This week I'm gonna show you seven rules of photography
even though these are rules you don't always have to stick to them and you can
get some amazing shots when you break all of them think of them more as
guidelines to help you learn photography the legendary photojournalist Arthur
Ouija Fellig was first credited with using this term f/8 and be there in the
1930s in New York he was always the one to get there and get the shot for the
newspapers and this is so true if you're not there you're not going to get the
shot the reason why it's f/8 and be there is because at f/8 the depth of
focus is quite deep so you're more than likely to get your subject in focus and
it's all about capturing the moment so if you were to have a low f-stop and you
were to point the camera at the subject you might capture the moment but they
might not be in focus at f/8 the subject is more likely to be in focus for
instance if you're doing street photography on a really sunny day you
had your settings at one four hundredth of a second at ISO 100 and f/8 you could
pretty much walk around taking photos of everything and anything that's going on
around you then you'd more likely capture the
moment and not have to worry about the settings and with today's modern cameras
you can always pull back the shadows and the highlights so this is really true in
today's photography as it was in the 1930s f/8 and be there this is a rule to
follow when shooting handheld basically you take your focal length figure and
then make sure your shutter speed figure doesn't drop below this if your hands
are relatively steady and you follow this rule you should get a clear and
crisp shot for instance if I'm shooting with a 25 millimeter lens I won't let my
shutter speed drop below 125th of a second if I'm shooting with an 85
millimeter the slowest shutter speed I'll use is around 180 fifth of a second
if I'm shooting with a 200 millimeter lens I'll make sure my shutter speed is
one two hundredth of a second or faster now this is the most well-known rule in
photography it's where you break your image up into three sectors on the
vertical plane and then on the horizontal plane so you end up with a
grid like this then if you place your subject on one of these
lines or whether intersect most of the time it'll give a pleasing image also if
you're shooting a landscape if you put the horizon on one of the horizontal
planes that'll also make the image a little bit more compelling this is not
always true but if you generally stick to this rule your photos will start to
look a lot better now this differs from the rule of thirds and it's more about
the subject or subject that you're shooting when shooting multiple objects
this is a rule to think about when shooting groups of the same thing try
and get three of them in the shot it seems to make the photograph work a lot
better sometimes they can be in different positions or lined up but
three of an object seems to work really well in a photograph this is really
interesting and it refers to the logarithmic scale that photographic
settings follow so with shutter speed if you start at one one hundredth of a
second and half the amount of light will go to one two hundredth of a second if
you have it again you go to one four hundredth of a second if you have it
again you go to one eight hundred thousand and then one sixteen hundredth
of a second and so on and so forth with ISO if you start at one hundred and
double the light you'll go to ISO 200 we double the light again you'll go to four
hundred and then again 800 and then 1600 so you can see even though they're going
in opposite directions they follow the same pattern so if you're shooting at
one 800 the second at ISO 800 if you wanted the same exposure with a lower
shutter speed you can drop it down to say one four hundredth of a second and
all you'd have to do is drop your ISO down to 400 if you wanted to drop the
shutter speed down to 1/100 of a second all you do is drop it down to ISO 100 in
practical terms if you are shooting with a 400 millimeter lens handheld with a
shutter speed of 1/100 of a second at ISO 100 if you wanted to raise the
shutter speed so you didn't get handheld blur what you do is raise it up to 1/4
hundredth of a second at ISO 400 this would give you exactly the same exposure
obvious in a real-life situation you drop your
f-stop down first but I'm just showing you the relationship with ISO and
shutter speed and this relationship leads us up to the last rule a long time
ago when I used to shoot with film I would use the sunny sixteen rule it's
basically a way of looking at the conditions and getting some settings
that you can start with especially if you forgot your light meter so it goes
like this if you set your ISO and shutter speed at the same number let's
say 1/100 of a second and ISO 100 if it's a sunny bright day we set the
aperture to f-16 and you'll get good exposure when shooting on film
you'd never get that instant feedback so this was really important nowadays
because the cameras give you instant feedback you can just use this rule as a
starting point and if you learn this rule it'll teach you a lot about the
settings of the camera and how they interact with each other if you search
online for the sunny 16 rule you'll find lots of cheat sheets and charts this
will give you an idea of what settings to shoot when if you keep your ISO and
shutter speed bigger the same then you can follow these rules f-16 on a sunny
day f11 on a partially cloudy day f/8 on a
cloudy day f 5.6 on a dark and stormy day F for around about sunset it may
seem complicated but if you keep the shutter speed and ISO figure exactly the
same and just take along or memorize the cheat sheet you'll have a really good
starting point also if you want to learn as much about photography as possible
it's worth learning this rule then you can literally go to a location look to
see what the conditions are and know exactly what settings to shoot him as
you learn more about photography you can then decide what settings you want and
you'll pretty much know what to shoot and then it's just a case of dialing in
those settings with practice you'll be able to go to a location and pretty much
get the settings right first time you might have to click a third of a stop
one way or another but most of the time you can get it right it's a fun
challenge to do and if you want to impress your photo buddies then this is
a really good one to learn what you'll find is if you're just
getting into photography and you don't know about these rules you might take
the odds shot that looks amazing you don't know why but you know it's a good
shot normally it's because it's breaking these rules or following them in a
certain way but once you learn them you'll understand why the photograph
looks good then by consciously following or breaking these rules you'll be able
to create some really compelling shots and that's my aim with this channel I
want to help you become the best photographer you can possibly be as
always if you like what you see give me a thumbs up if you didn't give me a
thumbs down and for weekly tutorials hints and tips in photography and
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