Experimenting with a new camera

[jonathan]

Here's the first two test shots with my new camera.  I can control the f-stop (aperture) to f/8.  That means nothing to me, yet, other than I get more depth of field.

Test:




We'll see if I get any better at photography with a new tool.

Regards,

Jonathan

[richg]

Looks pretty good, Jonathan.

What is the brand. model of camera?

How is the camera for videos?

Specs?

Rich

[john tricarico]

hi jon
what king of camera do you have, make sure you read the cameras manual  there are settings galore for all in door and out door settings and all sorts of special features,,  mean while take more pictures and let us see them

[beampaul7]

Hi Jonathan.     Maybe I can help. F-stops refer to the amount of lite admitted into the camera.  In a film camera of 35mm a setting of f2 came to be pretty standard and let in a lot of lite and made for a very short exposure but reduced the depth of field drastically to where what you focused on appeared very sharp but places nearer or farther away tended to be out of focus.  It is easy at this setting to hand hold the camera and still get sharply focused pictures.  By setting the lense to a smaller lens opening (larger number f16 f32 f64) you dramaticly increase the depth of field, also increase the exposure time which may require one to use a tripod to avoid bluriness from camera shake.  The newer digital cameras compensate for this to some extent but not always enough.               I have no idea what level of experience you have involving photography but I hope I haven't over slimpified this.  Your pictures have always been excellent.  Hope this has been helpful.            Paul

[Jhanecker2]

I happen to have the same White Tower Restaurant Model , though I haven't Assembled it yet . One reason I own it is that I was Raised in the Lincoln Park Neighborhood of Chicago ,Northside, and we actually had that restaurant  on the south corner of  Lincoln Avenue  and Sheffield Street .  It was supposed to be one  White Castle Restaurant Chain . It has always been a restaurant though not a "White Castle" . It was still there when I last was in Chicago. The only   rails near it  are  CTA  Elevated  Lines crossing  Lincoln Avenue ,north of Fullerton Avenue . J2.

[Geared Steam]

Looks pretty good, Jonathan.

What is the brand. model of camera?

How is the camera for videos?

Specs?

Rich

Rich
According to the image its a Nikon Coolpix P500 with a f/6.3 F-stop setting,

[richg]

Looks pretty good, Jonathan.

What is the brand. model of camera?

How is the camera for videos?

Specs?

Rich

Rich
According to the image its a Nikon Coolpix P500 with a f/6.3 F-stop setting,

This must be a DUH moment for me. How did you figure that out?

Rich

[richg]

Right now a WAG is, the photo label, DSCN0015.jpg. A similar label for my Nikon CoolPx S6000.

Rich

[Doneldon]

jonathan-

The f-stop number is actually the reciprocal of the size of the aperture. That is, f2.0 means that the aperture is at 1/2 of its maximum opening. f8.0 means the the aperture is 1/8 the size of its maximum. So, a smaller f-number means a larger opening (and proportionally more light getting in) than a larger f-number. For example, an f-stop of 4.0 (1/4) has an aperture which is twice as large as f8.0 (1/8), and it admits twice as much light. This is just like comparing how much light is admitted by two different size windows on the same side of a house and with the same shading, or lack of shading. But ... there is a down side to the larger opening: Softer focus and a shallower depth of field (the area between the closest in-focus point and the farthest in-focus point). Very small apertures, like f22 or even greater, have very sharp focus and great depth of field. Think pinhole camera.

Two other factors go into the exposure equation: shutter speed and film (or CMOS) sensitivity. And they work pretty much the same as aperture. For example, shutter speed is also a reciprocal. A shutter speed of 100 is really 1/100 second; a shutter speed of 200 is really 1/200 of a second. And the amount of light admitted to the sensing surface is proportional. You can see just how shutter speed and aperture interact when you realize that an f2.0 at 1/200 second is exactly the same exposure as an f4.0 at 1/100. The sensitivity of your recording surface (film or electronic sensor) also has numbers. They used to be reported only as ASA but these days (actually, for a long time now) they are reported as ISO or as ASA and ISO.

Looking at ASA, the gold standard for film was Kodacolor at ASA25. That film had very limited sensitivity to light but it paid for its slow "film speed" by reproducing colors accurately and with extremely fine grain. As you moved up the ASA scale, films became more sensitive but at the cost of increasingly biased color reproduction and graininess. Thus, serious photographers considered all three factors to get the exposure they wanted. Portraits were most commonly made with short telephoto lenses and relatively large apertures to get an appealing, soft skin surface without the huge noses which would have resulted from using a conventional lens from a shorter distance. Very large apertures might have been selected to get a sharp image of a rose, say, while blurring the background with a shallow depth of field. Action photos, like sports events or children running around called for very fast shutters which, in turn, required larger apertures or faster (more sensitive) film. Photos under minimum light conditions required a combination of long exposures, large apertures and fast film. You get the idea.

All of these factors affect our digital photography, too. Aperture and shutter work the same. We can set sensitivity with the in-camera controls if we need to deviate from normal. By and large, the electronic sensors are much more sensitive than film but with the same degradation of image quality as higher sensitivities are selected. We called that grain with film; with electronic cameras we call it noise. Our modern digital cameras do a lot of work for us though we aren't generally conscious of it. For example, our cameras electronically correct for different kinds of light we encounter in our day-to-day photography. (Light type, e.g., incandescent, flourescent, daylight,affects color rendition but not exposure.)  We had to change film or use light-stealing filters to do this with film. Modern cameras, including most film cameras made during the last 15-20 years of film, also have various programs which select a combination of aperture and shutter based on formulae programmed into the cameras by their manufacturers. An action program would favor fast shutters; a scenic program would favor small apertures. And so on. Throw auto-focus and various auto-flash features into the mix and one can generally take technically correct pictures without attending to exposure. That's not always true, of course, and our cameras still can't compose our photos. However, face finding and smile recognition are probably the start of cameras taking over the whole process except for changing batteries. My belief is that our cameras will be able to take consistently good photos in the future but they'll never be able to produce the outstanding photos which result from the eye and experience of a live photographer. Oh, they may get one by accident from time to time, but there will always be a need for the eye and creative artistry of an expert. I hope, anyway.

During the last 10-15 years of the film era the quality of film increased phenomenally fast. It's fair to say that speed, grain and color accuracy improved as much from one year to the next as it improved in 5-7 years during the 60s and 70s. Unfortunately, there was also a move to supersaturated colors which, I think, diminished the quality of the finished product, the slide or print. We're seeing similarly rapid advances in digital photography and it's hard to imagine that will change other than to improve faster.

So. Does that explain what an f-stop of 8.0 is?
                                                                               -- D

[J3a-614]

Donaldon, I want to say thank you for your explanations of cameras, f-stops, shutter speeds, etc.  Brought back a lot of stuff I had forgotten about because I hadn't been an active photographer for a long time now, and still haven't joined the electronic camera generation! 

I like your comments about how we still need a photographer to make the shot.  And I'll mention something else--I'm not sure photographing what are often very small models in a manner to make them look like their large prototypes is a really extensive field as far as photography is concerned.  It's probably something very small, a specialized niche, compared with the other type of model photography, like pretty girls. . .no comment about what the girls might be wearing, though, this is a family forum . . .

Just remember you don't scratch a niche . . .(5:26)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GTa8RF6MHI

Of course, we have to have the rest of the sequence:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxBuP-l4NWE&feature=channel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryaFVZBcxrA&feature=channel

[jonathan]

I don't know how you guessed that, but as a matter of fact, it is a Nikon P500.  

That seems like a magic trick somehow.  

The P500 is considered a "bridge" camera.  It's a point-and-shoot digital, yet has a couple extra dials to let you control, to a small degree, the shutter speed, f-stop (thanks for the explanation), and a few other settings.  I wanted to be able to play with the settings a little bit, to see if I can get photos a little sharper, with good depth of field, and a controlled lighting--to see if a specific time of day could be modelled.  Both shots above were suppose to look like night time settings.  I actually took the pics in the dark, with just the track lighting you see.  Unfortunately, the camera took over and adjusted for the low light.  I will have to play some more, probably with the shutter speed.

So much to learn, so little time...

I REALLY wanted the camera because it has HD video.  Once my scenery is a little more "done", I plan on setting up some trains to shoot, using some free movie making software I downloaded recently.  Already have the tripods and homemade spotlights, and of course, the necessary trains.

Regards.

Jonathan

Addendum:  the manual is 232 pages with really small print.  This project could take a while. 

[Woody Elmore]

Who needs a manual? 232 pages? Good grief - Oliver Twist isn't that long! Of course the manual probably is in English, French, Spanish, Japanese, Korean and other interesting languages

Seriously, because the camera is digital you can experiment with f stops and get instant results. With film cameras you had to wait until you saw the developed film. Maybe you can make a pin hole device for it to get realy good depth of field..

Enjoy!

[J3a-614]

Jon, how far down will your lens go?  F-8 is still considered a somewhat wide opening; I have lenses on my old 35mm cameras that go down to F-22.  

Another recent development in digital work--and something you couldn't do with film--is a technique called "focus stacking."  Originally developed for microscopic photography, this is essentially taking a series of photos from exactly the same point, but with the sharpest focus at different depths or distances in the image field, and combining the photos with software.  I've seen some pictures taken in N-scale that were simply mind-blowing for their depth of field.  

Problem is, it doesn't look like there are really free focus-stacking programs available:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focus_stacking

http://bigwww.epfl.ch/demo/edf/

Sample shots:

http://www.zeiss.de/c12567be0045acf1/Contents-Frame/380524c84434dc8dc1256e3d005371eb

Something else to fool with. . .

[richg]

This discussion will help me buy a new Nikon. My two year old Nikon S6000 somehow ened up with a tiny scratch of the lens. I think once or twice the lens cover did not shut all the way and sometning in the bag put a scratch on the lens. I doubt any camera shops take care of this anymore, at least for inexpensive digital cameras.

Rich

[Geared Steam]

Looks pretty good, Jonathan.

What is the brand. model of camera?

How is the camera for videos?

Specs?

Rich

Rich
According to the image its a Nikon Coolpix P500 with a f/6.3 F-stop setting,

This must be a DUH moment for me. How did you figure that out?

Rich

Rich, all digital cameras leave data on the file. If you want to view it, first you need to save the picture to your HD, then right click on the file, chose "Properties", select the "Details" tab, then scroll down until you reach the "Camera", and there you are!
It's a great tool to use when you seen a great picture and am curious about the camera and the settings used.