Bryan Peterson's "Who Cares Apetures"

[troyer16]

In his book "Understanding Exposure" Peterson suggests that f/8 -f/11 are 'who cares apetures'. With this logic, would the only variable on shooting with f/8 or f/11 be shutter speed? Thanks.

[FlyingPhotog]

Shutter or ISO...

Don't forget you have three legs to stand on in photography.

[troyer16]

Yeah, he says that these are often the sweet spots on lenses.
Lets say i want to shoot a landscape with 2ft infront of me to infinity in focus. Would
f/11 sufice?

[FlyingPhotog]

Maybe you've seen this handy website:

http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html

Pick a body, lens, distance(s) and see what works!

[troyer16]

Thank you!

[FlyingPhotog]

Yer very welcome!

[pointerDixie214]

That is a great book!

All depends on the focal length you are shooting at. With a wide lens, f/11 might work... just keep in mind, anything above f/11 and you might start to see some dirt on the sensor...

Most of his examples in his book were done with film, so dirt wasn't an issue for him. I have thought about getting a film SLR for this very reason. Landscapes only since skies in landscape photos tend to show you the dirt more so than other images.

[Doug Pardee]

Bear in mind that the aperture ranges for his groupings are selected based on sharpness criteria, not on exposure. From a sharpness point of view, you need to adjust the apertures for the "crop factor" of your camera (there is no adjustment from an exposure point of view).

For a camera with an APS-C sensor, instead of f/8 to f/11 the range would be f/5 to f/7.

[rdenney]

In his book "Understanding Exposure" Peterson suggests that f/8 -f/11 are 'who cares apetures'. With this logic, would the only variable on shooting with f/8 or f/11 be shutter speed? Thanks.

You are ready for Sunny 16.

Here it is: In bright sun, set the aperture to f/16 and the shutter speed to the reciprocal of the ISO. So, at ISO 200, set the shutter speed to 1/200.

I actually think Sunny 11 works better for me with negative materials. You can calibrate your own rule with a digital camera, considering that you can view the results instantly.

Bazillions of reasonably well-exposed images have been made using that rule, without a meter, zones, chimping, or anything like that.

Ansel Adams once said that his exposures were all off when he first went to the Southwest. He was assuming bright daylight was the same there as it was in northern California. It wasn't. He experienced that long before spotmeters associated with his methods were invented.

And then there's the same result from a different direction: Fiddling with aperture slows you down. An old truism in photojournalism is "F/8 and be there." Timing is more important than shutter time. He was probably using something like the forerunner of the Weston Master V with (maybe) something as high-tech as a selenium cell.

Anybody remember the instruction sheets that used to come with rolls of film? It would give you the exposure values for bright sun, open shade, indoors with room light, and so on. I used to have the one for Tri-X memorized.

Rick "who still occasionally uses cameras that have no built-in meter" Denney