Photography Techniques To Increase The Variety Of Your ImagesPhotography Techniques will present ways to increase the creativity and variety or our photography and our Florida images that do not rely on equipment. This page is devoted to exercising and expanding the repertoire of our visual communication tools. FloridaImageTools recognizes that many of the best photographs ever were made using very basic and limited equipment. Many great images are still made that way.
Take Advantage of All Available F-Stops
Most lenses, even on point-and-shoot cameras, come with a wide range of available F-stops to choose from. Many people view this variety of lens apertures as primarily for exposure control. This adjustment affects many more aspects of each image than just the exposure, though. The chosen f-stop can influence: overall sharpness and resolution; depth of field(or zone appearing in-focus); shutter speed for desired short or long exposure effects; the appearance of light ghosting, flair and starbursts when shooting towards the light source. The middle range of apertures(f/8 to f/11) on most lenses will produce the greatest corner-to-corner sharpness and the highest resolution without corner vignetting(darkening). This is the “sweet spot” of most lenses and should be used whenever the goal is to get the highest possible quality image file for producing maximum sized prints. This quality can only be fully realized by also having the camera mounted on a sturdy tripod, assuring proper focus on the most important part of the subject and using the camera’s slowest ISO setting. This combination is of course not always possible. Pesky things like low light levels, high winds, subject motion or necessary hand-holding often interfere with maximum possible quality and require compromises. The largest apertures(lens wide open) allows faster shutter speeds and gives more limited depth-of-field. This is useful when hand-holding, dealing with subject motion or needing to make cluttered backgrounds or foregrounds less distracting by blurring them. Larger apertures often also produce slightly softer edges. Many zoom lenses, at the wider angle settings, can slightly darken the corners of the frame when used at the widest f-stops. All of these characteristics can be used creatively in our photography if we know about them and explore the possibilities as we shoot. The smallest apertures(lens closed down) allow slower shutter speeds and greater depth-of-field. This is useful when panning a subject in motion to produce a blurred background, when motion is desired in running water or when sharpness is required from close to far as in many landscape images. The smallest apertures, while appearing sharper because of the greater depth-of-field, often produce lowered resolution because of diffraction around the aperture opening. This results in lessened fine detail and a softer look in larger prints. Color saturation can also appear more subdued for the same reason. Like everything else in photography and in life, the choice of lens aperture is always a compromise. Maximum sharpness and maximum depth-of-field cannot happen at the same time. Minimum depth-of-field does not coincide with the slowest shutter speeds. Decisions must be made depending on the priorities for each individual subject, and often very “looks” can be achieved by trying different f-stops and focus points as part of the visual exploration of a subject. Choosing the lens aperture is just as important as choosing the camera placement and the direction of the light and the focal length.
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