ArtistFirst
Second Officer
Flight distance : 986716 ft
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I know this is older than dirt this post but its been true forever so while you are teaching, I thought I would help your lesson out a little.
Aperture, Iris, or even "hole where light gets in the camera" are interchangeable.
The benefit of having a small aperture or I should say a "high level aperture stop" such as 22 (which is a pinhole) will get you the greatest detail but you also need to hold the shutter open for longer so that you can get enough light for an image. Of course you can also boost ISO but remember that you want to get the best picture you can while usually using the least amount of ISO as possible unless you are going for a specific (i.e. super contrasty look).
So the reason the consumer/prosumer/enthusiast DJI Phantom 3 is fixed at 2.8 is because that's about generally where you want to be for pretty much all of the settings that we do have control over. It's good for cinematic, it's closed enough for sharpness with a quick shutter speed and low ISO. etc.
Also, the terminology (and the reason I am giving this, especially in an old thread but I read this and saw a couple things I wanted to add) is important.
If you STEP UP or "STEP UP YOUR APERTURE" or "GO UP ONE STOP" and terms like these, it means you go to the next f-stop and IT IS NOT ARBITRARY. It is a mathematical equation and it is the same as every camera you will use The amount you can open and close the aperture depends on the camera (for example we get zero range but we are at 2.8 so lets use that as a barometer).
If you go up a stop from 2.8, you will be at an f-stop of f/2.0 (wider), what you will be doing is letting in EXACTLY 2x the amount of light as 2.8, then if you went down another stop you would be a f/1.4 you would be doubling the amount of light again, then f/1.0 which is pretty much all the way open and then 0 which would be open. Of course this is theoretical because in reality it's infinite. You would never actually close it if you use ratios and fractions of the stops which some really expensive cameras allow you to do. If you look up the math on f-stops, I don't care how smart you are, you will get your mind blown.
Just remember this rule. Stepping up (or opening up the iris, otherwise called aperture) is by going down, 2.8/2.0/1.4/1 and then going the other way, logically, if we are DOUBLING the light coming in by going lower in number buy open in reality, the other way going from f/2.8 to f/4.0 is CLOSING the aperture (iris) and letting half the light in which gives you better detail but you must figure out a way to make up for the missing light which is up to you as an artist to do. With a flying machine, you would be hard pressed to get a picture at f/22.
From the 2.8 of the Phantom, the next stop closing the iris would be f/4 (cutting the light in half), the f/5.6 (halved), f/8, f/11, f/16, f/22.
And there you have it. A very detailed explanation what an f-stop really is and what it means to you. 2.8 is a very nice average but I have still cameras that cost me LITERALLY 3x more than the whole Phantom (Maybe even more).
Put it this way, I've had video cams hooked up to my S1000 that if it fell from the sky my first words would be "How is the camera".
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