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.

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Panning@SIC Track Day

I was so busy since my last post in this blog. I am not sure what I was doing but it was kinda hard for me finding a free time to write about my last photo outing - panning at Sepang International Circuit on last weekend. Oh, Happy Chinese New Year for those who celebrate it today.

Some of us might wonder why sport photographers on TV usually using big white lenses to capture the moment while my small Sony 70-300G and Sony 16-80CZ did the job pretty well:









Some might prefer to have big lenses which easily cost you RM20k while some others might settle with mid-level lens. If I have the budget, I would go to those white lenses but owning small 70-300G does not limit me to get my desired pictures. As I said in earlier post, you will learn to overcome the limitations of your gear.

From my personal experience using whitey and my Sony 70-300G, the only difference I can tell is the time taken to lock focus point. My Sony 70-300G took me about 3-5 seconds to lock the subject while whitey would take less than a second. No doubt whitey will make your life much easier. Other than that is its constant aperture really helps especially for indoor shooting. If you have a f2.8 lens, put on M mode and try to shoot with shutter speed at 1/60 and ISO at 200. Compare the result with the same settings except for aperture, move to f5.6 - you will see how much you lost the important light.

Back to the panning shot I took on my last trip to SIC, here are the settings:
Shutter Speed: 1/200
Aperture: f11
ISO: 320
WB: Daylight
File type: JPEG

The settings above are subjective, depends on the weather of the day. Credit to a man (photographer) I know at the track - shit, I didn't ask for his name and contact. He shared his Canon 50D settings for track panning but I altered to as above. He was using faster ss but I slow down the ss to get extra blur background.

I hope you are clear about the settings. So what else, go and practice panning!

As usual, if you like my blog, please do share with your friends.

For more collection of Panning@SIC, please visit my gallery at http://www.afhamaziz.com/flickr. For any reasons, I can be reached at admin@afhamaziz.com.

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Engage: Hafizul & Ika

In photography, there are a few types of field are waiting for you to explore - from nature to product shoot and portrait. It is just the matter of which one are you interested in. Currently, I am more to people shoot - be it candid, portrait or event - I enjoy shoot them all but no doubt, new comers to photography world will love to shoot nature especially landscape - and I was one of them too.

Practice your shot everyday will help you to understand yourself better - in which photography field attracts you the most. As for me, I found one as I stated above after about a year in photography. Trust me, you will fall in love with photography when you understand it - but be prepare with deep pocket to enjoy the game. Haha. :P.

Back to the title, I was having fun on last weekend shooting engagement day of a friend of mine, Hafizul in Klang, Selangor with his partner, Ika. I am very happy with the outputs I got from the event:









As usual, please visit my flickr gallery for full collection at www.afhamaziz.com/flickr and I can be reached at admin@afhamaziz.com for any reason.


- Afham Aziz.



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