Tag: shutter speed

2011-01-25

Aperture is just funky. Well, if you sit around with friends calculating the area of a circle and talk about the next digit of π, then maybe you are just a different kind of normal and aperture is your cup of tea. For the rest of us, though, I highly suggest a time honored method to understanding your camera, though understanding why the numbers are weird will elude you: memorize.

Any of us can calculate that ISO 200 is twice as sensitive as ISO 100, and ISO 400 is twice as fast as as ISO 200. With film sensitivity, a stop of light is easy to figure. Even with the shutter speed, though they inconveniently do not use exact numbers, the key numbers are approximately exponential: 2, 4, 8, 15, 30, 60, 125, 250, 500, 1000. There is a little funny business going on in there, but basically, it is easy to figure a stop of light. Aperture, though? Not so much.

2011-01-04

Do you see good photo ops, but just cannot seem to make the camera capture the image like you see it? Photography is half creativity and half technique, and without a firm grasp on the technical side of how our cameras capture photographs, we can only hope our cameras take the photo we want. We all struggle with this “other half of photography”, but the more we understand and know how to put into practice, the fewer ruined photographs we will have. I will be leading a class on Wednesday nights this month (January) to learn about light, how our cameras capture it, and the limitations and creative potential unique to photography. Temple Parks & Leisure is providing this class each Wednesday in January from 5:30-7:00pm for a total cost of $45. Feel free to ask any questions you might have of me below in the comments or contact Temple…