Aperture and the movie ted....

Our second lesson of the "back to basics" series is on Aperture.  It's nice every once and a while to review what you think you already know.  I find that most often I get more out of a lesson or story the second time around.  Especially movies, for instance the movie "ted".  I had the pleasure of watching that beauty three times.  And each time I picked up on more and more awful parts that I had fortunately missed the previous viewing.  How does this relate to Aperture?  It doesn't.  Well kind of, what I mean to say is hopefully if you know a little about aperture you'll know a little more after this blog.  Or if you didn't then it's a good starting point. 

 

Ok, lets start with Erin.....

I don't know about you, but I sure am ready for spring to arrive!!  We have more "threatening" winter weather and once again schools have decided to open on a delay!  It was the best news when I was a kid but now that I am officially "old" it is simply a huge pain in the booty :-)  So, as I was trying to find a subject for this week's challenge I found myself looking longingly at the one sign of spring in our yard...tiny little white flowers on a scraggly shrub.  Not much to look at but it leaves me clinging to hope for more beauty to arrive!!  Anyway, I took several images of this poor little shrub to try and demonstrate the impact that changing your aperture can have on your pictures.  Before talking about the images, I should tell you that I did take the pictures with my 70-200mm,  2.8 lens.

This first image was shot at an aperture of 2.8 and the second image was set to an aperture of 18.

 So, what you can see immediately is that the image with the lower aperture (2.8) has most of the background out of focus while the image with the high aperture (18) has more of the background in focus.  So, if you want those fun "background out of focus" pictures all you need to do is lower your aperture.  Sounds easy enough, right?  Well, here is the one thing to keep in mind...your aperture is dependent on your lens (not your camera).  If you have a intro level DSLR camera with a kit lens (the lens that came with the camera), then you likely will not be able to lower your aperture to 2.8 like I did in the first image.  Sadly, you will have to buy another lens...sorry to be the bearer of bad news!  But you can still take time to lower your aperture as much as your lens will allow and shoot away :-)

As I have been learning more about photography, I have have found that aperture priority mode (Av on my canon) has been my new friend.  I shoot in this mode a great deal of the time because it allows me to easily change and control my aperture.  The one time I will caution you to change from this mode is when you are using a flash outside...you will end up with a freakishly white image.  

Now before I completely leave winter behind, I wanted to share my two beautiful kiddos enjoying the winter weather!!  Thanks for reading :-)

And now from Vicki....

So Aperture can also be called the f-stop number.  Don't you love it when things have more than one name?  By definition aperture is an opening in an optical instrument that limits the amount of light passing through a lens or onto a mirror.  The diameter of that opening is described as being an f-number.  The higher the f-number the smaller the opening.  The lower the f-number the larger the opening.  I've tried over and over again to make sense of this little tidbit of info.  And here's all I can come up with.  Let's pretend it's Noon on a Saturday and the sun is in full force.  You will probably squint your eyes (aka create a small aperture with your eyelids) to let less of that sun in.  Big sun (f-number) = small eyes (size of opening).  And on the flip side if it's an overcast day you can easily see things with your eyes wide open.  Small amt of sun (f-number) = wide open eyes (size of opening).  Make sense?  Ok here is my example in photographs.  Maybe this will help.

You can see from my examples how the aperture can drastically change not only what is in focus (from Erin's examples) but also what happens when too little or too much light is let in.  Now, here is the one difference with her examples and mine.  She kept her camera in Aperture Priority mode.  Meaning that she wanted to control the f-number and let the camera figure out what the ISO and Shutter Speed needed to be in order to produce a well balanced picture with a focus exactly where she wanted it.  My pictures were taken in Manual Mode with ISO set at 400 and Shutter Speed set at 1/125.  So now that you are thoroughly confused you can see that Photography can really get interesting once you know, understand, and PRACTICE (shouting this to Erin and I) with your camera.  :)  Sure you can point and shoot.  And you can most definitely live in Auto, hey sometimes I do.  But if you were looking to go beyond the norm and experiment then hopefully this blog post has helped you do that.  When I first began studying this trade with an extremely talented and detail oriented photographer, I learned that it is always important to have a fundamental understanding of the basic mechanics. 

No go out there and take those lovely DSLRs out of Auto and experiment!!  And if you are wondering what the little number is in my photo.  Well us Hautop ladies never really sit still for too long.  I said earlier that 2013 was my year of "yes" and that big things were happening......so I decided to start another business!!  Why not, right?!?  I now moonlight (lol, I love using that word) as an Executive Consultant for Rodan + Fields Dermatologists.  The creators of Proactiv are now REDEFINING skincare issues of all types.  And this picture is of the latest and greatest at home treatment tool, the MACRO Exfoliator.  People it's amazing.  And if you want to know more check out my other website, www.vhautop.myrandf.com , or email me at hautopblog@gmail.com.  I'd love to share this tool and all of their product lines with you. 

Comments please!!  We love hearing from our audience.  :)

Next week.....ISO.