After reading Step 1, I wanted Alicia to skip forward to Step 5.  As stated earlier, the author wanted to save the technical nature of Step 5 for later so the reader wouldn’t get discouraged.  Knowing that Alicia is committed to this, I encouraged her to read this section next because these concepts are central to understanding how to get the photo you picture in your mind.

Have you finished Step 5 Alicia?  For everyone else, here’s a summary.  If you are done with it Alicia, does the following capture your understanding?  Do you have questions?  Examples?

Aperture, shutter speed, and ISO are all inter-related and make up the exposure value.  You can get essentially the same exposure by making offsetting changes in these three settings.  In other words, if you speed up the shutter, you can either open the lens wider or change the ISO to make the light sensor more sensitive.  Either offset will yield the same exposure as the original settings (before speeding up the shutter in this example.)  This allows you to get more creative by using a faster or slower shutter speed and/or a wider or narrower aperture depending on the situation and the desired effect.  Personally, I use the lowest ISO setting the camera has as the default because the higher the setting, the more “noise” it can introduce into the photo.  Therefore, I only change the ISO if I really need more range on the shutter speed.

Why would you want a faster or slower shutter speed?  Creative effects is one reason.  A very fast speed can freeze action and a very slow speed can blur action.  Faster speeds also make it easier to hold the camera steady for the duration.  Slower speeds may require a tripod or other stabilization technique, especially when using telephoto lenses because they magnify movements as well as everything else.

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Why care about a wider or narrower aperture?  Creative effects again.  A wide aperture can blur background and foreground features, emphasizing the subject.  A narrow aperture can ensure everything is in focus regardless of varying distances.  This is a phenomenon known as depth of field.  The camera is focused at a particular object or distance and the narrower the lens opening, the greater the range of distances that will still be in focus.  Conversely, the wider the opening, the more precise the focus must be because the depth of field can be extremely small.  Again, this is exaggerated by telephoto lenses.  The more the magnification, the smaller the range of the depth of field.  This is also affected by distance to the focus point since depth of field is relative to the focus distance, ie. if the focus point is far away, the depth of field will be greater than if the focus point is much closer.

Finally, I specifically said “telephoto” lenses in the two paragraphs above.  Often times people refer to them as “zoom” lenses, however, in this case that would be less than accurate.  How much of a scene a lens can capture has everything to do with it’s focal length.  A smaller or “shorter” focal length than “normal” implies that the lens will shrink and distort the image to fit more into the camera’s frame.  This is referred to as a wide angle lens.  A larger or “longer” than normal focal length implies that the lens will magnify the image.  This is referred to as a telephoto lens.  A zoom lens on the other hand, COULD be a telephoto lens, but more accurately is one that can ADJUST the focal length.  When set to it’s shortest focal length, it captures more of the scene.  When moved to a longer focal length, it magnifies everything and it all seems to get closer.  We often refer to this as “zooming in” on the subject, but remember that although it is common usage, a zoom lens can be a wide angle only zoom, a telephoto only zoom, or a combination from slightly wide angle to normal to slightly telephoto.  Also, a telephoto lens does not have to be a zoom lens.  You can have a lens of any focal length which does not zoom (wide angle, normal, or telephoto) and these “non-zoom” lenses are known as “fixed” lenses because they only have one focal length.  There are many reasons why you might want a fixed lens.  Often the quality is better, they usually allow more light to pass through them making them “faster” or more capable of faster shutter speeds and lower light conditions.  While often “better” for their specific purpose, fixed lenses are not nearly as versatile as zoom lenses so most cameras without the capability to change lenses utilize a zoom lens, and most people with SLR cameras use a zoom lens as their default lens.

So…  On to step 2 and a little closer to our projects!  It’s funny though, we held off on the projects until Alicia was done with school for the semester and got her dance recital behind her.  Now that she should be ready to dive into projects, I’M in school and busier than all get out.  Still, I’m looking forward to the fun of this!