I hope you’ve had a great week. Did you get a chance to look at your ‘big’ camera and move your dial away from Auto? If you remember back to last week’s blog post, it was all about the exposure triangle and learning about the three key elements that work together to control how bright or dark your photo is (known as exposure). We then looked at one of these elements - the ISO. That’s the setting that if it’s too high, causes grain or noise on the image. I try to keep this setting on the lowest ISO number possible to avoid image noise, and use my other two settings to lighten things up.

Let’s move on to the next setting… 

2nd setting - Aperture

After I set my ISO, I usually go to the aperture. This is my FAVOURITE setting. This is where, for me, the magic happens - where you can achieve those beautiful images with blurred bokeh backgrounds. You know the ones I’m talking about? 

Aperture can be defined as the opening in a lens through which light passes to enter the camera. Think about it in terms of how your eyes work as you move between bright and dark environments. The iris in your eyes either expands or shrinks, controlling the size of your pupil. In photography, the ‘pupil’ of your lens is called aperture. You can shrink or enlarge the size of the aperture to allow more or less light to reach your camera’s sensor. A large aperture (a wide opening) enables a lot of light to pass through, resulting in a brighter photograph. A small aperture does just the opposite, making a photo darker. 

The beautiful thing about aperture is that it can add dimension to your photos by controlling depth of field. Depth of field is the amount of your photograph that appears sharp from front to back. At one extreme, you have a “large” or “deep” depth of field, where both the foreground and background are crisp and sharp. At the other extreme, aperture gives you a blurred out of focus background with a beautiful shallow focus effect. 

Apart from large and small, aperture can also be expressed as a number known as “f-stop”, with the letter “f” appearing before the number e.g. f/8. The larger the opening (denoted by a lower number f-stop), the more light gets through, the smaller the opening (higher number f-stop), the less light gets through. Most likely, you have noticed this on your camera before. On your LCD screen or viewfinder, your aperture will look something like this: f/2, f/3.5, f/8, and so on. 

To summarise, aperture is responsible for changing the brightness of your image and creating depth of field - either crisp and sharp or blurred and out of focus parts of your image.

3rd setting - Shutter speed

The third setting to understand is the shutter speed. I use this setting in conjunction with aperture. Shutter speed is the length of time a camera’s shutter is open to expose light into the camera sensor. 

The analogy we can make here is that it is like your eye when you blink. When you click your camera for a photo, the shutter opens and fully exposes the camera sensor to the light that has passed through your lens. After the sensor is done collecting the light, the shutter closes immediately, stopping the light from hitting the sensor. The button that fires the camera is also called “shutter” or “shutter button,” because it triggers the shutter to open and close.

A fast shutter speed is used to freeze motion. It enables you to achieve amazing shots of those fast-moving subjects like birds in flight, or children running, or cyclists. It allows you to freeze the subject without sacrificing quality. In food photography, a fast shutter speed allows me to achieve movement (such as falling icing sugar or dripping caramel) without blur.  

A slow or long shutter speed on the other hand, exposes your camera’s sensor for a significant period of time, which means you get motion blur. If your shutter speed is long, moving subjects in your photo will appear blurred along the direction of motion.  Slow shutter speeds are used to photograph the night sky. They create a sense of motion on rivers and waterfalls, while keeping everything else completely sharp. A tripod is a necessary accessory when using a slow shutter speed.  

 Shutter speeds are typically measured in fractions of a second, when they are under a second. For example 1/4 means a quarter of a second, while 1/250 means one two-hundred-and-fiftieth of a second (or four milliseconds).

To summarise, shutter speed is responsible for two particular things: changing the brightness of your photo, and creating dramatic effects by either freezing action or blurring motion.

So, there you have it - manual mode in three simple settings.

Ok, it’s not that simple, but in many ways, it can be.

What you really need to do is practise, practise, practise - in manual mode.

Play around with the three settings to get a feel for how the exposure triangle works, and how you can use the three elements together to achieve a pleasing exposure and  different results.

And remember it’s also about developing your unique style.

I tend to over expose my images because, well - that’s what I like.

What is it that you’d like to achieve with your photography?