Prayer FlagThere’s a wonderful story about Kurt Schwitters.* One day, the artist was on the train, carrying with him the roots of a tree. When someone asked him what the roots were,
[H]e replied that they constituted a cathedral. “But that is no cathedral, that is only wood!” the stranger exclaimed. “But don’t you know that cathedrals are made out of wood?” Schwitters replied.
On the face of it, the artist probably seemed a little crazy to the man on the train. But to Schwitters, it was no more unusual to look at those roots and see the cathedral inside than it would’ve been for Rodin to recognize the lovers waiting to be liberated from the stone. His fertile imagination gave the world inventive poetry, whimsical bits of collage he dubbed “Merz” and Gaudi-esque architectural fantasias that came to be known as “Merzbau.” A more sensible man might’ve conceded that it was a bit of a stretch to see cathedrals in stumps; thankfully, Schwitters stuck to his gentle madness.
At some point, you’ll want to cultivate your own style and vision. After all, when just about everyone’s got a camera, what’s a guy or girl got to do to stand out? So we look for that individual style, the one that will at least make us stand out, if not make us rich and/or famous.
Don’t.
Mind you, I’m not saying “take the same photos everyone’s taken of the same things since the dawn of photography.” What I’m saying, more accurately, is quit worrying about making yourself unique. You might as well fret over your fingerprints. Each of us sees the world differently, just because. There are ways that we can see more of it, either by getting to places we’ve never been, or finding a new light (sometimes literally) in which to view that which we pass every day. Worrying about authenticity isn’t what makes you authentic. It’s a simple matter of seeing what you see, as no one else does or can, framing that in the viewfinder, and then being faithful to that vision.
There’s everything you need to find your style in a nutshell. Simple, isn’t it? Well, not really. It takes work. It’s easy to take those same shots everybody’s taken (Hey, look! I’m squishing the Eiffel Tower between my fingertips! I’ve got the Guggenheim in a waffle cone!). It’s also tempting to settle for the easy shot for lack of time, or because the more conventional shot might get more plaudits (or sales). It’s quite something else to pass those shots up for another spot altogether, or to do the even harder work of finding new angles on the same old subject that nobody’s thought of before. They may not be what’s in every vacation snapshot or postcard, but they’re something else: they’re truly, irrevocably, yours. If you can nail that, and stay true to it, you will have done something you can be proud to put your name on.
Ansel Adams said once that the most important part of the camera was the twelve inches behind it. Not the Canon, Kodak, or Nikon, nor the tripod it’s on, nor the lens that’s attached to it. You. Nobody else sees the world quite the way you do. You have a responsibility to yourself to honor the vision that only you can see, and only you can communicate.
*Related in Motherwell, The Dada Painters and Poets, p. xxvii.
Last week, I mentioned that the right exposure is all about the intensity, amount, and duration of light. We’ve already discussed how Aperture and ISO affect your shooting, so this week, we’ll take up Shutter Priority.
There are several types of shutter, but regardless of how they work, they’re all meant to do the same thing. The shutter’s a bit like a set of little doors built into your camera body. If the aperture is like your iris, the shutter is your camera’s eyelid; keep it open longer, and more light is reaching your retina. Similarly, the shutter will remain open for lengths of time ranging from 1/8000th of a second to several minutes or hours (as is commonly done in astrophotography) controlling how much light will hit your camera’s film or sensor.
Figure 2
If you’re using Shutter Priority (usually denoted by an “S” on your control knob), you’ve chosen to control the shutter, and let the camera meter the scene, guess at aperture, and possibly also adjust your ISO, depending on your settings.
When might it be better to shoot in Shutter priority rather than Aperture? For one thing, if you’re not particular about your depth of field (deep, shallow, it’s all the same to you as long as you’ve got a decent exposure at the end of it). For another, shutter speed comes very much into play if you’re photographing in extreme lighting conditions. If you’re shooting in bright, direct sunlight, for instance, you may want or need a faster shutter speed than your camera’s Auto setting would choose under those same circumstances, so as not to overexpose your picture. On the other hand, if you’re shooting in low light, using a longer shutter speed means not having to use a higher ISO, thereby preserving details in your photo and keeping noise levels down.*
Shutter speed can also have artistic uses, sometimes creating a sense of motion (for instance, showing light trails from fireworks, doing a light painting, blurring a moving object against a sharp background, or vice versa), and other times stopping it dead in its tracks. These can be very individual decisions, and can also vary based on what, and when, you’re shooting.
Figure 3
Shutter priority is useful for far more practical reasons as well. While you can always get more light to the sensor by opening your aperture, no matter what lens you’re using, at some point you’ll have opened it as far as it can go. Sometimes you can’t go any farther for artistic reasons; a lens that opens to f/1.4 will usually give you good bokeh and a nicely blurred background, but will also give you a razor-thin focal plane when sometimes you need, or want, either the focal distance or the depth of field. Other times you just can’t go any further for technical reasons; a lens with a maximum aperture of f/3.5 isn’t going to open to 2.8 simply because we’d like it to. You can, however, control the duration of light, so what you’ve gained or lost in f/stops, you can easily balance by changing your shutter speed.
As we did last week with Aperture Priority, let’s take a look at what the camera’s doing when you shoot in Shutter Priority.
In Figure 1, I wanted to show the motion of the cars as they passed me, so I used a shutter speed of 1/10. I’m not too worried about camera shake, since the subject’s not even going to be in the same ZIP code as “sharp.” It’s a bright, sunny day, so the camera should stop the aperture down… and it does, to f/25. Notice that even at ISO 100 (my camera’s base ISO), the photo comes out washed out. This is one instance in which you’d generally want to stop down, resort to exposure compensation, or use a polarizing filter if you have one.** In Figure 2, I wanted a similar feeling of motion, but this time, I’m shooting in the shade, so the camera should stop the aperture up. This time I’m using a 1/8 shutter speed, and the camera’s giving me an aperture of f/20 with a much more even exposure.
Figure 4
Figures 3 and 4 are a bit different, in that I didn’t particularly care about capturing, or stopping, motion. I just wanted a reasonably well-exposed photo. So in Figure 3, I’ve used a comparatively speedy 1/200 shutter speed, and the aperture the camera’s chosen is f/10. If you recall last week (Aperture Priority), you’ll notice that the camera tries to balance the settings off one another as you change them; if you want to exercise a bit more control when shooting in A or S, you almost have to think like the camera. So if I want a bit more depth of field (at this distance f/10 really should suffice, but play along for a minute), all I need to do is slow the shutter speed; the camera will stop the aperture down to compensate.*** If I want less, I do the opposite. But since I want more in this instance, I’ve chosen a slower 1/30, and the camera has obliged me with f/14, which gets me a bit more DOF.
Not so bad, was it? As always, check your photos as you shoot so you can make adjustments on the fly as you need to.
*Long shutter speeds can also be a source of image noise, which is why some cameras have long exposure noise reduction. However, comparing the noise from a long exposure to that from shooting at a very high ISO generally shows that longer exposures are by far the lesser of two evils.
**A polarizing filter, besides being useful for cutting glare and giving you lovely blue skies, can also be adjusted to vary the amount of light that’s reaching your camera’s sensor by a stop or more.
***There are exceptions. Because any medium, whether it’s film or a digital sensor, can only capture images within a certain range of light, at some point, you run into what’s called “reciprocity failure.” In plain English, the amount of light you’re letting hit the medium is either too high or too low for that medium’s dynamic range, so all you’re going to see is something terribly under- or over-exposed, if you’re lucky to see anything besides just a solid black or white square. If you’re operating around the camera’s limits, it will generally let you know; you’ll need to read the manual to see how and where it will show you that warning.
This time last week, I wrote about our “inner critic.” Of course, the criticism doesn’t stop there. Part of our growth, regardless of whether we’re expressing ourselves with a camera or a Fender Telecaster, is finding someone to give an honest critique of our work; that growth continues when we’re approached to do the same for another person.
To begin with, let’s consider this from the viewpoint of the person who wants their work critiqued. Here, there are a few things to keep in mind: First, it should be someone who knows photography well enough to give not only an aesthetic critique, but also a technical one. On one hand, you may have a perfectly exposed but dull shot; on the other, you may have a terrific subject that’s undermined by poor focus or thoughtless composition. Someone who’s inexperienced might find it perfectly acceptable, or may realize something’s “off” but not be able to tell you what it is. Second, it should be someone who will be honest with you. Your best friend, or your mother, may not want to hurt your feelings;* an experienced critic knows how to give constructive feedback without being unduly harsh about it. Third, be specific as to what you expect from your critic. The criteria for evaluating the artistic merits of something versus its commercial viability, for instance, can be two very different things. The better your critic understands you, and also understands what you’re trying to accomplish, the better they can help get you there.
Having considered the photographer, let’s now consider the critic. Someone respects you, and your work, enough to think that you’d have something constructive to offer them about their craft. So be honest, obviously, but also be constructive. You know what your inner critic is like; you don’t need to externalize yours, or personify someone else’s. Saying, “Wow, that really sucks!” isn’t helping anybody; pointing out not only the flaws but their remedies, however, can teach both of you something. Think of yourself almost like an Olympic judge: you’re looking at technical merit, artistic impression, and giving an overall “score.”
Be encouraging; if there’s something you see someone doing well, whether it’s in just one photo or over the course of a batch of them, point that out, but be specific, since empty praise is about as helpful as empty criticism. Account for differences in communication style. Regardless of your “type,” (blunt, oblique, timid), hash that out ahead of time so there are no rude surprises. Most of all, though, if you’re not sure of something (intent, context, the photographer’s motivation not only in what they did, but how), ask.
One thing that both photographer and critic need to bear in mind is context. A single photo may be great, or awful, on its own merits. It helps, however, to know where this piece fits in relation to the rest of someone’s body of work. If it’s part of a series, does it make sense in the context of the rest of the photos that comprise that series? And if it’s being considered as an individual work, does it mark an improvement over previous efforts, a decline, or someone who’s holding steady? If you’re the photographer, you’ll likely get better feedback if you don’t just hand, or email, someone a single picture and ask, “What do you think of this?” Likewise, as the person giving the critique, it’s not unreasonable to ask ahead of time for works from different times in the photographer’s development to be included, so that it’s easier to give an informed opinion.
There’s an axiom that criticism says as much about the critic as it does the object of the criticism. Bear in mind that your approach to someone, and their work, may be remembered long after the specifics of what you said have faded from memory, and with that in mind, try to be the kind of critic you’d no doubt like to have: constructive, tough, but fair. Also remember that you’re being asked to give an assessment of the person’s work, not the person; you may think the person themselves is absolutely wonderful, but they still might not be doing their best work; conversely, you don’t have to particularly like an individual to see, and commend, the value of what they’re doing. And if you feel you’re not the right person to critique someone’s work, there’s no shame in directing them to someone you feel may be better qualified for the job.
*Of course, there are exceptions. If you’ve got the kind of friend or family member who not only knows what they’re talking about, but will share it constructively, at least you know they’re not blowing smoke if they tell you something’s good. My mother’s been a photographer for longer than I’ve been breathing, and while she’s encouraging, she’ll also let me know when I could do better, and how to do it. If you’ve got that kind of mother, disregard that last bit.
Again?!? But I read you “The Poky Little Puppy” LAST night!
The weekly fishwrap. As usual, links go to the full articles.
Fond remembrances of the late photographer and documentarian Jerome Liebling by the New York Times’ James Estrin and the Boston Globe’s Mark Feeney.
Panasonic’s upcoming GH3 to support new AVHCD 2.0 codec? Old and new versions of Micro 4/3 14-42mm lenses tested head to head (4/3 Rumors)
Canon expected to make a series of new product announcements soon after the upcoming Nikon announcement. Canon generally announces early in the week, so if the August 23-24 timeline is correct for Nikon, a Canon announcement around the 29th would not be out of the question. Same article speculates that the 1Ds Mark IV will have a 36 megapixel sensor. (Canon Rumors)
Kodak attempts “poison pill” to fend off potential hostile takeover. (Democrat and Chronicle; hat tip to PetaPixel)
Ricoh’s GXR camera system gets a Leica M-mount module (dpreview)
Thom Hogan alternates between perceptive writing on the craft of photography, and reviews of gear that are actually useful (not something to take for granted). He’s in gear mode this week, having not only written reviews for a series of compact cameras (Fuji’s X100, the Samsung TL500, Sony’s HX9V) but also thrown fuel on the Nikon Mirrorless fire. As there are several articles of interest, the backlink goes to his homepage; from there, browse to your heart’s content.
Leica starts shipping Summilux-C cinema lenses; a set of eight will set you back a mere $178,000. Leica Camera AG issues a statement in the wake of a rash of customer issues with SD cards in the M9, saying that “a very limited number” of customers have come forward with issues. Call me a silly bastard, but if your camera can’t save the images it captures, $7,000 is a bit much to spend for a paperweight. (Leica Rumors)
Early test images from the new Samsung 60mm 2.8 Macro lens are coming out at a slow drip. What’s out so far looks pretty impressive. (Mirrorless Rumors)
With the Nikon D700 out of stock at all the larger online retailers, speculation is growing that the August 24 Nikon announcement will include D700 and D3s replacements. Furthermore, cryptic tweets have come from big shots Andy Rouse, Chase Jarvis and Joe McNally that hint that there are other Nikon-related things afoot… My take: I’m sure that each of them have signed ironclad NDA’s, so anything that comes out in advance of an official announcement probably ain’t coming from them. (Nikon Rumors)
Japanese electronics manufacturer Pioneer to manufacture cameras in Brazil for the Chinese market. Confused yet? (PetaPixel)
New York photographer Phil Datz arrested for videotaping the police — legally. (Poynter.org)
Might Sony be trying to steal some of Nikon’s thunder? On August 24 (the same date as Nikon’s upcoming announcement), they’re said to be announcing new bodies, A (SLR) and E (NEX) mount lenses, and accessories. As the date gets closer, not only are specs beginning to firm up, but also photos of the gear in question… speaking of which, I have to take back what I said about the earlier NEX-7 pictures looking ‘shopped. Looks like they were, in fact, the real deal. Several posts this week, so the link to the right will go to the Sony Alpha Rumors homepage; browse from there. (Sony Alpha Rumors)
Stripped to its basics, photography’s all about light: how much, how long, and at what intensity. The aperture, which we covered earlier in the week, controls “how much.” The shutter, which we’ll be taking up next Tuesday, controls “how long.” That leaves the intensity of, or more accurately,
your camera’s sensitivity to, light, which is controlled by its ISO settings.
Let’s get the jargon out of the way first, shall we? ISO simply stands for International Organization for Standardization, a body that sets standards for film speed and sensor sensitivity. ISO actually carries over from the film days (and the numbers correspond to ASA numbers, from the system that ISO replaced). Time was, if you were shooting outdoors, you’d buy ISO 100 or 200, use 400 for indoors, and use 800 or 1600 for low light or situations when you wanted to shoot at a much higher shutter speed in broad daylight.
Just the same as low-ISO film had a very fine grain, the “grain” in digital (more often referred to as “noise”) is much less noticeable at a low ISO than it is when you “push” the ISO, using the upper reaches of your camera’s ISO capability. The reason for this is that you’re increasing the sensor’s sensitivity to input in general; not only does light get picked up, but the sensor is also “reading” stray electrical impulses and incorporating those into your image.
Of course, as with any other feature or setting on your camera, a little experimentation is in order. You always want to know what a setting will do not only for, but also to, your photos. Higher ISO settings, as previously mentioned, introduce varying levels of noise, and loss of detail, into your photos. Whether you’re using specialized software, or just your camera’s native noise reduction, you can keep a lid on the noise to some degree, but you can’t recover lost detail. It’s up to you, therefore, to see how your camera behaves at about 1,000 and above, and to decide whether these are tradeoffs you’re willing to make.
Figure 3
Let me give you an example. Noise is generally going to show in darker areas of the photo, though if the ISO’s set high enough, it’ll be noticeable throughout the photo. Figure 1 was shot in Aperture priority at ISO 400, since I wanted an f/16 aperture to make sure the church’s steeple would be as sharp as the rose window and other parts closer to me. The shot’s reasonably clear of noise. As you’ll see if you peek at the EXIF data, the camera chose a shutter speed of 13 seconds. I happened to have the camera on a tripod at the time, so for me, that was an acceptable shutter speed. But suppose you don’t own a tripod, or don’t have it with you? A higher shutter speed is going to be necessary to reduce motion blur, but if I try a higher shutter speed at f/16, my photo’s going to be terribly underexposed. The compromise lies in our ISO settings. There’s a dizzying array of ISO numbers on your camera, with some cameras starting as low as 50, and going as high as 25,600. Here’s all you need to remember: with each doubling of your ISO number, you’re also doubling your sensor’s sensitivity to light. So going from ISO 800 to ISO 1600, for instance, is one full stop of light; in other words, I’ve got twice the light sensitivity I had before.
Figure 4
So. I’m not willing to compromise on aperture because I don’t want to sacrifice my depth of field. I probably can’t squeeze more than a third of a stop out of my shutter speed without the photo being underexposed. The solution, therefore, is to boost the ISO. We’ll try going up two stops, to ISO 1600 (figure 2). Notice that the aperture stays the same, but the shutter speed has been “sped up” to 8/10ths of a second. If I want to go faster still (maybe it’s cold out and my hands are shaky; it’s not like I have to worry about the church scuttling off), I can push to ISO 3200 (Figure 3, ½ second). Or maybe my subject isn’t quite as well-lit as this church, and I have no tripod (I know I already said I had one… play along for a minute). I can push my ISO all the way up to 25,600, and, hey presto, my subject is there in the frame, plain as day (Figure 4)… but I’ve sacrificed image quality for not much of a gain shutter speed.
Speaking of degradation, let’s take a closer look at the noise, shall we? Figure 5 shows a 100% crop (300×300 pixels) from a section of the shot in figure 4. Not a great look, is it?
Figure 5
Noise isn’t your friend. I’m also going to end on the assumption that if you’re making a photo of something, you want the end result to be reasonably close to what you’re seeing in front of you. Besides the noise and lost detail that higher ISO introduces, it also affects the look of the light in the scene, making the night look brighter, overall, than it actually is. Your best bet, therefore, is a support (a tripod, or, barring that, a monopod) with a nice, long shutter speed and the lowest-possible ISO. Being the realist that I am, I know you won’t always have a tripod. The next best thing is to push the ISO only as far as it needs to go, and shoot with as slow a shutter speed as your handholding technique will allow.
A note on sensor size and ISO: because a larger sensor can accommodate larger pixels, it’s possible to get higher, cleaner ISO performance out of a full-frame sensor than out of an APS-C sensor, while both of those will outperform a compact, and all three will beat the pants off your iPhone. It’s not uncommon for current cameras, like Nikon’s D7000 and Canon’s 60D, to be capable of up to a staggering 25,600 ISO, although the level of noise present in the photo (and the amount of detail that’s lost) makes it impractical. Realistically, newer cameras can be expected to give acceptable results up to about ISO 3200, with the caveat that your mileage may vary.
As should probably be pretty clear by now, my approach to photography is as much centered on the “why” as it is on the “how.” There are innumerable ways to get the right exposure even for a single shot (as we saw a couple of days ago in Shooting in Aperture Priority). But there are also innumerable “Whys” for each of us as photographers. Why pick up a camera in the first place? Why that subject, at that angle, in that light, and not some other?
Consequently, I’m drawn to photographers whose Why shines through in their work. Photography doesn’t necessarily always have to be about something, but should always be motivated by something. And when it comes to books on photography, I’m similarly drawn as much to writers that address the thought process or philosophy behind the shot as much as the settings used to get it. All of which brings us, in a rather roundabout way, to Visual Poetry: A Creative Guide for Making Engaging Digital Photographs, by Chris Orwig.
Like a number of other photo books, it’s split into thematic sections. Unlike many of those other books, thankfully, it doesn’t include extensive information on post-processing (which is all the more admirable given that Orwig teaches, and has written a number of books on, those tools). Here, instead, he seems primarily concerned with what happens before you’ve pressed the shutter. A good thing, if you ask me, since an overreliance on postproduction tends to lead to sloppier photography (if the photo’s mediocre, the thinking tends to go, you can always just fix it later). Given the thematic organization, you could probably skip straight to the section on photographing weddings, or family, or whatever suits your particular taste. Don’t. Each chapter, whether it’s about your particular bailiwick or not, has information that will be useful to you, regardless of your specialty (or lack thereof).
If there’s plenty here to stimulate thought, there’s also practical advice on technique and gear. With that said, even these sections are intended to make you think about what you’re using and why; it’s one thing to spell out a list of options (brands, focal lengths), but quite another to give someone the tools with which to make the right buying decisions. You can have all the heart and all the compositional skills in the world, but they won’t get you very far as a photographer if your photos are otherwise a mess visually. So there’s technique scattered among all the philosophical bits as well, and it’s addressed with the same lucidity as the rest of the subject matter here.
The best part comes at the end of each section. Not only is it a succinct summation of what went before, there are also interviews with experienced photographers, a wealth of print and web-based resources, and a series of exercises designed to take all that thought and theory and make it tangible through practice.
I’m of two minds on this book. On the one hand, I think it’s an ideal resource for a novice or an amateur who’s not particularly advanced; those readers, particularly, will find plenty that helps them develop habits and ways of seeing that will serve them well. On the other, advanced amateurs and professionals shouldn’t overlook it. When you’ve been shooting for years, it’s easy to become jaded and maybe a little bored by the craft; there are moments here that can help you shake off some of those cobwebs, and some of the apathy. Regardless of skill level, there’s something to be said for a reminder of first principles that can help kindle, or re-awaken, the joy to be found in simplifying one’s gear, approach, and process.
Postscript: Chris’s website, which you can visit here, is a gateway to his portfolio, blog, and quite a bit else.
Your purchases through the Amazon affiliate links in this post help keep The First 10,000 going. Thanks for your support!
What kinda photographer shoots stuff like this, anyway?
At some point, you’ll find it useful to decide just what kind of photographer you are. Are you serious or casual? Plan on going professional, or content to remain an amateur? You’ve got money to burn, or you want/need to keep it on the cheap? Just as importantly, what do you want to shoot? Kids? Animals? Sports? Cars? Landscapes? Or do you have not even the remotest idea what kind of photographer you are?
These aren’t just rhetorical questions (far be it from me, the one-time English major…). They’re actually important for a number of reasons.
Not least of these is equipment. The requirements, usually in lenses, but sometimes also in bodies and accessories, will be much different for someone in the habit of shooting architecture than they’d be for someone who treks to the track every weekend for shots of the ponies or the stock cars.
But of course, gear only gets you so far. You’ll also need to do a fair amount of study and training. If you plan on being self-taught, your answers to these questions might guide you to one book or website over another; if you’re planning on learning from a human being, those same answers will guide you to taking certain types of classes, or in finding a photographer to shadow or take on as a mentor.
And even once you’ve got your gear and a fair amount of training/experience under your belt, you’re not done yet. There’s still the matter of developing your style. We’ll be taking up some tips on doing just that in the days ahead, but bear in mind that part of how we arrive at our own style, often as not, is by observing others who do what we’d like to be doing, and learning from them. So if you fancy yourself a fashion photographer, you might start with Herb Ritts; a street photographer, Gary Winograd; a photojournalist, Sebastiao Salgado. Others’ work can be an inspiration, a point of departure, or a series of object lessons in what we do or don’t want out of our photography.
Incidentally, if you’re not sure what kind of photographer you are or would like to be, or if you feel like assigning yourself a “category” is somehow pigeonholing yourself, know that that’s okay too. Just be aware that even being a Jack or Jill of all trades carries with it its own set of requirements, and sometimes even bigger challenges; you probably won’t be able to get away with having only one lens in your kit, for instance, and you may find it a bit more of a challenge figuring out from whom to learn. On the other hand, your options are limitless, since you’re free to just wander from day to day, pointing your camera wherever your eye leads you.
Regardless of where you fall on any of these criteria – and really, it’s got to be a plural, since all the different things we “are” as photographers end up looking like a really complicated Venn diagram with many, many points of intersection – don’t feel as though you need to explain, much less justify, it to anyone. This is for you, and you alone. Think of it as something that’s just one more thing in your mental toolkit. Your choices don’t make you a better photographer than the next person, but neither do they diminish you.
For a humorous take on this, check out Gordon Lewis’ What Type of Photographer Are You? on Shutterfinger (and check out the rest of his blog while you’re there… you’ll thank me later).
And by way of a postscript, what kind of photographer are you?
Photography, from a purely technical standpoint, is all about getting the right exposure, which, in turn, is all about light: how intense, how much, and how long. The controls you’ll be using most often on your camera (or, if you’re shooting in Auto, the controls the camera’s choosing for you) deal with these three things. This week, we’ll be taking up the role of the aperture, and shooting in Aperture Priority.
The aperture’s a diaphragm located on the end of the lens that connects to the camera body. It looks a bit like, and functions more than a little like, the iris in your eye; the more “dilated” it is, the more light it lets in. It does something else, as well, controlling depth of field, which, in plain English, is how much of your scene will be in focus.
Aperture Priority (usually denoted by an “A” on your control knob), regardless of the camera you’re using, means that you’ve chosen to control the aperture, and are leaving the rest of the guesswork up to the camera; it will “choose” your shutter speed based on how it meters the scene. If you’ve chosen Auto ISO, it may also adjust your camera’s ISO, especially in low-light situations.*
Why choose Aperture Priority over Shutter Priority or Manual? Well, for one thing, it’s useful in low light situations, since a larger/faster aperture is letting more light into the lens, and therefore onto the sensor. For another, it can also be useful as an artistic tool. If your subject is in an area where there’s a lot of background clutter (figure 1), changing your depth of field can blur that clutter, making it less recognizeable and keeping the focus on your subject. Likewise, when you want more of your shot in focus, you can set your aperture to f/11 or higher, giving you greater depth of field. Shooting in Automatic removes much of your ability to do that; often as not, you’ll get a nicely blurred background on something you wanted in focus, and vice versa.
Figure 2
Now, let’s look at what the camera’s doing when you shoot in Aperture Priority. Since it was a nice, bright day out, I kept my ISO at 200 for all of these shots. Figure 2 was shot at 21mm, with the aperture set at 3.8, which is the widest my f3.5-5.6 will let me go at that focal length.. The shutter speed is 1/400 (1/400th of a second). On Figure 3, I’m using f/8, and the camera’s set the shutter speed to 1/100. By the time we get to figure 4, I’m using f/18 (remember, same ISO and focal length) and the shutter speed defaults to 1/20. Notice what’s happening here: there’s very little difference in each exposure, because each time we stop down**, we’re letting in a bit less light, and the camera, in order to compensate, is making the shutter speed a little slower in order to make sure that the sensor’s “seeing” that light for a longer period of time.
Figure 3
Suppose you’ve chosen your aperture, and the picture’s either under- or overexposed. You have two possible fixes. One is to make note of what shutter speed the camera’s choosing for you, go to “M” and make the shutter either that much faster or that much slower to compensate (because in “A” you could technically stop the camera up or down, but then it’s just going to choose a shutter speed that gives you the same exposure issue). The other is to use your camera’s exposure compensation settings. Exposure compensation allows you to lighten or darken the picture by anywhere from three to five stops, in 1/3 stop increments. So your viewfinder, or LCD display, will show a value of +/- .03, .07, 1, etc.; some will preview the effect if you’re using the LCD and shooting in live view. You may need to take a few shots ’til you’ve got one with which you’re happy. If you notice your camera’s consistently under/overexposing in a certain situation, you may want to keep the exposure compensation at a given value. Just make sure to check your photos from time to time, since an area may not be as dark as it seems, or the sun can slip behind a cloud.
Figure 4
A side note on Aperture: you’ll sometimes hear people talk about a “bright” or “fast” versus a “dark” or “slow” lens. What they’re generally referring to is its maximum aperture. A “fast” lens (generally in the range of f1.4-2.8) lets in more light, allowing for a quicker shutter speed (the “fast” part). Because a lens will stay at its maximum aperture for its focal length until you press down the shutter (an f/2 lens stopped down to f/22 stays open at f/2, for example), it’s going to look brighter in your viewfinder than something with a maximum aperture of f/5.6 (the “bright” part). What difference does that make? Well, focusing — whether you’re doing it yourself, or using the camera’s autofocus — is a heck of a lot easier the “brighter” the lens. Autofocus tends to “hunt” in low light with a darker lens, and you, likewise, will find it harder to focus, especially if the lens doesn’t have a focusing scale on it.
*I’ll be discussing ISO later this week.
**”Stopping down” is going to a higher f/ number, while “stopping up” is going to a smaller f/number; if this sounds confusing, think of the aperture like a dimmer switch: turn it up, you get more light, whereas if you turn it down, you get less.
These flowers weren't shot out of a cannon, just through one.
If you take your photography even remotely seriously – and I hope you do – it’s likely you want to do it well. It’s also likely that you’re convinced that your photography, or at least a fair amount of it, is crap. This is true of many photographers I know (myself included).
In small doses, believe it or not, that can actually be a constructive thing. There are few things worse for your craft than assuming you’ve got it licked. Room for improvement? Pah! That’s for rank amateurs, not an artiste like mysel—oh, cut that out, already. However, it’s equally counterproductive to assume that you’re as good as you’re ever going to get and that, let’s face it, that just ain’t all that good.
That inner voice, your inner critic, when he or she is constructive, can be very useful. After all, that can be who keeps us from becoming complacent about our craft, and keeps us striving day after day to question the why and how of what we do. That internal monologue (or dialogue, if you’re given to replying to yourself) can motivate you, and keep you going on those days you’d rather just say the hell with it.
However, he or she isn’t always constructive. There are times we, and our inner critic, can be our own worst enemy. We find ourselves telling ourselves that our work is awful, which is bad enough; what’s worse is when we think that a bad shoot or a bad day is somehow reflective of who we are as people. At that point, your inner critic just becomes your inner bastard.
“But wait,” I hear you say, “my photography’s a big part of me, to a point where I identify with, and by, what I create.” Good. Just don’t let that identification be limited to all the times you picked the wrong shutter speed, or left the lens cap on. You’re better than your mistakes, and not yet as good as you’re capable of becoming.
Let’s step back from this for a moment. Instead of an internal discussion over your own work, let’s imagine for a second that someone was disparaging the work of an artist you really understood and respected. At the very least, you’d disagree with that person. You might even go so far as to point out where you think this person’s in error vis-à-vis the artist. You could also, if you’re feeling particularly feisty, tell said individual to get over themselves.
Now tell me: do you owe yourself any less compassion than you’d give, oh, Van Gogh?
If you’ve got work that you’re not happy with, hang onto it for a bit. I say this for two reasons: first, you may just come back to it later, and realize it wasn’t so bad after all. Second, let’s suppose for a second that you’re right, and it really isn’t so great. Go back to that same photo six months from now, and compare it to what you’re doing at that time. I promise you, it’ll be a great reminder of how far you’ve come, and how much farther still you’ll go so long as you stick with it, and don’t give up either on your craft, or (more importantly) yourself.
, by Chris Orwig.
