Digital Photography

Today in Photography we looked again at the technical requirements to expose our photographs manually.

Photography means ‘Light drawing’ in Latin and camera means ‘darkroom’. By considering our image as a light drawing and our camera as a dark room it becomes clearer what we need to do to create our photographs. There are 3 elements to consider:  1st, ISO – the sensitivity of the film plate which we need to set initially. Once we have done this we can read the light entering our camera using a light meter and choose 2^nd, our shutter speed and 3^rd, our aperture according to the light situation we are in.

Today we looked at shutter speed, understanding that the shutter is like a door allowing light into our camera – or ‘dark room’.  The longer the shutter is open for the more light can travel in, and the faster the shutter is opened/closed the less light travels in.

In order to be able to try out long exposures we went into the dark theatre where we can control the lights. By using lazar pens and torches we were able to draw with light and capture this in camera with an exposure of 30 seconds. We also used the stage lights and balanced our exposure accordingly to see the effects of mixing lighting.

 In contrast to see the effects of fast shutter speeds which freezes movement some brave volunteers had cups of water thrown over their faces. By using shutter speeds of over 1/1250 we caught the water frozen in the shot.

By looking at both extremes of potential shutter speeds we can see the creative effects possible when we manually expose our cameras. It’s all about vision!