Let’s talk about some basic stuffs in photography.
You might not be interested about knowing how I started photography as a hobby. But let me talk about that first :). Don’t worry I will not force you to read through this. You can skip this paragraph and go to the next one.
(I meant skip this one and go to the next one..) As a child I used to see the studios and photographers’ and thought about how cool their job is. I though they are doing a job. But as and when I grew up started to this is a passion for some as well .. not just a job. Creativity was almost none at that time. Most people used to own black and white roll cameras and there were limited number of clicks you can have . 30-50 number some times. They have a fixed ISO number 100,200 and later 400 and 800 variants were also available. But still some of the photographers were doing awesome work. Was impressed by an picture taken by a local photographer and wanted to click same kind of pictures by myself. But did not have that privilege to have a camera at that time. That was it …. I stopped thinking about photography. …..until recent years ☺. Now the technology has made it possible for everyone to have a camera. They are cheap enough and most amazing part is we don’t have to wait to see the result of what we clicked. And this was the time when I could also afford a camera. I am a technology guy and loves to visit places where gadgets are being showcased. During my visit to one such event I came across to my first DSLR. It was an SONY nex 5 . A basic compact DSLR which is capable of taking good quality photos. That’s when I was inclined again towards photography. It had interchangeable lens and build quality was cool enough. I started basics then.
What are the basics ? In photography everything is light. That’s all about a photo. The photo is captured by all means in terms of the amount of light. The camera only understands light. And the basic or advanced photography deals with light only. So to start with you can think about exposure triangle. What kind of triangle is it ? Never heard of it in the trigonometry class !!!! Okay… It’s
- ISO
- Aperture
- Shutter speed
ISO : This is the amount of light your camera reacts to when you are talking the picture. ISO varies normally but not strictly as 100,200,400,800,1600,3200 etc. To tell you in short lower ISO number gives you finer image with lowest grains in it but the picture might not look bright enough . More number means more grainy picture and pictures can be bright. It all depends on the subject you are framing. If it’s sunny day and you are shooting outside then lower ISO might get you the great result. But on a cloudy day you might need little higher ISO.
Sample images : The above picture depicts only ISO changes in the settings. You can see the effects for each one of them.
APERTURE : This is the eye of your camera. This can be in a way compared to human eyes. The size of the aperture decides how much light is passing through your camera eye. Aperture is referred to as “f” numbers. Such as f 2,f3.5,f8 etc. F is for focal point, also referred to as f stops. This works in a reverse way. Such as f2 is the bigger aperture than f22. Your minimum and maximum f numbers can vary and depends on your lenses. The smaller aperture the darker the image is. Example f2 will be bright and f22 will be darker.
Sample Image: You can see the difference of only aperture make the scene dark or light.
Apart from that, f stop controls your background blurring as well. Which is also called as depth of field. The small f stop you have the more blurry background you will get. The bigger f number you set your image background will be clearer. Will talk about it more in future post.
SHUTTER SPEED : Shutter speed is how fast your camera eye blinks. This is usually measured in seconds. Example 1/200 , 1/500, 1″ etc. 1/200 is 200th of a second. Similarly 1/500 is 500th of a second. 1″ is for 1 second and so on. Shutter speed also contributes to the image brightness. The faster shutter speed means low light and slower shutter speed means more light passing through the lense. This number depicts the amount of time your lense shutter will be kept open. So the more time the lense is open the more light will come in to your camera. Shutter speed is also responsible for freezing moments or some time it will blur your image entirely. I will talk about this all in detail in some other post.
Sample Image: See the shutter speed changes makes a scene bright or dark. See the blurriness of both the images. Higher speed gives a more sharper image.
Conclusion : So as you see all three of these can help you control the exposure. That’s why it’s called exposure triangle.
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