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Quiz: Exposure

It is now time to test your knowledge in the pop quiz, and we're gonna do this quiz slightly differently than the previous ones, and who was the last team that we worked with as an opportunity for points, does anyone remember at this point? I think it was back even, I think we're going back to A on this one if I recall 'cause I think we did histograms back and forth and there was four questions. So the way it's gonna work, is you're gonna work with me to kind of work through a problem like we did, but you're gonna have to make more decisions and I'm gonna give you a team score somewhere between zero and three points on how well you did so you'll have up to three points that you can gain, if you really get most everything correctly in the situation. So, here is the photo that we are trying to take, and you have a series of questions, all right? Let's get to your first series of questions. First question is, what are we trying to do in this photograph? You have five choices up there. (au...

dience mumbling) [Woman From Team A] Freeze motion. Incorrect, we're trying to blur this back right now, the subject we are trying to freeze so that concept is correct, but we are doing a blur motion shot here, so this was a little bit tricky on that one. But let's continue on. Next question, so this is blurring motion here. The next question is, which one of these five lenses do you think I used in order to take this photograph? And teammates, your captain needs help it looks like, needs input. 50. 50, close. It was the 70-200, it was a little hard to tell. This is a really challenging quiz and before anybody over here says anything, just wait 'till it's your turn. (laughing) Okay, so now we're gonna make some changes, I'll give you a softball one, what are we gonna do first here with the exposure? Well, you're gonna start with ISO 100. ISO 100, all right, let's give 'em a round of applause. (audience applauding) (John laughing) Okay, now we are trying to do this panning shot here. So what do you think would be our next setting? Shutter speed. Oh, I want more than that, give me some numbers. Okay, you want a specific number? Throw out some numbers. Okay. Get me in the ballpark, that's all I want, just get me in the ballpark. 15. 15, folks, they're coming on strong now, they are spot on, all right. So I'm adding up the points in the back of my brain right now. (laughing) What about the aperture? Where do you think we should put the aperture on this one? Four. Four, okay actually, we don't need to let in that much, we're not really going for that shallow depth of field when we are panning and we haven't gone through the full panning so I'm give you a slight break on that. We don't need to worry about how sharp the background is, we're not gonna be able to go with shallow depth of field on this and so f/8, just for sharpness, is kind of a default, good place to go in the beginning when you don't know what else to do. Now, we are severely underexposed. In general, what should we do to get a correct exposure in this? You don't have give me specific numbers but just tell me what setting I need to change in order to get a better exposure here? Since you said the aperture doesn't matter because you're panning, you can open up the aperture. Right, that's a very good call, good job. And that gets us back here to two stops on your expose so what should be our final step here, how do we get in two stops more light? [Woman From Team A] ISO 400. ISO 400, okay, nice job. You started out a little weak, but you finished strong. I'm gonna give you two out of three points on that one. So that's very good, all right? You're gonna have to get a higher percentage, you don't have to get a perfect score to get three points. But that is how we do that. And so if you are doing these panning shots, if you're doing the blur shots, so the river blur is kind of the same thing in a different manner, just that you're not moving the camera. You need to kind of figure out what shutter speed looks good to you. You might like five seconds or a half second, or 1/15 or 1/30 depending on what you're shooting. So kind of figure that out with some manual testing. If you are doing the panning shot, you need to move the camera very smoothly for getting these panning shots. And picking out the individual moments you want, generally doesn't work too well if you're just shooting this random burst and so a lot of times it works best just picking one or two shots at a time to shoot with and for these panning shots, you need to shoot a lot of 'em in this manner. Okay, over to Team B, help me out here. This is our shot. We're in the Ngorongora Crater here, some wildebeests and that doesn't look too comfortable. Okay, so first, let me know what are we trying to do here? We're gonna freeze motion. Gonna freeze motion, that is absolutely right. We've got some fast action here. Tail's all frozen here so that's a good start for you. All right, now, which one of these lenses do you think I am using in this situation? And so you're gonna want to be looking at your subject and the background and trying to guess by parallax, where are you and how far away? [Woman From Team B] We're gonna pick 300. Gonna pick a 300? And in this case, it's actually the 70-200. We would see a little bit more compression with the animals in the background but that's pretty close, it's not far off at all, don't sweat it, I think you're still in range. I'm not even gonna let you chance to answer that 100 one, that's a little too easy. But I want you to give me the next thing that we need to do with this camera. A 2,000 shutter speed. So they're going with a fast shutter speed of 2,000 and that's in the ballpark, that's darn close. And what do you think we should do with this aperture? Try to think of the importance of foreground and background. All right, we're here at 5.6. Going with 5.6 on that one, and so you're getting us in the ballpark, you're getting us very close to the mark on that one. So let's take a look at the light meter and see what happens to the light meter. Okay, this is not bad, I love it when I'm only one stop off, that's kind of nice. I only missed it by one street address or something. And so we need to let in a little bit more light, what do you think we should do to let in some more light? We're gonna go with bumping up ISO to 200. Bumping ISO up to 200 is exactly what you need to do, it wasn't perfect but that is worth three points, 'cause it was really close and that's what we're trying to do, it's not about getting exact specific numbers. It's about just generally choosing the right things to do. [Woman In Audience] I think we should check in on the score over there, John. What's going on? Well, we have a lot of points at stake here and so there's a lot of points to be either gained or lost. Team B kind of got an early lead and they're just holding onto that lead as we move along here. All right, so good job on that. And so, if you are doing freezing motions, so you're sports photography, a few quick tips, is figuring out what the fast shutter speed is and not going beyond it unless you actually need it. And so just getting enough shutter speed. It's gonna be easier to capture with a telephoto lens in most cases. Continuous focusing, which is something we'll talk about in the next big section in the class, it's something that you'll probably want to have on for subjects that are moving around. And your motor drive on high, 'cause you never know when the best moments are going to be. Always looking for those peak moments so that you are shooting a rapid series of pictures at that time and you're not using up your buffer on something that's not so important so you always want to have pictures available to shoot at that particular time. All right, sending it back to Team A. I don't know, maybe Team A is just forced into getting tougher situations here. And so we have this shot here, this was down in San Francisco. Just in case you're not sure of what we're looking at, we're looking straight up at the underside of a dome so this dome has eight pillars going up and I love the roof of this. The first thing is, what are we trying to do conceptually in this photograph of these five options? Maximize sharpness. Maximize sharpness is exactly what we're wanting to do so very good in that regards, so you're off to a good start on that one. Now, this is gonna be a really tough one here, because you don't know how big this is, do we have anybody here from San Francisco? You're good, so you probably, you may not have been to this particular location. But you know what? I will give you one extra bonus point if you can nail this. (audience laughing) See, you're up for one bonus, I can make the rules up whenever I want. So if you can nail it in one guess, you will get an extra bonus point, so, what lens did I use? (Team A members mumbling) (laughing) The pressure is on the line, they're behind, they need the points. (Team A members mumbling) They're all over the place, captain's gonna have to just make a call, here. Um, I'll go 35. 35, I am sorry that's incorrect, so they do not get the bonus point, you were one off. And so it was a wide angle lens, in this case, it was a really wide angle lens. It would have to be really tall in order to shoot it with a longer focal length lens and I believe I was at 11 to shoot this, so it was very, very wide. Okay, so we know we're trying to get maximum sharpness, we're shooting a wide angle lens. What are we doing next on our camera? Maybe we should give 'em each one camera to go out and shoot photos and as a group they have to go take photos. (laughing) Um, aperture eight. Aperture of f/8. I'm gonna go with f/11, that's getting us in the ballpark, so I'd say that's generally a correct answer, that's very good. Now let's think about our shutter speeds. What shutter speed do you think you'd like to have, what'd be convenient in this case? The 125. 125, well you know, if nothing else, you're gonna come out of this class knowing that I like shooting at 125, f/8, at ISO 100. They're nice, safe, simple settings. Okay, let's a look at our light meter. Oh, we are way dark right there. Okay, if we really want to get maximum sharpness, what do you think we're gonna need to do? [Woman In Audience] Get a tripod. We're gonna need a tripod, yeah. What are we gonna do, what are we gonna change if we use a tripod? [Woman In Audience] Shutter speed. And how do we figure out our shutter speed? Drop the aperture to eight, and then adjust the shutter speed and then the ISO. I think you might want to confer with your teammates here. (laughing) If we're on a tripod, we don't need to go down to f/8. We can just use lower shutter speeds, and so using the slower speeds is correct. We just go down to whatever we need to, to get this back up to zero here, all right? You may not have got everything right, but I think you deserve at least two points for that. So two out of three on that one, which is good. And so for maximizing the sharpness, we're gonna try to really keep that aperture in the middle of the range on that case. And so if you are trying to maximize the sharpness, photographing something that is generally flat, and there's a lot of things that aren't flat that are generally kind of flat, like this is not flat but everything is kind of far away from the lens and so it's essentially flat in that regard. That f/8, f/11 range is gonna be where you want to be. And make sure you're perpendicular, you're not shooting it an angle, you generally want to be shooting it straight on, like you're shooting a photograph, you're copying a photograph or artwork or a book cover or something like that. And sometimes the cameras will have in-camera grids that'll help you align things up so that you're shooting things straight on in that regard. Okay, let's send it back over to Team B. And we have a shot from Cuba here. Let's take a good look at the shot first and then let's figure out what are we trying to do in this particular shot? One of five options. We're gonna go for maximize depth of field. Maximize depth of field, absolutely right, 'cause we got the taxicab sign here in the foreground, we got the taxi in the background, we kind of want 'em both in focus there, very good. Okay, and let's take a look at the lens options here and have you pick from one of these five lens choices. We feel like a 35? Really, you know, it's kind of hard because, the 50 to 24, that's just a narrow, little slice there that you've picked and you've done it correctly too. (laughing) So very nice job on that one there. So we're shooting our street photography there at 35, right? We got our ISO at 100. Now let's see, confer a little bit, what do you think we should do next on the camera to get this type of shot? It's good to think about what you're trying to do. We're gonna go by moving the aperture to 16 to avoid the funkiness of being at 22. Okay, well, you're going for lots of depth of field, and in this case, we're actually, it'd be nice to get 22 in this case. I'm not afraid of no diffraction, not me. (laughing) All right, and so let's see, what would be a nice shutter speed? What would be convenient? [Woman In Audience] Are you handheld? (laughing) Convenient. We're gonna guess 125? 125 is convenient 'cause then I don't need a tripod, and so for handholding let's go ahead and take a look at the light meter in this. We are at more than three stops off. How do we solve this problem? (Team B members mumbling) So there are two ways we could address this. Right. And so one way would be adding a tripod. Right. The other way would be to bump up the ISO. Right, right. And so. What do you think is the best way to do it? To get the best photograph possible? (Team B members mumbling) Let's try it with a tripod. Try it with a tripod, that's always a good idea, if you brought one so in this case, we actually had to go all the way down to a 30-second exposure to even that out. And you know, I kind of lost track there, but I think you got most everything right, so I think they're gonna get three points on that one, so nice job on that and so very good. And so if you are trying to maximize the depth of field, then your landscape photography would also fall into this same category here. You're gonna need to use a small aperture, you try not to go to 22 if you don't have to, but if you do, use it, that's why it's there. Typically wider angle lenses are gonna be better and easier to do this type of treatment with so 35 down to your wider angle lenses and then you're gonna need to get pretty close to your foreground subjects so that they become a significant portion of the frame, you need to be fairly close to that taxi sign so that you can actually see it and read it there very easily. And then having multiple subjects, subjects in the foreground, subjects in the background, that are both sharp, is gonna enable people's eyes to kind of move around. All right, I think we're down to our last one of these. We're back to Team A. You guys kind of get the last shout-out today here for potential points. I don't know, you can come up with a name for him. Let's figure out what are we trying to do here? [Woman From Team A] Shallow depth of field. Shallow depth of field, yup, the eyes are in focus, the background is way out of focus, so spot on correct there. All right, let's pull up the options for lenses. What do you think I was using for a lens, one of these five options? 70 to 200. 70 to 200 is spot on, I was using it at 200 millimeters there. Okay, next up, let's take a look, we know we're gonna be shooting at ISO 100. What is our next setting on the camera? F/4. F/4, that is because f/4 is the maximum aperture on this one, maybe some of us have lenses that go down to 2.8 or faster, we might set that, but this one, we just do the best that we can, I know some of you have lenses that only go to 5. so you'd set 5.6 in that case. Now, shutter speeds. Things are moving, potentially moving. What sort of shutter speed should we have, would you like to have, how fast is it moving? Think about those things. So get back to me with a recommendation for shutter speed. Well, the dog's not moving, but you have a 200 so at least 125. You confer and get back to me. (laughing) Yeah, there's a number of things to think about, what lens am I using, how fast am I moving, how fast is the dog moving? You really threw 'em with that comment. (laughing) Not trying to throw 'em too far off, just make 'em a little loose. (laughing) They're saying 1,000. 1,000, okay this one, I think a little off the mark, there. 125 is probably necessary and I would say that 250 would be very much on the mark 'cause I was using a 200 millimeter lens there. As anyone who owns a dog knows, dogs don't sit still for very long, and so what may be still for a moment isn't lasting forever, and so you do need a little bit faster shutter speed for that but he's laying down, he's not running around or anything like that. And so 125 is where I wanted to be for this, but now the exposure was up here. Now how do I solve this overexposure problem? (Team A mumbling quietly) Shutter speed to 1,000. Shutter speed to 1,000 solves this problem and that actually is back up at the shutter speed that you were recommending to begin with. (laughing) We didn't need 1/1000 of a second, but it actually ended up working out fine and it doesn't hurt anything, nobody got hurt shooting 1/1000 of a second here. And so it all ends up pretty good, I think you guys did an excellent job, let's give 'em three points for that 'cause they really nailed that, so they caught up a little bit there. So nice job on that. (applauding) And so, for shooting these shallow depth of fields, which would normally be done with a human portrait but you know sometimes animals need good portraits too. So use a fast lens if you can, 1.4 to f/4. I don't mind using the maximum aperture opening quite a bit of the time. Now some people think that you shouldn't use it all the time which is perfectly fair 'cause sometimes, you're shooting a portrait of somebody, you don't just want the eyes in focus, you want the nose and the ears in focus and so I know there's a number of professional photographers who shoot portraits that stop down to 5.6 because yeah, they might have a cool 1.2 lens, but they don't need super shallow depth of field 'cause they want the face in focus. And so that'll depend on the setup that you have. Generally getting kind of close to your subject, not too close but using that telephoto lens and getting fairly close to your subject and using those 85, 200, 70 to 200-type telephoto lenses. Now I gotta admit, you guys did a really, really good job. I think you should be very proud of yourself and I don't know how much you knew coming into this class, but it really seems like you know a lot now.