Photography Notes

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ASA

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American Standard Association. Film speed or film’s exposure index (EI) is described by a number using a system originally devised by the ASA. Now an obsolete system - film is described by its ISO value; the lower the number the slower the film.

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Latent Image

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Light which strikes photosensitive material causes invisible changes in the internal chemistry of the material. This is invisible image is the latent image, which is not visible to the human eye until the material has been developed.

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F-Stop (what is it?)

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The relative aperture of a lens, or the numbers used to indicate lens apertures - the amount of light that a lens lets in. These numbers are a relative number and are equivalent to the focal length of the lens divided by the size of the lens aperture.

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F-Stop (what does it do?)

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each increase or decrease in f stop value either doubles or halves the aperture size. Since f stop values are relative to the focal length each camera lens should let the same amount of light through at the same f stop value regardless of focal length.

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Dodging/how to/why?

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Lightening an area on a photographic print by waving a physical object, such as a piece of cardboard or a dodger, over the paper during exposure. This results in less light hitting the paper and so lightens that portion of the image.

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Aperature

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Most lenses contain a diaphragm, a thin light-blocking plate or interleaving set of adjustable plates. The diaphragm contains a small hole, the aperture, which is adjustable in size and allows the photographer to control the amount of light entering the camera. Apertures are indicated by the f stop value, which is a relative value and does not indicate the actual size of the aperture hole.

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Depth Of Field

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Very simply the distance range of acceptable focus in front of your lens. When you focus your camera on a given point there is a range in front of the point and behind that point which is also in acceptable focus. If this range is very narrow then you have very shallow depth of field - only the plane at the focus point will be in focus and everything else will be blurry. If you have deep depth of field then much more of the image will be in acceptable focus.

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Burning

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Darkening an image on a photographic print by exposing it to more light than surrounding areas. For example, you could cut out a hole in a piece of thin cardboard and hold it over the print during exposure, moving the cardboard continuously to ensure blurred edges. The result would be a darkened area on the print where the hole was.

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Shutter Speed

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The precisely-calibrated amount of time that a camera shutter stays open, usually measured in fractions of a second.
The shutter speed and the lens aperture are the principal forms of control that a photographer has over the amount of light which hits the film or image sensor of a camera.

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Steps for making prints in the darkroom

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Fixer, 1-2 Minutes, Agitate every 30 seconds, Stop Bath, 30 Seconds, Hypo, 4-5 Minutes, Agitate every minute, Water, 5 minutes

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Cropping

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Resizing a photo by cutting out unwanted areas of the image.

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Emulsion

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The light-sensitive layer coated onto film stock and photographic paper. Typically this is a coating of gelatin with silver halides suspended within it.

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Contact Printing

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You take the negatives, lay them down in contact with a sheet of photographic paper, cover the negatives with a sheet of glass to keep them flat, and expose the paper to an appropriate amount of light for a few seconds. The result is a sheet of paper containing tiny positive images of each frame; each image being the same size as the negative.

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Bracketing

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Taking multiple photographs of the same scene using different settings.Usually the term refers to shooting a sequence of photos with different exposure settings in the hope that at least one is going to be close. Bracketing is particularly important when using film with very narrow exposure latitude, such as slide or infrared film.

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Pinhole Camera

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A very simple form of camera which does not use a lens. A pinhole camera is simply a container of any size with a tiny pinhole at one end. Light enters this hole and exposes some photosensitive material mounted on the far wall of the camera.

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Camera Obscura

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A darkened room with a tiny hole which lets in light. Also known as a CAMERA

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Rule of thirds

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The compositional guideline (it isn’t a rule per se) which states that images with dominant points of interest usually look best with those points situated about 1/3 of the way along the image.

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Value

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The amount of light hitting the surface of a photosensitive material based on a combination of shutter speed and aperture values. EV 0 is the combination of a 1 second exposure at f/1.

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Tonal Value

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Lightness or tonal value is the light or dark of a color regardless of its hue. Value arises from the relative luminance of surfaces or lights, the amount of light reaching our eye from a specific color area in contrast to the average or total illumination in our field of view.

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Zone System

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A method for determining correct exposures of negatives, developed by American photographer Ansel Adams and his colleague Fred Archer.Zone metering involves dividing up the scene into a set number of discrete light levels - typically 9 or 10, but some photographers advocate more, especially for colour film. Zone 0 or I represents pure black and zone IX pure white on the final print.

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Ansel Adams

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Ansel Easton Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984) was an American photographer and environmentalist, best known for his black-and-white photographs of the American West and primarily Yosemite National Park.
For his images, he developed the zone system, a way to determine proper exposure and adjust the contrast of the final print. The resulting clarity and depth characterized his photographs. Although his large-format view cameras were difficult to use because of their size, weight, setup time, and film cost, their high resolution ensured sharpness in his images.
He founded the Group f/64 along with fellow photographers Edward Weston and Imogen Cunningham, which in turn created the Museum of Modern Art's department of photography. Adams' timeless and visually stunning photographs are reproduced on calendars, posters, and in books, making his photographs widely recognizable.

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Annie Liebovitz

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is an American portrait photographer whose style is marked by a close collaboration between the photographer and the subject.

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Photograms

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photographic technique of making images without lenses.
Opaque, translucent or transparent objects are placed upon the surface of some photosensitive material or other - usually paper - and the entire area is then exposed to light. The objects block or diffuse the light, resulting in patterns when the emulsion is developed.