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As someone who is passionate about, you are probably interested in knowing how to include more depth of field in your photos. There is a lot of literature on this subject. If you're a professional photographer, you've probably learned some things about wide angle (shorter focal length) and telephoto lenses (long focal length). For years photography textbooks and magazines have been promoting the idea that a wide-angle lens provides more depth of field compared to a telephoto one. However, if you type 'depth of field' on Google, you will soon come across a lot of articles arguing this assumption.
Recent tests taken by experts, including several photo magazines, have proven that, technically speaking, a wide-angle length does not provide more depth of field. These tests are quite easy and you can conduct them yourself to verify the conclusions. But how does this impact your work as a photographer? All these tests assume that you keep the picture size constant. They go like this: take a photo of some subject using a telephoto and then zoom out and use the wide angle lens. You can also use interchangeable telephoto and wide angle lenses. Then take the photo made with the short focus lens and enlarge a selected portion of it until is the same size as the same portion in the other photo. You will see that there is no significant difference between them. This proves that wide angle lenses don't actually provide more depth of field.
Now, let's see why you actually zoom out. Say you are in front of an amazingly beautiful scenery, such as a mountain landscape beautifully colored with sunrise light. You zoom in and take the picture with a telephoto setting. Then you zoom out and take the photo using the wide angle setting. You expect to get more depth of field with the last photo and that's what it looks like. You would never think that if you enlarge a portion of it this apparent depth of field will disappear. When you use a wide angle setting, you zoom out because you want to capture more things in your picture. You are aware that the objects will look smaller and it doesn't bother you. In the same way, when you zoom in you want to focus on a certain aspect of the photo even though you know you will loose depth of field. Zooming in and out and using different focal length setting makes you perceive that the depth of field also varies. Photos taken with the wide angle appear to include more depth of field compared to those taken with the telephoto. This may not be true technically. But what is in fact a photograph? What appears to the viewer. If you don't place technical correctness above everything else, you should stick to what you've known and has proven right for years. As long as you like what you get, why drop it? Your photos will prove if you are on the right path or not.
For digital SLR Camera enter-level users, face the camera lenses is often confused. Not to mention the brand and type of the Lens is more than the digital SLR body, the Lens is a variety of sizes and models, I often heard someone told me to complain: I don't understand. So, how to understand a basic data of a Lens? Actually we just need to know two data. First It is the focal length, the Second, it is aperture.
the first factor decide whether it can be taken. For example, a digital SLR Camera bundled lens is a wide-angle lens. Use this lens, you want to narrow the gap between the distant scene is not possible, because its focal length is not enough. As another example, you use a telephoto lens shoot People at home, It also is not possible, unless your home is a large villa, a living room a few hundred square meters, in a small space, only the wide-angle lens can be inclusive under the wider perspective.
The aperture is different. It decide whether the photo is good. Large aperture lens's aperture generally is has a higher quality than smaller aperture lens, and the large aperture lens, shutting speed in low light or moved conditions (like shooting the car, game, etc.) will get better results. For example, if you have a large aperture lens, you can shoot a very natural and soft bokeh portrait photos. If your lens aperture is more smaller, You also can shoot photos, but the Photo is not so soft and natural.
Note, the fixed focus lens only have a label of focal and maximum aperture. For example, 50mm/F1.8, It means the focal is 50mm, maximum aperture is F1.8. But The zoom lens has a label with two focal length and maximum aperture. For example, Tamron 18-270mm F3.5-6.3, It means than the wide end of focal length is 18mm, maximum aperture is F3.5 and the telephoto focal length is 55mm, maximum aperture is F5.6.
Two Important Factors: The Aperture and Focal Length of Digital SLR Camera Lens
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Don't lose those precious travel memories when you go on vacation. Careful camera choice and knowledge of how it works will save a lot of embarrassment when those important times don't look nearly as good in digital form as they did in real life. Or they have vanished altogether. Here are seven things you can do to keep those moments forever fresh.
Choose your camera before you leave on vacation
It's easy to save some money by getting your camera duty free, but your chances of being able to operate it efficiently in a hurry are fairly slim. Modern cameras are becoming cheaper and have better quality lenses, sensors, specs and overall quality than they did even two years ago. Make the investment and enjoy superior results. Stay with the well known brands. 0 and up will get you a great camera in the point and shoot range.
Get comfortable with your camera
Ask to hold your camera before you buy it. Do the controls fit under your fingers, or are they so tiny you press several at once? Are they placed logically for you? Ask the demonstrator to show you how to hold the camera firmly. Get an explanation of how the menu works. It's hard to shoot quickly if you can't find the right settings.
Is the viewfinder convenient and easy to see?
Some cameras come with an LCD screen only, and some have an electronic viewfinder as well. A screen can be very hard to see in the sun. An electronic viewfinder is really a very small LCD screen. It uses up battery power, and a further disadvantage is that, because electronic viewfinders cannot resolve fine detail, it's hard to see whether the subject's eyes are open or closed, for instance. An optical system viewfinder does not have this problem.
Optical versus digital zoom
These are often confused, but there is a big difference in the quality between them. Digital zoom takes a portion of the picture and enlarges it back to the original size. Individual pixels in the image are removed or magnified causing quality loss and a lower resolution. It's also not true magnification. The picture is manipulated electronically, and the end result is that your image won't look great. Optical zoom is made by the lens and will not affect picture quality, so this should be your first choice always. Some manufacturers will combine the optical and digital magnifications to give a more impressive specification, but ignore this and find the true optical value.
Is the camera small enough to carry?
How much equipment do you really need? Do you want to carry a lot extra as you would with a bigger camera with interchangeable lenses? Or will something that fits into your pocket do? Be realistic about your skill level, and don't pay a lot for extras you will hardly if ever use. Let the professionals pay the big bucks. Just make sure you have a good protection pouch to carry it in.
Don't put all your eggs in one basket
There are many memory cards on the market with capacities of 8GB and more, and in February 2010 an SCXD card was released with a 64GB capacity. However while these may sound grand, there is always the possibility of card failure or corruption with any of these devices. This usually means irretrievable loss of your precious images. I feel far more comfortable with two or three cards of 4GB or less, so if one card develops a problem, I haven't lost all my images.
Batteries
With travel, a decent battery system is a major concern. Battery failure at the wrong moment will often cause an irreplaceable loss of a shot. Don't rely on standard AA batteries. Get the best for your camera, and lithium rechargeables are great.
A little thought and careful shopping will go a long way to bring you pleasure after the holiday with successful photographs. Decide what you want your camera to do, make a list of the features you need and then go shopping. Stay with the major brands, keep it simple, learn the automatic features first and then experiment further with the other settings. Happy holidays!
Choosing a Camera to Take on Holiday - 7 Tips For Successful PhotographsDSLR's have a great deal to offer. Large sensors provide striking depth of field, great low light capabilities, and interchangeable lenses on a budget. But there are also quite a few caveats that can take time, practice, and learning to combat. In this lesson we will take a look at some of the things you can do to improve video on DSLR cameras.
Before we hit record, let's take a look at some of the important settings to know. In full automatic, there will not be as much to consider. Typically frame rate will still be an option though and you may choose from 24, 30, and sometimes 60fps at different resolutions. At this time, 1080p is the highest resolution of choice and most new HD TV's are capable of viewing this resolution. However, many laptop computer screens are still closer to 720p making the decision a matter of choice. 1080p is superior and future proof compared to other resolutions, however video at this resolution will require significant space and a high end computer system for viewing and editing. Typically, Hollywood movies are recorded at 24fps and much of television at 30fps. 24fps can be difficult to handle as it requires smooth motion and careful attention to movement of and in front of the camera. As a result, it is usually better to film at 30fps whenever possible. Shooting at 30fps also allows you to play back at 24fps thus giving a slow motion effect. 60fps allows for full ½ or more slow motion footage though rarely should be used for typical footage to be played back at full speed.
Once in manual, things become a little tricky. While in photography, you typically look for fast shutter speeds to stop action, on video, you have to slow things down. Motion blur created from slow shutter speeds creates smooth motion in video playback and typically you would want to set your shutter speed to 1/(2x the frame rate). For example, the ideal shutter speed in most cases for 30fps video would be 1/60th sec. This leaves you with the aperture and ISO as the only means of controlling the amount of light in the camera. For this reason, many DSLR users purchase a variable N.D. when looking for shallow depth of field in those situations with plenty of light to limit the amount of light that reaches the sensor.
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With so many camera models to choose from where do you start? Well, the way I choose any new toy these days is to start at the end. What do you want it to do? Err . . . take pictures. Yes but what kind of pictures and what are you going to do with them? The other burning question is how much are you prepared to learn?
As you are reading this and have actually made it to paragraph two, I think we can assume that you are prepared to learn at least a little. So what do you want to do? Do you want something that you can keep in your pocket at all times so you can snap the kids? Do you want a camera that will allow you to take pictures in any lighting conditions from any distance (with the right gadget screwed on the front of course)? Is this going to be a hobby or just some quick snaps?
The Learning Curve
I haven't seen any cameras on sale in recent years that do not have a fully automatic 'point and shoot' mode, most will automatically switch on the flash for you when it is needed so you may wonder why we need all the other manual and semi automatic modes and an instruction book to make your head spin. The answer is that, although the camera can produce good exposures most of the time, there are times when, to get the results we want, we have to apply a little knowhow and select more appropriate settings than the camera would automatically choose.
Before choosing a camera with lots of knobs and dials it is a good idea to consider whether you are ever going to bother to learn what they are all for. I've been around cameras for many years now, and I'm still learning what all the settings on my latest camera actually do. I never bother to learn how to do something until I need to. So there are certain obscure settings that I have yet to find a use for. Of course it would be nice if we could choose just the buttons we need and have each camera custom made for us but in the real world all we can do is choose the level of control based on how much we think we might want to get involved. Generally speaking an SLR will have more knobs, dials and menus than a compact camera which will give you more control over your pictures but will have a much steeper learning curve.
SLR or Compact?
All the cameras on the market can be categorised into a few simple groups. The most important two groups are fixed lens and interchangeable lens. The fixed lens cameras tend, with a few exceptions, to be smaller, lighter and more pocketable, therefore you are more likely to have it with you when you need it. Well that's the theory anyway but I think we can say that you are more likely to be bothered to take it with you on that outing to the beach or the zoo.
However even with today's zoom lenses, which are pretty wonderful, you will often find that you are too far away or too close to get the picture you want so you need to be able to change the lens for a longer telephoto or a wider angle. The other major advantage of these single lens reflex (SLR) cameras is that you are actually looking through the lens instead of a separate viewfinder so what you see is what you get, although this is less of an issue now that we can review our photos on the screen of the digital camera. The down side of these SLR cameras is that you very soon end up with quite a heavy bag of gadgets and are less likely to carry it everywhere with you. However much I yearn for a compact camera for it's handyness I know I would be frustrated by it's shortcomings so for me the choice is SLR every time.
Digital or Film?
Do they still make film cameras? Oh yes they do and I wouldn't mind betting that they continue to do so for many years and I wouldn't mind betting that at some time in the future there will be a retro backlash and a large number of 'serious' photographers will return to the darkroom. Some will probably claim that they have never used digital at all, ever.
You might think from the remarks above that I am a diehard supporter of film. Nothing could be further from the truth actually I am now fully converted to digital and loving it. I am going to make the pros and cons a separate discussion that will be posted soon but, for now, I'll just say that I am completely sold on digital and do not feel that I have lost anything significant by changing.
Which brand?
This, of course, is the big question that you really want an answer to and you know that nobody is going to give you one. If you ask anyone who already has a camera most will support the brand of the camera they have unless they have had some trouble with it, even then people are very forgiving. I think the reason for this is that people think that, if they have made the wrong choice it is because they have somehow failed, and they are not going to admit their failure. Back in the 1980s I had a camera shop in England and at the time a lot of people, who already owned an SLR, were buying compact cameras 'for the wife'. They would ask me which brand was the best and, if I didn't already know, I would discreetly try to find out which brand of SLR they owned, then I would recommend the same brand of compact camera.
Trying to sell them another brand was like telling them they had made a wrong choice when buying their old camera and was likely to lose me a sale. So I'd better have a really good reason for not recommending the Canon, Olympus, Nikon, Pentax or whatever and I didn't have one. All of the well known brands produce similar cameras at similar prices and, by and large, you get what you pay for.
I will stick my neck out a little bit here and say that in my humble opinion the manufacturers who make the best film cameras the Japanese Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Pentax, Minolta and the German Contax and Leica seem to make the best digital cameras. I would not be too happy to put my trust in brands whose traditional expertise is in other fields when there are such good cameras available from the traditional sources. I will probably get a lot of hate mail from people who have bought Sony cameras or Hewlett Packard and are perfectly happy with them. If I wanted a printer Hewlett Packard would be top of my list and I am a huge fan of Sony video and TV equipment but my first choice for a digital SLR would be one of the names mentioned above.
How Many Pixels?
Until recently the quality of digital cameras was measured by how many pixels they boasted. Now we have cameras that can produce tens of millions and it has ceased to be the only test of quality. In the real world the number of pixels you need depends on how big you want to print your pictures. If you mainly want postcard size or A5 then I would consider 4 million pixels to be perfectly adequate. Even at A4 size I would be hard pushed to tell the difference between my 4 million pixel camera and my 6.5 million pixel camera. Don't forget though that your cropping in the camera may not always be perfect so you may be enlarging only a portion of the image and so only using a portion of the available pixels.
Although an adequate number of pixels is important, the quality of your picture will be greatly affected by the quality of the lens. When Canon recently updated the EOS 300D (digital rebel) with 6.5 million pixels to the EOS 350D with 8 million pixels, the general consensus amongst reviewers seemed to be that the money you needed to spend on an upgrade would be better spent on a better quality lens. So the answer to the pixel question is that we seem to have now reached a point where enough is enough.
There is also a school of thought that we have reached the limit of the number of photo sensors that we can fit on a chip and that a greater number will cause the individual cells to be too small compared to the space in between them. Usually though, when someone says something like that, the following week the boffins announce a breakthrough which makes it all nonsense. You may have seen adverts for cameras, costing many thousands, that have 16 or 20 million pixels. These have sensors that are twice the size of those in the consumer cameras, hence the price. To me, the resolution of a 6 or 8 million pixel camera with a decent lens seems good enough for most purposes and on a par with the quality I used to get from a 35mm film camera.
In the past I have spent a lot of time and money in the pursuit of ultimate quality, I have owned a 5x4inch plate camera, a Hassleblad and two Mamiya medium format cameras, every major brand of 35mm camera and in the end, I would be hard pushed to tell you which photo on the wall was taken with which camera. A fellow photographer once observed that photographers tend to smell pictures rather than look at them, by which he meant that they were more interested in the graininess and sharpness of the image than the actual image itself.
Choosing a New Camera
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