Photography ï‚™ From the Greek, â€œwriting with...

download Photography &iuml;&sbquo;&trade; From the Greek, &acirc;&euro;&oelig;writing with light.&acirc;&euro;&zwnj; &iuml;&sbquo;&trade; That is what we do, either on paper with chemicals, or on a computer screen with pixels

of 44

  • date post

  • Category


  • view

  • download


Embed Size (px)

Transcript of Photography ï‚™ From the Greek, â€œwriting with...

  • Slide 1

Slide 2 Photography From the Greek, writing with light. That is what we do, either on paper with chemicals, or on a computer screen with pixels. Slide 3 Change Photography has always been technology-driven. Today we mostly produce photographs digitally. But photography is still photography. Slide 4 Getting startedGetting started Everyone has taken a picture. Or, as professionals sometimes say, made an image. Oftentimes nowadays the machine we use to do that is the cell phone or smartphone. We also might use a point-and-shoot camera. Slide 5 Snaps Everyone takes informal snaps of family and travels. Even the pros. No shame in that! But the focus of a photography class, if we dare use that word, is to learn to take better pictures. In this class, in particular, we try to learn and approach the standards expected of professional media. Slide 6 Basic principlesBasic principles To begin with, we need to realize this: Photography is at its core a technical process. That is different from many other familiar visual media. Painting or drawing, for example, arent mechanical. They require paint, brushes or pens. But the rest comes from the artists mind. Slide 7 The machineThe machine In photography, a machine makes the imageguided by the photographer, to be sure, a key point. Other machines, or perhaps chemicals, process what the machine has recorded so we can see it as a picture. So a photographer may be an artist, but is always also a technologist. Slide 8 Becoming technicalBecoming technical So to become a better photographer, we have to be come better at the technology behind the art. That means we learn physics, engineering and machines skills. No math required. Well, almost none. Slide 9 The cameraThe camera First stop, obviously, the camera. We can use light to make an image without a camera, actually. A photogram is made by manipulating light striking photographic paper. Slide 10 Real photographyReal photography But a photogram is not what wed probably consider real photography. For that we need a light-tight box to gather an image. Any old box will actually work. Slide 11 Gathering the imageGathering the image We need to gather the image into something we can view as a photo, and we need to preserve, or fix that image. We can do this traditionally using light-sensitive chemicals. But film nowadays has become mostly a fine-art medium. Nearly 100 percent of mass media photography nowadays uses a digital sensor, mostly in DSLRs. Slide 12 Light and darkLight and dark Light varies in intensity. The lowest light the eye can detect is about 200 times less than the brightest. Slide 13 Controlling intensityControlling intensity Unless we can control light intensity, gathering an image is impossible. The eye controls intensity through its iris. Slide 14 Controlling intensityControlling intensity Cameras have two ways to control intensity: aperture. exposure. Slide 15 Aperture Aperture controls light coming through a lens by phsycially blocking some of it. Overlapping metal plates or equivalent can be controlled to leave a smaller or larger amount of space for the light to pass through. Slide 16 Exposure Exposure is the length of time the light strikes the film or digital sensor. The longer the time, the more light is gathered. Slide 17 Controlling lightControlling light Aperture is controlled by f/stops. Exposure is controlled by shutter speeds. Both are dependent on the level of film or sensor senstivity. Slide 18 Sensitivity The more sensitive the surface that gathers the light, th eless light we need to record an acceptable image. What is acceptable? An image that is neither too dark nor too light. Too dark is called underexposure ; too light is called overexposure. That may be counterintuitive, but consider we begin with black (absence of light) and add to it. Slide 19 Acceptable exposureAcceptable exposure Under or overexposure is of course a subjective judgment. But professional photographers for the mass media are usually easily able to evaluate images for exposure. Slide 20 Adjusting exposureAdjusting exposure Photographers may or may not be able to control exposure; it depends on the camera. Smartphones and point-and-shoot cameras normally select a combination of f/stop and shutter speed without photographer input. These are called auto modes. Slide 21 Simple auto modesSimple auto modes Some simple cameras offer few auto adjustments. Some offer none at all. A fixed aperture/fixed exposure camera uses a combination that will work fairly well for many common lighting situations. Most smartphones have no actual shutter to control shutter speed. The user must accept a lag time between pressing the button and taking the picutre. Thats nearly useless if youre trying to catch a moving subject. Slide 22 Auto modesAuto modes Auto modes choose combinations of f/stop and shutter speed. But those combinations often dont meet a serious photographers needs. One step that moves the casual snapshooter toward the serious photographer is ther ability to turn off the auto mode. Serious photographers usually manually control the amount of light reaching a sensor. Slide 23 Physics and lensPhysics and lens Physics tells us that when light strikes a transparent medium such as water or glass, it may bend, or refract. The camera lens is designed to control this refraction to obtain an image on a photo-sensitive surface behind it, called a focal plane. Slide 24 Controlling refractionControlling refraction The image should reach the focal plane at its narrowest point possible, called the focal point. But that focal point changes, depending on how far the object is from the lens. We must control the gathering of light rays on the focal plane to produce a sharp photograph. We call the mechanism focus. Slide 25 Focus To focus an image onto the sensor, we move actual elements in the lens forward or backward. The principle is similar to a magnifying glass most of us have usedwe move it forward or back until the image is sharp. Slide 26 Ways to focusWays to focus Point-and-shoot cameras may not have a focus mechanism at all. They rely on depth of field. Depth of field means that depending on how close we are to a subject, and what aperture we have chosen, we may fix a lens at one focus setting. Objects closer to and farther from that focus will appear to be in focus. This works for mostly outdoor scenes in good light. Slide 27 Ways to focusWays to focus But fixed focus lenses dont give more serious photographers much flexibility. Subjects closer to the camera or in dim light may be blurry. We rely on a lens that will focus. Most modern lenses focus for us automatically, the Autofocus system. Slide 28 Autofocus DSLR AF systems focus based on sensors that detect contrast between subject and background. Motors move the lens elements. The higher the contrast the sharper the focus. Low light or low contrast may fool the AF system. A photographer has the option of turning off the system and focusing manually using the ring on the lens barrel. Slide 29 Sensitivity The fourth major adjustment serious photographers want to control is film or sensor sensitivity. A more sensitive sensor can make usable images in a dimmer environment. Photographers dont often have to deal with too much lightbut they quite often deal with too little. Slide 30 Sensitivity We can use the pop-up electronic flash to add light. But that often produces poor quality, amateurish photos. Slide 31 Adjusting the sensorAdjusting the sensor In chemical days, the film sensitivity was set, and expressed in a number, the ASA number. In the 1970s we moved to ISO (International Organization for Standardization) numbers, but they corresponded to the old numbers. Today we have borrowed the old system for digital sensitivity. Normally point-and-shoot cameras either have no way to alter ISO, or do it automatically. Slide 32 ISO More advanced photographers prefer to control ISO. ISO numbers can be changed to increase sensor sensitivity. Typically these numbers begin at 25, and double, ending at 1600 (higher in advanced DSLRs). Each number indicates double the sensitivity to light. That means you can get the same exposure with half as much light. So if its dark, you move the ISO to 1600. If its bright, leave it at about 100. Slide 33 ISO But like so much in photography, theres a trade off. As we increase ISO, we also reduce image quality. High ISO numbers introduce noise, that is, a grainy look to a photo. Slide 34 The practiceThe practice So there you have the technical basics. Lets consider a few picture-taking basics. Slide 35 Steady This might seem obvious, but its critical: hold the camera steady. More images a ruined by blur than any other reason, it seems. Smartphones and modern point-and-shoots encourage fuzzy images, because we hold them in front of us and compuse using the LCD panel. Slide 36 Be solidBe solid Composing through an LCD panel is a habit of amateurs. Professionals use the viewfinder. They hold the camera against their forehead, and brace their elbows against their body. This creates a kind of solid human tripod that makes a sharper image. Slide 37 Stabilization Some modern lenses offer image stabilization to help keep the image sharp, but its not a good substitute for keeping your hands steady at the camera. Most professionals also own a tripod. Slide 38 Background General rule two: Pay attention to your background. Our eyes are good at focusing on a center of interest while ignoring distractions behind it. The two-dimensional camera isnt, and distracting backgrounds ruin many otherwise good photos. Slide 39 Move away from centerMove away from center Rule three sounds ironic: the center of interest should generally not be in the center of the photo. Centered subjects are usuallly boring and static. They lo