Fragino Photography: Blog https://fraginophotography.zenfolio.com/blog en-us (C) Fragino Photography [email protected] (Fragino Photography) Mon, 16 Mar 2020 06:37:00 GMT Mon, 16 Mar 2020 06:37:00 GMT The ONE word you need to control your camera. https://fraginophotography.zenfolio.com/blog/2014/3/the-most-important-thing-to-understand The most important thing to understand in order to control your camera is the word STOP.  Most of us have heard of the word f-stop and may even understand that it pertains to the opening of the camera lens' aperture.  Forget about that for a second.

Think of a STOP as a measure of brightness or amount of light.  For example, think of a certain stop as the brightness of one light bulb.  If you increase the STOP by one you end up with two light bulbs or twice the brightness.  Okay the next step is tricky.  If you increase by one more STOP those two light bulbs become four light bulbs.  If you increase by another STOP then you go to eight light bulbs.  Each increase in STOP doubles the previous amount.  Consequently it also works the same way around.  If you decrease by one stop then you get half the light output, if you decrease by two stops then you get 1/4th, then 1/8th, then 1/16th and on.

Now here is the REALLY GREAT PART.  STOPs pertain to not just the f-stop or aperture, but also to the shutter speed and the ISO and each STOP in each one is ALL THE SAME AMOUNT OF LIGHT!!!  Here is a fancy word, they are all reciprocal.  That means that if you go up one stop on one and go down one stop on the other they balance out to the same amount of light!  How does this help you?

Lets say you're taking pictures of your family in a restaurant in the PHD (push here dummy) mode and the light is okay but the picture keeps coming out blurry.  You look through your viewfinder and the settings are ISO 400, shutter speed 30 and the f-stop is 8.0.  The problem is that the shutter speed is too slow even with your blur reduction turned on.  So how do you change the settings so that you will have a greater chance of taking a sharp picture?  Try increasing the shutter speed by one stop to 60.  What happens if you don't do anything else?  The picture will be too dark since the shutter is only open long enough to allow half the amount of light it did at 30.  If you open up your f-stop by one STOP to 5.6 you will now have the same amount of exposure as you did on the original setting.  Think of it also as a balancing act, except this balance is a triangle.  You could have also increased the ISO to 800, which is also an increase of one STOP, instead of opening your aperture to 5.6 and it would have worked out to the same original exposure.

There are lots of great free charts out there that show the full stops for all three elements.  It gets confusing in camera sometimes because most cameras are capable of stepping by one third or half a stop.  Usually it's best to start with full stops until you know them by heart.

If there are some technical errors in the above it's all my fault.  It's my attempt to explain in my own words what the concept of a STOP is and how useful it is.  There are lots of other great explanations out there.  I hope to have helped you some.

]]> [email protected] (Fragino Photography) https://fraginophotography.zenfolio.com/blog/2014/3/the-most-important-thing-to-understand Thu, 06 Mar 2014 09:04:00 GMT Starting Out https://fraginophotography.zenfolio.com/blog/2014/3/starting-out This is an experiment.  I'm hoping to make this a successful one.  There will be a lot of errors and mulligans but I hope to grow with it.  I'm going to post my thoughts on photography and simple instructions on photography.  I know there are a lot of very good resources out there already, I should know, I've used plenty of them, but sometimes it took me to hear the same instruction in several voices to finally get it through my thick head.  I'm hoping to give back a little of what I've received.  Please let me know what you want and I may make that a topic.

]]> [email protected] (Fragino Photography) https://fraginophotography.zenfolio.com/blog/2014/3/starting-out Sun, 02 Mar 2014 20:37:04 GMT