations to a minimum or I’ll oversimplify, to have you on track as quick as possible. So you can go experimenting by yourself (that’s always the most important thing).

All the things I know are self-taught or I’ve learned when shooting (I used to have a video production studio years ago). Probably some things will not be perfectly accurate, I will go in depth with a more rigorous method and specific subjects in the future, maybe.

Even the most complex reflex camera has just a few controls you have to know before using it. Those are the basics for all Photography. Knowing those makes you also understand the basic working parameters of video cameras.

So here’s the two main parameters you need to control (or at least know about):

–Aperture (F, F-stops, Diaphragm,….)

–Exposure time (Shutter speed)

These are other very important things you should be able to change, if needed, and know about:

-ISO Sensitivity (ISO, film sensitivity,….)

-White Balance (Color balance, neutral balance,…)

-Focal Length

So you see, there’s not much… these are the parameters you have to experiment with in your camera. They’re usually available in non-reflex cameras also, while smartphones are more limited. Of course you have to put everything in manual mode.

I use manual mode almost always, switching to semi-auto (aperture- or shutter-piority) only if I don’t have the time to set everything by hand. That’s usually because something is moving or if, for some other reason, there’s little time to shoot.

I’ll publish the above parts during the next few days and link them above!