Aperture - At home, in the park, in the mountains

I think one of the most common, effective and essential techniques I've wanted to know how to do in taking photos is the "blurry" background effect, which I feel adds a sense of depth and drama to even the most "undramatic" subject.

I have found there a combination of ways to achieve this effect. The simplest on my Canon 550D is to simply go into creative mode and slide the "background blurry or sharp" dial down to blurry. This however is cheating, so I wanted to learn what was happening behind the cloak of creative mode.

Enter the world of "Aperture". So what is Aperture? http://www.photoxels.com/tutorial_aperture.html

In a nutshell, Aperture is how wide the lens of the camera is open, and accordingly, how much light get in. Aperture is measured using a f number - which operates in the opposite manner than would be expected:

• SMALL aperture number = larger lens opening = Lots of light
• LARGE aperture number = smaller lens opening = Minimal light

So what does this have to do with blurring backgrounds? From what I've learnt it's all about Depth of Field: http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/depth-of-field.htm

As it turns out:

• A small aperture number = larger lens opening = lots of light = shallow depth of field = blurry background
• A larger aperture number = smaller lens opening = less light = larger depth of field = sharp background

The way I try to think of it is as if my eyes were the camera lens. This is helped particularly by the fact that I wear glasses (I am short sighted). The principles are probably completely incorrect and the parallels between my vision and a camera are probably wrong, but it makes it easy to remember!

• If I take off my glasses and look around things close to me are in focus but things in the background are fuzzy. This is like having a small aperture number, as my eyes are wide open and lots of light is getting in.
• If I see something in the distance and wish to make it clearer, I squint, reducing the amount of light getting in, increasing my aperture number, making the entire image sharper. 

Other than the aperture value, the focal length of the lens (and also the "close-ness" of the object to the camera) effects the Depth of Field but this is something I will worry about learning for another day! http://www.all-things-photography.com/depth-of-field.html

For the time being, I am happy putting my camera on the AV setting, setting the aperture as low as possible, bringing the subject of the photo close to the lens and snapping away. My playing thus far has made me want to get more lenses with lower aperture abilities, but for the time being I still have lots to learn! The results?

White balance - A little experiment on the beach

Today I went to another beach in Auckland called Orewa. It was a patchy day, cloudy at times and blue at others. I thought I would give the white balance settings on my camera a go to see what differences it would make - for no reason other than experimentation... which I am finding is the best way to see out how everything works.

Plan to go out tomorrow and play some more with the White Balance Settings, but this little test showed me the difference the settings can make. The top three photos were all taken in the space of about 30 secs, and the sun was behind clouds during this time. I think this shows, as in my opinion (and again, I note I am colourblind, so my perception of colours can be different to others), the "Shady" Preset actually created the best pic. This may just be me though, because I tend to like the "warmer" looking pics.

Not the best experiment I know - next time I will use all the White Balance settings  - cloudy would have been a good start! Today however, I really just wanted to get in the water!

What is White Balance?? http://www.photographymad.com/blog/post/white-balance-explained

White Balance Preset: Tungsten Light

White Balance Preset: Shady

White Balance Preset: Sunny

White Balance Preset: Auto (the sun was out by now)

Finally, on an unrelated topic, here is a snap of Auckland City I took from the car window (through the glass) on automatic setting on the drive home from the beach (have cropped it to take out light posts and road railings). Actually a very nice city!

A walk in the park and cats: 26 - 27 December 2010

After a successful morning of taking snaps of flowers, it was time to head out and actually go for a walk with my new toy slung around my neck. Being in New Zealand, I am actually quite lucky with a range of, what at least to me, seem interesting places to go take some pics.

Armed with still only a read of the manual, I set off at about 5pm on 26 December for a walk up one tree hill which is literally, just a couple of blocks from Simone's house (cue - the U2 song named after the place below), and also the venue of our Wedding reception in January!

Anyway, after a hour or so of auto mode snapping I had quite a number of pics! I experimented a bit with composition in a number of the shots.

Back at Simone's house their cat, Sammy, was in a cute pose on the front porch. Simone ran (carefully) and grabbed my camera and snapped this pic herself:

After realising it was the centre of attention the cat jumped to the lawn so I decided to try and take some pics and play around with the depth settings. I put the camera into AV mode and slid the Aperture down to 4 (as low as it seemed to go). Based on some research here: http://www.slrphotographyguide.com/camera/settings/av-mode.shtml

I now realise the lower the f-number (the apeture number) the more open the lens actually is and the more light that gets in. The result is an in focus subject close to the lens with the background out of focus. Here is the result (just to add to the millions of other pictures of people cats on the Internet!)