One other thing that Jason didn't mention is that large apertures are good for blurring out foreground elements, like fences. If there's a fence between you and the subject, get as close as you can to the fence and open the aperture. You can often make the fence "disappear".

@avonbarksdale2506

5 ай бұрын

as an amateur photographer way back when, this blew my mind at family sporting events shooting through the fence lol

@kai.05

5 ай бұрын

Beware, it makes your bokeh way funky. Better than having a fence in view tho

@careylymanjones

5 ай бұрын

@@kai.05 If your lens is long enough, fast enough, and you can get close enough, you can make chain link fence disappear.

@kai.05

5 ай бұрын

@@careylymanjones yeah the fence definitely dissappears. I shoot those kinds with my 100-400 5-6.3, and you can't see the fence at all in the foreground. But, since you're adding another shape to the bokeh by having the fence so close, you don't really get circle bokeh anymore. You get circle with a diamond etched into it, which is cool, but not always desirable. Definitely a worthy tradeoff though

@tomnorton8499

5 ай бұрын

I shoot mainly sports and wildlife. Having the ability to open up the aperture wide as possible gives a better ability to keep your speed up and ISO down as as much as possible when you can’t use flash.

As someone that shoots 99% extreme low light (concert photography), I have a tendency to completely forget that aperture exists outside of wide open. It's definitely something I need to improve in my photography.

@Pouncer_Fox

3 ай бұрын

What f stop do you use?

@stevenleonmusic

3 ай бұрын

Honestly, technology for digital photography has advanced so much that your best bet is to shoot everything at your lens's sharpest F-stop (often around F8) and then just let your digital darkroom/Photoshop software handle the depth of field and lens blur later. For concerts you usually don't have to shoot entirely wide open to get the performers (unless the lighting people suck) but yeah, if you hope to get halfway decent shots that include the crowd and surroundings you probably shouldn't push it unless you have a flagship body that can do extremely high ISO settings. Again, denoising software has come such a long way you really can afford to crank up the ISO and fix it later.

@l.e.phillips

Ай бұрын

@@stevenleonmusicLightroom has a decent ability to do this now but it isn’t perfect yet. However, I’m a beta tester for upcoming improvements, and let me tell ya, it’s quickly getting much much better. I think after another year or two your advice will be spot on.

@stevenleonmusic

Ай бұрын

@@l.e.phillips Well the closer it is to perfect out of the camera, the less work you have to do in post, so usually I do recommend attempting to get it right in camera if you can. That said, it really just depends on the context. I think focus correction is currently at a good spot for social media and self-promotion. If you're making money off your photography, then you might want to wait for the tech to improve slightly. For low-resolution work though, what we have is more than enough and even what we had before the AI stuff was too.

@techtutorial9050

Ай бұрын

@@stevenleonmusic I respect your take, but I disagree with you here. My principle is that the better it is straight out of the camera, the better it will be after editing, and as we’re on the topic of concert photography (or low-light event photography in general), the best thing to do, in my opinion, is move around and figure out the settings, which is not that difficult, and you’ll end up with much cleaner images, which doesn’t hurt even if you’re images will be viewed through social media most of the time.

Ive lately been a big fan of higher f-stop numbers like f8 or f11. 1. I shoot a lot of weddings and I feel like clients choose their venue because they like how it looks a lot so I want to show how the environment and location looks in the photo clearly along with the people in it. 2. Higher F stops allows me to use Photoshop to easily to remove unwanted artifacts in the background. 3. Bokeh has become so popular that every beginner of Photographer uses it now that it’s not a unique look anymore.

@donflamingo795

5 ай бұрын

Agree

@joel6376

5 ай бұрын

>3 It was never a unique look.

@RogerC

5 ай бұрын

Curious - what does higher F stop have to do with Photoshop and removing unwanted artifacts?

@Akiidan

5 ай бұрын

@@RogerC yeah, when everything is in focus it’s a lot easier to make selections and then remove. Whereas when it’s blurred out, the selection is less perfect and content aware ,generated fill, spot fill or patch tools has a much harder time getting it right.

@saschafrohlich2740

5 ай бұрын

true story bro

The most important thing to emphasize is practicing with your camera and lenses is important. I learn new things every wedding I work. I actually realized I could drop the f stop and still get blurry backgrounds one day when I forgot my VND i usually use on my 50mm 1.4 and had to shoot outside. I had to go to 5.6 to get usable exposure for my video, but the closer i got for intimate shots I realized the background was still a bit bokeh (granted, not as much as I would have preferred but still good). Plus lots of lenses are sharper stopped down than wide open.

Hello, I'd like to point out that it's not 'larger the number smaller the hole and vice versa.' Even my teacher at uni gets this wrong. It's not f 16 or f 1.4; it is f/16 or f/1.4 -- meaning f 1/16 or f 1/1.4. Now we know with the numerator same, if the denominator is bigger the number is smaller. Like ½ is 0.5 and ¼ is 0.25. So 1/1.4 > 1/16 and technically 'bigger the number bigger the hole.'

@yellahbe

5 ай бұрын

I learned something today! Thanks!

@danfarmer_photo

5 ай бұрын

The technical correctness isn’t always the best way to learn, being that what a first time photographer would see in their settings (on screen) is how Jason presented it.

@cl9279

5 ай бұрын

🤓

@puhgeh

5 ай бұрын

bruh, as much as I would want to say you are technically correct, you cannot discredit what he was saying. You need to listen to what he is saying in the proper “context” he was presenting it. And that context is that he is pertaining and presenting it in the context of the lens aperture ring itself which is given by the value of denominators. He presented it in both the actual lens as well as with the actual written fraction. So if you really listen, he is correct. Stop discrediting people to show you know something. Your professor might be correct and it’s just that you prefer not to listen to understand - At the end of the day, he won’t be just one smart ass guy trying to look smart, your professor got his degree and credentials to teach so he ain’t stupid.

@David-sz3yt

5 ай бұрын

k nerd

Always nice to get a primer in the basics. Nothing wrong with some review.

My dad did a good job of explaining this to me in1960. I had to learn "sunny 16" back then because I shot with a manual camera, no light meter, and by the seat of my pants. Man those days were fun! Yes, I have several new cameras, but I also shoot an Argus C-3 .... a true manual, manual camera. You did a great tutorial video here... great info for those of us with 60 years of photography behind us. I say that because I'll never say I've learned it all!

Thank you! I've been looking for a video like this for some time now and you finally delivered one covering the basic needs, helped out a lot!

It was nice to hear someone say what it took me a few years to learn myself. You are a great teacher. Keep it up. Big fan.

Great refresher Jason! Love the energy and enthusiasm.

Great video! Two things that have ruined modern photography are pixel peepers and bokeh worshippers. Typically neither one of these groups has any skill either. They wouldn't know a quality photograph if it bit them, they are too busy zooming into 400% and sitting an inch from their huge monitor looking for imperfections. Its been fueled by KZreadrs playing photographer who push the latest 1.2 lens and absurdly overpriced "flagship" FULL FRAME camera as the only thing you need to get great photos 🤣 Ive been a professional fashion/portrait shooter almost 20 years and have shot with tons of gear from all manufacturers. You can get awesome shallow DOF in a portrait with an Olympus 75 1.8 on a tiny little M43 sensor camera. Ive done it and had shots published in magazines. No one would ever go hey wait a minute, thats a M43 sensor camera! What makes a great photograph is lighting and composition, not how blurry the background is or how creamy the bokeh balls are 😂

This is the tutorial that I'm looking for so longggg time. Others are just explaining the meaning of Aperture but thank you for creating this in depth teachings

Great video! I really liked the demonstration on the iPad with the focus leeway. Low f-stop is such a beginner trap - I say this as someone who just picked up photography earlier this year and has had this revelation myself in the last month or so. I think every beginner photographer naturally wants to play with bokeh, because in their eyes it's what makes their photos stand out against a photo taken say on a phone (although many phones can fake bokeh these days). As you mature as a photographer, you start to realise: a) bokeh can be achieved in several ways without a super low f-stop, and b) you don't always need bokeh. if you're relying on bokeh for good photos, you need to learn more about what makes a good photo i.e interesting compositions, subjects and lighting.

@viktorpetukhov727

5 ай бұрын

As an amateur photographer I have to say low apertures give you more freedom of movement, I mean you can control DoF on bigger distances

Great explanation. A good reason to save money on buying bokeh beast lenses however, is the rapidly emerging DOF tools in post processing software. Lightroom/ACR is absolutely amazing. Sure ...you must spend some time on each selected image and there is a learning curve, but the control is amazing. I'm sure those features will be available in batch processing before long, so a bunch of similar images can be selected and what was shot in focus from the end of one's nose to infinity will take on the look of having been shot with a much larger aperture.

Love the visuals, especially the top down view to help drive the point home!

Great explanation, thank you. I especially liked the "overhead" illustration.

This really helped me understand that distance from the object really matters. As a noob, I've been looking at it as "getting the person or the object in focus is the only thing I can control." But now i see that distance plays a big role in hiw the background looks. Thanks.

@FueledUpBrandMedia

5 ай бұрын

Yea, in regular camera mode with your phone, you can have very blurry backgrounds by shooting from very close to your subject!

This is the exactly what I needed!! Thanks always ❤

Great vid mate, well edited to the point and heaps of value in it. Saving this as an example of how to make a video guide. 🔥

I love your videos and how relevant and accessible you make information. This would have been really handy six or seven years ago. When I was starting out the professional side

Great breakdown of this topic, Jason!

This is such a great, concise video. Thank you!

Jason, Thank you for creating this video. It was extremely helpful. I've been making many of these mistakes.

Fantastic top level video for beginners and intermediate level. Take each chapter and go practice! So much information to unpack.

thanks for the videos Jason!!❤

Got the basics covered very nicely! Keep it up man!

Great stuff Jason! Super well explained!

This helped me figure out what lens I wanna buy and reminded me of some of the stuff I had forgotten from film school, thanks so much!

That was an amazing, crystal-clear explanation! Thanks for that! The shallow vs deep depth of field makes much more sense to me now! You didn't mention the influence in low-light environments, though. Is having the lowest aperture always the best in low-light cases?

great video! this is genuinely going to be helpful for me!

What's amazing is I have already been doing some of the stuff you have mentioned here just by taking photo after photo after photo. But still, thanks for breaking everything for us in this video. 😎 Everything we do (and learn) on the fly makes a lot more sense now. 😁

thank you for the video, hopefully more tutorial from you soon. Composition, editing process ..

Great video - I often get caught up in shooting wide open and this is a great reminder! THank you!

Thanks for putting this in a format most of us can understand and not making it confusing.👍

Thanks Jason for these crystal clear explanations !

More of these please Good, easy coverage on the basics 👌

This video spoke to my photography soul and said, "Stop it!" 👍🏾 Thanks.

Banger vid Jason, I dig it - Just got my Tamron 17-70mm f 2.8 so this is good timing.

@JasonVong

5 ай бұрын

Nice man! Great lens! One of the best for APSC!!

I love your approach at explaining this!

Thank you for your work on this video. Thanks to professor too.

That is a great video.👍 I guess that could not be explained better, faster and easier. Well done my friend. (No doubt you will be inspiring the photo lessons I am planning to give in the next months.)

The THICC DOF simulation on the tablet with camera and pencil is such a good visual presentation. This is very key idea on why shooting widest may lead to out of focus shots more often. A mistake I made for years. I think what could be improved is to visualise in this same manner what you said for the wedding photos: with constant aperture, DOF gets more thicc with distance.

Love the text overlays in this videos. Nice work Jason 🎉

This was great 👍 Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us, much appreciated

finally i know what is aperture all about.. thanks for sharing such amazing information ! I learn something today!

@JasonVong

5 ай бұрын

very happy to heard that! 😁

This video is really helpful and just in time for my new camera. Thanks!

This was a crazy helpful video. Any newbie like myself should watch this I have been struggling to take not just clear pictures but low light as well as as someone said in the comment buying all these lenses without knowing how they work is a newbie trap. I have been gotten

Great explanation! I'm still be to the scene and only doing as a hobby. I have my nice little f1.4 Sigma lens on my zv-e10 and find these points very useful! Will use these tips

I appreciate this Jason! I just got into photography and I was thinking exactly what you were talking about, low f-stops every time 😭, which is not always a good thing

Great stuff. This is definitely critical for beginners. I've learned the hard way. I've done group photo shoots for corporate clients. Three or four people in the photos doing work, etc., and I wanted some blurry background. I was using between f2.8 and f4. I couldn't tell in my camera screen that one person was in focus while others were out of focus. I got home to review the photos on my computer and nearly all the photos were ruined because half of the people were badly out of focus. I should have definitely used f8 or higher. Hopefully others learn from my mistake which is why I wanted to share. Cheers!

Very informative. Thank you so much for this!

Very useful info. Thanks for the refresher course.

Fantastic video Jason!

Nice use of the Motion vfx Podcast presets! Also this is a great explanation of depth of field, vieiwng it as a line which is bigger or smaller based on aperture is really smart.

Excellent video! Thanks for the breakdown.

Brilliant video. Thanks for the detailed explanation.

This was a game changer for me thank you

Perfect explanation, keep providing content like this💪🏼🔥

great video! very good info. thanks jason!

I wish so badly I learned this 2 year ago. I was so surface level and didn't go to school for it. Its like learning the little caveats came up only when I challenged myself with different type of photography.

nice video & I love your explaining style !

Outstanding video Jason!!!

Hey Jason, I love your videos and the energy you out into them 👍👍👍. I finally got my first camera ever (A7C) and have been watching hrs of videos. In the last point when you said it's better to step further back to have everybody in focus. Does that have anything to do with forcing the lens to go into infinity focus???

I learned more about this topic than ever. I’ve been obsessed with these low numbers, but now realize it doesn’t matter for the content I make.

Great explanation, always something to learn.

As a long time photo instructor, you did a great job! High 5!

@JasonVong

5 ай бұрын

thank you!

Excellent explained!

As someone who taught photography for over 20 years I never met any beginner who shot wide open. I met a lot of beginners who didn't understand what aperture was and never knew when to change it if anything. Just saying.

@joits

5 ай бұрын

It was one of the first things I learned as a beginner. Someone explained to me about shooting in aperture priority and that to get the nice blurry effect around a subject, use the smallest aperture number available and if I wanted to get everything into focus, use a higher aperture number like f/8 or f/11. I didn't understand why a smaller number means more bokeh or larger number means less but I didn't worry about it at the time. And I did like the look so I did shoot wide open often, too often sometimes.

Thank you...this is really helpful!!!

Thanks for sharing!

This is insanely informative!

Thank you for the tips dude! I really learned a lot. Holy I had no idea about anything about aperature besides it being good for blurry background with a subject.

This is a great video, more tutorials please

Damn. The most well explained video so far! Thanks !

Great video! 🙏🏽

Very good to know, considering I'm still somewhat a beginner. I'm always open to learning. My thing is that I shoot mostly concerts and I need something with good low light performance. That's why I'm debating between an ef 70-200mm f/2.8 vs the 70-200mm f/4

@BobIzam

5 ай бұрын

yeah for low-light that extra stop makes a world of difference when you're not on a tripod, if you can afford it i'd recommend it.

@os6997

5 ай бұрын

The 2.8 will make the image brighter in the viewfinder if you use a DSLR. If you use a mirrorless, it's less relevant.

Thanks for the video ❤

Very well explained. excellent!

thank you for your great video. I saw you many times at Akihabara.

Incredibly helpful video 👌

Great video!

solid tips thanks

Amazing and fun video ❤

Great advice

Great video Jason, mahalo!

Superb! Many thanks! 🙏🙏🙏

Good stuff. Thanx!

Ok this was good 👍🏻 Thank you!

Best explanation on the internet!

Brilliant video! This is EXACTLY the situation I find myself taking photos from and was explained beautifully. I learned a huge amount from this! Awesome

This is probably the best series of explanations on aperature and bokeh background blur, I have seen. The last scene with church photo and large group, I would go F8, but you are right some 2.8 shooters will have to move all the way back. For large groups F8 is better, just run up the ISO to 1000 or 1200iso in a church as today's cameras are still sharp and vivid and low noise in high iso, provided it is a full frame sensor. A touch of flash fill in a church would also help so with flash fill you won't need to go to 2500 iso in a dim church and it adds a touch of sparkle to eyes. I regularly shoot churches and halls at F8 and ISO 1200 (vary to ISO 800 in closer range) with fill flash with a small dome on flash at weddings and it looks great.

Got some lovely random street photography during our recent Europe trip by setting the 28mm lens to F1.7 without looking at the evf or lcd screen

Thank you!!!

That was very good!

I use 50mm nifty fifty f1.8 but i use f1.8 mostly around night. Even f3.5 are good at night but then have to adjust shutter speed and iso to best quality that camera can handle.

beware using to small an aperture, as many lenses loose resolution after f/8 or f/11 due to diffusion, so that expensive glass may not perform where you would expect it too

Good explanation bro

Nice video! With deliberate "blurring" being the easiest thing to add in post just shoot the smallest hole you can without sacrifing (a) a fast enough shutter speed for the moving subject or (b) a sufficiently low enough ISO. Never sacrifice your shutter speed and know your camera's ISO limitations. Start from there.

Thank you as a beginner here. So I know what lens to buy after buying 35mm anamorphic Sirui lens for my sony zve10

Love this vid❤️