Digital Photography – Controlling the Camera – Shutter Speed and Aperture

So now that we have learned the basics of what a camera is in the previous article, we can learn about how to control it.  Most cameras will let you adjust the setting we will go over but you will know if you can adjust them if you have already gone over your camera.

Controlling the Camera

Point and shoot cameras or the auto setting on your camera will try to adjust all the settings we are about to talk about automatically. They will try and produce the best image using sensors built into the camera.  Some times this works but to be able to produce quality photos in various setting you must learn to control your camera. You must become a master of your tool.

Shutter Speed

Shutter speed is one of the most important controls you need to learn to master. So what does shutter speed do and why do you need to control it? The shutter controls the amount of time that your digital sensor is exposed to light coming in from the lens. The shutter opens and closes to allow light onto the sensor. When you press the shutter release button on your camera the shutter opens to capture the image. The shutter speed determines how long the shutter remains open.
So how do you understand the settings? You have probably seen the options for the shutter speed control, they look like 1/60, 1/200, 3, etc.. What does it mean? Shutter speeds are measured in fractions of a second. So 1/60 is a 60th of a second and the whole numbers are whole seconds. If your camera shows a “B”, that means the shutter will remain open as long as your finger is on the shutter release button.
There are a couple reasons why you need to be able to control the shutter speed. We will go over these briefly.

Light

The longer your shutter is open the more light that hits your sensor. So in darker situations you would want much more light hitting the sensor, so you would use a longer shutter time. If you are in a bright area then there is a lot more light shining and you need less time to expose the sensor, using a very small fraction of a second. So the the more light the less amount of time and the less light the longer the exposure.

Motion

The next reason to learn to control the shutter speed is motion. Everything in life is always in motion so what happens when you leave the shutter open? You capture motion which can make yours images blurry. Sometimes you might like a little motion it can give a really cool effect but other times you want to have a clear image. So if you are trying to take a picture of something in motion and want the image to be clear, you will have to make sure that the sensor is only expose for a split second. You are trying to capture that moment in time. For example, in sports there is a lot of motion, so if you want to see a clear image of a athlete you have to capture a small fraction of the motion. So you would use a quick shutter time.
So here comes the juggle. What if you are in a low light situation and there is a lot of action? You are in a situation where you need long exposure for light and short exposure for motion. Well that is where a flash or a tripod would be helpful or you can adjust your ISO setting, but we will get into those later.  For now we will learn about aperture.

Aperture

Is an adjustable opening in the lens that controls how much light can enter the camera. The aperture in a sense allows you to dim the lights or make them brighter. This can allow you to use faster or slower shutter speeds. The aperture is measured by the f-stop setting on your camera. The larger the f-stop the less light that is allowed in and the smaller the f-stop the more light that is allowed in. That can be confusing but also knowing that the bigger the f-stop, the more depth of field you have. The smaller the f-stop, the less amount of depth of field you have. So the bigger the depth of field the smaller the amount of light and the smaller the depth of field the more light that is allowed in. Use whatever is the best method for you to remember.

So the aperture and shutter is like if you were standing in a darkroom and you open the door.  The Aperture is how far you open the door to let the light in and the shutter speed is how long the the door is open.

Homework

So now we know what the shutter speed does and what the aperture does. Time to experiment. Try to take a few pictures of a stationary object under the same lighting with different shutter speeds and different aperture settings. Then change the lighting and play with the setting again. Next try to find a moving object and play with the shutter speeds and aperture. Finally comment with your best photos.