lights and camera

i have taken to photography lately. i dont think its a fad that is soon going to wane. i started with absolutely no idea on photography and whatever i have learnt is through experimentation. i have also been using a loaner camera but i have got acquainted with it. personally i love canon. i havent tried nikon but have heard its great to use. the camera i use nowadays is panasonic dmz fz 18. now dont go about wondering about panasonic being a camera company. its lens is from leica which is amazing!

so this post is dedicated to photography. my views on it ( which necessarily dont have to be true :P ).

3 components make up a photograph (assuming is auto focus).

1. amount of light on the subject.
2. amount of time that amount of light is exposed on the subject.
3. color.
4. the subject itself.

in my opinion the subject doesn't have to be majestic to make the photo spectacular. even an apple or a bottle of drinking water can be a really good subject. what matters is your perspective on the subject. people who are born with such perspectives, to capture a subject that garners most attention, go on to become professional photographers.

if you view enough photographs, you tend to form your own perspective (which although highly is dependent on the kind of photographs you have seen), but you get there eventually and with time, like wine, become better.

lets assume that you are a beginner and dont have any perspective at all. thats a reasonable assumption. but that doesnt stop from taking breath taking photographs.

what you need then is the proper values of light and amount of exposure. from here on, i will refer to amount of light as apertue, amount of exposure as shutter speed and the color value as ISO.

aperture - lower - more light is going to fall on the lens and hence the photo is going to be brighter

shutter speed - higher it is ( 1/n is more than n because we are talking about speed in time here)

iso - higher it is, more will be the noise or dirtier the picture.


modern day cameras have a metering mode that tell you how bright or dark the photograph is actually going to be depending upon the settings of the aperture and shutter speed. the metering mode is between the range of -2 to 2 in steps of 1/3.

at this point you check if the subject can do with a bright / normal / dark photograph. if you are unsure take one in -1 0 1 and then decide after the viewing the result. eventually you will understand how you want your photograph to be.

one of the challenges is to take snaps at night. an aid for you is a tripod. it helps a lot in night photography. the challenge here is that there is a dearth of light. to counter you decrease the shutter speed ( take it couple of seconds) and increase the aperture (allow more light in). decreasing the shutter speed means that more time is spent on capturing the subject and hence more color is absorbed. increasing the aperture will increase the light coming on your lens. you will be surprised to see the results of this.

one other thing that will help you in night photography is to drop your ISO. the more you drop the less picky the camera will be about the color. i have captured star constellations this way, using the normal lens and they turned out to be great.

i dont prefer to use flash, unless really really necessary, simply because it doesnt have any range but to your surroundings.

i think this about covers the basics of it. there is a whole world out there to discover.

cheers,