Chapter Three Lenses and Filters

Controlling the Image

Having been introduced to the fundamentals of how lenses create images, we can now explore the ways that the controls on a camera lens allow you to alter the image. The principal control is the aperture (commonly referred to as f-number). The aperture adjusts how much light is let in, how much of the scene is in focus, and how sharp the areas in focus actually are. It is very important in image making to know when and how to create total sharpness, or to localize image detail.

Photographic Lenses

As we have seen, a simple glass lens creates a higher quality image (in terms of sharpness) than ...

Get Langford's Basic Photography, 10th Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.