Tuesday’s Digital Tutorial

Welcome to my first Tuesday Digital Tutorial.  I’m all about digital whether it be digital photography, the digital darkroom, or digital scrapbooking.

This week’s tutorial is going to focus on digital photography.

With all the buttons and dials on today’s digital SLR cameras, it can get a little confusing on how to set up your digital camera to get the right exposure.  When I say exposure, I am referring to the amount of light that passes through the lens of your camera and falls onto the digital sensor within your camera.

Too much light and your photograph will look washed out.  Too little light and you won’t be able to see any of the photos details.

There are three things that determine how much light enters the camera.  ISO rating, shutter speed and aperture.

Let’s begin with ISO rating.  The lower the number (i.e. ISO 100) the more sensitive to light the sensor will be.  The higher the rating (i.e. ISO 800) means the sensor will need to be exposed to light for a longer period of time to record your image.

Shutter speed is referring to how long the sensor is exposed to light.  Shutter speeds can range from 1/4000th of a second to 30 seconds or longer.

Aperture is the opening in the lens that lets in a little light or a lot of light.  Think of the opening being the size of a pinhole (little light comes through) to the size of a 50 cent piece (lots of light comes through).

Now you could cheat and use the handful of Scene Modes that are already programmed into your camera and you will get a decent photograph for your lack of effort.  But if you really want to have some creative control over how your photographs turn out then you will want to turn that dial to the Manual Modes.  That is after why you purchased a digital SLR camera, to create better photographs.

The Modes

P = Program Mode: Your camera will set the aperture and the shutter speed for you.  You can adjust the ISO rating.

TV = Shutter Priority means that the camera will set the aperture and you have control over the ISO rating and the shutter speed.

AV = Aperture Mode means that you can control the aperture setting and the ISO rating and your camera will set the shutter speed based on your settings.

M = Manual Mode gives you full control over all of your camera’s settings.

To help you determine how best to set your camera, I have developed a few questions you can ask yourself and some guidelines to follow when taking your photographs.

1.  Is your subject moving? If Yes go to #2, if not go to #3

2.  If the subject is moving, do you want to freeze the subject or show it in motion? If the subject is moving, go to #A, if you need to show motion go to #B.

3.  If the subject is not moving, do you want everything to be in focus or do you want the subject in focus but the background or foreground blurry?  If you want everything near and far in focus go to #C, if you want the subject in focus and everything else blurry go to #D.

Here are some examples to help you understand a little better.

In this photograph I was able to freeze the motion of the kid going off the ramp on his Big Wheel by setting my camera to: ISO 80, Shutter Speed 1/200 sec, and an Aperture of f/7.8.

This is one of my favorite photographs because I was successful at showing the movement of the water as it flowed over the rocks.  For this photo my camera was set to ISO 100, 0.6 sec, and an Aperture of f/29.  I would also like to mention that when you have a longer Shutter Speed it is best to use a tripod so as to not shake the camera while taking the photograph.

In this photograph, pretty much everything is sharp near to far.  I was able to achieve this photograph by setting my ISO to 100, Shutter Speed 1/80 sec, and an Aperture of f/22.

 

For this last photograph, I wanted to focus on the wild berries and blur out the background.  For this photograph I set my camera to an ISO 100, Shutter Speed 1/100 sec, And an Aperture of f/5.6.

Now that you are armed with some new knowledge, put it to good use by going out to take some photographs right after you leave me some feedback on this post.  I would like to know if you found this information useful or not.  And what would you like to see me teach for next week?

Wishing you a picture perfect Tuesday!