Stopping Down Question

[dicklaxt]

I read a lot and I mean a lot about many facets of life so I oft times get my facts or retention of same mixed up.In the camera world I think I have read somewhere,sometime that the term "Stopping Down" was a physical movement by the camera operator if you will,of pushing or pulling a lever mounted on the lens ring to change the aperture setting.The camera lens ring would have a series of dedents that the spring loaded lever would fall into when moving around the lens perimeter,each of these dedents was assigned an aperture value.If that is true, then couldn't the term "Stopping Down" mean going up or down with the f/ value,can any of you experienced folks confirm any of this?

dick

[pauld]

I read a lot and I mean a lot about many facets of life so I oft times get my facts or retention of same mixed up.In the camera world I think I have read somewhere,sometime that the term "Stopping Down" was a physical movement by the camera operator if you will,of pushing or pulling a lever mounted on the lens ring to change the aperture setting.The camera lens ring would have a series of dedents that the spring loaded lever would fall into when moving around the lens perimeter,each of these dedents was assigned an aperture value.If that is true, then couldn't the term "Stopping Down" mean going up or down with the f/ value,can any of you experienced folks confirm any of this?

dick

Hi,

I use MF lenses on my 5D all the time. (with adapters)
Olympus, Nikkor Ais, P6, M42, contax, you name it.

So I do stop down metering. Cam on "M", focus wide open, then stop down to desired aperture to set shutter speed, take pic. That's all.

Paul.

Paul.

[coffee]

I read a lot and I mean a lot about many facets of life so I oft times get my facts or retention of same mixed up.In the camera world I think I have read somewhere,sometime that the term "Stopping Down" was a physical movement by the camera operator if you will,of pushing or pulling a lever mounted on the lens ring to change the aperture setting.The camera lens ring would have a series of dedents that the spring loaded lever would fall into when moving around the lens perimeter,each of these dedents was assigned an aperture value.If that is true, then couldn't the term "Stopping Down" mean going up or down with the f/ value,can any of you experienced folks confirm any of this?

dick

No. Stopping down means reducing the size of the aperture.

[dicklaxt]

What I meant was, the lever on the earlier cameras was used exclusively to change the f/ either up or down manually and the spring loaded mechanism made it fall into a dedent and stop and that was where the original saying "stop down" came from meaning it had stopped whether it was moving up or down,,,,,so then why couldn't you say stopup as well as stopdown depending on which way the aperture was moving?

I guess the word down is key here,

Reminds me of an elixer that was on the market many year ago probably before most of you were even born. They didn't know what to name it so they called it Hadacol becauase they "had to call" it something.

Thus it was named "Hadacol"

[pauld]

Hi,

Stop UP has no use.

As I said, you have to focus first. You must do that with as much light as possible in the viewfinder. That is at max aperture.
Then you STOP DOWN = reduce aperture to the desired F-stop.

In a way, modern cams do the same. They close the blades only when the shutter is pressed.

PS the lever (=ring) is on the lens, not on the cam.

Paul

[jerryph]

Stopping down means to reduce the physical size of the aperture. Because the "F/?" represents a mathematical division... so to calculate a smaller aperture means that the division factor used is greater, the numerical values go UP when your stop DOWN... lol

The explanation of what aperture is and how it is calculated has been repeated several times here and on the web, so I am not going to repeat it here again. :)

Also the location of where the aperture can be adjusted *can* be on the camera *or* the lens.

On an older film camera, you control the aperture via the aperture ring on the lens. On modern digital SLR cameras, you control the aperture via on camera settings... and in the case of Nikon cameras, if the lens has an aperture ring, you set it to it's highest setting and lock it there, else it will give you an error code in the LCD display (the famous EE error code). Most modern digital camera lenses do not even have aperture rings anymore!