Understanding the Basic Settings of Digital Photography

There are three basic settings in digital photography that every photographer needs to know and understand: exposure, aperture, and ISO. If you can fully understand the effects of each on your pictures you will greatly expand your possibilities and quality of your shots.

Don’t Be Afraid of the M

Most camera’s today come with several preset modes to choose from and most of them do a good job for their intended use, but to get more out of your camera and to push your creativity, you really should explore the M or Manual mode. Don’t be afraid of the M, with digital photography if you mess up its ok, just delete the picture, make some adjustments and try again. Manual mode gives you full control of how you want the picture to look. You may want to have a silhouette of an individual, but if you use the Portrait mode your subject will be lit, that’s why you use Manual mode instead.

Exposure AKA Shutter Speed

Exposure is also often referred to as “shutter speed”. In a nutshell it’s how fast the shutter on the camera stays open to capture the light and the image. The faster the shutter speed the darker the picture will be, likewise, the slower the shutter speed the brighter the picture will be.

f 22   25 sec   ISO 100

The entire time the shutter is open its collecting light, so the longer its open the more light it collects. So at night time or in low light conditions such as inside a building, you will tend to want to use longer exposures (i.e. 15 seconds or 1/60 of a second) times to collect enough light so the picture doesn’t turn out black or too dark.

f 4.0   1/5   ISO 100

If you are taking pictures outside during the day, especially if it’s a sunny day, you’ll want a faster shutter speed (i.e. 1/1000) as you don’t need very much time to capture plenty of light.

f 5.0   1/1000   ISO 1600

Other things to keep in mind when you are choosing your exposure setting would be, is the subject moving, and do  you want your capture to be blurred or crisp and frozen? If you are shooting say a sporting event such as a baseball game or a moving vehicle; you’ll want to be sure to use a faster shutter speed to freeze the action. If you use a slower shutter speed your subject will be blurred. Which there are techniques that can be used to capture your subject crisply with some blur trail behind them, but that’s more than the basics.

f 5.6   1/1250   ISO 400

Sometimes you may want your subject to have some movement or blur to them, so you’ll want to be sure to use a longer exposure setting for those shots. Some great examples of subjects you might want to blur would be water (waterfalls), fireworks, carnival rides, traffic (car lights), etc. In these situations it will be key to use a tripod so that you capture the movement but stationary items will be crisp. If you try doing these shots by hand your pictures will not turn out like you want as everything, including the stationary items will turn out blurry.

The point in which you need to use a trip is different for each camera / photographer / lens combination. When you are dealing with slow shutter speeds, a steady hand always comes in handy, as does a lens with some type of image stabilization or vibration reduction.

f 16   10 sec   ISO 100

Note: A good rule of thumb is when you start getting 1/60 exposure, you’ll need to pay extra attention to holding the camera steady and the longer you go from there the more likely you’ll need a tripod from the shot.

f 5.0   1/2500   ISO 100

Aperture AKA f Value

Aperture is also often referred to as your f-value. Honestly this one was the hardest for me personally to get, but once you get it, it seems so trivial. Essentially aperture controls how much of your picture is in focus. It also has an effect on how bright your picture is as well, but its primary function is your depth of field (dof). Let me see if I can explain.

f 18   30 sec   ISO 100

Here is where I got confused, but it was only because I had trouble finding and explanation for it. If you read online or read photography books about aperture, you’ll find them talking about choosing a higher f value or aperture. Well to me a higher aperture would mean choosing a high number like f 16. Yeah well that’s just totally backward from the truth. The lower the number translates to a higher aperture or f value. So an f value of 1.8 would be considered a higher aperture value than an f value of 8.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way lets take a closer look at what the effects our f value has on our pictures. If you want to have everything in your picture to be in focus you’ll want to be sure you choose a lower aperture (i.e. f 16). The higher the number you choose, the more you’ll increase your dof and the more things will be in focus. You would want to choose a higher number for your f value for landscape or large group shots.

Now as you explore photography you’ll find that everyone is searching for ways to narrow their dof in their shots, so that they can isolate their subject and really show off just the subject without distraction of the background. The lower the number you use for your f value the smaller dof you get. In other words, the less amount of space in your shots will be in focus. Most lenses that you’ll find will have a minimum f value of around 4 (well unless you’ve got the good stuff). There are plenty of lenses that will go much lower but most of them are much more expensive as well, unless you check out some prime lenses (they don’t zoom, you just have one focal length).

f 5.6   1/80   ISO 1600

A lower number for the f value is great for portrait shots, especially if the background is not important to you and/or it’s a busy background. With a low enough number of the f value you can completely blur out that busy background and at that point it is no longer a distraction from your subject. A low number for the f value is also great for floral shots or just anything you want to isolate.

f 1.8   1/2500   ISO 100

In controlling the blur is not solely determined by the number you are using for your f value. You focal length is also very important in determining just how blurred your background is. The further you are zoomed out the more the background is going to be blurred. So say if you were zoomed out to 200mm your background is going to be more blurred than if you were only zoomed out to say 24mm. So if you were having to use a lower number for your f value and lets say you are taking a landscape shot and wanted everything in focus, you would want to be sure to use the least amount of zoom so you want to be around 18mm to ensure things are in focus.

Note: Another quick tip on blurring the background is that the closer the subject is to your camera the more the background will be blurred.

f 18   10 sec   ISO 100

ISO

ISO? Well I could get all technical on you and tell you that it stands for “International Organization for Standardization” and that it deals with sensitivity to light, and is determined sensitometry and measured on various numerical scales, but that would just be way too technical.

f 22   15 sec   ISO 100

If you’ve been taking pictures for a while you should be pretty familiar with ISO, it’s essentially the speed of the film. Remember film? When you had to go pick up some film to take pictures at a birthday party you probably paid attention to the numbers on the outside of the package. 400 was a popular speed choice as it tends to do well in low lighting situations such as inside a house. Well ISO and the speeds are essentially the same for digital photography. Remember I said essentially.

f 4.0   1/30   ISO 6400

Note: Rule of thumb is that the lower the number the better quality or less noise that will be present in the picture.

Well that’s easy right, so why wouldn’t you always just choose the lowest number your camera has on it (for most DSLR’s the lowest number 100). Well the lower the number the darker the picture will be, and vice versa, the higher the number the brighter the picture will be. When dealing with higher ISO’s you run the risk of adding more noise to your pictures, but as many have said a grainy shot is better than no shot at all. With some of the DSLR cameras today they can shoot at crazy high ISO’s with little to minimal noise.

f 5.6   1/50   ISO 1600

So what is considered a high ISO setting? Well I would say 1600 and above for the most part. So what is considered and acceptable ISO setting that won’t give you too much noise? Well that really depends on your camera.

f 5.6   1/2500   ISO 800

Note: Here is a quick rule of thumb that you can use, the more expensive the camera the better it will do with higher ISO settings. Well that’s not 100% accurate with some of the point-and-shoot cameras with Canon’s HS system but it mostly holds true.

f 3.5   1/8   ISO 3200

If your camera fits in your pocket (assuming you are not a giant) then most likely your camera doesn’t handle high iSO’s very well at all. I have an advance point and shoot camera and I found it did well with ISO’s at 200 or lower, anything beyond that and the noise was just too much for me. DSLRs will handle higher ISO settings much better with many of them doing just fine with settings 800, 1600, 3200 and higher. The more advanced and more expensive DSLRs do better than cheaper one’s but most of them do a pretty good job at high ISO’s.

f 5.6   1/1000   ISO 100

Conclusion

So as you noticed all three of the basic settings in some way affects the brightness of your pictures. That’s part of the challenge of photography is figuring out what combination of the three settings you need to use to get your desired outcome. There is not a magic formula, but the more you learn and the more you take pictures, the better you’ll get at know what settings to choose and/or which settings you need to adjust. The best way to learn is by trying. Remember this is digital photography, don’t be afraid to mess up, if you do just delete the picture, adjust your settings and try again.

Note: A rule of thumb that I’ve heard from several is the 10/100 rule. That means that out of every 100 shots you take, you should get 10 good shots. As you get more experience that ratio should get better, but I’m going to guess you are already meeting if not exceeding that ration, so don’t give up.

Hopefully you’ve learned at least a little about the three basic settings in digital photography. There are many more setting and options, but if you can get these three down you’ll be on your way to some amazing shots!