I Learned How to Take Better Photos by Digging Through My Camera’s Exposure Settings.
I shoved the phone in my husband’s face to show him a photograph of the New York skyline that I had taken . “It’s good, isn’t it?” I asked, too proud of myself, because, to be honest, it was not good. “Okay,” he said. “Imagine how good it would look if you knew what you were doing.” I rolled my eyes, but I accepted his offer to teach me how to expose.
A good photograph is a properly exposed photograph, all of which means that the right amount of light hits the photograph in all the right places. I’ve always had a vague idea of my camera’s exposure settings. I knew they had something to do with lighting. But when I took the trouble to find out how exposure actually works, my photographs changed from “that’s cute” to “wow, this doesn’t really suck.”
Exposure depends on three factors: aperture, shutter speed, and ISO sensitivity , also referred to as the “exposure triangle”.
Not all cameras allow you to change these settings, but if you’re even interested in taking photos that don’t really suck at all, it’s worth learning how they work nonetheless.
Diaphragm
Aperture is measured in apertures, and it’s basically the amount of light your lens lets through. A wide aperture lets in more light, and the wider the aperture, the smaller the aperture (f / 1.0 is quite wide). So what about f?
F / stop is the ratio. As photographer Matt Cole explains, it is the ratio of the lens aperture diameter to its focal length. He further explains :
Focal length is usually measured in millimeters, so we will use that as our unit of measurement. For a 50mm f / 2 lens, this means that the aperture diameter is 25mm. Ratio: 50/25 = 2.
Things get a little tricky, but for a newbie to photography like me, all you really need to know is that aperture determines how much light your camera lets through. Wide apertures will have a lower number, allowing a lot of light to pass through. light, and narrow apertures will have more, letting in less light. When you’re shooting something very bright, like the moon, you need a narrow aperture. It’s like a window on a clear day – you don’t have to open the curtains wide until the light floods the room. However, on a rainy day, you may need to open them as wide as possible to get any light into the room.
Shutter speed
While the aperture measures size, shutter speed measures time: how long the camera’s shutter is open to let light through. The faster the shutter opens and closes, the less light can get in. If it is open for a long time, it will let in quite a bit of light. When you are shooting the night sky and want to capture the stars, you will have a slow shutter speed because you need all the light you can get at night (unless you are shooting the moon, which is already bright).
If you let in too much light, your photos may look washed out. This can happen if you move the camera too. Going back to the night sky example, this is why it is important that your camera is extremely stable – otherwise you might end up with blurry stars or light trails (on the other hand, if you know what you are doing, this is kind of a cool trick) . However, when you’re trying to photograph a hummingbird or anything else in action, you need a super fast shutter speed. This way, you get enough light to capture one flap of the bird’s wings, as opposed to keeping it open for longer and filming several flaps, which then turn into a blurry bird.
Shutter speed is measured in fractions of a second. For a combat shot, a shutter speed of 1 / 1200th of a second may be required. But it depends on the image. If you are taking a photo of the night sky or trying to get cool light trails, you can leave the shutter open for up to 30 seconds. Your settings depend on the image you are trying to capture, lighting, and two other exposure settings.
ISO sensitivity
ISO is the third part of the triangle. It stands for International Organization for Standardization , as it is a standardized scale for measuring sensitivity to light.
In film photography, ISO indicates how sensitive the film is to incident light. In digital photography, your camera has its own sensor with its own ISO settings. The lower the ISO value, the less sensitive your camera is to light and the darker the photo will be. You can take a brighter shot without flash by increasing the ISO . The problem is that too high an ISO can rob your photo of all the details. The bastard photography book puts it this way :
First of all, you want the ISO to be as low as possible. Unlike shutter speed and aperture, there really isn’t a compelling reason for a higher ISO than necessary. Because no one wants the high ISO effect … It creates noise, random pixelation that can smear out fine details in an image. I suppose some photographers like this look when it brings out the “grainy” texture inherent in sensitive film. But as far as color pixels are concerned, this is usually not very nice.
In auto mode, your camera should try to select the lowest ISO possible for the scene. However, you can dive deeper into the manual setting to tweak night shots or any other situations where the lighting isn’t perfect.
Exposure settings for five types of photos
I won’t pretend to be a professional or even a good photographer, but once I got to know the exposure triangle and how each factor works together, I was surprised how much better my photographs are. Here are some examples and exposure settings that I used.
moon
Lunar photographers follow the so-called Looney 11 Rule. “11” refers to aperture, which seems to be the most important exposure setting here. This is what the rule specifically requires depending on the moon:
- Full moon: shutter speed 1/125, aperture f / 11 and ISO 250
- Quarter Moon: Shutter speed 1/60, aperture f / 11 and ISO 250
- Thin Crescent: Shutter speed 1/15, aperture f / 2.8 and ISO 250
These settings will get you closer to your goal, but when you’re shooting your own photo of the moon, experiment a little with the settings to see which gives the best results.
The above photo is not the best shot of the Moon ever taken, but it beats the pictures of a luminous lamp I took on the Moon, where it was indistinguishable from a street lamp.
The settings I used for the photo above:
- Aperture: f / 11
- Exposure: 1/320
- ISO250
However, not every lens is suitable for taking pictures of the moon . You will need a telephoto lens with a focal length of at least 300mm. Also, use a tripod to make sure your camera is stabilized because even a little movement can blur your photo and ruin it. I took about twenty shots of the blurry moon before I got the one above, and I also used the camera’s timer to make sure there was no movement.
Street Photography
When you go outside with your camera, you often have to move pretty quickly to get the shot you want. On a sunny day, PetaPixel advises that your settings should stay in place :
- Aperture: f / 16
- Exposure: more than 1/200
- ISO between 200-400
Remember that the faster the shutter speed, the faster the shutter opens and closes, which allows you to better capture a moving subject: a walking person, a cyclist, etc. They recommend using a wide-angle lens to capture everything. A telephoto lens works too, but you can look like a paparazzi walking down the street with a giant lens. Here’s the lens I use for pretty much everything.
In the above photo (by Lifehacker Stephanie Lee!) I used the following settings:
- Aperture: f / 3.2
- Exposure: 1/500
- ISO: 320
Stephanie looks great, but in terms of exposure, this isn’t the best shot. It was a cloudy day, so my aperture is wider, but it’s probably too wide anyway. Looking back, maybe I should have narrowed the aperture and just raised the ISO. Live and learn.
Action or bird photography
Whether it’s a basketball game or a large bird flapping its wings, the key to great action shots is exposure. Photography Mad recommends starting at 1/500. In terms of aperture and ISO, you can probably stick to the same range as your street photography shots (around f / 16, ISO 200-400), depending on the lighting.
In the photo above, I tried to take ten different shots of this bird spreading its wings, and they all came out blurry. I set the shutter speed to 1/2500 to capture the action. Also, I used a telephoto lens to capture this shot from a distance, as most birds don’t actually allow you to get up close and personal.
Water in motion
Shutter speed is also central to waterfall photography. Again, you need a fast shutter speed to catch the water in motion. The setting depends on how fast the water is moving, so it can be difficult to measure. It also depends on what kind of photo you want. Here’s what Phototuts + recommends for these ethereal, powdery waterfall photos:
- Aperture: f / 16
- ISO: the lowest your camera allows
- Exposure time: 2 seconds
Again, this is an approximate value and is intended to recreate a specific type of photo of a waterfall. In the photo above, I wanted to capture the movement of the waterfall, all the details, including the tiny drops that you see. Here are the settings I used:
- Aperture: f / 7
- Exposure: 1/2000
- ISO: 320
Fast shutter speeds allow you to capture the subject in action. Again, if this is not what you intend to do, you will be using a much lower speed, maybe about one to two seconds. Experiment and see what works for you, but these settings should get you started.
Night sky and stars
One of my favorite subjects for photography is the night sky. I suck, but that’s what makes it funny. It’s just a lot of trial and error. Here’s where Nikon USA recommends saving the settings for decent night sky photos:
- Aperture: As wide as your lens allows
- Exposure time: 20 seconds
- ISO: say increase as needed, but try 4000 to 12800
Photographing the night sky can be tricky because you often need to capture the sky and landscape along with it, and this may require different exposure settings. Your job is to find a good balance that fits both (or you can take two separate photos and edit, but that’s a different post). For the photo of the night sky above, I used the following settings:
- Aperture: f4
- Exposure time: 15 seconds
- ISO: 1250
As you can see, my shutter speed and ISO are much farther than expected, but this is in part because I wanted to capture a brightly lit landscape in my photo.
Obviously I’m not a pro. Much better photos can be taken. But that’s the point: learning how exposure settings work together is critical to determining how to take the best photos. I think I’ve come a long way from aiming and firing and all I needed to do was learn a few basics and of course experiment.