photography: humble beginnings, Part 1

A lot has been going on behind the scenes as I've been studying on Skillshare and slowly purchasing my tech equipment. I'm not done with either, and I'm only at the beginning regarding photography, video-making, graphic design, (text)book layout, and other skills. This is a months-long process that I've committed to, but I may have reached a point where I will begin, tentatively, producing little, lame creations as I start to put into practice the things I've been learning. This post is the first of two parts regarding photography.

I went out this evening to photograph the moon. A bit after 9 p.m., it was fairly high in the sky, and since it was hovering over my apartment building, I thought that the building's lighted sign (which says "Daecheong Tower" in Korean) would be a good measure—along with the moon itself—of whatever level of focus and clarity was possible. I brought with me two filters that came with the mirrorless Canon I had bought, just to see whether they might help with photo quality. In the end, I don't think they helped much, so tomorrow night, I'll be going back out with the Canon, not my cell phone, to take some photos of the moon again—hopefully of much better quality.

One of the fundamentals I've been learning about goes by different names; I'll call it the exposure triangle, which seems to be one of the more common designations. A triangle has three sides and three corners, so as you might guess from the term itself, exposure triangle refers to the three aspects of exposure in photography. By exposure, we're referring to light hitting a sensor, or to light hitting film (in the old days). Three things affect the quality and quantity of light entering your camera: (1) the ISO* (roughly, the amount of light exposure), (2) the aperture or f-stop (i.e., how wide-open your shutter is when you take a picture), and (3) the shutter speed (i.e., how fast your lens clicks open and closed). 

If your ISO is low, very bright objects like the sun or moon will appear muted (you should be able to see features on the moon), and the surrounding background will be pretty black. If your ISO is high (high light exposure), darker objects will appear brighter, but you'll also pick up a lot of ambient "noise" that will appear as visible fuzziness in the background (you'll see a lot of this below). An ISO of 100 is quite low; an ISO of 2000 is high.

If your aperture/f-stop is narrow, then when you snap a picture, the camera's "iris" (its diaphragm) won't open very wide, so very little light will be let in. As with a low ISO, this can help to mute overly bright light, allowing you to point your camera at and shoot bright objects, e.g. the Eiffel Tower at New Year's (here—not the best example). When your aperture/f-stop is wide, you'll be letting a lot of light in. The narrowness or width of your aperture affects your depth of field, i.e., how much and what parts of your image are in focus. The f-stop number is the denominator of a fraction, so like in math, if the denominator is smaller, the quantity is bigger, and vice versa. So if you see an f-stop of F2, for example, the aperture is much bigger/wider than an f-stop of F22. (Eating 1/2 of a pie is a lot more than eating 1/22 of a pie.) With a wide aperture, you get a narrow depth of field, i.e. only a small sliver of your image will be in focus. With a narrow aperture, you'll get a wide depth of field, i.e., most things in the foreground and background ought to be in focus.

If you have a fast shutter speed, action photos will be crisp and minimally blurred. If you opt for a slower shutter speed, you allow light more time to get into the camera; the longer exposure will lead to blurred movement. This can be a good thing if/when it's artistically done. Fast shutter speeds can also lead to intensely artistic results that are clear, crisp, and unblurred. So pay attention to your shutter speed.

Forget about video-making for the moment—there are a lot more concepts that come with just photography: DSLR, focal length, ND filter (which I still need to buy), vignetting, focus stacking, bokeh, histograms (which I still don't quite get), white balance, etc.

Anyway, I went out tonight (Wednesday night) to take photos of my building and the moon to see whether the filters for my new camera might help my cell phone to take better-quality pics. Conclusion: no. These are the wrong filters. But see for yourself, and note that you can now understand the captions a lot better thanks to the above explanations (which you may or may not have needed!). I took pairs of pics at 1X and 2X zoom. My first pair of images was taken with just the cell phone, which automatically adjusted things like ISO, f-stop, and shutter speed (and other factors like the number of megapixels per shot and focal length, a millimeter measurement that has to do with field of view and magnification: lower mm = wider field & lower magnification; higher mm = narrower field & higher magnification). I actually paid attention, this time, to the stats that are stamped with each photo (accessible, on Samsung, through an "i" button that appears with each photo). This proved educational.

unfiltered, 1X zoom, ISO 1250, F1.8, 1/15s

Note how the photo below is at 2X zoom, and the greater ISO means more "noise" in the photo, especially in the sky around the moon. Note, too, how the ISO (raw exposure) affects the clarity or fuzziness of the "대청타워" ("Daecheong Tower") label at the top of my building. In the first pic, if you magnify it, you can see that the sign is clearer. In the second pic, the higher ISO brings in more noise and makes the building's sign fuzzier.

unfiltered, 2X zoom, ISO 1600, F1.8, 1/10s

For the next pair of pics, again at 1X and 2X zoom, I used one of my filters to see how that might help or hurt the image quality. You decide.

Zoom-AI Super Slim DSLR C-PL filter, 1X zoom, ISO 2500, F1.8, 1/10s

Above, at ISO 2500, I see a lot of noise. I'm not too happy with the quality. The slower shutter speed doesn't help, either (going from 1/15 sec. to 1/10 sec. = more exposure).

By the way, a "CPL filter" is a circular-polarizing filter. Google AI says: "[it] reduces reflections, enhances colors, and increases contrast in your images. It does this by selectively blocking polarized light that is reflected off non-metallic surfaces like water, glass, and foliage. By rotating the filter, you can control the intensity of the polarizing effect and achieve different visual results." Note, too, that this is a filter for a DSLR camera ("Digital Single Lens Reflex," the loud-clicky kind), which my Canon is not, being a mirrorless camera.

Below, we again have an ISO of 2500 and a slower shutter speed (1/10 sec.). This is controlled automatically by my cell phone. Cell phones, for all of their evolution, are still pretty shit when it comes to taking pics and videos in low-light or nighttime environments, and they freak out when dealing with high-contrast lighting. I've been under bridge tunnels before, and I've wanted to take pictures of the ends of those tunnels, but with the sun shining brightly outside, my phone camera would balk at showing anything other than a wash of blank whiteness... until I finally walked to the very end of the tunnel, and the camera was able to handle the lighting situation again.

Zoom-AI Super Slim DSLR C-PL filter, 2X zoom, ISO 2500, F1.8, 1/10s

So those were two photos taken with the Zoom-AI filter that may not really belong with my mirrorless camera. Below, this next pair of images were taken using a Hoya UX II ultraviolet filter—probably not of much use at night.

Hoya UX II UV filter, 1X zoom, ISO 1250, F1.8, 1/12s

Still, the ISO was only 1250—half of the ISO for the Zoom-AI filters, and as you see, the shutter speed was a bit faster at 1/12 sec. The Hoya was a clearer filter than the Zoom-AI, so the camera may have adjusted its ISO and shutter speed accordingly.

Hoya UX II UV filter, 2X zoom, ISO 1600, F1.8, 1/10s

But as you see above with the 2X zoom, the noise returned. (Note, too, the higher ISO of 1600, and the once-again slower shutter speed.)

Below, I went back to just using the camera, which also has its own digital filters. I switched among them trying to find a halfway satisfactory one, and I found a "palm tree" setting, which is what you see below for the following pair of pics.

"palm tree" filter (phone only), 1X zoom, ISO 1250, F1.8, 1/13s

Note, above, the faster shutter speed of 1/13 sec. and, once again, the 1250 ISO.

Below—we're back to having a lot more noise. I don't like how the noise creates a halo effect that can't be seen in the sky with the naked eye. The noise is an artifact that adds something extra and unnecessary to the shot.

"palm tree" filter (phone only), 2X zoom, ISO 1600, F1.8, 1/10s

Finally, below, for the last two shots, I used a different digital filter called "classic." I didn't realize it would remove all the color from the photo. And from what I see, the "classic" filter isn't as good as the very first pair of shots in this photo essay: you can tell by how fuzzy the "대청타워" sign is (click to enlarge).

"classic" filter, 1X zoom, ISO 1250, F1.8, 1/13s

Even in black and white, there's a lot of noise below:

"classic" filter, 2X zoom, ISO 1600, F1.8, 1/10s

The filters I used:

the Zoom-AI, a darker filter

the Hoya (easy to remember since I'm a Hoya), a clear filter

In all, I didn't see much benefit from using the camera filters with my cell phone (I simply held the filters over the phone camera's lens), but I did learn a lot. I'm now impatient to try my Canon out since I can adjust its settings in all sorts of different ways. I've seen online that the suggested ISO for photographing the moon is much lower than anything my cell phone can do (at night)—around 100 or so (my phone can get down around there in the daytime). The aperture should be around F11 to F8, which is much narrower than the F1.8 seen above. And the shutter speed needs to be around 1/125 sec., much faster than what my phone camera seems able to do. So I'll go out tomorrow at around the same time and take some pics.

In the meantime, I have to start collecting video footage with my Canon—stuff to edit into several coherent video presentations. I've decided to document the making of boeuf bourguignon since my boss and coworker will be coming over this Saturday to have lunch and talk about the future. I have my camera and a lavalier microphone, and I still need to see how to hook the camera up to my computer so I can use video-editing software (I have both iMovie for Mac and the Mac version of Da Vinci). There's so much to learn, and the above is merely about photography. Eventually, I'll be blogging about my adventures in video-making.

Meanwhile, stay tuned for Part 2 as I photograph the moon with my Canon.

__________

*ISO stands for International Organization of Standardization, which would seem to be IOS, but ISO also stems from the Greek root isos, meaning "equal."