All language subtitles for 1. Gw Camera

Now, when I started out,

it was clearly prescribed

that if you were a portrait photographer,

you use the medium format camera.

And occasionally,

large format.

If you're a photo journalist, you use 35 mm

but, you know, if you wanted to, say,

present a set of pictures of bigger reproduction

or with slightly different qualities to them,

you might move up to medium format.

If you did landscape photography,

it was often said you would do plate cameras.

Your large 5x4 or 10x8 cameras.

Still life photography, to fix parallax

you would often use these larger cameras.

Now, today, a lot of that's gone out the window

because the sensor quality

on regular 35 mm cameras is so great now.

And, the bomb posters that I shot

that literally wraps this huge IMAX cinema

in Waterloo in London came off a 35 mm camera.

My background was Photojournalism,

and I've never really swayed away

from shooting 35 mm.

And when I have, I've kind of regretted it.

The thing I love about 35 mm cameras

is the speed I'm able to work with them.

So even if I'm doing a beauty sheet,

I will still use my 35 mm cameras.

If I'm doing a picture that I know

is going to wrap a building,

I use the same cameras.

So,

all these other cameras,

larger formats that're all

a Google away from you,

but I'm not going to go

into any detail on those now.

What I will do

is explain the workings of a camera.

And I'm sorry, if you already know all this.

Firstly, Lights.

There are three contributing factors

to your exposure.

One is ISO / ASA that relates the same

to it's either the sensitivity of your film

or the sensitivity of your sensor

in your digital camera.

The higher the ISO, the lower light you can work in,

but the grainier your image will be.

So that's compromise number 1.

When you have your F-Stop

and your F-stop is basically

how open your lens is.

But it also very importantly controls

your depth of field.

I worked with a photographer years ago,

who was probably eight years

into his professional career,

and we were having a conversation

about depth of field.

And he was like, what do you mean depth of field?

And so, I'm sorry if I'm telling you

how to suck eggs, but it is amazing

that when we start out in life,

how

massive sort of important factors

in photography get missed,

unless someone tells you.

So, depth of field.

If I'm at 1.8,

there is only a

shallow depth of field

to my image, so how much of me is in focus.

And in fact, there's a lens

like a 50 mm F1

Low upper lens

that you can literally have an eye in focus

and an eyelash soft. And then in contrast,

you could be an F/22 on a wide angle lens,

and you literally don't even have

to focus the camera.

If you set it to the right part of the lens,

absolutely everything will be in focus

all the way out to infinity.

The more light you let in,

the shallower your depth of field.

So there is compromise number 2.

The third, contributed to how much light

you let into your camera,

is your Shutter Speed.

Shutter speed controls how long the hole is open

on your camera, for it shots

to expose the picture.

The more either you or your subject is moving,

the faster the shutter speed you'll need

to keep that image sharp.

If, of course, you want that image to be sharp.

So in summary, it's do we compromise

how grainy the picture is?

The depth of field of the picture

or how frozen the moments is?

So exposure is a juggle

of these three compromises.

If I want a still frame,

I need the highest shutter speed

so that I can work with a wider aperture

and a higher ISO, for instance.

If I want a super low grain image,

I may choose a low ISO, but then compromise

on my depth of field and shutter speed.

And if I want everything in focus,

I compromise on shutter speed or noise, so.

Now to be clear,

I generally start every shoot in automatic

because cameras are so extraordinary

like what I can't do.

One of my Leicas will be set up auto, auto, auto

and I'll be on auto-focus. Okay.

The only thing I'm never automatic on

by the way, is ISA.

I always like to choose my ISA.

I will always walk into a situation

to shoot automatically.

And as soon as I realize I've got a problem,

as soon as someone's wearing a black suit

against a black background,

I know I have to open up, right.

Or as soon as I know that we're moving really fast

and I'm only at a 30th of a second,

I know that I've got to go to,

you know, shutter priority.

But I start on automatic.

And the reason I do that is speed.

Everything I try and do in my life

is about getting the picture quickly

and getting out and moving on

and letting the people that I'm photographing

carry on with their lives.

The other thing we haven't discussed

is camera's focal length.

Different focal length lenses behave differently.

So, for instance, I'm now on a 24 mm lens,

and then this is a 35 mil lens.

This is a 50 mil lens.

And then this is a 70 lens, 85 mm lens,

135 millimeter lens.

And this is a 300 mm lens.

You'll see that my face looks wider

than the contrasting same frame on the 24,

where you can see it.

It's quite a different view.

The other contributing factor

that I'm not going to go

into any detail is Sensor Size

because I'm talking about a 35 mm sensor.

If we're talking about larger sensors,

then your standard lens could go

from the 50 mm standard on a 35.

If you're on a 10x8 plate camera,

the standard lens is a 300 mm lens

because it's got that much more

sort of plight to hit.

Anyway, please Google that stuff.

I don't know enough about it. It's not my thing.

And it's not what I'm here today to talk about.

Apologies if you know all this stuff,

but I can't tell you how important it is

to really, really understand it.

So much of the creativity you can bring

to a picture comes from playing around

with those fundamental elements of photography.

If you don't do this work,

if you don't really understand the fundamentals

and go back to them every time you shoot,

you are seriously limiting your work.

There's a lovely analogy of those sort of, you know,

world number one golfers,

and they're still working on their stats

and they grit every day.

And I like to think every day

when I'm taking pictures,

I'm still running through those things

that I was taught as a kid.

What I want you to take from this

is that every single day,

I want you to be thinking

about these elements of exposure,

about how to use your camera

and to really understand

what the different decisions you make,

the impact that they will have on your pictures.

Because when you do that,

you're empowered of information

and you will take better photographs

armed with that knowledge.

Please, please, please really learn this stuff

and really put it into action.