Welcome to Art 256: Creativity & Composition in Photography

These pages are provided as an outline for Art 256: Creativity & Composition in Photography. At right you will find links to the material covered each week throughout the course, as well as links to each weeks assignments, distributed via Adobe PDF files. Though this site is updated frequently, all materials and assignments are subject to change at Instructor’s (Todd Roeth’s) discretion.

Things to know, remember, and understand.

This material is a supplement to class and does not replace class attendance and participation. For more information regard attendeance policies, please refer to the Marietta Student Handbook.

Assignments for class are assigned on a weekly basis, and delivered as printable .pdf documents available at right. Due dates are assigned in class.

Required Materials

This class relies on pratical and empirical knowledge of photography and the process of seeing, and then making photographs. For this class students will need to purchase the following:

TextBook:

The Photograph, Oxford History of Art by Graham Clarke is the class textbook. Required readings from this book will be assigned weekly throughout most of the semester.

Holga Camera

A Holga 120N camera and at least 8 rolls of compatible 120 Color Negative Film.

35mm SLR Camera with a mininum of 1 lens

The second half of the semester, students will continue to explore photography with the use of a 35mm film or digital Single Lens Relflex camera. The 35mm camers must be Single Lens Relflex (SLR) – film or digital – and allow for total manual operation. Any compatible lenses will work. It is best to have acess to 2 lenses or 1 zoom lens, in order to experiment with differnt focal lengths later in the semester.

Some suggested makes and models can be found used at good prices:
• Canon AE1

• Pentax MX

Obtaining an appropriate and approved SLR is required. Students will need an estimate of 10 rolls of 35mm color negative film.

Epson Ink Cartridges

Each Assignment will need to be submitted to professional standards. Proper printing, trimming, and folding (when appropriate) is required for sucessful outcomes. Class assignments submitted for grade can be outputed to the Epson 1280 Printers available in the Classroom.

Students will be responsible for buying their own ink. Ink needs to be brought to class when needed. Students are responsible for loading and unloading their own ink from the printers. It is recommended that students store and carry their ink cartridges in an index card box.

Other Places to Buy Epson 1280 Ink

Information about Epson 1280 Printers

Handout

Read: Epson Ink Cartridge Handling [.pdf]

Photo Paper

Students will be required to submit a final lortfolio of printed images. Images will be printed on the Epson Classroom printers. Suggested Paper sizes and finishes are as follows:

Epson Matte Heavyweight Photo Paper.

Flickr

Flickr is an online photosharing service. This class will be using flickr to show student work and submit for formal reveiw and grading.

› In order to contribure to flickr, and this class, a free membership is required.

› Once joined, students need to join the Marietta College Photo Group

› Students may post as many images as they please to thier personal site. (20 Mb Limit per month. A Pro account can be purchased that allows for more space.)

› To submit an image for grading, it must be added to the Marietta College Photo Group.

› There is a limit to 2 images per week that a student can submit to the Group. Use good judgement and learn to edit your photos according the information shared in class and by peer feedback.

In-Class

Join flickr and the Marietta College Photo Group, and explore the website after logging in.

In-Class

Slideshow of introductory images, a brief overview of photographic styles, uses, and outcomes.

View Slideshow: Introductory Images

Assignment: Explore Flickr, and find 5 images that make an impact on you. Copy those files to the Student Server. Be prepare to speak in class about your choices.

Photography, when studied as a language, is perhaps the most impactful and purest form of communication: it trandscends verbal and written language, objectifies both time and space, and is at the same time both art and fact; both beauty and information.

In Class

Review student picks from Flickr, and discuss student’s persoanl connection to the image and evaulate images according to Creative Devices.

Photography’s Purpose

First and foremost, in both a historical and conceptual sense, photographs are used to record time and place. Though visual art has always transformed three-dimensional space into two dimensions, photography, for the first time in written history, has married science and art to create mechanically accurate but humanly emotional archive of time.

Record

Photography’s greatest power it to document and archive our human experience. From it’s earliest uses, photographic image making turned memory into an object.

Communicate

Soon after the invention of the camera, photographers began recognizing the power of photography. As camera technolgy became smaller – and thus – moblile, photography became a means of storytelling; bringing images of the world back to an audience who otherwise could not witness the events being photographed.

Express

As our understanding of Photography evolved, so too did our use of it. Narritive themes, social and political commentary, and personal expression all became and remains motives and subject matter for photographers.

Photographer Focus: Man Ray

Born: Emmanuel Radnitzky, August 27, 1890 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Died: November 18, 1976.

Man Ray was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Categorized as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements. He is best known in the art world for his avant-garde photography, namely, the technique that bears his namesake, the ‘Rayograph’.”

Man Ray’s interpretation of the image making technique called a Pictogram was indicative of the “anti-art” spirit of Dadaism, a cultural movement that peaked during WW I. Like many Dada works of art, Man Ray’s Rayographs instilled a sense of parody. By making photographs without a camera, he begged the cultural and artistic questions to redefine what a “photograph” is, and how they are made.

Printed in a darkroom on photographic paper, a photogram is created by placing opaque objects on the unexposed paper before using a photographic enlarger or other controlled light source to expose the uncovered paper, creating a silhouetted print.

Man Ray also produced major works in a variety of media and considered himself a painter above all. He was also a renowned fashion and portrait photographer, and exuded the quintessential eclecticism of artists persona, counting many influential Dada and Surrealist artists of the era as friends: Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dali, and Georges Braque.

Slideshow: Man Ray Images

OTHER LINKS
Official Man Ray Licensing Archive
George Eastman House Still Photograph Archive

Class Reading: Chapter #1 & #2

Assignment: Create a ‘Scanograph’. Assignment #1 [.pdf]

Handout: Basic Scanning Tips

The history of Photography is nearly synomous with the history of the Camera. The following timeline outlines a brief list of benchmarks in the last 160 years of camera technology and those who have used them.

Handout: Photographic History [.pdf]

11th Century: The Camera Obscura

The camera obsucra had been discovered by accident in Egypt. (Though it’s optical properties were observed by Aristotle during a solar eclipse). It soon had come into practice giving artists and craftsman the ability to project a daylight scene onto a two dimensional flat plane to trace. Using a small opening into a dark room (or large box) an image from the outside environment would be projected in inverse on the backside of the room, much like a rudimentary projector. Further developments over the centuries (Leonardo DaVinci gave clear examples in his notebooks in 1490) implemented mirrors and smaller, portable boxes to project scenes onto flat traceable surfaces.

These devices did not create an image, only provided the means of converting a three dimensional daylight scene into a projected flat surface.

The fundametnals of a Camera Obscura

Wooden Box Camera Obscuras

Camera Obscura Illustration

1826: Joseph Nicéphore Niépce makes the first photograph.

From his windowsill in Paris France, he used a wooden camera invented by two brothers; Charles and Vincent Chevalier. Niépce called his process “heliography”, meaning “sun writing”. The exposure time require is an issue still debated today, somewhere between 8 and 20 hours. Because of the incredibly long exposure time, the process was used to photograph buildings and inanimate objects, but could not be practically used to photograph people.

Niépce’s first photograph

1835: The first practical photographic process was invented by Louis Daguerre.

Named the daguerreotype, this process was a postive image that could not be duplicated nor reprinted. William Fox Talbot perfected a different process, the calotype, in 1840. Both used a sensitized plate or sheet of paper placed in front of the viewing screen to record the image. Focusing was generally via sliding boxes. Soon a new industry, portrait photography became vogue for the upper class gentry who could afford them.

An early Daguerreotype

1840: Frederick Scott Archer developed the Wet Plate Process

This advancment cut exposure times dramatically, allowing for a wider range of subjects, but required photographers to prepare glass plates with light sensitive chemicals in a dark room prior to making the exposure.

The photographic process during the American Civil War

1877: Dry Plate development eclipsed Wet plates

The Dry Plate process could be done far in advnce of loading the camera, allowing photographers to take commercially made plates of the shelf and load them into cameras. This was the precursor to modern film, and allowed for a proliferation of camera designs, some small enough to be handheld.

Dry Plate Process Outlined

Eastman’s Dry Plate Development: Timeline

1888: George Eastman offers the first film camera

Preloaded with 100 exposures worth of celluloid film, he called his camera the “Kodak”. The camera needed to be sent back to the factory for processing and reloading when the roll was finished. It was a simple camera with a fixed-focus lens and single shutter speed, which along with its relatively low price appealed to the average consumer.

In 1900, Eastman took mass-market photography one-step further with the Brownie, a simple and very inexpensive box camera that introduced the concept of the snapshot. The Brownie was extremely popular and various models remained on sale until the 1960s.

The Brownie Camera Collection

Koak Company History

1920’s: The invention of 35mm film leads to new cameras

35mm film was invented 1892 by William Dickson and Thomas Edison, using film stock supplied by George Eastman. The photographic film is cut into strips 1 3/8 inches or 35 mm wide — hence the name. German Oskar Barnack built the first 35mm camera in 1914, though further development was delayed for several years by World War I. Leitz test-marketed the design between 1923 and 1924, receiving enough positive feedback that the camera was put into production as the Leica I (for Leitz camera) in 1925. The 35mm film format became the most popular film used in cameras for the rest of the 1900’s. Though Eastman’s brownie camera models, with their roll film remained popular format of choice for mass-market cameras, 35mm cameras became affordable before the Second World War.

1930’s: The fledgling Japanese camera industry began to take off

In 1936 the Canon 35mm rangefinder was released. It was an improved version of the 1933 Kwanon prototype, and Japanese cameras would begin to become popular in the West after Korean War veterans and soldiers stationed in Japan brought them back to the United States and elsewhere.

1947: The Single Lens Reflex camera (SLR)

This invention was developed in the 1930’s, but did not gain wide appeal until further refinement after WWII. The first major post-war SLR innovation was the eye-level viewfinder, which first appeared on the Hungarian Duflex in 1947 and was refined in 1948 with the Contax S, the first camera to use a pentaprism, a mirror system to bend light coming through the lens into a viewfinder above the lens in the back of the camera.

SLR Cameras at eBay

1948: Polariod Cameras Debut

While conventional cameras were becoming more refined and sophisticated, an entirely new type of camera appeared on the market in 1948. This was the Polaroid Model 95, the world’s first viable instant-picture camera. These cameras were relatively high priced and were not marketed to the general public until 1965, when consumer a priced consumer priced model, the Polaroid Swinger was released. It was a huge success and remains one of the top-selling cameras of all time.

Polaroid Company History

1975: Cameras continue to evolve

Texas Instruments designed a filmless analog camera in 1972, but it is not known if it was ever built. The first recorded attempt at building a digital camera was by Steve Sasson, an engineer at Eastman Kodak. It used the then-new solid-state CCD chips developed by Fairchild Semiconductor in 1973. The camera weighed 8 pounds, recorded black and white images to a cassette tape, had a resolution of .01 mega pixel (10,000 pixels), and took 23 seconds to capture it’s first image in December of 1975. The prototype camera was a technical exercise, not intended for production, and it still existed as of 2005.

The Origins of the Digital Camera

1982: The Holga Perhaps a corruption of the Cantonese phrase ho gwong, meaning “very bright”, the Holga is a very inexpensive, medium format box camera appreciated for its low-fidelity aesthetic. The Holga originated in Hong Kong in 1982, and used 120 film, the most widely available film in China at that time. The camera was originally intended to provide an inexpensive mass-market camera for working-class Chinese in order to record family portraits and events. The Holga’s cheap construction, combined with poor quality materials and simple meniscus lens often yields pictures that display vignetting, blur, light leaks, and other distortions. The often bizarre photographic results of these effects have ironically popularized the camera with an international audience, and Holga photos have won numerous awards and competitions in art and news photography.

A Holga Overview

1991: Digital Capture and Transimission

The early adopters tended to be in the news media, where the cost was negated by the utility and the ability to transmit images by telephone lines. The poor image quality was offset by the low resolution of newspaper graphics. This capability to transmit images without a satellite link was useful during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and the first Gulf War in 1991.

The Digital Journalist: Images of the Gulf War

The first true digital camera that recorded images as a computerized file was likely the Fuji DS-1P of 1988, which recorded to a 16MB internal memory card that used a battery to keep the data in memory. This camera was never marketed in the United States. The first commercially available digital camera was the 1991 Kodak DCS-100, the beginning of a long line of professional SLR cameras by Kodak that were based in part on film bodies, often Nikons. It used a 1.3 mega pixel sensor and was priced at $13,000.

1999: The Digital SLR

saw the introduction of the Nikon D1; a 2.74 mega pixel camera that was the first digital SLR developed entirely by a major manufacturer, and at a cost of under $6,000 at introduction was affordable by professional photographers and high-end consumers. This camera also used Nikon F-mount lenses, which meant film photographers could use many of the same lenses they already owned.

2003 saw the introduction of the Canon Digital Rebel, also known as the 300D; a 6-mega pixel camera and the first DSLR priced under $1,000, and marketed to consumers.

The Relationship between Photography & Cameras

There are few examples in history where an artform is so closely related to technology and industrial enterprise. The photographic medium has always been in flux, with each generation of photographers grappling with past, current, and future forms of image making.

Above and beyond the act of making a photograph, there is always the concept, the reason, and the essense of image making. It has existed without interference from the constanlty changing camera industry. Impactful images resonate and stir our human psyche because of how they communicate messages to our hearts and minds; they are timelss and trandscend the optics of the camera. They move us by the skill and vision of the photographer, not by what camera was used.

Class Reading: Chapter #3

Origins

The Holga is a very inexpensive, medium format box camera appreciated for its low-fidelity aesthetic. The Holga originated in Hong Kong in 1982, and used 120 film, the most widely available film in China at that time. The camera was originally intended to provide an inexpensive mass-market camera for working-class Chinese in order to record family portraits and events. The Holga’s cheap construction, combined with poor quality materials and simple meniscus lens often yields pictures that display vignetting, blur, light leaks, and other distortions. The often bizarre photographic results of these effects have ironically popularized the camera with an international audience.

Download & Read: Holga User’s Guide

120 Film

120 is the film students will use with their Holga cameras for this class. It is a film format introduced by Kodak for their Brownie No. 2 in 1901, and is still available, though lesser known to most consumers, as 35mm film is the near exclusive film format used today with film based cameras.

120 film is a medium format film and is used in many professional grade cameras (Hassleblad, Mamiya, Pentax). Its large size (2.466” length, 0.990” unrolled) yeilds a far bigger negative than 35mm film, thereby allowing far bigger enlargemtns with much greater and finer detail.

Depending on the use of the Holga’s interior mask, or any modifications, Holga cameras produce an image of either 6”x4.5” (with the mask) or a square approximately 6”x6”, and allows for 12 exposures per roll.

Photographer Focus: You!

Get to know your camera. Learn the visual character and nuances of your individual Holga, and learn the coordination of handling film. Experiment with your shooting techniques, and learn to translate what you see into what the camera sees. Learn to look, and remember: there is no such thing as a mistake when using a Holga.

OTHER LINKS
David Niles Holga Gallery
Mark Sink (Nudes, New York City, Bridges)
Holga Photography on Flickr

In-Class

Campus Walkabout: Unpackage film and load cameras, and explore campus with cameras.Students are given 1 hour shoot 1 roll of film, before returning as a class to unload film.

Denotative vs. Connotative Imagery

Every string photograph has two levels of communication; The denotative, or literal, and the connotative- or what the photo means.

Denotative

The denotative is the literal meaning of an image. This type of understanding of an image is the superficial or literal visual meaning. A portrait of a woman is a portrait of a woman. The denotative meaning does not take into account symbolic meaning, cultural messages, or any type of message beyond the physical objects in the photo.

Conotative

The conotative is the implied meaning of an image. This type of understanding of a photograph requires a deeper understanding and observation of what the image means. A portrait of a woman is a portrait of a woman. But if the portrait is The Migrant Mother, by Dorthea Lange then the message of the image is not just the denotative meaning, but also the connative: a statement of motherhood, of adversity, hardship, of character, and ultimatley a symbolic representation of an entire era of American History, The Great Depression.

Class Reading: Chapter #5

Assignment: Marietta College. Photo-assignment #2 [.pdf]

Photoshop Basics for Toning & Touching Up Scans

Document Size vs. Target Size

When scanning your film (120 or 35mm sizes) be sure to distinguish between your document size and the target size.

• Document Size: Is the size of the area on the scanner that is being scanned. This size is determined by the size of your selection square in the Preview window.

• Target Size: This size determines how big the image will be scanned into Photoshop. For class requirements, this size should be at least 8” on the shortest side, at 360 ppi. The image size should be bigger than your final size, to accommodate any cropping that may be done.

Image Rotation

To rotate your image after it is scanned, or to flip the image horizontally, (if the negative was laid on the scanner upside down): Image>Rotate Canvas

The Crop Tool

Use the crop tool to trim away any area along the edges of your image. For class assignments, all images are required to be full frame. (Uncropped.) When using the crop tool, be sure that all presets in the Options bar are cleared. This will allow you to crop your image without resizing or changing the resolution.

The Clone Stamp Tool

Often when images are scanned on a flatbed scanner, small dust specs will appear in the image as small white markings. These need to be removed using the Clone Stamp Tool. To use select an area near the dust spot that can bu used to cover up the spot. Option + Click on the area to sample the pixels. The paint the sampled area onto the dust spot. When used delicately at very small brush sizes, the tool will remove all of your dust from the scan.

Level & Curves Adjustments

To correct and adjust the exposure of your scan, use either the Levels or the Curves Adjustment: Image>Adjustments>

Read: The Difference between Curves & Levels

Portrait Photography

Of all reasons and motivations to make photographs, taking pictures of people has always been the most popluar. Portrait photography was immedeatly made into the first commercially viable means of using a camera, and was paramount in the early years of photography and it’s developing industry; and still drives photography in both commercial and artistic aspects today.

Portrait photography flourished among the gentry class in the decades immedialty following the birth of Nicéphore Niépce’s camera 1826. Portait photography began to steal the market of portriat painting, which until the mid 1800’s was a luxury available on the wealthy. With the camera’s “immediate” image, (relative to a sitting for a portrait painting: exposure times lasted as long as 30 seconds, hence the stoic and rigid postures and expressions in early portraits) and is cheaper cost, portraits became more accessible to the upper middle class of France and to a lesser extent in England ( where Louis Daguerre, inventor of the era’s most popular process, the Daguerreotype, controlled the practice with a patent). Soon after, portrait photography became a vialbe profession in America during the Industrial Revolution.

Contemporary Portraiture

Taking Photographs of people has been intrepreted and reinvented through the 20th century. So too has it’s uses. Portrait Photography has always had commercial value, but has also found strong and impactful use in fashion, journalistic, social and historical documentary, and fine art contexts.

Photographer Focus: Mary Ellen Mark

Born, March 20, 1940 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

-From the introduction of Mary Ellen Mark’s: Portraits
(1995, Motta Fotografia, Italy.)

OTHER LINKS
Salon.com Article, March 2000. Article, March 2000.
University School of Journalism & Communication

Class Reading: Chapter #6

Assignment: The Portrait Photo-assignment #3 [.pdf]

Of all the subject matter photographed by people, the compostitons and techniques used in landscape photography have had the most influnce from classical painting.

Light

At it’s visual essence, landscape photography is a statement of light. Light illuminates, thereby defineing space. Without strong, dramatic (dramatic does not always always bright) light, landscape paintings – and photographs – will suffer.

More Paintings by Albert Bierstadt

Landscape Photography in America

Like all photography, (and like all art) images are a reflection of the people and ideas of their time. Landscape photography reached is full development in America during the second half of the 1800’s. The ideas and sprit of exploration and settlement was reflected in the photographs of many American Landscape photograpers. Timothy O’Sullivanand Edward Weston most notably photographed the westward expansion of the United States. Landscape photography of the era was a direct and literal expression of America’s new concept of ‘owning’ land. To photograph landscapes was an expression of conquest and ownership, that very much supported the national ideals in the late 1800’s.

Edward Weston

Class Reading: Chapter #4

Assignment: Photo-assignment4.pdf

Holga cameras are classified as ‘toy cameras’. They are made to play with. There are many modifications and experiments you can try to create more intriguing and unique images.

As we learned in the brief historical overiew of photography – photographers skill and their awareness of their cameras go hand in hand. Holgas are one of the simplest cameras available.

Holga Modifications

There are several tricks photographers have learned and have shared. Some are have purchased and modified Holgas for sale, and others have developed methods you can try on your own Holga.

Some modify the Holga to ‘improve’ on it’s design, while others deliberaty ‘ruin’ it. What do you consider is the difference? What do regrard as a successful image?

Suggestions and Ideas

Holga-ramas (These are easy and fun.)

Store bought gadgets to tweak your Holga

How to Tune Up your Holga Lens

How to Make your Holga Lens Even Worse

How to use 35mm film in your Holga

Class Reading: Chapters 9 & 10

Class Assignment: Photo-assignment5.pdf

For students using SLR cameras which require film, the following information outlines the basic information continuing in this course. It is also important for those shooting with digital equipment as well, because many film metaphors have remained in the controls and concepts of digital cameras.

Film Types Used for Class

The class will shoot 35mm Color Print (Negative) Film, processed using C-41 chemistry, scan, tone and post each weeks assignemt work to their respective Flickr pages. This is the same process as shooting with Holgas, but with a different medium and new options for processing and scanning.

Shooting with SLR camera opens up a whole set of controls, and thus knowledge to sucessfully make the images you want, and at the quality demanded, requires a strong understanding of technical concepts.

Film Speed

There are several options for film speeds in 35mm filmstock. Each speed, regardless of brand is rated using the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) giving consistant properties of all film rated with the same speeds.

What Does Film Speed Measure?

Film speed measures the film’s sensitivity to light.

Film speeds are measured numerically. The lower the ISO number, the less sensitive the film is to light. Conversly,the higher the ISO number, the more sensitive the film is to light. Film speeds are rated by numbers that double in increments as follows:

25, 50, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200,...

What Does Film Speed Mean?

The speed of your film directly relates to environment and your time of day you want to photograph.

Higher film speeds (‘faster film’) are more sensitive to light, meaning you need less light to make a properly exposed image. This means high film speeds (800, 1600,...) can be used late in the day, or after sunset, or indoors.

Lower film speeds (‘slower film’) are less sensitive to light, meaning you need more light to make a properly exposed image. This means low film speeds (100, 200) will allow for images only in very bright environments- midday sun, open sky.

What Does Film Speed Really Mean?

There are counter-effects to film speeds. If there were not, every photographer would only use ‘fast film’ so they could shoot in many more (and darker) situations that ‘slow film’ allows.

The consequence of faster film speed is this: with increasing sensitivity to light (higher ISO ratings), film looses it’s quality – images increase in ‘grain’ as the film speeds rise. However, ‘fast film’ can be used in lower light scenes, and is therefore a more realsitic film speed to often use.

The consequence of slower fllm speed is this: with decreasing sensitivity to light, (lower ISO ratings), film gains quality – less grain and better color saturation. However, “slow film” demands much more light (more exposure).

Where to Buy 35mm Film

There are several places locally and online to buy film. It is reccommended to try different film speeds in different scenarios to add to your photographic experience and education.

B&H Photo, 35mm Color Print Film

B&H Photo, 35mm Archival Negative Storage

Where to Process 35mm Film

Your film can be processed at any Color Processing Lab. With the exception of one assignment, you will not need prints. Processing only is required. Some suggested locations are:

O’Brians
› +1 740 373 6737
› 9am-5pm: M-F, 9am-4am: Saturday
› Processsing = $2.00/roll
› Photo CD = $5.00
› Same Day Service

CVS Pharmacy
› +1 740 373 2961
› 8am-10pm: Everyday
› Processing = $2.50/roll
› Photo CD = Only available by mail order, 2-3 days.
› Same day Service

Hammond’s Foto 1
› +1 304 295 9240
› 8am-10pm: M,F – 10am-6pm: T,W,Th – 10am-5pm: Saturday
› Processing = $2.00/roll
› Photo CD = Not available
› Same day Service

In combination with Film Speed, aperture and shutter speed are the two controls used to determine the proper exposure for any given scene.

As with all things in Photography, there is in inverse relationship between aperture and shutter speed; in order to maintian balance (proper exposure), as one of these controls rises, the other needs to lower.

Aperture

The aperture controls the amount of light that enters a camera. Apertures exist in the lenses of cameras, and are usually controlled by a dial on the barrel of the lens, or via a dial on the body of electrically circuted and digital cameras. Regardless of where the aperture is controlled, they are always measured with the same numbers, called f stops

f/ 2.0
f/ 2.8
f/ 4
f/ 5.6
f/ 8
f/ 11
f/16
f/ 22

The smaller the aperture number (f stop), the bigger the opening. In other words, the smaller the f-stop, the more light shines on the film.

Depth of Field

A secondary property of aperture settings is the Depth of Field created by different f-stops. The Depth of Field is not the focus, but more sublte, the distance in front of and behind the plane of focus.

Read: Aperture Explained

Shutter Speed

In addition to the amount of light controlled by the aperture, the duration of light determined by the shutter speed is the other method by which to control an exposure.

In short, the faster the shutter speed, the less light shines on the film. The less light that shines on the film, the darker the exposure. Shutter speeds are measured in fractions of seconds as such:

1/4000
1/2000
1/1000
1/500
1/250
1/100
1/60
1/30
1/15
1/8
1/4
1/2
1”
2”
B

Stop Action vs. Motion Blur

A secondary property of shutter speeds are their ability to “freeze” action within the exposure with a fast shutter speed, and inversly, “blur” motion with a slow shutter speed.

Read: Shutter Speed Tediously Explained

Camera Shake

A note on using slow shutter speeds: Slower shutter speeds will blur any fast moving objects in your image. An (almost always) undesirable side-effect of using slow shutter speeds is that any motion you cause in the camera will yield an entirely blurry image due to camera shake. When you hand hold a camera, any shutter speed slower 1/60 will begin to show any movement of the camera you may cause during the exposure. Solution: Use a tripod or other means to rest your camera in a stationary position

Light Meter

Within your viewfinder, either below or beside the framed image will be your camera’s light meter. Light meters are designed differently among SLR’s, but all are made to provide feedback by evaluating the scene you are composing and giving you feedback, in terms of either aperture and/or shutter speed to help you properly compose your image.

Read: Kodak: Accurate Exposure with Your Meter

Exposure Settings Examined

1/6400 sec. @ f/2.5

1/30 sec. @ f/22

This slow shutter speed not only blurs Prada, it also creates camera shake. Note how even at a very small aperture the image is still overexposed due to the lengthy exposure time.

The focal length of lenses used on cameras has the single most effect on the outcome of image making. Not only does the focal length used determine the perspective of the image (Angle of View), it also intrinsically controls the depth of field.

About Lens Lengths

The length between the plane of the film in the camera and the focusing glass element in the lens is called the ‘Focal Length’.

Lenses of shorter focal length are called wide-angle lenses, while longer focal length lenses are called telephoto lenses.

Generally, wide angle lenses are faster lenses, and offer a greater depth of field. Conversely, telephoto lenses use more light (because they in essence ‘magnify the light’) and are generally ‘slower’ lenses. Telephoto lenses also inherently yeild a lower depth of field.

Wide angle lenses

Wide angles lenses are those with smaller focal lengths. Common wide-angle lenses for a full-frame 35mm camera are 35, 28, 24, 21, 18 and 14 mm. These lenses will produce a more or less rectilinear image at the film plane (though some degree of barrel distortion is not uncommon here).

Normal lenses

In still photography, a normal lens is a lens whose focal length is roughly equivalent to the diagonal of the image projected within the camera. This roughly approximates the perspective perceived by the human vision. a 50mm lens is generally considered to be the ‘normal’ lens on a 35mm camera.

Telephoto lenses

Telephoto lenses are ‘long lenses’ whose focal lengths range from 70mm upwards (85mm, 100mm, 200mm, 300mm… ). By compressing space (and thus depth of field) the subjects can appear closer to the camera and appear with a reduced Angle of View.

The Speed of lenses

Wide angle lenses are able to be made with bigger apertures (‘faster’ because you can open to a bigger aperture and there for use a ‘faster’ shutter speed) than telephoto lenses. This is mainly due to the larger amounts of light required to ‘magnify’ the light in longer lenses.

Zoom vs. Telephoto

Zoom lenses refer to an lens whose focal lenght can be adjusted. The confusion between these two terms is usually because many Telephoto lenses are also Zoom lenses (70mm – 200mm lens).

Some Zoom lenses, especially with a wide zoom range, often have a variable aperture. This means that when your Zoom lens is at it’s widest focal lenght it will have a bigger aperture avaialble that when the zoom lens is fully extended. (Remember, longer focal lengths require more light, so they do not have large apertures, so they cannot ‘open up’ as much, and are therefore ‘slower’ lenses.)

Focal Lengths Examined

The following images were made with the same shutter speed and aperture, all while standing in the same place. Notice the reduction in Depth of Field as the focal length increases.

20mm

1/200 sec @ f/5.0

50mm

1/200 sec @ f/5.0

In photography (and cinematography) a normal lens is a lens that generates images that are generally held to have a “natural” perspective compared with lenses with longer or shorter focal lengths.

Consequently 50mm lenses are often the ‘fastest’. Some 50mm lenses can be as fast as f/1.0

70mm

1/200 sec @ f/5.0

100mm

1/200 sec @ f/5.0

200mm

1/200 sec @ f/5.0

White Balance

The human eye adjusts it’s exposure (by dilating or contracting the pupil) subconsciously. It also adjusts very well a wide variety of color casts created by various types of light sources.

There are three main color sources in the minds of photogrphers:
• Daylight (Sunlight, Natural Light)
• Indoor Light (Tungsten)
• Flourecent Light

Each light not only has different qualites but each light soruce also has differnt color temperatures. These different temperatures create different color casts. While our eyes are able to adjust by themselves, photographers need to be consous of the light in a scene and adjust accordingly. This requires changing to the proper light balanced film, or adjusting the *white balance on digital cameras.

White Balance Effects

Incorrectly color balanced photos will have a strong color shift.

• Daylight (Sunlight, Natural Light) = Blue Color Cast
• Indoor Light (Tungsten) = Orange/Warm Color Cast
• Flourecent Light = Green Color Cast

Natural light with indoor (tungsten) white balance: 1/15 @ f5.6; ISO 320. Additionally, note that the image properly exposed the light in the window, forceing the darker foreground inside to be underexposed.

Natural light with a proper daylight white balance: 1/15 @ f4; ISO 800. In this image, note that the foreground inside was properly exposed, forcing the brighter areas of the scene in the window to be overexposed.