From our friends over at ChurchSpin. A good reference for the latest tech news.

CAMERA LENS 101 – APERTURE from Church Creatives on Vimeo.

The Aperture of a lens refers to the amount of light the lens can let in
The more open the aperture the more light that comes in
The more open the aperture the smaller the f-stop #
A smaller aperture means that things can be in focus over a wide distance
The Lower the fstop the larger the aperture the narrower the DOF
Slower lenses create more photo blurring and lens diffraction

So the higher the fstop the smaller the aperture size the slower
the shutter speed and the wider the DOF

I am sick this week so I decided to write up the blog this week so you don’t have to
hear me hack. This week I wanted to get more in depth with the camera starting with
lenses. This first lens blog will be on focal length in the next few weeks I will talk
about zoom, aperture, shutter speed, and iso and how they all affect your lens. But for
now lets get to focal length.

The focal length of a lens determines what the angle of view is and how much
magnification is present in the picture. Wide angle lenses have small focal lengths,
while telephoto lenses have longer focal lengths.

Perspective will usually determine someone’s choice in focal length. Note how the subject
is relatively the same with drastic differences to the background. The camera would
have to be moved back and forth to get these same perspective sizes depending on
the size of the lens. The larger the mm the further back you need to go the smaller
the mm the closer to the subject you would need to be in order to get this perspective.

The table below helps provide an overview of what focal lengths are required to be
considered a wide angle or telephoto lens.

Lens Focal Lengths
Less than 21 mm Extreme Wide Angle
21-35 mm Wide Angle
35-70 mm Normal
70-135 mm Medium Telephoto
135-300+ mm Telephoto

Some other factors you may want to consider with lens focal length:
Telephoto lenses are more susceptible to camera shake. This is primarily because slight
movements are magnified with distance.
Wide angle lenses are more resistant to flare because they assume wide angle lenses would
more often include the sun in the shot.

SERGEI! from Church Creatives on Vimeo.

A few words on cinematography.

Typography 101 from Church Creatives on Vimeo.

Learning the basics of typography from our first guest speaker Stephen Cox! Stephen is a graphic designer at LifeChurch.tv and has made tons of great graphic work for the Church as a whole. Enjoy.