Hello everyone, welcome to “Rockin’ What you Got” The UHH new weekly photo lesson / challenge. We will challenge ourselves to learn how to use our cameras to the most of our ability and hopefully grow as photographers as well. For these challenges you do not need to fancy camera or tons of lenses, what you will need is a camera that allows you to use Shutter Priority, Aperture Priority, and eventually manual mode, your willingness to contribute and a desire to learn, THAT’S IT!

Lessons will be posted on Friday evenings (this one is early by a few hours) and will run for a full week before the next lesson is posted. That doesn’t mean you can’t continue to post in completed lessons, I promise not only will I look at new posts but others will as well.

I also ask the following:
* If I post something that you think is wrong, correct me. (I'm still learning too!)
* If you know a better way to do something, let us all know.
* Be open to people offering not only words of words of encouragement but also offering advice on how to improve.

Aperture 101!

Our first lesson/assignment is going to be about aperture and the affects f stops have on our images.

A little over view of aperture

The size of your aperture, or f/stop, determines not only how much of your picture is in focus but also how much light reaches your sensor. The f/stop of a lens can go from typically go from anywhere from 1.2 to 22 (remember I said typically, lol). F/stops are confusing at first; the numbers refer to how open or closed the aperture of a lens is. The bigger the opening, the more light enters your camera at one time – which means that when you aperture is wide open your focus plane is smaller, resulting in a blurring of the background or foreground (bokeh). In return, the smaller your opening on the lens the less amount of light enters your camera and more of your image is in focus.

Now the crazy part, the smaller the aperture number equals the larger the opening (get your minds out of the gutter!). So on the 50 mm 1.8, an f/stop of 1.8 would be wide open and allow more light to hit the camera sensor and result in a smaller focal plane and hopefully more bokeh. The larger the f/stop number the more closed down your aperture and most if not all of your image would be in focus.

Review: small f/stop = small focal plane. Large f/stop = large focal plane.

Weekly Challenge

This week we will be using Aperture Priority mode on your camera (AV on Canon, A on Nikon). This mode will allow us to set the desired f/stop and the camera will set the shutter speed. If you like please feel free to turn ISO to auto as well.
Just how much of our photo do we want in focus?

Of course our answer will depend on the situation, but do pick the correct f/stop we have to become knowledgeable in how each number affects the outcome of our image, so our goal is to figure out what the different f/stop will do. Pick a fixed subject such as a doll, water bottle, small toy, flower or whatever you have handy that will not run, fly or scurry away.

1. Set your aperture to the lowest setting it will allow you. Compose your image, focus on one spot on your subject (remember where it is because you will need to focus on the same spots for your other images). Press your shutter.

2. Move your aperture setting to f/8, focus on the same spot as image 1 and press the shutter button.

3. Move your aperture setting to the highest it will go, yep you guessed it, focus and shot.

4. Move your aperture setting to one random f stop, focus and shot.

Review: the lower the f/stop number the less that is in focus. The higher the number more of the image is in focus.

Please post your images along with your aperture settings, SS and ISO.

Question to think about and answer: What do you notice about your pictures?

I will also will be doing the assignment and will have my pictures up later this weekend.