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Aperture (AV mode)

Changing the aperture alters the depth of field in a photograph.

Depth of field refers to the range of distance that appears acceptably sharp. It varies depending on camera type, aperture and focusing distance.

Making the aperture small (larger f-number) increases the depth of field in a photograph. Using a wide lens and focusing on something far away from the lens increases this effect.

Smaller apertures reduce the light coming in to the camera and often need much longer exposure times which require a tripod.

Aperture (AV Mode) is the setting which controls the size of the hole in the camera lens which allows light to hit the sensor. The size of the hole is measured in F-Stops, fractions of the aperture such as F/3.5 (Wide aperture) & F/22 (Narrow aperture).

The wider the hole in the lens, the more light that is let through, this also makes the depth of field shallower. If the hole in the lens in narrower the amount of light let in will be lower and the depth of field will be larger, putting more of the image in focus.

Image Reference: http://www.nelsontan.com/tutorialspage/images/Aperture-table.jpg

This image was taken at an aperture of F/3.5, meaning that the aperture was very wide and allowed a lot of light in, as well as creating a shallow depth of field. The Shallow depth of field can be seen clearly as the surroundings of the metal corner are more and more out of focus depending on how far away they are.

This image was taken at an aperture of F/8. This is a relatively narrow aperture, and often the go to aperture for people that want all round basic photos. It allows a wide amount of the image to be in focus yet keeps the images sharp along with an attractive background blur.

The aperture in this image is F/22. Meaning that the aperture in the lens is very narrow, taking in a lot less light than, for example F/3.5, instead it lets a lot more of the scene come into focus.

F/3.5

F/8

F/22

Shutter Speed (TV mode)A camera shutter is a cover in front of the camera sensor that stays closed until the camera fires. When the camera fires, the shutter opens and fully exposes the camera sensor to the light that passes through the lens aperture. After the sensor is done collecting the light, the shutter closes, stopping the light from hitting the sensor.

A slow shutter speed such as 1/20th of a second could produce motion blur where as a fast shutter speed such as 1/2000th of a second will freeze motion completely.

Photographers like to have full control over the shutter speed because it can make create amazing effects in images, such as long shutter speeds of waterfalls or tides, to create a flowing motion look. The fast shutter speeds can be used for almost everything in life, as it is usually preferred to have an image with no or low amount of motion blur, images such as motorsport or action shots of snowboarders are taken with fast shutter speeds to capture the moment in sharp detail. It can also be used as an alternative to aperture and ISO if needed.

1/1000 s 1/500 s 1/250 s 1/125 s 1/60 s 1/30 s 1/15 s 1/8 s 1/4 s 1/2 s 1 s

Fast shutter speeds

Slow shutter speeds

This image has a shutter speed of 1/10th of a second. This is a relatively long shutter speed. It allows plenty of light into the sensor and also creates a lot of motion blur as can be seen in the image. The background behind the van is very smudged and blurred, this is due to a lot of motion blur caused by the long exposure.

This image of a cyclist was taken at 1/50th of a second. This has created a small amount of motion blur in the background and in the physical movement of the cyclist. This is 5 times faster than the van image, which is obvious based on the amount of motion blur in the image.

This image of the land rover was taken at 1/500th of a second, this is a fast shutter speed, which has almost completely stopped the image in time. There is only a slight amount of motion blur in the background, making the vehicle look almost still.

1/10th Second

1/50th Second

1/500th Second

ISO (Film Speed)

The ISO setting on a camera changes how sensitive the sensor is to light.

The ASA number of a film tells you how sensitive the film is to light.

The bigger the number the more sensitive or ‘faster’ the film or sensor is.

A ‘faster’ film or sensor needs less light to produce an image than a slow one.

When shooting in low light conditions without a tripod or other support it may be that increasing the ISO speed or using a faster film will let you get the images you need.

ISO (International Standards Organisation) is the sensitivity of the sensor, by electronically boosting it. The ISO is an alternative when shutter speed and aperture can not be used to increase light intake for whatever reasons, for example landscape image = narrow aperture= dark image = need of ISO boost or longer exposure. The ISO can be increased and decreased, usually starting at ISO 100 and often spanning to ISO 6400 or even higher. As the image ISO is increased the image quality decreases due to noise and graininess.

Image Reference:https://cdn.tutsplus.com/photo/uploads/legacy/287_meterviewfinder/PerfectExposure-3.jpg

This shot was taken at ISO 100, the lowest ISO available on the camera. This is the preferred ISO for the best image quality possible, but only when other equivalents such as aperture and shutter speed are available. This image zoomed in shows that the image is quite soft and not much noise is showing. Due to the low ISO the shutter speed had to be low, creating a motion blur in the image.

This shot was taken at ISO 800 and noise has quickly got into the image, making its quality drop drastically. The artefacts and grainy pixels have become very obvious.

This shot was taken at ISO 6400, and it is clear as to what the high ISO has done to the image. The image is covered in graininess, especially in the darker parts of the image such as the top right corner.

ISO 100

ISO 800

ISO 6400

White Balance

The white balance settings on a camera help the camera to understand what white is.

The auto-white balance setting will work in most situations but sometimes you may need or want to change the setting to adjust the colour in your photograph.

Using the cloudy setting in bright daylight will give your image a warmer, yellow tint to it.

Using the fluorescent light setting in daylight will give your images a green tint.

At times, you will need to change the settings if the colours you see are not being reproduced correctly by the camera.

At other times you may decide to chose the ‘wrong’ white balance on purpose to change the look of your photographs.

The white balance on a camera is usually automatic, and usually does a good job controlling it itself, but sometimes it can get confused or sometimes the photographer will want control of the white balance in order to change the colour of the images whites. For example the cloudy white balance mode is often used in order to get a warm tone in the image.

Image Reference: http://www.exposureguide.com/images/white-balance/white-balance-chart.png

The different shades are caused by changes in white balances, although they are very subtle in the first 3 images. The point of the white balances is to make the whites in the image the same as how we see them, when the camera can make the mistakes of misinterpreting them or using the wrong auto white balance. The first image is using the daylight mode, the overall image has a slight bluish tone to it. The cloudy image has a much more warm tint, although the sky is a much more realistic white in the clouds. The shade white balance is again quite warm, and the sky's clouds are again very true to the eye. The tungsten white balance is designed to counter act the colour dispersed by tungsten light bulbs which show up badly in camera images. The white balance causes a bluish/cool tone on the image which is very unrealistic compared to what can really be seen- this is obviously because we are not in artificial tungsten light, we are instead in daylight.

CloudyDaylight

TungstenShade

Original image

Cropped

Levels

Dodging and burning

Colour adjustments

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Flatbed ScannerScanners such as a flatbed scanner which are commercially available and affordable use a charge-coupled device (CCD). They consist of a glass pane and a moving optical sensor, with RGB filters. The moving optical sensor allows it to receive light from different parts of the subject in order to get it all in one frame.

The downside of flatbed scanners are that paper can not be automatically fed into the scanner, it has to be manually placed by the user page by page. So problems could occur if the user had to scan multiple sheets of images or writing as it would be very time consuming. Depending on the price and quality of the scanners the usability can vary, many devices will have better scanning speeds and many will have better image quality in the scanned images.

The upside is that the scanner can create amazing macro shots if there is a flat object on it, such as a leaf or coin. The shots of real objects are very sharp, much sharper than those taken from prints.

WebcamA webcam is a camera that is often used as a method of videotelephony. Webcams can also be used for surveillance, computer vision, broadcasting and video making. They can also be used for photography and time lapses, using the computer as a device to record multiple pictures over a period of time.

The advantage of using a webcam for photographs is that there is the ability to instantly edit them after the shot has been taken, although the quality is usually low. The computers large processors allow multiple effects to be placed over the live image in order to show the user how it will look after the image is taken.

The disadvantages are simple, the webcams aren't exactly portable, as they are often inside the monitors screen, and when they aren’t they have to be plugged into a monitor or computer,. The image quality is also very low which makes a bad picture. There is limited movement for the camera usually. They also reverse the image which means it has to be rotated back to normal in post production, if needs be.

Mobile PhoneCamera phones came out in the early 2000’s, but they were very low quality, now camera phones have much better quality. Camera Phone photography is insanely popular nowadays. With most people owning one, it has become the go to way of getting good quality images without having to haul around a pocket camera and batteries or a larger DSLR camera.

With cameras on phones getting better and device costs getting cheaper it is getting to the point that many people would rather take their camera phone out than a larger bodied camera.

Camera phones are all different and all have different camera controls depending on the device and software. Some phones have a unique selling point which is the innovative camera, for example the NOKIA LUMIA 1020 with its 41MP sensor and many camera controls. Where as other phones may only have limited controls such as only the white balance and zoom. On many smart phones the user has the ability to use “Touch Focus” which allows them to touch where or which subject they would like to focus on.

One of the advantages of using a camera phone instead of a digital camera is that on Smartphone's the user, or photographer, has the ability to share images on social media such as Facebook and Twitter instantly, or to photo sharing sites such as Flickr, Instagram or 500px. The disadvantage of using smart phones for photography is that the image sensor is so small, due to such thin and narrow devices. This creates lower image quality and increased noise in the images. Another downside is that different devices have different types of screen that can make the final image look different to how it may appear on a computer screen or print. For example Samsung Galaxy phones have very highly saturated screens, which makes colours stand out a lot more and often look unrealistic, where as iPhones have much more neutral coloured screens which show a truer colour.

SAMSUNG GALAXY S5 – 16MP

ISO: 80APERTURE: F/2.2FOCAL LENGTH: 31mmSHUTTERSPEED: 1/30s

Sharp focus on selected leaf.

Near background out of focus – shallow depth of field.

Cloudy white balance for warm tone.