When you understand how your camera works and what different settings do to manipulate your shot, you can use it much more creatively. The 3 main settings Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO will vary the exposure of your shot. Each have different characteristics (pros and cons) when using them. Here is my explanation:
TRANSCRIPT
Exposure is the amount of light that is captured in your photo. Under exposed and the shot is too dark, over exposed and the bright areas become white. In both instances you are losing detail in your shot.
There are 3 main settings on your camera that you can control to determine the exposure of your shot. They are aperture, shutter speed and ISO.
Aperture refers to the size of a diaphragm that is in your lens and controls the amount of light that comes in at once. The bigger the hole the more light that comes in. It’s similar to the turning of this tap, the more I turn it, the bigger the hole, the more water can come through at one time.
The second setting is shutter speed, it’s how fast the shutter opens and closes. It’s going to represented by the time I leave the tap on, a short time, not much water or light, leave it open for longer, I get more more water or light come through.
The third setting is ISO, this refers to light sensitivity of your film or camera sensor. The higher the ISO the faster it fills the shot. It’s going to be represented by sand in this container.
Our goal is to achieve zero exposure in our shot, or in this case to fill this container up exactly to the brim. Less water will mean that it’s under exposed, water spilling over means that it’s over exposed.
So let’s see how these 3 variables, aperture, shutter and ISO can affect the exposure of our shot and the pros and cons to using each.
Here is a common setting for capturing a moment in our photo, a high shutter speed is
required and aperture set to a large size hole. Here it’s demonstrated by fast on and off of the tap and high rate of water coming through. What is happening is, with the aperture size the opening is large, more light comes in the light comes in fast, it’s kind of like the pressure of this water coming out is fast, and the water spills over and you lose detail. Using this creatively you get bokeh in your shot, where the background detail has not been completely captured.
Okay to compensate smaller aperture you want longer time that your shutter is open. The downside to this is that, if you are hand holding your camera it will not be steady. I’m exaggerating here but they can be lost in detail. Again you can use this artistically like this shot where the light of the cars are blurred, and see how the stationary objects stay clear.
The third setting is ISO the sand is your ISO setting the higher the ISO the more sand in your container. For illustration purposes it’s kind of like this. Since the sand takes up space, it means the water takes a shorter time to fill the container to gain base exposure. This allows you to adjust your shutter to be faster and aperture hole size smaller. The downside to high ISO is that like this sandy water your photo becomes grainy and you do not get that crystal clear shot. I’ll zoom in and you can see how it is in this shot.
As you can see it’s a bit of a balancing act when you do not have ideal conditions. Each have their draw backs at the same time they have their characteristics that you can use in an artistic manner. Now when you shoot in a priority mode the camera will help adjust the other settings, you just have to set up your exposure limit. Or if you want to shoot in Manual mode then you now know how to control your camera to get the shot you want.
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