Welcome!

Hello and welcome to my blog,

This is my first blog ever so please be kind. I decided to start a blog after noticing how a lot of people are buying DSLRs these days, but only use the camera in "Auto" mode. Buying a DSLR is a great first step towards photography, and I always encourage it, but learning how to use your camera should be your second step. So I decided to write about how to use your DSLR camera and have control over your pictures. I am going to start by talking about how the cameras work, and then tell you guys about how to control the outcome.

Even if you do not intend to make money from your photography, you should still learn how to use your camera. Taking beautiful pictures is a great reward in itself and will justify the price of your DSLR. Keep one thing in mind though, learning photography takes patience and practice and trial and error is a huge part of learning. So do not give up too soon, or think it is too complicated.

Even though this blog is for beginners, I love talking about photography, so experienced and professional photographers are always welcome for discussion and input.

Feel free to ask me any questions that you may have.

See you guys soon.

How does a camera work?

Hello again, I will start off by telling you guys how a camera records pictures on to it's sensor. Once you understand this process, it will become very easy for you to understand how to change the settings to get the results you want.

Here is a diagram to show you what is going on inside a camera when you are looking through the view finder. (diagrams acquired from lnkr.net)

The red line represents light. Light travels through your lens, between the aperture blades (more on that later). The first mirror catches the light and bounces it to the second mirror on top, which reflects it on to the view finder. The shutter and the sensor are not exposed to any light at this stage.

The second diagram represents what happens when you click the shutter button. As you can see, the first mirror and the shutter snap out of the way letting the light through. The sensor captures the light and records the picture which is then saved on to a memory card. During this time, you will not be able to see anything through the view finder because the light goes straight to the sensor instead of traveling up to the view finder.

That's it! That is how a camera works.

My next post will be about aperture, so check back soon. And do not forget to ask any questions that you may have.

Have a look at what REALLY goes on inside a camera!

I posted a couple of diagrams showing how light passes through a camera. Well, the guys at Tokyo Eco Products convention decided to take it a step further and cut an actual Nikon DSLR in half. its a Nikon D3 and 14-24 Nikkor lens, and they both cost around $6,000 combined.


Check it out:

 

2050?

You guys might be wondering about the weird dates in my archives. Well, since I want my blog to show the old posts first I have to date them in the future. That is the only way I know how to fix the problem, let me know if you guys know a better way.

Aperture

 

As I said earlier, the light travels through the lens to hit the sensor and the lens on your camera has blades inside which can open up wide or narrow. You can also think of it as a hole in your lens which can change its size. Since a bigger hole will let more light in, a bigger hole will give you brighter pictures compared to a smaller hole.

Aperture values are called f-stops and are measured in fractions. An aperture of 1/4, for example, is written as f/4. Therefor, f/4 is a bigger aperture than f/8. This is how the aperture blades look at different aperture values:

 

When you purchase a lens, it always states the maximum aperture the lens can operate on. The 18-55mm lens that comes with most cameras as a kit, usually has maximum aperture of 3.5 to 5.6. This means the maximum aperture value of the lens is 3.5 at 18mm and 5.6 at 55mm. There are constant aperture lenses which keep the same aperture throughout the zoom range of the lens. These lenses are generally more expensive. There are also lenses with very wide apertures, such as f/1.8 or f/1.4. These are mostly fixed focal length lenses which can not zoom at all, also known as prime lenses. 

While different lenses have different maximum apertures, all lenses have roughly the same minimum aperture. I believe they all go down to f/32 or somewhere close to it. But if a wider aperture gives you more light, why would you want to use your camera at a smaller aperture? Well, the other thing aperture controls is depth of field. Depth of field determines how much of a picture is in focus. A wide aperture will give you a shallow depth of field, whereas a small aperture will have a larger depth of field. To explain this better I did a little test for you guys, I took 3 batteries and placed them in front of each other and focused on the battery in the middle.

This first picture was taken at f/4:

Since I focused on the battery in the middle, the two batteries closest and furthest away from the camera are out of focus and blurry. That is because at f/4, the depth of field is shallow or small.

This second picture was taken at f/10:

You can clearly see that both the batteries that were out of focus before are much more in focus now.

 

And this last picture was taken at f/29:

I used my 18-55mm kit lens for this experiment and put my camera in Av (Aperture Value or Aperture Priority) mode. In Av mode you select the aperture you want and your camera selects the right shutter speed for you. 

I would recommend you guys go play with your camera in Av mode and see the results at different aperture values. And then put your camera in manual mode and see what happens when all you change is the aperture value and nothing else.

Next I will talk about shutter speed, which is very closely linked to aperture.

Shutter speed

Before I start talking about shutter speed, let me apologize for not updating the blog in a while. I was busy with a wedding and then got really busy at work. But lets get to it now.

We know that the mirror and the shutter snap up from in front of the sensor, exposing it to the subject to take a picture. Well the shutter can snap back in place very quickly or can stay up for a long time. The time it takes for the shutter to snap up and down again is referred to as shutter speed.

So what can you control with shutter speed? Motion. If you want to freeze motion, you would take pictures at a high shutter speed such as 1/1000th or 1/500th of a second. To show flow of motion, use slow shutter speeds such as 1/30th of a second or shutter speeds longer than a second. Most cameras can go from 1/4000th to a 30 second shutter speed. And most DSLRs also have a "Bulb" mode, which means that the camera will take the picture for as long as the shutter button is pressed. But try to use a tripod or a stable surface when using slow shutter speeds otherwise the entire picture will come out blurry due to shaky hands.

To demonstrate the results, I set my camera on a tripod and took pictures of moving traffic at different shutter speeds.

Taken at 1/500th of a second:

Taken at 1/100th of a second and you can clearly see that the cars in this picture are not as sharp as the car in the last one:

1/25th of a second:

1/10th of a second:

Just like one of the uses of the aperture is to determine how much light goes through the lens, shutter speed has the same use as well. The longer the shutter is open for the more light hits the sensor making your pictures brighter. So if you want to take pictures with long shutter speeds in day light, you will have to use a very small aperture value so your pictures do not come out too bright.

Put your camera in the shutter priority or shutter value mode (marked with an "S" or "Tv" on your camera dial) and experiment with different shutter speeds.

Next and hopefully very soon, I will talk about ISO control and tell you how you can use aperture, shutter speed and ISO to get the proper exposure but different results for your pictures.

Sensitivity (ISO)

Your DSLR has different ISO settings for you to chose from. Some cameras start at 50, most at 100 and others at 200 and go up to different amounts. For example, the Canon 450D (Rebel XSi) has an ISO range of 100-1600 whereas the much newer Canon 550D (Rebel T2i) and the 600D (Rebel T3i) have an ISO range of 100-12800. Your camera will allow you to chose an ISO setting between that range.

So what does it do? It basically makes your pictures brighter. The higher the ISO number, the brighter the picture will be. But it comes at a cost. While the picture will be brighter, it will also be grainier. So a picture taken at ISO 800 will have more grain than a picture taken at ISO 200. The grain added by ISO is called "noise".

Generally you want to take pictures with less noise in it, but sometimes you do not have enough light for a properly lit picture. In that case, it is better to turn up the ISO and get the shot.

Different cameras react differently to the same ISO setting. The newer cameras with newer sensors will generate less noise than older cameras with older sensors at similar ISO. So the Canon 600D (Rebel T3i) will have less noise at ISO 1600 than the Canon 450D (Rebel XSi) at the same ISO.

And as usual, I have examples for you guys. I put my camera in the manual mode, set my aperture at f/4, my shutter speed at 1/40th of a second and took pictures from ISO 200 to ISO 6400.

ISO 200

ISO 400

ISO 800

ISO 1600

 ISO 3200

ISO 6400

 

So as you can see, the pictures got a lot brighter with the high ISO setting but they also got noisier. It is better to have the camera at a low ISO setting in daylight or when you have enough light available, but you will have to crank it up at night or indoors to get a properly lit shot.

ISO is like steroids, it enhances your performance but also comes with side effects. The side effect being noise.

Play around with the ISO in your camera and check out the different results you get. Next time I will talk about how to get a proper exposure but different results by using Aperture, Shutter speed and ISO. 

Feel free to ask any questions that you may have.