Blog 9

As I talked a bit about my background on my first blog, I am not a photographer. I said so because it's not my permanent job and it’s not my major in school now. However, I'd say photography is my hobby and I usually take photos when I have free time. 

 

In my country, high school students must finish an elective course to graduate. My friends and I decided to take photography course together because we were interested in taking photos. I got a lot of basic knowledge in the class. My teacher was great; she taught a lot of things and tricks in photography. We had a lot of memories, and it may be the greatest time in my life.

 

I remember on the weekend I didn’t have school, my best friend and I went to the mountains to take some photos because we had nothing to do at home. The night before, we went to my uncle’s house to borrow a camera and a roll of film. In the early morning, we got started from my house. Around 5 A.M, we were cycling to the moutains, all we had were a camera and our enthusiasm. My hometown located on the top of the mountain and it took us about one hour cycling to get to the mountain. We went early because we wanted to take a picture of sunrise on the mountains. I couldn’t believe what I saw on that day, the sun was rising between the ravine, and fog was covering around the mountains. It was amazing and wonderful. Then we went deep to the forest to take photos of plants or animal. Suddenly, there was a man lying on the ground yelling at us. We didn’t know what we did wrong but we got scared. After all, we knew the reason. He was one of the best photographers in my hometown, or even in my country. He was waiting for a cricket going out its cave to drink foggy water on a leaf but we broke his plan. However, we got to know him and learned a ton of things from him. 

 

I also learn photography from many sources on the internet when I have free time. I usually go to a forum where people share everything about photography. They put a lot of materials for everybody who wants to learn photography and it’s totally free. Otherwise, I go to famous photographer’s websites to learn their experiment.

The Cellphone Photography - Instagram

An expensive camera is not a requirement to take good photographs. I am not kidding. If you don't have a fancy camera, you can still make fabulous photos with a camera on your phone. This blog, I'd like to blog about the cellphone photography. If you wonder about what it is, please keep reading, you will have an answer for you at the end of this post.

 

First of all, I’d say that a camera is not an only factor to determine a photo quality. According to Ken Rockwell on his article "Your Camera Doesn’t Matter" on his website, he said

Your camera has NOTHING to do with making great photos…The hard part is saying something with your images. Photography is art. It's abstract. Therefore it's difficult for many people to grasp. It's easy and lazy to think a camera makes the photos. It's easy to blame bad photos on a camera. When you get better you'll realize you would have been better off to pay more attention to your images and less to your camera.

So we need to remember that an expensive camera doesn’t guarantee giving out great photos. I think the equipment just makes the process of taking photos easier and faster. As I research that not everybody has a camera, but a cellphone. I believe that a lot of people own a smartphone such as a Samsung Galaxy, Sony Xperia, or Nokia Lumia, or an Iphone, and each one of these has an outstanding camera on it. And I think it’s more comfortable and convenient to take photos with a cellphone, we can take photos anytime and anywhere. I am sure that we all know about Instagram, an application for a smartphone. According to the copy on their website, they describe

It is a fast, beautiful and fun way to share your photos with friends and family. Snap a picture, choose a filter to transform its look and feel, then post to Instagram. Share to Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr too – it's as easy as pie. It's photo sharing, reinvented.

As I know that after taking photos by using that application, we can use the filters to edit the photos, and then post them to Instagram community to share with other people. It is a wonderful community, people are sharing their photos there and some of them become famous from your work. Like most people, Emily Reid started using Instagram on a lark. She'd taken a picture of the view from her friends' rooftop, decided it looked pretty cool, and then posted it to her page on the Instagram website so her friends could see. According to Lucas Kavner in his article on www.huffingtonpost.com, he said more details

On Monday, she posted a photo of a D.C. building in front of a distorted blue sky at 8:00 p.m. -- she edits her photos, sometimes for hours apiece, using a variety of iPhone apps -- and by 8:30 p.m. it had collected more than 200 likes and a stream of comments…."I became very, very quickly addicted," says Reid, who works primarily as a web designer. "It's a fascinating phenomenon, unlike anything…where people are all sharing their art and talking about it, like Instagram."

I think it's simple to get into photography world with your cellphone. The Instagram is free for everyone and it's very easy to use. Here are some tips I found that may help you a lot when you take photos with your cellphone: get to know your phone, take note of your lighting, avoid using digital zoom, consider composition, think about your background, and keep your lens clean. I think you should take your phone out and try to shoot, and then share them to Instagram community. 

 

Work Cited:

Rockwell, Ken. " Your Camera Doesn’t Matter." www.kenrockwell.com. Ken Rockwell Photography, 2005. Web. 26 Sept 2012

 

Kavner, Lucas. "Instagram: Photography's Antichrist, Savior, Or Something In Between?" www.huffingtonpost.com. Huffpost Art & Culture, 18 Sept 2012. Web. 26 Sept 2012.

Blog 7

In this blog, I'd like introduce two blogs of two photographers that I like. There are a lot of bloggers who have photography as a hobby or passion. But I just pick one of them for now, because I leave the other place for my favorite photographer, he is Ken Rockwell. Actually, he is not using blog, but he has his own website, so it could be considered like a source. His website is one of the world's largest independent sources of photography. He is a professional photographer and also well-known in photography community. I went to his website for the first time when I was looking for reviews of a camera I wanted to buy. I found out that a lot of good photography materials for a newbie like me. His website contains a lot of valuing contents. He shares everything related to photography from his experiences with community. He uses a lot of different kinds of cameras and he writes reviews of those cameras and accessories. He writes a lot of articles to share his knowledge, skills and techniques in photography. He is the site's only author. I think his website is very helpful for me. The other source is one of a blogger I just found after researching in a long time. The blog is Lemon Photography. He made a blog to be an archive of his photos. After looking around his blog, I see that he is a photography enthusiast. I choose his blog because he shows photos he took including a story which belongs to the photos in every blog. I like his photos and stories. His photos have a lot of emotions and it's not easy to add them into photos. I think that his blog is helpful for my paper too.
At the end, I'd like to share to classmates the link that you can use to search your community blogs, the link is www.lsblogs.com. I found the link in his blog.

The Third Factor in Exposure Triangle - The ISO

As I mentioned about the last blog, the combination of the three factors that determines an camera exposure were aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. I planned to blog all three factors on one blog but I thought it would be overwhelming, so I broke them into two blogs to make it easier to understand. On this blog, I'd like to add some details of the last leg of the exposure triangle, which called ISO.

 

As the aperture and shutter speed, the ISO also controls an amount of light get into a camera' sensory. Before getting to know how ISO effects on a photograph, let's go over its definition, and see what that is about. According to Nasim Mansurov in his photography guide for beginners, he describes that:

ISO – the level of sensitivity of your camera to available light. It is typically measured in numbers, a lower number representing lower sensitivity to available light, while higher numbers mean more sensitivity. More sensitivity comes at the cost though, as the ISO increases, so does the grain/noise in the images. Examples of ISO: 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600.

I always keep in mind that higher ISO means more light coming into the camera sensor and lower ISO means less light coming into the camera sensor (Yuen Mun) I'd like to make it simply by showing a few photographs that I took at different ISO levels.

I took this photo when I was on the top of the mountain. It was sunny so I chose ISO 100 because there was full of light.

I took this picture with ISO 200 because there was in the morning and it was cloudy.

I took this photo in the early evening and there was not too much light so I chose ISO 400.

It's a gift from my friend. I took this photo in my room with light source from the lamp. I set ISO at 800.

From these examples, I'd like to say that ISO levels depend on what we want take a photo of. In different cases, the light comes from different sources so we need to determine an amount of light to set up the ISO levels. It's very simple but there is more about it. Sometimes, when taking photos at the night time, ISO settings are usually high because the light is very limited, and resulting that a photo would be noise. In other words, a photo doesn't look crisp and clean, it has more grain. 

 

In short, the exposure of a photograph is controlled by only three factors: aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. By understanding the three factor photographers can easily adjust settings in every situation and create an art of combining all three. In an article, Yuen Mun said: 

For best results, photographers should decide which combination of settings to use. Knowing the relationship between the settings allows photographers to quickly adjust settings while keeping the exposure constant.

I'd like to share more details of combining all three factors in different situations. If you are taking a landscape photo, you should set small aperture to increase the depth-of-field. When taking landscape, we usually have a plenty of light, the ISO should be low about 100 or 200. If you are taking a portrait photo, you don't need the depth-of-field, so you should set bigger aperture, and the ISO depends on the light the time you take a photo. If you are taking a macro photo, you need to set very big aperture because you need to focus an object in close distance, shutter speed should be fast because while the aperture opens like this, a plenty of light comes into the sensor, and the ISO should be around 100 or 200 for a clean photo. They are cases that I want to share. Now, I think you should take your camera and try to set the three factors depending on what you want to take. Then, you will see how it works.

Work Cited:

Mansurov, Nasim. "Understanding ISO, Shutter Speed and Aperture – A Beginner’s Guide." www.mansurovs.com. Mansurovs Photography, 12 Jan 2010. Web. 19 Sept 2012.

 

Mun, Yuen. "Relationship Between Camera ISO, Aperture and Shutter Speed." www.suite101.com. Photography at Suite101, 10 Apr 2010. Web. 19 Sept 2012.

Relationship Between Aperture and Shutter Speed

As in a previous blog, I talked about steps to take macro photos by using an auto built-in mode in a digital camera. All of built-in modes in a digital camera have different fixed exposure. This blog, I’d like to write a little bit more details of two from three factors of the exposure triangle and its relationship.

 

First of all, what are the three factors of the camera exposure? I know that a lot people wonder and want to know about that. According to Maggie O'Briant, in her article in Steve's Digicams site, she defines that

A correct exposure is a simple combination of three important factors: aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. Since the beginning of photography, these same two factors have always been at the heart of every exposure, whether that exposure was correct or not, and they still are today—even if you’re using a digital camera.

The first factor I'd like to tell is the aperture. As what I researched, there are a few different definitions about the aperture but I like the way Bryan F Peterson explains the most. According to him, in his article in www.photo.net, he defines that 

The aperture is the size of the lens opening. It controls the amount of light let in: a larger aperture lets in more light, while a smaller aperture lets in less light.

The aperture does have variable opening value as its size is written in this form "f/number". As I know that form is a ratio of focal length to aperture diameter. The aperture size is usually between f/2 to f/16. There is a simple, direct relationship between aperture and depth-of-field, the smaller the aperture, the more extensive the depth-of-field. According to an article on Ephoto Zine site, there are examples about the relationship between them:

If you want to keep as much as possible sharp, you should set as small an aperture as possible - preferably f/16, or even f/22 if your lens offers it…If, however, you want to concentrate attention on just one part of the scene, and throw the rest out-of-focus, you should select a large aperture.

The second factors is the shutter speed. It is defined very clearly on an article that I read on the site Photography Mad, the writer said

Inside your camera, directly in front of the sensor, is a small flap called the shutter. When you take a photo, this opens and closes to let light reach the sensor, creating your image. Shutter speed describes how quickly or slowly the shutter opens and closes again. A fast shutter speed means that the shutter is only open for a short period of time; a slow shutter speed means the shutter is open for longer.

As I said early, in this blog, I only talk about the relationship between the aperture and the shutter speed. Aperture and shutter speed are bound together like an old married couple. For the same scene, if you open the aperture, you increase the shutter speed, and if you close down the aperture, you decrease the shutter speed (Photography Mad) A picture that I'd post below is represent relationship of them.

 

As much as I know, there are a lot of uses for aperture and shutter speed. Professional photographers take advantage of them to make creative effect on art works. One of these art works is making the background blur. Another thing is drawing lights at night. Both of them usually give interesting results. Even though I am not a professional photographer, but I used to try to drawing lights at night time when waiting for the traffic light. I image that it's a photo of a man who has curly hair, he is tired and taking a long sigh.
Thank you for reading my blog.




















Work Cited:

O'Briant, Maggie. "The Exposure Family: Aperture, Shutter Speed and Metering." www.steves-digicams.com. Steve's Digicams, n.d. Web. 12 Sept 2012.
 
Peterson, Bryan F . "Basic Photo Tips: Aperture, Shutter Speed, and ISO." www.photo.net. A Site for Photography, Aug 2008. Web. 12 Sept 2012

   

"Depth-of-field explained." www.ephotozine.com. Ephoto Zine, n.d. Web. 12 Sept 2012.

"Shutter Speed: A Beginner's Guide." http://www.photographymad.com. Photography Mad, n.d. Web. 12 Sept 2012.

Something About Macro Photography

For me, photography is a journey to everywhere. I like capturing photos from everything around me, especially tiny things. Perhaps a lot of people have wondered how a professional photographer took clear, comprehensive photos of flowers or even insects, and what kind of photography is that? According to Philip Greenspun in his article, he defines 

Taking close-up pictures of small things is called "macro photography." Perhaps because the small things in macro photography are generally larger than the things…If you really want to be pedantic then you should say you are doing "photomacrography".

In my opinion, it’s very simple when we photograph something very small we call it "macro photography.” Don’t worry about too much about the definition because this term is defined differently from different people.

 

Next, I will talk about how we make a macro photography photo. In this decade, people are using much digital cameras more often than film cameras. In an article on Cin’s Photography Tips, a famous site about photography, a writer stated the main reason is that

The main advantage that digital photography offers is that it is much more convenient than using a camera with film… The other big reason that digital photography is so popular is that you can see your picture as soon as you take it.

For the best results of macro photography, it's better to have a single-lens reflex camera, the one professional photographers use, but it's expensive and complicated to use. In this blog, I only focus on macro photography with compact digital cameras. I believe that a lot of people have one such as a compact digital camera, the one I mentioned about in last blog, or a camera from cellphones. There is an easy way to take macro photos because they have a built-in macro mode in a telephone camera which lets us take photo of an object in close distance, up to an inch. In other words, it's one of auto modes. What we need to do is choose the right mode and shoot. 

 

The most important factor when taking macro photo is focusing. From my experience, we need to hold a camera tight, steady, and make sure there is no shaking. I usually focus an object by moving the camera and keeping the frame constant. I still remember that Ken Rockwell, a very famous photographer, said

Small variations in your position become huge variations in image size, so fixing the focus and moving the camera keeps this stable.

I'd like to share steps how to take macro photos from an article, "The Comprehensive Guide To Macro Photography", on DIY Photography site which I like the most. And here is the process:

1. Position the camera and the object. As we discussed, the camera needs to rest on a tripod and it would be best if your subject is in a place where it does not move too much. Depending on how strong your magnification is, the lens will be stuck up pretty close to the subject now. 
2. Get the scene roughly in focus. Frame and compose.
3. If you have live view on your camera turns it on and magnify as much as you can.

At the end, I'd like to share a photo that I took with my camera, it's a non-SLR camera. I took it at the Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington D.C. Thanks for reading my blog and hope you enjoy.

Work Cited:

Greenspun, Philip. "Macro Photography." www. photo.net. A Site for Photographers, Aug. 2007. Web. 12 Sept 2012.
 
"The Advantages of Digital Photography." www.cinphotography.com. Cin’s Photography Tips, n.d. Web. 12 Sept 2012.

Rockwell, Ken. "Macro Photography." www.kenrockwell.com. Ken Rockwell Photography, 2005. Web. 12 Sept 2012.

"The Comprehensive Guide To Macro Photography." www.diyphotography.net. DIY Photography, 1 Aug. 2011. Web. 12 Sept 2012.

A Sensor and Megapixels

Last blog, I hope you guys understand how photography began from the brief history even though it was not fully detailed. I think you guys are now curious something more about photography. There are tons of things related to photography but I am pretty sure that you have heard at least one time a word "megapixels" or you may see it on your camera. So what are megapixels?
  
This blog, I decide to write something about megapixels of a camera and I am sure it would be an interesting topic for someone. However, before talking about that, I'd like to introduce that there are two types of cameras: film and digital cameras.
  
Today, digital cameras are the rage. In addition, digital cameras is divided into non-SLR digital and digital SLR cameras. As I mentioned the word "non-SLR digital camera", it stands for non-Single Lens Reflect digital camera; and "DSLR camera" stands for Digital Single Lens Reflect camera. I am not going to talk more details between two kinds; I might talk about it in the next blog. One little thing I'd like to say is non-SLR is kind of scientific words; we may see it under different names depending on different companies such as power-shot camera from Canon, cyber-shot camera from Sony, point-and-shoot camera from Nikon, etc.

I believe that a lot of people own a non-SLR camera and I think you do too. The reason why I chose megapixels as a topic is that the term megapixels is only used when talking about digital cameras. At the end of this blog, you guys will know the meaning of megapixels.

In fact, megapixels is one of basic elements of a camera and usually goes together with the word "sensor". Instead of film, a digital camera has an imaging sensor which is located inside the camera and contains an integrated circuit with millions pixels that records an image. In other words, a digital camera captures pictures through that sensor. You may see an amount of sensor units somewhere on the surface of a camera, example 5.1 MP, 7.2 MP, 12.4 MP, and the range of megapixels is between 0.3 and 20. So, if your camera has 10.0 MP, that means your camera has 10 millions pixels on its sensor.
    
A sensor is not the only element to determine quality of a camera. An effect of amount of megapixels on a picture is that it represents how large of picture. The more megapixels a camera has, the bigger resolution the camera has and, thus, the larger the photograph will be (Big Sky Fishing...) But a lot of people buy cameras depending on amount megapixels of the sensor. According to Jakob Jelling in his article "The Relationship Between Megapixel and Image Quality" in Snapjunky.com, he notes that

Despite what is commonly thought, choosing a camera according to how many megapixels it has is not correct. One camera which has more megapixels than another is not necessary better since megapixels is not a measure of quality and, therefore, a camera which offers more of them than another does not guarantee a better image. This way, those who are looking for a new camcorder and find out that some of them offer more megapixels as one of the main advantages, should ask how does that affect the image quality. Image quality and the amount of mega pixels are two different things, and one of them does not necessarily imply the other.

Through this short blog, I hope you guys understand a little bit clearly about the megapixels on your camera. Even though this blog doesn't provide much knowledge and information about photography, but I believe after reading this blog, you may feel curious about what is next. 


Work Cited:

Jelling, Jakob. "The Relationship Between Megapixel and Image Quality" Snapjunky.com. Digital Camera Guide. Web. Sept 3, 2012.
 

"What are Megapixels and Why Should I Care" Bigskyfishing.com. A Consumer Guide to Digital Cameras. Web. Sep 3, 2012.