Quiz Study Guide - Quiz is March 4th.

Quiz Study Guide

(You will be tested on March 4th).

There are three main elements that go into properly exposing a photograph:

1. ISO (film speed, or digital sensor speed).
2. F-Stop
3. Shutter Speed

ISO

ISO deals with the sensitivity of film or the digital sensor of your camera. A lower ISO (100) will produce a finer grain quality, while a higher ISO (1600) will produce a larger grain quality. Lower ISOs are used for daytime photography (100-200) while interior photography requires a faster film speed (400-800). Nighttime photography requires an even faster ISO, suggested at around 800-3200.

F-Stop

F-stop can also be referred to as aperture, and on your camera it is represented as Av (aperture priority) on your camera. It has to do with how open your aperture is open. The smaller the F-stop (2.8) the larger the aperture hole is. The larger the F-stop (22) the smaller the aperture is. The smaller the F-stop, the shallower depth of field is (shallow focus). This makes the subject in focus, and blurs out the background. The larger the F-stop, the greater depth of field is. This is good for photographing landscapes, if you want everything is focus.

F-stops to memorize:

2.8 4 5.6 8 11 16 22

<shallower depth of field------------ -------------------------greater depth of field>

Shutter Speed:

Shutter speed is represented as Tv on your camera. It has to do with how quickly the shutter can open and release, and it deals in conjunction with ISO and F-stop to create a properly exposed photograph.

A fast shutter speed freezes movement in time, and a slow shutter speed shows blurred movement.

Here are some examples of Shutter Speeds. To the left is 1/500 of a second (very fast) and to the right is 2” (the “ denotes that it is an entire second, not a fraction of a second). 1” second and over denotes a long exposure. Long exposures can be used to capture blurred movement, such as a passing car.

1/500s 1/250s 1/125s 1/60s 1/30s 1/4s 1/8s 1/2s 1”s 2”s

<faster shutter speed------------------------------------ ------------slower shutter speed>

F-Stop or Shutter Speed?

When creating an image, you can ask yourself what is more important – capturing movement (shutter speed priority) or a shallow/greater depth of field (aperture priority). If you know your answer, you should set your ISO and then select Av or Tv and dial in your desired setting. Let the camera's internal light meter suggest the correlating F-stop or shutter speed to you. Using Manual Mode you can punch all of these elements in, and adjust as needed. If you decide to go up a f-stop and continue to photograph, we call that Bracketing. Remember, it is always better to have more information in your digital negative then not enough.

But don't I just focus using my camera's lens?

While the lens helps bring into focus what you are photographing, F-stop also plays a large factor in the depth of field that is present in your exposed image.

Extra image expanding on F-stop/aperture/AV

(any of these terms are correct when talking about aperture).