Download - How Your Camera Works
How Your Camera Works
Path of LightLight Source
Lens
Sensor
Your Lens
• Optical Zoom-repositioning of the lens
-retains quality
• Digital Zoom-simply crops the photo– Drastically reduces quality
Aperture• How large the opening (iris) in the lens
is
Depth of Field
• Area of the image that appears in focus from foreground to background
• Affected by aperture
Shutter
• Controls how long light passes through to the image sensor
• Can be as short as 1/500 second to 1 second or even minutes
• Be aware of lighting and it’s affect on the shutter speed
• Beware of shutter lag
The Digital Sensor
• Collects light data
ISO
• International Standards Organization
• Measures the sensitivity of the sensor
• Higher ISO increases light sensitivity, but also increases noise
Noise
• Created by electronic errors– Often described as the camera filling in the
blanks
File Formats
• JPEG-widely popular
• TIFF-no compression
• RAW-raw data
Flash
• To flash or not to flash
White Balance
• Color Balance-The color of light
• Your eyes balance the colors so that they look basically the same
• Fluorescent light is very green-yellow
• Sunlight is very blue
• Your camera will probably do this automatically
Shooting Modes
Full Auto
• Your camera makes all the choices for you except how to frame the shot and when to press the shutter
Program Mode
• Your camera chooses aperture and shutter speed, but you have the ability to shift the aperture/shutter speed combo
Aperture Priority
• You choose the aperture and your camera choose an appropriate shutter speed
• Use this mode for if depth of field is important for your shot
Shutter Priority
• You decide the shutter speed and your camera chooses an appropriate aperture
• Use this mode if motion is important
Manual
• You make all the decisions based on your light meter’s reading
• On your cameras manual may only include choices on color, ISO, exposure compensation,etc.
Scene Modes
Preset Configurations
Portrait
• Softens the background while keeping your subject in sharp focus
Night Portrait
• Chooses flash and slower shutter speed to make both background and foreground visible
• Use in dark conditions when your subject is relatively close to the camera and you want the background to be visible
Landscape
• Keeps as much in focus as possible
• Sometimes this setting also sharpens digitally and/or enhances color
Night Landscape
• This setting turns off the flash and uses a slower shutter speed
• Requires a tripod
Beach/Snow & Backlight
• For photographing very bright subjects
• Sand and snow can be so bright that it confuses your camera-this leads to a too dark photo
• Backlight-when a very bright light comes from behind your subject
• This setting chooses an aperture and shutter speed based on the foreground subject
• May use flash to help lighten foreground
Close Up/Macro
• Allows for close up shots
Sports
• Freezes action with a fast shutter speed
Drive Settings
• One shot
• Multiple shot blast
• Self timer