Lessons
Class Introduction
17:26 2Welcome to Photography
13:08 3Camera Types Overview
02:00 4Viewing Systems
28:43 5Viewing Systems Q&A
08:45 6Lens Systems
32:06 7Shutter Systems
13:17 8Shutter Speeds
10:47Choosing a Shutter Speed
31:30 10Shutter Speeds for Handholding
08:36 11Shutter Speed Pop Quiz
09:06 12Camera Settings
25:35 13General Camera Q&A
14:38 14Sensor Sizes: The Basics
15:33 15Sensor Sizes: Compared
19:10 16Pixels
20:13 17ISO
21:13 18Sensor Q&A
13:34 19Focal Length: Overview
11:09 20Focal Length: Angle of View
15:09 21Wide Angle Lenses
08:48 22Telephoto Lenses
25:23 23Angle of View Q&A
09:29 24Fish Eye Lenses
10:39 25Tilt & Shift Lenses
23:42 26Subject Zone
17:19 27Lens Speed
09:56 28Aperture Basics
08:46 29Depth of Field
21:49 30Aperture Pop Quiz
13:23 31Lens Quality
18:30 32Photo Equipment Life Cycle
03:57 33Light Meter Basics
09:25 34Histogram
15:25 35Histogram Pop Quiz and Q&A
10:58 36Dynamic Range
06:03 37Exposure Modes
15:58 38Manual Exposure
09:38 39Sunny 16 Rule
05:54 40Exposure Bracketing
10:18 41Exposure Values
27:21 42Exposure Pop Quiz
26:43 43Focus Overview
16:15 44Focusing Systems
05:15 45Autofocus Controls
11:56 46Focus Points
07:35 47Autofocusing on Subjects
20:19 48Manual Focus
07:52 49Digital Focusing Assistance
03:40 50Focus Options: DSLR and Mirrorless
04:58 51Shutter Speeds for Sharpness and DoF
05:20 52Depth of Field Pop Quiz
12:14 53Depth of Field Camera Features
04:54 54Lens Sharpness
09:58 55Camera Movement
05:20 56Handheld and Tripod Focusing
04:32 57Advanced Techniques
07:12 58Hyperfocal Distance
06:50 59Hyperfocal Quiz and Focusing Formula
04:36 60Micro adjust and AF Fine Tune
05:34 61Focus Stacking and Post Sharpening
06:00 62Focus Problem Pop Quiz
18:07 63The Gadget Bag: Camera Accessories
25:30 64The Gadget Bag: Lens Accessories
12:46 65The Gadget Bag: Neutral Density Filter
20:43 66The Gadget Bag: Lens Hood and Teleconverters
08:55 67The Gadget Bag: Lens Adapters
05:43 68The Gadget Bag: Lens Cleaning Supplies
04:34 69The Gadget Bag: Macro Lenses and Accessories
15:57 70The Gadget Bag: Flash and Lighting
05:08 71The Gadget Bag: Tripods and Accessories
18:50 72The Gadget Bag: Custom Cases
11:20 7310 Thoughts on Being a Photographer
07:37 74Direct Sunlight
25:04 75Indirect Sunlight
18:49 76Sunrise and Sunset
18:39 77Cloud Light
14:48 78Golden Hour
09:50 79Light Pop Quiz
07:53 80Light Management
14:00 81Artificial Light
13:56 82Speedlights
16:02 83Off-Camera Flash
27:38 84Advanced Flash Techniques
09:49 85Editing Overview
08:24 86Editing Set-up
08:06 87Importing Images
16:45 88Best Use of Files and Folders
20:54 89Culling
20:56 90Develop: Fixing in Lightroom
18:13 91Develop: Treating Your Images
10:53 92Develop: Optimizing in Lightroom
14:51 93Art of Editing Q&A
06:01 94Composition Overview
06:53 95Photographic Intrusions
10:10 96Mystery and Working the Scene
16:18 97Point of View
09:11 98Better Backgrounds
16:02 99Unique Perspective
11:02 100Angle of View
15:06 101Subject Placement
41:14 102Subject Placement Q&A
05:18 103Panorama
07:39 104Multishot Techniques
13:57 105Timelapse
16:13 106Human Vision vs The Camera
20:07 107Visual Perception
08:35 108Visual Balance Test
22:56 109Visual Drama
12:25 110Elements of Design
28:57 111The Photographic Process
12:28 112Working the Shot
27:38 113The Moment
04:42 114One Hour Photo - Colby Brown
1:04:32 115One Hour Photo - John Keatley
1:03:05 116One Hour Photo - Art Wolfe
59:01 117One Hour Photo - Rocco Ancora
1:01:20 118One Hour Photo - Mike Hagen
1:01:20 119One Hour Photo - Lisa Carney
1:00:52 120One Hour Photo - Ian Shive
1:08:00 121One Hour Photo - Sandra Coan
1:10:29 122One Hour Photo - Daniel Gregory
1:06:07 123One Hour Photo - Scott Robert Lim
1:05:41Lesson Info
Aperture Basics
So it is time to get into a big core of the lens, and that is the aperture, so let's talk about the aperture in the lens. The aperture is the opening through which light travels. That's the hole that will let the light into the sensor. It's a term that gets used and misused in many ways. We have been talking, for the last little section, about the maximum aperture. Someone might say, hey that's a nice lens, what aperture lens is that? What they're really asking is, what's the maximum aperture? Just as a joke, if somebody says what lens is that, you should say it's an 85 f/22 lens. They're gonna be like, what, nobody makes an 85 f/22. Because we always wanna know what's the best that it can do. So we're talking about the maximum aperture on that lens. Now the aperture, in reality, is this diaphragm that opens and closes in the lens so that we can adjust the amount of light coming in the lens and so that's the aperture, or what we will call the F-Stop. Sometimes it can be called the iris...
. The F-Stop is the ratio of the focal length of the lens to the entrance pupil. If that sounds weird, we did the math just a little bit ago, we took the 50 millimeter, we divided it by 1.4, we got 35 millimeters. That's how we're getting to the F-Stop of this. This is the opening of the lens. These are listed as fractions, and that's why they are kind of in reverse order. The biggest opening is the smallest number. Let's take our lens, and let's stop this aperture down. As we stop our apertures down, we are letting in half as much light at each setting. The smallest opening on mini-lenses is around 22. As we open it up, each time we open it one setting, we are doubling the amount of light that is being let in the lens. The diagram to kind of embed in your memory is 1.4 is this big opening, and f/22 is this small opening. Now let's just say that we're at f/2.8, and we go to 2.0, we will often call that opening up the aperture, for obvious reasons, it's getting bigger, and that would be by a full stop of light. It's gonna let in twice as much light as we go 2.8 to two. And if you think about things, this is very different than shutter speeds and apertures. Let's go back and talk about ISOs, or shutter speeds. When we doubled the number, we cut the light in half. And when we cut the number in half, we cut it in half. And so it goes in doubling and cutting in half. The same thing with ISOs, you double the number, you double the sensitivity, but here, we're not doubling the numbers, we're doing something else with it. This has to do with the fact that the area of a circle grows very quickly by just making it a little bit larger. There's some complicated math behind it that we're not gonna get into. It's easier just to remember the 2.8, and two is the next in the series. And so when we go from 2.8 to four, we're stopping down our aperture, it's becoming smaller, And we're letting in half as much light at four as we had at 2.8. So each of these, we're cutting the light in half. Then when we go the other direction, we're letting in twice as much light. The most common lens out there, for the newcomer, is the 18-55, which has that 3.5-5.6 variable maximum aperture on it. So what does that exactly mean? What that means, is that if you have the lens at 18, the maximum aperture is 3.5. And you can stop down all the way down to about f/22. You can vary it anywhere in here that you want. Now let's say you zoom it out to 55. The maximum aperture there is now 5.6. The maximum variable aperture thing that we've been talking about, is the fact that these two numbers are different. 3.5 and 5.6, it changes between these. But what happens if you set it to 35? Well I don't know, but it's probably somewhere between here, so it might be f/4.2. You'll have to take a look at your own camera, and you can actually see these numbers change on your own lens as you zoom it back and forth, if you set it to 3.5. The nice thing is, is that we do have some computers running our camera, and if you take this lens, and you set an aperture of f/8, it'll automatically just keep it at f/8 as you zoom back and forth. The only place where it kinda slips and changes is when you have the opening at its maximum opening. This is the least favorite part of my class, this is the part that people just don't like the most. I want you to memorize all of the aperture settings, because you're gonna be using them for the rest of your life, because we're all gonna be awesome photographers who do it 'til the day you die. You wanna know this stuff, and it's really not that hard. There's two numbers you need to remember. The first number is number one. Since that number is so easy, you only really need to remember one number, and that is 1.4, cause it is the next number in the series. It is a series of numbers, one, 1.4... Now we wanna figure out the next number going up, and here's what we do: we go back a number, and we double it. That gives us two, alright? So we wanna figure out the next number from two, and so what we do is we go to the previous number, and we double it, and we get to the next number. So these numbers are just kinda leap-frogging each other, and doubling. And so, two, 2.8, four, and on up the scale. It's a very easy scale, and you should be able to figure it out, and it goes to infinity. It just keeps going bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, but you're not gonna need... You'll rarely see things in the really large numbers here. I've got a question for somebody here in the class. Let's see if you can answer this. Stanley Kubrick made a movie called Barry Lyndon. In the movie, he had a scene that he wanted to shoot, that had a candle and an actor, and he figured that he needed a lens that let in a lot of light, and somehow he calculated that he needed a lens that was faster than an f/1.0 lens. So here we have an f/1.0 lens, he needed something even faster than a 1.0 lens. Can any of you tell us what lens he needed, that was one stop faster than an f/1.0 lens? Pick up the microphone, okay, pick up the microphone. My guess would be a .50? A .50, now how to did you figure that out? I'm looking at You guessing? I'm guessing, but I'm also looking at one, and what would be less than one. I'm trying to do the math. You're not right, you're close. Someone else wanna try? Well, just going the other way, when you were saying doubling, so wouldn't we take the 1.4 and cut it in half? That is correct, and so the next one is... You go to the previous number, you cut that one in half, you jumped one extra. He used a 50 millimeter .7 lens. Check your closets, if you happen to have one, there was like six made, and they're really really valuable. You can go up and you can go down on the scale, and so after the .7, the .5 would be the next lens. That is the lens that is one stop faster than Kubrick's lens. The apertures that we're gonna deal with in reality, for the most of us, is gonna be 1.4 to f/22. Now one of the thing's you'll notice as you change the aperture on your lens, is that you will have these third stops. They are perfectly fine to set. I'm not gonna list them, cause there's too many numbers and they clutter up the screen, but they're perfectly fine to set these third stops so that we can be very very accurate on our cameras. So the aperture is gonna control the amount of light being let through the lens, so if you wanna let in more light or less light, the aperture is one of those things that can control either more or less light. But it also controls the depth of field, and so suddenly when something does two things, you can start to see that this is where we're gonna have a little bit of conflict in our desires.
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Ratings and Reviews
a Creativelive Student
Love love all John Greengo classes! Wish to have had him decades ago with this info, but no internet then!! John is the greatest photography teacher I have seen out there, and I watch a lot of Creative Live classes and folks on YouTube too. John is so detailed and there are a ton of ah ha moments for me and I know lots of others. I think I own 4 John Greengo classes so far and want to add this one and Travel Photography!! I just drop everything to watch John on Creative Live. I wish sometime soon he would teach a Lightroom class and his knowledge on photography post editing.!!! That would probably take a LOT OF TIME but I know John would explain it soooooo good, like he does all his Photography classes!! Thank you Creative Live for having such a wonderful instructor with John Greengo!! Make more classes John, for just love them and soak it up! There is soooo much to learn and sometimes just so overwhelming. Is there anyway you might do a Motivation class!!?? Like do this button for this day, and try this technique for a week, or post this subject for this week, etc. Motivation and inspiration, and playing around with what you teach, needed so much and would be so fun.!! Just saying??? Awaiting gadgets class now, while waiting for lunch break to be over. All the filters and gadgets, oh my. Thank you thank you for all you teach John, You are truly a wonderful wonderful instructor and I would highly recommend folks listening and buying your classes.
Eve
I don't think that adjectives like beautiful, fantastic or excellent can describe the course and classes with John Greengo well enough. I've just bought my first camera and I am a total amateur but I fell in love with photography while watching the classes with John. It is fun, clear, understandable, entertaining, informative and and and. He is not only a fabulous photographer but a great teacher as well. Easy to follow, clear explanations and fantastic visuals. The only disadvantage I can list here that he is sooooo good that keeps me from going out to shoot as I am just glued to the screen. :-) Don't miss it and well worth the money invested! Thank you John!
Vlad Chiriacescu
Wow! John is THE best teacher I have ever had the pleasure of learning from, and this is the most comprehensive, eloquent and fun course I have ever taken (online or off). If you're even / / interested in photography, take this course as soon as possible! You might find out that taking great photos requires much more work than you're willing to invest, or you might get so excited learning from John that you'll start taking your camera with you EVERYWHERE. At the very least, you'll learn the fundamental inner workings and techniques that WILL help you get a better photo. Worried about the cost? Well, I've taken courses that are twice as expensive that offer less than maybe a tenth of the value. You'll be much better off investing in this course than a new camera or a new lens. I cannot reccomend John and this course enough!