AS Photography; Weird and Wonderful: Camera Techniques

When using manual settings you need to be able to know how to work the camera settings. In this section, I will explain what some of these techniques are.

Shutter Speed

The first thing I will talk about is shutter speed; which is the amount of time the shutter is open in seconds (including fraction of seconds). The bigger the denominator, the faster the speed.

You would want a fast shutter speed for sharp photographs because it only exposes to light for fractions of a second which means the light can't make the objects look soft. However, you would need lots of light to use a fast shutter speed otherwise the image will be really dark because of the light not being able to reach the camera before it closes. A fast shutter speed would be perfect for freezing movement because it captures it quickly without it looking blurry.

You would want a slow shutter speed for low-light situations or for special effects. For example, using it for landscape photography would allow the natural light to reach the camera so you wouldn't have to use any lights or flash that would make it look unnatural. However, any shutter speed slower than 1/60th of a second would need to be done using a tripod otherwise the picture will be blurry from camera shake (where the camera moves when you press the button).

As you change the shutter speed, it changes other elements such as the aperture.

Aperture

The aperture is the size of the opening of the lens which controls the light. Shutter speed affects the aperture because the faster the shutter speed, the bigger the aperture needs to be. This is because it needs to let lots of light through. The bigger the aperture, the more light that gets let through.
On a camera, it can be quite confusing to change the aperture correctly because the settings are different. The smaller the aperture, the higher the number on the settings. This number is called the 'F-stop' or 'F-number'. It could be seen as the amount of material covering the lens.

Source from http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2011/12/aperture.jpg

The higher the F-number, the darker the image because it only lets a little bit of light through. This is good for taking photographs that need slow exposure.

The lower the F-number, the lighter the image because it exposes itself to light for longer. This is best for places that are really dark as it lets the light reach the object so you can view it clearly on the photo.

Aperture can also control the depth of field; which is how sharp or soft you want your image to look. The smaller the number, the narrower the depth of field. This means the image will look really sharp in some areas, but not in the background. It's best for intimate photos of one thing/person otherwise one will be sharp and the other person wouldn't.

The bigger the number, the wider the depth of field meaning more things will be in focus, but does mean it's less sharp.

Source from http://jeffbrutsche.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/aperture.jpg

ISO

ISO (International Organisation of Standardisation) is how sensitive the film on the camera is. The higher the ISO, the higher the sensitivity. For example, an ISO of 100 would look 'grainy' because it's not sensitive so the lighting has to be really bright to make the image look clearer. It's usually best for outdoor situations.

However, the higher the sensitivity, the poorer the quality. This means that low ISO settings are better for quality.

Overall, if you change one of these three things (Shutter Speed, Aperture, ISO), you have to change the others. This is usually known as the Triangle of Exposure.