The New Intimacy

Using aperture and shutter speed [Article]

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Contributor: Vaccinium Vaccinium
The undoubtedly highly anticipated second part of the two-part series on aperture and shutter speed is now up. This article should be especially useful to those of you who shoot in automatic mode on your cameras and want to have more control and for those of you like Naughty Student who want to know how to use the manual setting on your cameras. Taking the decision-making of your photography back from your camera is the first step in improving your photographs - and it's really not hard to learn. Most importantly, everyone should read it because if you don't, I'll be sad.

As always, past articles and current announcements can be found at the Clubs and Events Blog and discussion on all things photography can be found at the Eden Photographers subforum. If you have any questions about the article or on aperture and shutter speed in general, feel free to post them in this thread.
03/03/2011
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Contributor: Jul!a Jul!a
That was a great article, thanks for sharing it
03/03/2011
Contributor: Vaccinium Vaccinium
Thanks, Sam. I hope it helps people. And thank you for not making me sad

It's kind of hard to generalize on how it all works since every camera and camera manufacturer does things differently. If anyone is having problems understanding the concept of how shooting modes can benefit their photography or can't figure out how their camera accomplishes it, just post your questions in this thread or at the bottom of the blog post and I'll do all I can to help. You can even let me know what camera you are using and I may be able to walk you through the process if it differs from the classic SLR layout (such as in the photos that accompany the article.)
03/03/2011
Contributor: Ivy Wilde Ivy Wilde
In the first article on aperture and shutter speed, you talked about f-stops in terms of f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6. In the second article where you are showing the histograms with the shutter speed and f-stop settings, I can understand that the "5.6" in the histogram is "f/5.6". However, in the histogram, the shutter speed is shown as "0''3" or "0''4". How does this relate to the way you described shutter speed as being "1/250", "1/125", "1/60", etc...?
07/09/2011
Contributor: Ivy Wilde Ivy Wilde
Frankly, I'm not entirely sure I understand the relationship between aperture and focusing on objects. You give the example of using f/11 to focus on a stationary object. So... does that mean that if you want to photograph a large landscape, you would use a smaller f-stop, say f/4? And if you wanted to take a very close up picture of a tiny flower that you would use an larger f-stop, say f/22? Or am I getting it totally backward?
07/09/2011
Contributor: Vaccinium Vaccinium
Quote:
Originally posted by Ivy Wilde
In the first article on aperture and shutter speed, you talked about f-stops in terms of f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6. In the second article where you are showing the histograms with the shutter speed and f-stop settings, I can understand that the ... more
The shutter speed is usually shown as the bottom number of the fraction. So, "0''3" is equivalent to 1/3 of a second, "0''4" is equivalent to 1/4 of a second, and "250" would be 1/250 of a second. Numbers equal to or larger than 1 are shown normally (1, 1.3, 2, 3, etc.).
07/09/2011
Contributor: Vaccinium Vaccinium
Quote:
Originally posted by Ivy Wilde
Frankly, I'm not entirely sure I understand the relationship between aperture and focusing on objects. You give the example of using f/11 to focus on a stationary object. So... does that mean that if you want to photograph a large landscape, ... more
It depends what you want to show. If you want a lot of the image to be in acceptable focus, you want to choose a large f-stop (small aperture). If you want a small amount that is in acceptable focus, you'll want to choose a small f-stop (large aperture). It doesn't matter whether it is a landscape photo or a close-up. The choice of f-stop will ultimately be based on a lot of factors both artistic and practical.

That said, as the focal length of the lens gets longer (a larger number in mm), the amount of your image that will be in acceptable focus at the same f-stop will decrease. The same goes for as you get closer to an object. For example, at f/11 there will be more in acceptable focus using a 24 mm lens than a 100 mm lens. There will also be more of your object in acceptable focus at f/11 at 5 feet away from your subject as compared to 1 foot away.

The articles on Understanding Depth of Field and Using Depth of Field will address your question as well.

I hope that helped!
07/09/2011