Hi everybody welcome to another episode
of Exploring Photography right here on
AdoramaTV, I'm Mark Wallace. Well about a
year and a half ago I did a series on
the Exposure Triangle, understanding the
ISO, the shutter and the aperture value,
and how those all relate to each other
and a lot of people have written in and
said; "can you please just give us an
example of you putting that into
practice" and so that's what we're going
to do today. So I am in Pretoria, South Africa
I'm going to be walking the streets, shooting
some street photography. Maybe doing a
portrait here and there, but the key to
this episode is explaining my thought
process. Why am I using a certain
aperture? Why am I using a certain ISO
value? Or why am I using a certain
shutter speed? And how do all those
things relate? And so we're going to do
that by me just walking taking pictures
and explaining it as I go. So join me as we
do this in this video today.
Alright we're going to start
by using the simplest setup possible.
We have lots of light here
and so what I'm doing is
I have my aperture set to f/8.
That is the sharpest that
this lens is going to be. So really,
really, crystal clear. If you're not sure
what the sharpest aperture value of your
lens is where you can google it or look
at the Adorama Learning Center,
we've probably had some discussions about that,
but it's going to be around f/8 around to
maybe, to f/11 something like that. I have
my ISO at 200 because we have lots of
light. I don't need to have that cranked
up, so it's going to keep everything nice
and noise free. As far as the shutter is
concerned, well I'm shooting in aperture
priority mode. In other words, I've set
this to f/8 ISO 200 the cameras going to
figure out the shutter speed, because we
know we have a lot of light, it's going
to be nice and fast, so I can shoot
handheld and I'm sitting with
the 21mm lens, which is perfect for
street photography, because almost
everything is going to be in focus.
I can almost just point and shoot and take
some great shots.
So behind me we've a lot of
construction. We got a lot of people
working. We've got a lot of activity.
So we're going to walk around
and shoot with these settings.
This is Gertrude, we just met
her on the street.
She said we could take pictures.
I think she sort of likes me.
Oh I love you darling.
Thank you. I just love you darling
[unintelligible singing]...
Okay
and you don’t know the story
I think she was then the double pawn.
I think my husband will say,
“why, why, why?”
So I said, “Because you are not part of the story darling.”
I'll just talk just a second about Gertrude,
so she just walked up and
said "hello" on the street and engaged
with us and what a fantastic
conversation, but in that situation
that's when understanding the exposure
triangle really comes into play, because
I wanted to get a good shot of her but
everything was all wacky. We had this
really strong back light. The first shots
I was taking were under exposed because
the camera was metering for the background,
and so I didn't have a chance to fumble
with my camera as I was having a
conversation with her, so I quickly
peaked at my histogram and the image on
the back of the screen and I could tell
that things were right and so as she was
talking, I took a picture of her feet and
that gave me a proper exposure because
it was in the shade, then I adjusted my
camera manually to the proper settings,
and then I was able to shoot and get
some shots of her face and everything
was all correct.
"Zinc, zinc, twilight..."
So still ISO 200, still, I think I was at
f/8 and then the shutter speed. I don't
remember what it is, but I will show it
right here, so you know what I was
shooting at, but that's the kind of thing
understanding the exposure triangle will
help you with, is understanding what to
do when things aren't going right and I
think these shots are really fun and I
really had fun hanging out with Gertrude.
Okay well in this situation what I'm
doing is, we have sort of this busy
shopping center with lots of hustle and
bustle, and people buying things, and
eating and so motion is the thing that's
important to me. So what I've done is I've
set my camera to a really small aperture
value. Its an aperture value of f/16
and that's going to restrict the light
and force my shutter speed to be really long
so I'm shooting at a shutter speed of a
1/4 of a second, 1/4s
at ISO 200 and that's going to
blur everything that's moving but
because my camera is on a tripod, anything
that's not moving;
like the ground and the environment
is going to be perfectly still,
and that'll give us that sense of motion.
So slow shutter speed, low ISO,
closed down aperture,
almost everything is going
to be in focus and now we can see that
we have this sort of hustle and bustle
scene and it works just fine.
So in this shot Odette is joining us.
You might remember her from previous episodes
of Exploring Photography. So thanks for
popping in for this. We are really in a
dark environment, right now. It's really,
really low light. We have the gain turned
up on the video camera, so it might not
look like that. So what settings do I use?
Well what I'm going to do is we're going
to shoot against this brick wall. We're
going to do a black and white exposure
here, to be sort of really nice and
contrasting. So what I'm going to do here
is I'm going to start at an aperture
value of f/2.8. That's going to let in
a lot of light.
I'm an ISO 200. That's my base ISO.
When I try to take this shot. So you
stand right there.
I look and I see that, oh my gosh I'm
at 1/8th of a second. That is really
slow so I'm going to have some problems
with camera shake.
So the next thing I'm going to do is at
an 1/8th of a second, I know I really need
to crank up my ISO, so I'm changing my
ISO from 200 all the way up to 800.
On this camera it doesn't do really well above
ISO 800, so I'm stopping they're.
Now I'm going to check and see what my shutter
speed is to see if I can shoot handheld.
So we're going to look again and now I'm
seeing that my shutter speed is about
1/30th of a second, which is still
going to be a little bit shaky so what
can I do my ISO is increased my aperture
is open
luckily I have a lens that goes from f/2.8
all the way to f/1.4
That's a full stop
That's going to allow me to shoot
handheld and because we have that nice
shallow depth of field against this,
it doesn't really matter how much is in
focus, as long as I focus on the eyes.
So ISO 800 for the low light. Aperture at
f/1.4 also because of low light and now
we're going to shoot. Are you ready?
Okay, let's begin, beautiful,
I love those eyes.
Right well, I think these shots
worked really great.
Thank you so much for popping in and
helping us with this video, but we have
other shots to take so we're going to
leave you and do that right now
Jimmy and Floyd, Jimmy and Floyd,
Jimmy and Floyd I'm going to take one more picture
of you guys okay we're going to film is that
alright? Alright Jimmy and Floyd are
going to let me take pictures, so I'm shooting
this f/2, shallow depth of field we're
sort of in low light here. That's going to
work out my 35mm lens. Give me
your best Jimmy and Floyd expression.
What I'm going to do now is, there's some
construction behind me ,you can see these
guys working. I want to maybe get a couple of
shots from them, but I want to isolate
the workers and so I'm going to use a shallow
depth of field, which requires a wide
open aperture. This is a 50mm lens,
so it's not going to be two shallow
at distance. So I'm going to go all the
way to f/1.4 that's wide open
that means I need to have my ISO as low
as possible with all this light, and that's
going to make my shutter speed really,
really fast. That'll freeze the motion so
I'm going to shoot these guys back here
and we'll show you what we get.
Can I take your picture? Yeah? Fantastic.
Ammous. This is Ammous. Ammous.
What is it? Ammous
Ammous, alright thank you
This was awesome.
Alright well I think we've
shot enough to illustrate the point of
how the exposure triangle works.
Remember; if you're thinking about motion,
you're thinking about the shutter speed.
A slow shutter speed shows motion, like we shot
in that busy little market there.
Fast shutter speed is going to freeze motion.
if you're concerned about depth of field,
how much is in focus?
Wide open aperture with
a long lens is going to give you
shallow depth of field, like we shot with
construction workers or a nice short
lens 21mm, like I used for the
street photography is going to have
everything in focus with an aperture
value about f/8
So if you're concerned about
depth of field, think aperture first,
but if you're in low light,
then you're going to start thinking about
your ISO, to bring that up so that you
can capture that low light as best as
possible. Once you start playing with
this you'll see that it works every
single time you just need to practice,
practice, practice and you'll see that
all of these things start to relate
automatically in your brain
and you'll be able to adjust very, very quickly.
Thank you so much for joining me for
this episode of Exploring Photography.
Don't forget to subscribe to AdoramaTV
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Thanks for joining me and I'll see you
again next time.