I typed this up a while ago.
If you find this one anywhere else, I would truly like to know.
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Before I say anything else, there are a few basic things a photographer should know, especially if they have a better camera on which they can exercise these things.
Terms:
Aperture – In optics, the aperture is the opening that controls the amount of light let into the lens. It is measured in F-Stops, written like this 5.6/f (that’s an example of how I do it anyway). The larger the number is, the smaller the opening is, the less light is let in, and therefore the greater the focusing area is. This idea also goes vice-versa, the smaller the number is, the larger the opening is, the more light is let in, and therefore the smaller the focusing area is. It may seem confusing right now, but you’ll get the hang of it.
Shutter Speed – This is the amount of time that the camera will expose the film, in a film camera, or the sensor, in a digital camera. This is usually anywhere from 1/6000 of a second all the way to 30 seconds on most cameras, although some go much, much faster. There is also usually another setting called Bulb, this also deals with shutter speed, I’ll explain that next. The faster the shutter speed is, the more light that is required, the slower the shutter speed is the less light is required. When using a slower shutter speed you will have to keep the camera steady and at a certain point will either need a tripod or something else to keep the camera still enough, if you move the camera while the shutter is open you will get a blur. Generally, blurring isn’t a good thing. Slower shutter speeds are used for low light situations and also when using a small aperture.
Bulb – This is a setting on many cameras that deals with shutter speed. It is usually found at the slowest end when choosing a shutter speed. What it does is as long as you hold down on the shutter-release button it will keep the shutter opened. You would generally use this when you need to expose the picture for more then 30 seconds or whatever the slowest set shutter speed happens to be on your camera.
ISO – Don’t ask what it stands for, I don’t know if it stands for anything or means anything. When dealing with film it is the speed of your film and how fast it can be exposed and still take a picture. On digital cameras it is much the same. The general rule is the higher the ISO number, the faster you can take your picture, the more noise that is introduced into the photo. Most cameras have a certain range that they work best in, my Sony A300 seems to work best from 100-400 ISO without a noticeable amount of noise and sometimes I can squeeze an 800 ISO shot out if I’m shooting in the right conditions.
Bytes and Pixels – Both of these are units of measurement used in digital photography. Pixels are generally used to measure how large of an image a camera can take, the more pixels the better. Bytes are basically digital storage space, the more bytes of free space you have the more you can store. Now with pretty much any camera you will find today, you will also see Megapixels, Megabytes, and most likely Gigabytes. 1024 bytes is 1 Kilobyte, 1024 Kilobytes is 1 Megabyte, and 1024 Megabytes is 1 Gigabyte. That pattern goes on and on infinitely, although I don’t know many more names after Giga and it will probably be some time before we see any of them, except maybe Terabytes (1024 Gigabytes). The same goes for pixels, though I doubt you will see Kilopixels anywhere, and you definitely won’t be seeing Gigapixels, but, if you do, I’d like to know where right away.
RAW Format – This is a setting that can be found on probably every Digital SLR currently made, it is simply a file format on which you can control, through a computer program, the different settings you normally would on the camera. Such as the exposure, white balance, contrast, and many more. It saves much more data than the normal format used, which is usually JPEG, that also means it is a much larger file. I personally use a 10.2 MP DSLR, when shooting in raw each photo averages somewhere between 7mb and 10mb. I have an 8gb CF card and I can take about 4000 JPEG images with it or just 500 RAW format images.
Tips:
The Rule of Thirds – This is one of the most simple rules of composition in any kind of art. To follow this rule, imagine that there are 2 vertical line and 2 horizontal lines cutting your image in 9 sections, 3 rows of 3 cells. The human eye has been proven to follow these lines and cells, when photographing things, place them on the lines or at the points of intersection. If you look through my photos, I follow this rule quite a lot. But I warn you, this is not something that you just do and it makes your photos perfect, you still need to use your artistic eye and see what looks best. I also have some photos that don’t follow this rule at all, and they are great, or so I have been told.
This post was edited by kratos on Aug 12 2010 08:45pm