Using Aperture, ISO, and Shutter Speed

I bet you've looked at a photographer's picture before and thought "What are they doing that I'm not?" Well, most photographers don't take a compact camera outside and snap a photograph of clouds on auto and it just automatically looks amazing. Real photographers who take good quality photographs create them by using all types of special settings and manipulations that are created by their cameras, the lenses they use, and most importantly light. To learn how to take a real good photograph you must first learn how to use your camera's manual setting. Taking a manual photograph requires you to know how to use Aperture, ISO, and shutter speed. These three things depend on each other and work together to create good exposure. A camera is basically a light sensitive box, so when you take a photograph your camera lets light in and that light is written onto film or a digital sensor and that creates your photograph. The amount of light that you allow on your digital sensor determines how your photograph will turn out. Your camera has a small wall inside of it, called a shutter. This wall remains in front of your digital sensor until you press the shutter release button and your camera takes a photograph. When you take a photo you always hear your camera click, this click is how long it takes that shutter wall to move from in front of your sensor, collect all the light needed for a photograph, and move back in front of your sensor. You can change the amount of light that is in your photograph and how fast the photograph is taken by changing your shutter speed. Your shutter is shown on your camera screen by using measurements of time such as 1/100 s or 1/4 s. Sometimes you need your shutter speed to be really fast, like if your taking a picture of a moving ball and your shutter speed is 1/160 s. But, then you may find that your picture is really dark. To even out the amount of light that is taken from your photograph by your fast shutter, you would change your aperture setting. An aperture is a small circle inside your camera lens that determines the amount of light that enters your camera. Your aperture can be bigger which allows more light in, or smaller which allows less light. Your aperture is shown on your screen as numbers called F-stops. Now F-stops are a bit backwards, and they can be pretty comfusing. For example, if you want more light then you would want your aperture ring to be larger, but your F-stop would become smaller, like an f/5.6 or F/2.8. If you have a really long shutter speed like 1/4 s then you would have a small aperture ring which is represented by a large F-stop. The ISO also changes how much light you have. A little ISO such as 200 allows less grainy dots (film grain) and less light, while a large ISO such as 3200 brings in a lot of light but also makes your photograph look blurry. When you use all three of these together correctly, you should be able to take a photograph that looks exactly like the one your camera took on auto, and your probably thinking "Why do all this work when I can just have the camera do it for me?" Well, using your camera on manual will allow you to have more creative ablilty with your camera. I will be explaining how to use shutter, ISO, and aperture to achieve creative photographs in my next few blogs.