I think shooting manual, also known as understanding the exposure triangle is like a rite of passage
for amateurs to be able to acquire the status of ‘photographer’.
Now for those of you who are well versed on this topic, this video might not be suitable
for you, but for those who are just starting out, I’m going to try my best to break it
down and make it easier to understand.
I’ll be splitting this into two parts; the first part we will identify the elements that
make up the exposure triangle, how they affect exposure, and the side effects of these elements.
In the second part, we will talk about how to effectively work with these elements to
achieve the result you want.
I will Include timestamps in the description box if you want to jump to a specific section.
Let’s go.
The three elements that make up the exposure triangle are ISO, Shutter Speed, and Aperture.
Now these three elements all have the ability to control the amount of light the camera
will expose in a scene, in other words any of these elements can make an image brighter
or darker.
But that is where the similarities end, because each of these elements also serve their own
unique purpose.
ISO controls Image Quality, Shutter Speed controls motion, and Aperture controls Depth.
Remember this as it is important for later on.
Now let’s take a look at each individual element, starting with ISO.
Essentially, the higher the ISO value, the brighter or more exposed the image becomes,
simple as that.
But remember how I said ISO controls Image Quality?
Well, here’s the catch.
The higher the ISO value, the more Digital Noise the Image produces.
Digital noise are these grainy artifacts that show up on your image, here’s a comparison
of a low value ISO to a high value ISO.
So now we know the tradeoff of making an image brighter using ISO.
Next up is Shutter Speed.
Quick note, shutter speed is measured in fractions of a second, so the numbers you see here on
my Fujifilm dial, keep in mind, are actually 1 over whatever the value, seconds.
So for instance 4000 would technically be 1/4000th of a second, and 2 would be half
a second, hope that clears things up.
So essentially, the LOWER or slower the shutter speed, the brighter or more exposed the image
becomes.
But what happens when the shutter speed slows down?
If you have a moving subject in your frame, and your shutter speed is slower than how
fast the subject is travelling, by the time the shutter closes, the subject may have already
moved to another point in the frame.
And that ambiguous blur in the resulting image is what is known as motion blur.
And this is the tradeoff of making the image brighter using shutter speed.
And finally Aperture.
Similar to Shutter Speed, the lower the aperture value, the brighter the image becomes.
So what’s the drawback?
Put simply, aperture controls the depth of an image; the lower the aperture value, the
greater the depth or separation of foreground subjects to mid and background subjects.
The higher the aperture value, the less depth or separation of subjects.
For example in a very bright scene when you want the greatest depth possible, lowering
your aperture value will make the scene even brighter, or a very dark scene when you want
the least depth possible, by increasing the aperture value you will make it even darker.
So now we’ve established the three elements that make up the exposure triangle, how they
individually expose an image and how they each have their own drawbacks.
So now let’s talk about how we go about adjusting these three elements to get the
most optimal image.
When shooting any photo it is a good idea to always consider in which order you want
to prioritise the three elements to expose an image.
What do I mean?
Think about it.
If my goal is to get the best possible image quality, which element should I prioritise?
If I want to freeze a subject’s movement, which element should I prioritise?
If I want to seperate my subject from the background or if I want everything in focus,
which element should I prioritise?
You choose one element to be the TOP priority, that means once you set a value for that element
you should not change it no matter what.
From there we can start working with the other two elements.
Out of the remaining two elements, it’s a good idea to identify which one you would
prefer to be a higher priority than the other.
Once you have decided, the element with the lowest priority will be your main adjustment
setting for correct exposure and the higher prioritised element becomes your backup adjustment
setting. Let’s learn with a few examples.
In the first example, we have a still life scene in a dim environment.
For still life I want the best possible image quality, so ISO will be top priority, so we
choose the lowest value for best quality.
Next I want as much of the subject in focus, so aperture is my next priority, so we’ll
choose a higher aperture value.
And that leaves us with shutter speed as our final element.
Remember how I mentioned shutter speed freezes motion?
I forgot to mention that motion does not just come from external sources, you yourself can
also be responsible for the motion in an image.
So keeping that in mind let’s look at the scene.
We have a low ISO value and a high aperture value, both of which will make the image darker.
So to expose correctly we must lower our shutter speed, but hold on why is this image blurry?
This is still life, nothing is moving in the scene.
Well that's because our shutter speed value is so low that even slight movements coming
from our body can affect the motion of the scene.
If you have shaky hands like myself, these micro movements can create unwanted motion
blur at low shutter speeds.
So how to fix this, we will need to raise our shutter speed value to an amount that
can overcome this.
Over time, through trial and error, you will figure out what the optimal values for each
element should be for certain situations so I won’t be going over recommended settings
in this video.
Ok, now that we have shutter speed at the lowest usable value, we notice that it still
isn’t bright enough, so we will go back to our second priority, aperture, to correct
the exposure.
And now we have a correctly exposed still life image with the best possible image quality.
In the next example, I have a moving subject that I want to freeze, I know that I need
to prioritise my shutter speed and for the sake of this example the minimum value I can
set to freeze motion is 1/500th of a second; so I will set that value, next I want to prioritise
my image quality, I want the image quality to be as good as possible; so I will set my
ISO to the lowest amount.
Now if you take a look at the screen it is all dark!
This is because both increasing the shutter speed, and lowering the ISO value will make
the image darker.
So the only way to balance this is to adjust our lowest priority element, which in this
case is aperture.
We know that by lowering the aperture value we can make an image brighter so let’s lower
the aperture value to its lowest.
Ok, now we can see there is a bit more exposure in the image, but nowhere near bright enough.
What do we do?
Well we know that we cannot touch the shutter speed as that is what freezes the motion,
and we also know that our aperture is already at its lowest value.
That leaves only the ISO element, so in order to expose the image properly, the only way
is to increase our ISO value.
Now we have an image that is correctly exposed and can also freeze motion!
The last example will be a very bright scene, we want to take a photo of the foreground
subject but separate it from all the other subjects in the scene.
This means we need to create more depth in the image, so the element that takes top priority
is Aperture, so we will set it to the lowest value to maximize the depth.
Next I want the best image quality, so I will lower the ISO value.
We know that decreasing the aperture will brighten the image and decreasing the ISO
will darken the image, so that seems to balance things out, but why is the scene still bright?
Now we need to resort to our shutter speed.
By increasing the shutter speed value, we will darken the image.
And there we have it, a subject with a nice blurry background.
So to sum up, the exposure triangle consists of three elements, ISO, shutter speed and
aperture.
In order to brighten an image, you need to increase the ISO value, decrease the shutter
speed value, and decrease the aperture value.
To get the best image quality possible you need to prioritise ISO, to freeze motion you
need to prioritise shutter speed, and to capture more depth in an image you need to prioritise
aperture.
I hope this video has helped.
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Thanks for watching guys and until next time.