Just Clearing My Head

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Friday, March 25, 2005

Before I Forget...

Sunny 16 rule:
At high noon on a sunny day, aperture should be set at f/16 and shutter speed should be set at 125. This is using 100 speed film, so stop down accordingly depending on the speed film you're using. (ie, with 200 speed film you would move either to one stop smaller aperture opening or one stop faster shutter.)

Oh god, there's too much to remember.

If you're taking a picture of something that has eyes, make sure that the eyes are what you're focusing on. Seems simple and logical, but many a potentially good photo has been fuxxored by not having the eyes in focus. Think about it. When you're looking at a photo of a human or animal, what's the first thing you look at? Eyeholes must be in sharp focus.

Aperture setting controls depth of field. The smaller the aperture, the more you have in focus. The bigger the opening, the shallower the depth of field.

You don't use the focus ring in macro. Instead move the camera physically closer to or further away from the subject, until it's in focus.

The minimum shutter speed for any given exposure should be approximately half the mm length of the lens you're using. So for instance, last night I was using the big gun (500mm zoom) to take photos of the moon. So the minimum shutter speed was 250. This compensates for camera shake... the greater the zoom, the worse the camera shake's going to be. Of course this formula won't be optimal in all situations, but it's generally a good rule of thumb. Right? Right. Obviously this heavily affects aperture setting in a weird light situation like that of shooting the moon. (haha.)

When using a polarizing filter, expose for one stop less that what your meter reads. A polarizer steals about one stop's worth of light. (But make sure that you check the direction of the polarizing lines, so that your filter is at the right angle to the sun when you're taking the shot.)

Now, somebody chip in to my Fuji Finepix s2 pro fund. Haha, no, seriously though. Cool macro close-ups of bugs will be your reward. Yeah babies. You know you want it.

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