Charlyn’s Web

Rain Forests are dark places. There is the thick canopy overhead, cloudy skies and rain falling on your camera. I had to set the ISO and the F-stop. Sounds like I know what I’m doing, doesn’t it? Ha! I laugh.

The ISO has to do with the speed of the “film” but because I have a digital SLR there is no film. But from what I understand (and with limited brain power, I could be wrong) the lower the number the more light it needs but it has better color saturation. ISO 200 would have better color but needs a brighter day. The higher the setting the more grainy the photo can be too. I experimented with different ISOs and settled on about 400 or 800 depending on where I was in the woods Rain Forest.

The F stop determines how wide the shutter opens (called aperture) which determines how much light hits the “film”. The wider it opens the shorter the depth of focus. If I have it set to 8 the aperture doesn’t open as wide, letting in less light, but it will provide a wider focus area. If someone was standing in front of an impressive sight, I would want to have a deeper focus to include not only the person but the background so I would set it at about 8. If the person was standing in front of something not so impressive or I wanted the person to be the main focus of the photo, I would set it at a lower number- say 5.6. If you go too low then the person’s nose might be in focus but the rest would be blurry.

In this situation, trying to take photos in the dark, when I didn’t want to use a flash- I wanted the aperture to open wide to let in as much light as possible. It seems to have worked for the forest shots but the people shots were a bit off. Maybe one person in focus and the others a tad blurry. Here’s an example:

(Somebody has complained about the amount of time my Blog takes to load. I certainly wouldn’t want to inconvenience my vast (snort) readership or hog up more than my share of Internet ethereal space. So these shots are in thumbnail because I haven’t figured out how to put part of it on another page. Click on the thumbnail to get a larger photo.)

TG is mainly in focus but her moving boots are very blurry. Grandpa and KJ are slightly fuzzy. This was at ISO 400 and F-stop 5.6.  I’m not sure what would have been better because if I went with a smaller aperture then there may not have been enough light and the shutter would stay open longer also making a blurry shot.

I’ll probably be posting more photos in the next few days. I’ve been a tad bit grumpy lately ( yes, just a Tad, you have issue with that?!?!?!) The Col. is leading worship at revival services in the evenings so he isn’t around- which may be for the best. When he is gone and the kids are in bed, I don’t have to share the chocolate.