Continuing to Learn

I attended Class #3 last night and I know believe I will learn one or two things with each class. This time the teacher spoke about ISO, file formats, depth of field and the hyper-focal point. I have always understood ISO (aka film speed or sensitivity) as I used to work with traditional film and it really was crucial then. When it comes to depth of field I like to think that I am quite learned and experienced. I enjoy playing with the depth of field in pictures and I find it useful when trying to get the viewer to see the image the way I intended it to be seen, so there wasn’t much new information here either. The new data I picked up comes with the other two topics: file formats and hyper-focal point.

In terms of file formats, it was not the actual formats that were new. Jp(e)g, tiff, gif, raw – I had heard them all before and used them as well. The new stuff came when he brought a raw file into Adobe Photoshop and showed us what it could do. He could basically ‘re-take’ the shot under any lighting situation he chose. He could warm up or cool down the photo, increase or decrease the exposure, fill in dark spaces, etc. He could even set the white balance to a certain spot on the picture and have the rest of the image change as required. He showed us an example of a jet engine testing area. Due to the lighting needed to protect the bulbs from the high temperatures, the picture came out completely yellow. By setting the white balance on a spot he knew to be white (from being inside the area), the entire image changed as if there were no lighting problems whatsoever. Walls turned yellow from the lights, went white as if there had been no problems at all. It was amazing!

The second new topic was the hyper-focal point. As I understood it, the hyper-focal point is essentially the distance at which one should focus their camera to have everything in the picture focused. In other words, you will have the greatest depth of field when you focus your lens at its hyper-focal point. It has to do with the depth of field ranging from 1/3 of the focal plane in front to 2/3 of the focal plane behind the subject (the focal plane is the area in focus). The hyper-focal point puts the end of your ‘2/3’ at infinity and therefore as long as nothing is between your camera lens and the 1/3 mark, everything will be in focus. We were given a term to Google to find websites that would give you the hyper-focal point for specific lenses, etc: depth of field calculator (original huh). Anyway, if you are interested in getting those great landscape shots, this is definitely something to look into.