The secondary effect with the easiest of the three to understand is probably the shutter speed. A fast shutter speed can freeze action. A slow shutter speed will blur motion. If you are shooting sports, chances are you are going to want to freeze their motion. To freeze motions that a person can do, your…
Author: elliott
Putting it all together: Exposure
“Exposure” is the choices made in the Exposure Triangle and how it looks in the final picture. An image is properly exposed when it is not too bright and not too dark.[1] Here is an image I took on July 9, 2014. The exposure triangle settings for this image were: Aperture: f/6.3 Shutter Speed: 1/800…
How Aperture Relates to the other legs of the Triangle
The other aspect of aperture that is complicated is how it relates, numerically, to the other values in the exposure triangle. Hang with me here! Or take my word for it and skip ahead. Let’s say we have that 3 inch simple lens that is 1 inch across. What if we doubled the size of…
What is a “Stop”?
Now we can answer why we use the word “stop” in talking about exposure. On old cameras with a manual aperture ring, the aperture numbers are marked on the ring, similarly to the picture show above. On these old lenses, there was a mechanical click, or “stop,” built in to the action of that ring.…
Primary Effects — Aperture: Values
Values for the aperture are written as a fraction, like this: f/1 (Large aperture; lets in a lot of light) f/1.4 f/2.0 f/2.8 f/4 f/5.6 f/8 f/11 f/16 (Small aperture; lets in only a little light) The aperture can be any value. But in practice, these values are the most common ones that are quoted. …
Primary Effects: Aperture — Derivation of the numbers used for Aperture
The aperture is measured in a very funny way that is somewhat hard to understand.[1] The aperture is defined with respect to the focal length of the lens: A = f/d Where: A is the aperture value f is the focal length of the lens[2] d is the diameter of the opening of the lens…
Primary Effects: Aperture — Introduction
Aperture is, far and away, the hardest leg of the exposure triangle to understand. The aperture is the size of the opening in the lens. Only light that goes through that opening can hit the sensor. You can see the aperture variation on a large camera in manual mode—it is same way as the iris…
Primary Effects: ISO
The ISO[1] is the sensitivity of the sensor to the light that is hitting it. There is not much to understand here on this leg of the Exposure Triangle: The higher the number, the more sensitive is the sensor. The numbers we use for ISO include: 50, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200, 6400, ……
Primary Effects: Shutter Speed
The shutter speed is the amount of time that the sensor is exposed to the incoming light from the scene you are photographing. The number we assign to this parameter is expressed as a fraction of a second, for example 1/30 1/2000 ½ 15 The last one, “15”, means that the sensor is exposed to…
Why Exposure “Triangle”?
Many photography teachers shy away from the phrase, “Exposure Triangle,” and for good reason. The triangle itself has no meaning. First, there is no “light” leg. Second, it gives the viewer a mental picture of a non-existent relationship among the legs. But since there are three aspects of exposure that can be adjusted, it is…