Miss Colby

This photo shoot was seriously so much fun! I can't get over the vibrant colors and textures of this spot we stumbled upon. It was the perfect Florida summer day! Isn't she the most beautiful pre-school teacher you've ever seen?!

 

 

Perfect Exposure… Every time

For the past few weeks, I've tried to master exposure settings. It's one of the trickiest things to grasp really. My workflow usually consisted of snapping a picture, viewing the result, then fiddling with each setting randomly, then doing the process all over again until I finally stumble upon a somewhat satisfied result. It's an immensely frustrating procedure, especially for an amateur photographer with no formal training. 

Well, I just learned today that it doesn't have to be that difficult!

Seriously, this trick is a game changer. 

Ok, are you ready for this?! Everything you need know to guide you to the "sweet spot" of exposure is in your viewfinder. 

Let me first briefly explain the three pillars of exposure to fully understand what you are looking for in your viewfinder. No matter how many times I read about this, I always get confused. So, here's a refresher…. 

Exposure loosely refers to the amount of light that touches the sensor of your camera. How much light that is let in is a function of your shutter speed and aperture. Shutter speed is the amount of time your shutter is open to allow light to past through, shown as 1/125, 1/50, etc. The smaller the denominator, the longer the exposure. 

Aperture works exactly like the pupil in your eye. Measured in focal length (f/x), aperture refers to the size of the opening. The smaller the number (f/1.8 for instance) the larger the opening. Depth of Field is correlated to aperture in that the smaller the denominator, the less will be in focus around your subject. 

Your ISO also affects brightness as well as the quality of your photos. The higher the number, the brighter the picture and, unfortunately, the lower the quality. Higher ISO tend to create noise and fuzz. 

Basic principle when shooting in full manual mode is this: If you need your image to be brighter, decrease the denominator in both the aperture and shutter speed and increase the ISO. If you need your image to be darker, increase the denominator in both the aperture and shutter speed and decrease the ISO.

Ok, now that we're through that, we can get to the good stuff. Try pointing your camera at an object and hold down the shoot button half way. Hear that beep? Do you see a bunch of numbers? This beep signifies much more than the autofocus. These indicators will light up and show you the exact setting you selected and how your camera interprets the available light. It might look something like this… 

This viewfinder is telling us that we've selected our shutter speed to be at 1/125, aperture at f/4 and ISO at 200. The real magic lies within the Exposure Level Indicator. This is telling us that we're not letting enough light in. Now, without even taking your eye off the viewfinder, you are able to adjust this by simply moving the dial next to the shoot button. This changes the shutter speed. Move the dial to the right, it will move left, and visa versa. You are able to change the other settings, but you must consult your manual for those short cuts. 

The trick is to get the little guy right on the center and you will have beautiful shots almost every time!  

 

My first photo shoot

It has taken me quite some time to grasp all that photography entails. A heck of a lot longer than I thought, at least. While each lesson on it's own makes perfect sense, it's when you actually take a subject out for a day and do your own photo shoot that things are forgotten and steps are skipped. I had some overexposed shots and some out-of-focus shots. But, I must say, I am fairly proud of the way some of these photos turned out. 

I nanny an 11-year-old after school and I forced her to be the subject of my first photo shoot. She had quite the model behavior once we got started, though. These are my favorites from our little photo sesh!

The D.O.F.

Depth of Field is one of the first big hurdles in photography. I've heard that once I am able to tackle this, I will gain infinite amounts of confidence in my photography. Here's hoping!

So, your camera can only focus its lens on a single point, but there is an area that stretches in front and behind that point. That zone is Depth of Field. It's either described as shallow (where just a narrow zone appears sharp) or deep (where more of the picture appears sharp). When photographing a landscape, you'll want to capture detail from the entire foreground to the horizon, so a deeper DOF is desired. But in portraiture, you'll want a shallow DOF to blur out distraction so the focal point is on the subject.

In order to achieve your desired DOF, you'll need to control your aperture. Remember, an aperture at f/2.8 is wide, while an aperture of f/22 is small. To tie it all together, shallow depths of field coincide with wider f-stops, whereas smaller f-stops create a deeper depth of field.

So, I had a little experiment with DOF the other day with my boyfriend. I brought out my 50mm lens (by far my favorite lens) and took pics at each f-stop. You'll see that with each notch, everything in the background become more clear. 

PS. I have no apologies for my boyfriend's silliness!

 ISO 100 f/1.8 1/4000

 ISO 100 f/2.2 1/2500

 ISO 100 f/2.8 1/1600

 ISO 100 f/3.5 1/1250

 ISO 100 f/4.5 1/800

 ISO 100 f/5.6 1/500

ISO 100 f/8 1/160 

Capturing the Caribbean

In March, my sweet boyfriend surprised me a very tropical gift to celebrate our one-year anniversary: a seven-day cruise to the Eastern Caribbean! Well, just this past week we finally left on our excursion and, needless to say, I am so sad to be back in Florida. The cruise was absolutely amazing and I loved the time I got to spend with Corey!

I took this trip as a great opportunity to play around with my camera. So, here are some of my favorites from our adventure…. Enjoy!

Aperture

While shutter speed and ISO are controlled by the camera, Aperture is determined by the lens. It is the size of the opening of the lens and is measured in f-stops…. i.e. f/16, f/1.4, etc.

Think of your eyes… Aperture functions exactly as the pupil in your eye does. Depending on the amount of light, the iris can either expand or shrink, controlling the the size of the pupil, which is a hole that allows light to pass further into the eye. 

In photography, wide apertures are represented by low f/#, while small apertures are represented by high f/#. This wonderful chart below makes it more clear for you….

Larger Aperture: When you have a large aperture, indicated with a low number like f/1.4 or f/2, the amount of your subject that will be in focus is narrow. Most of your photo will be soft and blurry because very few planes will be in focus. You have a narrow or shallow Depth of Field.

Smaller Aperture: When you have a smaller aperture, indicated with a number like f/16 or f/22, most of your photo will be in focus. Instead of isolating a subject, you can bring many subjects or entire landscapes in focus. Many planes are in focus; you have a wide Depth of Field.

When it comes to Aperture… REMEMBER THIS

Small number = Big Opening = Allows in more light = Less time required for correct exposure = shallow depth of field.

Big number = Small Opening = Reduces amount of light in = More time required for the same exposure = wider depth of field.

So, wait, what is all this talk about depth of field? 

Aperture and depth of field always go hand-in-hand! Basically, it determines how much of your photo is in focus and how much of it is blurry {example below}. Depth of field isn't exactly something you can control, however, it's more of a result of how the Aperture is controlled. 

Image by wisdoc (Aperture = f/5.6)

This blurry goodness is what we call Bokeh! It can be achieved by having a large aperture and shallow depth of field. Distance can also affect depth of field. If you stand farther away from your subject, the band of focus would be much greater than if you were up real close to it. 

Learning ISO

In my previous post, I talked about Darcy's genius analogy comparing shutter speed to a running faucet.  Leave the faucet running too long, the cup overflows - your image is overexposed. Not long enough, the cup doesn't fill - you're underexposed.

If shutter speed relates to how long you have the water running, ISO controls the flow of water.

ISO is the level of sensitivity your camera is to light.  The lower the ISO number, the less sensitive it is to light, while a higher ISO number increases its sensitivity. The piece within your camera that controls and changes the sensitivity is the "image sensor." It's the most important component of your camera that  gathers light and transforms it into an image. With increased ISO, your camera is able to capture images in low light situations. It comes at a cost however, because high sensitivity can add grain or noise to your image.

My camera comes with a "base ISO" of 100, while most Nikon's start at 200. When there is plenty of light, it is best to stick with the lowest ISO in order to retain the most detail and have the highest image quality. However, it's not always possible when you are capturing images in low-light conditions. Anytime you want to shoot indoors without a flash, set your ISO to a higher number to be able to freeze motion. Other cases you might need higher ISO is to capture ultra-fast shots, like sporting events or flying birds.

Starting at 100, your ISO number doubly increases with every notch… 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200, etc. So it's important to remember with each step between the numbers doubles the camera's sensitivity to light. For example, ISO 200 is twice as sensitive to ISO 100, while ISO 800 is eight time more sensitive the ISO 100. So, what does it mean when a sensor is 1600 times more sensitive to light? It means that it needs 16 times less time (shutter speed) to capture an image.

ISO Speed Example:
ISO 100 – 1 sec
ISO 200 – 1/2 sec
ISO 400 – 1/4 sec
ISO 800 – 1/8 sec
ISO 1600 – 1/16 sec
ISO 3200 – 1/32 sec


Notice how with every increase of ISO, the shutter speed is halved? This means you can get the same mathematical exposure if you adjust the ISO and shutter speed in doubles and halves. For example, if you captured an image at ISO 100 at 1 second, by simply switching to ISO 800, you can capture the same image at 1/8th of a second. This could mean the world of difference in your photography because it can freeze motion and make for a very crisp photo!

Here is what I shot while messing around with ISO today: 

ISO 3200 f/5.6 1/125 

ISO 200 f/2.2 1/80

Understanding Shutter Speed

What I love most about Darcy's blog is her ability to make what seems to be a complicated setting into something so simple. When I first got my camera I tried to read every piece of the manual and after a while it all started to look like a different language. So when I turned to her blog for the first lesson in shutter speed, she explained is as such...

"Imagine you’re at the sink with a small cup. You want to fill the cup with water. So you reach for the faucet. If you leave the water on too long, the cup will overflow and spill. If you don’t leave it on long enough, your cup will not fill.

You need to leave the faucet running for just the right amount of time to fill the cup, but not go over.

Using that analogy – you need to leave your shutter open for just the right amount of time to let in light to fill your photo and record your image, but not spill over and overexpose it." 

Having read this, I went outside and started experimenting with shutter speed using the Time Value setting, which allows you to change the shutter speed while the camera automatically selects the aperture and ISO…. 

1/120

 1/80

 1/60

 1/40

 1/30

 1/20

1/8

Looking back at these after loading them to my computer it's interesting to see the significant changes after just turning the wheel one or two notches. I think I'll need to experiment more to fully understand different situations to use each shutter speed. 

What a fun adventure that has begun!

With love, 

Katie