As we have already learnt shutter speed and aperture work together to control how much light enters the camera when taking a picture.  The amount of light required is dependent on the cameras recording – in a film camera the negative, in a digital camera the image sensor.

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Any experienced photographer will tell you that Depth of Field- otherwise known as DOF- is a crucial factor in photography.  Depth of field is how much of a picture is in sharp focus.   The larger the DOF, the bigger the zone of sharpness.

How do you change the DOF? Well one way is to change the aperture.  A low aperture, such as F3.4,  will have a shallow depth of field, resulting in the background being blurry and the main subject being very sharp.  This is a good example of a shallow DOF.

Very blurry background

A aperture of F11 will have a greater zone of sharpness.

Zooming in to a subject also results in a shallow DOF, whilst just coming close to a subject will give a large DOF.

Now for the good aspect of a blur.

A picture, if the background is busy, resulting in the main subject being overlooked, is BAD. When the background is blurred the main subject screams “look at me!!!”. This picture, I think is a good example.

Blurring the background of this picture made it look very good!!!

I will probably soon write an article on blurring the background of your picture.

I saw this very interesting article on www.geofflawrence.com and I thought I would share it with you. It is some questions that you have to ask yourself bebore buying a camera.

With so many camera models to choose from, at a bewildering range of prices, where do you start? Well, the way I choose any new toy these days is to start at the end. What do you want it to do? Err . . . take pictures. Yes but what kind of pictures and what are you going to do with them? The other burning question is how much are you prepared to learn? And, of course, how much are you prepared to pay?

As you are reading this and have actually made it to paragraph two, I think we can assume that you are prepared to learn at least a little. So what do you want to do? Do you want something that you can keep in your pocket at all times so you can snap the kids? Do you want a camera that will allow you to take pictures in any lighting conditions from any distance (with the right gadget screwed on the front of course)? Is this going to be a hobby or just some quick snaps?

I haven’t seen any cameras on sale in recent years that do not have a fully automatic ‘point and shoot’ mode, most will automatically switch on the flash for you when it is needed so you may wonder why we need all the other manual and semi automatic modes and an instruction book to make your head spin.

The answer is that, although the camera can produce good exposures most of the time, there are times when, to get the results we want, we have to apply a little know-how and select more appropriate settings than the camera would automatically choose.

Before choosing a camera with lots of knobs and dials it is a good idea to consider whether you are ever going to bother to learn what they are all for. I’ve been around cameras for many years now, and I’m still learning what all the settings on my latest camera actually do. I never bother to learn how to do something until I need to. So there are certain obscure settings that I have yet to find a use for. Of course it would be nice if we could choose just the buttons we need and have each camera custom made for us but in the real world all we can do is choose the level of control based on how much we think we might want to get involved. Generally speaking an SLR will have more knobs, dials and menus than a compact camera which will give you more control over your pictures but will have a much steeper learning curve.

All the cameras on the market can be categorised into a few simple groups. The most important two groups are fixed lens and interchangeable lens. The fixed lens cameras tend, with a few exceptions, to be smaller, lighter and more pocketable, therefore you are more likely to have it with you when you need it. Well that’s the theory anyway but I think we can say that you are more likely to be bothered to take it with you on that outing to the beach or the zoo.

However even with today’s zoom lenses, which are pretty wonderful, you will often find that you are too far away or too close to get the picture you want so you need to be able to change the lens for a longer telephoto or a wider angle. The other major advantage of these single lens reflex (SLR) cameras is that you are actually looking through the lens instead of a separate viewfinder so what you see is what you get, although this is less of an issue now that we can review our photos on the screen of the digital camera. The down side of these SLR cameras is that you very soon end up with quite a heavy bag of gadgets and are less likely to carry it everywhere with you. However much I yearn for a compact camera for it’s handyness I know I would be frustrated by it’s shortcomings so for me the choice is SLR every time.