What are the big 3? Shutter speed, aperture and ISO. Once you understand and practice how these three work together you will be in control of your camera and can create wonderful images in all kinds of conditions. It’s only 3 things, so learn the way they interact and then practice. I am not going to give you the historical or scientific explanations. If you want to know that search the terms and you will find a lot written. I’m going to tell you how to use them.
Balance ISO, shutter speed, and aperture. They all work together to control LIGHT. That’s photography LIGHT.
ISO
The “normal” range of ISO is 200 to 1600. Ask yourself How much light is there? If you are shooting outside with bright sunlight or inside with really bright lights you will use a lower ISO 200 – 400. If you are shooting at night time without flash you will have to increase the ISO to a higher number to be able to record the light on the camera’s sensor 1600 – 6400. Your camera may not go that high. Just remember the darker the situation the bigger the ISO. But also remember ISO numbers of of 3200 or 6400 will have lots of “digital noise”. And if you are using flash that is a very bright light so you ISO can be lower.
Shutter speed
When you press that button on your camera you are engaging the shutter. You know that click. That’s the shutter. Now, it’s called shutter SPEED because if the shutter opens and closes real fast less light enters the camera. If is opens real slow more light enters. It’s like a door. If you are in a dark room and someone opens the door real fast or real slow the amount of light that enters the room is more or less. The dark room is the camera the door is the shutter. There a numbers on you camera from a low from around one to thousands. It varies by camera.
Rule of thumb:
Use LOW numbers, slow shutter speed, with LOW light.
Use HIGH numbers, fast shutter speed, with HIGH light.
Question: If you are photographing something moving very fast do you want a fast or slow shutter? Answer: fast.
Aperture
The aperture is like the iris of your eye. It opens and closes to let light in. Think of looking at peoples eyes in these lightening conditions. If you change lenses on your camera the aperture is in the lens. However if you have a point and shoot you have just one lens and that is where the aperture sits. Now there are strange numbers with aperture, also known as f stop. 2.8, 3.2, 3.5, 4, 4.5 etc. There is a reason for this look it up if you want. We are just talking about using it.
LOW numbers for LOW light. But with the aperture we are doing something else. Actually this is where lots of creativity comes into play. Remember this is the lens. And just like the eye it can focus on different things. So aperture is the relationship between the fore ground and the back ground too. If you want everything to be in focus like a landscape, use a big number like 8 – 10. However if you want a clear subject with a fuzzy back ground, like say a flower, use the lowest number possible on your camera.
This is just a basic over view. The mastery and the fun comes from using them together. I will comment on this in another blog. But you can just play around.
But take notes. Put your camera on manual. Start with an ISO of 100, shutter speed of 100, aperture of 3.5. Go outside with the sun at your back, find a subject and take a photo of it. Now just keep increasing the aperture number and see what happens. Then go back to the original setting and this time keep changing the ISO number, do the same process with the shutter speed. Lots of these photos will look terrible. You will start to understand what’s going on by the errors. Keep noting what that little dial in your camera says. The camera will tell you if you setting are correct for those lightening conditions. but you can get that little needle to be right in the center, correct settin, by varying the ISO, shutter and aperture individually. You are now understanding how to control your camera. And if you force yourself to keep photographing in manual you will never want to shoot automatic again. Have fun.
