Monthly Tips: Photography
This month I have been sharing different tips about photography, mainly how to control and work with a DSLR or SLR camera with the three basic pillars: aperture (also known as F-stop), shutter speed and ISO. If these sound foreign to you - don’t worry! In this article, I will dive into the differences and how you can combine them to get the look you are going for in all of your photos!
Let’s start with a quick review and definition of each of the three pillars:
Aperture: This is how open your lens is, it also controls your depth of field. It is controlled by you F-Stop setting on your camera.
Shutter Speed: This is how long the shutter will open to capture the image.
ISO: First, ISO stands for Internal Organization for Standardization, it controls how sensitive your camera is to light. If you are using film, it is also known as the film speed but it still measures how sensitive your film is to light.
Now, that all may sounds confusing because it is more technical. I am going to attempt to make it easier to understand and then provide examples!
The first thing I consider when I am setting up the three pillars is which one is the most important to achieve the look I want. For me, when shooting portraits my goal is to make sure my subject is the focus of the image so I want to make sure the back ground is creamy and blurred out (also known as the depth of field). This is controlled by the aperture/f-stop. This is the most important setting for me. I will set my f-stop low (f2.8 or lower), this means I have a shallow depth of field, creating a beautiful blur behind my subject. Now, working with this low of an f-stop means that the shutter is going to open really wide so a ton of light is going to flood the frame.
Once I have set my aperture/f-stop, next I want to set up my ISO. ISO controls how sensitive the camera is to light, so the lower I go the less sensitive to light my camera is and the higher I go the more sensitive to light my camera is. If I am in a bright light situation, I will set my ISO as low as 200 and if I am in a low light situation and I need more light in the frame, I will go up to around 800. With an f-stop at f2.8 or f2, I would probably stay around 200 or 400 since I am letting a lot of light in with my f-stop.
Now, I will set my shutter speed. With the settings I have set up so far (Aperture: f-2, ISO: 400) I will have a pretty fast shutter speed. I use my light meter to set my shutter speed. I will share another post about light metering so, for now, I will say to snap some photos and test to see what shutter speed you want to be at to achieve the look you are going for.
This is a ton of information, but remember, get out there and play with your camera! The more you shoot, the better you get! It takes practice and patience so don’t give up!
Now, here are a few examples labelled with my settings:
Aperture: F/1.4, ISO: 200, Shutter Speed: 1600
Aperture: F/1.8, ISO: 400, Shutter Speed: 1600
Aperture: F/2.2, ISO: 400, Shutter Speed: 800