Vol 4 - Bringing it all together
So far, we’ve covered the exposure triangle, aperture, and shutter speed. Now we need to practice bringing those things together! The other leg of the exposure triangle that we haven’t talked about is ISO. ISO is how sensitive your camera is to light. I think of it like this how much light is my camera “In Search Of?” If light is abundant, my camera is not “in search of” light so it can be a low number, like 100. If my camera is “in search of” a lot of light (because it’s dark) then it needs to be high like 6400 or 12800.
The higher your ISO the more grain your image will have, but I think having a grainy image is better than having no image at all!
So now we’re ready for the big switch, turn that dial to M!
Decide what you would like to take a picture of, let’s say you want to take a picture of a bowl of fruit sitting in a well lit window and you want lots of blur in the background.
Let’s set our bowl about 3 feet in front of the window.
On our camera, let’s put our shutter speed at 1/200, and let’s lower our aperture as low as we can, for my 50mm lens, that 1.4. When I do that and I look through the viewfinder, I see this:
Do you see that bar at the bottom in the middle of my viewfinder? it’s ticked all the way to the plus sign on the right. That’s telling me that my picture will be overexposed, I don’t want there to be any “tics” on either side of that “0” in the middle. So I have to change some of my numbers.
There are a couple of ways to fix an “over exposure,” I can
Make my shutter speed faster (less time to let in light)
Make my aperture smaller - by raising the number (less light coming in through a smaller opening)
Lower my ISO (allow my camera to compensate for additional light)
So.. I lowered my ISO, because I don’t want to change my shutter speed or aperture in this setting, and look what happens to my meter…
My meter is balanced at “0” now! I’ve taken a picture using all three aspects of the exposure triangle and my camera has told me when it’s a “good exposure.”
For an “under exposed” image you would just change your settings to let in MORE light:
lower your shutter speed (more time to let light in)
Open up your aperture (wider opening lets in more light)
Raise your ISO (allow my camera to compensate for low light)
Practice this in a few situations and see how you can change your settings to accommodate lighting in different ways! Practice changing your settings to make the meter = 0 , you’ll be proficient in no time!
Next week we’re going to talk about white balance! EXCITING STUFF Y’ALL!