The Five Most Essential Camera Settings and How

The Five Most Essential Camera
Settings and How to Use Them

Created By: David Shaw

 Modern cameras, from phones to high-end DSLRs, are designed to make
decisions for us. And for the most part, they do a pretty darn good job of it.
Slap your SLR into AUTO mode and more often than not you’ll get images that
are sharp with decent exposure. If you are just looking to document your
world, then go for it, snap away.

 The drawback is that images taken in AUTO tend to look similar to one
another, with a uniform depth of field and exposure. If you want to move
beyond the automatic camera settings, you need to understand your camera,
how to use it, and most importantly, what impact changing those settings will
have on your final image. Here are five of the most essential camera settings,
what they mean, and how they impact the photograph.



ISO

 First, the acronym ISO is terrible, because it’s basically meaningless in terms
of photography. It stands for “International Standards Organization” a
European non-governmental organization that makes sure industries apply the
same standards. In the case of photography, they want to make sure that an
800 ISO on a Canon is the same as on a Nikon, Sony or Fuji.

 If that standard didn’t exist, then settings wouldn’t be applicable across
camera brands. So if I set my Canon to make an image at 1/100th sec at f/2.8
and ISO 400, and you set your Nikon to the same setting, we wouldn’t get the
same exposure. Thankfully all the major manufacturers do subscribe to the
ISO standards.



Shutter Speed

 The length of time your camera’s sensor is exposed to light is the shutter
speed. Many cameras have a mechanical shutter that snaps open and closed
allowing light to reach the sensor, others use a digital shutter that simply
turns on the sensor for the set period of time before switching it off again.
Shutter speed has a huge impact on the final image. A long shutter speed will
create blur in moving subjects. As a landscape photographer, I use long
shutter speeds often to blur water, expose starlight, or capture wind motion.

 Short or fast shutter speeds have the effect of stopping motion. Use a shutter
speed of 1/2000th of a second and the motion of a runner or a cyclist will be
stopped dead.



Aperture

 The aperture, or f-stop, may be the most confusing aspect of photography for
many photographers because it affects images in unexpected ways.
Essentially, the aperture is how big the hole in the lens is. The smaller the
hole, the less light is allowed in, the larger it is, the more light gets through.
What often confuses people is the numbering system: the smaller the number,
the larger the hole. So f/2.8 is a larger opening than f/4, f/5.6, f/8, f/11 and
so on. Lenses with a wide maximum aperture (a small number like f/2) are
considered “fast” meaning they are capable of allowing in more light.



Depth of Field and application

 Next, the aperture also controls the Depth of Field. The DoF is the amount of
the image from close to far that is in focus. A lens, when set wide open, say
f/2.8, will have less DoF than when the same lens is set to f/11.

 Like shutter speed, your use of aperture should be purposeful. Have a
landscape image that you want in focus from front to back? You better select
a high f-stop (like f/11). How about a portrait where you want a clean, soft
background but a tack-sharp eye? Then use a small f-stop (like f/2.8 or f/4)
and watch that focus point.

 The aperture has a direct impact on shutter speed. A large f-stop will require
you to use a longer shutter speed to attain proper exposure. Just as lower f-
stop, will allow you to use a fast shutter speed. These two are completely
interrelated, there is no escaping it, so you NEED a strong understanding of
both.



Thank You!