Process Analysis Essay On Photography

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Practically everyone in modern society takes pictures. We use photography in our every day life, from taking “selfies”, capturing family events, or to a job if you’re a professional photographer. Yet most to most people, there is an oversight of how cameras are controlled. Have you ever wondered what all of those numbers mean on a camera’s display? Or perhaps why someone would have a mode where you were left in charge of those strange numbers? I have been studying photography at Leeward Community College and hold a certificate of competence in digital photography. I will be explaining what those numbers mean. Focal length, exposure time, and ISO are the three basic camera settings that determine how a photograph is captured.

The first camera control, focal length is a change in a camera lens’ diameter. Often called “F-Stop” it will appear in your camera as the symbol “ƒ” followed by a number. The lower the number, the wider the aperture is open. The higher the number, the smaller the aperture is open. So what exactly does this do to the camera? It allows more or less light into the camera making the photo brighter or darker by changing the shutter. The aperture behaves the same way your eye works. The iris will expand or contract depending on the situation. Changing the focal length will also change something called depth of field. Depth of field is a zone in distance where things are in focus. A small aperture provides a small depth of field, and higher aperture with a larger depth of field. Next I will explain how shutter speed works. …show more content…

In the camera the number will appear as a fraction or a number with a quotation mark following “Shutter speeds are measured in seconds and fractions of a second” (Cole 2015). By this control we can take pictures of the stars in a night sky or capture the crack of a baseball meeting a bat. The timing is up to

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