This post is the second in a series about lenses.  For many first time DSLR users the sheer variety of lenses can be daunting with a mish-mash of numbers that can further the confusion.  In this post we will take a look at what is aperture or f-stop and break it down into plain and simple English.

To start we need an example lens and what better place to start than the one that most first time DSLR buyers get with their camera, the kit lens.  Called the kit lens because you buy the lens and camera together as a kit.  If you haven’t bought yet you do have the option of buying body only but I rarely recommend that for first time buyers (more on that later).  Both Canon and Nikon offer an 18-55 lens as part of their kit.  Using the Canon as an example-

Canon EF-S – Zoom lens – 18mm-55mm – f/3.5-5.6 IS – Canon EF-S

f/3.5-5.6 represents the aperture. Aperture is the opening in your lens that allows light to pass through. Because the number is represented as a fraction the smaller numbers represent a larger opening.

Shooting at a larger aperture lets in more light and narrows your depth for field(the area that is in focus in your picture).   In the example canon above the maximum aperture is a range from f/3.5 to f/5.6.  As you zoom from 18-55 your maximum aperture decreases to f/5.6.   This is a result of the kit lens being fairly cheap.  But why do you care about the aperture in the first place?

Having a lens with a very large maximum aperture has two benefits

1. Larger apertures let in more light allowing you to shoot in darker environments with fast enough shutter speeds to minimize blur and camera shake.

2. Larger apertures decrease you depth of field allowing you to isolate your subject by blurring the background, that background blur is referred to as bokeh.

Why don’t people care about the minimum aperture?  Most lenses are sharpest somewhere between f/4 and f/11 – this range for each lens varies slightly and is called the “sweet spot”  It is not that no one cares about the minimum aperture it is just a fact that almost all lenses have a minimum aperture that is small enough to cover the sweet spot and then some.  And at the very small minimums, usually around f/18 and on your image quality begins to degrade due to diffraction.  So that’s why you hear very little about minimum apertures.

Lets look at another example

Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Camera Lens

This prime(doesn’t zoom) lens has a maximum Aperture of f/1.8 – three stops faster than the kit lens at it’s maximum of f/3.5. And actually a true comparison would be to zoom the kit lens to 50mm where its maximum aperture changes to f/5.6.  Look at the graphic above again – see the difference in size between the f/5.6 aperture and the f/2 aperture?  Pretty significant different in the amount of light that can hit the sensor.   Translated into a real world example – Let’s say you have your kit lens on and are zoomed in to 50mm – your aperture cannot increase beyond f/5.6 and the suggested shutter speed is 1/15 or a second this is most likely going to give you a blurry picture and if anyone is moving they will be blurry too. If you popped on the 50mm f/1.8 lens and changed your aperture to f/1.8, keeping all other settings the same your suggested shutter speed now would be around 1/180 of a second, fast enough to stop most motion and plenty fast enough to eliminate camera shake.  The catch is that at f/1.8 your depth of field is very shallow, or can be at closer focusing distances- There are always trade off but one of the reasons I recommend this lens is it lets you experiment shooting at larger apertures, also referred to as “shooting wide open” and you can quickly begin to see how controlling aperture can greatly change the look of your photographs.

But what if you don’t want to use a lens with a fixed focal length like the Canon 50 prime above?   There are zoom lenses that have larger maximum apertures than the kit lens and some of the nicer lenses provide a constant maximum aperture for example the Tamron AF 28-75mm f/2.8 allows you to shoot at f/2.8 over the entire range of the lens.   Earlier I mentioned the sweet spot, the aperture range that is going to give you the best quality from the lens, and you may have noticed that f/4 was the largest aperture in that sweet spot range.  Now you may begin to realize why some lenses are so much more expensive.  The Tamron listed above is about $500 and is a decent lens and a good value but if you find that you will be shooting at f/2.8 often and sharpness wide open is critical you need to start considering other lenses, one excellent but expensive example is the Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM, a lens that is almost 3x the cost of the Tamron.  There are other factors determining that price difference but the fact that the Canon 24-70 is sharper wide open across the entire focal range is part of the price difference.   This is another reason why many photographers are willing to sacrifice a little bit of convenience to shoot with a prime lens- not only can you get wider apertures they are more likely to be sharper at those wider apertures.

Some examples of excellent value primes

Canon EF 50mm f/1.8

Canon EF 50mm f1.4 USM

Canon EF 85mm f/1.8

Nikon 50mm f/1.8D AF (will not auto-focus on D40/60/3001/3000/5000/ for those cameras buy either Nikon 35mm f/1.8G AF-S DX or Nikon 50mm f/1.4G)
Nikon 85mm f/1.8D (will not auto-focus on D40/60/3001/3000/5000/)

I finished my Focal Length post with the following paragraph, I am going to include it here as well because you might feel scared away by the aperture limitations – don’t be. . continue reading.

My advice for first time DSLR buyers is to buy the kit lens- you might read on the Internet something to the the effect that the “KIT LENS SUCKS MAN!!” Don’t listen to those people.  It is a decent lens and a solid value capable of excellent pictures in most situations, it often only adds $100 to the price of the camera and unless you have a very good reason to go body only and get a different lens I suggest buying the kit.  As you use it, and learn the type of shooter you are you can start shopping for wider, zoomier, wider maximum aperture or whatever works best for you.

Next post will be about all those little acronyms that follow the focal length and aperture numbers, other posts I need to do in this series include camera brand versus off camera brand (e.g. a Canon lens vs a Sigma lens), Pro lenses, filter sizes and ??? you tell me what else you want to know about lenses.

Canon Users I have a list of recommended lenses

Nikon Users – I am working on one

Take a moment to like this post if you found it useful. And if you have ANY questions find me on twitter, no question is stupid and I am happy to help.

This post and others like it are supported by your Amazon purchases- Canon shooters go buy a nifty fifty right now

Thanks!

p.s. plan to update this post with some illustrations of depth of field soon.

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This post is the beginning of a series about lenses.  For many first time DSLR users the sheer variety of lenses can be daunting with a mish-mash of numbers that can further the confusion.  In this post we will take a look at what the numbers mean and break it down into plain and simple English.

To start we need an example lens and what better place to start than the one that most first time DSLR buyers get with their camera, the kit lens.  Called the kit lens because you buy the lens and camera together as a kit.  If you haven’t bought yet you do have the option of buying body only but I rarely recommend that for first time buyers (more on that later).  Both Canon and Nikon offer an 18-55 lens as part of their kit.  Using the Canon as an example-

Canon EF-S – Zoom lens – 18mm-55mm – f/3.5-5.6 IS – Canon EF-S

18mm-55m is the focal length- don’t Google focal length! You will get all kinds of deep and not so helpful definitions for understanding what it all actually means. Instead I suggest you think of it like this – there are three basic type of lenses, wide, normal and telephoto.  Wide lenses are typically anything less than 50mm, normal is 50mm and telephoto is above 50mm.  In the example above, the Canon lens isn’t fixed, it has a range from 18-55 so encompasses all three types, although just barely a telephoto.   So the lower the focal length number the wider the lens, The wider the lens the wider its field of view.   Not much needs to be said about normal, it is similar to what a human eye can see ~43mm.  Telephoto lenses give you a narrower field of  view but allow you to magnify your subject making them seem closer.   Tamron has a nice interactive focal length comparator.  You may notice that they have different buttons for 35mm and digital, that has to do with something called the crop factor.  I am not going to go into detail on this but if you are curious wikipedia’s explanation is fairly clear:)

Now that you know of focal length and the three type of lenses you may want to be able to calculate the zoom of a lens, after all every point and shoot is sold with the zoom listed prominently on the packaging 3x, 4x, 12x are all common zoom amounts of point and shoot cameras. Using the 3x as an example it means your subject will appear to be three times closer to you at the cameras highest focal length.  A 12x zoom will get your subject twelve times closer to the camera at its highest focal length.   To find out the zoom of your lens you divide the larger focal length by the smaller, so an 18-55 lens, 55/18 =  3.05 and voila! The common kit is a 3x zoom lens.   Another common lens that compliments the kit nicely is the

Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4.0-5.6 IS Telephoto Zoom Lens for Canon Digital SLR Cameras

What is the focal length of the above lens?

I hope you said 55mm-250mm.  Now what is the zoom?

4.5x right! But you might say hold on a minute, I know that the 250mm is going to get me way closer than 4.5x over the 18 that is the widest of the kit lens I own. The answer is yes, to figure out what the total zoom of your camera is now divide your greatest focal length of your telephoto lens by the widest focal length of your widest lens – in this example 250/18 =~14x.  Sure it takes you a lens switch to get from 18-250 but that is a total increase of fourteen times.  There are single lenses that will cover that entire range, the Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G AF-S ED VR II Telephoto Zoom Lens for Nikon DX-Format Digital SLR Cameras is one example.  Why don’t they sell it with the camera and why doesn’t everyone use a lens with a similar range?  Cost and quality is the answer.  It is easier and cheaper to make a lens that covers a smaller range, if they bundled the 18-200 with every DSLR the price would double, weight would increase, quality at the extremes of the range would decrease and on top of that not everyone needs a 14x zoom lens.

All the lenses I have used in this example are zoom lenses because they have a variable focal length, even the 18-55 does zoom  covering  the wide to normal range.  There are also prime lenses, lenses with a fixed focal length, a great example is the

Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Camera Lens

Why would someone buy a lens that doesn’t zoom? The first part of the answer is that a lens that doesn’t zoom has fewer moving parts that translates into higher quality at a lower cost. The second part of the answer has to do with the aperture, the f/1.8 number.  A discussion of aperture will be the next post but for now I suggest you look at the f/# of all the lenses I have used here as an example and  I will tell you that small difference in aperture can make a LARGE difference in the amount of light and the depth of field for your images.

My advice for first time DSLR buyers is to buy the kit lens- you might read on the Internet something to the the effect that the “KIT LENS SUCKS MAN!!” Don’t listen to those people.  It is a decent lens and a solid value capable of excellent pictures in most situations, it often only adds $100 to the price of the camera and unless you have a very good reason to go body only and get a different lens I suggest buying the kit.  As you use it, and learn the type of shooter you are you can start shopping for wider, zoomier or whatever works best for you.

Next post will be about Aperture, other posts I need to do in this series include camera brand versus off camera brand (e.g. a Canon lens vs a Sigma lens), Pro lenses, filter sizes and ??? you tell me what else you want to know about lenses.

Canon Users I have a list of recommended lenses

Nikon Users – I am working on one

Take a moment to like this post if you found it useful. And if you have ANY questions find me on twitter, no question is stupid and I am happy to help.

This post and others like it are supported by your Amazon purchases- Canon shooters go buy a nifty fifty right now

Thanks!

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Guest Post by the wonderful and talented Christina Bernales

Shoot from above – When you are photographing a subject, try picking an angle that is higher than him or her. Not only will this give you a more interesting point of view, it is also a more flattering angle especially for women. Photographing your subject from above will highlight their eyes by making them look bigger and even bringing out catch lights.

Pick consistent dark backgrounds and use a shallow depth of field – Picking a background that is darker than your subject will make him or her stand out more in the photo. Some of my favorite backgrounds for portraits include bushes, tree trunks and backyard fences. These add texture without taking over the entire photo. Most photographers out there will recommend using a shallow depth of field for portraits and I have to agree. Using a shallow depth of field will make the backgrounds I listed above look more like interesting, textured backdrops and will make the subject stand out more.

Light is all – I could write an entire post about why light is incredibly important when photographing subjects (and I probably will). There are countless variations and tools photographers use to create interesting light and very unique portraits. If you are just getting started with portraiture, a good way to determine if the light that is available to you is flattering is by studying the shadows around you. Look at trees, cars mailboxes or anything that is around you and look for their shadows then ask yourself:

Are the edges of the shadows hard and defined? if so, then place your subject in the shade in order to avoid hard, unpleasant shadows.

Buy From Amazon – Posts like these are made possible by you clicking through to Amazon. Thank you.

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As I think of tips and share them on twitter I will also add here, I may use this as a scratch pad for tips in progress too, not always easy to get a tip into 140 characters or less

Previous Tips:

CameraTip: Always reformat your memory card in camera- less problems with corrupted files.  Just make sure ur photos are safely on comp 1st!

Camera Tip: Try shooting at dawn and dusk(Golden Hour)- the softer quality of light will greatly enhance your photos. http://www.golden-hour.com/

Tip: Sweet spot of the lens is usually around f/8.0 – try to shoot at or near that to get the sharpest photos

Tip: Photographing Kids?  get down on their level for a more child-like persepective

TIP: related to yesterday’s tip- don’t take all your pictures at eye level = boring.  get high, get low, anywhere but tween  5 ‘ to 6′

TIP: Low-light?  Brace your elbows against chest and press the shutter in one smooth motion and/or fire a burst of three images

TIP: In photography, bokeh is the blur, or the aesthetic quality of the blur, in out-of-focus areas of an image

TIP: Have a DSLR or highend P&S that lets u shoot RAW?  USE it -the added detail & post processing latitude you get is worth the larger size

Upcoming Tips -

Exposure – To the right or the left?

Filters/lens hoods

Backups

Tripods

Sunset

Flowing Water

Better Photographer browse Flickr. . .

Flickr – upload 5 pics at a time because. . .

Fill Flash – use it during the day. . .

Sharp Focus – be BOLD. . .

Watch those backgrounds . . .

Watch those foregrounds . .

Have a tip to share or would like to hear more about a certain topic? leave it in the comments.

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Kodak has a very nice list of 10 tips that will, if followed, greatly improve your pictures.  http://classic.kodakgallery.com/fullpages/photo_tips/top-10-photo-tips.html

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Winter has certainly arrived to most of the Northern Hemisphere. Well technically to all of it but there are places where people still get to wear shorts. Here are some colder weather photography tips. Feel free to leave your own tips in the comments below.

1- Keep your spare camera batteries warm. Keep them in an inside pocket. Cold batteries lose their power, they regain it when warmed up.

2- Keep your camera cold to avoid condensation and allow your camera to warm up slowly or seal it in a ziplock bag before you bring it inside and again allow it to slowly warm up before taking out of the bag.

(more…)

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