White balance is the WHY? in the mnemonic. Our brains are very clever, if we look at the colour white in a number of different environments with different colour temperatures it will adjust so that we still recognise white as white .
A Camera cannot make this adjustment automatically (yet). For example your camera will see white as having different colour casts in different light, it CAN adjust if YOU tell it (the camera) what kind of light conditions you are in. so if you are in bright daylight let it know by selecting the daylight settings in your white balance menu and if you then go inside and are shooting in a room with a tungsten bulb, you will need to change your white balance setting. Using your white balance ensures you get a picture that shows the truest representation of what the eye sees. However there are times you might want to lie to your camera to create a different effect. ApertureThe 'Africa' in the mnemonic is Aperture. Aperture refers to how much the camera's shutter opens up. This can be seen as like the pupil of the human eye. Our pupils get smaller when there is a lot of light to protect them. Whereas when there is little light the our pupils grow wider to be able to see better. The camera shutter is like this but instead of growing smaller to protect the lens from the light, the shutter covers the lens more to let in less light. This would result in less depth of field meaning it will not capture as much as it would with a larger aperture. With a larger aperture, more light will be let in and you can capture more. This would be great for shooting at night or in dark places. The diagram shows the aperture range of a regular camera as well as the depth of field at each stage. e to edit.
Written by Thuy Anh Doan Year 10 Photography Student. |
ISO refers to the setting of the Camera Sensor's sensitivity to light (if your are using a digital camera), however if you are using a film camera it would refer to the film's sensitivity to light.
A setting of ISO 100 would be well suited to shooting in bright light conditions, however if you want to shoot in low light conditions you would need to set your ISO setting to a higher number. the higher the ISO number - the greater the sensitivity. There is a draw back however, the higher your number also means that your image will show more 'NOISE OR GRAIN". which could ruin your image. FocusFocus - the 'Flaming' part of the mnemonic. The Focussing of an image or part of an image is one of the tools a photographer uses in order to make his subject matter clear to his audience. The part of the image that is 'in focus' is the sharpest or clearest and the part or parts that are not in focus will be blurred . .
When you turn the lens of a camera to focus it -- you're moving it closer or farther away from the film or sensor surface. As you move the lens, you can line up the focused real image of an object so it falls directly on the film or sensor surface, making the object appear sharp. Whatever the photographer chooses to have in or out of focus will effect the overall intended reading of that image |
Shutter speed is a measurement of time that a camera's shutter is open.
The longer the shutter is open the more light it will let in. If you want to take a photo of a fast moving object with everything in focus - to capture movement as a frozen action - you will need to use a fast shutter speed, However, if you want to create an image showing movement - some blurring - you will need to leave the shutter open for longer. Slow shutter speed are great for capturing busy scenes, moving water or light trails (at night). where as fast speeds are used prolifically in nature photography and sports. Histogram
Histogram is the final word of the mnemonic - 'Hot'. A histogram displays the tones of an image with shadows on the left and highlights on the right. For example, if you take a photo in the shade or on a dark cloudy day or area, the graph bars will be higher on the left of the graph because there are more dark toned pixels (shadows) of the image. Whereas, if a photo was shot in the bright sunlight or bright place, the higher the graph would be towards the right. The diagram on the right explains well how to read a histogram. Histograms are a great tool to find out whether your photo is under or overexposed as your eyes are not able to tell as accurately
Written by Thuy Anh Doan Year 10 Photography Student. |