A Question for Camera People
I have a glorified point and shoot camera. Glorified because although it doesn't have the bells and whistles of a high-end camera, it does allow a limited range of manual control if the user knows anything about photography.
I don't know anything, but maybe I'll learn. In that ethereal Someday. When I'm ninety.
A couple of weeks ago, I took this picture of the moon in a tree house. It's a typical amateur moon shot.
This is the moon shot I took that same night with the limited range of control my camera allows. It's still a typical amateur moon shot, except I can see the man on the moon! I was excited by this. To anyone who does know something about photography: is it possible to take a picture of the moon with the clarity of the bottom picture instead of the hazy white of the top while still capturing the branches? I think that would've been cool, but if it's possible, I have no idea how to do it.
I don't even remember what I did between the first and second shots to make the difference. I just looked in my camera's manual (which, two years later, I still haven't read), and it says that the camera can shoot from 4 sec. to 1/1000 of a sec. in 1/3 EV increments and from it can shoot from F 3.5 to F 13.6.
I know these numbers have something to do with aperture and shutter speed, but I don't know much about what that means. I remember Luke patiently explaining it to me once and giving up when my eyes glazed over. (When I'm ninety, Luke, you can try again, and I'll take awesome pictures of my wheelchair.)
7 comments :
C'MON, CAMERA PEOPLE!!!
I really am curious about this.
Ok, since you're desperate, here's my cheap shot:
It's a question of focus. The moon is much further away than the branches, and your camera can't really "look" at both things at once. Your best bet would be to use a "landscape" setting on your camera (most have one nowadays) which tries to put as much in focus as possible. Even so, if you have a detailed shot of the moon, your branches will be fuzzy.
This can be achieved manually (as I look it up to get my terminology right, as I by no means have this memorized)--- using a narrower (that is, a larger number---32 is a greater depth of field than 5, etc) f-stop, which "will produce a longer depth of field, allowing objects at a wide range of distances to all be in focus at the same time." However, if you close the lens up like that, you will need to expose it longer (not as much light can get in), which means that if you do not use a tripod, you will have a blurry picture.
So, basically, you would want to put your camera on it's narrowest opening (which in your case would be F 13.6). You would probably want to use a tripod. Your lens will have to remain open for longer (closer to the 4 sec than the 1/1000 sec), especially since you are shooting in a low light situation. So a place to start would be to shoot at your most-closed position (13.6)for the longest time possible (4 sec, but you must use a tripod if you're going to shoot for a whole 4 seconds), and then take about 1400 million shots of trial-and-error till you see if you can get a good one.
That's my best shot, but I don't know if it made any sense or not to you.
(The more open the lens is, the more light is let in and the narrower the depth of field. The more closed the lens, the greater the depth of field, but the less the light is let in. Paradoxically, a narrower lens opening has a greater number, and a larger opening has the smaller number. Shutter speed is adjusted to make sure your photo is properly {neither over- nor under-) exposed---in general, since a narrower opening (greater depth of field, larger number) has less light let in at a time, you need to expose for greater lengths of time. And a wider opening (narrower range of focus, smaller number) lets in a lot more light, so you have to expose it for less time.)
Let me know if you have questions, but basically I can do is tell you the general theory and tell you to experiment, so I'm not sure how much help I'm going to be. . .
I don't know if I can really add anything to what Titi said. You basically have to get the right combination of aperture opening and shutter speed. With my camera, there is a setting where you can fiddle with the aperture (the F 3.5 is talking about the aperture), and then whatever you put it to it automatically sets a good shutter speed to match it, and vice versa. Also, whatever I set it to, it showed me on the LCD screen what it was going to look like. So I haven't had much experience with having to set BOTH of them exactly right. (Incidentally, just about the only time I ever fiddled with those things was trying to take pictures of the moon!)
Basically, you want to have a very high F number (aperture--why do they call it F-stop? Beats me), which makes the aperture opening very small and lets in less light. That way the moon won't look like just a big glowing ball. But, as best as I can surmise, you don't want it THE highest either--or else you don't have enough light to silhouette the tree branches. Somewhere in between. Maybe F-12 at 2 or 3 seconds? Just a random guess. Precisely, exactly how to do it (though I think it would be impossible to get the moon with AS MUCH clarity as in your second picture and still have the branches show up) is something that requires more finesse of camera knowledge than I have. I have no idea what the "in 1/3 EV increments" bit means.
I've experimented a few times with taking pictures of the moon, as well (as I already mentioned). Like you, I especially wanted to get it framed inside of tree branches (in my case the apple tree branches). With the one folder I found of pictures of the moon I had taken, I had many pictures where the apple tree leaves/other shrubbery were silhouetted--although grainy--and the moon was a tiny glowing ball in the midst of them, or a quarter-sized moon with larger leaves for the ones I zoomed. But only one or two where the leaves showed up AND you could actually see those gray patches on the moon. Not nearly as sharp or detailed as in your picture, though! With the ones where the moon always appeared glowing rather than detailed, my camera was pointing lower down, where the apple tree leaves were thicker and there was less light (to make it look like the moon was coming through the leaves of the tree)--not enough light for the moon to be detailed plus the leaves to show up. With the few that I managed to get both, the camera was pointing up into the sky, directly at the moon, with the very top-most twiggy apple branches touching the moon. So since I was pointing the camera straight at the moon rather than at the apple tree with the moon showing through, there was more light. At least that's my understanding of it.
I just posted the moon pictures on the Purdyville photo gallery site, if you want to take a look at them--the site is photos.purdyville dot com. (I would link to it but I don't know how in Blogger comments.)
I wish I could classify myself as "camera people" but the truth is, while I do take an INSANE amount of photographs...it is much harder to get my head around the "keys" of photography.
Thus far, I just experiment and hope for the best. I do hope someday I will be more reliably smart in cases like these. For now, though, thank goodness for Titi and Cadence
Ha ha. I'm just pretending to be smart, Rebecca. :-)
Me too also (pretending, that is). I take basically no pictures at all, but I know enough of the lingo to throw it around. If I'm ever right, someone should let me know. ;-)
Thank you, Camera People. I knew you'd pull through. (And I think it's funny that you're all too modest to admit that you're Camera People.)
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