The 40,000’ View

Toby said, ‘Hey, what is that stuff you write at the bottom of the pictures? It’s all gobble-de-gook!’

I told him that I put the camera body, lens, and the settings I used to take the photo. He said, ‘That doesn’t explain anything!’

So to clear up his confusion, I’ll try to explain…

With an interchangeable lens camera system there are different lenses that can be mounted onto a camera body. The camera body is the box with the buttons and knobs and the lens is the part that sticks out in front with all of the glass. The lens magnifies and focuses the image onto the sensor inside of the camera body.

The first item I generally list is the camera body. Different bodies have different capabilities such as sensor size, resolution, dynamic range, low light capability, stabilization, shutter speed, frames per second, video modes as well as other options. I generally use the A7Riv which is marketed for its high resolution sensor.

He didn’t look convinced so I continued on…

Then I list the lens I use. Some lenses zoom in like a telescope and some can see very wide. There are pros and cons to each but it generally comes down to what ‘effect’ you want and what you plan to photograph. Most of my lenses are zooms in that they can go from somewhat wider to somewhat more narrow. I usually use the SEL1635GM unless I know I have some other specific requirement. That lens goes from 16mm to 35mm. The numbers relate to field of view but generally they are best used as a comparison to each other. Some lenses are as wide as 6mm and others will be as narrow as 600mm or more. At 16mm the lens sees a little more twice side to side and up and down than at 35mm.

‘So what’s this f-thingy,’ he asked? ‘That’s the f-stop,’ I said. That’s a term that generally relates to how open the aperture is in the lens which impacts how much light gets through the lens. That can help in low light to keep the shutter speed down and the ISO down. It also has optical effects which can impact how much of the picture is in focus.

‘So the next thing is shutter speed,’ he presumed? ‘That’s correct,’ I told him. It’s listed in fractions of a second. For hand-held photography it’s anywhere from about 1/20th of a second up to 1/8000th of a second depending on how bright the scene is and perhaps the effect you want.

I barreled on and told him that ISO is a setting that is related to how bright and noisy your photo will be. It’s vey similar to how the sound quality deteriorates when you turn up a speaker too high. Most cameras start around ISO 100 and go up to ISO 32000 or higher though there are exceptions. I try to stay as low as possible with ISO but generally don’t go higher than ISO 3200 if I can avoid it though different camera bodies are better or worse at higher ISO settings.

‘So basically you’re just showing off when you put that stuff down there,’ he said. I said, ‘No, someone might be interested in the settings. They might look at the photo and see how the f-stop, shutter speed and ISO combination relate to the overall exposure, noise level, compositions and effect.’ ‘That doesn’t seem likely,’ he said. ‘I think you just make it all up. Why don’t you just use a cellphone like all of the other Instagram people?’