Blog 3: Friday 12th of March 2010

Today in class I learnt for the first time about photography with digital SLR cameras. The two main points I learnt were about aperture (depth of field) and shutter speed.


Aperture: f-stop – controlling the depth of field:

• Lowest number of f-stop (f/2.8) lets the most amount of light to reach the image sensor and the depth of field is limited. Objects in the background and foreground of the subject will be blurry. Good for portraits to draw attention to the subject.


• A high number of f-stop (f/16) lets less light reach the image sensor and more of the picture will be in focus. Good for landscape photographs. The image will be sharp.

Shutter speed: determines how long the shutter remains open to record the scene:

• Slow shutter speed (1/15 of a second) is needed in dim conditions without a flash. You will need a tripod to keep the image steady and your subject must remain completely still. However, use this speed if you want to create artistic blurs like headlights of a car moving.
  
• High shutter speed (1/2000 of a second) is needed to freeze the action of your subject. It is also used when you have zoomed in on a subject to avoid the image blurring.