Welcome…I hope you enjoy these basic “lessons”
Please come back to see more as they are posted. I have lots to talk about, and my goal is to help you understand how your camera works, and how to take better pictures with it!
Aperture and Shutter Speed
This lesson is about your camera basics. Obviously, to get the best results from this, you need a camera where you can manually adjust these settings. It doesn’t HAVE to be an SLR camera…many advanced point and shoot cameras have manual features as well. Even if you don’t have a camera like this, it’s worth reading, just to get a better understanding.
Cameras are not the super complicated pieces of electronic equipment that they may seem to be. A camera exposes film (or an image sensor) to light. That light creates an image on the film. The aperture of the camera is controlled by an iris, and it determines how much light gets in. It also controls how much of your picture is in focus (depth of field).
The shutter is the thing that controls the amount of time that light is allowed to reach the film or sensor. Typical shutter speeds are:
1 second 1/30 second
½ second 1/60 second
¼ second 1/125 second
1/8 second 1/500 second
1/15 second 1/1000 second
Some cameras will have longer or shorter shutter speeds available, as well as “Time” or “Bulb” settings. They are basically the same and will allow you to leave your shutter open for long periods of time. The longer your shutter speed, the more light the camera will let in.
To properly expose your pictures, basically, every time you increase your f/stop by 1 stop, you are letting twice the light in, therefore you need to cut the shutter speed in half. If you go down one f/stop, you need to double the shutter speed. This is why we discuss shutter speed and aperture together…they work hand in hand.