Beginners Guide

JAW · Beginners Guide

Can i request a beginners guide to basic camera settings?

e.g:

ISO: <description of what it does>
<different settings and when to use them>

Aperture (spelling?): <description of what it does>
<different settings and when to use them>

I will make this thread a sticky and i'm sure it would be useful to most of the members on this site (including me)

Hamish

It's difficult to explain aperture/shutter speed and ISO properly without also explaining exposure and metering. I'd struggle to keep it short enough. For example aperture controls depth of field but isn't just affected by the f-stop numbers but also the focal length of the lens and the distance from the subject. That's three things alone to describe which affect how the amount of the image that is 'acceptably sharp' is controlled. I'd really suggest reading some tutorials on the net or buying a basics of photography book. Here's the real beginners version:

Exposure - the amount of light getting to the sensor, which results in the photo. It's determined by three things:

1. Shutter speed

How long the shutter is open. Simple. The camera records it in seconds e.e 1/250 = 1/250th of a second

Longer shutter speed = more light coming in but can result in movement being blurred. Short shutter = less light but freezes action. Better to keep it around 1/250-1/640 where possible. Easier to keep it high when it's bright but go too high and you'll freeze everything including the wheels and it'll look silly if it's a biking pic.

2. Aperture

The size of the hole the light passes through on it's way to the sensor while the shutter is open. It is measure by the f-stop numbers. A big number = small hole (I know it's silly) and small number - big hole.

The bigger the number, the larger the area of sharpness around the point where you focus. Big numbers are good for scenery stuff.

The smaller the number the smaller the area of sharpness around the point where you focus. Good for blurring areas that aren't important like the background.

3. ISO

This can be thought of as the sensitivity of the sensor - it isn't actually that but I'll spare you the technical stuff. The bigger the number the more sensitive the film. It's better to use as low an ISO as you can as it produces noise at high ISOs such as 800 and above.

So, to summarise, a photo is taken when the sensor is exposed to light. To control the amount of light you can adjust 3 things - the speed of the shutter, the size of the hole and the "sensitivity" of the sensor.

Each of these things will affect how the photo turns out and you often have to either decided which factor is most important. As a result I can't just give you 'good settings' as it depends on the scene you're shooting and the lighting as well as lots of other things I've not mentioned.

That's the REALLY basic version. Hope that helps. I'd suggest looking at some of the tutorials here, particularly the ones on Depth of field and Understanding exposure: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/

JAW

Nice one Hamish, thanks for taking the time to type that! Cool