My Journey So Far
Happy Friday, Companions! Today I'm writing my first post about my most recent hobby, photography. Last March, almost a year ago to the day, I purchased a Panasonic LUMIX GX7 digital camera. The catalyst was simple: Lizzie and I were going to the Masters in April and I wanted to take pictures, but they don't allow phones! My research into cameras and photography started when I learned about that prohibition and hasn't stopped since. I learned all about the types of digital cameras: DSLR, Mirrorless, Micro Four Thirds, the list goes on. Then I decided what was right for my needs - something compact, beginner-friendly, and not too expensive. The LUMIX and its companion "kit" lens (the lens that was originally packaged with the camera body when sold via retail) emerged victorious. I used this camera, with a new lens purchase for my birthday in July, throughout 2024.
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| Me and my LUMIX GX7 |
At the turn of the new year, I embarked on a journey I had considered for a while: shooting photos on 35mm film. What followed was an absolute slew of new things to learn about before deciding what camera to buy. I stumbled upon an interesting format: the half-frame camera. More specifically I purchased the Olympus PEN EE-3. These cameras can fit two "exposures" (pictures) on each typical 35mm exposure. It accomplishes this task by essentially halving the frame - hence the name. Where a full-frame exposure measures 36mm by 24mm, a half-frame exposure measures 18mm by 24mm. This is illustrated below.
Most film rolls have 36 exposures, so with my camera, I can shoot 72 photos per roll. I find this amazing as a first-timer since I'm all about testing and shooting everything I want. Plus, the drop in quality isn't too bad. The photos aren't going to be as sharp as shooting when using the full frame, but so far my photos have been sharp enough for me. It's also a teeny tiny camera that I can easily fit in my pocket or my Lululemon crossbody that I stole from my beautiful wife. The biggest benefit as far as my nature as a beginner is that it's a fully "point and shoot" camera. Pretty nifty, especially for a camera made in the 70s, that I can just set the dial to the ISO of the film stock I'm using and click away. The camera even tells me if there's not enough light by simply not taking the picture. Plus if I want to override that I can! Candidly, I am already researching a more robust and manual full-frame 35mm camera but that's only because I'm getting more comfortable with shooting 35mm (and have an insatiable appetite for new gear). |
| Me and my Olympus PEN EE-3 |
The Exposure Triangle
Now that I've touched on my background and what cameras I use, I can explain what I'm talking about today: the exposure triangle. This is a concept that I learned out of the gate after ordering my digital camera. It's also probably the single most important topic of photography and something I've finally started to get a feel for. The triangle involves three camera settings: Aperture, Shutter Speed, and ISO. These three settings work together to create a photo with perfect exposure (which is synonymous with the brightness or darkness of an image). These settings also individually and collectively impact the stylistic choices around a photograph. To understand how this all works, you must first understand what each setting means.
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| The Exposure Triangle |
Shutter Speed
The easiest setting to grasp in my opinion is shutter speed, which is sometimes called "exposure time". Simply put, it's how long your film or digital sensor is exposed to light when you take a photograph. The most common shutter speed is 1/60th of a second (you'll see this written as 1/60). Aside from contributing to the exposure by determining how long light is let in, the key stylistic aspect of shutter speed is motion blur. To access the full spectrum of shutter speeds, you need a tripod as low-light photography shutter speeds can approach seconds or even minutes! However, if you want to shoot a photo of an Olympic sprinter without motion blur, you would manually set your shutter speed to a quick setting, like 1/1000 or faster. Shutter speed is generally automatically set by a camera. However, it's always helpful to have a firm grasp on what this setting impacts in case you need to control the amount of motion blur in your photo.
Aperture
In my opinion, the aperture is the most relevant setting to the overall end product of the photograph. It is the size of the hole that the light passes through when taking a photo. Most photographers agree this is the most important setting. That's why the most common shooting mode when using a digital camera is "A" on your dial or Aperture-Priority Mode. This means that you manually set the aperture for your photo and the camera chooses the right shutter speed and ISO. Aperture is also known as an "F stop" and that's how this setting is displayed - if you're familiar with photography you will have seen things like f/1.8 or f/5.6 on your lenses. The actual measure is strange to grasp as f/1.8 is a larger aperture than f/5.6. That's because it's actually a fraction. Aperture impacts exposure because a wide-open aperture like f/1.8 will let more light in than a small aperture like f/22. This can be easily seen in the image below.
But how does this impact your image? Through the depth of field! The easiest way to explain this is by using an iPhone setting example. On your phone, "portrait mode" uses a wide-open aperture like f/1.8, which creates a ton of blur in the background of whatever is not in focus. This is illustrated in the picture of the cute orange cat in the chart above. For things like landscape photography, you want everything in focus and therefore will choose a small aperture like f/11. Portrait photographers will almost always use something like f/1.8. One last fun piece of information here is that the blurry part of the photo behind a portrait is called "bokeh" (pronounced bow-kay). Cool and important word.
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| One benefit of digital cameras is that you can see the settings used for each photo after you import it to your phone. This was taken using f/2.2, 1/8000, ISO 200 |
ISO
This setting was the hardest part of the triangle to grasp and something that didn't click for me until I got into film photography. ISO essentially means the film or digital sensor's sensitivity to light. When you use a digital camera on aperture-priority mode, which I do most of the time because it gives me a high amount of control over my image with a low amount of effort, ISO is set automatically. So truthfully I didn't really care on digital.
That experience vs choosing ISO in film photography is legitimately night and day. Why is that? Two words: film stocks. Each type of roll of film has an ISO setting, alternatively referred to as "film speed". So, when I shoot UltraMax 400, the 400 means that's the ISO for that roll. This means that ISO is fixed when you shoot each roll of 35mm film and to get perfect exposure, you only have two pieces of the triangle to focus on. You do, however, have a great deal of control when choosing what type of film you shoot. The difference in film speeds on exposure is illustrated below.
Another important note about ISO from a 35mm film perspective is that it impacts how much film grain there is in a photo. ISO 100 is not all that great for low-light scenarios but produces a very fine film grain (closer to how a digital photo looks). Whereas the highest ISO film of 3200 is pretty darn good at shooting in low light but will produce a ton of film grain, which some people like! It all depends on what your conditions will be and that's why choosing film stocks is so important and why ISO is so different in analog photography.
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| TRI-X 400 has an iconic film grain and now I know why. This is maybe my favorite picture to date. |
As always, if you've read this far I hope you learned something new! This post was written at a high level, so if you have any questions please let me know.
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