The human hands can hold a camera without shaking to a maximum shutter speed of 1/60 of a second. Any longer than that without stabilization and you will notice blurring within your picture. This is not very conducive to taking pictures in lower light without increasing your ISO which somewhat diminishes the quality of the photograph. When taking pictures of still objects in low light, the best thing a photographer can do is use a low ISO, fast shutter speed and have the aperture set where it needs to be for the correct exposure. To do this you may require the tool all photographers should have: the tripod.
There have been several instances where I’ve been caught without one because they’re big, bulky and a general pain to lug around. My wife once took her 5lb tripod on a four day backcountry hiking trip and realized her mistake after the first day! Often when I go on a day photography mission I forget this essential tool and curse myself for it afterwards. Tripods provide stabilization for the camera, allowing for longer shutter speeds without camera shake. Tripods, despite their lack of portability are easy to use. They often come with a “foot” that screws into the bottom of your camera. If you leave the foot on your camera it is easy to attach it to the tripod quickly and conveniently. From there it is simply a matter of extending the legs to the appropriate height and taking your shot with whatever shutter speed you desire.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
ISO
Film speed is a measure of photographic films sensitivity to light. The International Standards Organization’s (ISO) current standard of measuring this sensitivity for digital cameras is ISO 12232:2006. This standard has a number scale which indicates the digital camera’s sensitivity to light.
On the ISO scale lower numbers mean less sensitivity. An ISO of 100 is much less sensitive to light than a picture with an ISO setting of 1600. In situations where there is minimal light, you may find yourself with a completely open aperture and long shutter speed to capture a photograph. This comes with the possibility of camera shake (blurry subjects because the camera has moved during the long exposure). In this case a solution may be to increase your ISO setting. This however comes with a negative as well. As you increase your ISO pictures become grainier and has much less detail or sharpness than one taken with a lower ISO setting.
You may notice that there are trade offs to be made with aperture, shutter speed and ISO’s which is why there is a delicate balance to be made with all three settings. In nature photography you will often hear of photographers sacrificing graininess just to get the faster shutter speed when taking pictures of moving animals.
On the ISO scale lower numbers mean less sensitivity. An ISO of 100 is much less sensitive to light than a picture with an ISO setting of 1600. In situations where there is minimal light, you may find yourself with a completely open aperture and long shutter speed to capture a photograph. This comes with the possibility of camera shake (blurry subjects because the camera has moved during the long exposure). In this case a solution may be to increase your ISO setting. This however comes with a negative as well. As you increase your ISO pictures become grainier and has much less detail or sharpness than one taken with a lower ISO setting.
You may notice that there are trade offs to be made with aperture, shutter speed and ISO’s which is why there is a delicate balance to be made with all three settings. In nature photography you will often hear of photographers sacrificing graininess just to get the faster shutter speed when taking pictures of moving animals.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Aperture (F/Stops)
In manual mode on your camera you may set the shutter speed to be a fraction of a second, but if there is very little light coming in there will be a whole lot of black on your screen.
Both aperture and shutter speed work together to allow the perfect amount of light into you camera so that your picture is neither overexposed (too bright) nor underexposed (too dark). If you have a fast shutter speed you want to have a large aperture (larger hole open in the lens) to let more light in during that tiny amount of time. Conversely if you have a slow shutter speed, you will need to tone down the amount of light that comes in.
These two always need to be in balance. Check out this PDF for common pairings, what subjects the pairs are useful for and other photo-geek goodness!
Both aperture and shutter speed work together to allow the perfect amount of light into you camera so that your picture is neither overexposed (too bright) nor underexposed (too dark). If you have a fast shutter speed you want to have a large aperture (larger hole open in the lens) to let more light in during that tiny amount of time. Conversely if you have a slow shutter speed, you will need to tone down the amount of light that comes in.
These two always need to be in balance. Check out this PDF for common pairings, what subjects the pairs are useful for and other photo-geek goodness!
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Shutter Speed
I’ve gotten to the point where I’m taking the bold step of not using the automatic setting on my camera. I’ve gone completely manual. To do this I needed to learn Three key words: Shutter Speed, Aperture and ISO.
Today is all about shutter speed. Shutter speed is the amount of time that the shutter remains open. The longer it’s open the more light that is let in. There’s some pretty funky stuff that can be done both with longer shutter speeds and with split second shutter speeds. As you can see on the right, the two rain photos were take at the same time with two completely different results. One froze the rain (fast shutter) in mid fall so you could see the individual drops, the other (slower shutter) let the rain “trail” a bit as it fell and made for a much more pleasant photo.
It can also be used when taking photos of action to blur the background while keeping the moving subject in focus or vice versa. It can also be used to create cool effects like the lid of the soda bottle seen in my examples.
Any guesses on what the lightstreaked picture is of? It had a shutter speed of 28 seconds.
Today is all about shutter speed. Shutter speed is the amount of time that the shutter remains open. The longer it’s open the more light that is let in. There’s some pretty funky stuff that can be done both with longer shutter speeds and with split second shutter speeds. As you can see on the right, the two rain photos were take at the same time with two completely different results. One froze the rain (fast shutter) in mid fall so you could see the individual drops, the other (slower shutter) let the rain “trail” a bit as it fell and made for a much more pleasant photo.
It can also be used when taking photos of action to blur the background while keeping the moving subject in focus or vice versa. It can also be used to create cool effects like the lid of the soda bottle seen in my examples.
Any guesses on what the lightstreaked picture is of? It had a shutter speed of 28 seconds.
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