F-stop (f1.8???)

Aperture refers to an opening that light passes through. When talking about cameras, to get a photo, light needs to pass through a lens onto a sensor or film. So what the f-stop or f-number refers to is the size of aperture of a lens, so how much light can pass through. If you think of it like this, the bigger the opening or the bigger the aperture, the more light that can pass through.

Now, to get confusing, the way that the numbers work when referring to the f-stop is the complete opposite of what you think. To allow more light in your image, you want the aperture to be more open, the more light you want, the lower the f-stop number will be, for example from f8 down to f3.5.

Practicality!

When you use a low f-stop, you allow more light into your picture (open aperture= faster shutter= no blur/freeze the image). But due to some phenomena unknown to me, comes the term "depth of field" or DOF for all you cool kids. DOF refers to the area in the photo that will be in focus (nice, clear and sharp). When you take a photo with a low f-stop (e.g. f1.8) or really open aperture, the DOF is smaller than when you use a high f-stop (e.g. f16) or small aperture.

So, if you wanted to take a photo where an object, whether a flower or a person, is the main part of the photograph then a low f-stop will make sure that the object is in focus and the areas around it will be nice and blurry so that if someone looks at it, their eyes will be drawn to the subject and not distracted by a busy background.

If you were going to take a landscape shot, then you would want to make sure that the foreground, the middle ground and the background were all sharp and in focus, therefore i would use a high f-stop, where the DOF would be greater.

On standard lenses you usually get an aperture of around f3.5-5.6. You will usually pay more for the lower f-stop numbers from f-2.8 and lower, but they are usually very nice lenses with very good glass in them.

Once again there is a lot more to this than all I have written, but it would be best to be discussed! So please comment and let us know your own views!

Peace

Andy

Focal length...(mm?)

What the heck is focal length? When i first started getting into photography this was definitely something that tripped me up and i had no idea what it meant.

Explanation?

Basically what it is, is a number to describe what kinda zoom your gonna get with your lens. If you think of it this way, 50mm-55mm is considered to be what you see with your eyes. So, if you are looking at your computer screen, what you see is equivalent to what you would see through a camera with the lens set to 50mm.

Now, if you wanted to zoom in on that screen without physically moving closer to the screen, you could zoom in from 50mm, to a higher number-100mm and through the camera you will be closer. If you wanted to get further away from the screen then the lower the number, say 18mm, the further away it will seem and the more you will fit in the picture.

So WIDE = lower number

TELE = higher number

WIDE = further away from subject

TELE = closer to the subject

Practicality!

Lets think about why we would use these. If i wanted to get down and dirty with good ol' nature and take some shots of whatever birds might be out there, i would need to get a good telephoto lens so that while im hiding in the bushes I can take a creepy secret shot of the bird without it knowing it.

If i was taking a landscape shot or a shot of a building, instead of me running back 100metres onto the busy highway if i have a good wide angle lens then i can zoom it out and fit all the building in, or all that rockin' mountain in.

I think thats an easy way to get your head around the some of the numbers that are written around a lens...but thats not all...there will be a number on there that has an f in front of it but i'll write that in another post.

Let me know if this was at all helpful!

Peace

Andy

ISO

ISO = Sensitivity to light

What does it do?

Everyone knows the situation, your trying to take a photo, probably inside or a night and you take your shot but when you look at it the photo is all blurry. This is because the shutter has stayed open too long and the camera has moved, therefore blurring the image.

With ISO setting, you can turn the number up, which makes the sensor more sensitive to light. so, from say, 400 to 1600. This means that the shutter doesn't need to stay open as long, so you can take a sharp image, with out blurriness.

Great? Well, sort of...

although the shutter is now able to open and shut faster, when you bump the ISO up, it causes the camera to create noise in the image. The higher the ISO goes the more noise that appears in the image. This is caused by something to do with more electricity/heat being sent to the sensor. (?)

So, during the day, or when you have a lot of light use a low ISO setting, around 100. But when shooting indoors or in lower light use a higher ISO, but with a little bit more noise.

Even with the great technology in cameras today, this noise is still a problem. There are noise reduction features, but are they actually effective? Sometimes they can cut down the noise but give this weird smooth effect to your image.

I dunno, let me know what you think!

Peace

Andy

Megapixels

Ok, first off the very first thing that you will see on the tag in the camera shop is how many megapixels the camera has. There is so much debate and talk about megapixels. Basically what a megapixel is, is the size of the image. Simply put, the more megapixels, the bigger the image. When digital cameras first came out, the megapixels were very small. But as the technology has progressed the numbers have gone up and up.

Many people will say you need to have a lot of megapixels and many will say it doesn't matter. The best way to decide how many megapixels you need is to think, what are you going to use the photos for? If you are going to take photos and print them out at huge sizes, then the more megapixels the better- there will be more detail in the print. If you are going to walk around and take lots of great photos, but only ever leave them on your computer or print out postcard sizes, then you don't need so many.

Say, you have a camera that is 8 megapixels, then the company who made your camera supersedes yours with a 10 megapixel model. Should this make you want to upgrade? Nup. There are plenty reasons why you might want to upgrade a camera, but unless you need more detail, for larger sizes, megapixels probably isn't the reason why you would.

This was a very brief explanation of megapixels, but please comment and discuss your own ideas below! I wanna know what you think...

Peace

Andy

Good Morning Kids!

Welcome to the Youth Photographer Blog!

The aim of this blog is to create a community where the new generation photographers can come to the one place to share ideas, tips, gear reviews etc, etc, etc.

The basis of this idea is birthed out of the fact that there are plenty of people out there in the world who have the training and the technique and all that jazz, but since the introduction of digital photography, anyone can get their hands on a camera and take a million shots, some of which turn out pretty good...

So, where to go to find a place where the next generation of photographers can come and share ideas and discuss photography, where some "pro" isn't gonna diss you, or ramble a whole lot of technical jargon that you dont understand?

The fact is, advice from proffesionals is awesome, but times have changes, and we all have the ability to get our hands on a camera, for the love of taking photographs.

So whether you have a point-and-shoot, a DSLR or are experimenting with film; whether you are a pro, beginner or somewhere in between this blog will contain information and tips to help you and others to take great and even better photographs, in an encouraging environment.

So to all photographers out there, lets have mad fun, take photos and talk about it!

Peace

Andy- Youth Photographers