Week 2 Homework Assignment

Part 1 of this weeks homework was to work more with understanding depth of field. We were to select a scene that had a close foreground and a distant background (like a person standing in front of a building that was off in the distant). Usually I try and get my boys to participate and be my subjects but they aren't always in the mood, plus these assignments require a subject to stay in the same place for more than 3 seconds!

So let me introduce you to Cat, one of the boys stuffed animals. By using a stuffed animal I can set the scene up that I need and keep it there while changing the settings or focus points to create the different images that I need to create.
In the first image we were to use a single autofocus point and focus on the forground, in this image the foreground will be sharp and the background blurry. This is done by using a large aperture.

In the second image we were to ignore the subject in the foreground, due to the shallow depth of field the foreground is now blurry.


Part 2 was all about white balance. White balance which is basically the color of light. In manual mode there are different settings for your white balance. Auto, Daylight, Shade, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent and Custom. The first part of this assignment was to set up a scene (in this case I used the same scene with Cat from above) and shoot an image using each of the different white balance settings.

Auto:


Daylight:


Shade:


Cloudy:


Tungsten:


Flourescent:


If you look closely at each image you can see that the coloring is different in each one. Especially as you get down to Tungsten and Fluorescent. Notice the blueish hues.

Now for the second part of the white balance assignment was to custom set the white balance. To do this you need a gray card (or if you don't have one a white sheet of paper will work). Snap a photo in the lighting your shooting in with at least 80% of the image being the gray card (or white sheet of paper). It doesn't have to be in focus, you just have to make sure that the majority of the image is the gray card (or white paper). Under your menu settings go to custom white balance and select the image you took of the gray card or the white paper and hit OK! Now any image you shoot in that same lighting will all be correct.

You can see the above image is the best quality straight out of camera! It was very cool learning this feature since I did a lot of my photographing at the Rec center in terrible fluorescent lighting. If only I had known this I could have customized my white balance before each party!

Tonight is the lens class! I cannot wait to try out all the lenses that I have had my eye on! And now that I have a better understanding of Depth of Field, I am really looking forward to trying out the 50mm 1.4 prime again!