Hello i'm Graham and i hope everyone's having a great day and welcome to
episode 4 of this new series I've created for beginners - of the FZ300/
330 camera from Panasonic. Now in the series we've been looking at how to use
the camera without going into too much technical information. In the first
episode we saw how to use the iA mode and how to modulate that by using the iA
+ mode so we've got a little bit more control over how the camera responds.
Then we moved into the first of the semi-automatic modes and we looked at
the program auto. Now I liken that to the ISO priority mode. Now in today's video
we're going to look at two other priority modes one the aperture priority
mode and the other the shutter priority mode. When you select aperture priority
mode you'ret elling the camera you want to use a specific aperture to create a specific
look in your particular image. Dependent on the ISO the camera will then set a
shutter speed to give you the correct exposure. Now the aperture governs the
amount of light that reaches the sensor but it also creates them a depth of
field, or amount of focus between the foreground and the background hence we
call it the depth of field. Now the depth of field will depend on the
aperture and also on the focal length of the lens- so the combination of the two
of these you can create some very interesting pictures with either a very
shallow depth of field such as if you were taking a portrait - you could have
just the eyes and nose in focus. With landscape photography as converse we want
as much depth of field in that picture as possible so it's tradition to use a
wide-angle setting and a small aperture and then you'll get the maximum depth of
field. If you choose shutter priority mode you're signaling to the camera that
you want a specific shutter speed either to create some subject motion, such as
for waterfalls, or you want to arrest any subject motion perhaps for birds in
flight or in sports photography. Now here in the studio I've got a situation where
I want to create a picture of these characters and I want to create two
images one where we've got very very shallow depth of field so we've only got
one of these characters in focus and again
I want to create another image were they're all in focus so I show you two
techniques for creating the shallow depth-of-field
and the extended depth of field. We're going to be shooting in the aperture
priority mode so to gain aperture priority mode turn the top control dial
until the a is opposite the white index mark on the flash housing and you'll
notice that we get the a symbol on the LCD display to tell us we're in aperture
priority mod. Now as we did in the program auto mode I've set the manual
white balance to give me the correct white balance in my studio lights. I'm shooting
at ISO 100 and that's the lowest ISO this camera provides. That will give me
the lowest noise in the image and also gives me the most dynamic range or the
range of colors from highlights to shadows. The first image I want to shoot
at F 2.8 and F 2.8 is the widest aperture of the camera has - so that will give me
the shallowest depth of field. So I'm going to select an aperture of 2.8 by
turning the top control dial which then allows me to change that aperture down
to F 2.8. You can see that the camera will be using a shutter speed of 1/40th
of a second. So if I was hand-holding that will be fine but I've got it
mounted on this little tripod so I can keep the shots consistent from shot to
shot. I've also set up the single area auto focus and I've got the single point
and I've got it set to the smallest size - and we did that in the program auto mode
So it means I can change the position of the target by using the touchscreen or I
can use the navigation dial after we press the function 2 button. So for the
first shot I'll use function 2 which then brings up the target and its
position. I'll position the focus on the first of the seven characters in this
image. So you can see I've got an indicator here which reminds me of in F
2.8 mode. So I'll set the two second timer so we don't get any camera shake
as it goes off. I'm also in the electronic shutter mode so that will
also reduce the amount of vibration when the camera shutter fires. So let's
take that first image and we can review that in the video - but we notice we've
got the first image very sharp and then it progressively falls off towards
the background. The amount of sharpness we have. I'll now change over to f/8 so
we can then see the amount of depth of field based on the same character but
using the smaller aperture. So first of all I'll change up to f/8. You now
notice that the exposure has gone to 1/5 of a second. So I'll turn around the
indicator to remind me. Again I'll use a two second timer - you can now see we've
got much more depth of field or more more focus from foreground to background.
Now even though we focused on the front character the camera lens always gives
us depth of field and there's about a third of it before the focus point and
about two thirds of it after the focus point. So if we focused here on the first
character it means that we've lost some depth of field to the front of the image
that we could have used in achieving a much better focus throughout the rest of
the character set. So what I'm gonna do now is not focus on the first character
but I'm gonna focus on the third character which is a third of the way
down this group of seven. So I'll change my focus point to this third character
down the way - again I'll use the touchscreen this time to set my focus
point. So I'll set the focus point on the third character and again I'll use that
f/8 aperture and the two second timer to take this shot - and now you can see our
first character is still sharp and the last character is even sharper. So we've
got a lot more depth of field because we focused at what's called the hyper focal
point. So we've got a third of the image in focus to the subjects and two thirds
behind
So If we were to measure that you'll find that our character is in focus with one
third of the image to the front and two thirds of the image to the rear. So if
you shooting a landscape don't focus on infinity - focus on about a
third of the way into subject and you get the maximum depth of field. So let's
just look at that with the F 2.8 aperture. So I convert this to F 2.8 - turn
the indicator on to remind me and again using that two second timer to take this
shot. You can see we've got a reduced amount of depth of field and it's
centered around that third character. So we've got the second character just
slightly in focus and we've got the fourth and the fifth character in
focus because of this one-third two-thirds relationship. I'll now focus
on the final character in the set so again I'll use a touchscreen and to set
the focus point there and we'll still use the F 2.8 aperture and I'll take
that shot - again we'll have a third of the image in front of this character
focus so we should see the sixth and possibly the fifth character in focus
but we've lost that amount of depth of field behind that we could have gained.
So we're now changed to f/8 and see just how much of in front we get
so we set f8 turn my indicator round to remind me and we'll take that shot again.
With that last character in focus and you can see we've got a lot more in
depth of field coming towards but we could have got more depth of field by
focusing a third of the way into the subject which would have been that third
character in this case. Now as with the program auto mode if I thought the image
was slightly under exposed or slightly overexposed I can use exposure value
compensation to make that change. By pressing the function 1 button you see
that we bring up the EV Scale and I can change the brightness by going plus
to make it brighter or minus to make it darker. So if I felt the image was
slightly under exposed- too dark I could make it brighter by going towards a plus
side - and we're going to take that picture. You can see it's slightly
brighter! So that was the aperture priority mode we'll know shoot in the
shutter priority mode and to gain the shutter priority mode turn the top
control down until the S is opposite the white marker on the flash housing and
again you get verification with the s appearing on the screen. Now the top
control dial will vary the shutter speed for me. If I select a shutter speed for
instance now 1/50th second - if I half press the shutter button the
camera will tell me the aperture that it's got to select. You notice
selected F 2.8 but the aperture and the shutter speed are both flashing red - which
means the camera can't control that exposure. And if you notice when I half
press the shutter button you notice the image goes darker which means the
camera is under exposing! So to make the exposure correct
I can either change my ISO- if I wanted to use a particular shutter speed or as
I want to keep the ISO to 100 I need to lengthen the exposure to make that
subject brighter. So I'm going to go from 1/50th down to 1/40th -and you notice on
the exposure scale 1/40th is still in the red band.
So I need to go until we have the aperture opposite a gray point on the
shutter speed dial. So here at 1/30th it's just inside the control.
If I went down to 1/25th you will see that a 1/25th is well into the aperture range
and it's actually no going to move the aperture up from F 2.8 to f/4. So if I
wanted F 2.8 for the shallow depth of field then I need to be using a
1/30th of a second or1/25th to get the exposure. So if I take that
picture the self-timer will get the correct exposure. Well that's it for this
short video I hope you did find that useful. Of course if you'r e new to the
channel please do hit that subscribe button - and if you want notification of
when I upload the next part of this series click that little bell icon by
the side and then you'll be notified when I do upload that video. Of course if
you're not already downloaded the guidebook for the series it's available
on my photographic blog- and I'm going to put a link to that in the video
description below. It does assume that you've set the camera back to camera
defaults and set some of the menu items the way that I particularly like to set
the camera up - it means that if we do any changes to the camera you'll be able to
see the results without wondering why you're not achieving what you should be
achieving if you've not got the same settings that we have. So until the next
video where I'm going to be looking at filters and macro lenses for this camera,
then we'll be looking in the final episode at the use of video with the
camera how to set up the video some of the accessories you might need and how
to create good video with good sound for recording. So until then thanks again for
watching - please do take care and I'll see you all in the next one. Good bye for
now!