I’ve had a couple of interesting photography-related discoveries lately I thought I would share. This gets a little technical, so if you have no interest… well, you’ve been warned. If you’re not up to speed with how to use aperture & shutter speed, 5 minutes of reading or video on google will rock your world and improve your images immensely. Search for “Photography Basics”.
I wasn’t able to find anything online describing the issue, but once in a while my photos have this nasty shadow ring around the outside of the image. I discussed with an expert who recommended stepping up the aperture to about 8 or so. I haven’t had this problem since. Not sure why this works exactly, but I can live with that.
Also, I’ve been browsing images on flickr and notice people generally use a smaller aperture setting whenever possible. Normal, everyday photography sees settings like f/10 or even f/20 for no immediately apparent reason. I did a bunch of googling to see if I could figure out why, and came up with nothing but the stand-by “depth of field” discussion. With some contemplation, I’ve decided it’s probably to do with chromatic aberration and/or the understanding that the center of the glass is the best part. The two may be related.
In short, I theorize that smaller aperture = sharper images/less unwanted distortion. Not a far cry from the depth of field argument, but still useful to me. I recommend setting your camera to shutter-priority and setting to about 1/100-1/300 or so for normal use.
It also occurred to me quite randomly during this fiasco (and I feel like an idiot for not realizing sooner) that using a smaller aperture allows you to manipulate exposure time in abundant lighting. So say you want to capture a waterfall and get that nice, soft blurred water look in direct sunlight… grab your tripod, crank up the f/stop and you’ll have a much better shot. Ken Rockwell says shoot for 1 full second of exposure time for the best results.
That’s all for now…