ARTX230 Analog Photography—Camera Controls

Winter Quarter 2020, Kalamazoo College

Richard Koenig, Professor

 

 

Camera Controls—Inter-relationship of Shutter and Aperture

 

Shutter (the time controller)

 

á               Affects motion

á               This is more apparent when direction of thing moving is perpendicular to the angle of view.

 

Aperture (size of opening in lens)

 

á               Affects depth of field (or depth of focus).

á               Both either halves or doubles the amount of light that enters the camera—they work together.

 

Equivalent Exposures

 

á               You can set-up different combinations of shutter and aperture settings—depending on what kind of effect you want.

 

á               Important: I said equivalent not identical.

 

á               Think of faucet filling container: different amount of flow requires different amount of time to fill the container—but the container is still full in either case (a full container represents a correct exposure in this scenario).

 

á               The equivalent exposures have different characteristics: a large aperture give shallow depth of field, a small gives great depth of field; a quick shutter time freezes action, a long one gives blur.

 

á               So, you can pick what is important to you in a given situation for creative needs—this equivalent exposure or that equivalent exposure—but you still have to satisfy the camera (full container/correct exposure).

 

 

An Exposure Exercise

 

Let us say that your cameraÕs meter recommends a setting of 1/60th at f 8 for a given scene and lighting conditions.

 

    Shutter speed            500      250      125      60      30      15      8      4

                                       ----------------------- < = > -----------------------

    Aperture                  2.8          4        5.6        8      11      16      22    32

     

     

  1. Which combination would give you the shallowest depth of field?

 

 

  1. Which combination would give you the most depth of field?

 

 

  1. And now a trickier question: if you wanted an exposure two stops brighter than the first example cited (1/60@F8), what is one possible exposure?

 

 

Answers to Exposure Exercise:

 

1) 1/500th of a second @ f2.8            2) 1/4th of a second @ f32                3) 1/60th of a second @ f4

 

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