[b3lha]

OK. I know these two photos aren't worthy of this thread, but I wanted to demonstrate something that I learned in photography class many years ago. Something that you can't do with an automatic compact camera. I don't even know if you can do it with a digital SLR.

I took these two photos one after another with my 35mm SLR in "manual aperture" mode, trying to achieve a different effect in each case. I haven't retouched them, just scanned them and saved as jpgs.

For the first photo, I set the aperture wide open (1.7) and the camera automatically increased the shutter speed. You will notice that there is a very narrow depth of field. The SVX Network logo is sharp, but things nearer or further are out of focus.


For the second photo, I set the aperture really small (22) and the camera automatically decreased the shutter speed. This increases the depth of field. Now everything is in focus.


I suppose I should have done a half-way open photo as well, but I didn't think of it at the time.