Thursday, June 4, 2009

That F Matters

Whats the F inside your view finder? in lay men's term, it simply means how big the eye of your camera...in scientific bombastic camera term..er...i cant really explain that..partly cause i'm like new, and partly cause i'm not a geek...

ok definition aside..What the hell does the eye of your camera gotta do with anything in photography..why don't we just pop the dial to automatic and let the camera do all the thinking, settings, and computations..well to certain extend that may be true..your camera's automatic feature maybe useful..but it just gives you that dull boring image that many other camera dudes in the world could produce..



Ever want to take photos like the above? Most of my friends come to me on how to take photos would first ask this question..how do I get pictures with a blurry background? It's really not that hard..here's some facts on how the camera works..

Unlike us, our eyes, created by god works along with the most powerful processor in the world, which obviously means our brain, allowing us to automatically focus on things we wish in this world..this also mean that your eyes can blur background sweat-free.

But unfortunately for your camera, it only comes with a BIONZ brain for sony, a DIGIC 4 brain for canon, and other brain names for the other brands...and with our processor, we know that these brains are no where near the one we have, and therefore we have to apply a little of our brain power on photography instead of blindly shooting.

ok..enough crap...your camera eye works exactly as to our eyes work..now try opening your eyes really really big...wide open..and try to focus on everything in front of you..if you get to do that..i suppose you have a brain way better than any one of the other beings in this world..you can't possibly do that..now notice, when you open your eyes wide open and focus on a particular thing in front of you, everything in the background automatically turns blury...you can try it out..

the other way around, if you strain your eyes, you would notice that everything is sharp but at the same time darker, I can tell you that your camera works the same way..easily translated, the eye of your camera is the apperture, which means the F number!

but unlike our eyes, the higher the F number in your camera, the smaller the opening of the camera eye...meaning if your camera is set to f22 or f36, your picture would turn out darker, meaning you have to re-adjust your exposure..but we'll cover on how to do that some other time..

Here's some sample image differences of small F numbers and large F numbers.

Lets take a look at this two photos, what do you notice? the same focus on the stick, but notice the background..the first images, shows a blurry image of what's behind but the second one shows perfect clarity of the background. I believe now you can tell roughly what F number is used right? the first pic is taken using a setting of f/5.6 and the second pic is taken at f/36...there you'll notice the difference..

So as to the other images....








Now i'm sure you're thinking that..ooh yuen lai its so easy to take blurry background images.. and the fact is yeap..it is that easy, just get the exposure right, and i'll try grab some pic examples on that and do another post..just go out there and keep shooting..

Digital is free..
Think of buying a digital if you're running on film..the cost can buy you a new camera!

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