EVery photographer has to start somewhere; and when it comes to shooting photos every instructor will tell you to shoot in manual mode. The reason for this is because it gives you the most creative control. When combining this control with your creative ideas, you’ll be able to actually get the photo idea from your head into pixels from the camera.
The problem: learning manual controls can be difficult. But this video from CamCrunch should be able to help you get the basics down in eight minutes. The host talks about aperture, shutter speed and ISO control that provide the absolute basics.
As many of the more advanced shooters will tell you:
– Apertures (f-stop) controls your depth of field and how much light hits the sensor at its most basic. When a flash is included, it also controls how much light from the flash hits the sensor.
– Shutter speeds control how long the light hits the sensor, and therefore motion.
– ISO controls how sensitive all the other parameters are.
To supplement these basics presented in the video, we’ve included images after the jump that help to illustrate the basics of Manual Image Exposure.
Aperture
ISO 100, 1/80th at f1.4 At f1.4, the aperture is very shallow and therefore very little will be in focus. ISO 100 was used to get the most detail since the lower the ISO is, the more details you will get and 1/80th was used to ensure stability when hand holding the lens in the cold.
At f/16, almost the complete frame from fore- to background is sharp. But more importantly, since less light travels through the lens, I could expose the image longer (1/20 sec. at ISO 100) and capture the flow of the water.
Shutter Speed
F8, 1/6th of a second and ISO 250. F8 was used to ensure that when Jordana was moving about that I’d get that area in focus. 1/6th was used to capture the motion of the hula hoops.
1/1250th of a second, f2.8 iso 400. The shutter speed is so fast because the depth of field is so shallow. So to ensure that the right amount of light hit the sensor, I needed to shoot at a faster shutter speed.
ISO
f1.4, 1/500th of a second at IO 6400. Notice how at a higher ISO setting that there is much more grain to the image. We needed to shoot at this ISO setting because of the low light in the bookstore.
ISO 100, 1/2000h, f2.5 ISO 100 gave us the least amount of light sensitivity, which we needed when shooting during the daytime because there is so much light available to begin with.
