Basics of Photography - Aperture, Shutter Speed and Exposure

We thought of bringing something for all the Beginners of Photography. An article which can make an amateur know about the prime elements in a camera paving way for his growth as a Photographer.

For all the starters these three words may sound little complicated, but here we are to make you master them. To begin with, all three elements are important for making a picture, its more or less a combination of all three working in equal basis. But at times we need to prioritize things, when we want to shoot a specific kind of a picture. That’s when all these priority options comes into play. So before we jump into looking into these Priority options lets figure out what these terms actually mean.

Aperture

Aperture is a hole or opening for the light to travel through it. In simple terms Bigger the hole maximum the light flow. These aperture are also responsible for the sharpness of the image relative to the quantity of light admitted inside.Resulting in a sharper image with very shallow defocus and then there is the aperture stop which is responsible for determining the ray cone angle responsible to the bright spot.

Now we know what aperture stop does and this aperture stop is very important in determining the depth of field of an image. In combination with the alterations of shutter speed and exposure we can regulate light into the sensor and so on.
A lens with larger aperture is often called as Prime lens or fixed focal length lenses they are very fast lenses which allow more light compared to the zoom lenses. So when would you shoot in aperture priority, you can opt for this mode while using prime lenses, when you don’t want to care about your shutter speed, and you can still adjust your exposure on the go.

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Some Videos on Aperture

Shutter Speed

The time given by you to the camera sensor for the amount of light for it to receive is called the Shutter Speed. In other words, the shutter speed is equal to the time the shutter remains open to click a picture. Now let’s forget about aperture, logically lesser the shutter speed maximum the light entry into the sensor. Those fast action freezes or those blurry action shots are all due to shutter speed. Here there is no context to the aperture but again a combination with aperture can give you great results.

Imagine a huge tiger freezed while jumping over a deer with a great defocus background. This is where both aperture and shutter speed shake hands and create magic. Also one should play safe with faster shutter speed which might get underexposed.

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Some Videos on Shutter Speed

Exposure

OK. Now lets speak about Exposure.

Exposure is the total amount of light allowed to enter the sensor, which is measured in terms of lux. Again exposure is solely dependent on shutter speed or aperture, even the physical formula says so..

Exposure = Ev . t
- Hv is the luminous exposure (usually in lux seconds)
- Ev is the image-plane illuminance (usually in lux)
- t is the exposure time (in seconds)

At times everyone of us click some burnt out darks or the bleached out whites, which technically are called as underexposed or overexposed images.
So how do we know if a image is properly exposed, well watch out this section for some articles on zone system and its role in Photography.

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