Is this the same SLR simulator I saw a couple of years back? Can't tell because it's Flash.
Seems to me like DSLRs don't really need simulators. Pick up a DSLR, dial it to P or green or whatever, and go. It's simpler and more responsive than a point and shoot, just bigger and heavier. (My four year olds love using my smaller DSLR and have less trouble using it than a small P&S.)
Anyone wanting to learn the fine points of photography can learn them at their leisure once the key point — using a DSLR is EASIER than using a point and shoot — is absorbed, and simulators that overload the user with information are probably counter-productive.
I see value in this. I have seen many people frustrated because their camera's automatic functions did not produce the image they wanted, and they have no idea how to change the settings to get a better image. It almost always boils down to an understanding between shutter speed, aperture, and simple settings such as exposure compensation.
For these people, this kind of simulator could be really helpful. It might be a little better if there was more explanatory text after you press the shutter. For example, I saw "overexposed" once; maybe that message could be more along the lines of "Your image is overexposed. Try decreasing your aperture, decreasing your shutterspeed, or adjusting exposure compensation."
It seems like there's a balance between the different settings on a camera that can't really be captured well with independent sliders.
I imagine a control that indicates the trade-offs (and when they're ok) as you tweak it would educate users in a better way than experimentation. Stay "inside the envelope" and your picture is probably ok. You can get outside it if you know what you're doing.
i saw a suggestion a few years ago for a mode that would just let you set depth of field directly, picking an aperture and shutter (and possibly iso and comp too) appropriately given the lighting. after all, what most people want most of the time is either a narrow depth to isolate a subject with bokeh or a wide depth to show something in context.
Yes, for people who understand how aperture relates to depth of field. But there seem to be a good number of people who understand what depth of field is, without understanding how to control for it using aperture.
Depth of field is controlled by aperture, focal length, and distance to subject. The degree to which the subject is actually isolated from the background is also very important. This simulator manages to bury one aspect of this information and ignore the rest.
All else being equal, to increase subject isolation:
* Increase separation between subject and background
Each of these things is equally important. (But all else is not equal, so if you're determined to stand in one spot and not change your composition, just increasing aperture size is your only option.)
Yes, this is indeed the case! I shoot with a prime, so the ability to change the focal length doesn't really come to me. But I think it's very important that you brought up specifically the fact that the distance spatially between the camera, the subject, and the background are very important!
Where it has value, I think, is giving people a reference for the number of important variables. Modern DSLRs are covered in controls and symbols and modes, etc. and I believe for a beginner it can be quite overwhelming. Having just these key factors in mind when shooting could plausibly give a beginner the right set of variables to focus on without being distracted by all the other fluff.
That being said, I absolutely agree that the only way to learn photography is to get out there and shoot.
>> the only way to learn photography is to get out there and shoot.
Mostly agree, but I see there as being two parts of photography.
The art, which is seeing, composing, etc. For that, you do have to just get out and shoot.
The craft, which is knowing what settings to use and when. You can learn this by trial and error by "just going out and shooting", but having someone teach you, reading about it, or using an app that demonstrates what happens with a settings change will not only save time, but make the time spent shooting that much more productive.
I think this applies to a lot more than photography. Directly, I have knowledge of how it applies to both dancing and music as well, especially jazz. You definitely have to get out there and do it, but you have to spend time deliberately refining your ear, and deliberately refining your technique.
For dancing, it's much the same, you need to get out there and do it. But there is also a lot of time spent deliberately refining your ear for the music, your feeling for the beat what position your body should be in and how a lead should feel. Each play into the other but if one is neglected, it's hard to progress.
While I agree, there is no shortcut to simply picking up a camera and getting a few thousand shutter actuations to learn whats what (and most definitely not on green box mode if learning is the intention), some demonstrations like pulling two instances of this up and putting distance/focal length at opposite extremes in each to show the compression of the compression of the backdrop work very well.
Dialing it to P teaches you nothing, since the camera is picking the exposure settings for you.
If you're really going to learn via shooting, you need to bracket your shots, line them up side by side in an app like Lightroom or iPhoto and look at the metadata to see what changed in the scene from the setting changes. Most people aren't going to bother doing this.
If an app like this is done properly, it would let you see the DOF and exposure changes more coveniently than post-shot chimping can.
If you learn to use the P setting on modern cameras it's actually all there, only more convenient (the control dial in P mode trades shutter speed for aperture). I happen to live in A mode most of the time, mostly because I'm forgetful.
There's an even better mode one Pentax DSLRs where one dial acts as a P dial and the other controls ISO.
One thing that would be invaluable simulating is a variable aperture lens rather than this constant f/2.8 simulation.
My girlfriend just got her first DSLR and was struggling with changing the aperture. While she understood the concepts, she wasn't familiar with working with a DSLR alone and since I wasn't physically present, it took me a while to realise over the phone she'd been changing the aperture by changing the focal length of the lens. (The D5100 has a pretty crappy and unintuitive control combination for setting aperture.) Had I been able to point her to a simulation like this it would have been clear to her that she needed a distinct method of setting aperture.
To set aperture on a D5100 switch to A and use the command dial.
(Shooting in Manual mode is simply torturing yourself unnecessarily if you don't know exactly what you're doing. In Aperture priority — or Program shift — setting aperture is simple and intuitive.)
In manual mode it's not that simple from what I could glean (haven't touched a D5100 myself). You have to half depress the shutter release, simultaneously press the exposure compensation button and only then you can adjust the aperture with the command dial (otherwise you'll just change shutter speed). That's pretty crummy IMO and rather elaborate for a beginner.
My D7000 is more straightforward since it has a separate dial for this and no need to half depress the shutter release. (I assume you can also change the settings using the LCD, but that's of no use if you're looking through the viewfinder and trying to set manual exposure.)
Looking at the manual you apparently don't have to half depress the shutter, just the exposure compensation button (which has an aperture symbol next to it), but other websites suggest you do have to. I'll look into it when I can see the camera in person in a few weeks.
Why not? Every pre-digital photographer did manual exposures. It teaches you to pay attention to your environment, and ultimately, I believe, makes you a better photographer because it develops your intuition about a given scene and what does and doesn't work.
I started off with P&S cameras and before I knew the mechanics of cameras I was frustrated with the automatic exposures; once I discovered I was missing "manual mode" I never turned back.
Sure, from time to time I'll use the priority or program modes when the shot is more important than the learning experience, but after 4 years of hobbyist photography I still find myself with much to learn and I enjoy the challenge of manual exposures.
I started out with manual everything cameras processing my own film, and I got pretty darn good a judging lighting by eye. Unless what you're trying to learn to do is become a human light meter, the "education" you're describing is pretty silly. You can accomplish the same results more quickly using the correct automatic setting and exposure compensation.
No see you're as confused as she was :) Most zoom lenses are variable aperture, e.g. at 18mm they will open up to f/3.5 but at 55mm they will only open up to f/5.6. The simulation doesn't address this, and it can be surprising for a beginner to see the aperture changing as they zoom - they may become fixated on zooming as a way to control aperture without realising they are observing a side-effect.
Unfortunately, I do not completely agree with the post. With the prices of DSLRs coming down, nowadays everyone has a DSLR. And most of them don't give a crap about photography and its internals.
While I agree that constant aperture lenses are substantially costly than their variable aperture counterparts, cameras like Canon 5D Mark III is coming with a 24-70 F/2.8L II lens as a kit.
I'm confused. Are you suggesting that the type of person who would find the camera simulator site useful is likely to be somebody who would own something like a Canon 5D Mark III? That's a $3,500 camera - body only. If you own that camera, I should hope you aren't visiting camera simulator sites, otherwise I suspect you're not going to be putting it to much good use :)
I have come across at least 2 people holding a 1 series camera and shooting in Auto or Programmed Auto modes. And I was severely disheartened.
I am only expecting people who actually have a DSLR with either a variable or constant speed lens but still shoot auto will come and be able to try their hands out on a same scene with similar type of lighting but different shutter speed aperture combinations and later on be motivated enough to try it out on their real camera.
Why would you be disheartened? A lot of photographers (including skilled amateurs and pros) shoot in P mode when the situation allows for it.
Prolific shooters usually know what to expect from their camera, so there's no need to experiment with settings all of the time, and if they see a P mode choice they don't like, they can program shift or switch to A/S/M mode.
I am not aware of your level of understanding of digital photography, so please pardon me. But as far as I understand, an average camera tries to reach the correct exposure by adding everything up to 18% grey. I am intentionally leaving the metering discussions out here for simplicity. So in case your frame contains too much light and shadows, your metering will be thrown off.
I come from an age when SLR cameras did not even have batteries, leave aside digital sensors. So probably it is hard wired into me that I need to use my eyes and brain and leave aside the cameras' when shooting.
You're about right with the 18% grey, but most skilled photographers do rely on the in-camera metering these days, regardless of which P/A/S mode they're using.
They may not use matrix metering (I definitely don't, I use center weighted, and I'm just a hobbyist) but you also have to remember the dynamic range of a full-frame RAW file is pretty good and that you can get good shadow/highlight recovery out of most situations.
When the photographer is chimping the image post-shot, if they see that the exposure is way off, you can still program-shift the settings in P-mode or use the EV dial to make adjustments and reshoot.
Most kit lenses on entry level cameras aren't fixed aperture though - I am guessing this app targets entry level users.
In any case, the need to have fixed fast aperture lenses is diminishing with IS and high ISO performance. I'd rather carry a fixed F4 than a fixed F2.8 zoom with a 2012 camera. It's going to be a much smaller lens and just as effective for most use cases.
While I agree with the point on quality, constant aperture zoom lenses tend to be MUCH more expensive than variable aperture lenses. Your single lens costs more than twice her entire starting kit :) They also tend to have fairly specialist zoom ranges. I find it hard to imagine somebody with a constant aperture zoom lens would find benefit in this camera simulation. The majority of the kind of people using it will be beginners with kit variable aperture lenses.
The most common advice for them would be to get a prime lens. Especially in this simulation that offers both distance and focal length setting (which are, for this scene and 18-55mm focal length, mostly interchangeable), I'd like to have it. It'd also allow you to go (cheaply) to f/1.8 or f/1.4, which would be much better to illustrate the effect that aperture has on the depth of field. With a common f/3.5:5.6 kit lens and APS-C sensor, you won't get a shallow DOF and nice out-of-focus background easily, and that could be frustrating to a beginner. Especially when you learn to do it in this simulation.
The faster aperture tends to necessitate better glass, but the idea that only fast lenses have good glass would not necessarily be true. There are plenty of "slow" lenses that have very good optical quality.
Are you sure? When a lens claims to be f/2.8 at all zoom levels, it usually means that that the maximum aperture (i.e., minimum f-number) is f/2.8. It can do f/11 etc also.
If it is indeed a lens with just a single aperture setting, can you tell me the model number? I'm quite curious now. Thx.
He means that his 24-70 zoom lens has the maximum aperture of f/2.8 at all focal lengths from 24 to 70. Cheaper lens would get to, say, f/3.5 at 24, but at 70, you wouldn't get more than f/5.6, for example. So you can't set it to 70mm and f/3.5, even though you can set it to 24 and f/3.5, because it can't physically do that. Of course you can set it to f/13 or even more, that's easy to do with an ordinary lens. There are some funnier lenses (mirror lenses, for example) that have fixed apertures. It's f/8 and you can't do anything about it, because there is no mechanism that would allow you to cover more or less of space before the sensor (film).
The aperture on an SLR only closes once you press the shutter release (or press the depth of field preview button, but those are becoming rare on consumer grade hardware). If the aperture closed as soon as you changed it the camera would be unusable because the viewfinder would become very dark, and the autofocus would stop working.
>or press the depth of field preview button, but those are becoming rare on consumer grade hardware
I bought a Nikon D5100 last summer, my first SLR since a Pentax K1000 I had for decades. The lack of a DoF preview button was a little hard for me to adjust to.
I do have d5100 and I confirm that there is no DoF Preview button. You can read about it's purpose here http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/dof-button.htm
If you really need this button d7000 have same sensor and does same quality photos. It allows for more control using physical buttons (in d5100 you need to use info menu to set some setting). It is also better suited then d5100 for manual lenses. That said it is also more expensive and heavier(but is also more water prove).
Personally most of the time lack of DoF preview did not bother me because I either wanted as much in focus as possible(for landscapes), or only person in focus which was quite easy. Weak support for manual lenses on the other hand baited me once with out of focus picture that I did not notice until it was to late(if it is really bright outside is hard to see photo on LCD, so i just checked histogram).
You can see my d5100 pictures here https://plus.google.com/100147104412340662455/photos if you are interested.
Great, will read through the article and play around to see what the option does on my brothers Nikon D60 (I've been playing around with his camera before deciding whether to splash out). Great pictures, looked at them briefly, will look at them properly tonight. Thanks.
Likely it's just that I'm pretty dense about certain subjects, but I had a hard time grasping the basics of photography until I watched this ten minute video:
It needs to give you the ability to use flash lighting. Then you could learn about how you can use flash to give a scene a completely different look, for example by using a wide aperture and short exposure to get the girl properly illuminated but have the background look very dark.
This works because the flash delivers all its light in a very short period of time so it is completely unaffected by the shutter speed. So once the flash power and aperture are set to give a proper exposure on the subject the shutter speed can be adjusted to give different levels of background illumination.
Why not show the result in real time as you adjust the sliders? You can still show the preview off to one side or whatever. It would help develop a tighter iterative loop for experimenting and save the cognitive overhead of trying to remember what was wrong with the one before. Have some image 'troughs' which you can populate with screen grabs including the settings you used to allow quick reference to settings from previous results. If you did that then there would be more of an argument for using this rather than just picking up a DSLR and fiddling with the controls.
I agree, that actually surprised me a bit. With a real SLR, some adjustments are immediately obvious. When you change the aperture, the view becomes brighter/dimmer and the depth of field changes.
Some, like shutter speed, don't make a difference until you hit the button, but it would have been nice to see the DOF changes in real time.
On most DSLRs, I believe, you have to press a DOF-preview button (whatever it's called), instead, it remains wide open making it easier/possible to accurately focus using the viewfinder. Focus is what I miss most in this simulator, it leaves out a very important part of taking of the picture…
And of course, there is virtually no way to reflect the ISO or shutter speed setting, using the optical viewfinder. Not a bad idea to "simulate" here as well, because it's not funny to shoot in the aperture-first mode and forget to reset ISO from some ridiculously high value that you had to use yesterday in the evening.
On the other hand, I was confused and disappointed that the lighting slider in the simulation doesn't do anything (well, it shows an icon, for a while, couldn't it just dim/lighten the scene a bit?).
On most modern (D)SLRs the lens isn't stopped down to the aperture setting until the shutter button is depressed (or you activate the DOF-preview button if it's available). Even when the lens is stopped-down to the aperture you've set, the in-viewfinder effect is far subtler than it ends up being in the actual exposure.
> You can still show the preview off to one side or whatever. It would help develop a tighter iterative loop for experimenting and save the cognitive overhead of trying to remember what was wrong with the one before.
ITYM, "Why doesn't this SLR camera have burst mode?"
This is pretty cool, but the swaying girl gets a little creepy after spending any time on the site. Are there any other scenes available? It would be nice to have a "Change Scene" button.
Presume this is a tool for point and shoot guys to figure out what a SLR feels like. If you can add a shutter half-click simulation - have an out of focus element and bring that to focus with the shutter half-click, that'll be awesome.
Congrats on the cool project, I've never seen one done before and I understand how this would be of value to someone starting out that doesn't have access to the real deal. I think this must have been fun to develop and it shows. I can see great value in specific cases, for young kids to get a grasp at the joy of getting good photo results while experimenting. The experimentation factor is always a plus for interactivity and you showed good use of the tech to accomplish that.
This is neat. I like the advice that you give when the pictures are bad, but it took me a little while to get from "this picture is OK, but kind of blurry" to a good one. I guess I can't expect to pick up a SLR and get a good one on my first try!
Seems to me like DSLRs don't really need simulators. Pick up a DSLR, dial it to P or green or whatever, and go. It's simpler and more responsive than a point and shoot, just bigger and heavier. (My four year olds love using my smaller DSLR and have less trouble using it than a small P&S.)
Anyone wanting to learn the fine points of photography can learn them at their leisure once the key point — using a DSLR is EASIER than using a point and shoot — is absorbed, and simulators that overload the user with information are probably counter-productive.