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This time the Civil War. This weekend I was at yet another re-enactment doing the photography thing (I have one expensive hobby, I cannot afford to pick up another one and join them out in the field! Maybe one day!).

It was a lot smaller than the Siege, but just as enjoyable as the spectators were a lot closer to the action this time around, and they had horses! I spent most of the morning taking photos of people and chatting with the various folks around the camps ect, several whom had also been at the siege. However the most impressive work came out of the battle at 3pm (they had to move it back an hour because of a wedding happening at the same location, can’t have the vows happening while rifle and field gun fire were going off).

All my photos from the event can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/axle81401/sets/72157621998707303/

Once again I was allowed back to photograph the Siege of Fort Erie event. This year, unlike last I was much more restricted in my movements so I wasn’t able to shoot in true photojournalist style, but I was able to pick up some great shots from the event as it is.

The British Line.

The trouble with events like this is because dispite appearances things happen really quickly out on the battle field. I found that setting my camera to Continuous High Speed mode, will give you a better selection of shots to choose from. During the day it’s hard to catch the explosive forces when a musket/rifle is fired. But with careful timing you can get some impressive shots.

The Americans fire a volley into the Fort.

I was able to get onto the Battlefield for the re-enactment of the Battle of Chippiwa, and often found myself in the middle of the line of fire. I had to be pretty quick on my feet, and lugging a D300 with my 70-200mm f/2.8 lens around made it difficult, all while wearing period clothes.

Glengarry Light Infantry

As Dusk comes, it makes capturing the explosions from the muskets is easier, however I had to once again reach into the high ISO settings on my camera.

The British send hot lead screaming across the field of Battle.

I was also very happy to have a camera and lens that are fully weather sealed, as the rain started to come down, I could shoot without worrying about my equipment…too much. Events like this are very hard on your camera, but that’s why I paid for the top quality equipment so that I could drag my camera out into the battle field, even if it was a fake battlefield.

And before I leave, just this one awesome shot that I caught during the night battle:

If you want to see all my photos of the event you can view them here: www.flickr.com/photos/axle81401/sets/72157621992580652/

Today we’re going to discuss aperture. Not the popular Apple software product for cataloging and editing photos.

Your camera’s aperture controls how much light is let into the camera, but also and more importantly how much of your image will be in focus. But first, covering how aperture is noted.

You will encounter the aperture noted in terms of f-stops, or more commonly f/2.8. Unlike many things, the smaller the f number on a lens, the wider the aperture is. It is based on a logarithmic equation, seen below.

The f-number f/#, often notated as N, is given by the above equation. Where f is the focal length, and D is the diameter of the entrance pupil. By convention, “f/#” is treated as a single symbol, and specific values of f/# are written by replacing the number sign with the value. For example, if the focal length is 16 times the pupil diameter, the f-number is f/16, or N = 16. The greater the f-number, the less light per unit area reaches the image plane of the system; the amount of light transmitted to the film (or sensor) decreases with the f-number squared. Doubling the f-number increases the necessary exposure time by a factor of four. Equation and following text is care of Wikipedia.

But enough math…you’re probably wanting something more concrete and practical. So let’s use my handy manual focus 50mm lens for that. The lens is rated at f/1.4, it is the lens with the widest aperture that I own.

To the left is the lens wide open (f/1.4) as you can see, it will let in a lot of light, to the right is the lens at f/16.

So while having the lens wide open lets in a lot of light, which is great for dark places, there is a downside, you loose how much of the image will be in focus, this is called Depth of Field (DoF).

How does this translate into your photos.

Let’s call in my friend Jay for a bit.

(50mm ~ f/1.8 ~ 1/50″ ~ ISO-1600)

As you can see, very little of the image is in focus, pretty much the only thing in focus is the “Hold” tag on him. Opening the aperture can create some pretty dynamic effects and can really help make the subject pop out of the rest of the frame.

So now we’ve had it wide open let’s close it all the way down. Here’s one of my favourite shots, in fact it’s the one used in the banner for my website and this blog, taken using the same lens as the above image (just to be fair).

(50mm ~ f/22 ~ 1/60″ ~ ISO-200)

As you can see, the image from the CN Tower in the background to the houses in the foreground everything is sharp and in focus.

How do you apply this to your photography, well again it’s all about your subject matter. When it comes to portrait work you want your subject(s) to be the only thing in focus in the frame, so you want a shallow depth of field, for group shots, a deeper depth of field so that poor Uncle Bill isn’t out of focus. When it comes to landscapes, you want all the details to be in focus so closing the aperture is desired.

In my Previous Post, I discussed the three ways cameras capture light, Aperture, Shutter Speed, and Sensitivity. I went into some detail on what each did, and now as promised I’m going to expand on these three. First up, Shutter Speed.

Shutter Speed determines how long light is let onto the recording medium, it is measured in seconds, and more often fractions of a second. On many early SLR like cameras, the shutter speed is set through a dial on the top of the camera, and in some cases, a ring on the actual lens mount. On this selector is several numbers and letters. The two most common letters that will appear on these dials are A and B. “A” will set your camera into Aperture priority mode, where the camera will set the shutter speed for you. “B” stands for bulb mode, which will allow the photographer to hold the shutter open as long as they’d like. On modern SLR cameras the shutter speed is set by using command dials, and selecting the appropriate command, setting ect. Also many cameras now have Shutter Priority mode, which allows the photographer to set the shutter speed and the camera will set the aperture for you. So for today let’s set the camera to Shutter Priority.

By manipulating the shutter speed you can create some dynamic effects, you can capture motion and even freeze time. I mentioned earlier that shutter speed is measured in seconds, and fractions of a second, this is key. We live in a very dynamic world where things can happen in a fraction of a second and then everything has changed, when it comes to cameras they have the ability to freeze that instant moment, if you’re able to have the shutter open for the right length of time.

Most cameras these days can be set to shutter speeds between 30 seconds and 1/5000th of a second (or faster). These are often noted as 30″ and 1/5000″. If you want to freeze a moment in time, you’ll want a faster shutter speed, for the most part anything faster than 1/60″ will be able to freeze motion, anything slower there will be motion blur. In some cases like fast moving cars, sports, and other fast paced action you’ll need even faster shutter speeds, 1/200″ or faster. If you want to create some nice effects and capture the motion, 1/30″ or slower will create some nice effects. But you then have to start worrying about camera shake. Some ways to help with that is to get a lens with some form of stabilization, or use a tripod or monopod to help steady your camera.

So let’s get practical here.

Take for example, you’re down at a river and there’s a small water fall, and it’s bouncing and the droplets are spraying around, and you just want to capture that simple moment with the drops suspended in air. A fast shutter speed will be needed.

(105mm ~ 1/5000″ ~ f/2.5 ~ ISO-320)

As you can see with the above photo, I selected a very fast shutter speed so that you can see the details in the water, it looks frozen, ice-like almost.

Now, let’s flip it around, you have a bunch of people running around, but you actually want to capture this motion in your image for dramatic effect.

(35mm ~ 1/25″ ~ f/2 ~ ISO-1600)

So as you can see, you can drop the shutter speed below 1/60″ and you can see the youth moving around, but still are able to tell that these are people milling about.

For even more dramatic effect, especially at night, are the shots of highways/freeways where you can just see streaks of lights, but can’t actually see the cars, that’s by leaving the shutter open for over a second. Below is an example.

(105mm ~ 30″ ~ f/10 ~ ISO-200)

As you can see, with the shutter open for 30″ the cars have become nothing more than streaks of white and red. Hopefully this has helped you understand how the duration of having the shutter open affects the way motion is captured by your camera. The longer it’s open, the more the motion is captured, whereas a faster speed is more likely the freeze that moment in time.

Good Morning, and welcome back. I was thinking last night how to improve and expand on things I post here, and came up with the idea to do a series of posts titled “Mastering the Basics” sort of a refresher course for photographers and myself in creating these. There will probably be some sprinklings of technical and slang terms in here, but I hope I have explained them well. If you have questions feel free to leave a comment and I’ll work on explaining things further or answering them.

So why not start right at the beginning on how a camera works.

Here are two examples of Nikon cameras. The one on the left is a Nikon F3, the Professional camera from the 1980s, on the right is a Nikon D300, my current main camera. Now the question is, do these two camera work in the same way?

Yes, they do.

One fact that is often lost is that all cameras, from the very first camera to the latest and greatest work on the exact same principle. Light, reflected off an object is directed through a lens or hole onto a light sensitive recording medium, and stored. The only difference is what the medium is and how it’s stored. In the case of the F3, it uses Film, which both records the image and stores it. The D300 using a sensor and then stores the image on a Compact Flash card. Yes, even your point and shoot camera works with these same principles.

Controlling Light. As I mentioned earlier, a camera directs light through a lens onto a light sensitive medium. If you just let all the light into the camera onto the medium you’ll just be seeing white. Lots of white. This is why you need to control the light being recorded. There are three things that do this, they are aperture size, shutter speed, and senstivity.

Aperture controls the amount of light going in, shutter speed determines how long the light is let in, and sensitivity determines how receptive to light the medium is.

Aperture: when you look at an eye, notice how in bright light the pupil goes smaller and in darkness opens wide, the camera’s aperture works in the same way.

When you look at the lens you’ll often see a series of numbers and letters. Of course there’s the 105mm, this is the focal length. But the one that we’re going to focus on is the 1:2.5. This indicates the maximum aperture the lens has, or how wide open it can go, these numbers are called F-Stops they are also written as f/2.5 or f/4. You might also see 1:3.5-4.5, this means that the maximum aperture is variable based on the focal length, this is often found on point and shoot lenses, or lower end zoom lenses. So while at the one end of the focal length you might have a maximum aperture of f/3.5 when you zoom all the way in, you’ll only have a maximum aperture of f/4.5. The lower the number the larger the maximum aperture, so a lens marked 1:1.8 will be able to let in a lot more light than a lens marked 1:5.6, so the f/1.8 lens is called faster. But the more open the aperature is the less of the photo will be in focus, this is called depth of field, which I will discuss in a later posting.

Shutter Speed: The shutter is often a piece of cloth or metal that protects the light sensitive material, the shutter speed determines how long this curtain is open. This speed is often listed in fractions of a second, noted by a quote mark so 1/60″ would indicate that the shutter was open for one sixtieth of a second or 30″ would indicate the shutter was open for thirty seconds. On average a person can shoot at speeds of 1/60″ or faster (1/100″ ect), this eliminates the appearance of camera shake in your images. See the photo below.

This is an example is a little extreme (6.4″ shutter speed), but shows off what camera shake is, most people will see this when shooting at speeds around 1/30″ or slower (1/15″). Of course camera manufactures have been working on new ways to assist by installing Image Stabilization (There are many names for this, Nikon uses VR or “Vibration Reduction”) on lenses or in camera.

Sensitivity to Light: As the name suggests it is how sensitivity to light the medium is. There’s really no real way to explain it. This sensitivity is measured on a scale known as ISO numbers (pronounced Eye-Ss-Oh, not eye-so). The higher the number, the more sensitive to light the medium is. However there are drawbacks to using a higher ISO, you get more grain (or noise in the digital world), this is noticeable aberrations in your images.

So combining aperture size, shutter speed, and sensitivity is how the camera determines how the light is captured. The real trick comes with choosing how to use all three in concert. But that will come with later posts, and a little more about manipulating the each setting to get the look you want.

This past weekend I had the chance to tour around an abandoned mental hospital. The place, closed in 1995, seemed to gain a life of its own after the closure.

Whenever I photograph an event I try to cath the emotion of the event, lots of facial expressions, people having fun, in action, the usually things you see in your daily newspaper. But how do you do that for things that don’t have emotions? Like a building?

Nikon D300 ~ AF-S Nikkor 17-55mm 1:2.8G DX
17mm ~ f/2.8 ~ 1/20″ ~ ISO-1600

You need to use your eyes, to be able to see a scene within the building that would induce emotion, often times, a trick in the post processing will help, the in above case, the chair looks like it’s trying to escape, the high-contrast black and white gives it a very harsh look. No surprise, this building housed people undergoing Electro Convulsive Therapy.

When you walk into a building, think about what it used to be, let that be your guide when looking for emotion. This was a mental hospital, within my own mind I thought of emotions of loss, isolation, fear, desire to escape. So while I was walking through the halls I looked for scenes that evoked that emotion within me.

Nikon D300 ~ AF-S Nikkor 17-55mm 1:2.8G DX
23mm ~ f/4 ~ 1/40″ ~ ISO-1600

Now, go out and start exploring your world, remember, there is a huge range of emotions that you can shoot into.