How ISO, Shutter Speed and Aperture All Relate to One Another

by Chris Gampat on 12/13/2010

Here it is: the one chart you’ll ever need to understand shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. It will help you to create better black and white photos, it helps to explain why your lenses are more important than your camera, how to get the most of them, etc. If you don’t understand any of this, take a look at our guide to terminology. Or…take it with you.

This chart will help you with the dark art of metering and shooting out in the field, like at pop culture events. Enjoy!

Editor’s Note: This isn’t our chart. It was sent into us by a reader. Thanks Andrew!

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Tagged as: aperture, iso, lenses, Photography, Shutter Speed, terminology

  • Foto

    Can you please provide an explanation for the chart? I’m a photographer, and this makes no sense to me. Cheers.

  • http://thephoblographer.wordpress.com Chris Gampat

    Noise triangle: higher the ISOs the greater the noise. Hence why 1600 is closest to the Noise section and 100 is furthest away.

    Shutter speed: higher the shutter speed, the less the motion blur. Hence why 2″ is closest to the motion blur area.

    Aperture: f/2.0 is the shallowest depth of field and f/16 is the most narrow. Hence by F/16 is furthest away from the depth of field label.

    The arrows help to point to this.

    • Foto

      Those 3 concepts make absolute sense on their own, but not when jammed together into one chart like this.

      For instance, when you pump up the iso you don’t mystically get a shallow DOF.

      • http://thephoblographer.wordpress.com Chris Gampat

        It’s not saying that, hence why they’re separated by red. It took me a while too to get it when Andrew first sent it to me.

      • Pete

        I think it’s trying to indicate that lower shutter speed (heading towards 2″) means lower iso (heading towards 100) and higher iso (heading towards 1600) means smaller aperture (heading towards f/16) etc, and the red lines indicate what each setting controls

  • Foto

    Then I guess the issue I have is with the title of the post. This image doesn’t show “How ISO, Shutter Speed and Aperture All Relate to One Another”.

    Instead it shows the effects of each of these elements on the final image, and not the implications of how they are interrelated. (I.e. from a given exposure, if you increase the exposure time by a stop, you need to close down your lens by a stop to get an equivalent exposure.)

    But I guess that’s not a catchy title ;)

  • http://www.flickr.com/photos/rocencore/ b

    please join twitter so you can post when new articles come up! would be a huge help! thanks for considering. twitter.com/rocencore

  • http://www.flickr.com/photos/rocencore/ b

    woops! just found you on twitter. thanks!

  • http://www.technicaljar.com Maduranga

    For someone who knows these three concepts, the diagram doesn’t make much sense.. but to someone who doesn’t know about these concepts, the diagram makes absolutely no sense IMHO. Would have been much more informative is showed the effects separately for two values each.

    • Pete

      The diagram does make sense, it’s actually 3 diagrams overlaid. One diagram shows the effect on brightness that each setting has, one shows what effect on the photo each has (blur, dof, noise) and one shows the interaction of the settings. It’s really quite clever once you grasp the entire diagram…

      • http://thephoblographer.wordpress.com Chris Gampat

        Someone is still going to complain, this is the internet afterall. But yes, I agree with you.

  • JB

    You should also take into account the fact that adjusting all of these things makes the image more exposed and brighter, thus the gradient from dark to light at the center of the triangle. That is how I am interpreting it.

    So if you increase the shutter time, you get a brighter image but increased motion blur. If you increase aperture size you get a brighter image, but shallow DOF. And if you increase ISO you get a brighter image, but increased noise.

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  • http://www.galapinoyredux.com Cedric

    If you find the diagram confusing, here’s an article that explains the relationship between the three: http://www.galapinoyredux.com/2011/01/understanding-aperture-shutter-speed-and-iso/ :)

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  • Moos

    Fail

  • Pingback: Article: How ISO, Shutter Speed and Aperture All Relate to One Another « I Am Locutus of Borg

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