LENS BASED: DSLRs and Studio Lighting

To start the Lens Based Media Rotation week, we were introduced to the basics of studio photography equipment. Despite having learnt most of the technical aspects of using a DSLR in various settings (namely natural and studio), it was good to refresh my memory and also learn the technical vocabulary and jargon for the course.

We started off with looking at the settings a DSLR has, such as aperture, shutter speed and ISO. 

The aperture setting is to do with how much the shutter opens and therefore determines how much light is revealed to the image sensor (or film in analogue photography). The modes of this setting are measured in f-stops and these go as seen above where the number increases as the hole restricts.

One of the main benefits of playing with the aperture is the ability to alter the depth of field in a photograph. At the highest f-stop, the depth of field (DOF) is at the greatest and therefore as the f-stop decreases, the DOF becomes more and more shallow. 

Due to the technology of aperture, if one is attempting to capture an image with a shallow DOF, this means the shutter is wide open and lets in a large amount of light. This means, with no other settings being changed, the image will often be overexposed and so the shutter speed will often be altered to compensate for the exposure. 

Moving onto looking at lighting, we were introduced to the school's studio equipment. This consisted of two of the more common lights, being tungsten lamps and a compound flash.

We were then shown the effects of these two lights and how they are used both in technical terms and the difference in aesthetic results.

These are the images I then took with this information fresh in my head to test the outcomes: