Hyperfocal Technique & Busting Focus Myths | A Morning at the Seaside | Filming Moving Subjects 

It's okay. We welcome all comments as it is good to have a debate (as long as we are right!).

Cracking episode as per guys, ignore the comments on people who know better. Where is their photography channel? Good to see you all this weekend. See you all soon, hopefully.

Hi PB FED, totally agree. Thank you Photography On Line for producing such a great professional programme (I dislike the word show, it is not a circus) It is probably the best of all the youtube content. Love the mythbusting and techie bits. The segment on lens compression a few months ago was great. I will recreate the experiment myself when I can find a 6 year old to help, as we know it only works when photographing a 6 year old :o)

I.S.O. is an acronym. Therefore it is perfectly correct to say each letter separately. It doesn't not come from the greek word for equal. Tell that to the International Organization of Standardization. PB KED I also tend to say EYESO but don't be that guy that thinks they know it all!

@@terrygoyan Hi Terry. Please check out the latest edition of P.O. at 18.30 minutes. My comment was not someone thinking they know it all, just a simple statement of fact. The last sentence was said tongue in cheek. I personally don't care whether it is pronounced I.S.O or Eyso.

The acronym ISO stands for “International Organization for Standardization”. However, camera ISO does not directly refer to the organization that creates various technology and product standards. Ever since two film standards called ASA and DIN were combined into ISO standards in 1974 (later revised for both film and digital photography), they were referred to as one word “ISO” from that point on. Although ISO initially defined only film sensitivity, it was later adopted by digital camera manufacturers with the purpose of maintaining similar brightness levels as film.

Hi Bangkok Photographer and Alien65. Thanks for your comments, which are all valid and correct. We asked "what does ISO stand for?" and then gave 4 answers - none of which were "International Organisation for Standardization", so this left only one as being the possible correct answer. We threw "Interntational Standards Organization" in there, as we knew that is what a vast majority of photographers think it stands for, but as you know, there is no such thing. Thanks for watching and for taking to the time to comment. All the best.

Back in the days of film, emulsions were produced to very strict ASA standards so that an ASA100 film should give the same results whether it was Kodak, Agfa, Basf or Fuji. The amount of silver halide used in the emulsion determined the film's sensitivity to light - the more silver used then the more sensitive the emulsion, but also the more 'grain' that could be seen. At the moment the shutter was opened, three things determined the exposure ie. aperture, shutter speed and the film ASA which was fixed unless 'pushed' in the development stage. Into the digital age and we have ISO. What many photographers are not aware of is that ISO is only applied after the exposure has been made - it is a kind of 'gain' control like those used in music mixers. The DXO labs have equipment that can actually measure ISO and have shown that its use in digital cameras is far from standard. The old standard of 100, 200, 400 etc. is only a guide as many cameras, even those belonging to the same manufacturer can vary from those markings as 100 ISO on a Nikon will not necessarily be the same as 100 ISO on a Canon. Ergo, if ISO was an acronym for International Organisation Standards then one would expect ISO ratings to be the same on every digital camera which sadly they are not. Please check out DXO Labs information on ISO for various cameras.

@@PhotographyOnline Correct, we don't have "International Organisation for Standardization" anymore, as it changed to ANSI (American National Standards Institute).

Agreed. I've always understood ASA to be American Standards Association which morphed into International Standardisation Organisation. Certainly nothing to do with Greek!

Thank you very much!

Thanks David - we’ll let her know she has a job!

Thanks for watching.

Cheers Charles. Great to hear you appreciate it.

Have fun Ted!

thanks Peter.

@@PhotographyOnline I should add that the entire team are a joy to watch every episode with terrific varied content Cheers ~ Peter

Our pleasure!

Thanks TJ

Nice people? Even Harry?!! Thanks Francis. All the best.

Thanks David. Glad you enjoyed another one. We're back into our bi-weekly schedule now, so not long to wait for the next fix!

I also wish I could get to the British Isles for one of their workshops. The hyperfocal techniques Markus teaches are very enlightening.

Cheers Colin

Glad to hear it!

Great to hear Trev. All the best

Thanks James.

Glad you enjoyed it!

Thanks for sharing!!

You are welcome. Thanks for watching

Cheers Steven. Glad to hear it was helpful.

Your wish will be granted Lynn! Thanks for watching

Great to hear!

Glad you enjoyed it

Glad you enjoyed it, but please make sure you address your terrible attendence record!

@@PhotographyOnline it's the wife's fault making me Decorate. 😭

@@craigmaisfield3247 have you heard of something called divorce?

@@PhotographyOnline 🤣🤣 sorry guys but I have please her sometimes. 😜

He's just growing it while he can! Thanks for watching again.

Thanks for sharing!

Also if your macro photographer, there is another benefit. Sure you can get everything in focus (sometimes) at f/8 or f/11 but distracting background could also show up. Doing a 5-8 focus stack, the DoF will fall off quicker at f/4 and f/5.6 and you get more pleasing bokeh.

@@RobShootPhotos Agreed. I have even done a macro focus stack at f/2.8 to get dreamy bokeh/background behind what I wanted in focus.

Thanks for watching Philip. All the best

Cheers Stefan and thanks for your support.

Thanks for your input Jay. We're sure your hair isn't that grey!

Actually it is (was) absolutely possible, if you had a lab!

Sorry Jeffrey but you are mistaken about ISO. You are correct that it replaced ASA but there is no such thing as International Standards Organisation. It is the International Organisation for Standardization and they chose thier name from the Greek work Isos. If you still don’t believe us, check out the ISO website.

Great viewing!

Robert. Never ever use Wikipedia for your facts (unless you want to be wrong!). You can read the truth here on the ISO website - www.iso.org/about-us.html Thanks for watching. All the best.

@@PhotographyOnline ISO is the sensitivity scale standardized by the International Organization for Standardization and they have adopted ISO as the short form of their name. It's true the three letters do not represent the initial letters for the organization's name (which would be different in different languages) and they have chosen to derive their short name from the Greek for Equal, but ISO certainly does represent the International Organization for Standardization and it's important that photographers are aware of that otherwise the numbers on their camera dials could be arbitrary, with different cameras using different scales.

@@JoeyMudflats Richard - at no point did we say that ISO is not the International Organisation for Standardization”. We asked what ISO stood for, because most people pronounce it incorrectly. Hope this helps

@@PhotographyOnline Hmmm. Similarly, many people talk about Canon's autofocus EOS camera range as EE-OH-ESS rather than EE-OSS. It's a name, not a string of letters. And co-incidentally, Canon took the name from the Greek Goddess of the Dawn.

@@JoeyMudflats yes you are correct. Thanks for watching

Glad you enjoyed it

Glad you enjoyed

Glad you enjoyed it

Hi Stewart. The 5D iv is the best of the DSLR cameras for wildlife (excluding the 1Dx III). Hope this helps. All the best.

Thanks Eugene.

We forgive you Jeff

Hi. The aperture decision is simply down to the unique conditions within each scene. The Aperture wasn’t part of the question but we included it in case it was useful. It will come with experience, so keep practicing as much as you can with your camera and try to learn from the results. Thanks for the purchase of the beanie - glad to hear it can stand up to 80mph winds (although we already knew that!)😆

I thought perhaps there was an additional calculation that I had missed. Many thanks! 👍🏻

Hi Robert. For the photo of the boats on the loch and the castle, the sweet spot was used. For the astro shot, a wide aperture was used so as to avoid a super high ISO. For the landscape shot, a small aperture was used to gain more depth of field as there was foreground in that one. Does that make sense?

Thank god we’re not him then!

Depends on the circumstances

Hi Andrew. Difference between 10m and 50m = 40m. 1/3rd of 40 = 13. 10m plus 13 = 23m. Hope that makes sense

@@PhotographyOnline OK, but clearly maths isn't my strong suite, or I'm not getting it as 23m isn't 1/3 of the distance is between 10m and 50m it? Its 1/3 plus 10m, so is the calculation then; 1/3rd plus your nearest subject you want in focus distance?

@@andrewmactier5215 Hi Andrew. The 10 meters was beginning from the camera sensor and extends outwards too 10 meters to get to 10 mts. Once you understand this all the "maths" work out. 50 - 10 = 40, 40/3 =13 (ish) add the 10 mts to the 13 mts you get 23 mts. Thats where you should focus for this focal length. Hope this helps.

Hi John. They work in the same way, but we will do a feature on them at some point because you're not the first person to ask. Thanks for watching.

Hi Andy. Thanks for the questions but I’ve covered all these in our feature on infinity. As it’s long winded to explain, the easiest thing is to watch our show which has Buzz Lightyear on the thumbnail and you’ll have all the info you require. Thanks for watching.

Thanks very much Vijay. All the best

Hi. We would never clone out such objects. The red flag was intentionally included as it added to the story of the shot. Without such elements, photos can easily become sterile. Obviously this down to personal opinion, so you may disagree. That’s what makes photography interesting - there’s always differing views.

Hi Scott. You need to remember that only objects on your plane of focus will ever be truly sharp, so it's a dangerous game to start focusing away from your subject, even if your depth of field will include it. If you enlarge the image enough, sooner or later it will become apparent that your subject is not sharp. So if your subject is at infinity and you have little of importance in front of it, then always focus on infinity and don't worry about the wasted DOF behind it. Only focus in front of your subject if you want to maximise sharpness on the foreground too. With regards to the infinity threshold being equal to your focal length in mm, this is just our own rule of thumb based on our own field tests. Just like DOF, this is dependent on aperture, image reproduction size and viewing distance, so it is only a rule of thumb intended to assist judgement rather than be a scientific equation. Hope this helps. Thanks for watching.

@@PhotographyOnline I don't use hyperfocal distance. The point of my comment was related to the concept of hyperfocal distance. It would seem your description does not match my understanding of the principles behind it.

@@PhotographyOnline Oh, and thanks for the details on the infinity threshold. Good to know that even without supporting math, it has been proven in the field! Great channel you guys are building!

It represents that, but doesn’t stand for that, otherwise it would be IOS.

Cheers Edmond

Not sure what that means Maurice?

@@PhotographyOnline if you swap his word 'focus' for "sharpness", his statement makes more sense, i.e. the point at which diffraction impacts acceptable sharpness. F/4 seems a little low in my opinion, but perhaps M4/3 has that issue? For my Fuji XT-5, aficionados tend to place diffraction limits in the f/7.1 to f/8 range.

Thanks as always for watching Ian.

Wouldn't miss it

All would be correct

Thanks for watching and for sharing your views.

Hi Robert. You seem to have misinterpreted the question. We asked “what does ISO stand for?”, but you seem to be asking what it represents - two totally different questions. You are correct that ISO represents the International Organization for Standardization” but if you go to their website and read how they chose their name, you will see that ISO is an abbreviation for Isos - the Greek word for equal. The purpose of the question was to make people realise that it should not be pronounced “eye ess oh” but “eye so”, or if you want to be really correct… “eee-so”. Thanks for watching.

Hi Alex. That’s just the name that the international Organisation for Standardisation chose. So ISO doesn’t mean “equal”, but they decided on their name because of their initials and the Greek word Isos.

Then it would be IOS! You can read how they chose their name on the “about” page on the ISO website

We couldn't possibly reveal that sort of information!!!

@@PhotographyOnline bet its Harry !!!!

We use Premier Pro but there are many other packages out there which are just as capable. We have no experience in how these compare so cannot say which ones are best. Premier Pro is great when it isn’t crashing!

Don’t give her ideas!

@@PhotographyOnline 🤣🤣😁🤣🤣🤔🤔🤔🤣🤣🤣🤣

Hi Andrew. It is difficult to answer this problem without first hand experience in it, and we don't need to wear glasses, so it's really not something we can make any good suggestions for. I would imagine that you should set your diopter so that the viewfinder looks sharp when using your distant glasses, as these are what you need to look at the scene. Then you'll need to change to your reading glasses to look at the screen of the camera, but this doesn't interfere with the viewfinder diopter.

@@PhotographyOnline thanks for your time and assistance with my question.kind regards

Our pleasure Pete!

Thanks!

You mean the quiz question? If so - please read here... www.iso.org/about-us.html

Surely it means “ international standards organisation “?

There’s no such thing!

I think the answer is both. International Organisation for Standards (IOS) but their web site is ISO, International Standards Organisation. The web site goes onto say they decided on ISO to avoid confusion in translation, so ISO fitted in with the Greek ISOS, meaning equal. i.e 1 litre of water in UK would be the same as 1 litre of water in Jamaica.

@@PhotographyOnline No, but there is the International Organization for Standardization which is of course what @Donald Goldney was referring to. I'm not very happy with the robust way in which you've been defending your quiz answer. While it's true that ISO is not the initials of the organization, it is the name they've chosen for themselves. The derivation from the first three letters of the Greek word for Equal isn't really the point. ISO 100 is 100 on the sensitivity scale standardized by ISO, the International Organization for Standardization. That's what it means in context. ISO also administer many other standards.

You mean the part where he specifically said "I'm not knocking those who focus stack"?!! What more do you want him to say to avoid offending you?

@@PhotographyOnline I truly wasn't offended because I'm on my own journey, and I'm right where I should be. To be clear though, "I'm not knocking those who focus stack" was immediately followed by, "however, I don't do photography so I can sit in front a of a computer all day...if you enjoy editing more...you might like long winded post production." The word "however", in this context, usually means that I don't really believe the words that I just said and this is what I really think. Anyhow, I did learn something which was the point of watching the video. - Take care

No, because we never said there was such a thing. Nice try though!

They are linked, so it's not a problem.

Agree Geoff, which is why we thought it would be useful to cover it on the show. Thanks for watching

Sorry Marc. We don't hike up the shipping charges - they are what they are - out of our control. Where are you based?

@@PhotographyOnline a small hill station in Northeast India.

Good to know Rob. Thanks for watching

Cheers Adam. No need to feel bad - we're happy to help.

We know! But some people actually think this helps!

I know. A pretty famous blog tog that recommended this, !!

Wrong!

The debate is still raging (see John Klopper's comment above) but the majority are agreeing with you that answer 'B' is correct.

Hi Kill Pop. All tables and lens markings are intended for guidance only. The problem with many modern day digital shooters is that they assume such figures give an assurance of sharpness, and they then wonder what they are doing wrong. The purpose of this feature was to highlight this issue and try to encourage everyone to set their own standards and then work out how to achieve them by using their head instead of an app. Hope that makes sense. Thanks for watching.

@@PhotographyOnline I did not mean instead of an app. 8:30 has a list of Considerations and some of those exactly match Lens Tables like closest point , furthest point, as well as focus distance and f stop to achieve the desired outcome. Long time since I've seen them so all IIRC, but if there is no way to preview or review best guess is those guides (or app?) IMO as they are quite specific in reinforcing anything you might go with with your head. You head could even get it wrong, those guides, based on optical physics, shouldn't.

There’s no such thing as International Standards Organisation Jordan. Read the “it’s all in the name” section here - www.iso.org/about-us.html

Correct

Sorry John but you’re wrong. Try looking at the ISO website rather than Google (which is not a reliable source of reference).

Hi Scott. ISO for digital is the same as for film, but ISO doesn't stand for International Organization for Standardization, otherwise it would be IOS! You can read about it here - www.iso.org/about-us.html

@@scottdimond6763 I have to say I agree, I've just Googled a number of different digital imaging websites and the following is typical of the definition of ISO "The acronym ISO itself is a reference to the International Organization for Standardization. However this organization does far more than define camera sensitivities, it promotes universal standards for measurements of all different types, on an international level. Fun fact: Instead of calling themselves the IOS, the title "ISO" is in reference to isos, (ίσος) which means "equal". Previously, film sensitivity was also measured a similar way by another organization, the ASA or American Standards Association. This has been superseded by ISO in modern times, but the measurement itself and the scale remain effectively the same."

Back in the film days it was ASA for American Standard Association and then there was International Standards Organization.

@@PhotographyOnline From this website, it seems that the International Standards Organisation intended for ISO to represent their name in the same way as ASA stood for American Standards Authority but thought that non-English speaking countries would try to translate this into their own language and avoided this by telling them that ISO was a Greek word rather than an acronym. If the intention was not to name ISO after themselves I'm sure they could have come up with a better name than calling it after three quarters of the Greek word for "equal".