Not sure how to title this...i just need some help. lol.

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Not sure how to title this...i just need some help. lol.

Postby Photography~girl~ » Wed Jul 15, 2009 9:40 am

I went into our local camea shop the other day to print my photos for the fair.(that's right, i am entering into the county fair! :D ) And SOMEHOW the guy started telling me about aperture & shutter speed(i love how they're just so willing to share information.) Well he was telling me that the slower the shutter the lighter the background will get and the larger the aperture(like 2.8) the lighter the front will be. He was explaining that you need to balance the two to have proper exposer. I kind of get it. but kind of don't.(i couldn't spend a whole lot of time in there...cause i needed to get to work. :lol:)anyway.
Is there a general "rule" to use what shutter speed with a certain f/stop? Do you mind also explaining how this works? or have a good website/book that i can read to fully grasp this concept?
thanks so much guys! :D
a.k
"its the little things that make all the difference"
I'm a.k, a highschool student and learning all the things the Canon Rebel XSI can offer...advice is more then welcome. (:
*photo editing okay*
http://www.flickr.com/photos/umpiresphotographer
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Re: Not sure how to title this...i just need some help. lol.

Postby Bonish Photo » Wed Jul 15, 2009 9:56 am

This is probably the most confusing parts of photography

Here is the simpliest way I know how to explain it.

The smaller the number, the larger the opening and the more light it will allow in. This is also why f/2.8 lenses are so expensive, yet so saught after for fast action and sports, low-light photography.

Usually the more you open up your aperature, lower the number in f/stop speak, the more light you'll get on your subject. Think of a concert shot, if you're shooting at f/2.8, you'll have enough light to light the singer, but as soon as you move past the singer/subject, the light will go black which usually gives a good back ground and makes your subject stand out.

If you were to use a smaller aperature, larger aperature in f/stop speak, say a f/8 or all the way up to an f/22, you'd probably have to open your shutter so far, a few seconds, that anything in the foreground would be blurry.

I'm not sure if that makes any sense, but its the best I can do to explain it in laymans terms.

There is no golden rule to any settings, as every situation changes what settings you would have on your camera depending on what lens, what lighting and what effect you want to acheive as the final image
Pat Bonish
Every Miles A Memory
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Re: Not sure how to title this...i just need some help. lol.

Postby Photography~girl~ » Wed Jul 15, 2009 10:17 am

that made sense. :D I understand the needing to having longer shutter when the aperture is smaller...i guess. i guess i just know that when you have a small aperture you're gunna need a long shutter(maybe not the whole "why" behind it)
just the whole "aperture lights the forground and shutter speed lights the background" was completly new to me.
Since this is dealing with light, i assume i should learn this durring school this coming year?(i am deff doing the indepth study of light and Light with photography) and that thought just popped into my head. :lol:
"its the little things that make all the difference"
I'm a.k, a highschool student and learning all the things the Canon Rebel XSI can offer...advice is more then welcome. (:
*photo editing okay*
http://www.flickr.com/photos/umpiresphotographer
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Re: Not sure how to title this...i just need some help. lol.

Postby Traumuh » Wed Jul 15, 2009 11:55 am

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/sho ... p?t=414088 Sorry for linking to another forum, but that guide is pretty nice and easy to understand.
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Re: Not sure how to title this...i just need some help. lol.

Postby Photography~girl~ » Wed Jul 15, 2009 2:52 pm

hehe. Thanks, Traumuh. I am actually on POTN and have read that same thread. :D
guess i am not making my question clear enough.... :?
"its the little things that make all the difference"
I'm a.k, a highschool student and learning all the things the Canon Rebel XSI can offer...advice is more then welcome. (:
*photo editing okay*
http://www.flickr.com/photos/umpiresphotographer
Photography~girl~
 
Posts: 331
Joined: Sun Aug 03, 2008 11:02 am
Location: drinking a cup of coffee with my camera in hand sitting at Lake Michigan

Re: Not sure how to title this...i just need some help. lol.

Postby bob_r » Wed Jul 15, 2009 3:30 pm

Photography~girl~ wrote:I went into our local camea shop the other day to print my photos for the fair.(that's right, i am entering into the county fair! :D ) And SOMEHOW the guy started telling me about aperture & shutter speed(i love how they're just so willing to share information.) Well he was telling me that the slower the shutter the lighter the background will get and the larger the aperture(like 2.8) the lighter the front will be. a.k


You need to find a different camera store! This "guy" doesn't have a clue!
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Re: Not sure how to title this...i just need some help. lol.

Postby Mitchell » Wed Jul 15, 2009 3:42 pm

the way i understand this (please tell me if im wrong) the faster the shutter speed the darker the background is becuase of how long it take for light to reflect off what ever is in the background to get to the sensor. But im not sure about the F/stop part of it though :?
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Re: Not sure how to title this...i just need some help. lol.

Postby bob_r » Wed Jul 15, 2009 4:04 pm

Mitchell wrote:the way i understand this (please tell me if im wrong) the faster the shutter speed the darker the background is becuase of how long it take for light to reflect off what ever is in the background to get to the sensor. But im not sure about the F/stop part of it though :?


Mitchell,

Please don't try to understand that rubbish - he's completely wrong! There are 3 settings that regulate how light or dark your image will be: aperture, shutter speed and ISO. These 3 things work together and changing any one will affect the brightness of your image since they all regulate the amount of light captured by the sensor. None of these individually regulate the brightness of your background or foreground. If using a faster shutter speed would make your background dark, how could I capture this image with a shutter speed of 1/8000s? If you don't understand the relationship between these 3 settings, I suggest you google it or better yet, get a good basic photography book.
Image
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Re: Not sure how to title this...i just need some help. lol.

Postby Mitchell » Wed Jul 15, 2009 4:13 pm

oops ive been thinking more about it, and they were talking about flash.. still dont know if it true but thats what they were talking about. sorry..
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Re: Not sure how to title this...i just need some help. lol.

Postby Photography~girl~ » Thu Jul 16, 2009 9:14 am

okay.
last night when getting ready to hit the sack i was still trying to figure out what the guy told me...Something inside me was telling me he was right, i just had to figure out what he was saying. And then it just was like someone turned on the lights(thank you Lord! :D ) and it hit me what the guy was telling me. I explained it to mom this morn and she understood it, so i hope i can explain it here. So here goes(now i am going to explain as if i were explaining it to a 'newbie'.): I'll use the example of a daisy shot i took. I used a fast shutter, and the daisy[front of pic] was perfect, but the background was black. Due to the fact that since the shutter was so fast it only 'grabbed' the light that was directly in front of it. If i would have used a longer shutter the light from the background would have had the time to reach the sensor. Thus making the shutter speed "lighten/darken" the background. But since my aperture is large at this point and time, the front of the photo(the daisy) would be totally blown out because the light in front hits the sensor for a longer amount time unlike the light from the back. So make the aperture smaller, and that will allow the front of the picture to be darker. Thus the aperture making the front of the picture "darker/lighter".


Now i am sure this is general rule, but doesn't work with everything. Like Bob's photograph. He took that pic at 1/8000s, but the background is still properly exposed.

I remember reading somewhere(i think here...) where if you change your shutter speed a stop up, you need to change your f/stop a stop down....or something like that. whish i could remember what it was....

anyway. thought i should explain what was reviled to me. :D

EDIT: wow. i am so happy. I was just wondering why a smaller aperture/long shutter speed alows great depth of field. It makes sense to me, and i would like to explain it(if i explain things to others, it seems to make more sense to me that way...and you guys can tell me if i am wrong. lol) Since a long exposer alows light from the very back of the shot hit the sensor, you'll get the detail of the background, because the light from /all/ spots back there are hitting the sensor(photography is art with light, i remember someone telling me). When you have fast shutter speed the light in the background doesn't get a chance to give the sensor all its detail(even though sometimes it'll give the sensor a generall idea of what's behind there.)
(i hope that made sense y'all...)
I've known a small aperture/long shutter speed, creates a greater depth of field but never known the "why" behind it. :D
"its the little things that make all the difference"
I'm a.k, a highschool student and learning all the things the Canon Rebel XSI can offer...advice is more then welcome. (:
*photo editing okay*
http://www.flickr.com/photos/umpiresphotographer
Photography~girl~
 
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Joined: Sun Aug 03, 2008 11:02 am
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Re: Not sure how to title this...i just need some help. lol.

Postby bob_r » Thu Jul 16, 2009 10:17 am

A.K.,

Light travels at 186,282.397 miles per second, so to use my sample pic where my shutter speed was 1/8000s, light would have traveled over 23 miles in that interval. There is no measurable lag time for light to reach your sensor because of distance to the subject, but the sensor, shutter speed, aperture and ISO settings regulate how quickly that light can be captured.

A number of factors come into play when measuring depth of field, but shutter speed is not one of them. The factors are: size of the camera's sensor (crop factor), focal length, distance to subject and aperture setting. Shutter speed and ISO setting would help determine if your image gets properly exposed, but they wouldn't have an effect on the DOF. Here's a link to a DOF calculator and you'll see that they don't ask for shutter speed or ISO settings.
http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html
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Re: Not sure how to title this...i just need some help. lol.

Postby Photography~girl~ » Thu Jul 16, 2009 11:35 am

hmmm. interesting...
thanks, Bob. :)
"its the little things that make all the difference"
I'm a.k, a highschool student and learning all the things the Canon Rebel XSI can offer...advice is more then welcome. (:
*photo editing okay*
http://www.flickr.com/photos/umpiresphotographer
Photography~girl~
 
Posts: 331
Joined: Sun Aug 03, 2008 11:02 am
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Re: Not sure how to title this...i just need some help. lol.

Postby gldiana » Thu Jul 16, 2009 4:18 pm

Mitchell wrote:the way i understand this (please tell me if im wrong) the faster the shutter speed the darker the background is becuase of how long it take for light to reflect off what ever is in the background to get to the sensor.


The light travels at exactly the speed of light, so unless you shooting a flower filed in the foreground with some distant stars in the background they time it takes to reach the sensor is pretty much the same. In a normal photo not even an atomic clock would be fast enough to measure the difference.
I side with Bob thinking that the guy in the camera store was high on something, maybe darkroom acids ;)
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Re: Not sure how to title this...i just need some help. lol.

Postby Bonish Photo » Fri Jul 17, 2009 11:53 am

gldiana wrote:I side with Bob thinking that the guy in the camera store was high on something, maybe darkroom acids ;)


I've never tried those types of Acid, are they any good?? :twisted:
Pat Bonish
Every Miles A Memory
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If you want to Edit any of my images to show various options, feel free to do so!
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Re: Not sure how to title this...i just need some help. lol.

Postby gldiana » Fri Jul 17, 2009 1:32 pm

You're asking the wrong guy, Pat. I haven't used a darkroom since the early 90's ;-)
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Check my website and blog for discounts on HDR Software Photomatix and NikSoftware titles
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http://www.lucadiana.net/blog
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