You got a new camera - yay!
As fantastic as point and shoot auto-features are, fine-tuning the settings yourself and going manual
will really make your photos and videos stand out!
So, let’s break down the basics: ISO, aperture and shutter speed.
This is DIY in 5!
Hey everyone! I’m Trisha Hershberger and you are watching DIY in 5,
the show where we make tech topics simple enough that you can DIY them all in a video that’s 5 minutes or less.
Today, we are talking about the three pillars of exposure: ISO, aperture size and shutter speed.
So, let’s dive right in!
Exposure is the amount of light that reaches your camera sensor.
Pictures too dark or too bright? That’s an exposure issue.
There are three elements that influence your exposure: ISO, aperture, and shutter speed.
We’ll get into how they influence each other in a moment but first, what are they?
ISO, which stands for International Standards Organization, refers to how sensitive your camera’s sensor is to light.
The higher the ISO number, the more sensitive the camera’s sensor is to light.
As a general rule, higher ISO values are better for dark settings and lower ISO numbers are better for bright settings,
like outside on a sunny day.
One note for videographers, the higher your ISO increases, the more noise you may find in your video footage.
This also applies for photos.
Aperture size adjusts to control how much light passes through, kind of like the pupils of your eyes.
Aperture is measured in f-stops, often referred to as f/number.
Somewhat confusingly, the smaller the number, like f/1.4, the bigger the aperture size.
So, an f/1.4 will let in more light than, say f/22.
Besides controlling how much light passes through, aperture size also affects depth of field, or how much blur you get in the background.
A larger f-stop number means that more of the image will be in focus, both foreground and background - say for landscape photography,
while a smaller f-stop number will mean only part of the image will be in focus, like for portraits.
Shutter speed measures how long your camera shutter stays open.
Shutter speed is measured in fractions of a second, so a faster shutter speed like 1/2000 of a second:
those faster shutter speeds are great for capturing crisp photos of fast-moving subjects
but they let in much less light than a slower shutter speed would, like 1 second,
which lets in light for a whole second and is better served to capture detail and colors in low-light situations,
but will record any motion captured as a blur.
This is why it’s best to hold still for a while when taking low light photos.
To avoid camera shake for any shutter speed slower than 1/60 of a second, consider using a tripod or resting your camera on a stable surface.
Also, for the videographers out there looking for cinematic motion blur in your videos,
a good rule of thumb is that your shutter speed should be double your frame rate.
So, if you are recording 24fps video, you will want a 1/48 or 1/50 shutter speed.
Now that we know what ISO, Aperture and Shutter Speed are, let’s talk about how they impact each other.
Perfectly balancing these three pillars of light will help you find the perfect exposure for your photo.
When you increase the exposure for one of these pillars, you will need to decrease one or both others to maintain the same exposure.
Depending on which auto features you have turned on for your camera, your camera may attempt to balance this for you automatically.
Or you’ll need to dial it in yourself.
The exposure compensation setting on your camera will allow your camera to help you with this fine-tuning process
by balancing all three pillars to create either a higher or lower exposure.
Exposure compensation is usually shown as numbers on a number line ranging from negative to positive and is controlled by a plus/minus button on most cameras.
If you don’t want to mess with all three pillars individually, but the auto mode just isn’t cutting it, this could be a great alternative.
I hope you now feel ready to go out and take some awesome photos and videos,
getting creative with your ISO, aperture size and shutter speed to get exactly the photo that you envisioned.
If the tips in this video helped you, feel free to subscribe to the channel
and check out our other photography tips videos as well.
Take care everyone, and I’ll see you next time with more DIY in 5!