aperture, shutter speed, iso question...

[robbins.photo]

I find it ironic that for years I would have given anything to have a meter built into my cameras so I didn't have to shoot every single photograph in so-called "Manual Mode" whereas now people have intelligent cameras with built-in metering and microprocessors controlling everything, and the majority of them want to start out in the mode many of us would have loved to get away from.

Rotfl.. yup, that one just made my day. Couldn't agree more.

 

[fmw]

A couple of comments. Exposure is a fairly complicated subject. There have been books written about it. What makes it even more complex is that what the camera thinks your exposure setting should be may not produce the mood you wish to convey.

ISO relates to film speed in the pre-digital era. Slower films had more resolution and contrast but required more exposure. Faster films traded resolution and contrast to provide for less exposure. You may have seen slow films used for something like a landscape and fast film used for sports action, for example. ISO in the digital age is similar. While it doesn't affect resolution it does impact image quality. As ISO increases so does digital noise. How much of that is acceptable is up to you but lower ISO settings will deliver a better image all other things being equal.

Aperture is nothing more than the size of the opening in the lens. It affects several things but the most obvious effect is depth of field. Larger openings provide for faster exposure times at the expense of depth of field. Smaller apertures, are the opposite. They provide greater depth of field by requiring longer exposure times.

Finally the shutter speed controls exposure time. Faster exposures are better at freezing action or even allowing you to hand hold the camera. Slower shutter speeds are for still images or images that would benefit from motion blur. Sometimes the use of slower shutter speeds will require the use of a tripod or some other way of preventing blurred images.

I assume your camera has a programmed exposure mode. With Nikon cameras there is a P mode that meters the subject and then provides combinations of f stop and exposure time to produce different effects. The photographer can step through the various options with a wheel. Spend some time with the P mode to better understand what different exposure options produce in the final image.

Lastly you need to understand a little about how meters work. The metering system is set up to produce what we call an 18% or medium gray result with exposure. Let's say you are shooting a snowy landscape. The meter is going to try to render the snow as medium gray. It will underexpose the image. So you will need to overexpose the image by 1 1/2 to 2 stops. You can do that by exposing manually, or setting up an exposure compensation or finding a mode in an amateur camera designed to shoot snow scenes. Conversely shooting a night cityscape will require less exposure because the meter will tend to overexpose it.

In the digital age we can dial in the "film speed" or allow the camera to choose it for us with compromises in any event. Different aperture and shutter speed settings will produce different results and now you have a way of understanding that better. Finally, exposure requires thinking that goes beyond what camera automation offers. We can change the results of our image by changing all or any of the three factors. Reading and experience will help you with that.

I don't know if this was helpful, OP, but I hope it got you thinking about exposure as an important photographic subject.

 

[yaopey]

I have always been taught to make use of simulation to learn and I often find them helpful. Maybe you could give it a try. Play around the settings and compare the results

The original DSLR camera simulator | CameraSim