Help needed

As a indication:
This is shot with the DA 50-200 at 180 MM.
Minimal focus distance of 1 meter to subject.
Aperture at F8.



The next one is taken with the DA 18-55 at the minimal close focus distance
of 25 cm. Focal length was 50 MM
Aperture was set at F 16



Now...in picture 1 the background was far enough away from the main subject to let F8 already separate the subject from the background.

Picture 2 shows the opposite. Because I am very close to my subject that should be in focus (the yellow stamps) even using F16 isn't enough to get whole of the flower in focus. The difference between in focus and out of focus is maybe 2 cm.

So now you have a idea what aperture settings can do with DOF and the creative use of in focus and out of focus areas.

Yes - agreed and I now understand more of what he was wanting - but I really do object to having this sense of failure because :-

1) the lecturer has not asked us what kit we were using [ to my mind a huge mistake as we are learners ]

2) when I told him I didn't understand I was give instructions to put it into Av and move the wheel till it showed me that my f stop would be 2.8 , which I now understand is not possible with my lens.

The instruction about the homework was 1 picture with a shallow field and an f stop of 2.8.

The way I feel at present [ and yes I'm away out tomorrow to a local park with lots of bushes and trees ] I'm likely to tell him that he can choose whichever of my 31 pics [ maybe more than that after tomorrow ] and show everyone that I can't follow instructions .

Tomorrow I'm going to shoot at 55mm and an f stop of 5.6 as suggested by gartmore and see if I can get what he's after .

I'm really really frustrated . I do not accept defeat easily.

Angela,
I partly agree with your point one, simply because a teacher should always check if his assignments are doable. Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst

But.....You mentioned in your opening post you are in the improver's class.
Suggesting you know the relationship between F stop and shutter speed and what the set aperture does to out of focus areas. Because this is stuff usually handled in the beginners class or close after, your teacher assumed more knowledge being present, than reality could cover.

Nevertheless.....That's all water under the bridge and you have to move on. Becoming a good photographer means: making mistakes, learning from them, asking a lot of questions and improvising.
May I suggest you go out with your 18-55, find a nice flower and use the aperture wide open? The latter will vary from 3,5 to 5,6 depending on the used focal length. 18MM gives you 3,5 and 55MM gives you 5,6
Use the close focus option on your kit lens and get very close to the subject. You will achieve a similar effect like my second picture.

Vary the aperture settings so you get instant feedback. The changing focus on the background will tell you.
And.......your teacher can only give you full marks for dealing with the limitations of your equipment,but still be able to succeed on the assignment. Mission completed.

Maybe some of this is down to me , but not all by any manner of means

When I enrolled I was not given a chance to talk to the instructor - I was told that the beginners class was covering - how to switch on the camera , how to put the card in , and hot to press the button to take the photo and how to download it .

Last Monday was the first class - and he started straight in on Fstops - revising in about 2 secs and left me gasping - I did say I did not understand . I'm still struggling with the relationship between F stop and shutter speeds

BTW - you said Flower ?? in Scotland after a month of snow ?? I'll be lucky to find some green leaves .

As I said - I'm not giving in .

OK - I ~think~ I've got the pic he wanted . It's been pouring for most of the night and of course I have a K-x, not a weatherproofed K7 [ faaaaaaar beyond my abilities ].

So I fled down to the bottom of my yard where I have a rhododenron bush and took a series of 4 pics whilst it was actually dry .

1) f5.6 shutter 1/60
2) f8 shutter 1/30
3) f16 shutter 1/8
4) f22 shutter 1/4

the differences between each successive pair and between 1 and 4 are very striking .

I kept the K-x in Av and just altered the F stop setting . Having seen the results in iPhoto I'm fairly content . I've at last got [ I think ] what he wanted me to get though I can't open up to f 2.8. Things can only get better from now

That is the test your tutor should have given you in the first place, its quite a common excercise in photography courses.

I would be interested to know how many students have a DSLR as the tutor should be savvy enough to realise that unless his students are wealthy then very few of them (if any) will own an f2.8 lens

Of the 13 there last week I could see at least 8 were DSLRs , 2 had not brought cameras , 1 brought a Fuji which was fairly small , had the look of a DSLR but I felt it was more like our old Fuji S5000 [ bridge ? ] - the others I couldn't see. We never even saw our tutor's camera - though he had been using it just before we arrived. OH and one had both DSLR, though that wasn't seen till we were supposed to download a picture onto the rather elderly PCs [ and of course being a MacHead I had no idea how to do that either ] and a P&S which was the one she was actually using .

One older guy [ yes, I think older than me ] is switching from film to digital so at least he has a good grasp of technicalities to start with.

I always say that get the basics of photography and go and take 10 000 shots of anything, diff settings and playing around with your camera. Getting use to your camera is the most important thing! Cause once your use to it your photos will improve!

OK - just realised something - the technoidiot seems incapable of putting a pic on here so I've updated my website - and it's there on the page for my evening classes

Have you read through the instructions for posting pictures at the top of the Your Photos section?

Yes John - I did indeed and believe you me the technoidiot failed at the task

Since I'm concentrating on catching up with these other Class attendees [ who are supposed to have covered this part of the course last term ] I'm letting putting pics [ or rather solving how to put on pics ] rest till I'm more confident in what I'm doing - I want to be understanding what I'm doing and using full manual control by the end of the 10 week course.

I think the Rhododendron pic on your website probably shows what your coarse tutor is looking for. The foreground leaf that is furthest from the lens is nicely out of focus. If you had a 1:2.8 lens the leaf would have appeared even more out of focus.

So now you know what is meant by depth of field (DOF) and how it can be used to good advantage. I'd guess that the images you took at smaller apertures (bigger f number) don't look anywhere near as interesting.

Well done.

The other 3 from that series of 4 are not bad pics - but they didn't produce what he wanted , it was very interesting seeing how the focus was different . I grabbed that one first - didn't even look at it on the screen , and hastily took 3 more at different Fstops.

This week should be interesting - If he looks at the EXIF data for it - he'll realise I have not actually obeyed the instructions - but I got the result

And I got it thanks to the help I got here

Took another pair of pics to compare shooting at different apertures with the same subject. First was using a focal length of 18 and f3.5 , then I swapped to 55 and used f5.6 . Actual distance was the same . Chalk and cheese ! A valuable lesson learnt.

The class was mainly discussing last week's challenge - and one person failed it [ not identified ] and doing some non-destructive editing in Photoshop

This weeks challenge - movement - either using sports setting or shutter priority . It's up to us how we do it and we have to be able to say why we did what we did .

This could really be interesting - scratching me head at present - I know a lovely waterfall which will really be full at present, and positively gushing down - but it's a 50 mile round trip


Hmmmmm - movement

How about the weir in Pollok Estate?