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Tutorial: Basics

In this article I’ll be explaining just the basics of how ISO, aperture, and shutter speed works. Knowing how your camera handles light will give you much more control over how you take your photos.

ISO

ISO is a way of measuring the sensitivity of film to light. The lower the ISO number, the less sensitive. Although it applies to film, the same concept applies to digital cameras. At ISO 800, the film is quite sensitive, and therefore does not require as much light as ISO 100 would need to take the same picture with similar exposure. 

The downside to using a larger ISO is the amount of noise (those little annoying pixels) the image will produce. While you may be able to get a faster shutter speed with a higher ISO, the image will have more noise.

No one wants that in their shots. Higher end cameras handle noise much better than the cheaper ones.

Since I like landscapes, I shoot at the lowest possible ISO, and use a tripod so that I can use the aperture and shutter speed that I need. Action shots usually require a higher ISO.

Aperture

The aperture is the opening of your lens that allows light to make it into the camera. The smaller the number, the more the opening increases. Here’s a good example from Wikipedia:

The larger the opening, the more light is allowed in. 

There are a few reasons why aperture matters. There is a technique that people use to blur the background while keeping the main subject in focus. Basically, the larger the aperture, for example f/2.8, the more the background will blur. The blurring is called ‘bokeh’. I’m still not sure how to pronounce it because it sounds funny every way I try. This is usually good for portraits, because you don’t want anything else in the background to distract you from your subject.

You may have come across a problem where you want multiple subjects to be in focus, but they are at different distances from the camera. In the previous paragraph, I said that a larger aperture would increase background blur. In this case, a smaller aperture (smaller opening, not number) will blur less and keep things more in focus. Also, apertures around 8.0 tend to be the sharpest your lens will shoot. As you can see, this can be very useful under certain circumstances such as landscapes. It’s a lot to take in and I have a writing skills of a four year old, so go experiment yourselves!

First tutorial: Shutter speed

A lot of people have been asking me for tips on how to take certain kinds of shots. I’ve decided to post up some free tutorials for everyone and Tumblr users. As I’m still an amateur, I may make some mistakes, so if there are any mistakes, feel free to point them out. Also, if you would like any requests on tutorials or specific questions about how I took a certain photo, just let me know!

So you want to play around with longer shutter speeds. The first thing you will need is a tripod. They usually go for pretty cheap if you’re looking at one that will hold your camera in place. Some photographers say it’s better to spend more money on a tripod than a camera, cause they can be incredibly important based on the kind of photography you want to shoot. I shot most of mine on a $50 one. Only until recently I went nuts and blew $400 on a carbon fiber one, but there is a huge noticeable difference between the two in terms of weight and stability.

One thing I always use is a remote shutter release cable. That way I can take the picture without pressing the button on my camera. It reduces small vibrations, especially if your tripod isn’t that sturdy. If you don’t have one or if you’re too lazy like I am sometimes, before shooting a long exposure, set your camera on a 2 second timer. Then, when you press the button to take the shot, it will wait 2 seconds, then capture the image, so the vibrations from pressing the button aren’t picked up.

Anyways, after you have a tripod and all that set up, you have to make sure that you don’t have much light in your photo, so that you can compensate the loss of light with a longer shutter speed. 



In that shot, I was in a shady area, so I could use a slightly longer shutter speed, somewhere around a second or two. I wanted even longer to further smooth out the water, so I increased the aperture to the max, which cuts a lot of light out. Therefore, it allowed me to increase the shutter speed to a full 5 seconds.

You don’t always need to blur for that long to show water movement. If water is moving fast, you only need a split second of a shot to show that in your photo. In that beach picture I used 1/5 of a second so the water wasn’t completely smoothed out. 

Or you could blur for more time. The tide was still coming in and out so 25 seconds made it seem like mist.

Here’s a 70 second shot. Of course, when I took it, it was much darker outside than the pictures makes it seem.



One of my favorite shots. I took this during the bright day, but I used a neutral density filter on my lens to cut out almost all the light. This let me take a 20 second shot in bright daylight.

Just go out, take shots, and be creative!