Yeah Right!

[iShootYou]

So it's been known that Photography is a form of Art. So why in the world is it way too hard to understand?

I don't get it and I'm going insane reading and reading, watching YouTube videos after videos, asking my professor question after question...and I still DON'T get it.

I don't get the technical part of it. Any suggestions or anyone know of a book, website that explains it in a friendly manner for a photography dummy like me self?


Thanks!
Zoe

Sent from my iPhone using PhotoForum

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

How about "Photography for Dummies" or the "Idiots Guide to Photography"?

The answer was in your question.

 

[cgipson1]

So it's been known that Photography is a form of Art. So why in the world is it way too hard to understand?

I don't get it and I'm going insane reading and reading, watching YouTube videos after videos, asking my professor question after question...and I still DON'T get it.

I don't get the technical part of it. Any suggestions or anyone know of a book, website that explains it in a friendly manner for a photography dummy like me self?


Thanks!
Zoe

Sent from my iPhone using PhotoForum

What are you having so much trouble with? Details!

 

[iShootYou]

Hi Gypson,

I'm having trouble understanding the aperture, shutter speed, DOF, and the whys and hows of each setting. I get the ISO low iso for bright situations and high iso for dark. That I get, but the rest just doesn't want to process in my mind. Help please!

 

[WesternGuy]

Hi Gypson,

I'm having trouble understanding the aperture, shutter speed, DOF, and the whys and hows of each setting. I get the ISO low iso for bright situations and high iso for dark. That I get, but the rest just doesn't want to process in my mind. Help please!

Follow up on Bitter Jeweler's advice.

I would also like to suggest some experiments you might consider. I don't know Chicago, haven't been there in 20 years, but as a start, find a long, relatively straight, residential street, or a long walkway in a park, either of which have a lot of trees on it. Set your camera on a tripod and put it in manual mode - use a lens that has aperture settings that start at f2.8 and go up to f22. Set the shutter speed to about 1/125 second. Focus on a tree that is about 15 feet or so away. Start taking pictures with the largest aperture - might be f2.8, and then take subsequent pictures using slightly smaller apertures - f4.0, f5.6, f8, f11, f16, f22...when you bring these out on the computer, you should, hopefully notice that the depth of field (DOF) changes - i.e., as you increase the f stop from 2.8 to 22, there should be more of the things along the road or path in focus.

For the second part of this, find a roadway that has some reasonable traffic on it - doesn't have to be a freeway, just a road that has a car going by every 30 to 60 seconds or so. Set your camera on the tripod, on the sidewalk and focus on a street sign or a parked car say half a block or so away, and set the aperture at f16. Set the shutter speed to say 1/1000 of a second and watch when you see a car getting close to your view through your view finder, snap the shutter - it may take a few tries to get this to work, but hang in there, it will be worth it. Lower the shutter speed to 1/500th and repeat - keeping the aperture and focus the same. Repeat this experiment a with shutter speeds of 1/250, 1/125, 1/60, 1/30, 1/15, of a second until you have a wide range of shutter speeds covered - you can go down to 1 second and that should be enough. Take the images back and put them on your computer and look at the results. If this doesn't give you an appreciation for aspects of shutter speed, DOF, and aperture, then maybe others have some ideas as to how you can learn about this. You should of course, use the same ISO, say ISO of 200 for all your shots - you could up this a bit of it is a cloudy day, but I would not go any higher than ISO 400 for the purposes of this experiment.

Alternatively, you could try this experiment from a bridge overlooking a freeway, but I would be afraid that the Homeland Security folks would be right beside you real quick, wanting to know what you are doing.

Cheers,

WesternGuy

 

[cgipson1]

Shutter speed

Low and slow (on tripod) for long exposures (night, inside, low light, etc ... i.e 1/30, 2 seconds, etc)

FAST to stop motion (race cars, running children, pets, etc! this also helps to prevent blur from camera movement when hand holding.. i.e 1/250, 1/1000, etc)

Aperture

Small Aperture (small hole = Large F/Stop number i.e 16, 22, etc) gives large depth of field |------------Subject--------------------------|(amount of distance in focus in front of and behind the subject) Lets in very little light... good for Bright days... requires slower shutter speeds usually

Large Aperture (big hole = Small F/Stop number i.e. 1.4, 2.8, etc) gives small depth of field |--Subject---| but lets in a lot of light.. good for low light... fast shutter speeds....

ISO - just sets the initial sensitivity to light... and then you use aperture and shutter speed to achieve the affect you want.

This is the EXPOSURE TRIANGLE (Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO)

If you have not read it.. please try Bryan Peterson's Understanding Exposure... he explains it all in very simple terms... might help! http://www.amazon.com/Understanding...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322708688&sr=1-1

 

[Rephargotohp]

Here is the problem, People that do photography as an art form are very likely artistic, or to put it more precisely are Right Brained. They have a certain way that their brain processes things. People that are scientific in nature are more Left Brained they process information very differently. The problem comes when a Right Brained person is taught using left brained methods. As most schools are these days. That is why you see a lot of kids that are artistic not do very well in school even though they may be very intelligent. They just think differently

Right brained people are very visual and learn so much better in a visual environment then reading or hearing a lecture. Hands on is the best method for their learning.

Most of the people I have mentored have been very artistic, very right brained so I need to teach in a totally different way in which they could relate and they were able to learn and learn quickly, The first person I ever taught now teaches along side me and also uses the same techniques to teach and even came up with a few of her own. Because she knew how she needed to learn.

It's like when we teach OCF, If I just recited The Inverse Square law, People stare at me and say I sound like charlie Brown's Teacher, Wah Wah Wah, But if we show them, move the light closer, it gets stronger, farther away, it get weaker. The light bulbs go off. (Pun intended)

So my advice is to find a Mentor that "get's it". Take hands on Seminars whenever you can by people that get it. You can read from now till forever, and that stuff might not sink in a bit, But have someone show you in a way that Right Brained people get...and then USE the artistic side. It is SOOOO much more important than the technical side ( yeah you still have to know a few things) But use the artistic side and ..See

 

[TamiAz]

Here is the problem, People that do photography as an art form are very likely artistic, or to put it more precisely are Right Brained. They have a certain way that their brain processes things. People that are scientific in nature are more Left Brained they process information very differently. The problem comes when a Right Brained person is taught using left brained methods. As most schools are these days. That is why you see a lot of kids that are artistic not do very well in school even though they may be very intelligent. They just think differently

Right brained people are very visual and learn so much better in a visual environment then reading or hearing a lecture. Hands on is the best method for their learning.

Most of the people I have mentored have been very artistic, very right brained so I need to teach in a totally different way in which they could relate and they were able to learn and learn quickly, The first person I ever taught now teaches along side me and also uses the same techniques to teach and even came up with a few of her own. Because she knew how she needed to learn.

It's like when we teach OCF, If I just recited The Inverse Square law, People stare at me and say I sound like charlie Brown's Teacher, Wah Wah Wah, But if we show them, move the light closer, it gets stronger, farther away, it get weaker. The light bulbs go off. (Pun intended)

So my advice is to find a Mentor that "get's it". Take hands on Seminars whenever you can by people that get it. You can read from now till forever, and that stuff might not sink in a bit, But have someone show you in a way that Right Brained people get...and then USE the artistic side. It is SOOOO much more important than the technical side ( yeah you still have to know a few things) But use the artistic side and ..See

This is sooooo true. I am one of those right brained people who is a visual learner....Reading about photography is torture for me, so I try to find different ways to learn. I prefer watching videos and seeing examples. I would love to find someone who would be willing to teach me a few things!!

 

[Dao]

- In most situation, when we take a photo we like to take it so that it has the right amount of exposure. So we can say the photo is properly exposed.

- To expose the photo properly, there are few things we can control. Aperture, Shutter speed and ISO (Let's just assume you are using a digital camera for now).

- Aperture control how much light enter the camera at a given time.

- Shutter speed control how long you allow the light to enter the camera.

- ISO is the sensitivity. The higher the ISO value, less light is require to obtain a particular exposure.


Let take an example: (Photography)
- I want to expose a photo in a heavy overcast day. I will try Exposure Value (EV) of 12 (if you do not know what that is, you can ignore EV for now)
- For EV 12, I can set my camera with the following settings

Aperture: f/4
Shutter speed: 1/125
ISO: 100
The settings about should be able to expose a photo properly in that environment.



Now, imagine you have a task to fill one single bucket. The are few things you can control. garden hose size (diameter), filling time and bucket size.

- Garden hose control how much water enter the bucket at a given time. (Just like Aperture)

- Filling time control how long you allow the water to enter the bucket. (Just like Shutter Speed)

- Bucket size, smaller the size, less water is require to fully fill the bucket. (Just like ISO, but this one is the opposite. Smaller bucket require less water while lower ISO, or say light sensivitity, need more light)



So in the example above, if you want to expose a photo with EV 12 (to fully fill 12 buckets of water) and you double the physical size of the aperture -> f/2.8 ( physical size of the diameter of the hose), keep the same ISO value (using the same size bucket), the shutter speed (exposure time) should cut in half to 1/60 (the filling bucket times should cut in half)

Hope that make sense to you.

 

[Proteus617]

Any else see the irony in this? The OP can't wrap his mind around the basic technical aspects of photography, but posts to an online forum using an iphone. Understanding the exposure triangle is not complicated. Navigating an iphone is very complicated.

 

[GooniesNeverSayDie11]

Think of Shutter speed, Aperture and ISO as a triangle that directly effects each other and must be "Balanced" for a proper exposure. "Stops" are a measurement of light and the measurement used when balancing that triangle. For Shutter speed and ISO, a doubling effect indicates an increase of 1 "stop".

So if you are at 1/500th of a second and go to 1/1000 of a second, you just lost 1 stop of light. Because that shutter is going to be open only half as long as it used to be, then it is only going to get half as much light through it as it used to.

If you go from ISO100 to ISO200 you have gained 1 "stop." If you go from ISO800 down to ISO200 then you have lost 2 "stops" of light because now your camera has become less sensitive to the light so it picks up less. Thats all ISO is, a sensitivity boost basically.

Aperture is a bit trickier because you have to learn the numbers that represent full stops. f1/ f1.4 / f2 / f2.8 / f4 / f5.6 / f8 / f11 / f16 / f22 / f32 / f45 / f64 / The higher you go in f/numbers the smaller that aperture opening gets and the less light can come through. So you LOSE "stops".

So now, with that knowledge, if your camera gives you a meter reading of 1/100th, and f/4 @ ISO100, but you find that you need more speed because you need to freeze some sports action....you can bump the speed to 1/400th which would be a loss of 2 stops of light. Therefore you must balance the triangle to gain those two stops you just lost. So you can either open the aperture to f/2 ( which your lens may not be capable of ) or you can bump the ISO to 400.

There are also pros and cons to each and different more advanced reasoning ( like when using flash ).

For instance:
ISO adds noise when increased so most try to use it as a last resort.

F/stops effect depth of field. The lower the f/stop the more blurred the background will be. The higher the f/stop, the more distant objects will be in focus.

Shutter speed can cause motion blur or camera shake blur at slow speeds, or freeze fast objects and reduce camera shake at higher speeds.

Thats it in a nutshell. I am not sure it can be explained much more simply than that. You can try Brian Petersons book "Undestanding Exposure"

 

[cgipson1]

Any else see the irony in this? The OP can't wrap his mind around the basic technical aspects of photography, but posts to an online forum using an iphone. Understanding the exposure triangle is not complicated. Navigating an iphone is very complicated.

There is that!

 

[Futurelight]

Shutter speed

Low and slow (on tripod) for long exposures (night, inside, low light, etc ... i.e 1/30, 2 seconds, etc)

FAST to stop motion (race cars, running children, pets, etc! this also helps to prevent blur from camera movement when hand holding.. i.e 1/250, 1/1000, etc)

Aperture

Small Aperture (small hole = Large F/Stop number i.e 16, 22, etc) gives large depth of field |------------Subject--------------------------|(amount of distance in focus in front of and behind the subject) Lets in very little light... good for Bright days... requires slower shutter speeds usually

Large Aperture (big hole = Small F/Stop number i.e. 1.4, 2.8, etc) gives small depth of field |--Subject---| but lets in a lot of light.. good for low light... fast shutter speeds....

ISO - just sets the initial sensitivity to light... and then you use aperture and shutter speed to achieve the affect you want.

This is the EXPOSURE TRIANGLE (Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO)

If you have not read it.. please try Bryan Peterson's Understanding Exposure... he explains it all in very simple terms... might help! Amazon.com: Understanding Exposure, 3rd Edition: How to Shoot Great Photographs with Any Camera (9780817439392): Bryan Peterson: Books

Just about sums it up really

Try doing something like a choosing a subjet point X distance away from you. Run off a shot at each of the f-stops and making a note of eache setting for each shot. Then change the ISO and do it all again. Do this for each setting so you will have a visual reference for each and every setting. I know its a laborious process but it will give you a good understanding of what settings you need for different lights and different environments. Hope this helps

 

[DiskoJoe]

Have you ever actually looked at your lens and see what the aperture blades are actually doing? Seriously. Photography is about light and how to adjust for light. if you have lots of light then you can use a smaller aperture. Less light you need a bigger aperture. A larger aperture also allow for faster exposures because the camera can get more light into it. So that is how aperture effect shutter speed. You need to get out any shoot more pics in varying conditions to see for yourself how the light effects the exposure. There is a lot of trial and error to photography, mostly error. And you are going to mess up lots of pictures before you start understanding how to take good ones.

 

[Rephargotohp]

*sigh* left brainers