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Photography

3 min read

Aperture

Used for depth of field. Changes the aperture of the lense and allows you to choose how big the focusing range is (imagine two glass planes - a higher F-number means they are wider apart, and thus everything between those panes will be in focus around a point within the panes). A lower F-number means the panes are closer, narrowing the range that something will be in focus.

Wider aperture lower number more light.

Measured in speed, for some fucking reason. High speed bigger hole smaller number.

Shutter speed

How fast.

Some rules of thumb:

  1. Shutter speed >= focal length
    1. Avoids blurry bullshit (high focal length == more zoom!)

ISO

Measures how sensitive the camera is to light. Smaller number == less sensitivity. The trade of is that there is more noise for higher sensitivities.

For digital cameras, the amount of light reaching the sensor is defined entirely by shutter and aperture. After that, digital processing will change the “gain” of the camera. Much like gain on weather radar.

Imagine a very poor quality audio recording of someone speaking ... but the microphone is too far away from the person speaking. You turn up the volume while playing the audio back and you hear lots of background noise, hiss, hum, and other nuances (maybe even including other people in the room). But because you turn up the volume, you hear all these background sounds which are much more apparent. If the microphone had been closer to the person speaking, you would have stronger "signal" and you would not have needed to increase the play-back volume.
 
This is a good analogy for the signal-to-noise ratio. The noise is relatively constant. It's the signal that was stronger or weaker. But this dynamic changes the "signal-to-noise ratio" (SNR).
 
If you have poor signal, you'll be tempted to "turn up the volume". In photography you "turn up the volume" by increasing the ISO (really the gain). But this increases ALL the information... both the signal and the noise.

Composition

Settings

Create a “fast action” profile that can be easily accessed with a single button press (or a preset that can be enabled before heading out). This is to allow the camera to be in a state to take photographs that are unextected. A fast action profile should include:

  1. High shutter speed
  2. Continuous auto focus
  3. Multiple focus points

Custom Settings

C1

Used for general broad daylight photography.

Minimum shutter speed → 1/30. Attempt to set up fn button to manually adjust min shutter speed if required. Auto ISO → Base ISO to 12,800 give or take Multi metering Auto WB Small single point focus AF-S with AF-Lock button

C2

For fleeting, fast moving situations that require immediate action. Thus, fast shutter speeds

Min shutter speed → 1/1000 High continous shutter speed Single point tracking AF Highlight weighted

C3

Same as mode 2, but with electronic shutter.

Peeps

Books

  • Seeing Things, Joel Meyerowitz
  • The Photographer’s Eye, Michael Freeman

Graph View