2. Exposure Tests - ISO
ISO determines how sensitive to light your camera is. The
lower the ISO is, the less sensitive your camera is to light. In
well light areas, you will want to use a lower ISO as your
camera will have plenty of light to pick up on. Darker
locations (such as the car park seen on the images) will need
a higher ISO as there is less light so the sensitivity needs to
be increased so the camera can pick up on it. If a photo is
taken with an ISO too high, there will be noise on the image
(a grainy texture to the image), but if it’s too low, the image
will be too dark so finding the right one is crucial. These
images were taken using a Canon 600D. I went to a darkly lit
parking lot where there wasn’t a lot of light so the camera
needed to be extra sensitive to the lens. The first image has
an ISO of 200, then I increased it gradually until the final
image where the ISO is 3200. This is great for brightening
images that take place in dark locations as seen by the
images on the right but the more you increase it, the grainier
the image gets. I’d say the 400 ISO is the best image for this
setting as it brightens the place up, but it doesn’t over
expose it so much that the image looks grainy and unnatural.
3. Exposure Tests – Shutter Speed
Shutter Speed is the rate at which the shutter of the
camera closes. The longer it is open for, the more light
is let in. Both images are of moving cars. The top
image has a faster shutter speed. This essentially lets
us freeze time and take an image with little to no blur.
The image at the bottom had a slower shutter speed
therefore blur was created as the camera was exposed
to light for longer. In the images on the left I was able
to take a picture of a moving car, without it looking
like it was moving due to having a shutter speed of
1/4000th whereas the image below only has a shutter
speed of 1/250th so the car looks somewhat elongated
and very blurred. This can look really effective in
certain circumstances where you want the object to
look like it’s moving really fast. The image of the car
with a high Shutter Speed looks as if it is stationary
due to how quick the shutter open and closed, so if
you want to make it obvious the object is moving,
reduce the shutter speed.
4. Exposure Tests - Aperture
Aperture is the opening of the lens of your camera and changing
aperture controls how wide your lens will open to. The bigger the
aperture, the bigger the hole created in the lens and the more light let
in. You can also effect the focus of an image with aperture. A large
aperture is often used to create to create a lot of blur in both the
background and foreground whereas a small aperture will create and
image where every part is equally in focus.
5. Why Balancing ISO, Shutter Speed and
Aperture matter.
Each of these three settings can help with how the camera receives light. The ISO determines
how sensitive the camera is to light, the Shutter Speed determines how long it is exposed to light
and the Aperture controls how much light gets to the camera at one time. However, each setting
comes with unique features such as the noise of ISO, the blur of Shutter Speed and the
foreground and background focus of Aperture. This means you have to balance these settings
depending of the image you want to take. If you want the foreground and background to be out
of focus, you will turn the aperture to a large setting, but this means more light reaches the lens
so if your ISO is too high it’ll be too sensitive and if your shutter speed is too high it’ll be exposed
to the light for too long. This means you’d have to adjust all settings to best suit the situation.
Whilst they all do induvial things, they all work as part of a team.
8. Lens Tests
The lens tests were two experiments designed to show the difference between lenses and how they
can distort images. For the first test, we mounted the camera (Canon 600D) on a tripod and didn’t
move it across the duration of the experiment. Then we attached a 300m lens and took a picture of
the figurine on the table. Then we changed lens so the mm gradually got smaller till we were at a
14mm lens. Then we took the photos are put them into order starting with the largest lens and
working down to the smallest. We can see that the bigger lenses capture more of the room but don’t
put a lot of detail into everything that it captures with a lot of it being extremely small. The 14mm
lens only has the space for the figurine. This really only showed how much each lens can capture and
the difference between wide lenses and ones for more close up work. The next experiment showed
how lenses can manipulate an image even if the content is the same. For this, we took the same
camera and took a close up image of the figurine, then when we changed lens, we move the tripod
closer to the figurine so the image would remain the same. As we got closer to the image, the sides of
the figures head start to warp and create a more circular image. The bigger lenses such as the 300mm
capture a more 2D looking image whilst the closer ones make it appear more spherical. I’d use a
human instead of a figure to try this experiment again as I feel it would show up of a face clearer but I
think this experiment worked really well.
9. Lighting Tests – Ley Key
The Low key images were taken by removing any
natural light from the room and only having one to
two artificial lights sort projecting onto the model. We
used a LED stick to illuminate the model using the
colour Red and Blue. It creates a darker, more serious
tone than high key lighting. These were illuminated
using two LED sticks turned to blue and red and the
photos were taken on a Canon 600D. These images
work really well as showing how low key lighting
works. The colours blend really well where they meet
and the shadows create for a mysterious more serious
looking image. The colour choice can also creates a
narrative and the blue and red looks somewhat like a
photo from a police drama with sirens flashing on the
character.
10. Lighting Tests – High Key/Three Point
Lighting
The High-Key lighting was made using a three point light
setup. This involved having two lights illuminating the front of
the model, and one lighting up the back of him. By making
the light hit the model evenly, you can make the face of the
model look smooth creating a clean but somewhat artificial
look. These images were lit using three IANIRO LED lights and
the photos were taken using a Canon 600D. No post
production was done to further adjust them as this was
purely a lighting experiment. I think these picture look a little
over exposed and the brightness needs turning down on the
lights to make a cleaner looking image. Also I believe the
camera is slightly out of focus for these images which I didn’t
notice at the time. Although I can see how having a high key
lighting setup would result in a smoother looking image by
seeing these images.
12. This is a remake of the ‘Logan’ poster featuring a student in
replacement of Hugh Jackman as ‘Logan’. I knew that the
background of the image has a yellowy/orangey glow so we
used LED sticks to try and replicate the light and shadows
that would likely be coming off the characters face if they
were in this situation. We set the colour of the LED to a light
red and lit up the left side of his face with it whilst
neutralising the colour with a cream coloured light on the
other side of his face. Then a photo was taken using a Canon
600D and uploaded to photoshop. The colours weren’t
exactly correct so I used the built in colour correcting
software on Photoshop to change settings such as
brightness and contrast in order to correctly match the
background (which had been loaded onto the same
Photoshop file). Once the right adjustments had been made
I added the claws and the title and exported it. I think the
colour match looks pretty effective and this poster does
work as a lower budget looking version of ‘Logan’. To further
improve I’d experiment with different colours on the LEDs as
I believe the colour I chose was slightly too red and made it
slightly difficult to edit into the right colour. Also the claws
are really poorly edited on. These weren’t important to the
document as a whole but it would look a lot better if they
weren’t so obnoxiously fake.
13. Low Key lighting, shallow focus. Warm lighting used
to show the fire. Harsh lighting on the head creates a
sense of distress.
Low ISO due to natural light. Shallow
Focus on the head and fire.
Same shot as before but the focus in now on
the body and the head is out of focus. This
changes where the audiences attention is.
Shot of body using low key lighting. Shot in a dark
room with one light source. Creates a sense of
uneasiness telling us what the character is thinking.
Low key lighting, now with two light sources to brighten up the
background and the character. Shallow focus draws attention to the
character and this combination tells us the character has spotted an
object and is focused on it. This creates an enigma. The brighter light
source suggests a change in tone from despair represented by
darkness, to possible hope.
Long shot establishing the area and introduces us to
everything in the film. Low external lighting, deep
focus.
14. Deep focus shot using an aperture size
of f16. Daytime external lighting.
Establishing wide shot shot mirroring the first
image and showing the changed landscape.
Camera zooms out slowly, fade to black.
Image of built snowman taken from a
distance using the zoom of at 45mm-
150mm lens.
Deep focus shot of all 3 objects. Shows equal
importance amongst them for the plot.
High angle shot, deep focus, long shot
allows the audience to see every detail
of the shot.
Shallow focus, low angle shot puts the body in focus,
but allows the audience to see his goal in the
distance.
15. Storyboard
Taking what I knew from the other experiments I made a narrative driven
storyboard using different photography techniques. The storyboard depicts the
body of a snowman who has lost his head trying to get past a burning fire to
retrieve his head. I used different camera settings and lighting setups to change
what the image was showing. There are some shots where the subject is in focus
but everything else is blurred (shallow focus). I use low key lighting to make the
fire seem fierce and have it cast shadows of objects surrounding it. This showed
me how important camera and lighting settings are to telling a visual story. If I
were to improve this document I’d want to try different lenses. I was limited to
one and could only change the settings of the camera and not the lens itself to
change the image.
