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Aperture, shutter speed and ISO

"Move beyond auto mode and gain control of your photographs with step-by-step guidance from Santa Fe Photographic Workshops instructor Rick Allred. Master your camera's features and join Rick in the field as he reveals how to find flattering light and shoot successfully in shade, harsh sunlight and challenging low light. Learn to use shutter speed and depth of field to maximize detail, minimize distractions and create the best photos possible."

Digital cameras can be put in different photo shooting modes. The most used mode is automatic - the only thing you need to do is point and shoot. However understanding and using the other options will allow you to get better photos in certain scenarios.

Welcome to lesson two! The next two lessons are going to focus on camera basics. First off, we're going to talk about aperture - also called f-stop - and shutter speed. Those two things alone put me off for a very long time when I was a beginner and considering learning more about photography. All the years I spent growing up while I was young, I had a camera in my hands. I have boxes full of photographs of school events, slumber parties, the poodle I had growing up and all of my friends acting goofy. I figure some of that will make good blackmail material later on in life, but I digress… The point is that I was born with a love for taking pictures, but all of the crazy technical sounding stuff was very scary to me. If that's where you are, I'm here to tell you that you have nothing to be scared of. It takes a while to get the feel of how to know exactly what you're doing, but the basic concepts are quite easy, and I'll give you some tools you can use to help you along until it all comes naturally to you.

"Step 1 - What Is Aperture? The best way to understand setting your aperture is to think of it as the pupil of an eye.  The wider it gets, the more light it lets in. Together, the aperture settings, shutter speed and ISO produce an exposure. The diameter of the aperture size changes, allowing more or less light onto the sensor. This depends on the situation and the scene being photographed. Creative uses of different aperture sizes and their consequences are tackled in Step 2. Put simply, when talking about light and exposure, wider apertures allow more light and narrower ones allow less."