Wednesday Word of the day! ISO

What is ISO? ISO measures the sensitivity of the image sensor, the lower the number the less sensitive your camera is to light and the finer the grain and vice versa. Lower # = less noise.

Depending on your camera’s make and model will play a HUGE roll in how high you can go and still remain “safe”. When I started out with my Canon Digital Rebel, I couldn’t even think about going over 400ISO without grain. My 50D worked well up to about 800ISO.

Play with your camera and find your “max”.

There are of course instances when you will have no choice but to go above what you are happy with. Indoor sporting events, a wedding perhaps, maybe even a dim clients home.

Because ISO is part of the triangle of light, changing your ISO greatly effects the two other key points, as will adjusting any or all of the points Aperture, Shutter Speed, and ISO.

Let’s setup a mental situation with poor light. Your local high school has asked you to shoot the Championship Basketball game Friday night. You know that the lighting is pretty poor and there is going to be a ton of quick moving action. Let’s determine which point of the triangle will be most important to us. I’m going to go with shutter speed. We are not going to want Jim Three Pointers to be blurry as he take that game winning shot. We want to capture that moment in time. Let’s bump the shutter speed to 1/500, maybe even 1/1000. You haven’t touched your aperture yet, it’s set at f/7 and your ISO is at 100 (haven’t touch that yet either). Shoot. WAY to underexposed. Remember that we want to leave ISO as our last ditch ever, so lets bump the Aperture down a whole lot. We can take that down to f/4 or even f/2.8 Wow! What a difference. MUCH more light coming in to the camera but still not perfectly exposed. Last resort, ISO…bump the ISO from 100 to 400. HUGE difference. Now shoot away!!

If you are in a low light situation that does not require a super fast shutter speed, get yourself a tripod! I know, its yet ANOTHER piece of equipment that you just don’t feel like lugging around, but you will be so thankful you did! Situation: Maternity session, clients home little light coming through the small itty bitty windows on a dark, stormy day. That small bit of light is hitting mom’s belly just right. Camera settings: Shutter Speed: 1/125 Aperture: f2.8 ISO: 200. You need just a bit more light coming into your camera. First thought, bump the ISO to 400 or higher, say a prayer and hope for no noise. IF you had your trusty tripod, you could easily break the hand held shutter speed rule (remember never put your shutter speed less than your aperture length or you risk some nasty shake blur). Hook that bad boy up to your tripod and you can drop the shutter speed down to 1/30 without any shake (as long as mom-to-be is a good listener and can sit still) ISO remains at a safe no-noise level.

The only way to get the hang of these tips and tricks is to get out the camera and play. Eat, Sleep, Breathe the triangle. When you get on location, take a big deep breath, review your surroundings, set your camera settings, check your settings, check ‘em again and start shooting, making adjustments as you go.

Aperture, Shutter Speed ISO. Aperture, Shutter Speed, ISO. Just keep saying it, out loud if you have to. You’ll be shooting manual in no time…with PERFECT exposure!

Taken from PropInsanity

iPhone Contest! - Woodlands fStop

Alright, I just was playing with my iPhone and I had a great idea. Since we all are on these things all of the time, why not have a contest with a photo from here! I know you all have cameras on your phone. It doesn't have to be an iphone, so that doesn't get you off the hook. And we all know that the quality on these things are not great. But you will be amazed at the things that people can do.

So get out there and shoot! You have until Feb 1. I will come up with some small gift for the winner. But in the mean time, I want to see some new participants. Get your friends involved, or maybe even your hubby. When you have your favorite one or two, send them to me. Hey, if you get two friends to send them in, let me know and I will give you your next webinar FREE.

And please, no shooting while driving. That is just bad safety.

Here is a funny one from Caden. That is a cereal puff in his nose. :)

Wednesday Word of the day! - Shutter Speed

Let's discuss shutter speed today.

Most think of needing to know about shutter speed when taking photos of action. If you are just starting out, the mode with the man running is tweaking your shutter speed, it is called the Action Mode. When taking a photo of a moving subject, changing the shutter speed can change the look of an image and help the look of the photo.

Using a fast shutter speed, tiny fraction, will freeze the action (1/1000). If a slow shutter speed, big fraction, is selected, movement is captured (1/2).

Here are suggested shutter speeds for photographing a variety of subjects.

SUGGESTED SHUTTER SPEEDS
TO FREEZE ACTION*	TO CAPTURE MOTION**
Children - 1/250 - 1/1000 seconds	Amusement park rides: +/- one second
Moving water/waterfalls: 1/1000 seconds or more	Moving water/waterfalls: 4 or more seconds
Sporting event: 1/500 - 1/2000 seconds	Fireworks: 1/2 - 4 seconds
Birds in flight: 1/1000th a second and above	Moving cars at night: 8-10 seconds
	Night photography - one or more seconds

* The closer action is to your digital camera, the faster the shutter speed is needed.

To help prevent images from becoming blurred, set the shutter speed faster than the focal length. For example, a zoom lens set at 200mm requires a shutter speed of at least 1/200 second to avoid a blurred image.

** Tripod or other camera support is recommended whenever using slow shutter speeds. Also use the self-timer or remote to trigger the shutter to prevent camera movement.

Holiday Contest Winner - Woodlands fStop Contest

After 76 votes... We officially have a winner!

With 33 of the 76 votes the fStop Fan Favorite is #1 by Jill T. Congrats Jill. I have your gift certificate and will contact you soon.

And since I'm the judge, I'm going to allow 2 Judge's Pick's. #5 and #10. #5 is by Liz A. I choose this one for it's simplicity. Sometimes less is more. And #10 is by Michele B. I choose this for the purity of the moment. The lighting is perfect, the pose, and you know I'm a sucker for newborns. Congrats Michele and Liz.

Ok and a final congrats to all of the ladies that participated in the contest. It takes a lot of courage to put yourself out there and do this. So thank you ladies for participating. And I hope it encourages all of you ladies out there to get out there, shoot and participate in these contests! They are fun!

Wednesday Word of the day! Aperture

Aperture is measured and set in F-stops. When you purchased a lens you probably thought what the heck does the 1.8 in the Canon EF 50mm 1.8 description mean? That is your MAX aperture. Now I told you this was confusing, and you might be saying MAX aperture, MAX means BIG, that doesn’t sound like the MAX, that's like the lowest number ever! Remember all of the fStop stuff from last week?

Now there are a couple of factors to keep in mind, when playing with your Aperture.

1. Keep your subjects on the same plane. Your Depth Of Field will vary greatly based on how close or far your subject is to the background and/or other subjects in the photo. Keeping your subjects on the same plane, gives you a better chance of getting multiple subjects in your focus area with little numbers. Especially with a MAX aperture, you are more likely to get someone out of focus unless everyone is sitting next to each other.

You can see that the by moving the subjects backward and away from your main point of focus, even at the same aperture, changes your DOF. Imagine you have your subject sitting in a garden. The surrounding flowers would become more and more blurred as you move your subject closer to you and further from the garden. Get closer to your subject and your subject further from the background for optimal blur.

Helpful Tip: Change your Aperture number to match the number of subjects in your photo. 1 person, have at it and play with everything you’ve got. 3 people (try to keep them on the same plane!), start out at f/3.2, 5 people, f/5.0 and so on. This little tip can help you keep all your subjects in focus while still playing with your DOF.

2. Changing your Aperture effects light.

When you make changes to your aperture, you will need to compensate with changes to your shutter speed and or ISO. You will hear many people say, “I love that lens for low-light situations”. Those lenses have little numbers as their MAX aperture, which means…all together now, more light gets in there and these lenses let you keep lower ISO’s and faster shutter speeds in low conditions because the MAX aperture compensates for some additional light.

3. Every lens has a sweet spot. Although I like small #s for creamy backgrounds, I found that each of my lenses has an aperture setting that just, well ROCKS! Example…my 50mm 1.4 stops down to a MAX aperture of 1.4. When I put that bad boy on my camera I thought, I will never shoot with a “bigger” number, I am sticking with 1.4 all the way. We’ll I prefer my eyes sharp as tacks! So I practiced and played and then it happened. I shot a session at f/2.8 and I haven’t gone back since!

Go play! Share some tips an tricks!

Information taken from Prop Insanity

What the Holiday's Mean to Me Contest - Vote!

You know you missed them! Here is the first contest of 2010!

Theme: What the Holiday's Mean to Me

Prize: $50 gift certificate to Olive Garden

Good luck ladies, you all did a great job, your holidays looked fabulous and congrats to the new mommies in the bunch, I can't wait to see those babies grow up.

Voting ends on 1/18 at midnight.

Making memories and creating new ones!

Passing on our faith and traditions

Serious Santa

Santa's Little Helper

Simply, Christmas.

Making Memories on the Family Holiday Hike

Magic of Christmas Eve

Anticipation of Good Things to Come

Christmas in the South

The best presents can't be bought.

Caden turns 1!

I can not believe that is has been a year, since I met my little miracle for the first time. I remember that first day so vividly. Waking up in the middle of the night in labor, welcoming him after 5 hours, waiting 6 hours before I could hold him due to him being in the NICU. Oh it was a long day, and a long night, as I just held him close to me, once I did finally get my hands on him.

And now, a full year later, we have gone through and learned so much. Being a first time mom, I was so green at so much. But we made it through and we are still standing!

For all of you moms that are still in the middle of those sleepless nights, hang in there. They will end. You are headed for some fun times ahead. Today was a great example of that. We had many moments of laughter this weekend. He is getting so smart and fun to be around. Here is a few photos from his first birthday today.

Enjoy those little ones, they grow up way too fast!

Kara

Wednesday Word of the day!

A new year, brings new things. And one new thing at fStop is the Wednesday Word of the day.

So what better word to start with, than the word that started it all.

fStop.

Aperture or what is sometimes called fStop is one of the more confusing parts of how cameras work, so let's make it easy.

Aperture settings are expressed as decimal numbers, and works opposite to the way you’d think – a higher number lets in less light than a lower number. In between it is what is known as the f-stops, or aperture settings – numbers like f1.6, f2.2, f8.0, f16.0, with many in between. Different lenses can

have different apertures – for example, a cheaper lens may only open to f4.0, not letting in as much light as a more expensive lens that will open to f1.4.

Changes to aperture will effect depth of field, which is why most people want to learn it first. Do you want your background to be blurry and the person to be in focus? This is depth of field. The smaller the fStop, the more blurry the background.

So if you have a really expensive lens (f/1.4) and you shoot your child in front of some trees, he or she will be in focus and the trees will be really blurry. Most likely some of their face will be out of focus as well, since it is such a high aperture.

Happy 2010!

Happy New Year everyone!

I can not believe that 2009 is over and we are starting a new decade. So with a new start, comes a lot of new things. We are officially launching around mid-Jan. So stay tuned. We are just waiting for the website to be done. There are some great things happening here in 2010.

Remember, that you have until 1/8 for the holiday contest and we have all kinds of webinars in Jan. The website will be up soon, so you can sign up!

So from our family to yours, happy new year and we hope that you keep all of your resolutions for a least a month or two.