VIDEO 101

The Lens

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Lesson Outline
Introduction
Zoom Lenses
Focal Length
Telephoto
Wide Angle
Aperture
Focus & Zoom
Depth of Field


Lens > Lens controls > Aperture

Many camcorders use numbers to describe the size of the aperture. These numbers are called f-stops.

It might make sense to number the f-stops 1,2,3,4 etc., but that's not how it works. Instead, the official f-stop numbers don't seem to make any logical sense--and they probably aren't 100 people in the world who can explain WHY we use this collection of numbers. Nonetheless, here they are:

2, 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22

You DO need to know that small numbers (2, 2.8 etc) mean big lens openings and big numbers (16,22) mean small openings. Crazy, huh?


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Michael Trinklein