Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hi, I am doing a science fair experiment that uses a digital camera to measure skyglow. The camera I have does not go into some of the setting mentioned in the procedure of the experiment. For example, the lowest aperture is f/3.5 and this experiment asks for f/2.8. Also, the smallest image resolution is much larger than the example they give. Will this be a big problem, or will it be fine as long as the camera settings remain constant? Thank you so much!

Hi cfranb,

As you correctly point out, the most important thing is to control all of your variables except for exposure time. A smaller aperture may reduce the overall pixel brightness, but you should still be able to do the project. Likewise, the image resolution shouldn't be a big problem. But, you definitely need to be able to manually control the shutter speed/exposure time in order to do this project.