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Photography Basics
LVS
Instructor: Al Mierau
May, 2009
R. Joanne Johnson

Week 3

The Photos for Week 3
Aperture Priority/Aperture Value

Finally, I think that I understand what the f stop means. It is the way that the size of the aperture opening is described. The wider open it is, the smaller the f number. On my camera, f 2.4 is the widest it will go and f 8 the smallest. Some of my f8 shots took as long as 6 seconds to expose! And, some of my f 2.4 took up to a second and sometimes even longer. Also, when I changed the zoom, the camera automatically increased the f number and would not allow it to be decreased. At the Olympus link below, you can check out the specs of the camera.

I took at least 100 photos, all in and around my home because the weather and the opportunity to go somewhere wonderful limited the process. However, it did not limit my ability to experiment with Aperture and I did have some interesting fun and results! I noticed, at least with my camera, that the f8 (smallest aperture available on my camera) seemed to give richer, deeper images as far as color and overall representation of the photographed objects. I am happy to know that. I loved the richness and solid representations! The larger apertures finally yielded the desired DOF when I was able to be sure that the background to be blurred (or even foreground!) needed to be separated by distance from the central subject.

I did not do this, but will in the future, take a photo with Portrait Mode because, from my reading, the desired blurred background is part of that setting.

I must repeat that I took over 100 shots to arrive at the 11 I am including in my assignment. It was a good learning experience for me. I found this page informative: Understanding Aperture in photographic basic

The photos (all EXIF data on slides pages):

1. Photo of the plants on the front porch...I am pleased with the DOF although the armm of the chair is a bit blown out
2. Frog, front porch and again I like the DOF...at least I can see the gray paint of the porch blurring as it goes back
3. I like this horse photo and, although the wall is white, I can notice the blurriness
4. Again, I am happy with the sharpness of the main subject and blurriness of the background
5. The f 3.5 setting seemed right for this along with the focal length. Although the background is not blurred much (probably too close to the main subject) it has a suggestion of being softer than the very sharp main subject
6. At f 8, this took 4 seconds (used a tripod) to record. This is showing what I see as solid, well developed color and a sort of soft yet accented edge to the bottles
7. At f2.5, the DOF is there
8. Same scene as 7
9. I am including this because of the color, sharpness of the Clos du Bois bottle and label
10. The foreground is blurred, forming a frame around the dolls (I should have trimmed the thread on the girl!)
11. Shot with spot metering, from a distance with Zoom where the aperture was locked at f3.5