Shutter Speed

Shutter speed refers to the amount of time that your image sensor is exposed to light. Refer back to my earlier post on the anatomy of a DSLR, and you’ll see that the shutter is in front of the image sensor. So, the “faster” your shutter speed, the less time light (which is the image) is hitting the image. “Slower” shutter speeds, means that the image sensor is exposed for a longer period of time.

Shutters are normally very fast… fractions of a second. That’s all the light you need to make a photo. Shutter speeds range from about 1/6000^th of a second to about 8 seconds. The light you have available to take a picture, determines how you set your shutter speed. 8 seconds, (denoted 8” on the back of the camera) would be used for incredibly low light (ie, Taking pictures of the stars). 1/6000^th of a second (denoted 6000 on the back of the camera) would be used for taking pictures when there is a lot of light available (ie, middle of the day, pointed at the sun).

Under normal, daytime conditions, I shoot in the range of 1/60^th to 1/3200^th of a second. I generally try to use the fastest speed that the light will allow. The faster the shutter, the less chance I will cause the image to be blurry by shaking the camera. This type of blur is called “motion blur”, and causes everything in your pictures to appear out of focus. If I’m going to hand-hold my camera (not use a tripod), I won’t set it below 1/60^th of a second. It is next to impossible to hold still enough at this speed.

Take a look at the three photos below to see the effects of shutter speed. I’ve kept all the variables the same (Subject, time of day, aperture, white balance, iso camera location) except shutter speed.

This image has the “fastest” shutter speed. 1/2500^th of a second.

This image is a little slower. 1/2500^th of a second.

This is the slowest image 1/800^th of a second.

Notice that the photos get darker the faster the shutter speed is. This is because less light is hitting the sensor. 1/2500^th of a second’s worth of light vs. 1/800^th of a second.

So, when shooting in the manual mode, I set the aperture, and then adjust the shutter speed until the image is exposed properly. The camera will also do this automatically for you if you shoot in Aperture Priority Mode.

Using Autofocus

The ability for a camera to automatically focus is awesome. The fact that your camera can look at an object, determine if it is sharp enough, and change the focus blows me away every time. When I first got my DSLR cameras, one thing I’ve noticed is that it was unpredictable on what it would focus on. I’d look through the viewfinder, and want to focus on the person in my shot, and it would focus on some leaf in the foreground. Or it would focus on the closest person instead of the person in the middle. Turns out, my Nikon has some settings for the focus mode that I didn’t know about. The factory had it set to focus on the closest object, regardless of where it was. This wasn’t working for me, because I didn’t always want the closest object in focus.

What I’ve done to simplify my life and make my autofocus only focus on what is in the direct center of my viewfinder. Looking through my Nikon, (D40) I have an indicator that looks like:





These boxes are the focus area indicators. I’ve changed the settings in the back menu (check your manual to see what menu), so that only the center square is put in focus.

I know what you are saying, “what if I don’t want the center to be in focus, what if I want something on the right or left to be in focus. I that case you put the item you want to focus on in the center brackets, press the shutter button half way down and then re-compose you image. This blog talks about some of the other features of autofocusing that I won’t rewrite here: http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/d80/af-settings.htm

I also noticed that sometimes the camera wouldn't focus, it just kept searching, and never finds a focus distance. The autofocus in your camera uses lines of contrast to focus. So you need to look at the edge of an object to get the camera to focus. It you are trying to focus on something all the same color, the camera won’t know how to make it sharp

Becoming Master of Your Domain: Camera Modes

One of the first things that new camera owners start to play with on their DSLR is the little Mode Dial on the top of the camera:

Nikon



Canon


Everyone is always tempted to just put it on Auto, and leave it, but here’s what these different Mode Dial symbols mean (I’m going to focus on Nikon and Canon):

Nikon	Canon
P	P	Program Mode: this is almost automatic, but allows you to change a couple settings like ISO and white balance. It is a way to override some of the decisions your camera’s auto sensor is making.
S	Tv	Shutter Priority: You chose the shutter speed, and the camera selects an appropriate aperture value. This is a semi-auto mode, but it is great for getting a specific effect. For example, it you want to get a crystal clear picture of a track runner, you need a fast shutter speed to stop the runner. Otherwise you will get a blur. In this mode, you set the shutter speed fast, and the camera picks the appropriate aperture to get enough light.
A	Av	Aperture Priority: You chose the aperture value, and the camera selects an appropriate shutter speed. This is a semi-auto mode, but it is great for getting a specific effect. For example, it you want to take a “selective focus” picture of a flower (flower in focus, background out of focus) you need a wide aperture (low f-number). This will put the flower in crisp focus, and have the background all out of focus. The camera then compensates with the correct shutter speed to let the right amount of light in.
M	M	Manual: Allows everything to be set by the user. I shoot most of the time in this mode.
Auto	Green Box (Auto)	Auto: “photography for dummies”. This setting uses the camera’s image sensor to decide all settings. It usually gets close, but I’ve found that I can usually do a better job controlling brightness, white balance, and shooting style using the Auto Mode
Icon	Icon	Scene Select: the second half of the camera mode dial has little pictures on it that are meant to specify a shooting scenario. They basically change some of the pre-set features for each scene type. I find them useless.

Buying Guide - Pro level D-SLR’s

If you have a few thousand dollars to spend, and really want to look like you know what you are doing, I’d recommend you look into a pro level DSLR. To be totally honest, I don’t have the cash for these, so I’m probably not the best person to offer advice. What I can say are a few of the benefits:
• Higher Mexapixel – More sensors in the camera means higher resolution images
• Better in low light – These cameras look better at higher ISO’s
• Better Kit lenses – they pack these into the costs
• More buttons, and dials – the camera body is bigger so they fit in things like LCD displays, separate aperture and shutter speed controls, white balance buttons, etc.
• Video – some of the newer models (Canon 5D – Mark II and Nikon D90) are offering video capabilities.

Along with the higher price tag, these cameras are bigger and weigh more, so be prepared to carry a heavier load.

I’d strongly advise against spending this much money for your first camera. Personally, I got the cheapest camera I could to learn with. My plan is to continue using it till I’ve out grown its capabilities, then upgrade to something a little snazzier!!! But that’s just me.

Digital Zoom is a Scam

Cameras advertise that they have 15x digital zoom, which means absolutely nothing! All digital zoom does is enable the camera to blow up the picture and crop the edges. You can do the same using photo editing software on your computer or even through some print providers. (I’ll also cover this later). They say this is a big feature, and even advertise the camera as having tons of zoom. Don't fall for it. Let me show you the difference between optical zoom and digital zoom.

Here are some examples of optical zoom I stood in the same place and took pictures of this water bottle.

This image with 1x optical zoom:



This image is 3x optical zoom:



This is "real" zoom. You can notice that with the 3x optical zoom, the image is still sharp and clean. This is because it contains the same number of pixels as the 1x optical zoom.

Now, this is an example of digital digital zoom. I used the digital zoom on the camera and went to 15x:



You can see in the image, that it has lost some of its sharpness. Look under the red band of the label and you will see some jagged edges, as well as the lettering in crystal. The interesting thing is that I can produce the exact same image with the exact same sharpness by just using a crop tool on my desktop:



This picture just a crop of the picture above from 3x OPTICAL zoom. Notice how is just as sharp as the 15x digital zoom.


Please, don't be fooled by digital zoom!

Buying a point and shoot compact camera

If a camera can fit in your pocket, chances are, it is a point and shoot. These cameras are great for a night out on the town, or anytime you want to take pictures, but don’t want to lug around a heavy camera. These cameras are generally the least expensive and range in price from under a hundred to around $400. Most point and shoots purchased in the last couple years take pretty great pictures. So, you are probably asking yourself, if these cameras are the smallest and lowest price, why don’t I just stop here, why do I need anything more?

Control, control, control! As we start to get into more advanced features of the camera, it becomes important to be able to change different ‘setting’ that the camera uses to capture the image. The two biggest ones are shutter speed and aperture (don’t worry if you don’t know what those are right now, I’ll be covering them in later entries).

If you look at the controls on the point and shoot cameras,

you’ll notice that they only have an auto setting and a couple pre-sets.


They don’t allow you to individually change the shutter speed or aperture. The camera relies on its internal computer and sensors to make a decision about how these things should be set. It usually gets pretty close, but you can’t do the fine-tuning that makes your images look really fantastic. There isn’t an image sensor or camera processor that can make decisions as well as the human eye… at least not yet.

Also, interchangeable lenses! The point and shoots come with one lens that is attached to the camera. That is the only lens that you will be able to use. If you want to shoot close up pictures, wide angle, or super zoomed pictures, you are out of luck. Point and shoot cameras do have the ability to zoom, and usually say something like “3x optical zoom”. This means that you can make an image 3 times larger. However, ever other camera uses a measure of mm to denote the camera’s zoom. A typical zoom range for a point and shot with “3.8x optical zoom“ is from 28-105mm, but that is hard to gauge, because they have different starting points to do 3x. I’ll get into more detail about what those numbers mean later, but they are useful for comparison.

Also, remember that DIGITAL ZOOM IS A SCAM!!! More on this tomorrow.

Personally, I have a point and shoot that I carry around with me when I want to take some snapshots. It’s a Canon SD850IS.

I bought it two years ago and carry it around when I don’t want to deal with the bigger cameras.


Examples: Canon SD970IS, Nikon Coolpix S230, Sony Cyber-shot DSC-G3

Thanks to DPReview.com for the camera images above.

Buying a Digital Camera

If you are like me, then buying a digital camera is an overwhelming process. There are literally hundreds of cameras on the market and dozens of places to buy. Prices can range from under a hundred dollars to a several thousand. I’m not an expert on camera selection, but here is the thought process and learning I had when I selected my camera.

I’ve broken the digital camera market down into four “styles” of cameras:

1. Point and shoot compact cameras
2. Consumer model cameras with advanced settings
3. Consumer style D-SLR cameras
4. Pro level D-SLR’s

Each camera has a distinct purpose and situation that they are best suited for. The best advice I have is to choose the one that makes the most sense for your photographic needs, but that also fits in your budget. Buying the most expensive camera isn’t going to make you a better photographer. Knowing how to use the camera you have is what is most important. As the week goes on, I’ll create an entry for each segment of camera and walk you through the defining characteristics of each. I’ll also share what I bought, and why.

For now, a couple resources to check out are:

• DP Review (www.dpreview.com): Checkout the buying guide and camera database
• Consumer Reports (www.consumerreports.org): Good for reliability and feature comparison, but the site charges to see everything
• CNet Digital Cameras (www.cnet.com): This link takes you to the digital camera section. There are a lot of good reviews here.

Just a note here, I’m exclusively talking about digital cameras. If you are interested in traditional film I don’t really have any advice for you.

www.jordanldavis.com is now live

Success!!! I was able to map the domain I bought and point my blogger account to that URL. www.jordanldavis.com is now live and running.

I'm starting this blog to chronicle my experience learning to become a photographer (or at least learn how to use my camera). I've been lucky enough to have the opportunity to enroll in a photography course at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, and wanted to share that knowledge with friends and families. I'll try to distill each lesson down and post it online so that others can benefit from what I'm learning. It will start out pretty basic with camera instructions, and hopefully get more and more advanced ans my knowledge and skills improve.

I'll also try to post samples of my work and share some of the feedback I get from class reviews. Please feel free to leave me comments, I'll try to reply to them.