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 Posted - May 31 2022 : 08:53:35 AM
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This may be a little arcane for this forum, but I recently did a little experiment with my Canon DSLR camera to see hwo I could improve the focus and sharpness of my photos. I had heard that lens aperture opening had a great effect on depth of field, or how much of an image is in focus. This is an issue in the close up photography we as modellers do.
For this experiment, I set up the camera on a tripod, and pulled the mens back to as wide of an angle as possible. The resultant photos show the majority of the Cumberland terminal mainline. which operates in a 4 1/2 x 4 foot area. The camera was set for aperture (f stop) priority, and focused. Lighting was normal room lighting with a 100 watt daylight spectrum LED bulb, which is almost directly over the layout. All settings except aperture, including flash, were left up to the camera. Here are the results:
In the first image, the aperture is wide open. The camera settings, if anybody was interested, are 18mm, 1/25 @f3.5 @ iso 800. If you look closely, you;ll notice the Santa Fe FT and many of the gondolas are in sharp focus, while the locomotives in the foreground are blurry. The photo, because of the relatively high ISO, is pretty grainy. Contrast that with the next photo:
This photo was taken with the lens wide open, at a much slower shutter speed. That's not an issue because of the tripod, but the first photo is at about the practical limit for a hand held photo. This one is only possible with a tripod. The camera settings were: 18mm, 3/10 sec @ f10 @ iso 800.
The FT and the gondolas are still in razor sharp focus. But notice the locomotives in the foreground. While not as sharp as the FT, there is a drastic improvement in the focus on the foreground areas. Had I focused on the center of the layout instead of the FT, most of the photo would have been sharp. The only reason I didn't do this is that the area I'd need to focus on is open, and what the camera would use for focus would be even farther away than the FT.
Now that I know this, I;ll be sure to apply it to further photos.
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Posted - May 31 2022 : 1:24:02 PM
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| Good info. I just took a scroll through my 'good' camera and it does allow f stop adjustment. I'll have to try this later!
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Posted - May 31 2022 : 5:40:48 PM
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Annnnncient history lesson! I remember the days of ISO, f stop, shutter
speed. With the smart phone, that I seem to have misplaced, it's just
point and shoot and toss out about 4 bad ones for 1 good.
I use a discarded Pixel XL for photography, as it has much better resolution
than the Samsung video cam, which has really rotten resolution. Can't seem to adjust it, either.
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Posted - May 31 2022 : 10:06:30 PM
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| I took a photo class in high school some 12+ years ago now (SLR, darkroom, etc). As much as I like the convenience of modern cell phone cameras, things can be simplified to a fault. I'm also slightly bitter that my current phone doesn't have a 'macro' setting, but does have a million filters to choose from. Maybe that's just hardware limitations...
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Country: Canada ~
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