CTE DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY STUDY GUIDE

Camera Information, Techniques and Tools When backpacking, take the lightest weight camera with you to use, which will be

either a point and shoot or your phone camera Digital camera images are recorded on memory cards Digital cameras, compared to point and shoot cameras, are larger and more

expensive Digital SLR uses interchangeable lenses, especially when shooting sports Digital zoom – when you zoom in, pixels get bigger. Found on point and shoot

cameras and cell phone cameras. DSLR – digital single lens reflex (camera) Equipment used for downloading images: cables (cords connected to your

camera), card readers, drives Less light entering a camera makes an image appear darker Memory cards: compact flash (thumb drive or flash drive), secure digital (the SD

card in your camera), sony memory stick (external device), compact disc (CD), internal storage (memory built into the camera). Where digital images are stored in your camera.

Monopod – a one legged camera support used often by sports photographers for lens stability

More light entering a camera makes an image appear lighter On camera direct flash produces photo with harsh or bright lighting Point and shoot – camera with the least control Photo memory – SD or XD cards, compact memory (Thumb drives) Pushing the shutter release button down halfway focuses and measures the light Optical zoom - when you zoom in, pixels stay as small as they were, giving you a

sharper, clearer photo. Found on digital SLRs. Uses OPTICS. Red eye – caused when the flash from your camera reflects the blood in the back of

your eye back into the photo Shutter release button – the button on the camera body that you press down

halfway to measure light and focus a photo on auto focus and that you press down all the way to take a photo

The biggest difference between film and digital cameras is the way they capture photos (on film with emulsion or digitally in memory or on SD Cards)

Use a tripod when the shutter speed is bulb or 1 second or to stabilize your camera Viewfinder – the part of a camera that you look through in order to compose your

photo

Camera Lenses Lens – the external part of a camera that connects to the camera body. On a digital

SLR (single lens reflex) camera, the lens is interchangeable (with zoom, telephoto, wide angle, macro, etc. lenses)

Macro lens – gets very close to your subject, often within inches. Shallow depth of field

Portrait lens – creates a shallow depth of field every time (blurry background) to bring attention to the subject

Telephoto lens - gets closer to your subject with one focal length (distance from your subject)

Wide angle lens – includes more in the photo from left to right Zoom lens – gets closer to your subject by allowing you to choose one of many focal

lengths (distances from your subject)

Camera Settings 100 is best ISO for bright light conditions 1600 or higher is best ISO for low light or dark conditions (A)perture priority – you choose the aperture setting (f-stop) and the camera

chooses the shutter speed Auto (flash off) (lightning bolt) mode – auto flash is disabled so the flash won’t go

off, shutter speed and fstop are set automatically by the camera (full) auto mode – the camera sets everything – shutter speed and aperture or

f/stop Bulb: the shutter stays open as long as the shutter release button is pushed down Close up (flower) mode – reds and greens are pumped up or elevated, camera

selects a center focus, the flash may pop up if needed Continuous shoot or burst (not a mode) – when your camera takes many photos

quickly. It sounds like a rapid fire gun and takes 2-10 photos per second, depending on the camera model. The shutter release button is held down continuously to do this.

Camera mode dial or setting – the round knob on top of the camera body with all the little pictures showing you what camera mode you’re using

Child (kid) mode – boosts sharpness and saturation for clothing and background details, softens skin tones to make them look natural

Fast Shutter Speed to Freeze action with 1/1000 shutter speed or faster Hot shoe – the connection point or place on top of your camera where a strobe or

external flash attach to the camera Landscape (mountain) mode – broad depth of field, boosts color and saturation,

contrast (M)anual mode – you choose the aperture setting and the shutter speed; you have

complete control over the camera settings. You need to set 3 things to get a well exposed photo: ISO, aperture, and shutter speed

Mode selector or dial – the dial on top of the camera that allows you to choose preset camera settings for specific kinds of photos, like a for aperture, p for program, manual, etc.

Night Portrait (person with star) mode – slow shutter speed with a flash Portrait (woman with hat) mode – softens and slightly blurs the background,

softer skin tones (P)rogram or programmable mode – puts the camera in charge of the aperture

(f/stop) and shutter speed, with all other camera settings available for the photographer to change

Slow Shutter Speed to Blur action with 1/60 shutter speed or slower Sports (runner) mode – high or fast shutter speeds, continuous focus while the

shutter release button is held down halfway, tracking the subject in the center focus area

Career and Professional Information 3 things to look at when critiquing photographs: composition, technical skills,

interesting subject matter Effective portfolios should include: your best images, name, contact information Images that a photographer can ethically use: those captured by the

photographer Programs that download images: lightroom, preview, photoshop SkillsUSA – career and technical student organization student portfolio - 20-30 images What’s acceptable without a model release? At a residence, street or park (public

places)

File and Post-Processing Information, Techniques and Tools 72 pixels per inch (ppi) is best to use on the internet so photos load quickly 200-300 pixels per inch (ppi) is best to use when printing high quality (8x10)

photographs Acid free board should be used to mount or matte photos Calibrate a monitor if color is not accurate when you print Critiquing photos: composition, technical skills, interesting subject matter Digital file formats: raw, tiff, jpeg image management – organizing files, photo selection and managing folders image transfer- downloading files to a computer jpeg (Most common format) (JPEG is a standardized image-compression format.

JPEG compression reduces the file size but has no effect on the number of pixels in the image (i.e., the resolution). JPEG was designed to compress the file size of photos and can handle as many colors as are in the picture. It is also lossy, meaning that some information is lost during compression, and the decompressed image is not a total match with the original. This means that a little bit of image detail quality is lost when saved as JPEG.)

Megapixels (how many pixels?) – 1 million Printer profiles for paper types are found in file>print>printer profiles raw (A RAW image is the pure data directly saved from the camera's image sensor

onto the card. With other image formats the camera processes the raw data and converts it to TIFF or JPEG, but with RAW mode the pure data is saved and can be edited later. RAW files take up 4 times as much memory as TIFF or JPEG files)

tiff (A TIFF image is an uncompressed image showing the full detail of the image with no quality loss. TIFF images are very large and can take large amounts of storage space and can take a long time to save to the memory card. When a TIFF image is created in the camera, the camera takes the RAW image from the camera's sensor and converts it into the TIFF format using the settings in the camera's menus.)

Workflow: capture, edit, output (export)

History George Eastman produced the first mass produced affordable camera available to

the public Sony mavica – first digital camera The first digital cameras (in the 1960s) were big, expensive, poor quality

Lighting Information, Techniques and Tools Fill light illuminates or lightens up shadows Key light: the primary light that comes from artificial light sources (that you set up,

like the portrait studio light

Lightroom Information, Techniques and Tools Adjustment brush: used to lighten or darken parts of an image Spot removal tool gets rid of spots and blemishes on people in portraits Vibrance should be adjusted to get colors as correct or accurate as possible

Photo composition Elements of Art and Principles of Design Elements of art and principles of design: simplicity, emphasis, rule of thirds,

point of view (bird’s eye, bug’s eye), leading lines framing: when something in your photo is physically surrounded by or framed by

something in the photo, like a fence, or a doorway Leading lines – like one point perspective. Example: receding railroad tracks point of view: angle at which the photo was taken – bird’s eye is when the photo

was taken above the subject Point of view: bug’s eye is when the photo was taken below the subject symmetry/asymmetry: equal similar things on either side of a photo/unequal

things merger or forced perspective: when 2 unrelated things not near one another line

up and look like they’re touching, like when a person looks like they’re holding the Eiffel tower or a landmark or something appears to come out of a person’s head, like a tree

Rule or law of thirds – when a composition is covered with a rule of thirds grid (like a tic tac toe grid), the most important features in the composition will fall either on an intersection or on one of the lines of the tic tac toe grid. Used to stabilize or ground your composition.

simplicity: concentrate on a few basic elements, highlighting only those components that add to your composition, emphasis: when a light object or shape is next to a dark object or shape in order to bring the viewer’s attention to the object or shape

Photoshop Information, Techniques and Tools 100% opacity – completely saturated with color or pigment; the opposite of

transparent or see-through adjust tonal range (histogram and levels) Black and white conversion (from a color photo to a black and white photo) –

hue/saturation, grayscale mode Burn tool – used to darken select parts of a photo Clipping mask – apply a photo over a large shape or object that you selected, copied

and pasted onto its own layer Clone stamp tool – selects one area of a photo to clone or copy onto another area of

a photo. Uses a target and the OPT + Click to establish the targeted area to copy elsewhere. Selects a clean area of a photo to cover blemishes and spots using a circle)

Color correction – variations, (image/adjustments) color balance, (image/adjustments) hue/saturation and (image/adjustments) levels

Contact sheet (index print) – a page or pages of thumbnails or smaller versions of your photos used to review and analyze your photos or archive a photo shoot

contrast, and color correction (image/adjustments) crop tool - adjust the size or resolution of an image Dodge tool – used to lighten select parts of a photo Edit/transform: scale, rotate, skew, flip, distort, warp Edit/Transform scale: size Edit/Transform rotate: arbitrary by using the ruler tool to define where the photo

should be straightened to Edit/Transform skew: allows you to move each of the four corners of a selected

rectangular area in directions other than up or down or left or right (at angles) Edit/Transform flip: allows you to flip horizontally or vertically Edit/Transform distort: change where the four corners of an image are (like one

point perspective on the text assignment) Edit/Transform warp: adjust many points of an object to change its shape Eye dropper – allows you sample color form another part of the image healing brushes (spot healing) Histogram – a graph of all tones in an image or distribution of light Image/adjust: hue/saturation, brightness/contrast) Image/adjust brightness: how light or dark a photo is Image/adjust contrast: how dark are the darks and how light are the lights (high

contrast – darks are very dark and lights are very light) Image/Adjust hue: color name (like green) Image/adjust saturation: how opaque (rich with color) an object is image editing : straighten, rotate, limited crop, adjust tonal range, contrast

and color correction Lasso: selects an area using a continuous line around it Layers pallet – active layer (highlighted), layer order (the layer on top is the layer

you see first, like turning a stack of glass panes, each with part of the composition on it, sideways and looking through it to see all the layers at one time), creating and deleting layers, opacity of a layer (adjusted on the layers palette)

Less than 100% opacity creates a checkerboard pattern on your screen Levels – a tool which can move and stretch the brightness levels of an image

histogram limited crop (use the crop tool as usual)

magic wand: selects an area of like pixels based on common value Marquee tool – selects an area using a square, rectangle, oval, ellipse or circle patch tool (slight feathered edge when placing a patch of the photo elsewhere in the

composition) Polygonal lasso tool – selects an area using many straight lines to create a polygon

or multi-sided shape Quick mask lets you select and edit part of an image, not the whole thing. To isolate

a portion of the image to be modified, use a quick mask. Quick select tool – selects an area with similar pixels rotate (image/adjustments) Selection tools: marquee, lasso, magic wand, adding and subtracting to of from

the selection Shadow/highlight correction – correcting the exposure in shadows or highlights (S)hutter priority mode – you choose the shutter speed and the camera chooses

the aperture setting or f-stop setting. Spot healing brush – allows you to drag the mouse over scars or blemishes you

want to remove. It takes the non-scarred area on both sides of where you dragged the mouse and merges them over the scar or blemish

straighten (use the ruler tool to draw a line and establish what should be parallel or perpendicular to the bottom of the composition; Image/adjustments, rotate/arbitrary)

Techniques for improving images: healing brushes, patch tool, clone stamp, sharpening filter

sharpening filter Text tool – typing words and letters To quickly change your brush or tool size, use the shortcut by pressing the left

(makes it smaller) or right (makes it bigger) bracket keys Undo/redo – history pallet, step forward (command Z), step backward

(command Z, option Command Z for multiple steps backward) When a new layer is created, it is created directly above the layer selected

framing merger or forced perspective