plain english: camera settings

Alright, so I want to preface this by saying I'm not studying photography, and I'm not a photographer. However, I had to find out all of this in the most painfully slow way, so hopefully this helps you if you're wondering!

First, let's talk about gear. So, in my opinion, the camera body doesn't matter as much as your lens does. Having a lens that has a low aperture (below) is such a better investment than just having a good camera body. So, if you're saving up for something, save up for a prime lens with a low aperture! It will do wonders to your photos. Also, fixed lenses tend to be cheaper than zoom lenses (quality zoom lenses, at least). So, it's just better all around I think. The lens I use almost at all times is a Nikor 35mm f/1.8. At first it's annoying because you can't just sit there and let your zoom do all the work, but I like it better, because it makes you think more about the composition of your photos.

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APERTURE AKA "BLURRY BACKGROUND": Basically, aperture controls how big the hole is that is letting the light into your camera. A large aperture has a big hole. A small aperture has a small hole. Pretty simple. The "f stops" are how you change your aperture. So, on your camera when it says f/16 that means the hole on the your lens is open very small. When is says f/1.8 that means the hole on your lens is open really wide. Now, aperture is important because it affects your depth of field (aka what's in focus and what isn't). Let's look at the images below.

So, the one on the left is taken with a small aperture (even though it's a bigger f stop number). A small aperture leads a a deep depth of field. Depth of field is basically  just how much you can see. In a deep depth of field (which I'm not sure is actually what it's called, it's just what I call it haha) you can see lots of stuff in the background. Look at the leaves on the tree behind Jake, you can see sooo much more than you can in the image on the right. So, now let's look at the one on the right. It looks better, doesn't it? This one is with a f/1.8. So, aka the background is blurrier.

Why do you care? You should care about manipulating your depth of field, because if you're taking portraits they look much better with a blurry background. In fact, I think most things look good with a blurry background.

Warning! If you are taking a picture of a group, like a group of 50 people at a wedding, you're going to NOT want a shallow depth of field. If you shoot at a low f number (ex. 1.8) you're going to not have everyone in focus. So, make sure you are adjusting it as is necessary. If you don't have a lot of subjects, you're probably good to shoot at a low aperture (and you probably should). If you are shooting a group, make sure you're shooting at a high aperture, like 10 or something.

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SHUTTER SPEED: So, now that you've learned about aperture, we need to use it to work with shutter speed. But first, let's talk about shutter speed. Basically, it's just how fast the camera takes the picture. So, the one on the left is taken at 1/13th of a second which is too slow to capture movement. The one on the right was taken at 1/1000th of a second, which is obviously much faster and can capture epic jumps. 

Now, let's apply aperture to shutter speed by looking at the photos below. The photo on the left was taken at 1/13th of a second, so it was letting more light in than 1/1000th of a second. If fractions confuse you, just remember that the higher the bottom number, the faster the shutter speed, kind of like a speedometer. If you're going 1000 mph you're going faster than 13 mph, haha. Anyways, so 1/13th of a second produced a nicely exposed image when it was paired with f/16. If I would have paired it with f/1.8, it would have been really bright. If I would have paired it with f/20, it would have been dark.

So, on the left we had 1/13 and f/16. When I made the shutter speed faster, it let less light in. So, to compensate for less light being let it, I had to have more light be let in somewhere else, like with aperture (aka a bigger hole). 1/1000 with f/1.8 made a nicely exposed image. 

Why do you care? Because, you're typically going to need to shoot at 1/40 to get a clear image just with natural body movement and all that jazz. If you're photographing someone running or doing sports, you're going to need an even faster shutter speed.

Fun stuff: Have you ever seen pictures of star trails? Basically they are taken with leaving the shutter open for a really long time. This is also called "long exposure" and you can do tons of cool stuff with it. Just google it and you'll discover the amazing, beautiful world of long exposure photography!

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ISO: ISO basically just controls how much grain your image has. At least, that's how I look at it. So, it's good to keep your ISO low, but sometimes you need to make it higher if you're in low light situations. Below is a comparison of how different cameras handle different ISO levels. Look at the cabinet in the background, and you'll see grain start to appear.

Why do I care? You should care about ISO, because it allows you to shoot in lower lighting. Just make sure you know your camera's limits and at what point it starts to get grainy. Let's say we're eating cute food at a wedding reception. It's getting late, and we want to take a picture because come on, who doesn't take pictures of cute food? So, we have a few things we can do. First of all, we can lower our aperture, because like we learned earlier, that lets more light in, and we want as much light as we can get! We also want a slower shutter speed, because that also lets more light in, but we don't want to go too slow or it will be blurry. So, let's keep it at 1/40. So, we take a picture at f/1.8, 1/40, but lo and behold it's too dark. We can make our shutter speed slower, but then our picture will be blurry. Sooooo, we will raise our ISO instead! An ISO of 100, shutter speed of 1/40, and f/1.8 produces an image that is too dark. However, if we increase our ISO to 1000, then it will be properly exposed. Observe my remote below, it's not cute food, but what can you do... So each photo was taken with the same aperture and shutter speed, they just have different ISOs.

Emily, why do I care about any of this stuff?

Well, you shouldn't if you don't want to. However, if you have invested in a DSLR, you owe it to yourself to learn this stuff! It really does make such a difference. Also, ALWAYS SHOOT MANUAL. I can't stress that enough. It literally transforms your photos when you have complete control over everything.

I hope that all made sense and helped you out! It took me quite a while to understand everything, and I still probably don't understand a lot haha. But, those are the basic things that I have found make the biggest differences! I wish someone would have done a blog post like this when I was a wee child lost in the the big world of DSLR language, so hopefully this helped you out! And if it just made you more confused, remember there is always google and youtube that are so awesome for understanding things like this.

Let me know if I missed anything, or if you have any personal camera tricks you like! I love getting new tips!

XOXO
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