| On Tuesday night we discussed the three most important things to know about your camera. I thought it might be helpful to re-cap those. It’s important to understand and know the relationship between a./
ISO, b./ shutter speed, and c./ aperture (or F-stop).
1./ ISO is a sensitivity rating that use to be applied to film. The lower the ISO, the slower the film but the sharper the final image. The higher ISO films, 400 or 800, for example, would be used to
photograph at faster speeds to capture fast moving subjects. These always give a coarser or grainier picture – or what, in digital parlance, is called “noise.” Noise is a big no-no. It is always
better to use the lowest ISO settings that your camera allows, typically ISO 100 or less.
2./ Shutter speed is the amount of time, in seconds, that the camera allows light through the lens. Faster speeds (1/250th sec.) will be
used to capture moving subjects, while lower speeds (1/60th or 1/100th sec.) will be used for stationary subjects or people standing still.
Faster speeds let in less light.
3./ F-stop, or aperture, is given in fractions of an inch and tells how wide open the lens is. . F4 is 1/4 inch, F8 is 1/8th inch, F22 is 1/22nd inch. So the higher the F-number, the smaller the aperture or, put another way, the less light enters the lens. It is also important to understand that the higher the F_number the greater the “depth of
field.”
These three things are closely related. If you set the ISO to 100, and then change the F-stop (say from F8 to F22), the shutter speed will change as well (in this case it will change to a slower shutter
speed to compensate for the less light being allowed into the camera.) Make sense?
Personally I almost always set my ISO to 100, then as I am focusing on my subject, I manually adjust the F-stop on my camera to the highest
setting I can get while watching that the shutter speed doesn’t drop too low. I do this with scenic shots, portraits or animal shots.
A good photo tip (From: Top 100 Simplified Tips and Tricks – Digital Photography by Gregory Georges). When you want the maximum depth of
field and you are shooting in low light, or you are shooting close-up or macro shots, the movement of the camera caused by pressing the
shutter release button can cause unwanted image blur. To avoid camera movement caused by pressing the shutter button, set the timer-release so that the camera takes aphoto without your pressing the shutter release button.
VOILA (a little French lingo here!). I use this technique often.
Keep shooting! Posted: Aug 21, 2008 11:53am |
