F stop exercise.

[Guest]

Well I took Johns advice and I went and bought the book "Understanding Exposure". Well the training wheels have been taken off the camera. I took it off auto aperture and this is what I came away with. And I was using my 28/80mm set at 28mm.

 

This first one was set at F/22

 

F/11

 

And F/3.5

 

I noticed that with the larger aperture F/22 everything in the photo is in focus. Then with F/11 the foreground is just a little bit out of focus. Then with F/3.5 you can really tell the foreground is out of focus. The shutter speed and the ISO was set to auto on these.

 

Jim

[KVRNut 0]

Glad you took the advice and got the book Jim. You'll find that controlling your aperture and depth of field will open up a lot of creative avenues for you and mean going from your discarded training wheels to maybe a Harley. You're going to have a ball experimenting and trying things out!

 

Think you may have the aperture a bit backwards though. f./22 leaves a small opening or aperture (slow shutter speed) where as at f./3.5 your lens aperture is wide open (faster shutter speed). f./3.5 is a good aperture setting for a shot where you want only the subject in focus and a soft foreground and background.

 

If you don't mind, here's some examples that I took in July that'll maybe help get the creative juices flowing.

I'm not too good at composition but I wanted to focus in on a portion of these wild flowers so I set the aperture at f./5.6 on this photo so it had some softness to it leading to the subject(s) and away from it.

 

This shot had the the aperture set at f./9.5 or just under half open so I could get more of the flowers in focus.

 

This shot had the aperture set at f./16 or 13 giving the shot a decent d.o.f. so as much as possible was in focus due to the flowers being spread out and not bunched too closely together. I still wanted to draw attention to the flowers and not the background.

 

Hope the pics help out some and give you an idea what you can do with D.O.F.

 

Ernie

 

[JayMorr 0]

J,

 

Awesome experiment. Can you link the guide you have read on Understanding exposure? I would love to read it. I have been messing around a lot with Apeture and ISO settings!!! WOW what a difference in my photos.

 

You guys are really helping me out a lot and it is great to view the photos on this site of so many top notch photographers!

 

Thanks

[Guest]

Hi Jay, here is the link to the book I am reading. Understanding Exposure . This book has helped me out alot. If I can only remember the stuff when I'm out actually shooting that will be something totally different.

 

Hi KVRNut thanks for correcting me. Sometimes I get things a little backwards.

 

Thanks

Jim

[JayMorr 0]

Thanks guys! I just purchased the book. I will give it a read. I am a kid in the candy store already with the new camera.

 

 

 

[Wulff 0]

You can see some differences just in the shots you posted, which as you noted affect how much of the foreground and background are in focus. Thats your DoF. Keep playing around with some aperature settings, although try to keep it between your lenses widest (fastest) opening be it f3.5, or 4.0 and say f11 to 14. Also see if you can find your lenses sweet spot which will likely be near f8.

 

And keep reading the book, particularily what he refers as to the exposure triangle...(f/stop, iso and Shutter speed) as each has a direct relationship on the others as you change them for any given meter reading. Before long it starts to make more and more sense and terms like stopping down, opening up etc all make sense. Once you have that down to a degree then you can start tring to put some his "metering" advice to practise. Like metering back lit scenes, scenes that predominantly white (snow) etc and how to combine those decisions with aperature settings like f8 for "dont care" DoF to wide open aperature for isolation of the subject etc.

 

J

 

 

 

[letumgo 0]

This is a super helpful thread. You guys have inspired me to take my camera out of auto-everything mode and try to understand the capabilities of my camera in manual mode. Thanks for the inspiration guys.

[Graham 0]

This is a great thread! And thank you for posting your shots jbrowning, very interesting. You should try standing in front of the white statue, with the tree directly behind it, and the fence behind that, maybe even put an extra flower pot between the state and tree. Focus on the white statue and do your f/stop changes to see how it affects the background, including both the fence and the tree. Then take a few steps closer to the white statue and do it again, and then get as close to the statue as you can, either as close as your lens minimum focus allows, or less if that means nothing in the background can be seen. Do the f/stop changes again. You'll see that the closer you are to your subject, the more out of focused the background becomes, even with the lens stopped down. This is what I do when choosing my positioning for bird photos, especially the background distance. With enough distance I can stop down the lens, for subject sharpness, and still have the background out of focus.

 

I still get confused by a number of photographic terms, including DOF. I used to think it meant depth of focus instead of depth of field. I did this same f/stop experiment about a year ago, posted pics here on the forum, using a grasshopper on a fern leaf. I went from f/4 through f/40 using a 200mm macro lens. What confused me was that when I stopped down past f/22 everything was in focus, but the picture looked flatter. Like the depth of field was actually shrinking while the depth of focus expaned. There was a fern berry behind the grasshopper but when everything was in focus, and sharp, it appeared that the berry was on the same plane as the grasshopper. Almost looked like it could have been in front of the bug. This still confuses me because depth of field, in my eyes, can actually decrease by stopping down a lens, although more of the scene is in focus. I like depth in my photos, both landscape and critters. With landscape I try to get away with f/16 to achieve close-through-infinity in focus, instead of using f/22. And for critters I like to stop down the lens as much as possible, while keeping the background out of focus. Most of my bird shots are f/8 unless the background is too close, then I'll experiment with opening up the lens to balance the subject and background focus. And just as confusing, to me, a smooth out of focus background, can make a bird photo look deeper than if the background is in focus. lol..

 

Graham

[Graham 0]

I found some of the grasshopper shots I mentioned.

 

First one is F/4

 

f/6

 

f/11

 

f/16

 

f/36

 

I really notice how the depth of field is compressed, enough that the background berry almost looks like it is in front of the grasshopper. Although the entire frame seems to be in focus at f/36, it definately looks soft focused. No, I haven't fished with this fly yet...

[kargen 0]

"I really notice how the depth of field is compressed, enough that the background berry almost looks like it is in front of the grasshopper."

 

With a photograph you only get a perception of depth. Depth perception is not quite the same as depth of field. Depth of field has an effect on depth perception though.

 

Three things really make a difference with depth perception. Depth of field obviously as things out of focus tend to look either closer or farther away. The more out of focus it is the farther away from the subject we perceive it to be.

Shadows also make a big difference in depth perception. They give a photo shape and depth. If your photos were more front lit so shadows fell back into the photo you would then be able to see the berry as being farther back

Lens magnification also plays with depth perception. A telephoto lens will compress the background so it appears to be closer to the subject. If you have a zoom lens you can see how this works by shooting a scene, backing up some then zooming in with the lens so you have the same crop.

 

I am going to add a 4th thing and there are probably a few more. If the object is something we recognise then size will help indicate depth. If we have two subjects in the photo and know about what size each object would be then our brain will take note of size and tell us one item is farther back.

 

Even though the photo is flat our brain is used to all that fun 3D stuff around us and can be fooled into seeing depth where really there is not any.

 

I had a couple of courses on perceptions and gestalt theory and I thought they were really interesting. Helped quite a bit with composing photos as it turns out so I actually learned something I guess while in college.

[Peterjay 0]

This discussion is way over my head, (unlike Kargen, the only thing I learned in college was how to write comparative book reviews without reading either book) but Graham mentioned that his stopped-down images were a bit soft. A possible contributing factor in this could be diffraction - the interruption of light waves by the edges of the aperture. The smaller the aperture, the more diffraction, and thus a softer image. The DOF will increase but the sharpness will go in the other direction. Higher resolution-capable cameras will make this phenomenon more apparent. It doesn't matter much for the kind of stuff I do, but if sharpness is critical, it may not be a good idea to stop down the lens too much. Either that or maybe I should stop reading technical articles that I don't really understand. If that's the case, then kindly disregard the above.

[Graham 0]

Thank you kargen and Peterjay. Fascinating information, and valuable as well. I guess the bottom line is understanding the various factors that contribute to depth, recognizing what is available to work with, then balancing these for maximum effect. Kargen, I'll keep reading your post over and over to burn this info into my head...lol.. Thanks again!!!

 

My wife has been telling me that I should take some photography classes. I think that is a great idea.

 

Graham

[little laker 0]

Jim,

 

I hope that you don't mind.

I tweaked the top pic just a little.

Here's your version

and mine

That was just playing with the exposure, and contrast just a little.

 

I just wanted to lighten up the brown fence and trees a little, but didn't want to blow out the sky.

 

I've heard good things about understanding exposure, but never read it.

I taught myself about DOF, by trying what you did there with bottles on the ground.

I ended up getting my own style as a result, and it's paying off for me.

 

There is 1 thing that I'd like to mention.

It looks like your camera over exposes the images just a little.

This makes the foreground appear nice and bright, however it takes away the sky's color and the clouds detail.

When you learn how to shoot on manual settings the chances are that you'll start under exposing several photographs just a little to bring out the skies detail.

You'll be able to bring up the foreground like I did with your photo software, drastically improving your image quality.

 

It will take a little time to learn this along with several other tricks, but it'll come.

 

Have fun, and keep it up.

[Guest]

Thanks for doing that Laker. I have been trying to figure out how to overexpose a shot in manual mode (M) but I guess that isn't possible with my camera if I am manually setting the aperture and shutter speed. The same button operates the shutterspeed and the exposure. Might have to start messing with the AV mode and TV mode.

 

Thanks again Laker

Jim

[little laker 0]

Your welcome Jim,

 

If you have M on there you should be able to.

 

In my case while in M, I have to press the AV button to adjust the f-stop but that's really about it.

 

If you have any problems send me an PM or e-mail with your number and I'll see if I can help you out over the phone.

A cordless phone, and enough daylight to snap photo's would make it easier.