There are three things that your camera does to expose an image,
I am going to explain them to you in the order I set them on my camera.
ISO~This goes back to old film speed for those of you old enough to remember film. Remember if you were going to take pictures outside you would 100 speed film and if you were indoors you would use 400 speed or higher. Well ISO on your digital camera is how sensitive the light gathering sensor will be. If your ISO is set to 100 you would be in very bright lighting conditions, If you were in a low light room your would set your ISO to 1000. OK so get your Camera manual or Natural Light for dummies :) and find the section on ISO and read it I am going to go fill my coffee cup {whistling} keep going I'll wait >>>>OK do you know how to set that on camera now....in the case of the sample image the ISO was set to 1600 seems a bit high. The thing about high ISO is that>>>> the higher the # the grainier the image. Now the better your camera the better it can handle the higher numbers. But I always try to keep the number as low as possible!!!SO in the sample image I think I would hang around 1000, but you will need to get as much light as you can open curtains, the front door...but turn off light bulbs they just make everything yellow and add very little light :)
OK the second thing I set on my Camera is my F-stop or aperture, I am going to call it Fstop, OK??
Fstop is a function of your lens....so with different lenses you have different options. Fstop is how closed or open the "pupil" of your lens is at a setting. So pick up your camera....yeah go get it :} take the lens off and look at the back of the lens, look in and see the little black flower inside that is the aperture that determines how much light will be let into the lens....make sense??? so if we set the camera to say F4.5 we are telling the lens to not open up as much and let less light in >>>>buuuut if we set it, to say F1.8, we are telling the lens to OPEN WAY UP and let in TONS of light!!! now all lens have a limit to how high or low their Fstop can go I have a 18-200mm lens that only goes down to F3.5 so this lens is best for outside or lighting situation that have LOTS of light. But my 50mm opens up to F1.4>>> I can shoot in the house at night with no flash. Your Fstop also determines how much of the photo will be in focus, this is called depth of field.
Here are three samples>>>> this first image is ALL in focus and its Fstop is F8
This image was shot at F5.6 notice she is all in focus and the background is blurry she is sitting a ways from the background as well so that adds to the blur of the background.
and finally this one is shot at F2 and the only thing in focus is her face.
So to recap>>> ISO determines how sensitive the sensor will be and Fstop determines how much light will reach that sensor by how far the "pupil" will open, and how much of the image will be in focus>>> so that bring us to SHUTTER SPEED
I can never read this info enough! thanks so much!
ReplyDeleteSuper Info!! It is nice to read this info when it is written a bit different than in my manual!! I have ready it several times but it seems like I have trouble applying it:) I think I got a handle on F-stop but now I need to work with the others more!! I really want to move from shooting in auto or aperature to manual!! Time to play!
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