Tuesday's Lesson: Panorama, Macro and Depth of Field

Macro:

• Macro is when you take an extreme close up of an image with the goal of focusing in more on the details of a smaller object.
• On certain cameras you can select the flower on your scenes/dial.
• On other cameras you can use a telephoto lens to get the macro effect.
• You may want to use a tripod because slight camera movement can cause blurry images when shooting Macro.
• You can take macros of just about anything... food, nature, game pieces, noses/eyes/etc..

Panorama:

• Take multiple shots in a line, making sure that they overlap just enough, of a scene that is to tall or wide to capture in one shot.
• You can then thread them together in Photoshop.
• Elements:  File - New -Photomerge Panorama- Browse- select all of your photos from their locations on your computer or disc- make sure AUTO is selected as the merging option - hit "OK".  
• There is a prompt that shows up in Elements 10 that asks if you would like it to auto correct the edges.  You can do that or you can crop it down.

Depth of Field:

• "Distance in focus"
• There is an area in front of your object and behind your object that are in focus.  You can control what is in or out of focus with your camera.
• You won't see the adjustment until you have taken you picture because your view will be in focus until the moment you take the picture.
• Use the AV setting if you want to only focus on the aperture.
• There are 3 ways to control your depth of field:
• Change your f-stop --> everything in focus = large number (Ansel Adams shot at F64 because he always shot everything in focus) / short distance in focus = small number.
• Your lens type --> telephoto lens will give your a shorter depth of field while a wide angle lens will give you a larger depth of field.
• Distance--> The closer you are to your object the shorter depth of field you will have.  The further you are from your object the larger your depth of field will be.

Examples from Phil's slideshow: