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Aperture Pop Quiz

It's time to see how much you guys have absorbed. So, it is time for another pop quiz, this time dealing with apertures. So, to start with, we got our apertures over here on the left. So, this is a multiple choice. All the answers are on the board right now, and with this lens, we're gonna do a scene with everything, this is a voluntary answer. Whoever wants to answer this can just raise their hand. A scene with everything in focus from near to far, what would you choose in aperture? This is an easy one, so, if you want to volunteer on an easy one. You want everything in focus. Who wants to answer this? Somebody raise your hand. You gonna take this one? Grab the mike, grab the mike. I'll probably get it wrong. Like a landscape, doing a landscape shot, to get everything in focus. So, to get everything in focus, like... Well, I'm gonna go with f11. F11? You're in the right range. F11, 16, 22, that's the correct range. When I say everything from near to far, that's more f22, if someth...

ing's really close, but 11, 16, 22, those are kind of your landscape apertures. So, you wanna stop it down to get as much depth of field. So nice, nice. All right, let's go with the next question. The sharpest setting on this particular lens, who would like to... Wanna grab that one? Okay. What's the sharpest setting? F5.6 And explain how you came to that conclusion. Based on a chart you showed us before, f5.6 was the sharpest based along the entire graph. Well, how did you figure out 5.6? It was the number in the middle. The number in the middle? Yeah. So, very good and 5.6 is spot on, so nice job, perfect. All right, next question is, a subject with the background way out of focus. Where would you set your lens if-- Go ahead, let's hand the microphone over, and so you want your subject with the background way out of focus. What would you set? 1.4 1.4 So, I would accept 2.8, 2, 1.4 as good answers, but 1.4 is if you want it way out of focus. And a lot of times people will get an 85 1.4, and they'll shoot everything at 85 1.4, and it's got this really out of focus background, but a lot of professional photographers who have the 85 1.4 will actually shoot it at 2, or 2.8, cause they wanna make sure that the entire face is in focus, not just the eyes. 'Cause the nose can fall out of focus, or the ears can fall out, and so it's hard not to have a 1.4, and shoot it at 1.4, 'cause you get that really shallow depth of field. Okay, fourth and final question here is that you're at 5.6, but you need to close down three stops. Where does that put you on the scale? If you need to close down three stops from 5.6. It's a little bit of a math problem. What is the correct numbered answer here? F16. F16, and how did you get it? I just went, (clears throat) counted down from 5.6 to 8 to 11 to 16. Very good, and so you're at 5.6, one stop, two stop, three stop, puts you at f16. And we're gonna be counting these up, and we're gonna be using this kind of counting up and down as we get more into the exposure section, so, very good. All right, that was just the warm up, folks. That was just the warm up quiz. Now, we get to look at photos, and let's go ahead and start front row, and look at this photo, and tell me what aperture you think I set the camera at in order to take this photo. Okay, so it's a landscape. And I have skipped apertures, just to try to make it a little bit easier to kind of hit it pretty close. Okay. Once again, if you could nail it, that's great, you get a round of applause. If not, if you get one off, that's still pretty good. Okay, well, the snow and the forefront is (laughing) throwing me off. Throwing you off? Yeah. These are clues! This is a clue! You should be looking at this, going, "Thank goodness, "there's foreground that helps me figure things out." And so first off, you want to be thinking, "What type of lens is this? "Is this a wide-angle or a telephoto lens?" So kinda consider that first. How close is the foreground? How far is the background? Those are all clues that I would be thinking about. 5.6. Why would you say 5.6? Because you've got... I don't know. Well, let me ask you this: How close do you think this snowbank is from the camera? I think you're pretty close. "Pretty close," how close? Like, you're standing right there. Like I'm standing, like, 10 feet, 3 feet? Three feet. Three feet, how far away is the mountain? Very, very far away. Is the foreground in focus? Yes. Is it sharp here? Yes. Can we see detail? Yes. Is it sharp back here? Yes. So, is everything in focus? Yes. What gives us lots of depth of field? So, like a f22. There we go. Forgot to give you the clue. The clue was it's a 17mm lens, you chose f22, she gets a round of applause. (Blonde woman laughs) (audience claps) Let's hand the microphone over and let's see what your photograph is. Okay. So, what do we see in here? You can voice out what you're thinking or what you see or what you think is important. What I see is the tulips themselves are pretty sharp. Below them, is a little out of sorts. And then the back of it is really out-of-focus. And you know what? I'm gonna give you a clue. So, the clue is up here, that's the lens. We have a 50mm lens. So I am going to go that that is probably an f2.8. F2.8? Actual answer is 1.4, so you're close. Very close, that's good. And so, yes, it's a very shallow depth of field, and when you're focused pretty close, 'cause with a 50mm lens, we know that we're pretty close and we get shallower depth of field when we're really close. All right, let's hand the microphone over. All right, just kinda talk about what you think when you see this photo as far as what lens we're using and what's in focus and what's out of focus. What do you see? So you want to be kinda close up to it... We're close up to it, yeah. So you're gonna ... And then that background is really out of focus. You can see these bokeh balls from the lights, really out of focus. Let me give you a little hint: here's the lens I used. Okay. So, maybe, this one, since it's not, the background's not completely blurred out, you'd go for the 2.8 on this one? All right, 2.8 is the answer and we get a round of applause on that one. (audience claps) Yay! All right, let's go for the next shot, this one here. Tell us what you see in the photo, what you're gonna use, kind of, to base your judgment on. What do you think? I see buildings side to side, or across the street from one another. See a street. What about focus? What do you notice about focus? Focus is pretty sharp. Let me go ahead and give you a hint on the lens. So here's the lens. So, it's a wide-angle lens. (man sighs) I would have to go with ... An f11. All right, let's take a look at the answer. And f11's the right answer. Awesome. (audience claps) Nice job, spot on. Okay, let's go with the next photo. Here we go. Tell us what you see with depth of field and, not that you get a round of applause for this, but you can guess the lens as well, as to what you think the lens might be. (audience member laughs) <v Man #2>Let's see. It looks like you're standing back a bit. I'd probably say, maybe 200? It looks kinda close up and cropped-in. Water's blurry, I'd probably say... 5.6. Oh, wait, wait. So you were thinking it was 200. I'm gonna hold you on the guess because I'm gonna give you the official clue. So now that you know it's a 50mm lens, it's not a telephoto, it's a normal lens? <v Man #2>I think it's either 2.8 or 5.6, so I'll say... I'll say 5.6, because even the columns look not-quite too out-of-focus and things look pretty sharp around the bike. We have good sharpness here and it falls off as we get back further. <v Man #2>Right. Now one of the things to consider is, how big is this subject and how far back are we in order to get the shot? All right, and so what's your final answer? <v Man #2>Um...2.8. Gonna go with 2.8. All right, we're still thinking in the right category. It's a 1.4, is the aperture on this. So with this, kinda the tricky thing is that, with a 50mm lens, you gotta get backed up pretty far. And if you're backed up pretty far, it's harder to get shallow depth of field. And so that's where that 1.4 is giving us this depth of field, here. It would be more out-of-focus, but we have to be so far back from everything. All right, and we're gonna have another one, here. I forgot how many, I think we might have a couple more. So, what do you notice about the focusing? Okay, well, you definitely have the good blur in the background. Right, so we have the subject in focus, background out-of-focus, I'll go ahead and just give you the hint for the lens right now. Ah! Okay. Well... I'm gonna admit right now, this is a tricky one. So those of you online who are doing this, if you can get this one right, you get a double round of applause. (Blonde Woman laughing) Because I want to say 1.4, but... Yeah, I'm gonna go with 1.4. Okay, well, they don't make a 300 1.4 lens, unfortunately. Oh! The actual answer is a 5.6. So, with the 300mm lens, you are gonna get shallow depth of field almost all the time. And with a subject like this, most statues are pretty close to human-sized, we can kinda get a feeling for where we are. As I say, that's a very tricky one. And I think we have one final one here. I don't know why I like this shot. (Instructor laughing) It's goofy. So what do you notice about the focusing? I notice that the front is the really in-focus, actually, the black suit with the red tie is the most in-focus. Right. And you can still see definition in the guy all the way to the back. Mm-hmm, on the far left. So, I'm gonna say-- And let's give you a little hint on the lens, now. So what's our aperture setting on this? I'm gonna say 5.6, because of what we learned about the middle ground. All right, so the actual answer is 2.8, so one off, so you were pretty close. So, not bad at all. And so 1.4, we would be throwing this foreground figure a little bit more out-of-focus and be throwing that background a little bit more out-of-focus as well. All right, so what do you notice about focus? Foreground, background, subjects in there? So the foreground is really sharp with the grasses-- (whistling noise) (laughing) But you can still see, there's not too much blur along that horizon line. But it's a little hard to tell with the sand, is all white. Well, you can look at the clouds-- But the clouds, yeah-- You can look at the clouds. They still have some definition to them. Do you have an unofficial guess on the lens that I used? I would go with... ...a 50? Fifty? Okay. Actual lens was a 24. Wide-angle, we have the subject in... Little hard to see, there's not a lot to base it on. But, your final guess as to what aperture was used, now that you know we're using a 24mm lens? I would go with a... ...22? And folks... We need a round of applause! (audience claps) Yay! Good job. All right, so, there was a number of perfect answers and a lot of really close ones. This is something that's really hard to truly judge, reverse engineering a photograph. But if you're getting it in the right zone, you're thinking right, okay? Because there's a lot of variables going on in here, it gets very complicated.