Settings

[Graemey]

Hello All,

I'm going to take some shots inside a Church and was wondering if you can give me any advice on settings? The building is quite bright and one shot I would like in particular is over the lecturn looking towards the back of the Church. I guess this would be something like F22 but where would I foucus and is it possible to get the foreground in focus as well the background?

Thank you as always,

Best wishes
Graeme

[OsmosisStudios]

F/22 might be a bit extreme, and will actually hurt image quality (look up DIFFRACTION, and then become an engineer to understand it). You can also try hyperfocal distance focusing (look that up while youre at it) and focus stacking (ditto).

A church may look bright to you, but not to the camera: things may change once you actually get there to shoot.

[RichardTaylor]

As OsmosisStudios says there will be less light than what you think.

If you want a lot of DOF the you will need to stop down (F16?) and that means a tripod especially if you want to shoot at a low ISO.

Here's a couple of examples, from my Flickr stream of what you may possibly expect.

(1)

Camera Canon EOS 5D
Exposure 0.067 sec (1/15)
Aperture f/5.6
Focal Length 24 mm
ISO Speed 1600
Exposure Bias -1 EV

(2)


Camera Canon EOS 5D
Exposure 0.013 sec (1/80)
Aperture f/4.0
Focal Length 24 mm
ISO Speed 400
Exposure Bias 0 EV
Flash Off, Did not fire

You may find it to be high contrast, especially if it is daytime and light is streaming in through the windows. So I would shoot raw and bracket shots so that I can have more leeway when PPing. Especially if I need to merge images.

[nickbedford]

Originally Posted by Graemey

Hello All,

I'm going to take some shots inside a Church and was wondering if you can give me any advice on settings? The building is quite bright and one shot I would like in particular is over the lecturn looking towards the back of the Church. I guess this would be something like F22 but where would I foucus and is it possible to get the foreground in focus as well the background?

Thank you as always,

Best wishes
Graeme

f/22 will allow you a rather large depth of field but it will also severely reduce the amount of the light entering the lens, which I suppose is only a problem if you're shooting a moving scene. If the scene is static, you could use a tripod.

That being said, as Osmosis pointed out, the overall sharpness of f/22 is limited by diffraction, an unfortunate property of electromagnetic wave propagation through a small slit like an aperture of f/22.

f/9.0 is usually about the limit of most lens and sensor combinations (between 7.1 and 9 usually) before diffraction starts to take effect.

I might ask, is it a wide angle shot or not? If it's a wide angle shot you don't need anywhere near f/22 to achieve a large depth of field.

Also remember f/22 is 4 stops darker than f/5.6, which requires a substantially longer shutter speed or much higher ISO speed.

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tu...fraction.shtml

[Graemey]

Thank you for that, Richard, brill answer, your second shot is just what I'm looking for. Now I need to know how to use my Sony A200 in Manual mode! I can set the aperture or the shutter speed but not both yet!

Best wishes
Graeme

[Graemey]

And thanks Nick also, it will be a wide angle I guess.

Best wishes
Greme

[nickbedford]

Originally Posted by Graemey

And thanks Nick also, it will be a wide angle I guess.

Best wishes
Greme

With a wide angle shot (FF equivalent 24mm or so), you can probably get away with f/5.6 quite easily, giving you much better ISO and shutter speed settings to achieve a crisp shot. If you have the option to use a tripod and expose for longer (static scene) then I'd bump the aperture down to f/9 tops and adjust shutter speed about a stop and a half longer (whatever the difference is).

[mshockley]

Just thought I'd add this shot I took last week to the ideas for you. I definitly agree with Osmosis in saying that although a church may "seem" bright, it is a bit deceiving, and also with Richard on the high contrast as bright light was streaming in from 2 windows in my shot.
Using a tripod I was at f/18 for a 15 second exposure. I ended up with several shots of people blurred as they walked through my frame, but with patience I got the shot I was looking for.

[OsmosisStudios]

Originally Posted by nickbedford

f/9.0 is usually about the limit of most lens and sensor combinations (between 7.1 and 9 usually) before diffraction starts to take effect.

I've actually found my "limit" for diffraction to be around f/16 or so, but with judicious sharpening I can get that even further. Of course, that's on a 10-12mp sensor: I don't know how badly the higher-res and higher-density sensors fare.

[nickbedford]

Originally Posted by OsmosisStudios

I've actually found my "limit" for diffraction to be around f/16 or so, but with judicious sharpening I can get that even further. Of course, that's on a 10-12mp sensor: I don't know how badly the higher-res and higher-density sensors fare.

Well I think I'd read that on average f/9 was around the point where you would *just* start going back in sharpness, not when it was actually moderately detrimental, so to speak.

That being said, f-stop does also rely on the focal length as the physical aperture f/9 is larger for 200mm than 50mm.