Another good read – Basic Shutter Speed, Aperture and Depth of Field Underwater. The article was written with underwater photography in mind, but the information is sound even when you are on dry land. A few weeks ago, when I wanted to dust off the Minolta SLR to take some pictures, I ended up writing to Rannie for advice – I had forgotten how to use the f-stops to manipulate the depth of field within a photograph. Thanks to his help, I remember now that smaller numbers equal a larger opening, which in turn effects the depth of field. So, for example, an f-stop of 8 is a larger opening then an f-stop of 16. Huh? Well, just think of it this way – the f-stops translate to 1/8 and 1/16 in fractions – and 1/8 is larger then 1/16. See? Pretty cool.
Another cool thing I learned tonight? If I actually read the manual for my camera, I’d learn a lot of cool tricks! It seems I have macro settings and stuff like that – things I’ve never used … because I didn’t know how to do it. Oops. So now I’m off to finally read the manual!