How a Camera Sees: In-Class Assessment

Part One: Focal Length

The following pictures were taken with a similar composition at different focal lengths i.e. one was taken at a wide-angle setting and the other at a telephoto setting. What can be seen in both images is a difference in the depth of field. Despite the fact that both images were taken with an aperture setting of f/2.8, the background is more out of focus in the second ... The transition between the subject (Matteo) and the background is more prounounced in the second photograph. This proves that a longer focal length will result in a shallower depth of field and thus one should use a telephoto lens when photographing portraits.

Wide Angle Shot

Taken with a Carl Zeiss 24-70mm lens @ 24mm setting.

Telephoto Shot

Taken with a Carl Zeiss 24-70mm lens @ 70mm setting.

Part Two: White Balance

The second part of this in-class assignment was to play around with our camera's white balance settings. Although the following pictures were taken in the same location with similar camera settings (apart from white balance), their is a clear difference between the two. The first picture was taken with a white balance set to shade while the second was taken with the white balance set to tungsten. One can see that the first image seems more neutral. On the other hand, the second image appears to have a blue color cast throughout. It seems that while balance affects the temperature of a photograph. The first image looks warmer than the second. In this way, one may say that white balance plays with the temperature of a photo by adding a specific color cast. This can be manipulated by photographers in order to make a photo either look neutral, warm or cold.



Taken with a Sony Alpha a900 with White Balance set to SHADE.



Taken with a Sony Alpha a900 with White Balance set to TUNGSTEN.

Part Three: The Camera's Light Meter

The last part of this in-class assesment was designed to make us better understand how a camera's light meter works. In the first image, a wide-angle setting was used to capture a larger portion of the window. On the other hand, the second image shows a narrower scene with Matteo occupying most of the frame.

In the first image the camera seems to have metered a correct exposure based on the light information it gathered from the window. Since the window is a strong light source it took a photo with a shutter speed that would have provided a proper exposure for that scene. However that shutter speed was to fast for the rest of the image resulting in a lack of light ... this is why Matteo and the curtains are under-exposed.

Image is under-exposed with the exception of the scene in the window.

In the second image, the camera seems to have metered a correct exposure based on the light information it gathered off the subject, in this case Matteo. Since Matteo required a longer exposure than the window in the background which had plenty of light ... the window is over-exposed in the final exposure.



In this image, Matteo is exposed well. However, the background is over-exposed.

It seems that despite the progress made in photgraphy over all these years, light meters found in cameras struggle to provide an-overall well-exposed image when there is a bounty of light sources in a single exposure ...  such as a person with a window behind them.