New Posts

2. March 2010 by Dave Mo.

If you have any questions you would like answered, or have a discussion to start, please feel free to do so.

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Open Questions…

31. August 2009 by Dave Mo.

Thank you to everyone who has been responding to these information tidbits. If anyone has a question, or would like to bring a topic up for discussion, please, post it or email it to me.

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103.1 The Bear’s 3rd annual Spring Swing

14. April 2009 by Dave Mo.

All American Photography is proud to be a supporter of this years 3rd annual Spring Swing golf scramble at the Golf Club of WV. This event is to help raise money for the Shriners Hospital in Lexington, Ky.

Shriners Hospitals for Children is a one-of-a-kind health care system dedicated to improving the lives of children by providing pediatric specialty care, innovative research and outstanding teaching programs. Every year, the Shriners Hospitals for Children provides care for thousands of kids with orthopaedic conditions, burns, spinal cord injuries, and cleft lip and palate, in a family-centered environment at no charge. It’s how Shriners Hospitals has been helping kids defy the odds since 1922.

All American Photography will be providing the team photos to be presented at the awards ceremony following the tournament. We are happy to do our part to help the Shriners, who help so many children in need.

If you would like details about the tournament, or to sign up your four-person team, contact 103.1 The Bear on their website.

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Depth of Field Part 2…

9. April 2009 by Dave Mo.

Alright, time for math class…wait, I thought this was a photography blog? It is, but, with most things in life, math is here too. So, today we are going to learn how to determine our depth-of-field. (range of acceptable sharpness)

Webster defines depth-of-field as:

the range of distances of the object in front of an image-forming device (as a camera lens) measured along the axis of the device throughout which the image has acceptable sharpness

With cameras, when you focus on something at a given distance, with any aperture, only one plane is in focus at a given time. Now, certain things can adjust over what distances this appearant focus drops off, and this is what gives us depth-of-field.

This is one of the most profound effects in all of photography. I allows the photographer to control the way everything looks in a photograph. Want a razor-thin depth-of-field for food photography? No problem, need everything in focus to infinity? No problem.

Let us start with the hyperfocal distance. This is the distance to focus on when you want the maximum range of sharpness. When you focus on the hyperfocal distance for a lens, everything from half that distance from the camera to infinity will be in acceptable focus. How do you determine this hyperfocal distance you ask, well, lets find out.

On older film cameras, they had aperture rings and hyperfocal scales that made it somewhat easier, and even some more expensive lenses still have the scales, but, most entry and mid level lenses do not. We will see how to determine this for any lens, though.

Remember: every calculation in this tutorial is overly simplified, meaning that most dof and hyperfocal calculations leave out exacting specifications, because every lens is manufactured differently, and therefore not quite the same as any other. So, these formulas are approximations, albeit good enough for most people.

  where:

H is the hyperfocal distance of a lens, in mm

f is lens focal length, in mm (actual, not accounting for sensor crop)

N is the f/stop

c is the circle of confusion, in mm

Circle of confusion, what is that? Glad you asked. It is an optical spot caused by a cone of light rays from a lens not coming to a perfect focus when imaging a point source. You don’t have to remember that, just know what it is for your particular camera format.

35mm=.029

APS-C=.018

4/3 (Olympus)=.015

I am not going to give them for medium and large format cameras, because if you are using one of those, you are probably not reading this blog.

Now, you can use that formula at any time to determine what distance to focus on to get maximum range of sharpness out of your lens. What about any other time? What about when you want a defocused background? No problem. You can always determine the range of near and far acceptable focus for your chosen settings (aperture, subject distance, and focal length) Heres how to find the near distance of acceptable sharpness:

 where:

Dn is the near focus distance of acceptable sharpness

s is the focal (subject) distance

H is the hyperfocal distance, in mm

f is the lens focal length, in mm

And to find the far limit of acceptable sharpness:

 where:

Df is the far focus distance of acceptable sharpness

s is the focal (subject) distance

H is the hyperfocal distance, in mm

f is the lens focal length, in mm

So, using the numbers you get from these formulas, you can determine if you have, say, 5.24 feet of sharpness when focusing on a subject at 15 feet, with a lens focal length of 80mm, and an aperture of f/8. This will allow you creative freedom by freeing you to decide if you want another object to appear in focus with the main subject of your photograph, or just as a blur in the background.

These may seem tough, and they can be, but, it is just another tool in the photographers arsenel to use to create their masterpiece.

Thank you for reading, and have a great day!!!

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Resolution…

12. March 2009 by Dave Mo.

Today, we are going to hit on a topic of interest to every photographer…resolution. Before we get started, a quick defenition. The American Heritiage Dictionary defines resolution as The fineness of detail that can be distinguished in an image, as on a video display terminal.

The number that most people associate with resolution is ppi, or, pixels per inch. What this is is the number of pixels (dots) in each linear inch of  printed photograph (not digital file). I know this will sound strange to most people, but, digital photo files have no inherent resolution. The resolution of a file comes from trying to squeeze a certain number of pixels onto a certain size print. A digital file contains a fixed number of pixels. This generally determines how large you can print the photo, and hence, the resolution.

When you print a photo, you resolve the photo at a certain number of pixels per inch. Do not confuse this with dpi (dots per inch), which is a measure of printer resolution. I think this is where a lot of people get hung up at on this subject. Also, the larger you print the photo, the less pixels per inch you need because the viewer is not going to be right on top of the photo, so the loss of detail will not be as big of a deal.

 Anyways, here is a quick method to roughly determine how large you can print a given photograph. Most people seem to agree that anywhere between 200 and 300 pixels per inch nets you the highest quality photo with detail noticable by the human eye. So, if you have a digital file that has pixel dimensions of 1200×1500, you could print a pretty well detailed 4×6 in photo. (1200 pixels divided by 300 pixels per in). Remember, this is just for MAXIMUM detail. you could print a 8×10 in photo and would get a ppi of 150. The photo would probably appear a bit blocky or fuzzy.

In a nutshell, divide your pixel dimensions by your inteded output resoultion to get your maximum print size. You can get your print dimensions from the EXIF data embedded in your file. In Windows, right click the photo, go down to properties, click on it, then click on summary. Ignore the horizontal and vertical resolution, that only has to do with on screen resolution.

If you have any questions, comments or concerns, as always, feel free to email me.

Dave

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Exposure

1. February 2009 by Dave Mo.

This post is all about exposure. 

I suppose this should have been the first entry as far as educational material. Oh well, better late than… well, you get the idea.

Here we go, into the wonderful world of exposure (EV-exposure value). Probably one of the most misunderstood, and most important concepts in photography.

Exposure is the amount of light that hits your digital sensor (or film). In photography, it is measured by f-stops. It is controlled by three primary methods.

First is shutter speed, which was covered a bit last time. All other thing being equal, a slower shutter speed will allow more light in, and give you a higher exposure. The result of this is a brighter picture. Conversely, a faster shutter speed will give you a lower exposure, and a darker picture, all other thing being equal.

The second thing that allows you to control exposure is your aperture. This was also talked about a bit before. Aperture is the ratio of the lens opening to the size of the sensor (film), and not a specific size. Similar to the shutter speed, with all other thing being equal, a larger aperture will give you a higher exposure. Also conversely, a smaller aperture will give you a lower exposure.

Finally, the last of the primary methods for controlling exposure is the ISO, or sensor gain, or sensetivity. Imagine, every pixel (picture element) on your sensor is a small bucket collecting little bits of light as the shutter opens. Imagine further, since we are working with electrical components, you take that small amount of light collected by those little buckets (pixels), and amplify them, you get a stronger signal. This is what ISO controls. So, all other things being equal, a higher ISO will give you a higher exposure. So…you guessed it, a lower ISO will give a lower exposure, all other things equal, of course.

On a bit of a side note: be careful when raising your ISO, as it goes up, so does digital noise. Similar to film grain on high-ISO films, although most people do not find noise as appealing as grain. This phenomenon is similar to what happens when you turn a radio up too loud, eventually, the speakers can’t handle it and the sound distorts. In photography, this is noise. You will see noise as small blocks of color, especially in darker areas of a photo. However, sometimes you need that boost, and there are some noise-reducing plugins out there for your editing programs.

It is the combination of these three main tools, shutter speed, aperture, and ISO, that allow photographers to do so many wonderful things. The tricky part is experamenting with all of these things. Luckily, in the digital age, there is no fee for film and developing, except your time. So spend your time taking photos, play around with your settings, and HAVE FUN!!!

 Dave

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Sharpness

15. January 2009 by Dave Mo.

This is a very basic introduction to achieving tack-sharp photos.

 The main thing to control sharpness is shutter speed. The faster the shutter opens and closes, the less time something has to register on the film (digital sensor) and move across it (blur). Given that, to have the sharpest photos, you would set your camera for as fast of a shutter speed as it has, right? Wrong!

As with everything else in this world, there is a trade-off. When you have a super fast shutter speed, light has a very short time to get to the film (sensor). This has a tendancy to lower your overall exposure. Try this, if your camera has a manual mode, turn it on, set the shutter speed as fast as it will go, and take pictures. Now, this may not work with shutter priority mode (Tv or S on some cameras), as the camera trys to balence everything out.

So now you have very dark photos. What do you do? Well, you make other adjustments. If you need a very fast shutter speed, you can increase the ISO, which, in a nutshell, makes the camera more sensitive to light, or, you can open up the aperture. Be aware that higher ISO’s may increase noise and grain, and large apertures have limited DOF (depth of acceptable sharpness).

Last thing, handholding. When you handhold a camera, depending on how well balanced you are, you may need to use a very fast shutter speed. The general rule-of-thumb is to use a shutter speed that is the reciprocal of the focal length of your lens. This means that with a 30mm lens, you would have a shutter speed no greater than 1/30 sec. Now, that is in 35mm terms, if you have a digital SLR or point-and-shoot, this changes. For example, Olympus cameras have what is called a 2x crop factor. This means that the same 30mm lens on an Olympus digital SLR would have an effective focal length of 60mm (2×30), and you would need a shutter speed of 1/60 sec. Why is this important? Because, the rule-of-thumb is from the 35mm days. It works, you just have to be careful. Other camera manufactures are different, APS-C sensors (Canon) have a 1.5x crop, Nikons have a 1.6x crop. Just refer to your cameras documentation.

 Well, thats it for now. I hope everyone can get something from this, and I will post again soon.

Dave

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Depth of Field

11. December 2008 by Dave Mo.

Hello Everyone!!! Just a short little information tidbit. To help control depth of field, with all other things being equal, the larger your aperture, the less DOF you have. This will give you those creamy, defocused backgrounds that are a staple of portrait photography.

If you use a point and shoot camera, and it has manual controls, this is easy, if a bit counterintuitive. Whatever your aperture control is, its listed as a number (f2, 2.8, 4, 5.6 etc.) the smaller the number, the larger the aperture. This is due to the fact that the number is the reciprocal of the ratio of the lens opening to the size of the sensor.

When you set your point and shoot to portrait mode, this is what it does. It tries to select the lowest aperture available. Many other factors come into play, but we will cover those later.

 Dave Mo

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Panoramio (Google Earth Photos)

11. December 2008 by Dave Mo.

I have a number of photos on Google Earth now. You can check out my Panoramio Photos here http://www.panoramio.com/user/2433902

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Update to Contest

11. December 2008 by Dave Mo.

I got selected for the contest. There will be five winners.

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