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