CHARLES PERRETTI

A Girl Who Lives in Tokyo

Hayashi Natsumi is a girl who lives in Tokyo, has two cats as housemates, and shoots daily photographs of her adventures in levitation. http://yowayowacamera.com/

よわよわカメラウーマン日記.

Best Must Have IPad / Iphone Apps For Designers

I want to say Up front that there still is no good way of WordPress blogging on the I-pad.

The lack of WordPress modulars is astounding. The Ipad should be the best tool for Blogging.

Also I have not found a good a app for writing Resumes and Cover Letters, formating is the reason.

App shopper- Better than Apple’s App Site

Free Wifi Finder- Down Load National List of WIFI

Atomic web- Download capable Web browser with Tabs(No WordPress WTF)

Go Task- The best Todo list app syncs with your G-Cal Tasks.

Muji calendar- Enter New dates Fast, Syncs both ways with G-Cal

Dropbox- Transfer files and use them between apps, computer and devices.(No WordPress WTF)

ZITE- RSS magazine personalized articles, blogs, videos syncs with Twitter or G-Reader or on its own.

“On the Tarmac ”

cpdbInstagram.

My New Photo Blog – Under-construction

perretti.

Brent Stirton » Photojournalist

Brent Stirton, 39, is the senior staff photographer for the assignment division of Getty Images, New York. Getty Images is the largest photographic agency in the world. He specializes in documentary work and is known for his alternative approaches. He travels an average of nine months of the year on assignment.

Brent’s work is published by: National Geographic Magazine, National Geographic Adventure, The New York Times Magazine, The London Sunday Times Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine, The Discovery Channel, Newsweek, Le Express, Le Monde 2, Figaro, Paris Match, GQ, Geo, Stern, CNN, and many other respected international titles and news organizations.

Brent also photographs for the Global Business Coalition against Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria. He has been a long time photographer for the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), shooting campaigns on sustainability and the environment. He works for the Ford and Clinton Foundations, the Nike foundation and the World Economic Forum. He was appointed one of 200 Young Global leaders in 2009 by the World Economic Forum.

Brent has received awards from the Overseas Press Club, the Frontline Club, the Deadline Club, Days Japan, multiple P.O.Y USA awards, 3 times China International Photo Awards, the Lead Awards Germany, Graphis USA, American Photography, American Photo and the American Society of Publication Designers as well as the London Association of Photographers. Brent has received 5 awards from the Lucie Foundation and 5 awards from the World Press Photo Foundation and has also received awards from the United Nations for his work on the environment and in the field of HIV. Recently Brent won the 2008 Visa D’or at the Visa Pour L’ image Festival in France for Magazine photography. Brent was also awarded The Lucy Award for International photographer of the Year for 2008.

In 2009 he received a gold award from China International photographic awards, as well as awards from the National Press Photographers Association, Graphis and American Photography.

Brent received the 2009 ASME magazine publishers award for photojournalism for his work in the Democratic Republic of Congo published in National Geographic magazine.

Brent Stirton » Photojournalist.

Photographer, Erik Schaetzke

Find him at: http://erikian.com

http://erikian.com/erik_ian/advertising.html#10advertising.

Primordial and cellular levels of knowing. « Synaptic Stimuli

I don’t know what it is, but I like it.

Primordial and cellular levels of knowing. « Synaptic Stimuli.

Minimal Landscape & Architectural Photography

Kim Høltermand on Desktopography &  Behance

Minimal Landscape & Architectural Photography | The Donut Project.

Federico Frangi – Barcelona Photographer

Federico Frangi – Spain Issue 178, Showcase magazine – Production Paradise.

Lens Aperture (F Stop) explained

1. 

   Aperture or stop. This is the adjustable hole through which light passes on its way from the subject, through the lens, to the film (or digital sensor). It blocks rays of light except those that  form an inverted image by passing through that central point to a corresponding point in the opposite direction on the film.

2. 

   • f/ numbers are a ratio of the diameter of your aperture compared to your lens. Hence, a larger number is a smaller aperture.
   • 

     It’s as simple as this: a smaller aperture means more depth of field, a larger aperture means less. A larger aperture also means more background blur.

   • Iris diaphragm or simply iris. is a series of overlapping thin metal blades that forms a central hole that is perfectly round wide open or  a smaller polygonal hole (which may have curved edges).
   • Stopping down means to use a smaller, or (depending on context) a relatively small aperture (large f/ number).
   • Opening up means to use a larger, or (depending on context), a relatively large aperture (small f/ number).
   • Wide open means to use the largest aperture (smallest f/number).
   • Depth of field is the front-to-back area that appears fairly sharp. A smaller aperture increases depth of field and decreases the extent to which other objects are blurred. The precise distance of focus, and the noticeability of defocus depends on factors such as subject type, other sources of lack of sharpness, and viewing conditions.
   • A relatively large depth-of-field is called deep; a relatively small depth-of-field is called shallow.
   • Diffraction is the behavior of waves passing through small openings limiting the maximum sharpness of all lenses at smaller apertures. It becomes increasingly apparent past f/11 or so, making a great camera and lens no better than a so-so one.
3. Understand depth of field.  There is only one distance at which an objects will be in perfect focus, but sharpness drops off gradually in front of and behind that distance.

   

   

   • If you want great background blur but do not have quite enough depth of field for your subject, focus on the part that will draw the most attention, often the eyes.
   • Using a longer focal length and a smaller aperture defocuses backgrounds just as well as a longer focal length.
   • So, if you want shallow depth of field, you can buy a super-fast lens (expensive), or zoom in (free) and set even a cheap smaller-aperture lens wide open.
   • Assume expensive or prime (non-zoom) lenses are best at f/8, cheap simple ones such as kit lenses are best at f/11, and cheap exotic ones such as superwides or lenses with wide or tele adapters are best at f/16. (With an adapter lens on a point and shoot, stop down as much as possible, perhaps by using the camera’s aperture-priority mode – look in its menus.)
   • Another  practical purpose of depth of field is to set a small aperture and pre-focus the lens to the “hyperfocal distance” (the closest at which the depth of field extends to infinity to be ready to take a picture quickly with a manual-focus camera or a subject moving too fast or unpredictably for autofocus (in which case you’ll need a high shutter speed too).
   • Understand the interaction of aperture and instantaneous lighting (flash). A wide aperture increases maximum flash range. It also increases effective fill-flash range by reducing the time during which ambient light is allowed in. A small aperture may be needed to prevent overexposure in close-ups. Many cameras can adjust the balance of flash and ambient lighting with “flash exposure compensation”.
   • Nearly all lenses have lower contrast and are less sharp at their widest aperture, especially towards the corners of your image. This is especially true on point-and-shoot and cheaper lenses. Consequently, if you’re going to have detail in the corners of your pictures that you want to keep sharp, then you’ll want to use a smaller aperture. For flat subjects, f/8 is typically the sharpest aperture. For objects at varying distances a smaller aperture may be better for more depth of field.
   • Remember that you normally won’t see any of this through your viewfinder (or on your screen as you’re composing.
   • Zoom lenses can vary depending on how far in or out they are zoomed. Test for the above things at a few different zoom settings.
   • Diffraction makes almost every lens’s images softer at f/16 and smaller apertures, and conspicuously softer at f/22 and smaller.

1. Understand aperture-related special effects.
   • • Bokeh, a Japanese word often used to refer to the appearance of out-of-focus areas, especially highlights because those appear as bright blobs. Much has been written about the details of those out-of-focus blobs, which are sometimes brighter in the middle and sometimes a little brighter at the edges, like donuts, or some combination of the two, but at least one author rarely notices it except in bokeh articles. Most importantly, out-of-focus blurs are:
       • Much larger and more diffuse at wider apertures.
       • Soft-edged at the widest aperture, due to the perfectly round hole (the edge of a lens, rather than an iris blade).
       • The shape of the diaphragm opening, when not at the widest aperture. This is most noticeable at wide apertures because they are large. This might be considered unattractive with a lens whose opening does not closely approximate a circle, such as a cheap lens with a five- or six-bladed diaphragm.
       • Sometimes half-moons rather than circular toward the sides of images at very wide apertures, probably due to one of the lens elements not being as huge as it would have to be to fully illuminate all parts of the image at that aperture, or weirdly extended due to “coma” at very wide apertures (which is pretty much only an issue when taking pictures of lights at night).
       • 

         Catadioptric (mirror) lenses give donut-shaped bokeh.

         Prominently donut-like with mirror-type tele lenses, due to a central obstruction.

     • Diffraction spikes forming sunstars. Very bright highlights, such as light bulbs at night or small specular reflections of sunlight, will be surrounded by “diffraction spikes” making “sunstars” at small apertures (they are formed by increased diffraction at the points of the polygonal hole formed by the iris). These will either have the same number of points as your lens has aperture blades (if you have an even number of them), due to overlapping of opposite-sides’ spikes, or twice as many (if you have an odd number of aperture blades). They are fainter and less noticeable with lenses with many, many aperture blades (generally odd lenses such as old Leicas).
2. Get out and shoot. Most importantly  Control your depth of field. It’s as simple as this: a smaller aperture means more depth of field, a larger aperture means less. A larger aperture also means more background blur.
   • • Use a small aperture to force more depth of field.
     • If you’re doing macro photography, for example, you might want to stop down far more than you would for a landscape. Insect photographers often go way down to f/16 or smaller, and have to nuke their subjects with lots of artificial lighting. Large apertures force backgrounds to be thrown out of focus; this is great for portraits, as in this shot made at f/2.
     • A shallow depth of field is great for portraits (much better than the silly automatic portrait scene modes), for example; use the largest aperture you have, lock your focus on the eyes, recompose and you’ll find the background is thrown out of focus and is, consequently, made less distracting.Remember that opening the aperture like this will cause faster shutter speeds to be chosen. In bright daylight, make sure you aren’t causing your camera to max out its fastest shutter speed (typically 1/4000 on digital SLRs). Keep your ISO low to avoid this.
   • Shoot for special effects. If you’re photographing lights at night, have adequate camera support, and want sunstars, use a small aperture. If you want large, perfectly rounded bokeh spots (albeit with some incomplete circles), use a wide-open aperture.
   • Shoot for fill-flash. Use a relatively large aperture and fast shutter speed if necessary to mix flash with daylight so the flash isn’t overwhelmed.
   • Shoot for optimum technical image quality. If depth of field is not of primary importance (which would generally be the case when pretty much everything in the picture is relatively far from the lens and will be in focus anyway), the shutter speed will be high enough to avoid blur from camera shake and the ISO setting will be low enough to avoid severe noise or other quality loss (which would generally be the case in daytime), you don’t need any aperture-related gimmicks, and any flash is powerful enough to balance with ambient light adequately, set the aperture that gives the best detail with the particular lens being used.
   • Once you’ve chosen the lens aperture, try making the most of it with aperture-priority mode.

Try This Out

For Canon user, find your Depth of Field preview button:

Then turn the mode to AV mode:

Press and hold your Depth of Field button and move the dial as below:

While you move the dial left and right, look into your lens and check the moving parts in the lens. You will see the aperture diaphragm moving while you moving the dial. For best view, use 50mm F1.8.

AV Mode/A Mode

The best mode to study the behavior of the Aperture is to set the D-SLR mode to Aperture Priority mode (Av for Canon, A for Nikon). Aperture Priority mode enable the photographer to manipulate/control the Aperture’s opens with F-number value indicator at the LCD view. Setting to this mode is the best mode for outdoor shooting or shooting without flash. Most of photographer choose this mode when dealing with very limited time to shoot details of the event or moment.

To control your aperture in this mode, just set your camera to the AV mode/A mode, and move the dial to right to increase th F-value (small aperture) and left to lowering the F-value (wide aperture).

Observe the shutter speed (commonly at left of F-number). The shutter speed change automatically with the F-number that been manipulated. The changes of shutter speed is to balance the light enter to the sensor. When the aperture set to wide (for example, F1.8) the shutter speed will be speedup (for example 1/1000). The shutter speed speedup to control/balance the light that enter from the wide aperture that set earlier (remember, wide aperture, more light enter, shutter speed increase automatically to balance the amount of the light enter). So, in this case, the manipulated variable is the aperture, and the responding variable is shutter speed.

The relationship between the Aperture and Shutter Speed can be explain as below:

Clearly, the aperture vs shutter speed is directly proportional. But this condition only valid for certain assumption that need to take, such as ISO control, the ambient light condition, flash manipulating, etc.

(So, the introduction of  theories of Aperture behaviors and controls that you just read it only to gain basic knowledge about the component of the aperture, so that you enable to thinks critically about how to control the light to the sensor and exposure of the image)

How to Choose a Lens Aperture (F Stop): 10 steps (with video) – wikiHow.