Digital Camera Functions University of Houston（数码相机功能休斯顿大学）.pdf

Digital Camera Functions All photography is based on the same optical principle of viewing objects with our eyes. In both cases, light is reflected off of an object and passes through a lens, which focuses the light rays, onto the light sensitive retina, in the case of eyesight, or onto film or an image sensor the case of traditional or digital photography. The shutter is a curtain that is placed between the lens and the camera that briefly opens to let light hit the film in conventional photography or the image sensor in digital photography. The shutter speed refers to how long the curtain stays open to let light in. The higher the number, the shorter the time, and consequently, the less light gets in. So, a shutter speed of 1/60th of a second lets in half the amount of light than a speed of 1/30th of a second. For most normal pictures, shutter speeds range from 1/30th of a second to 1/100th of a second. A faster shutter speed, such as 1/500th of a second or 1/1000th of a second, would be used to take a picture of a fast moving object such as a race car; while a slow shutter speed would be used to take pictures in low-light situations, such as when taking pictures of the moon at night. Remember that the longer the shutter stays open, the more chance the image will be blurred because a person cannot usually hold a camera still for very long. A tripod or other support mechanism should almost always be used to stabilize the camera when slow shutter speeds are used. Now, lets look at aperture. The aperture is actually part of the lens, not the camera. It is a circular, adjustable opening that functions much like the lens of the eye. It opens wide in low light situations to let in more light, and closes down to a small opening in brightly lit situations to let in less light. The size of the opening of the lens aperture is measured in numerical values called f-stops. Typical f-stops are f2.8, f-4, f-5.6, f-8, f-11, f-16 and f-22. The larger the