Photography 101 – Basics About Aperture And Shutter Speed
Pre-set modes like “Sports” and “Night Portrait” make it easy for us to just point and shoot. If you’re new to photography, two of the most important things to learn are aperture and shutter speed settings as these will give you a lot of creative control. If you’re wondering which cameras have these settings, some digital compacts have them while most of the bridge (prosumer) cameras do and all SLRs have them.
At first it seems a little daunting to start using manual camera settings, but the vast improvement in your pictures will be worth the effort.
Photography 101 – Introducing Aperture
The aperture of a camera works a lot like how the iris of a person’s eye works. Similar to your irises and how they widen or narrow to let in more or less light through the pupils, the camera’s lens diaphragm narrows or widens to let in less or more light in through the lens. The aperture is the size of this opening.
Aperture lets the photographer (or the camera’s exposure computer if it’s set to automatic) increase or reduce the amount of light that gets through to the sensor, thus helping determine how bright or dark the picture will be.
The camera aperture also controls the image’s depth of field.
To get a good idea of what this means, make a fist, holding it in front of your eye. Then slowly open your fist. See how everything is in focus when the opening in your hand is small? But when it’s open wide the object closest to you is sharper than the background?
A small aperture is great for taking pictures like landscapes where you want everything in focus.
An Aperture Priority setting on your camera allows you to set the aperture within the camera’s range of f-stop numbers (or called f-stop for short). These f stop numbers represent ratios meaning that the larger the f stop number, the narrower the aperture. So the larger the f-stop number on your camera, the larger the depth of field.
The reason the setting is called “priority” is that when you set the aperture, the camera adjusts the shutter speed so that the exposure is just right. In other words, in the wider scheme of exposure, the aperture setting will have priority, while shutter speed plays a supporting role.
Photography 101 – Learning About Shutter Speed
While the aperture controls how much light at one time falls on the image sensor, the shutter speed controls the length of time the camera allows in the light.
If you’ve ever seen really old pictures, you’ll notice that they are rarely smiling. Shutter speeds were so slow back then that people had to hold perfectly still for several minutes – not to mention in all those stiff clothes they wore for picture day. No wonder they looked so stern!
The shutter speeds most commonly used today are 1/500th of a second to 1/60th of a second. By using Shutter Priority, you can then choose the shutter speed (within your camera’s range) for the exact effect you want.
For shutter speeds slower than 1/60 you will probably need a tripod or other camera support because when the shutter is open that long the camera records the tiniest jiggle, causing the photo to be out of focus or outright blurry.
If you want to freeze action (like what Sports mode does), set the camera’s Shutter Priority to a fast speed. Only with this manual setting, you can be more selective. For example, a dog sitting quietly will require a shutter speed of around 1/125 in order to freeze the small twitch in the dog’s tail. On the flip side, taking pictures at a soccer game may require up to 1/500 to freeze fast moving actions.
Using manual settings like Aperture Priority and Shutter Priority give you more creative control, which means better pictures that you can display on your wall.
About the Author
Autumn Lockwood is a writer for Your Picture Frames and loves taking pictures. Shop online and see our large selection of picture frames in a wide variety of colors, sizes and styles like our antique photo frames and ornate picture frames. Visit our website and see our vintage picture frame selection or call 1-800-780-0699.
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