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Tutorial: Basics

In this article I’ll be explaining just the basics of how ISO, aperture, and shutter speed works. Knowing how your camera handles light will give you much more control over how you take your photos.

ISO

ISO is a way of measuring the sensitivity of film to light. The lower the ISO number, the less sensitive. Although it applies to film, the same concept applies to digital cameras. At ISO 800, the film is quite sensitive, and therefore does not require as much light as ISO 100 would need to take the same picture with similar exposure. 

The downside to using a larger ISO is the amount of noise (those little annoying pixels) the image will produce. While you may be able to get a faster shutter speed with a higher ISO, the image will have more noise.

No one wants that in their shots. Higher end cameras handle noise much better than the cheaper ones.

Since I like landscapes, I shoot at the lowest possible ISO, and use a tripod so that I can use the aperture and shutter speed that I need. Action shots usually require a higher ISO.

Aperture

The aperture is the opening of your lens that allows light to make it into the camera. The smaller the number, the more the opening increases. Here’s a good example from Wikipedia:

The larger the opening, the more light is allowed in. 

There are a few reasons why aperture matters. There is a technique that people use to blur the background while keeping the main subject in focus. Basically, the larger the aperture, for example f/2.8, the more the background will blur. The blurring is called ‘bokeh’. I’m still not sure how to pronounce it because it sounds funny every way I try. This is usually good for portraits, because you don’t want anything else in the background to distract you from your subject.

You may have come across a problem where you want multiple subjects to be in focus, but they are at different distances from the camera. In the previous paragraph, I said that a larger aperture would increase background blur. In this case, a smaller aperture (smaller opening, not number) will blur less and keep things more in focus. Also, apertures around 8.0 tend to be the sharpest your lens will shoot. As you can see, this can be very useful under certain circumstances such as landscapes. It’s a lot to take in and I have a writing skills of a four year old, so go experiment yourselves!

First tutorial: Shutter speed

A lot of people have been asking me for tips on how to take certain kinds of shots. I’ve decided to post up some free tutorials for everyone and Tumblr users. As I’m still an amateur, I may make some mistakes, so if there are any mistakes, feel free to point them out. Also, if you would like any requests on tutorials or specific questions about how I took a certain photo, just let me know!

So you want to play around with longer shutter speeds. The first thing you will need is a tripod. They usually go for pretty cheap if you’re looking at one that will hold your camera in place. Some photographers say it’s better to spend more money on a tripod than a camera, cause they can be incredibly important based on the kind of photography you want to shoot. I shot most of mine on a $50 one. Only until recently I went nuts and blew $400 on a carbon fiber one, but there is a huge noticeable difference between the two in terms of weight and stability.

One thing I always use is a remote shutter release cable. That way I can take the picture without pressing the button on my camera. It reduces small vibrations, especially if your tripod isn’t that sturdy. If you don’t have one or if you’re too lazy like I am sometimes, before shooting a long exposure, set your camera on a 2 second timer. Then, when you press the button to take the shot, it will wait 2 seconds, then capture the image, so the vibrations from pressing the button aren’t picked up.

Anyways, after you have a tripod and all that set up, you have to make sure that you don’t have much light in your photo, so that you can compensate the loss of light with a longer shutter speed. 



In that shot, I was in a shady area, so I could use a slightly longer shutter speed, somewhere around a second or two. I wanted even longer to further smooth out the water, so I increased the aperture to the max, which cuts a lot of light out. Therefore, it allowed me to increase the shutter speed to a full 5 seconds.

You don’t always need to blur for that long to show water movement. If water is moving fast, you only need a split second of a shot to show that in your photo. In that beach picture I used 1/5 of a second so the water wasn’t completely smoothed out. 

Or you could blur for more time. The tide was still coming in and out so 25 seconds made it seem like mist.

Here’s a 70 second shot. Of course, when I took it, it was much darker outside than the pictures makes it seem.



One of my favorite shots. I took this during the bright day, but I used a neutral density filter on my lens to cut out almost all the light. This let me take a 20 second shot in bright daylight.

Just go out, take shots, and be creative!

Day 5

Another late start to the day. I think we’re just all tired of being out every day. My sister made portobello mushroom sandwiches and packed them into a bag for us. We headed down to Lake George and got a rowboat and cruised around the lake for a while before we busted out the sandwiches to eat on the lake. 

The sandwiches were amazing (thanks Pauline). After our lunch on the lake we anchored to the other sides of the lake to hike around in the really deep snow. Besides the crazy amount of mosquitoes, throwing snowballs and watching each other slip is always fun. Rowing a boat is way more tiring than you think. I gotta work on it so I can pull a Ryan Gosling on a Rachel McAdams ;)

Three and a half hours later, we got back to the place and knocked out until dinner time. For the first time, we ate a real dinner instead of a happy hour kinda thing. The place was called The Restaurant at Convict Lake. Their duck was SO GOOD. One of the better restaurants I’ve been to. 

Before the food coma kicked in fully, we drove to the actual Convict Lake, which was right down the road. It was getting dark, so I took as many shots as I could while getting swarmed by quarter-sized mosquitoes. On the way back, it started raining and there were black storm clouds everywhere. It was somehow beautiful but scary looking at the same time.

This is my last full day here. We’ll leave tomorrow morning or afternoon, depending on if this place gets rainy or too hot to hike.

Oh, and Happy Fourth of July!

Day 4

Started off the day really lazy. We woke up late, my sister made us waffles, and listened to my iPod all morning. We left for Tioga Pass in the afternoon. 

We stopped at a trail on the way to try and go on a hike, but there were SO MANY DAMN MOSQUITOES. It was like the apocalypse, so we hauled ass back to the car. 

I never thought gas stations like Mobil would ever serve gourmet food, but in Mammoth there is one that does just that. Since it’s the only restaurant and gas station in the area, it was like a zoo full of people and their noisy little kids. Of course, they charge $5 a gallon and $13 to $16 a plate, but they were damn good. We ate lunch there then kept on going to our original destination.

On the way, we stopped at Tioga Lake, a beautiful half frozen lake surrounded by snow-capped mountains. The weather was also perfect at a good 70 degrees Fahrenheit and we hiked around for a few hours and took tons of photos. It’s somewhere like 100+ degrees back at home, goodness. A few hours passed by really quickly and we didn’t even notice. 

As I mentioned, Mobil was the only restaurant in the area, so we stopped by again to get two more plates of seared tuna. Mmmm. 

The last place we went to was Mono Lake. It’s famous for its tufas, which defined by Wikipedia is: a variety of limestone, formed by the precipitation of carbonate minerals from ambient temperature water bodies. 

Anyways, the lake has 2.5 more salt than the ocean and has underwater flies and other weird animals like Canadian Geese. I made my family wait while I took photos and waited for the opportune time for the sunset to paint the sky pink. There was a huge flock of photographers gathered at the lake’s edge taking bad pictures (mine included) so we left.

lol.

On the way back to the car, the sky turned the shade of pink and I got my shot of the day. When I get home I’ll put a link to my site.

Then we came home and ate homemade fajitas at 11pm. Good finish to a good day.

Mammoth Trip

Days 1, 2, and 3.

I started this one super late. But I blame oxygen deficiency and my computer for not complying.

Anyways, the drive up wasn’t too bad. 5 hours, but I was basically half passed out the entire time. By the time we got to our place, we all had headaches from the thin air up here. Even in June/July there is a good amount of snow. Not enough to cover the roads, but there are patches here and there. If you climb up a few hundred feet higher the snow gets a lot thicker. Apparently every single restaurant here has happy hour, so half off appetizers made up our dinner. 

As you can see, we made a mess within a few hours of arriving.

The second day we checked out the multiple lakes right around the area. Aside from the occasional mosquito bites, it was really relaxing to just walk around each lake and admire the snow-capped mountain views. Twin Lakes, Lake Mary, Lake Mamie, and Lake George were some of the ones we visited. We were all hungry and feeling cheap so we did our happy hour dinner again with the same waitress as the first day.

This is where I sleep. It’s on the third floor, so I’m usually out of breath by the time I get up here. Blah.

Today was a good day. I finally snowboarded for the first time. I picked it up pretty fast on the bunny slopes, though I fell a lot and somehow bruised my arm in a weird place. It’s really similar to longboarding, especially the sliding aspect of it. My sister didn’t quite pick it up too well. I wonder if she’ll try again some time soon. After all that, we went to see some other lakes once again. This time we did more hiking than just strolling around. I need to get some hiking shoes though. Climbing up through snow and mud just isn’t good in bike-oriented shoes. But yeah, perfect weather with a cool breeze watching people fish is extremely relaxing.

Dinner was at a different restaurant this time. Again, we hit up happy hour specials, which were really good. Especially the Mango Mojito. Mmmm. I’m starting to think we will never have a real dinner here. We spent the evening eating watermelons and listening to Frank Sinatra on the surround sound system. Today was a good day.

P.S.

Portfolio Tumblr Up!

I’ve redirected adrianyang.com to my other tumblr account, adrianyangphoto.tumblr.com! I will be uploading all my stuff slowly. Check it out :D

Day 5 and 6

Day 5

Beach, alcohol, food, sleep. Somehow I got even lazier and didn’t update yesterday.

Day 6

Didn’t pack my camera at all, since today was a boat trip. Took a catamaran with around 30 people to Isla Mujeres, an island maybe 45 minutes away from Cancun. The whole boat ride had an open bar by the way. The bartender would not stop offering everyone drinks. The sun was completely blocked by the clouds until lunch, so the water was super cold. Before we stopped at the island, we stopped to snorkel. No sun meant it was really, really cold in the water. Saw some colorful fish though, and swam through a small school of funny little ones. I tried to grab some but those fish are ninjas. 

Stopped at the island for buffet, then sailed slowly back towards Cancun. In the middle we stopped again when the wind acted up and some of us got to try out the spinnaker. Look that up, cause I had no idea what it was either. It’s basically similar to parasailing that I tried a couple days ago. That was super fun, and the water was great now that the sun came up. 

On the final stretch, while we were trying to finish our tequila sunrises, the bartender and some other guy came out in sombreros with tequila shots for everyone. They were really trying to get everyone to take shots, and even got my sister to take one, but she choked and spit it out on everything. I took a shot with my dad, but he kept it in his mouth for like a minute, and when everyone wasn’t looking he spit it back into his cup. What a trooper. 

For dinner we tried yet another Mexican place, this time next to a lagoon (with crocodiles apparently). I’ve said lots of restaurants here are good, but this one was the cheapest and the best in my opinion. Nachos here are so good my mom couldn’t stop eating them. 

Tomorrow my sister and I are going on another little tour with ziplining and offroading and swimming in another cenote. Fun.

Cancun Trip

Day 1

Went to the airport for a 10:30am flight. Wasn’t the least bit crowded either, which is weird for holiday season. Luckily, no bodyscans or invasive pat-downs, but since when was a dorky Asian family a danger to anyone? 

The time difference is +2 hours. Got here at around 5pm local, and went straight to the hotel. All of the hotels/resorts here are massive, and there are malls filled with designer stuff for all the rich people (not us). 

After we rested up, we asked around for a good place to eat dinner. The restaurants are all pretty expensive and catered towards American tourists, which basically make up everyone here. Since we asked for authentic Mexican food, one of the busboys gave us a free margarita card for 4 at this restaurant called Hacienda Sisol. The drinking age here is 18…well I couldn’t resist. Ended up getting 3 and one virgin for my sister. The waitress thought the virgin margarita was for me. How embarrassing. 

Anyways, we had the BEST Mexican food ever. Fish and lobster shrimp enchiladas with an awesome legal margarita. Hard to beat.

I think tomorrow we’re just gonna take it easy, we’re all tired. I’ll try and get in some pictures that don’t suck.