Digital Photography – Lecture No. 2

Lectures on Digital Photography are a set of lectures made available by Marc Levoy, a former Stanford professor. These are my notes and assessment after having sat through each lecture. So this is not meant to be instructional. Click here to access the lectures in their entirety.

The Interplay of Sensitivity, Shutter Speed, and Aperture
In an overall sense, this lecture focused on the three variables of exposure (Aperture, Shutter Speed, and ISO) and their influence on the depth of field.

Depth of Field
Simply stated, the depth of field is the distance between the nearest and the farthest objects that are in focus in an image.

As I Mentioned
The specific math and formulas aren’t the thing I want to know. But since there is a definite correlation between the settings in those three variables (ISO, Shutter Speed, and Aperture) and depth of field, I wanted to learn how to set my camera to achieve the desired effect (e.g blurred background but focused foreground, or the other way around, etc.). Here’s a handy little scale that should provide a little guidance on that.


And if I listened correctly, the chart above explains pretty much what the lecture covered. So I will be relying on it for the required photos in assignment 2, Sports and Action.

Stay tuned…

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