Basics of Photography

Understanding the Basics of Photography

With most cameras, except “point n shoots” you have three options that you can control:

1. Shutter speed
2. ISO
3. Aperture

Shutter Speed:

Fast - Medium - Slow

 

The above diagram illustrates how and what happens if you decrease or increase your shutter speed,

Shutter speed not only controls the light but also the motion of the object (blur or sharpness).  

The longer you leave the shutter open for, the more light lands on the film, resulting in a brighter image. Slow shutter speeds show motion and blur, while fast shutter speeds can “freeze” motion.

Camera shake:

One issue with shutter speed is that choosing a shutter speed that’s too slow can mean that your pictures lose their sharpness due to camera shake. It’s virtually impossible to hold the camera perfectly still while shooting your picture unless you use a tripod. At low shutter speeds, this movement can be seen on your images as a slight blurring which means that your pictures won’t be as sharp as you’d like. This effect is more noticeable when using zoom or macro lenses, and the longer the zoom, the more pronounced the camera shake will be. So to avoid camera shake, you need to use a high shutter speed.
The thumb rule is that you should use a shutter speed at least as fast as 1/the focal length of your lens. So if you are using a 200mm zoom lens, you should use a shutter speed of at least 1/200th of a second.

ISO

 

 

ISO ah!! this is where your sensor tweeks and peeks come in, The ISO of your film or sensor is a measure of how sensitive it is to light. “Normal” ISO, for taking shots outdoors on bright sunny days is 100. If you’re shooting indoors, or you’re shooting, say, sports and you want to use a high shutter speed, you may need to use a higher ISO (400 is common for sports photography). ISO goes in a doubling scale too: 50, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200.

If you are using a normal basic DSLR the iso range will be from 100 to 3200, in medium level DSLR it will go till 6400 to 12800, in pro models it may go till 25000 or even 100k and above.

The main draw back if you peek up your ISO is the noise levels will increase, what is the noise ?

 see the pic above when you compare the ISO levels from 80 to 1600, the pic with 80 is neat and clean but the 1600 one is bit noisier ( fine and small white dots or grains in the picture)

So may factors come in to play where if you are using small aperture like f5.6, F8, F11 and so on you will need to increase the ISO or decrease the shutter speed to avoid noisier picture.

 Aperture

 

 

 

2 2.8 4 5.6 8 11 16 22,  what are these ?


These numbers are called f-stops, and like the stops we saw before while looking at shutter speed, moving up or down a stop halves or doubles the light let into the camera. The aperture is the hole through which the light passes through to reach the sensor or film. You can actually control the diameter of this hole on your camera.

Remember F1.2 is bigger than the F3.5, lots of photographers get confused with this, Please get this in to your head.