Mac MWAC: Photography Tips for Modern Moms

There are three elements in your camera that work together to properly expose your photo for you. By expose, I mean give you a photo that is sharp (not blurry), bright enough (not too dark or too bright), with the depth of field that you want (I'll get into depth of field in a later post). These elements are ISO, aperture, and shutter speed. I'm going to give you a very light introduction to each element today, and I'll go into greater detail with a post for each one in the coming weeks.

ISO: sensitivity to light. ISO is measured in your camera with numbers like 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, all the way up to 3200. The lower the number, the less sensitive your camera is to light. The higher the number, the more sensitive your camera is. When you are taking a photo outside on a bright day, your camera doesn't need to be as sensitive to the light since there is plenty of available light. Therefore, you would only need an ISO of 100. Now if you are inside at your daughter's violin recital in a dark room, your camera would need to be much more sensitive to the light, so you would choose an ISO of at least 800, if not 1600 or higher.

Here's the catch. The higher you go with your ISO (400, 800, 1600), the more noise you will see in your photograph. Here's an example of a photo with a lot of noise. See how it's really grainy?

Aperture: The opening that lets light into the camera. Aperture is measured with numbers like f/1.2, f/2.8, f/5.0, f/8.0, f/16.0, all the way up to f/22. Imagine aperture is like your pupil. When there is a lot of light, your pupil gets smaller to compensate. When there is low light, your pupil dilates to let in more light. Aperture is the same concept. Here is a chart to help you visualize this.

Shutter speed: how long the shutter is open. Shutter speed is measured with time. You can leave your shutter open for as long as you want, like 10 seconds, for example. However if you're photographing young children, you want a very fast shutter speed so you get a sharp photo with no blur. For example, this photo was taken with a shutter speed of 640, meaning 1/640th of a second.

If you're shooting in full automatic mode, you don't have to think about these things. However, you'll have more control over the outcome of your photo if you shoot in manual mode. To shoot in manual, you must understand how these elements all work together to produce your photo. It can be very confusing at first! That's why I'm going to dedicate a whole post to each of these elements. Slowly but surely, you can learn how to master these things! Stay tuned.