Camera Pros

[ten ocho recon scout]

Picked up a sony a7ii on sale this weekend. Time to stop using the auto setting and learn what the hell an aperture is.

[red321]

6 hours ago, ten ocho recon scout said:

Picked up a sony a7ii on sale this weekend. Time to stop using the auto setting and learn what the hell an aperture is.

yep...best way to learn is start using manual setting...or at a minimum the P setting.

A photo is made of 2 components (well actually 3 but we'll skip ISO for now).

Aperture + Shutter Speed = Exposure

The correct exposure is "always" the same (based on what you want from the image). So your choice is to combine Aperture and Shutter Speed to get the correct Exposure.

So, for example. if the correct exposure f/8 (aperture) + 1/60th = exposure. So, if you wanted to use f/5.6 (one step faster aperture) you would need to increase your shutter speed by one stop...in this case to 1/120th. Or, if you wanted to use f/11 (on step slower) you would need to decrease your shutter speed by one stop...in this case 1/30th.

Best way to think of aperture is like a hose.

Think of the camera sensor as a shallow bucket and your lens is a hose. To fill a bucket it takes the same amount of water. If you have a large opening on the hose the water will land in one spot and then splatter all over. So you end up with one area in focus and the rest will be splatter. To translate that to a picture...you end up with one area in focus and the rest of the image is out of focus (otherwise known as bokeh). This is like a portrait where the face is focus and the background is blurred. We call this a large/fast aperture.

The other alternative is you have a small opening and water doesn't come streaming out. To fill the bucket you the water lands and then slowly spreads all over the bucket. It doesn't splatter all over. To translate to an image...the light is focused throughout the image, meaning the entire picture should be in focus. We call this small/slow aperture.

Now, to make it more confusing. The smaller the aperture number (e.g. f/2) the faster the lens. It's a mathematical equation, but in essence the smaller the f-stop the wider the lens opening is, meaning more light that is let in. 

So, to take a picture like a portrait where you want a shallow focus (this is called focal depth - the distance from your lens that is in focus), you would use a faster aperture. To take a picture like a landscape...where you want most if not all of the frame in focus, you would use a smaller/slower aperture. (within reason, most photographers won't go past f/13 or f/16 even if the lens goes higher due to light refraction and lens issues). If you are taking a picture of something like a wall, where everything is about the same distance away...you could go with f/8.

 

This is obviously a very generic overview of exposure/aperture. There are countless videos on the subject and any basic photography book worth a shit will go into this in more detail.

I learn best from books/doing Understanding Exposure from Bryan Peterson was my book of choice. Scott Kelby has good overview books that go through camera basics. I haven't looked in years, I'm sure there are dozens of others.

https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Exposure-Fourth-Photographs-Camera-ebook/dp/B0104EOJSK/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=understanding+exposure&qid=1556813269&s=gateway&sr=8-3

But regardless of what you choose...the best way to learn is to experiment. Go use the camera. Go into your backyard, or pick a flower and set it up in your window with some light coming through and practice. Go to a hill that has a large vista, or the beach. Find an object that you can place closely in the foreground...and then take pictures changing the aperture. See how it changes what is in focus. Take images with different apertures and then go and look in your editing tool. Turn on the photo information so it shows you what aperture was used. See how focal depth changes. I think the a7ii has liveview mode, so you can also do this in the viewfinder...but it really is best to view the images on larger screen so you can really see how an image changes.

 

Good luck...have fun! (and feel free to ask questions)

 

[Blarg]

My favorite camera was a Nikon FA with an Aperature priority setting. At the time it had a very advanced light metering system called Amp. Set it for programed and it was excellent for snapshots. Shutter priority for sports and Aperature priority for portraits. We didn't have room in our tiny house for a dark room and the camera was stolen in a burglary. Never replaced that camera and now I wish I had along with setting up a real darkroom. 

[Tank]

1 hour ago, Blarg said:

My favorite camera was a Nikon FA with an Aperature priority setting. At the time it had a very advanced light metering system called Amp. Set it for programed and it was excellent for snapshots. Shutter priority for sports and Aperature priority for portraits. We didn't have room in our tiny house for a dark room and the camera was stolen in a burglary. Never replaced that camera and now I wish I had along with setting up a real darkroom. 

ebay, brother, ebay.

[Tank]

@red321 do we have to know that for the test?

[T.G.]

30 minutes ago, Tank said:

@red321 do we have to know that for the test?

I'm dropping the class. 

*Phew*

[AngelsLakersFan]

Play around with this... http://www.exposuretool.com

[red321]

16 minutes ago, AngelsLakersFan said:

Play around with this... http://www.exposuretool.com

that's a good demonstration site

[ten ocho recon scout]

2 hours ago, Tank said:

ebay, brother, ebay.

To get the same camera back!

[ten ocho recon scout]

@red321, outstanding post! Good analogy about the bucket!

Im teasing slightly, i think i have aperture down. Shutter speed is still a learning curve. I still dont "get" metering. Learning it step by step. 

Never realize how much work a camera is until you get a real one.

For years i shot good pics, but wrong settings. Then overprocessed the hell out of them on cheap apps. Thought it looked great. Looking back now...yikes.

From my most recent trip, i finally broke down and asked my buddy why the hell his pics looked so much cleaner and natural. Then he explained the white balance tool on lightroom....

..... soooooo many cool pics i wasted over the years playing with the sliders, making them look like cartoons! I guess better late than never.

Worst part is ill never be back to these places again to take the pics correctly. 

I really cant afford it, but im gonna grab the sony 70-200 lens. I love wildlife photography, and dont want to ever waste another opportunity shooting with a short range lens. One of my fave pics of all time is at yellowstone, lined up with a bunch of people with million dollar lenses and tripods, and me with my cellphone

2 quick questions.

what do the size on a lens mean? Like why is a 70-200 better for long range than a 55-210?

and is it better to adjust aperture or shutter speed to increase exposure? Im trying to master the AP setting, but is there an advantage to SP (for say a sunrise?)

[ten ocho recon scout]

46 minutes ago, AngelsLakersFan said:

Play around with this... http://www.exposuretool.com

Nice!

[red321]

11 minutes ago, ten ocho recon scout said:

@red321, outstanding post! Good analogy about the bucket!

Im teasing slightly, i think i have aperture down. Shutter speed is still a learning curve. I still dont "get" metering. Learning it step by step. 

Never realize how much work a camera is until you get a real one.

For years i shot good pics, but wrong settings. Then overprocessed the hell out of them on cheap apps. Thought it looked great. Looking back now...yikes.

From my most recent trip, i finally broke down and asked my buddy why the hell his pics looked so much cleaner and natural. Then he explained the white balance tool on lightroom....

..... soooooo many cool pics i wasted over the years playing with the sliders, making them look like cartoons! I guess better late than never.

Worst part is ill never be back to these places again to take the pics correctly. 

I really cant afford it, but im gonna grab the sony 70-200 lens. I love wildlife photography, and dont want to ever waste another opportunity shooting with a short range lens. One of my fave pics of all time is at yellowstone, lined up with a bunch of people with million dollar lenses and tripods, and me with my cellphone

2 quick questions.

what do the size on a lens mean? Like why is a 70-200 better for long range than a 55-210?

and is it better to adjust aperture or shutter speed to increase exposure? Im trying to master the AP setting, but is there an advantage to SP (for say a sunrise?)

Some advice.

Learn to shoot in raw. When you shoot in jpg the camera makes a lot of decisions on how the photo is processed (and if you're a drunk fool...you end up with cartoon looking over processed crap). Raw you have all the raw data and you can go back and have a lot more leeway in editing your photo. The white balance scenario you talked about...if you fuck it up in the field...less of a deal since you can reset the white balance in raw.

Go get a tool like Adobe Lightroom. Still the best editing tool out there. (though I must say I've been partial to OnOne Photo Raw lately).

Never edit your pictures directly. Use a tool like Lightroom (or Photo Raw). Even if it's a jpg original...non destructive editing allows you to edit photos without screwing up the original so you can go back and try something else at a later date. You might be surprised what you can do with your older photos (if you didn't edit them directly and screw them up).

For lenses.

Cheap glass is just that...cheap. Really read the reviews of the lens to see the quality. Be wary....hell...just outright ignore 3rd party lenses that are dirt cheap. The best photos you see are tack sharp where it matters...and that takes a good lens.

Looking at the price of the sony 70/200 lens...ok, that's a pretty good lens (yes...dollars does tend to equate to quality when it comes to a lens). Are you looking at the f4 or f 2.8?  Remember with telephoto lenses, speed (larger aperture) matters. Not just in bokeh but what you can shoot hand held. For a zoom lens, without image stabilization, the rule of thumb is you can shoot handheld the length of the lens. So, if you are shooting at 200mm, you have to shoot at at least 1/200 to keep it sharp. If you are on a cropped lens you have to take magnification into account as well, so if it was a 1.5x crop fact, you would have to shoot at least 1/300 to keep it sharp. The a7ii is a full frame, so you don't have to worry about crop factor. f2.8 can make a big difference there. If you have IS in the lens, you can usually get 2 to 3 additional stops, so maybe 1/100 or 1/60.

The size or mm, stands for focal length. The focal length determines the angle of view. The smaller the number, the wider the angle of view. 24mm is going to give you a much wider view than 200mm. A 70-200 is a zoom lens that you can adjust between 70mm and 200mm. The 55-210 would therefore be 55-210. It would give you some additional angle of view (though there isn't a huge difference between 55 and 70).

Looking at the 55-210, that seems like a fairly generic kit lens. It also looks pretty slow with an f/5.6 at the high end of the zoom. That makes hand held tough unless you are in bright conditions. Probably ok, and just that. It's not going to have nearly the quality of the 70/200.

Also keep in mind. 200mm on a full frame, is just that 200mm. That is not much of a zoom when it comes to wildlife. You still have to be fairly close. 

 

 

 

 

[ten ocho recon scout]

Great stuff red.

I was looking at the f4 lens... but if youre saying 200mm is t that much of a zoom, ill probably hold off. What range should i look into for long range? I think sony has a 100-300? 

I shoot in raw+jpeg. New camera (as opposed to my a6000) has uncompressed raw. Am i wasting space with the jpeg? Should i just shoot raw only?

I used lightroom...but for too long have used the mobile app on my phone. Lazy. Great time killer, though. Ill have to look into that other one (onOne). Do you prefer lightroom over photoshop?

[Tank]

2 hours ago, red321 said:

Some advice.

Learn to shoot in the raw. 

Dude, isn’t that illegal in most places?

proceed at your own risk, TORS.

[T.G.]

How do you guys take selfies with these fancy cameras?

[Blarg]

20 hours ago, Tank said:

ebay, brother, ebay.

35mm is dead.

[Blarg]

14 hours ago, ten ocho recon scout said:

Great stuff read.

I was looking at the f4 lens... but if youre saying 200mm is t that much of a zoom, ill probably hold off. What range should i look into for long range? I think sony has a 100-300? 

I shoot in raw+jpeg. New camera (as opposed to my a6000) has uncompressed raw. Am i wasting space with the jpeg? Should i just shoot raw only?

I used lightroom...but for too long have used the mobile app on my phone. Lazy. Great time killer, though. Ill have to look into that other one (onOne). Do you prefer lightroom over photoshop?

Shoot Jpeg if you want a quick result that you can send to friends from your laptop that day. This is going to the game with friends, parties, junk shooting that you aren't ever going to work really hard with after to do a beauty pass. It's also good for testing out your aperture skills on stuff you will dump later. You can shoot, see the image, trash it and try again.

When you are serious shooting, like your wild animal squirrels in the backyard, then shoot RAW because you really want to play with the look afterwards to sharpen up their fur and color of their eyes as they give you the I'm going to kill you for that peanut stare. Or nudes of your tinder date. Whichever.

[Blarg]

45 minutes ago, True Grich said:

How do you guys take selfies with these fancy cameras?

Tripod and camera timer. Which always takes longer than you think and then just when you give up thinking it won't work it clicks a picture of you half in the frame moving towards the camera.

[T.G.]

Just now, Blarg said:

Tripod and camera timer. Which always takes longer than you think and then just when you give up thinking it won't work it clicks a picture of you half in the frame moving towards the camera.

what about when you're on a roller coaster or sky diving or jumping off a mountain or streaking onto a baseball field?

[Blarg]

4 minutes ago, True Grich said:

what about when you're on a roller coaster or sky diving or jumping off a mountain or streaking onto a baseball field?

A client of mine used to do all of the promotion work for Magic Mountain and when they introduced a ride they would mount cameras on the front of the first car and let it run around the course. It's important that you make sure the bayonet mount for the lens is locked into place because... There went $45K on the second loop. That's back when the lens cost more than the cameras and the cameras were $35k. 

Use your iPhone or a GoPro.

[red321]

15 hours ago, ten ocho recon scout said:

Great stuff read.

I was looking at the f4 lens... but if youre saying 200mm is t that much of a zoom, ill probably hold off. What range should i look into for long range? I think sony has a 100-300? 

I shoot in raw+jpeg. New camera (as opposed to my a6000) has uncompressed raw. Am i wasting space with the jpeg? Should i just shoot raw only?

I used lightroom...but for too long have used the mobile app on my phone. Lazy. Great time killer, though. Ill have to look into that other one (onOne). Do you prefer lightroom over photoshop?

Not saying you should pass on the 70-200...just wanted to be sure you were realistic on what that gives you. I have both a 70-200 and 100-400. I use them for different things. A lot depends on what other lenses you have.

Storage is cheap, and jpgs tend to be small. On my fuji I shoot raw+jpg, in large part because fuji cameras do such a great job with film emulation on their jpgs. But I still want to retain the original raw just in case.

Blarg's advice was fairly spot on...for events that you don't have to have the absolute best like family outings, snapshots, kids playing soccer...shit like that...you want to shoot, maybe make a few minor adjustments on a few photos, and send out...jpg is fine. For serious shooting, raw at a minimum. Like I said...storage is fairly cheap so I just do the raw+jpg almost all the time. As long as you have a good catalog management process it's not that big of a deal.

Lightoom is a better primary tool to use than Photoshop. Lightroom has full catalog management, and if you are getting serious you need catalog management. Spend some time reading up on how to manage photos in lightroom. Reality is for 95% of your photos you can do everything you need in Lightroom...And for most people they'll never need to do the remaining 5% anyways. It's also much easier to do your photo editing in a tool like Lightroom that was designed to be a photo editing tool as compared to Photoshop which photo editing is not the primary function.

Adobe has a photographer's bundle subscription. $9.99 a month and you get both Lightroom and Photoshop (plus some other shit you don't need).

I'd also start looking into cloud backup if you are serious. Start now, so you don't realize 1tb in that you don't have a good backup and it takes months.

[T.G.]

6 minutes ago, Blarg said:

A client of mine used to do all of the promotion work for Magic Mountain and when they introduced a ride they would mount cameras on the front of the first car and let it run around the course. It's important that you make sure the bayonet mount for the lens is locked into place because... There went $45K on the second loop. That's back when the lens cost more than the cameras and the cameras were $35k. 

Use your iPhone or a GoPro.

Couldn't you just come with me on all my adventures and run along side me?

[Blarg]

8 minutes ago, True Grich said:

Couldn't you just come with me on all my adventures and run along side me?

You'd be better off hiring Pujols if running is a requirement.

[T.G.]

2 minutes ago, Blarg said:

You'd be better off hiring Pujols if running is a requirement.

He's busy for the next 3 years, batting clean up and winning gold gloves at 1B. 

[Blarg]

14 minutes ago, red321 said:

Blarg's advice was fairly spot on..

Of course it is. You don't want to waste storage space on relatives and friends when there is an abundance of nature to shoot, like the black widows that want to nest in our pool loungers for surprise attacks during spring cleaning.