If you have ever seen people taking selfies at the park, or at a tourist attraction and found yourself annoyed to no end, then this article might be for you. While I understand the desire to take pictures everywhere you go, unfortunately selfies are NOT the solution. The solution I am suggesting is that we all learn how to use a DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) camera. In doing so, the nature of the DSLR will encourage more pointing of the camera out into the world rather than inward. Almost every household has a DSLR anymore, if not then return the point-and-shoot to whatever Best Buy sales agent stole your money and buy one. Its well worth the expense.
The topics I will be covering are:
- Shooting Modes
- ISO
- Exposure
- Metering
- Focussing
- File Size/types
1. Shooting Modes
The obvious place to start is the shooting modes. As shown in the picture the shooting modes are located on a dial on top of one side of the camera and has settings such as “auto, Av, Tv, M, P” and depending on the camera, possibly more. Each mode will set the camera in a different preset to behave a certain way when taking a picture, for example the “auto” mode selects everything to do with the exposure, aperture and shutter speed for you. Your auto is your general automatic transmission.
Aperture Priority (Av or A)
Aperture priority lets the controller select the aperture, but the camera selects the shutter speed. SO you might be asking yourself what is aperture?
The aperture is the size of the opening in the sense through which light is allowed to pass when the shutter is opened (examples above). The larger the aperture (or lower the f-stop) the more light that is allowed to pass through.
Aperture is always measure in “f-stops” and is always an f-number such as; f/2.0, f/2.8, f/4.0, etc. Reducing the aperture by one whole f-stop, i.e. f/2.0 to f/2.8 or f/5.6 to f/8.0 will cut the amount of light entering the camera in half.
The main use of aperture is to change your depth of field (the amount of image in focus). A large depth of field is attained using a small aperture (large f-number) which allows for a large distance within the scene to be in focus such as below.
This image was captured using f/13 to give large depth of field ensuring the entire image foreground to background was in focus.
On the other hand a shallow depth of field is achieved by using a large aperture (small f-number). This allows an image where only the subject is in focus and the background and foreground become soft and out of focus. This is a go-to favorite for portraiture or any image where you want to isolate the subject from the background such as below.
An aperture of f4.5 was used to capture this image, which causes the soft out of focus background.
Shutter Priority (Tv or S)
Similar to aperture priority, this is another mode where the controller can take control of one setting (shutter speed) and the camera will do the rest. The shutter speed is generally measure in seconds or fractions of a second. It is the amount of time the shutter stays open when you take the photograph. Naturally the longer the shutter stays open, the more light that will pass into the camera.
Short shutter speeds are great for freezing fast moving objects as shown below:
This image was captured using a 1/4000th sec shutter speed in order to freeze the subject mid flight.
On the contrary, you would use a long shutter speed if you wanted to blur a moving subject. The most common use is for flowing water (pictured below), but can also be used for things such as light painting. When using a long shutter speed, one must place the camera on a tripod in order to keep the camera steady. If you do not, your entire picture will become chaos, but unless you are experimenting and don’t mind the chaos, use a tripod.
Using a shutter speed of 6 seconds allows the moving water in the imagine to become soft and cloud-like.
Program (P)
Program mode is the midway point between the semi controlled settings to completely controlled settings. Think of it as an automatic transmission with paddle shifters. In program mode, you are able to set either the aperture or shutter speed, and the camera will maintain whatever you are not controlling accordingly. If you are on the move, and do not know what exactly you will be taking pictures of, this is your easy fast go to mode. It allows the user to jump back and forth between controlling aperture and shutter speed without having to change modes. This is also probably the best place to start after you move on from “auto” mode.
2. ISO
To put it very simply, ISO is a measure of how sensitive the sensor of your camera is to light. Probably the biggest innovation of digital photography was allowing the user to change the ISO at any point, where as film photography you buy a roll of film at one specific ISO and it cannot be changed.
The ISO sensitivity is represented numerically from ISO 100 (low sensitivity) up to ISO 8000 (high sensitivity) and even much higher. Changing the ISO changes the amount of light required to attain a given exposure.
At a low ISO, more light is required to achieve a given exposure where as with a high ISO less light is required to achieve the same exposure. Examples will go a long way here.
Low ISO
Photograph taken at ISO 100, does not show any signs of noise.
If you are photographing outside on a bright sunny day, then there is plenty of light for the sensor to expose properly at very low ISO such as 100 or 200. This will give the highest quality images, with very little grain/noise even when magnified.
High ISO
This image was taken around sunset, and there was not much ambient light. Therefore this was shot with ISO 4000, but contains a lot of noise.
If you are shooting in low light conditions, such as inside a building, or after the sun goes down, then there is likely not enough light to exposure your image properly at a low ISO. To compensate for this you may increase your ISO until you attain the desired result. Its worth being said that many of the DSLR’s have an “auto-ISO” function, where the camera will always adjust the ISO for optimal lighting. As you can see, as you increase the ISO, your image loses much of its sharpness, so changing the ISO is a last resort option in my book.
3. Exposure
At this point it is important to understand the relationship between aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. They are all linked and if you change one, it affects the others as well. As you can see on the right, the three settings must always be balanced.
For this, we assume the “original” is the correct exposure. Situation 1 shows that if you increase the aperture from f/8 to f/4, which is 2 stops, then you must increase the shutter speed by two stops (if we are keeping the ISO the same). Situation 2 also increases the aperture by two stops, but this time we are compensating by increasing the ISO by two stops. Situation 3 is similar, except we decrease the shutter speed by 1 stop and the ISO by 1 stop. As long as they balance out, it doesn’t matter what ratio you add or subtract to each.
This is what your camera is doing in all of the stem-auto settings. You are changing one of the categories, and the camera changes the others for you. And unless you are well experienced, I strongly suggest staying in the semi-auto settings.
4. Metering
As I have mentioned before, the camera registers the available light for you the majority of the time when taking a photograph. You may be asking yourself how does it do this? Don’t worry its a good question.
When taking a photograph and using any auto exposure setting the camera always calculates the average exposure. It always aims so that all tones in the image contain about 18% grey. This is known as the “middle” grey.
This process is known as metering. It is also why if you point your camera at a white scene, the image automatically come out darker than what you see, and visa versa, if you point your camera at a black scene, the resulting image will be brighter than it appears.
Generally speaking your camera has three metering modes:
Average – The camera asses tones across the entire image from corner to corner and exposes 18% grey to the image. Highly recommend staying in this setting.
Center-weighted – The camera weights the exposure reading in the center of the viewfinder, and can read up to 80% of the scene.
Spot metering – The camera uses a very small area to check for light conditions. Typically no more than 5% of the scene is measured in this setting, but based on the metering it will still expose the entire scene to 18% great based on that reading.
The left image shows the camera’s average exposure setting when photographing an actual white scene. And the right the exposure was adjusting to attain the correct exposure.
There are instances where you need to adjust your exposure when taking an image in order to capture what you see in real life. You can fix this by over exposing (applying positive exposure) if the scene is darker than real life like above, or under exposing (applying negative exposure) if the scene is brighter than in real life. The button to do this is shown to the right.
5. Focussing
Regardless of what mode you are using, focusing properly is always top priority. If the focus is not correct, then all of the other settings won’t matter because your subject that you want to be in focus will be blurry and painful to look at.
Focussing Modes
AF-S – autofocus-single. Best for stationary subjects such as portraits, landscapes, etc. Half-press the shutter to focus and so long as you don’t release the shutter release, the focus will be held at that point. If you need to change the focus, then simply release the shutter and press down half way again.
AF-C – autofocus-continuous. This is best for action or moving subjects such as sports, wildlife, etc. When you half press the shutter release the camera will focus on the subject, and the focus will follow the subject even if they move so long as the shutter release is held half way down.
S
Focus Points as seen through the viewfinder.
This is what you will see when you look through your viewfinder. This diagram will help you easily see where the camera is focusing. Wherever the camera focuses, that box(s) will light up red.
As with everything, one can choose to change the focuses from automatic to user chosen. While this is not necessary, I recommend setting your focus point to the center most square when starting out(See your camera manual to do this). This allows you to quickly know where your focusing since it is always the center. However do not be fooled, this does not mean all of your subjects that are in focus have to be in the center! You can simply get your subject in the center, press the shutter half way down to attain the focus, and turn your lens to the desired set up and take the picture.
6. File Size/Type
Setting your camera to the proper file type is probably the most crucial thing to do when you get your camera. Quite simply, you always want the images to save as the largest file possible, whether that be “large” or “fine”or “super fine” but most DSLR have the option of “raw.” Always select raw when available. The raw file is comprised and contains the largest amount of data. This allows for endless post-processing where the others will leave your imagine pixelated.
Take Away
Overall, the digital camera’s of the 21st century are quite complex. While it may seem daunting at first and you may say “but auto works just fine” I would strongly urge you to give it a try. Take your camera off auto and allow your creative expression to wonder where it may. Do not expect to learn everything in a day. With more and more sophisticated tech coming in cameras every year, even the professionals are constantly learning new things. Allow yourself to make mistakes, and have fun! And lastly, once you learn the ropes you can encourage those around you to stop taking pointless selfies, and point the camera out in this great big world we live in instead.