Exposure tips

Learn how the Shutter Speed affects your flash photos – flash photography tips

2017-05-29T16:22:15+01:00

Flash photography tips - has this ever happened to you? You take a portrait using your built-in or external flash, but the photo is too bright or too dark, like the slightly over-exposed couple and wedding register on the table in the above shot. What did you do to fix it?:- Use exposure compensation Change from aperture to shutter priority or vice versa Change the flash exposure compensation (FEC) Change the ISO Well, there is no one quick answer, it all depends on what part of the image was over or under-exposed and your creative intention when taking the photo. But it helps to know that when using flash, changing the shutter speed has absolutely no effect on the light from the flash. That's because the flash burst of light is almost instantaneous, much faster than any of your typical shutter speeds when using flash. Changing the shutter speed only affects the ambient light. Here's a quick lighting setup outside my house during a sunny day. I put a speedlight on a stand and took a series of shots of the wall (extremely interesting subject!!). I used the camera's Manual mode and I only adjusted the shutter speed between shots. You can see that the light on the wall from the flash is exactly the same in every shot, but the ambient light is getting lighter as I slow the shutter speed.   ...until eventually, the light from the flash on the wall is perfectly balanced with the ambient light. So how does this help? In the wedding photo at the top of the page, I used Manual mode and made a guess of the exposure, it was only a test shot, but [...]

Learn how the Shutter Speed affects your flash photos – flash photography tips2017-05-29T16:22:15+01:00
  • what is iso

What is ISO – Understand ISO and get out of the Auto mode

2017-05-29T16:22:15+01:00

ISO is one of the most important camera settings, you will significantly improve not just the quality of your photos, but also the variety of them too by making good use of the ISO setting. Years ago, in the days of film, now being lost in the midst of time, the film manufacturers used to print a number on the side of the box. This number represented the speed of the film, that is, how sensitive the film was to light, and the higher the number, the more sensitive was the film to light. Using a higher ASA film made it much easier to take photos in low light or to take fast moving subjects, i.e sports or birds in flight. The problem was, especially in the early days of film, the higher the ISO, the more 'grain' was introduced to the negative and consequently the prints. In this digital age, the term ASA has been replaced with ISO, and 'grain' is now referred to as 'noise'. With film, yo were locked into the ASA for the whole roll of film, the only way of varying the ASA while shooting was to carry another camera body loaded with a different film. How times have changed, we are now able to vary the ISO on a frame by frame basis, plus in my opinion the quality of high ISO images is now better than it was with film. [do action="tl-linktocurriculum1"] [/do] Here's a simple analogy showing how the sensitivity of the camera sensor changes when you adjust the ISO. If you arrive at a cinema show a bit late, everything looks really dark when you go in doesn't [...]

What is ISO – Understand ISO and get out of the Auto mode2017-05-29T16:22:15+01:00

What is Shutter Speed?

2017-05-29T16:22:16+01:00

What is shutter speed Shutter speed is a common term used to discuss exposure time, the effective length of time a camera's shutter is open. You can think of the shutter in your camera as a bit like a window shutter, you open up the shutters to let light in through the window, and when you close the shutters, the light is cut off. When you open and then close the shutters, the room gets brighter for a brief period and then goes dark again. That’s pretty much what a camera does on your SLR or mirrorless camera. Play this 5 second video to see a slow shutter speed action That was a very slow shutter speed, which in the majority of cases would let in too much light. The faster the shutter speed, the less light gets in, so I’m going to switch to a typical fast shutter speed, say 250th of a second, I doubt that you’re even going to see it. Play this video to see a fast shutter speed action (blink & you'll miss it!) For most photos the shutter speed is a fraction of a second, generally speaking out in the bright sunlight it could be anywhere between 125th of a second and several thousandth of a second, depending on other camera settings like your aperture or ISO. In low light the shutter speed might be somewhere between 30th of a second and 125th of a second, and at night, taking a night scene or maybe fireworks, the shutter speed can be several seconds. Obviously at night, the shutter needs to be held open for longer to let more light [...]

What is Shutter Speed?2017-05-29T16:22:16+01:00

The Exposure Triangle – Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO

2020-06-11T18:48:49+01:00

There's more info on this topic at www.pixpa.com. The exposure triangle explains how the individual aspects of exposure, i.e aperture, shutter speed and ISO, affect the final exposure of the photo. It's a useful way of describing the relationship between the three aspects of exposure. Each side of the triangle represents one of the three variables, aperture, shutter speed and ISO. Adjusting just one of these will will change the appearance of the photo based on your settings. It's important to understand that unless you are in the Manual Exposure Mode, changing any of the three settings will not make the image darker or lighter. That's because in any of the semi auto modes (such as A/AV, S/TV, or P), the camera will automatically compensate by changing one of the other settings. Aperture The aperture, which is part of the lens not the camera, controls the quantity of light entering your camera. Just like the pupil of the eye, the larger the aperture, the more light is let in. The aperture is set using what is known as F numbers, i.e f2.8, f4, f5.6, f8 and so on, and the smaller the number, the larger the aperture (only a small elite of quantum physicists know why this numbering system is so perverse!!). These numbers are sometimes referred to as a 'stop', and each stop allows in twice as much light as the previous one, so or example f4 lets in twice as much light as f5.6 Shutter speed The shutter speed, measured in fractions of a second, controls the duration of the exposure. Just like window shutters, the longer the shutter is held open, the more light is let [...]

The Exposure Triangle – Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO2020-06-11T18:48:49+01:00

Aperture vs Shutter Priority Mode – Which should you use?

2018-01-22T19:46:01+00:00

As well as the fully automatic green Auto mode, all DSLR's have several other very useful exposure modes. Aperture Priority and Shutter Priority Modes are two of the most popular semi-automatic modes. But what many people don't realise is that generally speaking, these two modes will give you exactly same exposures. For example, take a look at these settings which show equivalent settings (assume that the current light level is giving a reading of aperture f4, shutter speed 1/250th of a sec):- Every one of the above settings will give you the same exposure, for example, compare f5.6 at 1/125th of a second with f11 at 1/30th of second. f11 is 2 stops smaller than f5.6 (so less light is let in), and so to compensate for that, the camera chooses 1/30th of a second, which is 2 stops slower than 1/125th (shutter is held open longer). Also, the only difference between aperture priority and shutter speed priority, and the clue is in the name, is which setting you have direct control over, either the aperture or the shutter speed. Aperture or Shutter speed priority So that leaves a burning question. If it makes no difference to the exposure, why then choose aperture priority over shutter speed priority or vice versa? Well, it all comes down to the creativity element of photography. As well as controlling exposure, the aperture is used to control depth of field, that is, how much of the image is in focus from front to back, and the shutter speed is used to control motion, so whether you want to freeze the action or show movement. With that in mind, for landscapes you would generally use aperture priority and choose [...]

Aperture vs Shutter Priority Mode – Which should you use?2018-01-22T19:46:01+00:00

Exposure compensation explained

2017-05-29T16:22:17+01:00

Sometime, even the most sophisticated DSLRs can make a complete mess of the your exposure, with the result that your subjects will be too light or too dark. Think about some landscape photos you may have seen where the sky looks great but foreground objects are too dark, snow photos where the snow looks grey, or people playing on a beach in bright sunshine, but it looks like they were playing at tea time because the images were dark. This happens because camera metering systems attempt to average out the exposure to give a mid grey tone, (not grey in colour!), this usually works well because many images have both bright and dark areas in the scene. When the tones of these areas are averaged out, they quite often end up as mid-grey, but when a scene has very prominent bright or very prominent dark areas, this averaging out method can cause under or over exposure. The lovely bride Aimee above, has beautiful light skin, but because the wall and her dress are quite dark toned (and her face and arms are quite small in the frame), her skin would have been over-exposed if I hadn't used -1.3ev exposure compensation. In these two short video clips you'll see how the auto metering system of the video camera is fooled when zoomed in. Watch what happens to black velvet Watch what happens to a white wall In both cases, the image changed to a mid grey, obviously you wouldn't normally fill the frame with all black or all white, but it does show how the exposure can be fooled by the tone of the subject. In fact the light didn't [...]

Exposure compensation explained2017-05-29T16:22:17+01:00
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