Photography Notes

I’m mainly interested in digital photography, so that will be the focus of my notes.

I’ve been dabbling with my current DSLR and phone photography for quite a while now and I enjoy the composition side of things, but I started this document mainly to fill a gap in knowledge around the technical side of photography, so that’s what I’m focusing on fleshing out for now.

Section 1: Cheatsheet

Full-Frame 36 x 24 mm	Sony APS-C 23.5 x 15.6 mm
16mm	10.46mm
24mm	15.7mm
35mm	22.88mm
50mm	32.7mm
85mm	55.6mm

Standard Full-Stop f-Numbers
AV	Standard	Calculated
0	f/ 1	f/ 1
0.3...	f/ 1.1	f/ 1.122
0.6...	f/ 1.2	f/ 1.260
1	f/ 1.4	f/ 1.414
1.3...	f/ 1.6	f/ 1.587
1.6...	f/ 1.8	f/ 1.782
2	f/ 2	f/ 2
2.3...	f/ 2.2	f/ 2.245
2.6...	f/ 2.5	f/ 2.520
3	f/ 2.8	f/ 2.828
3.3...	f/ 3.2	f/ 3.175
3.6...	f/ 3.5	f/ 3.564
4	f/ 4	f/ 4
4.3...	f/ 4.5	f/ 4.490
4.6...	f/ 5	f/ 5.040
5	f/ 5.6	f/ 5.657
5.3...	f/ 6.3	f/ 6.350
5.6...	f/ 7.1	f/ 7.127
6	f/ 8	f/ 8
6.3...	f/ 9	f/ 8.980
6.6...	f/ 10	f/ 10.079
7	f/ 11	f/ 11.314
7.3...	f/ 13	f/ 12.699
7.6...	f/ 14	f/ 14.254
8	f/ 16	f/ 16

Section 2a: Core Technical Concepts

Exposure Triangle

Shutter Speed (t)

Slower shutter speed → more exposure, more motion blur.

Aperture (N)

Smaller f-stop number → larger aperture → more exposure, shallower depth of field.

The f-stop ($N$) is a dimensionless ratio:

Often written in the format “f/N”, which usefully forms an expression of $D$.

Recall the area of a circle ($A$) as a function of radius ($r$) or diameter ($D$):

TODO: Link area to exposure and find out how focal length affects things…

ISO

Higher ISO number → more exposure, and usually more noise.

Exposure Value (EV)

EV represents the overall exposure of the image as a function of $t$ and $N$. Commonly referred to as stops of light.

It’s a base-2 logarithm, so a difference of $\pm 1 \text{EV}$ represents a doubling or halving of light hitting the camera sensor:

Lenses

Focal Length

TODO

References

Section 2b: Videography-Specific Concepts

TODO