Learning Exposure: ISO, aperture, shutter speed – DIY in 5 Ep 218

Опубликовано 10 марта 2024, 13:00

Modern cameras’ point-and-click auto features are great, but going manual to fine-tune the settings yourself will really make your photos and videos stand out. This video explains the basics of exposure so you can tinker while informed.

Exposure is the amount of light that reaches your camera sensor. Pictures with too much or too little light have exposure issues. ISO, aperture, and shutter speed are the three elements which influence your exposure. What do these terms mean?

ISO
Known in full as International Standards Organization, this refers to how sensitive your camera’s sensor is to light. A higher number means a greater sensitivity to light. Higher ISO values are generally better for dark settings and lower ISO values for bright settings such as outside on a sunny day. Videographers may find higher ISOs come with more noise in their video footage.

Aperture
Aperture size adjusts to control the amount of light passing through, like how your pupils work in your eyes. Apertures are measured in f-stops, often referred to as f/number. It’s counter-intuitive, but try and remember, the smaller the number, the bigger the aperture size. An f/1.4 will let in more light than an f/22. Besides controlling how much light passes through, aperture size also affects depth of field (or how much blur you get in the background). Larger f-stop numbers mean that more of the image will be in focus, making them suitable for landscape photography, while smaller f-stop numbers mean only part of the image will be in focus (like a portrait).

Shutter speed
This measurement is for how long your camera shutter and digital sensor are exposed to light and how long motion is captured for. Shutter speed is measured in fractions of a second. A faster shutter speed, like 1/2000 of a second, is great for capturing crisp photos of fast-moving subjects, but lets in much less light than a slower shutter speed. A 1 second shutter speed lets in light for a whole second, better served to capture detail and colors in low-light scenarios, but records any motion captured as a blur. That’s why it’s best to hold still for a while when taking low-light photos.
To avoid camera shake for any shutter speed slower than 1/60th of a second, consider using a tripod or resting your camera on a stable surface. Videographers looking for a more cinematic motion blur should set their shutter speed to double their frame rate: for example, a 24fps video would need a 1/48 or 1/50 shutter speed.

3 Pillars
How do ISO, Aperture, and Shutter Speed impact each other? Perfectly balancing these three pillars of light will help you find the perfect exposure for your photo. When you increase the exposure for one of these pillars, you’ll need to decrease one or both of the others to maintain the same exposure. Depending on which auto features you have turned on for your camera, your camera may attempt to balance this for you automatically. Alternatively, you can dial it in yourself. The exposure compensation setting on your camera will allow your camera to help you with this fine-tuning process by balancing all three pillars to create either a higher or lower exposure. Exposure compensation is usually controlled by a plus/minus button on most cameras, since it’s represented as numbers on a number line ranging from positive to negative. If you don’t want to mess with all three pillars individually, but the auto mode does not suit your needs, this is a viable alternative.
Are you ready to go out and take some awesome photos and videos? Get creative with your ISO, aperture size, and shutter speed so you can get exactly the photo you envisioned.
Thanks for watching our video! If you have any tech topics you’d like us to take on in a future DIY in 5 episode, leave a comment!

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0:00 Intro
0:36 Exposure
0:54 ISO
1:23 Aperture
2:08 Shutter Speed
3:07 3 Pillars
4:02 Outro