Tips: Understand the Basic Skill of Photography

It has been about 2 weeks from my last tips about getting first DSLR and I hope you are making the right decision of your purchase - be it Sony, Canon or Nikon is not a matter. Ok. In this post, I will explain more about the basic skills required in photography - aperture, shutter speed and ISO.

There is no short cut to master anything in the world but only one would help – the PASSION. The same rules applied in photography. It might takes you a year, or might be a decade to master and understand it.

Before you learn the rules of photography, you have to master the most important element in photography, that is exposure. According to Wikipedia article, “Exposure is the total amount of light allowed to fall on the photographic medium (photographic film or image sensor) during the process of taking a photograph. Exposure is measured in lux seconds, and can be computed from exposure value (EV) and scene luminance over a specified area”.

To master exposure or total amount of light, there are only 3 things you have to understand – aperture, shutter speed and ISO. They are all related each other in controlling amount of light allowed to go through the camera sensor.

The first one is aperture. Aperture is a hole or an opening through of a lens which allows light travels and it is measured in f-value, the normal range is in between f2.8 and f22. Smaller f-value indicates bigger hole of lens, which allows more light to go through the lens. There is nothing better than experience it by yourself. Follow the practical tips to understand more about aperture.

PRACTICAL TIPS (Aperture): Set your camera on M mode, ISO at 800, shutter speed at 1/60 and aperture at f4. Capture anything static in the house. Second, use the same settings as above except the aperture, change it to f8. Snap the same subject. Compare the result – you will get aperture at f4 is having better exposure than f8. It is simply because f4 was opened larger hole than f8. Hence, it was allowing more light travel into lens.

Shutter speed is controlling the amount of time that the volume of light coming through the lens (determined by the aperture) and normally measured in seconds. Depend on camera make and model, some of them showing 60 while the others are using 1/60 but both of them share the same meaning – 1/60 seconds which is equal to 0.0167 seconds. The standard exposure range for entry level camera is in between 1/4000s and 30s while higher level has as fast as 1/8000s.

Note: Please do not confuse 30” with 30 on the camera info. Normally 30” indicates 30 seconds while 30 indicate 1/30 seconds.

PRACTICAL TIPS (Shutter speed): Set your camera on M mode, ISO at 800, aperture at f5 and shutter speed at 1/60. Point and click moving object in the house, e.g ceiling fan. Use the same object and settings as above except for shutter speed, change to 1/250. Compare the result – shutter speed at 1/250 giving you underexpose (darker) picture. Check out the visibility of fan blades between 2 pictures. I will talk more about the shutter priority. In this post, I just want you to understand the exposure and relationship between aperture, shutter and ISO.

Let move to the last part, ISO. ISO tells the camera’s light sensitivity. Standard ISO range of entry level camera is in between 100 and 1600 and some of them go up to 3200 or 6400. Newer and higher range camera has up to 24000. Imaging you are in a stadium, equipped with 3200 spotlights but you only turn on about 100 bulbs of spotlight – the field is still dark. Hence, you decide to turn on other 900 bulbs to make it 1000 bulbs - the field has better visibility. Above condition can be applied in photography ISO.

PRACTICAL TIPS (ISO): set your camera on M mode, aperture at f5, shutter speed at 1/60 and ISO at 100. Shoot anything static object in your house. For the second photo, use the same settings except for ISO, change it to 800. Compare the result – the one with ISO 800 has greater exposure than ISO at 100. Bear in mind that higher ISO does produce noisy picture – you can compare the noise level at ISO 100 and ISO 800 in above test.

I hope that you are clear about exposure in your camera. What else? Go and practice yourself to get correct exposure. I will update the tutorial from times to times and hopefully we gain something from it. If you like my blog article, please share with your friends and family.

As usual, if you have any question or reason, please do contact me at admin@afhamaziz.com.

Thank you.


Best Regards,
Afham Aziz.