So I have started to get into photography due to travelling. I am slowly figuring out editing and am about to buy a decent camera. I have been using my iPhone (645 II app) and gopro. Is there a website or a subreddit that explains what ISO and the other photography terms mean in a simple to understand way and when to use/change these settings?
Appreciate any help
Hi, and welcome!
The terms you need to know are; aperture, which is the opening that lets the light in. Expressed as a fraction of the maximum that the lens is capable of. for instance; f/5.6 means focal length divided by 5.6. Kind of hard to understand on the face of it, but just getting into it will help a lot.
Shutter speed; (time the shutter is open) which is usually expressed in seconds, or a fraction of a second. So a shutter speed of 500 is actually 1/500 of a second. Also kind of hard to understand without some experience with it.
ISO; this is a "construct" invented by digital camera makers when they wanted to convince film camera users that there was some kind of relationship between the digital sensor sensitivity and film sensitivity. The film users were accustomed to making some exposure compensations when they changed film, and wanted to know how much exposure compensation to allow in order to get a good exposure with digital.
This created more confusion than it helped because newbie digital users suddenly had one more setting to fiddle with, in spite of it not having anything to do with actual exposure. The ISO setting does, however, affect the display on the back of the camera, therefore many photographers will adjust the ISO setting to give them a good-looking thumbnail image to look at while they are evaluating the composition, etc.
Get yourself hooked up with Cambridge in Colour, and go through the tutorials.
Digital Photography Tutorials
Have fun!
