Pics & Vids Week III | Camera

TRANSCRIPT

Hello kids, today we are going to be doing something a little different, I am unable to attend physically and unable to live stream so we’ll be doing a recorded lesson.

Don’t worry, you’ll be learning just as much as you ever have, and you’ll be able to pause or rewind whenever you’d like to better understand what we are talking about.

This week we were supposed to talk about camera terminology and then walk around Wall Street for an on-location portrait shoot.

Instead, we’re still going to talk about camera terminology, but instead of doing a portrait photo shoot, we’re going to work on using our phone apps to edit the photos we take.

So, first things first, I’m going to ask you to download some apps to your phone.

Go to your App Store and download

Snapseed

Pro Camera

Today we will be using Pro Camera to take photos like one would with a professional camera, manually.

On your phone, your camera app takes care of multiple settings that camera’s have so that you don’t have to. But its important to know these settings so that you can change them and open a new element of control over your image and creativity.

The settings both your iPhone and traditional cameras use are

ISO

Shutter Speed

Aperture

These three settings control the exposure of the image.

Exposure is how much light hits the sensor and shows up in the photo.

Here’s what each one does in a nutshell:

Aperture controls the amount of light entering the lens. The aperture is controlled by a diaphragm in the lens that adjusts its width based on the f-stop being used. The higher the f-number, the smaller the aperture opening, and the less light coming into the lens.

Shutter speed controls the duration of light that reaches the sensor. It’s controlled by a curtain in front of the camera’s sensor. A fast shutter speed means that the curtain opens and closes quickly, thus minimizing how long the sensor is exposed to light.

ISO is responsible for the sensitivity of the camera’s sensor to light. The higher the ISO, the more sensitive the sensor becomes.

Let’s start with aperture…

The size of the aperture impacts the depth of field in the photos you take. The depth of field refers to the area of the image that’s in focus.

If you want a shallow depth of field with a blurry background as seen in this portrait, you want to use a large aperture.

The confusing part for many people is that the size of the aperture is inversely related to the f-stop number, meaning, a large aperture is indicated by a small f-number.

So, f/2 is a very large aperture while f/16 is a very small aperture.

When it comes to shutter speed, it controls how movement is captured in a photo.

Shutter speed is measured in fractions of a second, like 1/30 seconds, 1/100 seconds, 1/500 seconds, and so on.

Naturally, the faster the shutter speed (i.e., 1/500 seconds), the more likely it will be that you can freeze the movement of a moving target, as shown above.

Conversely, if you slow the shutter down, you’ll begin to see motion blur appear in the photo.

The last element, ISO, controls how much digital noise is in the shot.

Digital noise looks like film grain, and it can add a grittiness to your images, as seen above.

ISO is measured on a scale that extends from about 100-6400 on most entry-level cameras, though the scale can extend much, much further.

The higher the ISO you use, the more grain will be evident in the photo’s that you take.