What the F-Stop is This?

I didn't take photography class in high school, and it was only when I started to fetishize a more serious camera that I bothered to learn how to use one.

I have a 4 megapixel Canon Powershot, a perfect little pocket camera. I have it with me all the time, which lets me catch the occasional juking Lady Liberty or spectacular fire. I've even been able to blow a couple of the best shots I've taken of the girls to 11 x 14 on a DocuColor.



Before I got fired from my job five days before Christmas, I had been thinking that saving up for a Pentax K-10 was a great idea. It's an awesome camera, and it does make it's own gravy, but it's also not on the menu for someone adjusting to a pay cut and making a longish commute in an '88 Buick held together by duct tape and chewing gum.

But in the process of worshiping the dSLRs, I actually read the manual for my camera. Well, I had to go online and download the PDF, no way I was ever going to find my actual manual. I never knew what they were for.



So anyway, the whole F-stop thing and exposure time was something new to me. I learned why I fight to catch action in low light and across distance. And I learned how you get those cool effects like the blurred flow of a waterfall.



Like this. Here's the honyocks in front of the waterfall in the Westin lobby. And here's what an F2.6 looks like versus an F8 (letting the camera pick the exposure time, I'm not sure what shutterspeeds these were, but the F8, where you're letting the least amount of light possible in, the click was long enough you could wonder if you had the button down).