Basic Intro to photography – Intro (I promise it is going to be EASY)

Jump to:

-Page 2- The Aperture

-Page 3- The Shutter (basic).

-Page 4- The Shutter (advanced).

-Page 5- Sensitivity! (ISO/ASA)

In order to take a picture the camera needs light to go through the lens and into the camera's Sensor (in digital cameras) or the Film (in....Film camera, that's right!).

Basically, when it is dark, we will need more light to go through. When the scene is bright we can use smaller amount of light to get a well exposed image.

There are 3 tools we use to determine and control how much light goes into the sensor/film

- Aperture

- Shutter Speed

- ASA/ISO (sensor/film sensitivity)

By controlling these 3 settings, I like to think you can improve 50% of your picture taking skill.
The rest is Composing the picture and controlling some other minor tools (White balance, Flash and so on – I'll talk about those in a future article)

This is not a short article (5 pages...) but it is simple to understand, goes over all the essential stuff and has a lot of pictures to better explain what I wrote.

Take a deep breath and stay with me, I’ll make sure you will not regret it.

The first thing the light meets is the Aperture.

Without complicating things too much, you may think of the aperture as the window allowing the light into the “room” (the sensor or the film).

The bigger the window is the bigger amount of light that travels into this “room”.

When we are photographing a dark scene, we will need a big window. When it is bright we will use a small one.

The aperture values are those “F” numbers you always see and never understand. F2.8, F4, F5.6 and F8 are among the most common ones.

The aperture also determines the depth of filed which is very cool and extremely useful tool – but I will explain it later on.

The lower the number is, (F2.8 is lower then F8), the BIGGER the “window” will be and the more light that will go through.
This is a “Big/Open aperture”. A high number is also called “Small/Closed aperture”

Then We have the Shutter Speed

Now let’s talk about the Shutter speed (keeping on with the “room window” example) this is what controls for how long the window will remain open so light can go in.

If we want to let the same amount of light into the room, once through a big windows and once through a smaller one, we will need to keep the smaller window open for longer period of time.

The shutter speed is the other strange figures you see next to the aperture values. The shutter values usually looks like this: 1/125, 1/60, 1, 1” and so. 1/125 is actually 1/125 of a second.
1 is 1 second and 1” is 1 minute.

The Shutter speed also has some benefits when controlled, but I'll talk about this later as well.

And finally we have the sensor/film sensitivity – ASA or ISO

The ASA values are used to determine how sensitive the film is. The more sensitive the film is- the less amount of light it needs to get the same result.
ISO is the term used for digital sensor. These values are usually 50,100,200,400,800 and so on. The higher the ISO is the more sensitive the film/sensor is.
We will need double exposure when using 200 ISO than we will when using 400 ISO.

As you can imagine also using different ISO will have different side effects. And yes – I'll explain it later on as well (it is only a few minutes away...)

Next Step(The aperture, the shutter speed the ISO and the connection between them all.)

So we have these 3 things we need to play with in order to get a good exposure.

I bet you want to know what a good exposure is….

Here are 3 images. Over exposed (too bright), Under exposed (too dark) and exposed correctly.

We can have all kind of combinations that will give the exact same result.

Open aperture + slow shutter speed + low ISO = closed aperture + slow shutter speed + high ISO.

Example:

F2.8+1/125+100ISO = F4+1/125+200ISO= F5.6+1/125+400ISO= F8+1/125+800ISO

We use a more sensitive film (100 ISO is less sensitive the 800 ISO) to compensate for the aperture closing down (F2.8 is bigger than F8)

Here are 4 pictures taken in different settings. Can you tell the Who is who?

The settings of these images are:

F8+1/800+100 ISO / F8+1/1600+200 ISO / F8+1/320+400 ISO / F8+1/3200+800 ISO

So now you must ask yourself – why should I care what combination to use, I'll let the camera figure it out..

Well, remember I wrote before about the side effects that the different settings will have.
This is where Iexplain it so pay attention – this is very, very important.
Without understanding this you might as well continue to use the automatic mode of your camera.
You'll never understand how come your pictures are never as good as the ones you see over the net...

Let’s see what are those cool side effects I was talking about earlier....

“Next – The Aperture (2)”