Camera Components/Functions

This morning I've been tasked with researching camera components, functions and concepts.

The list follows:

-Iris

-Apature

-Shutter

-ISO

-Exposure

-Depth of field

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Iris

The Iris is to control the light coming through the lens.

Aperture

Aperture is the opening of the lens, the higher the F stop (eg 2.8) the shallower the focus would be. The lower the F stop (eg 22) everything would be sharp and in focus.

Shutter

The shutter allows light to travel through the lens for a set period of time. You can adjust the shutter speed and make it faster or slower. The faster it is the darker the image will be, but you can shoot subjects in motion. The slower speed will allow more light to come through the lens and you can get a long exposure shot.

ISO

The ISO measures the sensitivity of the light, you can adjust it to make an image more brighter. Although the higher the ISO you have the more noise will appear in your image and distort it with a grainy effect. On a bright day you would have the ISO low, where as indoors or at night you'd have it higher.

Exposure

The exposure is determined by how well lit the image is. If your image is over exposed then it'll look really white and washed out, if it is under exposed then it'll appear really dark.

Depth of field

The depth of field (DOF) is how much of the image is in focus. Basically you can have the subject completely focused and the background blurred out, or vice versa. You can achieve this effect using two methods, firstly you can adjust the Aperture so that the higher the F stop the shallower the DOF would be. You can also get a DOF by using a zoom lens and zooming in on the subject.

Basically using manual mode you have to balance the Shutter, ISO and the Aperture to get the specific shot you want to achieve, while making sure it is correctly exposed.

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Canon Outside of Auto

After we did this my tutor then showed me a website called: http://canonoutsideofauto.ca/play/

Basically the site recreates manual mode and lets you experiment on a camera without actually needing one, I had no idea this idea existed and it's really handy. I was tasked with creating several different shots including:

-Non grainy shot

-Long exposure shot

-Sharp image with no motion blur

-Narrow DOF shot

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Non Grainy:

I reduced the aperture, setting the lowest ISO and having the shutter speed around the middle.

Long Exposure:

I set it to the lowest shutter speed and ISO, and then adjusted the aperture to correctly expose it. You can't really tell its a long exposure shot due to the only thing moving being the propellor, if it happened to be a light moving, it would be a lot more prominent.

Sharp image with no motion blur:

I got this by having the fasted shutter speed, increasing the ISO and having a high aperture.

Narrow DOF shot:

The only thing that needed adjusting for this was the aperture needed to be high, in order to get the shallow DOF.