Photography tuturials

Filters thread into the end of your lens and provide "filtering" or special effects. A polarizer is a type of filter that polarizes light to reduce glare and remove reflections from non-metallic objects.

Again, I am n ot getting sharp images just out of the box. This image is sharpened and still looks out of focus. Clocked using 50 mm 1.8. At f2.2

I looked at your pic, and here's my take:

You were doing a close-up shot at a wide aperture (f/2.2 is quite wide for close-ups). What you can expect from this is a quite narrow depth of field. Some plane in your image should be reasonably sharp (if you shot with a tripod) and the rest should be increasingly soft both in the foreground and in the background.

In your pic I believe that the very front/bottom row of -- fudge? -- is in good focus and, as expected, the foreground and the background grow soft.

To get more in focus, you have to narrow your aperture. Take that shot at f/8, and you should see a dramatic "improvement" in overall sharpness.

Wide apertures are useful for "creative" effects where that narrow depth of field is desired, as well as low-light capabilities where you need a fast shutter speed. Another thing of note is that your perceived depth of field varies when you are farther from the subject, and also depends on how far the subject is from the background. For example, you could shoot at f/8 and get a soft background if you're close to the subject and the background is relatively far from the subject, but the farther you are from the subject, or the closer the subject is to the background, the more in-focus the background will become.

Hello again Godfather - actually, you are getting quite a sharp image right out of the box.

It appears that you have your focus point locked onto the cloth hold the fudge which is razor sharp on my monitor. The front row of fudge is equally so. You are not doing anything wrong here and it appears your gear is performing as it should.

But apparently what you really want and what you are getting are 2 different things. Tony explained it very well. At f/2.2 you will get a very very small range of acceptably sharp focus when you are so close to an object. If you want more of the fudge in focus you can do a couple of things. First you could use a much small aperture/f-stop like f/11 or f/16 which will increase your DOF (range of sharp focus). To maintain proper exposure though you will have to use a slower shutter speed or higher ISO.

Or, you could move a little farther back from the fudge, take the picture with the same settings, and then crop to suit. This is less desirable but will work somewhat.

[godfather wrote:
='[godfather];5054091'​]Again, I am n ot getting sharp images just out of the box. This image is sharpened and still looks out of focus. Clocked using 50 mm 1.8. At f2.2

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Godfather, perhaps you are having a little bit of difficulty understanding the relationship between aperture/shutter speed, how it realtes to overall exposure, and how you can achieve more or less DOF by altering the combination of these settings.

Let's say you're using an ISO of 800, your camera is set for Av, and it "gives's you "exposure settings of f/2.0 at 1/60 sec. This will give you quite a shallow depth of field - narrow range of sharp focus - but also a shutter speed that would allow you to hand hold the camera successfully without introducing camera shake, if you are steady.

This combination of aperture and shutter speed will let a specific quantity of light into the camera.

Now consider this - all of the settings below will let the same quantity of light into the camera:

f/2.0 at 1/60 sec
f/2.8 at 1/30 sec
f/4.0 at 1/15 sec
f/5.6 at 1/8 sec
f/8.0 at 1/4 sec
f/11 at 1/2 sec
f/16 at 1 second

Do you notice a mathematical relationship between f-stop and shutter speed here?

Let's start at your initial combination of f/2.0 at 1/60 second. An aperture of f/2.8 will let half the amount of light into the lens as an aperture set at f/2.0. Now, if we want to keep the overall exposure the same, we have to double the duration of the shutter speed to compensate for an aperture that is half as large. Because we are allowing half as much light to enter, we need to give it twice as much time to pass through the lens..... hence 1/30 second instead of 1/60.

To continue: an aperture of f/4.0 permits half as much light to pass as f/2.8. An aperture of f/5.6 permits half as much light as f/4.0.... and it goes on and on. You see the pattern. Each time you cut in half the amount of light you are permitting, you have to allow it TWICE as much time to travel into the camera, if you want to maintain the same overall exposure.

So how can you use these principles to your advantage?

We've established that anything around f/2.0 is TOO large an aperture to give you a deep enough DOF for the range of sharpness that you really want. Let's use f/11 instead.

Looking at my table above, we see that if you select an aperture of f/11, you will need to set your shutter speed to 1/2 second to maintain the same exposure. The down side of this is you will now need a tripod to keep the camera steady and avoid camera shake. But the advantage is that you will have a deeper DOF which will throw more of the fudge into acceptably sharp focus.

Hopefully this explanation will help you out. - Stu

Wow Stuart. My hats off to you. Way to go trying to help someone out halfway around the world.

godfather - at the top of this forum is Ben's Newbie Guide. This is a very good resource and does take you step by step through the basics.

Hello Eric - thank you for the kind words.... very considerate of you.

Some of my coworkers are in his neck of the woods and Godfather seems to be trying very hard to understand the basic concepts and improve his technique.... not to mention the fact that he's asking for our help . The relationship between aperture/shutter speed can be daunting. I thought my little table might be helpful to him.

And you're right about Ben's Newbie Guide. Ben put a lot of hard work and excellent tips into that post. It's submissions like his that really make this place a valuable forum. - Stu

eddarr wrote in post #5056629
Wow Stuart. My hats off to you. Way to go trying to help someone out halfway around the world.

godfather - at the top of this forum is Ben's Newbie Guide. This is a very good resource and does take you step by step through the basics.

It was a while before I even noticed where folks were from. Didn't matter then and doesn't matter now. Would bet that 99.99% of the folks here feel the same.

Guess thats why it's called the world wide web.

hello! I have not read through this entire thread but I did skim through it and did not see this link I think it is a MUST have for us newbies
https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=414088

sapearl wrote in post #5055592
Hello again Godfather - actually, you are getting quite a sharp image right out of the box.

It appears that you have your focus point locked onto the cloth hold the fudge which is razor sharp on my monitor. The front row of fudge is equally so. You are not doing anything wrong here and it appears your gear is performing as it should.

But apparently what you really want and what you are getting are 2 different things. Tony explained it very well. At f/2.2 you will get a very very small range of acceptably sharp focus when you are so close to an object. If you want more of the fudge in focus you can do a couple of things. First you could use a much small aperture/f-stop like f/11 or f/16 which will increase your DOF (range of sharp focus). To maintain proper exposure though you will have to use a slower shutter speed or higher ISO.

Or, you could move a little farther back from the fudge, take the picture with the same settings, and then crop to suit. This is less desirable but will work somewhat.

Hello Sir, how are you doing?

Thanx a lot for your such kind help and time!!!

REally appreciated at my side!

Thankyou!!

Regarding the photo, I think the camera shaked while I was clicking the pic. I did not notice the cloth. I focussed in the centre of that pieces of GUR (made from sugercane juice). But thanx for clearing. Most of the time my shakes and I get a blurry picture.

I am really working on it, but still failed

Also regarding the small aperture, I am using my 50 mm only when I need something like this, I mean blurred BG and focussed subject, so I beleive that using aperture like f11 would be making it complete scene in focus, isnt it?

Well, you did succeed in getting a portion of your pic in focus and the background out of focus. I don't know about camera shake, without seeing the front row enlarged some, but with that wide aperture you may have had a fast enought shutter speed to cancel out the camera shake.

To get more of the shot in focus you need the smaller aperture. But when you stop down the aperture you'll get a slower shutter speed, which will exacerbate camera shake. For an inside shot you need either a lot of light, a high ISO, a tripod, or flash (or a combination of the above). You can adjust things such as your aperture and your closeness to the subject and your distance between the subject and the background until you basically get the plate of goodies in focus and the background soft.

Well Godfather, without seeing your exposure information I would guess that you are using some sort of overall averaging metering mode that is reading off a portion of the black sky as well as darker areas of the scene.

In this mode, the camera will conclude that the overall scene is pretty dim, and that it needs a large aperture to compensate - in other words it needs a larger lens opening to let more light in. Unfortunately this will cause the other bright areas to be blown out in the highlights.

Try to use either evaluative or spot metering on a bright area. This will cause that part of the scene to be better exposed - less will be blown out - but the dim areas will go darker. Eventually you will determine a compromise exposure that falls in between the two. Once you arrive at that, you can do additional post processing in PS to improve the final image.

This type of exposure situation has always faced photographers. It was especially difficult with film becuase we didn't have the benefit of PS.