*Note! Some (all) of this information is incorrect, look at the comments to see the corrections!*
Dear reader(s),
I apologize for the absurd amount of time it has taken me to post another entry and I promise that I will attempt to do the one-a-day posting from now on! If I don't...then there's not much that could really punish me at this point unless one or all of the existing pantheons decide to strike me down. However, to make up for my hiatus I will impart what little gems of knowledge that I have garnered from my fruitful week-long internship!
First of all, I have come to the realization that in every field and profession, there comes a point that individuals achieve a certain level of mastery after which the basics are taken for granted. This morphs into the assumption that every single human being was born with knowledge of what an arhat is, what ISO means and does, and at what point should a meat thermometer be inserted into the meat (it actually depends on whether or not it was an oven built thermometer or one that is an instant read and should only be inserted at the end to get a gauge of internal meat temperatures). Since I will (hopefully) achieve this mastery in photography, I should probably start writing down now everything that I have struggled to learn before I too succumb to the allure of smugness. The following hints are for manual operation on DSLR cameras.
Lets see, so ISO stands for...okay, I don't actually know what it stands for BUT I do know that the lower the ISO, e.g. 200, the more light is let into an image which makes it brighter. If you are taking pictures on a DSLR camera and do not have it on an automatic setting, you'll have to manually adjust the ISO smaller or larger depending on how bright the photo is. If it's too bright, raise the ISO. I don't really have a cheat sheet yet for what are typical numbers, I'm still getting a feel for it myself, but that's the basic premise. I had the opportunity to play with a Nikon D700 this week (it is AWESOME) and this professional type of camera actually allows ISO change and manipulation right in the toggles and buttons on the camera. My awesome D5000, beginning more of a starting point and a good transition into professional cameras, only allows ISO change through the menu. A little more time consuming but once a setting is done, you shouldn't have to change it too much unless you're moving around a lot between well-lit and dark areas.
Also in line with how much brightness is in the shot is the F-stop (aka relative aperture, focal ratio according to wikipedia). I'll spare you the wading that I had to do through convoluted explanations of what this does and give you the easy answer: the lower the f-stop, the larger the aperture, the more light that enters the camera! So, if the picture is too dark, then just lower the f-stop and it should lighten up. Conversely, if the picture is too light, adjust the f-stop higher and it should darken. Watch out if you fiddle too much with both the ISO and the f-stop or you could end up with a ridiculously light photo even at night.
White balance is another way to lighten or darken photos by adjusting it higher or lower depending on how much light you want. Shutter speed I'm still figuring out...through some sort of finagling I managed to get the shutter speed to 1/6000 of a second which contributed to the lightness of the above photo. When I know more, I'll be sure to post!
Well, that's it for now. I'll write something soon comparing Picasa (the google free editing software) and Lightroom (adobe's pricey version).
Adieu!
