3 Main Camera Settings
In this article we will explore the 3 main camera settings known as the exposure triangle being the shutter speed, ISO, aperture and understand how to correctly apply them to achieve rewarding photos.
Turning on the camera for the first time and having to decipher the camera settings can be quite a daunting task, yet as the daunt fades away through knowledge and understanding photography begins to form into a beautiful experience. These crucial settings will determine the quality of your photos much like the attributes of the human eye which impacts eye sight quality, let's see how it all works.
Shutter Speed
Shutter Speed
The shutter speed setting is the most exciting for creative shots, it's also the easiest to explain using an eye analogy.
Think of the shutter speed as your eye quickly opening and closing, then computing what you saw into an image. The quicker the opening and closing is done the less opportunity the objects in front of have to move. Where if the person kept their eyes open for a second and a lion in front of them is moving to the right by 2 meters, the single image of the lion will be blurred over the area it covered within that second. The best way to overcome this is to increase the shutter speed to generally around 1/400 or higher as this will create less of an opportunity for the lion to move while the shutter is open.
The second type of movement to contribute to blurry photos is camera shake, this is the movement caused from subtle swaying when handholding a camera. The bonus tip at the end will further discuss the solution to this.
The shutter speed can be a powerful tool with night photography when combined with its perfect partner, the tripod. Although night photography offers alluring lights that brings a city skyline to life, the ambient light is low which doesn't favour clear and sharp photos. A way to solve this problem is to decrease the shutter speed where it remains open for a few seconds or up to 30 seconds on certain occasions. A tripod will be necessary to stablise the camera and remove the possibility of camera shake. Whereby if your subject is still like a tall building this will result in a sharp photo because the building is stagnant, however if a moving car is the subject then it will result in a blurred subject, however this may materialise into a creative shot know as light trail photography.
ISO
ISO
ISO
Generally speaking lighter eye colours are more sensitive to light, the ISO setting works similar in the sense when the setting is increase it becomes more sensitive to light and will help to produce brighter pictures in low light situations. Ideally you want the ISO as low as possible which is an ISO of 50 or 100 in most cameras. A lower ISO will lead to clearer photos, and a higher ISO will cause graininess in the photo.
As the shutter momentarily opens to allow light to hit the sensor, this information on how the light hits the sensor is ultimately taken and converted into a digital file. in the process of creating a digital file the electrical signal is amplified with higher ISO settings.
The ISO should be kept as low as possible, yet don't be afraid to use it for it can be your saving grace in creating a high quality shot in that rare moment.
Think of ISO as different eye colours that effects the camera's sensor sensitivity to light. As the shutter opens light hits the sensor a higher ISO will allow the camera to see better in low light situations and produce a correct exposure, only increase the ISO when needed as a last resort, yet don't be afraid to use it for it can be your saving grace in creating a high quality shot in that rare moment.
Aperture
Aperture
The aperture setting is most complex setting in regards to its application in different scenarios, it's very similar to the pupil of an eye and effects the amount of light entering the camera.
The aperture is most known for effecting the depth of field or in other words blurring out the background. A shallow depth of field can create a nice dreamy look in a photo and make the subject really standout. On the contrary sometimes it may be beneficial to move away from a blurry background and have more of it in focus to take advantage on interesting background that brings character to the shot. An f stop of f/4 or lower will provide a nice shallow depth of field.
Aperture is a great way of allowing more light into the camera without having to increase the ISO which causes the photo to appear grainier. It's important to point out that depth of field is also effected by how far the subject is from the camera. Photographing a flower within arms reach will result in a blurry background regardless of the f stop number, and in astrophotography an f stop of f/2.8 is ideal as more light is required at night yet most of the photo will be focused due to the subject being far away. The human eye works in a similar way where if you're gazing at a sunset everything you see will be in focus, yet if you hold your iPhone close to your face the objects behind it will appear blurry.
Bonus Tip
The 4th camera setting needs to explanation due to its simplicity but has an effect on the previous 3 settings which is the focal length or zoom.
When shooting in manual mode the key in knowing what settings to select is applying the "double your shutter speed" rule according to your focal length. The more zoomed in you are the more camera shake will occur. For instance when shooting at 200mm the ideal shutter speed would be 1/400fps. This is great for relatively still subjects, when capturing the movements of an animal or a moving car, a shutter speed of 2x to 4x higher the focal length may be required depending on how fast the subject is moving.
With newly released cameras that have IBIS (in built image stabilisation) meaning the technology in the camera partly offsets camera shake leading to sharper photos, it is possible to set your shutter to slightly below 1/400 in reference to the example above. This can prove handy in low light conditions where you would want to lower the shutter speed to compensate for the lack of light. In the scenario where it's a "shot of a lifetime" and the subject is still it may be safer sticking to doubling the shutter speed.
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