Day 1: October 10
Basic Skills and Vocabulary!
To start off my learning photography, I decided to learn about the three main settings: ISO, aperture, and shutter speed.
ISO: sensitivity to light
ISO is the first thing to be adjusted, and is adjusted depending on how much light there is.
*in dark conditions, a higher ISO will brighten it up
On a side note, there is a term called noise level. This basically dictates the distortion of light in pictures. A lower ISO will produce less noise, but it won't make the picture brighter.
So what do you do if you’re in a dark setting?
It is best to keep the ISO low. Since pictures will be dark, you should use shutter speed and aperture to change the lighting as well to compensate for the low ISO.
Aperture: how open or closed the lens is
Aperture not only changes how much light comes in, but also controls depth of field.
This is controlled by the F-stop setting on your camera.
The lower the number of the F-stop, the bigger the aperture, which means that the lens will be more open and allows more light in. The greater the f-stop, the smaller the lens is, which allows less light in. A low F-stop also makes the depth of field very shallow, so the background is not focused on while an object will be in focus. This is great for when something, like an object, is needed to make a "point" in the image. On the other hand, a high f-stop will make the background focus as well.
Shutter Speed: controls how fast it takes picture
Shutter speed is good to play around with for pictures that require motion.
If the shutter is open for a long time, which is a low shutter speed, it will combine the movements (blur) the movements. A high shutter speed will be ideal to take pictures of motions, if the intended affect is to get a cool still picture of something moving. However, if the intent of the image is to get a blurry movement picture, then a low shutter speed should be used.
*shutter speed is dictated by fractions, so a higher denominator means a lower shutter speed.
Reflection:
Because I’ve learnt these basics from online videos, I still need to get my hands on the camera and experience it myself to determine whether I can fully be confident with taking "good" pictures. I feel that I have got a good idea on what these terms mean, but I am still confused on shutter speed. Additionally, many of the settings rely on each other, so I am curious as to how one compensates for the other (ex. low ISO compensated by higher aperture). These are problems that I believe will get solved through direct experience as I start going out and experimenting.