1. FYS 100 Creative Discovery in Digital Art Forms Fall 2008 Burg Digital Photography Assignment

2. Choosing the Pixel Dimensions and File Type When You Take a Picture with your Digital Camera You should know the choice of pixel dimensions and file types for your digital camera. File type is often JPEG, TIFF, or RAW (a proprietary file format). JPEG files are compressed with a lossy compression method. TIFF files can be compressed or uncompressed. Your choice of pixel dimension and file type – coupled with the amount of memory you have in your camera – determines how many pictures you can take and store on the camera (or in its memory card).

3. Lossy vs. Lossless Compression Lossy compression removes some detail, but it’s probably detail you wouldn’t notice anyway. JPEG is lossy (but still good quality). The compression type used with TIFF is lossless (but you don’t have to compress a TIFF file).

4. Nikon CoolPix 995 “Image Quality,” which determines the file type and whether or not there is compression a 2001 prosumer camera

5. Nikon CoolPix 995 pixel dimension settings (which they call “image size”)

6. NIKON D100 Pixel dimensions: –3008 X 2000 pixels, 2240 X 1488 pixels, or 1504 X 1000 pixels six possible file types: –NEF raw uncompressed (12 bits per pixel) –NEF raw compressed –TIFF-RGB (uncompressed) –JPEG Fine (lossy compression at a ratio of 4:1) –JPEG Normal (lossy compression at a ratio of 8:1) –JPEG Basic (lossy compression at a ratio of 16:1) (See page 43 of the camera manual for the relationship between image size in terms of pixels, image quality, and image size in terms of number of bytes required for storage.)

7. NIKON D100 3D matrix metering as its method to determine correct exposure (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_metering.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_metering built-in Speedlight single frame, continuous, or self-timer shooting modes "film" sensitivity levels between values roughly equivalent to between ISO 200 and 1600 in steps equivalent to 1/3 EV. Higher values of HI-1 (ISO 3200) and HI-2 (ISO 6400) also possible. manual settings can be made for aperture, sensitivity, shutter speed, focus, single-shot vs. continuous mode, etc. storage medium – Nikon, SanDisk, LexarMedia, or IBM CompactFlash cards photos transferable to computer through USB cable or CompactFlash Card adapter

8. NIKON D100 SetUp

11. Canon Powershot SD750

13. Image Size in Inches The physical size of an image, in inches, is a combination of the number of pixels in the image coupled with the number of pixels you put into each inch. On a computer screen, each pixel in the image file is correlated with a pixel on the computer screen. For a printed picture, you can specify how many pixels from the image file you want to use for each inch in the printed picture. This is called the resolution – pixels per inch (ppi). A resolution of 200 or 300 ppi is usually sufficient for good image quality.

14. File Size How many 2048 x 1536 uncompressed TIFF images can you fit on a 64 MB memory card? –MB standards for megabyte (2 20 bytes) –We think of a megabyte as about 1,000,000 bytes, but it’s actually more. It’s 2 20 = 1,048,576. –RGB color is used. This means that one byte is used for each of the R, G, and B color channels – a total of three bytes per pixel.

15. Let’s do the arithmetic… 2048 x 1536 = 3,145,728 pixels 3,145,728 pixels * 3 bytes/pixel = 9,437,184 bytes 9,437,184 bytes  9.4 MB 64  9.4 = 6 Six 2048 x 1536 uncompressed TIFF pictures can be stored on a 64 MB memory card

16. Aperture Aperture is the opening in the lens to let light in. The bigger the opening, the more light is let in, and the less time you need to take the picture.

17. Focal Length Focal length is the distance from the rear of the lens to the point where the light rays through the lens are focused onto the sensor plane where the colors are sensed. This distance is typically measured in millimeters (mm).

18. F-Stop F-stop is the ratio of the focal length of the lens to the diameter of the opening of the aperture. A smaller f-stop number means a wider aperture.

19. Aperture, Focal Length, and F-Stop Wider apertures let in more light. Wider apertures (i.e., smaller f-stop numbers) also create a shallower depth of field. A shallow depth of field makes objects in the foreground stand out while the background is blurry.

20. F-stops

21. Shallow depth of field From Digital Photography by Katrin Eismann, Seán Duggan, and Tim Grey, PeachPit Press Deep focus

22. Point-and-Shoot and “Prosumer” Cameras Point-and-shoot automatically adjust the f-stop, shutter speed, and focus as you take a picture. Some allow you have a few options for pixel dimensions and or/or file type, but perhaps not. You might be able to take only JPEG images in a fixed pixel dimension. “Prosumer” cameras are somewhere between professional and consumer level. Nikon CoolPix 995 is a prosumer camera.

23. SLR Cameras SLR refers to single lens reflex. This is a professional grade camera. You look straight through the lens. Professional digital SLRs use an imaging sensor that’s the same size as the 35mm film they replace, so the specs of lens size and focal length match what you might be used to in analog cameras. SLRs often have interchangeable lenses.

24. NIKON D100: A 2002-model SLR Camera SLR (single-lens reflex) The advantage of SLR is that when you look through the viewfinder, you are seeing exactly the image that you will take. This makes it possible for you to use manual focusing in a very accurate way. We bought two lenses for the camera. (You often have to buy the lenses of SLR cameras separately.) –Nikon AF Nikkor –Nikon AF Micro Nikkor 60mm f/2.8D (for close-ups) CCD (charge-coupled device) is 23.7 x 15.6 mm/0.9" x 0.6" Advertised as 6.1 million "effective" pixels (Multiply 3008 x 2000 and you get approximately this value. Manufacturers always advertise their maximum pixel size ("megapixels") to their advantage.)