photography week intro

Today we took our first look at the SLR cameras and got a brief understanding of how they work, we looked specifically at the different modes of the camera.

Shutter Speed - shutter speed is the amount of time that the shutter of the camera stays open, and this can be changed within the settings of the camera depending on how dark or light you want your photo to be, because the longer the shutter speed the more light will be exposed therefore making the photo brighter.

Aperture - the aperture is a hole or opening through which light travels, the aperture is similar to the shutter speed in the aspect that it too controls the amount of light reaching the film or image sensor, this can also be changed on the camera depending on how light or dark you want your photo.

Depth of field -  A camera can only focus its lens at a single point, but there will be an area that stretches in front of and behind this focus point that still appears sharp, this is known as the depth of field 

F stop - the aperture or lens opening measured in F-stops affects the depth of field in your pictures and the amount of light entering your lens.

ISO is the level of sensitivity of your camera to available light. The lower the ISO number, the less sensitive it is to the light, while a higher ISO number increases the sensitivity of your camera. The component within your camera that can change sensitivity is called “image sensor” or simply “sensor”.

After the introduction to the camera and learning the basic techniques we were put into pairs and asked to experiment with the camera, when shooting I tried to incorporate what I had previously learnt into the photos, for example I focused on depth of field trying to get my subject in focus, and then trying to get the right lighting, this was the end result.

This was a DSLR simulator that we used to get a first hand basis on the cameras, incorporating all the techniques we learnt today, for example we would play around with depth of field in preparation for the actual cameras.