gtrman:

 KMDDMA .. very cool.. One thing that hit me.. if you moved the cars closer to the camera, you would see the effect more.

 

Ie.. move the cars closer to the lens, focus on them and you would see the background (leaves) have more of the effect.

 

Right now the cars are very close to the same distance as the leaves, so the focus point is the same. if the cars were at the "front" of your image.. you would see them in focus, and the leaves more in the butta range. haha

(I love butta)

 

It would be cool if you had time to set the same shot up tomorrow and repost the difference

 

Gtrman

 

Ahhhhh, I will climb to the top of the swing set again and see what I come up with.  I hope its warmer tomorrow (I'm so sick of this crappy cold weather, why can't it just stay warm already).  Thanks for the tip.

Michelle
 

Mary K - I love you! You asked every question I wanted to ask myself. I just walked into class a little late.

Can GND be our teacher for our next assignment? I bookmarked her posts. I love her too. Silly and smart. What a combo ; )

I learned more in this thread then I did in about 10 classes of photography that I have been taking.

Thank you so much for putting this together. I appreciate everyone taking the time to chime in to. I like the long in depth explainations. I really feel that Im getting a grasp on what is being taught (finally).

Hopefully I'll have a chance to hand in an assignment later this week.

I give Gtrman an A+ so far. What a great, great lesson. And where only on page two of the thread.

The best!

This is just great!  I love how everyone puts in their input and adds something to the lesson!

I will try to get my homework in soon.

What a wonderful community of people!

Thanks Mpix guys also for putting a tutorial section in!!

There were a few things that helped me figure out f-stop and keep it straight in my head.

First and most important is that it's a fraction so that's why the aperature gets smaller as the number gets larger.  Think of it as f/2.8 or f/4 or f/8 and it's easier to see that the aperature is getting smaller and smaller.

To understand why a very small aperature size can put everything into focus, I did this:

1.  Make a big circle out of your thumb and forefinger and look through it.  No change.

2.  Make the circle progressively smaller and smaller until it's a tiny little pin hole.  At this size you'll see things at a distance more in focus.  (It helps if you are a bit near sighted and take off your glasses.)

A few other tips I've come across are "f/8 and be there" -- f/8 is good for most situations.  (I think this is a journalism saying, but I can't remember where I ran across it.)

Another is the #16 Sunshine Rule.  It goes something like:  On a sunny day, use f/16 and a shutter speed that is the reciprocal of the ISO.  Example would be f/16 with ISO 200 would mean SS of 1/200. 

I mainly use it in conjunction with the oh so important "don't handhold at a SS slower than the reciprocal of the focal length of your lens."  Using them together would mean f/16, and if I am using the 100mm lens, then no slower than 1/100 (1/125) so ISO is 100.  To bump up SS to 1/200 - 1/250 then bump ISO to 200.  This pretty much puts you in the ballpark.  As the clouds roll in or the light fades, keep opening up the aperature (f/11, f/8, f/5.6) or shooting faster SS.

Wait!  I found this little table while digging around looking for the original article I read.  It's in Wikipedia (of course)

Set the SS to the number nearest the reciprocal of the ISO -- 1/ISO then set the aperature according to this:

It goes on to say: 

As with other light readings, the shutter speed can be changed, as long as the f-number is compensated. For example, 1/250th of a second at f/11 would be equivalent to 1/125th at f/16.

That last statement is what brought it all together for me.  Since these three variables -- SS, f/value and ISO, all work together and are set up to be somewhat in sync, it's best to decide what you want one to be then change the other two accordingly.

If you speed up the SS a notch ("notch" is a very technical term) say from 1/125 to 1/250 (shoot faster so therefore less light coming in), then you need to either open up the aperature a stop to let in more light or raise the ISO a tick to make the "film" more light sensitive.  

If you open up the aperature (let more light in), then you have to shoot with faster SS or lower the ISO. 

If you clamp down the aperature (let less light in) then you need shoot slower or raise the ISO.

They all have to be in balance and that's what took me forever to figure out.  OK...I know, I know...it's simple, but for some reason I just could NOT get it through my head that they were set up and scaled to be related, and that you should always look at it from the perspective of what you are doing to the amount light coming into the camera rather than just the ISO or just the SS or just the aperature. 

Finally I realized that if you change one a notch, you have to change one of the other two a notch.  Change one two notches, you can change the other two each a notch or you can change one of the other two by two notches.  Which direction you change them depends upon whether you want more light into the camera or less.  (It's all about the light...errr...perhaps that's why it's called photo-graphy?)

Oh, and one more factoid I came across:  The human eye runs from about f/8 in bright light to about f/2 in the dark.  That's why the "f/8 and be there" rule. 

I know this is rambling and all over the place, but I had such a hard time getting a grasp on it that I thought I'd share my tortuous path to enlightenment. 

 I have that chart from the inside of an old box of film.  LOL  It is great though.

Pamela, thank you for sharing that. It was wonderfully laid out. I printed out your words of wisdom to re-visit them again.

Have I told all of you that I feel like my heart has wings and the stress of learning on my own has lifted of my shoulders?!

I really hope this continues. This is why I came to Mpix in the first place. I wanted to learn. Im so grateful that you have given me that opportunity.

 Great start everyone....can we see some more examples and images?

If this is an easy one for you... maybe this would be a great time to show how you compose a shot like this.. How do you use DOF to it's greatest strengths?

Gtrman

Ok, you all asked for it.

These are terrible.

First three.  f/2.8, f/somewhere in the middle, f/22

second shot

third shot

And the second try last night was inside the house....

yeah I ignored the go outside part because it was freezing out there....but without changing any other settings it was worse!

Here is f/2.8 and f/22 .  It looks like I was detoxing here.....LOL

Gtrman,

Please cover this next!

You said: 

" I just look and saw that you weer shooting with a 300mm Lens, so just bear in mind the hand holding rules of a shutter speed of the reciprocal of your focal length. So with a 300mm lens , you want a 1/300 or faster shutter speed IF, you are hand holding that lens "

Do you base your reciprocal on the lense ( 70mm 300mm etc...) or on the ACTUAL set focal length  ( 38mm,  65mm  120mm)?
Make sense?

Thanks,

OMG.

I think I resized these twice...

anyway, they are bad...bad...bad... so the smaller the better i guess   :-))

Ok, so I am going to attempt this again today.....

let's all hope I can do better...lol

 I think this is great that you 'seasoned' photographers are willing to help us others learn! I'm definately going to do this, but it might not be till this evening.

Patrick:

Gtrman,

Please cover this next!

You said: 

" I just look and saw that you weer shooting with a 300mm Lens, so just bear in mind the hand holding rules of a shutter speed of the reciprocal of your focal length. So with a 300mm lens , you want a 1/300 or faster shutter speed IF, you are hand holding that lens "

Do you base your reciprocal on the lense ( 70mm 300mm etc...) or on the ACTUAL set focal length  ( 38mm,  65mm  120mm)?
Make sense?

Thanks,

I think that is a good idea too....

this is what I heard in my head when I read that....

{{ wah, wha, wha}}  sort of like Charlie Brown's teacher.......  

gtrman:

jwphoto:

Curious about your focal length???  They are so tack sharp and I seem to have issues with that.... I will be contributing my assignment later :)  This is an awesome thread/idea too!  Thank you!!

 

 

I used the canon 85mm prime lens for this shot. Oh boy did it take me a looooooong time to get my images sharper... I think we have next week's lesson idea !

 

Gtrman

 

Yes... please make this next weeks lesson!!  I will fully take the blame is no one likes it!

okay here is my second go at this....i am happiest with the last one, this was all at ISO 1600...the fearie is so washed out in the first two, i konw my focus isn't all that great, had it on auto focus....

captivating...:

 I think this is great that you 'seasoned' photographers are willing to help us others learn! I'm definately going to do this, but it might not be till this evening.

The only "seasoned" on me is when I bbq...haha.. But yes there are some people here who will help till they can't help no more...Hope to see your images

Gtrman

74Pinto:

Ok, you all asked for it.

These are terrible.

First three.  f/2.8, f/somewhere in the middle, f/22

 

Okay the worst thing about your post, and it really did suck, was the "these are terrible" comment. No negatives allowed...ESPECIALLY for ourselves... 

Now on to the photo.  This week's lesson, was NOT on sharpness, exposure, composition, it was simply on makin some Butta... and for that ?

You get an A baby !.

You did exactly the right techniques... see how the greenery behind the flowers looks in the three different shots.. That is what the goal was..and you nailed it.

So now, we move on..pretend that was a person, not a flower..see how the background  would look with a LOW F number?  That  is the goal here..

Can I make a standing rule here for everyone? Tell me no, if I'm wrong.  You can't pee on the seats when you leave the classroom, and you can't put yourself down in the posts.

Deal?

When we move on to the other lessons, if you miss something that was assigned, THEN we can beat you up. But when you do EXACTLY what you were supposed to do...

How can we possibly find fault?   haha...

This is about baby steps everyone.... one thing at a time...

Great job Pinto...

Gtrman

Karrie:

okay here is my second go at this....i am happiest with the last one, this was all at ISO 1600...the fearie is so washed out in the first two, i konw my focus isn't all that great, had it on auto focus....

this is when ISO comes into play.....you said the first 2 are washed out, lower your ISO since your aperture is wide open letting more light in already, at f-36 you have closed it down all the way, you need the ISO to allow more light in to help the shutter speed stay higher to keep a sharp image.

Patrick:

Gtrman,

Please cover this next!

You said: 

" I just look and saw that you weer shooting with a 300mm Lens, so just bear in mind the hand holding rules of a shutter speed of the reciprocal of your focal length. So with a 300mm lens , you want a 1/300 or faster shutter speed IF, you are hand holding that lens "

Do you base your reciprocal on the lense ( 70mm 300mm etc...) or on the ACTUAL set focal length  ( 38mm,  65mm  120mm)?
Make sense?

Thanks,

on the actual focal length (70mm = 1/70, 150mm =1/150, 300mm = 1/300, etc.) ...but with heavier lenses you might need up to 1.5x the focal length to help prevent camera shake. For example, a 70-200mm 2.8 lens @ 200mm might need 1/300 or higher to prevent blur.