After nearly a year of filming test shots and with one scene already in the can, we figured it was time to learn how to use a camera.
From what we can figure out, besides focal distance and zoom, there are three settings that affect the look of a shot: aperture, ISO, and shutter speed. Shutter speed was intuitive. The longer the shutter stays open, the more light is allowed to pass through to the lens. This results in a brighter and clearer picture, but also encourages the ghastly appearance of the phantom hand. Slowing the shutter speed past five or six seconds will diminish the depth of field effect coveted by semi-pro photographers and super-amateur stop motion animators (such as ourselves).
Aperture determines the amount that the shutter opens. An aperture setting of 5.6 opens the shutter twice as wide as a setting of 8, which is twice as wide as 11, and so on. The amount the shutter opens determines how much light hits the lens.
According to photo.net, ISO is apparently a swarm of bees gobbling up the light passing through the shutter. Steve likened changing the ISO to adjusting the number of photo-receptors available to take in light. An ISO setting of 100 has half as many receptors as a setting of 200. Increasing the ISO creates a brighter picture with a smaller aperture and faster shutter speed, but at the expense of adding graininess and noise.
And with that, we’re over 300 frames into our next scene. It’s nice to once again measure our progress in frames. Looks like the entire scene will end up having between 1700 and 1800 of them.
-Mike